I saw a segment on TV the other day about a feature in Cleo magazine which lists Australia’s 50 most eligible bachelors. As you can imagine, they were the epitome of what you might describe as desirable young men. They were the sort who get elected as the school captain, or who get leading parts in TV shows or movies. The sort that most young men wish they could be like. They were athletic, well built, good-looking. But what I want to suggest today, is that there’s a much more desirable characteristic that we should all be aspiring to. That’s the characteristic of meekness.
I wonder what you think of when I mention meekness. If I were to tell you I met someone yesterday who was a really meek person, I wonder what sort of image that would throw up in your mind. Most of us these days, I think, associate the idea of meekness with someone who’s weak and timid. Perhaps we think of Clark Kent, the mild mannered reporter who disappears whenever danger threatens. Perhaps we think of the school weakling who was always being picked on by the tough kids.
That’s a sad thing because it totally misses the point of what Jesus is saying. Our problem is that the word has changed its meaning since Jesus’ day.
If you’ve ever been to a rodeo or seen one on TV or in a movie, you’ll no doubt have seen the Bronco buster trying to stay on the wild stallion for 10 seconds. It’s probably one of the most popular events in a rodeo. Why? Because of the power, the brute force, the strength, the danger. A bucking bronco seems so powerful doesn’t it? But compare that with the mounts used in the Olympics for the 3-day endurance event. There a horse has to have the strength, not just to throw a rider in less than 10 seconds, but to carry a rider over rough ground for kilometre after kilometre for 3 days straight. In fact when you think about it, the power of those horses has to be far greater than that of the bucking bronco at the rodeo doesn’t it? Well, you know what the difference is between the rodeo horse and the horse in the Olympics, don’t you. The difference is that the one in the Olympics has been tamed. It’s had to get used to having a saddle on it. It’s had to learn to allow a rider to sit on that saddle. It’s had to learn to respond to the bit in its mouth so it does what the rider tells it. Then it’s able to be trained so it can be strong enough to survive the rigours of a 3-day event.
Do you know what the word was that was used in Jesus’ day for that process of taming and then training a horse? It was the word that’s translated here as meek. Meekness was the attribute of a horse that was well trained, obedient, disciplined. Its strength hadn’t been reduced, but rather was enhanced, channelled in a useful direction as a result of discipline applied by its trainer.
In the early days of the history of Israel there were two brothers, sons of Jacob, or Israel. One was Reuben, the first-born son. He’s described like this: (Gen 49:3-4 NRSV) "Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the first fruits of my vigor, excelling in rank and excelling in power." He had all the potential to be a leader. He was strong, people looked up to him, but because he lacked discipline, he failed to live up to his potential, and the leadership of his family passed to another. That other was Joseph, the second youngest son. The difference with him was that he had great self-discipline. Through a number of incidents where he was challenged by peer pressure, sexual temptation, the possibility of personal gain and the opportunity to take revenge on those who had hurt him, he refused to give in. Rather than give in to the seduction of Potiphar’s wife, he chose to govern his natural desires and resist the temptation. When he was imprisoned unjustly he chose not to give in to bitterness, but to wait for God to vindicate him. And having exercised authority over his own desires, after having learned to rule himself, he was in turn given authority over the whole land of Egypt.
I have a cousin who loved horse riding. So her parents bought her a horse. It had been a race horse at one stage but was now retired. The trouble was, when she got it, it hadn’t been ridden for some time and so was very hard to control. In fact they thought at first they might have to return it, because its lack of discipline destroyed its usefulness as a saddle pony. How many times do we see that in people? We see someone who’s full of promise, but because they lack self-discipline, or because they’re stubborn, or self-willed, their potential is never fulfilled.
Their problem is one that we all suffer from to varying degrees. They suffer from a rebellious heart. Jesus put it like this: (Mat 15:19 NRSV) "For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander." The problem, so often, isn’t that we lack potential. It’s that our hearts are wrong. What we all need is to have our hearts changed, to have our rebellious natures tamed, to bring them under the control of the Holy Spirit, to learn spiritual discipline.
We began 2 weeks ago with the need to recognise our spiritual poverty, our need for God’s intervention if we were to experience the sort of spiritual life we long for. Now we come to the need, not just to be spiritually awakened, but to be spiritually self-disciplined. When Jesus says blessed are the meek, he’s talking about those who are under the control of the Holy Spirit. Someone has translated meekness as "The humble and gentle attitude which expresses itself in a patient submissiveness, free from malice and desire for revenge." It’s a gentle and controlled strength which holds every natural impulse in check, ready to respond to the Holy Spirit’s prompting. It’s the opposite of self-assertiveness, of self-seeking. It describes a life that’s submitted to the Master’s control, whose strength of character is focussed on following God’s ways.
So how do we learn this sort of self control, this spiritual self-discipline? How do we learn to respond to God’s leading?
We begin by looking at what God has told us in his Word about how he wants us to live. Paul in 2 Tim 3:16 says: "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness," So use what God has told us in his word to allow yourself to be trained for God’s service.
Let me give you an example of how God’s word can help us discipline ourselves. This is from Ps 37 which addresses the dilemma faced by godly people when they see the wicked flourishing. In fact Jesus was probably quoting from this Psalm when he gave this blessing. Here’s what God says we’re to do in the face of apparent injustice: Ps 37:3-11 "Trust in the LORD, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security. 4Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. 5Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. 6He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday. 7Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices. 8Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret -- it leads only to evil. 9For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land. 10Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there. 11But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity." It takes great self-discipline to trust God; to delight in God, even when things aren’t going well; to wait for God to act, rather than taking matters into our own hands; to refrain from anger; to not fret. But that’s what God wants us to do. That’s what he means by being meek. To hand over the control of our lives to him and to remain faithful to him through thick and thin.
Paul in that passage from 1 Cor 9 that we read earlier uses the analogy of the athlete who runs to win the prize. He says, athletes don’t just get out on the track and start running. First they go into training. And their training isn’t just aimless running. It’s focussed. Its aim is to make their body their slave, so it does what they want it to. They work out where their weak points are and work on them to build up their strength or their agility, or flexibility. So too, we’re to discipline ourselves, so our bodies help us rather than hinder us in living godly lives.
This is what it means to be a disciple. When Jesus commissioned his disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel, he told them to "go and make disciples of all nations, ... teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." When Jesus called people to follow him he said "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me."
Christian discipline implies submitting to Jesus’ yoke. That is, following Jesus’ lead. And it requires accepting boundaries to our behaviour. This in turn requires us to resist the mindset of our modern world which sees freedom and authority as opposites; which equates freedom to a removal of boundaries. We need to reassert that to be truly free in this world, we need to be controlled by God’s Spirit; that when our strength is under his control then we’re truly free. That freedom and anarchy are not the same thing.
The promise of Jesus is that if we are under his control, then we’ll inherit the earth. Why is that? Because "the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it" (Ps 24:1). You see, methods that people prefer to use to win control of the world: power, money, dishonesty, ruthlessness, image, manipulation; these won’t work, because none of them will have any impact on God who is in control of the world in the first place. The only thing that will influence him is a heart that’s set on following him. That is, a heart that’s characterised by meekness. Someone once wrote: "The foundation of a noble character is self-mastery. It is the key to applying any virtue in which we may be lacking and will carry us to our greatest objective - becoming a perfect individual. ... Self-mastery is the motivating force whereby we reach upward."
If we’re self-disciplined, if we’re open to the leading of God’s spirit, then we’ll be moving closer to him all the time and so we’ll be being prepared for the time when we’re ready enter his kingdom in all its fullness.
But I wonder too, whether part of this promise of inheriting the earth, has to do with the possibility that those who follow God’s leading will take part in the winning of the world for the Kingdom of God. One of the outcomes of being a faithful disciple, you see, is that we’re enabled to share the gospel with others. And as we do that, the Kingdom of God grows and the world is brought more and more under the control of God. Not that I think we’ll ever see the Kingdom of God fully on this earth but the more we share the gospel with others the more that kingdom is seen.
I was listening this week to a tape of a talk given by Tom and Christine Sine to World Vision last year. They’re a couple who have done a lot of thinking about ways that Churches can be proactive in promoting radical discipleship among their members. One of the things they talked about was the suggestion that every Christian be encouraged to work out a personal mission statement for their life. I thought this sounded like an excellent idea. You know we have a mission statement for St Theodore’s: To
But what’s your personal mission statement? What are you living for? Where are you going? Let me suggest that you take St Theo’s Mission statement as a model and sit down and write your own. Then take it to someone you trust and ask them to check whether it’s the sort of mission statement that fits with the gospel. Why am I suggesting this is a good idea? Because if we’re to be disciplined in our Christian life, we really need to know what we’re meant to be doing. If we want to avoid running aimlessly, or beating the air, we need to know where we’re going. If we have a stated mission for our lives at the moment, it’ll help us work out what our priorities are. It’ll help us see that what we’re doing is meaningful, that it has a purpose.
Of course it may be that if you work out your current mission statement in all honesty, you’ll find that some of the things you’re aiming for aren’t godly aims. If that’s the case then it becomes an opportunity for you to repent and change the direction of your life.
Just to give you some idea of what I’m talking about, here is the mission statement I wrote down for myself: My current aim in life is: To grow in my relationship with Jesus Christ, to seek to follow him in obedience and trust, to be a faithful husband and father to my wife and children, and to do all I can to empower and enable others to serve God with all their strength.
I hope you won’t just forget this idea the moment you walk out the door today. If we’re to be truly disciplined, truly under God’s control, then we need to be clear what that will look like for each of us in our particular life situation. We need to know where we should be heading if we’re not to simply walk aimlessly.
The reward of meekness, of being controlled by the Holy Spirit, is the assurance that the earth will be ours. That is, that when Christ returns and ushers in the new creation, the new heavens and a new earth, we will be there to rejoice with the saints and enjoy God’s presence forever. Let’s make sure that in this present age we’re among those who follow Christ’s leading in all we do so we can rejoice with him in the age to come.
