I hope you'll take your heart to listen to let the Lord speak to you about this great fruit of the Spirit this evening. Galatians chapter 5 and verse 22, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. And tonight we're still working and dealing with verse 23, meekness, meekness. And we have one more and that'll be in the weeks to come, temperance. And that'll be the last one of the fruit of the Spirit. But for now, we've been and are sharing with you what the Scripture says and what we said when we began this particular fruit that in the song, Take Time to Be Holy, a song that's in the songbook. It's the fourth verse where it says, Take time to be holy, be calm in thy soul. That's about as good a definition of meekness as I think could be. Because what the scriptures speak about in regard to meekness is an internal calmness. It's not so much of just expression externally. It's what you are internally. It's the work that the Spirit does into your life and deals with you in your life to keep you calm under all set of circumstances in how you react to people and what you say to them. And the consequence of that is that it happens to be one of those that the emphasis of the scripture is one that holds it up as a very serious and exceedingly important one in the dealings of God's people and even with our Lord Jesus Christ. For instance, in your Bible over at Matthew chapter 21, you can either listen or turn there, Matthew 21, You have the case where references to what's called and what's titled in most of the Bibles is the triumphant entry into Jerusalem and it speaks about the fact of the king coming and it begins In verse number 1 of chapter 21, ìWhen they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, under the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two of his disciples, saying to them, ìGo into the village over against you a straight way, or immediately you shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her. Loose them, bring them unto me. And if any man say awe unto you, you shall say, ìThe Lord need of them,î and straightway or immediately he will send them.î all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying tell you the daughter of zion behold thy king cometh unto thee meek and sitting upon an ass and a colt the fold of an ass that's an interesting thing because here you have the king of glory who's going to be and was in this case going to be riding on a donkey and uh... the point made about that is in our society we have a tendency to do a lot about the pomp you know the the glory and the pageantry and what the king rides on. You know, there's a song that we've referenced before around Christmas time. It's entitled, How Would a King Come? And it's an interesting thing because it talks about him being dressed in royalty and riding a white stallion. That's the typical concept. Or if you were in England and you talk about the queen and all her entries of all the great celebrations they do, you know, these horses and very, very energetic stallions that they had tied to those carriages, or those soldiers ride upon them, you know. And the point about all that, it's all the pop of it. It's an interesting thing. Here you have the king of glory, the creator of the universe, and he's going to ride on a donkey's back, and he's described as meek. That's what I'm talking about, and that's what the scriptures talk about. It's not so much an external thing, it's a thing that's internalized. It's something really about who you are, and who you are When you get people who react to you wrong, you will show them who you are by how you react to them. And what meekness is all about is having that internal quality of having power under control. Jesus Christ, in this case, as he's coming in in a triumphant entry and so forth, he could have had anything he wanted. I mean, he could have had a whole stable of white stallions and they led the procession and oh it would have been impomptu, I mean it would have been glorious and it would have been royalty of big order. But the fact of the matter is that wasn't important to him because what's important to him and that's what's conveyed in Galatians chapter 5 verse 23 is the fact that he's interested in what's on the inside of you and the inside of you is this issue of meekness. And how you react to people shows meekness. How parents react to their children. shows whether or not they've got meekness or not. How children react to parents shows whether or not they've got meekness. It's a matter of being, you may be absolutely right. You may be 100% right. And you may know it 100% that you are right. But if you see it's going to create more of a fuss and a fight and an argument to just say, okay, hey, that's fine. You may be right. That's meekness. Meekness says, I weigh the cost of what it is I'm fighting over, and if what I'm fighting over is not equal to the issue that's going to be raised and the depths to which this is going to take this discussion, I surrender right up front. You win, I lose. Meekness, by the way, doesn't mind saying, you win. It doesn't have a problem with that. That's why in relationship to husband and wives and arguments, if believers all had meekness, there wouldn't be any. you can judge a marriage by how much meekness you have, by how many conflicts you have that you carry on and just keep on going with them because you know one hundred percent you're right and you're not quitting until there's blood. So meekness is the thing that says, hey, look, that's not worth this. This is not worth this. And what's important here is that I'm calm in my soul. I'm calm in my spirit. There is no need arguing over this. There's no reason. In fact, Spurgeon says people with meekness don't even raise their voices. Now, I know Spurgeon's not God, but he was a wise princely preacher, and he was a godly man for sure. and his perception of the scriptures and when he studies meekness he says he didn't have to raise his voice. He gathers that from the fact that Jesus Christ was meek and there really wasn't any places where he raised his voices. Let me show you a couple others that I think are important. Look what Paul said, Paul said this in 2 Corinthians chapter number 10, 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, he said this in verse number 1, Now I, Paul, myself beseech you, now watch it, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, who in presence am base among you, but being absent, am bold toward you." The fact of the matter is that Paul references the meekness and the gentleness of the Lord Jesus Christ. I find that amazing because, though I don't have to read it to you, you know it well, because in this ideal of meekness. Many people think, well, as I've told you at the beginning, some folks would tell you that meekness is weakness. And so they don't want any part of meekness. When a group of young people were given a bunch of cards with the fruit of the spirit on it, it was interesting that when the kids picked the cards that they wanted to stand up and talk about or have questions asked about, nobody took meekness. And when inquired by the teacher, it was simply, it's one of those You know, it's just not cool. It's just not cool, they say. Their idea is that it implies weakness. Well let me remind you of this when Paul here in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 speaks about it and he talks about our Lord Jesus Christ and he's beseeching these people by or on the basis of the meekness and gentleness of Jesus Christ. I would remind you that Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 4 went toe to toe with the devil and not one time in the text does he raise his voice. Not one time. There is no reference, either in the English or even in translation of the Greek, where it shows any inference that he just got bent out of shape because this nutty devil was not cooperated with. He doesn't even raise his voice. Now look, if Jesus Christ, who is meek, could deal with the devil toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball, so to speak, and not raise his voice, but not compromise his cause, And surely every family member, every husband-wife relationship, every son and daughter in relationship to parents could get along without raising their voice. And it all would grow out of the fruit of the spirit of having meekness. Now, I know you're not born with it. None of us are born with meekness. I came into this world with my fingers in my diaper, and I was really arrogant. You know, I mean, I started out from the ground floor. I thought I was somebody. And I told everybody in the nursery, they said, You know, I am somebody. When the Lord pulls the rug out from under you and shows you who you are, oh, by the way, that's a good point because in Matthew chapter 5 you have the Beatitudes. He starts out at the very beginning of those and as many preachers who've studied the text of the Beatitudes points out, and I think wisely so, from a grammatical standpoint and from a translation standpoint, they build on each other. Before you get to meekness, You've got to go through the others over here, and one of those is that one of them is you need to mourn. Blessed is those who mourn. Well, what will you be mourning over? It's people who understand that they have a deficit in their life, and the consequence is, in fact, let me just read you the text so you can see it for yourself. Building upon it, Matthew chapter 5, And his point that he makes in this particular text as he's describing and telling us who the believers are, who the Christians are, who those of God's people really are. In verse number 3 of Matthew 5 he says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. The first thing is poor in spirit. That's an ideal that, you know, nobody likes to think about poor. We'd rather talk about rich. We talk about stuff. But his qualification for the first one and the first description of God's people is, he says, and makes the statement, blessed are happy are the poor in spirit. Then he goes a step further in verse number four, he said, blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. This ideal of mourning is somebody who is as weeping over something that has become a reality to them. You know, we hear people mourning the death of someone and so forth. It means someone who weeps over, who grieves over something that's become a living physical reality to you. And what he speaks about in this text of scripture is that these are realities of coming into the work of relationship with the Lord, coming into being birthed into his family. And one of the very first thing is you have to come to him bankrupt, poor. If you come to God and you say to him, hey look, I am somebody, you save me and I will make you some hay, you ain't going to get the first base. He says to you, blessed is the guy who comes in bankrupt and says to me, have mercy on me, I don't have anything. That's why Isaiah would say to you, come, you who have no money, come, come. You don't have anything to trade, you don't have anything to barter with, you come. You're the very people God wants to come to, wants to come to him. You have nothing to trade on, you have nothing that merits getting into heaven. So you come poor in spirit. The second part of it is when you come, you need to come mourning. You need to really believe and really have a sense of how and what you are. And the fact that what you are is not tradable merchandise or commodity, and God doesn't need it. He doesn't need you. He doesn't need it. And he's not going to accept it in a trade-off for salvation. So he says, I want you to come poor in spirit, and I want you to come weeping over it. Then when he says that, he brings you to the third one, and that's what we talk about here. Verse 5, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Well, the fact of the matter is, only when you come to the meek do you come to a point of where there's some positiveness. This is positive. And what he's saying is this, you remembering that you came poor, and you remember that you came mourning, and you understand then you have nothing, and you need to come to me and carry yourself, conduct yourself, in that tone or spirit for the rest of your Christian experience. And he uses the word meek. If you do that, the inheritance of the earth will be yours. And a lot of that has to do with dealing with people. Sometimes it's the meekest people who accomplish the most because they don't depend on their education. They don't depend on their power. They don't depend on their prestige. They don't depend on their wealth. They depend on the Lord. And consequently, he says, with this kind of spirit, there is a sense in which you can gain the world. Interesting, too, and back over, and we won't have a lot of time to look at them, but look, if you would, back over from where you are, if you turn to Matthew 5, look over to Matthew chapter 11. Matthew chapter 11, and look at verse number 20. Matthew 11 and verse number 20 says this. Matthew 11 verse 20, ìThen began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And then he goes on, verse 23, Thou Capernaum which art exalted unto heaven, shalt thou be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this day. But I say unto you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee. Doesn't sound very meek, does it? It just shows you that meekness is not weakness. A parent can be a strong parent, correct their children, love them to death, but correct them when they're wrong. and still be meek. So meekness is not going to be translated by you cowering down and falling over and tripping over your kindnesses to people and letting them get away with murder. That's not what it is. And this is a good illustration of here you have the meek Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, but He does not, He does not show any weakness. He's gracious, He's kind, He's straightforward, but the fact is He does not in any sense of the word reflect the kind of thing that People in this world seem or tend to expect from him. If you listen to people describe our Lord, you are going to think he's weak. He just lets everything go. He lets people get away with everything. And they'll say, oh, I don't think Jesus cares about that. He doesn't care about people committing homosexual acts. He doesn't care about that. He doesn't care. Well, yes, he does. Yeah, he does. Meekness doesn't say we'll just excuse all sin. It doesn't say that at all. So there's illustration after illustration through the scriptures that this person that Paul talked about, the meekness and the gentleness of the Lord Jesus Christ is scattered throughout all the Bible. There's something else to be noted too. When I mentioned last Sunday morning I believe in the message and I think it is an absolute truth that the thing about meekness is something that needs to be lab tested with other believers. That is to say that meekness is not going to be something that a believer is going to develop as the Holy Spirit works in their life and so forth. It's not going to be something you develop well unless you're in context with other people. Other people test your meekness. And the more you come in touch with them and the more you bump into them about things that you may agree or disagree over, you're going to find out how meek you are. And the Holy Spirit is going to use that to calibrate how much work you've got to do. So there's a simple thing, and I'm not sure I can get all of it in, but I'll start. When I was growing up, my father, who had not, I don't think, ever read a book in his life on parenting, saw something and began to do something in my life, because I've already told you about my first years as being pretty rebellious. I'm not proud of that. But I don't run from it. I tell people that I was. I was a rebellious little boy. And my father, I mean, everything in the world my dad did to show me, express to me that he loved me. But I thought he was going to beat me to death before I got out of home. And the fact is, I just disobeyed. He'd tell me, and I wouldn't do what he said. Oh, I would while he was staying around. But when he left, I'd go do my thing. And he caught up with me, and he caught up with me often, frequently. But there's something he did and something that I think personally made a tremendous change and altered my life immensely. The thing is that I was reading some books the other day, and this is what reminded me of it. First thing is that there are plenty of family life gurus out there that see parents who want to rear their children right They feel the need, these parents do, of a lot of step-by-step helps and something they can believe in. For personal financial gain, I'm sure, these gurus would turn out a book a month or a video a week for a parent to buy and then to begin to practice. The truth is some, and maybe most, possibly most, of the stuff they package to sell is not helpful and in long term may be harmful. Some years ago, you may or may not know, which is irrelevant to the point, that here at the New Life Baptist Church, someone gave us a series of videos. They said to us that these videos would be great for your families, and we would recommend that you let all the families in the church see them and so forth. And so we went out on a limb, we purchased some of them, and we put them in the library. One day that somebody challenged me about something that was in them, because I did not sit down and review every single one of the videos. In one of the videos, there was just some material there that once I saw it, I didn't need to see anymore. I walked to the library, I gathered up the whole stack of videos and the booklets that went with them, put them in a box, and they are here on the premises here somewhere. And they'll never get back into the library. Because of what they said in there and some statements they made, and they made it to sound as if this was absolutely gospel. One aspect of it, and this was not in these particular videos, but it was in a booklet that they recommended from the videos. They said in the booklet that was along with them that rocking of a baby to sleep actually creates a rebellious spirit within them, and so they said, do not let anyone rock your child. Now let me tell you something. If you can find that in the Bible, I'll read all 66 books of it. You see, that's not in the Scriptures. Now that can be a psychological opinion of somebody's, and if that's the way it is, it should have been described as that. That's not the way it was set out in this brochure. This booklet suggested that this is a Gospel truth, and you should not let anybody rock your children. And they made a big deal about it. They even went down the list of who shouldn't get to rock the baby. Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle, Aunt, Cousin, Second Cousin, Third Cousin, Fourth. Now they were being exaggerated, but that's their point. The fact of the matter is, that's not in the scripture. In fact, it's outright ridiculous, because rocking anything won't make it rebellious. We were born that way. Every baby born in the world is a rebel. Every baby born in the world is a rebel, lost and on its way to hell. And until they come to faith in Jesus Christ, that's where they'll ultimately end up. Because babies grow up to be adults, and much of what we do for them in training them as children will set like cement, make it a very, what we call a frightening kind of direction to them, that they start here and they'll end up there. So how and what you do for children in the early going is an exceedingly important thing. But the fact of the matter is, the scriptures make it clear that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child. You can call it rebellion, you can call it a lot of things, and rebellion would fit the foolishness of the context of which it's found, but it says the foolishness is bound in the heart of the child and the rod of correction or discipline can fix that problem. That's what it says. Listening to someone recently let me see what is often missed in the case of was a parent working hard to get a child in a home life to act and behave in a certain manner? However, the father in this child's case found out later that this child was a terror everywhere else. So he went to work. Well, anyway, when I heard that, when I was talking about that and I read a piece in a magazine, it hit me. I remember the time that my father did a very wise thing. Not just once, he did it several times. Here's what he did. He knew very well that I was being rebellious and he knew very well that I needed some change of heart. And even though he'd never read a book on parenting, he had read the scriptures, and I suspect that the Lord may have given him some insight to my own person and my character, so he decided what he would do. He saw to it that he would put me in situations where he was not present and where he would turn over to somebody else who he trusted the authority to control me. The first case is the story that you're most familiar with. It's the Yalla Duck story. My teacher was Mrs. Brine. I remember the day that I walked into that school and my father said to the teacher, you make him mind, and if he ever doesn't mind, I want you to tell me. She said, absolutely, Mr. Henry. Saddest words I'd ever heard in my life. Yes, sir, Mr. Henry. And that very week, I mean, it wasn't a month, it was a week, that she comes down to the aisle where I'm parked in my benching seat, and she hands this particular page of all these animals on it, and she succinctly said, color all the ducks yellow. I remember this hour. I said, I don't like yellow. I ain't coloring them dumb duck yellow. I'm going to color them brown. I reached into the box of crayons that were on the face of the desk, and I proceeded to color all the ducks brown. Let me tell you something. It was almost as if lightning struck. Mrs. Bryant was right over my shoulder. Mrs. Bryant took me by the arm and said, would you follow me? And I said, yes, ma'am. And we walked right out into the hall, and Mrs. Bryant took a paddle from her desk on the way by. I mean, it's like she was used to this. You know, the paddle was lying in the right position. She grabbed the paddle, and we walked right outside that room. She asked me to put both my hands on the wall, and then she proceeded to apply that paddle to my body. On the spot, I was paddled for disobeying concerning this duck thing. I am convinced Mrs. Bryant believed with all of her heart. Ecclesiastes, what is it? 811, I believe it is. You know, where sentence against an evil work is not carried out speedily or executed speedily, the heart of man is fully set in them to do evil. She decided this ain't never going to happen to this kid again. He ain't never going to think that it's a good thing to do the wrong thing. So she paddled me, big time paddled me. Hardest paddling I thought I ever heard, saw, believed, and for me, ever experienced. Never had another one. No teacher ever paddled me again. My father did, but not teachers. I go home that day, and my father, oh I had a note by the way, and the note was written to my father. And it just said, Ricky disobeyed, we paddled him, end of discussion. My dad smiled. I thought, This is the end of this story. My dad said, if you'll go in the room, I'll be in there with you in a moment. I got a second paddling because my father had instructed that teacher, if he gets out of hand, you tell me and we will deal with it at home. He did. I never thought it was right, you know, for you to get double jeopardy, you know, get paddled twice for the same crime. My father didn't believe that and I couldn't convince him otherwise. So I got a second paddling. That was the first time it happened. The second time it happened was when I was in Sunday school. I didn't get paddled. My father just went into a Sunday school class with me. The teacher was Mrs. Fitzgerald, under whose ministry I came to know the Lord, by the way. He told Mrs. Fitzgerald, he said, Rick has a tendency about rebellion. If he does not act right in the class, if he disobeys any order you give, I want you to come to tell me. I heard him say it. I didn't disobey and I didn't rebel. And I went through Mrs. Fitzgerald's class and Got commendations. I don't have any medals, but I did get commendations. She'd say, you did a good job. You handled yourself well. You obeyed precisely, quickly, firmly. And boy, I felt like I'd gone somewhere. I got home, and my father said, she said, you did a good job. I expect that every week. I never disappointed him. I obeyed her very well. I grew older. As I got older, my father went to my brother. My older brother, Bud, he's a free will Baptist preacher. And at the time, he had a farm he and his wife lived on. And I don't believe at the time I was there he had any children. So he needed some help on the farm. My father went to him, Bud, and said, I want Rick to go over and work with you on the farm. He needs to work, and I want you to go and take him in my presence, he said. And if he misbehaves, if he disobeys, I want you to tell me. I will take care of it. I didn't disobey. I didn't misbehave. I did everything I was supposed to do. I worked that summer with my brother. I went home at the end of it. I went home in periodic time before that. But my father said, asked my brother, how did he do? My brother said he did fine, no problem at all. My dad commended me, thanked me for behaving, and what I was beginning to understand, and this is the point, my father made it a practice to put me under the authority of other people to test respect and attention to every bit of authority, not just one or two. In time, and with patience, my heart tendered to the need to listen, submit, and to the authorities that I was under. Then the time came when I did not have to be under my father's assurances of discipline if I did not obey. I now call that behavioralism. Behavioralism is not a good way of motivating children. to stand with a big stick. You know, carry a big stick, you can get anybody to do anything you want them to do. The issue is not behavioralism. The issue is something that really is meekness. What was to be worked on in this particular case, my father then never did have to take me outside and sit down with me to talk with me about my behavior ever again. Several things, therefore, had an impact on my life, and one of them, of course, was my father's love and his protection and his patience and his determination to help me to learn to submit. What's interesting about that in submitting to legitimate authorities wherever they were found, remember that meekness is a word in the Greek language that means gentleness and humility, being humble. And it's not so much just an outward expression of the feelings, but an inward calmness of the soul toward people and toward circumstances. Only as I came to submit to the people that my father brought into my life, people of authority, only then, only then did I get under control. And only then did I have a calmness of my spirit. so that I was not all the time agitated feeling that I had to do something and do it my way regardless of what my father said. It was at that point in my life that I began to take on a seriousness concerning the Lord, His plan, and His will for my life. I submit now to you that one of the ways that God uses to teach His people meekness is to put you in circumstances under authorities that are not necessarily good people. I think Mrs. Bryant was a decent teacher, gracious lady, but she was not somebody I enjoyed being around. You know, I saw right off the get-go that this lady is a no-nonsense kind of person. I wouldn't have enjoyed that class. I surely would not have volunteered for it. If she'd have been teaching college, I would not have signed up for the class. But the Lord put us there, and my father approved it, and sent me in that class. I see now it was an important thing. It was the first paddling I ever got in a classroom setting, and it was the last one I ever got. I learned from that. But as adults, sometimes we think that, you know, everything ought to be calm sailing for every set of circumstances of the people under whose authority we've been placed. It's really the laboratory to see what you Let's say whether or not you've got a high-grade meekness or a low-grade meekness. Are you meek and lowly? Are you arrogant and cocky as I was when I grew up in the ministry? What is it that you would classify yourself as? And if it's not what God was wanting to produce yet, He may stick you under some people who are not good authorities. I mean, they may be legitimate. They may be the right kind of people in the right kind of places for the world's point of view, but for the believer, this guy is not the kind of person you want to be under. Let me illustrate again. I don't particularly care for the politics of our president, but I remind myself often, he is the president. I don't like it. I'm not happy about it. But I find myself being tested of my own meekness about it by how I react to him. He, therefore, becomes sort of a lab as to how I react of that calmness of my soul. You see, there should not be, and it ought not be possible for anybody to say, well, these people just provoke me to this. Not if you have meekness. They should be provoking you to good works and a right spirit. Because if you're right within the inside, nothing that happens on the outside should change that. And that's why the Holy Spirit works from the inside out. You know, He doesn't work on the outside changing everything you pray for. Lord, I'm faced this very bad situation under this very bad boss and Lord you need to get me out from under this thing or I'm going to go crazy. I think you just signed up for another month, you know. I think the Lord would say, look, this is the best place for you, just hang in there. I believe there are people who the Lord would have and brings into churches under different kind of leadership, pastors, et cetera, et cetera. And I believe part of the reason is God uses that who they may or may not be used to, and they may not even really like it that way, but it's what the Lord wanted for them to teach them and to help them in the quest for meekness. And I remind you that everything our Lord had thrown at him, He submitted to. Oh, I don't mean he compromised anything. I don't mean that kind of thing. But he never fought against it. When he was facing the worst of the worst, that's when he was in the garden and praying, and he said, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. And we know that that prayer was not actually answered, because it was not passed from him. In fact, John 12, he said, hey, what am I saying? This is the reason I came. You know, could I now say, I don't want to do this? That's what John 12 said, he said about that. And in John 12, when he made that statement, he wasn't even at the cross yet, or he wasn't even at the garden. But when he got to the garden, he said, Lord, if it be possible, Father, let this cup pass from me. Well, the fact of the matter is, he always adds, and we always see it in each of the gospels where it's recorded, nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. Meekness accepts what God brings into our life to be transforming us, working us with his and cooperating with his spirit to make us meek and in that make us gentle. Give us a sense of humility, not arrogance and not cockiness and not I know it all and you can't tell me anything. People who are meek are teachable. People who are meek are more patient. People who are meek are more calm in spirit. People who are meek have not a problem of debating, discussing with people and getting all agitated over it. They don't get into a point where they think they have to win the argument. They rest in the truth they know and they don't have to win. Meekness is an exceedingly important characteristic because one, it's illustrated of our Lord's life frequently. And after all, the Holy Spirit's working on us to cause us to be transformed into His likeness. And that's what we're supposed to be like. So what does He do? He brings people into our lives and circumstances into our lives that provoke us, challenges us. And to see whether or not we've got it in our spirit, in our hearts, or whether it's all external. We try to have mind over matter. We try to act it out, though we don't have anything to act upon. We don't have that sense of meekness in heart, but we know we're supposed to act a certain way, so we act a certain way. That's not what he's after. He's after you having meekness of heart and spirit. And in that, there'll be a calmness of you. No matter what you're facing and dealing with, you come to understand whether it be a human being or it be a human problem. You understand God's got you in this to teach you something from it. And the one thing that He's teaching us when He deals with these issues that we've mentioned tonight, He's talking about meekness. Meekness. Are you a meek person? Our Lord was. And He's not going to be happy with any of us until we are like Him. That's what the Holy Spirit's up to. That's why he calls it a fruit of the Spirit. It's not a fruit of a human heart. It's not a fruit of the human flesh. It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit working in our lives to bring us into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was meek and mild, gentle and humble, and yet strong as all could be. Turned over tables, you remember, when he emptied the temple. Not weak. Meek. Not afraid to speak the truth, but just did it with a calm spirit. So I say to you, it's equal to, likened unto, to speak the truth in love. A lot of folks say, Art, can you do that? Can you really speak the truth in love? Sure you can. Well, it's the same thing with meekness, is to be able to have the strength to back up something but not the necessity to yell and scream and shout and do all the outward things that may suggest that there's power in noise. When I was in school, there was a couple of young men who came in the homiletics class, and our teacher, Mr. Dykes, was an older man, and I remember the day when one of these young men got up. It was their day to preach in our homiletics class. Boy, this kid, when he got to the front of the classroom, he hit the ground running. He was yelling to the top of his voice. I mean, he was yelling. You couldn't even understand the words. He was just yelling, you know. And what he was doing, he was copying somebody. You know, I was talking to Pastor Bill Blakely today, the pastor of Berean Baptist Church, and I told him that one of the best lessons I learned was from a statement made of Vance Havner when he died. And that was that the guy doing the funeral service was saying that Vance Havner was born an original and he died an original. Most people are born original and die copies. I always said, I don't want to die a copy. I want to be original. I want to be who I am that God called me, and I don't want to change because somebody didn't fit in. Well, this kid who was in this first homiletics class in the first presentation that he preached, he had heard somebody do this, and so he copied it. I mean, he just walked in the pulpit, or the lectern actually, it was just a lectern, not a pulpit. He walked behind it, and the first things out of his mouth was high decimal loudness. I mean, it just about broke your eardrum, because he was under the impression that noise power, you know. It didn't make everybody in that room think he really had this preaching power, you know. Well, let me tell you something. All you'd have to do is leave there and go back to the auditorium on some of the days when we had Bible conference and Warren Willis would be teaching and preaching. I don't know that you ever heard, I don't know that I ever heard him raise his voice. You ever hear him raise his voice? Never heard the guy raise his voice in his life. But I've got all the books that I know he's written of the volumes of books in my library that everything I could get a hold on. I even got his original notes when he was down in Covington, Kentucky. His Sunday school notes. He gave them out, sold them when he was in school. And we'd go over to hear him speak and he wouldn't even raise his voice. But you couldn't write fast enough to get down the great truth that he was sharing with us. Because he realized it's not power in noise, it's power in truth. That's what makes a difference. So the fact of the matter is, parents can yell at their kids all they want to, husbands can yell at their wives all they want to, and so forth. You ain't getting anywhere because you're not dealing in truth. You've got the same foolish idea that this young man who was going to stand in a pomolytics class and preach and yell to the top of his voice thought he could get something done that he couldn't get done if he just told us what he wanted to tell us. The Bible's clear on that. What part of that is, is meekness. It's the ideal of having power under control. Speak the truth, speak it in love, be gracious, be gentle, and be humble about it. When you do that, that you reflect more than anything else you could do in those circumstances of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was meek and mild, gentle and humble. You take those qualities with you, I'll guarantee you people will take notice. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for this evening and thank you for Our Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for your son and his coming to this earth to die on the cross for our sins. And Father, we're grateful for the model that he is for behavior, for all of us who know you as Father and him as Savior. And Father, tonight, as we've thought about this one fruit of the Spirit for a couple of weeks now, it's a blessing to think on terms of it being such a simple word, but having such profound impact on people. to be able to have a calmness of spirit under every set of circumstances and reflect it in our reaction to what goes on around us, meekness. So Father, tonight I pray from my own heart that you'd give me a quiet and meek spirit. I pray, Father, that you'll give our people a meekness of heart and soul. I pray keep them calm when things around them are just going crazy. When even in their home life, some things just get nutty and just almost off the tracks. I pray you'll give them a calmness of heart and help them to be meek and mild, gracious, gentle, humble. And father, I pray that as we do that, that we can bear testimony of what you've done for us, that it was not be just our copying some kind of character trick, some core, some idea of what you've done. So we'll copy it. but it rather would be born out of the work that your spirit does within us, to create within us, as it were, a meek spirit. So Father, I pray then to help us to cooperate with your spirit, help us to have contact with other people where this will be tested, bring into our lives those challenging circumstances, and teach us the weaknesses that we have in meekness, and show us, Father, what we need to do to work on it. And as far as cooperating more fully, surrendering our own attitudes and spirits and our own wills and our egos and pride and anything else that gets in the way, I pray help us to be a meek people that we might glorify our Savior. And if there's one here tonight who's never believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, then obviously they're not going to become meek. They need, first of all, to be born again. You can't be like the Lord Jesus Christ until you believe on Him as Savior, obviously. So I pray for them that you may speak to their hearts and draw them by your spirit to yourself. Work in our lives and remind us we're all under construction. We're not home yet, and you're not finished with us. So help us, I pray, to cooperate. May your spirit have full reign of our life. God, direct our steps, our actions, our words, our spirit, and may you be glorified. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.