The Happiness Project: Meek

Verses one through five. If you want to turn to that in your bulletin or on the screen behind me, it's our custom as a church to read God's word aloud together. So if you'd find that and let the people of God now read the word of God.

Now when Jesus saw the crowds on a mountainside, half down, disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. He said, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. — Matthew 5:1-5

This is the word of God. Thanks be to God.

Are there parts of the Bible that you wish that you could change? I mean, maybe it's a weird question to come from a pastor, but there are parts that are really hard that we sort of wish Jesus could have taken a little more time to edit. Could you have looked back on that one again before we're looking at it now?

But I want to say to you, of all those places, these verses—what's known as the beatitudes, I'm gonna give you a different name for that in a minute—these are hard for me, and particularly this one: Blessed are the meek. I don't know. It was Simon and Garfunkel back in the 1960s who put this to music. And their version of this one goes like this:

Blessed are the sat upon, blessed are the spat upon and ratted on.

I mean, that's what that sounds like to us? Who wants to be meek? Anybody? In this world, doormats get stepped on. We don't want our kids to be meek. We want our kids to be strong and powerful. We don't want our leaders to be meek. We certainly don't want to be meek.

What Does Meek Mean?

Let me tell you about that word meek. There are a lot of different English translations of the New Testament and different translations render this as gentle, humble, compassionate, considerate, unassuming. But I think meek is actually really appropriate. I think this is what Jesus actually wanted us to feel because it's insulting. It's objectionable.

One writer puts it this way: when we hear the word meek, we want to take evasive action, and that's actually really appropriate. If somebody said of one of your friends, "Oh, he's so meek," you would say, "Oh, I'm so sorry." But Jesus isn't sorry. Jesus is like, "Lucky, fortunate, blessed are you who are meek."

I can tell you this: the world doesn't like meek. The Irish rock band U2 did a song a couple years ago with Kendrick Lamar. And Kendrick Lamar raps this "unbeatitudes" beginning to this passage. This is what he says:

Blessed are the bullies for one day they will have to stand up to themselves. Blessed are the liars for the truth can be awkward. Blessed are the arrogant for theirs is the kingdom of their own company. Blessed are the superstars for in their magnificence the magnificence in their light, we better understand our own insignificance. Blessed are the filthy rich for you can only truly own what you give away like your pain.

Now what's missing from Kendrick Lamar's list? Meek. The world hates meek.

Let me tell you who else hates meek: the church. We don't like meek. We don't believe this. We want the bold and the flashy and the cool. We want celebrity pastors and big production and decisive leadership. But the meek, the shy, the intimidated, the mild, the unassertive—we don't want that. Everybody wants Superman. Nobody wants Clark Kent.

And I'm going to confess this to you. This may sound weird, but I'm sorry, Jesus. I don't believe this either. Of all the beatitudes, sometimes pastors have to preach on stuff they don't like. For me, this is it. This is offensive to me. I don't like meek.

My family nickname—true confessions this morning—is bruiser. What that means is I apply the philosophy that if a little force is good, a lot of force is really good. A lot of energy is really good. A lot of salsa is really good. You're cooking eggs, you turn the heat all the way up high. Like, I do life this way. I am not a meek person.

I hate golf. What a terrible sport—a sport where the harder you try, the worse you do. I don't have time for that. I love weightlifting. I love cycling. I love backpacking. I like things where the more you push, the better you do. That's me. I don't want limitations. Push through life. So I resist blessed are the meek with every fiber of my being.

And yet, these beatitudes—I'm going to call them the beautitudes, because this is a picture that Jesus is holding up for us. This is the beautiful life. You know, when we say beatitude, we misunderstand it. Beatitude sounds like "you be this attitude and God rewards you." But that can't be what's going on here. Some of you are engineers.

You can't reverse engineer these verses to get the outcome of a blessed life. It doesn't work that way. That's not what Jesus is doing with this. If that was true, this is a new kind of legalism, right? It's not salvation by works, but maybe salvation by attitude. That's not how this works.

See, Jesus is actually not holding up a be-attitude. He's holding up the Beatitudes. This is what the beautiful life is. But I don't know about you—I'm like, am I missing something here? Especially with this one. Are we missing something here?

Well, let me think about it this way. What is it like for you to live in a world where this is not valued? What's the opposite of this? I mean, we live in a world where the fruit of everything but meekness is valued. So what is that? It's a world where hubris and pride—that's what we're surrounded by. One pastor puts it this way: the infected ego, or the inflated ego. This is small people acting too big.

Now, my family loves the Saturday Night Live skit "Penelope," played by Kristen Wiig. She's always trying to one-up somebody. So imagine the scene—Penelope goes to a wedding. Someone says, "I just never cried so much at a wedding. I'm so glad I brought tissues." And Penelope is like, "I brought tissues, too. Probably more tissues than you did. I brought paper towels and a beach towel and a sponge, and I used them all up. They're all so wet. I mean, I guess I'm just a little more emotional than everybody else."

Then somebody says, "I went to high school with the bride," and Penelope's like, "Well, I went to college with the bride and her parents and her neighbors. We all lived in a dorm together and the DJ. I probably know everyone a little better than you."

When the DJ says, "Take your seats. It's time for salad to be served," she's like, "I already had my salad. I've had ten salads today, in fact. I have a salad bar in my car."

When someone says, "Look, the party favors—they're all M&Ms," Penelope has to say, "At my wedding, we had M's and M's and M's. Just a few more M's on our candy. And we also had L's and L's and O's, O's and Q's and Q's, and they're from Iceland, so they taste better."

You get it, right? It's a funny version of the unfunny phenomenon of one-upping that's all around us. I mean, we live in a world of inflated egos, of the infected self, pride, hubris.

And of course, the Bible shows us that we are designed by God in the very blueprints of humanity to be esteemed by God.

You are the crown of creation. You're the very pinnacle of creation. You were designed for God to esteem you. — Psalm 8

And this is why in our church, we don't just value Christians. We don't just—like, we love Christians and Christians have great value. We look at all people. You can look at every person on the planet and say, "Wow, you're amazing. You have inherent worth because that's how God has made you."

And we see some of this in our children. I bet that for thousands of years on playgrounds across the world, the same two phrases have been coming out of the mouths of kids: "Look at me. Watch this." Little kids everywhere. I'm talking about when they were just playing with rocks, before there were monkey bars. We're saying, "Look at me, watch this." And there's something beautiful about that. That's actually how we're made—for there to be something in us like that.

And yet, in sin, in the fall, that's distorted and that's been broken. So we're always competing for attention. Our worth is always on the line. It's always "look at me" in a way that's broken.

I think it was the comedian Groucho Marx who put it this way: "Hey, I'm sorry we've been talking about me so much. Let's talk about something else. What do you think about me?"

Our world isn't very cute when we talk about "look at me." Aren't you sick of inflated egos?

I want you to picture a bullfrog. You know what a bullfrog does, don't you? It swells. This is the human condition. This is the human ego. We just swell. "Look at me. Think about me. Everything's about me." Aren't you tired of inflated ego? It's not yours—I'm not talking about yours. I'm talking about other people's. Aren't you tired of living in a world like that?

I mean, we're sick of the opposite of meekness. So maybe it's time we actually think about: Is there beauty in meekness? Is there something to this Beatitude? Is there something to what Jesus holds up?

What Is Meekness?

What is meekness? It means—and I want to give you this definition—it is restrained power. Restrained power. It's the ordering and restraining and proper use of power. The word in the Greek is also used to describe the bit and bridle that a horse wears.

So I want you to picture a muscular racehorse. When that horse is born, it's wild.

It has to be what's the phrase we say—broken. And the horse doesn't lose its strength when it's broken. Instead, that strength is trained, it's honed. So much so that we find the weakest people on the planet. And we call them jockeys, right? We look for tiny, diminutive people with very little weight. We put that person on top of this powerful racehorse, the most powerful racehorses. We put them in a race, and they're guided by a bit and bridle. That's meekness. Restrained power. Controlled by a bit.

You know, you probably have heard this from other pastors: meek is not weak. Though we always think of it that way. Restrained power. The healthy ego is meek. It takes up the proper amount of space. It's not the bullfrog that's swollen. It doesn't draw attention to self.

I want you to picture Dwayne The Rock Johnson, right? Big guy holding an infant. Now it's no secret in this church—I love infants. There's something to me about babies. I've tried to sign up several times to be a cuddler at WakeMed and at Rex and they won't let me. I don't know why, but there's something to me that's very transcendent about this. Everybody else, even your roughest toddlers know when you get around a baby, you have to be careful. They seem to instinctively know, like the neck, the soft spot. Picture Dwayne The Rock Johnson holding an infant. That's how God is towards sinners. This is who God is—meek. That's what's pictured for us all over the Bible.

Moses, we read, he's the meekest man—it says in Numbers, meekest man on the face of the earth. And you have this picture of Moses at times which is ferocious. So here's Moses: he receives the 10 Commandments. He comes down from the mountain and there the people are worshiping a false god, a golden calf. What does he do with the 10 Commandments? He smashes them in his anger. I mean, like raw power. And he grinds them up and makes the people drink it. I mean, like such power. And yet we read meek—restrained power. The way he dealt with the Israelites over and over, his patience. We read this of David. David—the people sang about David in Israel: "David has slain tens of thousands." He was a mighty warrior. And yet he writes the Psalms. He writes these Psalms about God being our shepherd, and he sings them to the Lord.

It's easy to overstate meekness. It's easy to take this out of context and therefore to make fun of it. So let me just clarify: Churches often attract dangerous people. They can attract ruthless people, or bullies, or sharks. And if someone like that showed up in our church and tried to do harm, the leaders of our church would not be meek. We would not show restrained power. We would be very concerned to make sure that this remains a safe place for everybody.

So it's easy to take meekness and kind of write that large. Let's think about our president. Do we want our president, Joe Biden, to show meekness in the face of Vladimir Putin rolling over Ukraine? No, that would be inappropriate. But Joe Biden not responding in pettiness on social media to people who attack him? Yeah, that's the proper place for meekness. So we want meekness in our leaders at the right place. We want that to be exercised in the right way.

So let me just sum it up this way again. Remember: it's not cowardness. It's not timidity. It's not peace at any price. It doesn't mean we never speak up or act on behalf of the weak. But it does mean with regard to our bullfrog selves, to our inflated egos, that that's another matter. Your reputation, your need to be important, your need to be seen—all that's fair play for meekness and this calling on your life.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases it this way in the Message. I like this. He says: you're blessed when you're content with who you are. No more, no less.

And like all the Beatitudes, all these pictures of the beautiful life, this is ultimately a picture for us of who Jesus is, right? This is who our God is. We just got done studying the book of Jonah. Jonah is the worst prophet in the Old Testament. Remember what he wants God to do? He wants God to come in and just destroy all the enemies, wipe them out. And what do we see God's heart toward Jonah over and over? His meekness toward him, his restrained power. Jonah—He keeps pursuing him, coming after him, showing him kindness. He's gentle with this angry prophet.

Meek is Jesus. In His deepest and truest self, this is who Jesus is. Matthew 11—Jesus gives this one statement of self-disclosure, which is remarkable:

Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble in heart. — Matthew 11:28-29

This is what Jesus says. This is who He is like on the inside. This is who our Savior is. Like the racehorse, like Dwayne The Rock Johnson with the infant—restrained power. Jesus, we learn in Scripture, He's no bruiser like me. Instead, what do we read about Jesus?

A bruised reed, He will not break. — Isaiah 42:3

Now let me take you on a little tour of my garden right now. Some of y'all don't know about this, but we're gardeners in my family. We have a front yard full of plants. And if you brush by one too closely, one of those stems will bend. It won't tear off. It'll just bend. And the part of the stem turns from light green to dark green where it bends. That's the bruised reed. And this is what it said of Jesus. He's not going to break it. He's that gentle with sinners. He's that meek toward us.

Meek is Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. It was the beginning of disappointment for the Jews. They were like, we wanted a conquering king who's going to overthrow Rome. What is this? This is our meek king. And yet we read in Revelation 19, this vision of Jesus in heaven with His armies.

I saw heaven open, behold a white horse. The one sitting on it is called faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire and on his head are many crowns. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. His clothing He's clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he's called is the word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On His robe and on His thigh, He has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. — Revelation 19

That's Jesus. That's the real Jesus. So which is it? Is it Jesus on the horse? Or Jesus on the donkey? Which one is it? That's the question. Yes. It's yes. It's both.

So what we see in Jesus' heart toward us is that all that power restrained. All that power restrained. Not only is Jesus not a bruiser, not only will He not break a bruised reed, the King James version of Isaiah 53 says:

He was bruised for our iniquities. He was crushed for our sins. — Isaiah 53 (KJV)

Could you submit to a God like this? I got to tell you as much as I'm being real with you all about how much I personally resist meekness in my life, this is incredibly compelling in Jesus. This for me is incredibly attractive in Jesus. This is how Jesus is toward you. And it makes me in everything I am want to move toward Him. I can submit to a God like this. And Jesus holds this up for us that we might move toward Him.

When I was in college, we sang a song that had a chorus that went like this:

This is our God, the servant King. He calls us now to follow Him to give our lives as a daily offering of worship to the servant King.

See, not only is this Jesus, this is the pathway—if you're a follower of Christ—that God is calling you to follow Him in. This pathway of pressing the gospel deeper into us, of us becoming like this, especially in this, the grace of repentance.

Repentance and the Sermon on the Mount

Now this whole section we call the Sermon on the Mount is framed by calls to repent. Jesus starts His ministry in Matthew 4, saying His ministry is gonna be one of repentance of sin. And sometimes when we read the Sermon on the Mount, we're like, oh yeah, I've heard all this stuff before. But if you really read the Sermon on the Mount, you're crushed by the Sermon on the Mount. We're gonna study this this summer. Jesus just kind of takes everything supersonic. He's taking the Old Testament law, you've heard it said, and He says, but I say. You've heard it said, don't commit murder. I say, don't be angry. Like supersonic. You've heard it said, don't commit adultery. I say, don't lust. Right? Like Jesus is taking this supersonic. And so anybody who takes this seriously, who's read this, says I'm crushed by the Sermon on the Mount.

And really the Beatitudes, these things we're studying—I've heard someone put it this way. This is like a picture of someone who's read through the Sermon on the Mount and fallen on the rocks and been broken by it. It's like, I can't do this. You know, somebody asked C.S. Lewis about the Sermon on the Mount. They said, don't like the Sermon on the Mount. He's like, of course you don't. The Sermon on the Mount is like a sledgehammer that comes to break down walls in your house.

See, we don't come to Jesus and say, hey, I want to inherit the earth so let me learn a little bit about meekness. It doesn't work that way. Now this is how it works. Meekness, some of you are chemists, you'll get this. Meekness is what happens after repentance. You do a chemistry experiment and what's left over, we call it the residue. Meekness is that residue in us that's left after we repent. After God's people repent. The ego shrinks back to its right size. It's not taking up too much space. It's not crushed, but it's in its proper place. Restrained. This is why repentance is the way into meekness.

I want you to remember Alice in Wonderland, where she goes into a room and there's a little tiny door, down near the floor. She's like, "I can't get through that." That's repentance. Repentance is going through the little door, stooping down, and that's the way into meekness.

Do you know how to repent? We use that word a lot. I'm not sure we always know what that word means. To repent is to agree with God about your sin, to grieve it, to hate it, to reject it. And to repent particularly of our inflated ego.

If you're even slightly paying attention in your life this week, God is giving you a thousand opportunities every week that are little doors into repentance, into meekness. This is happening all the time. The ways that you're a bullfrog, the ways that I'm a bullfrog—we live with an inflated ego where everything's about me. The way that you hurt other people. The comments that you make about other people. The way you're in competition with someone—they don't even know you're in competition with them. The way that you're calling attention to self, drawing attention to self, preoccupied with self, promoting self. The way that self is the most important thing you think about all day.

Every one of those things is not a barrier to the life with God. It's a little door. It's an opportunity. God is showing you over and over again: "Here's a place where you can meet me. Here's a place where you can experience the fullness of all I have to give you." And we resist it. "No way. I don't want that." But this is an opportunity to agree with God, to grieve it, to hate it, to reject it.

You know what motivates me to repent? This Jesus, the meek Jesus, who's inviting me over and over all the time to let go of those places where I'm so insistent on self and to find in repentance, Him. Him.

The Pattern of Repentance and Restoration

I used to marvel when I was a younger dad at what would happen after a process of discipline with our kids. I have six sons. Several years back, my wife insisted we learn this thing from Tedd Tripp on how you discipline your kids—a whole process. Some of y'all hear "discipline kids," you hear punishment, anger, yelling. This is not what this is supposed to be. Here's what it is: you name the offense, you call a child to repent, you correct them, then you bring them to Jesus and you restore the relationship.

This was amazing to me. This is one of the few really miraculous things I've seen over and over in my life. When we would walk that very specific pathway through discipline with our kids, what would be left over was a child who is so soft-hearted, so affectionate, wanting to hug, wanting to be near you, settled at peace. For me, that's a picture of the meekness that comes from repenting.

Let me ask you this question: Do you repent? Are you a regular repenter? This is what we're looking for in our church—not superstars. This is what we're looking for as we choose leaders: people who are really good at repenting because they're doing it all the time. Not people who are morally perfect, but people who are constantly saying, "Yeah, more of Jesus, less of me."

I wonder what our church would be like if we were really a repenting community and meekness is what people experienced here. Now, nobody's going to say, "Oh, that's a meek church. That church is famous for its meekness." Nobody wants to go to church famous for its meekness. But what happens when you experience meek people? People who are the right size, people who are humbled by the cross in all the right ways.

Can you imagine a community where people could be that accepted as they are? There's no one-upping. There's no need for performance. That would be an irresistible church because that is an irresistible Jesus. I want to be a part of that. I have no idea what that would be like, but man, I don't know. I need some of that. Don't you?

The Promise of Meekness

Well, here's the good news. Jesus says:

The meek will inherit the earth. — Matthew 5:5

That's what's coming. Now Kendrick Lamar is right—in this life, the bullies, the arrogant, the rich, that's who's inheriting the earth. But Jesus says not for long. The meek—and in fact, it's emphatic. He's saying: the meek and only the meek will inherit the earth.

Man, that is good news. Can you imagine eternity in the new Jerusalem with an entire group of people who are no longer comparing, measuring, posturing, overinflated? Man, what a joyful place that would be. What a joyful place that will be. Man, I'm hungry for that.

This is what Eugene Peterson says: "You're blessed when you're content with just who you are, no more, no less."

That's the moment that you find yourselves proud owners of everything that cannot be bought. The meek and only the meek will inherit the earth. And Jesus is saying, you can be in on that. You can be in on that. Here's the invitation again:

Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden with self and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and take my bridle and learn from me. I'm meek and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. — Matthew 11:28-29

Let's pray together.

Lord, we come to you this morning and this is so foreign and this feels both so appealing and so hard. We pray, Father, this week that you would give us opportunities to repent. Give us little doorways into experiencing the fullness of what you're inviting us into. Make us hungry for it. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.