Trinity Streetsville
Faithfulness | Organic - Growing the Fruit of the Spirit | June 23 2024
(gentle music) - Hello, and thanks for listening today to Trinity Sermons, Biblically-based sermons from Trinity Church Streetsville, a church where we are learning together to love Jesus, live like Jesus, and lead others to Jesus. Today, Rob Hercman's will be continuing our sermon series on the fruit of the spirit, and we will be learning about what he considers to be a rare fruit, that of faithfulness. We hope you enjoy today's message, and God bless. (gentle music) - Good morning. A reading from Ephesians chapter four, verse 25 to chapter five, verse two. Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work doing something useful with their own hands that they may have something to share with those in need. Do not let unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen, and do not give, sorry, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind, compassionate to one another. Forgive each other just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, the word of the Lord. - So when you go to a grocery store, of course, when you go to the produce section, there are a whole bunch of fruit that are very common, very regular, kind of run-of-the-mill North American fruits. They're all over the place. These are the ones that they have in copious amounts. These are the ones that often go on sale. There's the apples, the oranges, the bananas, and so on. But there are rarer kinds of fruit out there, and I wanna share just a few of them with you this morning. For example, this is what is called an aqui. Has anyone here ever eaten an aqui? No, I see a couple of hands. Yes, I've never had one. It looks like it's staring at you, and you can't get away from it. But apparently, an aqui is kind of a West African Caribbean fruit. It's got, listen to this, a nutty, silky, savory, cheesy taste. And it can be even scrambled like an egg. So there you go, an aqui. How about these little guys? Aren't they the cutest thing? These are, this is called a mouse melon. And mouse melon, anyone here ever had mouse melon? Nope, okay, apparently mouse melon. Great, and salsa, and gazpach. Oh, you've had mouse melon, good for you, Andrew. And you can even pickle it. So, I don't know, you just wanna nibble. You just wanna nibble those little mice melons. Now, going from the cute to the scary, this is called snake fruit, snake fruit. Anyone here ever tasted a snake fruit? It's from Malaysia, Indonesia, snake fruit. Even though they look kinda creepy, they're apparently very refreshing. You can eat them raw. You can put them in rice balls and stuff like that. Or how about this one? This fruit is called Buddha's Hand. It looks beautiful, don't you think? Buddha's Hand. And apparently, you can kinda see how it's, kinda looks like a lemon. It's apparently, it's very citrusy. It's kinda tangy, and you can use it to make like, I don't know, salad dressing, put it in muffins and stuff like that. So, can there's some rare fruits out there? Well, today we're talking about fruit, but we're not talking about the kind of fruit that you would find in the grocery store. We're talking about the fruit of the spirit. Meaning that if the Holy Spirit is working in your life, and if you are tending the garden of your soul, then what you should see happening is all these different kinds of fruit growing in your life. Like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is the fruit of the spirit. And today, we're gonna look at one of those fruit in particular, a very, very rare fruit of the spirit, which is called faithfulness. My friends, faithfulness is a rare fruit, very rare fruit. But today, we're gonna look at where you can find it, how you can grow it, and who can give it to you, right? It may be hard to find, and it may be difficult to grow, but there is someone who can give it to us, and we'll find that out at the end. So let's start with the question. Where do you find the fruit of faithfulness? It's hard, it's hard to find it. It's as hard as finding a mousemelon in no frills, right? And here's why, because the biblical idea of faithfulness comes down to these three words. Honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness. Faithfulness is H-I-T, it is a hit, in other words. Honest people, people with integrity, people who you can trust. These are the kind of people we wanna hang around with. These are the kind of people we want in our lives. These are the kind of people we want in our circle of friends. These are the kind of people that we want our kids to grow up and get married to. People who are a hit, people who are honest, and have integrity, and who are trustworthy. And when you come across someone who is faithful, it's like an achy, it scares you right in the face. You can't miss it, it's undeniable. You see the honesty, you see the integrity, you see the trustworthiness, you see the faithfulness, but it is rare. It is a rare fruit indeed. In fact, the proverb says a faithful person, who can find? And the psalmist says no one is faithful anymore. Those who are loyal seem to have vanished from the human race. All this means is that we have a bit of a crisis of faithfulness. Faithfulness is sorely lacking when it comes to relational faithfulness. These days, people seem to opt more for casual relationships than committed relationships. When was the last time you heard of somebody who's been happily married 30 or 40 years? When was the last time you've heard that somebody has had a lifelong friend? A lifelong friend, it has been there for them throughout the whole of their life. Relational faithfulness is kind of evaporating in our world today. There's also a professional faithfulness. These days, people don't stick in their jobs any longer than they really have to. We hop from job to job, from thing to thing. Company loyalty is a thing of the past. Now, hey, if someone is paying more, then we are out the door. And if there's also a type of faithfulness that's lacking, you might call it spiritual faithfulness as lacking. In our increasingly secular culture, people pursue religion and religious practices far, far less than they used to. And we struggle to maintain even our private spiritual practices. People have lost faith in things. People have lost faith in politics. We don't believe anything our politicians tell us anymore, do we? That's why we do fact checking. Because we know they're lying to us. So we have to find a way to figure out what is actually true. People have lost faith in their institutions. They've lost faith in the church. They've lost faith in the health care. They've lost faith in schools. People have lost faith in their banks. Ever since 2008, when we found out what the bankers were doing with all the money that we were giving them and how greedy and how dishonest, man, we lost faith in them too. But here's the kicker. We lost faith in ourselves because we struggle with honesty, don't we? And we struggle with integrity. And we struggle with trustworthyness. Who can find a faithful person? I can't even find a faithful person inside of myself. Check out this quote. Faithfulness means you stick to a commitment after the shine wears off. Faithfulness means you keep your word even though the complications arise. Faithfulness means you keep saying no a thousand times to the temptation of cutting a corner or taking the easy way of faithfulness means you keep working through relational problems rather than disposing of a relationship like yesterday's trash. Faithfulness means you see a project through to the bitter and faithfulness means you refuse to jump ship even when the waves of adversity are splashing over the decks of your marriage or of your relationship with others. That's a great quote. Here's the only problem though. That is a quote from a former church leader by the name of Bill Hybels who resigned in the year 2018 after allegations of sexual misconduct which were proven to be credible. So you see them say the fruit of faithfulness is a really, really hard thing to find. It's harder to find than a snake fruit or a mouse melon. The psalmist might be right then has faithfulness vanished from the face of the earth. Well, the answer is no. Though it is hard to find it can still be grown and actually because it's so rare we need more people and more people to grow faithfulness in their lives. And when Paul wrote this ancient letter that Annie just read to us to a church in Ephesus some 2,000 years ago, he was giving them some great wisdom and practical advice about how to grow faithfulness in their lives. Let's take a look at that. The first thing, the first lesson Paul says if you want to grow faithfulness is this. You need to refuse to deceive people. Refuse to deceive. If honesty is key to faithfulness that means you need to learn how to tell the truth. Paul says therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor. Don't lie. Don't make things up. Don't stretch the truth. Don't misdirect or misinterpret or misrepresent the truth. As Jesus put it this way, he said, all you need to do is just say yes or say no. All that other stuff that you say, it comes from the evil one. Now, of course, there are many, many ways you can lie. On the one hand, you can tell horrible lies about other people that are designed just to hurt them and beat them down. You can tell amazing lies about yourself just to make you look better and to build yourself up. And we know, we kind of know when those lies are happening. There are these other lies, though, that are sometimes called little white lies. And these lies are a little harder to spot, but maybe I'll just give you a few examples. One of these lies is what you make called a partial lie. It's when there's some truth, but it's not all the truth. Teenager comes home. Mom's like, hey, so what were you doing tonight? Oh, I was hanging out with Ryan. Oh, you're hanging out with Ryan. Okay, good, good. Was it just Ryan? No, it wasn't. It wasn't just Ryan. It was Ryan and Vince. Vince? Yes, Vince. Oh, gosh. So, what did you do? We used it at Ryan's house. Yeah, yeah, we were just at Ryan's house. Is that all you did? No, it's not all we did. It's not all we did. What else did you do? Oh, we went down to the river. Went to the river. What were you doing at the river? Oh, if you were just hanging out. Is that all you're doing at the river? Well, no, we went swimming. And is that all you did? Well, no, after we went swimming, we blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This keeps going on. It's like, you don't get the whole truth. You don't get a whole lie. You just have, it just keeps slowly leaking out. It's like a little white light. I'm telling the truth. I was hanging out with Ryan. I just didn't tell it was down by the river with Vince, right? So, there's the partial lie. That's one type of lie. There's also the polite lie. The polite lie is, you know, hey, can you come over to my place tonight? And you said, oh, shoot. I've got plans. I can't make it. But you don't have plans. Come on, right? You just don't want to go over. But the polite thing to say is that you've got plans. Related to the polite lie is the protective lie. It's when you don't really want to protect somebody's feelings. And so when they come back and they say, hey, how do you like my new haircut? And it's like, then you're like, it's amazing. I love it. What a great haircut. Or when your boss tells you, sorry, Rob, we've got to let you go because of downsizing. They're not downsizing. You're just a horrible employee. And they don't want to tell you. So they're saying, you know, we're just downsizing to protect your feelings, right? And then there's this other kind of lie, which is when you might call the padded lie, right? This is the kind of lie where you're always, you're exaggerating things. You say things like, you always do this. Or you never do that. Really, always? Never? No, come on. You're exaggerating. Or you might even have a friend. That friend is always like, it's amazing. Everything's amazing. Everything's excellent. It's like absolutely like, oh, it's off the wall. It's awesome. And you're like, everything can't be amazing and excellent all the time. If you go to the UK, you know what people are constantly saying in the UK? Everything's brilliant. Brilliant. Everything's brilliant. You know, isn't this day brilliant? Isn't this, you know, restaurant brilliant? Isn't this sandwich brilliant? It's brilliant. It's just a brilliant sandwich. This is a brilliant day. It's your brilliant, I'm brilliant. I'm like, okay. Everything can't be brilliant, right? It's an exaggerate. The sandwich is good. It's just not a brilliant sandwich, okay? So there is this way that sometimes we just exaggerate things. And anyways, the point being is that part of being faithful is being honest, telling the truth, and when we do that, it means that we don't lie. So let's keep going. That is the first advice that Paul gives us about how to grow in faithfulness, and that is to refuse to deceive. There is a second piece of advice he gives us, and that is to keep your promises. Keep your promises. That's how you become faithful. Refuse to deceive each other. Why? Because we're all members of one body. What he's saying is, hey, you're a church family, and you have made a promise to each other to be there for each other through thick and thin, and to take care of each other no matter what happens. You've promised that to each other, right? Keep your promises, Paul says. Now, a lot of people don't make promises these days because what they feel that is if I make a promise to you, then actually that means that I lose the freedom to do what I want to do. Now, I'll give you a couple of examples. One example might be, you see a lot more people who kind of live together rather than get married, and there could be so, so many reasons for that. Economic reasons, I'm not trying to oversimplify this, but one reason why that might be is that they want to be with that person. They want to hang out with them. They want to be in that relationship, but they also still want the freedom to change their minds should things go south. When you make a promise of marriage to someone, it is just a lot harder. It's a lot harder to have your freedom and decide to leave. So even though the research shows us that, you know, cohabitating before you get married does not increase your chances of a successful marriage, people still want the freedom. They want their freedom, and so they really resist kind of making that promise to the other person. That's just maybe one example of why we find it hard to keep our promises. Another example happens right here in churches sometimes. People have a hard time making a promise to be part of a church community, right? So someone might say, well, I kind of like church, and I'll maybe come and then I'll disappear, and then I'll come another time, and maybe you'll see me, maybe you won't see me, but I'm not going to promise to be part of this community because that then infringes on my freedom, and I don't want to lose my freedom when I make a promise to join something like this, and I know we get it. But the funny part is, according to this author, Louis Smeads, the opposite is actually what happens when we make a promise. We think when we make a promise, we lose our freedom. He says, actually, when you make a promise, you are exercising your freedom in the most profound way that you can. Or to put it in his words, he says, when we make a promise, we are most free. When you make a promise, you say, I'm going to determine what my future is, whether we say, I'm going to be with you forever, I promise, or whether we say, I'm going to be part of this community, I promise, or I'm going to pick you up at 5.30, I promise, right? You're not losing your freedom. You're exercising your freedom. You're saying, I'm not afraid to make a promise, 'cause that's how I exercise my freedom. And as followers of Jesus, we should not be afraid to make promises, but we should definitely be the kind of people that keep those promises. So, there you go. Refuse to deceive, that's how you be faithful. Secondly, keep the promises, that's how you be faithful. Thirdly, though, be yourself. Paul says, each of you must put off falsehood. Now, that word, falsehood, is a Greek word, pseudo. Did you guys know what, have you ever heard of a pseudo, right? If someone is being pseudo, they are like, I'm one person over here, but then I'm somebody totally else over here. And when I'm with this group of friends, I act this way, but I have this whole other personality, a pseudo personality that I put on when I'm with this group over here. When I'm at school, I'm pseudo this, and when I'm at church, I'm pseudo that. And so, it's like, who are you really? Who are you guys getting this morning? Are you getting Rob, or are you getting pseudo Rob? Is this the real Rob, or is this Rob on stage Rob? Or who cares, right? 'Cause I can be a different Rob in different situations. I don't have to be the same person all the time, but people who are faithful aren't pseudos. They have instead, integrity. Integrity comes from the same word as integer. And an integer is a whole number. It's not a fraction, it's not split apart. It's a whole number, it's one. What you see is what you get. Someone with integrity, they don't flip and flop. They don't change depending on who they're with. They're not too faced. You're not one way with one group. You're not another way on Instagram, and then you're not another way in church. You're just yourself through and through. That is part of being faithful. The last thing that Paul mentions as part of being faithful is this, to learn to watch your words. He says, don't let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what's helpful for building up other people. The word unwholesome, it comes from another Greek word that means putrefying or disgusting or foul. Imagine if you had a bucket and it was just filled with this murky, dank, dark, putrid liquid. You could not see through it. It was just so opaque. Paul is saying, as followers of Jesus, we should be a clear bucket of water. We should be transparent. You should be able to see right through us. When you start throwing out F words and S words and H words and B words and all this stuff, it's just a bunch of blusters, just a bunch of gross stuff that pollutes the water of your life and actually makes it so we don't really know who you are anymore, right? It's how you lose faithfulness. Paul says, clear it up, clean up the language so you can be true and you can be transparent and you can be faithful. So do you see why faithfulness is such a rare fruit, right? If you refuse to deceive, if you keep your promises, if you are yourself and if you watch your words, you can grow it. You can grow it in yourself. But because we're such weak and flawed human beings, we need help. That is why faithfulness is a fruit of the spirit. We need the spirit's help and we need Jesus to live faithfully. You see, Jesus knew all about faithfulness. Jesus stands on his integrity. The Bible says Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. The same Jesus you got over here was exactly the same Jesus you got over here. The Jesus you got 2,000 years ago is the same Jesus you are getting this morning here at Trinity Street Spill. In John chapter 18, there's this scene where Jesus is before the high priest and the high priest asks him, you know, who do you say you are? And Jesus says, I testify to the truth. And then he gets like slapped and beat about and like elbowed and need. And then a little few pages later, Jesus finds himself in front of Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate is the guy who controls whether he lives or dies. And Pontius Pilate asks him the same question. He's like, who do you say that you are? Now Jesus could say at this moment, hmm, the last time I said, I testify to the truth. That did not work out so well for me. So maybe I'll be somebody else. I'll say something else here, but that's not what Jesus does. Jesus is not a pseudo. He says the same things. He says, I testify to the truth. And of course, Jesus ends up suffering and dying for it. But Jesus was the same person, no matter who he was standing in front of, no matter who was intimidating him, no matter what the pressures were, who he was then was who he was going to be forever. Jesus will be Jesus. He speaks the truth and he stands on his integrity. There's no pseudo Jesus. But Jesus also kept his promises, right? When Jesus was kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane and he knew the suffering was coming, he knew the cross was coming, understandably, he's like, God, is there any other way I can get out of this? If we don't have to go through all the suffering stuff, I would prefer that. But then he says this line. He says, but not my will, your will be done. In other words, if it has to be this way, I will keep my promise. I've made a promise. I will go to the cross. I will go to the end. I will pay everything. I will surrender my own life if I have to. Not my will, your will be done, I promise. And actually, that means that all of us were saved because Jesus kept his promises, because Jesus was faithful. And if that doesn't make you want to keep your promises and have integrity, then I don't know what will. Finally, Jesus speaks the truth. In this world of lies, where do you go for truth? Who tells you the truth about what life is all about? Who tells you the truth about who you are? Who tells you the truth about what you're worth? Is it social media, Instagram, your friends on Snapchat or whatever? Who tells you the truth about you? Is it your boyfriend, your ex-boyfriend, your girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-wife, your ex-husband, some politician, some pastor? Is that who speaks the truth to you? Who tells you what you're worth? Who do you listen to to get the truth about things? Jesus says, I am the truth. There's only one person in the world who will actually tell you the truth about the world and about life and about who you are and what is true about you. And this is what he says. He says, I love you and I created you and I adopted you into my family and you're my brother and you're my sister and we are in this together and you are made in the image of God, that's who you are. That's who you are. The world that there's going to try to deceive you and tell you that you're something else but that's not who you are. The world will try to break promises to you that make you all these promises but it can't keep them but I will keep my promise and the world is full of people who are going to be fake with you and pseudo with you but I'm real, I'm the same. Yesterday, today and forever, I will not change. I will be faithful. So now, we can answer the Psalmist's question. Is there anybody who's faithful? Have they all vanished from the face of the earth? No, there is one. There is one who is completely honest, one who has complete integrity and one who is completely trustworthy and that is Jesus Christ. And as he lives in us and as his spirit changes us, we too can become those people of faithfulness. So thanks be to God. Amen. - Thanks for listening today and it is our hope that you can continue to grow the fruit of faithfulness wherever your life takes you. If you enjoyed the sermon, make sure to join us for our final two sermons on the last two fruits of the spirit, gentleness and self-control. Thanks again for listening. Today's sermon was taken from the June 23rd, 2024 service at Trinity Church Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario. (gentle music) [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]