Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are down to the last fruit of the spirit. We are on self-control. And I am going to demonstrate so much self-control while talking about self-control that we're going to end up with a total of four episodes on it. But the reason that we got to take a little bit of time to talk about self-control is because I think it has multiple elements to it. I mean, really, where does your head go when I say self-control? What do you picture? Really think about that for a minute. Self-control, what does that mean to you? Okay, I'm guessing that a whole bunch of you immediately thought of resisting temptation. Self-control. It's like seeing an image of something you probably shouldn't look at because it's not going to be good for you and not looking back. Okay, that's a good answer. Temptation resistance, corruption resistance. I think that certainly counts as self-control. But I bet that's not what all of you thought. I bet some of you pictured more like self-discipline, doing the thing that is hard. You get up in the morning, and of course you just want to sit there and watch YouTube videos, but instead, you're going to go to the gym, you're going to work out, you're going to get all of that in before you go to work. And it's hard, but you need to do it because you've made a commitment to certain things. You lay in bed at night, you want to watch a stupid show or play a game on your phone, but you have decided to make a habit of reading big chunks of Bible regularly. So you demonstrate discipline and you do the hard but good thing instead of the lazy, easy, and destructive thing. Yeah, I think that's a good answer too. I think self-discipline is self-control. But I bet there are others of you who, when I asked the question, where does your head go when I say self-control? I bet there are others of you who just thought of a general orientation toward calm, not losing your temper, not freaking out over things. Something happens in your life. It doesn't make you very happy. But rather than doing what your darker impulses, maybe we even call it the flesh, might want to do, instead, you restrain that, you control that, you demonstrate self-control or meekness, and you respond in a way that might be more fruitful. Maybe some of you thought of other things that I don't have on that neat list of three, but threes are very symmetrical. And so we're going to do three elements of self-control: one today, one tomorrow, one the next day. And we're going to start with that last one. We're going to start with calm, the ability to maintain oneself under pressure. We see examples in the Bible of both things. We see people get subjected to pressure, and then they blow a gasket and melt down and do stupid stuff that doesn't help them. And then we also see people that get subjected to pressure and they don't give in to their darker impulses. I mean, Jesus is pretty much the universal example of subjected to pressure and took it and handled it well. And then, you know, the rest of us, all of our point of view characters, are usually the ones that don't handle it so well. Well, I am going to pick on one of the great heroes of the faith in this conversation. I don't think he would mind because I think he will agree with the biblical read on how he handled a few things with his temper in the driver's seat, and that is Moses. In the book of Exodus, we get three big temper moments from Moses where we see him subjected to serious pressure, and he fails to pass all of these tests. Now, before we look at these, I want to take it a little bit easy on the guy because he was pretty much the best and awesomest pretty much ever. He's one of the people who most believed God and most got things right, and who God used to accomplish the most stuff in the Bible. I mean, he trusted God to throw his hands in the air with a staff and a sea would part, and his people would be spared, and it worked. This guy was remarkable, yet he's also like us. He'd get mad about stuff, and sometimes it wouldn't bring out the best. When he was a young man in Exodus 2, the incident is spelled out here, starting in verse 11. He gets mad over something, he kills a guy. Yep. I like I don't know, maybe some of you have killed a guy before. I'm not trying to bring up a sensitive subject. I'm guessing if you've killed a guy before, it is a sensitive subject, and it probably won't ever not be a sensitive subject. But we are men and women of plain speech, so I will speak plainly. Uh, I've never killed a guy. I don't think I've ever been close. And yet Moses, he has that on his resume. That is something he did in his younger years. So, hey, even those of us who have passed were not very proud of. There is uh there's life ahead of that. And here's a great example. One day after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were, that is, the Hebrews who were slaves. He went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people, glancing this way and that, and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. And that's it. That's just that's the whole story. It's only two verses of Moses murdering a dude and disposing of the body. Everybody, whenever you know, you talk about the heroes of the Bible or whatever, and you're always like, you know, but sometimes they did bad things. Everybody goes right to David and Bathsheba, and that was pretty bad. Like I get it, I see it. That was bad. But I think there's just something salacious about the scandal there that makes it an example that'll get everybody's attention more. And for whatever reason, maybe it's because like murder mysteries and stuff, or just like that's the fun thing. That you know, who done it and whatnot. Maybe because that's a genre. For us as modern readers, we're like, well, sometimes people kill people and hide the body. Moses did that. Oh, he was such a rascal in his younger years. Stop! What hold up? A guy made him mad, justifiably so. He was beating a Hebrew slave, but a guy made him mad so he looked this way and that, speaking of nobody's looking, and murdered him, and then took advantage of the Egyptian topography to just bury him in a sand dune somewhere. What that's part of the origin story of the great Moses? So I would say that would be a good example of a time when Moses, an otherwise pretty good guy, got subjected to some pressure and he was not calm. He did not demonstrate self-control. His temper got the best of him, and he literally murdered a dude. Well, then a bunch of things happen. He moves out into the desert in the very next verse. He meets a nice woman. That'll usually settle down a guy who's a little out of control. He uh, you know, has some adventures and whatnot with Pharaoh. He reconnects with his family, he sees a bunch of miracles, he sees the Red Sea parted and goes across it. I mean, oh, that's you'd think it would have a calming effect on Moses. And he'd be like, you know, God is real and this is my calling in life. But he has another temper moment. He comes down off the mountain and again is rightly angry. The stuff that's making Moses mad here, he's not wrong for being mad. He comes down off the mountain where he's been meeting with God. All the people who just crossed the sea and were saved by this same God are down there. They know Moses is up there in a cloud, like they can see the presence of God and stuff up there. They know he's literally meeting with God like about them and their future, but it's a big mountain. Moses was up there for a long time. Like, what if, guys, hear me out? What if while he's up there, we take all the gold that God gave us from Egypt and we melt it down into a calf and just worship it to like, you know, mix things up a little bit or pass the time or whatever. So Moses comes down the mountain, he's got Ten Commandments, and then he sees that, and so again, justifiably, he was not real happy. Exodus 32, 19. When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned, and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them into pieces at the foot of the mountain. Then, you know, then what he does next, uh, I think it was probably a healthy response. He uh, you know, wrecks the idol and wrecks the people who made the idol. I mean, it's it's uh it's pretty intense, but I always felt like I was I mean, I think this is the right read on the text. I don't know. Let's see what you think. But I always felt like when I got to the part where he smashed to the Ten Commandments, you're supposed to be like, uh, that ain't good. That was from God and stuff. Probably would have been better if he hadn't done that. I mean, you were right to be mad, but maybe don't break the thing. I don't know. Maybe some people read it and they're like, no, this shows righteous anger that they'd already broken every one of these commands before he ever got down the mountain, and it was symbolic. Could be that too, but it makes it sound like he burned with anger, and we know that temper can get the best of this guy, so I don't know. Read it the way you will. To me, it looks like even righteous anger got the best of him again. Numbers chapter 20. One more Moses incident with not a ton of calm. Time has passed, things haven't gone the best. Moses' sister just died. He's not having the best time right now. They've been wandering out in the desert, everybody's griping all the time, everybody's complaining about Moses. Why are we out here? If only we died before. Why'd you bring us out here? It is a terrible place. We should just go back to Egypt. I mean, it's very frustrating. There's no water to drink. Moses is not having he's not having fun. So he goes and talks to God in the tabernacle, and God shows up and communicates to Moses that he's going to provide water to the people. And he says, you know, God says to Moses, speak to the rock, and before their eyes it will pour water out of it, and you'll bring water out of the rock to the community so that they and their livestock can drink. But Moses is mad. He's real mad. So he takes the staff and he goes out from the Lord's presence. And in Numbers 20 it says, He and Aaron gathered the assembly together of all these complainers who are being jerks in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock? Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. This is where this is where it gets rough. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them. This is the moment right here where it is decided that Moses isn't going into the promised land. A new leader will take them in. And indeed that's how it plays out under the leadership of Joshua. So we've got these three different incidents in Moses. Who is awesome? We got these three different incidents in his life where his anger burns and he gets a little out of control, and his temper costs him and costs others. And thankfully, I'm not in the Bible because if I had as much screen time as Moses, I would have a lot more incidents than three where temper got the best of me. It is interesting to note, though, that I think Moses was right in all three situations in terms of being angry. It was what he did with it. He did not demonstrate self-control. He didn't respond to it on God's terms, and it made a mess. It made problems in all of those situations. James 1, 19 through 20 says, My dear brothers, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. For man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. And it seems like with all of this fruit of the spirit stuff, we end up in Proverbs at some point, and surprise! Proverbs has a lot to say about temper and resisting the impulse to having a hot temper. I'll just give you a couple. Proverbs uh 14-17, a quick-tempered man does foolish things, and a crafty man is hated. Next page, Proverbs 15, 18. A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel. And maybe that contrast right there is a good place to wrap up for today. When I reflect back on my life and I think of the moments where my temper got the best of me, regardless of how right I might have been to have been angry. None of those stories are a good look. Nobody's life was made better. Nobody's reputation was made better. If anything, it took the attention off of the legitimate offense, whatever somebody else really got wrong, and put the attention on my offense. So that person no longer felt the pressure to fix whatever they were screwing up, and I'm embarrassed. I bet if you think about the stuff that is the most embarrassing to you over the course of your life, there's a good percentage of those stories that are going to involve temper. It's kind of an ugly thing about the flesh, but hey, it's something that we have in common. It's cool that I guess we have this one flaw that makes it so easy to relate to each other. Also, it's something that life by the spirit begins to thwart. It begins to quench that hot temper. And what feels like something that is an animal impulse. Life by the spirit, as opposed to life by the flesh, means that we're no longer animals who are dictated to by that. We have the ability to keep our heads, we have the ability to see something bigger, to play a longer game than the you did something, I'm mad, now I'm going to melt down routine. And this is one of three elements of self-control. So we'll talk about the discipline side of that tomorrow and flesh all of this out a bit more as we go along. Seems like a good place to wrap up. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.