Developing Meekness (Part 2)

Now, that should remind you of Jesus Christ. Let's talk about Jesus Christ because He's the perfect example of everything we should become. The Bible tells us we should be becoming more and more like Him. Back in John 2, there's a similar situation with Jesus Christ. The world likes to picture Jesus Christ as this gentle, demure man who would never dare raise His voice, who would never dare upset anyone. That He is just a very gentle, almost timid man who wouldn't do anything. But in John 2, and He conducted Himself that way in a while. He wasn't one who was going about Israel, flapping heads, doing whatever He could to get their attention.

He spoke and He was gentle and He was kind and compassionate. But in John 2, we see another side of Him. In John 2, verse 14, He is coming to the temple, which was the place where God dwelt, and the Jews knew this was the place where God dwelt. In verse 14, it says, He found, Christ found in the temple, those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.

And He said to those who sold doves, Take these things away. Don't make My Father's house a house of merchandise. Don't you disrespect God. This is His house. This is in the place of merchandise. Don't you mock Him. Don't you minimize what He's doing. You hold and respect the things of God. You say, This is God's house. You respected His God's house. And He made a scene that day, and He got the attention of the people. That's what you call righteous anger. Righteous anger. He wasn't defending Himself, but He was defending God. And He was defending the truth of God, and He was defending the things of God. And when it was the things of God, He would get angry, and He would do what needed to be done.

So righteous anger in the face of people disrespecting or dishonoring God is a trait, a noble trait, part of what God would want us to be developing. Back in the book of Mark, let's look at another thing. Again, there are many things that we could talk about, Jesus Christ. But let's look back in Mark 15. Here He is. He's been arrested. He's been taken to the Sanhedrin. They've determined that He's a blasphemer.

They want Him to put to death. They drag Him to Pilate because they can't confer the death penalty on Christ, but Pilate can. In Mark 15, verse 2, as Pilate is talking to Him, it says, He asked Christ, Are you the king of the Jews?

Christ answered and said, It is as you say. And the chief priests accused Him of many things, but Christ answered not. Now, if you and I were there, or any other natural man, if you were being accused, especially falsely accused, you would want to respond. You wouldn't be able to sit there and listen to those things about yourself. You would say, No, that's not. You would argue with them. You would show all the examples. Christ said nothing.

He said nothing. And Pilate asked Him again, verse 4, Do you answer nothing? See how many things they testify against you. And Jesus still answered nothing. So that Pilate marveled. How could this man, how could this man who has riled so many people, this man that I've heard has performed miracles, this man who I've heard has done these things, how could he sit back and say nothing?

Why isn't he responding? He had a control, a total control over himself. He knew what the plan of God was. He knew what needed was going to happen. And he controlled himself and didn't fall prey to the natural tendencies that a human would have and that you and I might have. Pilate marveled because in him not reviling again, he saw a strength in him that absolutely captured him. He was all about armies and chariots and power and victory, but what he saw in Christ was a power he hadn't seen before, a control over himself that fascinated him.

You can mark down 1 Peter 2, 23 as well. That verse says that Christ endured everything he did without resentment. All the pain that he suffered, all the torture that he went through, he didn't become bitter against the people. Instead, what he said was, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. And to this day, he loves all of mankind and his will is that all of mankind will repent and come to eternal life. Over in Revelation 5, all those things in the Bible, all those eight, nine things that we talked about, God would have us develop in our lives. In Revelation 5, we see kind of a picture of Jesus Christ.

Revelation 5, verse 5, as the scrolls are about to be opened, they couldn't find anyone to open them, and it was determined that Christ could. In verse 5 of chapter 5 of Revelation, it says, One of the elders said to me, this is, of course, John recording the vision that he had, One of the elders said to me, Don't weep, behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Ruth of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.

The lion of Judah, the fierce one, the king, the one who no one would go up against, the one who has power, the one who has might, the one who no one should or should challenge, the lion of Judah. But then down in verse 12 of the same chapter, as the hosts in heaven are praising God, it says in verse 12, they said with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb, worthy is the Lamb who is slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. He's a lion. He's also a lamb.

He was willing to give himself up for you and me. He's tender. He's gentle. But he's a lion and he's fierce when he needs to be. It's all under complete control, his personality and the traits that he has. He does and he is who he needs to be at the time that he needs to be it, like Moses, like Elisha, like Job, Abraham. Let's recount just briefly here the things that we've talked about in these examples. People who have enduring faith and a calmness that comes from God even in the face of great danger.

People who have a willingness to give up themselves and who you are so that others may find God. People who have patience and endurance through trials, confidence that God is at work and that all things will work together for good, as it says in Romans 8.28. People who can forgive and not have any resentment against the people that have sinned against them.

People who won't revile even when others ridicule or revile you. People who don't stand and defend their own reputation and what belongs to you over anything else. They're not about defending themselves, they're about doing what God's will is. People who are gentle in nature, but powerful and can display righteous anger when God is offended and mocked. Now that's a pretty good list of traits, isn't it? If you and I could list all those things, God would be very pleased with us.

And He wants us to have all those traits. That's what He's called us to develop and become like over the time that we have God's Spirit. I'm not going to tell you what the Word in the Bible that encompasses all those things, because there is one Word in the Bible that encompasses all those traits. We'll get to that in a minute. Before I do that, let me read what this Bible scholar named Dale Bruner said about this trait, this trait that we're going to talk about. He says that it is poise born of not having to assert oneself to be strong.

It's the poise of faith. It's when we don't have to prove intelligence to be smart. We don't have to spew advice to be wise. We don't have to be seen with influential people to feel secure. We don't have to be first to have importance. We don't have to have the last word to be right.

The ability or tendency to endure injury with patience and without resentment sums up what he saw, this Word in the Bible that encompasses all those things that we talked about. I'm not going to give you the English word yet. Maybe you know what it is. I'm going to give you the Greek word, though. You remember that in Koine Greek, the linguists say that was the most expressive language ever devised.

It was there on earth. It stand for 600 years, 300 years before Christ, 300 years after Christ. No language has ever approached what Koine Greek would do. They had words in it that simply cannot be summed up in one word in English. This is one of them. The word that describes all these things that's in the Bible is the Greek word, pratus. It's also pratus. Some of you might know what that is. The scholars all agree that pratus cannot be efficiently translated into one word.

You would need a paragraph or more to describe what pratus is. We have eight or nine examples, and we could add to those examples if we wanted to, to come up with pratus, what it means. Let me read to you from Strong's and some Greek classical literature analysis about this word, pratus and pratus, that we're talking about here today. We're talking about the Greek classes.

Does the Greek classics use the word pratus to indicate a conciliatory attitude, a determined moderation of attitude? Note that, a choice, a determined moderation of attitude, designed to bring people together, a determined moderation of attitude, to eliminate barriers of hostility or misunderstanding. Well, that's what Paul did, didn't it? He had a determined, this is what I will be, because I don't want any barriers between you and me. I want you to get the message of God, and that's what I'm all about.

It's not about me, it's about what God's message is. Strong's, Strong's Concordance says the word pratus, it says, it expresses power with reserve and gentleness. For believers, pratus begins with God's inspiration and finishes by His direction and empowerment. It's of God. Starts with Him and finishes with Him. Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. God is the author and finisher of pratus. In the Greek word studies associated with Strong's, it says this of the word.

It says, pratus is temperate, displaying the right blend of force and reserve. It avoids unnecessary harshness, yet it does not compromise and is not too slow to use necessary force. It doesn't compromise on beliefs. Some may think that it's compromising, it's not compromising. You know what you believe and you stand for it, but you would handle it in a way and it's not slow to use necessary force when that's required. But here I think was the interesting part of this. It says, for the believer, pratus is the product of the Holy Spirit. That is, it is never something humanly accomplished.

Now, isn't that interesting that even someone who is studying Greek would say, without God's Spirit, it is impossible to develop pratus. Now, just last week we talked about the Holy Spirit and something about the fruits of the Spirit before that. In fact, that we learned what agape and joy are.

And the fruits of the Spirit are when we have God's Spirit. The world doesn't really understand agape. They don't really understand joy. They don't understand pratus. And even this commentator or this word, this linguist here, says it can't be accomplished without God's Spirit. What is pratus? Where is pratus? Well, let's go back and look at the first time the Old Testament counterpart of pratuntes is mentioned. And that's back in Numbers 12. In the Old Testament, anav, A-N-A-V, is the equivalent to pratuntes in the New Testament. And in Numbers 12.3, it says this of the man Moses, who we have spoken of a little. In chapter 12, verse 3, it says, Now the man Moses was very, in the New King James, it says humble, but in the Old King James, it says meek.

Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all men who were on the face of the earth. Now there's problems in some of the translations of the Bible. The scholars say you cannot translate pratuntes into any one word in the English language. In the Old King James, where they saw pratus or pratuntes, they translated it into the word meek or the word meekness. But the newer translations, understanding what the connotation of meekness means today, thought we can't say that.

We can't say Moses was meek because he wasn't meek in the way that the world sees meek. Let me read. Let me read from the dictionary what meek means today. It means humbly, patient, or docile, as under provocation from others. The second definition they give is overly submissive or compliant, spiritless, tame. So the world hears the word meek, they think, you're timid, you're weak, you can't stand up for yourself. And so the New Testament, the newer translations look at that and say, well, that's not at all what pratuntes means.

We can't use the word meek. So they use the word humble. In another place, we'll see that they use the word oppressed. In another place, the word gentle. In fact, in the list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5.22, they don't say meekness anymore, they say gentleness. And it gives a miconnotation of what pratuntes is. It's kind of hidden what God wants us to develop. It's hidden in this mistranslation. I wish that back when they were translating, they would have just used the word pratus and said, you know what, we're going to have to coin a new English word.

It means something beyond what we can do. And here's what the definition of it is. And here's the thing and let people know it's something different than what they have. But that isn't what the Bible did. Now, humility is a part of pratutes. But it's not the only part. It's much more. Pratutes is much more than humility. The Greek word for humility or humble is tapinos.

T-A-P-E-I-N-O-S. So if you go back and you look at a Greek interliver, and you see humble in the Bible says papinos, that's exactly humility. And we know without humility we cannot ever be what God wants us to be. We can't learn, we can't develop, we have to be humble. But if you go back and you look at the humble and it says pratus or pratutes, oh, humility is part of it.

But meekness, this entire encompassing definition of what meekness means that we talked about in eight or nine examples here, the whole thing of what Moses was and how he behaved in certain situations, how Christ behaved. That's what God wants us to develop. That's who we need to become. So in Numbers 12, verse 3, Moses was there. The Hebrew and OZ, A-N-A-V, means basically the same thing.

It says, the definition is, it's meek, humble, lowly in spirit. Go back to Matthew 11, 29, because that may have triggered a thought in your mind when I said lowly in spirit. Matthew 11, we'll pick it up in verse 28, Christ speaking here. He says, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You won't be talked about anymore. You won't be in a constant state of stress. You won't always be looking over your shoulder.

You will be at rest. You will be at peace. Come to me. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle. Ah, there's the word prat-utis. It's not gentle. It's what the Old Testament, the old translations would call meek. And maybe we use the word meek because it's different and it's not something we ever use. At least I never use it outside of a religious connotation. For I am prat-utis and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Prat-utis and anav. We are going to give a brief definition of either one of those. As I look through the various commentaries and the word studies, I think the one that came closest was that meekness or prat-utis is controlled strength or power completely surrendered to God. Controlled strength, controlled power, completely surrendered to God. Now, that's not a word that we even have in the English language, like they say. There's not anything we can say without saying at least that, and really it's more than that.

But it's the control. It's not weakness, it's strength. It's not human, it's of God's Holy Spirit. It's an attitude of heart in which all our energy is brought into the perfect control and submission to God's Spirit and to Him. Now, let me read a few commentaries on prat-utis. What they define it is, and as I've got three here, and you're going to see the various elements that we've talked about here. Strong's, Barnes, and then an English Bible scholar.

And see how they, as they've read through the Bible, and they, you see the word pratus, prat-utis, and anav in the Old Testament. This is what they say. Of course, the old translation was meekness. Strong's, their concordance part that describes these things, says, Meekness toward God is that disposition of Spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, therefore, without disputing or resisting. In the Old Testament, the meek are those wholly relying on God, rather than their own, rather than their own strength, to defend them against injustice.

Thus, meekness toward evil people means knowing God is permitting the injuries they inflict, that He is using them to purify His elect, and that He will deliver His elect in His time. So they pick up on one aspect of it. Trust in God that He is working in you, and that whatever faces you, you endure.

You have that patient endurance that Job had, that James even uses the word prat-utis when describing that. Now, the Barnes commentary says this of the word. They say, The meek man is not proud of himself. He doesn't in any sense glory in himself. He feels that there is nothing in himself of which he can boast. It also means that he does not assert himself. He doesn't make demands for his position, his privileges, his possessions, his status in life. The man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself.

He is not always watching himself in his own interests. He is not always on the defensive. To be truly meek means we no longer are out to protect ourselves because we see there is nothing worth defending. Now, that touches on some of those examples. That we aren't self-absorbed, that we aren't self-interested, but that we are interested in what others and what they're about and what God is about. There is nothing in us. There is no position worth defending. Moses didn't defend himself against Korah.

He let God make that decision. He didn't take the time to boast about, I did this, I did that, and this is where I belong and this is where I intend to stay.

If God was going to remove him from that position, so be it. But he let God make that decision. He didn't take the time to defend himself. It wasn't about him. Self meant nothing. And as we look at the men of God, self meant nothing. They were willing to give up whatever it took to do what God wanted them to do.

It wasn't about them at all. Martin Lloyd-Jones is an English Bible scholar. This is what he says about prat-utase. Prat- or in pratus. Pratus describes the man or woman whose temper is always under complete control. It means power put under control. The meek person knows when to be angry and when not to be angry. They patiently bear wrongs to themselves, but are ever chivalrously ready to spring to the health of others who are wronged.

When the meek person becomes angry, he is aroused by that which maligns God's name or his work or which is harmful to others, but not by that which is done against himself or herself. There is, in fact, a lack of anger when they are harmed or criticized. And when they do demonstrate a righteous anger, it is controlled and carefully directed, not a careless and wild venting of emotion that spatters everyone who is near.

People who are angered at every nuisance or inconvenience know nothing of meekness. They know nothing of that fruit of God's Holy Spirit that's listed there. Nothing wrong with anger. Christ got angry in the right situation. He didn't get angry just for any indiscriminate reason. The Bible says, Be angry and sin not. Power brought under control. Learning to control those emotions. Learning to bring them into submission to God.

Being angry because God is offended, not because you're offended. Being angry because of something noble, not because of something that you think about yourself. Not being so worried about self and positions and whatever it is that could be that you would find yourself out of control. But power under control, Martin Lloyd Jones says. And so we find in three different commentaries there, three different aspects of pra us and pra utis. All of them are right. We could combine all three of them together and we'd have a more complete definition of what meekness, the way the Bible, the Old King James used meekness, something that God wants to develop in you and me.

It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It's not a gift in the way that we talked about spiritual gifts a few weeks ago. Everyone that has God's Holy Spirit, he expects to be developing agape, joy, peace, and the eighth listed one, pra utis.

Everyone is supposed to be doing that. Everyone is supposed to be learning, to be firm, steadfast, and focused, instead of being impulsive, obstinate, and stubborn. We could all learn something. I include myself about pra utis and what God wants us to learn. Now, it's interesting when you look back at the word studies and the information that's there on pra us and pra utis, and when the Greeks talk about it and how it's used, they spend a lot of time talking about it.

But what they say, I found one of them that was in kind of etymology, if you will, or in the analysis of Greek literature, it says, this is what it said about it, pra us, because they know it's something special. It's not something that everyone has. They knew there was this elusive thing out there that the commentaries say, only developed by the Spirit of God, they say this, pra us is the Greek for an animal which has been trained and domesticated until it is completely under control. It's broken like a stallion. Now, I remember a few years ago, after the feast, I brought back a video, remember, from Steamboat Springs called Wild Horses. Remember that? David Jones gave it out there, and in that he had a three or four minute video on how a horse is broken. And you could see the unbridled power in that horse when it was wild. It was not at all under control. It was just running everywhere that it needed to be. It wasn't listening to anyone, not doing anything, just doing its own thing. And it had to come under control of a master, because a horse has a lot of power, but it's totally useless to man if that power isn't brought under control. And so the Greeks say, and they would use pratus for that, it's broken like a stallion. And yet, in another sense, it says it still has power. It still has power.

And another way, it's not broken. The power is still there. But its spirit is broken. Its power, its strength, all of its good attributes now can be used, and the humans can use them because it has been brought under the control of his master. Now it's a useful animal, but a wild horse is really of no use to anyone. And so, in the same regard, God looks at us. We all have human traits that are noble, that are good. But if we continue to be wild, if we continue to display the works of the flesh that are listed in Galatians 5.19, that talks about the lust of the flesh, that talks about the anger, that talks about the controversies, that talks about the contentions, that talks about all those things that never promote peace, that never make for a stable relationship with God or with anyone else. All those things are supposed to be put away. But all those natural talents that God has given us, they can be used good, and that power can be used when it's under the control of God, when it's under the control of His Holy Spirit. When our spirit is broken, but we really become strong when we have God's Spirit.

Now, there's a verse in the Bible. Let's go back to Psalm 51. Psalm 51, the prayer of repentance that David gives after his interlude with Bathsheba, when he realizes what he's done. Verse 17, Psalm 51, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken spirit. When we repent, God expects our human spirit to be broken. We now yield to Him. We now surrender to Him. We now allow His Holy Spirit to change us and to direct us and to guide us and purify us, that the old is washed away and the new emerges. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise. These you will not despise. God doesn't want broken people who aren't capable of doing anything. God doesn't want people who are timid and who are afraid to speak or afraid to do the things that humans do, but He wants people who are under control. Jesus Christ wasn't afraid to do the things that He needed to do. Job wasn't afraid. Moses wasn't afraid. They did the things of God, and God expects His elect, you and me. Not to be timid, not to be afraid, not to be languishing in confusion as to what He wants us to do, but He expects us to be growing, because He's given us the spirit of power and love and of a sound mind. But that power and love and sound mind is not about us. It's about what His will is and yielding ourselves to Him. Now, let's go back. Let's go back for just a few minutes and look at a few verses in the New Testament and a couple in the Old Testament where Pra Utes is used. Let's first go back to Colossians 3. I'm not going to turn to Galatians 5 verses 22 and 23. There's the fruits of the Spirit, and when the eighth one there is listed in the New King James, it's gentleness, it's not gentleness, it's meekness, it's Pra Utes. But in Colossians 3 in verse 12, says this, There's the Greek topinos.

Put on, even in the New King James meekness, Pra Utes. There's the difference between the two. Put on humility, put on Pra Utes, put on long suffering. Bear with one another. Forgive one another if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. Put these things on. Put the old off. Put these things on. Develop them. Let's go back to 1 Peter. 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3, he's talking to wives.

And in verse 1 of 1 Peter 3, he talks about submissiveness.

Just this week I had a conversation with someone not in the church about submissiveness and wives being submissive to God, and the world has a misunderstanding of that verse as well or that word.

It says, wives be submissive to your own husbands. But down in verse 4, he goes on to say, don't let your adornment be the outside. It doesn't mean don't take care of yourself. Do do that. But let your true beauty come from within. Verse 4, rather let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. Gentle, Pra Utes, meek, and all that meek means. Meekness isn't just for men, not just for Moses and Job and Elisha, all people. Rather let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a Prat Utes and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. Drop down a few verses to verse 15. 1 Peter 3, 15. Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you. Be ready to give an answer.

And there even the New King James says, with meekness, with Prat Utes and fear. Don't be timid when you respond. Don't apologize when you respond. Do it with meekness. Do it with Prat Utes. Do it because you know what you know, that you aren't going to compromise what you know, that you're not going to make excuses for what you know. You're simply going to be forthright and tell them what the Bible says. Also do it with the fear of God in mind and know who you're speaking for and make sure you know what you're speaking. Let me give you a couple others that you can look at home. Ephesians 4 verses 1 and 2. You can look up and see where Prat Utes or Prat Utes is in there.

James 1, 21, and Galatians 6, 1 and 2. Among many other verses, it might be a good study to go back and look at Strongs and look at the verses that have Prat Utes and Prat Utes in them. Now let's go back to the Old Testament and see where Anav, A-N-A-V is, because that's the counterpart of Prat Utes in the Old Testament, Isaiah 29. Isaiah 29 and verse 19. 29-19.

The humble. That's not the Hebrew word for humble. That's Anav, A-N-A-V. The meek.

I didn't look it up, but maybe probably the old King James says the meek shall increase their joy in the eternal. Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Do you want your joy to even increase more? Practice, or let Prat Utes or Anav become part of who you are. Let's look at Psalm, Psalm 25. David uses the word Anav quite a bit in his writings. Psalm 25.

Verse 9. The Anav, A-N-A-V, the Prat Utes, if it was in the New Testament. The Anav, God guides injustice. And the Anav, He teaches His way. Want God to guide you?

Want God to teach you? And to continue with that?

Become Anav. Become Prat Utes. Practice that.

Way back at the end of Psalms, there's others in Psalms. I'm not turning to them all. Psalm 147.

Verse 6. The Eternal, lift up the Anav, the meek. He casts the wicked down to the earth in Psalm 149. Verse 4. It says, The Eternal takes pleasure in his people. He will beautify the Anav. My margin actually has meek there. He will beautify the meek with salvation. Now, one last one in Psalms.

I like this verse because, again, it shows the continuity of the Bible. God didn't change course at the end of the Old Testament times. What He planned, He planned from the foundation of the world and what it says in the Old Testament continues right through into the new. Psalm 137. Verse 11. David writing here. Psalm 37. Verse 11 says, But the meek shall inherit the earth. Does that sound like anything Christ said? Matthew 5, right? The Beatitudes. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. The meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. So, we know something, maybe more today, about what prat-utase is and prat-us and what meekness is and what the Bible talks about meekness.

It's great to have the knowledge. Great to know what it is. But what do we do about it?

Do you think prat-utase is something worth developing in ourselves?

Something we should be concerned about? Something we should be looking to God to see that it's happening with us? How do we do that? Well, one way we do that is to be aware of it. And today, you're aware that there's an attitude and a character trait that God wants us to have. That's a fruit of His Spirit that is available to every single one in this room that has God's Spirit, because He intended it to be there and the fruits of the Spirit He intended for every single person.

Before He can develop anything, you have to be aware of it. You know, we can prat-fruit trees in our backyard and we might not do anything with it. If you have an orange tree and you have no idea it's an orange tree, you wouldn't do anything to cultivate it. But when you find out that it's an orange tree and it's not producing the fruit that you want or that you don't see it existed at all, what do you do? You go back and you cultivate it. You learn something about it. You learn how those oranges need to grow, what soil it needs, what fertilizer it needs, or whatever else it needs to be. And it's the same with meekness. If we're going to develop the Spirit, we need to be aware. If we're going to develop prat-fruit trees, we need to be aware of it. But we also have to practice it. We have to understand it. We have to look at the occasions in our life when we fall short of prat-fruit trees. When we're not under the control of the Spirit, but we're under the control of our own human self. When the natural man is shining through and we're worried all about self rather than about anything else. When we get mad when someone offends us, but we can let it go when God is insulted. When we get angry for something but not angry in a righteous anger. When we're angry when we shouldn't use our anger, we're going to be focused on self and we shouldn't be focused on self. We're going to be focused on other things other than God. I'm worried about positions, everything else that could be that we've talked about here. When we fall, pray to it.

Make a note of it. This is a trigger and ask God and practice. The next time prat-utase is what I'm going to practice because without practice we are never going to be perfect. Without practicing God's way of life, we will never learn it and understand it and be able to teach it. Without practicing resisting sin, we will never resist it. We will fall prey to it every single time. Without practicing prat-utase and being aware of it and having it in front of our minds as we should the other spirits, the opportunities of agape. I don't want to say gentleness, that's a different spirit. We'll talk about it another time, a different fruit of the spirit. But if we don't practice those things, we will never become that way. They have to be part of who we are because we're in training and God wants to develop those fruits in us. But we have to do our part well in making the conscious effort to do that. Okay, let's finish in Zephaniah.

You know, making this prat-utase is extremely, extremely important. Maybe it's the least, least or the most misunderstood trait or the fruit of the spirit. Let's go back to Zephaniah.

There's some interesting verses here. Zephaniah is the fourth book from the end of the Old Testament. And I'll just close in reading these and leave this thought with you. Zephaniah 1.

Begin in verse 12 to set the stage here.

I'm doing well enough. Therefore their goods shall become booty and their houses a desolation. They'll build houses but not inhabit them. They'll plant vineyards but not drink their wine. The great day of the eternal is near. It is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of the Lord is bitter. There the mighty men shall cry out. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of devastation and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet and alarm against the fortified cities and against the high towers. A time yet ahead of us. Verse 18.

Chapter 2, verse 1. Gather yourselves together. Yes, gather together, O undesirable nation, before the decree is issued or the day passes like chaff, before the Lord's fierce anger comes upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger comes upon you. Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, pratutase, anav. Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, his people that have his Holy Spirit. All you meek of the earth who have held his justice. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger.