The Pursuit of God - Week #9

Chapter Nine – Meekness and Rest

“Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:5

Tozer begins this chapter by pointing out that the virtues in the Beatitudes are the exact opposite of how fallen and sinful humanity lives and functions. Pride, pleasure-seeking, arrogance, cruelty, corrupt imaginings, retaliation, resentment, etc., characterize the world…”Of this kind of moral stuff civilized society is composed. The atmosphere is charged with it; we breathe it with every breath and drink it with our mother’s milk. Culture and education refine these things slightly but leave them basically untouched…”

Into this kind of world Jesus came and not only taught a radically different lifestyle but lived it perfectly. The Sermon on the Mount reveals the lifestyle of the Kingdom of God. In this teaching, “Jesus is not offering an opinion…He never guessed; He knew, and He knows. His words were not as Solomon’s were, the sum of sound wisdom or the results of keen observation…And His words were supported by deeds mightier than any performed on this earth by any other man. It is wisdom for us to listen.”

In Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus applies this simple word on meekness to our lives: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

In this portion Jesus speaks of two contrasting realities: a burden and rest…
“The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing. The word Jesus used means a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion. Rest is simply release from the burden. It is not something we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is the rest.”

Tozer says that there are three sources of such a burden:
• Pride
• Pretense
• Artificiality

1. Pride is a very heavy burden because it brings with it pain and stress over others’ opinions of oneself. “The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them…Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method.

“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…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. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything…he rests perfectly content to allow God to place His own values…In the meantime he will have attained a place of soul rest…he will be happy to let God defend him…He has found the peace which meekness brings.”

I can speak from experience that the business of attempting to manage people’s opinions and expectations of me is very draining work; as the fear of the Lord has increased in me (through knowing His unchanging love and affection for me), the need for others’ approval has lost its hold on me, resulting in increasing inner rest.

2. Pretense - the common human desire to put the best foot forward and hide from the world our real inward poverty. “There is hardly a man or woman who dares to be just what he or she is without doctoring up the impression. The fear of being found out gnaws like rodents within their hearts.” Tozer goes on to say that this manifests in our fear that someone will show up who is smarter or richer or more talented than I am. It is the sin of envy and is the opposite of what we see in children and in the child-like. “Little children do not compare; they receive direct enjoyment from what they have without relating it to something else or someone else…”

3. Artificiality - the means by which we conceal our true inner condition; it is closely associated with pretense. Our culture has whole industries designed to help us know how to appear a certain way in order to conceal who we truly are. “Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus’ feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness…Then what we are will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed.”

I recommend a wonderful series on meekness, The Sweet Aroma of Meekness, by Allen Hood from the International House of Prayer. (This recorded series can be downloaded from the IHOP website: www.ihop.org.) In it Allen says that the way to meekness is to look at Jesus, the meek One. In other words, we don’t become meek because we study about it nor because we grit our teeth and decide to act like we are meek; we become meek by beholding Meekness Himself (the principle of II Cor. 3:18 – becoming by beholding). Only Jesus lived and walked this reality in fullness. So once again, taking the time to worship Him, contemplating His beauty in meekness, is where we start and where we continue in this partnership with Him under His easy yoke and light burden. Christ in us is our only hope of living a life of inner rest.

The eternal ramifications of embracing meekness are staggering! It is the meek ones that will inherit the earth!! This momentary, light burden of meekness and self-forgetfulness will result in an eternal inheritance for those that embrace it. Along with the Meek One, we will enjoy rulership over the earth forever! Praise be to Him!

“Lord, make me childlike. Deliver me from the urge to compete with another for place or prestige or position. I would be simple and artless as a little child. Deliver me from pose and pretense. Forgive me for thinking of myself. Help me to forget myself and find my true peace in beholding Thee. That Thou mayest answer this prayer, I humble myself before Thee. Lay upon me Thy easy yoke of self-forgetfulness that through it I may find rest. Amen.”

God bless you the week with His manifest presence! Next week we will finish the book with chapter 10, The Sacrament of Living.