33 Our Lord's Favoruite Graces, Meekness and Lowliness of Heart

XXXIII OUR LORD’S FAVOURITE GRACES, MEEKNESS AND LOWLINESS OF HEART

Matthew 11:29 When our Lord says of Himself that He is meek and lowly in heart it sounds to us, at first sight, somewhat like self-praise. And indeed not here only, but all up and down the four Gospels the same personal note and the same self-appraising tone prevails. Till we are led to seek out, and with some anxiety, the proper explanation of that so unexpected and so startling manner of speech in our Lord. And then when we enter aright into that so universal habit of His and fully understand it, we see that it is just another evidence and just another result of the perfect purity, perfect humility, perfect simplicity, and absolute sinlessness of our Lord. He could say with the most perfect truth and innocence and seemliness, what no other man that ever lived could have said without presumptuous sin. He could say that He alone knew the Father, and that He alone could reveal the Father; and then He could say with the same breath that He was meek and lowly in heart, and all the time be as innocent of pride or self-praise as if He had only said how old He was, or how many cubits high He stood in His stature. And in the measure that we become like Him we also shall be able to speak about ourselves, and to describe ourselves, and even to appraise ourselves, and, all the time, to do so as truthfully and as becomingly as He did. We shall then be free to tell to all men what God has done in us and by us, thinking only of God’s goodness to us, and of our consequent debt to Him and to all our fellow-men. And all that will be but another entrance of ours into that liberty wherewith Christ shall yet make us as free as He Himself was made free. Butler, says one of his biographers, is often personal, but he is never egotistical.

Now, what exactly is this thing here called meekness and lowliness of heart? And when and where do we see these most excellent graces exhibited in our Lord? Just open the Four Gospels and you will meet with the meekness, and the gentleness, and the lowly-mindedness of Jesus Christ in every chapter. Lowliness best describes His birth and the household in which He was brought up. And the same word best describes His everyday life all down to His death. He filled up all His appointed days on this earth, if with words and deeds of divine authority and divine power, at the same time His whole earthly life was sanctified and beautified with the most perfect meekness and lowliness of heart. On every page of the Four Gospels you will read how He went about doing good with all patience and long-suffering and loving-kindness. How He turned His cheek to the smiter. How He blessed when He had been shamefully entreated. How He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her sharers is dumb; for the transgressions of my people was He stricken. And yet in all that His meekness and His lowly-mindedness were such that the yoke He bore was rendered easy to Him, and the burden that was laid upon Him was rendered light to Him.

Now it would not be a thing much to be wondered at were a meek and a lowly mind to be found in you and in me. For how can we be found other than meek and lowly-minded P How can we be haughty and high-minded? The thing is impossible. No man who knows himself at all can hold his head high or have his heart proud. Pride was not made for such men as we are. But that will not account for His humility and meekness who did no sin. He had always washed His hands in innocence. He had nothing in His past life to make Him either afraid or ashamed. No man could point a finger or throw a stone at our Lord. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. And yet never was prostrate sinner so lowly in his own eyes as was the sinless Son of God. What was it? How was it brought about? And how is it to be accounted for? Well, to begin at the beginning: Simply to be a creature of Almighty God was enough to make the Man Jesus of Nazareth the meekest and the most lowly-minded of men. Never did any other creature of Almighty God see down to the very bottom of all creature frailty, and vanity, and emptiness as did the best of the creatures. The perilousness, the perishables, the absolute nothingness, of all creaturehood was seen and felt by the Man Jesus as never before nor since by any other creature of God, angel or man. And that such a creature as man should be exalted into everlasting union with the Eternal Son of God--that finished the incomparable meekness and humility which His bare creation had begun. Promotion, privilege, honor, exaltation: these things fill fallen creatures like us with pride and vainglory and a puffed-up heart. But Jesus Christ was all the humbler and all the more lowly-minded because of His adorable union to the Godhead.

Now, let us be sure that we clearly understand all this and lay it to heart. For it is all told us first for our learning and then for our example and our imitation. It was our Lord’s meekness and lowly-mindedness that made His great burden so light. His burden was far from light; His meekness, and His lowly-mindedness, and all. But He could not have carried His burden a single furlong of His life’s way but for His meekness under it. And it is out of His own experience that He here speaks to us. "Bring but a meek heart to your burden, as I did," He says to us. "Bring but the same mind to your yoke that I brought to my yoke, and see how easy it will feel." Now, He so impresses us with what He here says that if He were lodging in this city to-night we would go to Him on the strength of this invitation of His. And we would tell Him the whole sad story of our cruel yoke and our heavy burden. But even were He here in the body, it is in the spirit alone that He could really assist us. Go to Him in the spirit then; tell Him that as His cross on the way to Calvary crushed Him, so your cross, your burden, and your yoke will not be long in crushing you into your grave unless you get help from Him to bear all these things. He may possibly remove your burden altogether if you are importunate enough. He can wholly remove it if that seems good in His sight. On the other hand, who knows, He may have such a plot in His divine counsels concerning you that He may say to you that His grace is sufficient for you, and that His strength is to be made perfect in your weakness. Go to Him in any case, and whatever He sees it good to do with you and your burden, He will at any rate begin to give you another heart under it. He will begin to give you what His Father gave Him. He will give you, burden or no burden, a meek and lowly heart. And a truly meek and lowly heart will enable you to carry ten burdens as big as yours, and ten yokes as galling as yours, and that to the end of your days on earth. It is not your burden that so weighs you down. It is your proud, rebellious, self-seeking, self-pleasing heart. Once make yourself a new heart and the thing is done. Once get a new heart from Him--a humble, meek, lowly heart, and your yoke from that day will be easy and your burden light. Just try, for one thing, to see yourself as you really are. Just try to look at yourself continually as Christ looked at Himself. And if being a creature of Almighty God does not teach you your own place under Almighty God, then consider yourself as a sinner against God, and such a sinner. You have not reflected enough on a thousand good reasons that God must have for the way He is yoking you and loading you. If you looked more at yourself, and at what your salvation must need at His hand and at your own hand to work it out, you would bow your neck to His will continually, and would hold your peace. Had He dealt with you after your sins, and rewarded you according to your iniquities, you had not been here to find fault with the way He is leading you to pardon and peace and everlasting life. When you begin to look at yourself in ways like these, already your yoke will have lost half its fretfulness, and your burden half its weightiness.

"Come unto Me," says the Pattern Burden-Bearer, "put on My meek mind, enter into My lowly heart, imitate Me." Go home, He means, and speak the meek and mild word where you have been wont to speak the high and hard word, and thus to exasperate your own yoke and the yokes of others. Hold your peace, and do not speak at all, about things concerning which you have been wont to speak so unadvisedly and so bitterly. Or if you must rebel against your burden, and must lift your heel against your yoke, do all that to God alone. Kneel down in secret at His feet, and refuse to rise till your yoke is either lightened or your heart is strengthened. Rutherford writes in one of his golden letters concerning a cross that had such wings that they bore up both that cross itself and the bearer of that cross. And your yoke also will sprout wings if you come sufficiently close to Christ with it, and continue to consult Him about it and about yourself under it. For He still remembers all His own experiences, and He is like His Father in this, that He delights in mercy. Try Him to-night. Knock at His door to-night. Confide to Him your most galling yoke, and your most heavy burden to-night. O, how grand it would be if this very night you had all this glorious scripture for ever fulfilled in you! Let neither shame then, nor fear, nor despair, turn you away from your Savior to-night. Take courage and come to Him, for He is as meek and lowly-minded, as accessible, and as affable in heaven as ever He was on earth. And more so, if that were possible. Though He be high, He is not any more high-minded than ever He was, as you will live to testify and tell, if you only take your case to Him. The truth is, this wonderful text sounds clearer and surer from heaven to-night; more heart-winning and more heart-commanding than ever it sounded on earth. Come unto Me,--our Lord says that from heaven to us, as He was never able to say it on earth,--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.