sermon: Blessed Are the Meek (2014)

Another Difficult Fruit of the Spirit
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 20-Dec-14; Sermon #1245; 84 minutes

Related

As a group, those of us in the Church of the Great God may be among the most knowledgeable people, in terms of a sizable group, on the subject of General Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States.

Now, the reason for that, why we know so much about President Andrew Jackson, is we have been going to the Feast in Nashville, Tennessee for the last three years and many of us have availed ourselves of the opportunity to go to Andrew Jackson's estate, which is right outside Nashville (just a few miles away from where we stay at the Embassy Suites), the Hermitage. And when you go to the Hermitage, you get a little bit of an education on the man, Andrew Jackson. Some of us have even eaten dinner on his steamboat that goes down the Tennessee River, the General Jackson.

Anyway, many of us are aware that General Jackson was not an easy man to get along with. In fact, he is notorious for having a quick and fiery temper. He had very thin skin. Any kind of offense or slight was a reason for him to get angry and retaliate. He had a very vengeful nature and was willing to fight, to scrap, or whatever at the drop of a hat. A biographer, H. W. Brands, gives us a taste of it, quoting from his work on Jackson,

His close associates all had stories of his blood-curling oaths, his summoning of the Almighty to loose his wrath upon some miscreant, typically followed by his own vow to hang the villain or blow him to perdition. Given his record in duels, brawls, mutiny trials, and summary hearings, listeners had to take his vows seriously.

Even on the last day of his presidency (he was 69 years old at the time), Jackson admitted that he had but two regrets upon leaving office and that is that he had "Been unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun." This is the kind of man we are talking about here, a man who was just vindictive for any kind of slight or you know, even getting in the way of his policies.

Speaking of shootings, he dueled in defense of his own and his wife Rachel's honor. I do not know if you are aware of the story that Rachel and Mr. Jackson had married before her divorce was finalized, and so there were people that would say that she was a woman of ill repute and he would fight a duel for her honor. And in that way he suffered actually grievous wounds that left him with bullet fragments lodged in his body for the rest of his life. One was so close to his heart that they were at the time very unwilling to operate.

On July 8, 1838, it was about a year after he left Washington, and as President General Jackson, now 70 years old, informed his minister, a man by the name of Dr. John Edgar, that he wanted to become a member of the Presbyterian Church there in Nashville. Now, according to the account from another biographer, this one a man named Robert Remini, Dr. Edgar asked the former President how he had come to his conversion and about his convictions. And as the general would answer the questions, he would give an approving nod. But being a devout minister, Dr. Edgar felt it necessary to investigate this rabble rouser, former President a little more closely. He said, "General, there is one more question that is my duty to ask. 'Can you forgive all your enemies?'"

The question stunned General Jackson. He stared at his minister for a while while he gathered his thoughts, and then he finally broke the silence. This is what he said, "My political enemies I can freely forgive. But as for those who abused me when I was serving my country in the field and those who attacked me for serving my country, doctor, that is a different case."

Now, it was an honest answer for a man who had spent a lifetime fighting everyone around him. But Dr. Edgars was not going to be moved. He wanted an answer to this question. "Can you forgive all your enemies?" 'Christians must forgive all,'" He insisted. He said, "This is an absolute requirement of Christians that they forgive their enemies." He said, "How could you follow Jesus' command to love your enemies if you haven't forgiven them? Forgiving others is one of the defining marks of a real Christian." Essentially he said, "General, you have to forgive them all."

Well, President Jackson had not anticipated that Dr. Edgar would probe and question him so deeply in this way. When the time came for him to respond, after thinking for several minutes, he knew that he had to embrace the fullness of a Christian's duty, and part of the Christian's duty is to forgive. So, Jackson's biographer, Remini, records his response.

The stricken man sighed. There was a considerable pause. Then Jackson spoke again. Upon reflection, he began. He thought he "could forgive all who had injured him, even those who reviled him for his services to his country on the battlefield." He was at long last prepared to grant amnesty to all the scoundrels and poltroons who had ever crossed his path.

I offer this illustration not to introduce a sermon on forgiveness, or on love, or on counting the cost, although these will certainly be a part of the sermon as we go forward. What Andrew Jackson displayed at long last in his life was a small human example of one of the fruits of the Spirit, prautes in Greek. It is traditionally translated, in like the King James Version of the Bible, as meekness. Generally today in modern translations it is rendered as gentleness. So when we go through the fruit of the Spirit, which we will in a moment, we will see it there as gentleness. It is another one of those theological terms that seems difficult to pin down a meaning. And I would like to give you my take on this word this afternoon.

So if you would please turn to Galatians 5 and we will read verses 22 and 23. As I said, this is the listing of the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness [and here it is, prautes], gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

It is interesting in this passage that gentleness comes right before self-control. There is a lot of similarity there between those two terms. And I have also heard some people believe that as you go through the list of the fruit of the Spirit after love, that each one is more difficult to express in one's life or to build as part of our character. That would mean self-control would be the hardest and prautes or meekness would be one of the most difficult of all. I do not know if that holds true, but it is one way of looking at them because how hard is it to control the self? We find that to be very difficult. And this meekness that we are going to be talking about today, we will find is also a very difficult fruit of the Spirit to learn and express.

Let us go a few pages forward to Colossians the third chapter. We are going to read just verse 12 because it is mentioned here again. This is the character of the new man, as my New King James titles this paragraph.

Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering.

Now, this one is interesting from the standpoint that it is sandwiched between humbleness of mind and longsuffering. And we will see as we go through this sermon and understand what meekness is, we could say that meekness begins with humbleness of mind and it ends with longsuffering. So it is couched between these two terms appropriately.

One more, let us go to I Timothy 6. We are going to read one verse here as well. He is talking about the man of God and specifically speaking to Timothy, but Timothy in this sense represents all of us.

I Timothy 6:11 But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness.

Now gentleness is prautes here. We can also translate it meekness. Here again, it is listed towards the end of all of these various characteristics and you get the sense that it is a tough one. You have got to go and pursue all these other things to get to true gentleness or true meekness.

I wanted to come to these three passages just to show you how the apostle Paul used this term prautes. And you notice they are all lists. There is not a great deal of context there that we can pull out in understanding of this term. It is obviously used elsewhere. But for right now this is good that we can see how they are used in combination with some of these other characteristics.

But a major reason we seem to have a difficult time pinning meekness down derives from the disparity between the current English definition of meekness and the Greek definition of prautes, because they are not the same. I said it was a disparity. They have common elements, but our modern understanding of meekness is quite different from the Greek understanding that Paul had of this word.

A common definition today, if you would, let us say, type it into Google and pull up a quick definition, it would be submissiveness. Meekness is submissiveness. Now, there is something to that. Meekness does involve submissiveness, but it is not everything about submissiveness. If we would go then to, let us say, Webster's Dictionary, it would define it as "the absence of any feelings of being better than others," which is a good thing. Jesus Christ tells us to do that, Paul tells us to do that. Do not think of yourself better than others. Fine. That is a good definition and there are elements of it in meekness, but it has this modern tinge to it that is not in the Greek term.

Along with Webster's definition, "the absence of any feelings of being better than others," it also gives a set of synonyms for meekness. And this is where we get the modern understanding of the term demureness, down-to-earthness. I have never heard of it put quite like that, but that is what was there. Humbleness, lowliness, and modesty. I think we are drifting away from the biblical Greek concept that is in prautes.

You hop over to dictionary.com and they provide three definitions of meekness, "humbly patient or docile as under provocation from others." That is actually fairly good. That is good to a point. The second one is, "overly submissive or compliant." Notice they put the adverb overly there because that is a great part of the modern definition. That one who is meek is seen as overly submissive, overly compliant, without spirit, spiritless, tame; that this person who is meek is a pushover, a doormat. The third one they say is obsolete. The third definition, "gentle" or "kind," which is kind of interesting because the biblical definition has a lot of "gentle" in it.

Now, if I can summarize all that I have gone over the past 10 minutes, today's usage tends strongly towards submissiveness, compliance, and docility, being docile, and all of these three terms in our modern language—submissiveness, compliance, and docility—are all seen as weakness. They are all seen in a negative light as someone who does not have a backbone. So we get this idea of meekness is weakness, and that is not the biblical concept of prautes.

In modern English, this idea was helped along greatly by Charles Wesley's well-known hymn, "Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild." And I want to read you two verses, the first verse and the third verse. Many of you might remember this from saying this in Protestant churches in the past. Okay, here is the first verse:

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child; pity my simplicity, suffer me to come to Thee.

The third verse:

Lamb of God, I look to Thee, Thou shalt my example be; Thou art gentle, meek, and mild; Thou wast once a little child.

What we have here is this grouping of three words, gentle, meek, and mild, and also the figures of a child and a lamb. And it all comes together to paint a picture of Jesus as someone you could just bowl over, without a spine. He is so meek and mild, and so gentle that a gust of wind would knock Him down. Now while He just was gentle and He was meek, and He was mild at various times and situations as needed, those words, these three words—gentle, meek, and mild—do not necessarily all describe the same value today.

Language changes over time and so this concept of meekness has changed over time. And instead of clinging to the Greek idea that is in prautes, we have allowed language to move to the point where meekness gives us this idea of mildness, and spinelessness, and compliance, and over-submission, submission when it is not even necessary. So when these three words are together in the modern mind, we imagine not strength or boldness or courage, but as I said before, doormats. We think of cowed children who have been slapped one too many times and they flinch at even a rough voice. We think of mousey people, who all they want to do is scurry and get out of the way of everyone else.

But there is actually in this virtue of meekness, in the prautes idea of meekness, that is very powerful. It is a quality of character that is rooted in profound confidence, not self-confidence necessarily. I want you to make sure you understand this; that this quality of character is rooted in profound confidence and self-composure, and that allows us to have a forgiving disposition even toward our enemies and even towards persecutors. You could say that meekness is a sign of inner power and it is something we do not see a lot in this world where we have competitive tit-for-tat, angry, road-rage type of reactions where people cannot keep their composure. They do not have any control and they do not have, of course, any confidence in God.

So, this is a quality that helps people get along in times of stress and even when there is disagreement. It can be very useful in the church when we are with each other a lot, you know, all the time. And we have maybe abrasive personalities or somebody says something that seems to be a slight against somebody else or you have a disagreement of some kind or another and then the person gets offended. Well, meekness is what makes those relationships work. It makes congregations not blow up into division over offense. Someone in there needs to show meekness. We will see this as we go along.

We are going to continue with this definition. I know this is taking a long time, but it is very important because we have been conditioned to think of meekness in another way. So, I want you to really see it as fully as you can.

Let us go to what the Greek scholars now say that prautes means. The Expository Dictionary of Bible Words says that it is "the gentle, quiet spirit of selfless devotion to God. The very antithesis of arrogant pride." We can see from that definition that gentle comes into there, quiet comes into there, selflessness, and devotion to God. And it is humble, lowly. All of these are factors in it and I think this is why we have such a hard time with it because it encompasses so much. It is one word that stands for a lot of these traits put together and made useful in a time of stress, or a time of offense, or a time of affliction or adversity. And what is shown is meekness.

Let us go on to another one. This is from Word Meanings in the New Testament, and that book explains it as "gentleness and meekness," but that is not very helpful. But it goes on to say something that is very interesting in trying to explain what they mean by gentleness and meekness. That meekness is, "the inward [notice that word inward] grace imparted by the Holy Spirit, and it manifests itself in the outward graciousness of gentleness."

You see what it has done here. It is saying that meekness is what the Holy Spirit imparts to you as a person on the inside. That is the state of your character as it is inside. But its expression, its behavior to those not in you, obviously that would be everybody else, is gentleness. So you do meekness. Okay? Let us put it a different way to make it more clear. When you desire to be meek, your actions are gentleness. The out-working of meekness is gentleness, is what they are saying. So you do meekness inside you, and outside you, the way you act, is gentleness. So maybe that will be helpful.

Richard C. Trench, who was the archbishop of Dublin about a century ago, and was known as a theologian who had an ability to define and explain words, puts it this way. And I think this is very instructive. "It is that temper or spirit in which we accept God's dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resistance. It is closely linked with humility and follows directly upon it because it is only the humble heart which is also meek."

So he looks at it just as that Word Meanings in the New Testament did. That meekness is, as he said, "The temper or spirit inside of us that acts humbly toward others." And it is interesting, we need to get this point as well, that this temper or spirit comes from the fact that we accept what God is doing with us. That is a good thing no matter what that thing is. So if we are going through a trial of some sort, we have accepted it meekly as good because God is doing it. That is where our confidence lies. Our confidence lies in what God is doing and we trust Him to do what is good for us.

Even if we are going through some sort of a bad thing, somebody has offended us, or somebody is persecuting us, or somebody is beating us up, we can actually respond gently to that because God allowed it. So we do not have to retaliate. We do not have to take vengeance on that. We can accept it and move on. Why? Because God is behind it.

Remember the original definition that we got when we typed it into Google? The original definition was submissiveness. Submissiveness is definitely present in the term meekness, but it is not necessarily submission or compliance to men. That is not where the submission is directed. It is humble submission to the will of God! That is where submission is in meekness. We are not necessarily submitting to the man who is beating us up or who is slandering us, or even to the affliction that is coming on us. One way or another, that is not where we are submitting. We are submitting to God because He allowed it and it comes out in our response, our meekness comes out in our response as gentleness in our treatment of those people, even our enemies, even our slanderers, even our persecutors, so that we do not have to retaliate.

We could put it another way. Meekness is an inner power of mind and heart that enables a person to bear injury or adversity without being turned emotionally inside out, because we feel safe because God has directed this as part of our life. The confidence, the submission, is in God. And so we can then take it and go on.

Now, Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards—and I think this is a very interesting way of looking at and if you get nothing out of my sermon today, maybe this image will stick in your mind.

We have the Susquehanna not too far from here. How wide is it here? It seems like it is about a mile wide. It is huge! I was just kind of asking Beth rhetorically how many gallons of water flows through that river every day, crossing one single point. It just must be millions and millions of gallons of water. It seemed like it took a minute or two to cross over the thing going 60 mph. It is just a really wide river. Others of you can think of the Ohio or the Mississippi or some other great river that you know of that is just flowing with tons of water.

Listen to Jonathan Edwards' description of meekness as a large flowing river. He is describing it in order to show us how meekness expands and strengthens the inner man so that it is absolutely unperturbed by wrongs against it.

It is from littleness of soul that the mind is easily disturbed and put out of frame by the reproaches and the ill-treatment of men. As we see that little streams of waters are much disturbed in their course by small unevennesses and obstacles that they meet with and make a great deal of noise as they pass over them. Whereas great and mighty streams would pass over them calmly and quietly, smooth and unruffled.

He is saying, little men react with violence, react with revenge when they are accosted or slandered or offended, given a slight, or whatever. Little men do that. Those are the rocks that come into the stream and they make a great noise as they go over these rocks, or they have to swerve out of the way violently to go over or around the rock.

But big men, he says, are like that wide river, like the Mississippi or the Susquehanna. You throw a rock in there, it does not care. It moves on and swallows that rock and it is totally unperturbed. That is the inner strength of meekness. You can take slights and injuries and just brush them off and move forward.

Let us look in the Bible a little bit and see some examples here. Let us go to Proverbs the 16th chapter. This may be a memory scripture for many.

Proverbs 16:32 He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes the city.

We often come to this when we are talking about anger or self-control or something along that line. And I am not saying that being slow to anger is necessarily a definition of meekness, but being slow to anger is one way that meekness is expressed. We do not fly off the handle when we are meek. A meek person will not blow his stack at the slightest provocation. Remember, it is the big wide river, it just flows down and nothing is going to stop it. It is just going to keep on moving. Slights and even injury and peril do not set a meek person off, but he rules his spirit. He has control over his spirit. He is poised, he is calm, he has himself under control.

Remember I said in the fruit of the Spirit and the list there, prautes was the one just before self-control. So when you can be meek, you have the ability to be under control. And so a person who is meek flows coolly on like a river. He has such self-control and is so submissive to God's will that he seems unruffled, imperturbable like a rock. You could say he is not going to blow up, he is not going to get angry. He is not going to make a big scene. He is not even going to hold a grudge because what has happened to him is part of God's will for him and he could be satisfied that God knows, God is watching, and he can just go on.

I am telling you, this is a hard thing because we have to be able to see the hand of an unseen God in what is going on. We have to be under control of ourselves and to know where God is leading us, and to be able to quickly think about and understand why God is putting us through such a thing and then be able to take it calmly. That is hard!

Let us go to another one in I Corinthians 13. This is the love chapter. And what we see in going through the descriptions of love in action are expressions of love. Many people think that the fruit of the Spirit are actually those things. They are expressions of love. Love tops the list. And everything else are ways that love comes out in a person who has God's Spirit. Well, we have a similar thing here in I Corinthians 13 because love is essentially a major part of meekness. Love for God and love for the one who is actually harming you or slandering you or whatever. It is an expression of our love toward our fellow man.

I Corinthians 13:5 [Love] does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil.

The final two descriptors are the ones that we are going to concentrate on here just for a moment: is not provoked and thinks no evil. They are together negative expressions of weakness in action. A meek person will do this. He will not be allow himself to be provoked and a meek person will not think evil of what has happened to him. The ESV renders these two that a person who is expressing love is not irritable or resentful.

So a meek person then is not irritable. The smallest things do not set them off. He is not a grump or a grouch about things that come about throughout his day. He is not constantly complaining about who did this to him. He does not hold a grudge, as it goes on to say. He is not resentful about people who may have said something or done something that wronged him in time past. Such a person who is meek neither reacts with irritation or anger at a slight or injury. He does not hold a grudge against another.

Remember the Mississippi or the Susquehanna? He just flows on, he shrugs it off, and he moves forward. Why? Because that was God's will. God allowed it. Now, he went through it. He can think about it, he can understand his lessons, but he is moving forward. He is not going to let that slight, that injury, or whatever slow him down, make him take a step back in his preparation for the Kingdom of God by reacting in a unconverted way, in a carnal way.

Let us see some examples. Back to the book of Numbers, chapter 12. This is when Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses. We are going to read the first 15 verses of this chapter. Actually, that is all but one verse in this chapter. And I want you to see the whole story. A lot of times when we are talking about meekness, we stop at verse 3 and explain from there. But you need to see the whole scenario to understand why Moses felt it necessary for him to put this parenthetical statement in here about his own meekness. This is a beautiful teaching passage for us in terms of developing meekness because Moses exemplified it to a high degree.

Numbers 12:1-15 Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman. And they said, "Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?" And the Lord heard it. (Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.) [in the King James it is meek: Now the man Moses was very meek.]

Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, "Come out, you three, to the tabernacle of meeting!" So the three came out. [You do not ignore God when He says this kind of thing.] Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam. And they both went forward [and I bet their knees were shaking].

Then He said, "Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision; and I speak to him in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; he is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark sayings; and he sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?" So the anger of the Lord was aroused against them, and He departed.

And when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle, suddenly Miriam became leprous, as white as snow. Then Aaron turned toward Miriam, and there she was, a leper. So Aaron said to Moses, "Oh, my lord! Please do not lay this sin on us, in which we have done foolishly and in which we have sinned. Please do not let her be as one dead, whose flesh is half consumed when he comes out of his mother's womb!"

So Moses cried out to the Lord saying, "Please heal her, O God, I pray!" Then the Lord said to Moses, "If her father had but spit in her face, would she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut out of the camp seven days, and afterward she may be received again." So Miriam was shut out of the camp seven days, and the people did not journey on until Miriam was brought in again.

Now, this is quite a situation that has happened there. Before we get into thinking about it a little bit, I want to give you the Hebrew word that is translated meek here in the King James and humble in the New King James. The word is anav and it has the sense, generally, of humble, poor, lowly, and afflicted. And there is an interesting word picture I guess behind this term, and to us the word that it would bring out would be depressed, pressed down. A person who is pressed down is one who is poor in the land, under another person's control. A person who is humble would be that way, a person who is downtrodden, we might say. And that is where this idea of afflicted comes in. That this person has the pressures of the world on him or the pressures of a leader who is not very kind, let us say. One who oppresses a bit.

So, what we have here, and I think meek actually works better than humble, Moses was humble, do not get me wrong. But I think his reaction here shows meekness rather than humility necessarily. The Theological Word Book of the Old Testament comments about this word anav, "This adjective stresses the moral and spiritual condition of the godly as the goal of affliction, implying that this state is joined with a suffering life rather than with one of worldly happiness and abundance."

Anav has to do with understanding that a person who has anav understands that God is trying to lead a person toward a point, a spiritual state. You could say, preparing him for, let us say, the Kingdom of God, and the way to get to this place is through affliction, is through going through things that are difficult. And so they are good with that, we would say. They have come to the realization that this is the way it is got to be, that there is no other way to build these traits of character. And so, they are willing to go through these things because they know that God is behind them. They know that worldly happiness and abundance may not be their lot in life, and probably is not. So they just move forward and take the suffering because they know it is building towards a spiritual goal, which is godliness.

In other words, one in this state feels absolute dependence on God and any affliction he might suffer is part of God's training process to bring him to perfection. And so he moves on. He takes his lessons from it and he moves on.

Now, I think this helps us understand a bit better what is going on in this situation with Moses. Moses had an Ethiopian wife. From what Josephus says, he had married this Ethiopian woman many years before while he was still a general in the Egyptian army. And so from what is said in Josephus, he had married this Ethiopian woman as part of a political maneuver to get these Ethiopians on their side. The Egyptians wanted the Ethiopians on their side. And so this marriage was arranged. The war that was between them was settled and they went on.

Then Moses had this problem in the wilderness, as it were. He was kicked out of Egypt, obviously. And then he met God in the wilderness. God sent him back to Egypt and then God brought Israel out of Egypt. And here we are, 40, 50 years later, and this Ethiopian woman shows up and comes into the Israelite camp because she is Moses' wife and she is traveling with them out of Egypt.

Aaron and Miriam were then complaining and criticizing Moses that he had recognized this Ethiopian woman as his wife. Remember Zipporah is still in the area as well, his wife from Midian. So he has two wives and an obviously Gentile wife in this Ethiopian woman, and they were trying to make what you might call political hay out of this. Who knows what they were jockeying for. More leadership, higher status? Were they even thinking that they could somehow depose him and become the leaders of Israel? I do not know how far this went. But however far it went, the Lord heard them.

Now, let us think of something. Let us consider this from Moses' point of view. Do you think Moses did not know that his sister and brother were complaining and criticizing about this Ethiopian woman? I cannot see how he did not know. He must have known. And who knows how long this griping about this Ethiopian woman had been occurring? Let us say she (this Ethiopian woman) decided to make contact again with Moses while the plagues were still going on or while things were just getting started when Moses came back to Egypt from Sinai. How long was this into the wilderness trek? Months at least. But this comes up just about the time they are sending spies into Canaan and that was about two years from the time they left Egypt.

So had this complaining, this slandering been going on for two years and Moses did not know? And better yet, there is no indication that Moses had ever reacted to it. This is why I say meek is the better word here than humble. Because what we see in Moses' reaction to all of this taking place is that he was showing meekness all along throughout this entire trial. From whenever they started talking or griping against this Ethiopian woman to each other and Moses heard about it. He just let it go. He did not say anything. He did not act against them. He just kept going and doing his job as he was supposed to. He had shrugged off these criticisms and the slander. He took their abuse contritely. He did not fight back. From all we know, he did not even react at all. That is why it says here he was "very meek, more than all men who were on the face of the earth."

What we can see here, reading between the lines a bit, is that God allowed Moses to continue receiving this criticism for a while. And then when he saw that Moses was acting in meekness, that he had not done anything against Aaron and Miriam—and it looks like Miriam was the real instigator here—He stepped in. Exactly as we want Him to do when we are being abused or slandered or in any kind of adversity, or going through any kind of affliction. If we are doing it in meekness, we still want God to step in and help us. We are just not reacting to the people who are doing it. We are not taking vengeance. We are not calling them out, we are not doing any of these things against them. We are leaving it in God's hands. And that is exactly what Moses did. And God intervened exactly as Moses probably wanted Him to do.

So Moses had left the situation in God's hands and God responded appropriately. He gave Miriam what was deserved. It was horrifying, both to Aaron and to Moses, and I am sure to Miriam as well, what God did in giving her leprosy. And it was so bad. Aaron, first of all, looks at her in horror and says do not let this happen to her. And Moses says, "God, I pray, heal her!" because it was so bad.

But you notice what God says to Moses after he asked for healing. If I can put it in modern terms, He says, "Be quiet, Moses. I'm giving her what she deserves. Let her take her lumps." And also maybe, "This is what you asked for in your prayers that I respond and now I've responded. Don't take it back." Because God is just and God was merciful. He could very easily have struck Miriam dead for what she had done. But He had mercy and only gave her leprosy and only for seven days.

So Moses shows here that he was very meek, so meek that when Miriam was punished, he wanted the punishment taken away. Do you see the gentleness come out? This is why meekness is so difficult! Moses was just a man of sterling character. That he would, first of all, not retaliate at all to the complaints and the criticisms. And then when she was punished, actually asked for mercy on her at that point. Of course, it was his sister and I am sure he loved her and was willing to put up with all the guffs that she she gave him. But even so, it really showed how humble and submissive he was to God.

The important point that we need to see here is that Moses humbly and submissively bore the criticism and hurtful words because he considered them to be part of what God allowed him to suffer. And he was willing to take it. So he had learned not to lash out. He had learned not to retaliate. He had learned not to fight fire with fire, but he just serenely bore the slights, and like that river, move forward, kept flowing.

Now think of Moses, think of what he was doing. Think of who he was with—a couple million Israelites. What could be worse? Think of those 40 years in the wilderness and all that he had to take from all those people who were constantly complaining and griping, and a lot of times their gripes were directly against him. "Give us a new leader. Isn't there someone else that could take us back to Egypt?" "Who is this man Moses that he rules over us?"

He endured probably countless injuries from those children of Israel over those 40 years, yet we never see him retaliating. He was the right man for the job. He needed to be very meek, more than all men on the earth, in order to take them from Egypt to the Promised Land. It was part of the job description, I am sure. Is there anyone other than maybe Jesus Christ that could have handled that crew? Those 2.5 million Israelites who are constantly bickering and wanting his head.

You know we cannot leave the subject of meekness without speaking about Jesus Christ and His meekness and get some understanding of what His meekness is all about. So, I want to read a series of scriptures. Let us start in Mark 14. We are going to read verses 55 through 61. This is Jesus facing the Sanhedrin. Now, I just want you to notice Jesus' composure and His reaction to the things that are happening against Him.

Mark 14:55-61 Now the chief priests and all the council sought testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, and found none. For many bore false witness against Him, but their testimonies did not agree. And some rose up and bore false witness against Him, saying, "We heard Him say, 'I will destroy this temple made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.'" But not even then did their testimony agree. And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, saying, "Do You answer nothing? What is it these men testify against You?" But He kept silent and answered nothing.

Let us drop down to chapter 15.

Mark 15:1-5 Immediately, in the morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council; and they bound Jesus, led Him away, and delivered him to Pilate. Then Pilate asked Him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And He answered and said to him, "It is as you say." And the chief priests accused him of many things, but He answered nothing. Then Pilate asked Him again, saying, "Do you answer nothing? See how many things they testify against You!" But Jesus still answered nothing, so that Pilate marveled.

He made a witness before Pilate about how He would not bear any testimony in His own behalf here.

Let us go to Luke the 23rd chapter. We want verses 8 through 11. Pilate, finding out that Jesus was from Galilee, thought this was a great way to get out from under the judgment here. So he sent Him to Herod.

Luke 23:8-11 Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad; for he had desired for a long time to see Him, because he had heard many things about Him, and he hoped to see some miracle done by Him. Then he questioned Him with many words, but He answered him nothing. And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused Him. Then Herod, with his men of war, treated Him with contempt and mocked Him, and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him back to Pilate.

And still Jesus remained silent.

Luke 23:33-34 And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." And they divided His garments and cast lots.

Let us go to the book of Acts, chapter 8. We will read verses 27 through 35. This is where Phillip is being sent to the Ethiopian eunuch to help explain a few things.

Acts 8:27-35 So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all of her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning. And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet.

Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go near and overtake this chariot." So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him.

The place in the Scripture which he read was this: "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so He opened not his mouth. In His humiliation His justice was taken away, and who will declare His generation? For His life was taken from the earth." So the eunuch answered Philip and said, "I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of some other man?" Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him.

Of course, the greatest example of meekness in Scripture is Jesus our Savior. Nothing seems to be emphasized more consistently in the story of Jesus, of His life and of His death especially, than His forbearing response to injury from others: that He did not open His mouth, that He did not retaliate, that He did not, as I have said before, fight fire with fire. He moved on like the mighty Mississippi or the Susquehanna, which I just found out 18 million gallons a minute flow at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. That is a lot of water! But that is how Jesus flowed, you might say, just like that.

These things, even though they were terribly hurtful things leading to His death on the cross, yet He still showed meekness. His lamb-like disposition toward His enemies and adversaries is just a true example of how we are supposed to be. Lambs are not aggressive, not at all. They are not confrontational toward one another or even to anything else. They are not rowdy. Lambs are not like lions, they do not eat their young or the young of others. Lambs do not threaten each other, their shepherd, the dog that helps keep them. They are gentle creatures and so too, is the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Even amidst insults and injuries from friends and enemies, we see that time and time again in His life.

And so it is said here in Isaiah that Jesus was the Lamb led to the slaughter. I just took it out of Acts 8 there, but he is quoting Isaiah. Jesus was misunderstood. Think of this. I am going to give you a list here of things that Jesus went through and think if you could take this and flow on as if nothing had happened.

He was mistreated and misunderstood by almost everyone.

He was disowned by His family.

He was demonized, literally demonized by the Pharisees and Sadducees. How often did they call Him Beelzebub or that He had a demon?

He was betrayed by a disciple and He was abandoned by all the others—even after saying, we would never leave. We are ready to die for You. First sign of trouble, they were off.

He was cursed and slapped in a court of law, "supposedly."

He was belittled by a petty king who presumed to play His judge.

He was mocked mercilessly by ignorant soldiers.

And He was even insulted by one of the criminals that He was crucified with! It went all the way to the end.

People were standing near His cross shouting insults at Him. "You're calling Elijah, why can't You come down from there? Do a miracle." When He was standing before Pilate, the crowd said, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" His own people rejected Him.

And what is consistently in the Gospels? He remains silent. He said not a word. He took it. He flowed on.

How does the Lamb of God respond? Does He show any hostility? Any vindictiveness? Does He even seem to take offense? Does He rebuke anybody? Does He rebuke Annas, Herod, Pontius Pilate? Does He call lightning down on Judas for his betrayal? Does He use His omniscience to undermine the accusers who came and said lies about Him and misquoted Him? Does He summon a legion of angels to rescue Him, which He said He had the power to do? Not at all. He remained silent. He moved forward. He allowed them to lead Him to His death. He asked the Father to forgive them while He was hanging on the cross. He died for them in meekness. A lamb led to the slaughter.

Now there is your example of meekness: that He was confident and submissive to the will of God, knowing that that was the path that had been set for Him to follow. And so anything that happened to Him was not worth responding to—because God had allowed it. And He was trusting in God to make it work out.

I Peter 2:18-24 Servants [that is all of us, we are all servants, none of us are masters in this spiritual context here], be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God, one endures grief [Is that not kind of what I have been talking about? That we have conscience toward God because we trust in God's will for us, that will endure grief], suffering wrongfully. For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer for it, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God. [you are showing meekness]

For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps [we are specifically talking about His meekness here that we are supposed to follow after]: "Who committed no sin, nor was guile found in His mouth"; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.

His meekness went so far, His humble submission to the will of God was so complete, that He was willing to suffer to the utmost to surrender to what God wanted Him to do—to the point of death, even the death of the cross. So He was gentle as a lamb with his enemies—even to that point of death. That He would, with some of His last breath say, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Now that is meekness.

We have one of our God's greatest teachings in Matthew the fifth chapter. These are the Beatitudes. I am going to read verses 3 through 5. We see a very clear progression of virtues here that Jesus says are blessed.

Matthew 5:3-5 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

Those who realize their spiritual poverty and those who learn godliness through sorrow and suffering will also be meek. They will be humbly submissive to God and His will for them despite the slings and arrows of criticism, offense, and adversity. Meekness, you could say, is godly composure under fire. Do you have it?

RTR/aws/drm

Back to the top