Meekness isn’t what you think it is.

Steve Brown:
Meekness isn’t what you think it is. Let’s talk about it on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
The deepest message of Jesus and the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and suffers. That’s what Key Life is all about. So if you’re hungry for the hopeful truth, that God isn’t mad at you, keep listening. Steve Brown is a professor and our teacher on Key Life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. We’re looking at the fruit of the Spirit, and we’re just going down the list that Paul gives us in Galatians 5, as a part of, now we talked about the works of the flesh and I didn’t spend as much time on that, cause frankly I find myself in that list some. And it makes me wince, every time I go through it. And then Paul says that people who do this stuff, they’re not going to get into the Kingdom of Heaven of God. And I, that makes me wince, until I look at what he’s talking about. He’s talking about people who are defined by those things, who are, who wallow and those things, who don’t give a rip that they do. But, I didn’t spend much time on that. We’re spending a good deal of time on these, the fruit of the Spirit. And we have seen that you’re free in Christ, and you’re free to love, to be joyful, to be at peace, to be patient, to be kind, to be good, to be faithful, but let me show you a new one. You are free to be gentle, Galatians 5:22.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness.

Now in the King James version, this word is translated as meekness and it has three meanings. First, it means to be submissive to the will of God. It’s that person who knows God’s will and submits to it, in his or her life. In fact, it’s a word that is sometimes used as a bit that’s put in a horse’s mouth, and very sensitive to the rider of the horse. And then secondly, it means being teachable. When somebody is a know at all, pretend that they speak from Sinai, listen to me, because I get all this, don’t run, don’t listen, because that’s not meekness. And it’s also a person who is considerate. Now the same word is the word that Jesus uses in the beatitudes in Matthew 5, when Jesus says.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Now this word is an interesting one. And it means what I said before, where the horse is sensitive to the rider. Wilson, in a very good little commentary on Galatians that I’ve read often says this about it.

This is not spineless weakness. But the gentleness of a strength, which has been brought under control, as a horse is made obedient to the bit and the bridal, meekness is thus the mark of the man or the woman who has been mastered by God.

When we get to heaven, I’ll introduce you to Dr. Addison Leach, I love that man a lot. He was the Dean of students at Gordon-Conwell seminary. He was married to Elizabeth Elliott. He was an incredible scholar of C.S. Lewis, and he was my friend. And he decided to be my friend, I didn’t. I had called him because I had gotten in a mess, and people were telling me what to do, and I didn’t know what to do. And I was a young pastor. So I said, called him and I said, Dr. Leach, you don’t know who I am, but I’m a pastor here in the Boston area. And I need some advice from a father in the faith. If I came up there, would you spend 5 or 10 minutes with me? And he said, I’ll never forget this, he said, you know, I think I know who you are, in fact, and he said to his secretary, bring that thing I was working on this morning. I just read your book. And I wrote a blurb for the cover, and I thought, Oh, I’ve died and gone to heaven. I’m something else. And then over the years, we became friends and when he died, it was a very, very sad time, but he adds a great attraction to Heaven. One time we were in St. Louis, and we were both speaking for a conference there, and we were having dinner, and a young man came up and just interrupted us and asked. Well, Dr. Leach is dead and I’m sure the student is close to it, so it’s been a lot of years ago, he asked a really dumb question, and I was already irritated that he had interrupted us at dinner, and was going to say something like son, go somewhere else, and ask your question later in a more appropriate place. You know what Dr. Leach did, he stopped eating, turned to the young man. And said, well, let me tell you what I think, that’s a good question. And I’m saying inside, no it wasn’t, it wasn’t a good question at all. And Dr. Leach said, let me tell you what I think about it. And then he went into some detail. The question was about eschatology, and he was kind, and he was gentle, and he didn’t hurry the young man along. I think about that. And then I think about Galatians 5:22, and then I think, that’s it. Gentleness, meekness is gentleness, it’s sensitivity to God. And because you’re sensitive to God, you’re sensitive to other people. We were at a dealership, a car dealership in Orlando last night, and my wife got a new car. And the deal that they gave was not to my liking. I told the young man, who was the salesman. I said, you talk to my wife Anna, you quit talking to me. Cause she’s the one you got to convince. And if you can’t convince her, you’re not going to make a sale. And he laughed, and he talked to her, and then he gave a deal that wasn’t very good. And I went ballistic. And so they called the head of finance for the dealership, and he sat down and he said, I’m here to work out a problem. And I said, no you’re not. You’re here to sell a car. Don’t give me that bull. And, and then the later, I had to sit down with him and I said, let me tell you something. I’m so sorry for being so snarky, will you forgive me? And he laughed, and said, you’re forgiven. And I felt gentle. You think about that. Amen. Well, it’s Wednesday and sometimes on Wednesdays, if I have some time, we look at a couple of questions, or maybe one or two., We’ll see. And we love getting your questions. As you know, Pete Alwinson will be in on Friday, and as always, we’ll spend the entire broadcast answering questions. You can ask a question anytime you want. 24 seven, 1-800-KEY-LIFE. 1-800-KEY-LIFE, and if you have a question, just dial that number and do what they tell you. And you can record your question and sometimes we put your voice on the air, or you can write to us at

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