The Gentle

1Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. 2He opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. 6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. 7Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 8Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. 10Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The sound of a brook running lightly along refreshes people’s hearts. Block the running water with stones and it quickly gathers into a pool where children can play, but if no rain falls it soon shows what it really is. A river that flows on quietly without a sound, though, is not a place children can splash into and soak in, nor can a few stones dam it, yet it flows on toward the sea without ceasing and raises up a great deal of life. Children pick up flat stones and skip them, throwing stone after stone to count whose skips the most, and the river takes every one of those stones in. So the river goes its own way without wavering in the least. Watching a river that quietly does the work given to it whatever the circumstances, I found myself thinking about the gentle.

Jesus said that the gentle in heart shall inherit the earth. I think being gentle in spirit begins with a wide heart that, like a river, takes everything in, and with a faith that does not waver. A faith that is thankful for the grace of God and obeys it is a beautiful thing a gentle person can have. Most people like to be loved but are stingy about giving love to others. They want their own mistakes covered, but they are stingy about covering or shielding the mistakes of others. Such people have not been born again spiritually. You are a big-hearted person only when you know how to give as much as you want to receive, and can cover and shield another person’s mistakes. To have a gentle heart, you must work at throwing away bad habits and a hardened heart, and you need training in obeying the word. If you train yourself to throw away bad habits, though it differs from person to person, you can come to a mature faith as long as you keep at it. A bad habit can never be fixed by thinking alone. The bad habit you have now became a habit without your noticing because you did the same thing for a long time, so to fix it you must put in far more effort and time than that. Like a small puddle, some people quickly show how shallow they are. They are hard to trust, so even if God gives them an inheritance they cannot keep it. But a believer rich in grace like a river shows the patience to endure in silence until the trouble passes, even when Satan throws stones and whips up a strong wind, and so can instead become a threat to Satan.

Because a gentle person’s feelings do not swing wildly, they do not spoil the work God has entrusted to them. People who have not grown get upset the moment they are touched and get carried away by a little praise, so they are hard for God to use as his tools. People who act on their feelings and calculate their own gain have hard hearts that will not share or sacrifice what is theirs, so they do not take part in God’s work. People mature in faith and character already see through the problem itself, so they think of answers to it not in one way but from many sides. So rather than forcing down a flash of temper or rising feelings, they are unshaken because their character itself is good. People who lack the ability to judge a problem cause discord wherever they are because of their poor character and wrong actions. Such people must first admit their rough edges and their lack of ability. Then only by working to live according to the word can they become gentle.

Jesus told us to put the lamp on a lampstand. That means we should not turn the lamp down or put it out according to the situation or our feelings, but help people follow its light onto the way of truth. A hard-hearted person, though, wants to shine only on people who are useful to them, and turns the wick down and up according to their feelings, so they are not trusted. It is by living according to the truth that we carry out the mission of a steward, so God will trust such believers and give them many rewards so that they can widen the borders of his kingdom. Gentleness means a gentle and soft attitude of heart that does not avoid hardship but bears pain and endures with an active heart. It does not mean building up virtue so that people will call you gentle; it means that, to save souls held in Satan’s territory, you must first live patiently and well within the gospel. Pretending to love when you do not love, and pretending to be humble when you are not humble, is not gentleness. Among the gentle was Stephen: he shared the love he had received from God, and he preached the gospel for the salvation of souls even as he was being martyred. Someone like Stephen, who proclaimed the word even in the face of death to widen the borders of the kingdom of God, is a gentle person.

Acts 7:59-8:1

59They stoned Stephen as he called out, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60He kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them!” When he had said this, he fell asleep. 1Saul was consenting to his death. A great persecution arose against the assembly which was in Jerusalem in that day. They were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except for the apostles.

Stephen was one of the seven deacons, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, who worked for the kingdom of God. When he realized that Jesus was the Christ who had atoned for his sins, he devoted his very life to the gospel. God helped Stephen to do wonders and signs by God’s power and to proclaim the truth with authority. One day, when Stephen, full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit, proclaimed the gospel in the synagogue, the elders, the scribes and the people realized that the gospel was exposing their sin, and they began to attack him instead. Even with death before him, Stephen was not afraid to preach the gospel to the people throwing stones at him, and his face was calm like an angel’s and unshaken. The word known only in the head and spoken only with the mouth has no power, so the word must be passed on not as knowledge but through a believer’s life, as Stephen did. Only when you live by the word as Stephen did and preach the gospel can you overcome fear, whatever attack you face.

Satan makes us doubt the Bible and sometimes brings us hardship, to make us give up our faith, but you already have the wisdom to stand against him. Stephen believed that God, Christ and the Holy Spirit are alive, so he had no reason to hesitate in preaching the gospel. Stephen’s face, which looked like an angel’s, showed the people gathered in the council how great a peace salvation gives, and it also gave them a chance to turn back.

This is how people must take responsibility for their own faces. The face is a mirror that shows what kind of life a person has lived so far, so the older we grow and the longer we live a life of faith, the more we must come to resemble the gentle Lord. I am passing Stephen’s long sermon on to you just as it was because I hope you will listen closely to the word Stephen preached and learn how the gospel should be preached.

Stephen said, “Please listen to me. When Abraham was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, the God of glory called him and told him to leave his country and his relatives and go to the land that he would show him, and he moved him to this land where you now live. But he gave him no inheritance in it, not so much as to set his foot on, and no child, and gave him only the promise that Abraham’s seed would possess this land. Along with the promise he told him in advance that Abraham’s descendants would live as slaves in another country and be mistreated for four hundred years. After receiving that promise, Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. Among those brothers, Joseph was unhappily sold into Egypt by his older brothers, but with God’s help he won Pharaoh’s favor and became governor. Then a famine came over the whole land, and when the starving brothers came to Egypt looking for food, Joseph recognized them as the brothers who had sold him. But Joseph understood the will of God, so he forgave them and brought his family, who were suffering in the drought, to Egypt. After that, when the time of the exodus God had promised Abraham drew near, the people of Israel had grown to a huge number. A new king of Egypt, who did not know Joseph, tried to keep Israel from growing and was killing every boy born, and in that time Moses was born. Moses nearly died, but Pharaoh’s daughter took him and raised him as a prince of Egypt, and Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became mighty in his words and works. When he was forty years old he wanted to look after his brothers, the Israelites, but when it came out that he had killed an Egyptian who was mistreating one of his own people, he fled into the wilderness. One day, when he had lived in the land of Midian for forty years, a thorn bush in the wilderness of Mount Sinai caught fire, and an angel appeared in the flame. The angel called him and told him to take his sandals off his feet, for the place where he stood was holy ground, and said that he had heard the groaning of the people of Israel in their suffering and would now send him to Egypt. Moses came to Egypt as he was commanded, worked the ten plagues and the miracle of crossing the Red Sea, and Israel came out of Egypt with Moses. When they took Canaan, the promised land, the tabernacle Joshua brought in with him lasted until the time of David. David wanted to build a temple, but God commanded him not to because he had shed much blood, so Solomon built a house for Yahweh. But the Most High did not dwell in places made by human hands, because heaven is God’s throne and the earth is God’s footstool.”

After recounting the events of the Old Testament in detail, Stephen declared that God had fulfilled everything he promised the ancestors. Then he rebuked the people gathered in the synagogue for the sin of rejecting such a God. He rebuked them. Their fathers had killed the prophets who foretold that the Messiah would come, he said, and in the same way they, stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, had resisted the Holy Spirit; they had seized and betrayed the Righteous One and murdered him. They were wicked people, he said, who had received the law delivered by angels and had not kept it. When the people listening to Stephen’s sermon were cut to the heart by the word, they gnashed their teeth at him and shouted with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and began to stone him. Even as the stones struck him, Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit, and when he looked up to heaven he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at his right hand. When Stephen then told them that he saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, they grew even more vicious. Even at the moment of death he prayed to Jesus not to hold this sin against them but to forgive them, and then he closed his eyes.

The apostle Paul later died as a martyr for Christ, but at this point he was a legalist who thought it right that Stephen should be stoned to death. If Stephen’s face shone like an angel’s at the very moment he was being stoned to death, the normal thing would be for people to look back at their own sin. But the people would not accept Stephen’s words, because if they took them as true, they would have no choice but to be sinners who had killed the Messiah. That is how afraid people are of admitting their own sin. Yet it is those who realize their own sin who need Christ, so if you take sin out of the relationship between Christ and believers, nothing is left to connect them.

I passed Stephen’s long sermon on to you just as it was because I wanted to show you that the true gospel must be preached like this, passing the word on just as it is. The gospel is not about stirring people’s feelings with testimonies or shocking stories or jokes; it is about telling the facts just as they are so that people see their own sin. Stephen put none of his own thoughts, judgments or feelings into what he said about God’s work. What is remarkable is that even though he passed on the word just as it was, the heavens opened, and Satan was exposed, stopping his ears, shouting and gnashing his teeth. This shows that the word itself is the power of God. A person who preaches the hope of the earth rather than the hope of heaven is a false prophet, and a person who inflates the truth to win people’s approval is a servant of Satan. It is true that miracles certainly happen where the Holy Spirit is at work, but no one should put on an exaggerated show, as though they must perform miracles for people. Pastors sometimes inflate the word and tell jokes to make it more exciting and entertaining, but a sermon must pass on Christ just as he is. That is the will of God and the mission of those who preach the word.

On the day Stephen died, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all the church members except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. [Acts 8:1] Stephen’s death became the spark that set off a great persecution of the church and gave an excuse to throw Christians into prison. When such hardship comes, people will complain and doubt, asking why they must suffer like this when they believe in God. But the believers who were scattered preached the gospel in every country where they settled and worked hard to build churches. Through the death of Stephen, the gentle man, churches were built in many places, and the astonishing work of widening God’s borders took place.

Romans 7:24-25

24What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death? 25I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! So then with the mind, I myself serve God’s law, but with the flesh, the sin’s law.

Saul was very glad at Stephen’s death, because it gave him a chance to kill Christians lawfully.

But astonishingly, in answer to Stephen’s prayer, his earnest plea not to hold their sin against them, God saved Saul’s soul. Remembering Stephen’s short and earnest prayer, God, ironically, called Saul, who had been glad at Stephen’s death, and entrusted him with the salvation of the Gentiles. When Saul met Christ on the road to Damascus, he was probably all the more tormented by his own sin in having thought Stephen’s death right. So he probably tried, to make up for it, to walk the road Stephen had walked. Looking at Paul’s life, it is plain that he tried to become like Stephen. Like Stephen he worked to preach only the gospel, forgave his persecutors even when they persecuted him severely, and though he saw the third heaven, as Stephen had seen Jesus when heaven’s door opened, he stayed humble.

Just as Stephen boldly preached the gospel in the council, Paul too boldly preached the gospel in synagogues full of people and before governors and kings. Perhaps the more people were saved through the gospel Paul preached, the heavier his heart grew over the sin he had committed against Stephen. For anyone, as faith grows, their own sin comes into sharper view. Seeing sin more sharply is itself evidence that faith is sanctifying you and you are becoming gentle. So for Paul, Stephen was a forerunner in faith he could never forget. Stephen and Paul were holy men who, as the gentle, inherited the earth and showed an astonishing power to widen the borders.

Philippians 4:13-14

13I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. 14However you did well that you shared in my affliction.

The apostle Paul’s words, I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me, are the verse believers love most, because they give special strength when a trial too hard to bear comes. But if you read this verse to mean that you can have everything you want in the world, you will not inherit the earth. When Paul proclaimed these words, he meant that if you believe in God you can face hard times calmly. Just as Stephen was content in every situation, Paul, who followed him, had also learned the secret of contentment. So the verse means that anyone who hopes for the eternal kingdom can give thanks even for the hardships they suffer in the world. That is why Paul says in Philippians 4:12 that he knows how to be humbled and how to abound, and that in any and all circumstances he has learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need. Paul was not proud when he had plenty and did not despair when he was hungry and in need, and whatever his circumstances, if it was for the gospel, he came to have the power to be thankful and glad. That he learned the secret of all things means that the Holy Spirit passed a secret on to him, and that he was born again as a believer who went beyond the limits of the world. He came to have an astonishing faith that could give thanks to God for letting him suffer hardship and persecution in order to carry out his mission.

Had he not understood the love of Christ, it would have been hard to give songs of thanks while being stoned, whipped and thrown into prison. God gave Paul every piece of ground he set foot on as his inheritance. The inheritance in the world and in heaven that he received from God is an enormous reward. God promised to give the people of Israel the land of Canaan, and they really did receive the land of Canaan as their inheritance. You too believed the promise and lived by faith, so you will have received heaven as your reward. We believers are blessed people: as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. If we, who are so honored, are shaken by small things, complain, and live by greed and cravings as people of the world do, God will not be able to entrust the inheritance of the earth to us.

You who have become gentle and inherited the earth must work, as you preach the gospel, to widen the borders as Stephen and the apostle Paul did. When you preach the gospel and see the watercourse of the word flowing in the other person’s spirit, you can offer praise that rises from deep thankfulness. I hope you will become holy believers who show the world, through a believer’s gentleness, the gospel God has trusted you with, and save many souls.