Pataskala Church of the Nazarene
August 23, 2009
First Sermon in Series: Character Makeover
By Their Fruit You Shall Know Them
Galatians 5:16-5:26
Introduction:
Have you ever wished that there was such a thing as a life makeover?
I remember when I was in junior high school we had a girl whose name was JoAnn Buzzard.
Our family at that time was poor, but her family was really poor.
When she came to school, she came wearing dresses that showed how poor her family was.
Her mother really didn’t even teach her how to comb her hair. I don’t know if you can get the picture in your mind, but … well you know.
It came time for the Junior – Senior Prom and some of the girls in our class decided to take JoAnn on as make over project. If you will allow me to say it that way.
They bought her a new dress, new shoes, new purse.
They arranged for JoAnn to get her hair done.
They even helped her with her hygiene and make-up.
I’ll be honest with you – when she came to the prom I didn’t know her.
She had had a tremendous appearance change.
Have you ever thought if you had some of your life to live over, what you would do differently?
I’m sure the greatest majority of us here this morning has watched Extreme Home Makeover.
What a great thing they do when they help families.
The only problem I see is who pays the utilities later!
Well, in the next several weeks I want to preach a series of sermons entitled: Character Makeover.
I want to talk to you about the key to longevity in our Christian living.
These sermons will mostly deal with the Fruits of the Holy Spirit found in Galatians chapter 5.
I want to take you on a journey that will cover such subjects as:
Having a right relationship with God, myself,
Others, things, and a right relationship regarding my future.
Let me get started in this mornings sermon.
In the Melanesian islands of the South Pacific during WWII, the native Melanesians watched closely as the American and British engineers came in and built airstrips.
The islanders were amazed to see that when the airstrips were completed, planes began to arrive filled with cargo: food, building materials, machinery, even vehicles.
So they decided, this was something they wanted in on.
The Melanesians deduced, that if they built airstrips, then planes would come to them, too, likewise bringing cargo, food, etc.
They accordingly hacked a makeshift runway out of the jungle and built mocked-up control towers out of grass and mud.
They put fires along the sides of the runways, and put a man in the grass-hut control tower, with two coconut halves on his head for headphones--he’s the controller--they rigged antennas out of bamboo and then they waited for the airplanes to land.
As far as they could see they were doing everything right.
The form was perfect.
It looked exactly the way it was supposed to.
But it didn’t work.
You and I both know no airplanes ever came.
Application:
In the world that you and I live in today let me say it like this, the cargo cults of a similar type are just about everywhere you look.
What these cargo people are looking for is not food, they are not looking for machinery
All these people are looking for love, joy, peace, patience and all the other things that our text this morning describes as the "fruit of the spirit."
So instead of going to the Author and the Creator who could give them what they so desperately are looking for – they go seeking in all the wrong places.
What they are missing, like the Melanesian islanders, is the fact that cargo comes not because of runways and control towers but because of a relationship with the One who sends the cargo.
They are ignorant of this truth. They don’t know that special relationship with the Sender/the Creator of this Universe.
What is the key to longevity in Christian living and effective ministry?
In one word – it embraces one of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit, it’s listed as the last one and that is Self-control.
You see – now understand with me – Self-control is the result of the workings of the rest of the fruit in a person’s life.
The Apostle Paul recognized self-control as one of the highly important spiritual qualities of any believer.
Paul closes the fruits with Self-control.
Paul preached and wrote to the Church of Corinth about spiritual self-control, which the church struggled with.
Here was a church of great giftedness, power, privilege, and promise, and yet they were in danger of throwing it all away because they couldn’t control their physical, spiritual, and moral appetites.
Love, joy and peace and all the others fruits of the Spirit are not the keeping of a set of Christian standards or rules, rather they grow out of a relationship with God that is born of faith in Jesus Christ.
Application:
You see, this church we call PCN has all kinds of giftedness.
But if we are not careful individually and collectively we could throw it all away by not controlling our physical, spiritual, and moral appetites.
There are some professing Christians sitting under the sound of my voice who are living a defeated life.
You are not controlling your character appetites. And the fact is you need God and His Holy Spirit to save you from those sinful appetites.
Where is your life rooted right now?
How deep are you in your relationship with God?
Are you doing everything you should be doing to establish a deeper relationship with Jesus?
Or are you satisfied with a shallow experience?
Are you going along in your spiritual life just kind of Ho-Um.
Only you know that – but actually the Word of God says, “By their fruits you shall know them.”
As you pastor and spiritual leader this morning I want to be obedient to God and preach to you in such a way that the Holy Spirit will convict you and help all of us to make it to heaven some day.
As we think about the kind of fruit that human lives produce I’d like to break it into three components,
1) We’ll consider the exclusive nature of spiritual fruit and
2) We’ll look at the two main varieties of Spiritual Fruit.
The first point that Paul makes is that...
1. You’ve got to pick Your Fruit
vv. 16-17 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.
Illustration:
One pastor told the story of when his family moved into the parsonage in Burwell, Nebraska there was a lovely apple tree in the back yard.
It bloomed beautifully in the spring, but there was a problem with this tree, not really with the tree itself, there was a problem with where it was planted.
You see the neighbors had a red cedar tree and when apple trees and cedar trees are planted near one another they are subject to a disease cycle known as cedar apple rust.
So every year the fruit of this apple tree was infected with brown rot, and the cedar tree was infected with slimy orange cankers.
The funny thing about cedar apple rust is that neither tree can remain infected year after year without the other, the apple has to be infected by the cedar and the cedar has to be infected by the apple.
The point is you can’t have both.
If you want apples don’t plant red cedar and if you want red cedar don’t plant apples.
Application:
Paul makes the same point here about our spiritual fruit.
The life lived by the Spirit, doesn’t cooperate with the desires of the sinful nature.
There is no way they can peacefully coexist.
When a person puts their faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in their life and when the Holy Spirit lives in you, He convicts of sin and you can’t be satisfied in that way of life anymore.
On the other hand, when you haven’t put your trust in Christ, when you’re trying to earn God’s favor on your own, it’s hard to maintain the outward facade of Christianity, you come to church every Sunday and you and God know that you are trying to coexist with sin in your life and you know it just isn’t working.
In the privacy of your life when the tempter comes and tempts you in the sinful flesh, you weakly succumb to the temptation and the tempter.
To go back to the cargo cult analogy, you see - it’s hard to keep the runways cleared of overgrowth and to maintain control tower personnel when the cargo of the fruit of the Spirit hasn’t arrived, because the flesh doesn’t really desire to do what’s right.
Let me illustrate that:
Men, you see that beautiful woman.
You’re married to your wife and you’ve vowed to be faithful to her.
And yet the tempter comes at you in your mind.
Most of every man here this morning knows what happens.
Instead of you immediately praying, you begin to play with that thought and temptation.
And the enemy has a foot hold in your spiritual life that causes you to live a defeated spiritual life.
The flesh desires and ultimately will lead a different kind of life that God demands.
And before you know it – the Fruit of your life is found out.
God’s Word says, “Be sure your sins will find you out.”
The Psalmist David wrote in Psalm 90:8 “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. 9 All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan.”
Listen friend, - there is a victorious life in God’s Holy Spirit. You don’t have to life all your days under God’s wrath because of your secret sins.
Let me come to the first kind of Spiritual Fruit...
2. Fruit of the Flesh
vv. 19-21 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious:
sexual immorality,
impurity and debauchery;
idolatry and witchcraft;
hatred,
discord,
jealousy,
fits of rage,
selfish ambition,
dissensions,
factions and envy;
drunkenness,
orgies, and the like.
I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
There’s a couple of important points here.
1. First of all note with me the diversity of this list.
Many believers do alright with the acts of the sinful nature that seem so obvious:
But I don’t want to discount that there are those in our midst this morning that do struggle and are defeated in some of these areas of the flesh.
Sexual immorality,
Debauchery; one who is a seducer or seduces one to impurity, one who is given to drunkenness
Idolatry and
Witchcraft;
Fits of rage, and
Sexual orgies.
What becomes more troublesome are those that seem a little more subtle:
Impurity,
Hatred – bitterness
Unforgiving spirit
Discord,
Jealousy,
Selfish ambition,
Dissensions,
Factions and
Envy;
Drunkenness.
These all become a serious problem for us, but the message is clear, they are not separated into first tier and second tier, they are woven together and put on the same plane.
You can’t take one and put it before God and say, “God, this one isn’t as bad as the other.”
Drunkenness, for example, is no more acceptable than witchcraft,
Jealousy is no less toxic than sexual immorality.
So it’s important for us to understand that all of these are the works of the flesh.
This is to the unsaved person; this comes natural and is unchanged by the Grace of God.
These are the fleshly desires that Paul says we will not gratify if we are living in the fullness the Holy Spirit.
TO make sure let’s list them altogether:
sexual immorality,
debauchery;
idolatry and
witchcraft;
fits of rage, and
orgies.
impurity,
hatred,
discord,
jealousy,
selfish ambition,
dissensions,
factions and
envy;
drunkenness.
Take a serious look at that list and see if you are there in any of them.
Folks, listen to me, if you see yourself in any of these – you must not give up and say you’re going to quit.
No! Absolutely not! Your pastor has to take an inventory of his own spiritual relationship with God and deal with these fleshly attacks from time to time.
You can’t get in spiritual despair and say, “There’s no hope for me!”
However, I want us to note that Paul is quite strong here in his condemnation of all or any of this type of behavior.
Paul says in verse 21, “I warn, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God.”
The Apostle Paul says, Those who live this way, WILL NOT inherit the kingdom of God.
Now – let me explain – The Greek tense here in the phrase, “Those who live like this” is in the Aorist Tense – which is translated – those who continue to live like this.
In other words, they insist on living like this.
They don’t try to make a change in their lives.
They don’t allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in their spiritual lives.
You can play all the semantic/word games with what that means all you want, but the bottom line is Paul is saying if you live a life that produces this kind of fruit, you haven’t been changed/you insist on living in this Fruit of the Flesh - you had better take a serious look at your present relationship with Jesus.
Illustration:
A man entered a bar, bought a glass of beer and then immediately threw it into the bartender’s face.
Quickly grabbing a napkin, he helped the bartender dry his face while he apologized with great remorse.
"I’m so sorry," he said. "I have this compulsion to do this. I fight it, but I don’t know what to do about it."
"You had better do something about your problem," the bartender replied.
"You can be sure I’ll remember you and will never serve you another drink until you get help."
It was months before the man faced the bartender again.
When he asked for a beer, the bartender refused.
Then the man explained that he had been seeing a psychiatrist and that his problem was solved. Convinced it was now okay to serve him, the bartender poured him a drink.
The man took the glass and splashed the beer into the barkeeper’s astonished face.
"I thought you were cured," the shocked bartender screamed.
"I am," said the man. "I still do it, but I don’t feel guilty about it anymore."
Spiritual Application:
There is one truth here that we need learn and that is there will come a time when we won’t feel guilty if we have turned the Holy Spirit away from us and grieved Him by insisting on repeating the Fruits of the Flesh.
This is the balance to the strong emphasis upon Faith and Grace that we’ve seen up to this point in his letter to the Galatians. Go home and read the previous chapters of Galatians.
He’s not taking all that back, he’s not turning around now and saying follow these rules to be saved.
He’s saying if you are saved you won’t live this way.
Paul is going to stress that in The Spirit-filled life of the believer they will not live according to the carnal/sensuous flesh.
Paul said in II Corinthians 10:4, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.”
Let me just interject here what happens when the enemy is allowed to get a Stronghold in our Christian life.
What are Strongholds?
The term “Strongholds” refers to areas where our enemy, Satan, has set up camp and dug in, creating for himself a fortress from which he launches attacks and tries to destroy us.
These are the places where we repeatedly experience discouragement, distress, defeat, and damage.
These are the monsters that keep us from living the Spirit-filled life.
This is not to give us permission for occasional backsliding.
This simply is to recognize that the changing grace that works in our lives by the power of His Holy Spirit brings us along gently in the process of Grace, molding us into the image of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
God isn’t up there with a stick ready to pound your head at the first mistake or the sin you commit as a believer, but there clearly is a divine expectation of a changed life in response to and in cooperation with God’s Grace.
In the Christian life, we are not go on sinning in thought, word and deed as some contend. We are to let go of sin and sinning.
Charles Swindoll tells the story in his book, Living above Mediocrity:
LETTING GO OF SIN
Men who trap animals in Africa for zoos in America say that one of the hardest animals to catch is the ring-tailed monkey. For the Zulus of that continent, however, it’s simple.
They’ve been catching this agile little animal with ease for years.
The method the Zulus use is based on knowledge of the animal.
Their trap is nothing more than a melon growing on a vine.
The seeds of this melon are a favorite of the monkey.
Knowing this, the Zulus simply cut a hole in the melon, just large enough for the monkey to insert his hand to reach the seeds inside.
The monkey will stick his hand in, grab as many seeds as he can, then start to withdraw it.
This he cannot do.
His fist is now larger than the hole.
The monkey will pull and tug, screech and fight the melon for hours.
But he can’t get free of the trap unless he gives up the seeds, which he refuses to do.
Meanwhile, the Zulus sneak up and nab him. SOURCE: Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p.150ff
I take you to Romans 6:1ff where Paul says again, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that Grace may abound? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”
But, you say Pastor, what happens when I do sin?
Well, here the verse: I John 2:1ff, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin, but if anybody does sin, we have One who speaks to the Father in our defense – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 3 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. 4. The man who says, ‘I know Him,’ but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But if anyone obeys His word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.”
Now, please listen to me, don’t use that as a license to continue to go on sinning. Too many have!
Finally let’s look at the Good stuff, the desirable cargo of the...
3. Fruit of the Holy Spirit
vv. 22-25 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature,(carnality), with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
The first thing that leaps out at me here is the contrast between the types of thing that Paul lists as being the fruit of the Spirit and those that he lists as fruit of the flesh.
The fruits of the flesh he describes as "acts of the sinful nature" and they are just that --actions, behaviors, things people do.
The fruit of the Spirit on the other hand are character traits. In this sermon and more to come we are talking about a Character Makeover.
The only way this can happen is through the Power and the Word of the Holy Spirit.
If you are a genuine believer in this service this morning, you must have these Fruits of the Spirit evident in your life.
They are ways of being, of course it goes without saying that these will manifest themselves in behavior that is consistent with the life of the Spirit, but it’s important to note that the transformation begins when we have a change in our inner life that only Jesus can accomplish for us.
It happens inside of you. There is a miraculous working – a divine operation that changes us.
Does our behavior change?
Yes, absolutely! But it is the person that changes first and the behavior changes as a result of that.
That’s why we tell people you don’t change the outward part of your life and then come to Jesus.
You come to Jesus and let Him then through the Power of the Holy Spirit change you inwardly.
And it is this internal change that we as believers are really interested in.
Folks, listen to me. This has to happen to the Body of Christ in order for us to be His Church – being effective and influencing those outside the fold.
Like the Melanesian islanders building empty runways we can attempt to build the Christian life based on externals but the real cargo never arrives when we do it that way.
A life of external purity in itself will lead only to frustration because we can’t forever maintain that façade.
But a life rooted and grounded in faith, grounded in Jesus Christ, through His Holy Spirit will lead both to a life filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, AND to a life that is externally pure.
When you and I are filled with all these fruits of the Holy Spirit, we will not show evidence of the Fleshly fruits that will cause us to eventually backslide and miss the Kingdom of God.
The very next verse says "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires"
Would it be alright if all of us would pray a prayer right now?
“Oh, God, our Heavenly Father, would you help me to be crucified with Christ Jesus? Would you, God, crucify my sinful nature with all of its passions and desires. God, these passions and desires have come against me to the place where Satan has a foothold in my life. I don’t want to live there anymore. But God, I can’t do it on my own. I need your divine help to get victory. Help me Lord God. Amen.”
A relationship with the source of the cargo means you get both the cargo—
the fruit of the Spirit--and
the runway--the changed life, and
instead of being drudgery the new life is abundant.
