The Fruit of the Spirit - Part 1

Well, good morning. You guys all made it through the snow and the cold. But actually, it's a beautiful day, actually. So it's a pretty cool day. So I have the privilege of actually doing this section on the fruit of the spirit, which we're actually going to take a couple of weeks to do that. So Mike has been going through. He started back. And we kind of take different weeks. I let him take more weeks than I do, because he's older by about six months.

So anyway, the older elder ought to you know have more responsibility I'm joking of course Okay, so I want I'd like to go back and look at Starting in verse 16 and kind of move up into the fruit of the Spirit and kind of give you the background and Just to put it in context. So let's with that in mind.

I Let's go back to the very first verse I got a chance to teach this which is cool And then Mike kind of followed on he got the he got the toughies I get the wonderful Wonderful life of Christ in the fruit of the Spirit and Mike got the dregs I mean my goodness that that lists are 14 that list you listen that list you think man That's pretty bad. It sounds like today's news right? Oh my goodness It's awful, but we have the we have wonderful good news this morning.

I So basically in verse 16 it says, But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. One observation that I noticed, and I had seen this earlier, was that interesting that Paul, if you look at this verse, this verse is a promise. He's saying something that says, you do not want to be controlled by the desires of the flesh. So he's telling you a remedy, if you will, a promise. that if you walk by the Spirit, you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. And it's a rather strong promise. In fact, it says it's an impossibility. And so it's a pretty amazing, you know, he approaches it that way, rather than saying, here's a way you walk by the Spirit and giving you a list. He says, walking by the Spirit is a remedy for the deeds of the flesh, or desires of the flesh. Actually, we're going to see the difference between desires and deeds here shortly. So let's just look at this. We looked at this before.

Literally, it's you walk by the Spirit. And walking is this word, peripateo, which means walking about figuratively. You know, I thought before I walked back and forth across the stage. You know, it's moving about. How do you conduct your life? You know, most of us, thankfully, can walk. And we can walk and move around. And the Christian life is to be lived walking by the Spirit.

And the walking metaphor is used by Paul a lot. He uses it for positive things, you know, walk by the Spirit. He also uses it negatively. You know, don't walk as the Gentiles walk in their lust of their flesh and lust of their minds. So it's used both positively and negatively. In this case, it's positive, walk by the Spirit, and it's continuous action.

I mentioned the daily practice, the conduct of our lives. And it's by the Spirit. And a couple of other renderings might be by means of the Spirit, or at least has it through the instrumentality of the Spirit. So the Holy Spirit of God desires for you to walk in accordance with basically the life of Christ, is what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives. So let's go on. This is a little review here we're going to do. That's my little guy in the corner. I found that online. I thought it was really kind of a cute little picture of a guy kind of reminding himself of what we said before.

So the last half is the promise if you will and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh And so it's a pretty amazing you will not carry out and actually has a double negative. It's hard to see that in the translation Just says you will not carry out and you say oh, it sounds kind of normal But actually it could be rendered you cannot you will never never Merriman translates it as and actually there's a usage of that other places in scripture where Jesus said In John 6.37, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out. So certainly not cast out is this double negative, it's omi in the Greek. So you will not carry out or fulfill the King James says. So putting it together, it's you cannot, you never will bring to completion Desires of the flesh or it's an impossibility.

So as we as we walk by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit We kind of lock out we lock out the desires of the flesh if you will We have desires and I'm going to show that shortly here, but the Holy Spirit of God Will be in control of our lives and you say well, how does that happen? Do I just flick a switch? Do I go to switch? Okay, I'm gonna go to Holy Spirit mode today and No, it's not that.

That would be law, right? That would be law. We'd operate by faith. So it's a faith operation that this happens. And that's a toughie, because you think, wow, faith sounds, yeah, I came to the Lord by faith, but how do I make this work on a day-to-day basis? And that's a challenge I have in teaching this, and also in living that too for myself. So hopefully we'll see more of that as we carry on here. Okay, so the rest of the verse, the desire of the flesh, Basically the sinful nature. Desire is epithumia. A desire, a craving, mostly of evil. It can be positive a few times. And it's frequently translated as lust.

So here's an observation. Paul is not saying you will have no desires. The idea here is that Many desires come through our head as we walk in our daily lives. Some are positive, and some are not so good. So those desires come into our mind. What he's saying is, as you walk by the Spirit, those desires won't be fulfilled. That's what he's promising. You will have desires. Paul's saying the desire of the flesh will not be brought to completion as we walk by the Spirit. The desire of the flesh will be in us. Until we go to be with the Lord.

Unfortunately, we'll have these things buzzing around in our heads and you say boy I'm glad that you know that brother or sister didn't know what I'm thinking right now if they did they probably wouldn't wouldn't talk with me and we all have that feeling sometimes or maybe we say something and we're we're sorry about what we said that happens to me many many times Okay, so let's carry on here. So I like this our brother how About 20 years ago when he taught Galatians he had this It's kind of a practicalist, how do you walk by the Spirit? Trying to answer the question I proposed earlier. So how does that happen?

So first of all, if you look at Scripture, the Holy Spirit is the one who wants to lead us. We're to be led by the Spirit. And that kind of folds in nicely with walking by the Spirit. So God the Father has given the Holy Spirit that responsibility to lead us. Therefore we are to be depending upon His leading. And how do we depend upon His leading?

We understand what Scripture says about the ministries of the Holy Spirit. We have a whole class, a whole Sunday School class, devoted just to that. And it's important to understand His ministries. So walking by the Spirit, kind of in one bullet says, so walking by the Spirit is walking by faith. Here we go again, walking by faith. You say, Roger, that's hard, that's hard. But it's faith in the facts, faith in what we understand from Scripture.

Walking is by faith and depending upon the leading of the Holy Spirit in the things of Christ and his word So in a nutshell that's walking by the Spirit and here's some things that it's not and I like this from brother Howell what he shared here Walking by the Spirit people confuse that it's not baptism. It's not the indwelling. It's not the filling Those are all ministries of the Holy Spirit, but it's not one of those. This is a precise ministry that God has given the Holy Spirit By walking by the Spirit is not self-occupation with the Holy Spirit.

You know, some believe, well, the more we kind of focus on the Holy Spirit, the unseen part of the Trinity, we'll talk about the Holy Spirit 24-7. No, the Holy Spirit, if you remember in John 16, He's to show us the things of Christ. He's to bring to our remembrance, to show us all the things of Christ. So that's His ministry. And actually, He's the silent one of the Godhead in terms of He doesn't want to focus on himself. He wants to focus on the Lord Jesus Christ and for us to do that. Walking by the Spirit is occupation with a glorified Lord Jesus Christ. It is beholding Him, depending upon Him, Christ being our all in all. So that's my little quick summary about walking by the Spirit. So now I'm going to cover Mike's four weeks in two charts. I'm joking. I'm totally joking. What I found was Mike did a great job.

I didn't have much to say so what else am I going to say? But there's a few points. I wanted to kind of refresh your memory on and so let's look at this Let's look at verse. I'm just going to look at verse 17 and verse 19 so first 17 says For the flesh sets its desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh For these are in opposition to one another so that you may not do the things that you please So you look at that and you say, wow, there's something going on here. It doesn't look good. There's a battle going on, right?

The flesh sets its desires, and that's actually the word lust. If you have the King James Bible, it will say lust. Lust against the spirit. But lust can be positive, and that's why I like the newer translations. And I supplied that word in there, it's not supplied in the text. The Spirit sets its desires against the flesh. So we have two entities, if you will. We have our sinful nature that we got from Adam, and we have the Holy Spirit of God. And they're in contention in our lives. They're in this battle that's going on. And Mike went through a really good, you look back to Romans 7, where Paul struggled with that. did a great job there.

So I just want to point a few more things out here about that. So I thought of this, if you guys in the military, maybe you've heard of this idea of rules of engagement. You know, there's like a, is it the Geneva Convention? You know, you just don't have war and it's just no holes barred. There are rules, right? By hopefully sane nations, and there's some insane nations, insane people, but You know, you're to treat hostages a certain way. You're to not... civilians are not to be hurt or whatever.

So there's actually, if you think about it, there's rules of engagement in this war between the Holy Spirit of God and our fleshly nature. And what's cool is, we got some cool rules on our side. So the first rule we got is our position. We come out of the gate, out of this... into this battle, but we're already in the Spirit. Wow! In our position. God sees us in the Holy Spirit. That's our position. The question is, what about our condition? So we come out of the gate, so to speak, with this rule of engagement.

It says in Romans 8.9a, however, you're not in the flesh, but you're in the Spirit. If, and that could be sense, indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. So the Spirit of God indwells every believer. That's a part of the wonderful blessings we have when we put our faith and trust in Christ.

But the question comes down to, in our walk, in our condition, how we conduct our lives. We can walk in the flesh, or we can walk in the spirit. And that's what this whole battle is about. Do we walk in the flesh, our nature from Adam, or do we walk in the spirit? That's what the whole battle is about. That's what this whole section of scripture is about.

All the desires of the flesh gratify self ultimately whether they may think they're good You said well, I'm gonna do a good thing a good deed I'll put down all the good deeds. I'm gonna do today and you write those down and you do those good deeds Well, are you depending by faith on the Lord on the Holy Spirit to do that? No, you're depending upon well I did good deed one good deed two and you check them off boy. I'm doing pretty well here That's that's totally not what the Lord's looking for. I He's looking for our faith in Him and trust in Him. So all the desires of the flesh gratify self. But the wonderful thing, all the desires of the Spirit are sourced in God and they're righteous. Every single one.

We're going to see that list, that list of nine things is impossible. You start looking at that list, you cannot do any of those. You can try to be loving, you can try to be gracious, you can try to be kind, but you really cannot perform what God has asked you to do.

He wants to be His love, His peace. It's all sourced in Christ. So we're going to see this list that He's asked us to, the fruits of the Spirit. Fruit, you have to be careful, it's singular, and I keep doing this, I was talking with Bonnie, I kept saying, fruits plural? It's not, and that's actually one of the key points here, it's fruit singular.

And we'll get into that shortly. I'm kind of jumping around here, I apologize. It's cool stuff here. So the Galatians, if you think about it, we've been going through this book for, it's been a little over a year now. We started in December last year. The Galatians were trying to please God by their works. We'll keep the law. We'll do circumcision. We'll do all that. And that will please you. Right, Lord? No, I want your faith. I don't want your works.

Okay, so that's verse 17. And I wanted to include a little bit before we jumped into the fruit singular of the spirit about the deed of the flesh. And what you notice here, and that's that list that's not too pleasant, notice that there's a change. In verse 16 it was the desire of the flesh. Then we move to 19, it's the deeds of the flesh. Seems kind of similar, actually some have works for deeds in other translations. So we see here that And here's a little picture. I like pictures, you know. Engineers like pictures. Block 1. Courtney loves this, I know. The desire of the flesh. That's what it says in 16.

And the promise is that the Holy Spirit, we will not carry out the desire of the flesh. But the desire of the flesh does do something. It produces, brings to completion, deeds. You have to have desires come before deeds. And what we went through in the last several weeks, those deeds of the flesh, are not pretty. And we see that, you know, unfortunately we see it in ourselves many times and we see it everywhere. So, desires produce deeds. The deeds are the end product of the desire of the flesh, in our thought, in our words, in our action.

What a person does testifies to the source of his deeds. And the Lord talked about this when when he was talking to the Jews you know they were and this is when he says I am I am the son of God and that just blew their circuits they said you blaspheme you can't be the son of God you know that can't be and he says well look at my look at my works look at my deeds and he quoted in this verse in 1037 says this if I do not do the works of my father do not believe me but if I do them though you do not believe me believe the works So deeds are hugely important, right?

We're totally judged in our world, in our job, in everything. We're totally judged for our deeds, right? We can say all kinds of good things. That's like many times we'll talk about a person says a lot of good things, but what are their actions? Their actions tell what's the source of their deeds.

So that's pretty tough stuff in there. And we kind of ground through that and Mike did a great job. So now I get a chance to go and look at the rest of the story, the rest of this wonderful story. So that was review. So I like this outline by Macaulay.

So he calls it the dynamics of the Christian life. So we talked about in many weeks past our outline of liberty. This section, he calls it the outline of spirituality. Walk by the Spirit, which we just talked about. Works of the flesh which we covered last weeks before Christmas and today we're going to talk about the fruit of the fruit singular of the spirit the singular fruit of the spirit and Then we're going to kind of close out this section with the believers position Paul Klein comes back again and talks about our position in Christ at the end of this little section in chapter 5 Okay, so finally we're going to get to our verse here But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law." Seems a pretty simple, straightforward verse, right? And it is pretty straightforward.

He's introducing a contrast here because he's contrasting what he talked about under the deeds of the flesh with the fruit singular of the Spirit. So I had an example of that. May have been a little overkill here, but anyway, this is the contrast here in John 1.11. He came to his own, but those who were his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to him he gave the right to become the children of God, even to those who believe in his name. So the contrast here in this verse is between those who didn't receive him and those who did receive him. The contrast in our verse is how we conduct our Christian lives, as conducted by the deeds of the flesh, as a result of those desires.

So it's a flesh or by the spirit is the question. So that but kind of introduces this section. And it's actually a pretty simple construction of this section, but we're going to get there in just a second. So let's see. I think we're going to get there right now. OK, we are. Sorry. I have the charts in certain order and I forgot how we ordered them.

So let's just look at subject, modifier, and verb. So the subject is the fruit, right? Notice singular. You know, I don't know how many years I have read fruits plural. And we all have probably. Fruits of the Spirit. Fruits of the Spirit. So, the Lord has something to tell us about this singular fruit. And it's singular.

And the modifier of this is of the Spirit. So it's fruits that is sourced in the Holy Spirit. And the verb here is one of these really cool verbs in the Greek, eimi. It's a state in which someone or something continuously exists. It's in the present tense. So what it's saying here, this fruit of the Spirit continuously exists, is singular, continuously exists as described by these list of attributes.

And one thing I wanted to point out here, in studying for this, I found out that people, in attempting to make sure they didn't make it plural fruits, we have to supply some other word, right? Because we're saying, This is a singular fruit of the Spirit. It's a whole. All these are singular. So what do you call the individual love, joy, peace, patience? What do you call them? Their attributes? Characteristics? Chaffer, wonderfully, he called them graces. I thought that was pretty cool.

So, be careful when you read, and I'd mark my Bible and say, no S there with the arrow. No S. It's singular fruit. is talking about a life. It's a person he's talking about and you know who the person is, our Savior. This is Christ. We're going to talk about Christ here in these attributes, in these graces. Each attribute exists simultaneously with the other.

You know, it's a package deal. We get the whole shebang. You don't work on love for a little bit, and then you graduate to joy, and then you get some patience. It doesn't work that way. You have it all. And that's why it becomes an impossibility for you to do this out of your own self. You have to walk by faith for this to be a reality in your life.

These attributes identify the characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit. And I had a little bottom bullet that I added on my notes here. I lost it. Okay, we'll just go on. So the nine characteristics comprise the singular fruit of the Spirit. One of the questions comes up. There are nine that are listed here. Remember back when Mike taught in about the 14 deeds of the flesh? That wasn't a complete list. In fact, it says that in the text. This isn't a complete list. Well, I think you can make a case that there actually are a few more that could be added to this list.

And if you look at Ephesians 5, 9, it says, For the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. So, taking this, goodness seems to encompass the nine, because, you know, only God is good, it says in Mark 10 there, when they're speaking to Christ. Only God is good. So, those nine, goodness kind of encompasses those nine, but then you could add righteousness and truth.

And what you begin to see, these are all characteristics of the singular fruit of the Spirit. It's a description of a person. It's a description of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. Okay. And I mention also, remember, as I talked about before, in 19-21, that was not a complete list either. Okay, so let's look at... So these nine attributes of the fruit of the Spirit, and they're all singular nouns. So I really like what Chafer had to say about the singular fruit of the Spirit.

This is from his systematic theology. Every word of the nine attributes as here used represents a superhuman quality of life. It's an exact description of the life of Christ. But Christ's likeness is never gained by the energy of the flesh. These virtues are not found in human nature, They are the singular fruit of the Spirit. I think that's why it's so important to make sure that as you read it for yourself, as you talk to people, that you see that this is a singular description of the person of God, our Lord Jesus.

I'm going to come back to this a few more times. Okay. So, okay, one question I had, I started looking through, I like to use various references, I started looking, I said, did anybody group these references? So I looked through, I couldn't find, and I came across one that did. And while it wasn't the best grouping, I thought it made sense.

So I'm going to group the nine attributes of the fruit of the Spirit. First of all, love, joy, peace, you could call that God-word attributes. Patience, kindness, and goodness could be called outward attributes. God is patient with us so that we'll be patient with people, right? We're kind to people. There's goodness. And then the last three, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, that could be thought of as maybe inward things that we're a faithful person by God's, through the Spirit of God, gentleness and self-control.

So there's a grouping that I kind of like. So I'm going to use that So I'm just going to cover the first three today. You'll be thankful. And then we'll cover the next six in the following lessons. So let's look at these first three, which in themselves are pretty... I think these are the amazing ones. They're all amazing, but these are amazing, amazing.

Okay, so let's start with the attributes of the fruit of the Spirit. Love is, as you might guess, agape. It's the kind of love that God has for man. This love springs from the value and preciousness placed on the object. The object love has worth to the one who is loving.

And we see that in John 3.16, for God loved He had the world, the world system, all of mankind had value to him. But God so loved the world that he did something. He gave his son. This love places a high value on its object and sees the preciousness of the object loved. John 15, 13 says, Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

And the third point here is, This love prompts the action we see in 1 Corinthians 13, 7-8. There actually are more in there, certainly. And this is a wonderful passage I covered much earlier in Galatians. Every time I read this, I have to remind myself this is another description of Christ, if you will.

This is Christ's love. Christ's love bears all things. Christ's love bears all things. Christ's love believes all things. Christ's love hopes all things, endures all things. Christ's love never fails. So you can think of the Corinthians passage and this passage as being descriptions of the Lord Jesus. Okay, so that's love.

How about joy? Gladness of heart, delight regardless of the circumstances. And I want to just make a note here, and I make a note to myself here too. You know, joy in scripture is not to be happy or happiness. Joy is basically a characteristic of who God is. The source of joy is Christ. So right off the bat, joy is not something you... If you try to equate joy and happiness, you're going to get into trouble.

You want to stick with... Separating those two not the happiness can't come out of joy, but joy is is a is a gift from God These things I have spoken to you so that you may have whose joy your joy My joy Christ joy may be in you and that your joy may be full so Christ makes promises about joy He doesn't make promises about happiness Isn't interesting that what does it say? It's the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm going to show my ignorance here. Maybe I should stop. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Isn't that? What is that? Let's see. What's that?

Declaration of Independence. Thank you. Boy, that's terrible. It kind of went in my mind. I should maybe leave it there. Anyway, but is there an innocent man thinks of the pursuit of happiness as being a goal? Well, God says, you know, I give you my joy. So joy is to be the believer's happiness is to be joy. I think that's important. Okay. Secondly, conditions of joy is abiding in him.

In fact, if you look at these verses, this whole section is about where Christ says, Abide in me, and I in you, as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. Abiding in Him, walking with Him, is the way we have joy. So all the attributes that we see here in the Christian life are as a result of our fellowship, our walking with our Savior. And the C part here is, the extent of our joy is totally complete, no lack, and cannot be taken from us.

John 16, 24, the last part, ask and you will receive so that your joy may be made full. And then it continued here, grief and sorrow can be turned into joy, therefore you have grief now, But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you." Since joy is a result of God, your faith in God, He is the source of joy. If you make joy something that you control, you're going to miss the point, right? It's sourced in God. Christ's joy can never be taken from us.

I'm kind of repeating myself here. Christ is our greatest example of focusing on joy and not on suffering. And that's shown in Hebrews 12, 2. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. So it was for the joy set before him. So joy is an attribute that comes from God.

Okay, now we get to peace. Peace actually is a big topic in scripture. There's lots of discussion about peace. There's a whole bunch of discussion about harmonious relations between nations, warring nations in Israel, people wanting peace between those nations, peace between man and God, peace with God, and peace within nations and within earth. But I think the one that is most focused on what we're talking about here is, it's a state of rest in a believer's heart and mind. And it's a peace of God that's, I think, in view here. So the definition of a peace of God is, no turmoil, no confusion, tranquility of mind, a heart and mind resting in the Lord. So the question I'd ask you, and I ask myself, am I there? And I say, many times I'm not.

And this just reinforces why these wonderful attributes, these wonderful graces that we see in the singular fruit of the Spirit are sourced in God. When we get down to the nitty-gritty of looking at each of these love, joy, peace, you'll see they're all sourced in God. They all come from God. They're all carried out by our being in fellowship with God and walking by faith in Him.

So the source of peace. There's one about Christ and one about the Father. In John 14.27 it says, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as a world do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, do not let it be fearful. So Christ has left his peace with us and he's given it. So it's a gift. Peace is a gift.

And then, in terms of the Father, we see that He is called, He is titled, if you will, is the God of Peace. The Father is seen as the God of Peace. Now may the God of Peace Himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit, soul, and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus. I found at least five times that kind of statement about the God of Peace. So the condition of peace.

For the mindset on flesh is death, but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace. So you ought to see a theme that comes up here. Like I said, I'm a broken record, but it comes back over and over again, each of these wonderful attributes to our faith and trust in Christ. And then lastly, here's a section I thought was interesting. The results of abiding in peace. The absence of a troubled heart and mind in life trials. We saw that when I read 1427. The absence of a fearful or frightened heart and mind. Free from tribulation, the pressures of the world.

We are called to peace, so let the peace of Christ rule in your heart. God's peace is imparted by communion with Him. God's peace through Christ. It surpasses all human understanding. It guards or garrisons our hearts and minds. So love, joy, peace. So my final thought here for today, and I've kind of done a lot with Chaffer. This is another wonderful section.

He expresses it so well and just focuses crystal clear on what the fruit of the Spirit is. Fruit singular of the Spirit. As employed in the passage now being considered, Galatians 5, 22-23, Nine words which denote the singular fruit of the spirit represent the superhuman qualities of character. They could, under no natural circumstances, be produced by human ability. They are divine characteristics. Similarly, the nine graces taken together are constituted the one fruit of the spirit, the singular form fruit being used is explained by the fact that these nine graces form an indivisible whole. And I would add to that, they describe the very person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I would say one thing, we're going to go through, we're going to finish it up next week. Don't try to be joyful, peaceful, loving. Don't try to do it. You won't succeed. But you will succeed as we focus on our Savior and you see how He was loving, He was kind.

You know, I thought if I really had, you know, you think, I could have done this for this message, right? Wouldn't it be cool to go through and find, and this is an assignment, if you want to take this assignment on. Go through probably the Gospels and find where Christ displayed love, the characteristic of love. to his disciples, to different people. Go through and find where he was patient. He was patient with them. I'm sure you could find all these nine attributes in Christ's life as he lived on this earth. That would have been a cool part to do, but I didn't do that, did I? Anyway, maybe I'll try a little bit next week. I have six more to cover, so maybe I'll try to find some examples like that. Okay, let's close then.

We thank you so much for this day, Lord. We thank you for the wonderful attributes of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, and the rest of those lists, Father. Thank you for just the wonderful care you have for us, Lord, that you realize that we cannot accomplish the life of Christ ourselves. It's an impossibility. We have a tendency to want to do that because we know how wonderful His life is, but you ask us to simply walk by faith, trusting in what you've done, what you've provided, with our eyes upon you, and that you will live, those attributes will be lived out as we walk by faith. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.