Hey, my friends, it's Matt. This is a Ten Minute Bible Hour podcast. And usually I'm about a week behind, two weeks behind on listening to my own podcast, because it's like I get a double dose of it if I listen to my own podcast because I kind of forget what we covered. I work on other stuff. I work ahead. And then if I'm a week or two behind, it's like I get to double-ingrain it in my brain. And usually I listen through it and I'm like, yeah, okay, that worked. That was cool. All right, I see what you're going for there, old version of me. But right now I'm caught up. So I listened to yesterday's episode about gentle giants and whatnot. And my goodness, Whitman, get to the point. What are you doing, dude? People don't need six minutes of you saying how much you love gentle giants and then naming literally all of them. I'm a monster. Y'all are very patient with me. I don't know why anyone's here. What are we even doing? Well, I will tell you this. A bunch of you gave me good gentle giants in various comment sections from around the internet that I had not thought of that were real good. Uh Revan515 said you like Clifford the big red dog. Didn't think of that. And the BFG, big friendly giant. Is that what BFG stands for? I hope that's what it stands for. Fezek, Liz said fezek. Justin Martin said fezek. Lots of people said fezek from The Princess Bride. Yeah, that's a great answer. Jacob Dacey says Totoro. I don't know what Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like a super old school, big fluffy character from an old Miyazaki film, right? Am I thinking of the right thing? I might be embarrassing myself right now. Okay, these were good answers. The point is clearly you knew what I was talking about, and you get the gentleness thing. Sorry I took so long on it. Also, there are lots of comments here about Jeff's unbelievably awesome mashup of Great Is Thy Faithfulness and Toto's Rosanna. That might be the coolest thing he's ever done, by the way. He's mashed up a lot of hymns over the years. I think he did Poker Face and Onward Christian Soldiers one time. Yeah, he did something else, I can't remember, but that was ludicrous. If you didn't catch it, or if you just, you know, tapped away as soon as the episode was done yesterday, two days ago, three days ago, whatever it was, you should definitely go back and catch that. But today we're on the fruit of the spirit that is gentleness, and we have got a lot of Bible activity that we need to get after. So let's do this thing. Where do I want to start? Um, I'm just gonna start from the back and work forward. Let's go, Proverbs 15, 1. Did I already do this one? I feel like I maybe already did this one. Whatever, I'm reading it again. No, I didn't do this one. Here we go. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. That's one of the ones that my dad made me memorize when I was a kid because I was getting a little bit uh a little bit hasty, a little bit like you're mean to me, I'm mean to you, kind of thing. And I remember this verse was part of a family lesson about that. But again, the idea was, well, yeah, Matt, maybe you're entitled to fire off that shot because they were mean to you or because things are escalating. But what's your objective? What do you want to accomplish here? And what if you didn't use the power of your tongue to say whatever quickly came to mind? You know, good, good dadding. I'm blessed with very good parents. Oh, yeah, I made another note here. This one, I don't know, this one's kind of interesting. I just sort of wrote down Leviticus and then I jotted down a note that said the middle part. Because there's a whole bunch of stuff here in the middle of Leviticus that are about how you handle your relationships with your neighbors and keeping things from getting out of hand. And the whole idea here is that clearly the civil part of the law there in Leviticus is saying, like, don't be a bumbling idiot who just goes around like a bull in a china shop, just busting everything with carelessness. The idea of the law is even if it was an accident, you still owe your neighbor if you wreck their stuff. So there's sort of this is a little bit of a stretch, but I think it counts. There's sort of an idealization of having a sense of gentleness, a sense of your surroundings, demonstrating care with the things that are around you. Okay, maybe it is a stretch, but I liked it and we're leaving it in here. Jefffoot, don't you dare edit that one out. Let's go to the New Testament. Titus 3, 2. Oh, I know what we're doing here. Do you remember how we find Titus? Because all the T books in the Bible are right next to each other: the Thessalonians, the Timothy, and Titus, and they're all in alphabetical order. That makes it really easy. You find one T book, you've found them all. Titus II, II. I'm going to start with verse one. Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good. There's that goodness theme again, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men. I wrote this one down for two reasons. One, because it characterizes the idea of gentleness, but two, because of who it was written to or what context it was written to. Probably after the end of the book of Acts, Paul gets out of prison. You know, Acts ends up with Paul, he's in prison, but he has freedom there in Rome. He's probably under house arrest, not like arrest, arrest. And so he can go around, he can preach freely to people, he's writing letters. I mean, for being under arrest, it's a pretty good place to leave things. I think Acts probably ends off right there because I don't know, if you're Luke, what's the good endpoint for that story? I mean, kind of acts is still happening, right? Like this podcast kind of is still acts. I'm not saying it's good enough to make the cut for that, but like everything that's still going on with the church and the work of the Holy Spirit, it's still acts. It's the story of the church, right? So where do you end it if you're Luke? Well, you set up the book of Acts with Acts 1.8. Uh, first you're going to be my witnesses. Jesus says to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And then that verse serves as the outline for the book, as the message of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit seems to go from local to regional to real big to super big to the ends of the earth, which is kind of Rome. And so thematically it wraps up in a good spot. But there's more that happens after that. We're going to talk about that a lot in the next season that we have coming up, uh, which is Philemon. But Paul probably gets out of jail after that. He probably does some more travels. It looks like a church is established in Crete, and he leaves faithful Titus, who we've talked about before on this podcast, behind in Crete. And it it goes okay, but Crete had a nasty reputation for being full of difficult people. And indeed, Paul, in this letter to Titus, where he's trying to coach Titus up, I know it's not an easy assignment, but here's what you need to do. Paul even mentions one of their own philosophers who acknowledges that Crete is morally pretty difficult, stubborn, difficult people, and gentleness certainly would not be the reputation of a Cretan. And yet, here Paul is toward the end of the letter to Titus, telling Titus that hey, you got to remind the people to be, I'll sum it up, gentle. Don't be rioters, don't be difficult all the time. Do things that are good. Stop with the gossip and the slander. Be peaceful people, be considerate, show humility toward all men. He's doing something very counter-cultural here in Crete. And this is not me picking a fight with Crete. I mean, Paul is citing the words of their own philosopher. Who was the guy's name? Is it Epimenides? I think that's the guy's name. I'm looking, I want to know the notes, the notes on quoted from the Cretan poet Epimenides. There it is. Every now and then the memory serves me. Okay. So I like this one as a biblical example of the fruit of the spirit that is gentleness, not just because of what it says, but because of the context, because of to whom it is being said. Let's do a couple more because I feel like it. We're gonna go to First Peter three, fifteen. Yes, but in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. I like this theme throughout Peter. He's a hothead when he was a kid. He's doing his best. He just did everything really, really big. He's kind of the point of view character for us in the book of Matthew, and he makes a lot of the mistakes that we would make or that maybe we wish we would be brave enough to make. But in the end, Peter comes around and he's humbled and he's focused and he learns to target all of that energy and that uh what do you call it, that vim and vigor to go and do exciting big things. And he's coaching up the next generation to be like, hey, if people are mad at you about stuff, don't let it be because you're a lawbreaker. Don't let it be because you're somebody who grabs swords and goes around swinging at people's ears when you got told not to. He doesn't say exactly that, but basically it feels like he's kind of reckoning with that part of his past. No, instead, if people are going to criticize you, let it be because of your good works, let it be because of your loyalty to Christ and your goodness and your adherence to this message and this kingdom. If people are going to get after you and persecute you, let it be because you did awesome good things, not because you were a jerk or difficult or obstinate or whatever. So for Peter of all people, Peter, with that personality and that resume to come along later in life and say stuff like this, but do this with gentleness and respect. Wow. That demonstrates a lot of growth. It demonstrates the work of the spirit in his life, and it demonstrates the fruit of the spirit about which he is writing. We have time for one more. Yes, I've decided we have time for one more. Ah man, I don't know where it is. How would I ever go about finding Second Timothy? Do you see it? Do you have a trick? That's right, it's with all the T's. So 2 Timothy 2 20. Well, I'm gonna start reading in verse 23. Uh Timothy is another one of these pastoral letters like Titus, where Paul is writing to one of his helpers. He says, Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord's servant mustn't quarrel, instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him, he must gently instruct in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will. That's what the fruit of the spirit that is gentleness looks like. Paul was a pretty feisty guy, too, the guy who's writing this letter. He was a guy who maybe liked to throw rocks at people he disagreed with literally. At the very least, we know he liked to stand there and watch other people throw rocks at people literally he disagreed with, and not like a couple times just to send a message. Like he liked it when they threw rocks at people he disagreed with until they died from the rocks. That was what younger Paul was like. And now here he's talking about tackling disagreement or people who are making mistakes and thinking backwards with patience and gentleness. So there's a lot of growth there in the spirit on the part of both Peter and Paul here that uh we're reading about in 2 Timothy. You get the idea. All of these fruit of the spirit, they're beautiful. Every single one of these really could probably get a season, and we could just track down these beautiful attributes all over the place, but we're not doing that. We're just about to the end of it. We got one more to go, and then our next season is not gonna be the fruit of the spirit double, triple, mega ultra breakdown. It's gonna be Philemon and it's gonna be delightful. All right. Thank you for indulging me last time around on overgentle gianting. I got a little carried away. I'm gonna tighten it up. I'm gonna demonstrate more self-control moving forward. You see what I did there? The next one is self-control. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.