Five Fruits of Faith
Introduction: I don’t think that there is anything more important than salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. God has placed an awareness of eternity in all of us and deep inside we know that this life is not all there is. That being said is it possible to know that you know God? That you are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ and that you are right with God and on your way to heaven?
2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
The verbs in this verse are in the present perfect tense signifying continuing action so a good translation of this passage would read something like this: “old things are passing away and all things are becoming new.”
The real evidence of faith is demonstrated by the changes that are occuring in our lives when we become new creatures in Christ Jesus. What then is the evidence of these change?
I. Faith will Change Our Affections
One of the most important things that Paul said about his experience with Christ is that the things he once loved he now hated and the things he once hated he now loved.
THE BLOOD OF LAMBS
I just finished a very moving book called, "The Blood of Lambs" by Kamal Saleem (Howard Books, 2009). He describes his life as a terrorist and how he hated Israel and America. He also couldn't stand Christians--that is, until God brought some Christian men into his life after he had a serious car accident. He saw how the Christian God answered prayer and so he cried out in desperation: "Allah, I want to hear that you love me. If you are real, speak to me." He writes: "I poured all my hope and faith into my prayer. But there was only silence. Stillness...A deep sadness engulfed me. My whole life had been a vain masquerade...Empty and void." In despair he thought about using one of his many weapons to kill himself but then decided to call on the true God with these words: "If you are real, I want to know you!"
As often happens when Muslims come to Christ, Kamal had a vision and heard these words, "I am the Alpha and the Omega. I have known you since before the foundation of the world." Kamal answered, "My Lord, I will live and die for you!" And then he heard something that forever changed him: "Do not die for me. I died for you that you may live." He writes: "At that moment I knew I met the Christian God. I knew I had met my Creator. There was no turning back" (pages 280-281).
(From a sermon by Brian Bill, Give More, 12/13/2009)
II. Faith will Change Our Attitudes
Another change is we go from pride to humility, from selfishness to selflessness. We stop seeking to live for self and starting seeking to live for God and for others.
Love, more properly “agape” love, the love of God is the difference between a Christian and an unbeliever.
Someone wrote: “The impossibly difficult instructions found in the sermon on the mount have often troubled me.
When I think about loving enemies, turning the other cheek, giving to the poor, storing up treasures in heaven, etc... I often feel like there's NO WAY I can be successful in the correctives Jesus presents.
With that said, I think Oswald Chambers speaks to the dilemma incredibly well in his devotional, "My Utmost for His Highest", and here is what he says:
"The Sermon on the Mount is not an ideal, it is a statement of what will happen in me when Jesus Christ has altered my disposition and put in a disposition like His own. Jesus Christ is the only One Who can fulfill the Sermon on the Mount."
We set more and more of our hopes, thoughts, dreams and aspirations on
III. Faith will Change Our Appetites
Our appetite for worldly things is replaced by an appetite for spiritual things. Paul said that the “natural man received not the things of the Spirit but the man or woman who is in Christ will “receive the things of the Spirit.”
Galatians 5:16-26 KJV
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.
The Apostle John wrote those early believers to “not the world nor the things that are in the world.
IV. Faith will Change Our Actions
1 John 2:6
And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. 4He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. 6He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. 7Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. 8Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. 9He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
We will seek to become commandment keepers instead of commandment breakers.
THE MEANEST MAN IN TEXAS
Let's finish with the true and amazing story of Clyde Thompson.
Clyde's father was a Bible salesman, but when he was old enough to stay home alone, he began refusing to go to church with the rest of the family. Most Sundays, while his family was in church, Clyde was hunting.
One Sunday afternoon in 1929, when he was 17 years old, he met some men in the woods, and for some reason Clyde killed the men. So at the age of 17, he was the youngest man in Texas history to be sentenced to death in the electric chair. Two years later, he became the youngest man on death row at Huntsville Penitentiary.
As the date of his execution neared, Clyde listened to a radio preacher and asked for the man to come to the prison and baptize him. The preacher came and Clyde was baptized.
Legal complications kept him from being executed. Unfortunately, things began to go very badly for him and he was worked so hard at the prison work farm that he lost his faith.
He began trying to escape and a number of prisoners were killed while trying to escape with Clyde. Clyde was shot through the shoulder in one of the attempts. While on death row he got into a fight and killed two other prisoners, making a total of four people he had killed.
As the years passed, Clyde Thompson was tagged by his own prison mates as the meanest man in the State of Texas. He developed such a terrible reputation inside death row that they put him in isolation. Clyde was put in an old building that used to be the morgue. A steel door was put in place and the only opening was about a foot square with bars. There was no running water and no electricity. Because this morgue sat between two very tall buildings inside the prison, daylight could only enter for six hours each day.
After being in the isolation for 2 or 3 months, Clyde asked a guard to bring him a Bible. He knew they wouldn't give him anything else to read, but he was bored. He just wanted something to read. He decided he would try to prove the Bible wasn't from God because it was full of contradictions--at least that's what he had heard. But the more he studied it, the more he became convinced it was God's truth. He came to realize that Christianity was man's only hope and he repented in tears on his knees day and night for months. Clyde kept reading the Bible and asking God if He could forgive a wretch like him.
A change began to come over Clyde Thompson. The guards noticed it. Later, he was released from the morgue to return to death row. There, on death row, he taught and baptized by immersion eight other prisoners. He made such an impression on prison administration that they finally released him from death row and let him go among the general population.
Clyde continued to study his Bible and he took a two-year Bible course from a college in TN. He became the chaplain's right-hand man, his assistant. Eventually, after more than 28 years in prison, the State of Texas gave him a life-time parole.
On the outside, Clyde went straight to the Lubbock County Jail, one of the largest county jails in Texas and he began a chaplaincy program there. Clyde died of a heart attack in July of 1979.
It was Clyde Thompson who will go down in God's record book as one of the greatest soul winners his present generation had ever known. It was Clyde Thompson, the meanest man in the State of Texas, who literally led hundreds of men, women, boys and girls out of the streets of alcoholism, out of the streets of drugs, and to the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ. It was this man, Clyde Thompson, the meanest man in the State of Texas, who was transformed when he allowed the Word of God and the love of God to take hold of his life.
(From a sermon by David Owens, Transformed, 5/8/2012)
V. Faith will Change Our Assurance
1 John 5:13
These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
1 John 5:12
He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
How does the phrase “in Christ” become a reality in our lives? We can only be in Christ by the blood of Christ. Found this illustration and would like to share:
THE TWO-HEADED LAMB
Dr. H.A. Ironside once shared a story that was the clearest illustration of the Gospel I have ever heard. He said that he was visiting in South Texas and had the opportunity to visit a sheep ranch. While he was there, he spotted what he thought to be a two-headed lamb. He asked the foreman of the ranch, "Why in the world does that lamb have two heads?"
The foreman smiled and said, "You are a city slicker. Let me explain what we did. The other day we had two ewes who gave birth to lambs. One of the ewes died in childbirth and one of the lambs died, also. We took the living lamb and put it in the pen with the living ewe to see if she would nurse. She smelled of the lamb and walked away. It wasn’t her own."
"What did you do?" Ironside asked. "Well, we took the coat off of the dead lamb and wrapped it around the living one and put it back in the pen. When the mother smelled the blood of her very own lamb......she accepted the little lamb and began to nurse."
Dr. Ironside said, "Thank you for sharing with me the greatest picture of the Cross I have ever seen. For without Christ, I am hopeless for eternity. God will not accept me into Heaven on my own works. But, when I stand before Him covered in the blood of His own Son, Jesus........He accepts me and allows me to be part of His family!"
Jesus became what WE ARE....that we might have what HE IS! The Bible says in II Corinthians 5:21: "For he knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might be
Conclusion: Let’s review what we have learned about what real faith does in us and the changes that it produces:
1. Faith will change our affections
2. Faith will change our attitudes
3. Faith will change our appetites
4. Faith will change our actions
5. Faith will change our assurance
