Power Under Control: The Fruit of Gentleness
Matt. 11:28-30 October 31, 2004
Intro:
I want you to think for a moment of someone you know who you would describe as gentle. Someone who, as you think of them, seems to embody the idea of gentleness. Can you think of anyone? Anyone want to share??
Not Highly Prized…
I don’t think we would find the concept of “gentleness” on many people’s top 10 lists of character qualities they would like to be remembered for. In our culture, gentleness is almost an archaic idea – oh, its nice, and where it is found it is probably a good thing, but it is basically benign, a fringe benefit, probably something we more likely associate with a grandpa or someone basically “harmless”. Our culture certainly does not consider gentleness something really important. Consider our elected leaders – does anyone think of Ralph as “gentle”? I don’t hear either of the US presidential candidates presenting themselves as “the gentle choice for president.”
Instead, we are supposed to be tough. We are supposed to be strong. We are supposed to be able to handle everything, manage it all, and come out still looking clean and tidy. Life is hard, but we should be harder. Gentleness?? That’s kind of an old-fashioned idea… certainly not desirable today.
Prized By God:
Does it surprise us, then, that we find “gentleness” as one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:23? As one of the character qualities that the Holy Spirit produces within us as He takes more and more control of our lives?
As the Holy Spirit lives within us, and as we allow God to form our character, one of the characteristics He produces in us is gentleness. I want to emphasize, as I did last week in the beginning of this series on the Fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5, that these qualities are not about you and I working on them. Specifically today, gentleness is not a matter of us thinking and monitoring and making a concerted effort to be more gentle. Rather, gentleness is one of the things that the Holy Spirit produces within us. It is about God’s grace, God’s effort, God’s work, and not our own. Gentleness, along with the other fruits of the Spirit, comes as we “live by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16).
How many of you, when you think of God, would describe God as gentle? If I were to back up, and begin by asking you to brainstorm a list of the characteristics of God, would the word “gentle” make it onto your list anywhere? I’d be surprised if many of us included that word to describe God, and yet as I reflect on my life, I see over and over how incredibly gentle God has been with me. I used to think that was a reflection of my weakness – God knows I couldn’t handle it if He came down really hard on me, so He has just always chosen to be gentle with me… But I’ve changed my mind about that. God is gentle with me because that is His nature.
Gentle Jesus:
Some of you are maybe not so sure about that… Maybe you’ve been reading parts of the Old Testament, or studying the book of Revelation, or maybe you are looking at the circumstances in your own life at the moment and you are having a hard time with me saying that God is, by His very nature, gentle. So let me take you to Matthew 11:28-30. Now, it is very important before I read this passage to you that you understand this: this is the only place in the Bible where Jesus actually describes Himself. John, Mark, Luke, Paul – they all spend a lot of time describing what Jesus was like and what He did, but this is the only place where Jesus Himself says, “here is who I am…” Listen to the words He uses… (read).
I am gentle and humble in heart:
Did you hear that? Jesus described Himself as gentle and humble of heart. That is good news for us – sometimes life is hard, and all of us, if we will be honest enough to admit it, are really quite fragile. We are breakable, we need to be handled with care. Many of us retreat from our frailty and try to create strong walls around us that will protect our heart, but we usually do that only after we have already had our hearts broken, so it is a little too late. And yet, what Jesus is telling us is that it is ok to let Him into those hurts, to let Him come and penetrate those walls, because He is gentle, and will be gentle with us. More on that a little later…
If Jesus’ self-description doesn’t fit with your picture of Jesus – calling the Pharisees hypocrites, telling the disciples off, flipping the tables of the moneychangers in the temple, going head to head with the demons and winning – then perhaps what we need to do is re-define what gentleness is.
Power Under Control:
Let me give you a definition of gentleness. It is not powerlessness, or weakness, or an absence of strength, but rather power under control. Gentleness is power under control. I did a little bit of research to understand more what Paul meant by the word he chose and which our Bibles translate as gentleness, and what I found out is that power under control is very much the idea that Paul and his hearers would have heard in the word we know as gentleness. “The Greeks value this virtue highly so long as there is compensating strength.” (TDNT abridged. For praus). Aristotle used the word as “a mean between bad temper and spineless incompetence; between extreme anger and indifference.” (TDNT). And there is a picture that goes along with the original word: one of wild animals being tamed.
Think for a moment about a wild horse. Do we have any big horse enthusiasts? I’ve been on a couple of trail rides years ago, which were generally incredibly boring – my horse just followed the horse in front, very, very slowly. One time I leaned back and put my feet up on the horse’s neck, until the cowboy got mad at me… However, I can recall once seeing a couple of large, strong Clydesdales pulling a wagon, and I recall being very impressed with the power of those animals. And yet, if that power is not harnessed, if it is not brought under control, it cannot be turned to a profitable use. The Greek word that we have translated as gentleness is the word they used for the taming of an animal. As I was looking that up, I discovered something else – even today, do any of you know the technical name for taming a horse? They call it “gentling” a horse. (with thanks to Rev. Brian Bill, sermoncentral.com, for that observation.)
What About Jesus?
With that definition, let’s think again about Jesus. When we think about power under control as the definition of gentleness, the picture of Jesus as gentle makes far more sense. Jesus had the power to condemn the woman caught in adultery – He could have been righteously angry at her sin – but He responded with gentleness and used His power in a far greater way by forgiving. Likewise with the woman at the well. And what about at the cross? Jesus had the power to come down from the cross and smite His accusers, but He kept that power under control and used it to sustain Him through the grief and the pain for the greater good – our salvation. He used His power even to be able to pray that God would not hold the sin against those who were crucifying Him. Even on the cross, Jesus was gentle and kept power under control.
When I think of gentleness, I think of strong hands – hands that could crush a pumpkin or loosen a rusted out wingnut – holding an infant, or plucking a rose. I think of a horse pulling a plow. I think of the children’s story “Are You My Mother?” where a huge industrial crane (called a “snort”) lifts a baby bird back into its nest high up in a tree. I think of messing up and standing in front of another person asking for forgiveness, and hearing them respond softly and not harshly, and offering forgiveness. I think of a surgeon with a sharp scalpel, tenderly cutting flesh so that we might be healed.
Are You?
What about you? Would people describe you as gentle? Remember, it doesn’t mean to be powerless, but to have power under control.
Remember also what I said about each of the fruits of the Spirit: they are about God creating them in us. How does that happen? How does God create gentleness inside us, and how do we cooperate?
Last week I talked about self-control, and how the Holy Spirit helps us see the truth behind the lies in temptation, which enables us to make the right choice and thus exercise self-control.
When it comes to gentleness, here is how I believe the Spirit works this in us: as we live in the Spirit, we begin to see one another through God’s eyes. We see one another the way God sees us. And as we let the Spirit control us, we begin to understand that others around us are fragile. We understand that people are the way they are often because of how they have been hurt. We see through the tough façade and recognize that underneath is a person who is tender, perhaps wounded, perhaps feeling trapped or alone or threatened. We begin to understand that when others act in a way that hurts us, they are almost always lashing out from some source of deep personal pain themselves.
That realization changes how we desire to respond. When we recognize what is going on with others, the Spirit changes our desires from impatience or annoyance or revenge, to compassion and tenderness and gentleness. We don’t want to hit back, we want to reach out with love and compassion and gentleness.
The absolute greatest way I know of to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in forming gentleness in us is to follow Jesus’ command to pray for our enemies. You can even begin by praying all the nasty things you are thinking you would like God to do to them… that’s ok, you can start there, God knows you are feeling that way anyways – just don’t stop there. Once you have vented, keep praying for them. And as you pray, as you let the Spirit lead you to pray, your negative impulses will be replaced by compassion, and then by gentleness, as you see those others the way God sees them.
Gentleness may not be highly valued in our society, but it is highly regarded in God’s Kingdom. In Philippians 4:5, Paul instructs us to “Let your gentleness be evident to all.” Colossians 3:12 says, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” 1 Timothy 6:11
Says, “But you, man of God, flee from all this (the love and pursuit of money), and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.” Even feisty Peter, always looking for a challenge, jumping right in with a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, says, “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.” (1 Peter 3:15).
Peaches:
Last week I mentioned that for each of the fruits of the Spirit, I thought of which actual fruit each character quality reminded me of. When I think about gentleness, I think about the peach. Now, I have a bit of a strange hobby – I like to can fruit. I’ll make jam, or pickles, but one of my favorite fruits to work with is the gentle peach. You can’t be rough with a peach, if it gets bruised or pierced it will spoil very quickly. And when one peach in a box goes bad, every other peach that is touching it also starts to go bad. You must handle them with gentleness, or else they will be destroyed.
People are a lot like that. When we risk opening ourselves up to one another, we are very much like a peach. It is easy to bruise, easy to hurt. And that pain often migrates to those close to us, and if unchecked, can easily start to negatively impact others as well. It takes a lot of gentleness with one another if we are to trust, and build a strong enough relationship that we can help one another become more like Jesus.
Returning to Gentle Jesus:
It is much easier to treat others with gentleness when we have experienced the incredible healing power of gentleness ourselves. Jesus described Himself as gentle of heart, and as we meet and experience His gentleness, we are healed and forgiven and the Spirit is free within us to make us gentle as well.
If life has been rough on you this week, if you are feeling beaten up and bruised, I have good news for you. Jesus invites you to come, and exchange your heavy burden for His light burden. He invites you to come and find rest for your weary souls, to find healing in His gentle response. Sometimes we are reluctant to come, we don’t want to admit weakness or struggle or difficulty, we would rather try to lock the pain in behind walls of stone. But when we take the hurt inside, we take the poison with us and all we really accomplish is making our healing that much harder because we lock out the healer.
Come and know the gentleness of God. Open yourself to what God might want to say to you today. God has not come to condemn, but to save. He isn’t going to slap you around because you have sinned, God is going to forgive you and restore you and set you free. If only you will come. Did you notice that was the one thing Jesus asked of us in Matt 11? Just come. Just come.
I want you to hear again the words of Jesus from Matt 11:28-30. I’m going to read them in closing. I actually want you to close your eyes, and imagine the face of Jesus. It is ok to use your imagination; I want you to try to listen to these words coming from the very lips of Jesus, speaking directly to you, personally and individually, and then we are going to let our worship team come and lead us through to the conclusion of our service.
