Meekness
In an Age of Arrogance

Sunday, February 5: A Different Kind of Happy

Week 3 - Jeremy Thom: "Meekness in an Age of Arrogance"

Makarios: Blessed or Happy

Arrogance - “exaggerating or disposed to exaggerate one’s own worth or importance often by an overbearing manner. Showing an offensive attitude of superiority.”

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

Meek (today)
Overly submissive
Compliant
Tame
Deficient in spirit
Deficient in courage
Not violent
Not strong

Praus = meek or gentle
“The positive moral quality of dealing with people in a kind manner, with humility and consideration.”

Arrogance is weakness disguised as strength.
Meekness is strength under control

Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.

I am gentle (praus, meek) and humble in heart (lowly).

“Meek. Humble. Gentle. Jesus is not trigger-happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms.” - Dane Ortlund

Romans 12:16
“be of the same mind toward one another; not be haughty (or proud), but associate with the lowly.”

“Gentle and lowly. This, according to his own testimony, is Christ’s very heart. This is who he is. Tender. Open. Welcoming. Accommodating. Understanding. Willing. If we are asked to say only one thing about who Jesus is, we would be honoring Jesus’s own teaching if our answer is, gentle and lowly.” - Dane Ortlund

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

The meek ask for it.
The meek are yoked to Jesus.
The meek trust God’s promise.
The meek know who they are.

“I am a follower of Christ who can’t keep up. I can’t keep up with the ideas that have me on the pilgrimage in the first place.”
- Bono

“The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather, he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life…in himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto.” - A.W. Tozer

For it is Christ in you, not you in you, that is the hope of glory

Matthew 27:39-43
Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’

“the meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.” - A.W. Tozer