Everyone Should Know This About the 9 Fruit of The Spirit

[Music] we have a tendency to spend much more time focusing on the question of the gifts of the Holy Spirit then in focusing on the matter of the fruit of the Holy Spirit and yet it is the chief goal of the Holy Spirit to apply the fruits of the gospel in such a way to fulfill God's mandate that this is the will of God even your sanctification and the greatest manifestation of our progress in the things of God will never be through the spectacular manifestations of gifts that we have whatever the gifts are a person for example today could be an extremely gifted preacher or a gifted teacher and yet show very little evidence of growth in maturity in the things of God beloved we're going to be examined and evaluated at the end of our lives not by the number of gifts we display nor by the talents God has given to us but we will be judged at the judgment seat of Christ by how much fruit we have borne and as Christians Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit in his letter to the Galatians in the fifth chapter I say then walk in the spirit stop right there here's the first Apostolic mandate that as Christian people we are called to walk in the spirit that does not mean that our primary task is to be pursuing mysticism or to be caught up in forms of magic or in shortcuts to spirituality I've had countless students come to me in the seminary and other places and say to me how can I become more spiritual or how can I become or pious or how can I become more gifted I've yet to have a student come to me and say what I really need to know is how can I become righteous the New Testament Jesus himself says seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things will be added onto you we are supposed to be demonstrating our spiritual growth our walk in the spirit of god which demonstration of our walk in the spirit of god is not to be seen in the manifestation of the gifts the demonstration of our walk in the spirit is to be manifested by the fruit of the holy ghost walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh for the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish but if you are led by the spirit you are not under the law earlier we see Jesus saying that which is born of the flesh is flesh that which is born of the Spirit is spirit and in your flesh you can do nothing there he's not talking about your physical body he's talking about your fallen human nature which includes not only your body but your mind your will your heart and so on before Paul talks about what it means to be led by the spirit and before the Apostle details for us the fruit of the Spirit he first shows us what the fruit of the Spirit is not because remember he's making a contrast here between the flesh and the spirit so he begins with the negative he says now the works of the flesh are evident which are adultery fornication uncleanness lewdness idolatry sorcery hatred contentions jealousies outbursts of Wrath selfish ambition dissensions heresies Envy murders drunkenness revelries and this time the apostle leaves no doubt that this list is not exhausted because he adds and the like of which I tell you beforehand just as I told you in time past that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God this is one of the scariest passages in the Bible those who practice such things adultery fornication lewdness hatred jealousy wrath selfish ambition heresy drunkenness and so on that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God now why is that so terrifying well because we know all kinds of people who have made profound professions of faith in Christ who fall into it over who struggle with alcohol who battle with pride and contentiousness and things of this sort through their whole lives and if you just look at this text you might come to conclusion well anybody who ever falls into any of these sins has no hope of salvation but when Paul speaks about practicing these things he's not saying that if you get drunk once you won't go to heaven that's not what he's saying but he's saying if these things define your lifestyle if you put a mirror up to your life and this is what your life looks like that this is your practice on a regular basis then that's an indication that you are in the flesh that you are not of the Spirit of God and that you are still unregenerate and will not be included in the kingdom of God I think it's important for us to understand that because here against all types of antinomianism that says well I believe in Jesus now I can live however I want to live and that there's no change in my life from my regeneration those people need to read this portion of Galatians to see that Paul gives the very sober warning if this is your practice then those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God now in contrast to the works of the flesh Paul gives the fruit of the Spirit but the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace long-suffering kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self-control against such there is no law and those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires if we live in the spirit let us also walk in the spirit let us not become conceited provoking one another or envying one another not notice he is giving an admonition to people in the church who are believers not to fall into the works of the flesh but to manifest the fruit of the Spirit and that tells you doesn't it that even Christians as long as they are Christians still have to battle with the old natures don't have to battle with the flesh so that there is that element of flesh that remains in the Christian life that has to come under the constant scrutiny of the Word of God that has to come under the constant discipline of the Holy Ghost that we may be convicted of sin and flee from these things and seek to cultivate the opposite kind of practice and that which is cultivated is that which bears fruit and we remember our Lord said it is by their fruit that you will know them what do you want on your gravestone you want it said that you earned so much money or that you won so many battles or that you expressed so many talents and were prodigious in extraordinary feats or do you want to have on your tombstone here was a person who manifested love joy peace long-suffering kindness goodness faithfulness these are the things that God wants from us these are the things that God delights in and yet we do not make them a priority in our lives and we all aware that we should be more loving and that particular fruit has been given lots of ink and lots of space and yet even at times we have a very superficial understanding of what love but love in its spiritual dimension is inseparably related to the other fruit now notice the difference here between the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit in the gifts in the spirit Paul Labor's the point of unity and diversity and he goes through that lengthy rhetorical sequence when he says do all have the gift of preaching do all have the gift of teaching do all have this gift or that gift and the obvious answer is no he doesn't do that with the fruit of the Spirit it's not like the Apostle is teaching here that just as the Spirit distributes individual gifts to particular people in the church for the edification of the whole body so the one person may have the gift of administration the other person may have the gift of giving the other person helps or whatever it is and then in like manner he gives one person the fruit of love another person the fruit of gentleness and other the fruit of patience and another the fruit of joy now the fruit of the Spirit in all of its fullness is to be made manifest in every Christians life all of us are called to bear the fruit of all of us are called to gentleness meekness well it's one thing to be called to wimp them so often in our culture the idea of being meek or gentle means that we lack strength or we can begin to give accolades to the coward you know a gentle person is a person who has strength but restrains the use of that string of gentleness is something akin to sensitivity and again to be gentle means to use less force than you could use in a given situation it doesn't mean that you never use your strength I think we take a cue from Jesus at this point one of the things that I find remarkable about the behavioral pattern of Jesus in how he deals with people is that he's is exceedingly tender with the weak and the powerless of his world the woman caught in adultery everybody was ready to rip her to shreds and he was tender and gentle with her but when the power mongers of the day the Pharisees came on Jesus trying to exercise their strength he responded with great strength in other words he was strong against the strong firm against the powerful but tender with the weak and we have a tendency to think that we're supposed to treat every person that we meet in the same manner no we have to learn how to monitor and moderate the strengths that we have fruit of the Spirit is joy it's to be a mark of the Christian life that as Christian people who were walking in the Spirit of God that we are not sour pusses that we have real joy in our lives I mean even the joy of the Spirit does not preclude grieving it does not preclude experiencing pain and affliction but the point is as the Apostle explains particularly in his epistle to the Philippians that in all things we learn to rejoice because the basic conduit for our joy is our relationship to God and the redemption that we have which is never threatened by the loss of a loved one or the loss of possessions or the loss of the job the loss of anything else we may suffer all kinds of setbacks and afflictions in this world that are painful but those things are not to rob us of the foundational joy that we have in Christ that we can rejoice in all things because the rest of these things are insignificant compared to the wonderful fullness of the Spirit that we enjoy in the presence of God but that is something that has to be cultivated the more we understand our relationship with the more we understand his promises in our lives the greater the joy that we will begin to bear as the fruit of our Christian life love joy gentleness peace long-suffering and kindness long-suffering is kind of related to patience notice that in these fruits that we are called to emulate that these fruits imitate the very character of God it's God who is love it's God is the author of joy it's God who manifests his supreme gentleness to his people and if anyone can be said to be long-suffering it's gone God is not quick to anger he's not hasty to judge but he's patient he's forbearing and he gives people time to turn around he doesn't just off with their heads the first time they do something that annoys him or that it irritates him a fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness and goodness and kindness you know kindness is one of the most difficult virtues there is in the world to define and yet there's a sense of which it doesn't need to be defined because everybody in the world knows what it is you know it when somebody is being kind to you don't you and you know it when somebody's being mean to you and so the opposite of meanness is kindness and that simply means that we're caring that we're considerate and that we are nice to people and that's part of the fruit that we are to manifest [Music] [Music]

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Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2019