A Blessing in Meekness
As word spread throughout the country of Syria about Jesus, people came wanting to be healed and Jesus healed them. Others came because they wanted to be attached to the new Rabbi who taught, preached, and performed miracles like no one had ever seen before. When Jesus saw the crowd following Him, He went up on the side of the mountain, sat down and taught them what now provides the foundation of what God expects from His children. This is, of course what we now call the Sermon on the Mount.
Photo by Karolina Bobek ✌ on Unsplash
In this sermon are nine Be-attitudes, each of which begins with the word blessed which comes from the Latin word, beatus, meaning happy. In this verse, Jesus says those who are meek are happy. Often when one hears the word meek, we are tempted to think of people who just sort of go along to get along. But this was not what the meaning of the word Jesus used in the text. The word Jesus used is translated from the Greek word that is used to describe an animal that had been domesticated or trained by its master to obey commands. Meekness, therefore, is doing what God requires in any given situation.
The key to us becoming meek is in our willingness to be teachable and open to learning God’s way, that is, in most cases unlike our own. In 2019, God is calling us to be meek in our dealings with each other – considerate even when we are provoked to be otherwise. In 2019, God is calling us to be meek in our dealings with Him – saying yes when we want to say no.
Meekness is much more than a dutiful religious performance. Meekness is about submitting your will to the will of God. Only by submitting ourselves to will of God are we able to be used by God. There is no reason fooling ourselves saying that we are walking by faith when we are unable and unwilling to submit to God’s will for our lives. Meekness enables us to walk by faith, any other way, we are simply doing our own thing and saying it is the way of God.
Furthermore, Jesus says when we are meek, we will inherit the earth. To inherit the earth means we will be joint-heirs with Christ on the day of judgment. On that day we will see that whatever we gave up is nothing compared to the joy of what we have gained being meek.