Josh Jones and Matthew Warnock look at the last two fruits of the spirit: Gentleness and Self Control.
Josh Jones and Matthew Warnock look at the last two fruits of the spirit: Gentleness and Self Control.
Josh
So, I think the only reason I'm here is because I love Jesus and I think the elders have far too much confidence in me, really.
And to illustrate that, we're gonna start by talking about Trump. I'm only kidding, I'm only kidding! We would never do such a thing.
They've given me the privilege of talking about self-control, which is something I'm definitely familiar with and throughout my life I've had to very graciously figure out what it is and how to actually get this thing that we call self-control. And to do that, I think it's a good idea to try and define what self-control is.
Originally, my impression of it was something similar to this: This desperate desire to suppress something that's within us to the point that eventually it just comes out and we can't help it.
And this is still, to this day, I think partly what I think self-control is. It's like a compressed capsule and we're just constantly putting things away in the cupboard and trying to clean up the mess and then one day someone opens it and then everything just topples out and falls apart.
But the Bible has something very different to say about what self-control really is. And according to it, it is “Ekkrateia”, which is a word I don't think any of us really knew, but it means the power over oneself, mastery over one's desires and passions, especially bodily and sensual appetites.
But the basis of this word comes with the one word “en” which is in, and “kratos” which is power. So the idea is to have the power of your own bodies, your own desires, which is an enormous task, I think, for anybody. And I suspect everyone here has something in their lives that they really struggle with both internally and externally.
But we're going to try and get a little further into this definition and see what it is by Paul's definition. And fundamentally it comes down to this. It is not willpower.
It is a partnership that is done with Jesus and with the Holy Spirit. Without that, it seems to be missing a certain element. And we're going to go through that, right?
So Proverbs 25 verses 28, it says: A person without self-control is like a city with broken down walls.
We are defenceless. We are lost. We are helpless.
And again, James 1 verse 14: Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
So the implicit statement here is that no matter who you are, no matter how old or young you are, there is going to be something inside of you that is going to be trying to pull you in a particular direction.
And it may be more of one thing than another for you or more of one thing than another for someone else. But there's always going to be something inside of us that is trying to pull away.
But let's go over these desires and see what they are. I've picked a few choice ones. I figured that are pertinent to the modern day society more than some of the others that we can talk about.
The first is: TikTok. I despise TikTok. I absolutely hate TikTok. I think it is such a gigantic trap for attention and time.
And not just TikTok, I'm not hating on Chloe's favourite thing, but short form videos. The amount of time that we burn through these things is astounding. And I don't blame them because it's engineered by design to be addictive, to consume your attention, to give you the things you like in the right quantity.
It is unyielding, unrelenting, and constant. It is very, very clever. So I don't blame anyone for falling for the stuff. I'm the same. I also occasionally go through a bunch of videos and two hours later, I'm like, well, sorry, Jesus. But they do have their effects.
And so very briefly, 1.5 to 2.5 hours a day are lost from TikTok alone in U.S. children. If you put that into the idea of how much time you actually have as a youngster in your day after school and sleep and food, you basically only have about four to five hours in your day to do anything else. To spend time with your family, your friends, the people you care about, to learn the things that you might want to learn.
And yet pretty much your entire remaining time is being consumed by this thing. It's hard. It's not easy. It's very hard. So we do sympathise with them.
Another example is one we are familiar with, which is food. Everyone suffers from this one, I suspect. Food is everywhere and it is designed, again, to be addictive. It's very hard to get away from this stuff.
It is made with addiction scientists and people that were previously in cigarette industries to pull out all the things inside of us, all of the reward systems they go and put in us and incentivise us to consume and consume and consume. And to illustrate that, in a particular study, 35% of the people that were in it met the criteria for food addiction. That's how easy it is nowadays to become addicted to something like food.
Besides that, there's also other things, other desires that we struggle with, both men and women alike. Some are money, some are other visual things, and it's very hard to deal with these things. And so when we take out self-control, we are left with this overbearing demand for our attention and our time and our heart and our energy.
In Romans 6, verse 16, it says: If you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey.
And this also includes, well, not just people, but objects and things and desires and what your body is yearning to get out. It is really, really, really hard to overcome the flesh.
And I think it was Paul in Romans who, he essentially said this, he said: My mind is telling me no, but my body is telling me yes. You know, in a few words - also R. Kelly said this - but that's different!
And the idea is, no matter how much we want to overcome it, no matter how hard we try to overcome it, with our own thoughts, with knowing what is good, you cannot overcome this.
It is impossible to resist it forever. It is like this, young Joel was kind enough to lend this elastic band to demonstrate, but it is like this resistance band here.
When you are resisting your desires, when you are trying to pull away from these things, you are creating tension, creating tension, creating tension, and you can hold that for quite some time for some of these things. For some of us, watching football is not much of a temptation. It is not much of an overbearing desire.
We could hold this for a very long time, but not forever. For other things, the tension increases. Maybe you are trying to avoid watching too many videos.
Maybe you are trying to avoid chasing after a woman. I am not saying any of you here are doing that necessarily. Maybe it is food.
But some of those things are a lot harder to hold for much longer, and eventually, they eventually snap.
You eventually break, and the worst part of it is when you do break, it will demotivate you, and it will hurt you so much because you think, God, I am such an awful person. I have been a Christian for 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, even for a few months.
I know everything that I am not supposed to do. Why is it that I always fall for these same things? Why do I always suffer from these same things?
It does not matter how old you are again. There is always going to be something that your heart desires. There is always going to be something that is trying to pull you in a particular direction.
Sometimes, it is even money. Sometimes, it is your family. That one is controversial, I know, because we think family is always a great thing. But sometimes, our desire to please our family, to be friends even with them, can sometimes take over, and it hurts us when they disappoint us. It hurts us when things go wrong. It hurts us when they do not respond in the perfect way.
Unfortunately, we should not be surprised by that. Only Jesus can be perfect. If you present yourself to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey.
In essence, we become slaves to our emotions, desires, our appetites. This is reiterated later by, I think it was Paul as well, and in Galatians specifically, where we are told that there is no in between. There is no middle ground where you are being tempted or pulled by something.
You are not slaves to nothing at any point in time. There will always be something in your life that is pulling you. The idea, though, is to make sure that we are not trying to overcome this by ourselves.
If we do, this concept of overcoming the body with the very body we live in, what happens? Well, I think it looks a bit like this. The idea of taking over yourself, taking care of yourself, beating yourself into submission, what happens at the end of that?
You just feel worse off. You just feel worse than the position you started at. I do not think this is really feasible, but even as people who believe, so much of the time we are like this.
We are constantly trying to curb our appetites with the very body that is causing those appetites. If anyone here has ever struggled with an addiction, you know what it is like. It is hard to overcome those things.
It sits at the back of your head, just trying to draw you away from it. I think we are short on time. I do not want to take too long.
The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions, as we said.
Again, in Matthew 6.24: No one can serve two masters, for you will hate one and love the other. You will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to … blank. Fill it in.
It is impossible to have these two things coexisting, according to the Bible. You are either serving God or living in the Spirit, or you are pursuing the things of the flesh. It is like a scale that is constantly tipping from one side to the other.
When we tip in the direction of our passions or our desires, we punish ourselves, because we think, wow, I failed. Of course you did. Of course I did.
I, myself, have had an addiction. You are welcome to come and talk to me afterwards, if you ever want to hear about it. But after years and years and years of trying to overcome this, in my own strength, knowing what God has told me what not to do and what to do, eventually you just feel so defeated.
You think, what is the point? That is because I was too stupid to understand what God was talking about. So, next to that we have the flesh versus the Spirit instead, one or the other.
In John 15, verses 4, he says: Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.
And I do not think this is a mistake. I think Jesus is very clearly talking about the same fruits that all these wonderful people have been talking about for the last few weeks. These fruits are a product of the Holy Spirit. They are a product of being in his presence.
They can't be manufactured by us. It is a weak replica. It is a Temu version of the Holy Spirit's kindness and his love and his graciousness and all these good things.
And again, in Ephesians 4, verses 30, he says: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
So my final illustration, and this is one that I've been praying for the last few weeks trying to understand this because who am I to actually talk about any of these things to all of you who have spent many years with very different experiences from me and undoubtedly know a lot more than I do about all of these things and more. And this image I got was this idea of a fire and it was puzzling to begin with, but it slowly started to make sense when I really started delving into what the Bible says.
And in essence, how can you keep warm if you walk outside your door and you do not have the appropriate wear? How can you stay warm if you are naked, running around in winter, expecting to remain warm forever? You cannot. You cannot.
And so what do you do? So, when you're suffering, when you're struggling, when the flesh is pulling you in all its funky directions, you have to stand next to the fire.
We can't exist away from him. We can't expect to stay warm forever if we just pass by the fire and then run away and go do our own thing. And then we're like, God, where are you? And he's like, well, I'm right there. Just walk up to me. He's given us access at any time because of Jesus specifically to him.
There is nothing else that allows us to be in his presence, that allows us to invite God into our homes and into our hearts to remain with us than Jesus. I love Jesus, honestly. I think the whole Bible is constantly just about remembering him and what he's done, remembering that he's the one that has overcome this, that he's the one that's nailed our desires to the cross, our flesh to the cross.
And all these words that make no sense to us often, but in reality it's just about spending time with him. If I want to get to know Stu, I'm sorry I haven't seen you in some time. I need to spend time with you. And when I'm spending time with Stu, all of his marvellous, wonderful characteristics and knowledge, they rub off on me. And the same applies to most people. Yeah.
But you have to be in the presence of each other to get the traits and the knowledge and the familiarity with each other. Why would God, who we are made in the image of, be any different?
How can we overcome the thing we live in if we don't invite him in and we don't abide in him? So, to summarise, you get warm by remaining next to the fire and cold when you walk away from it. Seems so simple, but I think a lot of the Bible is about simplifying things and making them understandable to all of us and the people we know.
So, stay warm, stay by the fire. Amen.
Matt
Thank you, Josh. And I think that echoes in so many of the talks that we've got to stay close to the fire. I think that applies to all of the fruits, how we're not going to show these fruits unless we're close to our amazing God.
Now, I've got the subject: Gentleness, and gentleness in today's society is often seen as something weak. I want to say to you, it is completely the opposite. Gentleness is a strength, not a weakness.
Here are four different things here. There's a stallion, a lion. You know, a lion is a strong creature, isn't it?
It's physically strong, but it also can be very gentle. A properly trained stallion can be safe and an obedient partner. In inexperienced hands, however, they can be very dangerous. We'll come back to that.
I had the privilege of living with my mum till I got married and I experienced gentleness firsthand. I can honestly say I cannot remember my mum shouting in all the time as a child.
Yet, she gave very clear guidelines of right and wrong. She was prepared to tell me very difficult things in a quiet way. She gave me numerous amounts of encouragements, heap loads, loads of them.
And then the odd “you could do much better” encouragements, soft guidelines to put me back on the right track. We had the privilege for many years to have Andy Jelfs come and speak here. He exuded gentleness.
This man was six foot two. He had so much wisdom, yet he delivered the word in a quiet, unassuming way. He got emotional about stories and people.
He exuded gentleness. This is not a weakness. This is an incredible strength that we have.
In the Bible, we see lots of different people show incredible amounts of gentleness. We see Moses leading the people of Israel for 40 years, moaning and complaining, miserable as you don't know what. Yet, he handled them with gentleness.
We saw Joseph, the way his brothers were with him, but he replenished it with gentleness. We see King David. Saul was trying to kill him.
He had the opportunity for revenge. He did it with gentleness. We see Ruth, how kind she was to her mother-in-law.
We saw Paul, the way he was so gentle with the church. There are verses in Ephesians 4, 1 to 3. It says: I urge you to live a life worthy of your calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
I want to suggest to you folks that the biggest ever display of gentleness was from our Lord Jesus on the cross. I just want you just to imagine that me and you are the two people on the other side of that cross. You know, Jesus had gone through incredible pain.
He'd been whipped. He'd been thrown insults at. He'd had all manner of things which are impossible to bear. Then these two guys, you and me, are throwing insults at Jesus. You know, we all are guilty. I am guilty.
I am one of them people. I am one of the people there, up there. Thank God I saw that God, Jesus, was the person who he claimed to be.
I came to trust in Jesus and rather than pouring out scorn and saying, look, and throwing insults at him, I said, Father, forgive me. I want to go to paradise. I want to go to heaven with you.
My cry, and I have to when I speak, is, have you decided? We all have to make a decision. It's whether we say, Jesus, you're not who you say you are, or it's, Jesus, I lay down my life. I believe you. I believe that you did die for me. I believe that you are who you say you are. I need your help, God. Please help me.
It's interesting, you know, that I mentioned Moses. He killed someone. He showed great gentleness. He killed someone.
I mentioned Joseph. He basically said, you know, brothers, you're going to bow down to me. So he made mistakes.
King David killed someone. Paul fell out with Mark in the Bible. This man up here fails many times.
In the last meeting, perhaps, if I'm honest, I wasn't particularly gentle. On the football pitch, I was accused of fouling someone. My reaction wasn't very gentle.
I can remember often helping people. Yes, I've helped them, but I wasn't gentle.
But thank God there's been times, I think of a time this week, when a young lad lost his dad, you know, and he's asking me, three boys coming in for suits. He was a wreck. He was an absolute wreck. He made things awkward.He was upset. He was cross, you know, and I had the grace, because God gave it to me, to put my arm around this dear lad, and by the time he left, he hugged me dearly and thanked me for the time.
Now, what's the difference? The difference is, when I act in my own strength, I'm no good. God says it in the Bible.I can do nothing in my own strength, but with God's help, I can display not just gentleness, all the fruits of the Spirit, because it's not me. It's God who shines through me.
Jesus was different. He was completely connected to God. He had no sin, so he exuded gentleness. I love the story when the lady who was caught in adultery, he forgave her. He loved her, and all the others had to go their way. You know, we are that dear lady too. We've all messed up.
We've all made mistakes. We all fall short of the glory of God, and he puts that same mark in the stand and says, I forgive them. As long as you come and ask me, I forgive you.
I saw a lovely… I did use this in leaders' meetings, so forgive me for using this again, but I saw an illustration in my notes about a Remora fish. I never heard of it. I bet you Nathan knows exactly what a remora fish is, but remora fish stick on sharks, basically, and other things, but they love sharks, and what they do is they feed all of the food that the shark drops as it eats.
It also eats the parasites on the body of sharks, and it just, it can't swim for ever so long on its own strength, so it takes a ride on a shark. It offers protection. It gets them food. It gives them energy conservation. It helps respiratory things, and there's a mutual benefit both for the shark and the remora fish. What an incredible picture of what a relationship with God can give to us.
You know, we need to hop on that shark. We need to hop on the amazing thing. That just reminds me, I think my wife takes this a bit too literally, because she hops on to a shark quite regularly, but that's the hoover, so perhaps this is a bad analogy here!
But anyway, sorry, but no, you know, we need to be connected to that incredible source that is incredible, which is Jesus, and he will offer us that protection. He will help us go to places that we won't be able to go in our own strength.
You know, the incredible thing, you know, the incredible thing is that this, it's mutual benefit. Do you know God wants you to spend time with him? He just wants you to spend time with him.
He just longs for you to go and warm your hands by that fire. Isn't it incredible that the God who made this universe is interested in you and me? But I believe it with all my heart.
Please, please just go, warm your hands and just experience something of God's love. Go for a walk, look at creation, go and read your bible, go and listen to music songs. There's so many ways we can experience who God is.
I know I love Bear Grylls. Listen to this quote. I read this a few days ago:
Have we fully understood what Jesus has done for us and the love he has for us? With less false dependence on your own worthiness (less of us, less of me) and a greater awareness of our need for his help and presence (more of him) we create space to receive the light of God. Our flaws and hurts allow Christ to shine through us and they become a way for his love to reach others. Isn't that amazing?
I'll read that one more time. With less dependence on your own worthiness (less of us) and a greater awareness of our need for his help and presence (more of him, more of them times by them fire, keep hopping onto that shark) we create space to receive the light of God. Our flaws hurts allow Christ to shine through us and they become a way for his love to reach other people.
Now I want to just make the observation, if we spend more time by the fire, if we spend more time hopping onto that shark, we will give out the fruits of the spirit. We will show not just gentleness, all of these other gifts.
I honestly believe that we will then receive opportunities to share the love of God because we will be more interested in other people, we'll be all more interested in our God. We can only do that, and I mean this, if we fully understood that we're loved by God. We've fully understood that the God who created this world thinks you're unique, you're special, you're valued.
And then we start changing our opinion of other people. We start seeing people with God's eyes. We don't look at their specs and their flaws, we see them as valued people.
We see the good things in people, not the bad things. And then God gives us opportunities because they see fruit in our lives, not our fruit, fruit because we're dwelling in the God who loves us. And then people see that fruit and they ask us questions.
And I want to finish with this verse, 1 Peter 3 verse 15: When we get these opportunities, brothers and sisters in Christ, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you, to give reason for the hope you have but do it with gentleness and respect.
So as God gives us these opportunities, his will, let's treat people as God would treat us. And we can see great things happen in your life and my life because God is living in us and shining through us. God bless you, and let's worship our amazing God. Thank you.