(8.2.26) Sermon | The Transformation (The Fruits of the Spirit) | Patrick Hardy

I mean, the truth is we all go through seasons where life gets a little bit more busy than others.

Seasons of exhaustion where we feel overwhelmed.

And I remember back when Alyssa and I first got married, she was working at the hospital, she's a nurse, and she was working in the ICU, which meant that she was working three 12-hour shifts during the week, which it was awesome because there were stretches where it'd be five, six days that she would have off in a row.

It felt like mini vacations that we would have together.

But then there were also stretches where for some reason she'd be scheduled for three days in a row.

And prior to kids, for me, that just meant that I got to eat a lot of fast food and I didn't mind it that much.

I would live the bachelor life for three days.

But I remember that when she would get home from that third shift, that third 12-hour shift, without fail, our marriage was always on the rocks.

The exhaustion, the busyness would catch up to us, to her.

And immediately the questions like, Do you love me?

Do you even care about me?

Would just start flying over that night.

And at first, I we were newly married.

I was like, oh no, like this isn't good.

Like, let's sit down, we need to talk about this.

And we'd have these long conversations about where our marriage was at and how things were going and how we could fix this.

But then after many months of this cycle going on, I realized she's just exhausted and tired.

And the only time that these problems were arising in our marriage was after this third shift in a row where it felt like our world was falling apart.

The answer for us wasn't to talk through it or arguing about it.

The answer was go to sleep, get some rest, and let's circle back in the morning and see how we feel then.

Without fail, we'd go to bed, wake up the next morning, and our marriage problems were magically disappeared.

It was amazing.

It was the best marriage counseling you get.

Go to sleep.

It's awesome.

The answer for us wasn't to work harder, to try harder.

The answer was just get some rest, a good night's sleep.

Have you ever heard the expression, feel isn't real?

What you feel isn't always exactly what's going on.

What you feel isn't exactly the reality.

Your marriage isn't always on the rocks.

You may both just need a good night's sleep from the exhaustion that you've experiencing from the busyness of the day.

In our walk with Jesus, feel may not always be real.

For example, have you ever got into the cycle where you just keep falling into the same sin or the same cycle over and over again?

What may begin to be played in your mind in those moments is that there's no way that Jesus could love someone like you who keeps falling into this over and over again.

No chance he'll forgive you this time.

No way you can go back to church.

This place is gonna burn down if you come in.

That's your shame beginning to talk to you.

That you're too far gone, you're too broken, you're too beyond repaired.

Your feelings are telling you that God can't love a sinner like you.

But the truth is you are never too far from the love of God.

That Christ died for you while you were still a sinner, that the that God, who is our loving father, is sitting on the front porch waiting for us to come home and running after his prodigal son.

Now, there are other times where it's the other way around, right?

You'll be going to church, you're in a connection group, you're serving all the time, you're running from one activity to the next, and you feel like me and God, we are good.

I am knocking this whole Christianity thing out of the park.

Your activity is filled with a whole lot of God, but you have hidden unrepentant sin in your life that you just keep falling back into, that you're ignoring, stuffing in the closet.

You continue to have unforgiveness towards your friend who has hurt you.

You continue to be easily angered or you struggle with the lack of joy in your heart.

Although on the scorecard of following Jesus, you have checked all the boxes, you've done all the right things, you've done all the activities, the fruits of your relationship aren't there.

You can feel close to God because you're doing a lot of the right Christian things while your character hasn't changed at all.

The danger is we mistake motion for spiritual health.

This morning the Apostle Paul is gonna challenge us that what proves we belong to Christ isn't just our busyness and our activities, but our walk of walking with the Spirit.

Are we walking with the Spirit or are we walking by the flesh?

You see, the evidence of discipleship is not activity, it's a changed life.

So if you've got your Bible this morning, open up.

We're gonna be in Galatians 5 in just a moment, verses 13 through 25.

If you don't have your Bible, no worries.

All of our scripture texts will be up on the screen for you to follow along.

And for the past four weeks, we've been walking through this journey together as we discover what discipleship really means.

As we go through this series, follow me.

You see, Jesus never intended discipleship to merely just be classes, programs, and ministries or just activities.

No, discipleship is responding to Jesus' invitation to follow him so that he can transform you and send you to help others follow him.

Discipleship begins with being called by Jesus to get out of your boat, outside of your comfort zone, to leave everything behind in order to follow him.

Jesus then begins to transform you into his image, meaning that he changes you from who you are to look a little bit more like him every day.

As you walk and you follow Jesus, you look more and more like him.

But it was never meant to be done alone, as God designed every single one of us with this need for community.

It goes past just the desire to have friends in our lives, but we actually need others to do life with.

You see, when we're in community with others, we grow spiritually and we experience the fullness of life that Jesus has to offer to us.

Discipleship is experienced in circles, not just rows.

And discipleship actually has a direction.

There is an end goal for us.

That it with it with it all being said and done, the goal of discipleship is really for us to be sent out back into the world to share what Jesus has done with us, done for us with others around us.

So others can come to know of the goodness of God.

You can't do it on your own, though.

You can't just lead other people, you can't live a sent life by yourself.

No, you need the Spirit who lives in you to empower you to do so.

Ultimately, we choose to follow.

But then the radical change that we experience in our lives through being a disciple of Jesus is really the byproduct of the Holy Spirit's work in our lives.

God the Father sent Jesus the Son, who died on the cross, and his grace is freely poured out on full display as he's on the cross for us in our place.

And now we experience his grace through the work of the Holy Spirit.

You see, we believe that God's grace doesn't just forgive us of our sins, but this grace actually transforms us from the inside out.

But here's the question how?

That sounds good.

How does that actually happen?

How does someone who struggles with anger just suddenly become gentle?

How does someone who struggles with anxiety become marked by peace?

How does someone who is selfish become someone who naturally loves others around them?

Paul's answer to us for us today isn't to try harder, his answer is to walk by the Spirit.

So if you've got your Bible, stand with me this morning.

We're going to be looking at Galatians 5, verses 13 through 25.

Galatians 5:13–25

Stand with me, it says this.

But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh, rather serve one another humbly in love.

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command Love your neighbor as yourself.

If you bite and devour each other, watch out, or you will be destroyed by each other.

So I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit is contrary to the flesh.

They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the flesh are obvious sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry, and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissension, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

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

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Against such things there is no law.

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

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep step with the Spirit.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

You may be seated this morning.

So Paul, he begins by addressing that in Christ we are called to be free.

We actually are free in Christ.

That when we give our lives to Jesus, there is a freedom that we experience and we get to live in.

What is this whole freedom thing, though?

Because to us as Americans, it's the ability to do what we want without the interference of the government.

Free speech, free press, life, liberty, in the pursuit of happiness.

We love our freedom.

We do a whole month of freedom of setting off fireworks and trying to blow off our hands in order to celebrate the freedom that we love.

And notice how Paul doesn't talk about freedom in the same way that we as Americans oftentimes talk about freedom.

He doesn't say, hey, you have freedom, so now you can go do whatever you want without anyone else bothering you.

They can't stop you because you are free.

He says, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh.

Rather, serve one another humbly in love.

You see, freedom isn't the right to do whatever you want, it's the power to become who Christ, who God created you to be.

Before Jesus, uh, we see in Scripture that we were slaves to sin, which means that prior to the freedom that Jesus offers, your master was your selfish desires.

It was your pride.

Our master was sin.

But now in Christ, through what he's done on the cross for us, through the free gift of grace, we are set free to live in the freedom that he offers in order to serve and love one another.

You see, freedom isn't the removal of all authority, but it's actually the exchange of masters from being slaves to sin to belonging to Jesus.

And this idea of belonging isn't unique to Paul here in Galatians.

No, it's actually how this whole the whole Bible understands this big word called holiness.

John Oswald, in his book Called to Be Holy, Oswald says that holiness begins with belonging.

Living a life set apart for Jesus means that it begins with our identity.

We oftentimes think of holiness, this word like, oh, I'm so you're so holy, as like the things that we avoid.

Right?

In order to be holy, we avoid all of these bad, sinful things.

And if we avoid things well, then we will be holy, uh like God's called us to be holy.

But holiness is less about the things we avoid and more about who we belong to.

You see, in in the ancient world, when someone dedicated to a gift to one of their pagan gods, um it that object could no longer be used for ordinary purposes.

It now belonged to that God alone.

That's what it meant to them in order to be holy.

It wasn't ordinary anymore because the ownership of that item, because it was gifted, had now changed.

The gift became holy because now who it had belonged to.

So, to understand what it means for you and I to be free, we must first understand what it means to be holy, to live lives that are set apart from the ways of this world.

When you gave your life to Jesus, your master was no longer sin.

You now belonged to Jesus Christ.

You're not holy because of what you have done, but because of whose you are.

Now that you belong to Jesus, your life is to be used for Christ's purposes.

You are now to take on Christ's character.

That's why Paul immediately starts when he's talking about freedom, he then begins to talk about love because when you belong to Jesus, you begin to look more like Jesus.

On my wedding day, um, you know, I placed a ring on Alyssa's finger.

And she placed a ring on mine, and these rings are there's really nothing special about them.

They're really just hunks of metal that we wear on our fingers.

But you know, we don't treat these hunks of metal, these rings as just an ordinary thing.

We treat them as something that represents that we belong to one another.

That I belong to Alyssa and Alyssa belongs to me.

My life, when we got married, when we put these rings on, our lives were no longer our own.

We belonged to one another.

In the same way we belong to Jesus Christ.

That why while Paul says freedom is expressed through our love to God and to one another, so when I belong to Jesus, I begin to care about the things that he cares about.

I love what he loves.

I care for those he cares for, I serve those that he serves, I forgive like he forgave me.

I become who he has created me to be out of this belonging to him.

You see, freedom isn't doing whatever we want.

No, freedom is becoming the people that we were created to be.

So let me ask you this how are you using the freedom that Jesus has offered to you?

Do you use it to love and to serve others, or do you use it in order to indulge your flesh?

Because Paul warns us here that misused freedom bites, it devours, and it destroys relationships.

But f because freedom isn't found in living for ourselves.

Freedom is found in belonging to Jesus.

And when you belong to Jesus, he begins to make you more like himself.

Paul goes on to say, he says, So I walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh.

They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit.

Notice here, Paul describes this life of freedom, describing with these these three verbs.

He says, walk, led, and live by the Spirit.

That it's not about trying harder or doing the right things, but instead, it's about a relationship.

It's about this closeness with the Holy Spirit.

Remember, discipleship is more than the classes we take.

It's more than the programs we're a part of, it's more than the ministries that go on at a church.

No, discipleship is relational, meaning that we are to be in close connection with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

We are to stay in pace and alignment with the Spirit every day of our lives.

We are to walk alongside the Spirit.

We are to follow the Spirit and let Him set the direction for our lives.

We are to allow the Spirit to be our life source, to empower us to live the life Christ has called us to.

If you have been following Jesus for any length of time, then you've probably learned that following Jesus isn't easy.

It's really not natural.

It's not your first inclination, oftentimes.

There's this tension that we experience as we want to be different.

I want things to change in my life, but we constantly see feel like we're falling back into our old selves as well.

It's like we take one step forward and then two steps back.

How do we actually become like Jesus?

Thomas Odin in the power of grace answers that question by pointing us to God's grace.

He says, Grace is God's way of empowering the bound will and healing the suffering spirit.

I love that phrase.

Empowering the bound will.

Before Jesus, you were bound to your sin.

It was our master, it controlled you.

But what grace does is it doesn't just forgive us of our sins, but it actually begins to set us free so that we can change from the inside out.

When we talk about grace, I think we oftentimes focus on God's saving grace.

But grace is so much more than just his saving grace.

There are actually three kinds of grace I want to share with you this morning.

There's his provenient grace, there's his justifying grace, and there's his sanctifying grace.

Alright, I'm giving you some big words.

I think you can do this, alright?

Stick with me, alright?

I know, I know.

I'm giving you some big words today, all right?

First, God's provenient grace.

This is the grace that goes before us.

Even before you pursued God, God was pursuing you.

God's provenient grace means that God has been at work in your life before you ever made a move towards God.

He's been drawing you back to himself.

Then there's his justifying grace, or as we like to call it, his saving grace.

This is the grace that when you gave your life to Jesus, you were saved.

You were justified.

God forgives you of your sin.

And because of God's justifying grace, when God sees you, he no longer sees your sin.

Instead, what he sees is he sees his son.

He sees his son's work on the cross, he has taken your place.

You have been justified, and you have been saved through what Christ has done for you.

Then we have God's sanctifying grace.

Sanctifying grace is the grace that transforms us from the inside out.

God's grace doesn't just save you, but it begins the process of transformation, transforming you into the image of Jesus.

You see, justifying grace, it dealt with what we call your personal sin.

Your personal sin is the things that you've done.

Hey, I've lied, I've cheated, I've stolen.

Those are the things you've done.

You've been forgiven, you've been justified.

But Jesus doesn't just leave you right there.

Instead, he sanctifies you.

He changes you from the inside out, and his sanctifying grace deals with what we call your original sin, which is your sinful nature, your desire to go against the things of God.

And as you walk with Jesus, as you're in step with the Spirit, His sanctifying grace, it doesn't just forgive you of your sins.

No, it actually begins to change your sinful nature so that you become more and more like Jesus.

Did you know that you don't just have to look at temptation, white knuckle it, grin and bear it to try and get through it?

But actually, what happens as you walk with Jesus every day in your life is your desires begin to change.

And the thing that once looked tempting no longer looks as tempting anymore.

You can actually be free from sin.

You don't just have to resist it, but God has set you free through his grace.

So what Paul is describing here in Galatians is that as we walk, as we're led, as we live by the Spirit in close relationship with Him, we experience God's sanctifying grace.

We are being transformed little by little as He changes our desires, our reactions, our inclinations, and He makes us more like Jesus.

John Wesley said it like this Exactly as we are justified by faith, so we are sanctified by faith.

Meaning that the same way that you were saved by Jesus, you are changed by him.

It wasn't in your own strength that you were saved, it was only through his work on the cross.

The same way that you are being you are being changed is actually only through his sanctifying grace.

There is nothing that you can do.

All you can do is stay close to him and he radically changes you from the inside out.

If I had a goal today that I wanted to go run a sub-three hour marathon, and I decided tomorrow, I'm gonna go try really, really hard to do this.

I'm gonna try and reach this goal.

So I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and I'm gonna run a sub-three hour marathon, no training or nothing.

What would happen?

I would die.

I would die if I tried to run a sub-three hour marathon.

And I probably after I die and I get resurrected back, you know, because whatever happens, water, uh, I'd probably be so discouraged from this goal of running a sub-three hour marathon that I would I would stop trying altogether.

You don't start running super fast marathons by trying to run really fast.

You don't get it by just trying really hard.

You start by training and building up your fitness.

But also, I don't know anything about marathon training.

I don't know anything about running.

So probably what I need to do is I need to find some people who have done this, who who know what the This is all about.

And I need to begin to train with them and learn from them and to understand them so then I can be challenged so that I can run faster than I ever thought I could and I could see what is actually possible.

Just as just by being around people who train harder, faster, and know what they're doing, I would become a better runner without doing anything else.

Just by being around them, I would be more likely to achieve my goal.

Paul tells us that the answer to becoming more like Jesus isn't just trying harder.

It's by walking, it's by being led, it's by living in the Spirit every day of our lives.

And when we do that, God's sanctifying grace transforms us into his image a little more every day.

Sanctification happens through close relationship with Jesus, empowered and guided by the Spirit.

Paul goes on in verse 19 and says, The acts of the flesh are obvious.

Sexual immorality, debauchery, yada yada yada, all these things.

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

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law.

I tell you one of my favorite things about Paul.

The guy just says it like he means it.

Like he doesn't beat around the bush, he just says it to us.

He says, the acts of the flesh are obvious.

You know it when you see it.

Alright?

If we gotta ask questions, it's probably wrong.

Alright?

It's probably an act of the flesh.

He says, sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, jealousy, envy, drunkenness, orgies.

Paul isn't sitting there and he's not writing going, you know, I wonder who's gonna read this.

I wonder whose feelings I'm going to offend as I write all of these things.

What he's doing is he's just calling balls and strikes like an umpire.

He's like, it's it's truth whether you agree with it or not.

It is obvious.

The thing with truth, though, is although Paul's writing here can read really harsh or overly direct, I need you to know that it's incredibly loving what he's doing.

It's not said with judgment, it's said with a warning and care that those who live this way will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And then he says something interesting.

In contrast to the acts of the flesh, he says the fruit of the spirit are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, all of them.

Did you catch the difference in the way that he describes these two things?

He says, the acts of the flesh.

Acts infers that you can produce them, that you can do them on your own.

The fruit of the spirit, though, fruit suggests that they are a byproduct of the spirit at work in our lives.

You see, acts are something that you produce, fruit is something that is produced in you.

Paul is telling us that we cannot just act our way to fruit.

We can't just try our way to being loving, to kindness, to gentleness.

But it's actually only through the empowerment of the spirit that our lives begin to change.

Notice how you can't take an apple and just tape it back to the tree and watch it grow.

You can't just take gorilla glue and attach it and oh, it just works.

No.

Godly character is produced only when it is connected to the life-giving Holy Spirit.

Oswald writes that the fact is, God is not too concerned whether we are happy or not, but he is very concerned whether we are holy.

That too can sound harsh until we remember what holiness really is.

Holiness isn't God trying to make your life miserable, taking out all the joys that you like and all the things that you enjoy.

No, holiness is God's own character being reproduced in his people.

It's becoming more like Jesus.

That's why Paul gives us the fruit of the Spirit here.

These are not personality traits that some of you were born with and some of you weren't.

No, this is uh these are the markers and the indicators that the spirit is actually at work in your life.

Maybe the question is not how busy we are as Christians, how many godly activities we can fill our days with.

It's not about what grade you're getting on your church report card.

Did you turn in all your assignments?

The better question is, am I becoming more like Jesus?

You see, discipleship is not a destination with a checklist of markers for us to hit.

Discipleship is the journey of becoming more like Jesus every day.

And the fruit of the Spirit are like God's fingerprints on our lives, of God's activity in our lives.

It's not something that you do, it's not something that you get, it's not something that you work harder towards.

It's when you walk and are led and live by the Spirit that you begin to see the Spirit at work in your life.

It's the markers, it's the indicators.

The evidence of discipleship is not activity, it's a changed life.

So as the band comes on up and gets ready to close, I I need you to know I have two kids, uh, their names are Savannah and Nox, and and Savannah is three years old, and Nox is one year old at the moment.

And every day when I go to pick these kids up, they get heavier.

Every single day.

Every time I I go to get them dressed, the the clothes are just fitting a little bit tighter than the day before.

Every time I turn around and I look back, somehow they've grown an inch and they're just bigger and bigger.

They're growing so fast.

I mean, it's crazy how fast kids grow up.

And if you've had kids, then you know that there are days where you just want to take those little kids and you just want to tell them to stop growing.

Like, could you just stay like this like forever?

Like, this is this is perfect.

I just want it always to be like that.

And it's in those moments that you feel like, man, I'm just in the good old days right now.

But then there are other moments where you cannot wait till these kids grow up.

When are you gonna move out?

When are you gonna pay your own bills?

When are you gonna buy your own food?

It's I think it's easy for us to live in these two extremes of life.

That they're that we are either living in the best days where everything is perfect and everything's grand, or I just can't wait till they get to this point, X, Y, Z.

Every day for me right now, when I'm spending time with Savannah and Knox, those days look very, very similar.

Yet, growth happens every day, whether I see it or not.

Just as my kids are growing up so quickly, it also feels like it's happening so slowly at the same time.

There's this tension that you live in.

I think that's how God's sanctifying work, sanctifying grace works in our lives.

That's what we want is we want instant growth.

We want to wake up on Monday and instantly be more patient.

We expect joy without any of the journey.

We want to be at peace without any of the process.

Sanctification, becoming more like Jesus is not a snap of the fingers.

It's a process of daily growth, transformation, walking by the Spirit, led by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit.

You see, you may not feel dramatically more patient tomorrow.

You may not feel holier than you did the day before.

But as you walk with the Spirit one day, one hour, one minute at a time, God's sanctifying grace changes you from the inside out.

You see, we get caught up in the destinations of where we are and where we want to be.

And Paul teaches us that fruit isn't found at the finish line, it's actually found along the journey.

You see, Jesus isn't looking for us to get from point A where we are right now, where we're so bad and we're so down and we're such sinners, to get all the way to point C, where we're like mature, we've got it all figured out, we've got all of the answers.

Jesus isn't waiting for us to get to the destination.

You see, you and I, we actually can live in the freedom that Christ has to offer to us as we walk with him.

That's where freedom is found.

The Spirit produces the fruit as we walk with him on this journey.

It's not about the destination of where we are or where we're going, it's about becoming more like Jesus as we are in close relationship with him.

And maybe today you're discouraged because you think I'm not nearly as far along in the spiritual journey as I'd like to be.

I wish I was there.

I wish I wasn't stuck right here where I am right now.

And can I encourage you?

God never asked you to arrive today, He asked you to walk today.

To walk tomorrow, to walk the next day, to keep in step with the Spirit.

Because the miracle of discipleship isn't that one day you suddenly wake up and you're just like Jesus.

No, the miracle is that while you're walking with him, you slowly realize he's been changing you all along.

His sanctifying grace has been at work in your life, whether you realize it or not, when you stay in step with the spirit.

So don't become so obsessed with the destination that you miss what God is doing on the journey.

The fruit isn't waiting until you get to the end of the road.

The fruit is growing while you walk with the Spirit.