Lent 9 Matt.5:5 Glory in Meekness

[HKHaugan]

Lent 9 Matt.5:5
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Before we get into meekness one more word needs to be said about mourning. Like guilt we mourn for ourselves and, separated from God, we mourn over our inability to control situations. So one of the clues to understanding the Beatitudes is to see them in sequence. One leads to the other and gets to the core mass of our hearts. The first one, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ calls for us to recognize how much in need of the Spirit we are. The second one, mourning, faces us with a call for the Spirit to replace our fear and pride. This third one, meekness, realizes that God has a spiritual will that is superior to ours and we yield to it even when we don’t know what it is in any given situation.

There are three basic meanings when Jesus uses the word ‘meek,’ humility, gentleness and submissiveness. All three start with God. We are called to be humble, gentle and submissive to and before God first. It is the Holy Spirit who relays it through us toward others. To put it simply we are humble, gentle and submissive to God toward others. So when confronted with conflict, or controlling personalities or fears about what the best thing to do is, go meekly to God, seek His Word and wait on the Spirit. Remember, the battle with evil was already won on the Cross. We are not competing with the world to be in control. God is in control and has the world solved. What He wants us to do is experience His nature and His work. To pass that on is our mission.

The old saying goes ‘In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.’ The world is blind to spiritual reality. We are always walking in invisible spiritual atmospheres, so Jesus, seeing our plight, came to be our eyes, to give us sight. Jesus is the ‘one-eyed king.’ He asks us to yield to Him and His Word. His eye is the eye of God. He sees all, knows all and can lead in all things if we let Him. That’s why meekness and humility are so important.

But there is a warning here. Meekness as the world defines it apart from God is not meekness at all but the attempt to control. False meekness and humility can really be avoidance techniques because of fear of an outcome. Jesus was never afraid when He stood before His accusers. He was being humble before His Father in the presence of others. He stood humble before God when He was outnumbered, threatened and abused. When He drove the moneychangers and cattle from the Temple He was being humble before His Father and His Word.

The character of true meekness is that it is a living quality of God. It is the Holy Spirit who conveys it when we are humble before God. The practice of meekness is the practice of the presence of God as revealed in His Word. God generates it through us.

Meekness is powerful. It is powerful not because it exerts some kind of force that changes the material world but in that God changes the heart through it. Thus it changes the spiritual conditions around us. When hearts are changed then how the heart deals with the material world is changed. The great myth is that if you change the physical environment the heart will be changed. That is the great error. You change the heart first.

The Beatitudes are the keys to opening the heart so God can be in control with His love, His will and His mercy, all of which are the qualities of Heaven. The first one, recognizing our spiritual poverty (the lack of reliance on the Holy Spirit to guide us), measures each of the Beatitudes. Each of the Beatitudes builds on the other. As each unfolds and is practiced the heart grows and the Kingdom of God spreads through the ‘beatified’ heart.

The real issue is who can really control the heart through love? When we are willing to recognize it, we realize it, when we realize it, we repent for our lack of faith, when we repent of our lack of faith and let Jesus become our focus, the Holy Spirit can take over. This is when attitudes and behavior are changed to reflect the will of God instead of the sinful nature producing fear, pride and arrogance. Stay tuned.