Righteousness is one of the key ideas in the Sermon on the Mount: 

Matthew 5:10 – “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.”

Matthew 5:20 – “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  (Followed by a string of teachings about righteousness, specifically having to do with commandments regarding murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, revenge, and loving enemies.)

Matthew 6:1 – “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them.

Matthew 6:33 – “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Righteousness is a matter of the heart. 

• Righteousness is not just about behaving the right way.
• Righteousness is also about wanting to live the right way.
• Righteousness is having every fiber of our being tuned to the right ways of God.
• Perhaps the best way of defining righteousness is: to be like Jesus himself.

At some point, we realize that this righteousness is unattainable on our own strength, on our own merit, on our own determination.  We come to Jesus – poor in spirit, mourning over our sins, recognizing our need to submit with meekness to Christ as Lord of our life.   We come, hungering and thirsting for a righteousness that we could never produce in and through ourselves. 

What comes to your mind when you picture someone who is meek?

• A quiet person who rarely speaks up or speaks out?
• A sheepish person who always goes along with whatever other people want to do?
• A timid person with a soft voice and a limp handshake?

I doubt if the word “meek” immediately conjures up words like strong, courageous, outgoing, and confident. 

• The world says: “meekness doesn’t make you happy.”
• But Jesus says, “Happy are the meek.”
• The world thinks that “meekness leads to an unfulfilled life.”
• But Jesus urges us to desire and seek out the attitude of meekness – as it’s one of the keys to a life of deep peace and fulfillment.

The values of God’s kingdom run counter to the values of the world.  We will see this over and over again in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. 

But I also think that the whole understanding of meekness is misunderstood and has morphed from what Jesus originally meant.

When we consider what it means to mourn, we usually think of the sorrow that accompanies the death of a loved one.  If you’ve ever walked the path of grief – or if even now you’re mourning the loss of someone precious to you – you know how painful it is to mourn.  Yet Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn.”  How many mourners would actually consider themselves “blessed”?