The Fruit Of The Spirit - Love

July 4, 2021 Online Live Sermon Fruit of the Spirit: Love - Galatians 5:13-23

At beginning of message and before Scripture reading, ask people to grab a piece of fruit that they might have in the house, in the fridge, even frozen in the freezer.

People generally have a favourite kind of fruit, or maybe a few favourites. What’s your favourite kind of fruit? Why don’t you type it in the chat for today? What is your favourite fruit? Today we begin our summer series on the Fruit of the Spirit.

When I think about fruit, I think just about the thing I’m planning to eat. I happen to enjoy mangos, pineapples and coconut, mostly because they remind me of the part of my childhood spent in Mexico. Smelling or eating those fruit takes me right back to the beach in Acapulco, and to a time when my birth family was young and everyone was alive.

That happens sometimes. Fruit, or even some other food or aroma, can take us back to moments in our past. Some of you have said: (fruit mentioned in chat). Awesome.

Pretty much across the board, one of the best things about fruit is that it’s sweet. It’s like nature’s candy. But fruit - whatever one it is, is actually the outcome of a long process.

Let’s look at an example of a strawberry growing. This is sped up drastically, of course. Strawbery growing time lapse - from frozen seedling (YouTube video of strawberry growing, sped up on YouTube 2X)

Comments while video playing: So many things go into the healthy growth of a strawberry. It needs the right amount of sunlight at the right time at its stage of growth. It needs good, nutritious soil. It needs water in the right amount. It needs oxygen. It also needs a gardener to protect it from weeds and even just other plants around it that might grow around it and overshadow it, not allowing it the light that it needs.

When video ends: So although I’m only thinking about the mango I’m about to eat, the truth is there’s a ton that has gone into the creation of the mango. The mango is the outcome of a lot of forces at work. The orange is the result of multiple processes working at the right time to bring it to the point where I can eat it.

If you have your piece of fruit, take a bite or have a piece of it now. That’s sweet. That’s delicious. Thank you God.

The Bible uses the metaphor of fruit to talk about something very important - it’s the formation of our souls, it’s the quality of our character and it’s the presence of Jesus in us. And so we have an actual list of the character qualities of Jesus which are called the fruit of the Spirit.

Let’s quickly look at a list of the fruit of the Spirit and then we’re going to talk today about the first fruit which is love.

The fruit of the Spirit are:

Love (seeks the highest good of others)

Joy (gladness that is not based on circumstances)

Peace (Deep contentment, shalom, unity between people)

Patience or Forbearance (Slow to speak, slow to anger)

Kindness (showing mercy, a sweet tenderness)

Goodness (generous and open-hearted)

Faithfulness (dependable, loyal and full of trust)

Gentleness, calm, non-threatening)

Self-control (Behaving well and in a way that honours God).

So these are the fruit of the Spirit that we find in the Bible. They are qualities of Jesus’ own character that we want to see continually increasing in our lives as people whose hearts are submitted to Christ. They are qualities that reflect what Jesus is like.

This of course takes real time to develop in us, and we have the example of Jesus in the Bible when we want to see the completeness and perfection of these qualities. In Him and in Him only are all of these fruit, all of these qualities perfected.

It takes time for the Fruit of the Spirit to develop in us, and though we can’t speed up the process the same way I sped up the video, we can choose consciously cooperate with God who is at work in us, in order to allow the growth, or maybe just not get in the way of the work of the Spirit bringing about fruit in our lives.

Now, you might ask: “How do I know if I have the Holy Spirit in me? What if sometimes I feel the Holy Spirit and other times I don’t. Does the Holy Spirit come and go?”

That’s a good question. We can sometimes wonder about this because our emotions can be all over the place. Fortunately the work of God is not dependent on our emotions. And the truth of God is not dependent on our feelings. It’s all rooted in Who God is and in God’s Word. And here are just 2 examples from many that talk about the Holy Spirit.