REVIEW
So, we are on a new series right now based on the Book of Revelation, which I have entitled “The Revelation.” The reason I call it this is because this final Book of the Bible is not called “Revelations” even though most people refer to it that way. No, the apostle John calls it— “the Revelation of Jesus Christ.” And so in part one of this series, we spent the entire time seeing that this Book is not the Book of Revelations, such as a revelation of the antichrist, a revelation of the tribulation, the revelation of judgment, etc., etc., etc. No, this Book of the Bible’s purpose and intent is to reveal to us one thing—namely, one Person—and His name is Jesus Christ! Therefore, when we read this Book through the lens that it is actually good news and not bad news, it will produce a different emotional response in us. Like we saw in Revelation 1:3, it will make us happy when we read and hear the words contained in it, not fearful and confused. So, we started out studying the “End Times” in a way we may never have heard it before. We got excited about the things that lie ahead! We started out rejoicing in the things the Lord has told us were on the horizon! We did this because we emphasized Who this Book reveals to us—JESUS! For example, we learned that Jesus is the “apocalypse!” Now this word generally terrifies people because they only associate it with the doom, the judgment, and the woes that are coming on the earth at the end. But the word “apocalypse” is simply the word for “Revelation” in that it comes from the Greek word apokalypsis. So, while the picture that has been painted of the apocalypse is smeared with doom, gloom, destruction, and judgment, technically it doesn’t “reveal” that to us. No, the apocalypse is “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In fact, we learned that Jesus Christ is the revelation, not just in this final Book of the Bible, but all throughout the Scriptures because He is the Word. Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, and that includes end-time prophecy. So, last week, we looked at the seven golden lampstands—those seven churches of Asia Minor that Jesus had the apostle John write letters to. And while we did not spend a fraction of the time we could have spent studying Jesus’ words to these seven churches, we did look at what I called seven pillars contained in these seven letters to the churches. This was seven things that we see repeated and emphasized in these seven letters that not only related to the church then, but to the church of today as well. Now some of these seven things were encouraging words and others were corrections. But we saw that even though five of these churches were corrected for many things, John did not see a couple of golden lampstands and then the other five were silver, bronze, etc. No, he saw seven golden churches—showing us that even though some churches and their members are “tarnished” with sin, flaws, and failures, they were still gold—the most precious commodity in the kingdom of God. Amen! But the fact is we covered seven very important things that the church today needs to be reminded of and emphasize. If you missed last week’s message, I encourage you to go to our website and listen to it and get a hold of the video and watch it. There is bound to be at least one of those pillars that the Holy Spirit will encourage you to apply to your life so your spiritual house can stay solid and strong. WE HAVE AN OPEN DOOR! Now, this week, I want us to pick up in Revelation chapter 4 where we have a transition. We see that “after these things” the apostle John looked and saw a door standing open in heaven: This illustrates to me something awesome: I see it as a metaphor that the door to heaven is indeed open for the Lord’s church. Yes, we have access with boldness into the Holiest and can enter into His presence whenever we want, however much we want! Glory to God! So, look at this more as an invitation for you rather than just what the apostle John experienced. The door to God’s presence along with seeing His kingdom come and His will be done is always open and available to us. And let me remind you, this is not a physical place. We don’t have to wait until we come to church or go to some other religious institution to experience heaven on earth. No, our “closet” or “secret place” is wherever we decide to make it. Jesus taught the woman at the well this lesson when she brought up the subject of where one ought to worship. Was it on this mountain or was it only in Jerusalem? Jesus clarified that the hour was coming—and now is—when men and women would not need to go to a physical place to worship God. They only need to worship in spirit and in truth! (See John 4:21-24). In other words, the true worshippers that God seeks now don’t have to go to a physical place to do so like “in church”; now they simply worship in Spirit and in truth. Glory be to God! That means we only need get into the spirit like John did (Revelation 1:10). That’s where God is, and that’s where we can go too! In fact, that is where we must go in order to truly worship Him effectively. Church, the veil has been rent! Now we can enter into His most holy place by the precious blood of the Lamb! And it is from this spiritual place that not only we can worship Him, but where we can see things from His perspective better. Let’s take a deeper look into that … COME UP HITHER! Then John heard a voice like a trumpet say to him, “Come up here (KJV- Come up hither), and I will show you things which must take place after this.” I believe this statement is extremely important in leading into the things John saw and wrote down for us. Why? It is because everything the Lord showed him that was to take place was from “up there.” In other words, it was from heaven’s perspective, not an earthly, carnal perspective. It is for this reason that I believe much of the things we have written in the Book of Revelation between chapters 4 & 22 are written from a spiritual perspective and are not necessarily describing to us literal events. So, in my opinion, for people to spend their time trying to make all of these things fit into the worldly events we will experience might not be exactly correct. But here is an important point for us: How many of you know that we all should have more of a heavenly perspective on things? I believe this is even more important for the days we are currently living in because all of the things we are experiencing in this world right now and the things that lie ahead require a spiritual perspective to where we can see what is really happening, and for us not to get swept away with the issues of this world. Church, we need to understand that there is a spiritual world that is even more real than this physical world. In fact, the spiritual world parented this physical world we live in. A great example of this is in the story of Elisha and his servant in Second Kings 6:14-17: In this story, Elisha and his servant were surrounded by the king’s army, and the servant feared, asking the prophet what they were going to do. And Elisha answered and said to his servant— “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them!” Then Elisha prayed and asked the Lord to open the eyes of the young man that he may see what he saw, and the Lord opened his eyes to see the mountain being full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. You see, fear gripped the young man when he looked only through his natural eyes. But when his spiritual eyes were opened to see what was happening in the spirit realm around them, he was seeing from “up there.” Saints, that’s how we ought to look at everything! We must look at things “in the spirit” and from “up hither.” This is where we can live on a higher plain than the vast majority of this world because we are seeing things as they truly are. And I believe that is exactly what so many have failed to do in regard to this subject we are covering right now. They have only looked at the Book of Revelation through a carnal, natural perspective and in doing so, it has sparked fear and anxiety in their hearts. Church, we need to “come up hither” too and become more spiritually minded concerning these things because when we do, a new perspective of the Revelation will occur: We will have hope replace the fear! We will have excitement substituted for dread! And we will have joy overcome the anxiety! THE THRONE ROOM OF GOD So, we see in Revelation 4:1 that the Lord called John up to enter that door of heaven so that He could show him things from that spiritual perspective … Then in verse 2, John began explaining what he saw: He said, “Immediately I was in the Spirit…” Now this is opposed to being in the flesh, right? You see, if we are in the flesh, we won’t see these spiritual realities. Our senses will be dominated by natural, carnal things. We will be moved by what we see instead of what we should be seeing—for we are called to look at things that are unseen instead of only looking at what we can see (“See” Second Corinthians 4:18). And let me tell you how one can more readily be “in the Spirit” than “in the flesh”: As Jesus said in the Garden on the eve of His crucifixion— “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation—for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41). You see, the watching is simply being willing to keep our spiritual antenna up and the praying is us staying connected to the spirit. If we do this regularly, we can get out of a flesh dominated life and get into the spirit where we can see things from a totally different perspective. Amen? Then notice what the first thing John describes that he saw when he entered this open door of heaven— “…and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne.” Oh, glory to God, what John saw first is what we need to see first in our lives—the throne and the One who is seated on it! In other words, we need to see what the highest authority is and who is He who is seated in that seat of ultimate authority—and we can see that it is El Elyon Himself! You see, church, no matter what happens on this earth. No matter how bad things get. The Lord God Almighty will always remain on the throne! He doesn’t fall off! He doesn’t change. He doesn’t deviate from His consistent rule and victory over all! That’s only us who does that—and the way we can keep ourselves from doing so is by opening our spiritual eyes to see the truth that God indeed is the King of kings and Lord of lords and He reigns forevermore! So, I believe it is important for us to know the first thing the apostle John saw when he came up hither. It wasn’t the dragon. It wasn’t the beast. It wasn’t the plagues, the bowls of wrath, or the judgments. No, it wasn’t all of the bad things that are to come upon the earth; it was the throne of God that he saw first. This illustrates something to me: What is the first thing we see when we look in this Book of the Bible? Is it the things that generate fear or is it the glorious beauty of who Jesus is? I believe the latter is to be true for all of us. You see, living down here on the earth, it is easy to keep our mind stayed on things of the earth. In other words, it is easy to focus on the curse, the death, and all of the things the god of this world is doing. But I believe we are called to elevate our way of thinking and see things, not from an earthly perspective, but from a heavenly perspective. I’m going to tell you—I watch the way people have flipped out about this pandemic and other things, and I wonder—what are they are going to do if humongous hornets with the faces of men come up out of the earth and start stinging people? You know, that’s one of the things Revelation tells us is going to happen. Now like I said earlier, those things might just be the spiritual influence behind the natural things that will take place on the earth at that time, but my point is, these things we’ve experienced in 2020—although certainly inconvenient and probably as bad as any year most of us have had in our lives—is nothing compared to things others have lived through and others will live through. In other words, it could also be worse. But guess what else is true? It could all be better too! Yes, we could choose to view things from our place seated at the right hand of God. Church, it is easy to look at all the bad things going on in the world and even try to spiritualize it by saying, “Oh, look at all the people dying and going to hell today!” Well, you can look at that two ways: You can either choose to focus on all the negative things the devil is doing or you can choose to focus on those who are getting saved, healed, blessed, etc. You know, that’s actually happening today as well, right? I know this good news doesn’t generally capture the headlines, but it is happening, nonetheless. Jesus even told us that the angels rejoice over the one sinner who repents rather than in ninety-nine which need no repentance (See Luke 15:10). And he never says anything about angels weeping over those who don’t repent; just that they are joyful when someone does. So, that’s the mentality I believe we ought to possess all the time—rejoicing to see God’s kingdom increase and prosper instead of letting what’s going on in the kingdom of darkness steal our joy from us. You see, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking (I know you can go to some churches and that doesn’t seem to be true, but it actually is😉), but it’s righteousness, peace, and joy (See Romans 14:17). That means that in God’s kingdom three of the predominant virtues you will find are these—righteousness, peace, and joy. So, there is no depression or anxiety in heaven, only joy and peace. Therefore, if we are living our lives in the kingdom of God, then there is no room for any of these negative emotions and ways of thinking. Church, I believe there is an open door in the kingdom of heaven for us to live in its victory. But it’s going to take us “coming up hither” and living from heaven’s perspective. THE SOUND OF HEAVEN And as the apostle John goes on to describe in verses 3-7, heaven is amazing, containing things which are difficult to imagine! But what I want us to now look at is one specific thing that John saw happening in heaven. In verse 8, he explained how these four living creatures that he saw and described in verse 7 did not rest day or night, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!” And then John went on to say in verses 9-11— “Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: ‘You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created.’” So, what John saw happening around the throne of God was lost in the sound of heaven—that is, the Father was being praised and glorified by the various hosts of heaven! But I want you to notice that these words they were saying were not verses to songs. They were simple statements that praised and glorified Father God. You know, sometimes I feel that we let the praise God desires be inhibited by our apparent lack of ability to sing well. We say things like— “Well, I cannot carry a tune like so and so.” But, again, they were making simple statements declaring things about the Father, not necessarily singing songs to Him. I’m guessing we all should be doing this. Why? How many of you know that Jesus taught us to pray like so— “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” (Matthew 6:9-10)? So, if we are to pray for things to be done here on the earth like they are done in heaven, then don’t you suppose we ought to be declaring the things that they do in heaven? Absolutely! Now I know that not every word we say or song we sing needs to be verse for verse what we read here in Revelation. There certainly is the place for psalms, hymns and spiritual songs too, where we declare other things. But I also believe it is clear that heaven sounds like this. Therefore, this ought to be a part of our verbiage too. WORTHY IS THE LAMB But do you want to know one of the primary things you and I are going to see in heaven is this—that the Lamb of God alone is worthy! This is what we see in Revelation chapter 5 … Following the worship of God by the four beasts and twenty-four elders, in this chapter, we now have our concentration placed upon the sealed scroll that is in the right hand of God. This scroll represents the eternal inheritance that is awaiting the saints of God and God’s redemptive plan for us to obtain it. The seven seals represent the events that must take place before the saints can receive that redemption & inheritance. So, a search begins for one who is worthy to receive this scroll, break the seals and reveal its contents. And no angel nor man is found worthy to open it, and the situation seems hopeless. But then, the Lamb—which we know to be the Lord Jesus Christ—comes onto the scene and, rightfully, takes the scroll from God’s hand. John is shown that the Lamb is the only One that is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll. And what we see in the remaining part of this chapter is the praise & worship that is given to the worthy Lamb of God where they said the following things: Verses 9-10: And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, And have made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth.” Verse 12: saying with a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!” Verse 13: … I heard saying: “Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!” Church, this is what they are declaring over and over in heaven—that Jesus is the One who is worthy of all glory, honor, and praise. And if we have heaven’s perspective, this is what we are going to be both seeing and declaring. The Lamb is worthy! Like we’ve seen in the Book of Revelation, it all points to the Lamb of God and how He alone deserves all the glory, all the worship, and all the praise! IS IT JUST THUNDER? Now, finally, I want us to go over to John chapter 12—because I believe it illustrates to us many of these things we’ve been learning here today: In John 12:28-41, we have an interesting event in the ministry of Jesus: In verse 28, Jesus turned His voice towards His Father and said, “Father, glorify your name.” Then we are told that a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” Now this was not God speaking just to Jesus—for we see in verse 29 that the people who stood by and heard it thought it had thundered. But others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.” So, what was it about this audible voice of God that caused some to think it was just normal thunder and others thought it was angel? Well, it had nothing to do with the audible voice; it had to do with the ears of the people present. So, what this shows us that what we perceive is based on what we have ears to hear. So, if we are predominately carnal, we might take something that is spiritual and only perceive it carnally. For example, the Bible teaches us that oftentimes we entertain angels unaware, but that doesn’t mean we have to be unaware. It’s just that we get swept along with the physical, natural, and carnal things of this world and our spiritual ears and eyes are not open to hearing and perceiving the spiritual things that are going on around us. I’ll give you a great example of this: you can have two different people attend a worship service, and one person experiences the presence of God and are on their knees weeping before Him, but the other person is bored, twiddling their thumbs, and experiences nothing. How is that possible? It shows us that it’s not just on the ministers to usher us into the presence of God. We have to enter in ourselves. Now, sure, there are times when His manifest presence is so obvious that just about everyone in the room will experience it, but this is not the common experience. Most of the times we are not going to be overwhelmed with His presence to where He is breaking through all the things we bring to church with us. We must press in and give Him our undivided attention and all of our hearts. This is when we will be the ones who perceive His presence and can experience the supernatural. Another good example is with the preaching in church: I have ministered many times to large groups of people and while the majority of them are like— “Eh, that was alright. I enjoyed that.”—and then they go on their way never letting that truth impact them, there are others who come to me saying, “That changed my life! It was awesome! I’ll never be the same.” Both of these examples of people heard the same message, and one is changed forever, and the other is no different. What’s the difference? The hearts of the people. Now skipping ahead to verses 37-41, we see John addressing this very thing: We are told that although Jesus had done so many signs before the people, they still did not believe in Him. And the reason why is because they couldn’t—for Isaiah said prophetically, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.” Then John goes on to say in verse 41, “These things Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him.” SEEING THE LORD HIGH & LIFTED UP So, I want us to go back where Isaiah saw His glory—because I believe it shows us how one’s eyes can be opened and how their hearts can understand: In Isaiah chapter 6, we have Isaiah’s testimony of his experience where He saw the Lord’s glory similarly to how the apostle John saw it in Revelation. In Isaiah 6:1-4, we read: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!’ And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.” Notice how this sounds very similar to John’s Revelation: He saw the Lord sitting on His throne and he saw angelic being who were also singing similar praises to God saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” Now that last phrase is interesting—because is the whole earth really filled with His glory? To the natural eye, it doesn’t seem to be because we see the curse, sin and death filling the earth. But again, it depends on what perspective we are viewing the earth from. If we look at the earth from an earthly perspective, we will tend to only see negative things. But if we look at it from heaven’s perspective, we can see the glory of God filling the earth! Hallelujah! And guess what this experience did? It made him very aware of his own unrighteousness and inadequacies. Verses 5-7 tell us the following— “So I said: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’ Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.’” So, can you guess why the Lord’s people were hearing but not truly understanding, why they were seeing, but not really perceiving? It was because they had not had Isaiah’s experience. You see, when you and I see the Lord high and lifted up, it will change our perspective. Then we will be able to truly hear His voice. Then we will be able to truly see what we need to perceive. It is these spiritual experiences that make things we read in the Bible true in our hearts. But, again, it was seeing the Lord high and lifted up which changed Isaiah’s perspective on things. And I believe that when we choose to enter that open door of heaven and begin seeing things from a heavenly perspective, we will see things like Isaiah did—the glory of the Lord filling the earth and our need to no longer fall short of that glory. As Jesus also said in John 12:31-32, if He be lifted up, He will draw all men unto Himself. Now I believe these verses have multiple meanings. I believe it means that people will come when He is exalted. I also believe it means that when He was lifted up on that Cross, that He drew all sin and the judgment for that sin upon Himself. But this is the point that I believe the Holy Spirit wants emphasized today—when we lift up and exalt Jesus on this earth through magnifying His Lordship and celebrating His salvation, all of heaven is drawn to that. He is the King of God’s kingdom and whenever and wherever the King is praised, heaven will be there to participate. Oh, glory to God! Church, it is all about the Lamb. He is the Theme of heaven. He is the Song of heaven. He is the only Way to heaven. It’s all about Him. Jesus alone is worthy!
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REVIEW
Last week, we began a new series on the Book of Revelation, which I am entitling “The Revelation.” And as we learned last week, the reason I am titling it this way is because this final Book of the Bible is not called “Revelations” even though most people refer to it that way. No, in the first verse of this book, the apostle John calls it—the Revelation of Jesus Christ.” So, we learned that it is not to the Book of Revelations, such as a revelation of the antichrist, a revelation of the tribulation, the revelation of judgment, etc., etc., etc. No, this Book of the Bible’s purpose and intent is to reveal to us one thing—namely, one Person—and His name is Jesus Christ! But I made the point last week that just as many people do not know how to even refer to this Book correctly, they certainly don’t interpret it correctly either. And the reason I say this is because of how most people steer clear of Revelation because it scares and confuses them. This is not to be the case! As we learned from Revelation 1:3, when we read, hear, and keep the words in this Book, it promises us that we will be “blessed.” And we learned that the word “blessed” can be translated different ways. Yes, it means to be blessed, fortunate, and to be envied, but it also means to be happy and joyful. In other words, to be blessed is not just to have our lives filled with things, it is to have our hearts full of happiness and joy at the same time. So, the point we made is that the reading, hearing, and keeping of this Book of the Bible is supposed to produce these blessed emotions in people. But, again, when you look at a lot of people who read the things from this Book, they are not happy when they hear its truths. On the contrary, they get depressed, become anxious, and are filled with fear. And I believe a lot of the reason for this is because they are looking at the Book of Revelation through the wrong filter. Yes, they are not hearing the heart of what it is saying because they are looking at it through a carnal mindset—trying to figure out what all of the things John saw mean and only looking at them from an earthly perspective. Church, I’ll tell you—if we look at this Book through the wrong filter, it won’t lead to life & peace. We must be spiritually minded when studying the Book of Revelation! So, we started last week studying the “End Times” in a way we may never have heard it before. We got excited about the things that lie ahead! We started out rejoicing in the things the Lord has told us were on the horizon! We did this because we emphasized Who this Book reveals to us—JESUS! And we learned that Jesus is the “apocalypse,” a word that terrifies people because they only associate it with the doom, the judgment, and the woes that are coming on the earth at the end. But the word “apocalypse” is simply the word for “Revelation” in that it comes from the Greek word apokalypsis. So, while the picture that has been painted of the apocalypse is smeared with doom, gloom, destruction, and judgment, technically it doesn’t “reveal” that to us. No, the apocalypse is “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” And what we learned last week is that this phrase “the Revelation of Jesus Christ” is used elsewhere in the New Testament, and the apostle Paul used it a lot of times—specifically to describe the revelation of the mystery of our new covenant. We specifically looked at Galatians 1:11-12 where Paul used it this way and learned that this “apocalypse of Jesus” is not a scary thing; it’s actually good news! Likewise, the Book of Revelation is intended to reveal to us the good news of what is to come, not the bumps in the road that it will take to get there. So, what we did last week was we emphasized the Gospel Himself and we did so by looking at that title Jesus declared about Himself several times in this Book—that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end! And we saw that what this means is that Jesus is the beginning of the alphabet and the end of the alphabet. And guess what? He’s everything in between too! This is how we should read the Book of Revelation, and, in fact, how we should read the entire Word of God—seeing Jesus in the beginning all the way to the ending. All of these things prophecy of Him! So, as many have taken in hand to describe Jesus in every Book of the Bible, it seemed good to me to do likewise. And we looked at Jesus in every Book of the Bible! It was awesome! And the last thing we did was we jumped forward to the nineteenth chapter of Revelation and took a look at one thing that I believe summarizes what the Revelation of Jesus Christ consists of— “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10). What this means is that at the very heart of all prophecy is Jesus. Church, that was the point last week: When studying this Book, we must do what Hebrews 12:2 encourages us to do— “Look unto Jesus!” That means keep our eyes on the prize and off of the struggle of the race that is set before us—for when we keep our focus on Him, we will walk on water. We won’t sink into the depths of fear and despair. No, we will walk in joy unspeakable and full of glory—for our attention is set on the spirit of all prophecy. That is the Jesus who was, the Jesus who is, and the Jesus who is to come. Glory and amen! THE GOLDEN LAMPSTANDS So now let’s pick up in Revelation 1:9 and move on to the next thing the Holy Spirit would have us emphasize today: Beginning in this verse, the apostle John begins to give us the background and setting of this Book: He starts out by identifying with these churches he was writing to by saying, “I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.” In other words, he was saying, “I am suffering the same persecution as you guys! That is why I am here on the Isle of Patmos (basically a volcanic rock where the Romans sent criminals to work in granite quarries).” Then, beginning in verse 10, he gives the account of how he received this revelation: He said, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,’ and, ‘What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.’” So, what this means is that originally, this Prophetic Book was intended for the seven churches located in Asia Minor. Now there are various theories about these seven churches: Some believe that because they were actual churches in the cities mentioned, Jesus was simply speaking to these seven churches of Asia Minor that represented the early first century church, while His Words certainly apply to all of the Lord’s church even in our generation. However, there are others who see these seven churches as prophetically describing the seven stages of church history. For example, those that ascribe to this say that the last church Jesus addressed—the church of Laodicea—is likely referring to the church of today. I’m not sure where I stand on all of that, but it certainly could be that it is not just one or the other. It could mean both. However, what we can be sure of is that because Jesus obviously intended this book to be written down and physically sent to these seven churches in Asia Minor, then these were actual churches full of real people that Jesus was talking to. And, of course, we know that these words were not just for them, but they were Holy Spirit inspired words that also apply to us as well. But then notice what John saw after he turned to see the voice that spoke these words to him: He said, “I saw seven golden lampstands.” Now this is reminiscent of Zechariah’s prophecy in chapter 4 of his Prophetic Book where an angel came and asked him what he saw, and the first thing he saw was a lampstand made of solid gold with a bowl on top of it, and on the stand seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven lamps (See Zechariah 4:2). Now, according to Revelation 1:20, we know exactly what these seven golden lampstands represent: They are these seven churches. And it is significant to me that these lampstands are “golden”—being made out of the most valuable and precious commodity we have on the earth. And as most of us are aware of, these churches were full of flaws and had all kinds of defects based on some of things Jesus said to them in Revelation chapters 2-3. But here is the good news: Even with their imperfections, that does not change how the Lord ultimately saw them! Likewise, even though we are also full of failures and shortcomings today, that does not change how the Lord sees us. So, turn to your neighbor and tell them, “You’re golden!” Then in verse 13, John goes on to describe what else he saw— “and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man…” Now I see an illusion here to the three Hebrew boys—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego—in the midst of the fiery furnace, when Nebuchadnezzar looked in and saw one “like the Son of God” walking around with them. And what this illustrates to us is that no matter what we are going through, no matter how fiery the trial, Jesus—the Son of God and the Son of Man—is in the middle of it with us. Glory to God! Then, in verses 13-16, John begins describing Jesus: He said, “…clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.” Now all of these things that John saw in the Son of Man describe His omnipotence and omniscience—His absolute authority and power. They are also reminiscent of the things that Daniel saw in the Son of God in his prophecy (See Daniel chapter 10). The apostle John goes on to say that when he saw Him, he fell at His feet as dead (See verse 17)—and, church, I can assure you that when we see Him like this, we will hit the deck too! We see this throughout the Bible—that when people have some sort of physical experience with God like seeing His glory or hearing His voice audibly it always provoked a response of demonstrative worship. And I believe the reason why so many of God’s people today, do not worship demonstratively like by getting on their knees or laying prostrate before Him is because they don’t see Him. We need to see Him too, church, and no, I am not talking about just have supernatural experiences; I am referring to seeing Him in our hearts to where the reality of Him has truly impacted us. In fact, I don’t believe we have to wait until His Revelation at the Second Coming; I believe we can see Him now and it will breed in us a heart of worship and the true fear of God. May it be so for all of us! Then in verses 17-20, Jesus laid His right hand on John and said to him, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death. Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this. The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.” In verse 19, we see a short description of what this Book of Revelation entails: the things which you have seen, the things which are, and the things which will take place after this. The things which he had seen would be all of the things he had revealed to him about Christ thus far (See 1:9-20). The things which are would be the things going on in the church (See 2:1-3:22). And the things to come would be the rest of this Book from chapter 4 and on. However, there is a possibility that there are things contained in chapters 4 through 22 that had already come to pass at the time that this Book was written. Then in verse 20, Jesus explains to John what the seven stars in His right hand were and what the golden lampstands were (as we have seen already). The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven golden lampstands are the churches. THE ANGEL OVER THE CHURCHES? First of all, I want you to notice that they were all written to the angel of each church—to the angel of the church of Ephesus, to the angel of the church of Smyrna, to the angel of the church of Pergamos, etc. Now we can only speculate as to what these “angels” were. Some believe that because the Greek word angelos is used here—which is used to refer to angelic beings, but also to “messengers”—that these are letters to written to each church’s messenger. Which is who? The pastor of each church. But since the word angelos is also the word used for actual angels, this could reveal to us that each church has a guardian angel set over it. If that is the case, I am not sure why the Lord is writing these letters to an angel unless somehow, someway, these angels communicate these words to the pastors, prophets, and others who speak to the church congregation. But the real point we need to understand here is, the Lord was speaking directly to these seven churches which consisted of real people through some medium agent called an angel or messenger. However, this ought to provide some solace for us too—for it shows us that we all have something or someone set over us who is there to protect us like an angel or direct us like one in the fivefold ministry. Either way, God has given gifts to the church that if we will open those spiritual ears and eyes, we can receive more grace in our lives. THE SEVEN PILLARS OF THE SEVEN CHURCHES So, what I want us to do now is spend the rest of our time looking at some of the predominant things that we see repeated in these seven churches. In fact, I want us to look at seven things that we see in these seven churches—seven things that we see repeated and emphasized. You see, while we could certainly spend months talking about everything Jesus revealed to these seven churches, I am going to give an overview of the things we see repeated in and consistencies between all seven letters. Now most of these we will find repeated to all seven churches. Others are mentioned just to a few of them. But what we can be assured of is that all seven of these things are to be foundational things we are established in, since in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word is to be established. However, let me encourage you with this—Don’t try to apply all seven of these pillars to your life today. The reason I say this is because the likelihood is that not all seven of them are what the Holy Spirit is saying to you individually today. Now I believe that each of these seven things are a Word from God for somebody here today, but it is highly unlikely that the Holy Spirit wants anyone here to get all seven of them at this time. So, with that being said, let’s begin with the first of seven pillars of the seven churches that goes along these lines: PILLAR #1 – HAVING EARS TO HEAR One of the things that we see repeated to all seven churches is the encouragement for—"He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” You know, this was something Jesus was known for saying throughout His ministry on the earth. In His messages, we see Him saying time and time again—"He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Now we know that everyone who came to hear Him teach probably had two physical ears, right? So, Jesus was not talking about audibly listening to His words. No, He was more referring to hearing with the ears of our heart than just physically listening to Him. And that is the key—not just auditing the Word being preached but having hearts that are receptive to those Words to where they are retained and valued like they ought to be. So, I begin with this one today because this is the way we should listen to every message, read every verse, and study every Scripture—with ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to us through them. In my experience, I’ve seen two types of Christians who listen to God’s Word:
So, my point is—we need to have the ears of our heart attune to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us in this hour. As the writers of Hebrews say, “Today, if you will hear His voice …” (Hebrews 3:7,15). It doesn’t say, “Tomorrow” or “Yesterday”; it says “Today.” We need to be most concerned with hearing the Spirit’s voice today. So, make sure you write down and meditate on those things that the Holy Spirit is saying to you right now, and don’t become distracted by everything else. These are the things that bear witness in your heart when you hear them. They will be accompanied by peace and joy. Sure, they might be corrective and even involve a rebuke, but will also be accompanied with the witness of the Holy Spirit letting you know it was for you. So, let’s move on now into some other details of these seven churches. PILLAR #2 – A SPECIFIC REVELATION OF JESUS Next, I want you to notice that all seven churches are given a specific revelation of Jesus at the beginning of each letter. In one, Jesus reveals Himself as the First and the Last; in another, He reveals Himself as the One who has eyes like a flame of fire and feet like fine brass. In one, He is the One who holds the seven stars in His right hand; in another, He is the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness. And the fact that Jesus began each letter by declaring who He was, is and evermore shall be shows me that the first thing Jesus wants His church to know is who He is. Yes, even before He addresses the things we’ve done right or the things we’ve done wrong, He addresses His nature and character. Oh, how important this is to our everyday lives because seeing Him and understanding who He is, is the chief cornerstone that a successful church is built on. If the truth of Christ is not being presented, there will be a faulty foundation. Jesus is the Rock that keeps His house from falling when the storms come, but if the house does not hear and do His sayings, I can assure you it will not stand. Likewise, when any individual member of the Body of Christ does not see Jesus in truth, he or she is building their life on the wrong foundation. So, a good prayer for us would be— “Father, I want to have the revelation of Jesus Christ! Open my eyes to see who He is in truth! Reveal His greatness and His glory, His grace and His goodness! I want to know You and Your Son! Amen!” And the Bible teaches us that when we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him. Amen and so be it! PILLAR #3 – HE SEES OUR WORKS The next thing we notice about all seven churches is that right after Jesus gives the different descriptions of who He is, He would let them all know— “I know your works!” This is evidently something that Jesus wants all of His church to know—that He does indeed know our works. And when you look at the words He used, it literally means that He “sees” our works. In other words, He knows first-hand what His church is doing. And why? Because He is walking in the midst of His golden lampstands. I want to tell you—this is important information to have! The Lord knows what we do even when others don’t. I don’t say that to scare anyone, but if it does scare us, then we probably shouldn’t be doing the things we are doing, right? This is just something we evidently need to remain cognizant of because knowing that the Lord is with us everywhere we go and that He knows not only everything we do but also knows everything we think, will help us to not think or do those things. It’s called integrity—doing what is right even when others don’t see. This is the way we ought to live before the eyes of Him who knows all our works. PILLAR #4 – A CALL TO REPENTANCE Now another thing that we see repeated in the letters to the seven churches is the word “repentance.” In fact, the word “repent” is used seven times—not once for each church because some churches didn’t need to be told to repent. But for some churches, they needed a double portion of repentance. And I can assure you that this is not a favorite word in our modern-day church today, but that does not change the fact that it was a favorite word of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, when Jesus came on the scene at 30 years of age, He came with one message— “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” What He was saying was— “Change sides, think a different way, and go in another direction—because the kingdom of God does things differently than this world.” You see, many Christians do not understand what repentance really is. They think it is simply just feeling sorry for what you did and maybe shedding a tear. Too often sorrow is confused with repentance. In the Parable of the Prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), repentance is described beautifully by the Lord Jesus. After the prodigal son left his father’s house and spent all that he had, he came to a place where he was wallowing with the pigs (i.e. he hit rock bottom in sin). Then in verses 17-18, Jesus said “when he came to himself, he said, ‘…I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you’…” What this prodigal child did was he confessed his sin (or, acknowledged what his father already knew) and backed up his words with his actions by getting up and heading back to his father’s house. You see, repentance is a distinct decision to return to the Lord. It is not an emotion, nor is it remorse. It is an act of our will to not continue wallowing around in the sin that we have been stained by. And the great thing about repentance is that God does not make us do it all ourselves! In the parable of the Prodigal son, after he repented and started on his way back to his father’s presence, his father “ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” God will not make us do all the work of repentance. He will run to meet us, as we have taken the first few steps, and he will put the sandals on our feet, the best robe on our back, and a ring on our finger. God will be there with us to help us return home!!! That is just the loving and compassionate God that He is. He gives us grace to repent! Therefore, repentance is a gift from God. Selah. So, when Jesus told these churches to repent seven different times, what we need to understand is that repentance is for all of God’s church—yesterday, today and forever. Therefore, we need to be reminded of it constantly and certainly practice it regularly. PILLAR #5 – HOLD FAST TO WHAT YOU HAVE Another pillar found a couple of times in these letters to the seven churches was the following phrase— “Hold fast to what you have.” (See Revelation 2:25 & 3:11). And although it is specifically said only a couple of times, it is alluded to throughout the churches—for persevering and having patience is encouraged and celebrated. And there was a reason for this: You see, the early church experienced a tremendous amount of persecution and tribulation. One of these churches was said to be positioned right where Satan’s throne was! You know that had to be a tough situation. So, what these churches preached on and embraced was “patience”—which literally described “staying under power” meaning no matter how much pressure was put on them, they were to stand fast and, yes, hold fast to what they had. These churches understood that if they just wouldn’t quit, then they would never lose. They knew what they had, and they understood that if they just wouldn’t relinquish it, there was great recompense of reward. This is why they called this virtue of patience—the queen of all virtues! I believe this, likewise, needs to be high up on our priority list. Yes, we need to possess this staying under power. For Jesus even said that by our patience we possess our souls (See Luke 21:19). This means that when times inevitably get tough, we will have need of patience so that we can hold on to the things which we have. How many of you have heard of people losing it when they become faint and weary? Our patience will help us not do that. We can keep our wits, hold on to our faith, and not allow discouragement to enter in. It is ours to hold and it is ours to let go of. Our patience is what we use to possess it! PILLAR #6 – A PROMISE TO HIM WHO OVERCOMES Now for pillar #6: What we see at the end of every letter to the seven churches was a promise—a promise to him who “overcomes.” One thing we must understand about God is He is a rewarder. In fact, Hebrews 11:6 says that in order to please God, those who come to Him must believe that He is a rewarder. So, it’s a big part of Christianity for us to embrace God’s heart to reward us. His desire is not to punish and chasten His kids; His heart is to reward them! Yes, it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom! And He is even good enough to share with us the various rewards that await us like being able to eat of the tree of life, being given the morning star, a white stone with a new name written on it, etc. Now I don’t know what all of these rewards Jesus mentioned are, but how many of you know that you don’t have to know what they are to know you want them! But the fact is, all of these wonderful things are promised to Him who overcomes: Who is he who overcomes? John answered this in his first epistle (First John 5:4-5), and in short it is he who is born again and he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. It’s our faith! So, overcoming the world through our faith is a big part of the Christian life. In fact, it seems to be the ultimate goal of the faith considering what we see here in the seven churches. Jesus declared that He overcame the world at the end of His ministry in John 16:33, and I believe we ought to be able to say the same thing when our time of departure is at hand. PILLAR #7 – OUR FIRST LOVE Finally, and arguably the most important pillar: When you look at the first and the last church—the Churches of Ephesus and Laodicea—you will find the Lord’s call to relationship. In the Church of Ephesus, the Lord’s lone correction for them was to return to their first love. This is their love for the first thing. And I am convinced that our first love is that pure, zealous and genuine love that we had for the Lord in the beginning of our Christian walk. But then in His letter to the Church of Laodicea, we see the Lord in Revelation 3:20 where He said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with Me.” Now while most people have used this verse evangelistically to tell the lost that Jesus wants to come into their lives, this is not being written to the lost. This is Jesus’ words to the church—showing us that a believer can be saved, but not experience the fullness of their salvation. Amen? Many use this as an evangelistic verse, but the fact is, this is written to a church full of believers—not to unbelievers. So, is it possible that a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian can have the Lord knocking at the door of their hearts and not already living in their hearts? Apparently so. Now that doesn’t mean that they are not saved; it just means that Jesus is not occupying their lives like He desires to. And that is a major point: He obviously desires to, or He wouldn’t be standing at the door knocking. Amen? And the way we let the Lord back in is by returning to our first love like He told the Church of Ephesus. So, my point is, He is not going to kick the door down. He will patiently wait until we decide to open the door by returning to our first love and inviting Him in. Amen? CONCLUSION Church, these are what I consider to be the seven pillars to the seven churches of Asia Minor. And like I said, all seven of them might not apply to your life today, but I believe that all seven of these things are pillars to the Lord’s church. The Lord Jesus evidently wants us to be mindful of these things so that we can be as strong and vibrant of a church as possible. Not to mention these things will certainly keep us ready for His soon return. Come, Lord Jesus. Come. INTRODUCTION
Well, church, hell has officially frozen over! Why, you ask? It is because I am beginning a teaching today on Biblical eschatology out the Book of Revelation (Eschatology is the part of theology concerned with the final events of world known as the "end of the world" or "end times"). You see, this is a subject I have said I never would want to teach on. Now the reason I have always been so reluctant to share on this particular subject is because of the perversion I have seen of it in the Body of Christ. You see, there are many dogmatic views on end-time prophecy—groups that ascribe to the belief system of a pretribulation rapture of the church to a belief system that we will be here through the tribulation until Jesus returns. And there are those who will fight you tooth and nail on this subject. But in this series of teachings, I am not going to do that. What I have on my heart to do is to focus on the heart of what all end-time prophecy points us to. In other words, I am wanting to put the emphasis on what I believe the Bible puts the emphasis on—not how to predict what’s going to happen or interpreting the various events that are described in these prophecies, but the good news that God promises us is going to ultimately happen. Yes, church, what I believe is the objective of the Holy Spirit through this study is for us to eliminate the fear, confusion, and anxiety from this Book, and see the good contained within its pages! And I can assure you that it is ultimately “very good.” As I wrote these words “very good,” it reminded me of God’s original creation: When the Lord created the things He did for those six days, we saw His process of creating the stars, the sun, the trees, the fish, the animals, etc. But then after the sixth day, we see that as God was about to rest from all His works that He said, “It is very good.” I believe that is what we are supposed to see in the Book of Revelation—that with God, the end is always “very good.” So, that is what I want us to see in this final Book of the Bible: I want us to see the very good news that it proclaims to us! You see, through some of these teachings on end-time prophecy, people in the church become confused, paranoid, and have even become terrified. How many of you know that this ought not be the case? The “apocalypse” is not something that should generate fear in the Lord’s church. It should actually create an excitement in us! Now those in the world who do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior should definitely be afraid! Yes, they ought to dreadfully fear that time, which would hopefully inspire them to call on the name of the Lord today and be ready for what must soon take place. But for the true followers of Christ, there is nothing to fear about that Day. While it should be the dread of the unrighteous, it is the hope of the righteous, which should provoke joy and peace as opposed to depression and anxiety. But that is exactly what many of these end-time teachings do to believers—it generates feelings and emotions that are not conducive to the peace and joy of the kingdom of God. So, we are going to study the “End Times” in a way you may never have heard it before. We are going to get excited about the things that lie ahead! We are going to rejoice in the things the Lord has told us were on the horizon! But let me first say that while we will certainly cover a lot of the chapters and verses in this Book, we are not doing an exhaustive study of everything it contains. For example, I am not planning to do what so many have taken in hand to do—explain all of the theological parts of what John saw. I will be the first to tell you that I do not know what all of these things mean, nor do I believe too many others do either. Again, we are going to go for the heart of the Book of Revelation! Yes, we want to capture the spirit of it so that we can receive the blessing associated with it. In fact, that is what I want us to begin with this week—the spirit of prophecy. THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST So, let’s begin in the “genesis” (i.e. the beginning) of the Book of Revelation … First of all, notice I did not call it “Revelations” (plural) as many call it. So, not only do many people look at this whole Book of the Bible in the wrong way, they even refer to its title incorrectly because it is not the Book of Revelations, it is the Book of Revelation. But notice what the apostle John specifically called it in Revelation 1:1: He began this Book by referring to it as— “The Revelation of Jesus Christ…” So, notice that this Book is not the Revelation of the Antichrist; it is the Revelation of Jesus Christ. And, you see, this is why I believe there have been so many misconceptions about end-time prophecy—it is because people want to spend so much time focusing on the part that the devil will play in end time events. They want to focus on all the doom and gloom that will come through the beast, the false prophet, the bowls of wrath, etc. I don’t believe that is the emphasis of this Book of the Bible, church! JESUS is the revelation, not the apocalypse! As a matter of fact, let me correct that previous statement: Jesus is the apocalypse! Say what? Let me explain: Did you know that the Greek word used for “Revelation” here is where we get the word “apocalypse” from? It sure is! It comes from the Greek word apokalypsis, which when transliterated, gives us the word “apocalypse.” So, while the picture that has been painted of the apocalypse is smeared with doom, gloom, destruction, and judgment, technically it doesn’t “reveal” that to us. No, the apocalypse is “the revelation.” So, it is not such a scary word when we look at it this way, is it? Now, let’s look at this word apokalypsis to learn exactly what it is: It comes from the words apo, being a prefix that describes a separation and could be defined as “away from.” And it also comes from the word kalypto which describes something that is hidden or covered up, like a veil is placed over it. So, when you put these words together, you get apokalypsis which then means to “take away the thing that is hiding or covering something up” or you could say, “to separate the veil.” Therefore, good definitions of this word are the words “unveiling, uncovering or disclosing.” This is an interesting word because of how it was often used when referring to Jesus Christ. In fact, the apostle Paul used this word a lot of times—especially to describe the revelation of the mystery of our new covenant (See Romans 16:25 & Ephesians 3:3). One of my favorite passages of Scripture where Paul uses this word is in Galatians 1:11-12 when he said, “But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.” You see, what Paul was doing in these verses is letting the Galatians know that the gospel he preached to them was not second-hand information: First, he says that it was “not according to man.” What he was saying here was that his gospel was not something that was “passed down” to him by other people. No, he hadn’t received passed down information from Peter, James, or John. Then he goes on to say he “neither received it from man.” In the phrase “from man,” he used the word para which is where we get our word “parallel, para-professional, para-medical, etc.” from. By using this word, Paul indicated that he did not receive his doctrine by being “alongside of” another person. Then Paul goes on to say, “nor was I taught it.” Now we know that the apostle Paul was certainly not against being taught by men. He himself taught these churches the gospel that he had received. What he was stressing to them, however, was that he personally was not taught by man the things that he had taught them. His teaching came by personal revelation—which is certainly a better way to be taught (by the revelation knowledge given by the Holy Spirit). Which is exactly where he goes to describe his revelation coming from— “but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.” My point in bringing this out is that this phrase “the revelation of Jesus Christ” is the exact same terminology that the apostle John used in Revelation 1:1. So, the apostle Paul was describing here that the gospel of grace that the Lord gave Him—the revelation of the mystery—was given to him the same way that the apostle John was given his prophetic vision of the glorified Jesus and the end time events that would surround His revelation to the world: all of this was disclosed, unveiled, and revealed to Him. Now we don’t know if Paul had an open vision like John did on the Isle of Patmos to where he saw the resurrected & glorified Lord Jesus and was shown these things in person. It might very well have occurred that way, or Paul’s revelation of Jesus Christ might have come differently. Perhaps the Holy Spirit revealed the truths concerning Jesus to Him spiritually to where he “saw” them in his spirit and knew them accordingly. But here is one thing I find noteworthy about the revelation both the apostles had of Jesus Christ—it came while they were away from everything and everyone else. Yes, it occurred while they were separated from the things of the world—Paul in the deserts of Arabia and John while exiled on the Isle of Patmos. In fact, did you know that the two men who had more revealed to them which resulted in them writing more Scripture than anyone else (I’m talking about Moses and the apostle Paul) had their “apocalypse” given to them while they spent years in the deserts of Arabia? They did! And this revelation given to John was “unveiled” to him while he was on an island—showing us that things can be best “revealed” when we are not clouded by the cares of this world, but are alone with the Lord in a secluded place. Nonetheless, was this “apocalypse” of Jesus Christ that Paul described in the Book of Galatians that he received a scary thing? Of course not! Wasn’t it actually a “good” thing in that it contained the “gospel of grace” that you and I benefit from today? Absolutely! Therefore, this word “Revelation” should be an exciting word to us because it is the “unveiling & disclosing” of the good news of Jesus Christ! Amen! WHAT THE WORD REVEALS But I want us to notice what John continued to say in this first verse of Revelation: He said, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place…” Notice this phrase, “which God gave Him to show His servants.” What that means is that this Revelation of Jesus Christ is not just what we have been shown about Him; it is what God showed Him (i.e. Jesus Christ) to then in turn show us, His servants. In other words, this Revelation of Jesus Christ is what God the Father revealed to His Son to share with His body. Glory! You know, people have the misconception that Jesus, being God the Son, knows all. But that is not entirely accurate. There are some things He told us He does not know. And one of them revolves around what we are covering here in this series—His Second Coming. Jesus said in Mark 14:32-37— “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning—lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” So, let me give you a great piece of advice: Not if, but when someone arises in the Body of Christ saying they know when Jesus is coming back, liquidate all your assets and bet everything that you have that Jesus will NOT be coming back on that date! Of course, I am joking about the betting part, but I am very serious about being that sure that Jesus will not come back on a date someone says that He is. In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that when so called teachers, prophets, etc. start telling you exactly how all of these end-time events are going to happen, don’t swallow what they are saying hook, line and sinker. The fact is, it is highly unlikely that anyone knows exactly how all of these things are going to come to pass and what they will look like when they do. Consider the First Coming of Jesus 2,000 years ago: Did the Jews correctly see how their Messiah was going to come? No, they incorrectly took their prophecies of the Messiah literally as Him coming as a conquering King to free them from their physical oppressors. And understandably so—for that’s what it seemed like many of those prophecies were saying. However, we know now in hindsight that Jesus was coming to first free mankind from their spiritual oppressor—Satan, sin, and death. And we can now see how those prophecies made this clear. But the Jews didn’t see it, and they were much more learned in their Scriptures than the church is today with our Bible. So, all I am saying is take everything you hear with a grain of salt regarding end-time events like exactly what’s going to happen and when it will happen. In fact, let me give you another good nugget of wisdom: Just as it was given to the Lord Jesus to show us these things which must take place, know that everything we need to know is recorded in the Word of God. Jesus is the Word, right (See John 1:1)? So, everything God has given us through His Word is all the information we need to successfully navigate life in the last days. I say this because I see so many people try to emphasize things the Bible does not emphasize. For example, there are folks who get hung up on the First Book of the Bible, Genesis, and read between the lines of those 50 chapters, trying to figure out what all happened in the beginning. Well, let me just say that as far as we know, the Book of Genesis covers close to 2,500 years of human history. That’s a long time to cover in just 50 chapters, right? Just to put that into perspective—the Book of Acts, which is 28 chapters only covers 30 years of the history of the church. And we know there was a lot left out of those first 30 years of the church. So, with that in mind, do you reckon God left some stuff out of those 50 chapters? He left a whole lot out! So, my point is that when it comes to the last Book of the Bible—Revelation—understand that the Lord Jesus had this specific information given to Him to give to us, but that does not mean that we have everything that will happen revealed to us in this Book. So, there is a lot in these 22 chapters that might seem muddy and difficult to understand, but it will be revealed to us in time. You can be sure of that! THINGS SHORTLY TAKING PLACE But that leads me to another point: Notice that the apostle John goes on to say that these things Jesus was going to show His servants were “things which must shortly take place.” This, my friends, is the purpose of the Book of Revelation! It is to show you and I things which must shortly take place. Now I know that we might read statements like that and think— “Things which must shortly take place? Well, that was around 2,000 years ago when John said that. What is God’s idea of ‘shortly’?” The short answer is this—His idea of “shortly” is not the same as ours. God doesn’t operate within our idea of time. The Bible teaches us that one day to the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day (See Second Peter 3:8). And this was said in the context of scoffers arising in the last days saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? Because all things continue just like they were before!” (See verse 4). So, just remember—God’s timeframe is vastly different than ours. When these times come where people will ridicule us for believing Jesus is coming again, be mindful of these words from the Lord Jesus Christ. He is coming quickly indeed! But this also applies to when we pray for something: God looks at it like— “Alright, the answer will come in 15 minutes.” In our timeframe of a day being as 1,000 years, that would be something like 10 years, saints! Do you see how our timetable is totally different than His? In fact, we all know of people whose references to time are different than ours. For example, you have might have someone who is coming to do some work for you say, “I’ll be there in a minute” and sure enough, they show up an hour later. Well, when the Lord Jesus says, “I’ll be there in a minute,” He means something like 8 and a half months. So, like when Abraham had to wait 25 years for the promise he had been given, that was only like a little over 30 minutes in God’s timeframe. That means for us to grow faint after a couple of weeks would be like saying, “Well God, I have been believing you for this thing for fifteen whole seconds. I’m tired of waiting. Maybe it’s not your will or maybe you just don’t love me enough to answer my prayer.” Many Christians would not verbally express it like that, but that is really what they are communicating through their actions. But what we should take solace in is the fact that if God’s “shortly” is obviously 2,000-plus years, then that same different standard of time works with how long He puts up with us. That is why the apostle Peter went on to say in verse 9, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” You see, the Lord is looooooooooooongsuffering! The word “longsuffering” describes a stick of dynamite with an extremely long fuse to where, although it possesses a great amount of power to destroy anything around it, it can get “burned” a lot before it will explode. That is our God! He is slow to anger and abounding in patience & longsuffering! He is this way towards the world who needs to repent and to His children who also at times need to repent! God is full of mercy! Thank God for that! THE BLESSED BOOK Then in the rest of verse 1 through verse 2, the apostle John went on to describe himself and how he received this “Revelation”: “And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw.” But I want you to notice what the apostle John then said in verse 3: “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.” Now if for no other reason, we ought to embrace this particular Book of the Bible because of this one single verse. And that reason is because we are promised here that a blessing is associated with reading, hearing, and keeping the things written in it! And notice that it does not say that you have to understand the things contained in it either! It just says a person is blessed in reading, hearing, and keeping the things written in it. That’s all. What a blessing to know that when I choose to study Revelation and let my heart capture its heart, I am going to receive a blessing from God! But until just recently, I always believed that this was all that verse 3 meant. However, the Lord showed me something a little different as I prepared for this series. You see, the word “Blessed” can be translated different ways. Yes, it means to be blessed, fortunate, and to be envied, but it also means to be happy and joyful. In other words, to be blessed is not just to have our lives filled with things, it is to have our hearts full of happiness and joy at the same time. And this is true prosperity, church! Prosperity is not just having things and possessing a bunch of stuff. No, true prosperity is having a full heart—a heart full of joy and peace. If one does not have that, then all of possessions of this world will not truly “bless” them. So, my point is that the reading, hearing, and keeping of this Book of the Bible is supposed to produce these blessed emotions in people. But if you look at a lot of people when they read the things from this Book, they are not happy when they hear its truths. On the contrary, they get depressed, become anxious, and are filled with fear. But I believe a lot of the reason for this is because they are looking at the Book of Revelation through the wrong filter. Yes, they are not hearing the heart of what it is saying because they are looking at it through a carnal mindset—trying to figure out what all of the things John saw mean and only looking at them from an earthly perspective. Church, I’ll tell you—if we look at this Book through the wrong filter, it won’t lead to life & peace. We must be spiritually minded when studying the Book of Revelation! Amen? So, that is what I am going to do, through the help of the Holy Spirit. I am going to take you through this Book of the Bible to where you will receive the blessedness that accompanies the hearing and keeping of this Book. THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA So, after John’s introduction to his prophetic Book, he then begins to address the recipients of it by writing (and I’ll put these verses in bullet points):
So, as many have taken in hand to describe Jesus in every Book of the Bible, it seemed good to me to do likewise. (See the Addendum at the End of this Article for “Jesus in Every Book of the Bible) With that being said, let’s jump forward to the nineteenth chapter and take a look at one thing that I believe summarizes what the Revelation of Jesus Christ consists of: THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY In Revelation 19:9, after heaven rejoiced in the destruction of Babylon, the angel with John said to him, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true sayings of God.’” And then in verse 10 we see John falling at the angel’s feet to worship him, and the angel said to him— “See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God!” You know, it is easy for one to idolize either the messenger of God or even a message from God. And I see that happen with various topics. I had one tell me before that they believe the Pauline epistles, and I wondered— “Do you not believe the other apostles’ epistles? What about the Gospels?” But man has the tendency to repeat the same error of the Corinthian Church— “I am of Paul” or “I am of Apollos.” We need to all be of JESUS—for it is God who gives the increase, not another servant of God or his writings. And the same goes for this Book we are covering: A lot of people have an undue affection for end-time prophecy and essentially “worship” this subject. We ought not do that with any biblical topic. Yeah, I love the subjects of grace, faith, the Holy Spirit, etc. but I dare not “worship” something pertaining to the kingdom of God more than I do the King of the kingdom Himself. And then I just love what the angel told the apostle John at the end of verse 10— “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” What this means is that at the very heart of all prophecy is Jesus. We see the apostle Paul saying this in First Corinthians 12:3 when he said that if anyone is speaking by the Spirit of God, they will be saying, “Jesus is Lord.” That means that with the gift of prophesy, Jesus is being testified of. But it is not just the gift of prophecy, which we can all operate in, that testifies of Jesus; Even the prophecy contained in the Book of Revelation speaks of Jesus Christ. And that is the point I want to leave you with today: When studying this Book, we must do what Hebrews 12:2 encourages us to do— “Look unto Jesus!” That means keep our eyes on the prize and off of the struggle of the race that is set before us—for when we keep our focus on Him, we will walk on water. We won’t sink into the depths of fear and despair. No, we will walk in joy unspeakable and full of glory—for our attention is set on the spirit of all prophecy. That is the Jesus who was, the Jesus who is, and the Jesus who is to come. Come quickly Lord! Amen. So since today is our annual First Fruits Sunday here at High Point Church, it seemed good to me and to the Holy Ghost to wrap up our teaching on the Fruit of the Spirit on this particular Sunday. With that being said, my title for today’s summary & recap of this series is “The Last Fruits on First Fruits.”
Now I hope you all have gotten as much out of this series on the Fruit of the Spirit as I have. This series of teachings has caused me personally to look at these nine virtues known as the Fruit of the Spirit quite differently than I had before. For one, I had never really seen these nine fruit as being the core nature of God Himself. But we have many Scriptures that back this up—because, for example, we know God is love, right (see First John 4:7)? He is also called both the “Prince of Peace” and the “God of Peace.” On top of that, we are constantly reminded in the Bible that God is good and He is faithful too. So, throughout the Bible we can find these nine virtues describing God Himself. Therefore, the fruit of the Spirit is essentially a call for us to imitate God in our hearts, actions and behavior. So, while most have essentially described the fruit of the Spirit as us simply displaying character in our lives, I now see these virtues as us basically producing God’s character in our lives. This is huge, church—because I believe that once we begin to see God as love, joy, peace, etc., then we find the freedom to reflect these virtues in our lives. In other words, once we see God as this way, we can see ourselves becoming this way too! Therefore, beholding His fruit is how we can nurture the seed for those same fruit that we who have been born again already have on the inside of us. And this has always been God’s plan for His creation, saints—to be fruitful and multiply in the paradise of His presence: Do you remember on the third day, after the Lord created the earth, what the Lord said? He said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:11-12). Here we see how God originally designed fruit to be produced: And I want you to notice that, first of all, in order for the tree to yield fruit that it must be created as a fruit tree. For example, if the tree is not an apple tree, then what is it not going to produce? Apples! So, the first thing that had to transpire in order for you and I to bear the fruit of the Spirit in our lives is to be recreated as a fruit-bearing tree. And we know that this occurred by the Holy Spirit when we called on the name of the Lord, were born again, and received the new nature we received through the Spirit washing, renewing and regenerating us (Titus 3:5). So, the Lord created things so that a fruit tree will yield its fruit, but notice that it yields fruit “according to its kind.” I like how the New Living Translation says this. It says, “from which they came.” In other words, a fruit tree is only going to produce the fruit, and the seed in that fruit, from the seed from which they came. So, the reason it is called the fruit of the Spirit is because it is fruit that is according to His kind, or you could say, it is the fruit that came directly from the seed of the Spirit. And that is exactly how I defined the Fruit of the Spirit: It is the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life. That means that it is what is produced in our lives both from what we have in our recreated spirit when we got saved (i.e. the fruit of our spirit) and from what the Holy Spirit helps us to produce (i.e. the fruit of the Holy Spirit). And both of these truths work together to see more fruit in our lives—for we had to be born of the Spirit to be capable to produce His fruit and we also need His help in producing it as well. So, what I want to do in this, the “last fruits” of our teaching on the Fruit of the Spirit is go back through each of these nine virtues and briefly touch on some of the highlights of what they are and how we can see them produced in our lives: Now these nine virtues are, of course, listed in Galatians 5:22-23 as “… love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control …” (Galatians 5:22-23). First of all, I made the point as we went through these nine fruit that the order that Paul listed them in is significant: For example, and understandably so, love is mentioned first in his list. Why? Well, because God’s core nature is agape. Therefore, like God is at the top of the food chain, love should certainly be at the top of the fruit chain. Also, Jesus called love—both our love for God and our love for our neighbor—the greatest of all the commandments. And Jesus then gave us a new commandment that was a whole new standard of love—loving one another as He has loved us. So, love certainly deserves to be the first in Paul’s list. But love also might be first because it is the meant to be the first virtue produced in the life of a born again, Spirit-filled Christian. You see, the Bible is explicit that our love for one another is how we know that we have passed from death unto life (First John 3:14). It is also how the world will know that we are Jesus’ disciples (John 13:35). So, you could say that love is how both we ourselves and the world around us will know that we are Christians. So, I don’t think I need to belabor this point any more that love is the greatest of all these fruit. Amen? But we also learned that by walking in this love, it will organically yield in our lives the other fruit as well. For example, joy and peace then become a natural by-product of the love we are producing. I’ll tell you—you show me someone who loves well and I’ll show you someone who also produces some joy and peace in their lives. Amen? So, my point is, these fruit play off one another in many respects. But do you remember how I made the point that the lower third of these nine manifestations of the Spirit are probably the last three virtues most Christians desire in their lives—faithfulness, humility (i.e. meekness), and self-control? Yes, I’m sure if we were to poll a hundred-plus Christians and asked them to honestly rank these nine Fruit of the Spirit, that these three would be at the bottom of the totem pole. But I made the point that the fruit of the Spirit are like our spiritual muscles, and like it is with most body-builders, the tendency is to only focus on developing the upper third of their body. In other words, these gym rats like to work on their chest, shoulders and arms, but they don’t work on their thighs and calves. This should not be so for us, spiritually-speaking. We need to not just focus on the upper half of Paul’s list—desiring more love, joy and peace. No, we need to pursue being more faithful, humble and self-controlled in our lives like we would being more loving, joyful and peaceful. So, my point is that Paul’s order of these fruit shows us some important truths about all of the fruit’s importance in our lives. So now, as promised, let’s briefly go back through each of the nine fruit of the Spirit in order to see what they are and how to see them produced in our lives:
CONCLUSION Church, fruit in our lives is what the Lord is after. I would say that it is ultimate goal of God for each and every one of us. In fact, this Greek word for “fruit” in Galatians 5:22 is used 66 times in New Testament. What makes that number significant, you ask? Well, we have 66 books in the Bible. Therefore, I think it is safe to say that the entire Word of God is geared around “fruit”—showing us God’s fruit and teaching us to bear fruit according to His own kind. And today is the fulfillment of all that we have been talking about over the past two or three months—for the purpose of First Fruits Sunday is to give everyone an opportunity to be even more fruitful by showing God’s love, goodness, kindness, etc. to your church family. In fact, it is essentially the same as what many people around the world are doing this week, where they are joining gyms and resolving to get back in shape for this coming year. Well, that is what today could be viewed as—for some of us it is us going to our spiritual gym for the first time in a while and exercising our spiritual muscles. But like we might say to the person who has made it their New Year’s resolution to start exercising, one quick word of encouragement: Don’t just make this a once-a-year event in your life. Live a lifestyle of blessing those around you—purposefully and intentionally thinking of ways to bear fruit towards those you come in contact with. This is the way to joy, the way of peace, and most importantly how to give glory to your Father! Amen and amen! REVIEW
So, we are coming close to concluding our study of the Fruit of the Spirit—which we have seen are the Lord’s divine characteristics and attributes that the Holy Spirit helps produce in our lives. In other words, the fruit of the Spirit is God’s character being produced in us, to where we exhibit His character. Again, we have learned that these are the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life. Not only that, but they are also the evidence that one is truly spiritual. Therefore, if we desire to be spiritually mature, then these nine virtues will be a part of our lives. Of course, these nine fruit of the Spirit are listed in Galatians 5:22-23 as “… love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control …” (Galatians 5:22-23). Thus far, we have covered eight of these nine fruit, and we have studied some awesome things. So, if you have missed any of these, please either get a hold of the prior notes or go to our website and listen to the one’s you’ve missed. But let me say that the last two fruit we have covered are the first two in Paul’s list—the fruit of love and the fruit of joy. And we learned last time that like Jesus said concerning the great commandment, the second is like the first. Likewise, the second fruit (joy) is like the first (love). You see, like God is at the top of the food chain, love is certainly at the top of the fruit chain. And love is a choice and an action, not necessarily a feeling or an emotion. We saw that since it is a commandment, that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to feel like doing it to obey. Well, we learned last time that joy is no different. You see, if love is a choice and not an emotion, then why would joy be any different? I made the point last time that the vast majority of Christians believe that while love might be an act of obedience, joy is just going to happen automatically in our life. I believe, like love, goodness, kindness, etc., the fruits of joy and peace are a choice, not just fruit that fall on us. A good example of this that we will look at again in a moment is in Philippians 4:4 where the apostle Paul tells this church to “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, Rejoice.” Why would the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul tell us to always rejoice if joy was just automatic? I mean, if joy was just something that is manifested in and through us irrespective of our own conscious and deliberate decision, then why would we have to be told to exhibit it? No, I think it is clear that, like love, joy is not an emotion or a feeling; joy is also a spiritual fruit that is meant to be produced in the natural. That means that I don’t have to feel happy or to necessarily have joyful emotions to produce this fruit. All I have to do is decide whether I am going to let my feelings dictate what is true or if I am going to purpose to let my spiritual nature walk in the truth. Now last time, after we described both what and who joy is, we looked at how we can see the fruit of it in our lives. And I said that one thing that is clear to me about joy is that it is predominantly a product of one’s perspective: I used the example of how we can line up two people—one who is an elderly millionaire and the other a 12-year-old kid who doesn’t have two pennies to rub together—and then give both of them $100. Guess what is going to happen? The millionaire might show some gratitude but he certainly would not be bubbling over with joy, right? On the other hand, the kid would probably be ecstatic, filled with joy. Why? The $100 is worth the same, isn’t it? The difference is that it is worth less to the millionaire than it is to the child. In other words, it is how they view the money and the value system that creates the joy, not the money itself. Likewise, you and I can be filthy, stinking rich in the spirit, having the same spiritual blessings as all the other born-again Christians out there, but if one of us doesn’t either recognize, focus on or esteem those spiritual blessings, then we won’t have joy produced in our hearts like another Christian who does. Therefore, we can accurately say that joy is the fruit of focus. So, I gave an example of what possessing joy is like: It would be like someone coming up to you, and promising to give you a million dollars. In fact, they say that the money is yours. It’s as good as done. And they’ll mail you a check by the end of the week. Well, depending on who it is that promised you this, you will have varying feelings. For example, if it is someone who has a reputation of being a prankster, they don’t have any indications from their life that they have that kind of money, or you simply just don’t know this person that well, you might not have any joy at that moment because your confidence in that promise would understandably be weak. But what would happen if you went to mail box one day that week and there was an envelope in the mail from this person, and in it was a check for one million dollars. Well, you probably still will not let yourself get too ecstatic because the check might not be good, right? But then you decide to take it to the bank it’s drawn on and ask them to give you a certified check for it, and you see them get up and go make that check for you. What do you think you are going to be feeling on the inside right then? Even before the check hits your hand, and you know it’s as good as gold, your heart rate will be sky high at that moment! So, this is what joy feels like: It is like when you don’t have that million dollars in your hand, but you feel like you do. Glory! THE PATH TO PEACE Now before we move on to the final piece of fruit that we have left to cover, let me make one important point: I personally believe there is a reason Paul put the fruit of the Spirit in the order that he did in Galatians 5:22-23. Why? Because these are the appropriate order in how to start seeing these fruit in our lives. Let me explain: You see, everything starts with love. Love is the foundation of “quality Christianity.” So, check your love walk—because I can guarantee you that if you are not walking in love with people (being generous, benevolent, considering others more than you do yourselves) then you won’t be walking in joy, nor will you have peace. For example, if we are going to experience fullness of joy, we must learn to become givers—to give of our time, our service, and yes, of our resources too. Sure, it is important that we cooperate with these other spiritual laws of God’s kingdom in order to experience joy, but being a giver is what I consider to be the most important key to joy that we have. I remember early in my Christian walk being dissatisfied with the level of joy I was walking in. I was growing by leaps and bounds and learning more and more about the Lord, but I witnessed in others a joy that I did not see in my own life. This prompted me to ask the Lord, “Lord, why do these other individuals seem to have more joy than I do?” To which the Lord responded, “It is because you count your life dear to yourself.” Then He took me over to this passage of Scripture in the book of Acts where the Apostle Paul made a powerful and most revealing statement. In Acts chapter 20 Paul was summarizing his message to a group of pastors saying that he was aware of the chains and tribulations that awaited him in Jerusalem. Then he said, “But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy…” (Acts 20:24) Through this simple, yet profound statement we see a major key to the joy that is our inheritance in Christ. The way the Lord unlocked this verse to me was that the reason Paul was able to finish his race with joy was because, number one, he did not let anything move him and, number two, because he did not count his life dear to himself. But He also showed me something more specific: Number one, I saw that because Paul did not let things move him, he was enabled to finish his race. In other words, simply persevering to the end and not quitting is based on our faith to not let circumstances and situations move us. And the same is true for all of us. If we do not let these things move us, we too will finish our race. It is only in allowing ourselves to be swayed by the tribulations of life that we will be hindered from finishing our race and completing our course. But the second truth we see in this verse is that finishing our race with joy is directly tied to not counting our own lives as dear to ourselves. You see, just because we are strong in faith does not mean that we will enjoy the journey to the degree that we can. Yes, it is only when we learn to not count our life dear to ourselves that we will finish our race with joy. In other words, while letting nothing move us through trusting and believing in God will enable us to finish our race; coming to the place where we become selfless and focused more on the needs of others is when we will possess joy in the midst of that race. Amen! We actually see this in the sequence of Philippians 4:2-7 when Paul begins to make an appeal to a couple of women in the church to walk in unity with one another and not to be contentious (see verses 2-3). Then, in verse 4, he exhorts them to rejoice in the Lord always. So, yes, love always precedes joy. But did you know that joy precedes peace too? Yes, after he talks to them about rejoicing, he gets into the things that govern the peace of God. So, there is evidently a way of peace in our lives, and along that way is love & joy. THE FRUIT OF PEACE So, now we come to the final fruit of the Spirit that we have left to cover—the fruit of peace. Let’s begin by defining it: This word for “peace” comes from the Greek word eirene which describes a state of rest, quietness and calmness. (On a side note, this is where some women have gotten their name “Irene” from) Now this peace that Paul speaks of here is like a two-sided coin. Of course, there is the side of peace that describes the tranquility, quietness, and rest in the soul. But there is also the side of peace that describes peace between two individuals. In fact, in the Blue Letter Bible application, peace is defined as that tranquil and blessed state of the soul, which is what we commonly think of when we refer to peace. But it also defines it as peace between individuals (i.e. harmony & concord), which is that peace that we speak of when we refer to the absence of wars and conflicts. So, we could say, there is a peace to be had on the inside—that is, peace within man—and a peace we can walk in on the outside—that is, peace towards men. So, I that to say that peace has different meaning depending on the context it is used in. Now let’s quickly look at that fruit of peace that we can possess on the inside of us: I would describe this peace as that same peace that enabled Daniel to get a good night’s rest in the den of lions. It is that peace that the Prince of Peace Himself walked in that enabled Him to lie down and rest peacefully on the boat when the storm was raging around Him. It is that supernatural peace that causes the winds and waves of life to not disturb us or cause us to change our course. This is the Lord’s peace, the peace that He left with us (see John 14:27)—the peace that surpasses all understanding that guards both our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (see Philippians 4:7). Now as we have brought up repeatedly throughout this series, just because we have these fruit of the Spirit dwelling within us as born-again, Spirit-filled Christians, does not mean that we will just automatically walk in them. There is a cooperation with these virtues that enables us to bear this fruit consistently in our lives. For example, like we talked about with the fruit of joy already, peace is also a fruit of our focus. In other words, it is walked in when we choose the proper perspective—for the Lord told us that He will keep us in perfect peace when our mind is stayed on Him (Isaiah 26:3). This is also what is implied in Philippians chapter 4 when Paul teaches us that the way to having the peace guard our hearts & minds is by us rejoicing, being thankful, turning to the Lord with the things which concern us, etc. (see Philippians 4:4-7). So, what we are beholding is again imperative to maintaining our peace. However, peace is also obtained by the presence of the God of peace in our lives (see Philippians 4:9). You see, this is the manifest presence of God in our lives—peace. Where there is true peace, there is God. Where there is confusion, turmoil, strife, division, etc., God is not manifest there. So, I say that to say that if we want peace manifest in our life, then we need God’s manifest presence surrounding us to keep us in that bubble of peace. Now this peace of the soul that surpasses all understanding is not what I feel led for us to emphasize this week. Mainly because I will be teaching much more thoroughly on that side of peace at the beginning of 2020 as we will be talking about stress and how to both deal with it and keep it out of our life. Stay tuned for that. What I want us to spend more time talking about this week is that part of peace among the body of Christ that is less emphasized. However, even though we like to hear more about possessing peace within ourselves, this peace towards one another is something extremely critical that the body of Christ needs to be established in. In fact, in my studies, I have found that most of the times when the term “peace” is used in the New Testament, it is referring to peace between individuals. So, let’s look at some of these verses that “stress” the importance of peace in the Body of Christ: PEACE TOWARDS MEN A good first example of this is how, around this time of year, we hear repeated what the angels declared to the shepherds on Christmas Eve— “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (Luke 2:14). Now it is obvious that with the coming of Christ, that did not secure peace on the earth among men—for we have seen war after war over the past 2,000 years since His birth. In fact, Jesus even said in Matthew 10:34, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” So no, the peace that the angels broadcasted was not going to be peace among men; the peace that He was ushering in would be made towards men by God. In other words, Jesus was the peace offering made by God to bring conditions of peace between Him and His creation. Therefore, as the apostle Paul said regarding Jesus in Ephesians 2:14, “He Himself is our peace…” Therefore, the primary form of peace that Jesus came to provide for us is the peace between us and God. In other words, He came to take the sin of the world in His body so that we do not have to be separated from Him anymore. You could say that God in Christ was the ultimate peacemaker. And because He brought us peace with Himself, now we are called to be peacemakers ourselves. Of course, that is referring to ushering others into the same salvation that we have received, but it is also referring to us giving people the same state of “right-standing” with us. In other words, we seek peace with others like Christ sought with us. It is only fitting that we as His children imitate our Heavenly Father—for we are His ministers of reconciliation (Compare w/ Second Corinthians 5:18-21). BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS We see this in the Beatitudes when Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9) Why will the peacemakers be the ones called sons of God? It is because their Father is the original & ultimate peacemaker, so they are just following in His footsteps. Amen. And again, this way of the peacemaker is a fruit of true spirituality. It is not natural, but is what a truly spiritual person does. We see this in James 3:13-18 when Pastor James began correcting this church in what a truly “wise person” does. He says, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” What this is essentially saying is that true spiritual wisdom is not found in our theology, but in our behavior—for if there are envies, jealousies, strife, self-seeking, etc. in our midst, then there is no peace. And if there is not the fruit of peace, then it is earthly, carnal, and demonic. I have heard it said and agree wholeheartedly: strife is the manifest presence of the devil and peace is the manifest presence of God. Where there is peace, there is the God of peace. You see, have you ever noticed how “natural” it is for us to be contentious, to slander others and to become disjoined? The reason it is so natural is because it is carnal. You see, any old sinner can get mad, find fault, and run from reconciliation. But it takes someone who intentionally decides to walk spiritually to be a peacemaker. Why? Because people don’t like us much when we don’t feed into their slander and gossiping about the person they are offended with. It is going against the stream. Let me give you an example: when someone offends us or does something that it hurtful, our natural response is not to go to that person and tell them how what they did made us feel and to seek reconciliation. No, the general response is to not go to that person but to go to others and tell them the hurtful thing that this person did to us. Why? Because when the flesh gets involved it wants to do what is easy, and that is not to confront; it is to vent to others. But what if we all did what Jesus taught us in Matthew chapter 18 when He taught us how to deal with a brother or sister who sins against us. What if we always—without any reservation—either dealt with it in our heart or went directly to the person ourselves and dealt with the situation one on one. But this is what the Lord expects from all of us, His children—to be His peacemakers. PURSUING PEACE And make no mistake about it, this fruit of peace is not going to just automatically appear on your branches. It is going to have to be pursued—because we live in this natural, carnal world, and everything in it (including our flesh) will just naturally go the opposite of the way of peace. So, let me give you several Scriptures that will establish this point that peace must be pursued:
CONCLUSION So, I hope you can see just how much of a premium the Lord obviously puts on pursuing peace with one another and with all people. It is a big part of Christianity in His eyes, and should be in ours as well. But one thing that needs to be said about being peacemakers is that it all begins on the inside. In other words, as we are certainly called to be a people who are “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (see Ephesians 4:3), this first takes place in our hearts. This is why the apostle Paul said in Colossians 3:15, “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.” You see, while most people use this verse to describe how peace is to be our guide when making bigger decisions (and I certainly agree with that principle), what Paul was actually saying here is that we are to let that peace that we are to have with one another to call the shots in our hearts. In other words, we are not to allow our hearts to get filled with offenses, strife, conflicts, etc. since we are called in one body. We can see that the way of peace is found by letting that peace rule in our hearts first. So, as the apostle Paul said in Second Thessalonians 3:16, I say to you today: “Now may the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always in every way. The Lord be with you all. REVIEW
So today, we are going to pick back up in our study of the Fruit of the Spirit—which we have seen are the Lord’s divine characteristics and attributes that the Holy Spirit helps produce in our lives. In other words, the fruit of the Spirit is God’s character being produced in us, to where we exhibit His character. How many of you know how important this is for us to produce God’s nature and attributes in & through our lives? It is vital—for the world needs to see God, and a major way in which He is seen and known is through our lives. In other words, the world will know that He is love when they see His love operating through the church. So, we have learned that these are the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life and also are the evidence that one is truly spiritual. No, it is not our spiritual giftings that indicate that we are mature spiritually; our spiritual maturity is based on how much of these nine fruit we produce in our lives. Now these nine fruit of the Spirit are listed in Galatians 5:22-23 as “… love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control …” (Galatians 5:22-23). Thus far, we have covered seven of these nine fruit: We began by studying two of the fruit sandwiched in the middle of Paul’s list— the fruits kindness and goodness. Then, the following week, we looked at the fruits of longsuffering and faithfulness. And then, the week after that, we covered the last two fruits in Paul’s list—the fruits of gentleness (i.e. humility) and self-control. And we saw some awesome things in these 6 fruits of the Spirit. So, if you missed any of these teachings, I encourage you to go to our website and listen to them. There was some good stuff in them! Then last time, we moved on and began looking at the top third of Paul’s list—beginning with the first and greatest fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of love. I made the point last time that agape is the undisputed greatest fruit of the them all, and why? Not just because Paul listed it first, but because it is the core-nature and characteristic of God Himself. We are told in First John 4:8 that “God is love.” This is not just saying that God has love to give. No, God is love! And we know that God has the preeminence, right? Yes, He is the greatest, the most glorious, the highest. Yes, God is the top of the food-chain! So, we learned that if God is love, then guess what? Love is the top of the “fruit-chain” too! Love is the highest and He is the best! We also saw that love is the greatest fruit we can produce in our lives because even out of faith and hope, it is the main virtue that we begin to walk in now and will continue to walk in throughout eternity. In fact, we learned that it is the greatest of all the commandments and is what our Lord gave us as the new commandment to following—loving one another as He has loved us. Therefore, love is the most valuable “produce” we can produce in the Christian life. Now we learned that there is a big difference between the way God uses the word “love” and the way the world uses the word “love.” We saw that this word “love” comes from the Greek word agape, which describes the God kind of love, again different than a worldly kind of love. You see, in the world, we are quick to loosely throw around the term “love.” We say I love Jesus, I love my wife, and I love my children the same way we say, I love pizza, I love chocolate, and I love coffee. But that is a cheap, generic, artificial love—because it is generally based on the performance of the thing we say we love. For example, what if the pizza man doesn’t use the best ingredients, or the pizza is cold, etc.? Then you are not going to say you love that pizza. What about the coffee? If it’s cold, watered down, or isn’t sweetened properly, you probably won’t say that you “love” that cup of coffee, right? The point of this was that this is worldly love because it is based on the condition of the thing we are loving. No, the God kind of love we are talking about here is a love that is not based on the behavior of the one being loved; it is solely based on the character of the one doing the loving. Therefore, agape is unconditional, limitless, and self-sacrificing. So, back to that example of loving coffee. If I truly did love coffee the way agape loves, then even if the coffee is bitter, bland, or just doesn’t taste the best, I will still drink from that cup. Amen? And why? Because it is not based on how good the coffee is; it is based on how good I am at loving unconditionally. Now we saw that the King James Version translates this God kind of love as “charity,” which I believe is a good description of agape because when one gives to a charity, there is nothing expected in return. It is understood that when we give to a “charity” that there are no strings attached and there is no reciprocation. Not to mention, “charities” are not designed to receive well wishes or good intentions. They receive tangible goods and monetary gifts. Likewise, agape is not just saying “I love you”; it is giving love. And I said that I believe John 3:16 describes it best by saying, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” It did not say that God so loved the world that He said to it, “I love you so, so much.” Nor did it say, “…that He gave it big hug.” No, He so agape’d us that He gave something (rather, Someone) to us and for us! And He did not just give anything; He gave His very best. Amen! So, we need to understand that this fruit of love is not to be cheapened by comparing it to this world’s idea of love. No, agape is not a love that is determined by the person being loved; it is only determined by both the nature and actions of the one doing the loving. Amen. We spent a considerable amount of time looking at this truth that love is a commandment, not a suggestion. Therefore, since it is a commandment, that means it does not necessarily involve emotions or feelings because a command is something we do whether we feel like it or not. Now those of you who have served in the military would agree to this point—but more times than not, when you were given orders to do something, you didn’t feel like doing what they told you to do. Particularly, when you were in basic training and those drill sergeants gave you orders like “drop and give me twenty” or “go run 5 miles!”, nothing in your flesh or your soul wanted to do it. But guess what? You did it anyway! And why? Because you were given orders by your authorities. Again, agape is a spiritual thing! Therefore, it is eternal and unchanging! But so many have a hard time believing this because they feel that they do not have love because they don’t “feel” love. In other words, because they don’t have the emotions of love and there is selfishness, anger, etc. in there, they believe that they are void of love. But this is when we must believe what the Word says more than what our feelings and our heads are telling us. Amen! And, as it is with everything spiritual in nature such as love, we are not led by our feelings. Saints, what I am saying is—do not wait until you feel like operating in these spiritual things before you practice them. Know that they are fruits of the spirit and spiritual things are not based on feelings. Again, if we are going to be a “spiritual” man or woman, we are going to have to learn to live out of the part of us that is willing by faith (i.e. the spirit) and not yield to the part of us that is weak by feelings (i.e. the flesh). Yes, being spiritual is a decision! It's an action—an act of our will (for the spirit is willing). It is not carnal to have feelings and emotions; it is carnal to act on those feelings and emotions; to act on what we know is true and, by faith, will to do those things is spiritual. A good Scriptural example I gave of this is found in Titus 2:3-4, where the Apostle Paul told Pastor Titus that the older women were to, among other things, admonish the young women to love their husbands and to love their children. We saw that these older women were not to admonish the younger women to “feel” more like loving their husbands and their children? No! We do not admonish someone to have certain emotions and feelings. What these older women were being admonished to do was to teach the younger women how to love their husbands and children—which, of course, would be actions and deeds of love. Amen! You see, love is more of an action than it is an emotion. And if we can be taught how to love, then we should know that it is an act of our own volition. If it were an emotion, then it would be out of our control because we are always going to have ups and downs in our emotions. But since love is a commandment, we know that it is in our control because the Lord would not have told us to do something that it wasn’t in our control to do. Amen! Yes, church, spirituality is having command over our feelings and emotions and learning to do things simply because it is what we are told to do or it is simply the right thing to do. Church, we must have resolve and integrity—doing what is right simply because it is right and because it is a command. We should need no other reason to love one another than this! THE SECOND IS LIKE IT So now, let’s move on to the second fruit that we see mentioned in Galatians 5:22—the fruit of joy. And just like Jesus said regarding the first fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of love, the second commandment of loving our neighbor is like the first and greatest commandment of loving God. Likewise, the second fruit of the Spirit is like the first. What do I mean by this? I mean that if love is a choice and not an emotion, then why would joy be any different? You see, I think that the vast majority of Christians believe that while love might be an act of obedience, joy is just going happen automatically in our life. But is that true? I don’t believe so. I believe, like love, goodness, kindness, etc. the fruits of joy and peace are a choice, not just fruit that fall on us. Let me give you an example: In Philippians 4:4, the apostle Paul tells this church to “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, Rejoice.” Why would the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul tell us to always rejoice if joy was just automatic? I mean, if joy was just something that is manifested in and through us irrespective of our own conscious and deliberate decision, then why would we have to be told to exhibit it? No, I think it is clear that, like love, joy is not an emotion or a feeling; joy is also a spiritual fruit that is meant to be produced in the natural. That means that I don’t have to feel happy or to necessarily have joyful emotions to produce this fruit. All I have to do is decide whether I am going to let my feelings dictate what is true or if I am going to purpose to let my spiritual nature walk in the truth. You see, this is why I am a big proponent in acting on the joy that we have inside of us. We can do this by laughing at our circumstances and the devil by faith. It doesn’t have anything to do with the way we feel. But since joy too is a fruit of the Spirit, why do we just sit there and cater to our feelings saying, “Well, I don’t feel like laughing right now.” We wouldn’t say— “Well, I don’t feel like reading my Bible anymore” and then just cater to that, would we? No, we have enough sense to know that is wrong. Nor would we believe that because we don’t feel like praising God that we evidently do not need to press through those feelings and cater to our flesh. No, if we know we are to act on things like this whether we feel like it or not, why would walking in any of the fruit of the Spirit be done any differently? No, we rejoice by faith because joy is a fruit of the Spirit just as we love by faith! Amen? WHO IS JOY? Now I want to remind you that all of these nine fruit of the Spirit are the characteristics and nature of God Himself. So, this fruit of joy is also an attribute of the Lord. In other words, just as much as God is love, He is joy as well. You see, some of us don’t have a lot of joy in our life because it was never modeled to us. What I mean is that some of us weren’t raised in happy homes. Our parents were locked up in certain ways and never were examples of joy to us. So, guess what? Unless we learn joy from our peers, we are probably going to conform to what we learned from the home we were raised in. But I want you to understand today that it’s okay to be happy and have joy. We have a Heavenly Father, an elder brother, and a holy companion, who is the ultimate model of joy for us! Glory to God! Let me show you a few Scriptures that model the joy of the Lord to us: In John 15:11, Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” Notice that it is Jesus’ joy that remains in us. This is the fruit of the Spirit that is in us, Jesus’ joy! And Jesus said that because His joy remains in us, our joy can be full. In John 17:13, Jesus prayed to His Father and said the following: “But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.” Notice again that Jesus possessed joy Himself and here He prayed that we would have His joy fulfilled in us. So, this is evidently the Lord’s will for us, right? The apostle Paul said in First Thessalonians 1:6, “And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit” And this exactly what I am attempting to get you to start doing today—being a follower of the joy you see in those over you, which certainly includes the Lord Himself. But notice here that it is called the joy of the Holy Spirit. Did you know the Holy Ghost has joy too? We’ve already seen Jesus possessed joy; now we are seeing the Holy Spirit has joy as well. But what about God the Father? Look at First Timothy 1:11 “according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.” This word “blessed” can be translated “happy.” Church, we need to see Him as the Happy God today! Another, more familiar Scripture is Nehemiah 8:10 that refers to the joy of the Lord being our strength. The joy of what? The joy of the Lord! You see, it is His joy! And this is the only reason we can have the fruit of joy in our life—because of the seed of joy that was sown in us by the Sower Himself. In other words, He can only give us this joy because He has it in Himself to give. Therefore, because the Godhead evidently possess joy themselves, they have joy to give to us. Amen? WHAT IS JOY? Now this word “joy” comes from the Greek word chara—which is akin to the word we know to be the word translated “grace,” charis. This is important to understand because of how our joy is connected to His grace. I’ll tell you, it’s awfully hard to have joy in our life without an understanding of what He has done for us by His grace. Far too many Christians have their focus on what they’ve done instead of what Christ has done. Church, I’ll tell you—if our eyes are predominately on who we are and what we’ve done, we have a good chance of being down & depressed. On the other hand, if you and I put our attention & focus on Jesus and the grace He’s provided for us, joy is the natural (or we could say, supernatural) byproduct. Amen? The word chara describes “gladness & cheerfulness.” The dictionary defines the verb form of joy—the word “rejoice”—as “to be joyful, to feel or express great happiness and to become cheerful.” Some synonyms used for “rejoicing” are words like “gladden, revel, exult, glory, delight, celebrate, and triumph.” However, as I have studied this word and the contexts that it is used in, I see how “joy & rejoicing” are easier to describe than they are to define. And the greatest description that I could find of what it means to “have joy and rejoice” is in the example of a dedicated and enthusiastic sports fan. Yes, the way that some of these “fanatics” act when their favorite team is victorious describes this word “rejoicing” to a tee. For example, notice that in the word “cheerful” is where we get the word “cheer” from. Who cheers? Fans! So, let’s consider some of the characteristics of a “fanatic”: What do many of these fans do when their team triumphs? They will clap their hands, pump their fists, and even throw their hands up in the air! Yes, they might jump up and down and even dance! Others will shout at the top of their lungs and will high-five and even hug complete strangers in those exciting moments! Saints, these joyful reactions by the “fanatic” describes the kind of rejoicing that the Bible speaks of. So, rejoicing is what one does at the height of their positive emotions. Simply stated—rejoicing is being excited! It is showing great enthusiasm and expressing it in some demonstrative way! So, no, rejoicing is not quiet and passive; it is loud and expressive! Now I do understand that people are wired differently and express their joy in different ways. For example, some of these very passionate fans are not demonstrative at all even though their devotion for their team runs just as deep. Therefore, rejoicing is not demonstrated the same way by everyone. However, the bottom line is that whatever way one of these devoted fans acts at the height of their excitement is a good description of how they rejoice. Now to some, that might just be getting a big smile across their face and lightly clapping their hands. To others (like myself), that might be absolutely losing themselves and screaming at the top of their lungs in excitement. To each their own. But, again, my point is—to rejoice is to celebrate in the most radical way that each person tends to. Church, our revelation of who God is and what He has done for us will naturally produce this genuine expression of joy. Yes, when we realize the magnitude of the grace and mercy we have obtained, it will touch our emotions too. Again, I am not advocating being emotion-led or emotion-ruled; but I am advocating letting our emotions serve the Lord through learning to rejoice in Him. So, the fruit of joy is not stoic and non-emotional. No, the joy of the Lord being produced in our lives will be a demonstrative cheerfulness & gladness that will mirror the height of our joy in this world. THE ROOT OF JOY Now that we have described both what and who joy is, how do we see fruit of it in our lives? Well, one thing that is clear to me about joy is that it is predominantly a product of one’s perspective: You see, we can line up two people—one who is an elderly millionaire and the other a 12-year-old kid who doesn’t have two pennies to rub together—and then give both of them $100. Guess what is going to happen? The millionaire might show some gratitude but he certainly would not be bubbling over with joy, right? On the other hand, the kid would probably be ecstatic, filled with joy. Why? The $100 is worth the same, isn’t it? The difference is that it is worth less to the millionaire than it is to the child. In other words, it is how they view the money and the value system that creates the joy, not the money itself. Likewise, you and I can be filthy, stinking rich in the spirit, having the same spiritual blessings as all the other born-again Christians out there, but if one of us doesn’t either recognize, focus on or esteem those spiritual blessings, then we won’t have joy produced in our hearts like another Christian who does. So, I believe we can accurately say that one’s joy oftentimes is based on what they see and what they hear. In other words, joy comes as a result of both looking at and listening to the right thing. Let me give you a couple of examples of this—naturally, from the Christmas story since “tis the season”: In the story of the wise men, we are told how after they left Herod’s presence, that they followed the star that they had seen in the East. And in Matthew 2:10, we are told that “when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.” Notice that they rejoiced with exceedingly great “joy” (the same Greek word, chara, used for the fruit of joy), when they saw something. Now I suppose some of us might have experienced something like this before. Perhaps it was when we saw a loved one whom we hadn’t seen for some time. Perhaps it is was when we found something we had lost and were unsure we would ever find again. And here is a good example: When we opened a Christmas gift and were surprised by something that was given to us that exceeded all expectations. I’ve seen some serious “joy” in watching children and even some adults when they’ve “seen” what lied beneath that wrapping paper. So, yes, “seeing” certain things has brought many of us great joy before! Amen? But over at (ironically enough), the same address in Luke’s Gospel, we see how sometimes our joy is based on what we hear: In Luke 2:10, after the angel appeared to the shepherds in the field and the glory of the Lord shown around them, He said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.” Notice the phrase “good tidings of great joy.” Now the phrase “good tiding” essentially describes information to share that someone will probably like. In other words, it describes “good news.” But the angel called it good news “of great joy.” In other words, the good news that he was about to tell them was to produce “great joy” in them (Again, the Greek word chara). I’m sure we’ve all experienced this one as well: Perhaps it was the news of a pregnancy or when someone told you that you had won a prize. Oftentimes, good news is a joy-producer in people, depending on how much they value the news being told to them. But my point is that the wise men’s joy was based on what they saw (i.e. the star) and the shepherd’s joy was based on what they heard (i.e. good tidings). Now this is the problem too: Just like people derive joy by the good things they see and hear, people’s lack of joy is based on the same thing—on the bad, alarming, and displeasing things that they are looking at and listening to. This is why Paul told us to rejoice in the Lord, not rejoice in our problems or in our circumstances, but in who He is and what He has done. In other words, we are looking at Him and His work as opposed to ourselves, our circumstances, etc. Church, this is the key to releasing the joy of the Lord in our lives—by not looking at the things which are seen that are temporal, but by keeping our focus and attention on the things that are spiritual and eternal. Now to some, this seems unrealistic. “How can someone not pay attention to the storms of life that are surrounding them?” they say. But what they miss is it is not us simply putting our head in the sand and covering our eyes; it is us choosing to look elsewhere while the storms surround us. We have the example of Peter walking on the water, right? There were storms all around him, and it was when he began to look at the wind & waves that he began to sink. However, when he put His focus on Jesus, He walked in the supernatural. Likewise, when you and I look away from everything else and look unto Jesus—the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2)—we can experience water-walking joy. So, no, it is not just trying not to look at the problems; it is deliberately looking at the answer that produces consistent and unwavering joy in our hearts. Joy is the fruit of focus. I love another Scriptural example we have of this: It is found in Hebrews 10:34 where the writer(s) of Hebrews described how they had “joyfully accepted the plundering of their goods, knowing that they had a better and an enduring possession for themselves in heaven.” How could someone do this? For instance, it would be like you or I going home today and finding someone had broken into our house and stolen everything we own. This verse says that they “joyfully accepted the plundering of their goods.” And why? Because they knew they had a better and an enduring possession for themselves in heaven. Wow! Now do you and I have a better and more enduring inheritance waiting for us in heaven or was this just true for the Early, First-Century Church? No, it is just as true for us as it was for them! So, God-forbid, if we lost everything that we possessed in this world, would we lose our joy or would we likewise know that we have better and more enduring possessions waiting for us in heaven? My point is, it is all a matter of perspective. Jesus taught us similar things regarding our perspective: In the last beatitude (Matthew 5:11-12), He said, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Here, Jesus taught us that we ought to rejoice and be exceedingly glad (sounds like an extra measure of joy to me) when we are reviled and persecuted falsely for Jesus’ sake. Why? Because great is our reward in heaven! Amen! So, what I am rejoicing in when I am persecuted for Christ’s sake is not the persecution itself, but is the reward on the other side of the persecution—which makes it more than worth it. For example, I suppose anyone in here might endure some temporary setback for a period of time if it was in exchange for a giant bounty. Amen? And this is not monopoly money we are talking about here! This is real gold, silver and precious stones that we have in our account, saints! So, what we have to do is what James taught his readers—Count it all joy (see James 1:2)! I saw the example of when all hell is breaking loose around us, it’s like a guy sitting in the confines of his own home counting the Benjamins! Glory! In other words, he’s not worried about all the alarm going on around his home; he’s focused on the riches he’s got in his possession! Amen! FEELING LIKE A MILLION BUCKS! So, continuing along this analogy, let me conclude today by giving you an example of what possessing joy is like: It would be like someone coming up to you, and promising to give you a million dollars. In fact, they say that the money is yours. It’s as good as done. And they’ll mail you a check by the end of the week. Well, depending on who it is that promised you this, you will have varying feelings. For example, if it is someone who either has a reputation of being a prankster, they don’t have any indications from their life that they have that kind of money, or you simply just don’t know this person that well, you might not have any joy at that moment because your confidence in that promise would understandably be weak. But what would happen if you went to mail box one day that week and there was an envelope in the mail from this person, and in it was a check for one million dollars. Well, you probably still will not let yourself get too ecstatic because the check might not be good, right? But then you decide to take it to the bank it’s drawn on and ask them to give you a certified check for it, and you see them get up and go make that check for you. What do you think you are going to be feeling on the inside right then? Even before the check hits your hand, and you know it’s as good as gold, your heart rate will be sky high at that moment! So, this is what joy feels like: It is like when you don’t have that million dollars in your hand, but you feel like you do. Glory! But let me take this a step further: What if some prominent, wealthy person in the community, who also already has a good reputation for being generous, a man of his word, etc., made you that same promise? Do you reckon you might feel joy rise up in you simply because he told you that it was on the way? No, you won’t necessarily have to see the check in your hand to start feeling joy rise up in your heart, will you? No, joy will be produced in you before you see the money. Again, this is what joy feels like: It is like when you don’t have that million dollars in your hand, but you feel like you do. Glory! So, the question that begs to be asked is—Can one be a millionaire and not even know it? Sure, they can! You realize that there have been people living on this earth who had riches available to them that they didn’t even realize. In one case, it might be a person who was left an inheritance and for whatever reason they didn’t ever receive it. In another case, it might have been a person who had a treasure hidden on their property somewhere that they never discovered. You name it, there are people out there who died in poverty when riches were rightfully theirs. Likewise, there are Christians who die having lived sad, depressed lives when they had so much to be happy about because of the riches they possessed in Christ. Yes, the riches are buried within them, but they never realize it and, therefore, never experience the joy of what they possess. This is one of the reasons Jesus gave us the Parable of the Hidden Treasure. In this parable He said, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (see Matthew 13:44). Notice the “joy” that accompanied him knowing what he had buried in that field. That is the same fruit of joy that will spring forth in our field when we realize what we have buried in us. Amen? REVIEW
So today, we are continuing our study of the Fruit of the Spirit—which are the Lord’s divine characteristics and attributes that the Holy Spirit helps produce in our lives. Therefore, we learned that these are the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life and also are the evidence that one is truly spiritual. No, it is not our spiritual giftings that indicate that we are mature spiritually; our spiritual maturity is based on how much of these nine fruit we produce. You know, fruit is called “produce,” right? That’s because fruit like apples, oranges, bananas, etc. are actual “produce” that we can now benefit from (i.e. eat). Likewise, if we are bearing the fruit of the Spirit, then we are “producing” something that others benefit from. And that is what the Lord intends—that we produce His godly characteristics so that the world can experience Him. Amen? Now these nine fruit of the Spirit are listed in Galatians 5:22-23 as “… love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control …” (Galatians 5:22-23). So, we began by studying two of the fruit sandwiched in the middle of Paul’s list— the fruits kindness and goodness. And we saw that these are sister fruits because they are so similar. However, we learned that what they have in common is that they are both to be produced in our lives. In other words, they are not just the good and kind intentions we have, but are good and kind manifestations. We learned that “kindness” describes someone who is useful, manageable, or employed by the Lord. We also saw that the fruit of goodness describes being “beneficial.” So, we learned that if we want to be both useful and beneficial in God’s kingdom, we need to be producing both of these fruit in our lives. But we learned that as it is with all of the fruit of the Spirit, these fruit do not come by accident. Like it is with growing specific fruit in our gardens, we have to plan to produce the fruits of kindness and goodness. Therefore, one must plan to be good. He or she must learn to think a certain way to be kind. In other words, as it is with all of these fruit of the Spirit, we must make room in our hearts to produce goodness and kindness to those we come in contact with. Then, the following week, we moved into another couple of fruit of the Spirit—the fruits of longsuffering and faithfulness: We learned that longsuffering is essentially “patience with people.” And as I made the point of, this fruit of the Spirit comes from the Greek word makrothumia which describes someone who takes a “long” time to get “mad” or “go off” on you like a stick of dynamite. Therefore, a person who possesses “longsuffering” is someone who is extremely forbearing and doesn’t easily “explode” on others. And we learned that this God-empowered ability to “forebear” with people is a virtue that must be put on—meaning, it requires a certain mentality to produce it in our lives. Then we looked at the fruit of faithfulness and saw that this particular fruit of the Spirit is describing someone who, through their faith, is reliable and loyal—that is, he or she is trustworthy, dependable, dedicated, consistent and unwavering in their dealings with others. In other words, people can believe in this person who exhibits faithfulness. I also made the point that since this Greek word used for “faithfulness” is the word for “faith” we really cannot separate our faithfulness in life from our faith in the Lord. Yes, God’s faithfulness is what our faith is rooted in, and our faithfulness is the fruit of the faith we have in Him. Then last week, we covered the last two fruit that the apostle Paul mentions, which are the only two listed in Galatians 5:23—gentleness & self-control. And we learned that these two fruit of the Spirit are probably at the bottom of just about every believer’s list as well. Therefore, while we might tend to focus more on the love, joy and peace side of the fruit of the Spirit, faithfulness, humility, and self-control are the other side of the fruit of the Spirit that will make us fully fruitful. Regarding this, I shared with you how I once had the Lord ask me— “Would you like to know what the muscles of your spirit man are?” Then He told me— “They are the fruit of the Spirit.” Essentially, what the Lord was telling me was that just as we recognize people from a distance by their physical physique, we recognize those who are both spiritual and unspiritual by their spiritual physique. In that case, it is by their fruit (their spiritual muscles or lack thereof) that we will know them. So, I said all of that to say, we don’t want to be like a lot of the gym rats out there that go to the gym to work out only their chest, shoulders, and arms and have these skinny little quads and calves. No, we need to develop the lower body just like we are (hopefully) looking to develop the upper body. And in this case, the lower body is the lower third of Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit (i.e. faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). Therefore, attention needs to be given to developing the lower third of our spiritual muscles just like we desire to be developed in the upper third fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, and peace. Once we do that, we will be a perfect man and “full of fruit.” Amen? So, we looked at the fruit of the gentleness and saw that it essentially describes someone who is gentle, meek or mild. Mild as opposed to sharp, right? Therefore, a person exhibiting this fruit of the Spirit is a person who is the opposite of being abrasive, severe, harsh, and arrogant. It is for this reason that I would describe it as “humility.” Now even though most translations use this word “gentleness,” many of us might better recognize the King James version’s translation of “meekness” here. And I believe that because of terms like this, many Christians do not esteem this particular virtue—because for some of us, we don’t see the terms “gentleness” and “meekness” as strengths. But what we need to understand is that “meekness” does not necessarily describe a weak person. No, meekness is not weakness. Rather, meekness is power under perfect control. You see, if I am mild & meek, it doesn’t mean I don’t have something to offer or don’t have an opinion; it just simply means that, in my love for you, I am willing to lay down my thoughts, opinion and viewpoint. Could I let you have it? Absolutely! But what does the selfless love of God do? It doesn’t do what it can do; it does what you are open to it doing for you. And we learned that this is exactly how our God is—He is meek and lowly in heart. He doesn’t force His will on any of us, but gives us a free choice. Therefore, this fruit of humility, meekness and gentleness is going to have to be chosen by us. No, as it is with all of the fruit of the Spirit, humility is not going to forced on us by God. We are taught that we must pursue and put on this virtue ourselves. Amen? We then looked at the last fruit of the Spirit Paul mentions—the fruit of self-control. We learned that the Greek word describes “inward ruling power.” In other words, like a democracy is literally “people ruling power,” a person exhibiting the fruit of self-control is a person who is “governing” themselves. So, “self-control” is the supernatural ability of the Holy Spirit to rule over our outward man by our inward man. But we learned that like you’ll hear said in the world regarding people shooting down the notion that the majority rules when it comes to certain decisions— “This is not a democracy!”—it is not with this particular fruit of the Spirit either! No, God the Father is not going to control you for you! Jesus is not going to make you produce His fruit either! And contrary to popular opinion, the Holy Spirit is also not going to make you bear this fruit of self-control! No, the only one that will control you is you! We went through several examples last week that prove that even the people who might say that they just cannot help doing this or doing that are mistaken. No, in almost every case, people do what they can get away with. In other words, they can control themselves because when it comes to consequences and rewards, they do it all the time for these things. No, the person who truly cannot control themselves is a demonized person. But for the majority of us who don’t have some other spirit controlling us, it is our own spirit that is in control. But again, this takes supernatural strength a lot of times. We need the Holy Spirit to help us control certain feelings, emotions, and flesh that rear their ugly heads. This is why we looked at Proverbs 16:32, which is a great verse describing the strength of a person who can control themselves: It says, “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” You see, like we said with “meekness,” people do not see self-restraint as a strength, but it truly is. A weak person lacks self-control—saying whatever comes up, venting all their feelings, and simply losing control. A strong person controls his or her words & actions—being even more mighty than someone who conquers an entire city. That shows us just how hard it is to “control self,” and why we need the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in this fruit. Perhaps this is the reason the apostle Paul listed “self-control” last—because it is the pinnacle of living a Spirit-controlled life. Church, you have probably heard me say before that we are walking in the fruit of the Spirit the most when we feel like smacking somebody and we don’t. That’s actually the fruit of self-control in operation. It is not an absence of “feelings” or a void of negative “emotions.” No, it is the supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit within us to not feed those emotions and to not act on those feelings. This is self-control—the highest form of personal government one can possess. Amen? Now, this week, let’s move on and look at yet another fruit of the Spirit. In fact, this week, we will begin covering the first three fruit of the Spirit that Paul mentioned in Galatians 5:22, but I want us to cover these three individually—for we have much to say about the virtues of love, joy and peace. And the one that we will cover this week is not just any, old fruit of the Spirit. The one we will camp on today is the undisputable greatest fruit that we can produce in our lives—LOVE. DEFINING AGAPE Now first of all, we need to understand that there is a big difference between the way God uses the word “love” and the way the world uses the word “love.” This word “love” comes from the Greek word agape, which describes the God kind of love, again different than a worldly kind of love. You see, in the world, we are quick to loosely throw around the term “love.” We say I love Jesus, I love my wife, and I love my children the same way we say, I love pizza, I love chocolate, and I love coffee. But that is a cheap, generic, artificial love—because it is generally based on the performance of the thing we say we love. For example, what if the pizza man doesn’t use the best ingredients, or the pizza is cold, etc.? Then you are not going to say you love that pizza. What about the coffee? If it’s cold, watered down, or isn’t sweetened properly, you probably won’t say that you “love” that cup of coffee, right? My point is that this is worldly love because it is based on the condition of the thing we are loving. No, the God kind of love we are talking about here is a love that is not based on the behavior of the one being loved; it is solely based on the character of the one doing the loving. Therefore, agape is unconditional, limitless, and self-sacrificing. So, back to that example of loving coffee. If I truly did love coffee the way agape loves, then even if the coffee is bitter, bland, or just doesn’t taste the best, I will still drink from that cup. Amen? And why? Because it is not based on how good the coffee is; it is based on how good I am at loving unconditionally. Now the King James Version translates this God kind of love as “charity,” which I believe is a good description of agape because when one gives to a charity, there is nothing expected in return. It is understood that when we give to a “charity” that there are no strings attached and there is no reciprocation. Not to mention, “charities” are not designed to receive well wishes or good intentions. They receive tangible goods and monetary gifts. Likewise, agape is not just saying “I love you”; it is giving love. I believe John 3:16 describes it best by saying, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” It did not say that God so loved the world that He said to it, “I love you so, so much.” Nor did it say, “…that He gave it big hug.” No, He so agape’d us that He gave something (rather, Someone) to us and for us! And He did not just give anything; He gave His very best. Amen! So, we need to understand that this fruit of love is not to be cheapened by comparing it to this world’s idea of love. No, agape is not a love that is determined by the person being loved; it is only determined by both the nature and actions of the one doing the loving. Amen. WHY LOVE IS FIRST But again, I want you to notice that agape is listed first in Paul’s list of the Fruit of the Spirit. Now I believe there are several reasons that love is mentioned first in Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit: For one, I believe Paul put love first because it is the BEST! But why is it best? Well, for one, it is the core-nature and characteristic of God Himself. We are told in First John 4:8 that “God is love.” This is not saying that God has love to give. No, God is love! And we know that God has the preeminence, right? Yes, He is the greatest, the most glorious, the highest. Yes, God is the top of the food-chain! So, if God is love, then guess what? Love is the top of the “fruit-chain” too! Love is the highest and He is the best! Amen? I believe another reason love is listed first is because it is supposed to be one of those first fruits produced in a believer’s life. You know, we have Scriptures that indicate that our love for others is one of the ways that we know we have passed from death unto life (see First John 3:14). Therefore, love is what a born-again believer possesses—thus, love is not only the greatest; it is the first. Now does that phrase—"love is the greatest”—sound familiar? It should. It’s located in First Corinthians chapter 13: In First Corinthians 13:13, the Apostle Paul says that now abides faith, hope and love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. And why is love the greatest? As we’ve seen, it is because it is what God is, but it is also because love is the only one of these three remaining virtues that we begin to walk in now and will continue to walk in throughout eternity. We won’t need faith when we are looking at Him face to face. We won’t need hope when we are experiencing the fulfillment of His promises in that Great Day. But love will always be practiced—from now throughout all eternity! Amen. But, not only is love simply the greatest; Jesus told us that it is also the greatest of all the commandments. In Matthew 22:36-40, we read the story of how the Pharisees asked Jesus what the greatest commandment in the law was. And Jesus responded by saying, first, by loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and mind (Mark & Luke’s account add the word “strength”). But Jesus went on to say that the second greatest commandment is “like it”—to love your neighbor as yourself. Why did Jesus say it is like that? Why did he say loving our neighbor as ourselves is “like” loving God? It is because loving others is actually “like” loving God. Jesus revealed to us how this is so when he said that whatever we do to the least of these, we have done it unto Him (see Matthew 25:40). So, we really cannot separate loving God from loving people—because God takes personally how we love others. But my point is, loving God and loving our neighbor is considered the greatest commandment in all of the law. The apostle Paul reveals to us that love is actually the fulfillment of all the law (see Romans 13:10). So, if I am truly loving God and loving others, then I am fulfilling the righteous requirement of the law. Therefore, love is the greatest thing you and I can produce in our lives. THE NEW COMMANDMENT But when Jesus came to show us God’s heart and His love for us, He introduced a new commandment to us. It is called the new commandment of love because the old commandment of love told us to love our neighbor as ourselves. This new commandment Jesus introduced is a little different. In John 13:34-35, Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” So, can you see why it is so important for us to love one another? Jesus said here that this is how all will know that we are His disciples—by the love we have for one another. Now notice that Jesus said here that this was a new commandment that He was giving them. He didn’t say a new “suggestion” or a new “recommendation;” He said a new commandment— showing us that this is not just a good idea; it is a charge and an order. Now again, loving others was not new in the sense that they did not have this commandment under the Old Covenant. We just saw in Matthew 22:37-40 that loving our neighbor as ourselves was one of the greatest two commandments from the Old Testament along with loving God. On top of that, you see threaded throughout the prophets, God’s constant emphasis placed on loving people—executing righteousness and justice and showing mercy towards others. The apostle John amplifies this more in his first epistle when he said, “Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning.” (First John 2:7) In other words, the love command was written in the beginning in the Old Covenant. So, this instruction to love one another was not new in the sense that they did not know its importance and significance. But as the Apostle John goes on to say in the next verse— “Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining” (verse 8). So, loving one another as Christ has loved us is the new and better commandment, even though loving our neighbor was written long before. It was a new standard of love, not necessarily a new idea. So, loving their neighbor was not new to them, but loving one another as He had loved them was certainly new and a much higher standard of love. Amen! BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US But in order for you and I to obey this new commandment of love, we have to first experience His love for us because Jesus said, “as I have loved you.” So, before we move any further into talking about the love we need to be producing in our lives, we need to know and believe the love that the Lord has for us. In First John 4:19 we are taught that we love (the word “Him” was not in all of the Greek texts. So, let’s leave it out and see what this verse means without it) because He first loved us. So, how are we going to be able to love God and love God’s people if He hasn’t first loved us? We won’t and we can’t. Sure, He loves us all already, but if we have tasted His goodness, experienced His love and seen His grace, we will have a major uphill battle to loving the brethren. Why? Because we cannot give away what we have not first received. So, when we see His love for us and receive it, then we have the standard by which we are to love others with. Amen? And that is the gist of what Jesus was saying here in John 13:34—that we are to specifically love one another “as I have loved you.” So how can we love one another as He has loved us if we have not experienced that love for us first? In other words, how can we fulfill this commandment if we haven’t experienced this love personally? We can’t. So, we can conclude that the best way to produce this fruit of love in our life is to first obviously have had the Holy Spirit place it in our spirit man, and secondly, to believe, know, and receive God’s love for us. LOVE IS SPIRITUAL But now, I want us to move further into this fruit of the Spirit of love by talking about how we produce it in our lives since we have already received it. So, let’s look back at John 13:34 and notice again what this Scripture says— “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” Now you heard me say earlier that this is not the new suggestion or the new ideal. No, this is the new commandment of the New Covenant! So, I believe the fact that Jesus called this a “commandment” is a great place to start in discovering how we produce the fruit of love. Why? It is because a commandment does not necessarily involve emotions or feelings. In other words, a command is something we do whether we feel like it or not. You see, a “command” is most commonly defined as “to give someone an order.” A common usage of this is with a commanding officer, like in the military, giving orders to those under himself. Now those of you who have served in the military would agree to this point—but more times than not, when you were given orders to do something, you didn’t feel like doing what they told you to do. Particularly, when you were in basic training and those drill sergeants gave you orders like “drop and give me twenty” or “go run 5 miles!”, nothing in your flesh or your soul wanted to do it. But guess what? You did it anyway! And why? Because you were given orders by your authorities. One very important lesson I have learned in this regard is that when it comes to submitting to your authorities, you are not submitting when your authority figures tell you to do something that you like or agree with and then you do it. No, you only truly submit to your authorities when they tell you to do something, you don’t agree with it or you dislike what they are telling you to do, and you do it anyway. This is when true submission to authority occurs. So, when it comes to this new “commandment” of loving one another, it has nothing to do with what we feel, what we think or what we want; it all has to do with simply following orders. Love is the orders from headquarters! Again, as a general rule, the world believes that love is a feeling. They’ll use the terminology like “I just fell in love with them” or “I just fell out of love”—indicating that love is a feeling and not a decision. But this is wrong! What do they say when they “fall out of love?” “I just don’t feel for you the way I used to feel about you.” This, again, indicates that love is a feeling or an emotion. No! When someone says they have fallen out of love with someone, really what they are saying is that they have “fallen out of feelings.” It is actually impossible to “fall out of” true love. Why? Because love is an act of your will! It is not a feeling! No, real love never ENDS (First Corinthians 13:8)! It changes not! Church, agape is a spiritual thing! Therefore, it is eternal and unchanging! For aren’t we taught that God is Spirit (John 4:24)? And we are also taught that God is love, right (First John 4:8)? So, this means that Love is a spiritual thing! You know, we are a spirit too. We are a spirit, we have a soul and we live in a body, and it is vital that we understand what the Lord accomplished in us through the new birth. Again, Galatians 5:22-23 teaches us that the fruit of the Spirit begins with love and includes joy, peace etc. And we have also seen that either way you look at it, this fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life is already in us. So, whether or not you believe that these fruit are the fruit of our reborn spirit or the fruit of the Holy Spirit, either way, this means we already have this fruit within us. Amen? Yes, I already have love in my heart for in Romans 5:5, the Apostle Paul says that the love of God has already been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Amen! So, my point is that love is already in there! We are not trying to get more love from the outside in; we are simply working out our salvation to get more love from the inside out! Amen! But so many have a hard time believing this because they feel that they do not have love because they don’t “feel” love. In other words, because they don’t have the emotions of love and there is selfishness, anger, etc. in there, they believe that they are void of love. But this is when we must believe what the Word says more than what our feelings and our heads are telling us. Amen! And, as it is with everything spiritual in nature such as love, we are not led by our feelings: For example, this is why I am big proponent in acting on the joy that we have inside of us. We can do this by laughing at our circumstances and the devil by faith. It doesn’t have anything to do with the way we feel. But since joy too is a fruit of the Spirit, do we just sit there and cater to our feelings saying, “Well, I don’t feel like laughing right now.” We wouldn’t say that— “Well, I don’t feel like reading my Bible anymore” and then just cater to that, would we? No, we have enough sense to know that is wrong. Nor would we believe that because we don’t feel like praising God that we evidently do not need to press through those feelings and cater to our flesh. No, if we know we are to act on things like this whether we feel like it or not, why would walking in any of the fruit of the Spirit be done any differently? No, we laugh by faith because joy is a fruit of the Spirit. And we love by faith as well! Saints, what I am saying is—do not wait until you feel like operating in these spiritual things before you practice them. Know that they are fruits of the spirit and spiritual things are not based on feelings. Now the reason I bring this out is because I have been around long enough to see that most believers that even desire to grow in love are waiting for the feelings and emotions of this love for others to come all over them. In other words, they are waiting to feel like loving people before they actually act on this commandment. Saints, I’m here to tell you that if you are waiting for all of these “lovey dovey” emotions to come all over you and overtake you, you are going to be waiting a long time! As you have likely heard me say before, I believe you are walking in love the most when you feel like strangling somebody, but as an act of your will, you decide to bless them instead. In other words, love is being exercised the most when our feelings are completely contrary but we act on the decision to love. Amen! As I have already said, love is a fruit of the Spirit—meaning, it is spiritual in nature. It’s not something that is tied into our flesh or our soul. Therefore, it doesn’t involve our feelings (a product of the flesh) or our emotions (a product of the soul). Love is a spiritual thing—meaning, it is an action that comes as a result of our will. Saints, if we are going to be a “spiritual” man or woman, we are going to have to learn to live out of the part of us that is walking by faith (i.e. the spirit) and not yield to the part of us that is weak by feelings (i.e. the flesh). Yes, being spiritual is a decision! It's an action—an act of our will (for the spirit is willing). It is not carnal to have feelings and emotions; it is carnal to act on those feelings and emotions; to act on what we know is true and, by faith, will to do those things, is spiritual. Let me give you a good Scriptural example of this: In Titus 2:3-4, the Apostle Paul told Pastor Titus that the older women were to, among other things, admonish the young women to love their husbands and to love their children. So, were these older women to admonish the younger women to “feel” more like loving their husbands and their children? No! You do not admonish someone to have certain emotions and feelings. What these older women were being admonished to do was to teach the younger women how to love their husbands and children—which, of course, would be actions and deeds of love. Amen! You see, love is more of an action than it is an emotion. And if we can be taught how to love, then we should know that it is an act of our own volition. If it were an emotion, then it would be out of our control because we are always going to have ups and downs in our emotions. But since love is a commandment, we know that it is in our control because the Lord would not have told us to do something that it wasn’t in our control to do. Amen! Yes, church, spirituality is having command over our feelings and emotions and learning to do things simply because it is what we are told to do or it is simply the right thing to do. Church, we must have resolve and integrity—doing what is right simply because it is right and because it is a command. We should need no other reason to love one another than this! FREELY FORGIVE I believe a great example of what I am talking about is the subject of “forgiveness”: If you look up these words “forgiving and forgave,” you will notice something very significant about forgiveness: The word “forgive” comes from the Greek word charis which is commonly translated “grace.” Now the word “grace” means to give something freely, with no strings attached. If you are giving someone “grace,” you are giving them something they don’t necessarily deserve nor have they done anything to earn it. Therefore, a common definition for “forgiveness” when considering the word “grace” is to freely forgive. Now why do I make this point? It is because oftentimes the mentality that people have which causes them to have a harder time forgiving people is that the person that offended them doesn’t deserve to be forgiven—maybe they haven’t even been repentant and asked for forgiveness. Now I would venture to say that most of us, if the person that hurt us came to us and said something to the effect of— “You know, I was wrong. I am so sorry. Please forgive me” that we would forgive them. But what makes forgiveness a little more difficult is when the person who hurt us doesn’t show any signs of being repentant and no remorse for what they did—which is, unfortunately, what happens most of the time. But that is when this true meaning of forgiveness becomes so important—because now I know I am called to forgive freely whether I feel they deserve it or not. I am “for-giving”—that is, I am giving them grace in advance of them deserving it or asking for it--like God loved us when we were still ungodly sinners. But this goes in line with what we have been talking about this week—because how many of you know that like love, forgiveness is a commandment! It’s expected of us! It is our duty! Therefore, feelings are not expected to follow obeying commandments. Amen? In Luke 17:1-5, we have a Scripture that reiterates this point: In the beginning of Luke chapter 17, Jesus begins to talk to His disciples about offenses and how we must do whatever is in our power not to cause others to stumble (verses 1-2). Then He tells His disciples to take heed to themselves that they live a life of forgiveness no matter how many times someone sins against them (verses 3-4). Well, it is interesting to note the reaction that this call to forgiveness generated in His disciples: In verse 5 we are told— “And the apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’” What does “increasing our faith” have to do with forgiveness? In other words, why would they ask the Lord to increase their faith immediately after He tells them to keep forgiving that sinning brother who keeps sinning against them? Apparently, it is because we forgive by faith. In other words, if we are called to raise our standard of forgiving one another, then we also need an increase of faith to forgive them by. You see, saints, we don’t forgive because we feel like forgiving or even because we feel like we have forgiven; we forgive, not because we feel like forgiving, but because of our faith in God and through our faith in God. You know, I’ve dealt with people who think they have not forgiven because they have all of the feelings and emotions that scream on the inside of them telling them that they hate that person. But those thoughts and emotions are not necessarily proof that you haven’t forgiven them. You see, people just want to feel like they’ve forgiven, but that it is not what a spiritual person does. A person who has decided to walk in the spirit does not go by how they feel; they are only moved by their faith. And because they have made the choice to forgive by faith, that is all they need. As it is with receiving anything from God, they don’t need the feelings to confirm it. And this call to forgive by faith is reiterated by the Lord in verses 7-10: In this lesson, Jesus gives us the example of a servant who, when he comes in from his day’s work, is not afforded the opportunity to sit down and eat, but first must serve his master and then he can serve himself. Jesus then gives the point of this story that this servant is not rewarded nor even thanked for serving his master because he simply did what was his duty to do. The point that Jesus was making by giving this example in context is that we don’t forgive our brothers and sisters in Christ because we feel like it or because of any benefit that we get out of it. No, our primary motivation for forgiving (next to loving God and loving the person) is because it is simply our duty as Christians! We do it because it is the right thing to do! Amen! And this is what this fruit of love does—it gives by faith and it forgives by faith. Faith works by love, and I would add that love works by faith too (see Galatians 5:6). This is what a truly spiritual person does—produces this fruit of love not by necessarily having loving feelings, but by producing loving actions. Amen! Now the Holy Spirit is certainly there to help us produce this fruit of love. He will do this by inspiring the actions, by putting the compassion in your heart, but like Jesus, we must then be moved with that compassion. HUNTING LOVE So, what I want to encourage you with is that this love is not something that is going to one day just fall on us like an apple out of tree. It is something that, although it is already on the inside of us, it must be aggressively pursued to see its fruit in your life. In other words, it must become your goal and aim and then you endeavor to walk in it because it is a command from our Lord Jesus Christ. After Paul teaches us all about love in First Corinthians chapter 13—how doing things not motivated by love is profitless, what love looks like and how love is the greatest cardinal of Christianity—he says in First Corinthians 14:1that we are to “Pursue love!” The word “pursue” comes from the Greek word diakeo which describes to willfully, forcefully and aggressively pursue. It was actually a hunting term that illustrates how the love walk is something that must be pursued like a hunter pursues his or her prey. For example, these guys that just love to go deer hunting, what do they do? Well, as deer season is approaching, I’ve heard how they will sit out on their front porch and just be staring out into the distance. What they are doing is they are meditating and predetermining what they are going to do when deer season starts. Then on the days they go hunting, they will get up at the crack of dawn to go get set up and ready. In short, some spend countless hours preparing, premeditating and doing the actual hunting. That is how we should pursue love—like these avid deer hunters are hunting deer. I just love the Message Bible’s translation of First Corinthians 14:1: It says, “Go after a life of love as if your life depends on it—because it does!” Amen! Saints, if we want to experience the life of God to where joy, peace, power etc. are the fruits we see in our lives, it all depends on finding and fulfilling the love of God in our lives! Friends, this is where the life of God is; it is found in the love of God! Amen! So aggressively pursue it! Make it your aim! For when you catch it, it will catch you! Amen! Now let me end by saying that we obviously could spend months talking about this subject of love, as agape is such a vast subject being God’s core nature. But I do want to let you know that I did teach on this extensively back in 2016 here at HPC in a series entitled “How to Love One Another.” So, you can either go back in our archives on our website and listen to this 9-part series that I did June thru September of 2016 or you can order the CDs/DVDs. I also have my notes available if you would like them. What I simply want us all to do is pursue it with all of your heart. Studying the love walk and keeping it before us is such an important part of the Christian walk. Again, pursue it and it will fill your branches. Amen! REVIEW
So, let’s continue looking at these nine fruit that the Holy Spirit produces in our lives—namely, “… love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control …” (Galatians 5:22-23). We have learned that these are the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life and are also the evidence that one is truly spiritual. No, it is not our spiritual giftings that indicate that we are mature spiritually; our spiritual maturity is based on how mature our fruit is. So, we began studying these nine virtues a couple of weeks ago, but not necessarily in the traditional order: We began with two of the fruit sandwiched in the middle of Paul’s list— the fruits kindness and goodness. And we saw that these are sister fruits because they are so similar. We explained that “kindness” is more of the attitude by which we do things for people, while “goodness” is the action accompanying the right attitude that we possess. But a point we made was that Paul is describing two virtues that we can see evidence of in one’s life, and are not just what a person is versus what they do. No, every believer is called to both be kind and do kind things, to be good and do good things. And we saw that “kindness” describes someone who is useful, manageable, or employed by the Lord. We also saw that kindness’ sister fruit—the fruit of goodness—describes being “beneficial.” So, if we want to be both useful and beneficial in God’s kingdom, we need to be producing both of these fruit in our lives. But we learned that as it is with all of the fruit of the Spirit, these fruit do not come by accident. No, kindness and goodness do not just fall on us like apples out of a tree. Like it is with growing specific fruit in our gardens, we have to plan to produce the fruits of kindness and goodness. So, in regards to this, last week we asked the question: How many books have you read on the fruit of the Spirit? How many studies have you done on the various fruit of the Spirit? I believe we can look at our libraries and see what we are producing in our lives. So, we ought to study up on these things and by doing so, make place in our lives for them. Then last week, we moved into another couple of fruit of the Spirit—the fruits of longsuffering and faithfulness. We began with longsuffering, and saw that while “patience” is another word that could be used, the New King James version’s translation of “longsuffering” might be better suited. The reason being is because the Greek word used in Galatians 5:22 is almost every time used in connection with someone being patient with someone else. However, with the word commonly translated “patience,” it is often used in connection with being patient in circumstances. Therefore, I believe that the difference between these two Biblical terms is that one is patience in regard to people (i.e. makrothumia) and the other (i.e. hupomeno) is enduring circumstances. Therefore, longsuffering is not moved by negative emotions while patience is not moved by negative circumstances. And as I made the point of, this fruit of the Spirit comes from the Greek word makrothumia which describes someone who takes a “long” time to get “mad” or “go off” on you like a stick of dynamite. Therefore, a person who possesses “longsuffering” is someone who is extremely forbearing and doesn’t easily “explode” on others. Based on First Corinthians 13:4, we learned that longsuffering is at the forefront of love’s characteristics. But we also learned that we are not going to be able to be longsuffering in our own power. According to Colossians 1:11, our level of longsuffering and patience accompanied by joy is tied to His strength and power. However, we learned that like there are certain types of soil that produce certain types of fruit better, there is a particular type of soil that best produces the fruit of longsuffering. So, I gave you a couple of characteristics of this type of heart: First of all, we learned in Colossians 3:12 that among other virtues, longsuffering is put on like clothes are put on. And like it is with the putting on of clothes in this physical life, the first step to wearing them is a mentality (i.e. determining what we are going to wear). None of us stood by our closet this morning and the clothes we are wearing jumped off the hangers and onto our body. No, we had to choose to put them on. And so we learned that just as our clothes didn’t choose us, but you choose them, neither will the fruit of longsuffering choose us; we must choose it. And we went through a couple of ways of thinking that will help us to choose it. Then we looked at the fruit of faithfulness and began by looking at the relationship between faith and faithfulness: We saw that this particular fruit of the Spirit is describing someone who, through their faith, is reliable and loyal—that is, he or she is trustworthy, dependable, dedicated, consistent and unwavering in their dealings with others. However, I made the point that I do not believe there is a big difference between one’s faith in God and faithfulness towards man. Why do you say this, pastor? It is because God’s faithfulness is what we put our faith in. You see, we can only believe a God who is faithful to do what He says He will do and that has done what He says He has done. If He vacillates in His character, how can we depend on Him and know what He is going to do? Therefore, this is why I believe our faith in God is rooted in God’s faithfulness. Likewise, I also believe the faithfulness we exhibit in our lives is a result of our faith in Him. Let me explain: If I truly believe God, I myself will be a reliable and dependable person. I’ll say it this way: if I trust God, I will be trustworthy myself. So, it is for this reason that I do not believe one can separate our faithfulness in life from our faith in the Lord. Yes, God’s faithfulness is what our faith is rooted in, and our faithfulness is the fruit of the faith we have in Him. So, I asked a question that I believe summarizes how we can know how faithful we’ve been: Can people believe in us? You see, just as God is constantly called “faithful,” we likewise need to reflect the same attribute of faithfulness in our lives as well. People need to know that we are dependable. Folks need to understand that we are trustworthy and reliable. The world needs to know that we absolutely will not lie to them. And the reason this is so important is because we are the only Bible some people will ever read. We are being read, saints! But regarding faithfulness, we can see that it is one of the most rewarded fruit in the kingdom of God. Yes, it is arguably the most lauded fruit that we can produce in our lives. No, it is not necessarily always recognized by man, but it is always praised by God—for it is one of the fruit Jesus is going to be looking for in that Great Day when we hopefully will hear from Him, “Well done you good and faithful servant.” Now let’s move on this week and cover the last two fruit that the apostle Paul mentions. These are the only two that Galatians 5:23 contain—gentleness & self-control. LOWER BODY EXERCISE And I want to let you know that these two fruit of the Spirit are probably at the bottom of just about every believer’s list as well—for the fruits of humility and self-control require much self-denial and sacrifice, and that is simply hard on one’s flesh. Therefore, while we might tend to focus more on the love, joy and peace side of the fruit of the Spirit, faithfulness, humility, and self-control are the other side of the fruit of the Spirit that will make us fully fruitful. In other words, we can be as fruitful in love, joy and peace as we can possibly be, but if we do not produce any faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control then we will not be filled with the fruits of righteousness. In fact, the apostle Paul prayed a prayer for the Church of Philippi and concluded this prayer with— “being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Christ Jesus to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:11). You see, I believe that the fruits of righteousness that Paul was talking about are these nine fruit of the Spirit we are talking about here—for, as we’ve learned, they are indeed the fruits of that righteous nature we have inherited in Christ. The other reasons I believe is by looking at the rest of the verse—they are both “by Christ Jesus” and “to the glory and praise of God.” Sounds like John chapter 15 to me—for our fruitfulness can only come through the Lord Jesus Christ (i.e. abiding in Him and apart from him we can do nothing) and Jesus also said that this fruit glorifies God. You see, when one is born again, they receive a new recreated spirit—one that is in the very image and likeness of God’s righteousness. And as the apostle John said, those who have truly been made righteous are meant to produce that righteousness in their life. In other words, through this new righteous nature we’ve freely received, there are these nine virtues that are meant to be produced in our lives. But notice in this prayer that Paul desired that we be “filled” with the fruits of that righteousness: The picture he was painting was that of a tree that was full of fruit. We have all seen certain trees that have no fruit, others that have some fruit, and still others that are full of fruit. God wants our limbs to be full of the fruits of righteousness, saints! In other words, the Lord expects a harvest to be produced in and through our lives from the seed of righteousness that He freely gave us when we were born again. And what makes us full of fruit is when we are producing all nine of the fruit of the Spirit in their fullness. Let me give you a good example of what I am referring to here: One time I had the Lord ask me— “Would you like to know what the muscles of your spirit man are?” Of course, I was quick to answer— “Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” He responded with— “They are the fruit of the Spirit.” Then a Scripture immediately dropped in my heart that says, “By their fruit, you will know them.” In this passage, in Matthew chapter seven, Jesus was talking about false prophets and false teachers, but knowing people by their fruit applies both to the righteous and the unrighteous. Essentially, what the Lord was telling me was that just as we recognize people from a distance by their physical physique, we recognize those who are both spiritual and unspiritual by their spiritual physique. In that case, it is by their fruit (their spiritual muscles or lack thereof) that we will know them. So, I say all of this to say, we don’t want to be like a lot of the gym rats out there that go to the gym to work out only their chest, shoulders, and arms and have these skinny little quads and calves. No, we need to develop the lower body just like we are (hopefully) looking to develop the upper body. And in this case, the lower body is the lower third of Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit (i.e. faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). So, attention needs to be given to developing the lower third of our spiritual muscles just like we desire to be developed in the upper third fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, and peace. Once we do that, we will be a perfect man and “full of fruit.” Amen? MEEKNESS IS NOT WEAKNESS So, let’s begin this week with gentleness: Now most translations use this word “gentleness,” but many of us might better recognize the King James version’s translation of “meekness” here. And the word Paul used here literally describes someone who is gentle, meek or mild. I think the term “mild” is interesting here because what do you think of when you think of something being “mild”? We might think of something not being sharp, spicy or bitter. And it makes me think of cheese! I think of “mild” cheddar versus “sharp” cheddar. You see, mild cheddar is much blander and more moderate. The sharper cheddars, on the other hand, stand out a little more! They are a little tarter! Likewise, a “mild” person is much less abrasive, severe and harsh. Rather, they are gentle, meek, and humble. But unlike the process that makes cheddar “sharper”—which is the time cheese is given to age—it usually takes more time to make a person “milder” as opposed to sharper. Of course, it doesn’t work this way with everyone—just like not everyone becomes wiser just by simply getting older—but as a general rule, the more one ages, the more humbled they should become. But this virtue called “gentleness” is by nature, meek, mild, and humble. The exact opposite of harsh, abrasive, and arrogant. Therefore, as you’ve heard me use already, perhaps the best translation of this word we would have today would be “humility.” Now the terminology that is used by our translations is one of the reasons that I believe so many Christians do not esteem this particular virtue. For some of us, we don’t see the terms “gentleness” and “meekness” as strengths. But what we need to understand is that “meekness” does not describe a weak person. No, meekness is not weakness. Rather, meekness is power under perfect control. You see, if I am mild & meek, it doesn’t mean I don’t have something to offer or don’t have an opinion; it just simply means that, in my love for you, I am willing to lay down my thoughts, opinion and viewpoint. Could I let you have it? Absolutely! But what does the selfless love of God do? It doesn’t do what it can do; it does what you are open to it doing for you. Now the polar opposite of a gentle, meek, and humble person is a person who needs to be in control. Yes, they try to change people and circumstances around them. We don’t want to be this way, church! And by cultivating this fruit of the Spirit, we can change ourselves to not be this way. And why? Because like all nine of the fruit of the Spirit, humility, gentleness, and meekness is a characteristic of God Himself! OUR MEEK MASTER To me, this is one of the most admirable virtues of God—how He does not make us do anything or assert Himself on us in any way. No, He is the epitome of humility in that He knows everything and really has all the answers (unlike us, who think we have all the answers), yet He let’s us choose what wisdom we get from Him. God truly is “meek” in every sense of the word! Didn’t the Lord Jesus refer to Himself this way—as “meek” and lowly in heart (see Matthew 11:29). Boy, I’ll tell you, Jesus could have come to this earth and set everyone straight just like that! But He didn’t. He took the humble road all throughout His ministry and did not seek His own. Everything He did was out of love for others. And this should be our motivation as well. So, if our Lord & God can be this way when He is as great & glorious as He is, then we certainly can produce this same kind of humility no matter how great & glorious we think we are. Yes, we ought to aspire to grow in this fruit of the Spirit as well. Again, church, you will not find a stronger person than a truly meek person. Why? It is because it is much more difficult to submit your will in humility than it is to exert your will in pride. The world does the latter, but the Spirit will empower the believer to humble themselves and be willing to yield to others in love. THE ATTITUDE OF HUMILITY In Galatians 6:1, we have a great example of how one who possesses this fruit of the Spirit will behave: In it, the apostle Paul says, “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted.” Now this word for “gentleness” is the same word Paul used in Galatians 5:23, and we have seen how it describes someone who might possess something, but they do not use their power to criticize, ridicule, and assert their will on someone. So, what this describes is the demeaner and attitude we have when we are helping someone who has missed it—we are not carrying ourselves haughtily and condemning them, but we are approaching them “gently, humbly, and with respect”—essentially, the way we would want someone to restore us if we had made the same mistake. So, it all goes back to the golden rule, right? Treating one another as we would want to be treated. Which is why Paul said what he said next in this verse … “considering yourself lest you also be tempted.” An interesting point here is that the word used for “considering” is the Greek word skopeo. This word is where we derive words such as “telescope, microscope and periscope” from. So, as it pertains to these words, we can see that skopeo means to focus on, or to look specifically at or for something. When I think of these examples of a telescope or microscope, I see someone who is actively trying to look for something that might not be apparent to the naked eye. They are using a specific tool that magnifies the object that they are looking at so that they can clearly see something that otherwise would not be seen. But here is the problem: Most of us are looking at others with these “scopes,” not ourselves. Yes, we look at others through a “microscope” and at ourselves through “rose-colored glasses.” This is what religion does, but a truly humble and spiritual person will inspect himself first--removing the telephone pole from his own eye before he ever attempts to remove the toothpick from someone else’s eye (see Matthew 7:5). And why? Why is it important for us to consider the specks in our own eyes first when helping others? Paul goes on to say, “lest you also be tempted.” Now it is important to understand that the attitude that we just described is the exact opposite attitude of that “spirit of gentleness” he mentions earlier in this verse. So many times, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are at a place spiritually where we are incapable of being tempted with certain things. This is absolutely untrue! No one is untouchable! Now you and I might not be capable of doing certain things today, but if we sow to our flesh for an extended period of time our corruption is inevitable (see Galatians 6:8). Understanding this will greatly help you and I have a “spirit of gentleness” when restoring those that have fallen. But as it has been so poetically stated— “You never know what your fruit is made of until it gets squeezed.” In other words, you and I don’t truly know what we would do if the situation was reversed and the pressure that is on them was on us instead. Therefore, the point Paul was making in this verse is that this attitude of humility will help us to deal with one another in a godly way. And it begins by us truly examining ourselves instead of trying to examine everyone else. But again, this fruit of the Spirit is not going to fall on us like an apple out of a tree. We are going to have to water that seed in us in order to see it produced in our lives. PURSUING AND PUTTING ON HUMILITY Now in the verse we looked at last week (Colossians 3:12) we saw that these fruit of the Spirit are to be purposefully “put on.” Again, Paul says, “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering.” So, like it was with “longsuffering,” we see this word for “gentleness” in this list as well, but here it is translated “humility.” And we see in First Timothy 6:11, that we are told to “…pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness.” So, this teaches me that this virtue given by the Holy Spirit, along with the others as well, are to be both pursued in our lives and then put on intentionally. And I believe the reason God designed it this way is because He desires His children to grow up. Yes, our Heavenly Father is not wanting to dress us; He wants us to put our clothes on ourselves. You know, regarding this fruit of “humility,” you have a large part of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ who believe that in order for us to become humble, God has to do it. They embrace the thought that we need to let God humble us. Some will even go as far as saying, “God, please make me more humble!” But did you know that the Bible never once teaches us that this is how we are to pursue this virtue? Now has somebody who was lifted up in pride been humbled by the Lord. Absolutely! One incredible example of this is King Nebuchadnezzar. This guy started believing he was the Most High himself. So, God quickly put him in his place to where he wound up eating grass off of the ground like a wild beast. We also see this in the New Testament like when King Herod started believing that he himself was a god and the angel of the Lord struck him down and he was eaten by worms. So, yes, we have examples where God humbled people, but again, this is not how the Bible teaches us to learn humility. We are told time and time again that we are to humble ourselves. Let me give you three or four witnesses:
So, apparently, this is something you and I are going to have to do to ourselves. No, it is not our job to try and keep other people humble either. We have a full-time job humbling ourselves. Why? Because pride & self-centeredness are just engrained in our flesh, and it is going to take some serious seeking to see it in us. But that is what we have the Holy Spirit for—to help us to both desire to see the “self” eradicated from our lives and to empower us to produce more “humility.” If we will yield to Him, He will help us do what we never could have done in the arm of the flesh. Amen? THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRACY Now let’s move on to the last, but certainly not least, fruit of the Spirit in Paul’s list—the fruit of self-control. This term “self-control” comes from the Greek word enkrateia which is a combination of two words—the word en which means “in, inner or inward” and the word kratos which describes “ruling power.” In fact, this word kratos is where we get our English term “democracy” from—the word demos being the Greek word for “people” and the word kratos meaning “ruling power.” So, the word democracy literally means “people ruling power”—essentially being a government that is ruled by the people. So, when you combine these words together, you get what I consider to be the perfect definition for “self-control.” Self-control is not people ruling power; it is “inward ruling power.” In other words, a person exhibiting the fruit of self-control is a person who is “governing” themselves. So, “self-control” is the supernatural ability of the Holy Spirit to rule over our outward man by our inward man. In other words, it is controlling the flesh by the spirit man. But like you’ll hear said in the world regarding people shooting down the notion that the majority rules when it comes to certain decisions— “This is not a democracy!” And it’s not with this particular fruit of the Spirit either! No, God the Father is not going to control you for you! Jesus is not going to make you produce His fruit either! And contrary to popular opinion, the Holy Spirit is also not going to make you bear this fruit of self-control! No, the only one that will control you is you! Now we are going to have a little fun this morning: Church, if I were to hold up a $100 and said the first person to get up in front of the church and jump on one leg, clucking like a chicken will get it, what would happen? Someone would do it! And my point would be that they would happily “lose-control” because they were properly motivated. So, wouldn’t the opposite be the case too? Couldn’t we control ourselves with the proper motivation? Sure, we can! WHO’S IN CONTROL? Now people will tell you that there are things they simply cannot control in regards to how they act. They will say, for example, that they just can’t help but blow up and go on a rage etc. but that is simply not true. If it were true, then we are dealing with something demonic because, as Paul taught in First Corinthians 14:32, the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets—and that applies to everything that we do. If we lose control and absolutely cannot control ourselves, then that is probably demonic in nature. Someone might say, “Yeah, well I don’t agree with that! I can’t control this temper I got! Well, I disagree with that person. I believe once properly motivated anyone can control anything that they think, say or do. Yes, the vast majority of the people that say they can’t control themselves can control themselves if given the proper motivation. Do you know, you’ll have a husband or wife who will just rail on their spouse and tell them how they feel just because they say they can’t help it. But that same person will go to their job and no matter how much their employer ticks them off or angers them they are able to keep from venting all of their feelings to their boss. And why? Because of what they know their actions might cost them! Do you remember when Jesus told us in His Sermon on the Mount that if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and if your hand causes you to sin cut it off? Why did He say this? Because it is better for one of your members to perish than your whole body to be cast into hell. (Matthew 5:29-30) Now most people don’t believe that Jesus was being literal here, but I differ. I believe He was being quite literal. Now, of course, He wasn’t encouraging self-mutilation. The Lord does not want us to start a ministry of eye plucking and hand chopping. But I believe He was being literal in that He was telling us that if any of your body parts are “causing” you to sin, then you should eliminate that body part. The truth is, however, that none of our body parts “cause” us to sin. Why? Because we—the real us on the inside—are in control of the carnal part of us on the outside. Let me give you a couple of examples of this— an example of the how we can control our eye from sinning and an example of how we can control our hand from sinning: First, the eye: I know that there are guys out there who say that they just can’t help but look at pornography and lust after women, but the truth is—if you were to tie that guy up in front of a computer and say—“Ok, I’m going to run a bunch of porn websites and if you look at any of these women to lust after them, I’m going to take this here spoon and pluck your eyes out.” Guess what you will discover? Somehow, supernaturally, that guy is going to find the ability to not lust. Why? Because He values His eye more than the lusts of his flesh. Now how about that guy who is beating up on his wife and says he just can’t help it because the rage just gets all over him when she does and says the things she does? He can control that just like the guy who says he can’t help but look at women lustfully. Do you know how I know that? It’s because all you have to do to prove that is put that guy in room with a 350 lb. football player and then get that football player to say and do all the things the other guy’s wife said and did, and somehow supernaturally, this wife-beater has the ability to control himself from beating up on the football player. No saints, most people just do what they feel they can get away with. My father in the faith, Andrew Wommack, served in Vietnam and he recounts a very interesting and disturbing experience he had: He said that during his time there that there were points where the soldiers were provided with prostitutes, drugs and alcohol and every last person in his division went and partook of these things except him. Some of these guys were professing Christians, were married, had girlfriends etc. Yet because they had a relatively low chance of ever surviving this war and because they knew that there was no way that anyone would ever find out back in the States, everyone compromised and did things that some of them normally never would have done. And do you know why? It was because they knew they would get away with it. You see, saints, we must have resolve and integrity—doing what is right simply because it is right. We should need no other reason or motivation to control ourselves other than this! SPIRITUAL STRENGTH You know, spirituality is having command over our feelings and emotions and learning to do things simply because it is what we are told to do or it is simply the right thing to do. But, church, this obviously takes supernatural strength and inner-fortitude to control the emotions and feelings that like to control us. Proverbs 16:32 is a great verse that echoes this: It says, “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” Like we said with “meekness,” people do not see self-restraint as a strength, but it truly is. A weak person lacks self-control—saying whatever comes up, venting all their feelings, and simply losing control. A strong person controls his or her words & actions—being even more mighty than someone who conquers an entire city. That shows us just how hard it is to “control self,” and why we need the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in this fruit. Perhaps this is the reason the apostle Paul listed “self-control” last—because it is the pinnacle of living a Spirit-controlled life. And our flesh, in my opinion, is the first thing we should aspire to have authority over; not the kingdom of darkness, but our own domain. I once heard Joyce Meyer say that people want authority over demons, but they don’t even have control over themselves when they see a sink full of dirty dishes. We are fooling ourselves to think we can control the things around us when we cannot control this body that we possess. You have probably heard me say before that we are walking in the fruit of the Spirit the most when we feel like smacking somebody and we don’t. That’s actually the fruit of self-control in operation. It is not an absence of “feelings” or a void of negative “emotions.” No, it is the supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit within us to not feed those emotions and to not act on those feelings. This is self-control—the highest form of personal government one can possess. You know, church, I believe it is no coincidence that the first fruit of the Spirit listed by Paul in Galatians 5:22-23 is “love” and the last is “self-control.” Why? Because I believe that love and self-control are the bookends of being fruitful. If we love—not necessarily feeling a bunch of loving emotions, but as an act of our will express love to people through our actions—and we exercise self-control over these feelings of the flesh, we are well on our way to walking in the Spirit. So, in conclusion, if we want to be completely developed and fully fruitful, then these last two fruit of the Spirit in Paul’s list are necessary. Yes, we want to focus on humbling ourselves and let the Holy Spirit do the work of producing this meek and mild-mannered temperament in our lives. We also want to give attention to producing the fruit of self-control in our lives as well—letting the Holy Spirit infuse strength in our inner man, so that the outer man loses control. This is when, combining our production of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness, we will become a perfect “fruity” man and give the most glory to our Father. Amen! REVIEW
So, we have been looking at those nine virtues that the Holy Spirit produces in our lives, known as the Fruit of the Spirit. And these are located in Galatians 5:22-23, where the apostle Paul says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Now one thing we have learned about the fruit of the Spirit is that since these nine virtues manifest God’s character in our lives, we should see that character in the Christian’s life is a major part of what the Holy Spirit is meant to manifest in us. And the truth is, these nine virtues are the fruit that someone is truly living a spiritual life. Yes, as we’ve learned, these fruit are the tell-tale sign of whether someone is spiritual of not. No, it’s not how much we speak in tongues or how many miracles we see in our lives; it’s how much we genuinely love people and how much joy & peace we are producing in our lives. Therefore, the fruit of the Spirit are the fruit of true spirituality. Now in part one of this series, we basically did an overview of these gifts and saw how one bears this fruit of the Spirit in their lives: We learned that the process of fruitfulness was God’s original design. And what Jesus did for us, was not place us back in the Garden, but place the Garden back in us—that is, He provided a way for us become spiritually alive again, and in doing so, the life in the Garden has become our inheritance. Therefore, we are meant to live free from that curse that the First Adam had given to him after his sin—that with labor and toil he would have to gain fruit from the ground. No, now we can freely eat the fruit from the trees in the Garden! But we still need to steer clear from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—that is, the law and trying to “work” in order to be fruitful. No, the Tree of Life—the Cross of Christ—is what has done the work for us. Now we can simply live a life of freedom, producing this fruit by His grace working in us. Amen! Church, this is how the Lord has designed for us to live the Christian life. We are not machines that “work,” manufacturing this fruit. No, we are fruit bearing trees that organically produce fruit for the glory of God. It is not meant to be arduous or laborious. Rather it is meant to be free-flowing, natural producing of these virtues in our life because of Who we are abiding in and Who we have abiding in us. No longer are we to produce fruit through our labor and toil; now we produce fruit simply through abiding in the Paradise of His presence. Amen! We saw that this is what Jesus described to us in John 15:1-8, when He taught His disciples the principle of abiding in Himself, the True Vine. In this parable, Jesus was illustrating to them (and us) what life is to be like in the kingdom—which is, simply a product of staying attached to Jesus and letting His presence produce fruit in us and through us. You see, you never see a branch struggling to produce fruit. In fact, the way this planet operates is that a branch has sap pumped into it from the vine, which forces the branch to produce fruit. Therefore, there is no “white-knuckling” it involved in bearing fruit. The branch automatically produces fruit simply by abiding in its vine. So, this is the foundation of what we are learning regarding the fruit of the Spirit—that this character does not “stem” from hard work, discipline and will power. No, it is produced primarily through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit and through the new birth. But what we learned is that there is a reason Paul called these nine virtues the fruit (singular) of the Spirit (lower case or capitalized “s”): We saw that Paul used the term “fruit” singular, which I believe shows us that these nine characteristics of the Spirit are like a cluster of grapes, but the same fruit. Therefore, unlike the gifts (plural) of the Spirit, we cannot say this one has this fruit and that one has that fruit. No, every follower of Christ is expected to produce all nine of these virtues in their life. We also learned that these are called the fruit of the Spirit because they are the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life. You see, you could make a case that the fruit of the Spirit are the fruit of our newborn, recreated spirit just like you can say that they are the fruit of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit within us. The reason being is because he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. So, if I am born of the Spirit and have been baptized in the Spirit, then the Holy Ghost and my reborn spirit are working together to produce this fruit. Amen! Therefore, if we back up and consider the context of Galatians chapter 5, we discover that this fruit Paul is describing is the fruit of both walking in the Spirit (see verse 16) and being led by the Spirit (see verse 18). In other words, as we live our lives in the realm of the Holy Spirit and are led, directed and guided by Him, these nine virtues will be the by-product. Amen? So, church, just like it was in the beginning when God set into motion the process of fruitfulness, fruit yields “according to its kind.” I like how the New Living Translation says this in Genesis 1:11. It says, “from which they came.” In other words, a fruit tree is only going to produce the fruit, and the seed in that fruit, from the seed from which they came. So, we learned that the reason it is called the fruit of the Spirit is because it is fruit that is according to His kind, or you could say, it is the fruit that came directly from the seed of the Spirit. Therefore, with these nine virtues being called the fruit of the Spirit, they are attributes of God. Yes, saints, by possessing the fruit of the Spirit, we have love within us—but not only that; He is also joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is the nature of God, and therefore, is to become our nature as well. So, we summarized all of this in three words—that in order to be fruitful, we must be “born.” We must “abide,” and we must “behold”: Yes, we must first be born again—receiving the nature that contains all nine of these virtues. Then we must yield to the presence and power of the Lord Jesus and His Holy Spirit to where the Lord is infusing us with the supernatural ability to exhibit these qualities in our lives on a consistent basis. That is the abiding part. And finally, we need to behold the One who possesses this fruit and let His example reflect in our own lives. Amen. So, last week, we began studying these nine virtues, but not in the traditional order. We began with two of the fruit sandwiched in the middle of Paul’s list— the fruits kindness and goodness. And we first saw that these are sister fruits because they are so similar. However, we saw that there must be a difference if the Holy Spirit inspired the apostle Paul to mention them both as two distinct fruit of the Spirit. I said last week that I see “kindness” as more of the attitude by which we do things for people. “Goodness,” on the other hand, is what I believe to be the action accompanying the right attitude that we possess. But my point was that these two fruit of the Spirit work hand in hand. However, here is what we must all agree on: both kindness and goodness are to be produced in our lives seeing as they are fruit of the Spirit. In other words, Paul is describing two virtues that we can see evidence of in one’s life and are not just what a person is versus what they do. No, every believer is called to both be kind and do kind things, to be good and do good things. We saw that the dictionary defines the word “kindness” as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Therefore, I said that I see kindness as looking kind, being kind, and thinking kind—meaning, a person producing the fruit of kindness in their life has a kind look on their face, thinks kind thoughts in their mind, and regularly practices kind actions in their life. And we saw this is exactly how God is kind Himself: Yes, God’s kindness was Him giving us His very best (see Ephesians 2:7). It is the manifestation of His kindness that helps people to change directions (Romans 2:4). So, kindness is not merely an attitude or an intention; kindness is a tangible fruit of God that we have all experienced. We learned that “kindness” describes someone who is useful, manageable, or employed by the Lord. So, if we want to be used of the Lord, then kindness is a great way to do so. We also learned that to be kind is to be motivated by compassion. And we constantly see Jesus doing the kind things that He did in the Gospels because of the compassion that moved Him. We saw from the example of the feeding of the four thousand, that in order to be kind and compassionate, we must be conscientious and considerate. Yes, we cannot only be wrapped up in our own world, only aware of our own needs. No, we must think about others and then, not just think kind thoughts, but act on them. Therefore, the fruit of kindness is an action, not just an intention. It ought to be our faith on display and manifested. Amen? Then we looked at kindness’ sister fruit—the fruit of goodness—and learned that this fruit describes being “beneficial.” Therefore, it paints the picture of a benefactor, which would describe one who possesses great wealth. Therefore, I described bearing the fruit of “goodness” as us being more “generous, liberal and charitable with our finances, time, or energy” like a “benefactor” graciously gives of him or herself to bless others. So, we learned from this that if we are going to be full of the fruit of goodness in our lives, then it helps to receive God’s goodness in our lives. In other words, the more we receive what God has provided, the “gooder” we can become by having the means to meet people’s need and grant their desires. And again, we saw that our Lord and Savior Jesus bore this fruit of goodness as well: We are told in Acts 10:38 that He went about “doing good” and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. So sure, Jesus performed miracles and healed thousands of people during His earthly ministry, but what people don’t talk about as much is all the good that He did aside from those spectacular things. Yes, Jesus bore an abundance of goodness in His life and ministry along with the healings and miracles He performed. You see, we learned that since Jesus had a treasurer, He must have had some money. And we saw that Jesus had a reputation for doing good to those in need at all hours of the day. So, Jesus was apparently bearing the fruit of goodness all the time! And so, we ended last week by learning how both of these fruit do not come by accident. No, kindness and goodness do not just fall on us like apples out of a tree. Like it is with growing specific fruit in our gardens, we have to plan to produce the fruits of kindness and goodness. The truth is—if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. So, we learned how to do this: We saw that we can do this by maybe starting each day asking the Lord to help us be more kind and to be good to the people we come in contact with. Then, we can begin thinking of ways that we can exhibit this kindness to those in our lives. Yes, we can strategically stir up good and kind works in our lives. How? By doing what Hebrews 10:24 says, “consider one another in order to stir up love and good works.” So, in regard to this, let me ask you: How many books have you read on the fruit of the Spirit? How many studies have you done on the various fruit of the Spirit? I believe we can look at our libraries and see what we are producing in our lives. So, we ought to study up on these things and by doing so, make place in our lives for them. And, glory to God, we saw what the other fruit of doing things like this consistently will be: We will begin producing more joy and peace in our lives as well! Why? Because we are spending more time thinking of how we can be good and kind to others rather than how others can be more good and kind to us. Amen? So, let’s move on this week into another couple of fruit of the Spirit. This week, I would like us to look at the fruits of longsuffering and faithfulness. PATIENCE VERSUS LONGSUFFERING Let’s begin with longsuffering: Now some translations use the word “patience” here, but I like the New King James version’s translation of “longsuffering” better, and here is why: For one, the Greek word Paul used here in Galatians 5:22 (Greek makrothumia) is translated “longsuffering” many more times than it is patience. But the main reason I like the translation “longsuffering” better as it pertains to this fruit of the Spirit is because when you do a word study of “patience” and “longsuffering,” what you find is interesting. You see, almost every time this word for “longsuffering” is used, it is used in connection with someone being patient with someone else. However, with the word for “patience” (oftentimes the translation of the word hupomeno), it is often used in connection with being patient in circumstances. Therefore, I believe that the difference between these two Greek terms is that one (the one that is listed as a fruit of the Spirit, mind you) is patience in regard to people (i.e. makrothumia) and the other (i.e. hupomeno) is enduring circumstances. In other words, I think it is safe to assume that there is a patience that is used with people and that is called “longsuffering” and there is a patience that is used with circumstances and that is called “endurance.” However, while longsuffering is certainly similar in nature to patience, the primary difference between these two virtues is that longsuffering keeps one from anger, wrath, etc. and patience keeps one from moving when the pressure is put on (Greek hupomeno— “staying under power”). So, longsuffering is not moved by negative emotions while patience is not moved by negative circumstances. Now is it incorrect to say that we can be patient with people? Certainly not! But since there are different words that were used in those days to describe how one patiently endures both people and things, I believe it is important for us to have different terms in order to make a distinction. However, based on the verbiage we use in our culture today, a better translation would be “patience” because the term “longsuffering” is not a commonly used word today. But this is where it gets interesting: As I stated already, the fruit of the Spirit which we call “longsuffering” comes from the Greek word makrothumia and comes from two words. The prefix is makros, which simply means “long”, and the other word is thumos, which describes “passionate anger or wrath.” So, when you combine these two words together, you see a person described that takes a “long” time to get “mad” or you could say they are slow to anger. When it comes to makrothumia, I like to use the analogy of a stick of dynamite. But not just any ordinary stick of dynamite, but one that has a tremendously long fuse (i.e. that string that one lights on fire to ignite the dynamite). So, because its fuse is so long, you can “burn” it for a long time before it will ever “explode” on you. Therefore, the believer who is producing this virtue in his or her life is extremely “patient & forbearing” with others. We see this described in Ephesians 4:2 when Paul says, “with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.” In other words, it is with longsuffering that we bear with one another in love. So, the fruit of longsuffering enables one to bear with others because of their love for them. You see, the lack of being able to “bear” it, is a lack of longsuffering. But again, it is not bearing with them with gritted teeth; it is bearing with them in love. LOVE IS LONGSUFFERING Now as it is with all of the fruit of the Spirit, we can see God in all of these virtues—and that is certainly the case with this fruit. For example, we see in First Corinthians 13:4, the very first description we have of love is that it “suffers long…” And as we have seen, since God is love, then God suffers long. Therefore, a major characteristic of God’s loving nature is longsuffering, or we could say, longsuffering is at the forefront of Love’s characteristics. We see this in Peter’s letters. (And why? Because he was a man who was in desperate need of this longsuffering nature of God. Amen?) In First Peter 3:20, he describes how it was “divine longsuffering” that had God wait in the days of Noah before bringing the flood on the earth. And even with the extreme depravity of man in those days, the Lord gave them an additional 120 years before judging the world. In Second Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” Peter goes on, in this chapter, to describe this “longsuffering” of God as the grace & mercy He gives us until His Second Coming. The fact is, if it were not for this “divine longsuffering,” many of us would not still be here. You see, God in His longsuffering gives us much more time than we can fathom. When OUR patience is running out, HIS is just getting started! Isn’t the Lord described in the Scriptures as being “slow to anger”? Now this is not our version of doing something slowly. For instance, in the Book of Revelation, Jesus said, “Behold I am coming quickly!” right? Now He said that how long ago? Around 2,000 years, right? So, if 2,000-plus years is God doing something “quickly,” what is Him doing something “slowly”? Selah. Romans 2:4 also describes this “divine longsuffering” when Paul said, “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” We see in this verse that things like God’s kindness, forbearance & longsuffering are the fruit of His goodness. And the point Paul was making right here was that when we bear this fruit, it leads others to change. Thus, the importance of bearing the fruit of longsuffering: it helps others change. For example, Peter talked about how this is one of the ways how a wife can win her husband to the Lord (see First Peter 3:1-2)—by the fruit she’s producing in her life. So, do you suppose if I bear the fruit of longsuffering in my life, it might help convert someone? I guarantee you it can—for it’s the manifestation of God’s goodness (in us and through us) that leads man to repentance. ACCORDING TO HIS POWER Now as we look at God’s fruit of longsuffering and also because longsuffering is a fruit of the Spirit, that means it is not just something we can work up on our own. No, it, like all of the fruit of the Spirit comes from the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life. While there are certainly some things that we can do to help us become more patient with others, such as a changed perspective and a renewed focus (we will look at some of these things momentarily), the fact is that if we are going to produce the fruit of God’s longsuffering, we are going to need help. In fact, in Colossians chapter one, Paul was praying for this church and said that he desired that they be “strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy.” (Colossians 1:11). In other words, this prayer was for the supernatural strength and power of God to be poured into a believer’s life which would enable them “for all patience and longsuffering with joy.” So, if you and I are going to produce all of the patience (for every difficult circumstance) and all of the longsuffering (for every difficult person), then we are going to need God’s strength to do it—particularly, in order to be joyful while enduring. So, yes, it is going to take the Holy Spirit’s help in us producing this fruit to the degree that we ought. However, like I said, there is still a part we have to play in producing this fruit. Let me explain: GOOD GROUND FOR LONGSUFFERING You see, like there are certain types of soil that produce certain types of fruit better, there is a particular type of soil that best produces the fruit of longsuffering. Let me give you a couple of characteristics of this type of heart: In Colossians 3:12, the apostle Paul says, “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering;” Notice here that there are virtues—one being the fruit of longsuffering—that are “put on” by us. The words “put on” literally describe clothing oneself. And like it is with the putting on of clothes in this physical life, the first step to wearing them is a mentality (i.e. determining what we are going to wear). How many of you went over to your closet this morning and the clothes you are now wearing jumped off the hangers and onto your body? No, you had to choose to put them on. So, just as your clothes didn’t choose you, but you choose them, neither will the fruit of longsuffering choose you; you must choose it. Therefore, in order to wear the fruit of longsuffering in my life, it is going to take a certain attitude and mentality. So, let me give you a couple of things that help one to have the proper mindset to wearing this particular fruit: First of all, in Matthew chapter 18, we see in Jesus’ Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, how the servant goes from asking his master to be longsuffering with him to then hearing his brother pleading the same from him and showing no patience with him. What we can gather from this is that one of the reasons we don’t “suffer long” with others is because we are not being mindful to how “longsuffering” God has been with us. Therefore, it helps me to cultivate the ground of my heart for this fruit by consciously remembering how patient the Lord has been with me and the great debt He has dismissed in my own personal life. The apostle Paul understood this well: In First Timothy 1:16, he described his life & ministry as showing all of God’s longsuffering in order to teach all who would turn to Christ after him how longsuffering God will be with them. In other words, God’s own longsuffering in his life propelled Paul into a state of being longsuffering himself (Compare Second Timothy 3:10). So, both being the receiver of God’s patience and living in the awareness of how much He has suffered long with us is a key to cultivating the ground of our heart, but there are some other good ways of thinking that will help as well: Pastor James uses this same word for “longsuffering” in James 5:7 when he says, “Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain.” Here we see James using the analogy of a farmer as being patient with his seed in order to describe how we are to suffer long in things. You see, one thing that I believe helps in producing longsuffering is understanding the process of patience. Like it is with seedtime & harvest, we understand that there is a natural process to the time between our sowing and our reaping. And we have seen how children, who do not understand how it takes time for a seed to grow and produce, want to dig those seeds up when it seemingly doesn’t do anything after a day or two, right? But do you have a problem when you plant a seed producing patience and longsuffering while you wait for it to come to maturity. Of course, you don’t. And why? It is because you know there is a process to the harvest coming to pass. Therefore, you are prepared to wait until harvest time by wisdom and understanding. Likewise, I think if we would understand that there is a similar process in sowing & reaping in both our own lives and in other’s lives, we would be more apt to produce longsuffering and patience. For example, if I am dealing with a difficult person, and I know that I am sowing good seed into them, I should know that it is just a matter of time before the harvest comes. And if I believe that longsuffering is a by-product, I know I will reap if I faint not and I am faithful to water that seed. Which leads me to the next fruit of the Spirit that I want us to cover today—the fruit of faithfulness … THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAITH AND FAITHFULNESS Now for some of us, we have known this particular fruit of the Spirit to be “faith” because this is the way the original King James Version translated it. And while the Greek word here, in fact, is the common word used for faith in the New Testament (The Greek word pistis), in the context here, it likely conveys more of the idea of a person who is faithful. The reason is because we mainly see moral and character qualities being described with the rest of the fruit of the Spirit Paul describes. Not to mention, the vast majority of translations we have today translate this word as “faithfulness” which indicates to me that most Greek scholars lean towards the belief that this particular fruit of the Spirit is describing someone who, through their faith, is reliable and loyal—that is, he or she is trustworthy, dependable, dedicated, consistent and unwavering in their dealings with others. However, I will say that I do not believe there is a big difference between one’s faith in God and faithfulness towards man. Why do you say this, pastor? It is because God’s faithfulness is what we put our faith in. You see, we can only believe a God who is faithful to do what He says He will do and that has done what He says He has done. If He vacillates in His character, how can we depend on Him and know what He is going to do. Therefore, this is why I believe our faith in God is rooted in God’s faithfulness. Likewise, I also believe the faithfulness we exhibit in our lives is a result of our faith in Him. Let me explain: If I truly believe God, I myself will be a reliable and dependable person. I’ll say it this way: if I trust God, I will be trustworthy myself. Someone might ask—How is that? Let me give you an example: if I believe God put me somewhere, then my faith in His assignment will cause me to stay planted there until He says something else. If He has called me to perform a certain task, then I will be dedicated to that calling. On a seemingly smaller level, if God gives me commandments like seek first the kingdom of God with my finances, then I will consistently and unwaveringly be faithful to put the Lord first with my finances. So, one cannot separate our faithfulness in life from our faith in the Lord. Here is a faithful statement and worthy of all acceptance: God’s faithfulness is what our faith is rooted in, and our faithfulness is the fruit of the faith we have in Him. CAN PEOPLE BELIEVE ME? On that note, do you how we could summarize what it means to be faithful? Like so: Can people believe in you? For example, if you told someone you would be there in 30 minutes, do you show up 45 minutes later? If you promised someone you would come help them with something, do you back out at the last minute simply because you didn’t find it convenient? I’m sure we all have failed in areas like this at one time or another, and there is certainly no need for condemnation for our past mistakes—for we cannot change our past, but we can change our future. So, my point is, we need to start today endeavoring to produce more of the fruit of faithfulness in our life until we are perfectly reflecting the faithfulness of God. Yes, church, we need to grow to become a man or woman that does exactly what they say they are going to do (i.e. dependable) and has done exactly what they say they have done (i.e. trustworthy). Again, this is why we are told time and time again in the Bible that God is faithful. In fact, great is His faithfulness! What this is essentially communicating to us is that we can believe in Him. Yes, He will do what He says He will do! For example, we have promise after promise in the Scriptures that tell us that He will never leave us nor forsake us, and that God is always with us, abiding with us forever. Well, if God was unfaithful, then one day He might be there and the next day, He might not. But no, since He is the epitome of faithfulness, then we know He is there even if we don’t perceive Him with our senses. For one to believe that God is not there with them at a current stage in their life is essentially calling Him “unfaithful.” Now I know they don’t like to think that is what they are saying, but that is what we are saying when we believe God is not doing what He said He would do. It’s tight but it’s right. Glory! But we know God is faithful! We know we can put our trust in Him, amen? We know He will do what He said He will do! Likewise, we need to reflect the same attribute of faithfulness in our lives as well. People need to know that we are dependable. Folks need to understand that we are trustworthy and reliable. The world needs to know that we absolutely will not lie to them. And the reason this is so important is because we are the only Bible some people will ever read. We are being read, saints! Haven’t you ever noticed how the ungodly knows when a Christian is being hypocritical? Yes, they know when we are being unfaithful more than we do in a lot of cases. This is why we need to produce the fruit of God’s faithfulness in our lives—so that by people seeing they can believe in us, they can believe on Him. Now again, a faithful person can be described in several ways: For one, he or she does what they say they are going to do. In other words, a faithful person tells the truth—even swearing to their own hurt. Another characteristic of a faithful person is that he or she is always there. In other words, they are going to be there with you through thick & thin. They are not going to quit on you and be quick to forsake you. Yes, a faithful person is a committed, loyal person. On that note, another characteristic of a faithful person is that they are responsible and dependable. For example, a faithful worker is one who not only shows up for work, but does a good job when they are there. THE REWARDS OF FAITHFULNESS And like we see in the world today at many institutions, faithfulness is one of the most rewarded fruit in the kingdom of God. Yes, it is arguably the most lauded fruit that we can produce in our lives. No, it is not necessarily always recognized by man, but it is always praised by God. Do you remember the statement Jesus said He would speak to those servants who served Him well in this life? He said, “Well done you good and faithful servant.” (see Matthew 25:21) This is what we want the Lord to say to us on that Day! This shows us that the fruit of faithfulness is one of the primary things that God is looking for in us, His servants. Yes, church, this is why we want the Lord to say this to us in that Day. This shows us that the fruit of faithfulness is one of the primary things that God is looking for in us, His servants. And the Lord saying this to us on that Day is not the only reward of faithfulness. The Bible teaches us that a faithful man abounds with blessings not only in the next life but in this one as well (see Proverbs 28:20). We are also taught that it is the faithful person who is rewarded with greater responsibilities (see Second Timothy 2:2). Paul himself said that he was called and enabled by God because he was counted faithful (see First Timothy 1:12). So, the Lord obviously considers faithfulness as one of the most essential fruits to being entrusted with a greater stewardship. Thus, He recognizes the good and faithful servant at His Second Coming. And on that note, what is interesting to me about this is these are arguably the two most common virtues God has ascribed to Him throughout the Bible—goodness & faithfulness. Yes, we see hear time and time again that “God is good” and “God is faithful.” So, I believe Jesus will, in essence, be telling His servants this— “Well done you good and faithful servant—for you produced My fruit on the earth. Verily, verily I say unto you what is said of Me— You are good. You are faithful.” So, in conclusion, we need to be mindful that these two fruit—the fruit of longsuffering and faithfulness—are to be exhibited in our lives. Therefore, we ought to keep them before us—first, by focusing on God’s patient and faithful nature and, secondly, by considering them in our own lives. Then, we are making place for them in us. Again, these characteristics of God given by the Holy Spirit are obviously not growing on us like trees. No, they must be pursued—no, not with fleshly energy, but by cooperating with the Holy Spirit within us. Let’s determine to become more faithful, church! Let’s aim to become more longsuffering with one another! For these virtues, while not as esteemed by the church as some of the others, are two of the most rewarding fruit we can bear. Amen. REVIEW
Last week, we began looking at those nine virtues that the Holy Spirit produces in our lives, commonly known as the Fruit of the Spirit. Church, both the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit are what all of these teachings that we have done this year on the Holy Spirit should point us to—to produce this good fruit in our lives. Yes, what the Lord wills for each of us is that the Holy Spirit would be manifested in and through us. So, again, we are winding up our teachings here in 2019 on the Holy Spirit by looking at the Fruit of the Spirit—that is, the nine characteristics that the Holy Spirit is meant to produce in our lives. We saw last week that these are located in Galatians 5:22-23, where the apostle Paul says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Now by “virtue” of the fact that these nine virtues manifest character in our lives, we should see that character in the Christian’s life is a major part of what the Holy Spirit is meant to manifest in each of us. As I made the point of last week, the majority of Spirit-filled Christians would much rather see signs, wonders and miracles manifest in our lives than these fruit, but these gifts are not the end all. Sure, we need the power. We absolutely need the gifts of the Holy Spirit active and operating in our lives, but not at the exclusion of the fruit of the Spirit. The Bible is clear that it is not our gifts that lets us know that we are born again Christians; the apostle John says it is our love of the brethren (see First John 3:14). The truth is, that these nine virtues are the fruit that someone is living a spiritual life. In other words, these fruit are the tell-tell sign of whether someone is spiritual of not. No, it’s not how much we speak in tongues or how many miracles we see in our lives; it’s how much we genuinely love people and how much joy & peace we are producing in our lives. If you recall, we looked at the example of the Church of Corinth and saw how they had a plethora of gifts, but lacked character, morals, etc. This should prove to us that the presence of gifts is not what makes one mature; the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of true spirituality. So, I say all of this to say, we need these nine virtues produced in our lives alongside of the nine gifts of the Spirit in order to make the kind of impact on this world God has called us to. So, let’s continue this week looking at these verses in Galatians chapter 5. Last week, we basically did an overview of these gifts and saw how one bears this fruit of the Spirit. The first thing we saw is what Paul meant when he said at the end of verse 23— “Against such there is no law”? He was essentially saying, “There is obviously no law out there against the people who produce these nine virtues in their life.” So, when these fruit are being produced in our lives and we abide by them, we are not violating any commandment. Rather, we are actually fulfilling the righteous requirement of God’s law—that is, the royal law of love. And herein lies the difference between the old and new covenants: The law preached “Thou shalt not … lie, steal, kill, etc.” but Jesus preached “Thou shalt … love you neighbor as yourself, love one another as I have loved you, do good, give, forgive, etc.” Let me say it this way: the law said, “Thou shalt not…” and grace says, “Thou shalt love, be joyful, have peace, be kind, do good, be longsuffering, faithful, gentle and self-controlled.” Again, why? Because by producing this fruit, we automatically fulfill the law of God. We don’t have to worry about not doing something because when we, through the power of the strength and leadership of the Spirit, do what is right, we are automatically avoiding the things that are wrong. Amen! Then we backed up to the beginning of verse 22 and noticed that little relatively obscure word at the beginning of verse 22, the word “But.” We learned that whenever you see a conjunction like that used to begin a verse, you need to consider what the author said before it. And in this case, it is clear to me that the apostle Paul was making a distinction between these fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh that he referred to in verses 19-21. And this is a BIG “But,” saints—because there is a big difference between not doing evil things (i.e. the works of the flesh) and doing good things (i.e. producing the fruit of the Spirit)! For example, a religious person might be able to abstain from stealing, but can he or she actually produce joy in their life? Yes, they might be able to boast that they have not murdered anyone, but have they truly loved their enemies? Church, simply not doing bad things is what religion likes to focus on; but true spirituality is fruitful—actually producing good works. “But” the fact is, there is a big difference between how both the flesh and Spirit manifest things in our lives. Paul describes the flesh as producing “works” and the Spirit as producing “fruit”—which again, there is a difference between how fruit is produced versus how something “works” to produce something. We saw that, in contrast to the fruit of the Spirit, the works of the flesh are not produced; they are “manufactured.” A machine in a factory “works” and can manufacture a product, but it can never “produce” fruit. Fruit only comes from something that has life and there is not much effort at all in this fruit-bearing process. But when it comes to the word “work,” we think of labor, toil, strain, and effort. This does not mean that the fleshly works are not automatically generated, but rather shows us what comes with the flesh—all of these negative qualities that we associate with “work.” So, the flesh will keep you longer than you want to stay (like work) and pay you what you definitely don’t want to be paid (like most jobs). “But” that is not how the Lord has designed for us to live the Christian life. We are not machines that work, manufacturing this fruit. No, we are fruit bearing trees that naturally (i.e. organically) produce fruit for the glory of God. It is not meant to be arduous or laborious. Rather it is meant to be free-flowing, natural producing of these virtues in our life because of Who we are abiding in and Who we have abiding in us. We saw how the “fruit” of the cursed ground was a product of the curse on mankind after Adam’s transgression, not the blessing God intended for mankind to live in. (See Genesis 3:17-18) So, this laboring and hard work to both produce and maintain the fruit of the ground was a product of the curse, not the blessing. The world has surely modeled this to us as well—for we are trained that with hard work, discipline, and effort, we will be fruitful in life. But not so in the kingdom of God. In it, we are fruitful simply by grace, not works. And this curse came as a result of Adam’s transgression, didn’t it? But this was never God’s plan for man. His will was that we continue to live in a fruitful Paradise where we simply enjoy life with God in the Garden and are not living by the sweat of our brow. And from the physical standpoint, while we certainly still live on the fallen, sin-cursed earth that will one day be redeemed to become the new earth, the fact is that part of our lives has already experienced redemption—that is, our spirits. But we saw that what the First Adam lost through His sinful act, the Last Adam has regained through His righteous deed! In other words, while we had inherited death through Adam’s transgression, through the new-birth, we now have a new inheritance; yes, through Christ’s resurrection we have an inheritance of life. Glory! Amen. So, Jesus did not come to initially put us back in the Garden; He came to put the Garden back in us! What I mean by that is that through the new birth and the indwelling Holy Spirit, paradise has been restored in our spirit-man. This is why the first key to producing the fruit of the Spirit is being born again. Without the new birth, it is impossible for us to produce His fruit—for His seed was never placed in us to begin with. Then how could we ever truly be fruitful? So, the Lord has set things up in our spiritual walk like He did in the Garden. No longer are we to produce fruit through our labor and toil; now we produce fruit simply through abiding in the Paradise of His presence. Amen! Then we saw how Jesus taught us this in John 15:1-8, when He taught His disciples the principle of abiding in Himself, the True Vine. In this parable, Jesus was illustrating to them (and us) what life is to be like in the kingdom. So, we saw that just as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself, likewise we are not going to be able to bear this fruit of the Spirit in our lives of ourselves. In other words, our determination, hard work and will-power is not going to get it done. No, in order to bear the fruit of the Spirit, we have to abide in the True Vine—for apart from Him, we can do absolutely nothing. Now as we’ve learned before, this word “abide” means to stay, live, remain, or dwell. So, what Jesus is referring to here is living in His presence habitually—that is, spending time in His presence on a daily basis. Church, this is the only way to bear fruit—to be consistently connected to Jesus through spending time in fellowship with Him. Then we moved on in Galatians 5:22 and looked at how the apostle Paul specifically called these nine virtues—the fruit of the Spirit. And we noticed that the word “fruit” is singular, in contrast to the “works” (plural) of the flesh. We learned that the fact that Paul uses fruit singular here suggests to us that these virtues/qualities are in unison—perhaps like a cluster of grapes as opposed to different pieces of fruit. We saw how this also serves in contrast to the gifts of the Spirit that are distributed to each one individually to where one Christian might tend towards one gift, and another operates in two totally different gifts. The fruit of the Spirit are not like this because every believer is expected to produce all nine of these fruit in their lives. So, we can’t say what we do with the gifts something like— “I have the gift of tongues, but I don’t have the gifts of healings.” No, we can’t say, “Well, I tend to produce kindness in my life, but self-control is not my fruit.” We need to understand that we all have the same Spirit and, therefore, are expected to produce the same fruit. Amen? So, that is why Paul, through the Holy Spirit, calls these nine virtues of character—the fruit of the Spirit. But then we saw how they are not just called fruit, but are called the fruit of something—namely, the fruit of the Spirit. If we back up and consider the context of Galatians chapter 5, we discover that this fruit Paul is describing is the fruit of both walking in the Spirit (see verse 16) and being led by the Spirit (see verse 18). In other words, as we live our lives in the realm of the Holy Spirit and are led, directed and guided by Him, these nine virtues will be the by-product. Amen? So, if someone is not exhibiting these nine fruit in their lives, what can we conclude? That they are not walking in the Spirit, nor are they being led by the Spirit. You see, church, if one claims to be Spirit-filled and is not producing these characteristics of the Holy Spirit, then something is wrong with that picture. Either God is a liar or they are. Which one do you think is more likely? So, what did the apostle Paul mean when he described these virtues as the fruit of the Spirit? Well, there is a couple of different ways one could look at this: Number one, it is important to understand that in the original language words like pnuema (the Greek word for “Spirit”) did not have capitalized letters. So, in this case, the term “Spirit” was capitalized by the translators. So, was Paul referring to the Holy Spirit here or to our new, recreated spirit? Well, I made the point that I believe it is referring to both, and let me explain why: While the Holy Spirit is the agent by which we have been born again and Who comes to take up residency in our spirit upon salvation, the fact is, if we have been born of Him, then why would our reborn spirit not have the same attributes? Let me ask it this way— since “he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (see First Corinthians 6:17) then wouldn’t this fruit of the Spirit also be the nature of our born-again spirits? My point is that it doesn’t really matter whether one believes this is the fruit of the Holy Spirit or the fruit of our born-again spirit. The bottom line is that it is the power of the Holy Spirit that helps a believer produce this fruit in their lives and He does this by giving us the life in the first place and then working together with our regenerated spirit to produce the fruit from that seed that He placed within us. Therefore, the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life! But Paul meant that since they are called “fruit,” they are the fruit that originates from another source of life. In this case, they have come through the Seed of the Spirit. In other words, as fruit, they grow and are produced in our lives after His (the Holy Spirit’s) own kind. I explained this by looking back in the Book of Genesis: We saw how on the third day, after the Lord created the earth, He said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:11-12). Here we see how God originally designed fruit to be produced: First of all, we saw that in order for the tree to yield fruit, it must be created as a fruit tree. For example, if the tree is not an apple tree, then what is it not going to produce? Apples! So, the first thing that had to transpire in order for you and I to bear the fruit of the Spirit in our lives is to be recreated as a fruit-bearing tree. And we know that this occurred by the Holy Spirit when we called on the name of the Lord, were born again, and received the new nature we received through the Spirit washing, renewing and regenerating us (Titus 3:5). So, the Lord created things so that a fruit tree will yield its fruit, but notice that it yields fruit “according to its kind.” I like how the New Living Translation says this. It says, “from which they came.” In other words, a fruit tree is only going to produce the fruit, and the seed in that fruit, from the seed from which they came. So, we learned that the reason it is called the fruit of the Spirit is because it is fruit that is according to His kind, or you could say, it is the fruit that came directly from the seed of the Spirit. I don’t believe most Christians have ever considered this—that if these nine virtues are the fruit of the Spirit, then they are attributes of God. It would make sense though—for why would God be producing characteristics in us that He Himself didn’t possess? No, saints, by possessing the fruit of the Spirit, we have love within us—but not only that; He is also joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Now we began looking at these last week, but let me give you a couple of other examples:
Now if we consider the context, we see that Paul was describing the difference between the glory of the Old Covenant and the glory of the New Covenant (which was said to exceed much more in glory [see verse 9]). And he uses the example of Moses putting a veil over his face after He came out of the glory of God on Mount Sinai, describing how the glory we’ve received does not pass away. Now we have had the veil removed and can behold His glory, which results in us being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. Now, if you recall, Moses desired to see this glory and the Lord responded that He would make all of His goodness pass before him. Therefore, I equate God’s glory with His goodness. So, if we behold God’s glory, we are seeing His goodness. And here is my point: If we behold the self-control, gentleness, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, longsuffering, peace, joy, and love of our God, what does this verse say will happen? We ourselves will be transformed into the same image we are beholding—meaning, you and I will begin to reflect His nature that we are beholding. Yes, we become what we behold, church. So, behold His beauty and watch His fruit become yours, in Jesus name. Amen! Just consider your own fruit—your children. How do they produce your fruit? First of all, they have to be born of you—holding your nature. Then by abiding in you—they become more like you through their relationship with you. But what we have just seen is a vital part of them becoming like you—they also bring forth your fruit by beholding you—for as they get to know you, observing how you live your life, they grow to become like you. So sure, it is by being born of those parents and having their nature put in you. Sure, it is by living in the presence of those parents and being raised in their home. But it is also by beholding how those parents do things; that is what produces the fruit of those parents in the child (i.e. fruit). All of this can be summarized in three words— Born, Abide, and Behold: First, we must be born again—receiving the nature that contains all nine of these virtues. Then we must yield to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to where He is infusing us with the supernatural ability to exhibit these qualities in our lives on a consistent basis. This is the abiding part. Finally, we need to behold the One who possesses this fruit and let His example reflect in our own lives. Now since we are not your traditional church, we are not going to study these nine virtues in the traditional order. This week, I want to begin with two of the gifts sandwiched in the middle of Paul’s list, the two we just referred to—kindness and goodness. SISTER FRUITS What is the difference between these two fruit of the Spirit? I mean, they sound similar, don’t they? Well, they are strikingly similar, but there must be a difference if the Holy Spirit inspired the apostle Paul to mention them both as two distinct fruit of the Spirit, right? I see “kindness” as more of the attitude by which we do things for people. Like, for example, in First Corinthians 13:4, we are told that love suffers long and is kind. How many of you know that one can suffer long or be patient with others but have the wrong attitude while doing it? For example, they might put up with or tolerate another person’s tardiness, but at the same time, be fuming on the inside while they are waiting on them. Sound like anyone we know? Don’t look at your spouse😊 “Goodness,” on the other hand, is what I believe to be the action accompanying the right attitude that we possess. Like, for instance, if there was a man who died and, in their will, they left a good portion of their estate to build an orphanage or to do some other benevolent work, how do you suppose those benefiting from him would refer to him? They might say, “He was a good man.” Why? Because we refer to someone as good because of their good deeds (or, fruit) that we see in their life. But my point is that these two fruit of the Spirit work hand in hand. We might describe them as sister fruits, seeing how closely related they are. For example, some of you might describe the fruit of kindness in the exact opposite way—as the action itself and not the attitude—and the fruit of goodness as the inherent quality of a person. But here is what we must agree on: that both kindness and goodness are to be produced in our lives seeing as they are fruit of the Spirit. In other words, Paul is describing two virtues that we can see evidence of in one’s life and are not just what a person is versus what they do. No, every believer is called to both be kind and do kind things, to be good and do good things. No, not to try and earn God’s love and acceptance through their goodness and kindness, but because they have already received His love and acceptance. So, let’s get into each of these this week. Let’s look at both the fruit of goodness and the fruit of kindness. Let’s start with the first one Paul mentions “kindness.” THE FRUIT OF KINDNESS The dictionary defines the word “kindness” as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Therefore, I see kindness as being exhibited in demeanor, action & thought. What I mean by that is the fruit of kindness is to look kind, be kind, and to think kind. In other words, it is produced in our lives by our countenance, our actions, and our mindset. As for other translations of this word, the original King James Version translates this word as “gentleness,” which fits well because to be kind carries with it the idea of being tenderhearted, gentle, and easily touched by other’s needs, infirmities, etc. I especially like the Aramaic Bible in Plain English, which translates this word as “sweetness”—for to be kind is to be “sweet.” Now what does it mean for someone to be sweet? It means that they are pleasant, nice, and to one’s liking. I like that. I think that is a good description of someone who is kind. Now as we have just seen, we know from several Scriptures that God is kind (First Corinthians 13:4). We see in the Bible that His kindness is what God showed us through the giving of His Son (Ephesians 2:7). It is even His kindness (some translations say “goodness”) that leads us to repentance to receive His kindness (Romans 2:4). So, let’s let this be the barometer of what kindness is: In most of these examples of God’s kindness, we see action and not just intention. God’s kindness was Him giving us His very best (see Ephesians 2:7). It is the manifestation of His kindness that helps people to change directions. So, kindness is not merely an attitude; kindness is a tangible fruit that people experience. Let’s look at another place where the apostle Paul encourages this fruit of kindness in our lives: In Ephesians 4:32, he said, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” (Compare Colossians 3:12). The word “kind” that he used here (Greek chrestos) literally describes being useful, manageable, or employed. In fact, this is the same word used by the Master in Matthew 11:30 when He described His yoke as “easy.” This word shows us that the way to be “employed” by the Lord is to have skills in the arena of “kindness.” Therefore, to be kind is to serve—both the Lord and others. Do you want to be useful? Do you want God to employ you for some great task? Then purpose in your heart to be a kind person, fruitful in the area of kindness. This is what makes one fit for us by Him. Amen? But like it is with most of our jobs, this is not a Sunday only vocation. When Paul said, “Be kind to one another,” he was implying being continuously kind. In other words, this is perpetual behavior, not just a one-time performance. I guarantee you your employer wants you doing your job for 40 hours a week, and not just 4 hours, right? Likewise, God wants us to be fit for use in our employment for Him, and He considers this a full-time job, not a part-time one. Now I want you to notice that Paul threads “tenderhearted” together with being kind here in Ephesians 4:32. Another way of describing being “tenderhearted” is to be compassionate and sensitive to the needs and desires of others. So, for this reason, I would describe “kindness” as being motivated by compassion and “moved with compassion.” Of course, we constantly see Jesus doing the kind things that He did in the Gospels because of the compassion that moved Him. There are many examples of this, but one that certainly exhibits the fruit of kindness to me is when Jesus fed the four thousand (plus): In Matthew 15:32, He said to His disciples, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.” So, how did this miracle of the feeding of thousands begin? It began with the compassion that rose up in Jesus. He was observant and conscientious of their need, knowing that they had stayed with Him for three days and that they had nothing to eat—which teaches us an important lesson: In order to be kind and compassionate, we must be conscientious and considerate. We cannot only be wrapped up in our own world, only aware of our own needs. Then, Jesus said that He did not want to send them away hungry because they might not make it back home. Now you understand that this was three days without any food, not three hours. People will say, “I’m starving!” but that’s usually not true. All that is, is their flesh crying out for food. The fact is, a person’s body can go for days without food—and if they had to do something physical like this multitude needing to walk home, we need food maybe a little sooner. But this reminds me of what Pastor James said in James 2:15-16 when he used the example of someone being naked and destitute of daily food and they just send them away saying, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled!” Kindness does not just speak kinds words to people like saying, “I’ll pray for you, brother.” No, kindness is a work (i.e. action). It is not only saying you hope their needs are met, but it is playing an actual part in that need being met. So, this describes kindness as not just the good intentions we have. Sure, kindness begins in the person who is kind themselves. Yes, it begins with an attitude, a mentality and way of thinking, but the fruit of kindness is produced in our lives by some kind of action on our part. Now of course, this doesn’t mean that we are always to do something for someone in need. Being led by the Spirit is the key to every situation, but my point is that the fruit of kindness will move one to be the solution and the answer to other’s needs more times than not. Then, as we are inclined to be kind, the Holy Spirit shows us how we can best serve Him at that moment. Amen? So, my point is, the fruit of kindness is an action, not just an intention. It ought to be our faith on display and manifested. Amen? But not only that, we learn from the end of Ephesians 4:32 that kindness also moves one to forgive. We see this in Matthew chapter 18 when the Master was moved with compassion and forgave his servant that debt. Did you know that kindness is the motivation that we ought to forgive others with? Again, the Lord is this way: We see in First Peter 2:3 where after the apostle Peter encouraged us as newborn babes to desire pure spiritual milk that we may grow up in our salvation, that he said, “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” The word “gracious” there is the same word as “kind” in Ephesians 4:32. Again, another time this word for “kindness” is used is in Romans 2:4 when Paul describes the riches of His “goodness” (same Greek word as in Galatians 5:22) that leads man to repentance. Church, this is why this fruit of the Spirit is so important to be produced in our lives. We could say it this way--the fruit of the fruit of kindness is that people will turn to God and receive His goodness. Amen! Which leads us to kindness’ sister fruit—the fruit of goodness: THE FRUIT OF GOODNESS The Greek word that Paul used in Galatians 5:22 denotes being “beneficial.” Therefore, it paints the picture a benefactor, which would describe one who possesses great wealth—a philanthropist, if you would. You see, there is a difference between a beneficiary and a benefactor: A beneficiary is someone who benefits from the wealth stored up by others. Like, for instance, a beneficiary on some type of saving’s account might be a next of kin who is left the dollars that their spouse, parent, or grandparents have personally saved up. Therefore, the benefactor must have something to give to the beneficiary, amen? Likewise, it needs to be understood that in order for us to be as fruitful as we can be in this fruit of the Spirit called “goodness,” we need to openly receive the goodness of God in our lives. In other words, we first need to be benefited by God’s goodness ourselves—like, for example, receiving more resources so that we will have more to give. Then we can be even “gooder” than we’ve been in the past. Therefore, I would describe bearing the fruit of “goodness” as us being more “generous, liberal and charitable with our finances, time, or energy” like a “benefactor” graciously gives of him or herself to bless others. It is also worth noting that we oftentimes use the word “good” in describing food. Like, for instance, if a particular fruit is “bad,” that means it is spoiled, lost its nutritional value, or no longer able to nourish us. Likewise, our fruit needs to remain good, church. That means that it needs to look good, taste good, and satisfy (others) good. In fact, all of the fruit of the Spirit is to consist in this one virtue—goodness: In Ephesians 5:9, Paul said, “for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth.” The context of this passage is us walking as children of light since we are light in the Lord. So, when you and I are walking as children of light, we will produce the fruit of the light, and its fruit is “in all goodness, righteousness, and truth.” That means that if I’m going about being a liar, deceptive, etc., and not doing what is right and in agreement with God’s standards, then I am not walking in the light. Likewise, if I am not exhibiting the fruit of goodness in my life, then I am not bearing all of the fruit of the light in my life. It is that simple. Now our Lord and Savior Jesus walked in the light and bore this fruit of goodness as well, did He not? We are told in Acts 10:38 that He went about “doing good” and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. Sure, Jesus performed miracles and healed thousands of people during His earthly ministry, but what people don’t talk about as much is all the good that He did aside from those spectacular things. Yes, Jesus bore an abundance of goodness in His life and ministry along with the healings and miracles He performed. You see, Jesus had a treasurer, and this was not just a title given to Judas; no, Jesus actually possessed finances and used that wealth to do good to others. Amen! To where even at the Last Supper, when Judas arose from the table and left, the disciples assumed Jesus had possibly sent him out to give some money to the poor (see John 13:29). Now what is interesting to me about that is this was at nighttime. So, why would Jesus’ disciples have assumed that Jesus might have sent Judas out to give something to the poor? Apparently, it was because Jesus had a reputation for doing good to those in need at all hours of the day. So, Jesus was apparently bearing the fruit of goodness all the time! And why? Because Jesus is God and God is good all the time! You see, over and over, the Scriptures speak to us about the fact that God is good and He does good (Psalm 119:68). And these verses not only tell us He’s good, but some of them show us how He is good. Let’s look at a couple of them in order to learn how we ourselves can walk in His goodness towards others: Psalm 34:8-10 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him. The young lions lack and suffer hunger; But those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.” When the Holy Spirit begins in verse 8 by inviting us to taste and see the Lord’s goodness, I can’t help but think of this fruit of the Spirit. And this fruit of His goodness can be both tasted and beheld. Then in verses 9-10, we see what His goodness produces in others— “no want, lack, or suffering hunger.” Therefore, when we are good to others what is the fruit we produce in their lives? We eliminate their needs, wants, and poverty. So, again, we see goodness as that gracious benefactor that both meets the needs and grants the desires of those in want. Let’s now look at the 84th Psalm: Psalm 84:11 says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” You see, our good God is described here as a “sun,” and there are not many other physical things that we’ve been given that illustrate God’s goodness more than the sun. James 1:17 describes Him as the Father of lights that gives us every good and perfect gift. So, the sun itself is one of those good and perfect gifts. All we would need to become acutely aware of how good God has been to the human race is have that sun in the heavens burn out. Life would not be good, I can assure you. Not only is God our sun, but he is also our “shield.” That describes Him as our protector. Oh, how much each of us have been spared from!?! But notice what He is said to give—grace and glory. Church, in His goodness, He shares His glory with me. You could say, in His glory, He shares His goodness with me! That’s right! No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly! And what are these good things? Things that benefit and bless you and I. All of His grace and glory work on our behalf to meet our every need. Oh my glory! So, how do we do this? We become their sun, walking as children of the light! We become their shield, offering them as much protection as we can! We grant them the grace and glory that is in our power to give them! And, last but not least, we do not withhold any good thing from them that is in our hand to give. So, all of these Scriptures that illustrate to us God’s goodness teach us that the Lord is the giver of good things—and only things that benefit and never anything that steals, kills or destroys (John 10:10). No, God only gives “good” and perfect gifts, and He does not deviate from doing that very thing. Pastor James told us to not be deceived in this truth. (see James 1:16-17). May it be so with us, church, that as it is with the Lord (see Psalm 34:8), those around us will be able to both taste and see the fruit of goodness in our lives! Amen! CULTIVATING KINDNESS & GOODNESS So, church, we need to know that the Lord expects the fruit of kindness and goodness to be manifested in our lives. But this fruit does not come by accident. Like it is with growing specific fruit in our gardens, we have to plan to produce the fruits of kindness and goodness. Yes, church, we have to plan to produce this fruit in our lives. Like we’ve learned, kindness and goodness do not just fall on us like apples out of a tree. No, they are fruit produced from our hearts. So, we must intentionally and deliberately begin to cultivate goodness and kindness in the ground of our hearts. When was the last time you did this? I mean, when was the last time you sat down and made a plan how you could be more kind and good to someone. If we are waiting to feel like doing it, it probably won’t happen. If we fail to plan, we plan to fail. Now we can do this by maybe starting each day asking the Lord to help us be more kind and to be good to the people we come in contact with. Then, we can begin thinking of ways that we can exhibit this kindness to those in our lives. Yes, we can strategically stir up good and kind works in our lives. How? By doing what Hebrews 10:24 says, “consider one another in order to stir up love and good works.” The word “consider” in this verse comes from the Greek word katanoeo and literally means “to think about from top to bottom.” So, when we take the time to think about someone thoroughly, the writer of Hebrews tells us here that we will stir up love and good works. The words “stir up” come from the Greek word that describes a “spurring on or encouraging unto” these love and good works. Now most people interpret this last phrase— “stir up (or, provoke unto) love and good works”—as us spurring one another up or encouraging each other to be more loving and to do more good works, but that can only be assumed. The language only indicates that by considering one another this will result in a spurring on or stirring up of love and good works. So, I submit to you that when we learn to truly “consider” one another, what this will do is stir our own hearts up to loving one another and spur ourselves up unto good works! Amen! Here is a good example of how we at High Point Church can do this: For those of you who are unaware, on the first Sunday of every year, we have what we call “First Fruits Sunday.” This is a day where each person at HPC blesses someone else in the church body. Well, a good, practical way to prepare for that day is to maybe begin saving a little money each month from the beginning of the year. Not only that, but begin “considering” others in the body throughout the year—perhaps by simply being observant as we gather together and seeing who the Lord might have you bless in one way or another. This way you are strategically, purposing to be good and kind. You can do this with your loved ones as well: What I began doing a few years back was observing throughout the year things Shannon and Levi have either stated they liked or I’ve simply observed them showing interest in and then I use a little notes app on my phone to jot those things down. Then, when birthdays, Christmas, etc. roll around, I have a list already put together that I can pick from to bless them. And herein lies another good word of wisdom: Be careful that it’s not always just what you think will “benefit” them; sometimes it needs to be what they believe will “benefit” them too. In other words, think about what will truly bless them the most, not just what would bless you the most. And do you know what the other fruit of doing things like this consistently throughout the year is? You will begin producing more joy and peace in your life as well! Why? Because you are spending more time thinking of how you can be good and kind to others rather than how others can be more good and kind to you. Amen? Finally, the apostle Paul said in First Thessalonians 5:15 (Amplified)– “See that none of you repays another with evil for evil, but always aim to show kindness and seek to do good to one another and to everybody.” Saints, let us make this our aim here at HPC! Let us be kind to one another, living to do good to each other and to everyone for that matter! We will be the better for it. Amen. |
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