Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast,
where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.
In this podcast series, we're going to be looking into biblical
words that have great significance to our faith.
The name of this series is called the Word of the Week, where
once a week we will dive deeper into these words that we are
familiar with in scripture.
So come along with me, let's study the Word of the week.
Pastor Josh here.
The word of the Week is meek.
The last few sessions we've been talking about the character
traits of God.
We've been talking about his non communicable attributes, meaning
attributes that only he holds.
We talked about omnipresence, omnipotence, all of those different
things, omniscience, things that only God holds in his perfect
nature.
But we do know that God holds certain attributes that as Christians,
we can emulate in our lives, that we can be transformed into,
not perfectly like him in his holiness, but certainly to the degree
of growth in the sanctification process.
And so one of the things that we're going to be talking about today
is the character trait of meekness.
Jesus says in Matthew, chapter 11, verse 29, take my yoke upon you
and learn of me.
And so the challenge is as a believer and as a disciple is to
learn about the truth of Jesus, not just about what he says,
but how he lives.
He says, learn of me.
And that's really the definition of a disciple is a learner,
someone who can learn from somebody else.
And so as disciples of Christ, we learn from Him.
And he says, learn of Me, for I am meek.
There's our Word and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto
your souls.
And so the Lord tells us right here in this passage that we are
to learn about his meekness.
Now, what is meekness?
We have to understand that definition before we can understand
how we can live that out in our lives.
Meekness does not mean weakness.
Sometimes it's equated with that word.
So meek is not weak.
Literally, it means to be mild, gentle of spirit.
Really you could wrap it up in humility.
It's also related to the idea of self control, allowing the Spirit
to control us.
Some scholars have called it this strength under control.
We know that God is all powerful.
We know that Jesus as God is all powerful, but yet he was completely
meek.
And so meekness does not mean weakness.
So as a Christian, what does that look like for us?
It means that we do have the power of God in our lives.
We do have the strength and the confidence of the power of God
in our life, but yet we have the control and we have the humility
to be able to harness that and use it for the goodness of God.
Matthew chapter 5 tells us something very interesting.
This is Jesus speaking to the folks there on the Sermon on the
Mount, some of the most well known preaching ever, if not the
most well known preaching ever.
And In Matthew chapter 5, verse 5, he says, Blessed are the
meek.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
So what the Lord is telling us is that meekness is a character trait
of those that follow him.
He is meek.
And we as Christians who are striving to be Christ like should
be meek as well.
And so in that transformative process of being more and more like
Christ, we are called to be meek.
And so when we understand the definition of meekness, what we can
see sometimes is actually meekness is considered by the world
to be a flaw, to be a weak element.
But what we can see in Scripture is that it's the complete
opposite.
And so we know that it means to have gentleness of spirit humility.
And we even know that in the book of James, James chapter one,
that we are to receive with meekness the engrafted word which
is able to save our souls.
And so the Bible says, not only are we to act with meekness
in our lives with others around us, but also we are to receive
the word of God with meekness.
Instead of receiving the Word in pride and in our own wisdom and
in selfishness, we receive the Word with humility.
We receive the word with meekness later on in the book of
James.
James 3:13 says, who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among
you?
So who's wise among you, let him show out of a good conversation
his works with meekness of wisdom.
And so the Bible tells us here that a wise man is a man who lives
his life.
That word conversation in the King James is just the way that you
live your life.
So a wise man is someone who lives his life with works of meekness,
works of meekness.
And so we understand that as Christians, meekness is humility
towards God and towards his Word and towards others.
It's having the right or the obligation of power that we have
as Christians.
Let me say it this way.
We have the ability of power, but the obligation of humility.
And so we have the power to do something to somebody, but we refrain
from that out of love.
And so Paul encouraged us to have meekness.
We even see that In Ephesians chapter 4, Paul says that we are
called to walk worthy.
Verse one, verse two.
He says, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering
for bearing one another in love.
And so to love another person is to show meekness to them.
So yes, we have the gift of God's power in our life that we can
use, but we also have the challenge and the ability to fulfill
that challenge of meekness in our life.
So we are to love others and display meekness to them.
This is perfectly seen in the humility of Christ and in his humble
nature described in Philippians chapter 2.
Jesus came as a servant.
I would encourage you to read through that passage in the book
of Philippians, Philippians chapter 2.
It describes to us that we are supposed to have the same mind as
Christ had.
What was his mind?
To put others before himself, to obey the Father, to humbly submit
to the job that the Lord gave him, and that was to come and give
his life for all of those who are broken in sin and giving us hope
and giving us salvation.
So Jesus did that because of his love.
And so his meekness was displayed because of his love.
And so, you know, a lot of times we see certain character traits
that we are called to have in our life as Christians, and we glorify
those.
So, for example, courage, strength, boldness, all of these
things that are considered in our society to be a great thing.
But one of the things that we don't usually highlight as an attractive
attribute of God is His meekness.
But the Bible tells us that that meekness is directly tied to
understanding the love of God and understanding the example of
Christ.
And so if we are to love God as He loved us, he loved us in meekness
sent his only Son.
And so we love him with meekness.
We receive His Word with meekness.
We don't receive the preaching of the Word of God with pride and
hard heartedness, though we receive it with an open heart, a
tender heart, being ready to be convicted by God, being ready
to change for what he has called us to change in, in our lives.
And so we see that meekness is tied to love.
Meekness is tied to humility.
Meekness is tied to selflessness.
And that's all what God has called us to follow in our lives.
And so if we are to love others because we're called to love
others, remember the first and greatest commandment is to love God
with everything our heart, soul, mind and strength.
But a close second after that is to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And so we are to love our neighbor.
There's no way to get around that.
So the Bible says, as we love our neighbor, we love them in the
way that God tells us to love them, because sometimes we want to
love on our own terms.
But to love my neighbor, as we see In Ephesians chapter 4, verse
2, is to love them with humility and meekness.
And we even know that we're to deal with unsafe people with meekness.
And so we might say, okay, it makes sense that we need to have
meekness with other Christians.
But when it comes to someone who is not a believer that might
even be questioning us, we don't need to be meek with them,
we need to be harsh with them.
Well, first Peter, chapter three, verse 15 tells us that we
are to share the gospel with meekness.
First Peter 3, 15, it says this, but sanctify the Lord God in
your hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every
man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness
and fear.
And so the Bible tells us here that we are to be living our lives
as Christians differently so that people notice us and notice
that we have a different type of hope.
And when we have that different type of hope, people will
say, hey, why do you have that hope?
Why are you different?
Why are you content?
Why are you joyful?
Why are you forgiving?
Well, we say we give our answer with meekness and fear, gentleness
and respect.
What's our answer?
Well, I'm just a good person.
No, the reason why we can have hope is because of our relationship
with Jesus Christ, what He has done for us and how we trust in him
for that work.
So the reason why we are different as Christians is not because
we just are good people.
The reason why we are different is because we have Christ
living within us.
We have the spirit of God directing our lives, and we are dying
to our flesh daily.
And so that's the hope that's within me.
The hope that's within the Christian is Christ.
And so therefore we share Christ with.
What does it say there?
Meekness and fear.
Not fear in the concept of I'm scared to do this.
That word fear has that understanding of respect.
So we respect people enough to treat them with meekness, to be gentle
with them, to be controlled in our answers, to not answer in anger
or answer in our flesh or answer in our emotions, but to answer
in the truth of God and the love of God.
So therefore, yes, we are to treat God with that love and meekness
in how we receive his word.
We are to treat other Christians around us with meekness
and gentleness and respect.
But we do also see that we are to respond to people around us that
are unsaved, asking for the hope that's within us as we share
the Gospel with meekness and fear, with gentleness and respect.
And so meekness should be a defining character trait of a Christian.
If you see a Christian, one of the marks of a Christian should be
meekness.
It might be something that's growing later on, right?
It might be something that doesn't happen right away for some
folks.
And certainly it's a character trait that is not necessarily anywhere
close to being a natural thing of our flesh.
But we even see that in Galatians, chapter five, when the
fruit of the Spirit is listed.
And these are the character traits that are evident in the life
of a believer that has the Spirit living within them.
We see meekness listed, right?
So, but the fruit of the Spirit is, and this is Galatians,
chapter 5, verse 22 and 23.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith.
And then verse 23, there it is, meekness, temperance.
Against such there is no law.
And so we even see that meekness is listed here in the fruit
of the Spirit.
And so we can rightly say biblically that meekness is a character
trait of a Christian.
And it should be a character trait that is growing as the Spirit
guides our life.
And so God says, yes, blessed are the meek.
Jesus preaches meekness, humility.
God gives grace to the humble.
God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
God gives grace to the meek.
Blessed are the meek.
Why?
Because those are the ones that are going to inherit the earth.
Jesus says In Matthew, chapter 11, we started with this, we will
end with this.
He says, learn of me, be my disciple.
Learn about meekness.
And don't just make it a head thing.
Don't just make it a head knowledge, but make it heart knowledge.
Apply it, right?
Remember back in the book of James, we already mentioned it.
It's the man who is wise who lives out meekness in his life.
So the wisdom is the application of knowledge.
And so therefore we can know what meekness is.
We can have the definition, we can understand that God commands
us.
But the true challenge is to live that out in our lives.
Meekness, gentleness, control, and being able to say, lord, I can
die to my flesh so that I can be more like you on a daily basis.
And so the challenge here is to be more and more and more meek
as we go about this sanctification process.
As we go about our spiritual walk, it's not meekness that we inherit
in our own strength, our own wisdom.
It is the power of God that gives us this meekness.
And so as we go through this study, we're going to look at various
character traits that we as Christians should pursue in our spiritual
growth process.
But I will say that I think a good place to start is this area
of meekness.
Because if we look at Christ as our greatest teacher, he perfectly,
perfectly lived out a life of meekness.
And so therefore, it should be something that we're striving to
understand, we're striving to grow in, and we're striving to apply
in our lives to the best of our ability in the power of God.
And so ask the Lord to give you meekness.
Today, read about passages of scripture that define meekness, that
explain meekness.
But truly the only way that we're able to understand this meekness
and use it as a tool in our life for the love of God and for
the love of others is by asking God to give us the strength
to do so and then yielding to him in that process.
Not always easy, but needed for Christians to understand the
truth of God and for Christians to live out that gospel
witness with meekness.
So thank you again for listening today.
We will be back next week with another character trait of God that
we will study and that we will desire to grow in in our lives.
Well, God bless you.
We will talk to you next week.
See you soon.
Hey, I really appreciate that you listened to the Word of the Week
podcast.
If you have any questions about the podcast or about our church,
Middletown Baptist Church, you can find more information about us
on Facebook or YouTube or you can find the podcast on NBCPodcast.org
you can contact me directly at Josh Massaro at middletownbaptistchurch.org
stay tuned for future Word of the Week episodes where we dive deeper
into words that impact our life according to scripture.
Thank you so much.
God bless.
We'll talk to you soon.