#108: God's Gentleness

On episode 108, Tim continues his Philippians series focusing on Philippians 4:4-5 which talks about rejoicing and gentleness.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome into episode one hundred and eight of Bring Heaven Down.
My name is Tim and I'm the host of this
daily devotional podcast that shows up in your feed Monday
through Friday. While you're here, hit that rate and review
button and follow button so that you will receive this
podcast in your podcasting feed. All right, we picked back
up and Philippians chapter four, and we're right at the

(00:24):
beginning of Philippians chapter four, and if you want to
follow along, we are going to be focusing really only
on verses four and five. It's a really quick one,
but I think a very important one. It says this,
rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again. Rejoice.
Let your gentleness be evident to all. There's that word

(00:51):
rejoice again. We see the apostle Paul right, rejoice and
the Lord I will say again, rejoice many times throughout
this short book of the Bible, which means we better rejoice.
Anytime you see something repeated anywhere there is importance and

(01:19):
there is emphasis behind that word. And the word rejoice
is repeated many times throughout scripture and through all circumstances.
We should rejoice, including through suffering. But I want to

(01:40):
focus more on Versus five, because we talked about rejoice
in quite a bit, but we needed to take note
of it again because it is all throughout Philippians, and
verse five says, let your gentleness be evident to all gentleness.
That is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit

(02:03):
and one of my favorite underrated I'll call it characteristics
of Jesus is his gentleness, because I think oftentimes we
think of God as this fierce, strict God, this all powerful,

(02:28):
sovereign God who can strike lightning down like fire if
he wants to. But there are many times throughout scripture
where God presents himself as a gentle God. At the
very beginning in Genesis, when Adam and Eve fell into sin,

(02:52):
God is walking through the garden and asked simple question,
what did he do? Adam? Where are you? He didn't
come into the garden ripping up flowers and weeds that
suddenly arrived after they fell into sin. He didn't walk

(03:16):
into the garden tossing things over, furious that they ruined
his perfect world. It's like, guys, what have you done?
Where are you? Another one of my favorite examples of
his gentleness is the apostle Paul, the person who wrote this.
He was formerly Saul, who persecuted Christians, and as he

(03:41):
was on a walk to Damascus to persecute more Christians,
Jesus appeared to him in a vision and wasn't yelling
at Saul. He was an irate He asked a simple question,
he says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting my people?

(04:05):
Jesus's gentleness is evident all throughout Scripture, and it is
evident with us today because what we deserve is eternal
punishment in hell. But it's because of Jesus's mercy that
he has created a path out of that situation. He

(04:31):
is gentle with us by giving us opportunities to repent,
to ask for forgiveness. And it's one of his characteristics
that I'll say again, I don't think is highlighted as

(04:52):
some of his other characteristics. And I think that with
the way culture and the world has gone politically and
in so many other avenues, bringing a gentle, unoffendable approach

(05:17):
to those topics and situations is more important than ever.
So thank you for choosing Jesus today, and I'm excited
to continue this Bring Heaven Down podcast, where our goal
is to bring heaven down. I hope your heart and

(05:40):
your life is filled with the fruits of the Holy
Spirit throughout this day.