How Is Your Love Life Series

INTRODUCTION

• How do I know if God is working in me? What evidence do I have to shows me that God’s Spirit is in me?

• How can others see God working in me?

• Today we are going to being a sermon series that will help us to answer the above questions.

• SLIDE #1

• Today we are going to begin to look at the fruit of the Spirit. The first fruit we are going to examine is the fruit of love. Today we are going asking the question, “How is your love life?”

• Before we start to look at the issue of love, I want us to turn to Galatians 5. This will be the text we will begin with each week.

• In Galatians 5, Paul talks to us about the contrast of walking by the flesh verses walking by the Spirit.

• One of the things we need to understand is that when we walk by the Spirit and are lead by the Spirit, we are not under bondage to sin and the appetites of the flesh; we are driven by something better. Walking by the Spirit helps us to conquer walking by the flesh.

• SLIDES #2-3

• Look at Galatians 5:19-21 for a moment with me. READ GALATIANS 5:19-21

• Then we go to the verses we will focus on in verses 22-23

• Paul says those things in verse 19-21 are the deeds of the flesh. In other words those are the way in which we can tell if we are controlled by the flesh.

• SLIDE #4

• Look at Galatians 5:22-23. He starts out with BUT… READ GALATIANS 5:22-23

• What is presented to us is a choice, we can choose to live by the flesh or we can live by the Spirit.

• Notice in verse 22 the items listed, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are called to fruit of the Spirit.

• The use of the singular form of the word “fruit” shows us that God wants us to know these qualities are in unity, like a bunch of grapes, the bunch of grapes comes from the same vine branch.

• These qualities are to be found growing in ALL Christians.

• Fruit is what something naturally produces. When a tree is rotten it naturally produces rotten fruit (Matt 7:17). But when the indwelling Spirit of God Himself begins to express His mighty power in the inner being of believers, good things begin to happen. The nature of God himself begins to manifest itself in our lives.

• These are called the fruit of the “Spirit” because the Spirit is the cause of source of the fruit.

• The deeds of the flesh are the works of man; the fruit of the Spirit are works from God. When God is in you, and you allow His Spirit to work in you, these are natural by-products of Him working in you.

• The first fruit we will examine is the fruit of love.

• The way you love can tell you a lot about how much God has control of you.

• During Paul’s day, Greek was the language of the day. In that language we find four predominate words for love and they had fairly distinct meanings.

• In English, we have one word for love and you must know the context in which it is used in order to know what is meant.

• In the original language of the New Testament, that is not true, you can identify the word and generally know what is meant by looking at the word.

• How is your love life? What is the basis of your love for others? Let us look at four types of love. In doing so, we will understand what kind of love qualifies as being a part of the fruit of the Spirit.

SLIDE #5

SERMON

Is your love based on:

I. WHAT OTHERS DO FOR YOU?

• This is a selfish kind of love. It is a love that is rooted in what another person can do for you.

• This is the lowest level of love. This is the type of love in which people would be accused of being pigs for.

• Notice in the picture how happy the pig is because he is in the dirty water.

• In the Greek the word used is “EROS” from which we get the word erotic. By the way as far as I can find, this word is not used in the New Testament.

• This kind of love was a passionate love that was often tainted by the lust for fleshly gratification. This kind of love always tries to use the object of love to fulfill its own hunger for excitement and emotional intoxication.