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 rippling along refreshes the heart. Block the flowing water with stones, and it soon gathers into a pool where children can play; but when the rain stops, it quickly shows what it really is. A river that flows quietly, without a sound, is another matter. Children cannot splash into it or bathe in it, nor can a few stones dam it, yet it flows unceasingly toward the sea, nourishing countless living things. When children pick up flat stones and skip them across the water, throwing one after another to count whose stone bounces most, the river takes them all into itself. So the river goes on its way without the slightest disturbance. Watching it quietly do the work it has been given, whatever happens, I found myself thinking about the gentle.
Jesus said that the gentle shall inherit the earth. To be gentle in the spiritual sense, I believe, begins with a broad heart that embraces everything, as a river does, and with a faith that does not waver. A faith that is grateful for God’s grace and obeys him is the beautiful mark of a gentle person. Most people love to be loved, yet they are stingy in giving love to others. They want their own mistakes covered, but they are grudging when it comes to covering or bearing with the mistakes of others. Such people have not been born again in spirit. We must learn to give as much as we wish to receive, and be able to cover and bear with others’ failings; that is what makes a big-hearted person. To gain a gentle heart, we must strive to cast off bad habits and a hard heart, and we need training in obedience to the word. People differ, of course, but if we train ourselves to break bad habits and keep at it, we can grow into a mature faith. A bad habit can never be fixed by thinking alone. The bad habits we have now took hold without our noticing, because we did the same thing over a long time, so breaking them takes far more effort and time than it took to form them. Those who, like a small pool, soon show how shallow they are cannot hold on to an inheritance even when God gives them one, because they are hard to trust. But those who are rich in grace, like a river, endure quietly until trouble passes, even when Satan throws stones and stirs up fierce winds, and their patience can make them a real threat to Satan instead.
Because gentle people are not tossed about by their feelings, they do not spoil the work God has entrusted to them. The immature take offense at the slightest touch and are quickly carried away by a little praise, which makes them hard for God to use as his instruments. Those who act on their feelings and calculate their own gain have hard hearts that will not share or sacrifice what is theirs, and they take no part in God’s work. Those who are mature in faith and character already see to the heart of a problem, and they weigh not just one answer but many approaches. Rather than forcing down their temper and rising emotions, they stay steady because their very character is upright. Those who lack the ability to judge a problem rightly stir up discord wherever they go, through their immature character and wrong behavior. People like this must first admit their own prickly temperament and their lack of ability. And only by striving to live by the word can they become gentle.
Jesus told us to put the lamp on its stand. He meant that we are not to dim the lamp or put it out as our circumstances and feelings change, but to help people follow its light onto the way of truth. A hard-hearted person, however, shines only on those who can be of use to them and turns the wick up and down with their moods, and for that reason no one trusts them. Only by living according to the truth can we fulfill our charge as stewards, and to such people God will give rich rewards without hesitation, so that they can enlarge their borders. Gentleness means not running from hardship but bearing pain with an active heart, enduring patiently, and keeping a mild and tender disposition. We are not told to build up virtue so that people will call us gentle; we are told first to live patiently and well within the gospel ourselves, so that we may save the souls held in Satan’s domain. To pretend to love when we do not, or to pretend to be humble when we are not, is not gentleness. Stephen was one of the gentle: he shared the love he had received from God, and for the salvation of souls he preached the gospel even at the place of his martyrdom. People like Stephen, who proclaimed the word even in the face of death to enlarge the borders of the Kingdom of God, are the gentle.
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 Spirit and of wisdom, who worked for the Kingdom of God. When he realized that Jesus was the Christ who had atoned for his sins, he gave his life to the gospel. God enabled Stephen to do wonders and signs by God’s power and to proclaim the truth with authority. One day, full of wisdom and the Spirit, Stephen proclaimed the gospel in the synagogue, and when the elders, the scribes, and the people realized that the gospel was exposing their sin, they turned on him. With death before him, Stephen was not afraid to preach the gospel to those who were stoning him, and his face was calm and unshaken, like the face of an angel. A word known only in the head and spoken only with the lips has no power; the word must therefore be passed on not as knowledge but, as Stephen did, through our lives. Only when we live by the word as Stephen did and preach the gospel can we overcome fear under any attack.
Satan sows doubt about Scripture and sends hardship to make us give up our faith, but you already have the wisdom to stand against his forces. Since Stephen believed that God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are alive, he had no reason to hesitate in preaching the gospel. His face, which looked like an angel’s, showed those gathered in the council how great a peace salvation gives, and it gave them a chance to turn back.
In just this way, each of us must answer for our own face. The face is a mirror that shows how a person has lived, which is why the older we grow and the longer we walk with God, the more we should come to resemble our gentle Lord. I am passing on Stephen’s long sermon to you in full because I hope you will listen closely to the word he preached and learn how the gospel ought to be shared.
Stephen said, ‘I ask you to hear me. When Abraham was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, the God of glory called him and told him to leave his land and his relatives and go into the land he would show him, and then he moved him into this land where you now live. Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not so much as to set his foot on, and no child, but only the promise that Abraham’s offspring would possess this land. Along with the promise, he told him in advance that Abraham’s descendants would live as slaves in a foreign country and be mistreated for four hundred years. After he received that promise, Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs. Among those brothers, Joseph had the misfortune of being sold into Egypt by his older brothers, but with God’s help he won the favor of Pharaoh and became governor. Then a famine came over the whole land, and when his 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, worn down by the drought, to Egypt. Later, when the time drew near for the exodus God had promised Abraham, the people of Israel had multiplied to a great number. Because the new king of Egypt did not know Joseph, he sought to check Israel’s growth and was putting every newborn boy to death; it was then that Moses was born. Moses had come close to death, but fortunately Pharaoh’s daughter took him in and raised him as a prince of Egypt, and he 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 children of Israel, and he killed an Egyptian who was oppressing one of his people; when this came to light, he fled into the wilderness. One day, when he had lived forty years in the land of Midian, a bush caught fire in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, and an angel appeared in the flame. The angel called to him, telling him to take the sandals off his feet, for the place where he stood was holy ground, and saying that he had heard the groaning of the people of Israel in their affliction and would now send him into Egypt. Moses came to Egypt as he was commanded, worked the ten plagues and the miracle of the crossing of the Red Sea, and Israel went out of Egypt with Moses. When they took Canaan, the promised land, the tabernacle that Joshua brought in with them remained until the days of David. David wanted to build a temple, but because he had shed much blood, God commanded him not to build it, and so Solomon built a house for Yahweh. Yet the Most High did not dwell in places made with human hands, for heaven is God’s throne and the earth is his footstool.’
After recounting the events of the Old Testament in detail, Stephen declared that God had fulfilled everything he promised to their fathers. Then he rebuked the people gathered in the synagogue for the sin of forsaking such a God. Just as their fathers had killed the prophets who foretold the coming of the Messiah, he told them, they, stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, had resisted the Holy Spirit and become the betrayers and murderers of the Righteous One; they had received the law delivered by angels and had not kept it, and they were wicked men. The people listening to Stephen’s sermon were cut to the heart; they gnashed their teeth at him, cried out 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 told them that he now saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, they grew more savage still. Even as he died, he prayed to Jesus to forgive them and not to hold this sin against them, and then he closed his eyes.
The apostle Paul would later be martyred for Christ, but at this time he was a legalist who thought it only right that Stephen should be stoned to death. If Stephen’s face shone like an angel’s at the very moment he was stoned, ordinary people would naturally look back on their own sin. But they would not accept Stephen’s words, because if they did, they would have no choice but to stand as sinners who had killed the Messiah. That is how deeply people fear admitting their own sin. Yet since it is those who recognize their sin who need Christ, take sin out of the relationship between Christ and his people and nothing is left to bind them together.
I have passed on Stephen’s long sermon to you in full because I wanted you to see that the true gospel must be preached in just this way, delivering the word as it is. The gospel is not a testimony, a sensational story, or a joke that plays on people’s emotions; it is the truth told just as it is, so as to make people see their own sin. Stephen proclaimed God’s work without adding any of his own thoughts, judgments, or feelings. What is astonishing is that although he simply proclaimed the word as it was, the heavens opened, and Satan came out into the open, stopping his ears, shouting, and gnashing his teeth. Here we see that the word itself is the power of God. Those who preach earthly hopes more than the hope of heaven are false prophets, and those who inflate the truth to win human approval are servants of Satan. It is true that miracles happen wherever the Holy Spirit is at work, but we must not exaggerate and behave as though it were up to us to put on miracles for people. Pastors sometimes embellish the word or tell jokes to make it more stirring and entertaining, but a sermon has to present Christ as he is. That is the will of God, and that is the calling of those who preach the word.
On the day Stephen died, a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem, and everyone except the apostles was scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. [Acts 8:1] Stephen’s death became the spark for a great persecution of the church and gave a pretext for throwing Christians into prison. Faced with such hardship, people tend to complain and doubt, asking why they should suffer like this when they believe in God. But those who were scattered shared the gospel in every land where they settled and labored to plant churches. Through the death of Stephen, a gentle man, churches were founded in many places, and God’s borders were remarkably enlarged.
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 overjoyed at Stephen’s death, because it gave him the chance to put Christians to death lawfully.
Yet, astonishingly, God answered the prayer of Stephen, who had pleaded that their sin not be held against them, by saving Saul’s soul. God remembered Stephen’s short and earnest prayer, and, in a striking irony, he called Saul, who had rejoiced at Stephen’s death, and entrusted him with the salvation of the Gentiles. When Saul met Christ on the road to Damascus, he must have been all the more tormented by his own sin in having thought Stephen’s death deserved. With a penitent heart, he would then have tried to walk the road Stephen had walked. Paul’s life bears clear marks of his striving to be like Stephen. Like Stephen, he labored to preach nothing but the gospel; when he suffered great persecution, he forgave his persecutors; and though he was caught up to the third heaven, as Stephen had seen heaven opened and beheld Jesus, he remained humble.
Just as Stephen boldly preached the gospel before the council, Paul boldly preached it in crowded synagogues and before governors and kings. Perhaps the more people were saved through the gospel he preached, the heavier his heart grew over the sin he had committed against Stephen. As anyone’s faith grows, their own sin comes into sharper focus. When sin grows clearer, it is a sign that faith is sanctifying us and making us gentle. For Paul, then, 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 a remarkable power to enlarge God’s 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.
Paul’s words, I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me, are among the verses we love most, because when trials too heavy to bear come upon us, this verse gives us particular strength. But if we read it to mean that we can have everything we want in this world, we will not inherit the earth. What Paul meant when he proclaimed it is that those who believe in God can meet even dire straits with calm. Stephen was content whatever his circumstances, and Paul, who followed after him, learned the secret of contentment as well; it follows that anyone who hopes for the eternal Kingdom can give thanks even for the suffering this world brings. That is why Paul said in Philippians 4:12 that he knew how to be humbled and how to abound, and that in any and all things he had learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need. When Paul had plenty, he was not proud; when he was hungry and in need, he did not despair; and whatever his circumstances, he came to have the strength to give thanks and rejoice, so long as it served the gospel. When he says he learned the secret, he means that he received a mystery from the Holy Spirit and was born again as one who rises above the limits of the world. He came to have a remarkable faith, able to give thanks to the God who made him suffer hardship and persecution so that he might fulfill his calling.
Had Paul not grasped the love of Christ, it would have been hard for him to offer songs of thanksgiving while he was stoned, flogged, and imprisoned. God gave Paul as an inheritance all the land on which he set his feet. What he inherited from God, in the world and in heaven, is a reward beyond measure. God promised to give the people of Israel the land of Canaan, and they did in fact receive Canaan as their inheritance. You too, having believed the promise and lived by faith, will have received heaven as your reward. God’s people are as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things; they are blessed indeed. If people so honored are shaken by small things, grumble, and live like the people of the world by their own greed and desires, God will not be able to entrust them with the inheritance of the earth.
You who have become gentle and received the earth as your inheritance must strive, as you share the gospel, to enlarge its borders as Stephen and the apostle Paul did. If, when you share the gospel, you see the stream of the word flowing in another person’s heart, you can offer praise that wells up from deep gratitude. God has trusted you with the gospel. May you reveal it to the world through the gentleness of his people and become holy people who save many souls.