Gentleness is Better than Cancel Culture

Gentleness Is Better than Cancel Culture

I want you to turn with me to Philippians 4. Philippians 4 is where we’re going to be spending our time, and David got us kicked off the last couple of weeks. We are spending time in this chapter unpacking what we desperately need during a season like this. We desperately need some good news and God certainly has good news for us in His word and in particular here in Philippians 4. And before we get to the text that we’re going to spend time with Scott Sauls, a pastor in Nashville, just dropped a new book called A Gentle Answer, and I haven’t read it yet to be honest, so I can’t vouch for everything in it, but I love Scott Sauls.

Everything he’s written so far I’ve, I’ve enjoyed, but you’ll have to check it out and let me know how it is. But what drew my attention to the book, it just dropped last month, was the subtitle.

The title is A Gentle Answer, and the subtitle is Our Secret Weapon In an Age Of Us Against Them. I love how he accurately diagnosis the age that we’re in right now, the age of us against them. That’s just so true. We live in a culture in a society that’s so increasingly polarized and increasingly hostile to the point that a phrase has been invented to describe the environment that we find ourselves in. And it’s called cancel culture.

And some of y’all know what cancel culture is. Some of you don’t know, but it is actually an entry now it’s in a whole article at dictionary.com. I do my research y’all. So according to dictionary.com, cancel culture refers to the popular practice of withdrawing support for or canceling public figures in companies after they’ve done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. They say cancel culture is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming.

It involves calling out bad behavior, boycotting their work, and trying to take away their public platform in power. That’s cancel culture. Now there’s some funny examples we see of cancel culture. Popeye’s almost got canceled when they ran out of chicken sandwiches. It was about to be done. And listen, I’m a loyalist to Popeye’s. I do think Chick-fil-A is better, but for different reasons. But Popeye’s almost got canceled. I’m just saying. They’re back now, check out the chicken sandwich. It is fantastic. There’s funny examples, but sometimes it’s not funny. Sometimes people get canceled because they are legitimately guilty of something that is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable. And we’ve seen this all over the media with different assault cases and fraud cases.

Sometimes these are very serious examples and people need to be held accountable. But listen, there’s a difference between holding people accountable and what has become known as cancel culture because canceling people has now become a knee-jerk reaction, a mob mentality with no margin for error, no graciousness, no discernment between enemies and civilians, right?

Just locked and loaded. Shoot first, aim later. But in our time together today, I don’t want us to evaluate the culture. I want us to evaluate our own hearts. And so let me ask you a question. Think about this. Here’s my question for us. Have we embraced a form of cancel culture in our own relationships, in our friendships, in our marriage, with our coworkers, in our church? Come on y’all.

Let’s be honest, because there’s some difficult people even in the church, even in our house, maybe not the person you’re sitting beside watching this with, but there’s some difficult folks, y’all, there’s some people that we strongly disagree with about how to finish the work project, about politics, about whether the toilet paper should go over or under, this is dividing marriages people. And then there’s people who hurt us and our instinct will be to cancel them off the top or to lash out against them.

But in Philippians 4, God gives us a better Christ-centered way to respond to difficult people or people we disagree with or people who hurt us. And we’re working together throughout this series to memorize Philippians 4. Each week we’re adding a verse or two, and this week we added verse 5, which is what we’re going to focus on in the sermon today. So if you’ve been working on it, don’t look at the screen while you’re saying it. If you haven’t, we’re going to put the verses up on the screen and I’ll just tell you, it was struggle city this week trying to remember all these five verses, but I’m going to try to do it from memory. So let’s recite Philippians 4:1-5 together. “Therefore, my brothers whom I love and long for, my joy and crown,” already forgot it. There we go.

All right, “Stand firm. Thus, in the Lord my beloved, I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be made known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.” I almost got it perfectly, but I’ve been working on it. Listen, let me give you context, Philippians, just so you understand why we’re going to focus on what we’re focusing on today. In the book of Philippians, Paul is writing to a group of followers of Jesus who are experiencing persecution from people outside the church. In fact, Paul is writing from a condition of persecution. He’s writing this letter from prison because he’s being persecuted. So they’re experiencing persecution from people outside the church, but they’re also experiencing conflict between people inside the church.

You saw this in the verses that we just read. David preached on this text where you have these two godly women, these two probably leaders in the church, co-laborers in the gospel, Euodia and Syntyche, and they are experiencing conflict. And we’re going to come back to verse 4 next week when we talk about how Christians should respond in difficult circumstances. But today we’re going to focus on verse 5 and think about how a Christian should respond to difficult people. And what I want to do today is I want us to define what reasonableness, or some of your translations might say gentleness.

I want us to define what gentleness really is because it may not be what you think. And then I want us to get super practical and I want us to look at what does that gentleness actually look like in our relationships and our interactions with people. So before we dive in further, let me just pause and pray for us because I think this is a message that the Lord wants to speak to us and he wants to do work in our hearts.

And so Father, I pray first and foremost for myself, but I pray for every person listening in, watching, Lord God, that we will receive your word with humility. Holy Spirit, make us willing to obey your word and lead us in a better path, the path that leads to life. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

All right, so what is gentleness? Let me ask you, what comes to your mind when you think about gentleness? For most of us, when we think about gentleness, we immediately think about softness or tenderness. In fact, that’s how William Tyndale, the legendary Bible translator, translated Philippians 4:5 in 1525. He translated it, “Let your softness be known to all men.” And that’s one aspect of it. You see that in the way Jesus is described in scripture. 2 Corinthians 10:1, Paul says, “I, Paul, myself, entreat you and listen by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.”

And the coming Messiah, who we know is the Lord Jesus, was described this way in Isaiah 40:11, listen how the Messiah is described, “He will tend His flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in His arms, He will carry them in His bosom and gently lead those that are with young.” Softness, tenderness with these vulnerable baby sheep. So yes, there is definitely a sense in which gentleness means tenderness, but I want you to think about something.

The Bible says that Jesus was fully God, but He was also fully human and not just fully human, but perfectly human. He was tempted in every way as we are and yet without sin. So Jesus is the model of perfect humanity. That’s why maturity and spiritual growth in scripture is basically just becoming more like Jesus. So follow me for a second. Jesus then is the ultimate model of gentleness. But wait, because if you know your Bible, if you’ve been reading in the Bible, reading plan so far through the gospel of Matthew, then you probably have some questions.

Think about how Jesus talked to the Pharisees and scribes. We read this earlier this week. Matthew 23:15, Jesus says, He says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” How you really feel, Jesus?

Or verse 23. He says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.” Making a big deal out of small things and dismissing things that are huge in the heart of God. And just in case they didn’t catch the message, verse 33, chapter 23, He says, “You serpents, you brood of vipers.” See, if Jesus is the perfect model of gentleness, how do we reconcile that with those words or think about some of His actions? We read this in our Bible reading plan this week as well in Matthew 21, but let me read John’s account because he gives a little more detail. John 2:14-17.

Listen to this, y’all, “In the temple, Jesus found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money-changers sitting there, and making a whip of cords, He drove them out of the temple with the sheep and oxen and He poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.” This is like a real housewives moment. He’s flipping over tables in the temple, “And He told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade. And His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.” Listen, this was premeditated. It doesn’t just say He grabbed a whip real quick on His way inside. My Lord made a whip. If you can just think about His disciples being around as He’s making the whip like, “Jesus, are you sure you want to do this? You sure you want to run up in the temple and you want to do this?”

So listen, if Jesus is the prototype of gentleness, if He’s the ultimate model of gentleness, then our definition of gentleness has to be able to get its arms around all of who Jesus is and all that He exemplified. And so just so we’re on the same page, gentleness is not a personality type. You don’t get a pass, right? Because you would say, “I’m just not a gentle person.”

Gentleness is not feminine, it’s not a feminine quality. You don’t get a pass as a man. We have this toxic masculinity, this unbiblical, unChrist-like idea of masculinity and God says, “Do not be conformed to this world.” Don’t be conformed to the patterns of so-called masculinity in this culture. Gentleness is not a feminine characteristic, it is not feminine, it is Godly, and gentleness is not weakness. It’s not apathy in the face of evil. It’s not complacency or passivity in situations that call for action. So then what is gentleness?

Well, in the Greek language, this word gentleness or as ESV or the English Standard Version translated reasonableness, it’s a very, very complex word. In fact, it’s almost untranslatable in English because there’s no one word in English that fully captures the range of its meaning. That’s why it’s translated so many different ways in so many different Bible translations, reasonableness, gentleness, moderation. And we already talked about, softness. So here’s what I did. I took all the different ideas that are wrapped up in this one word, plus the other synonyms that are commonly used throughout scripture, and I tried to pick a working definition that would be helpful for us.

And so here’s my definition of gentleness, and I got to give credit to my friend Pastor Jordan Rice for helping me think through this. Here’s my definition of gentleness, “Gentleness is making a decision to only use the amount of force necessary to accomplish what’s right.”

Let me say that again, and if you’re taking notes, write this down. “Gentleness is making a decision to only use the amount of force necessary to accomplish what’s right.” Let me give you two illustrations that I think are helpful. I mentioned my friend Jordan Rice that helped me think through this, and so I’m unashamedly stealing these from him. In fact, I made him write them up and send them to me. And so two different illustrations, right?

Think about a dentist. Jordan wrote this, he said, “A decade ago, I had a cavity. I procrastinated and waited a good amount of time before it was filled and it wasn’t as simple as the ones I’ve had before. As I sat in the dentist’s chair, I started getting uncomfortable as he drilled and drilled.” First of all, kids, if you’re watching this, don’t worry. The dentist, it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt, right?

Well, finally he says, “The dentist mercifully stopped. He wasn’t finished, but he stopped just to say that he had to keep drilling to get out all of the decay and he wouldn’t be a good dentist if he valued my comfort over really helping me because if there was still decay, it would just recur over and over again and I’d eventually lose the tooth.” A dentist. Let me give you another illustration that he gave me. Diffusing a bomb, right? We’re talking about military. Some of you who have served in combat, you’ve actually seen this up close in person before. Most of us have only seen it in a movie. Nobody just plops their hands down and just starts yanking stuff. That’s not how you diffuse a bomb. They’re careful. They’re exact. They move slow, no sudden movements at all and listen, there’s always that scene in the movie where it’s so intense that the person diffusing the bomb is just sweating and we’re all watching because we all are afraid that if that one bead of sweat drops, it’s a wrap. The movie is over, the credits will roll, like it’s done.

And here’s why I love those two illustrations that Jordan gave me. Listen, because with the dentist, it’s uncomfortable and even painful at times, but it’s the necessary amount of force in order to fix what’s wrong. With the bomb, people might look and think, “Why are they moving so slow? Why are they being so delicate? A bomb is about to go off.” But in that case, it’s the appropriate amount of force for the situation. It would be unwise to use any more force. In other words, here’s the point, listen, gentleness is not one size fits all.

Think about it with little kids. You see a five-year-old wrestling with their dad and you think it’s cute. You see a five-year-old, that same five-year-old wrestling with a two-year-old and you say what? Be gentle. You see, gentle requires wisdom to know how much force is necessary and it requires self-control to limit yourself to only what’s necessary, not just how you feel like reacting.

That’s a cool story. My uncle mentored Martin Luther King Jr. Let me get more specific, because I know that math doesn’t add up. So technically he was my distant uncle, it was my grandfather’s great uncle. His name was Dr. George Kelsey. He was a professor at Morehouse in Atlanta, Georgia, and Martin Luther King was one of his students and they kept a close relationship all the way until Dr. King’s assassination, and thankfully some of their correspondences archived in the King Institute at Stanford University. I recently read through all of their archived letters and I came across this. It jumped out to me.

This is my Uncle George to Martin Luther King Jr. He said this, he was talking… I don’t know, I can’t remember the context, if it was when Martin Luther King won the Nobel Priest Prize, or some accolade that he received and my uncle George wrote him this, said, “Many of us are proud of the high plane on which you are waging the fight, and are deeply moved by the effectiveness with which…” Listen, “By the effectiveness with which you keep love as the regulating ideal in a situation which calls for resistance as the chief instrument.”

He says, I commend you because even though you have to do what’s right, you are keeping love as the regulating ideal. Listen, why is this so important y’all? What am I trying to get at? It’s important because when God tells us to be gentle, he’s not telling us not to do the right thing. He’s telling us to make sure we do the right thing in the right way, to do the right thing as Christians in a Christ-like way.
So gentleness is making a decision, and as a Christian making a decision to obey Jesus and to only use the amount of force necessary in order to accomplish what’s right. So what does that gentleness look like?

Some of y’all are like, “This kind of sounds like a lecture, right? Break this down.” All right, let’s talk practically, what does gentleness look like? Six ways for you to grow in gentleness, six ways for you to grow in gentleness. Here’s the first one. A gentle person is gracious with people’s faults and failures. They see people’s faults and failures and they only use the amount of force necessary in order to accomplish what’s right. This word in Philippians 4:5 was used in ancient times to refer to a ruler or a judge who would use discretion and consider all the different factors in a case before making a judgment.

And sometimes rather than just automatically giving people the maximum penalty of the law, they would grant leniency. That’s this word reasonableness or gentleness. And listen, there are some of y’all… We talk about personality.

There’s some of y’all who are by the book, rule follower kind of people. Nudge your neighbor. You know who I’m talking about? Rule follower by the book kind of people. And let me just tell you all about yourself. You have two core values in life, precision and punctuality. Your life is governed by those two core values and some of y’all are laughing right now because you know I’m talking about you, and we praise God. We need you in the body of Christ, I need you, we need some of y’all, right? But the downside, the unhealthy expression of that is that if we’re not careful, we can create an environment where people around us constantly feel like they’re in a minefield.

Like there’s no margin for error, no grace, constant criticism, harsh and immediate judgment. Listen, let me ask you, is that what your family feels like around you or your spouse? They’re constantly in a minefield, like you could explode at any moment. What about the people at your job? In our parenting, when our kids do something wrong or make a mistake, do we scold them and make them feel like complete failures? When our coworkers or direct reports or the people on our ministry team miss a deadline or make a mistake, how do we respond? What about the environment we create in our church family?

When someone personally offends us, the Holy Spirit tells us through the Apostle Paul, Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4:1-3. When somebody in our church family personally offends us, how should we respond? Listen, “I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” How? What does that look like? “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

How do we handle each other’s sin in the church? Because you see a gentle person lovingly confronts sin without crushing the sinner. Galatians 6:1, Paul writes, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression.” If you see somebody in sin, if you see somebody stuck in a pattern of sin, how should you respond? Paul says, and the Spirit says to us, “You who are spiritual, more mature, filled with the Holy Spirit, you should restore him,” how? “In a spirit of gentleness.” Only using the amount of force necessary in order to accomplish what’s right.

And Paul says, “Our gentleness should be known to everyone, not just our loved ones or our church family.” So let me ask you honestly, are Christians in our culture known for this kind of graciousness and gentleness with people’s faults and failures? Come on, y’all. Some of y’all know that’s not the reputation of the church in our country right now, and some of you guys have been on the brutal end of that. Women who have had or are considering an abortion, do they see our gentleness? Does the LGBTQ community see our gentleness? People who say or support racist things, do they recognize our gentleness as distinct Christ followers in the world?

I want you to think about how Jesus handled the woman who was guilty of adultery. Even if you’re not that familiar with the Bible, you’re probably familiar with this story and we won’t read it, but I just want you to think, I want that image to be in your mind as you think about gentleness, because the scribes and the Pharisees spread the word about her sin. Now, we won’t even get to the fact that they didn’t call the dude out. That’s a whole nother sermon, but they spread the word about her sin, they tell everybody to bring their stones, and they tell everybody, in other words, get their stones, is like our equivalent of everybody get on social media and go in, right? Then they drag this woman before Jesus and they say, “The law of Moses commands us to stone such women.” So Jesus, what do you say?

And you can read the story because they’re not sincere, they’re not really interested in justice. They’re playing a game. They’re trying to trap Jesus. But listen to how Jesus responds. There’s so much going on in that interaction, but just think about Jesus’s response, y’all. First of all, Jesus doesn’t join the mob. He refuses to join the mob. He could have. She was caught in adultery, she was guilty. He could have joined the mob against her, but He doesn’t. Instead, what does Jesus do?

He creates a safe place for her to hear the truth rather than being condemned and He does tell her the truth. He calls what she did sin, He says, “Go and sin no more.” He doesn’t give her a pass. It’s not tolerance, it’s not relativism, but He creates a safe place for her to hear and hopefully by God’s grace, respond to the truth without condemnation. And then He gives her grace.

He says, “Where have your accusers gone? They don’t condemn you.” He says, “Neither do I condemn you.” He gives her grace. And isn’t this exactly what Jesus has done for us? Isn’t this what Jesus has done for you? Isn’t it what Jesus has done for me, is that He has seen and He sees our faults and our failures, and He has every reason to immediately cancel us, to immediately condemn us, to treat us as our sins deserve. But Jesus is gentle and He is gracious with our faults and failures. And listen, if you’re watching and you’re not a committed follower of Jesus, this is good news for you because just like the mob was standing over that woman, Satan desires for you to be condemned. That’s his goal in your life. He wants you to be condemned. And quite frankly you probably know this, that there’s some stuff that you’ve done in your life that you’re guilty of, and there’s probably some other people around you that want you to be condemned. But listen to me clearly.

Maybe the reason that God had you watch this today is so for you to hear this very clearly, that God sent Jesus into the world not to condemn the world, not to condemn you, but to save you, that He sees your faults and your failures and your sins. He doesn’t sugarcoat the truth. He looks you in your face and He tells you the truth about your sin, that you and I in our sin, we deserve the judgment of God. We deserve nothing good from Him. And when we see Him face to face, if we are still in our sin, we will be canceled, we will be cut off, we will be condemned forever in hell. That is the truth.

Jesus loves us enough to look us in the eyes and tell us the truth and He is gentle and He is patient and He is kind and He is gracious and He tells us, “But I’ve come to provide a way out. I’ve held off Satan. I’m withholding my wrath because I don’t want you to be condemned. I want you to be saved. I want you to enjoy my gentleness and my goodness for all of eternity. And listen to me today, today you have an opportunity to trust God, to take Him at His word. That if you humble yourself before Him, if you acknowledge your sin, if you confess to Him that you desire to be saved through the death of Jesus on the cross in your place, in His victorious resurrection from the grave, you will be met with gentleness.” He promises you that.

Listen, when we grasp the reality of God’s graciousness and gentleness toward us, how much more then should we be gracious and gentle with other people’s faults and failures? A gentle person is gracious. Secondly, a gentle person is willing to yield to others rather than always demanding their way. And the reason I started with the gracious toward faults and failures is because I want the truth of the gospel, the wonder of the gospel to sit on our hearts because when we really grasp the graciousness of God toward us and His gentleness, it changes the way we interact with people. And so a gentle person will yield to others rather than always demanding their way. This is why the ESV translates this word reasonableness, specifically why.

Because this willingness to yield is actually at the core of what this word means. It’s a picture of a person who doesn’t always have to assert their opinion and isn’t always demanding their rights. A person who doesn’t always have to push back or fight for what they deserve but is able even at times eager to fall back, to yield.
We see this quality mention in James 3:17 as a characteristic of a wise person. It’s all over the scriptures. It’s actually one of the qualifications required in order to be an elder in the church.

So look with me at 1 Timothy 3:2-3. Paul writes this to Timothy, he says, “Therefore an overseer in the church must be above reproach,” got to have integrity, “the husband and one wife,” got to be faithful if they’re married, “sober-minded, self-control, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome.” Everything can’t be beef, everything can’t turn into an argument. It’s a person that’s willing to yield to others instead of always demanding their way. And listen, we’ve all been in this situation. If you drive, you’ve been sitting in a long line of cars waiting to get off the exit ramp and some car pulls up to the front of the line. After you’ve been inching your way up, they pull up to the front of the line right beside you, acting like they didn’t realize it was their exit, and they pull up and what do you do? What do you do?

You keep looking straight ahead. You don’t make no eye contact with them, not for a second. You know why? Because the moment you make eye contact, eye contact is the moment you acknowledge you know they’re there and now you are responsible, right? And might have a little fish on the back of your car and now you got to act like a Christian. So you just stay locked in and just act like they’re not there. We’ve all been in that situation before. But listen, that’s how we can be with people in our relationships. That’s how we can be in meetings. Think about the teams you’ve worked on or families you’ve been around where nobody is ever willing to give in.

Think about trying to pick a TV show with your siblings back in the day before everybody had their own tablet and could watch whatever show they want to watch. We didn’t have all that growing up. That’s why right now I feel like I can negotiate a hostage situation, because I had to learn how to negotiate as a means of survival in the Kelsey household.

Come on y’all. You’ve been around groups of people where everybody is digging their heels in. Nobody is willing to flex. It becomes a toxic environment, not to mention unproductive. And God says, “Christians, those who have been redeemed by the grace of God and have the Spirit of God, Christians should be the ones to break the standoff.” We should be the ones willing to lay down our lives, our preferences, our opinions, our egos in order to bless others. And see, this is why gentleness is so often listed alongside humility because sometimes it requires you to relinquish what you want and what’s best for you. Dave Young, one of our pastors here, is one of the best examples of this in my life. And to be honest, it’s kind of great, but it’s also kind of annoying. You know what I’m saying?

If you’ve met David, you already know what I’m talking about. He will lay out a 32-slide presentation arguing why his idea is better than your idea.

But you know what the last slide will be? He will say at the end of all of this sprawling argument, “But I might be wrong. I’ll do what’s best for the team.” I don’t know whether to applaud that or just be frustrated by that. But let me ask you, are you the kind of person who always expects everybody else to bend towards you? Are you always argumentative and stubborn? Listen, that’s not a virtue. If you’re a Christian, you can’t just talk that up to being type A. A gentle person, a person under the control of the Holy Spirit, is someone who is flexible and easy to work with not because we don’t have opinions or standards and not because we compromise our core convictions, but because like our Savior, we are eager to put others’ interests ahead of our own. A gentle person is willing to yield.

Here’s number three. A gentle person takes time to figure out the most appropriate response rather than being driven by their first emotional response. Let me say that again. A gentle person takes time to figure out the most appropriate response rather than being driven by their first emotional response. And this is hard sometimes it’s been real hard in these last couple weeks because often we’re controlled by our emotions rather than by our obedience to God. And we think our feelings have to be expressed the moment we feel them, like it’s weak or inauthentic for us to hold back.

Come on, y’all. You ever popped off on somebody only to realize that they didn’t even do what you thought they did? Or maybe they did do something wrong, but listen, had you just taken a moment, you would have realized it really wasn’t as big a deal as it initially felt.

If you had just slowed down for long enough, you would have had a much more chill and much more appropriate response. I think the Holy Spirit is applying His word to email. Come on, we got trigger fingers on email. We will respond in a heartbeat. And the Holy Spirit works through my wife. She tells me the 24-hour rule. Type up the email, that’s fine. Just save it as a draft. Don’t accidentally hit send too quick. You know what I’m saying? Because your job might be on the line, but just save it as a draft and then come back to it 24 hours later when your emotions settle a bit, you’re a little bit more objective, and you can actually evaluate, is this the appropriate response? Proverbs 15:1. Proverbs 15:1 says, “A soft answer turns away wrath.” Some translations say a gentle answer, “but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

Proverbs 15:18 says, “A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel.” Listen, if you want to grow in gentleness, you have to learn to interrogate your instincts.

You got to ask yourself two questions. Is this necessary, and will this be helpful? And some of you, you need to write down those two questions like we as followers of Jesus who want to be gentle, we want the most appropriate response, how do you figure that out? You got to slow down and you got to ask, is this necessary, what I’m about to say, what I’m about to do, is it necessary to accomplishing what’s right and will it be helpful? Because if we’re not careful, we can wound people in ways that we’ll regret.

And some of y’all have been here before where you gave into your first emotional response and you said things and you did things that you regret now because you wounded people in the process. And that’s the next characteristic here. A gentle person is careful with other people’s weaknesses and wounds.

Man, this is hard for some of us, some of us because of our personality, some of us because of the ways that we were raised, some of us because we’ve been trained to be hard and to not respect weakness and wounds. And so we just throw our weight around. But I want you to think about Jesus. Matthew 11:28-30.

Matthew 11:28-30, listen to what Jesus says, how He responds to weakness and woundedness. He says, “Come to me all who labor in our heavily laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Listen to how Jesus has described the coming Messiah, Isaiah 42:3. It’s one of the verses that the Holy Spirit uses the most in my heart, y’all, because I struggle with this gentleness thing. Listen to how Jesus has described a bruised reed He will not break, and a faintly burning wick He will not quench.

Listen, gentleness requires us to see and consider a person’s weakness and their woundedness and allow that to influence the way we respond to people and interact with people. If you just want to be a better person in general, but if you want to follow Jesus and your desire is to be like Him, then we follow Jesus who sees weaknesses and wounds and rather than condemning them, Psalm 103, “As a father has compassion, God has compassion on us,” because He knows our frame. He knows that we are frail and we are weak and that we are but dust.

A gentle person is careful with people’s weaknesses and their wounds. And then number five, a gentle person chooses to respond to injustice without vengeance or bitterness.

Listen, can I be honest with you for a sec? I’m just going to be going to just real honest. I didn’t want to preach this passage. I thought about softening that and being like, “I struggled.” No, no, no. I just flat out did not want to preach this. We had already laid out Philippians 4 assigned who was going to preach what weeks. And it just so happened that I was up this week and I struggled with this verse for two reasons. The first is a sinful reason, because I’m tempted to let my anger be destructive instead of constructive. In the midst of everything that’s happening in our culture right now, the hostility that is raging, the tension around injustice and around race in our country. Honestly, I am tempted to let my anger be destructive instead of constructive. Constructive anger sees wrong and is motivated to fix it. Destructive anger is aimed at causing harm to people.

And in my pride, sometimes I just want to pop off because what you won’t do is disrespect me. That’s how I feel. Some of y’all… Don’t leave me up here by myself. Some of y’all feel like that, like there’s a whole lot you can do, but what you won’t do is disrespect me. We can feel like that sometimes. And so I’ve had to surrender that sinful impulse in me to the Holy Spirit and let the Spirit produce in me a deeper desire to honor Christ rather than just responding emotionally. But I struggle with this verse for another reason, and I think this is a righteous reason. And so many people throughout history have struggled with verses like Philippians 4:5 and calls to gentleness and kindness, because listen, when gentleness is misunderstood, it can easily be manipulated.

We’ve seen it in so many situations and all throughout history where people used gentleness or kindness as a way to silence hurting and oppressed people. For some people be kind, be gentle is a way of saying don’t make such a fuss about your pain. Don’t inconvenience us with your claims of injustice of injustice. Abuse victims are asked not to ruffle any feathers.

People suffering under inequality are asked to maintain the status quo, all in the name of gentleness. And so I honestly struggled with this verse, and if I’m honest, I want to ignore it sometimes, but Jesus won’t let me because this is all over the Bible, like a gentle person choosing to respond to injustice without vengeance or bitterness. It’s all over the Bible. So much so that this is not just a principle in the Bible, this is a theme in the Bible.

2 Timothy 2, look at 2 Timothy 2:23. It says, listen, Paul is writing to his protege, this young pastor Timothy, right? And he says, “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies. You know that they breed quarrels and the Lord’s servant,” listen, just like we talked about with elder qualifications, “the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil.” What? “Correcting his opponents with gentleness.” You see the balance.

Correcting his opponents, but with gentleness. And listen, here’s why. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. Listen, God says, be gentle in the way you handle people who oppose you because they might actually repent and they might actually find God’s grace and find life and listen to me, sometimes we can be so angry that if we’re honest, we don’t even want the person to repent because that would mean we would no longer be able to cling to our anger.

Some of you have been so angry for so long that it’s all you know. Maybe you were raised to be angry toward that person, toward that family member, maybe toward your father, or maybe you were raised to be angry toward that group of people. And you think that to be kind or gentle or gracious to this person or to this group of people would be to somehow excuse their sin. But listen to what God says, brothers and sisters. Romans 12. Listen, Romans 12:17, he says, “Repay no one evil for evil,. But give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay,’ says the Lord. To the contrary,” and this is where I be having problems. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by doing so, you will heat burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

And this is so hard because this is the one right here that requires us to die to our pride. And quite frankly, it’s just plain difficult to not just do, but to want to do. Now, I want to be clear. I don’t think God is telling people who suffer abuse and injustice to never do anything about it. We know that because Paul also wrote Romans 13, where Paul describes the government, listen, as an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrong doer. And so we should hold the justice system accountable to do what it’s supposed to do. We should use appropriate means in order to secure justice and protection for victims of abuse. But listen, this is the key. This is the turning point in your heart.

Listen, there’s a difference between justice and vengeance, between holding someone accountable and seeking personal retaliation. Remember the definition of gentleness. It is making a decision to only use the amount of force necessary to accomplish what’s right, but we are tempted to go beyond what’s necessary for what’s right because we want personal retaliation and vengeance.

And God says that’s not an option for a follower of Jesus. It’s not an option. And listen, the Jesus who commands that of us is not a Jesus who is unfamiliar with what that feels like. We have a high priest who’s able to sympathize with our weaknesses. Look at 1 Peter 2. Look at how Jesus is described. It says, “When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten.” But listen, here’s how He did it. “He continued entrusting Himself to Him.” To God the Father who judges justly. You see the same thing in Isaiah 53.

Jesus, our Savior, who was perfect and who was divine, allowed Himself to be forced out of His homeland as a refugee into Egypt. He allowed Himself to be wrongfully arrested. He allowed himself to be beaten and to be tortured. He allowed Himself to be strung up on a cross like a criminal in front of all of these people and to be mocked and to be spat on and to look at these Roman soldiers who could be evaporated in a second.

He experienced all of that. And you know what He did? He made a conscious decision that I’m not going to get out of pocket, I’m going to stay focused on my Father’s will. I’m going to accomplish what is right, what is right in this situation, what I have been sent here to do. I have been sent here to become the Lamb who is slain for the sins of the world. And He entrusted himself to God the Father who judges justly. And so we follow Jesus’s example for this last characteristic. A gentle person, and I would say this is where it gets specific to Christians.

A gentle Christian is someone who is ultimately motivated by their relationship with the Lord. They are constantly depending on the Lord. That’s why Paul says, “Let your reasonableness be made known to everyone.” And he says, “For the Lord is at hand.” The Lord is at hand.

Listen, when you are experiencing difficult people or when you suffer, you are not alone. The Lord is at hand. The Lord is at hand. The Lord is near. He is with you and His Holy Spirit, the power of the Spirit is in you and that power, Galatians 5, will produce the gentleness that you want to obey. Remember that the Lord is at hand, He’s near and He is watching you, y’all. Every careless word we give an account for. Our Lord is near, He is watching us and He expects us to obey Him. And the Lord is at hand. He’s near. Listen, one day He will vindicate you. He will vindicate you. Proverbs 20:22 says, “Do not say I’ll pay you back for this wrong. Wait for the Lord and he will offend you.”

This is what we see in Jesus as He humbled Himself and He fulfilled His purpose. He obeyed his father. He did what was right, and He got up three days later and He was given the name that was above every name. He didn’t lose any respect. He was given the name that was above every name. So at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And listen, brothers and sisters, Christians have clung to this promise for all of church history, persecuted Christians and suffering Christians all over the world and throughout history have clung to the promise that the Lord is at hand and that those who put their trust in Him will never be put to shame. Listen, gentleness is a better way.

It is a Godly way to respond to difficult people. And it’s difficult to do it. It’s difficult to even want to do it. But the Lord is with us. He has not only modeled it for us, but He empowers us to do it.

And listen, by being gentle, we will not sacrifice anything because our Lord will make all things right. Now, listen, some of you, before we close, you need to begin a relationship with the Lord Jesus, this Jesus that we’ve been talking about who desires to be gentle with your sin. And so wherever you are, I’m going to lead us in prayer. And wherever you are, you can just say directly to God. You can just confess your sin to God. Tell Him that you know you deserve His punishment. Ask Him to save you and tell Him that you’re putting all of your trust in His death that paid the price for your sins and in His resurrection, and He promises He will save you. Let’s pray together.

Oh, Father, we thank you so much for the ways that you are gentle with us. And God, I pray for any people right now who coming into this message that have not known you, Lord, I pray that you would draw their hearts, Father, that they would humble themselves before you, and they would humble themselves before you and acknowledge their sin, Lord, and they will put their trust in the sacrifice of Jesus. Help them not to fear coming to you because you promise that you’ll receive them with gentleness and graciousness. Lord God, would you save them according to your word, Lord God.

And Father, I pray for those of us who are followers of Jesus, in our relationships, all of our relationships, would you produce the fruit of the Spirit in us, the fruit of gentleness, would you make us more gentle, Lord God, and give us the peace that comes with that Lord God, and ultimately the glory that you receive from it? We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.