MEEKNESS--Counteracting Modern Hubris

I remember John Piper saying once that he didn't necessarily read completely through most books, unless it were Jonathan Edwards--excepting Scripture, of course. He further commented that none of us remembers all of what we read. Usually it's a paragraph or even one sentence that tends to make a lasting impact. I have certainly found that to be true of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones' Sermon on the Mount. Some years back when I was just out of college, I began preaching a series on the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew. Drawing from Lloyd-Jones' amazing collection of sixty sermons I found a treasure trove of wisdom. One of the most memorable, and I'd say, defining paragraphs I have read was a comment he made in defining the meek man as found in the third beatitude.

We spend the whole of our lives watching ourselves. But when a man becomes meek he has finished with all that; he no longer worries about himself and what other people say. To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending. So we are not on the defensive; all that is gone. The man who is truly meek never pities himself, he is never sorry for himself. He never talks to himself and says, “You are having a hard time, how unkind these people are not to understand you.” He never thinks: ‘How wonderful I really am, if only other people gave me a chance.’ Self-pity! What hours and years we waste in this! But the man who has become meek has finished with all that. To be meek, in other words, means that you have finished with yourself altogether, and you come to see you have no rights or deserts at all. You come to realize that nobody can harm you. John Bunyan puts it perfectly, ‘He that is down need fear no fall.’ When a man truly sees himself, he knows nobody can say anything about him that is too bad. You need not worry about what men may say or do; you know you deserve it all and more. Once again, therefore, I would define meekness like this. The man who is truly meek is the one who is amazed that God and man can think of him as well as they do and treat him as well as they do. That, it seems to me, is its essential quality. [Emphases mine]

Oh, that more of us would hear these timely words! What we need today is not more voices screaming for their rights. No, we need more who when they are right with God, cry for a deeper death to self, a complete loss of concern about reputation and fame. There is certainly nothing new about hubris, nor about the biblical cure. John Flavel, the Puritan, had it right when he said, "They that know God will be humble and they that know themselves cannot be proud." Amen.

Dave