Meekness

It's obvious that a tree is known by the fruit that it bears. I mean, an apple tree bears apples. A pear tree bears pears. We know that. We see these trees. We say, okay, we know what that tree is because of its fruit. We also know when a tree has bad fruit. Now, there might be fruit, but you go take—you ever have a fig tree—I mean, in Texas, a lot of fig trees—you go take a bite out of a bad fig, and that's an experience you really don't want to have, okay? Or you take a bite out of an apple and it's sour or has worms in it. I mean, you know a tree has bad fruit. A tree is not only known by the type of fruit it bears, but whether it's good fruit or bad fruit. And if you have ever grown trees of any type for food, you have to work with those trees so that they can bear fruit. You have to cultivate the tree. And a tree can go bad, and eventually you just have to cut it down. You have to cut it down, and because it replanted another tree, you can't get that tree to grow fruit. Well, that's what this parable is about that Jesus gave that's recorded in Luke. Let's go to Luke 13. Luke 13.

And verse 6, so Jesus speaks of parable, and he says, a certain man had a fig tree planted as his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit and he found none. Now, if you've ever seen, you don't get, I don't think, do fig trees grow in Tennessee? I don't think so. They take a different kind of climate. Do they? Oh, do you? Okay. When a fig tree gets loaded down, I mean, he could just be loaded with fruit, and they're really sweet.

You know, some people, my wife doesn't like figs. I love figs, so, but they're really sweet. But he goes, he walks to his vineyard, you know, where he's, and he has some fig trees in his vineyard, and there's no fruit on this fig tree at all.

Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and found none. Cut it down. Why does it use up the ground? It's just taking space. It's a worthless tree. Cut it down, and let's get another tree planted here. But he answered and said to him, so here's the man, the keeper of the vineyard and the keeper of the trees for this farmer.

And he said to him, sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well, but if not, after that, you can cut it down. And so the man who cultivates says, let me cultivate this. Now, cultivation is a lot of work. He said, let me dig around it. Let me see if there's problems with the roots. Let me make sure it's got a right water supply. Let me fertilize it. Now, the purpose of this parable is because this is the way God deals with us. We, as we started to talk about last week in this series of sermons on the fruits of the Spirit, we are planted by God.

And God expects us to bear fruit that comes from His Spirit. It is something He develops in us. What we learn from this parable is that the cultivation of fruit sometimes is not easy. There are times in your life, in order to cultivate the fruit God wants in your life, He's going to dig you up and shake you around. He's going to cut off limbs.

Sometimes you just have to trim a tree. He's going to cut off the dead branches. And every once in a while, He's going to come up with a big wheelbarrow of manure and dump it on you. So this is the Christian life. This is what is going to happen to us in order to bear fruit.

So understand that the cultivation process of bearing the fruits of the Spirit is not a simple O. I repented, had hands laid on me, I was baptized, I received God's Spirit. There, poof, I have the fruits of the Spirit. In fact, we spend our whole lives with God cultivating the Spirit. These fruits. We are expected to bear these fruits. Understand that bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit is just as much a command as the Ten Commandments.

It is just as much a requirement as the Ten Commandments. In fact, you can keep the Ten Commandments and not bear the fruits of the Holy Spirit, I mean in the letter. You can keep the Ten Commandments in the letter and not bear the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which means that God's going to come along, dig you up, cut parts of you off, and dump manure on you.

Because this is the purpose of our lives. In fact, it's the purpose of the law. It is to bear these traits in our lives. Last time, we went to Galatians 5. Let's go back. You know, we look at, and a lot of people are always concerned with the gifts of the Spirit. And that's a whole other subject that we'll go through sometime. But the gifts of the Spirit are something that God gives to each of us individually. Each of us have something special that God gives us that's part of who we are and our personality.

And it's a gift to use us in whatever way He wants. The fruits of the Spirit are to be developed in every single person, no matter what your gifts. No matter what your gifts. Sometimes we look at all this person has great gifts. I wish I had that person's gifts. Gifts are given by God individually. In the end, the gifts of the Spirit only are as important as we have fruits of the Spirit. You can have great gifts of the Spirit and fail miserably.

Just read 1 Corinthians, the book 1 Corinthians, the letter. Paul tells a church that had enormous gifts that they were failing as Christians. But they had all kinds of gifts. And he talks about their gifts and the gifts that God had given to them. So it is possible to have great gifts from God's Spirit and actually fail. In fact, the Bible shows us people that were given great gifts and great opportunities by God who failed. It is the fruit of God's Spirit that must be developed in every single one of us, among all of us.

Galatians 5, 22, this is where we started last week. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now, I said we were going to reverse this order because these fruits all combine and we end up with love. But really, we have to start at the bottom to start to understand how the components fit together. Last time, we talked about self-control and how important self-control is.

And it's self-control. It is something that is developed in us by God. This isn't a self-control you can do yourself, but you learn it. It's developed in you through God's Spirit.

And how that self-control is expected of us in so many levels. We talked about that last week. So let's look at the second one. In the King James here, the second one, working from the bottom up, is gentleness. Now, that's actually a very incomplete translation of that word because there is no English equivalent word for the Greek word. Some things just don't translate. That Greek word does not translate into any English word. The closest word we have is meekness. In fact, the Oaking James, it is translated meekness. The problem is that we think of meekness as a personality trait. Well, that's just a mild-mannered, kind-hearted, nice person. They're sort of meek. They never get upset. They never yell at anybody. And we tend to actually see it as a weakness. What Paul writes about here in this second fruit is a meekness that is a product of God's Spirit. So we have to try to understand what this is because God expects to develop this in us. If we don't know what it is, we'll have a hard time having Him develop it in us. But there is no English word to use. Let me read what Vines Expository Dictionary of Greek Words says. This word meekness, if we translate it meekness, is chiefly towards God. In other words, it starts with an attitude towards God.

So it starts that way. It is temper of the Spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting. In other words, the beginning of this meekness is, I accept and submit entirely to God and believe that God's goodness is being carried out in my life, even if my situation is not good. So it has nothing to do with situation. Remember, as we go through these fruits, they are exhibited in actions, but they are internal. It is so much easier to deal with the external issues of Christianity. Thou shalt not steal. That's an external issue. I don't steal. The fruits of the Spirit all begin as internal issues. Self-control is an internal issue that exhibits itself in control. Right? Meekness is an internal issue that begins with, I am submissive to God. I am not fighting against God. I am not resisting God. I am confident and trusting in God. And this is how this starts. This meekness then carries over into how we treat others. So it is exhibited in actions. All the fruits are exhibited in actions. But they all must be internally generated. And this is why this takes effort and thought, and it takes prayer, and it takes understanding what God is doing in our lives by bearing these fruits. Let me go on and read what this dictionary says. The meaning of this Greek word is not expressed well in English, but the term meekness, mildness, commonly used, suggests weakness. Described negatively, meekness is the opposite. So he says if you want to look at what this isn't, it is the opposite of self-assertiveness and self-interest. It is a calmness of spirit that is neither elated nor cast down, simply because it's not occupied with self at all. It is such a submission to God that you're concerned about God's concerns.

And you're not spending a lot of time with your concerns. Now, we all have concerns. We're not supposed to ignore taking care of ourselves, those kind of things. But this is a life that is centered on what does God want, and I trust what He wants. I submit to what He wants.

It's related to humility, but humility is a little different concept, too. This is rooted in. Absolute, you are God, and I am not. This is what this is rooted in. It's in the fruit of the Spirit to say, I get it. You're God, I'm not. What do you wish from me?

This generates into actions towards others. It's very interesting. The word, and there's different forms of this word. I mean, in the Bible, you'll find it uses a noun and an adjective. I'm just talking about this word in its different forms today. I'm not going to go through and say, well, this is a noun, this is a verb. But because there's four different forms of this word in the Bible, but in the New Testament. When we look at this word in Greek, it's an ethical word. Like, you know, honesty. Honesty is an ethical word in English, right? And someone says, well, that's an honest person. We're talking about the ethical standards of that person. This word, meat, that we translate meatness because we don't have a word to put it into, this word is an ethical word. Now, I'm not going to use Aristotle to explain the Bible, but how Aristotle uses it helps us understand how it's used in Greek. You understand what I'm saying? You have to understand how it's used in the language. Aristotle said that the person who had this kind of meatness would know exactly what it would produce. They would only get angry when it was morally right to get angry and it would always be controlled. And they would never get angry when it wasn't morally right to get angry. In other words, the person has a calmness of spirit.

And that's how a lot of Greek dictionaries will describe this word. It is a calmness of the spirit because, okay, a calmness of the spirit because before God we trust Him.

We believe He's working in our lives. We believe His goodness is being carried out.

And we'll see in a minute how this is used in the New Testament to describe how we treat other people. This calmness that comes from God. That means we have to be in a prayerful relationship and to be asking God all the time to give me a calmness. Give me the meatness. But when we ask for that, we're asking God to… This is not self-control. As you see, as we go through, they're all connected, right? If I learn to have self-control through God's spirit, I begin to have a calmness. Remember I talked about last time that there's freedom from the self-control that's developed by the Spirit of God. As we begin to have self-control and freedom, we begin to have more calmness of spirit, which actually now changes the way we treat other people. Instead of with frustration and anger and hurt and bitterness, we begin to treat other people differently. That's why I said last week, when we go through the fruits of the Spirit, whether it's your marriage, your job, your congregation, who you are, these fruits are the solutions to who we are and our issues in life.

So with this calmness of spirit, the new American Standard Hebrew-Greek study, Lexicon, says this, It is a condition of mind and heart which demonstrates gentleness, not in weakness, not in weakness, but in power. It is a virtue born in strength of character. Okay, it is a meekness before God that is so real that you can deal with other people in their faults and in their problems with a gentleness that you would not do otherwise. Now, we're going to get into another one of the fruits of the Spirit a little later that says that there's not a time to be gentle. There's a time to stand up. So the whole point of the fruits of the Spirit is knowing how to handle life, how to handle life, how to handle each other. So the fruit of God's Spirit, this fruit of God's Spirit, préotes, is just to be so submissive and teachable towards God that it produces consideration and gentleness towards others.

As we tear this word apart, you're going to see that this fruit of meekness is produced by a number of things. And this is what we need to look for in our lives. This is what we need to ask for. This is what we need to contemplate. The fruits of the Spirit are cultivated. They don't happen by accident. They happen on our knees. They happen as we think. They happen as we interact and say, wait a minute, how do I do this? They happen because we're in the Scripture searching for these fruits, and we ask God to cultivate them in us.

How is this fruit cultivated in us? Well, three things. First, we have to be confident in God's goodness and work in us. It is a belief that God is actually in charge. God is actually in charge, and God will work this out if I stay focused on God. Our problem is we spend most of our lives focused on what? Other people. I don't mean in a positive way. I mean in a negative way. Actually, as we do this, we become focused on other people in a positive way, but we become very focused on everybody else in a negative way. So our focus is on God. That's how this fruit is developed in us, in a confidence in His goodness. Two, we humbly submit to God, which brings a calmness upon us. God will work this out. I will trust in God.

I will step back and say, God, show me what to do, and I will submit to it. I will do what I'm supposed to do here, even if I don't want to, because it's what's right. And in this humble submission towards God, the frustration and the anger and the issues we have with other people lessen because our focus is no longer on the problem. It's focused on God. God as solution. So the calmness of spirit is what this meekness is all about. But the only way that happens is by this incredible humility and submission to God. Because where does the calmness of spirit come from? It comes from Him. So we have to do this submission and this humility before God, and as He then produces this fruit in us, we begin to find that other people don't bother us so much. We're not so easily hurt. What other people say don't matter as much as it used to in terms of the negative impact on us. It doesn't have the same negative impact because our focus is on God and He's developed this fruit in us. The third point is why we have to be concerned with God's interests instead of just living our lives with our interests. And as we are interested in what God is doing, we see a much bigger picture of life. A much bigger picture of life.

So here the word translated meekness, like I said before, exists in a number of different forms. What I want to do is just spend the rest of the time going through a number of scriptures and show you where that word is used in the context of a passage. Because we can miss this. You know, we miss this word. Sometimes it's translated gentle or gentleness or meek or meekness, and we can just miss it. As a fruit of the Spirit, we see how it's used in other passages. We begin to see how it's developed in us and what it will produce. In other words, if I want to have this meekness, I have to be submissive to God, but I also have to think about how does that change how I act, just like self-control. If I'm learning self-control from God, how does that change how I act? Okay, well, I'm not going to play video games at three in the morning every night anymore. You know, there will be a change in action. Do you see what I mean? There'll be a change in action as I learn to self-control. There will be, as we learn this calmness before God, there's a change in actions. So let's look at how this is used. Let's start with Paul right here in Galatians. You know, we were in Galatians 5. Let's go back to Galatians 5 because Paul uses this exact same word in this passage where he lists the fruits of the Spirit in a different context. Galatians 5, verse 26, we just read verse 24.

Get to just pick up where he's going to go here with this thought. He says, let us not become conceited, provoking one another and envying one another. So he's got to compare two things here. Now, he's leading them into an action in the next statement. Paul's setting them up for what he wants to tell them to do. And he says now, but he sort of sets them up because if they disagree with him, disagree with what he tells them to do, he's basically saying you're conceited, provoking one another and you have envy. So nobody wants to be conceited, be provoking people and have envy. So he's setting them up for what he's about to tell them to do. So he says, let's, now let's be clear here. The fruits of the Spirit, the opposite of the fruits of the Spirit is pride, it's conceit, it's, you just, you anger each other, you fight against each other, you frustrate each other, and you envy one another. Brethren, remember this is all one letter. There's no chapter break here in the original. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. Spirit of gentleness, same word just translated meekness back a few verses. So we see how this is produced. He said, if we're driven by conceit, by provoking one another, we just pick fights, we love arguments, we're always striving for control and power and dominating each other. He says, or if we're filled with envy, you can't do the next step. What he's telling them to do, there was a person obviously, or people, that had actually been probably put out of the church for some grave sin. They needed to be restored. They had repented. Since they had repented, he says, you have to restore them. Now, that's not always easy, is it? Now, I've known people in the church who have left the church because they found out somebody else's past and said, I just can't go to that church. I mean, that person was a homosexual 30 years ago. I can't go to that church. I've seen people do that. Or that person, whatever. But the person repents. He says, they're supposed to be restored back into the community. And how do you do that? Because you have this meekness. You are so submissive to God that you can now, as a recipient of God's grace, do what? Be gracious towards somebody else. See, remember I said last week that the fruits of the Spirit have to flow through us? Where does it come from? We have to submit to all this. We have our part to do, but you can't create this. This comes from God and we're allowing or submitting to it. We actually submit to God's graciousness. And the result is that His gracious flows through us. And we restore the person back into the community because they've been forgiven just like I have.

Interesting use of the term, isn't it? That somehow in this fruit of God's Spirit and this meekness before God, it changes the way we treat other people. We see it in those actions. Well, let's look at what Peter says and how he uses this word. Let's go to 1 Peter 3.

So are you still with me here? It's a huge concept. In Greek, this is a big word, much bigger than I can even work through because I don't know the Greek language. I mean, this takes pages and pages and dictionaries to explain.

And what we see is it's basically in the Christian use of the word, a submission to God that allows us to calmly deal with our issues with each other, with other people. That's why these fruits take a lifetime of development. You don't wake up one day and have meekness. It's a lifetime of development, but they are just as commanded as the Ten Commandments. They are just as much as expected by God as the law because it is the result of obedience and submission to God's law that is supposed to produce this in us with His Spirit. And so what Peter says, uses this in a very interesting way. I want to read a fairly long passage here so you could get the whole, you know, this big thing he's dealing with. And all of a sudden, this word appears in the middle of this discussion here, or this writing that he does, this letter he writes. Verse 8 of 1 Peter 3. He says now, he's writing to the church. He says, finally, all of you be of one mind. And now he's going to give us a model of what we're supposed to be in the church. This is what we're supposed to look like. This is what each congregation is supposed to look like as we interact with each other in other congregations. Now, it doesn't look like this very often, but this is what it's supposed to look like. He says, one mind, having compassion for one another, love as brothers, be tender-hearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling. But on the contrary, blessing, know that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. He says with each other, because of God's spirit, not because we just like each other, I mean, let's face it, you could go to a Titans game and sit around with a bunch of people you don't know, and all 30 of you have a beer and they win the game, and for five seconds, you're all totally unified. You're hugging people you don't even know, right? Everybody's cheering, it's like, wow, and your wife goes, who was that guy? I don't know, you hugged him. We won! You're unified. This is a little more than that, okay? Because he breaks it down, and he breaks it down into emotional components. We have to actually have compassion. Compassion is our actions. There's emotions involved in compassion.

We have to be tender-hearted. We have to be courteous. We have to treat each other with some courtesy and not be rude. But the real thing here is, when you are treated evil, you don't react with evil. Now that doesn't mean you don't react. We'll see when we get to one of the other fruits, there's a time to stand up against evil. In fact, we're expected to. But this fruit is having to do with this level of relationship where you don't say, you know, and here's sort of the human thinking. I mean, how many movies have you seen this way? Okay, I took it from you. You know, you beat up my kids, you stole from me. Every place I went, you always were intimidating me. You and this gang down the street, and you'd rob us coming out of the grocery store, and the police couldn't do anything about it. And then you killed my dog, and I get my shotgun, and I'm coming after you. Right? Kicking in the door and blowing people away. Well, that's not exactly the Christian response. Okay? We're to stand up against evil, but that's not it. It's, you know, what's his name? Segal? What's his first name? Andy would know. Stephen Segal. What's that other guy? Eastwood. What's he got? So he says, okay, even when you stand up to evil, you have to do it in the right way. You can't stand up to evil with evil. Now you've just gotten to pit with them. People are evil.

It's interesting, because then he goes on in verse 10, 11, and 12, and uses the Old Testament to support his argument. So he says, no, the Bible teaches this. So he goes to the Old Testament, and he uses that to support his argument. Then verse 13, all in the same sort of thought process. Okay, so I'm having to deal with evil and not respond with evil. And then he asks a question that's supposed to make us think, okay, if you are evil's happening to you, or someone's mistreating you, or something bad's happening to you, and you feel bad, you can't... I mean, it's not like you can feel bad. We do feel bad. We feel hurt. We feel frustrated. We feel upset. Okay. Now what do we do? He says, remember this thought, verse 13, and who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good?

Now we're back to this idea of calmness of spirit, because I know who God is.

I just had a funny memory. I remember standing... this was in a restroom many, many years ago, and some guy came up and confronted me just belligerently and went on and on and on and on and on. I kept looking at him and looking at him, and finally he stopped. And I looked at him and I said, why do you hate God so much? I don't hate God. I said, yeah, you do.

You're standing there yelling at me, but that's not the issue. And he didn't have an answer. I just walked away.

Why do you hate God so much? So we've got to remember that, okay, I know who God is and God's in my life. It's not an easy thing to do, and none of us do this very well. Well, I don't. Maybe you do. I don't. Okay. He says, verse 14, "...but even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed, and do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled." Don't be troubled. But, you know, something bad's happening. I'm trying to be a follower of God here, and things aren't working out the way I thought they would. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. That's an interesting thing. Sanctify. Set apart the Lord God in your heart. Let God reign over you. Let just go submit to God. But no, no, no, the problem is this. No, just go submit to God. Let God reign in your life. Let God control the issue. But, but, no, that's not a good idea.

Let God deal with this. Sometimes we just make an issue worse and worse and worse by dealing with it. Sometimes you have to just let God deal with it. He says, always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you. So you're ready to give a defense. You're ready to defend your faith publicly. I didn't do that this week, and I felt bad about it. I had a chance to defend my faith, and I didn't do it. I was at Joanne Fabrics. I know you're wondering, why was he at Joanne Fabrics? Well, let me tell you. I had run out of anointed cloth. So I went and got, you know, one yard of cloth and a pair of shears. And I walked up, and the ladies all behind the counter looked at me like one yard of cloth and a pair of shears. I said, yeah. She said, what are you making? And I said, nothing. And they all just stared at me, and they said, you're making nothing? And I said, actually, I'm not making anything. And I said, well, you're the first person that's ever come up and bought something, and you're not making something. And I packed it up, walked up, and I thought, you know, I had a chance to tell them about anointing, and I didn't do it. I had a chance to defend my faith. I should have. I don't know if it had done any good, but it would have been interesting to look at their faces. Oh, I'm going to cut this off and put some oil on it and send it off to people. They're going to be healed. So.

Yeah, maybe it's good I didn't. Anyways, let's get back to Peter here. Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Same word. That's a little derivative of it, but it's basically the same word that is used as a fruit of God's fruit. Be followers of God, or followers of what is good, even when it's not working out. And you do this because you have this absolute submission to God and you have fear. The fear is the consequences of not submitting to God. The fear is doing this without God. So I don't want to do this without God. So we do it with total submission to God. We surrender ourselves, everything. And as we surrender ourselves to God in this meekness, his calmness comes into us, and he's able to do things in us, in spite of the stress we might be under, or the problems we might be having, or the thoughts we might be wrestling with, because he's able to do it in us.

What's interesting is, because this isn't the end of the sentence, he says, having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. You know, with this meekness and this fear, we're without guilt, we're without resentment. We don't need to prove ourselves. Why? I know God, and I'm not God. So there's nothing to prove anymore. Boy, this is hard, isn't it? Well, man, I never knew this was part of Christianity. It's one of the fruits of the Spirit.

This is the part that we're missing so much of the time. It's the beatitudes and the fruits of the Spirit that we're missing so much of the time. It's not our law-keeping. We're pretty good at law-keeping. But this is where we must go. Then this last verse is interesting, verse 17, for it is better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. And this meekness, it's better, I'll suffer for doing what's right. We say, well, that's not fair. If we are totally submissive to God, the fruit of God's Spirit is the ability to say, I'll suffer for doing what's right, because I'm not going to do what's wrong here. So Peter's explanation is, and this word pops up in the middle of a very detailed explanation of what we are supposed to be as followers of the good. Now let's look at what James says. Let's go to James. Oh, let's see. Let's start in James 1.

You know, it's interesting. The more this fruit is produced in us, a couple of things happen to us. This allows us to deal with hurt and abuse from others in a totally different way. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, but our response is different. Our response is different.

For one thing, too, we become calm in God's control, and we no longer need to be in control of everything, to run everything, to have everybody meet what we want them to do.

We don't have to control everything. But there's something else that happens with this fruit of the Spirit. We begin to look at other Christians differently in that we don't see everything as a sort of a spiritual pecking order, where I am in the pecking order, because it doesn't matter. It's where I am with God. So we begin to see every person as having value. We see every person as having value. Other God's children!

It changes the way we view things. So eventually, this meekness with God generates something. And once again, the problem is there is no English word to explain this. There are only passages where we can begin to understand the impact of this word.

James 1, verse 20, is used here. So just this one verse. James is therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness, the implanted word which is able to save your souls. In other words, this kind of submission to God is open to His word. Receptive to His word. If you're not in this book all the time, how can you be receptive to it?

If we're not meditating on this all the time, how can we be receptive to it? This kind of meekness motivates us. It drives us to the Scripture, to look for God in our lives, and how God motivates us and what God does with us. Now let's look at another place where James uses the word in James 3. Now remember, every place you see meek or beekness in the Bible, in the English Bible, is not this same Greek word. There's a number of different words translated meek and meekness. I'm just going to ones that specifically are related to the word in Galatians 5. So we're looking at how that word is expanded out by the different writers of the New Testament. James 3.13.

I find this word, use of this word, by James fascinating. Verse 13 of James 3, There's Peotas. The meekness of wisdom. A submission to wisdom.

Wisdom is something we can lack sometimes. We understand basic doctrine, but we don't know how to actually live it. We don't know how to apply the teachings of the Scripture to everyday life. Wisdom is how we get from point understanding to point application. It's wisdom, how we make our decisions. But this submission to wisdom, so if we're going to submit to wisdom, we have to understand what the wisdom is. So let's continue. But if you have, and just like Paul did, he begins to explain this meekness by showing the opposite of it. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, and do not boast a lie against the truth, or do not boast a lie against the truth. So in other words, if the opposite of this meekness and wisdom, this submission to wisdom, is self-seeking and envy. Just selfishness. Just a life of selfishness, which our society teaches us. Our society is based in selfishness.

Because we live in the most rich nation in the history of the world.

And in all these blessings, we become selfish. You think we'd be the opposite, but it's not what we do. We become selfish. Verse 15. Now he's comparing this wisdom of meekness, okay? This meekness of wisdom, the submission to this wisdom, to this other wisdom, this wisdom, the wisdom of self-seeking and envy. This wisdom does not descend from above. Ah! So the wisdom that we need to submit to comes from above. It's not something you can just go read in a book. It's something that comes from God. Now there's another kind of wisdom that doesn't come from God that makes us selfish. It is earthly, sensual, and here's what I find really amazing, demonic. It's one thing to say, your selfishness, you know, when you're selfish, you're just being a carnal human being, you know? He says, no, it's actually more than that. When we're selfish, we're acting like Satan, because that's the core of his being. He is absolutely self-centered.

This kind of meekness is God-centered. It doesn't mean you don't have your own feelings and thoughts and needs and, you know, likes and dislikes and... I mean, we are human beings that are self-conscious for a purpose. God wants us to be that way. But we're not obsessed with self. We are outward because we're submitting to God.

We're looking for God's will in things. We're looking at what God wants in things. And every day in our lives, what does God want here? What would God want me to do?

So he says that it is demonic. Verse 16, for where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion, and every evil thing are there.

I don't know about you, but sometimes my life is in confusion. And I can honestly say when my life is in confusion, it's not because of God.

It's because I'm not connected to God somehow. It's coming from someplace else. It's coming from me. Meatness brings us into this relationship with God, this total submission, so that he can say, okay, let's work through some of this and let me calm you down, kid. I mean, this meatness allows God to calm our spirit.

So that we, you know, it's like, look, you take a big breath, kid. Like how I still have my grandkids, and I've told you this before, fold your hands, take a big breath. Okay, another one. Okay, calm down. Yeah. Okay. Now what's the problem? Instead of hollering and screaming, I couldn't understand what you were saying. This is what God does in this throat.

And every once in my own life, I've experienced this. And it's like, oh, thanks. Usually I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Usually I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. You know, how many have actually seen that?

Really? Oh, it's really amazing. You cut their head off. They run around. It's an amazing thing. It's, everybody should see that once in your life.

And then you would know why, why they say you're running around like a chicken with their head cut off. Now, everything, every evil thing is there.

Verse 17, now he goes back to this wisdom that we are to submit to in this meekness, in this gentleness, in this willingness. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, and gentle, and willing to yield full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy. When we submit to this wisdom from above, which is one of the fruits of the Spirit, what is produced in us then is this gentleness and this peacefulness and this willingness to yield. We don't always have to have our way. We don't always have to make it what we want. We don't always have to be right.

Because why? Because God is God, and I know God, and I'm not God.

And that permeates the way we see life. And this is the fruit. Now notice, he even brings us into a fruit analogy. Verse 18, now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. This gentleness helps us become peacemakers. We'll talk about peace as one of the fruits of the Spirit. But that is a much broader concept in some ways than this. That's where we started at the bottom of the list. To get to that kind of peace, we've got to begin to understand this too. This calmness of Spirit so that we can become peacemakers.

So James tells us here that it's part of our inner lives. We have to work on the inner life of Christianity. The inner thought processes, the inner emotional processes. It produces them what God wants to produce in us. One last place where this word is used is in Matthew 11.

Remember, these are the fruits of God's Spirit. These are God's traits. What we see in the fruits of the Spirit are the character traits of God. Aren't you and I glad, as I mentioned last week, that He has all self-control? If He didn't have self-control, wow! Well, probably we wouldn't exist. But if He didn't have calmness of Spirit, then what calmness of Spirit? How does that tie in with God? Well, let's look at... Remember, what we have in Jesus Christ is the perfect example of God's fruits in a human being. We can see what the character of God in a human being is like. So He says in verse 28, Jesus says, Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. So He's saying, you want some calmness? You want some rest? You're tired of carrying around the sin and the burdens and the stress of a life that just doesn't work very well half the time.

He says, you're tired of carrying this around. He says, Come to Me, and I'll help you. I'll take this burden. Now, remember this meekness I read from the two Greek dictionaries. It is an issue that this comes from strength. Something that comes from strength means that you have a choice and it's what you decide to do. You know, if you're a weak person, you may show signs of gentleness, not because you're gentle. You're just not strong enough to do anything. This comes from a strength that says, no, this is what I will do. Even if I have to take the wrong or even if something bad happens to me, this is what I will do. Why? Because God is God. And I am not. And Jesus here, as this example, says, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle. It's the Word. It's the Word from Galatians 5.

See, he says, this is what I am. I am gentle and low, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. What is he saying? You really want to understand now, this fruit of the Spirit. Jesus Christ says, you are not me.

Jesus Christ is God. He said, you are not me. But I have a so calmness of spirit, I will carry you.

It's interesting, he doesn't say, just the way this is said. I mean, he doesn't put any other clauses in here. Because I am this strong, I can be gentle with you.

Because I am this strong, I can carry you.

That is the heart and soul of the fruit of God's Spirit, meekness. You wouldn't think of God as meek, would you? I went to God's meek. And the meaning of that Greek word, yes, I am strong enough to be this great and carry you. So when we look at this, we can begin to see, as we go through each of these fruits, how they work together to make us what we're supposed to be.

Self-control and meekness work together. As we allow God to help us develop self-control, we avoid then being controlled by our own negative thoughts, our own sins, our own dysfunctional emotions. And it frees us from just the shackles of sin and the obsession of being selfish. Selfishness is an obsession that makes us unhappy and destroys all relationships. A selfish person never has a good relationship with anybody. And once we start to learn this self-control, now we can begin to be open to this calmness of spirit. Calmness of spirit that is confident because we are submissive absolutely completely to God as God. We believe in His goodness and we can now submit to that and in that submission to that, we become gentle towards other people.

We help carry other people.

To sum it up, and this, when you really get into it, this is what it is. It's not a term that we use today. It's not a term that means anything. It did a few hundred years ago.

When we have this fruit, it means we are so willing to be submissive and teachable to God that we actually become gentlemen and gentlemen.