Meek Not Weak

 “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:5)
If we are to understand what this verse is all about, we must also consider what it is not. I think we have been conditioned by television, movies and all of popular culture – and maybe even by the demeanor of some Christians – to equate meekness with weakness. We are being programmed to think, “Well, if I’m going to be a good Christian, I’d better just let everybody run over me. I’ll just forget about standing up for myself or for what is right. I don’t want to offend anybody.” You have as much right as a Muslim to stand up for what you believe. Being a Christian does not make you a doormat for everybody else. If other people get mad when you talk about Jesus, you should get just as mad when they defile His name. But some people expect you to put up with the blasphemous tirades of the wicked and slither off into a corner rather then express your displeasure when your beliefs are ridiculed. It’s time we started to understand that when God speaks in this verse of being meek, He is not talking about being weak. Another popular misunderstanding in this passage is that many of us equate meekness with timidity. The world so often tells us, “You can go ahead and believe what you like, but don’t speak up and try to force it on us.” So we are essentially put in our place, and we have gotten comfortable with that. I am not suggesting at all that you be unkind or uncouth, or that you cram your beliefs down someone else’s throat. The Bible never teaches that. But we have lost something in our society in that we have stopped taking a stand for Biblical Christianity. The Bible tells us to be bold and proclaim our faith. We used to sing that old hymn, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross.” The sad fact today is that our lives more accurately reflect the words, “Sit down, sit down, be quiet; don’t talk about Jesus.” There used to be a different mindset in society. You can say what you want, but it’s a fact that this country was better off when prohibition was the law of the land. Crime was down, domestic abuse was down, and most families’ finances were improved. Much was made of Al Capone and his ilk, but aside from a few specific urban areas where organized crime was active, most of America was better off when booze was harder to come by. The prohibition laws would never have come about except for men like Billy Sunday who stood up and said, “Booze is killing our kids. We need to do something about it.” Imagine if that great evangelist had listened to people who said, “Mr. Sunday, it’s all right if you believe that, but you need to keep it in the pulpit.” We have no problem today yelling about sin in the church, but we seem to hesitate to yell about it out in the world where most of the sin is actually taking place. We’re allowed to have our religion in church, but God forbid we bring it with us to work or (gasp!) into politics. I received an e-mail recently with a photo of a 2008 presidential candidate who appeared at a function dressed in drag because he was pandering to gay, lesbian and transgender voters. I don’t want a male president who dresses like a woman or a female president who dresses like a man. I’m going to support a righteous person in any political campaign. I would rather lose with a righteous person than win with a compromiser. I have more respect for a Catholic priest who preaches his doctrine without hesitation than a compromising Baptist. I would prefer that America be led by a rank liberal who supports killing babies and a Sodomite lifestyle than a so-called conservative who capitulates and compromises. Maybe then as we head down the path of destruction we could have the hope that God would send revival. We have been told to stay in our place. As Christians, we need to get out of that place. If the Sodomites can come out of the closet, so can the Christians. I am sick of being timid. If meekness is not weakness or timidity, then it certainly is not cowardice. We need to be afraid of what Jesus thinks and not what the world thinks. We should be afraid of what we will hear at the Judgment Seat and not what someone might say down at the coffee shop. We must be more concerned with what the Bible says and what has been handed down to us over the years from men and women of God than what is said by modernist, liberals and anyone else who hates God. “But I don’t want to offend my friends,” you say. Well, all of them are going to Heaven or Hell, and you owe it to them to stand up and tell them what is right. Another popular argument is, “You don’t have the right to say your way is better than anyone else’s way.” The Bible says in Prov. 12:26, “The righteous is more excellent than his neighbour: but the way of the wicked seduceth them.” Now I’m no better than anyone else in that we are all sinners. But the way I have chosen is better than the way you have chosen. “Who are you to tell me that your way is better than my way?” I am a born-again, blood-bought child of God, washed in the blood of Christ, saved by the grace of God, and I’ve got the Bible to prove it. I can’t make you live right, but I can tell you what the Bible says about how you should live. “My way will get me to Heaven just as good as your way.” Your way will get you somewhere, but it won’t be to Heaven. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” A lady ran into Curtis Hutson one day at the post office after hearing him preach on the radio. She said, “Dr. Hutson, you preach about Jesus and all that, but you have your way to Heaven and I have my way – just like we came different ways to the post office today.” Dr. Hutson thought for just moment and quickly replied, “Ma’am, you are correct about getting to the post office. But when you die, you don’t go to the post office.” So if meekness is not to be equated with weakness, timidity or cowardice, what is the Biblical definition of meekness? It is very simple. Meekness is submission to God and His plan for your life; it is accepting that the hand of God at work in your life is for His glory and your good in everything. When you commit to walk down the path that God has chosen for you, and you realize that whatever happens is not the intent of God to hurt you, but is for His glory and your good, then you are practicing the art of meekness as outlined in His Word. Gen. 50:20 says, “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers after being thrown into a pit. He was bought by Potiphar and worked as a servant in an Egyptian house, until he was lied about by an adulterous woman and thrown into prison. All of this began when he was a teenager. I marvel at how teenagers can say it is impossible to go against the crowd and live for God in today’s society when I think about what Joseph went through.  Now Joseph stands as the number-two man in all of Egypt, and his brothers stand before him hoping to avoid starvation. Most of us, in Joseph’s place, would have smacked those men down in an instant, thrown them into prison so they could experience what they did to us. But Joseph looked at them as said, “Fellas, it’s all right. God had a plan all along. Now I can spare your lives.” Remember Joseph’s dream? Here it was coming to pass. God had a plan when he was in the pit, when he was a servant in Potiphar’s house, and when he was in that Egyptian prison before moving to the palace. Neither Joseph nor his brothers knew this plan, but Joseph submitted to the will of God for his life. All those years he would rather have been back home sitting at his father’s table, but he knew he was fulfilling a purpose for God’s honor and glory, so he did his best to honor Him. What a wonderful example of total submission. Another example is Job. To say he had a bad day would be the understatement of all time. In a single day he lost his wealth, his children and his health. His wife turned on him and said he should curse God. He replied, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) We have nothing to complain about. Everything we have was given to us by God. If He wants to take something away, it’s OK. Nearly every one of us, in Job’s place, would be moaning and groaning constantly. As a father of four, I can say without hesitation that I would be questioning God if I lost my children so suddenly. As close as I am to my wife, I can’t imagine how Job felt to have his wife desert him when he needed her most. She told him in no uncertain terms that she wished he were dead and he should wish the same thing, because she wanted no part of whatever God was allowing to happen in his life. I don’t know of any man in the Bible who was a better Christian than Job. If anyone had a “right” to complain, in my earthly view, it would be him. God took everything away to prove a point about Himself, and Job proved Him right. That is total submission to God. Could any of us have that kind of attitude when things aren’t going so well? Jesus said in Matt. 11:29, “Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly.” In the Garden of Gethsemane, He showed total submission to God when He said in Matt. 26:39, “Let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I wilt, but as thou wilt.” He didn’t want to face the cross, but He knew that it was important for the entire human race to have the opportunity to know God through Christ than for Him to avoid it. As a sports fan, I have learned not to be a big fan of a particular team, because that team can be overrun with wicked people who just happen to be great athletes, and I want my children to learn not to look up to that kind of behavior. I’m a fan of people. My favorite football team in recent years has been the Indianapolis Colts because of my great admiration for their head coach, Tony Dungy. A fine Christian man, he wrote a book entitled “Quiet Strength” that was a huge blessing to me. In 2005, a little over a year before Dungy’s team won the Super Bowl, his 18-year-old committed suicide. To this day, the family is not sure why he did that. This young man was a Christian and all of his friends described him as an upbeat person. This tragedy in Tony Dungy’s personal life came after a series of professional setbacks, as he had many good teams in Tampa and Indianapolis but couldn’t seem to get over the hump and win the big games, especially in the playoffs. Dungy wrote in his book that his attitude was, “I’ll not change anything. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, but I’ll do it a little bit better, because I know I’m doing right.” When he and his wife flew to Tampa to begin making funeral arrangements, he saw thousands of people participating in the procession and expressing their condolences. “I can’t explain it, but I still believe that God has my best interests at heart,” he wrote. So after years of being hammered in the press and by fans for being too passive or too “Christian,” after being pressured to make changes in certain areas, he decided that he was going to stay the course. After winning the Super Bowl, the first words out of his mouth were in praise to the Lord Jesus Christ for giving him this opportunity. He did not talk about being the first black coach to win the Super Bowl or reflect on his long and storied career, but he praised God above all. Since then, he has used his status and his circumstances as a platform to share his testimony in print and in person around the world. He could have quit on God after the death of his son but he didn’t, and God honored him for that. Meekness is the ability to praise God in the best and the worst. It is thanking Him when things are good, and also thanking Him when things are not so good. But there are some problems associated with our view of meekness. One of them is an improper view of the Person of God. The reason that we don’t accept God’s will so many times is that we have the wrong view of who God is. Often I encounter people, especially teenagers, who think that God hates them. You would be shocked at how many young people have this attitude because of what a parent or someone they know has said or done to them. When awful things happen in their lives, they think, “If God loved me, He wouldn’t let this happen to me.” But the Bible says plainly in I John 5 that God is love. That passage goes on to say that you don’t know how to love is you don’t know God. Those of you who think God hates you have it all wrong. God loves you, and He did not do to you what you think He did to you. Instead, it is our own free will combined with Satanic influence in our lives – the choices that we make and that others make for us – that has resulted in whatever is going on around us. God does not want you to be a robot. He wants you to love Him by choice. Many things that we think God simply allows to happen are things that He did not want to happen, although He knew before the world was formed that they would occur. God is not at fault in these circumstances; you or someone in your life chose to disobey God. Most of the heartache in our lives would not exist if people followed God’s plan. Many people who go around singing, “God is love,” while painting flowers on Volkswagens and smoking various forms of plant life also have an improper view of God. Yes, God is love, but He is much more than that. Preachers are roundly criticized for preaching so much about judgment, but if you only get the love of God you fail to see His holiness, which is the greatest underlying aspect of who God is. His love can manifest itself because of His holiness. The Bible says in Ps. 99:9, “Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at his holy hill; for the Lord our God is holy.” Just as those who think God hates them have an improper view, so do those who think that because God is love there are no consequences to our actions. As I Pet. 1:16 puts it, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” God’s holiness says, “I made everything, so I make the rules. This is in bounds, and this is out of bounds.” God is going to judge sinners who violate His holiness. Psalm 7:11 says, “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.” He will judge those of us who are saved according to how we lived after we were saved, and He will judge sinners who do not accept Christ. I was talking with an eight-year-old boy about sin and he said, “A pinch is a handful.” I thought he had lost his mind. “Preacher, a pinch is a handful, he kept saying. I was still in the dark, until finally he said, “A pinch of sin is just as much as a handful of sin.” That’s when I got it. That young boy had been taught that, no matter how small you think your sin is, in God’s eyes it is a big sin. They are all the same to Him. God judged His own Son who was nailed to a cross for our sins. Do you honestly think He will let you slide for what you have done? You will either accept or reject Christ, and God will judge you based upon that. Another view of God is that He loves you and wants you to be saved but how you do it is your choice. I John 5:10-11 says, “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” People do not understand God’s will because they have an improper view of what it takes to get to Heaven. When you say that you will go to Heaven because of your good works or your church membership or some religious ritual, you are saying that God is a liar. Because the record says that Jesus is the only way to Heaven, if you say that anything else is acceptable then you are calling God a liar. You might call me a liar, but would you really call God a liar? “This is my plan,” God has said. “Anything outside of my plan will not work.” So if you don’t believe God’s plan or think you’re doing it another way, you can just go ahead and tell God that He is a liar. You are offending the very One who has your soul in the palm of His hand. The Bible says in Matt. 10:28, “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.” A Christian professor was teaching a class in basic Christianity at a secular college out west. He could never get his students to take his class seriously. For years he tried to explain Christianity to these young people and get them excited about it but he could never get through. One day a big, strapping 19-year-old named Steve entered his class. He was a good-looking kid who as a freshman was the starting center on the football team. The professor also learned that he was a very committed Christian who loved the Lord, and he asked him for his help in a class experiment. “How many push-ups can you do?” the professor asked. “I do 200 every night before I go to bed,” Steve replied. “Do you think you could do 300 at one time in sets of ten?” He paused and said, “I think so.” That Friday Steve came early for class and sat on the front row. The professor brought out a large box of delicious donuts. It was an early class and many students had not eaten breakfast. “Would anyone like a donut?” the professor asked. Nearly every student in the room raised a hand. The professor approached a young lady on the front row, and when she said she would like a donut, the professor turned and asked Steve to do ten push-ups so that she could have a donut. She started to protest, but the professor said that he would decide how the donuts were distributed. Steve did the push-ups quickly and was back in his seat. The same thing happened for another girl, and she was not as pleased to receive a donut when she saw someone else doing the work for her. When the next girl politely refused a donut, the professor asked Steve to do ten push-ups for her even though she did not want one. He sat the donut on her desk and moved down the aisle. He came to a young man who said he wanted to do his own push-ups for a donut. The professor would not allow it and asked Steve to do ten more for this student. As the demonstration moved through the classroom, some of the female students began to cry as Steve started having to work harder on his push-ups once he got past the 200 mark. On top of that, students from outside the classroom began coming in when they heard about the free donuts. Eventually Steve got up to 350 push-ups and was quite tired. Some students were weeping and others angrily refused their donuts. The professor was unmoved. “I bought and paid for these and I will decide how they are given out,” he said. “I’ll just leave mine on my desk,” said one student. “Fine,” said the professor. “But Steve is doing the push-ups for you, so you might as well enjoy the donut.” When he finished the last set before time ran out in the class, Steve had to be helped back to his seat because he was wiped out. But a smile was on his face as he knew where the experiment was going. The professor proceeded to explain to the class that, while they wept over a simple donut that someone else did push-ups for them to have, Christ died in their place so they could have everlasting life and they still reject Him. They had a misunderstanding about who God is. His grace has already been given and the price for their sins has already been paid, regardless of whether they choose to accept it. The meek person says, “I may not understand everything about God, but I see that this is His plan for me and I accept it.” That kind of total submission to God is exactly what He is looking for, and it leads to a fulfilling life on this earth and eternal life with Him after that.