I have very few religious books for children at home, but one of my favourites is a book for lower primary school readers by Steph Williams, titled Little Me, Big God: Stories About Jesus.[1] I thought about that title as I prepared this sermon.
The third Beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:5) is often translated, “Blessed are the meek…” but a more accurate translation from the original Greek is, “Blessed are the humble,” or, “Blessed are the little people, for they will inherit the earth.” Little me, big God.
This Beatitude champions the unsung quality of humility, a character trait that is sometimes misunderstood.
Humility is not fashionable. It rarely trends on social media. In a world obsessed with self-promotion, instant gratification, and aggressive ambition, humility may appear weak, irrelevant, or even naive. Yet Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, pronounces a blessing on those who are humble.
Little me, big God. Congratulations, says Jesus, to those who make no grand claims about themselves before God, or before other people.
In its original context, this Beatitude (like the other seven) describes people in bad situations rather than people with good spiritualities. Those who are blessed by Jesus are those who actually are powerless rather than those who through effort successfully avoid pride.[2]
Sooner or later, we will all be brought low. The ancient storyteller Aesop has a child ask, “What does God do?” and the child responds, “God brings down the high and exalts the low.” The French philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) calls this an “abbreviation of human history.”
My mother used to say to me, “The higher you climb, the further you’ll fall.” That hard-earned life lesson applies equally to individuals, corporations, and nations. It’s a kind of moral entropy.
The Greek word translated “meek” here doesn’t mean spineless or passive. It’s not about weakness. It’s not about being a doormat or staying silent when we should speak out.
Biblical meekness is moral strength under control. It’s a gentle and humble attitude that trusts in God and refrains from asserting oneself in proud or destructive ways. Think of a powerful stallion that has been trained and bridled. Its strength has not been taken away but harnessed. That is meekness.
In the biblical imagination, the meek or the humble are those who have submitted to God’s rule. They are not driven by self-interest or the need to dominate, but by a desire to please God and serve others.
We see this quality most clearly in the life of Jesus. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus possessed all authority, but chose to live a humble life. He entered Jerusalem not on a warhorse, but on a donkey. He washed the feet of his disciples. He submitted to death, even death on a cross.
This Beatitude is not a call to be passive, but to be purposeful, to model the character of Jesus, to cultivate a spirit that does not demand its own way but trusts God’s timing, provision, and ultimate justice.
Cultivating a humble spirit in place of pride and self-aggrandisement bears wonderful fruit. Let me suggest three.
First, humility reorients our relationship with God. The proud heart resists grace. It clings to the illusion of self-sufficiency. But the humble heart is open, teachable, and dependent upon God. As Psalm 25:9 says, “[God] leads the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.”
The meek or humble acknowledge their limitations and failures. They know their need for mercy. They live in the light of grace.
The Christian life is one of ethical formation, becoming more like Christ not merely in our beliefs but in the formation of our character. For Christians, humility is a mark of spiritual maturity. It’s not achieved overnight. It’s cultivated through prayer, repentance, obedience, it arises through trial and error. It grows as we learn to relinquish control and entrust our lives to God.
Second, humility transforms our relationships with others. In a society that often celebrates dominance and ego, the meek stand out. They don’t need to win every argument. They listen more than they speak. They are quick to forgive. They don’t manipulate or control. They serve. They think about themselves less and less.
As Paul writes, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others” (Php 2:3f).
Humility has a quiet strength. It de-escalates conflict. It opens space for others to flourish. It builds community rather than tearing it down. When we live in a humble manner, we embody the kingdom of God in tangible ways. We become more like our Master Jesus.
Third, humility shapes our mission in the world. As followers of Christ, we are called to witness—not by overpowering people with arguments, but by demonstrating lives marked by grace.
The early apprentices of Jesus spread the good news about Jesus not through force, but through love, through meekness, through humility. In a hostile culture, they forgave those who wronged them, they sacrificially served the poor, they suffered with dignity. That kind of witness is still powerful today.
As we put into practice the humility that Jesus exemplified, our lives become a countercultural witness to the Way of Jesus. Ethics and evangelism are not separate tracks – they run together. The way we live matters. When we live humbly, we point to Jesus who humbled himself for our sake. Little me, big God.
Finally, what does Jesus mean when he promises that those who are humble “will inherit the earth”?
It seems implausible. In our world, it’s not the meek who inherit the earth – it’s the powerful, the wealthy, the aggressive, those who for whatever reason have the balance tilted in their favour. The humble are overlooked or pushed aside.
Jesus turns worldly logic on its head. He probably had in mind the promise in Psalm 37:11, “But the humble will inherit the land and will enjoy peace and prosperity.”
In the Hebrew Bible, “the land” was the promised inheritance of God’s people, representing security, blessing, and the fulfilment of God’s covenant promises to Abraham and his descendants. By God’s grace, the New Testament expands that promise. The humble will inherit not merely a plot of physical land somewhere between Egypt and Turkey but the entire renewed creation.
This is what theologians call an eschatological hope. It points forward to the day when Jesus will return and God makes all things new. The first will be last, and the last first. The humble will be exalted. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord.
But this is also a present reality. Even now, the humble “inherit the earth” not through ownership but through contentment. Their joy is not based on accumulation but on trust. Because they are not striving to prove themselves, they are free to receive with gratitude what God graciously provides. Little me, big God.
In a culture addicted to consumption, those who practice humility model a different kind of wealth – that of simplicity, trust, and peace.
“Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.” This is not a comfortable Beatitude. It challenges us to die to self, to live in a posture of trust rather than control, to embrace and model the humility of Jesus.
But it is also a word of hope. In a world full of striving and unrest, Jesus invites us into rest, into a new way of being.
I want to close with three questions for reflection:
- Where is pride holding you back from deeper intimacy with God?
- How might humility transform your relationships this week?
- What does it look like for you to live as someone who lives into the reality of God’s amazing grace, as someone who has already inherited the earth because of your faith in Jesus?
By God’s grace, may we become a people marked by humility – not as weakness, but as strength under control.
And may the humble example of Jesus so empower and shape us that our living witness to the reality of the kingdom of God becomes more apparent, more and more winsome, here and now in Western Sydney. Little me, big God.
Sermon 810 copyright © 2025 Rod Benson. Preached at North Rocks Community Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 1 June 2025. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).
[1] Steph Williams, Little Me, Big God: Stories About Jesus (n.p.: Good Book Company, 2024).
[2] Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary. Volume 1: The Christbook: Matthew 1-12 (revised and expanded edition; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 165.
Image source: Perichoresis
iDigress 
Loved reading this one 🙂
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