The Meek

How many of you remember the glory days of Nike and the NBA in the 80s-90s?

Say what you will, but that was the golden age of basketball, with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Magic Johnson, and so many other greats.

Do you remember who the bad boy was during those years? The one everybody loved to hate?

There may have been several, but one stands out particularly to me: Charles Barkley.

How many of you remember this classic Nike ad with Sir Charles?

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In 1987, Nike ran an ad that said, “The meek may inherit the earth, but they won’t get the ball.”

In case you aren’t familiar with the first part of that sentence, it comes from the beatitude we examine today.

That ad is a great representation of just how wrong we are when we usually think about the term “meekness.”

In our world, it is synonymous with being weak, timid, and afraid.

However, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes it clear that meekness is more important than being able to steal the ball or block the shot.

In fact, meekness is one of the key qualities of those who are a part of the kingdom of God.

Go ahead and open your Bibles to Matthew 5:5.

Our study in the Sermon on the Mount has been pretty heavy so far.

Jesus delivered this sermon to a group of people from all different areas and walks of life.

They were fascinated by what he had been saying, and they were excited about the miracles Jesus had performed.

It seemed to them that God was finally fulfilling his promises to bring his kingdom to bear on earth.

With all this excitement building, Jesus sits down to clarify some things.

They aren’t entirely wrong; this is the beginning of God’s kingdom on earth.

However, in this stage, the kingdom wouldn’t look anything like what they were expecting.

In the first 10 verses, he outlines several conditions for us to meet that enable us to live blessed lives.

Often, they are opposite of what we would expect.

We have seen that the way to inherit the kingdom of God is to recognize that we have no merit of our own with which to earn it.

Last week, we saw that in order to have true joy, we have to first mourn over our sin. It’s only after we are willing to take a hard look at who we are and who God is that we can receive the comfort that his forgiveness brings.

Again, this week’s beatitude builds on the previous two, giving us a next step.

If we have developed the mindset that we have nothing on our own, and we are broken for our sin, then how do we need to live moving forward?

That’s what we find here in Matthew 5:5, so let’s look at it together...

Again, there is this same pattern of an attribute followed by an outcome.

This week, the attribute Jesus commends is those who are humble.

Although that is one way this word can be translated, there is no good word in English that really conveys exactly what this means.

Some have translated it “gentle,” and others use the term, “meek.”

This morning, that’s the term I want to go with. Humility is a word we use often, but we don’t use “meek” nearly as much.

Since we aren’t as familiar with “meek”, then we have the opportunity to discover better what it means through Scripture without having to pull it away from the regular ways we think about that word.

As we mentioned earlier, it isn’t about weakness; rather, the idea of meekness is those who have power under control.

We talked about this several months back in a different context, so some things we say today may sound familiar but bear repeating.

Some define this “humility/gentleness/meekness” as self-control, but as we will see, it goes deeper than that.

In fact, isn’t that what we spent the last two weeks talking about? We have already said we don’t have the ability to control ourselves. That’s why we are spiritually poor and have all this sin in our lives when we live apart from Christ.

William Barclay, who we mentioned a few weeks ago, does a great job in his commentary of highlighting at least three different expressions of this meekness in Scripture, and I adapted them some to highlight what is behind Jesus’ words here.

If you and I are going to live the blessed life of unshakeable joy, then we have to be meek.

If we are to be meek, then, we must:

1) Recognize our ignorance.

The meek are those who recognize that there is a limit to what we know and understand.

Before I go any further, I don’t want you to think that I am telling you that Jesus is just telling you to stop thinking and just do what you’re told.

I am not telling you to avoid wrestling with the difficult realities of what we find in Scripture and see in the world around us.

However, even as we wrestle through those things, we have to acknowledge that we do not, will not, and cannot know everything.

We saw that last week when we talked about sin. As we saw how broadly the Bible defines sin, we acknowledged that we couldn’t possibly know every sin we have ever committed.

If that is true of our own lives, then how could we possibly understand everything that is going on in the world around us?

That is what Job discovered, isn’t it? Through everything he endured, Job came to acknowledge his limitations in a new way.

If you remember the story, Job was a man who followed God closely. God had given him a large family and a large fortune, and in a matter of moments, it was almost all taken way. His children were killed, and all his livestock was stolen, which would have decimated his finances.

His friends show up, and for a lot of chapters, there is a back and forth where essentially, the friends say, “God did this because you did something wrong,” and Job replies, “No I didn’t.”

Eventually, God speaks directly to Job.

Here’s how he starts out:

Job 38:1–7 CSB

Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind. He said: Who is this who obscures my counsel with ignorant words? Get ready to answer me like a man; when I question you, you will inform me. Where were you when I established the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? What supports its foundations? Or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

God goes on for two whole chapters like that before Job pipes up and says, “Okay, I get it.” But God isn’t done and goes through two more chapters, until finally Job arrives at a point of meekness and recognizes that God will do things that we cannot understand:

Job 42:1–6 CSB

Then Job replied to the Lord: I know that you can do anything and no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, “Who is this who conceals my counsel with ignorance?” Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wondrous for me to know. You said, “Listen now, and I will speak. When I question you, you will inform me.” I had heard reports about you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I reject my words and am sorry for them; I am dust and ashes.

Listen: God knows things you do not know! He knows how all of human history will pan out. He knows exactly what is right and exactly what is wrong in every situation.

He is the king over every king, and he is in charge.

Are you willing to surrender to the fact that you may never know, you may never understand?

That is part of being meek: recognizing that God knows more than I do.

That plays out in many ways, but one of the key ways it is demonstrated is as we cultivate meekness to...

2) Control our desires.

This goes back to the main idea behind meekness as power under control.

We are saying it this morning as controlling our desires.

If we can keep the desires in check, then the actions will follow.

As we saw last week and will see over and over in the Sermon on the Mount, sin starts when a temptation meets a desire in our heart.

John categorizes sin in three main categories of desires:

1 John 2:16 CSB

For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world.

We desires things to make our flesh feel a certain way, we desire to have things we don’t, or we desire recognition for what we have achieved and possess.

Many of those desires aren’t wrong, but they become sinful when we put the desire for those things above our desire to honor Christ.

For example, if you are married, you should have sexual desire for your spouse. However, if you begin to manipulate your spouse to get them to meet your desires, or if you start seeking to satisfy that desire outside of your relationship to your spouse in a mutually encouraging way, that desire has become sinful.

It isn’t wrong for you to desire some time to rest. God established a pattern of rest for us when he created the world. However, when you use your rest time for things that go against God’s design, or when you put such a high priority on rest that you are missing out on what God is doing around you, then it is sin.

It is those desires, those unmet expectations that are the source of many of the problems we have!

James 4:1–3 CSB

What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

The meek man or woman, then, is going to seek to bring those desires under control and let God determine if and how they should be met.

Let me ask you to take a minute and think through last week.

How would you describe it? Was it a week of control, where you kept your temper, you kept your desire for stuff or for sex, your desire to be known by everyone and respected in check?

Would those who know you best say, “This person is a model of what a disciplined life looks like”?

If not, then you are not living a life of humility, gentleness, or meekness.

This doesn’t mean that there will never be a place for strong emotions, though, especially anger.

That is simply weakness.

Let’s throw out another 80s/90s reference…how many of you remember the show Full House?

We recently went back and rewatched the entire series.

Do any of you remember Kimmy’s boyfriend Duane? He pretty much only said one word: “Whatever.”

That was his answer to every question. He was going to go with the flow and just do whatever.

That isn’t meekness!

The meek man knows when it is time to stand up and say, “This is not okay!”

Isn’t that what we see of Moses? He was described as the meekest man alive, yet he was angry at the people who so quickly rebelled against God while Moses was on the mountain.

Isn’t that what we see of Jesus? He described himself using this same word in Matthew 11:29, and yet later in Matthew 21:12-13, we see him flipping tables and driving out people who were abusing the sacrificial system of the temple.

What was that all about? These men knew it was right to be angry at sin, especially when it was a demonstration of people who claimed to honor God and were doing the exact opposite of what he would command.

This actually makes it harder, doesn’t it? It would be easier to say, “The way to be meek is to give up and never be angry again,” than to say, “You need to control your anger, only directing it at the right time in the right ways.”

Just like the first two beatitudes, we are again confronted with our own inability here!

You and I can’t control our desires, which is why the meekness we see in Scripture isn’t just about self-control.

Here’s how William Barclay said it:

Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew—Volume 1 Chapters 1–10 (Revised Edition) The Bliss of the God-Controlled Life

It is not so much the blessing of the man who is self-controlled, for such complete self-control is beyond human capacity; rather, it is the blessing of the man who is completely God-controlled, for only in his service do we find our perfect freedom, and in doing his will our peace.

That is why we flesh out our understanding of meekness by:

3) Submit to our leader.

If I don’t understand everything, and I can’t control my desires on my own, then doesn’t this just make sense?

Shouldn’t I want to surrender my life to the God who is able to do everything that I can’t?

As we see with our desires, though, this isn’t just a passive submission.

It is a submission where I bring my will, what I think is best, my hopes and dreams, and I lay it all down at Jesus’ feet.

I don’t ask him to sign off on what I want; I am laying these things down at his feet to see what of that fits in line with his plan for me and what he is doing in his kingdom.

Where my plans and dreams and desires are wrong, I willingly surrender them to him.

Where they are in line with what he wants me to be and do, I pick them up and do what he desires in the strength he supplies.

Let’s not forget that, although God is gracious to bless us and be more kind and loving to us than any human master, he is still in charge and we still serve him, not the other way around.

Jesus is telling us how to live the blessed life of a servant in his kingdom, not the blessed life of the member of the country club.

Here’s what Jesus says that looks like:

Luke 17:7–10 CSB

“Which one of you having a servant tending sheep or plowing will say to him when he comes in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? Instead, will he not tell him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, get ready, and serve me while I eat and drink; later you can eat and drink’? Does he thank that servant because he did what was commanded? In the same way, when you have done all that you were commanded, you should say, ‘We are worthless servants; we’ve only done our duty.’ ”

Meekness recognizes that Jesus is our Lord, our leader, our boss, and we are actively submitting to him for him to accomplish his will through us as he exerts his rule and reign over all creation.

Why would we do this? Because the meek are the ones who inherit the earth.

Revelation 20 tells us that when Jesus returns to establish his kingdom, those who surrendered to him will rule and reign with him.

Beyond that, in submitting to him in meekness now, we experience the world in a different way than those who don’t. The natural world has a different kind of beauty and wonder because we see the powerful and loving hand of our God behind it all.

The disappointments of life are tempered by the understanding that ultimately, God is the answer to all our unmet desires.

And, on top of that, we have the incredible recognition that Jesus modeled this kind of meekness for us.

One of our weekly readings this week will take us to John 13, where we find Jesus the night before he was crucified for the sins of the world.

He wasn’t ignorant, in fact, John tells us that Jesus was completely aware of what was going on and what was taking place.

However, he voluntarily limited his desires and his power as he knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples.

He showed us what meekness looks like in that moment, but the picture became even more clear as the night went on.

Instead of seeking to preserve his own life, he surrendered to the will of the Father and went to the cross for us.

Instead of delivering himself, using his power to destroy those who opposed him, he let himself be beaten, spat upon, and killed as an act of surrender to the Father.

That submission, that act, is what breaks the power of sin for us since he died in our place and offers us life instead.

Will you surrender to him today?

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.