Upside Down Living #3 - Meekness in a Time of Harshness
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues in the Beatitudes with Matthew 5:5 looking at the idea of meekness, what meekness means, why someone would want to be meek, and how to cultivate meekness in our life.
Message Transcript
Hey, welcome to Orchard Hill. It's great to be together in Wexford, in the Chapel, in the Strip District, in Butler County, at home virtually, or wherever you are. And during this time, we're so grateful for so many of you just participating in a variety of ways. So, let me start with a question today. Do you think that people are getting more harsh or less harsh in their treatment of one another in our culture? If you had to answer that, how would you answer that? Now my guess is a lot of people would say we're getting harsher. But I actually watched Hamilton the other day, it came out on the digital platform, and I had not seen it. And so, I saw it. And one of the things that struck me was, how acrimonious the politics were. Just because sometimes we tend to think, oh, it's really ugly in our day and age, and yet it was ugly then.
Now whether or not you think it's more harsh or less harsh today really isn't the point. The point is people have always found reasons to be harsh with one another, to be acrimonious with one another, certainly over politics. But it isn't just politics. I saw a news story recently about a woman who was challenged to wear a mask in a Michigan store. And she went off on the people there and it ended with her flipping them off, flipping some stuff over, and just a complete meltdown. And then a few years back, I remember being at a youth sports event, when my son was engaged in the youth sports. And one of the moms got upset with one of the coaches, this had nothing to do with me, but she got upset with one of the coaches and they started exchanging words and she literally punched the coach. This is something that I witnessed. And so, this is not something that is just out there, it's all around us this idea of harshness. And harshness is really rooted in a couple of behaviors. One is, it's whenever we assign sinister motives to somebody else, where we assume that we know what somebody's intended, that they had motives that were dark in some way or intended for harm. It's whenever we refuse to consider an opposing point of view fully and completely. It's when we say no, I know I'm right. And my only interest right now is arguing that I'm right rather than actually listening and engaging in dialogue, and harshness occurs, I believe when we're combative in dialogue.
But Jesus comes along and gives us this Sermon on the Mount. We're doing a series on it, and we're calling it Upside Down Living. It begins with these Beatitudes and the Beatitudes are statements were Jesus basically says, you'll be blessed if... Now, there's a lot of scholarly debate rightly around, are these conditions something else, but what he says is blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. And so, Jesus comes along, and he says, in essence, you may live in a harsh culture, and the culture that the people lived in then was harsh. The culture we live in now is harsh. Whether or not it's escalating or not, isn't really the issue. But because we live in times where people can be harsh toward one another, Jesus word about being blessed if we're meek is an important word for us to hear. And Jesus tells us this and this is going to be upside down in our day and age. And so, what I'd like to do today is just ask and answer three questions. The first question is this and that is, why would we want to be meek? A second question is what does it look like to be meek, and then what can we do to cultivate meekness in our lives if we want to?
So first, why would we want to be meek? If you think about harshness, a lot of times people think I'm just letting people know how I feel, and letting people know what I think. In fact, some people would say, you know, if your opponents go low, you go lower, because it's the only way to be taken seriously in our day and age. And so, there's no reason for us to want to be meek. But let me just give you three reasons for being meek. The first is right here in Matthew 5:5, where we read this, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." There is a promise of inheritance that comes to those who are meek. And being meek, at a minimum, implies the idea of receiving what Jesus says about us, what God says about us, without defensiveness. Here's where we see this. This is James chapter one. And I'm going to again, point to some other places where this word is used. The Greek word is praus and it is used in several contexts in the New Testament because it helps us understand a single verse. Here's what we read in James 1:21, ""Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent..." And then it says this, and humbly, here's the word praus, it's the same word for meek, "...and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you."
So how does meekness help us inherit the earth? Well, what it does is it helps us to accept God's assessment of us. And here's God's assessment of us, ultimately, and that is that we're sinful people who need a savior and can't save ourselves. And if we don't humbly accept that, then we will not inherit the earth. And so being meek, being humble enough to say God's assessment of me is right, I'm not on a path that's enough, that's good enough, but I need a savior, I need a substitute on my behalf as part of coming to a point of having a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
But there's a second reason why we might want to be meek and that is because it's helpful in life. And I say this because when there is meekness, we experience our relationships better than we do if we're not meek. In other words, we have a better experience of community. A lot of times, people will go on social media or different things and fight with others, because it's not relational. But even in our relationships, when we exhibit what Jesus is talking about here, we end up having better relationships. This is true when we're corrected. And it's true just in general when we when we interact with people. Here's Galatians 6:1 again, the same word is used. "Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently." There's the word again. And so what he's saying is that he wants us to know that when we confront somebody, if we do it gently, if we do it with meekness, with humility, that will go better than if we don't. Now, you know that to be true. That's not anything revelatory that you wouldn't understand or know. And you know that when somebody challenges you, if they come with gentleness, with humility, that you're way more likely to hear them then if they come at you with both guns blazing, figuratively speaking. And so, it's helpful for us in life, in terms of that kind of a relationship, but also just in general. Here's Ephesians 4:2 again, it says, "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Talking about our general approach to people in our lives.
And then we see this, and this is Numbers 12:3. Now we're in the Old Testament. So, the word isn't the same. It's not necessarily a Greek word because the Old Testament has Hebrew underlying it. But the Septuagint, which is the Greek rendition of the Old Testament has a similar word here that would translate over. This is talking about Moses, Numbers 12:3. "Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth." And that is a rough approximation to this idea of meekness. And here's why this matters here is because not only will it be helpful in our life to be meek, in terms of our relationships, and our community with people, but it will be helpful because it will give us perseverance, and this is what was true for Moses.
Just a couple things that happened for Moses. Moses persevered in his following of God's call for him despite Pharaoh's disdain for him. This is Exodus chapter five, verse two and following. I'm just going to give you a couple of instances in Moses's life. And here's why this matters. If you and I are not meek, what will happen is at some point, when we're met with disdain from other people, it will be hard to continue because we'll say, I'm not getting out of this what I think I need. Moses endured or was one who persevered, even though there was the ungratefulness from the people that he led. And we see this in Numbers 11. In other words, there were a lot of people who grumbled at what Moses did. And if you read through the story of the Exodus, the people came out and you know, they were they were enslaved. And then when they were wandering through the wilderness, they said, oh, that we could go back to Egypt. We used to have meat to eat. Now all we have is this mana that comes down from heaven in our freedom out here. We used to have good things to eat. Now, we don't have good things to eat. But Moses's demeanor allowed him to continue even when there were people who were ungrateful, Numbers 12, which is where the verse talks about his humility, he was being criticized by those close to him. And again, if you don't have a touch of this in your life, what will happen is you'll end up wanting to give up.
And then he endured when there was a conspiracy to take him out of leadership, Numbers 16:1-3. And so that's part of why meekness becomes important as it helps us navigate important relationships and navigate difficult times.
And then we see one other reason why this is important. And this is Galatians 5:22-23, which is often known as the fruit of the Spirit, because it says that. It says, "22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." And gentleness is again the same word. So why would you or I want to say this is something that's important. Instead of just saying, you know what, I just match people's intensity, they go low, I go lower. Somebody ramps it up, I ramp it up. Well, why would we want to deal with it? Because it is part of where we get the promised inheritance. It's helpful in our lives and because it's an evidence of the Holy Spirit.
So, what is meekness? This is our second question. Well, if you heard kind of me talk about those verses, you heard that it was translated, the Greek word three different ways, typically in our English translations, meekness, humility, and gentleness. And anytime a word, a Greek word is translated in different ways consistently, it means that the translators, the peoples who have studied this and tried to understand it, can't capture all of the nuance of meaning in our English language with a single word. They keep saying that no, there's a shade here and the context calls for something different. The reason that's significant is because what that means is that just simply saying, to be meek means to be gentle or humble isn't quite enough, there are shades of meaning. So, let me just see if I can help us understand this.
The first element I think of what it means to be meek is to have an absence of pretension. Meaning that we don't live with a sense of saying, I know exactly how everything should go and it should go according to my plan. And if it doesn't, I'm irritated. I'm annoyed. I'm put off. Robert L. Palmer, who is a Greek scholar, put it this way, he said, "The opposite of meekness is a harsh and proud wickedness that insists on immediate self-vindication." So anytime, basically, that you're challenged, and you don't like what somebody else says, you start saying I have to be vindicated right now. I need to be proved right. And sometimes it shows up in goofy ways. Sometimes we end up arguing over nothing in order to be like, no, I'm right about this. I don't know if you've ever found yourself in a completely inane argument over something. Like maybe, you know, when a certain show stopped or started, or a certain stat in some sport, or a certain piece of trivia, and you find yourself just arguing about it, and you're like, why does this matter? Well, what it is, is it's you or me saying, I want to be proved right. I want immediate self-vindication. So, meekness is an absence of pretension.
I think it's also gentle in its approach. One of the pictures that this Greek word carries is an animal with a with a bit or a bridle being contained or controlled. And so, the picture is of something that has strength, has power, but is being brought under control. To be meek or gentle means that we're going to be gentle in the way that we approach people in situations.
And then I would say thirdly that meekness is restraint when irritated. And what I mean by this is that we would be able to say even when I might be rightly irritated, that I come to a point of being able to say, I can restrain or control my irritation. Here's how James Montgomery Boice writes about this, and he talks about how Aristotle saw virtue and he says that he always defined virtue as a mean between excess of the virtue and its deficiency. For instance, "Courage is a virtue, because it's a mean between cowardness which is a deficiency and courage, and foolhardy action, which is a result from too much courage. Generosity is a mean between stinginess and profligate waste of one's resources. To Aristotle, meekness was also a virtue because it was the mean between excessive anger in the inability to show anger at all. He described as a meek man, the one who was angry on the right occasion, and with the right people, and at the right moment, for the right length of time. In other words, meekness doesn't mean that you don't ever become angry, but it means that you have it at the right time, for the right reasons, and with the right level of intensity. On the basis of this, Boice continues, definition, it is possible to translate the beatitude fairly as William Barclay does, in his commentary, 'Blessed is the man who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time.'" And so, to be meek, means in part that what we do is we come to a point where we say I am learning how to disagree without being obstinate with people.
You know, we asked the question at the beginning, are things getting more harsh or less harsh in our day and age? And my guess is most of us would say, it seems pretty harsh right now. And because of that, what's happening is there's not a lot of patience when we're irritated. I heard one line the other day that said, most organizations right now are scrambling to figure out how to do their business. And it's like they're building an airplane in flight. And the point of that is to say, it's really easy to stand back if you're not in the position of having to make decisions, whether it be governmental decisions, whether it be organizational decisions, school decisions, and say, oh, I know exactly what they should do, they ought to, and yet people are doing the best they can to make wise decisions. You may not agree with them and that's fine. But to be irritated, and throw down, is not to express meekness.
There are some memes on the internet around an idea of people going off publicly on others. And it's gotten a nickname now. And to go off on somebody in public, in an unreasonable manner means that you get the nickname, Karen. And I don't know if any of you have seen any of these memes. They're not the most encouraging things to see if you've seen them. And in a way, to ever put yourself in a place where somebody could say you're a Karen, is a lack of meekness. But here's the thing. Everybody taking videos and calling out everybody else's Karen-ness, is also a lack of meekness. Because what you're doing in that moment is you're saying gotcha, you're a Karen, ha-ha. Well, at the same time when somebody says, I'm going to take this moment to express or go off on somebody else, there's a lack of meekness.
And here's what I think is unfortunate in our culture. And that is you understand, I understand, what it takes to get along with somebody. And here's what I mean. if you're married, and even if you're not married, you've seen somebody who's married, your parents were ever married, you ever have a relative, or a friend who's married, you get this. And that is when you're married what happens is sooner or later, the person you're married to will say something, do something that irritates you, annoys you, honks you off, whatever phrase you want to use. And when that happens, what usually happens is you have a chance to come and say, okay, I want to talk to you about this. Or they come to you and say, I want to talk to you about this. And if you're defensive and dismissive, what happens is your relationship degenerates. But if you receive it, if you listen to it, if you take it to heart, even if they were wrong, you say, well, now I want to readdress and tell you why I think you had it wrong, what happens is your relationship grows.
And what meekness is, is it's the capacity to say, I'm going to stay in relationship even if it's not necessarily a strong relationship, it's just a quick consumer relationship, rather than simply going to the worst-case scenario. And the harshness is saying, I'm going to assign sinister motives to you. I'm going to not consider your perspective, your point of view at all, and I am going to refuse to engage in any kind of meaningful dialogue. Meekness says, I'm going to, in essence, say I don't have pretension here. So, I'm willing to hear from you. I'm going to be gentle in my approach, and I'm going to be self-controlled even when I'm irritated. Do you see it? Not just a word. And that is meekness does not mean that you and I have a lack of conviction, or that we abdicate places where we have influence, or power, or responsibility.
Sometimes people think meekness is basically saying, well, I shouldn't say anything to anybody about anything, or I should never have an opinion. And the opposite is true. When I was in college, I worked for a construction company. I was on a building crew, and I was always the low person on the building crew, which means I got the worst jobs, and rightly was the low person by the way, because I had the least skill, and so you know, I would run the errands, and I would do stuff. Then once in a while, they would give me a real job, which was like, hey, could you do this?
And I remember one afternoon I was given a real job. I was supposed to frame part of this one wall, and I started framing the wall. And the foreman came over, about halfway through the job and he said, you know, I think it would work a lot better if, and he gave me a suggestion. And in all my wisdom and construction experience, I kind of shot back at him because he was criticizing how I was doing my work. And now just on the face of that, you can see how ridiculous that is. But that's how this went down. And I still remember what he said after that. Now, this is a guy who could say, and you know, and this does happen in different job sites, he could say, you're an idiot, or you don't know anything. He could, you know, have cussed me out, or threatened to fire me. I mean, he had a range of possibilities for how he could have dealt with my arrogance in that moment. Do you know what he did? He said, oh, I'm really sorry. I jumped all over you. And he turned and walked away. And he had been so nice about how he came up to me to help me do the job better. And in that moment, what he did is he had meekness. He didn't abdicate. He made his point. He got through to me, and all of a sudden, I'm like, yeah, I'm the idiot here. I get it. And here's my point. If he comes and comes after me hard, maybe I'm like, oh, that guy is the problem or something, I feel vindicated. But he didn't abdicate his responsibility. He was in charge. He made his point, but he did it with incredible gentleness, humility, and meekness.
So, now the question is this. How do you cultivate it? How do you cultivate meekness? And here's the challenge of the Sermon on the Mount, specifically. If you see the Sermon on the Mount as a checklist to say, these are qualities I should exhibit, what will happen is you will take all of this teaching, and you'll say, I'm going to try really hard to do it. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't try to be meek, but I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus gives. And the reason I say that is because I don't think the Sermon on the Mount is intended to be something that we look at and we say in essence that this is a goal or merely a goal that we should aspire to. I think it's also intended to be a wall that we run into, so that we acknowledge how far short we come. And the reason I say this, and I quoted this a couple of weeks ago, is in Matthew, 5:17, Jesus says this, he says, "Don't think I've come to abolish the law or prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." And so, what Jesus says, is this, and that is, I have fulfilled the law. I'm not abolishing it, I fulfill it. Not I'm making you get there, but I personally am the one that fulfills it. And what he means by this is that you and I come to realize our lack of meekness when we read this, and in that we say, but there's one who was meek on my behalf.
Now, again, that doesn't mean that you don't say, oh, I'd like to work on my humility or become more gentle or humble in my life. But what it means is that it isn't about how humble can I become so God can accept me, it's about recognizing that no matter how well I do at this, there are times where I am not humble, I am not meek, I am not gentle, and that is precisely why Jesus died. Not only that, I believe that when we see how Jesus was gentle with us, it will inspire genuine humility and meekness in us. This is Jesus in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, and 29, he says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Do you ever feel weary, especially with the harshness and the back and forth of trying to always prove yourself right, or stand out in some way? Verse 29, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Jesus says, you can come to me because I am gentle. And whatever yoke you think you're going to get from me, it's actually a lighter burden than the burden you will have your own way.
So how do you or I cultivate meekness, ultimately by acknowledging that we're not meek, looking to Jesus meekness, and then saying how Jesus gentleness has been lived out for me that I who deserve punishment, am given grace and mercy because of that, then I can extend grace and mercy to others. And the more I sit in that, the more I understand that, the more I savor that, the more likely I am to be gentle and meek, in my daily interactions. The more I think I have it together, the more likely I am to become the person who says I've got it right and everybody else needs to get it right like me. Now, again, don't misunderstand. I'm not saying there's not a time to say you think you have a conviction and shouldn't go forward with that. What I'm saying is that there's a mindset that comes from thinking that you have it together, that when you acknowledge before God, you don't. And Jesus has done for you what you don't deserve, allows you to be compassionate and meek with people in your life. And it will help you when you do that. And so, you and I don't need to power up on people because of any conviction that we have.
John Wesley wrote a prayer years ago and it says this. He says, "I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will. Rank me with whom you will. Put me to doing. Put me to suffering. Let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you, exalted for you, or brought low for you. Let me be full. Let me be empty. Let me have all things. Let me have nothing. I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal." And the reason I read that is I love how his mindset was not let me be gentle for the sake of everybody else in my life. It was, let me surrender myself to God, and whatever that means, because I'm offering myself to God, that is why I do it. And that's where you and I can get some of the strength to be meek.
So, what do you do with this today? Well, hopefully what you've heard is that as you acknowledge your need of Jesus and savor him, you will just become meeker than you would be otherwise. Hopefully, you've maybe heard some ways in which you can identify places where you're not meek and know that that's part of why you need to run to a savior. But let me just say this too, as a congregation right now, as a church, Orchard Hill church, one of the things that's important, is that in this time, when things are harsh, and people are throwing down on all kinds of things, that we learn how to be the people who can give a gentle voice to our culture pointing to our Savior.
And what that means is that we will be convicted about the things that scripture has directly addressed without compromise, while at the same time being able to distinguish the things that people make a big deal that might be implications of Scripture, might even be true implications of Scripture, but can be more tolerant of some differences there, and be able to discuss those things with vigor but at the same time, with tact and grace. And that's what's missing in our broader culture. And it's a place where the church, I believe can lead the way forward. And the only way that happens is not by digging in our heels and saying we have all the answers, but by saying we have convictions based on scripture, and then we have some implications too, that we think are important, but we are willing to listen, we are willing to engage in dialogue with one another.
Well, let me just give you one example of this. Just because sometimes examples help us think about this. When I was a kid, well, I didn't have a ton of exposure to the church. But the season that I was exposed to church, one of the things that was really clear was that if you were a Christian, you did not go to R-rated movies. That was like a thing. Now some of you are like, what, who would ever think such a thing? And the reason was, is that there were people who would say, well, the Bible says Philippians four, think on the things that are true that are beautiful. That are good, that are noble that are upright. And therefore, if you go to an R-rated movie that's filled with violence, with sexuality and language, you aren't thinking on those things, therefore you can't go to a rated R-movie. All right? Now, you can hear where people can get really down the line on either side of this kind of thinking, and not be meek.
Well, here's what's true. The Bible does say think on what's pure, what's beautiful, what's right. That is something every person can agree on. How people choose to apply that, is an area of implication, meaning people can have different opinions, and their beliefs might be strong. But what happens is, sometimes we want to insist that everybody believes the same implications that we come to in the same way, rather than being able to say, you know what we can agree about what the Bible says here. And then we can talk about with meekness, with humility, with gentleness, some of the implications. If the church can model that for the world, then we're living and modeling the gospel. But if the church goes at each other all the time, then what happens in the churches, we're just a mirror of our culture, rather than a light to our culture. I believe God has called us to be a light. That's what Matthew 5:13 says, that we're called to be a light, are called to be salt and light, 14 says that. So, Jesus says, blessed are the meek because they'll inherit the earth. You and I only become meek by seeing and savoring the meekness of Jesus.
Father, we thank you for your word, and just it's clarity to speak to right where we live today. I pray that you would help me and each person who calls Orchard Hill their church home, in our businesses, in our friendships, in our homes, and our marriages, in our schools, and our dorm rooms, to be gentle, humble, meek. But Lord, we acknowledge that it's only an acknowledging that we aren't those things. That you move in our lives and bring about salvation and from that, we can even begin that journey. And so we pray that you would do that work in us and repeat the wonder of that in us to such an extent that we can be part of the solution in our world and lead the way rather than part of the problem. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.
