Thank you, Scott. Good morning. God bless you all brothers. It's great to be with you. Looking forward to this time of fellowship with other brothers who have undergone similar trials and tribulations as we all do in the ministry.

I've been in the ministry now for 23 years as an elder and a pastor in the Colorado area. And I think the message that I was assigned was the most convicting of all of them. Thank you, Scott. These words penetrate into me as I read them the first time. And I think more than anything else, this has been the prayer of my heart that God would show me what it is to be gentle as Christ is gentle.

And that is the heights to which none of us will achieve perfectly. But don't we all desire that? When we say the word gentle, isn't that what we all want? Amen. Amen.

Let's read from 1 Thessalonians 2, 7 through 9. Not only the gospel of God but also our own lives because you had become dear to us for you remember brethren our labor and toil for laboring night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you we preach to you the gospel of God. Amen. Well, let's discuss the quality of gentleness. That I think is the overriding principle in these three verses, so I want to spend the most time with that and just will glance over some of the other characteristics that Paul presents as an example in his own life.

The quality of gentleness. Paul brings this out in 1 Timothy as well, the servant of God must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient." Above all, I think as anybody comes to meet with you in your study or meets you in the street or in the supermarket or they come to your house, It doesn't matter if it's a believer or an unbeliever. It seems to me that the one quality they need to come away with by which they would describe you and me as ministers of the gospel must be this word. I think they need to walk away and say, that was a gentle man. That's the word.

That's the word I want people to use when they come to meet me personally, not when they read about me on somebody else's blog. I'm talking about coming to meet me in my house at my table for the first time. They spend five minutes with me or ten minutes with you. They walk away and someone says, how would you describe that man? And they say, he was a gentle man.

Amen? It seems to me that is the quintessential descriptive adjective for the servant of God. That's what Paul says here. The servant of God must not strive but be gentle unto all men. And then again here in our passage, we were gentle among you just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children.

Well, is this a soft man? Let me talk about this in a negative first. Is he speaking of someone who is soft? Is this the effeminate man? Obviously I think that's been corrected by what's already been exposited from previous verses.

But this is not the soft man. Jesus commends John the Baptist, I think, in Matthew 11. What went ye out into the wilderness to see a read shaken with the wind What went ye out for to see a man clothed in soft raiment? From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. One of my favorite verse books is Thomas Watson's Heaven Taken by Storm on that passage.

But this is a description of who we are to be as kingdom men we ought to be strong. So this idea of gentleness is not a lack of strength. Jesus wants us to be strong. He wants us to be strong in faith, be strong in the power of his might. We're told in Ephesians 6, Jesus wants us to be resilient.

Men who can stand in the face of many difficulties. And I know we're tempted to quit. I've written more than one resignation letter over my 20-some years. But brothers, let's be resilient. Let's be men of God who continue in the faith.

One of the most encouraging passages to me is 2 Timothy chapter 4 where Paul says, I have kept the faith And I have taken my ministry, I've fulfilled my ministry. And those words, fulfill your ministry, is something that rings in my mind all the time. Take it to the end. Take it all the way through the six months, and then even further through that, if God gives you another six months. But let's take this ministry to the end and fulfill the ministry.

So let's be the indomitable men, the strong men, the men who will persevere. I love the descriptions in 2 Samuel 23. If you take that spiritually, if men are willing to get down into the pit in the time of snow and grapple with the lion and you know only one's going to come out alive, but you're engaging the enemies and sometimes multiple enemies as well. And when other men may disappear in the field of lentils, Shammah continues facing down the Philistines. What we need are men of great hearts, like Great Heart, the pastor in Pilgrim's Progress.

It's one of my favorite characters. Great Heart is always bearing the brunt of the battles against the great giants as you know a great heart is there resilient and following through so this is not the soft man this is not the effeminate man but also here sometimes in the ministry I think and sometimes with men a hardness and a harshness develops. And this hardness and harshness, brothers, is something we need to shoe in our lives. It comes out of a self-centeredness and a pride, sometimes a defensiveness. Sometimes it's impatience with others that is bothered when others inconvenience you.

You wake up with sheep hoof marks on your face and you wonder what happened for a moment. The tendency is to get up and be a little more hardened to the sheep the next day, or the next month, or the next year. But let's be careful about that. Let's not give way to that hardness, that hard-edged gracelessness, and this lack of forgiveness or bitterness that might creep in. Also there is amongst our present day a Nietzschean nihilist spirit of wrath and spite for God.

The idea of the will to power. I will overcome this thing in my own strength And I'm going to set myself against God's difficult providences, but do so in my own strength. And not in increasing reliance upon Him, increasing humility and bowing to His will and His purpose in my life. So let's be careful we don't give way to the hardness and the harshness of the day. We are not to assume that members of the church are not Christians.

I think we ought to be careful about that. There's this tendency sometimes in the preaching to give way to this temptation of suspecting everybody and love no longer hopes all things anymore. We're just assuming they're all unbelievers week in and week out when indeed they haven't proven that through the courts of the church. So let's be careful, be cautious with that kind of thing. Granted, there may be members who are not Christians, but don't look around saying, I'll bet he isn't and I'll bet she isn't.

Be careful about the hardness and harshness in the ministry. Even the warnings in Hebrews are always followed up with, but we are assured of better things of you, you know, and there's that comfort that comes with with the warnings and the exhortations. Well, we were gentle, that's the word, and it's interesting, the word gentle isn't the normal word used for gentleness in the New Testament. This word is actually we were childlike among you. It's kind of interesting.

We were like kids around you, which means we weren't overly complicated, we weren't pressing on you with these super high expectations as we would of adults. We were as little children among you. Now as far as what this gentleness looks like, let me just give you a couple of signs of gentleness in the ministry, and I think I have three here. The first is, it ties in with some of the things that have already been said. It has to do with the reaction, our reaction to the beatings.

I say the beatings because we do wake up with the chief hook marks on us. I think people have taken a baseball bat to the back of my head so many times. I've been spinning around for 20 years of my ministry oftentimes not really understanding what's going on, but I love Spurgeon's encouragement in his lectures to his students. Brothers, we need one blind eye and one death ear, But I've modified that a little bit. I think it's better to have about 1.92 blind eyes and 1.92 death ears when it comes to the ministry.

We just, we have to develop an amnesia about the problems and the issues. You just have to, you know, develop Alzheimer's disease early on in the ministry. That's very helpful. I've had people offend me and I run into them in a supermarket or something. I run up to give them a hug and then for a moment I think, I'm not supposed to hug this person But I can't remember why I'm not supposed to hug them, so I go ahead and hug them anyway.

So I think that's the attitude. Now of course they're a little stiff, you know, they're doing this number, but that's all right. We forget about the reasons why we're not supposed to hug each other and develop an amnesia about that. For the first time something happened this last Sunday it was just a blessing to my soul. I think it's first time in 23 years of ministry we had a family that left the church but came back.

And this is the thing that that was such a blessing was that they felt free to come back. See, we handled the departure rightly, thanks be to God, doesn't always happen as well as it did in that case, but just the fact that they came back and they humbled themselves and and they just said God has been working in us in this area in this area and they just felt that warmth that love in the congregation this for first week we came back we just felt a blanket of love that just surrounded us and received us and I think they felt that from the elders too. So that's the first reaction that's an indication of gentleness in your ministry. The second is patience. Patience.

The patience with the Mr. Fearing and the Mr. Ready-to-Halt in Pilgrim's Progress. That's why I love Great Heart. He's, he's, you know who Mr.

Fearing is, Mr. Ready-to-Halt? You have them in your ministries, don't you? And I've had the privilege of working with some of these brothers and sisters now for about 20 to 24 years. I've been an elder of Jeannie Harvey for about 20 years, the the Edens for probably 23 years, so a few families in our church I've been with for quite some time And some of these people are the Mr.

Fearing, the Mr. Eddydahal, you know, and I just wasn't sure they were going to make it. You know, you have those members where they just, they seem to be stumbling and they're always sort of fearing and sort of doubtful about their salvation and you're just kind of helping them along and and and they have the same prayer request every week practically for like 15 years and you're thinking are these people really gonna make it but it's the mr. Fearing's the mr. Eddie a halt so somehow they just keep and then you occasionally have somebody in your church they come in and they're like they got all the five points of Calvinism and they're just like just slick and they know everything and and they're just hopping along like the like the rabbit in there the tortoise and the hare you know I'm saying he's so he's the hare and then and then man they just fall flat on their face and they might even apostatize.

So we've had some situations like that over a time in ministry. But then there's the tortoise, you know? And there's the ready halts and the missed affearings and they make it along the way. And so I think as we learn that patience and we see that this growth of faith can be very slow at points And you have to get out the microscope to see if there really is some faith right there right now You know, okay. I think there is some there good good.

That's good. We can we can work with that you know So so this patience this working through and with these brothers and sisters Over decades is an indication of this gentleness third indication of the gentleness is how the children in the church react to you. Because I think that ties in directly here. Here, the gentleness is similar to the mother whose children run to her and are nursed by her. So also I think as Scott Brown said at the very beginning, the way our children, our children, pastors, elders children, react to the problems is such a good reflection of ourselves.

That's the, That's the thermometer. I'm checking with my children on how they can handle... My kids have been through some doozies. Some doozies. And You know, I've watched them carefully.

Are they going to react rightly to this? The misunderstandings and the people leaving upset about the wrong things. They're not even sure what they're upset about, but they know they're upset. And sometimes good friends of your own children, walking away from the body. And my son told me last week, he said, he does this softball team.

And he says, well, it's not exactly a church softball team. He says, dad, it's all my friends who have left the church and people in the church. So he's doing his best to maintain friendships, despite some differences in things that have occurred over time. But children in the church should expect your gentleness and your godly love for them. They should run to you.

They should hug your legs. They should be there every Sunday morning, you know, in line. Brothers, This is the ministry. Our children in our church should feel our proper and gentle love for them. It may take a year or two for some of the shy kids.

I've noticed that. You know, occasionally you'll have a family with a couple of shy kids and it takes a little while to warm up, but after a while you kind of feel that tugging on your your pant leg on the behind right back here you know you kind of feel that oh there's that little child that's been here for you know a year and a half and they're finally kind of warming up the pastor you know and that's a good thing that's an indication that the children are drawn into your gentleness. Alright, we cherish you with the tender love as the mother does as to her own children. And I thought this again is a picture of Christ. Isaiah 40 and verse 11, I draw that in.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom and shall gently lead those with that are with young." That's such a great picture. We are to lead as shepherds. And I think the the most poignant picture of this is Mark Hamby's story about how he took on shepherding as his little family economy for a while and and he he really developed a hate-hate relationship with the sheep and he tells the story of how the sheep actually several the Rams tried to kill him I mean it was just just brutal he just he was chasing them he was trying to catch them, trying to pen them up, and it was just a disaster. But he said During the third lambing season, he actually went out to the barn and spent eight weeks in the barn with his sheep.

And this is what he said, about the sixth week after shearing, deworming, immunizing, and bottle feeding, I noticed that the ewes were behaving differently toward me. They were observing my movements and were not as anxious around me. Now picture this. There I was, not feeling very well, with no energy and little hope, but I was giving these sheep the best care I could give them. I often sat in the hay reading the psalms and praying aloud, holding a lamb that nibbled on my finger.

I truly began to love these creatures of God and the mother sheep knew it. Then one day as I walked to the other side of the barn all 70 sheep moved toward me. I walked to the other side and they followed. I quickly opened up all the stall doors and then began parading up the path toward our house and when I look back all the mothers and their lambs were following." And of course the lesson is this, is the sheep will know if you love them. The sheep will get that idea and they will follow.

So Jesus of course has demonstrated his love for us in these amazing ways. He not only came into the barn, he came all the way down from heaven into the barn and then off to the cross to die on the cross for us. And he is the great shepherd, and he has emulated that for us. And so brothers, there's no better example than our Lord and what he has done for us. So we just simply follow in his footsteps.

Well, in conclusion, Paul says we were affectionately longing for you, we want to be with you, and we look forward to the fellowship. And each and every Sunday, Pretty much every Sunday I ask myself the question, Kevin, do you love these people? And I hear the question again from our Lord, do you love me? It's the first question he asks us, doesn't he? As pastors and shepherds, do you love me?

Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, do you love me? Do you love me? I say yes I love you Lord you you love me first and I love you and then he turns back and says well then feed my lambs. Love these sheep. Feed these sheep.

So let's affectionately long for the body, the sheep that Jesus has brought to us, and let's give them the Gospel and give them our lives. Well, our best example is Christ, and I had several examples of how he shepherds. It's helpful to go through his interactions, his corrections with his disciples. How does he do it? And I won't read them all.

I have them in my notes here. But I tell you, as I was looking at it just before I rose up to speak, I noticed something. In almost every case in which Jesus corrects his disciples, he asks them questions. That interesting? Why were you so afraid?

Where is your faith? Peter, do you love me? And so forth. Simon, are you sleeping? Could you watch for one hour?

These are the questions. They're all questions. Went through all the corrections he brought to his disciples. And yes, we have a corrective ministry, but so much of his corrections, in fact I think every single one of them I have here in front of me, are simply his questions. He's statusing them, he's questioning them, he's probing them, he's He's the surgeon determining what the issue is.

What's the problem with you? Where is your faith? So forth. Well, this is the thing that matters more than anything else in the ministry, brothers. This matters more than anything else for us, and that is our love for the sheep.

Think of 1st Corinthians 13, you may speak with the tongues of men and of angels. You may be the most incredible rhetorician ever. You are walking on air, literally, The rhetoric of angels. You may have the faith of the most charismatic preacher in the first century raising the debt down at the graveyard. People coming out of the ground.

But if if you don't have love, you may be the most doctrinally precise denomination ever. Absolutely got every single item, every minor issue of biblical doctrine down exactly right. All knowledge and all these things. But if you do not have love, you are nothing. Nothing.

It's all worth nothing. Your ministry is a big zero. So you see brothers, we must, we must cry out to the Savior for this love. We must understand it, live it out, and walk in the love that He loved us with when He gave Himself a propitiation for our sins. Amen?

Let's cry out for that. That God give us love. Amen.