What does it mean to be meek? Meek is a word we do not hear or use all that often anymore. Maybe the reason for its little use in the English vocabulary is because it is not something that is highly valued in America. What we value is strength, boldness, and courage. We value ingenuity, skill, tenacity, and determination. These values are not necessarily bad, but meekness is not a character trait one might see in the hero featured in the latest superhero movie.
So, what does it mean to be meek? Let me begin by telling you what meekness is not. Here is a list of what meekness is not – at least the meekness Jesus refers to in his sermon on the mount – meekness is not:
- Cowardice
- Spinelessness
- Indecisiveness
- Timidity
- Shyness
- Niceness
- A posture of wishy-washiness
- A lack of confidence
To be meek, according to the Bible, is to be a person with self-control, a person who exercises controlled strength, and a person who has a proper and right understanding of who they are in light of a sovereign God. A meek person is not only a person who appreciates that God is sovereign, but a person who trusts God and out of that trust, the meek person is humble and gentle (the Greek word for meek can also be translated gentle or humble). A meek person is a free person, and it is this person who will inherit the earth. It will not be the powerful, popular, prestigious, or prideful who will inherit the earth, but it will be the meek who will inherit the earth.
This type of meekness will not coexist with the kind of creedal statements our culture celebrates, creedal statements whose spirit is so ingrained in our culture that we assume are not only harmless but virtuous. There are two that come to mind I want to share with you to help you understand why Jesus’ words sound so paradoxical; the first is a poem written by William Ernest:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
For the whole month of June our culture now celebrates the spirit of Invictus; it began with a parade on the streets of Manhattan and Central Park in 1970 with the first Pride Parade, and now our society calls it Pride Month. The spirit of Invictus is not only celebrated in June, it is celebrated with the posture that I can determine my own truth because, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” It is this spirit that can be heard in John Lennon’s “Imagine”:
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
This is how the world believes one will inherit the earth, but Jesus shows us a different way. Jesus shows us a better way. Jesus shows us the only way a person will inherit what was never the world’s to give in the first place.
Who are the Meek?
According to Jesus, it is a different type of person who will inherit the earth. Each of the beatitudes serve in succession of the one before it. The beatitudes are not independent clever statements that will make life better if you apply them to your life, but a statement on what kind of person belongs to a kingdom that cannot fade, grow old, or be destroyed (1 Pet. 1:3-9).
There is a Psalm that I believe Jesus is referring to in Matthew 5:5 that helps us understand who the meek are. The passage I have in mind is Psalm 37; here is the heart of it in verses 4-11,
Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
and your justice as the noonday.
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
over the man who carries out evil devices!
Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
For the evildoers shall be cut off,
but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.
In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;
though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.
But the meek shall inherit the land
and delight themselves in abundant peace.
The Hebrew word that is translated “land” in this Psalm can also be translated “earth.” According to Psalm 37, the meek are those who have a deep trust in a sovereign God as the true captain of their soul. The meek wait on the LORD and seek his will for their lives. According to verse 34 of this Psalm, the meek are those who not only wait for the LORD, but follow in his ways:
Wait for the Lord and keep his way,
and he will exalt you to inherit the land;
you will look on when the wicked are cut off.
The meek are those who are also poor in spirit as well as those who mourn. The meek are poor in spirit because they understand that there is no righteousness of their own that is sufficient to earn the approval of God. The meek mourn not only over their own sins but the sins of others and the world because of the way sin grieves the heart of God and robs people of the peace they were made to experience with God.
The meek are those who understand that their problems are beyond them, their problems are because of the sin in them, and their problems are because of their own person. As is true with the poor in spirit and those who mourn, no person who belongs to God’s kingdom is not first meek. You cannot enter the kingdom of God if you are not first aware you are not the master or captain of your own ship! Here is what Martyn Lloyd-Jones said about meekness:
Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others. It is therefore two things. It is my attitude towards myself; and it is an expression of that in my relationship to others…. A man can never be meek unless he is poor in spirit. A man can never be meek unless he has seen himself as a vile sinner. These other things must come first. But when I have that true view of myself in terms of poverty of spirit, and mourning because of my sinfulness, I am led on to see that there must be an absence of pride.[1]
The meek are those who understand who they really are in light of who God actually is. Their response to God is to come to the foot of the cross where God provided a way to be reconciled to him and to know him in relationship. The meek arrive at the cross with empty hands with no righteousness of their own, heavy hearts over the gravity of their own sin, with a posture of humility knowing that the only reason that they were able to arrive at the foot of the cross of Christ was because they were invited.
What Does Meekness Look Like?
There are many examples of what meekness looks like in the Bible. There is the example of Gideon who trusted God to reduce his army of 32,000 to 300 to face the Midianite army whose numbers most likely surpassed 100,000 and defeated them not by overpowering them, but by confusing them (see Judges 7). There is also the example of David who endured the unjust treatment of King Saul even though David knew that he was appointed by God to become the king of Israel. There are also examples to be seen in the Old Testament examples of Abraham, Joseph, and Esther as there are to be seen in countless examples in the New Testament (read the book of Acts).
There are two examples I want to point your attention to for the purpose of this sermon, with the first being Moses. Moses is described among his generation in the Old Testament as an example of what meekness looked like in action: “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3). Yet, Moses was also a man of great courage. He stood against the abuses of Pharoah who was one of the most powerful individuals in his world at that time. Moses showed great resilience over the many years he led the Hebrew people in the wilderness… often suffering under their frequent criticism of his leadership.
Moses’ meekness was the symptom of his intimacy with God. The deeper his relationship with God went, the less of his pride could be seen and more of his humility was on display. The context of Numbers 12:3 was the issue that Moses’ brother and sister, Miriam and Aaron, who assisted him in his ministry had with the Cushite woman that Moses married, which was really just an excuse to question Moses’ competency as a leader. Here is what we read in Numbers 12:1-2, “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, ‘Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?’ And the Lord heard it” (Numbers 12:1–2).
Aaron and Miriam had spoken in private thinking that no one could hear them, but they had forgotten that God being who God is, was very much aware of what they were thinking in secret. God heard their complaining and then called a meeting with Aaron, Miriam, and Moses. It is in God’s rebuke of Aaron and Miriam that we are told why Moses was meeker than all people in his generation: “And he said, ‘Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses’” (Numbers 12:6–8)?
The irony of the story is that since it was Miriam who initiated the conversation with Aaron to question Moses’ competency as a leader based on the black woman he married as a Jewish man, God struck Miriam with leprosy. In fact, we are told that after God had finished speaking with the three of them, “Miriam was leprous like snow” (v. 10). It was as if God said, “Miriam, if you want to judge my servant Moses based on the skin color of the woman he has chosen to marry, I am going to make you whiter than you ever hoped to be. What was Moses’ response to Miriam’s leprosy? It was his meekness in full display: “And Moses cried to the LORD, ‘O God, please heal her—please” (v. 13). So, God healed her. Moses is an example of the kind of meekness that pleases God.
There is another example of meekness I would like to turn your attention to, and that example is Jesus. Jesus was not meek because he was less holy than God, Jesus was meek because he chose to humble himself by being born of a virgin to live as one of us, yet without sin, for the purpose of dying for our sins. We see the meekness of Jesus put on display in the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Jesus wasn’t meek because his problems were beyond him, he wasn’t meek because his problem was with sin, and he wasn’t meek because his problem was himself. Jesus chose meekness because our problem was beyond our cure. Here is what Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians concerning the meekness of Jesus: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5–8).
Jesus’ meekness is seen in the way he approached and interacted with sinners without ever condoning sin (e.g. John 8:1-11). The prophet Isaiah describes Jesus as one who was oppressed and afflicted, yet did not open his mouth (Isa. 53:7). Peter who watched Jesus’ life and example as one of his closest disciples said of Jesus, “While being reviled, he did not revile in return” (1 Pet. 2:23). While on the cross, Jesus’ meekness is put on full display when he prayed: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). And even after Peter denied him three times, Jesus’ meekness is seen in the way he restored a broken Peter shortly after his resurrection (see John 21:15-19).
It is his example of meekness, that Jesus has called and expects all who follow him to learn from, for he uses the same word for meek in Matthew 11:29 as he does in his third beatitude: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). Just as it is true that every follower of Jesus Christ is a person who is poor in spirit and one who mourns over sin, so it is true that such a person is meek. There is no room for pride in God’s kingdom economy. This is also why the same Greek word used for meek is used for the word gentle in the Apostle Paul’s list of what ought to be present in the Christian’s life: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:22–24).
Listen, the longer you walk with Jesus and the deeper your relationship with Him grows, the meeker you will become. It is the meek who will inherit a resurrected earth after God makes all things new. It is only the meek who will experience the promise of Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
