And when he saw the scarves, he climbed up the mountain, and where he sat, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth, and taught them, and said, Blessed is he that is poor in spirit, for to him the kingdom of heaven is due. Blessed is he that weeps, for he will be comforted. Blessed is he that is gentle, for he will inherit the earth. Blessed is he that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for all things shall be blessed. Blessed are those who are righteous, for in them shall righteousness be proved. Blessed are those who are pure of heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for in them shall be the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people persecute and persecute you, and falsely and in all manner of evil speak against you against my will. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they followed the prophet who was before you. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt is leaned, how shall it be leaned? It has nowhere to go but to be thrown out and trampled by the people. You are the light of the world. A city that lives on top of a mountain cannot be thrown away. And a man does not light a lamp and puts it under the table, but on the table. And it shines for all that is in the house. Let your light shine so much for the people that they can see your good works and your Father who is in heaven, glorified. But do not think that I have come to dispel the law or the prophets. I have not come to dispel, but to fulfill. For I say to you, before heaven or earth passes, not one Jew or one title of the law will ever pass until all has happened. Every time one of the people of this building breaks and the people are so empty, the least will be called in the kingdom of heaven. But everyone who does and learns, he will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, if your righteousness is not more abundant than that of the scribes and pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it has been said to the people of the old days, you may not kill, but everyone who kills must take responsibility for the law. But I say to you that everyone who is unjust to his brother should take responsibility for the law. And everyone who says to his brother, Raka, should take responsibility for the great council. And everyone who says, your boss should take responsibility for the holy fire. If you then bring your gifts to the altar and you notice that your brother has something against you, leave your gifts in front of the altar and go to your brother first and then come and bring your gifts. Be good to your Tea Party as long as you are still on the road with it. So that the Tea Party may not hand you over to the judge and the judge will not hand you over to the court and you will not be thrown into prison. For which I say to you, you will certainly not get out of there before you have paid the last bill. You have heard what has been said to the people of the old days, you can't really break in. But I say to you, that everyone who looks at a woman to desire her, has already made a pact with her in his heart. If your right eye then lets you strike, take it out and throw it away from you, for it is better for you that one of your limbs is gone, and not that your whole body is thrown into hell. And if your right hand lets you strike, take it off and throw it away from you, for it is better for you that one of your limbs is gone, and not that your whole body is thrown into hell. It is also said that everyone who marries his wife must give her a marriage certificate. But I say to you that everyone who marries his wife, except because of hearsay, makes sure that she really breaks. And everyone who marries his wife, really breaks. Furthermore, you have heard that it has been said to the people of the old days, you are not allowed to swear falsely, but you must keep your honor to the Lord. But I say to you, swear not openly, not in heaven, because it is the throne of God, nor in the earth, because it is the footstool of his feet, nor in Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great king. You are also not allowed to swear at your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let it be a word, yes, yes, no, no, more than that is out of the bosom. You have heard that it is said, eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say to you that you should not resist a bad man. But if someone beats you on your right cheek, turn to the other one. And he who wants to go to court with you and wants to get you undressed, let him get himself undressed. and every one of your one mile is two miles long. Give him what you ask of him, and show him not what you want from him. You have been told there, You must love your neighbor, and hate your enemy. But I say to you, You must love your enemies, hate those whom you curse, do good to those whom you hate, and pray for those whom you insult and persecute, that you may become children of your Father who is in heaven, For He will raise His Son from evil and from good, and He will make rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you have love, the love that is for you, what reward do you have? Do not the tolerants do not do the same? And if you love only your brothers, what exception do you do? Do not the tolerants do not do the same? Then be content, as your Father in heaven is content. Amen. This is the Word of God. Blessed are the pious, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the pious, for they shall inherit the earth. Beloved community, we have now completed our series on the letter to the community in Philippi. We have already started a series on the Holy Sermon, so we are now going to start with that. But the previous sermon was a week ago, so we will start this sermon with a few instructive, clear thoughts. And then we will continue with, Blessed are those who are merciful, for they shall inherit the earth. What you have here in chapter 5, if you see it, also in the Scadavia of the Old Testament, where the Lord brings his people together at Mount Sinai and where he speaks with his people and teaches them about his kingdom, about his dominion. And then, many years later, that same Lord takes on the human nature and comes walking among us. Then he climbs a mountain again and he begins to teach the people with wisdom. So what do you have here? You have the honors of the teachers in human nature, who come to teach us. To teach us about His kingdom and His dominion. And also, then He begins in a special way and He says, how does the one who shares in His kingdom look like? The one who is in His dominion, the one who is a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. The mountain spirit. The beginning of the mountain break starts with our Lord who climbs the mountain, and then he sees the sheep, he sits down, he opens his mouth, and he has taught them and said, you have everything to do with authority, you have everything to do with the fact that Christ is busy also teaching the shepherds, I am the teacher, And you have to learn from me. The teacher has always sat down. When he decides to teach formally and officially, he will stand behind a podium. And then everyone realizes that the one who comes to teach is right to teach. I have to sit down and listen. And this is something that happens here. We see how the disciples realized this. As soon as Jesus is going to do this, as soon as he is going to sit, they come closer and they sit at his feet. They want to learn from the Master. Love should be like this with us. And I realize that we need Christ as our teacher. And He teaches us powerfully from His Word. So we have to sit at His feet and learn who He is as the King, what His reign is like, about everything and everything, and how I have to live for Him, learn from the good Master. Now then, let us begin, ladies and gentlemen, with the word, blessed. And repeat this word over and over again through the first part of the sermon, the opening part of the sermon. Blessed is he that is poor of heart. Blessed is he that weeps. Blessed is he that is merciful. Blessed is he that is hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Blessed is he that is merciful. Blessed is he that is pure of heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed is he that is persecuted. Blessed are you, for you persecute and persecute the people falsely, other than in evil, and you speak against me. This word in Greek is makarios. If you go to Harrel's Bay one day, then you have this tendency that houses at the seas got names. They had a sign on the house, and each house got a name. If you go to Haraldsbaai and walk along the beach, pay attention to the name, and there was one there with the name of Makarios. Makarios. The owner probably said, this place is a place where I am blessed. It is a place that is holy. It is a place where I experience joy. And that is what this word means. You can also translate it as blessed. You can also translate it as happy. These people are happy and full of joy. The blessings of the Lord bring joy and happiness. And just like the person who sat there, looked out over the sea and said, this moment is blessed. Or like when you have a nice cup of tea or a nice cup of coffee and you think, hmm, this is blessed. Just like that, there is something that the Lord Jesus is trying to convey. Who are the people, that has true holiness, that receives true joy, that receives true blessings from the Lord. You have to realize, beloved, that this is something that all people are looking for. But people are looking for it in the wrong place, in the wrong source. What Christ says is true holiness. is under His dominion. When He is your King, and when you are under Him, when He has given you His Holy Spirit, powerfully in your work and in your change, that is someone who shares true and eternal holiness. This person is holy. This person is holy. It is special to see, it is not, these people will not become holy. Or, they will receive salvation one day. This is where it is written in the Ten Commandments. Here, Christ is trying to describe, who are the people who have now received this salvation from Him? Who are they? But you can also put it this way. How do you change... God is saying, through the Holy Spirit, without people, how do you change when you bring them into his kingdom? When you bring them into rebirth? How do you change? And then it is described in every phrase that follows. Now, something that is extremely important is our work with the Holy Sermon. And we already mentioned it last time. But this does not describe different people. It's as if you're walking around a car, you're trying to buy a car. And then you walk around the car, you look at it from behind, you look at it from this side, you look at it from the front, you look at it from the other side, you look at it in the engine, you look at it in the kayak, you're busy looking at the car from all angles. And then you describe, if you describe the car from behind, you don't describe another car. If you describe the car, you don't describe it from the front. And so we have to look at the holy speeches. Christ is busy describing the citizens of the kingdom of heaven from different angles. We have to keep that in mind all the time we walk through it. So that means we can't... Just choose one thing and say, okay, I will be kind, but I will not be a peacemaker. Another citizen of the Kingdom can be a peacemaker. I don't have to be that, because I will be the kind one. No, that's not how it works. These goods are woven into each other. When the spirit works in the sinner's soul and brings him back to life, then you process all of this as a whole. It's a description of a whole picture of the citizen of the kingdom. But what we also need to see, and keep in mind, like we read in these sermons, is how this one flows over to the next one. It's a beautiful unity, not only that it describes the same people, but also that one flies over to the next one, flies over to the next one, flies over to the next one, and a sentence builds up to the last one. That's where the citizens of the kingdom live so much for the kingdom of the kingdom, that they are also persecuted by the enemies of the kingdom. So it builds up, from one to the next. What we should also hear here, is how the King of the Kingdom, for the citizens of the Kingdom, wants to learn, where does your security lie? Your security lies in the fact that He changes you, You can interpret it in your heart, it changes you from the inside out. It changes you, powerfully, supernaturally, it affects you in your soul. And then you can start to notice it, you can touch it, something has changed inside. Someone who has been born again can say, there has been a real change. in my life, in my thoughts. I don't have the desires of the world. I don't have the urges of the world. There is still some remnants of that. There is another beginning in my life. A beginning that is directed to the king of the kingdom. He is my master and I want to live for him. And I hate this piece that is still left, this rotten part of me that wants to pull me away from him. So something powerful happened in my soul. Now, where does your confidence lie? It's not in the first place that you have to deal with those changes. Because if you just work towards those changes, you can still start to doubt. But I see something where God will still keep me. Do I still belong to Him? Where does your confidence lie? It's in the promises of the Lord. is in himself, in his character, in his reliability. He is the God who does not change. He is the unchangeable being. That means that if he says something once, he will never take it back. If He makes His promises, then you can stand on it, you can stand on it. He is not going to say one thing and in 10, 20, 100,000 years He will say, it worked like this, I promised it like this, but now I change my plan and I promise something else. That is not who these divine beings are. When we heard on Friday about the prophecies of Jehovah's Witnesses in the beginning, there was this prophecy that God will come on this date. And then that date comes and it goes by and he changes his plan. It's going to be on the next date. And then that date comes and it's going to be on the next date. And what do you have to do with God then? You have nothing to do with the unchangeable beings. You have to deal with someone like us, who plans, but then something happens, or you don't get it right, and you have to adjust your plans. You have to change your plans. You have to deal with the unchangeable all-powerful being. So here you have to deal with a God who promises. And He promises for every citizen of the Kingdom, I will work these things in your soul. Hold fast to my promises, that these are the characteristics of one who is lost. So your certainty is at its deepest, On Him. On who He is. In His promises. That He promises. He saves sinners. He promises that the sinner that He saves, He will renew. He will bring him back to life. Here He describes how He looks in the soul of the sinner. And then when He notices these things, then He says, It is He. My trust is in Him. He is the rock for my soul. He gives certainty on the basis of who He is. On the basis of His promises. How blessed are these people, who are poor in spirit, who weep, who are sad, who are hungry and thirsty, who are barren and so on. And what people should see, again clearly, is how it is almost unintuitive. It goes against human intuition. You hear something about poverty, And then it's hard to say, but those are the people who are blessed. There is often more talk of the rich than of the blessed. You hear of someone who is in mourning, and you think, but that is certainly someone who has been blessed by the Lord, isn't it? But here it is. It's always something like this. Say, there's something else going on. It's not your first expectation. It's about your work. It's different. But it makes a lot of sense. If you dig into each and every one of these phrases, you'll see how it absolutely makes sense. At the beginning of each phrase there is a description of who we are, who the believers are, who the citizens of the kingdom are, who they are, how they were made. And then there is a promise at each one, that we can also hold on to, to say, Blessed is the one who is in the arms of Jesus, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Blessed is the one who is in the arms of Jesus, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who are merciful, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be blessed. In each of these verses your soul is called to say, believe in Him, trust Him, trust Him for the Lord, but also trust Him for one day, for the future. Hold fast to the Lord's promises. You will notice that the first one and the last one have the same promise. They belong to the Kingdom of Heaven. And that is the dominant theme in the mountain preaching. The Kingdom of Heaven. The dominion of the three-one God, the Lord God. That is the dominant theme. The Kingdom of Heaven. We have already looked at the first blessing speech. Blessed is the one who has the arm of Jesus. We said then, the arm of Jesus does not mean that you are intellectually weaker than the other. We have already heard how people refer to someone who is striven. They are the one who has the arm of Jesus. It does not say that the striven cannot have the arm of Jesus. But this is not about preachers like these. This is about people who come with the Holy Spirit. What do you do in the Sunday before you think, I am a good person. The one who was full of pride, who thought, there is nothing wrong with me. The wrong lies with that one and that one. And then, what does the Holy Spirit do? He opens your eyes to see yourself. He opens your eyes to see, how do I stand before the Lord? Think of the example I describe in Paul's life. He did these things before, but that was for a wish from God. That made him step into the throne of heaven one day and say, look at me. Look how big and good I was. Look at all the things I did. But then the Holy Spirit comes and opens his eyes, and he looks at these same goods and he says, This is adultery. You are hurting my business. And then you have to throw away all that good, and you have to stand in front of the Lord, and you are begging for grace. So what does the Holy Spirit do? When He wants to bring someone back to life, He forces you to recognize, I have nothing in Myself. All I can do, is that I can fall down in front of the Lord, and trust Him that He is a gracious God. You realize your spiritual poverty in front of the King of the Kingdom. You cannot stand in front of the King of the Kingdom and say, I, I, I am the one. You will fall down in front of him and say, O, you are the one who has mercy on me, a poor sinner. But the Holy Spirit does not only work on this realization of my spiritual poverty, the realization of how dependent I am on the King of Kings, that He must be blessed. The Spirit also moves my heart to react to that. Because you can get people who will say, yes, I'm angry. And that's nice. I'm angry and I'm not going to deal with that. That's something of a realization. of where He stands. But it is a satisfaction with that. It is a satisfaction with His standing before the Lord. But what does it say in verse 4? Blessed is the one who prays. And if it flows out of the first blessing, then that prayer has to do in the first place with your poverty, your spiritual poverty. That when the Holy Spirit works in our hearts, I don't look at my poverty in a neutral way, as if it doesn't touch me, as if it doesn't move me, as if it's just another fact like the grass is green. No, you stand before the Lord and you mourn over it. You mourn over it. You cry over your poverty. And it is something that a person notices when he is in the faith. So there is a righteous heartache about what you did for the Lord. Not in the first place, about the consequences of it. That you, as someone who was hurt, or you came to it, you lost something, didn't you? We notice that with the unbelievers as well. I mean, if you bring an unbeliever to the court of the world and he hears that his finding that is announced is a life sentence. So I don't want to see how they cry. It is not the tears that we are talking about here. The tears that we are noticing here are the tears that we are noticing with David in Psalm 51. Where he says, I have sinned against you and you alone, and I have done what is wrong in your eyes, so that you may be justified when you are not justified. The Spirit works in our awareness of our poverty, but He also works in our souls, which is tears over our sins. I think this is the primary meaning, but we can also say, what are the thoughts that go along with this? It is also a prayer about the sins, but also about what the sins bring forth. About the brokenness that it brings forth, the damage that it brings forth. That this is not a way in which the Lord is glorified and honored. And we cry about that. We cry about that this time that comes as a result of my sin and your sin and our sin, that is something that is in our hearts. And we long for a day when that will no longer be the case. There will be nothing left of it, and then you will hear the promise in the second half, because they will be comforted. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. But then something will say to you, what are we waiting for? What can we be rewarded for? For what will the Lord give us? He is going to give it to us. There is no longer the possibility to sin. He is already starting to work on it. Yes, that is what we are talking about in the process of sanctification. The sin is dying down more and more and you are more and more in the new people, in obedience. And then you get something of a foretaste of what the completion also means. That in the completion, the sin is completely extinguished. There is nothing left of it. And you are fully awakened in the new person. There is no longer any of that rebellion or sin that remains. But so also all the consequences. That is why we read in Revelation 21, There will no longer be anyone who weeps. There will no longer be tears. There will no longer be any sickness. There will no longer be any death. Because all those things that are the continuation of the fall of the sins and of people's sins, all those things the Lord does not do together with the sins. Because they have complete sanity before the holy authority of the Almighty God. Blessed are those who tremble, for they shall be comforted. And now we come to the blessed speech, where we have not yet stopped. Blessed are the pious, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the pious, for they shall inherit the earth. Now here, As we said before, what does gentleness mean? It's a beautiful word, it sounds beautiful, it rolls off the tongue. But what is the content of this word, gentleness? If you look at the English, a lot of the translation will be translated as meekness. Blessed are the meek, the meek. And then, when you hear an English preacher, they will often say, meekness does not mean weakness. Then you can play the African word game to say, gentleness does not mean weakness. But that is not enough to give you a definition. It tells you what it is not. But it does not tell you what it is not. And in that, Steve Lawson, he illustrates it to me in a very beautiful way. He illustrates it with the image of a wild horse, which still did its own thing, just as it wanted to do. And it went where it wanted, it did what it wanted. And this wild horse is caught and broken in. And now it is under the command of its master. He is under authority. Jesus speaks of power that is kept in the tomb. Power under the authority of the Master. Now, when we look at where this word occurs to us, and a fitting example is at the very beginning, in the Pentateuch, where Moses is called the most powerful man on the whole earth. And that is of course until that time. It's not like that in all times. Our Lord Jesus was ultimately the most merciful man. It is striking that directly... It is actually the introduction to what follows. The remark of what the Spirit has already done in Moses. The Spirit has already done a special mercy in Moses. And what happens right after that? Then you hear how Aaron and Miriam stand up to him. and to accuse him of all kinds of things and to accuse him. What do you have to see? You have to see his humility. You see it reflected in the way he reacts to it. Here you have a man who was not afraid to stand up for what is right. Who was not afraid to fight for what the Lord says. Who was not afraid to deceive people and talk to them. But what happened is, when it started in the first place about him, and not about the honor of the Lord, then you see how he is not a man whose life is about standing up for his rights. He is deeply aware of his duties, but his life is not about his rights. And it's quite striking when you see a book about real divorces. All those shocking statistics from the last 100 years, of how many more real divorces there are now than there were 100 years ago. And then you ask yourself, what has changed from that time to this time? One of the points we make is the claim to human rights. That it was about me and what came to me. And he said, what was more the claim in the past was on duties. What is my responsibility? What is it that I have to do? And that I realize, my duties, in a certain sense, my rights. You could also say, it was a time of greater self-confidence in the past. That doesn't mean it's gone. But what happened to us, is that the Christian principles affected society to a greater extent. And just as the Christian principles, the Christian life, say that we are free, we don't want to do anything with it, now you see the effect of that in society. There are people who are proud and say, it's about me, it's about my rights, it's all about what I want. And of course you will see how the devil is getting bigger and bigger. If the two parties and the devil say all the time, but this one and this one comes to me, you have to give it to me. Then it's a trap with a short spark and it's going to explode. But do you think how it has changed? Mr. Married Man says, what are my duties? What is my responsibility as a married man? Why did the Lord call me? What should I do for him? What should I do for her? Then something has changed. There is a gentleness in that. Even though the other party is not taking responsibility for it. Then my question is not, this is a trade transaction. I will do what I have to do, when you do what you have to do. That's not how it works. You realize you are under the rule of Jesus Christ. And under his power, under his rule, he broke in to live for him. Then you say, but where does Christ call me? He gives me a duty in my marriage, which I have to fulfill, even when my spouse doesn't fulfill the entire duty. I have to do what I have to do. So you see, Dikwils, how gentleness in the Scripture comes forth when people lie. It's actually the place where it's pointed out, where it's put to the test. When you are being attacked, when you are being accused, the way you react to that is like something is bleeding from the inside. The heart is bleeding. When there is criticism, when there is attack, when there is persecution, when people treat you badly, then the question is, how do I react to sin? You have to understand this. Just because someone else is doing sins, doesn't prevent me from reacting in a sinful way. I can react to sins with obedience. I can also react to sins with further sins. So what do I have to ask? I have to ask that the Lords guide me. When someone is sinning against me, I still have to ask, how do I have to be merciful in this situation? How do I have to, in this difficult situation, still do what is right in front of the eyes of the Lords? And often this is the place where the heart is exposed. Where it shows, is there mercy in here? Or is there a proud heart that says, I stand on my rights, and everything that comes to me, will come to me. Does that suit you? No. The self-confidence then flows out of the previous two holy speeches. Where you realize how poor of a spirit you really are before the Lord. And what brings me forward, is when you see the other one who is sinning against you, then you have a deep realization that you and I are one arm. I see your poverty, but I realize my own poverty before the Lord. And that has a positive effect on you. If you realize your spiritual poverty before the Lord, then it brings something of a realization of, I must also have mercy on the one standing before me. When you weep over your own spiritual poverty and the consequences it causes, what does it bring forth in you? Yes, we can be angry about sins. We can. We read about it in the scriptures. But what does it also bring forth in the believer is a heartache. is a deep heartache for what I now see in my brother, my sister, or any other person. So these first two are blessed words, and you should see how they flow forward into gentleness. Gentleness before the Lord, and gentleness towards my fellow man. But I realize, I was like a wild horse that did what I wanted with my strength. But God grabbed me and broke me in order to do what He wants under His command and His authority. Not what I want in the first place. It is something of a humiliation. It is something of a diminution. It is something that the Holy Spirit makes you small before the Almighty. You realize your smallness before the Living God. Become visible in how you work with the people around you. Realize your smallness for the living God. Again, we see the contrast here. The gentleness, and if you think about how the world thinks about it. I want to hear about those who are protected by their self-esteem. But they are the ones who are going to get everything. I have to be self-confident and then I will get everything. Here it is beautifully put. You have to humiliate yourself. You have to belittle yourself in front of the Lord. You have to be humble in front of the Lord. And the Lord says, that is what the earth is going to inherit. It is not that which they will increase themselves. That which they will increase themselves will be humiliated. And that which they will humiliate themselves, the Lord will eventually increase. What we need to see is that they will inherit the earth. It is certain. That is the first thing you need to see in this promise. The inheritance is certain. The Lord has determined it. He has measured it. He has chosen it. He has said, this is the portion of inheritance that I give to My Son, and through My Son, and all that is due to Him. The earth is His, and through Him, all His blessings. It has been measured, it has been fixed, it has been determined, it will not change. The heritage is fixed. But what you also have to see is that it is still in the future. Yes, the earth should... In the end, the Lord will also give the earth to the believers. There won't be one more unbeliever on earth. There won't be one more unjust on earth. There won't be one more thief, robber, or anything like that on earth. It will just be all that is part of the kingdom of heaven. But there is something in here that you still have to wait for. You're not going to have all the fullness of it now. We can already experience pre-tastes of it. We can already taste and experience something in a smaller form of it. But the fullness of it, wait for us for it. The Lord gives you a little taste and then says to you, there's so much more to come. Wait for it. Hope for it. Be rejuvenated for it. But how can we live now? Abraham is a good example of this. In a way, we are in the same position as him. Abraham, it was promised to him, he will inherit this land, Canaan. The Lord said to him, this land is yours and your descendants. But then he walks around in Canaan with all those Canaanite peoples and they are still in possession of the land. So, we are in something of the same position. We realize that the earth has been given to the believers. That is the heritage of the believers. But we still live on an earth where there are circumstances that the king of kings does not want to acknowledge and does not want to serve. Because he wants to worship the abandoned. And what do we see that is so striking in Genesis? Then you read, just as he walks, just as he comes to a new place, what does he do? He builds an altar. And then he moves from one place to the next, and he builds an altar. And then he moves from one place to the next, and he builds an altar. Everywhere he moves, he says, this ground is the ground on which the Lord is to be worshipped. This ground is not the ground that we should be at the end. This is the ground on which the Lord is to be worshipped. So when he realizes that this land will one day be his and my descendants, he lives in a different way here and now. He starts building the altars now. That's why the ground is there. That's why it's woven. It's woven in worship of the living God. And if we can live like that now, it doesn't mean that because you know the fullness will come one day, that we all sit back and do nothing now. That's not how it works. Even now, we are going around the world and saying, but the land belongs to the Lord. How can this land be taken from the offering of the dead and be consecrated for the offering of the living God? People can talk about land in a literal sense, yes, and I think it is also good to say, how can the believer possess land in a literal sense and then use that land for the kingdom? People can also talk about it in a more polite sense. Think, if you are in the legal profession, how can this ground also be used for the worship of the Lord? Law and justice, the courts. How can these places where the laws are made of the country, how can those places also be used for the worship of the Lord, where the kingdom of kings is recognized? And what he commands, through numbers in the laws that are made for the citizens of South Africa. So if you go in that direction, then you realize, but I'm going in that direction also with a goal. To say, how will this land be blessed for the worship of the living God, for the King of Kings, and for His Lordship? It's just one profession, one field. We can talk about every single field. How will we also, if we go in the medical direction, How should Christ's dominion and His will, and what He says about what is right and wrong, how should that come to light? In the medical science. And in a medical profession. And then you are also saying, there should be recognized Christ's kingdom. And this should also be a place where the living God is served and worshipped. And not that this is the medical profession for the deacons. And then you can try to work it out in your own direction, where you are. How is this aspect, this place where I live and where I work, how is that part of worship? This ground is also for the true God and not for apostasy. Because you know... But the gentlemen will inherit the earth. Those who are low, those who the world would say, they will not go anywhere, they will not get anything. They will finally give the Lord everything for the believers, for the citizens of the kingdom. It should not make you passive, it should give you a new aura of victory. to live for the King of the Kingdom. Blessed is the one who is gentle, the one who is humble, the one who is under the control of Jesus Christ, the one who realizes the smallness and weakness of the Lord, the one who bows before Him in His will and says, I am a little servant, and does not stand and say, but here and here and here and here He does not come to me, but is ready to lead for Him, Blessed are you, for the Lord has given you the earth. Amen.