Grace Alone (Part 11): Character - What fruit are you bearing?

Well, good morning.

Welcome to the liturgical worship service.

This morning, before we jump into the teaching, I want to just uh highlight a few things.

Once again, if you have kids and want to park in the higher lot, uh feel free to do that so that you can walk in and uh just access kids' ministry right away.

Uh the rest of you, if you can still park in the lower lot, that's uh great because that allows us to park the upper lot for the later service.

Speaking of services, uh in a couple of weeks, December 2nd and 3rd, we are going to change service times again.

Now, some of you are like, what are we doing?

Like experimenting and stuff.

You know, as a church, we have always said we want to do what works best.

And if something isn't working the best way, then we're going to be willing to change.

We're not going to do something just because we've always done it, and in this case, have done it for six or eight weeks.

And so uh we are going to make a little change to our service times.

Uh, and in some ways, this won't affect you here if this is your preferred service much, because the nine o'clock service will stay as it is as the liturgical worship time.

What it will affect is that we're going to move the 10 o'clock and the 11:30 both a half hour earlier to 9.30 and 11.

Now, if you're doing the math on that, you're like, well, wait a second, these things are like going on simultaneously, some things.

Yes, that is what will happen.

And there are a couple reasons for that.

Uh, one is we've seen that uh we didn't have quite enough volunteers with kids ministry and collide and some of the things uh for all of the hours that we were doing.

And this will also allow collide to happen and kids ministry to happen simultaneously.

So what'll happen if you have kids is they'll come in, they'll go to the small group first, then they'll have a joint worship and teaching time, one team of volunteers, and then the next service will have their small group after the teaching time kind of a thing.

Same thing for collide.

So we think that'll be a positive.

And then the other thing we found is that the 11:30 was just a little late, and so some people uh rightly were saying, you know, 11:30, I'm coming at 10, and it just uh slanted us a little too hard that direction.

And so we're just gonna move everything a half hour.

Uh now, what that will mean here in this service is that from time to time um I won't be able to be in this service uh teaching.

Uh so sometimes we'll have a have another teacher, sometimes we may do video in here.

That'll be rare because we set it up so that it can be this this way.

But for example, next weekend we have baptisms and infant dedication uh at the service.

So if the service time were different, I can't do baptisms and dedications at the beginning of that service, be here teaching, all such things.

The other thing you may get is you may get a slightly shorter message in here.

Um some of you are like, yes, I'm coming to the liturgical uh from now on.

Um be a story or two I might drop just to uh just to make sure that all the timing works.

So uh so that'll start December 3rd, uh, just so you're aware and uh and should be a good thing.

Uh uh Jenna already mentioned this, but I just want to say as well, if you this has been your church home for some time, if you can uh make it out tonight for our last year and giving event, that would be great.

It's a significant time for us as a church as we just uh continue to look ahead and how God can work.

So would you join me in prayer?

Father, as we're gathered here, we pray that you would speak to each of us and Lord that my words would reflect your words in content, in tone, and in emphasis.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So let me ask you a question.

When you look at the world that we're in today, do you feel encouraged with the overall direction?

Or do you look at it and say, you know, there's a lot of stuff that seems to be kind of moving in a less than positive direction?

Now, my guess is that there are different reactions to that question in this room.

But let me ask you a follow-up question.

Do you feel like Christians, people inside the church, are generally helping the direction of the country and the world, or that it's a neutral or even a net, net negative to the overall direction of our world?

My guess is very few of us would say, oh, that's a huge positive.

Probably even those of us in the church would say, you know, that the net is neutral, maybe even negative in the broader world.

Dallas Willard, who's written extensively on spiritual life, penned these words years ago.

He said, How many people are radically and permanently repelled from the way, speaking of the way of Christ, by Christians who are unfeeling, stiff, unapproachable, boring, lifeless, obsessive, and dissatisfied.

Yet such Christians are everywhere, and what they are missing is the wholesome liveliness springing up from a balanced vitality within God's loving rule.

And then he says this.

Listen to this comment.

He says, Spirituality, wrongly understood or pursued, is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God.

Let me say that again.

Spirituality, wrongly understood or pursued, is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God.

Well, if you've been here over these weeks, we've been working our way through the book of Galatians, and today we're to probably the most famous section of Galatians, Galatians 5, 22 through 25, which refers to the fruit of the Spirit.

And if you've just been even marginally involved in any kind of faith community, you've probably heard this and heard about the virtues of love and peace and joy and patience, goodness, kindness, all of these things.

But in the flow of the overall argument of Galatians, when you don't just pull them out and look at them as an individual thing, but you say, this is part of an overall argument, what has come before has led to this moment where he's saying, if you want to know what the result of all this talk about grace, of the Spirit of God in your life, here's what the result is: it is that you end up having a life that is characterized by these qualities.

In fact, when you go back at the very beginning of the book, the theme, in many ways, is getting the gospel right.

This is what he says, chapter 1, verse 6.

I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in grace, in the grace of Christ, and turning to a different gospel.

And then he says, which isn't really a different gospel at all.

In other words, he says, here's what's at stake.

Many of you in Galatia, what you're doing is you are basically saying, there's a different way for us to experience God, not the way that the apostles had handed down what we've affirmed already here today, that it was Jesus' work, but that rather it becomes kind of what we do, how we live our lives.

But when we get grace, when we understand and celebrate grace fully, what it does is it will produce in us the life of the Spirit, which will produce the fruit of the Spirit.

Okay?

So let me just read through this list for a moment and then we'll talk about how this works.

So it says this, that the fruit of the Spirit is love.

Now that's one that we don't think we need a lot of definition around.

But love is seeing the needs of others and putting those needs before our own.

Pretty simple.

But a lot of times the way that people in this world, me, you probably included, the way that we live is very transactional.

I'll do for you if you do for me.

And this is true even of people of faith.

A lot of times, what they'll do is instead of saying, I'm going to put somebody else's needs before my own, what I'm going to do is I'm going to say, as long as you meet my needs at an acceptable kind of price, then I'll meet your needs at an acceptable price.

And I don't mean monetary price, but I mean in terms of just a way of saying, you know, you give to me, I'll give to you.

But here, the fruit of the Spirit is that we start to prioritize other people's needs above our own.

Then he says, joy, which is a delight in God, not because of what God gives us, but because of the beauty and the reality of who God is.

So many of us in this day and age, what we do is we chase happiness with all of our time.

Meaning, what we're trying to always do is say, what will ultimately bring me happiness?

And we go from thing to thing to thing, trying to say that the next thing might be the thing that brings me happiness when the fruit of the Spirit is joy that's internal.

Then it's peace, which means a confidence in God's wisdom.

Then forbearance.

Some translations say patience, meaning the ability to handle hardship, kindness, giving practically to others, goodness, which means wholeness or integrity, faithfulness, speaking of loyalty and courage, gentleness, meaning humility or self-forgetfulness and self-control, which is basically being able to prioritize what's important over what I want in this exact moment.

And so what is all of this pointing to?

Just the question of who wouldn't want to have some of these qualities be true in their life?

Who wouldn't want more love, more joy, more peace, more kindness, more goodness.

And yet, if again, if if we're honest, a lot of times we say, you know what, that isn't always the way that it goes down.

So God must have known that I needed a story for this for this message.

Because this morning I had an experience.

So we have a dog, and and probably the proper phrase is my wife has a dog.

Um it's not my dog, it's her dog.

And this morning I was uh I was dressed, I was ready to to leave, and um I stepped in something.

And um and and my initial reaction was to say, I am filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.

Now, I I tell you that because here's the challenge.

We can all be loving and joyful and full of kindness and self-control when we're on vacation and everything's good.

But the reality of where we live is is do we do this when things are moving against us?

Is this our natural reaction?

Now, clearly, you can have a reaction and not necessarily be in step with the spirit or in step with the spirit.

So let's just talk for a few minutes about some of the things that this passage shows us about how this really works in our lives.

And the first thing that I want to say is that ultimately fruit is inevitable.

And what I mean by this is the fact that this text says the fruit of the spirit is, fruit is something that once it's planted, it can't help but grow.

Now, it's a little confusing for us because all of these characteristics are commanded in other places in the New Testament.

Meaning we're told to be loving, we're told to be joyful, we're told to be self-controlled.

But yet here, what it's saying is that is that this isn't just us saying, I'm going to go out and do this, but this is a result of something that has been planted in us.

It's a result of grace, of the gospel being planted in us, and that ultimately what will happen is we will grow.

Now that doesn't mean that when you step in something and you have a reaction that there isn't the fruit of the Spirit, but it means that what happens is that the fruit of the Spirit will grow in you and become more full, and that the results of your flesh, which is what the last passage was about, will be less striking than they used to be.

Not that they're non-existent, but that fruit becomes inevitable.

Now it's also significant here that the word fruit is singular.

If you are tracking kind of English language, you would expect that he would say the fruits of the spirit, because it's a plural, there's lots of them, so that would be the way you would say it, but he says, the fruit of the spirit.

And what that's pointing to is the reality that all of the fruit grows together.

So when we say it's inevitable, what that means is that if you are able to say, you know what, I'm really self-controlled, I'm really gentle, I'm really this, but I'm not very loving, or I'm not very something else, that it isn't necessarily the fruit of the spirit that's growing in you, but what it is is it's your natural temperament.

Some of us have a natural temperament to be very kind or very gentle.

That isn't necessarily the fruit of the spirit if it isn't accompanied by the other aspects, because what fruit, singular means, that the fruit of the spirit means that they all grow together, that it all becomes part of who we are.

Now, when we say that it's inevitable, what we're also talking about is that is that our emphasis ultimately shouldn't be the fruit but the root.

Because if it's inevitable, rather than saying what I'm going to do is try to be more joyful, what I need to do is actually go deeper into the gospel so that the joy becomes an overflow, rather than me saying, how do I become more joyful, more loving, more something?

Now, again, those are commands in other places.

So I'm not saying that you can just say, oh, I just have to deal with the root.

But the way that we actually live this is not by simply saying, let me do all of it, as much as by having an internal transformation.

What some of us try to do is we try to take fruit and put it on a dead tree.

You know, if you took an apple and you placed it on a tree that wasn't an apple tree, what would happen to the apple?

It would rot.

The way that the apple has life is because the roots are deep, because the transformation that's happening is growing in that apple through the roots.

Here's a second thing that's significant, and that is the fruit, as it grows, is generally imperceptible.

And here's why I say this.

Because what happens a lot of times in Christian community is there's a lot of judgment around people who don't necessarily live this way all the time.

Especially from people who start to say, you know what, I have I have a certain amount of the fruit of the spirit already, so if somebody else doesn't, there's a little sense sometimes of what's their deal.

But what's significant about this is that is that the fruit of the spirit is actually imperceptible in its initial growth.

Now, ultimately, there will be evidence, there will be fruit.

But but you don't see it grow when it's starting to grow.

When the seed first germinates, it takes time.

This has huge implications for how we disciple people, for how we parent, for how we do different things.

Because what some of us do as parents is we want our kids, when they're like eight, to be perfectly formed.

Rather than understanding that the fruit of the Spirit is a gradual, almost imperceptible process where it's growing inside somebody.

And again, if we focus on the root, on the reality, rather than saying, here's the behavior I want from you today, what we'll get is we'll get long-term transformation.

But when we demand behavior that doesn't accompany an internal change, what we're doing in essence is we're saying, what I want from you is I want you to demonstrate fruit rather than to be transformed from the inside out.

This also means that we don't need to be disheartened in ourselves when we have moments where we realize that we aren't living and matching the fruit of the spirit.

But here's the part that I really want to drive at today.

And that is the fruit is ultimately inviting or irresistible.

And I see this because here's the context.

Just before the fruit of the Spirit is mentioned, verse 21, uh, after this whole list of the works of the flesh, he says this.

He says, I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now we talked a little bit about this last week, what it means to inherit the kingdom of God and how that works.

But but it's an interesting phrase right here.

But then he turns and he says, But here's the fruit of the Spirit.

So what he's doing in part is he's saying, he's saying, part of the kingdom of God is the kingdom inside of you.

So let me just for a moment trace this idea of the kingdom of God in our Bible.

So if you don't need to turn, but you may want to jot down a few of these verses.

This is Mark chapter 1, verse 14 and 15.

Mark 1:14

This is Jesus in his initial statement about what he's doing.

John chapter 1, verse 14.

John 1:14

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God.

What's the good news of God?

The gospel.

That's what that word actually means.

So it's tied to Galatians, where the whole thing is about getting the gospel right.

So what does Jesus do?

He goes about saying, Here's the good news.

But what's the good news?

Well, Jesus says it right here.

The time has come.

Do you know what he says?

What?

The kingdom of God has come near.

Repent and believe the good news.

Now, notice what he doesn't say.

He doesn't say, the good news has come, you can do whatever you want, but the cross covers it so you can go to the cross and then get yourself kind of kind of made right so that you get a future.

What does he say?

The kingdom has come.

Repent and believe.

Dallas Willard, again, writing on this, said this, all, and this is kind of a summation of this or a paraphrase.

He says, all of the preliminaries have been taken care of.

The kingdom of God is now accessible for everyone.

And he says this review your plans for living and base your life on this remarkable opportunity.

Review your plans for living.

Probably his paraphrase of repent and then base your life on this remarkable opportunity.

Believe.

In other words, the good news of God's kingdom has come.

Now, there are other places that use this language.

Some of the most familiar are in what we call the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus was teaching his disciples to pray in Matthew 6, verses 9 and 10.

Matthew 6:9

You probably know this well.

It says this, this is then how you should pray.

What does he say?

Our Father in heaven.

So he's talking here about worship.

He says, Hallowed be your name.

In other words, the way that you pray is you begin by extolling who God is.

But do you know what the next line is?

Your what?

Kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What is he saying?

He's saying, I want God, your kingdom, to come here.

Now let me just pause for a moment and define kingdom because that can be a confusing word for us.

A kingdom is really a simple concept.

It's where what you say goes.

So when we say that God has a kingdom and his kingdom is to come, it's where what he says is taken as normative.

Now you have a kingdom.

You may not have a very big kingdom, but you have a kingdom.

For you, it may be your room, it may be a little space in your garage, it may be your car, but but somewhere you have a kingdom where you can choose to have things exactly as you want them, and nobody messes with it.

That is the idea of a kingdom.

So when we are told to pray, your kingdom come, let your kingdom come.

What we're praying is we're saying, God, let your way of things being come here.

Let that become our reality.

Here's another reference.

Matthew chapter 6, again, later in the Sermon on the Mount, verses 32 and following, talking about all of the things that we need, our material well-being, food, clothing, things like this.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

He says this.

He says, For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

Then it says this, but seek first his kingdom.

His kingdom.

And the righteous and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

In other words, it's possible for us to seek our own kingdom to the exclusion of God's kingdom, and to make our lives all about what we can get for us, rather than saying, my life is oriented to something bigger, something greater.

Here's another indication of the kingdom in Luke chapter 17.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

Verse 20 and 21.

Says this once on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, The coming of the kingdom is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, Here it is, or there it is, because the kingdom of God is in your midst.

So what does Jesus say?

He says, Do you want to know how the kingdom really comes?

It's not something that you look at and say, here it comes from out there.

In other words, this isn't through a political rally, this isn't through a military regime, it's inside my people.

That's where my kingdom comes from.

Matthew chapter 18, verses 1 through 3.

Matthew 18:1–3

Another reference to this idea of kingdom.

Here's what we see here.

His disciples came to him and asked, Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

So now what they're asking is, how do we get to be at the top in your kingdom?

How do we get to be the big people in your kingdom?

He called a little child to him and placed the child among them and said, Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never see the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever makes the lowly position of this child, who takes the lowly position of this child, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

And whoever welcomes such as child in my name welcomes me.

Do you hear what Jesus says?

Is doing, he's saying, in our world, the kingdom, the people who are greatest in the kingdom are those who have the highest positions, those who have the most prestige.

And he says, You want to know who's great in the kingdom of heaven?

It's the person who's willing to say, It isn't all about me, it isn't all about how far I can get.

Matthew 22, verse 2.

Matthew 22:2

Jesus spoke to them again in parables.

And he said, This, the kingdom of heaven is like a person who's prepared a wedding banquet for his son, and he sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come.

And they refused to come.

And then when you read through the parable, what he says is he compelled them to go out and to and to ask those, to bring those who were considered in that culture to be the least.

Again, what's the reference?

That the kingdom of God is not a respecter of position, but it's for those who come from broken, dysfunctional, disenfranchised places.

And then Romans chapter 14, verse 17 says this about the kingdom again.

Romans 14:17

Romans chapter 14 says this.

Romans 14 · chapter mention

Therefore, this is uh verse 16, do not let what you know as good be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but listen to this, but of righteousness, peace, joy, and the Holy Spirit.

Do you hear what he does?

Do you hear how it's tied to Galatians?

What is the kingdom of God?

It's a matter of righteousness, peace, joy, and the Holy Spirit.

In other words, the kingdom that God is bringing about is coming through people who surrender to him and say, I'm going to be a part of God's kingdom.

Jesus initiated a kingdom, and when we live with the fruit of the Spirit, that's when the kingdom of God advances in this world.

And here's what this means.

What this means is that every time that you or I, or a person of faith, says, you know what, I'm going to choose love over choosing selfishness, that the kingdom of God is there.

Every time that you or I are joyful in the face of afflictions and difficulties, what we're doing is we're saying, here's the kingdom of God, because we have a hope that isn't fixed just to this world.

Every time that there's peace, that we resolve conflict, that we come with a right heart and say, I'm not going to let this conflict tear people and lives apart and community apart.

We're advancing the kingdom of God.

Every single time that we say, I'm not going to just work harder and harder and harder to make more and more, but I have something that I'm living for that's bigger.

We're advancing the kingdom of God.

Every time we sit with a group and we share our lives, we're advancing the kingdom of God.

Every time we worship, we're advancing the kingdom of God every time we encourage or challenge somebody.

We're advancing the kingdom of God.

I don't know if you remember the old Star Wars, Star Trek, not Star Wars, Star Trek franchise, the the TV show and then the movies.

There was always a scene in there when people would get themselves in trouble.

And do you know what they would always do when they got themselves in trouble?

Do you remember this whole thing, you know, beam me up, Scotty, right?

And then they would be teleported from wherever they were, whatever trouble they were in, and they would all of a sudden be taken back to the mothership and whisked away to safety kind of a thing.

And the reason that I that I mentioned this is this is some people's view of what spiritual life is.

We're here in a in a decaying, challenging, ugly world, and we just need to get through until we can say, beam me up, Jesus, and then Jesus will beam us away into some eternal safety somewhere, and everything will be okay.

Can I just say that's not Christianity?

That's not the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is not watch Fox News or MSNBC, whichever your your version is, as your nightly liturgy to see how bad the world is.

And that is a nightly liturgy for some people, by the way, where you just sit and you watch and you go, wow, the world is awful.

And then you say, you know what?

I just need Jesus to beam me out of here because that's how bad the world is.

The idea here is that what happens as we come to understand the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God lives inside of us, is that we instead bring the kingdom here with our lives, with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So how do you do that when you step in something on a Sunday morning at seven o'clock?

Well, here's how this can really work.

Here's what he says.

He says, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

To crucify the flesh means that we say to our desires, to the things that we think are important, that we reorient them to something more.

And then he says, this, since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Last week we talked about walking with the Spirit, what it means to orient our entire life around the Spirit of God.

And what this means is that the way that the fruit of the Spirit will grow in us is as we orient our lives around the Spirit, around the message of grace so thoroughly, so consistently, that what we are naturally celebrating is not our own ends, but instead saying, my life is for something so much bigger.

You know, a lot of times we suffer, I think, in our day and age, from kind of the hope or belief that if my life's gonna count, I have to do something big.

But you know, really the best way for your life to count is to live with the fruit of the Spirit right where you are, so that people all around you say there's something about the way you live, about the hope you have, about the way you treat people, about what's important to you that that I want to be a part of.

You know, as a church, our our hope in this community is that is that the way that people come is, yeah, in part through kind of the the ministry and things, but but but it's through people that they get to know and say, I want a little bit of what you have.

And as they experience that, they say, you know what?

How have you come to live such a different life?

You know, let me go back to what Dallas Willard said.

How many people are radically and permanently repelled from the way by Christians who are unfeeling, stiff, unapproachable, boring, lifeless, obsessive, and dissatisfied.

You know, you could easily turn that around and say how many people are radically and permanently drawn to the way of Christians by those who live with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

That's how we bring the kingdom to the world in which we live.

Father, we pray today that you would help each one of us here to experience your kingdom personally in such a way that we're able to bring it to the places that we live.

God, I ask that for those of us who've been people of faith for some time, that we wouldn't get satisfied with joyless, loveless existences, but that we would dive deeper into your spirit, into your your gospel to be transformed.

And God, for those who who are here today and saying this whole idea is a little foreign, but but I would love to be characterized the way that the Bible characterizes somebody with the fruit of the Spirit.

God, I pray, even in this moment, there would just be a recognition that through our own strength, their own strength, that what's more likely is the deeds of the flesh, and that the substitutionary, beautiful death of Jesus Christ opens a way, not just for an eternity and a chance to be beamed away someday, but to live in the here and now with a reoriented life.

God, for those who who have been around church for a long time and know that that maybe the fruit of the Spirit in their life has been a little weak.

God, I pray that there would even be just an openness, a receptiveness in this moment to thinking about how to drive the roots deeper so that the fruit would become richer, fuller, stronger in their own life.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.