Teaching | Gentle and Humble

Hello and welcome to the John Mark Homer Teachings Podcast. My name is Yinka Dawson and I'm your host. Each week we feature teachings by John Mark or other voices in the formation space. It's great to have you with us. Today, John Mark explores one of the most well-known yet often misunderstood invitations of Jesus. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

He unpacks what it means that Jesus describes himself as gentle and humble in heart and why this revelation is essential if we ever want to find true rest for our souls. Here's John Mark. Good evening, everybody. That was not an encouraging sign for a guest speaker, but it's okay. Great to see you. Good evening, everybody. I'm much less Pentecostal than John. I don't need nearly as much love back.

Really grateful to be with you. Your name comes up all the time. I work with pastors and churches all over the place. It's beautiful how often I hear the name of your, not just your lead preacher, who's one of the best living preachers in the world, and I pray you know that and honor that.

but you as a community and how you are following Jesus together. I think of that line as I was coming here in Thessalonians chapter 1. It's one of my favorite lines in the New Testament where Paul writes, you to the church became a model to all the believers. all over that part of the known world. And in many ways, I think there are pastors and churches and followers of Jesus all over the country and the world who are looking to you as a North Star. So well done. And it's really a delight.

If you have a Bible, open up to Matthew chapter 11. We are going to work through the text a little bit more. I live in a place called Topanga Canyon, which is up in the Santa Monica Mountains, just on the edge of L.A. And this last summer, my wife and I, I'm about to date myself here, but we just celebrated 24 years of marriage.

You know, not bad. And as Kanye said, and just don't judge me for that, you know, marriage is like dog years for it's actually a long time. You're not married yet. That's why you don't think that's funny. You still think it's heaven on earth coming to you. Okay, that's great. I'll let you live in that wonderful illusion.

So 24 years, we went just a few hours north to Santa Yanez Valley, which is wine country in coastal California. It's beautiful. It's very idyllic. There's vineyards and ranches and quiet. tiny little towns with cafes and bistros. And right in the middle of nowhere, out in rural coastal California, there is this Michelin star restaurant called Bell's. We ate there for our anniversary dinner and get to chatting to the manager and it's like...

like a classic story. I was thinking about flying here. I was like, I have to tell them this. It's this NYC culinary power couple who ran high-end restaurants in Manhattan for years, crushed it until it crushed them, and they burned out. out on Manhattan Live, decamped to coastal California, and now they're open like four days a week, still have a Michelin star like you do, and they're just loving their life.

And I don't know if they're actually loving their life, but in my mind, that's the archetype of this story, right? And you know, I say that because it's kind of cliche. I don't even live here and I can tell you the pattern that you're all living through. People move to New York, they work their tail off, they rise in whatever their career or pursuit of the arts. or whatever it is, is until they inevitably burn out.

at which point you can just hope that you have made enough money or amassed enough vocational equity that you too can move somewhere sunny and warm and relaxed or whatever your preferred locale is. But in many ways, that caricature of the New York... life arc is just kind of

a sign of a wider generational trend. Anne Helen Peterson wrote that article a few years ago for BuzzFeed, How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, and this is true of Gen Z as well. In it, she calls burnout a rite of passage for our generation.

I mean, it used to be like there were multiple rites of passage. You know, you got your driver's license and you had your first drink out of the bar or whatever. Maybe back in the day you got married and you started a family. Now burnout is just like on that list. scheduled stop on the road of life she said it is not a temporary affliction it's the millennial condition it's our base temperature it's our background music it's the way things are it's our lives

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han famously called the West the burnout society. It's like we just churn out tired, exhausted souls like a widget factory. I don't know if you feel this at all yet in your body or in your bones. If you don't, it's because you're still young and you haven't been in the city very long. But you will. Trust me, you will.

Whether you are the classic kind of type A New Yorker working your tail off however many hours a week, just gutting it out, or a more kind of... type B, median, bell curve, normative American who's just in town for a selfie with the Statue of Liberty or whatever it is. Most of us read Jesus' invitation here in Matthew 11. Come to me, all you are weary. heavy burdened, and I will give you rest, not just for your body, but quote, rest for your souls.

Most of us as modern Americans, we read that line and there's just this like deep soul level. Yes, I ache for that. I love Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Matthew chapter 11. Come to me, all you who are weary. Nope, not this one. Do we have it? Come to me. Are you tired? worn out, burned out on religion. Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest.

Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep... company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. Do you not love that language freely and light? How many of you would love to live freely and lightly? I read that and I think, yes, sign me up. Like, where is it? Let me put my email in. I'm down. Sign me up. And yet, for honest...

For most of us, there is a chasmic gap between the invitation of Jesus, or you could argue the promise of Jesus, come to me and you will find rest for your souls. and our honest-to-God experience. Many of us, if we're actually honest, and most of us are lousy at that, but if we're actually honest, not just with other people, but even with ourselves. would have to admit, yeah, there is a gap. I mean, I follow Jesus daily to the best of my ability in New York City, but I am tired.

I am weary. I am honestly a bit burned out on religion. And so a lot of us just live with the dissonance. For some people, it's just too much dissonance and they have to walk away from the church or from the faith itself. Others of us have to just kind of step back and kind of settle into apathy. We don't know how to make sense of it in our brain or in our heart.

Or a lot of us just ignore it and get to work in the morning and figure there must be something wrong with me. Let me offer you that Matthew 11 is... one of the most well-known lines in all of the teachings of Jesus and the writings of the New Testament.

And the problem with popular Bible verses is year over year, they become increasingly distant from their source material until they are so wildly out of context that you almost have lost the entire meaning. give me just a few minutes to work through the text with you. You need to see, you need to understand.

the larger context of Jesus' invitation in order to make sense of it. So let's work through it, and we'll come back and kind of revisit that dissonance and see if there's another angle in to the rest. Look again at verse 25. At that time. Okay, so hermeneutics 101. What's the first question you ask? At what time? You are the worship leader. You don't count. Come on.

But that was fantastic. And she's in the front row. I mean, come on, this is a New Yorker Christian right here. I don't even know you. What is your name? Elise, that was lovely this evening. Thank you so much. And triple stars for you. Yes. But she's exactly right. At what time? Well, if you're reading through Matthew's story, Matthew's a literary genius. It's not like a collection of random sayings of Jesus on a calendar. This is all intentional. It's thoughtful. It's a literary...

redesigned the entire piece. And in context, in the story just before, Jesus is rejected by the villages of Chorazin and Bethsaida and a smattering of other villages in the Galilee who refuse to believe in spite of watching Jesus perform full-on miracles, healing the sick, casting out demonized people, raising the dead, and yet they refuse to believe.

that Jesus was the Messiah in part because of his nonviolent stance against Rome. And they refused to trust and believe in his good news or his gospel of the kingdom of God. Now, I don't know about you, but if I was just pouring out my life, to my people that I love, and I was rejected, and I was refused. I don't know. I would be emotionally shot. I would be cynical. I would be exhausted. But look at Jesus. Jesus said,

I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. It's almost like he's breaking out into music. Because you have hidden these things, the beauty of the gospel, from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children. Jesus is not depressed. Or despairing. He is full of joy. Because his interpretation is. The father has hidden.

the truth and the beauty of the gospel of the kingdom from, quote, the wise and the learned. That should terrify you if you are anything close to approximating a median New Yorker. There are a lot of wise people here and a lot of learned people here. If you wanted to paraphrase that line, Peterson style, you could say the cultural elites or the well-educated and well-read.

or the high and the mighty, or the movers and the shakers, or the who's who of the world, or the people that actually get things done. But the Father did not reveal himself to the people who run the world with business as usual. but rather to little children. That was a way in Jesus' gracious, tender way of referring to his followers.

And yes, there were a few kind of cultural elite type of people among Jesus' early band of disciples, Joseph of Arimathea, a number of prominent women who, of course, bankrolled the whole thing. I like this Jesus. But most of Jesus' followers... were fishermen and farmers and tax collectors and former sex workers and former invalids, people just who were desperate and in need.

And Jesus is just reveling in, Father, you have revealed yourself to little children. Yes, Father 26, for this is what you were pleased to do. Here again, you see the way that Jesus is always living for his Father's pleasure. One of my favorite lines, if you listen to Jesus, you notice this language a lot. One of my favorite lines out of Jesus' mouth is, I always do what pleases the Father. Can you imagine asking somebody tonight, like, so what do you do for work?

I always do what pleases the Father. Oh, so you're unemployed. Got it. Great, right? Man, I'm kind of sort of a paid Christian, said tongue-in-cheek, and I can't say that. Always do what pleases the Father. Here is Jesus just reveling in what the Father is on about. 27.

All things have been committed to me by my Father. And then look at this line. No one knows the Son except the Father. And no one knows the Father except the Son. And thank God. There is not a period right there, but rather a conjunction and Those to whom the son chooses to reveal him. That word no is gnosko in Greek. It doesn't mean like left brain head knowledge. It means the knowledge of personal direct relational experience.

So in English, we use the same word know for I know the theory of relativity and I know John Tyson. It's a very different word in Greek. This here means I know by direct relational experience. The Son knows the Father, and the Father knows the Son, and those whom the Son chooses to reveal to them. Years ago... I was privileged to be invited to a memorial service for an internationally famous preacher. I won't name him, but well-known household name in much of the world.

And through, long story, but I've been kind of family friends through my parents since before I was born. And I'm at this small friends and family invite-only memorial. This man has literally preached the gospel of Jesus to tens of millions of people. I sat through this service. Not one word was said about his preaching. Not one, you would never have even known that he was a preacher. Not a word was said for two hours. It was just his sons and his daughters and his grandkids talking about.

their father and the most moving time for me was his gay grandson gets up he was i don't know 19 years old and said you know i'm still working out me and god and life and i have a lot of questions But I know this, every summer we would all go together on vacation, and every morning at 6 a.m., Grandpa would take a different one of us grandkids out for breakfast.

And he would just love me and listen to me and ask me questions. And I really miss my grandpa. In that moment, I'd heard this man preach in front of once 150,000 people. I knew this man in a way I'd never known him before through his son's direct relational experience. In the same way, there are aspects of who God is that you can get just by opening up a physics textbook.

Or looking into a telescope tonight. I don't think you could see anything from Manhattan with this light pollution, but it's a nice idea, right? There are just things. Go read Romans chapter 1. There are just things about God that can be known just through the world or through just a cursor. reading of the Bible. But there are aspects of who God is and the depth of his being.

And I know this is scandalous to say in a place like New York, but you can only get through the person and life and teachings of Jesus.

Because the Son knows the Father and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Now, the word reveal that's used here in verse 27 and previously in verse 25, it's used twice, is apocalypsi. Greek where we get the title of the last book of the New Testament canon, the Revelation. It means to reveal or to unveil or to pull back the curtain to make public what previously was secret.

And what does Jesus apocalypsi, what does he make public that previously was secret? What does he reveal? The Father. Meaning, now this is what you need to hear from me right now. The context for this well-known invitation of Jesus, come to me all you are weary and I will give you rest. The context for it is Jesus. unveiling and revealing to his followers aspects of the Father's inner life that previously had been hidden. Verse 28. Come to me.

all of you who are weary and burdened in this context, in light of who the Father is, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. That was a first century rabbinic way. The rabbis would call the Torah the yoke of Israel. It was a way of saying the revelation of who God is. Take my yoke upon you. my yoke upon you and learn from me for, and this is a key phrase, I am.

If you were a first century Hebrew, that would send shivers down your spine. That's the language of Exodus and the burning bush and Moses. I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Because we're so exhausted, we often key in on this line right here about... you will find rest for your souls. And you're like, yes, come on, easy yoke, I'm in.

And that's certainly true. Most rabbis in Jesus' day were harsh and heavy-handed and would despise the common people. Later in Matthew, Jesus rebukes the religious leaders who, quote, tie up heavy cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders. Jesus is not like the other rabbis. And this is the part of Jesus' line that we should key on. He is two things. gentle, and humble. Is this how you think of Jesus? The Reformed writer Dale Ortlund

in his book Gentle and Lowly, points out that there's only one place in all four Gospels where Jesus tells us about his heart. One verse out of 3,779 verses in 89 chapters. where Jesus tells us what he is like on the inside, what his inner disposition is. Every person has like an inner core, an inner...

to use California language, an inner essence, right? You have an inner energy about you, like everybody does. If I had to say, okay, what's your friend's name? Give me two or three modifiers. Tell me about who your friend is. is at the core, what would you say? They're bold, they're creative, they're daring, they're wise, they're disciplined, they're thoughtful. What would you say? Jesus' two words are gentle and gentle.

That's what's at the core of Jesus' heart. Not power and might. Not courage and honor and glory. Not wisdom and intelligence and skill. Jesus is all of those things and much more. He is peaceful and joyful and generous and morally serious and holy and just. He is called by the writer of Hebrews a consuming fire. He is the judge of all the earth. And one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is not just gentle and lowly. He is also Lord. All of that is true.

But to Jesus, it's not what is most true. If there's a hierarchy of who Jesus is, at the top of that list is gentle and humble. In heart. The word gentle is pros in Greek. It can be translated all sorts of ways. Gentle, meek, unassuming, modest. Soft, quiet. It means one who is kind and compassionate and patient and gracious and warm-hearted and hospitable and welcoming and not easily angered. prickly or easily offended or judgmental, but just warm and loving.

Matthew and the gospel writers go out of their way to claim that Jesus is the one the prophet Isaiah was speaking of when he said, quote, he will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the street. A bruised reed he will not break. and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. That's what Jesus is like, soft-handed, so gentle he would not bend a broken blade of grass.

How much more gentle do you think he would be with you or with I? Gentle and humble are tapenos in Greek. It can also be translated lowly. It means one who either is in or intentionally takes the low position. Paul uses this Greek word in Romans 12. Live in harmony with one another, he's writing to the church. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.

Think of how we don't want to crowd our style or our brand or whatever with people that aren't on the up and up. We want to hitch our wagon to the right people. Jesus is the opposite. Who is the most uncool? unhelpful, non-networked person in the room. Let me go chill with that person. Gentle and, you know, it's kind of like how New Yorkers think, you know, don't worry, LA is 10x worse, right?

James and Peter both quote from Proverbs chapter 3, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. He opposes the proud. If you're proud in the room tonight, you have made God your enemy. And he's gentle and he's patient and he's kind, but he is opposed.

There's what theologians believe is an early Christian hymn that's quoted by Paul in Philippians 2 that uses this Greek word multiple times. In humility, again writing to the church, value others above yourselves. Not looking to your own interests, but... each of you to the interests of the others, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, the same consciousness, the same way of viewing and thinking about the world, who, being in very...

God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage or for his own privilege and well-being. Rather, he made himself nothing. By taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, same word again, by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. How often do you see people with power in the New Yorks of the world give that power away voluntarily?

How often do you see people with wealth give that wealth away voluntarily? And it's one thing to give it away out of abundance. The New Testament says that he became poor so that we might become rich. He didn't just give away out of excess. He gave everything. To the point of death. Very rarely do you ever see that in the best of human beings. Because Jesus in his heart, in his inner essence is gentle and...

Humble. If a friend were to ask you, hey, tell me, what is Jesus like? How would you answer that question? Would you quote the Nicene Creed? Would you pull language out of systematic theology? Would you quote the Bible? Would you talk about the Trinity or the resurrection? Those are all powerful truths. But if they said, but yeah, okay, but tell me, what's he like as a person? What's it like to be in relationship with him? I don't know what you would say, but I know what Jesus said.

And I think that's a pretty good starting place. Gentle and humble and hard. Now, here's the thing you need to make sense of Matthew 11. Let's connect the dots between Jesus' revelation of the Father, gentle and humble. And the invitation to rest for your soul, not just for your body. You can get that from a good pill from your doctor or if you have enough money, like a really nice vacation in Hawaii or wherever you go from the East Coast. I don't know.

Rest for your soul. Central to the Christian imagination is the mystery of what theologians call the incarnation. Put simply, and this is a very complex idea, And you can really only understand it with your right brain more than with your left. But put simply, it's that Jesus is fully human and fully God. Hebrews 1, the sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact...

representation of his being. Colossians 1, the sun is the image of the invisible God. John 1, no one has ever seen God but the one and only sun who is himself. God and is in closest relationship with the Father has made him known. Very similar idea here.

In the language of the Nicene Creed, if you're new to the Christian tradition, this comes around the 4th century when finally the way of Jesus is legalized by the Roman Empire. Christians kind of come out of hiding and persecution and literally meeting in catacombs for the first time. first time, band together, and the first thing they do is try to figure out theologically what in the world just happened with Jesus.

His death, burial, and resurrection, and how it blew up their categories of God and monotheism, and they began to just work it out, and they came up with this kind of agreement across the global church of the day that we now call the Nicene Creed. Here's the line about Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God.

God, begotten, not made of the same essence as the Father. Ancient Christians called Jesus the God-man, and modern American Christians usually emphasize the God side of this paradox, in part as a kind of response, or when it's not as wise, reaction.

to the kind of progressive, secular, humanistic, and often the progressive Christian, degradation of Jesus, kind of down from the incarnation to like a really... like a Jay Shelley from the first century, you know, just like a, like a kind of up and coming wisdom teacher, or he's like a Gandhi from in the ancient world.

And often those of us who love and follow Jesus come back and say, no, no, no, no, no. And we want to elevate the divinity of Jesus. But it's not about a balance. It's paradox. It's both. And if we, in turn, downplay the human side of Jesus, so much is lost. actually on the divine side of who God is. Because it's not just that when we look at Jesus, we are looking at God. It's that if you want to look at God, you look at Jesus.

As Michael Ramsey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, put it, God is Christ-like and in him is no un-Christ-likeness at all. We map our theology of God onto the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. If you want to know what the Father is like, look at Jesus. He is the revelation of the Father that you cannot get from science or telescopes or even from Christian theology. You get it ultimately from...

from its source material, Jesus himself. And to come full circle, he is what? Gentle and humble. This is so important to grasp.

if you ever want to find rest for your souls. Let me just explain this. Between the cultural hustle of New York life and just modern life, still floating in the kind of cultural ethos of the church, is this basically heretical caricature of God the Father as the kind of angry... Christian Odin, implacable, violent tyrant in the sky, craving blood lust, and Jesus as this kind of meek and mild, passive victim who's like a salvation...

mechanism, delivery thing. That's not Christian theology. It's not what any good Christian theologians believe or teach. But it is often kind of what comes through, often in popular preaching and teaching, often in other parts of the country, and often just with well-meaning metaphors gone horribly wrong. And it is really a bifurcating of the Trinity. The problem is we usually map our experience of authority figures over onto our view of God.

So then we come to, quote, God, and even if in our left brain we kind of know, we've read scripture, we've sat around church, we know at least at some level of our brain that God is love, that for God so loved the world that he gave us love. his one and only son. But we don't actually believe that. If you're familiar with the difference between implicit and explicit knowledge.

At an explicit level, we believe that God is a Trinitarian community of love. We believe in the Nicene Creed. We believe in the New Testament. We believe in good Christian doctrine. But often... at an implicit level. We are not an Orthodox Christian. We are a heretic. We are a pagan. We are deeply wounded. And there's a part of our body that believes God is scary or dangerous or mad or unhappy or shockingly like authority figures that we've known. Or abusive parents that we've known.

or wounding relationships that we've known. We blame God when really it is something much. If you do not grasp the inner heart of Jesus and by extension his revelation of the Father, you will struggle with burnout until your dying days because you misunderstand who God is.

and you misunderstand what it's like to spend time with them. And that is not a criticism of you. That is an invitation to you. Simple analogy. I don't know if you've ever had the chance. I have this on a somewhat regular basis. Through your work or your life, to spend time with a person, particularly an authority figure that you look up to and respect. Often those people who are highly successful in the world, or very driven people,

There's often a trail of marriages and children that want nothing to do with them behind them. But they might really look impressive. And when you're around those people, you know, often... Man, it's inspiring. You learn a lot. I don't know how you feel, though, with those people. I always feel anxious.

I always feel like, man, I got to be on. I got to bring my best game. I got to talk fast. I got to talk smart. I have to impress this person. I have to like one up the other people around me. I need them to think I do a good. I don't want to sound stupid. I don't want them. They're easily angered. It takes a lot to, I have to perform for them, right? And I might walk away inspired and impressed and even in awe of them, but I'm also gonna walk away exhausted.

Feeling like, man, I am not doing enough. I'm not talented enough. I'm not smart enough. I don't hustle enough. I don't have what it takes. I don't know if I can do this. I'm more aware of my insecurities and my weakness than ever before. But I've also had the chance to spend time with some authority figures and highly successful people who are the Jesus stuff people.

who have been deeply formed by the person of Jesus and their person. And even if they're hardworking, even if they're blisteringly smart and all that stuff that we like, They tend to be deeply peaceful. They're, for the most part, very relaxed. They tend to be really compassionate. They are so much less judgmental of me than I am of myself.

They can't, they're not really, like nobody's trying to impress them. They don't need to be impressed. They listen, they love, they care. And you know, when I walk away from those people, I was just with one the other day. I feel rested. I don't feel weakened. I feel strengthened. I don't feel drained. I feel filled up. I don't feel inadequate. I feel, man, if God can use broken people, God can use me.

I feel inspired to walk with God because they are gentle and humble. If you misunderstand who God is and you think God is like those super intense type A people, Wimber used to say, intensity is not a fruit of the spirit. All charismatics need to hear that. And he was a charismatic. Intensity is not a fruit of the spirit. It often actually is. A real deficit to love. Gentleness is, though. You have to understand God is gentle. And not to mention...

We become like our image of God for better or for worse. You will become like who you think God is, whether your view of God is Trinitarian and Jesus to the core or completely. denuded. And if you don't see God as gentle and humble, you will never become someone who is gentle and humble. And I'm telling you, the opposite is exhausting. Humble, you know how exhausting pride is?

Pride is so exhausting, keeping up appearances, pretending, performing, having to make yourself look better than you are, constantly curating your image, overthinking, what did I say? I said that stupid thing. What if they look down? me? What if that comment wasn't well worded? It is so tiring. Do you want to live your life on that hamster wheel?

Or gentleness, what's the opposite of gentleness? It's anger. And anger is often, anger is a surface level emotion, but in my life, it is almost always because my life is not going the way I want it to go. And my attempt to control my life and the people around me has been frustrated. That is exhausting, trying to control your life in a world this chaotic.

where almost nothing is in your control. I read a psychologist recently who said the average American has, I think it was 18% of the control over their life they think they do. It's like, that is job security for a therapist right there. 18%. Dallas Willard used to say, the soul finds rest when it no longer has to manage outcomes.

The people I know who are well rested in their soul are not the people who have everything go the way they want it to go. They are the people who have somehow become free of the need for it to go the way they want it to go. That doesn't mean they don't work and they don't plan and they don't grieve. It means they live freely and lightly. My point is very simple. Jesus is offering you rest for your souls. And if you are not experiencing it, there's lots of things you could look at.

You can look at all the surface level stuff of your life architecture. If you're at all familiar with my work, I talk a ton about this. slowing your life down and recapturing the practice of Sabbath and befriending quiet and living in deep long-term relationships. This is like the bread and butter of my life. I believe in all of it.

But you could do all of that. And that's a Herculean effort in a city like New York. You could even pull off the miracle of living an unhurried life in New York City. And you could still live with an existential exhaustion as long as you do not understand in your gut. That God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are gentle and humble and forming you to be the same.

And this is key. While this is the only place that Jesus pulls back the curtain to reveal to you and I his heart, and by extension the Father's, there are multiple places where the New Testament writers pick up on this language. The New Testament was written... Willard used to say by apprentices, for apprentices of Jesus, all about apprenticeship to Jesus. To be an apprentice or a disciple of Jesus is to devote your life, among other things, to becoming like Jesus.

What we call spiritual formation is all about the formation of Jesus' spirit, his inner essence, his heart inside. our heart or inner essence or spirit. That's what it is, which is why the New Testament writers call on Jesus' apprentices to emulate his gentleness and humility, not just to laud it in Christ, but to be...

Come that way. You're used to really long sermons. And that's, I'm just a guest here. I can't get fired. So I'm just going to keep going. And we're going to talk about this. Paul, for example. All of you are like, the 20 people clapping, stop, stop. You do not speak for the rest of us, right? Paul, for example, uses this phrase in Ephesians chapter 4, be completely...

humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. This is a direct allusion to Matthew 11. Colossians 3, again, clothe yourselves with compassion. You know, I love New York. It's so fun to visit. And I'm here with my 16 year old daughter. I've never been to New York, and I said, honey, you're going to love New York. It has some of the best fashion of any city in the world. There's just a vibe. I've never seen so many well-dressed people in one city, right?

And walking around yesterday, it is astonishing the amount of money and thought and effort and creativity that people put into their clothing or their appearance. What if we were to give just a tithe of that to clothing ourselves in humility, gentleness, and patience? Here it is again.

Remember, this is an oral culture. And so a teacher, and it's kind of like how, you know, if you're a writer today and you're writing an article online, you can hyperlink to stuff. And it's just like, yeah, you're writing through and it's like, oh yeah, people can double click on that if they want.

In an oral culture, the way you do that is with well-known words and phrases and language. These are people that had most of Scripture memorized. Here, Paul was able just to kind of allude to the gentle and humble nature of Christ, and everybody would have...

had that in their mind, which means Matthew 11, this invitation has spread all over the Mediterranean, the world in a matter of a few years. It's well known. And it's not just Paul. There's a controversial line in Peter's letter where he writes. that wives, the beauty of wives, should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

Feminist readings of this text point to it as yet another example of patriarchy in the Bible, as if Peter is saying women like children should be seen but not heard. And while there is plenty of patriarchy in church history, and far more of it in history history, to read the text that way is to completely miss the point. Gentleness and quietness, despised and disdained by our power-obsessed, noisy culture, are virtues in the Christian way. In fact, they are supreme virtues.

Christ himself is gentle. Then a few chapters later, Peter writes, all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. That's just a sampling. Do you see it? How Peter and Paul and others are calling the early Christians to emulate the heart of Jesus, the gentleness and the humility of Christ.

All of the early church fathers and many of the church mothers picked up on this. Here's a small sampling. I read a lot of ancient Christians. Just humor me for a minute. Ignatius of Antioch, who was mentored by the apostle John. So like C.S. Lewis, pretty great. Tim Keller, the GOAT, John Tyson, Keller 2.0, I don't know, like maybe. Like these are all brilliant teachers.

but mentored by the author of the Gospel of John, writing about five years later, that's pretty close to the source material. What does he write? I am amazed. What is this man amazed at about Jesus? So close to the culture, at his gentleness. Of all the things he could have been amazed by. You made the world, you this, that.

I'm amazed at his gentleness. For he was silent more than he spoke, and his silence is more powerful than the words of others. We think so much about the teachings of Jesus, all beautiful. But here's somebody close to the source. He was silent more than he spoke. Clement of Alexandria said, the Lord himself also was meek and lowly of heart. There's the line. He did not command us to be proud. Okay, that shows how crazy the world was.

People were commanded by Greco-Roman culture, particular men, to be proud, to die and murder for, quote, honor. He did not command us to be proud nor overbearing, but to imitate his own meekness. John Christostom, the bishop of Constantinople, arguably the best preacher in church history.

fourth century, said in his sermon on Matthew 11, do you see how Christ draws them by his gentleness of invitation? Not by fear and threat, but by meekness and humility, he wins their souls. He made famous a line that was used for centuries after that Christ saves by persuasion, not by compulsion for, quote, compulsion is not God's way of working.

A gentle person, they may be incredibly powerful, they may be brilliant, they may be wise, but a gentle person will not compel you, will not force you, will not use violence against you because that's not who they are. Alma Sincletica, a desert mother around the same time, said it is better to be silent and humble than to speak in pride. Let your heart be gentle toward all.

And God will teach you the secrets of his kingdom. One last one, Gregory the Great, the eponymous founder of Gregorian chant and the first of the popes. said this in his rule of life for pastors, the ruler of souls must be a pattern of meekness that he may draw the hearts of his hearers by gentleness.

so that all pastors and Christian leaders should model this from the center out in the church. Church history would read so much less depressingly if his words had been heeded in the centuries to come. I could go on for hours. My point is across 20 centuries on almost every continent in more languages than we could keep track of from Almost every ethnicity you can imagine in the world. The teachers of the way of Jesus that we vault and we value have all...

done something to point to Matthew 11 and said, listen, this is key. This is revealing to us, one, the essence of who Jesus is in his core, and by extension, who the Father is. And two, It is the template that we are to pour our life into. Doesn't matter what your Enneagram number is. Doesn't matter what your job is. Doesn't matter what.

your work hours are like, doesn't matter how intense your personality is. Intensity is not a fruit of the spirit. All of us, you be you, be who God made you to be. But the template is the gentleness and humility of Christ through you, through your gender, through your personality, through your life. But that doesn't change. It's gentle and it's humble.

It's who we as followers of Jesus are called to become. And that's not easy. It goes without saying that our culture is anything but gentle and humble, right? And especially in New York City. I mean, it's... It's so great to be here. It's hard not to love this city unless if you live here, and then it's, I'm sure, easy to not love this city. But as a guest, it's great. And, you know, coming from L.A., it's fascinating. L.A.

I would imagine is New York's rival as far as just debauchery, immorality, vulgarity, godlessness. It's probably a nice competition for who's who. But the nice thing about L.A. is because it's all spread out and just the worst planned city in the universe, you at least experience all of it from the safety of your car.

You know, and there's like glass and metal around you and that obscene billboard. At least it's like a few hundred yards away and not like right there and bright and screaming at you. In New York, it's like six inches away. I mean, I'm with my daughter yesterday. I'm like, don't look at the tourist t-shirts, honey. Like it's so vulgar. It is so harsh and cruel and intense.

and merciless, and cutting, and verbally vicious, is not gentle. And it is certainly not humble. And it, I mean, the culture, New York's just a concentrated form. It is arrogant. I'm just reading the news. It is arrogant and proud and boastful and competitive and demeaning and self-promotional and self-aggrandized and flash-out dishonest.

David Brooks, in his book The Road to Character, tells this great story about driving home from Manhattan to his home somewhere out in the burbs. And he was doing research for a book, and he was listening to this recording from right after World War II. right after we won the war. And it was all these kind of well-known celebrities who were doing this radio program. So Bing Crosby comes on first and he says, today our deep down feeling is one of humility.

Then there's this famous war correspondent who says, we did not win this war because destiny created us better than all people. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than proud. And it's just all this like kind of old school. self-effacing language, right? And he turns it off, goes into his house, turns on a football game.

And right away, he sees the quarterback nail a pass to a wide receiver who made a two-yard gain before he was tackled, at which point he got up, did a victory dance, strutting, beating his chest, throwing the thing. Tens of thousands of people going. Wilde and Brooks writes, it occurred to me that I had just watched more self-celebration after a two-yard gain than I had heard after the United States won World War II.

And he just goes on to write about how there have emerged these two different ways of being in the world. One that is all about the self, self-promotion, self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction, self-definition, self-expression. Holy cow. You think. Jesus, you think Christianity is legalistic? Holy cow. Your gym is 10x more.

Man, you gotta maintain yourself. You gotta prove yourself. You gotta believe in yourself. You gotta show yourself. You gotta one-up yourself. You gotta push yourself. No wonder we're all exhausted. You know the quip about how studies show that 89% of Americans believe they are above average? That's true. In 1950, the Gallup org asked high school seniors if they consider themselves to be a very important person. 12% said yes when they asked again in 2005. This is 20 years old. It was 80%.

Psychologists who test for narcissism, there is like an official test, tell us that the median narcissism score has risen 30% in the last two decades alone. We are not gentle, you know this.

We are not humble. And all of this is amplified by social media and the digital age. And you know everything I'm about to say. I just want to apply this to your discipleship. Our phones in general, and social media in particular, are designed to... capture our attention, and monetize it by selling our data to marketers whose goal in turn is to manipulate our behavior, to get you to believe a certain thing, vote a certain way, want a certain thing.

buy a certain thing, hence the name, the attention economy. Really, the only metric that matters from, you know, Meta or Google and the rest is, quote, engagement. Now the thing is, they're not actually all that ideological. They don't care that much what you look at online.

Whether it's from the right or the left, whether it's silly cat videos or like bomb making tutorials. They just want you online for as long as possible. The algorithms designed by brilliant people are designed to figure out whatever it is that your brain... is most drawn to and just feed you more and more and more of that. Whether it's like...

cool architecture or like nice dresses or something far more ominous. The problem is, and this is why most of us degrade over time online, which is a proven fact, you get meaner every year that you're online. The problem is what psychologists call the negativity bias.

From an evolutionary perspective, it is more important to stay alive than it is to feel happy. So our brains are weighted to focus and pay more attention on the negative than the positive, at neuroscientists argue a ratio of something like 14 to 1. Now this is public knowledge, and there are people online, influencers, often social justice advocates, certainly politicians, who intentionally utilize this negativity bias to get your attention.

it works. Reacher shows that on YouTube, the top four words you should put in your title to get more views are, quote, hates, obliterates, slams, or destroys. A few years ago, when Twitter was still called Twitter, remember the golden days? A study from New York University found that for every word of moral outrage you added to a post, your retweet rate went up by an average of 20%. And the most helpful words to get a tweet back were, attack, bad, or blame.

More recently, a study from Pew Research Center found that if you fill your Facebook posts, if you're 79, with indignant disagreement. Indignant disagreement was their word. That's also known as like Thanksgiving with Uncle Bob, right? You will double your likes and shares. The saying behind closed doors is enragement drives up engagement. People are not coy about this.

All this in turn is, if you even dabble in the waters of social media or the digital space, It is reshaping our brains at like an fMRI neurobiological before-after scientific peer-reviewed study level and our society as a whole into one that is increasing. increasingly angry and hostile and argumentative and petty and irrational and unhospitable and harsh, in a word, the opposite of gentle. And we're not even talking about humility yet.

Do you really need me to like explain to you how social media is not helping you grow in the humility of Christ? Curating an image. When was the last time you took a selfie? And it was just really bad because you look like you really do in real life. You know, I know I'm talking about myself here, by the way. I'm like, I take that picture. I'm like, holy crap. I hope that it's not accurate. You know, what did you post it?

No! Are you kidding? You took 19 more until you got one that you don't really look like in real life, and you're like, yeah, that's the one. The only reason you posted it is if you're an Enneagram 4 and you're just showing us how down to earth and authentic you are and real you are. And there you go. That's your point. We love you just as you are. Guys, we know you love yourself too. So that's great.

No, I'm messing with you. I love you all to pieces. It's the things you can say when you're a guest. You're like, they're never going to invite me back. My point is this drives us. We wonder why we're tired all of the time. You're laying in bed thinking about what people who aren't in the room with you that you barely even know are thinking about you and how you look and what you say and how you feel. It's exhausting.

My point is very simple, and I've overmade it. It is not easy to be humble and gentle in a culture like ours. And sadly, because I think the gentleness of Christ...

is one aspect of who Jesus is that I think we've lost a bit, at least in the American church. This seems to be an area where, and there are a few others, materialism, political polarization. where we just, as a wider church, have a huge blind spot. And there seems to be little to no difference between the church and the world. A New York Times op-ed article recently was talking about...

just some Christians that were saying some really nasty stuff online about the current political debate. And by nasty, I don't mean like a different political position. I mean, the way they were speaking was just nasty. It was just cruel.

even as they were saying certain things that are, quote, Christian. And the author said, quote, It is possible for the faithful to wander very far from the cross. It is possible for people who name Jesus as Lord, who are orthodox in theology, who are faithful to the teachings of Jesus on this, that, or the other, who love the Bible, study the Bible, read the Bible, who go to church, who pray, who fast.

Plead with God for revival. All good and right and fitting things. Please don't stop. But you can do all of that. And still, if you don't see this, if you don't want this, if you don't intentionally crucify yourself to move toward this, you can still be more deformed by the toxicities of your phone, your city, and our cultural moment than formed by the gentle and humble heart of Jesus.

You know, normally when I, I don't travel much to speak, but when I do, normally I give a teaching that I've done before that I feel is like better. It's like the sermon equivalent of a selfie. I want one that's like better than kind of... normal you know and that makes sense like if you're on jimmy kimmel and you're in a band right you don't like try out new material on tv and see how it goes like you play the hits baby right

So I wanted to come to you tonight. I'm in town. I wanted to see my friend John. I wanted to come and just like bring you a really good one that made you all think I'm smarter than I actually am because you just don't know about where I got my source material. That's what I wanted. But this is something that the Spirit of Jesus has been just teaching me. I was deeply moved by this line of Jesus, the gentleness and humility of Christ, a while back.

And I read through the New Testament kind of in a sweep a bit faster than I normally do. And I was just, you know, like when you're thinking about buying a new car, maybe that's a bad, that's an LA example, huh? That's not a New York... When you're thinking about buying a new pair of shoes. You know?

And you're like, do I buy this pair? Do I not buy that pair? And then all of a sudden, what happens? You see that pair of shoes all over the city. And you're like, ooh, that's kind of cool. I like it. Ooh, I like it in that color. Ooh, that person's got bad taste. Maybe I shouldn't get that pair of shoes. You just see it everywhere you go, right?

It was like that for me. I just started to read through the New Testament. I just started to see gentleness, humility, humility, gentleness, gentleness, humility. Be completely humble, gentle in heart. Clothe yourself with humility. Let your gentleness be evident to all. I just could not unsee it. And so I literally printed out this list of scriptures and quotes just to meditate on it. And then a few weeks ago, I was just...

preparing to be with you. I just felt like I was to pass it on to you. And so I don't say that in some heavy-handed, thus saith the Lord, but I really believe that this text that God has been speaking to me about. He really wants you as a church and you as a human being to consider the gentleness.

and the humility of Christ. I'm talking to myself, though, more than I am to you tonight. And this is not false humility. It is not like manipulative, amiletical vulnerability. I am honestly not that gentle or humble of a person. I'm fairly humble, actually. But I'm not all that gentle. I mean it. If you were to put, like, a hidden camera on my lapel and...

and watch the footage of my life for a week, you'd see some things that would be good. You'd see me get up every morning and spend unhurried time in scripture and in prayer. You'd see me fast. You'd see me give away money. You'd see me live in community with a small group. You'd see me confess my sins every Friday with a dear friend. But you wouldn't be impressed because you have a negativity bias in your brain, 14 to 1.

And you would see other stuff. You'd see me be unkind to my wife, who's lovely. You'd see me be so impatient with my son because he's painfully unhurried. I hope he never reads my book on that subject at all. You'd see how exacting I am. You'd see how my perfectionism that at times makes me really good at work. makes me a really lousy dad at other times. You'd see how my kids live under a subtle...

toxic performatism that I just can't escape in my own life, and so I leak it out into them. That's not horrible. It wouldn't probably make it on a blog post, but it's ugly. But I can tell you this. I have a long ways to go, but I am a lot more gentle and humble than I was a few years ago. I actually think I'm a lot more gentle and humble than I was a year ago. And in the time span of spiritual growth.

A year is nothing. We grow at about the same speed as trees. Not a lot happens. But man, you give it time.

If you've been to the park, they become something really beautiful. And I don't know where this journey goes, but I know that the spiritual journey... is not about a destination. It's about the journey. It's not about arrival. It's about always arriving. We do ourselves a disservice when we talk about healing as a past tense event. I healed. we're never really healed this side of resurrection. We're healing and becoming whole one day at a time. And so my question to you as a fellow traveler,

I don't live in New York, but I live in another hard city and I share a New York kind of psychosis. Like I get what's wrong with you a little bit because the same thing's wrong with me. is a very simple and basic invitation. Have you started this journey yet? Have you begun to discover the gentleness of Christ and to model your life after it? Do you even realize how central gentleness and humility are to your discipleship to Jesus? We all ask kind of questions about

how we chart and measure our spiritual progress and our spiritual maturity. And that's fine. A mentor said to me recently, the only thing worse than not trying to measure, then measuring your spiritual maturity is not measuring your spiritual maturity. So it's intuitive to kind of wonder, am I growing? Am I doing well? But then the question becomes, what's my metric? How do I know if I'm growing or doing well?

Is it like how much time I spend reading the Bible in the morning? Is it how much money I give away? Is it how much I serve at Jesus? That same mentor said to me, whatever your metric is, you need to devise some kind of a test question that you can't like get an A plus on if you're a Pharisee. So here's one that you could ask. You could ask a very simple question. Would those who know me best say that I am becoming more gentle?

And would those who know me best say that I am becoming more humble? That would be a really meaningful question for you to reflect on this week. And do you realize that this is what the Spirit of God is trying to do in your life right now, even if this is a brand new idea to you? Because this is who Christ is. And Christ is in you, the hope of glory. And he is lovingly welling up in your soul and drawing you into himself, which means he is lovingly.

calling you to index toward gentleness and humility? Are you cooperating? Or like me, are you too often resisting? The problem with successful urban kind of people is we take this kind of active approach to life where we want to be the best, we want to crush it, and we want to succeed. Great. But then we take that same mindset into our discipleship to Jesus.

We want to do the same with the Bible and morning devotions and Sabbath and theology and church. And that's not all bad. Most people are so passive about their discipleship. But we forget that most of our deepest formation does not come from practicing spiritual disciplines, does not come from going to church all of the time. These are great things. I do them every day and every week.

most of it comes from accepting the invitation of Jesus in pain and suffering. All the other stuff is really important. It's like how you build the foundation. But if you want to live in the house with God, You have to accept the life that is offered you and find the invitations of Jesus in it. And whatever those invitations are, I guarantee you they have something to do.

with the Spirit wanting to coax more gentleness out of you and lovingly draw more humility out of you. You can begin this journey today. That's all I really want to say to you.

One thing you could do, you could reflect on those questions, you could also just spend time quietly meditating on the heart of Jesus. There is some kind of a spiritual osmosis. You know, Andrew Murray in his book on humility said, what he shows, he gives. What he is, he imparts. As the meek and lowly one, he will come and dwell in the longing heart. Just by sitting.

At the feet of the gentle and humble Jesus, there is this kind of imbuement of his spirit into your own. I love this from Dale Ortlund in his book on Matthew 11. Let the heart of Jesus be something that is not only... gentle toward you but lovely to you. If I may put it this way,

Ponder, romance the heart of Jesus. All I mean is ponder him through his heart. Allow yourself to be alert. Why not build into your life unhurried quiet where, among other disciplines, you consider the radiance of who you are. Christ actually is, what animates him, what his deepest delight is. When you look at the glorious older saints in your church, how do you think they got there?

Sound doctrine, yes. Resolute obedience, without a doubt. Suffering without becoming cynical, for sure. But maybe another reason, maybe the deepest reason, is that they have, over time, been won over in their deepest affairs. Perfections by a gentle Savior. Every once in a while, you meet one of these people. They are rare and they are precious. They are peaceful and they are joyful. and they are kind, they are unselfconscious.

They are grounded and unshakable no matter what the world brings. They are free of the need to control the outcomes of their life. And they are caught up. in the intimacy at the center of the universe, the love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You can become one of those people. Likely at about the same rate as a sycamore tree. But you can grow. I can change.

What was true of you five years ago does not have to be true of you 25 years from now. How your story starts is a very different thing than how your story has to end. And you cannot change the past, and most of us can't even change the present or the future, but we can open to Jesus in the present, and he can change who we are forever. So may you. hear Jesus' invitation, not just to take a nap or sleep in or chill out more, but to come and find your home in the gentle and the humble heart.

of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and find rest for your souls. Let's stand together and pray.

John Mark shared a powerful idea towards the end there. The only thing worse than measuring your spiritual maturity is not measuring your spiritual maturity. If we don't reflect on our growth, we risk stagnation or worse. wandering from the cross, as John Mark said. So to wrap up today, I want to carve some time for us to reflect on how we're doing.

And if you want to go deeper here, we have a free tool on our website designed to help you in this process called the Spiritual Health Reflection. But for now, let's just reflect on those two questions John Mark posed. Would those who know me best say that I am becoming more gentle? Would those who know me best say that I am becoming more humble? I'll leave 30 seconds here. And close with amen.

Thanks for listening. This podcast is from Practice in the Way. We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus. Thanks to Little Thoughts for our show music. We're a crowdfunded non-profit so everything we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by The Circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks today goes to Anna Marie from Norwood, South Australia.

From Cincinnati, Ohio. Esther from Waynesville, Missouri. Tom from Brunswick, Maine. And Jay from Richmond, Texas. Thank you all very much. To join these friends in the circle. Or learn more about our resources. visit practiceintheway.org. Until next time, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.