I am gentle [meek] and humble in heart…

                 Life has many watershed moments starting with conception.  Birth follows, then walking, talking, learning to read, joining a sports team, your first job, graduating from school (any level), marriage, the birth of your first baby, turning 40, 50, etc., and finally death.  Many times negative events are major turning points in our lives: rejection of a college application, the death of a close friend or family member, the discovery and onset of a debilitating disease, etc.  And then there are those sometimes-unpredictable situations that “separate the men from the boys.”  However, when we talk about meekness, the men-and-the-boys illustration falls far short.  This is a God-only kind of thing.

While it is true that Moses was the meekest man in the whole world (Numbers 12:3), only Jesus could truly say, “I am meek” (Matthew 11:29), meaning, it is my very nature to be meek.  But what exactly does meek mean?  While we have meek in English, it doesn’t fully capture the concept as used by biblical writers in both Hebrew and Greek.  Webster’s Dictionary uses such one-word synonyms as “mild, calm, submissive, patient and humble.”  These are close but don’t hit the nail on the head.  Meekness is that perfectly balanced ability that embraces everything that happens as God’s will.  It is that character quality that leads to gentleness.  In fact, meek is to the spirit what gentleness is to actions.  Being meek means that you have divine strength for supreme self-control, although the two are distinguished in the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).  Meekness is a perfectly balanced emotional system that is always composed and unmovable regardless of circumstances.

We see this in the immediate text where Jesus declared his meekness.  Two verses earlier he says, “All things have been committed to me by my Father.  No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”  Two things emerge from this: (1) Assurance.  Jesus knew the Father’s will would come true exactly as planned.  He knew nothing would run off course.  (2) Intimacy.  Jesus knew and knows the Father like no one else.  Their relationship is unique, along with the Spirit, of course.  These two factors were the foundation of his meekness.  How many of us have the same kind of assurance and intimacy that he has with our heavenly Father?  None that I know of.  That’s why meekness is exclusively a God thing.  “I am meek” is a claim of deity.  That’s why the “men and boys” illustration fails.  Boys grow up to be men.  And while numerous Scriptures encourage us to be meek, put on meekness, demonstrate meekness in obedience, grow in meekness, etc., it is not indigenous in our character.  No one “grows up to be God” unless, supposedly, you’re a Mormon.  But Mormonism is simply not true.  We can only be meek with God’s help.

Consider the meekness clearly evident in Chris’s life.  He was never in a rush to get to anywhere.  He was always on time, even with delays and disappointing setbacks as he contended with a lack of faithful responsiveness among many, not just the Pharisees and Jewish religious establishment.  Consider his conversations with his disciples around the Lord’s Supper and on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane.  His struggle there didn’t reveal a loss of meekness, but acknowledged that what was soon coming was extremely difficult and challenging, even for the Son of God.  With that threshold crossed, his meek spirit is on display again.  Hear of the 12 legions of angels (72,000) he could have called (Matthew 26:53) but didn’t.  See the severed ear replaced and healed (Luke 22:51).  Consider the patience he exhibited at his illegal trial and its kangaroo court. God’s Son being tried by men?  Outrageous!  But he kept an even keel.  Read his conversations with Herod and Pontius Pilate.  Here he faced the torture of Roman crucifixion, done mostly to slaves, and he matter-of-factly talks about kingdoms, truth and power as their equal.  It is Pilate who is not meek: he is worried, fearful and scrambling in panic between the Jewish religious leaders and Jesus trying to set him free.  Even his wife compounded his difficulties (Matthew 27:19).  Yet Jesus held his own, remained steady, knowing that this all was his Father’s will, and that all things had been committed to him.  So he didn’t shake, fear, worry, complain, fight back, or get angry or depressed.  He was meek in the face of the world’s worst hostility and took all the pain and torture it could dish out.

Meekness was the steadying hand that enabled Jesus to win our salvation.  God wants to build meekness in your character.  How much assurance of and intimacy with him do you have these days?