The Spirit and the Fruit "I Am Who I Am" [8 of 12] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 5/18/2014

um i invite you to get out a bible get out your bible and uh turn with me to the new testament to paul's letter to the galatians chapter five chapter five and i'll try and not knock over anything expensive while i'm doing this galatians chapter five um so we're uh we're in to the third part of the series that we've been in for a few months now we're exploring what a christian means when they use the word god which is very ambiguous in our culture and so what is a christian vision of god and we are kind of building this all around the vision of god as jesus revealed the reality of god to be which is a god who is the one true god but who is three and one who is father son and spirit and so we're now in the third part of the series we're going to take i don't know we're somewhere up to two months and just explore and learn about the reality and the work and the person of the spirit so the first week we we explored the the spirit's role as creator and as life giver the one who gives breath and vitality to all living things um we explored in the second week that the spirit is jesus's gift to his people and that the story of what happened at pentecost in the book of acts is about the empowering presence of the spirit to come and take up his dwelling among us and to empower us to become humans and to do things that we wouldn't otherwise do and so today we're exploring a different role of the spirit which is the spirit's role in in messing with you and messing with your mind and your heart and beginning this process of change and transformation uh that we all really desperately need to to undergo and so if you have galatians chapter five open uh look at verse 22 and this is uh to some of you might be a really well-known little section in paul's letters um if you grew up around church you probably know a little melody you're gonna have a little melody in your head because you learned a song that had had the senate uh chapter 5 verse 22 what's this about this is about the fruit of the spirit the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control against such things there are there is no law how many of you had a little melody in your head some of you did a handful so uh this is one of the most condensed descriptions anywhere descriptions in the new testament anywhere of what happens when the spirit of god the spirit of jesus really gets a hold of someone's life and begins to change and transform them and so if you're a follower of jesus this is what our lives should look like um ready set go go be this do this do i need to say any more i'll pray i'll just pray now and we'll go ahead and we'll be done all right so uh no no no that's not it's actually not that simple at all so here's what's interesting you know so how many of you feel good about yourselves after reading that list of nine after years right you're just like oh really no i maybe got one or two of those going um notice that it's uh singular the fruit it's not the fruits the fruits not the fruits it's not like here's nine things that could grow in your life you know because the spirit is here is the one thing and it hears it from nine different aspects which means we're all deeply in trouble because uh if you've got love going on but no patience then that doesn't really matter it doesn't really work so what why why can't we just close it because this is complicated why can't i just pray and end the message here go be this and and do this because we because we all know just from day to day life experience like how how i'm growing and changing as a human being that's a slow complicated difficult process right and to just boil it down to well i guess i'm a christian the spirits of my life now so i guess i'll pray one night and i'll wake up and just be this whatever and how many of you had success at that so you wouldn't raise your hand because you would be patient and humble and kind wouldn't do that if you were but uh right so no we all know that this is much more complicated because so you have someone who became a christian in a very um kind of quick or you know you might call it a kind of a quick ignition kind of conversion experience say for example some of us have had that experience where there's a very short season of a month or a week or even a day or a moment where you realize your desperate need for jesus and you look to him in faith and trust and i'm gonna follow jesus for some of us that was a that was a a moment or a very short period of time and for someone who had that experience very often there really is a marked difference where like last month i was living that way i decided to follow jesus boom i'm gonna go this way now and so for someone with that story there is often a marked difference in this direction of the fruit of the spirit for others of us we have more of a slow burn convert not quick ignition but slow burn conversion where it's this slow process and you realize over years and and months or maybe you grew up around the church or something and but as you become older and become an adult you realize like whoa i had no idea what this was really about and so this is a slower process but at the same time you can see maybe a trend of some kind of growth in some of these ways sometimes but here's what happens is that whether slow burn or quick ignition a year goes by three years go by four and a half year five a decade goes by and there are in all of our lives these issues these these traits this baggage of patterns of thinking of real deep flaws in my character of just ways that i process and treat others or deal with circumstances they just keep coming back and they don't seem to go away and they just have this afterlife that lasts like so i'm i'm finally to the point where uh i'm uh nearing the halfway point of i've been a follower jesus a christian almost as long as i've uh no half the amount of time i've been alive i'm a christian at 20 i'm nearing 40 in about four years here and so i'm just like whoa why am i still dealing with that you know what i'm saying how many of you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah i mean you're like i'm a christian the spirits of my life why isn't more of this happening just real simply and why do those things keep living on and so i think you know memorizing this this little thing through the spirit as a song or something i think it's good it can bury it in our hearts but at the same time i think it can actually present a real challenge to us because we think that this ought to be just simple and i ought to just be able to pray one night and then i wake up and no more anger problems or no more whatever problems with money mismanagement and whatever your deal is right that you feel like is not this direction and so we feel like it's simplistic we feel like i'm failing this christianity thing why doesn't it work why isn't it changing me why doesn't jesus just bonk me on the head and make me new right and so why isn't it like that and when we just sing the song of this little passage and we think that that's all there is to it it would lead you to think that that's what the process is like but what we neglect to do is do what you should always do which is like read the passage in context for example right and what you realize is that in the flow of this whole section of the letter paul is wrestling with exactly those issues why is it that real deep character change is such a slow process in our lives and what do you do when it is like this battle of the new you and the old you constantly colliding and it's two steps forward one step back and one step forward two steps back in this constant and it takes so long and what it's exactly what paul is wrestling with in the whole in the whole passage overall so what we're going to do is back up to verse 16 and we're going to walk through this paul's one of paul's most beautiful explorations of of the spirit's role in this long process of changing and transforming us to become more more like jesus but i want to reframe it because notice what's the metaphor paul uses here of the spirit's work in our lives look at verse 22. it's a metaphor what is what's the word fruit fruit now that's extremely significant anytime you see paul or any new testament author using a metaphor like that it's worth just pausing and saying like what's what are the layers here because the fact that he uses this word and this image actually gets a window into how paul sees this whole process working itself out in in our lives so let me let me reframe that in a way that's at least been helpful for me in in thinking about it so uh as i've shared uh before uh i grew up in portland but i had a long hiatus my wife and i moved here from portland uh to the upper midwest uh for about nine years uh where i did uh continue graduate school at the university of wisconsin the wonderful state of wisconsin anybody it's a great state it's a great state so we moved to madison wisconsin it was nine years there was awesome as a great season of life and we knew we were going to be there for a while so eventually we we bought a small little fixer-upper home in madison and one of the things we really wanted to do jessica grew up with her family like having huge gardens in the backyard vegetable gardens and so on and so we wanted to have room for a garden and so that was a big criteria was a yard with good sun exposure to be able to uh grow a garden any garden i mean you're like you actually eat a lot of food from your garden anybody you do this so is portland for goodness sakes what's wrong with you all right this is just normal right it's actually not normal not to grow your food in portland i don't know anyway so um so that's what we wanted to do and so um there was nothing going on in the backyard it was just a lot of grass and so um over the few months before we moved in we uh we we made it happen and so i'll just show you a picture here just because i'm proud i'm so proud this was the only anyway i just love it it was a great little backyard lots of sun and so what i had to do was um get a rototiller and just i just chopped up a 10 by 25 foot rectangle and made some raised borders and put up chicken wire and so on and then my wife was responsible because she knows a lot more about this about what she wanted to grow and peas and beans and squash and cucumbers and peppers and tomatoes and raspberries and all these other things and it was really great so the first summer we had the garden it was awesome we actually like almost all of the vegetables i consumed in the summer of 2009 uh came from that 10 by 25 piece of dirt and it was incredible it was so fun it was just a really fun experience and it was it was so much work i can actually see why none of you guard them right because there's so much work are you kidding me so that itself took took enough work now here's so let me just ask you here's here's what i did not do what i was not able to do was just gonna go to the seed store or we get you know starts tomato starts or whatever from friends plant it all and then just like forget about it for six weeks or whatever and just expect it to be full of fruit right in six weeks and i just go out and pick it right that's what i did not do right because what would happen if i did that i just neglected it would there be any fruit in the garden that i had forgotten about for six weeks would there be any there could be some right there could be one really strong tomato plant that survived the neglect you know and a few cucumbers going so there might be something there'd be a lot of weeds a lot of weeds and a little bit of fruit that just happened to by happenstance just to survive if you actually want to make a plot of ground produce lots of fruit what do you have to do you have to learn how to be a gardener right you have to learn how to be a gardener you have to learn the patterns of watering and what plants need how much you have to learn obviously just the skill of weeding which isn't too terribly difficult but it was for me because i kept picking up things that were actually we were supposed to be eating right so so i had to learn the plant identification process and so whatever that's a skill that you develop you have to learn how to spot you know mildew or one of some of our tomatoes got a this blight or mold one year you have to learn how to spot all that stuff and you also specifically have to learn how to deal with predators of your garden right so i have chicken wire there because at least in wisconsin there's lots of tiny rabbits everywhere just like there's wild cats all over portland that's against the law in madison you can't have cats outside in madison but there's rabbits everywhere and so they will destroy your garden so you have to put up chicken wire so but here's what happened this is really what i'm getting to this is the best part of the whole experience was that um the second summer that we had the garden when things were just starting to really grow and the squash and cucumbers were coming in so on the piece and uh we went out one day and jessica noticed that the peas were just decimated like just shredded and we're just like what it's happening this is a monster rabbit like how did it get in you know and then right here at this section here the lower right section the chicken wire was all like compressed like something had lunged over it and gotten caught or something like it was heavy thing we're like what on earth and so i you know sit rat traps or whatever it would be really big rat but i don't know set traps and then over the next week or so like the cucumbers decimated the squash and half the tomatoes and so on and it was it just ruined our garden and we're like what is this what animal is he's a herd of elk or something like what's going through our backyard so after about a week of setting traps and wondering um jessica came around uh the deck around the garage to the back don't ever forget this because she just she just screamed and yelled and then i said i went to the window and i saw her running and i saw this large brown fuzzy creature like lunge hit the fence roll over it which is why it was all good and then like go right under our neighbor's garage and then we're like what on earth was that it was this huge brown it was like a beaver the size of a large large beaver but without the big tail and so then you know we're googling brown fuzzy creatures or whatever and then about two days later i came around and i saw it and he was right he was eating something i don't even remember and it was it was so classic it was like it was like this moment the zen moment of eye contact you know it was just like what he's caught and he was just like what's this guy going to do i had a rake in my hand and so i ran towards it and it you know did the same thing under the fence and it really got a good look at it we googled pictures i was we was battling a woodchuck a huge huge woodchuck that was living under our neighbor's garage like under the cement he had in the dirty a whole little world under there i guess apparently for him and so over the next week then we were actually leaving to come out to portland to see family and so on for a week and so we got a deal with this before we leave we're just gonna eat everything while we're gone and so my mission that whole week was to catch this thing and so i got a live cave trap from a friend and put that back there and was baiting it um but un un-rigged um with apples i cut up apples and and placed them around a bowl a plastic container um that i filled with coca-cola and floated marshmallows in it right so i was like lots of sugar lots of sugar and then some fruit and so it was totally eating this like four days in a row and then the fifth day i set the trap and got it got got the woodchuck and do you want to see him i just come on you have to you have to see him there he is look at him no i don't i mean i don't know in the lower picture you can kind of see i'm kneeling he's huge he's the size of like a medium-sized dog it's a gigantic gigantic animal and it kind of looks like narnia he would talk to you or something like that right so so here's my whole point one is i just this was i you know this was a primal experience for me i'm battling nature over my food you know that's kind of so i don't have those experiences very often but at the same time it was just this like what we're all we're trying to do is grow food here and this took not only did it take an enormous amount of work to prepare the garden and to like make the food actually grow but then you have this outside influence right these things you can't anticipate that come and decimate it over half our garden so i i trapped him you want to know what i did with them sorry so i'll relieve your consciences i didn't i didn't kill it i took it um 20 minutes south of town there's a like a wetland nature preserve and i let him let him lose whatever i carried him in my trunk and uh and of course he pooped everywhere while he was in the trunk of my car it was probably frightened that i was going to kill him or something so anyway so so why what's the point here what's the point here again come back with me come back with me so let's say we still got some some fruit out of our garden here uh by the end we can take it down you can take it down now so we still got fruit specifically tomatoes he didn't eat all of the tomatoes and so let's say you know a few weeks later we get back and we're having a salad and it's some lettuce and tomatoes from our garden an enormous amount of work that jessica and i did to protect and defend and make the garden grow some food but even after all of that can i sit down at that meal and say i grew this tomato can i say that is that true did i grow that tomato no i didn't grow that tomato right what did i do what i did is i was a gardener who who'd put in a lot of effort to provide an environment where fruit could be grown but how is fruit actually grow well there's this huge ball of gas that's very far away called the sun and it emits a huge amount of energy and heat and that's crucial how much control do i have over that thing zero and uh the like cloud cover and how much sun radiation gets mediated and so on to the plants like zero control over that and how much control do i have over the genetic structure in the health of the tomato plant or is it zero over that and then there's this whole process of photosynthesis that you learned about and forgot about a long time ago whatever and there's that whole thing that goes on and like i i have no control over any of those things that's what grows this fruit this tomato and so who who is the one who's what is the one that's growing the fruits these forces and realities that are way way outside of myself that i have no control over but yet my role is crucial isn't it i do not grow the fruit but i can hinder the growth of the fruit if i don't play my role as a gardener you guys with me here why does paul choose this metaphor to talk about the work of the spirit in our lives and it's very intentional it's brilliant even because fruit is one of these realities and here it's it's in this process of character change that when the spirit's at work in my life it's absolutely this outside influence it's the person an actual person who's trying to influence me and address stuff in my life and change me and make me more like jesus and that is i'm not in control of that i'm helpless when it comes to that that needs to come from something outside of myself i cannot change my character but at the same time i can hinder this growth process in my life like paul says you can grieve the spirit you can extinguish the work of the spirit in your life or in a church community you can do all kinds of things that will minimize the work of the spirit and that's the issue that he's getting at in the whole of of this of this chapter here you guys with me okay reframed let's dive in verse 16 of chapter five so he says so so i say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh now even now we're driving we're driving we're coming into this passage mid flow of thought and so on it takes 20 minutes to read the letter aloud i highly recommend it but we got to start somewhere here verse 16 is kind of where the the place i want to pick up at so we have this this command here walk by the spirit so it's what's he going there's another metaphor here walking by the spirit so it's this metaphor of life is a journey and uh every day and decision choice that you make it's like steps on this journey and you have a choice whether the spirit's in your life and you have a choice are you going to walk by or with the spirit or are you not we're all walking you're walking no matter what the question is with whom or by whom is your life being empowered and are you walking and he says by by the spirit okay so let's this is one of the key words that's going to dominate the whole passage here so spirit so we've already been exploring and studying this word this is the same word for breath vitalizing breath as a sign of life or of wind spirit is the new testament's way of talking about the very personal presence of god the father and of of god the son of jesus with his people in and among his people and so the first thing about spirit is that the spirit's in your life he's addressing christians here and the spirit is the person of god who's with you in you animating you and vitalizing you and so on this is just a key it's a key starting point right so he says walk by the spirit he assumes that the spirit's in your life one of um the the clearest i think and just simplest passages to go to to explain this whole thing is anot another letter that paul wrote in ephesians chapter one where he says this very simple statement that kind of sums sums it up here in ephesians chapter one he says you all he's writing to to christians at ephesus and he says you all were included in the messiah in christ when you heard the message of truth the gospel of your salvation and when you believed you were marked in him with a seal the promised holy spirit so whether again whether you had a real quick ignition a conversion experience and you realized very quickly like holy cow like the gospel of my salvation and i'm really screwed up and i need jesus to do what he did for me when when you believed and you gave your faith and your allegiance to jesus paul saying something very significant happened that the very presence of jesus actually takes up residence in your life or you could maybe say it this way he's already everywhere right and and animating all things but i woke up to the fact that what jesus did was for me and i opened myself in a new way to the reality of the spirit in my life and he says that what happens in that conversion experience whether it was slow burn or quick he says it's like you got stamped he uses another metaphor right here of uh of being marked with a seal of it getting stamped and so when i give my faith and my allegiance to jesus i open myself and receive the spirit of his presence into my life to guide me to change me and direct me he says it's like you got marked stamped belong this one belongs jesus now you can't we cannot undo that you can't get marked again you don't need to you already did right um one of the other metaphors used in the new testament about this moment is the word baptism right with josh talked about the other week which just means immersion and actually paul uses the word baptism too in another letter that he writes to talk about the baptism of the spirit and we're never told to be baptized again or get marked again this is something that happens to you marked belonging to jesus but now once you're marked or immersed in the spirit what we do have control over is how much influence the spirit gets in our lives we do have control over how much of us the spirit is going to be able to transform which is why paul says don't grieve the spirit don't minimize the influence of the spirit be open don't extinguish the work of the spirit and here he says walk by the spirit because you cannot you can be you can have given your faith to jesus for a long time but not walk by the spirit for in a lot of ways and that's that's both a sad and scary reality and so that's what paul's getting at right here we need to both receive the spirit as something outside of us that we have no control over but at the same time i have to become a gardener if you want fruit you have to become a gardener you can't expect the sun and photosynthesis to do everything for you be with me here this is what paul's getting at so he says walk by the spirit and and he recognizes of course that we're all following jesus in an environment that is not neutral which is what he gets at here and next and talking about this battle he says walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of what okay flesh so flesh is what i think probably most of uh your english translations have some of you might have a sinful nature right there instead of flesh which is fine that's actually really a really good translation or interpretation of this word so by flesh what paul what paul means is this he doesn't mean just simply your physical body as if somehow just your physical existence as such is bad or wrong or screwed up paul's he's jewish he's rabbi he grew up steeped in the hebrew scriptures and according to genesis chapter one um the physical material world including the humans and the physical bodies that we are um what good or bad genesis 1 not just good very good genesis 1 26 right and so it's like the artist surveys everything that he's made and he said love this is exactly exactly what i wanted it to be it's very good that is the biblical view of our material world very good but it is a material and physical world that has become compromised it's become vandalized by evil and by human and by human sin and that's what paul means when he uses this word is not just physical existence but our physical existence in bodies and in a world that's become deeply fractured and compromised by sin and so that's why some of your translations have instead of flesh they say sinful nature because that's what paul that's what paul means and so he he essentially develops this kind of this worldview you could just depict it in a very simple way that you you and i exist as it were with a foot in both worlds if you've given your faith to jesus and your allegiance to him you uh are in dwelt and and the spirit has taken up residence in your life you're marked you're immersed he's got your number you can't do a darn thing about it he's gonna mess with you as long as you live now right so that's a reality but at the same time we live in physical bodies and we live in a world order that is deeply compromised by sin and evil and so what you and i have is this choice right we have this choice of well which world am i going to choose to live in and this isn't just about living in the world this is about what kind of human existence am i going to live now that i have this power and presence and person available to me who's pulling me in the direction of life and so paul knows this is not simple paul knows this is not just you know pray on your couch one night like take this lifelong character flaw issue away from me and then boom you wake up and it's like oh that was easy you know so he knows that's not what it's going to be like because we have a foot in both of these worlds and that's what he goes on to explore let's keep let's keep going verse 17. he says so so the flesh the sinful nature it desires what's contrary to the spirit and the spirit desires what's contrary to the flesh they're in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want but if you are led by the spirit you are not under the law so paul fully recognizes that there's this battle this conflict going on inside inside each one of us now in terms of theology this is how he depicts it these two realms that you exist in as a follower of jesus this is not your full identity but it's you still live in the world and so on and so here we are it's going to be difficult but we now have this outside source the sun radiating this redemptive energy into our lives and pulling us towards life but it ends up with these moments when he says of conflict because it's like we live in these two worlds now that's it's that's you describe it there in terms of theology this is very practical actually this is not this will take me all of five seconds to get us all on the same page you have a you're in a well made more than five seconds so you have uh for me it's never just five seconds is it i'm so sorry being long-winded anyway so uh so you have a moment you're in a tense moment with someone whatever family member it's a co-worker friend stranger whatever and it's a tense moment and and the thought comes into your mind here's what i could say oh here's what i could say right now you know and what i could say would like man they have no clue what they've been doing over the last five months and i could really make them feel despicable right now and so there's that comes into your head and then it's like voices in our head sometimes at least i think it's from both of us right but these impulses inside of us then you have another one that's going dude like that's exactly not the kind of human you know you want to be you know like just two days ago you were just talking with your friend and they made that kind of decision and said something like that and you thought that was so lame and that's not and you know and you're like no that's not and you go in this back and forth in your head and it's all happening in seconds how many of you know what i'm talking about here it's exactly in that moment and and paul says look you're living in the midst of this conflict and depending on um which woodchuck you've been feeding more lately so to speak you know actually no that's bad that's the spirit is not a woodchuck the flesh is a woodchuck the flesh is a garden destroying monster right that's the woodchuck and so you have the the rays of the sun that are doing their best work but i depending on which one i've been tending to more will probably determine a lot of how that conflict is going is going to go and so depending on whether i have the truth of scripture buried in my heart depending on whether i have jesus on my brain at all that day whatsoever i mean there's all these other factors of if i've been gardening my life to be an environment that's conducive for fruit to grow and if you haven't been gardening your life so that the spirit can do what he needs to do then don't be surprised if you don't grow and don't be surprised if you don't change because the woodchuck is a monster and he's never going to stop and he's going to eat your lunch every single day that you let him that's what he's saying right here it's contrary it's this conflict that's never going to let up and so what you end up with is situations where he says it right here he says you're going to do things that you don't want to do it's like these moments of insanity how many of you know what i'm talking about it's these decisions that we make and it's us making them nobody's pointing a gun at our head and saying do this but a week an hour later a week later a month later we're just like what is going on with me why can't i get past this why do i keep making that stupid decision you guys know we're all on the same page here this is what paul is getting at and he knows that this is challenging and he knows that this will last a very long time and he's just trying to paint it as stark as he can but the hope here is not the hope of so therefore go do the fruit of the spirit the hope is is more just recognize the nature of the situation and recognize the nature of the of the the foes and the enemies and the realities within and without that are going to destroy us if if we let them and that they don't have to they don't have to so what paul's going to go on from here is he's going to explore both of these worlds he's going to explore the many sided face of the woodchuck and then the the multifaceted fruit of the of the spirit let's keep let's keep going he says in verse 19 he says the the acts of the flesh are obvious or some of you have the the deeds or the the works some of you have the works of the flesh yeah so this is really key the the words that he uses right here so the works stuff that we do stuff people do right so this is nobody nobody taught you how to be selfish it just happened you know what i mean and if you live with toddlers you know exactly what i'm talking about so capable of immense love and immense you know selfishness in the same moment and so this is just what humans do stuff humans do just left our own devices and he he he lists 15 facets of the broken sinful human condition here but he does break him into little categories that are interesting here so he says the acts of the sinful human nature they're they're obvious he begins with um sex broken sexuality he says sexual immorality impurity and debauchery debauchery who used that word this week right what what is that even right the bachelorette debauchery um at least the word paul uses it means a complete lack of inhibition and self-control with regard to sexual decisions that i make so he has these three sexual immoralities which is the broadest um it's the broadest term in all of the scriptures it's used by lots of different authors in the new testament jesus peter paul james and they use this word to to describe any act of sex that's not within the the protective boundaries of a lifetime marriage covenant between a man and a woman that's what every every time that word occurs in the new testament that's that's what it means and what paul's saying here is how do you know whether or not your your life is being taken over more by your your old humanity nature or whether it's being pulled in the direction of jesus by the spirit and he says the first place is to look is is your sexuality bro some broken sexuality says something about the human condition and this is strange to us as americans of course because we have there's the view you know of sex that we grew up with is that it's either simply just a physical appetite or that it's a primarily emotionally driven experience or desire and that it's a it's a recreational activity between two consenting adults right it's roughly the portrait of sex in our culture and what's interesting is that in in our culture the view of sex about that it's between uh man and woman and covenant marriage like that's not only a laughable ludicrous idea in our culture it's even viewed as oppressive right and so and so it's often argued you know the christian view of sex it's archaic it's ridiculous it's laughable and it's it's like this view that sex is dirty and so same people their whole lives and in bedroom it and turn the lights off and you know like this kind of thing it's this christian's prudish low view of sex and i would just really encourage you man to think think long and and thoroughly through this and i would argue that it is actually precisely the opposite that the christian view of sex is that sex is so profound and it's such a whole person embodied spiritual emotional sexual experience about this mingling of body and soul between two people and that that has such incredible potential within a relationship it's so powerful and so volatile that the scriptures portray this this beautiful environment where it can be protected in the covenant of marriage and actually uh at least ideally it doesn't always tragically in our broken world but ideally to produce new life within the context of a covenant family and so on that's the scriptural vision it's beautiful it's actually the highest view of sex and and of the body and what our culture does is it it actually wants to give us a low view of the value of your body and a low view of what sex is all all about and it's just emotionally driven physical appetite between two consenting consenting adults and we're actually robbed of the the immense power of what of what this is really at so that's my little aside about sex but there's a reason why paul goes there first it's because if i if i want to know whether or not my my life is a hospitable environment for the work of the spirit that one of the first places you can look is in a person's in a person's history in a person's choices that that they're making very few of us have any regrets you know over bad decisions that we made with regard to our sexual past or stupid sinful decisions somebody made that affected us like those are not things that just like we forget about you know those are not light matters those are events in our lives that deeply shape us and that we carry with us for a long a long time sex matters a lot our bodies matter a lot and the spirit is all about the redemption of our bodies and the healing of our mind and soul and body and so that's why paul paul starts here the second second category he looks at starts in verse 20. the acts of the flesh he names two that are connected here idolatry and witchcraft and so here he's he's talking about two activities about how we relate to this the spiritual realm so to speak and so idolatry is about giving our allegiance to something that's not the one true god and and witchcraft or sorcery this is about viewing spiritual beings or spiritual realities as something that i gain power over and manipulate to gain power over other people or to make things happen in life you know whether it's make the rain come down or put a curse on someone this kind of thing in both cases my relationship to spiritual realities is i'm the boss i will determine what i worship and i will determine gain power over those and it's precisely the opposite right because in the biblical vision we're humans made to reflect we're dignified beings made in the image of the creator and we're made for relationship and worship in in humble uh in humble service as we are guided by the wisdom and love of the creator it's not this way it's this way this is the acts of the flesh third category he really goes off on he gives eight here and it's all about relational breakdown he says hatred discord jealousy fits of rage selfish ambition dissensions factions and envy every one of these is about relational breakdown or personal character flaws that lead or contribute to break down and unhealthy relationships in our lives now he's named eight here which do you think is foremost on his mind so clearly this one right and that's because he's writing a letter to a group of churches uh in the region of glacier that are dividing and bitterly dividing over a really contentious issue of theology and cultural practice and so on just go read the letter it takes 20 minutes but so here this is really interesting to me it's because this is not an issue of like religious people and irreligious people right or like the religious people and the pagans or something like that um can you think of any like times where you have seen discord and fits of rage and selfish ambition and faction and dissension say in the lives of the church maybe maybe right so clearly this is not about like oh the pagans they have a monopoly on the acts of the flesh it's no it's this is a human thing and in fact it might even be that some of the most religiously driven people that you know it's actually not about jesus it's more about selfish ambition and they might end up being the most factious you know envious divisive people that you've ever ever met and so he lands right here and paul just says if you want to again see which you're feeding more which world you're living in more look at the health of your relationships and we'll tell you the health of your personal relationships will tell you a ton about whether your life is a friendly environment for the spirit to grow grow fruit look at how he concludes uh with two two more drunkenness and orgies which in his culture were connected to the worship of the gods that involved a lot of alcohol and a lot of ritual sex and so on in certain temples so drunkenness or jesus and the like he says i warn you as i did before that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of god now what's he saying here what he's saying is is we can reach a point or we can come to a point where you so allow your identity your life your choices to be completely cut off from jesus and this will happen before and there's a whole debate about whether you this can actually happen after you become a christian and so on that's not really what he's talking about here but his whole point is that you can be a point where actually i i no thank you i don't want the influence of jesus or the spirit in my life i simply want to be completely determined by my own whatever vision of reality it's a life and a person completely uh defined by the flesh and that could be a very religious person given the eight that he lives here it could be a very irreligious person that really doesn't matter at all and so paul says essentially if if i come to become so completely defined by these choices and these realities and this isn't about oh i fail and then i look back to jesus this is about i'm through with it like no thank you i don't care about and want anything to do with this then paul says such people have chosen not to inherit the kingdom of god if if the kingdom of god is about the realm of the spirit and and of new creation and where jesus is receives the object of worship and gratefulness from the renewed humanity and so on someone whose life and identity is determined by this like they of course they won't inherit this they wouldn't want to why would they want to right so if someone truly despises jesus why on earth would they want to be in a kingdom where they're going to worship him forever and live forever unless that would be somebody's version of hell i would imagine and so that's that's what he's getting at here if i so allow this to determine who i am there's no me left to make it here right because i've i've le i've cut myself off completely from the influence of jesus now there's a whole bunch of people that fear destruck in your heart and if you're just struck in your heart you are definitely not included in that category by the fact that fear just struck in your heart you know what i'm talking about the fact that you would be concerned am i this you're not that by the fact that you're concerned that you are that does that make sense the whole point okay i could say about five more times but i won't you get my point so so that's that's the flesh that's a that's a big monster and it's complicated and and christians live with a foot in both worlds and we do give in here but paul's relating this so that we know the enemy so that he can give us give us hope here as we're trained to become gardeners look at verse 22. he'll give the opposite now he says so here's the fruit the fruit of the spirit so remember this the this difference is so important here's what just humans do here's what the spirit wants to grow in our lives if we will partner with the spirit if we simply declare that we want our lives to be a place where the spirit can grow these kinds of jesus centered character trades and he he explores this ninefold fruit of the spirit this is all different facets of one thing what's the first one he names love love which is not emotion uh in the scriptures it's action that seeks the well-being of another person uh regardless of how they respond to me and they kind of go together in paris too joy and and peace this is about enjoying peace in the new testament it's about a decision that you make that because the son of god loved me he lived for me died for me he's raised for me he's given me his presence in the spirit life might become extremely difficult but my my fullest identity my vision of who i am and reality is grounded not in how my life is going but in what jesus did for me and that gives me a groundedness a centered nest that whatever comes my way i can choose to have joy and i can choose to live in a state of tranquility knowing that none of this surprises jesus he's got my number i'm stamped i belong to him and he's with me it's about joy joy and peace he says patience and kindness and and goodness this is about these are all relational terms they kind of balance the the categories of the works of the flesh and so in relationships this is about not being that super reactive person it's about knowing that i had a lot in my life that jesus died for and so like yeah like that person's annoying and they keep they off they have this thing they always do that to me but you know what i'm probably annoying to people too and you know whatever night in ways that i don't know and jesus died for me and so i can just be patient with this person because you hear paul talk about patience in his letters that's the process that he that he goes through about kindness and goodness just as jesus has been kind and generous to me we reflect that out towards other people faithfulness this ability to be a a source of stability in the lives of other people right if not flighty and not doing what i say i'm going to do but constancy in someone's life gentleness about this not the severe harsh reality and then what's the last one this is really interesting what's the last fruit of the part of the fruit of the spirit what's he saying self-control now that's super interesting because the fruit of the spirit we thought was about who taking control of us the spirit how do you know someone who exhibits the fruit of the spirit in their life someone who has self-control so is it you or the spirit exactly how did fruit grow in my garden because of my work or the spirit's work now whose work is more primary well here we can play out the metaphor right so without it's exactly right the whole point of the theology of the spirit in the new testament is not that you become like this religious like stoic disengaged person paul's saying the most spirit-filled people you know are the most fully human people that you know it's a human in control of their impulses and their desires and so on and who truly takes all of that energy and choose in generosity and love and patience and so on and is it human or is it spirit exactly the whole point is that the spirit is trying to pull us into fuller humanity because who is the one human who actually lived this way exactly we're being made into the image of jesus and it wasn't well was it god or was it jesus would i mean they were back to the first part of the series it's like yes it's fully god and fully human and when the spirit's at work in our lives that he makes us more ourselves as followers of jesus so he explores these two worlds now how do you so how do you get at that how great do you feel about yourself now you're like man if i did the math i'm like seven to three you know or something like that how do i make that happen and this is how he concludes look at verse 24. how do you actually garden your life knowing this about the two realms verse 24 he says those who belong to christ jesus you have crucified the flesh the sinful nature with its passions and its desires so since we live we exist by means of the spirit let's keep in step with the spirit this is such a profound way of concluding the paragraph here so how does this work out okay it's theologically this word is going how does this work out this is very practical how he ends right here he says what what has happened to your sinful old humanity here according to verse 24 what what happened to it what did you do to it when you became a follower of jesus look at verse 24 and tell me what does he say says you you killed the woodchuck you killed that thing you didn't take it to a nature preserve like that thing died the monster died now we read look at verse 24 you're just like really i i think i would remember something like that you know what i mean like my sinful nature is dead and out of commission then why does it still give me so much trouble right right and so it's the same it's the same question that we ask when we say look jesus died for the sins of the world and then he was risen again as a conqueror and victor over death so why does death and evil still have some of so much influence in our world it's the same exact question and the answer that the new testament gives is jesus rose from the dead he rose from the dead and he is the one human being who has entered into and brought about the reality of new creation in the power of the spirit and until he returns to fully reconcile heaven and earth and bring about the act the reconciling act of new new creation we in faith embrace this truth about the world but hear about yourself namely that your your old self your old humanity it died it died on the cross with jesus just like jesus died and absorbed the sins of the world into himself and we explored this at easter by the power of whom was jesus raised from the dead in romans chapter 1 we explored this by the power of the spirit so look what paul says he says listen if you have attached yourself to jesus in faith you died what's true of jesus is now true of you your identity who you are your self-worth the true reality of who you are is not governed by this anymore it died with jesus on the cross and what's true of him is now true of you namely that you live and exist by the spirit you're stamped you're marked and you can't undo that so he says you live by the spirit so keep in step with the spirit well wait i thought i lived by the spirit yes exactly so play the role of a gardener and keep in step with the spirit well that takes a lot of work well yes but you live by the spirit so to live by the spirit or keep in step with the spirit exactly i mean do you see what he's getting out here right and so it's it's learning here's what it's learning to do flip back one page and with this we'll land the plane chapter 2 verse 20. it's a it's a little summary of the gospel that was clearly very personal to paul and i commend you to memorize verses 20 and 21 and bury this deep in your heart paul says i have been crucified with christ it's no longer me that's alive it's no longer i who live but it's christ living in me the life that i now live in the body i live by faith in the son of god who loved me and gave himself for me who died on the cross jesus who died with jesus on the cross every single one of us if you choose to accept that what he did was for you and if i choose to accept that what he did was for me i now live not simply as just a human trying to be a good moral person and pull up my bootstraps i live with a new person in my life and it's a new person who is speaking good news to me it's this is this is what he's talking about here is learning the habit of preaching the gospel to yourself every single day that you wake up and even in those very difficult moments you bury scripture in your heart a passage just do it i just experiment with it spend 30 days memorize this passage and just watch how the spirit will bring these words to your mind in the moments of insanity i just just do it right and see and see what happens and all of a sudden you're in those moments of the choice flesh or spirit flesh or spirit and all of a sudden you you that the moment to announce the good news to yourself like this this habit this mindset this character flaw that i have this does not define me this is not who i really am this me died 2000 years ago with jesus on the cross and the me that i am right now it doesn't exist by any of my own power it exists purely because of the grace of jesus towards me holy spirit please empower me to make the right decision right now and are you with me here this is very practical it's not this is not abstract at all it's learning how to preach the gospel to myself that's how we garden our lives and we garden our lives first by listening to the gospel and then we garden our lives by in our moments of sobriety so to speak or sanity actually making choices that will make my life an even more hospitable garden or whatever and so like dudes in the room if your smartphone is killing you because of porn get a flipper dude just get a flip phone you know what i'm saying and you're saying no my life my career or whatever it's so difficult like i do email whatever whatever dude are you kidding me in a moment of sobriety and sanity you're gonna let that issue of convenience allow this deep distortion of your character to keep killing you like just go to another dude confess say you need help and get a flip phone for three months and just see what happens right i mean just i'm making light of it but i'm also not at all like just it's very practical if a weed grows up in your garden don't just like feed it kill the thing you know and paul's letter to the colossians he says execute put to death don't mess around with don't like d like execute and put to death the deeds of the flesh he says and get gnarly get serious right in the moments of sanity so that in your moments of insanity where you're trying to preach the gospel to yourself and then the voices in your head you actually have already tended the garden to be prone towards life are you with me here this is what you do go see the therapist finally like swallow your pride go see a therapist right go do whatever your issue is go to that person and just confess what you said or what you did to them like just do it just do it and all of a sudden as we preach the gospel and learn the practice of cultivating our lives through our choices and behavior paul says watch watch the spirit grow fruit in your life and it's not you doing it it's you playing the role of a gardener to allow the spirit to make you more like jesus how you guys doing it's very practical i don't know what your version of the woodchuck is you have we all have these weeds and woodwood chucks in our lives i didn't plan that it would be 2ws but it just happened weeds and woodchucks but man i just in our time of worship that remains i just really encourage you guys you know we have this every week we have a moment of quiet and this might be the only moment you get in the weekend right to just be quiet and listen to the poetry of the music and read the scriptures and allow the the bread and the cup to speak good news to you and remind you who you who you really are as a christian and so i'm going to pray and i just encourage you to use this time to allow yourself to be under the influence of the spirit let me close this in prayer you

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

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Length: 59min 51sec (3591 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021