Gentleness
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Series Materials
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Good morning Chapel family.
Can you believe Thanksgiving is 11 days away? I’m really excited for our Thanksgiving Eve service—I’ve invited our friend Bill Paige to come and give the message that night. Some of you might remember Bill is a former New York police officer and detective, and he now travels the world as a speaker with Young Life ministry. But he’s just a great guy, great teacher, and he’s going to help us get into the spirit of gratitude on that night before Thanksgiving.
I also want to mention that the Monday of Thanksgiving week, so a week from tomorrow, we are again helping with the Paterson Thanksgiving Banquet. So we’ll be serving Thanksgiving Dinner to 3-400 people from the city, and it’s just a beautiful, multicultural experience. We had a big group of volunteers that came out last year. So if you would like to join us, go on the web site under “Events” and go to “Paterson Thanksgiving Banquet,” and you can register to serve there.
Alright…we’re taking this fall to talk about the fruit of the Spirit. Not the fruit of our best efforts; it’s the fruit of the Spirit—the things that the Holy Spirit produces through us, if we let him. Which is so important, because left on our own, we tend to make a mess of things. And the only power that can overcome that sinful nature that we all have is the power of the Spirit. In other words…
The pull of sin is strong But the living Christ is stronger So open yourself to his Spirit And you will bear his fruit.
And that’s what this series is all about.
So today we come to the eighth fruit of the Spirit, which is gentleness. Now: some of you hear that word, and it sounds really unappealing. Right? It sounds like softness and weakness. In fact, if you’re reading this in the old King James, you know what word it uses? Meekness. Oh man—who wants to be meek, right? It sounds mousy, and cowardly, and spineless. But that is a complete misunderstanding of the word.
The Greek word is praotes. In English we translate it gentleness, meekness, or sometimes humility. The ancient Greeks used this word to describe a wild horse that had been tamed. So instead of being impulsive and violent and out of control, it was now under the control of its master. It calmly followed where the master led. That’s how they understood gentleness: strength under control. And I’m telling you: I cannot think of a virtue that’s more needed in today’s world.
Last week, I asked the guys in my men’s group: what’s the opposite of gentleness? What does it look like when we don’t have this fruit of the Spirit? Here’s what they said: Forceful, harsh, controlling, domineering, demanding, and severe. Think about that. Does that not sound like so much of today’s social media? Political discourse? Forceful and harsh. Some of you have a boss like this, or a teacher. Some of you were raised by a parent like this, right? Domineering, demanding, severe. And honestly, it did some damage to you. Because leading by fear might get people to comply in the short-term, because they’re bullied into submission. But in the long term, what truly changes hearts is gentleness. Gentleness is powerful. So how do you get that kind of biblical gentleness?
So…let’s look at our main Scripture—Matthew 11, verses 28-30. Let’s hear the Word of God…
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This is the Word of the Lord.
So let’s talk about two things today: Experiencing the Gentleness of Jesus, and Reflecting the Gentleness of Jesus. Experiencing the gentleness of Jesus, and reflecting the gentleness of Jesus.
So, first: Experiencing the Gentleness of Jesus. Jesus addressed this invitation to people who were “weary and burdened.” It’s not talking about being physically tired; this is all about soul-weariness, from your spirit getting beaten down. So why were they feeling that way? Well, Jesus was speaking to people who were weary from the demands being placed on them by their religious leaders. That list of opposites that I read before—forceful, harsh, controlling, domineering, demanding, and severe—that’s a pretty good description of how the Pharisees led. They knew the details of the Old Testament laws, and they reminded people constantly how far they were falling short in keeping those rules. If you’ve ever been under that kind of leadership, how does that affect you? It’s exhausting. It’s demoralizing. You just want to get away from it.
So that’s how your typical, first-century Jewish person was feeling. And Jesus said, “Come to me. I want to give you rest from all that. I’m different from those other leaders.”
The best devotional book I’ve read in the past ten years is a book called Gentle and Lowly, by Dane Ortlund. I highly recommend it. So in the first chapter, he’s talking about these words of Jesus in Matthew 11, and he writes this:
In the one place in the Bible where the Son of God pulls back the veil and lets us peer way down into the core of who he is, we are not told that he is “austere and demanding in heart.” We are not told that he is “exalted and dignified in heart” We are not even told that he is “joyful and generous in heart.” Letting Jesus set the terms, his surprising claim is that he is “gentle and lowly in heart.”
Would you let that sink in for a minute? This is the core of who Jesus is. At the deepest level, he’s gentle and humble. This is why he’s different from all those other leaders.
Now, again, don’t misunderstand what gentleness is! Jesus was powerful and authoritative and courageous. He calmed storms and cleared the temple and stood up to corrupt religious leaders. But he also gathered into his arms the little children that the disciples tried to send away. He showed tender compassion to a woman with chronic bleeding and a woman caught in adultery. He wept at the death of his friend. But the ultimate display of his gentleness was on the cross. He had the authority to call legions of angels to come and rescue him, and he had every right to curse his enemies. But he didn’t. Because he was gentle and humble in heart.
Have you experienced his heart personally?
How do you experience that? Well, look at the invitation: Come to me…and take my yoke upon you. You know what a yoke is, right? It’s that wooden sort of harness that you fasten to the neck of an ox, so it can pull a plow. But did you ever notice how many openings there are on a typical yoke? Two. So two oxen can walk side by side, and pull the load together. So Jesus invites me to step into this yoke. One opening for me; the other for…whom? For Jesus. He actually walks along with me—gently but powerfully—and pulls the load with me. Which means that whatever God calls me to do—whether it’s a hard job or taking care of elderly parents or dealing with a tough kid or whatever it is—I don’t pull
that weight alone. I develop a mindset of dependence on him. I feel his strength empowering me. I feel less flustered and more calm—more peaceful. That’s why his yoke is easy and his burden is light—because he does all the heavy lifting. Dane Ortlund said it like this: “What helium does to a balloon, Jesus’ yoke does to his followers.”
So that was the invitation of Jesus back then, and it’s still his invitation today: come to me, take my yoke upon you, and I’ll give you rest for your soul. Are you experiencing that? And I don’t just mean, “Have you received Christ as your Savior?” That’s how it starts, but this is an invitation to a way of life, where you allow the gentleness and power of Jesus to carry you through everything you do. It’s what your soul needs. And when you’re experiencing the gentleness of Christ, it changes you.
Which leads to point number two: Reflecting the Gentleness of Jesus. One of the most theologically rich books of the New Testament is the book of Ephesians. It has six chapters; the first three are all about what God has done for us, and the second three are all about how we should live for God. So right at the beginning of that second section, after all this amazing doctrine of how we were dead in our sins but Christ brought us back to life, here’s how the second half of the book starts—Ephesians 4:1-2…
1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely…what? What would you think Paul would say here? Be completely holy? Be completely committed? Be completely generous? All those things are valid, but he didn’t say any of that right here. In Paul’s Holy Spirit-guided mind, when we really understand the wonder of what God has done for us in Christ, the first thing that comes to mind is that we should be completely humble and gentle. Isn’t that interesting? But it makes so much sense! Because if that’s what Jesus is like, that’s what his followers should be like, too.
So how does this look? How does it look to reflect the gentleness of Jesus? Let’s break it down into two parts.
First, A gentle approach to life. A gentle approach to life. What does it mean to live our lives with gentleness? Well, it means the opposite of living in a forceful, harsh, controlling, domineering, demanding, and severe way—clenching our teeth, tensing our shoulders. It means realizing that things go better and we’re actually more powerful when we do things with a softer touch.
Norma Jean and I have this little code that we use with each other when we catch the other person living in a non-gentle way. Usually it’s in the kitchen. Maybe I’ll be making breakfast, and she’ll notice that I’m moving really fast, because I’m probably late for something. So I’m grabbing a pan and slamming the cabinet shut; I’m knocking the salt shaker onto the floor; I’m smearing butter on the counter; cracking eggs on the island and letting globs of egg run onto the counter; I mean, I’m on a mission. And Norma Jean will look at me and say, “Dave. Shalom.” In other words, “Relax. Take a deep breath. Be gentle.” That’s our code word—“shalom.” And I have to be honest, sometimes I don’t want to hear it. I’m like, “You don’t tell me shalom. I can tell you shalom, but you don’t shalom me.” But usually, I take it to heart, because I know she’s right. Life just goes better when you do things gently.
John Ortberg has a great little teaching that he calls “Try Softer.” He says we are so programmed to think we always need to try harder. So we work more hours, and exert more energy, because we think trying harder is the answer to everything. But, based on the gentleness of Jesus, he says sometimes we need to “try softer.”
For example, he says, in tennis, trying to hit your serve harder won’t necessarily make it better. So try…softer.
When you’re on a first date or a job interview, trying too hard can actually make you less yourself. So try softer.
When you’re lying in bed and you’re trying really hard to fall asleep, it usually doesn’t work, right? So try softer.
When you’re trying to remember someone’s name, and your racking your mind, usually you can’t think of it. But sometimes, when you just give up, it comes. So try softer.
In relationships, with your kids, when you try really hard to control them, it usually doesn’t work. So back off, let God be God, and try softer.
Remember the gentle heart of Jesus, get into the yoke with him, and try softer.
I’m going to tell you two very different stories. The first one is about a vacuum cleaner. About two weeks ago, our vacuum cleaner stopped working—barely any suction. It’s one of those canister vacuums with the long hose and then sort of a metal tube with the floor-cleaning thing on the end. And I could tell the clog was in the metal tube. So I banged it on the ground, really hard. Nothing. I took a long stick, and I jammed it in to try to shove the clog through. Nothing. I was getting frustrated. I took a hanger and straightened it out, and jammed that up in there nothing. So I gave up. And then, a few days later, I decided to try softer. I put the thing on my workbench, and I carefully, slowly looked at it. I noticed two tiny screws attaching the floor cleaning part to the metal tube. I took out those screws, and I was able to remove the floor part. Then, I gently inserted a little tool that unclogs sink drains—so it has a little retractable claw on the end, and I gently felt around for the clog. I felt something! And I pulled it out—slowly, so I wouldn’t lose it. And I know this is a little weird, but I took a picture of what came out. Want to see it? (show pic). Don’t get me started on people who vacuum up chip clips. But I have to tell you: it was so satisfying. And it worked, because there’s power in gentleness.
The second story actually comes from one of my favorite pastors and writers, the late Eugene Peterson. And he says he first learned about gentleness as a teenager, working in his dad’s butcher shop. Here’s how he describes it:
Carving a quarter of beef into roasts and steaks was not a matter of imposing my knife-fortified will on dumb matter but respectfully and reverently entering into the reality of the material.
“Hackers” was my father’s contemptuous label for butchers who ignorantly imposed their wills on the meat. They didn’t take into account the subtle differences between pork and beef. They used knives and cleavers inappropriately and didn’t keep them sharp. They were bullies forcing their wills on slabs of bacon and hindquarters of beef. The results were unattractive and uneconomical. They commonly left a mess behind that the rest of us had to clean up.
Not so much by words but by example, I internalized a respect for the material at hand. The material can be a pork loin, or a mahogany plank, or a lump of clay, or the will of God, or a soul, but when the work is done well, there is a kind of submission to the will of the conditions at hand, a cultivation of what I would later learn to call humility. It is a noticeable feature in all skilled workers — woodworkers, potters, poets, pray-ers, and pastors. I learned it in the butcher shop.
I love that. This guy was one of the most influential Christian pastors of the last 50 years, and that was largely because he knew the power of gentleness.
So…whatever you’re doing in life step into the yoke with Jesus and do it with gentleness. It’s a beautiful and powerful way to live.
But then specifically, let’s talk about A gentle approach to people. All through the Bible, there is instruction on living with gentleness, and so much of it is about how we relate to people. Titus 3:1-2 says 1 Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, 2 to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone. No matter who you’re working with, gentleness is the right way to be. Remember—it doesn’t mean weakness or passivity at all. It’s strength under control. Always be gentle toward everyone.
A few examples: We should be gentle toward angry people. Proverbs 15:1 says:
A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
This is so practical. I’ll never forget the day—I was 17 years old, driving to school with my best friend in the passenger seat and my younger brother in the back. And I rear-ended the car in front of me. I was treating the stop sign like a yield sign, but she decided to make a full stop. So I hit her pretty hard. I got out; she got out. And she started screaming at me: “Are you crazy? Don’t you know what a stop sign means? My daughter is in the car—do you realize how badly you could have hurt us?” I mean, she was worked up. And there was a brief moment where I realized my friend and my brother were watching, and I was being reamed out by this middle-aged mom, and I almost went back at her. I could have said, “Hey—shalom.” And that would have stirred up her anger. By God’s grace, I said, “I am so sorry. That was completely my fault. Are you okay?” And it was amazing to see her response. It was like a switch turned off. She said, “Well—let me get your driver’s license and your insurance information.” I gave her my info and we drove off. She never even reported it. A gentle answer turns away wrath.
Hey—to do that, consistently, takes the help of the Holy Spirit. But it’s so powerful.
Here’s another one: we should be gentle with skeptical people. Look at 1 Peter 3:15…
But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect… So when people question you or challenge you about your faith, don’t get defensive. Don’t try to shame them or argue them into submission. Talk to them, like a fellow human, about the reasons you’re following Christ. Respect their thought process. Take their questions seriously. In my own spiritual journey, when I was searching for truth in college, I could get pretty belligerent at times. And the fact that those few Christian fraternity brothers treated me like this—with gentleness and respect—is a big part of the reason I’m here today. So be gentle with skeptical people.
And then, third, we should be gentle with sinning people. Look at Galatians 6, verse 1: Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. So it’s talking about a situation where someone’s been engaging in some kind of destructive sin—maybe they’re caught stealing or lying or doing drugs or cheating on their spouse. And it says if you’re living by the Spirit, you should restore that person gently. Not harshly; not condemningly; not publicly embarrassing them. And that last line is so important: watch yourself, because you get tempted to sin, too! In other words, don’t get all self-
righteous—like, “How could you do that? I could never do that!” Yeah, you could. It’s only by the grace of God that you’re where you are. So stay humble; stay gentle; remember all the grace God pours out on you, and pour it out on that person who’s gotten caught in a sin. If we destroy people when they fail us, we’ll probably permanently sever our relationship with them, and we may discourage them so much that they never want to try again. So be gentle.
Early in my Christian life I read a lot of books by an author named Larry Crabb. He was a Christian counselor, and one of the things I really appreciated was how vulnerable he was with his own struggles. So I’ll never forget this story…
He had two sons—Ken and Kep. And Ken was always the dutiful son: Kep was the one who always got in trouble. So Kep managed to get accepted to college—he went to a Christian school in Indiana called Taylor. And Larry Crabb was thinking, “Finally he’s on the right track.” So in his third year, he got a call from the school, telling him that Kep had broken a pretty serious rule, and he was being expelled from college. So Crabb flew to Indiana, and drove the hour and a half from the airport through the Indiana cornfields to the college.
And while he drove, he prayed. “Lord, I’ve tried everything I know to do, and I haven’t reached my son. And I can’t reach him now. I don’t know how to do it. But I’m not asking for instruction. I’m asking you to let him see Christ in me…Principles and insights and rebukes just won’t do it. He needs to meet you. Give yourself to him through me, please.”
So he got to the off-campus house that his son was renting with friends. He rang the bell. And he said it was the strangest thing—when the door opened, he didn’t feel angry. He said, “Something from deep within me poured out toward my son with very ordinary words. I simply said, ‘How can I help?’”
And that moment was a turning point in Kep’s life. He was so surprised by the gentleness of his father. And years later he said to his dad, “I came back to the Lord during that time, but first I came back to you.”
Never underestimate the power of gentleness.
So…would you make a choice today? Choose to stop living with white knuckles and clenched jaw and tense shoulders. Stop being Forceful and harsh and controlling and domineering and demanding and severe.
The most powerful person who ever lived—Jesus our Savior—was gentle and humble in heart. And when we follow him, when we open ourselves to his Spirit, we will be gentle, too.
...step into the yoke with him.
…shalom.
…try softer.
…learn the power of gentleness.