Matthew 5:5 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones sums it up: Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others … The man who is truly meek is the one who is truly amazed that God and man can think of him as well as they do and treat him as well as they do. This makes him gentle, humble, sensitive, patient in all his dealings with others.

Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount so that his Father would get the glory for the way the disciples lived. His aim was to create a lifestyle in his disciples that would make people think about the value of God.

Jesus does not care about the reformation of manners or the transformation of personalities for their own sake. The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which stands at the center of this sermon, is, Hallowed be thy name.

Eighty years ago G. K. Chesterton spoke about the dislocation of humility. He said,

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason … We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. (Orthodoxy, p. 31f.)

We are no longer on the road. We have arrived. The most seminal thinkers of our day would call the multiplication table a way of using language to help us get what we want. That’s all. You know that the secular world in which we live is populated by people who do not make their choices on the basis of an ultimate standard of truth. All truth has become relative.

This is Probably An Allusion to Psalm 37

Psalm 37:11. The meek shall possess the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity. In the Greek Old Testament the words of Psalm 37:11 are almost identical with Matthew 5:5. It says, “The meek shall inherit the land.” And the word for “land” in Greek and Hebrew also means “earth.”

The Meek Who Wait for the Lord

“The meek shall possess the land.” Verse 9b says, “Those who wait for the Lord shall possess the land.” We can conclude that the meek are people who wait for the Lord.

5) Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. 6) He will bring forth your vindication as the light, and your right as the noonday. 7) Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over him who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! 8) Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

The Attitude of the Meek

They Trust in God

Meek people begin by trusting God (verse 5b). They believe that he will work for them and vindicate them when others oppose them. Biblical meekness is rooted in the deep confidence that God is for you and not against you.

They Commit Their Way to God

They admit that they are insufficient to cope with the complexities and pressures and obstacles of life, and they trust that God is able and willing to sustain them and guide them and protect them.

They Are Quiet Before God and Wait for Him

Meek people are quiet or still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. they wait patiently in stillness for the work of God in their lives.

This doesn’t mean they become lazy. It means that they’re free of frenzy. They have a kind of steady calm that comes from knowing that God is omnipotent, that he has their affairs under his control, and that he is gracious and will work things out for the best

They Don’t Fret over the Wicked

They don’t fret themselves over the wicked who prosper in their way. Or, as verse 8 says, they refrain from anger. Their family and work and life are in God’s sovereign hands; the setbacks and obstacles and opponents of life do not produce the kind of bitterness and anger and fretfulness that is so common among men.

Do you get upset when you see a pagan person who everything they touch, turns to gold? And you are serving God and are barely making it.

One biblical instance of meekness

Numbers 12:1–4 describes an occasion when Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses severely.
What happens in the following verses is that the Lord rebukes Miriam and Aaron and vindicates his servant Moses.

12 And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married; for he had married a Cushite woman. 2And they said, Hath Jehovah indeed spoken only with Moses? hath he not spoken also with us? And Jehovah heard it. 3Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the face of the earth. 4And Jehovah spake suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tent of meeting. And they three came out. 5And Jehovah came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the door of the Tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forth. 6And he said, Hear now my words: if there be a prophet among you, I Jehovah will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him in a dream. 7My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in all my house: 8with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches; and the form of Jehovah shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?

What is the point of calling Moses meek right here in this context, right between bitter opposition and God’s vindication? It shows that meekness means committing your cause to God and not needing to defend yourself. Just where we would expect the text to tell us what Moses said to justify himself against the charge of Miriam and Aaron, the text says he was the meekest man on the earth. Moses doesn’t say a word. Instead he waits patiently for the Lord. He frets not over these critical words. And God comes to his defense. Meekness loves to give place to wrath and leave its vindication with God

Meek People Receive the Word with Meekness

James. 1:19–21. Know this, my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rank growth of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

James has in mind two kinds of people here. He pictures on the one hand a person who does not like to listen to what other people have to say, especially if they speak with authority. This person is quick to speak and quickly becomes angry if the words of others cross his opinion or call his behavior into question. He is not receptive to the Word of God. He filters it through his own desires and receives it selectively, if at all.

James pictures another kind of person. This person is slow to speak, and quick to listen (v. 19). This person recognizes the limitations of his knowledge and the fallibility of his thinking, and so is eager to listen and learn anything valuable that he can. If he hears something new or contrary to his own view, his first reaction is not fretful anger. He is slow to anger. He listens and considers. And when it comes to the Word of God, he receives it with meekness.

Meek People are Teachable

So the new feature of our portrait of meekness is teachability. To receive the Word with meekness means that we don’t have a resistant, hostile spirit when we are being taught. It doesn’t mean we are gullible. It doesn’t even mean that we will never get angry about what some people teach. In Matthew 21:12 Jesus drove the merchants out of the temple and turned over their tables.

There is a Meekness of Wisdom

James 3:13-17. “Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good life let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.”

Look at verse 17: “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason …” Notice that the reason the truly wise person is also the truly meek person is that true wisdom is peaceable, gentle, and open to reason.

Wisdom in the Bible is never a merely intellectual affair. It is a disposition of the heart as well as ideas in the head.

The Meek are Reasonable

Reasonableness basically is the willingness to listen to another person’s reasons for his opinion and the willingness to give reasons for yours. If I put forward my opinion without giving any reasons for it except that it is my opinion—I would not be acting in meekness, no matter how soft-spoken I might be. On the contrary, I would be acting in an authoritarian way, because I would be appealing to nothing outside myself.

It is not just the way you are, or stop trying to make an excuse.

We must be ware of confusing certain temperaments with meekness or with the absence of meekness. A conversation between two people may become passionate and heated and still be marked by meekness, if both of these people are speaking reasonably, that is, if they are defending their opinions by appealing not to themselves but to a standard of truth that is over them and of which they are humble servants.

Two people making no claim on the other person’s opinion, refusing to submit their own opinion to an independent standard of truth, unwilling to make themselves vulnerable to the claims of truth and the possible need to admit error that is not the spirit of meekness, no matter how soft-spoken or humble it looks on the outside.

It is not humbling, it is self-protecting and pushing truth aside. What could be more serviceable to the spirit of pride than the view that neither you nor I have to give an account of our opinions before any standard but our own private selves?

Our Culture Today

Robert Bellah, in Habits of the Heart, described the basic doctrine of today’s American culture:

It is an understanding of life generally hostile to older ideas of moral order. Its center is the autonomous individual, presumed able to choose the roles he will play and the commitments he will make, not on the basis of higher truths but according to the criterion of life-effectiveness as the individual judges it.

That is the world we live in. That is the spirit of this age. It is the very atmosphere we breath. And unless we are extraordinarily alert we will breathe it right into the church as so many have already. And one of the ways it has made it into the church is we have been so naïve as to mistake it for meekness.

The Meek Care About the Truth

The meekness of wisdom is open to reason, it is quick to listen to the reasons given by others for their opinions, and it is willing to give reasons for its own opinions. It cares about truth and whether others agree. Therefore it may become passionate and forceful. But it is always a servant. It is always submissive to a higher standard of truth. It is always willing to change to bring its opinions into line with truth. Meekness knows its own fallibility. But for that reason it takes debate and argument so seriously. It wants to discern its own errors and forsake them.

But the soft-spoken conversation in which two modern people defer to each other’s opposite opinions, not feeling the need to submit his opinion to a standard of truth higher than himself, and thus not exposing himself to the possibility of error and repentance,
that is not the spirit of meekness.

Galatians 6:1–2. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of meekness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted.

They Shall Inherit the Earth

This may be a reference to the psalm that contrasts the wicked, who “will be no more,” with the meek, who “shall possess the land” (Ps. 37:10–11). The sense in which they will do this is not clear or very obvious.

These ‘meek’ people, Jesus added, ‘shall inherit the earth’. One would have expected the opposite. One would think that ‘meek’ people get nowhere because everybody ignores them or else rides roughshod over them and tramples them underfoot. It is the tough, the overbearing who succeed in the struggle for existence; weaklings go to the wall. Even the children of Israel had to fight for their inheritance, although the Lord their God gave them the promised land. But the condition on which we enter our spiritual inheritance in Christ is not might but meekness, for, as we have already seen, everything is ours if we are Christ’s.

The godless may boast and throw their weight about, yet real possession eludes their grasp. The meek, on the other hand, although they may be deprived and disenfranchised by men, yet because they know what it is to live and reign with Christ, can enjoy and even ‘possess’ the earth, which belongs to Christ. Then on the day of ‘the regeneration’ there will be ‘new heavens and a new earth’ for them to inherit.

The thought is eschatological; Jesus is looking forward to the coming of the messianic kingdom. In the end it is the meek, not the self-assertive, who will have a place in God’s kingdom. It has often been pointed out that the future in this and the following verses indicates certainty.

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice Revelation 21:1–3.