To Live is Christ — obedience with meekness

Although he made mistakes, Moses is highly revered as one of God’s main spokespersons in the Old Testament. Numbers 12:3 says, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.”

Humility in this verse actually should be translated as “meek” — a description that most people would not pick for themselves. Some have tried to define it as “strength under control,” but the Hebrew definition is richer than that. John MacArthur describes it something like this:

A meek person never defends himself because he knows he doesn’t deserve anything. He never gets angry about what’s done to him. He’s not running around trying to get his due. He’s already broken in spirit over his sin, and he’s already mourning and weeping over the consequence of it. In humility he stands before a holy God and he has nothing to commend himself. It isn’t cowardice nor a wishy-washy lack of conviction. It isn’t just human niceness either. Meekness says, “In myself, nothing is possible. But in God, everything is possible.” Meekness says, “For me, I offer no defense. For God, I’ll give my life.” It is not passive acceptance of sin, but (can also be) anger under control. It is holy indignation (over sin).

 What a fitting way to describe Moses. After God grabbed hold of his life, he was always more concerned about his people than his own life. He had strong convictions and often burned with anger over sin, but he knew that he was helpless apart from God.

A meek person will take orders. Today’s devotional reading shows how Moses did exactly as God said, even after his outbursts of indignation. After he broke the first set of tablets containing God’s commands, he had another encounter with God. 

At that time the Lord said to me, “Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain and make yourself an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and you shall put them in the ark.”

So I made an ark of acacia wood, hewed two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain, having the two tablets in my hand. And He wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken to you in the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark which I had made; and there they are, just as the Lord commanded me. (Deuteronomy 10:1–5)

Moses was an amazing leader, but his meekness of obedience is not just for the great movers and shakers in the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, meekness is blessed by God because those who have it will “inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).

It is also to be my attitude whenever I share my faith with others. 1 Peter 3:15 tells me to, “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”

God used a meek man to lead His people from slavery to freedom. He has never asked me to do anything so momentous, yet at the end of each day, He wants me to be able to say the same thing as Moses did, that I have humbly done. . . . “just as the Lord commanded me.”