Mat. 5:5
Blessed are the Meek
Pastor Albert N. Martin expounds the third Beatitude, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). He defines biblical meekness as the opposite of self-will toward God and ill-will toward man, emphasizing it is a supernatural grace produced by the Holy Spirit, not human effort or cultural refinement. Using Moses and Jesus as primary examples, Martin illustrates meekness as quiet submission to God's dealings and a gentle, lowly, teachable spirit in relationships with others, contrasting it sharply with the world's view of weakness or passivity. The sermon concludes with practical tests for meekness, urging believers to pursue this grace for true blessedness.
Primary Texts
Topics
Outline 12 sections · 51 min
- The Nature of Beatitudes and the Pursuit of Blessing 0:04
- Review of Previous Beatitudes and Introduction to Meekness 2:27
- The World's Misconception of Meekness 4:08
- The Progression of the Beatitudes and Meekness as a Relational Virtue 4:56
- Biblical Examples of Meekness: Moses and Christ 7:24
- What Meekness Is Not: Not Weakness or Moral Indecision 9:15
- What Meekness Is Not: Not Cultural Suppression of Meanness 12:03
- What Meekness Is: A Supernatural Grace of the Holy Spirit 21:03
- Definitions and Manifestations of Meekness Toward God 23:02
- Manifestations of Meekness Toward Man: Lowliness and Gentleness 30:55
- Evidences of Meekness in the Heart 38:21
- The Promise to the Meek and the Call to Seek Meekness 44:14
Key Quotes
“And the moment you look for blessing outside of this clear statement or these clear statements of our Lord, you're running the danger of getting counterfeit blessings from the Prince of Darkness.”
“Wherever there is any genuine meekness, upon which our Lord can pronounce blessings, that meekness is there solely and wholly as the direct result of the operation of the Holy Ghost. It's a supernatural grace.”
“Someone has said, and this has been most helpful, that meekness is the opposite of self-will to God and ill-will to God. And if I had to give you one definition, I forgot everyone else, that's the one I'd want you to go home to.”
“You've been nursing a grudge against God. And you wonder why your life's not blessed? Because you're not meek, blessed are the meek, and meekness, God's word, will always manifest itself in this manner of submitting to His dealings without persecuting, without resisting.”
“Someone has said we love to mouth the pious words I'm no good, I can do nothing, I'm a wretched sinner. But let someone else say that about you. They don't like it. Why? Because we really don't believe it.”
“Some of you waste too much time defending yourself. There's nothing worth defending.”
“this concept of a Christianity that's bloodless and immune and just sort of like a jellyfish you take the jellyfish in your hands and put your hands in a square it becomes a square jellyfish make your hands round it becomes round make it an oval it becomes oval beloved by the grace of God may we not be jellyfish in the hands of religious men and movement”
“and if our Christianity doesn't touch the dormitory room the kitchen where mama corrects daddy or daddy corrects mama if it doesn't work there then in God's name let's be done with it let's be done with it”
Applications
All listeners
- Do not hope for God's blessing or pray for it without an earnest desire and spiritual pursuit of being conformed to the characters of faith found in the Beatitudes.
- Do not look for blessing outside of Christ's clear statements in the Beatitudes, lest you receive counterfeit blessings from the Prince of Darkness.
- If you want to be blessed, you must think and understand what meekness is, and then pray to the Lord for a greater measure of it in your life.
- Examine if you are nursing a grudge against God because your plans were thwarted or hopes shattered, as this indicates a lack of meekness and hinders blessing.
- Do not take your rightful pedestal or lord it over people in any area where you feel you have a right, but instead manifest lowliness.
- Recognize that the root of most church conflicts is the opposite of meekness and lowliness, and pursue these virtues for unity.
- When correcting others, do so in meekness, not abandoning conviction but exercising gentleness.
- If a brother is overtaken in a fault, go to him and restore him in the spirit of meekness.
- Do not constantly defend yourself, recognizing your own corruption and unworthiness.
- Stop wasting time defending yourself or your reputation, as there is nothing worth defending in yourself.
- Cultivate a teachable spirit, welcoming anyone who can help you learn how to walk with God.
- Examine your heart for evidence of meekness; if there is none, you are not a God-blessed man or woman and have never been born of the Spirit.
- To have more meekness, seek it, follow after it, and study the lives of Moses and Jesus as examples.
- Ensure your Christianity is practical and demonstrated in your home, school, shop, and classroom; if it doesn't work there, it's not real.
A full transcript is available on the tab. 143 paragraphs, roughly 51 minutes.
The Nature of Beatitudes and the Pursuit of Blessing
I return again this morning to the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew to resume our studies in the section that we have commonly called the Beatitudes, the word Beatitude being the Latin word for blessed, and so these passages have come down to us as the Beatitudes, these eight blessed enunciated by our Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to repeat again, and I trust at the end of our study in the Beatitudes and as we move on into the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, we shall never forget it, all hope that God will bless your life and all prayers and desires that God will bless your
church or your family or your ministry, whatever it be, all such hopeful blessings which are not coupled with an earnest desire and spiritual pursuit of being conformed to these characters of faith as found in the Beatitudes, all such hopes and prayers are just vanities.
We were having a discussion last night after a good season of prayer at our men's prayer meeting, in fact it went on until about 11, and it wasn't just feeding the breeze, as we say, we were coming to grips with basic issues. How can we know and experience the blessing of God? And we came again as we studied the Scriptures and sought out life from God and His Word, that blessing comes in the way of conformity to the Redeemer. It is the blessing of God that we will enjoy, it would be so comfortable if somehow we could just go to sleep or have a praying marathon and God would have taken a hypodermic pill of something called blessing and just sort of squirted it into our hearts and lives and we could go on wonderfully with God.
But then what's this way? The Lord Jesus has pronounced blessedness upon those men and women whose lives and whose character conforms to these Beatitudes, and they and they only are the blessed of God. And the moment you look for blessing outside of this clear statement or these clear statements of our Lord, you're running the danger of getting counterfeit blessings from the Prince of Darkness. And never forget it, never forget it, for blessedness is found in these areas.
Review of Previous Beatitudes and Introduction to Meekness
Now we've considered the first two Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who recognize by the illumination of the Spirit that they are nothing. They have nothing. They can do nothing apart from God. And then last week, blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
When I recognize my true condition before God, and I allow that condition to filter down into my heart, then it will always produce spiritual mourning. This is true of the awakened sinner who is convicted of his sin. And turn. And it's true of the true child of God, for the mourning which begins at conversion continues and develops in the Christian experience.
Jesus did not say, blessed are they who mourn, the past comes, but blessed are they who mourn, present comes, for they and they alone shall be comforted. Now we come to the third Beatitude this morning, in which our Lord Jesus says, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Perfectly happy are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And once again, as with all of these other Beatitudes, we are immediately stunned with the tremendous realization of the world of difference between what our Lord Jesus pronounces
The World's Misconception of Meekness
blessed and what the world sounds blessed. The world doesn't count meekness of his truth. We say of a certain fellow, say, do you know a fellow? Oh, yeah, I know Mr. So-and-so.
Yeah, he's got, he's kind of a meek guy. What we mean by that is, well, we're pollinating, but he's not much like, not much of a, he's sort of a meek guy. It's sort of like some of his IQ isn't quite up to par, and we wouldn't disassociate ourselves with him. We wouldn't throw stones at him, but neither would we choose him to be our best companion.
Isn't that the way we talk about meekness? We say, oh, yeah, that fellow's kind of a meek fellow. See? The world doesn't count meekness of his truth.
The world, if we're writing this beatitude, would say, blessed are the self-assured and the confident. Doesn't God help those who help these selves? Blessed are those who have lots to grow. The world doesn't count blessedness of his truth.
We say, oh, yeah, I know Mr. So-and-so. Yeah, he's kind of a meek guy. What we mean by that is, well, we're pollinating, but he's not much like, not much of a, he's sort of a meek guy.
It's sort of like some of his IQ isn't quite up to par, and we wouldn't disassociate ourselves with him. We wouldn't throw stones at him, but neither would we choose him to be our best companion. Isn't that the way we talk about meekness? We say, oh, yeah, that fellow's kind of a meek fellow.
The Progression of the Beatitudes and Meekness as a Relational Virtue
and dynamic and initiative for they to inherit the earth, our Lord Jesus strikes right across the grain of this and He says, Blessed are the meek, for they and they alone shall inherit the earth. Now there is a progression in these Beatitudes of our Lord, and if not the hard fasting, certainly there are some principles involved here. If I see myself in the presence of God as a creature who has nothing, who is nothing, who can do nothing, and I stand in need of all things, and if because of that I have mourned my sin, and if because of that as a Christian I mourn my unworthiness
and my depravity and my corruption and my coldness, how can I be a slagging, cocky, sloshed, buckling person who blusters through life, leaving a trail of broken, wounded lives and a trail of broken, wounded lives who happen to come next to my blushing, sloshed, buckling self? It can't be. And so there's a progression here. If I've seen myself as I am, if I've gone down before God in holy mourning, then this next characteristic of meekness will be manifested not only in my relationship to God, but now this is the first Beatitude
which begins to touch my relationship to others. For having been, broken before God, I will be a meek person in the presence of men. Now as we seek to lay hold of the biblical concept of what meekness is, for I would remind you that Jesus nowhere enunciated anything new. In the Sermon on the Mount, every virtue that he deals with, we've been taking illustrations constantly from the Old Testament, haven't we?
And from the New Testament as well. But every virtue that Jesus announces, every precept, every precept that he deals with is somewhere embodied in the Old Testament. What our Lord was doing was bringing it into focus, and then in other cases he was pulling that precept out from underneath the rubble of Jewish tradition and getting it up where men could chew it again, and then he was laying it as the very foundation of all Christian morality and Christian principles. So when he says blessed are the meek, he's not enunciating something new.
Biblical Examples of Meekness: Moses and Christ
The Old Testament is filled with promises of God to the meek. And as we try to lay hold of the definition and the concept of meekness, we're going to be using two characters as an illustration throughout our message this morning. We're going to use in the Old Testament this man, Moses. For God said of Moses, Moses didn't say it of himself, but God said of Moses in Numbers 12 and verse 3, My servant Moses, a man meek above all men of the earth.
Now that's God's estimation of Moses. Now that's God's estimation of Moses. God says in his generation he was the meekest man who lived. So if we want to know what Jesus meant when he said blessed are the meek, do you want to be a God-blessed man or woman?
Do you? And do you want the blessing of God upon your life? And God says blessing comes where there's meekness. Well what's meekness like?
God says look at Moses. Who was a man meek above all men of the earth? So we'll be using Moses as our Old Testament illustration constantly this morning, and then as our New Testament illustration, we'll be using our lovely Lord, for he himself said in Matthew 11 verse 29, I am what? Meek and lowly in heart.
So if we can keep before us Moses and then the greater than Moses, our Lord Jesus, perhaps we can be green at least, be green, at least be green, to conceive of a biblical concept of what meekness is. Oh, but you say, Pastor, that's hard work. You make us see. You want to be blessed?
You want to be blessed? Then you've got to think. So unless you know what meekness is, how can you know if it's in your life, and how can you speak the Lord for it? And unless you speak the Lord for a greater measure of meekness, and unless meekness is in your life, you won't be blessed.
So if you're staying with your own kink, you won't be blessed. You want to be blessed? All right, then kink with me, as we try to lay hold of a biblical concept. What is meekness?
What Meekness Is Not: Not Weakness or Moral Indecision
Well, we'll start, as we've been doing with all of these beatitudes, what meekness is not. And first of all, I want you to think about what meekness is. What is meekness? Meekness is not weak men.
We usually associate meekness with weak men. The fellow who sort of stands off in the corner with his eyes cast down, and sort of wringing his hands, and feels like a social misfit, he's the meek fellow. He's weak, we say. He's not weak.
No, meekness is not meekness. How do we know? Moses was a man meek above all men of the earth. Our Lord Jesus was meek and lowly of heart.
And yet as we trace the history of the life of Moses and the history of the life of our Lord, we find no trace of meekness but abundant evidences of meekness. It is not meekness of character. Now, meekness of character is a description of the person who's easily swayed into any course of moral action. Young people, listen to me now.
A meek character is that fellow or girl that you know. Maybe he even comes to your church, I don't know. And when he's with a good group of young people in the sense of a group of young people whose talk is clean and whose activities are clean, he fits right in. He doesn't try to pollute them.
He doesn't try to introduce a dirty joke. He doesn't try to get them all. He doesn't try to go off and smoke cigarettes behind the garage or down somebody's cellar. No, no.
He fits right in. And when he's with a good, wholesome group of young people, he's a good actor. But two days later, he's with the other child. And they sit around in the corridors of the high school or the junior high telling the latest dirty joke they've heard.
He's right in there giggling with them. See? When he passes on the one he's heard, he's a meek character. He follows any course of moral action.
When he's with people who are committed to truth and righteousness, that's where he is. When he's without it, that's...
Now, meekness is not meekness. How do I know this? Moses. What kind of a character is Moses?
Well, we read in Hebrews chapter 11, When Moses was come to you, he was you. To be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Who would rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sinful achievement? He was a meek man, but he had a sanctified know.
And he had a sanctified... And he knew when to put it down.
To be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. And yet he was a meek man, as of all men of the earth. No meekness of character here. Our Lord Jesus.
What Meekness Is Not: Not Cultural Suppression of Meanness
Satan came to him. He's in the wilderness. He's tempted. He's fasted forty days a night.
And Satan comes to him and says, Are you the son of God? Sure, he's going to be there. Our Lord Jesus says, Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that is received out of the mouth of God. Uncommitted to do the will of God is revealed to me.
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And the word of God is revealed to me. He's busy in his face. Boy, slip through here. Bypass the cross.
And Jesus said to Peter, Get thee behind me. And the scripture says he set his face like a flint to go to death.
And yet he said, I need to know. Now, whatever need you do, it cannot mean weakness. Either a character easily swayed into any course of moral action. It cannot mean weakness of conviction.
It cannot mean easily moved to believe anything or to back off from anything. It cannot mean weakness of conduct, finding the course of easy resistance and slipping through. What then is weakness?
Well, it's not weakness. It's also not the suppression by culture of some of what we call the grosser forms of meanness. Like the woman who turned to Dr. Kozer.
And she said, Oh, Dr. Kozer, I'm so hungry for God. And I want with all my heart to know. God's blessing on my life.
And I just can't seem to find out what's wrong with me. Can you help me? And he said, Lady, do you really want help? She said, Yes.
She said, You know what the trouble is? She said, No. She said, Your trouble, dear lady, is it being as kind as the devil himself.
She said it kindly, but he said it gently.
And being a cultured, well-educated, refined lady, instead of strikingly looking woman, she showed no reaction. She just took up her talk with us and said, Thank you very much. And left. Came back several weeks later to hold Dr. Kozer.
And he told me that was how I wanted to be. Was my spirit disturbed with him? But she didn't blow it. Her culture, her refinement, her background kept her looking very mean.
But it was nothing but the suppression of a heart that was full of anything but meanness. So when Jesus said, Blessed are the meek, he was not pronouncing blessedness merely upon outward action. His meekness is basically a condition of the heart. Lest you keep wondering about that lady.
She met God. And she told Dr. Kozer, You're right. Now what's her problem?
When she's willing to die to herself, God met her and wonderfully blessed her life and cured her with his spirit. But now what is meekness?
What Meekness Is: A Supernatural Grace of the Holy Spirit
It's died off by recognizing that meekness is something that will never flow from the human heart apart from the direct influence of the Holy Spirit. For my Bible says in Galatians chapter 5, The fruit of education? No. The fruit of good training?
No. The fruit of good breeding? No. The fruit of the spirit is, and we have them in numerous, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith or faithfulness, that's the next thing, meekness.
Wherever there is any genuine meekness, upon which our Lord can pronounce blessings, that meekness is there solely and wholly as the direct result of the operation of the Holy Ghost. It's a supernatural grace. There is no raw material in the human heart out of which you can make meekness. And if meekness is to ever be formed in the human heart, the raw material, if I may speak reverently, must be done from minds out, tied with the human heart.
The human heart is a mind from which can be dug every form of resentment and pride and rebellion and stubbornness and retaliation, and I could make a list of my laws. You and I could church for a thousand years and would never find a trace of any not-so-material in the human heart out of which we could form one little stone or one little brick of meekness. Whatever meekness is, it's the result, it's the result of the operation of the Spirit of God upon the human heart. Just as these other Beatitudes we saw were not naturally characteristic, poverty of spirit, mourning,
Definitions and Manifestations of Meekness Toward God
so meekness is the work of God's own power and life within. May I share several definitions of meekness that have been a help to me in several writings, and perhaps they will be a help to you as you seek to frame an application today. What is meekness? Upon which Christ pronounces blessedness.
Matthew Henry says, The meek are those who quietly submit themselves before God, to His Word and to His law, who follow His direction, who comply with His design, and are gentle toward men. That's a meek person. Someone has said, and this has been most helpful, that meekness is the opposite of self-will to God and ill-will to God. And if I had to give you one definition, I forgot everyone else, that's the one I'd want you to go home to.
Blessed are the meek, those in whose hearts there is just the opposite of self-will to God and ill-will to man. Blessed are the meek, and then one more definition that's been helpful, meekness is the result of a true view of ourselves, expressing itself in our attitudes and conducts, toward God and toward man. Meekness is the natural result of a true view of ourselves. If I see myself as undone, poverty obscured, if I've gone down in mourning before God, I see my wretchedness, I sense my helplessness,
and I have laid hold of Christ as my execution seat, Christ as my hope, Christ as my life, then that consciousness of what I am in myself and now what I am by the grace of God in Christ, it will produce this attitude of meekness toward God and toward my fellow man. The manifestations of meekness in our relationship to God are basically two. The tempering spirit in which we accept God's dealings with us will be one of submission, resignation, we won't dispute with God, a meek mind, and again we go back to Moses.
It says he was a meek man above all men of the earth. In the moment that he was tempered, he struck the rock, Christ, instead of speaking to the rock. And God said to Moses, because of this disobedience, you can't work, you can't enter the commissary. Did Moses sit down and stomp and die an early death?
No. God let him go up and see with his own dimmed eye that land, but God says you're not going in and there's not a trace that Moses humbled. He accepted the temperings of God. That's a meek man.
He could have said, well God, look, I've borne these people like a mother who's suckling his child. I've borne them for these many years. I put up with them when they wanted to kill me and when they wanted to refuse my leadership. And when you said I'd blot them out, I prevailed, I chastised for forty days and nights.
Is this a way to treat me, God, because of one act of disobedience? Not a trace of it. Not a trace of it. Not a trace of it.
And God said Moses, you're not to go in. Moses demonstrated his meekness by submitting to the dealings of God. A wonderful illustration of this in David as well. David, you remember in his sin with Bathsheba, the tithe that resulted, God said, David, I've forgiven you, but because you gave the enemies of God occasion to blaspheme, I'm going to take the life of the child, 2 Samuel chapter 12.
And David went in before God and he laid on his face and he fasted and he wept and he prayed and he taught God. And when the news came the son is dead, the child is dead, it says he washed himself, he shaved, he went into the temple of God and he worshiped Him. Why? Because he was a meek man.
He accepted the tensions and the dealings of God. His heart was taboo. He didn't rebel. He didn't question why.
He didn't fight. He submitted. Blessed are the meek. And then, of course, the clearest example is our lovely Lord.
It was in the plan of the Father to be our Lord's portion, as we mentioned a few moments ago, to break the cuts of the suffering for the sin of His people. And He said these words in John 18, 11, the cuts that my Father has given me shall I not break it? For everything in His pure holy nature shrunk from the awful fact that He was to become identified with our sins. And we can never appreciate it.
Think of the thing that disgusted you most, the most vile, ugly, unseemly sight your eyes could ever behold. And that's just a one-thousandth of a part of what it was like for our spotless, sinless, lovely Lord to become identified with human sin. And yet He said, the cuts that my Father has given me shall I not break it? And in Psalm 22, as you read the cry of the crucified Christ, my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
Why art Thou far from my willings? You'd almost think He was complaining until you come to verse 4 where He says, But Thou art holy. Father, everything that You're doing to me is done in perfect holiness and justice. And Thou art my Father, and I submit to Thy willings.
Beloved, that's me. Do you know anything about that? As your proud, stubborn, rebel heart seems subdued by grace, so that you stop chasing at the dealings of God. You had plans in a certain area that seemed like God was in the thing, and suddenly, all the plans were thwarted, and all the hopes were shattered.
You've been nursing a grudge against God. And you wonder why your life's not blessed? Because you're not meek, blessed are the meek, and meekness, God's word, will always manifest itself in this manner of submitting to His dealings without persecuting, without resisting. And only the gracious God can produce this.
This is not a stoical resignation, saying, alright, I'm in the midst of it, and blind faith has just captured me, and I can't fight it, so I'll just endure it. No, no. No, that's not meekness. Meekness is that worth that God in the heart as a result of that work, whereby we actually resume as truth that which comes from the hand of God.
When Joseph I. Lewin, the godly young Puritan preacher who died at the age of 34, and who's book, The Alarm to the Unconverted, has been the instrument in leading countless souls to Christ, and helping and instructing pastors like myself, when he was lying there dying at construction as a young man, and his wife had to carry him just about from room to room, and he lay there in intense suffering and agony day by day. People would come and try to give him pity and say, isn't this a shame? And he would immediately answer and say, oh, don't talk this way.
If I've received grace from the hand of my Father, who am I to ever rebel? But he should see fit to lead me through deep waters, and he would have endorsed them for the very suggestion that he should entertain himself to them. So, brother, that's meekness. That's meekness.
Manifestations of Meekness Toward Man: Lowliness and Gentleness
And then this meekness will not only be managed in our relationship to God, but it will be manifest in our relationship to our fellow man. And it's interesting, wherever meekness, almost wherever meekness is mentioned as a characteristic of our attitude to our fellow man, it's joined with several other virtues. You'll find first of all that meekness is joined with the word lowliness. Remember the words of Christ, I am meek and what?
Lowly in height. Hmm? And lowly. Ephesians 4, 1 and 2, Paul says, We must endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace with all meekness and lowliness.
He puts the two together. Meekness and lowliness. Now that word lowliness simply means to step down, to humble ourselves. Same word used when it says, Let the man of lower state rejoice in that he has exalted, seeking a physical lower state, poverty.
So meekness in our relationship to other men will always be manifested as far as our position before them we're willing to step down. We don't force our rank. Some of you have been in the service, and I've been around servicemen enough to know there's nothing that gripes a serviceman more than a guy who's trying to throw his rank around. It gripes.
Show you've got a couple of strikes, throw up. Well, he says, I'll show you throw up. I've got them and you've got to recognize them. And it gripes this whole thing.
Someone throws his weight around, throws his sight around. And you see, this is what we do. By nature, if there's any area in which we feel we've got a just right to lord it over someone, whether it's our position as husbands, or our position as parents, or our position socially or economically, whatever it is, the human heart by nature always wants to take its rightful pedestal, and from that pedestal it wants to rule and to lord it over people. God says, Moonsmiths will always be joined with lowliness.
How do I know this is so? Well, again, I look at Moses, who's the great leader of Israel, and lo and behold, he could come along and try to tell him how to run the nation, but his father-in-law. Now, if you want to get in trouble, if you're a father-in-law or mother-in-law, you just try to tell somebody what to do. Or say your daughter-in-law or son-in-law.
His father-in-law came along and said, Listen, Moses, the thing you're doing is not good. You're wearing yourself out from morning till night. Moses is just sitting here, judging all the petty problems of the children of Israel. And his father-in-law came along and he wasn't even tactful.
He didn't say, Now, Moses, don't you think you might be over-taxing yourself? He said, Moses, the thing that thou doest is not good. He said, Look, pot, don't mind your own business. I'm running this nation.
God called me, not you. I was up in the mountains, not you. God gave the excuse to me, not you. No, he didn't do that.
He sat down. They had a chat together. His father said, Yes, you ought to take seventy of your best men, and let them judge the small matters, and then the big matters will come to you. Moses said, I do.
He was a leech now. It manifested itself in loneliness. He stepped down to take advice from his father-in-law. It takes some stepping down, doesn't it?
But he was a leech. And then, two, three, think of our Lord Jesus. Are you thinking of the instant I am? John 15.
And when supper was ended, Jesus rose, laid aside his garments, girded him with a towel, took a basin, and washed with his country's tea. And if you read the account, it's clear that Judas, his sheriff, had not yet left that room. And Jesus took and washed the feet of the very man that was to be crowned. He was standing lowly in power.
That's what leechness is in our relationship with our fellow man. It's that attitude of ladenness. Being willing to step down in order that we might serve the leech in him. Did there ever be any church fuzzies?
If there were any church fuzzies, what's the root of most church fuzzies? Come on now, what's the root? You know the root. It's the opposite of this.
I've got an opinion, and I'm entitled to my opinion. Isn't that the root of all the church fuzzies? That's why Paul says the unity of the Spirit is only maintained where there's leechness and lowliness. This is in chapter 4, verse 22.
Then I'm going to carry on. It's not only connected with lowliness, but you'll find in two of the other instances, leechness is always joined with gentleness. Listen as I quote several verses from Ephesians 10-1. Paul says, I have received you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.
And then God, Paul says to Timothy, the servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle to all men in the house of God. And then in 2 Timothy 2-25, in meekness, instruction goes that oppose themselves. He must be gentle in meekness instruction. And then in Titus 3-2, you will find these two words joined together again.
Meekness and gentleness. Now do you see the connection? Leechness and lowliness is that meekness in my position. I'm willing to step down to meet the needs of others.
Meekness and gentleness shows that meekness in its absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute and absolute What do I want? Where am I going?
And goes without thought of others in consideration, knows absolutely nothing of meekness. Now, it doesn't mean you throw away our conviction. That verse I told you a moment ago, Paul says, in meekness, really corrupting those that oppose himself. He says, Timothy, corrupt them, but do it in meekness.
Galatians 6.1, If a brother be overtaken in a fall, we've all got troubles and sins. Who are we to tell him anything and leave him alone? I don't know what my Bible is.
My Bible says, Begging if a man be overtaken in a fall, see that his spirit is restored. Go to him. Prove something about it that he says, in the spirit of us. Meekness.
See?
Not this root-flabby idea, they've got their life to live, I've got mine, I'm going to be meek, let them over. No, no. He said, go to that person, but go with the attitude of meekness.
Evidences of Meekness in the Heart
But Pastor, how can I know if this is really in my heart? May I close this morning by just giving you a few little pointers you can have after you've done?
If this meekness upon which Christ pronounces blessedness within me, what will the evidence be? Well, first of all, you won't be all the time defending yourself. If you've seen that you are nothing and have nothing and can do nothing and you stand in need of all things, and it's in the light of the glory and majesty of God and that is Christ you've seen yourself unneeded, you're praised in it. And if you come to each day with that consciousness apart from him you can do nothing, then you know something of the foul corruption of your own heart that thoughts and desires and opponents quiver to grapple day by day.
And someone says something that's nice about you, your attitude will be you don't know you're happy.
Won't it? Someone has said we love to mouth the pious words I'm no good, I can do nothing, I'm a wretched sinner. But let someone else say that about you. They don't like it.
They don't like it. Why? Because we really don't believe it. We're just mouthing some words that we've been taught to spiritual people off the mouth.
But for me, a meek man won't defend himself. How do I know? All right, go back to Moses.
You read in Numbers chapter 12 and this is what's interesting. The very chapter in which God says he's a meek man above all people of the earth is the chapter where it's recorded that certain ones tried to overthrow his leadership and Moses didn't fight them. He let God come to his defense and God didn't defend him. He was a meek man.
Some of you waste too much time defending yourself. There's nothing worth defending.
Some of you waste too much time. In three seconds if only your name and your reputation would be wasted in three seconds. Now listen. Now listen.
Look at how much time we spend trying to put ourselves in a good light and vindicate ourselves. Meekness doesn't vindicate itself. Look at our Lord.
A hurl of accusations out of him and it says he's a lion before his spirit is done before he opens his mouth. The only one who had a right to defend himself. The only one who had any inherent virtue or worth to defend. And he didn't do that.
I tell you dear ones as I've put my life up next to Moses in the Old Testament and Christ in the New Testament as examples of meekness I hang my head in shame and I feel I haven't taken the first step to first place.
But the Lord said best to the meek and this is the way it'll manifest itself. We won't be defending ourselves. We won't strike back when we're wrong. And then in a positive way it will exhibit itself in the characteristics of gentleness and lowliness.
This is what the mystery of the 17th century especially people who mixed up in religion in our day and I say Christianity excuse me but religion. Anyone who would stand out from here this morning I'm sure some people have been I know I shouldn't say I just think but I know when I was in the itinerant I had a lady come one night storming up not storming up but she came up with a good firm step to close the disturbance and she said to me something about do you believe the Lord Jesus would raise you voice like you did tonight?
Did I read about Christ that he was gentle and loose? Do you believe he would stand out and pine the pulpit and raise his voice? Well all I know about my Lord I know what the Bible says so I turned it. The last day is a great day of peace.
Jesus stood and cried saying if any man says and he didn't say he just said he said he cried saying and because he lifted up his voice and I said I'm sure there are times when our Lord says he wanted to hurl out the wolves in the house he wasn't to have that but I'm sure some people can't reconcile it because their whole concept is that Christianity ought to make you a person with no convictions no definite course of moral action no set of things which you believe and other things that don't believe and won't believe and which are not true this concept of a Christianity that's bloodless and immune and just sort of like a jellyfish you take the jellyfish in your hands and put your hands in a square it becomes a square jellyfish make your hands round it becomes round make it
an oval it becomes oval beloved by the grace of God may we not be jellyfish in the hands of religious men and movement this is not inconsistent with mission but in the midst of a firm conviction there'll be the lowliness the gentleness the tenderness and these two aren't incompatible for our Lord is the glorious picture of these two things joined together he who holds woes upon parity and cold and wise is found with little children sitting on his knees some instead of kids and dogs like me aren't you bad well that's a good test you see children always flee from a
person who's not gentle and so do animals may I say they be wise and work companion oh this will might be the magnetism of Christ our gentleness and then it'll be manifest in a teachable spirit wherever a man is moved he'll be teachable he won't feel that the truth ended with him he'll be teachable there's nothing more thrilling to me than the need of a person who's really peaceful that I ministered the other day he met a brother who's just gone into a certain form of ministry and I've just been thrilled ever since I haven't been a week yet and the other man who ministered with me from Pennsylvania I called him the other day and that's all he's been thinking about all the
The Promise to the Meek and the Call to Seek Meekness
hungry peaceful spirit of that brother it's such a refreshing thing to meet someone who feels he needs to know something and is willing to learn but if I really believe that I am nothing and have nothing and can do nothing and if I've really mourned my sinful state before God then I'll welcome anybody that can help me to learn how to walk with God won't I won't I I'll thank God for any instrument that he can use and I'll have a peace today peace well if you have this meekness God gives a comment and we can't be into it at that time John the meek will inherit the earth maybe we'll just touch on it next week I don't know how do the meek inherit the
earth well you look up the scripture maybe God will give you some light and maybe you can share some things with me during the week so it helps me to preach on it next week but as we close I ask you that question do you know anything about this meekness that you talked about dear one listen carefully now if there's no evidence of this meekness in you you're not a God blessed man or woman you've never been born with this spirit for the fruit of the spirit is meekness and in every child of God there is at least the seed of meekness where the spirit is disputed now the part of growth is to see that fruit get up but growth in grace
never means
and give no evidence of the fruit of the spirit is unscripted where the Holy Ghost is disputed now in the grave that fruit is hard nothing undeveloped but it's there it's real it's genuine fruit now is there anything of this meekness in your heart your mind your glory have you been subdued before God and loathing any gentleness toward men you say pastor I'm a sin little but I thank God I can remember when I didn't care how I reacted how people reacted what I did to people I rub ran rock God over people I thank God that's for the king how can I have more of this meekness God tells you how you said in Zechariah 2 3 fruit meekness we're the secret as we're the sheep
all over sheep and then we read again in 1 Timothy 6 11 we read about it this morning we're the whole after meekness and as a servant of God according to Titus 3 2 I am to command you to speak meekness see you dare study the life of Moses and the life of our Lord Jesus make a comparison this is how you grow and the longer I live the more I get blessedly in this to every team of blessings somebody's always coming around either the house or through the mail telling me some wonderful way to get blessed of God I just experience to get this get that more and more I'm just not interested because as I study the word of God I see that blessing comes if I'm
willing to be conformed to the revealed will of God and if I don't want blessing bad
in my life then dear ones I don't want meekness for Jesus said Father sanctify them how not to a rooftop hallelujah experience sanctify them through the truth and when he prayed by words truth that he might sanctify and cleanse this church by the washing of water by the word I've got no ask to cry dear ones but if we're to be kept steady and tangled in the aging which we live we've got to get hold of these principles and by the grace that God pressed through and as the Lord pours upon us is meekness then there's going to be greater blessing than we've ever known before
think of the blessing that will come to your soul if the present measure of your meekness is crippled then make a fool what happened again mama can tell him things
what happened to mama God can correct him if he doesn't stop this is witnessing isn't it what happened to me students before he didn't care when I went to bed he come busting in I brought a bed tent in he come busting in eleven thirty three I didn't hear him come in I what happened well I just came in quietly and just left the door open across and I
came in see how practical this is you see how practical it is and if our Christianity doesn't touch the dormitory room the kitchen where mama corrects daddy or daddy corrects mama if it doesn't work there then in God's name let's be done with it let's be done with it is it something that's relegated to these four walls that I don't want as part of it if it can't work and be demonstrated there in the home and in the school and in the shop and in the classroom then it's not real enough and worth caring with men but I thank God it can be manifested there and if it isn't I trust you to go down before God today and give him your rest and joy blessed
are the meek they shall be blessed and may I love without any kind of foot in the kitchen they shall be my life and be out for me may God grant me to be here so we can be blessed and may God bless you and may God bless you
This transcript was generated by automated speech recognition and may contain errors. It is provided for study and reference only; the audio recording is the authoritative source.
Passages Expounded
This is the primary text, the third Beatitude, which the entire sermon expounds and applies.
Texts Expounded
Also Referenced
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