CHRISTIAN MEEKNESS
Scripture reading: Matt. 4:23 - 5:16
Text: Matt. 5:5
My text is Matt. 5:5.
Last time I preached on "Blessed are they that mourn."
I want to remind you of a few things before we look at our text.
RECAPITULATION
General
Our Lord Himself is the speaker: therefore the greatest sermon ever preached.
He was the Lord of glory, the God-Man, the Logos, the Word of God.
It is the Manifesto of the King: it describes His subjects--those in His Kingdom.
None of these beatitudes are natural characteristics, but rather spiritual.
The whole sermon shows unity and progression. This progression can especially be seen in the Beatitudes.
Specific--i.e. the first two beatitudes
Let me remind you of the first two beatitudes.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit."--A description of every true Christian.
It is the realization that before a just and holy God we are totally bankrupt.
We have no righteousness of our own--"nothing in my hand I bring."
It is a WORK OF THE SPIRIT--a realization of my true state.
The Greek underlying "poor" indicates not mere poverty, but actual beggary--"Blessed are the beggars in spirit"--those who realize they have nothing and therefore are forced to cry out to God.
It is the cry of an Isaiah "Woe is me..undone..unclean lips."
It is the cry of a Job "Behold I am vile... I abhor myself and repent..."
It is the cry of a Paul "Oh wretched man...who shall deliver me?"
If you have never been there, you are still outside the Kingdom.
Therefore "poor in spirit" describes every true citizen of Heaven.
Mourning is the next logical step.
The "poor in spirit" of necessity becomes a "mourner in Zion."
This is why the mourning here is not any old mourning, but GODLY SORROW.
He who realizes his spiritual poverty necessarily weeps over it.
Therefore godly mourning characterises every true Christian.
Mourns his past sins, his present sinfulness and weakness, the sin all around him.
Our Lord was a "Man of Sorrows" and the true Christian follows His steps.
And so we saw also that one cannot be a Christian and not be characterised by godly sorrow.
Reminder of the meaning of "Blessed"
It means happiness--but the highest, holiest kind of happiness.
Not frivolity, not FUN.
It is that which characterises God Himself: 1 Tim. 1:11 "The happy God."
It has HOLINESS at its root.
It comes unbidden to those who live right--i.e. it cannot be purchased, earned.
INTRODUCTION
Our text is REVOLUTIONARY--remember to whom He was speaking.
Jesus had announced the Kingdom, i.e. the King had arrived.
The Jews had carnal expectations of earthly power and dominion for their Messiah.
They thought of pomp, splendour, military might.
They must have thought there was some mistake--poor in spirit, mourners, meek?
Jesus WAS announcing a takeover--"shall inherit the earth"--but THE MEEK???
Meekness suggests lowliness of mind, humility, lack of self-assertion--how are these going to take over the world?
Once again, God’s ways are not our ways.
Not only revolutionary, but entirely RELEVANT.
How could it possibly be relevant to you and me tonight?
A man sits on a mountain and addresses a crowd of people almost 2,000 years ago.
It all seems so far away--surely it doesn’t apply to me at the dawn of the 21st century!
Nothing could be more relevant.
No question could be of more importance than this:
Do I possess Christian meekness?
Am I one of those meek ones of whom our Lord says "they shall inherit the earth."
Our Lord’s words are timeless--as pressing, as urgent, as relevant as they were to that crowd to whom they were spoken.
Not only is our text revolutionary and relevant, but it is RIGHTLY PLACED.
It is the third beatitude.
No way it could have been first or second--must be third.
Again it is a spiritual characteristic--the whole context shows that.
Just as the result of poverty of spirit = mourning or godly sorrow, so poverty of spirit and godly sorrow lead inevitably to meekness.
Our Lord is not talking about natural meekness.
Some people seem to be born with a certain meekness, lowliness of mind, attitude of non-resistance, let others walk over them--but that is not CHRISTIAN MEEKNESS.
This fruit does not grow on the tree of human nature in its native state--only from the nature of Christ implanted at the new birth.
IMPORTANT QUESTION
So much by way of introduction.
I want us to examine Christian meekness. As we examine it, let us each ask ourselves the question: Do I possess this Christian Meekness?
As I said, it is relevant. Tremendous issues, eternal issues, turn on our answer to that question: Do I possess Christian meekness?
In order to answer that question, we first of all need to ask another question:
WHAT IS CHRISTIAN MEEKNESS?
1. Meekness describes first of all an attitude of heart toward God.
a. An attitude of submission to God.
Everything in the Christian life depends on this.
If we’re not sound here, we’re not sound anywhere.
The man who is crushed by a sense of sin, need, poverty, who mourns in godly sorrow is a man who has submitted himself to the law of God, the rule of God.
A mourner in Zion has had his heart twice broken--once by sin, once by love of God.
He whose heart is broken by the love of God, gladly submits himself.
The justified man gladly acknowledges his indebtedness by giving himself away:
"But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe
Here Lord I give myself away
Tis all that I can do."
The meek person gladly suffers or endures the will of God.
He has seen that God’s will is perfect--that even distress and perplexity, yes even calamity is sometimes allowed by God for purposes of His own.
The meek man offers no resistance, no rebellion, does not complain at God’s dealings. He rather embraces them.
He says with Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" because he knows "when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold."
He imitates our Lord--"Not my will, but Thine be done."
Submission to God, then, is the foundation of meekness.
b. An attitude of lowliness before God.
Because he has seen the greatness, the holiness, the majesty, the worthiness of God, he sees himself as nothing, a nobody.
He has accepted God’s verdict on his life: "all have sinned..."
That sense of nothingness before God never leaves the meek person.
Am I submitted tonight?
Do I accept ALL God’s dealings with docility and without dispute?
If not, perhaps I have not been thorough in the processes of the first beatitudes.
Only a thorough dealing with those will bring us through to the third, which is submission and lowliness of mind toward God.
2. Meekness also describes an attitude toward other people.
a. The meek man is not preoccuped with himself.
Having faced the worst about himself--that he is the "chief of sinners"--he doesn’t care what others think about him.
He knows his limitations,weaknesses, unworthiness--has faced it and accepted it.
He knows that nothing anyone can say about him is half as bad as what he sees himself to be.
b. He does not put himself forward.
The natural man DOES put himself forward, asserts himself.
Exod. 3:11 Moses says, "WHO AM I THAT I SHOULD GO?"
Why did Moses say that? Because he had seen himself, he had learned what his heart was like, he had become meek.
Our Lord Himself while on earth was characterised by meekness--Matt. 11:28-29.
Why does he say we find rest? All competition is gone. We’re no longer striving to get to the top of the pile--contentment, rest.
Paul was meek. 1 Cor. 15:9 "The least of the apostles"
Phil. 2:3--"In lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves."
Rom. 12:10--"In honour preferring one another."
Eph. 4:2--"With all lowliness of mind...forbearing one another."
So we see that meekness doesn’t put itself forward.
c. The meek man does not claim his rights.
Abraham gave Lot the choice--he chose the best.
Abraham was the oldest, the senior, the leader of the expedition if you like. But he let Lot choose (which tells us a lot about Lot).
David twice had an opportunity to slay Saul--he had been anointed king in his stead--but he would not claim his rights--he left himself in the hands of God.
Our Lord Himself is the supreme example. Phil. 2:6 NASB "Who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped." But rather "emptied Himself, took upon Him the form of a servant," etc.
d. The meek man doesn’t defend himself.
Turn to Numbers 12.
Moses did not defend himself--God defended him.
v 13 Moses prayed for Miriam--another point: Meek people are not resentful.
Our Lord is the best example of this.
Never was one so mistreated as He.
His crucifixion was the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of the world.
What does the divine record say--1 Peter 2:22-23.
Vengeance is mine, I will repay saith the Lord.
The meek man doesn’t take vengeance into his own hands.
e. But meekness is consistent with great strength of character.
i.e. meekness is not weakness.
On the contrary someone has described meekness as "great power under restraint."
No doubt our Lord had great power and could have dispatched the Roman soldiers who apprehended Him--could have called 10,000 angels and so on, but didn’t.
But HE DID cast out the money changers from the temple.
God’s honour (not His own) was at stake.
The meek man will not defend himself, but he will defend God’s honour to the hilt.
Witness Moses when he came down from the mount--ground up the golden calf to powder, put in the river and made them drink it.
So meekness is not weakness.
I hope then, that by now we have some idea of what meekness is. Do you have it? Do I have it? That is the question that God is asking us tonight.
1 Peter 3:4 "Meek and quiet spirit is in the sight of God of great price."
GOD’S PROMISE TO THE MEEK
"They shall inherit the earth."
My personal view is that this is future.
The poor--"theirs IS the Kingdom"
The meek--"they SHALL INHERIT the earth."
When it happens it will be the biggest takeover in the history of the world.
The meek shall be co-heirs with Christ, and Christ is to inherit the earth during the millennial reign.
See Rom. 8:17
"If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him," Paul says in 2 Tim. 2:12
See Rev. 3:21 and 21:7
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Amen. Let us pray.
