FBC Greenland Sermons
The Fruit of the Spirit - Galatians 5:22-26
All right, well if you have your Bibles go not to the Gospel of John go to the book of Galatians chapter 5 We'll give you guys a minute to get there Go to Galatians chapter 5 verse we'll be at the very end verse 22 Through 26, however, I will we'll say we will talk a little bit about what comes before that and so I don't have that on the screen But I do encourage you guys to be looking at that in your Bible when we go through that portion of this and so Before we got into John 15 because that's where we were heading next I wanted to take a little detour based on our text from last week and if you were here last week or you're familiar with the gospel of John John 14 ends with this promise of the Holy Spirit where Jesus Tells his disciples that he will not leave them as orphans that he will leave them a helper someone to give them strength someone to give them wisdom and discernment and guidance during this time where Jesus leaves them and We talked about the function of the Holy Spirit and what does the Holy Spirit do and what is its purpose and so Getting into John 15 is where we're gonna start on the 22nd next Sunday Victorian I will be here with our children or at least we're planning on a Lord willing the flight doesn't get delayed but We actually have Frank Cannon who's gonna come and preach from Psalm 130 If you remember Frank Frank preached for me the Sunday before I started here at BC Greenland And so I'm excited for y'all to hear from him and so we'll start on John 15 on the 22nd, but I Wanted to us to take a detour to the fruit of the Spirit because of John 15 so John 15 starts with this idea of bearing fruit and Our bearing of fruit comes from being rooted in Christ And so we have the promise of the Holy Spirit in its function in John 14 and then in John 15 we have fruit and so I thought this morning why don't we talk about that fruit when we look at what does it mean for us to bear fruit? What do we mean when we say that and so I thought this would be a great morning for us to look at that this morning in the fruit of the Spirit? And so what is the fruit of the Spirit and as the children's song by slugs and bugs would remind us the fruit of the Spirit is not a banana It's not Apples or blueberries the fruit of the Spirit is not tomatoes. Yes tomatoes are fruit if you did not know that But fruit of the Spirit is also not plural it's not fruits of the Spirit although some of us may be inclined to believe that you know when you look at fruit of the Spirit or any any imagery that has fruit of the Spirit like this one up here. What do you see a bunch of different? Fruits yeah But that's not exactly what the the fruit of the Spirit is It's not a fruit basket that we as believers have as an example of the Holy Spirit rather we Exhibit the fruit of the Spirit and the way I like to think about this is imagine. There's a tree and when you plant a tree The soil is fertile It's maybe tilled or watered or however you do that you plant the seed The seed takes root and then through the root and through nourishment and time that tree Grows and then eventually that tree bears fruit now at the beginning that that tree may bear fruit That isn't ripe or is small or isn't all that much but as time goes on That tree begins to bear more and more fruit and so when we think of the Christian life We think of being rooted in Christ. We think of bearing fruit. I want you to imagine a tree and Every Christian who begins their relationship with Christ Starts as a tree whose roots are planted in Christ and over time that tree grows and bears good faithful fruit And so that's what Paul is giving us here is he's giving us what the fruit of our spiritual tree should be The characteristics that we should be exhibiting as those who are rooted in Christ and belong to him So if you got your Bible is good to Galatians 5 Chapter Galatians 5 starting of verse 22 and verse 22 says this But the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self-control Against such things there is no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit Let us not become conceited Provoking one another or envying one another Will you pray with me this morning? Father God, we thank you for today God, I pray that you would help us to be fruitful Christians God that the fruit would be that we bear would not be One that doesn't reflect you well God, I pray you'd help us to see that this fruit that we bear doesn't come from our Own efforts, but God they come from you When we are rooted in you and we are nourished by your word God when you grow us Father, we can't help but to bear fruit God I pray that you would help us to discern whether we are those that bear good fruit and God I pray that you would just Help us to see that these characteristics Father are in are a reflection of you and God I pray that we would exhibit those well your sons holy and precious name. I pray amen So before we get into our main text I told you we're gonna go a little bit into the background of this and so This is where it's good for you all to have your Bibles open if you have them or a smartphone or carry your pigeon I don't know however you get your Bible Make sure you use it and if you ever need a Bible to we have some on this table over here And those aren't you know, we're not we don't check those out If you need a Bible and you need one to keep please take one with you That will be our gift to you But if you look at this in the book of Galatians Paul wrote this book to help the Christians in Galatia who were in a bit of a theological crisis They were being pressured by Jewish Christians uphold the old laws and essentially continue doing what they were doing before They became Christians As you know as Jesus in his earthly ministries, we've talked about in the gospel of John There was a lot of things that Jesus did that seemed contrary to the Old Testament law And one of the reasons why that Jesus did those things is one because he is God And he can do things like work on the Sabbath and do these amazing miracles, but the other is that Because of Jesus, we are no longer under the Old Testament law However, that doesn't mean you should ignore the 10 commandments or ignore the things God calls us to do because then what does Jesus say? Also, he says that you are to love God and love others all the commandments fall under those two categories And then he says a new commandment in verse 14 that you ought to love one another as I have loved you And so Paul wrote this letter To help these Christians see that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament law and they were no longer bound by these same laws Right, they didn't have to continue these these regulatory practices From their faith rather their faith is now in Jesus who saves them. It's not anything that they can do And he tells them and encourages them that they are to walk by the Spirit They're to walk by the Spirit and so he ends this letter And he tells them that but they walk by the Spirit. They won't gratify the desires of the flesh What does this mean when the Old Testament law was was put into place if you look at it just? Actively you see that the Old Testament law really gives us these parameters to live by think of it Like you're on a road and you see these guardrails The guardrails are there to make sure that if anything were to happen you don't fall off the edge to your immediate doom Or I don't know if you're not over driving over the big bridges Getting out of North S. Arkansas. It's keeping you from being off the road in some capacity I also think of it as these you can you can put up these invisible bumpers in Mario Kart So that you never fall off the edge or if you go bowling You could put up bumpers to make sure you never go into the little trench that's on the side of the bowling alleys Not that I would know anything about that, but anyways, so Those laws were put into place so that people knew how they were to live in the way that God called them to live But what was the problem? The problem was that they can never keep that law perfectly They broke that law all the time. Maybe they didn't do it with their hands, but their hearts. They would break those laws They would become envious of one another they would lust after things they would if the Bible teaches if you hate someone in your heart You've already committed murder and so Those Old Testament laws and all the other things that they were told to do past the Ten Commandments were all done so that they could make an atonement for their sin and follow in a As they tried to hope for a right relationship with God But the problem was we couldn't do that perfectly and We needed a Savior who would live a perfect life The kind of life that we couldn't live and it's through him that we have Eternal life. It's in him that our faith should belong So here's where the contradiction was Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament law living a perfect life He told them that in order to Have eternal life they would need to be born again made new they would need to become Christians and follow after Christ But the problem was these Christians although they were doing so they were still trying to fall under all these old practices that they used to And Paul was telling them that that's not freedom That's not freedom Freedom in Christ is different and When you talk about the the gratification of the desires of the flesh the things that are sinful Paul Paul acknowledges that the laws that were there in the Old Testament were there to keep us in check With our fleshly desires Right do not kill have no other gods before me do not commit adultery all those things Those were there so that we would know that we are not to gratify what our flesh and our sinful nature wants We have a list of what we aren't supposed to do But he tells him if you walk in the spirit Then the spirit helps you to resist those desires You don't have to have a long set list of rules anymore because the spirit helps us to follow those in obedience to Christ Right it's we don't really need the guardrails anymore because we're in the car with Jesus driving and he's never going to go off the edge So look at verse 17 for a moment If you have your Bibles out for he says for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are Against the flesh for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do Paul acknowledges that people want to sin Our flesh wants to go against God because that is our human nature. It's our human nature to be selfish It's our human nature to give into our our desires But Paul is telling us that those are opposed to the spirit We are given the holy spirit so that we don't need to succumb to our fleshly desires So that we don't fall into temptation that we don't fall into Giving in to the sin of our flesh, but rather we fall in step with the spirit And we do the things that he calls us to do He tells us that The things the holy spirit wants for us are in direct opposition to what our flesh wants And here is a long list that he gives us of what the works of the flesh are in verses 19 Through 21 and i'll just read through these. It's a pretty long list. So just bear with me Now the works of the flesh are evident Sexual morality and purity sensuality Idolatry sorcery imitate strife jealousy fits of anger rivalries Decentions divisions envy drunkenness orgies and things like these I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of god when we think of Times that we give in to the sin of our flesh That sounds like a weird statement if I can just put that out there But let me put it this way. How many of you guys have ever just Given into something you wanted to do even though you knew it was wrong And I think one of the things areas that we probably all done that the most is with anger Right, we feel ourselves boiling up in ourselves and we and we feel that anger coming and we are just one Person saying the wrong thing away from just exploding at and whether it's yelling or whatever it is that you do when you become angry some of you shut down when you become angry and and Fester it in and then find some kind of vice to help you feel better later on But we've all maybe overcome with anger at traffic or anger at somebody that didn't even Mean to wrong us in some way or whatever the case may be It boils over and we give into it. And so when we look at this list We see that it's full of selfishness We see that it's full of Desires that we may have that that are of our sinful nature and We see jealousy And rivalies dissensions divisions envy things of these nature that are all things that we at some point have struggled with In fact, there's a Disney movie out right now called inside out too and one of the emotions that This character Riley gets is called envy and the entire movie. She's like, oh, I wish I could have that or oh that looks so pretty Can I touch it like that sort of thing and this this this character just embodies This desire to not be content or this desire to want more and not be content with what you have And so all of these things are all characteristics that are counter to the Holy Spirit And all of these things Are desires of our flesh they're sinful Now when you read the end He says to those who do such things they will not inherit the kingdom of god I Can tell you that there are some people That Tony do you mind turning the air now a little bit. Thank you so much I appreciate it. Sorry about that so When you look at this last phrase I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of god Maybe for some of you that sets in a little bit of a panic Right, maybe for some of you you see that that phrase and go Oh, no, like I've done some of these things. I've been envious. I've been angry. I've been bitter I've I've fallen into drunkenness and you may read that and go does this mean that I'll never inherit the kingdom of god and There's a difference between Someone who lives as this is their character and someone who makes mistakes Because the reality is church We will all at some point make mistakes We are all sinful broken creatures Now there's a difference between habitual sin that is unrepentant and there's no conviction of the spirit And sin that we do that we know we need to repent for and there's a conviction of the spirit in us Let me put it this way If anything on that list Doesn't bother you Or there's nothing of that list that you've never felt conviction for by the spirit There's anything on this list that you know that you struggle with but you don't really care about Then I would say that that's not a good sign of whether the holy spirit is dwelling any or not Because the spirit convicts us of these things and these are not regular life practices that a christ follower should have Now we all know there are christians that struggle with some of these things particularly maybe envy or anger or impulsiveness or jealousy But the difference between a christian and somebody who's a non-christian is the christian works at repentance The christian works at changing the christian works at being more christ-like and working towards The image of jesus in their own lives The person who is not a christian Has no repentance and does not turn the lord when they struggle with these things And so then We get into The things that are directly opposed to this the actual fruit of the spirit so Getting into that in verse 22 We see that paul says but the fruit of the spirit is this and here each of the fruit Of the spirit and we're going to go down each and every one of them The first is love He starts with love love is the core of the christian life When we consider the fruit of the spirit These are also fruit that our savior exhibited in his life We look at these fruit love joy peace patience kind is good and it's gentle and spaithfulness And self-control what we see is we see that these were all things that jesus exhibited and his earthly life And he lived a perfect life And jesus is the one that we seek to try to imitate to be like that god grows us in sanctification to be more like him And so paul starts i believe very rightly with love We are to start with love Now the fruit of the spirit when i say these this morning is not some sort of ranking system And it could be easy for us to say well this means that love is the most important This means that joy is the second most or peace is the third most if i get one or two of these i should be good They're not they're all equally important And when we say fruit It's not that you'll exhibit one of these characteristics but not the other as a christian you should be exhibiting all of these characteristics These should be central to your lives as those who bear fruits But i find it fitting that paul starts all of these with love Because love is central to what jesus has called us to do Everything that god calls us to do falls under two categories to love god And to love others first john tells us that god is love And so to know who god it or to know god is to know What true everlasting love is So it's fitting for us as christians that we should consider an outpouring of love towards one another as One of the primary fruits of the spirit Because without love we can't do the rest of these Love should embody you Love should be central in your life And look and In a group like this, I don't feel like I have to go into detail of of what that looks like in terms of love But let me just say this Your love should be like jesus's love It should be compassionate It should be a kind of love that seeks to draw people to the lord It should be the kind of love that doesn't judge But shares hope That's the kind of love that our love should be it should be unconditional and it should be selfless Well, the next fruit of the spirit is joy And no, not the disney character from the movie inside out joy, but true Genuine joy honestly if maybe some of you haven't seen that movie, but if you have she really more exhibits happiness than anything else And there is a difference between joy and happiness, right? I think we often will place joy in the same category as happiness like we'll say Oh, I'm a very happy person, but you're really meaning joyful or Uh, man, I really need to become more joyful, but you're really saying that you wish you were more happy So what's the difference between the two? Well? Happiness is an emotion It's based on your circumstances Right there like for example if you're in a funeral for a loved one It might be strange for you to exhibit a high level of happiness I think maybe depending on a couple of factors though. Maybe I take that back Because you might be happy that your loved one is now with the lord Or you may be happy to get to reminisce about Uh the memories of the person you love and so there can be a little bit of happiness in there, but but ultimately It's okay to be sad, especially when you lose someone you love But then what's the difference then if we're called to be joyful Then how's that different than happiness? Well happiness is based on your circumstances Joy is a condition of your heart You can still be joyful while experiencing sadness and grief And one of the places that we see that is in the book of james for example james says that we are to consider it a joy My brothers that we face trials of various kinds And trials are not fun to go through right David would probably know that more than anybody else in a court of law sense But trials in terms of dark seasons of life Are things that are not fun to go through but then james tells us the weird exhibit Or to consider it a joy to go through those He doesn't mean that you should put a smile on your face and just laugh your way through the darkness But rather he says that you should consider to joy because you know The outcome that it produces steadfastness in you maturity and draws you closer to god So joy Is not an emotion and joy is not based on external circumstances whether your life is good or bad at the moment Joy rather is a condition of our heart. It's a choice we make To see a situation in light of the gospel We also see that in the book of philippians Paul's other letter that happens shortly after this one in your bibles In the book of philippians paul is on house arrest He's facing imminent doom from the roman authority He hasn't seen a lot of the churches that he's planted And listen if i am in paul's position and i've planted all these churches and they're new and they're in a place where they're being persecuted I would want to make sure that i'm doing everything in my power to care for them to be with them to write to them But paul's in a place where he can't But if you read that letter you would never think that that letter was written from a man in prison Because he writes it was such joy and gratitude and love That is what it looks like to have joy What's the next fruit? The next fruit of the spirit is patience patience Patience is the ability to endure or accept delay Trouble or suffering with peace So for example Patience is not bursting out anger when you don't get what you want when you want And we have someone on the prayer list today. We've had we put her on there last week. She should be on there now And that's miss pam bardle And pam and her husband david were members here for a long time and they led the sojourners Which is the children's ministry here at the church and that's how i got involved and Um, I don't remember every lesson they taught because honestly when I was a kid in church just being honest with you I was here for the cookies in the games Um, but I stayed for jesus The lord eventually changed my heart But when I I remember something that they would say all the time and I never forgot it Is they would say that if you pray For patience. God will give it to you They would say praying for patience is a dangerous thing because A lot of the times we gain patience Through suffering Through trials And I never forgot that and it wasn't until I really grew in my faith And experienced more of life that I actually begin to understand what What they were talking about Because when you think of people who are very patient in your life It's often people that have endured a whole lot And the reason why they are so patient Is because they've learned how to trust and wait on the lord In patience you don't have control In patience you have to rely on someone other than yourself In patience you have to trust that you're probably not going to get the outcome that you want And if i'm being honest church patience is one of the hardest things that we that we struggle with and listen And one of the things that is Been a little bit testing at least for me personally is that i'm so like excited to get all of our construction done But there's some of it that I need to be patient with And i'm sure all of us have been in states like that too And the fruit of the spirit reflects the things that reflect god and his character And our god is a very very patient god When you consider the old testament for example Right and you consider all the times is your lights Did these Wacky antics against god or just utter rebellion against him How patient god was with his people how patient he was with those he loved we just got done reading hosea and our wednesday night life group and It's fascinating to see that that god knew Their rebellion was deep. They were giving offerings to bale. They were worshiping other gods They were about to get taken over by another country And god warns them and warns them and warns them and gives them chance after chance after chance Yet they still fall away, but yet god still didn't abandon them Instead he continued to love and pursue them our god is so wonderfully patient And then i think about jesus In his earthly ministry, how many times did jesus say the hour is not here? The hour is not here. The hour is not here, but everybody else around him is like all right Let's get this messiah show on the road like they were ready to be delivered I mean think about all the people who are around him his disciples john the baptist everybody that asking him Lord is at time when are we going to be delivered when are we going to be brought away from from our our oppression and they were thinking the roman government They weren't considering jesus would deliver him from their sin from their broken dark nature into marvelous wonderful light jesus showed patience now patience Does not mean passivity Patience does not mean passivity But patience does mean that you're okay with not being in control Instead Patience leads us to trust the one who is in control The next is kindness And kindness For some people sometimes gets replaced with the word nice But that's not completely what kindness is Kindness more describes someone who is friendly Generous or considerate of others here's a here's a basic way to think about it someone who is kind Is drawing focus away from themself and considering the needs of others We also Find that definition in flippians too, but more attached to humility But kindness is this sort of generosity and friendliness that we as christ followers should exhibit Jesus our savior was kind But kindness does not mean that you will not try to correct people When something is going on with them Right one of the things that i've heard say a lot is clarity is kind And it is kind to be clear with people So that they are drawn closer to god because I think sometimes we get in this habit of we want to please everybody and not Disappointed anybody hurt anybody's feelings. So we try to avoid saying the hard thing But it's actually a kindness to do so Because it's loving It draws them to the lord and it draws them to repentance to him But we are to be kind individuals as those who love the lord The next is goodness When I think of goodness i'm drawn to roman's chapter 12 if you Are familiar with that roman's chapter 12 is is paul laying out what we call christian ethics And in it he calls us to abour or strongly hate what is evil and to hold fast what is good We know what good is Goodness comes from knowing god and being obedient to him And so when we see that the fruit of the spirit is goodness That fruit is that we should be pursuing the things that god loves and that he calls good The next is faithfulness Faithfulness now as our god is faithful to us We ought to be faithful in our own lives Meaning that we are to be loyal And trustworthy and we are to be faithful to god Meaning that we're not going to put idols over him Meaning that we're not going to put other things at the throne of our hearts where god should be Rather we should be faithful to loving him and loving others well That also means faithful in our relationships Faithful in our job Faithful in our word Faithful in everything we do Because our god was ultimately faithful in sending his son to die for us We've got two more The next is gentleness When our daughter was born Our oldest our two other boys became brothers And we didn't experience this so much with Theo when he was a baby because he and josh were so close in age But when charlotte was born our boys were older and one of the things that we had to tell them Whenever they met their sister for their first time was to be gentle with her To be gentle A gentle is one of those things that is pretty self-explanatory. It's one of those things I can tell anyone Hey be gentle and you all know what that means When it comes to gentleness, there's this slowness And care that comes from it Right whenever we told our boys to be gentle with baby charlotte They would hold her differently They would they would Be slower around her They would be more careful around her When we tell our kids to be gentle with the cats for example They don't always listen But when we say to be gentle with the cats you don't grab the cat up and run around the room You you had it and hold it You're you're you're slower with it And when it comes to being christians, we are to be gentle Now it's not to mean That we are to be those that just get torn down all the time by others Or that we don't try to defend things that are right but rather Christians that are marked by gentleness are marked by care and Not tearing one another down Christians who are marked by gentleness don't tear one another down So gentleness should be a characteristic we have and and one of my mentors cole he Tells me that he very often prays for that the most He prays for gentleness And so my hope is that you guys would pray more for that too And so what's the last one? The last one is self-control or if you sing the song it's self-control Right, it's the last one on that list self-control Now this one I think is probably the most self-explanatory of all of them if you are a christian And exhibiting the fruit of the spirit and you're seeking to exhibit love joy peace patience kindness goodness gentleness and self-control then That means that all those mark that you know what I just realized I skipped peace I can I love joy peace. I totally skipped peace. Wow. Look at my notes. Look at that. So when it comes to self-control We should be those who are not indulgent as Christians And when it comes to sin, we shouldn't make the the excuse that oh well, I'm just a broken human being So I'm just going to give in to my flesh a desire when it comes to self-control There's a level to it that we keep our flesh in check because of the holy spirit Now one of the ones I skipped was peace and when it comes to peace Those who are christians should be those who are peacemakers and peacekeepers Jesus tells us in john 14 that peace I leave you and peace I leave leave with you We are to be those who are peaceful too So these are the characteristics and the attributes that every believer should have Is sometimes these things are growing in more fullness over time and I believe as a believer sanctified and grows in maturity That their faith and their fruit also continues to grow And when you look at the end of verse 24 25 And those who belong to christ jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires We've crucified the flesh with his passions and desires meaning that when you become a christian You lay down your earthly desires to the lord And your desires should change If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step of the spirit Let us not become conceited provoking one another or envying one another We as christians our character should not be defined by The desires of our flesh, but it should be defined or defined by the spirit And so the question I have for you this morning as we transition into invitation is what kind of fruit do you bear what kind of fruit do you bear do you bear the the Unfruitfulness Of these desires of the flesh are these the things that mark your life That are central to your character in what you do in your action Or do you bear the fruit of the spirit Do you bear the fruit of the spirit? We pray with me this morning as we have our time of worship father I thank you for today God, I pray that you'd help us to exhibit all of this fruit God that you'd help us to be christians who Do the right thing not because of some Morality driven purpose, but rather because we love you and we love others God I pray You'd help us to be fruitful god that we would draw near to you got in our character Would reflect you and your spirit So father, we thank you for today. I've got to thank you for this time of worship Father, I pray that all that we do would be to honor and glorify you Your sons holy and precious and we pray amen