Disclaimer:
Due to the large amount of sermons and topics that appear on this site I feel it is necessary to post this disclaimer on all sermons posted. These sermons are original to the author and the leading of the Holy Spirit. While ideas and illustrations are often gleaned from many sources including those at Sermoncentral.com, any similarities and wording including sermon title, that may appear to be the same as any other sermon are purely coincidental. In instances where other minister’s wording is used, due recognition will be given. These sermons are not copyrighted and may be used or preached freely. May God richly bless you as you read these words. It is my sincere desire that all who read them may be enriched. All scriptures quoted in these sermons are copied and quoted from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Pastor James May
FRUIT INSPECTORS!
There have been several in the past few months that have been saved and some who have received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues. Some of you have been around Pentecostal churches for a long time so that it was a natural thing to you that the Holy Spirit would come to you. For others though, you are new to Pentecost and because of this you don’t quite know what to think of all this.
Let me first say that salvation is real and that the Baptism in the Holy Ghost is real. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you in this fashion, you can never doubt that He is real and that there has been a change in your life. That feeling of being “weightless” and of being on an “emotional and spiritual high” is not just emotions.
Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
When you give your heart and soul to Jesus in true heartfelt repentance, He lifts the burden of your sin from your shoulders and puts it upon his own. He bought the ability to take your burden of guilt, your anger, your frustrations, your fears and your worry, with His own blood on the cross. He takes all of those burdens away and creates within you a brand new heart. He breathes eternal life into your spirit and adopts you as His own child.
When I say that He creates within you a new heart and makes you a new man. That means that the very soul and essence of who you are is now taken from the power of sin and lifted to a realm of forgiveness. That part of you that always sought after pleasure and enjoyed the sin of this world will no longer seek and enjoy those things. There will be a difference.
Every new born-again Christian experiences that feeling of being cleaned out on the inside and that feeling of being whole again. A new hope arises in your heart and you know that something wonderful has happened.
A lot of times we see “baby Christians” (earthly age does not matter) as they begin strong for the Lord and then watch as they slowly fall back into their old way of life and some even lose out with God. This is a scary place to be because of what happens to that heart that is now clean and pure but has decided to leave God out too.
Matthew 12:43-45, "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation."
What Jesus is clearly saying is that we cannot afford to lose out with God once we have been cleansed from sin and filled with His Spirit. For if we do, we will be much worse than before and it will become harder to turn around the second time, the third time, etc.
Those who have experienced this process can attest to the truth of this statement!
There is also a great warning to those who would find themselves in a backslidden condition and who do not repent before it is too late.
Luke 9:62, "And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."
The prison of hell will be much greater for those who have known the Lord and have turned their back on Him. Throughout all eternity they will ever remember that they could have been in Heaven but now they can never be.
So, now that salvation and the Baptism in the Holy Ghost has come, what should your life be like today?
Now that you have been saved and filled with the Holy Spirit there are many changes that are going to come over you. Some will come quickly while others may take a long time to complete. Nevertheless, God is constantly changing you into the image of Christ. How long it takes depends mostly on our willingness and obedience to do whatever it takes to become more like Jesus.
Can you still hang around the same old friends, go to the same old hangouts or do the same things that you did before you were saved?
The answer is obvious. NO! Not if you want to maintain that victory that you first experienced at the moment of salvation and baptism.
If you want to see what your life should be like lets look at Galatians 5:22-25, "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."
Very quickly after salvation the Spirit of God within you will begin to bring forth works, or fruit, in your life that are noticeably different from what was before.
Instead of a sense of foreboding and hatred of all things that place limits on your desires, you will now have a greater love for people and for life itself. God’s love penetrates every fiber of your being. In fact, God’s love is what keeps all of creation in existence.
The days will be brighter, the nights more enjoyable and life, in general, becomes much more bearable.
There is a joy within that wasn’t there before. It’s a joy and contentment that you cannot explain. Even when things are going wrong in your life, your joy isn’t affected. Your joy comes from knowing that all is right between you and God and that your eternal home is waiting in Heaven.
Many of the troubles and trials of life are made easier to bear because of this joy for we know that none of those things can separate us from our God and that we will win in the end.
Romans 8:38-39 says, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
That’s why joy is your strength! You are strong in your faith and commitment to Jesus because you know that He will not let you fall by accident or slip away without a warning. He will never leave you nor forsake you, but will be there with you until the end.
There are 9 fruits of the Spirit that are mentioned in these verses, the first 2 being love and joy.
Lets look at the rest of these fruits and see if these are the fruits on your spiritual tree.
I cannot judge your heart or your motives like God can because I can only see on the outside where God can look right down into your deepest heart and know exactly who and what you are. I can only be a “fruit inspector” of the fruit that you bear. That fruit will tell me whether you are truly saved or not, and it doesn’t take long to find it if it is there.
Peace is the next fruit mentioned. I don’t think that there is a specific order that these fruits must be made manifest but I do believe that each one builds upon the ones before it.
If you have the fruit of peace, I won’t have to worry about you starting or even taking part in an argument unless you are forced into it by someone who doesn’t have this fruit.
When peace falls from your branches, it brings forth more seeds of peace until you have an effect on many around you. Things won’t bother you as much as before and your attitude will begin to rub off on others around you.
People who have the fruit of peace are not easily shaken for they live in perfect harmony with trust in God to carry them through every situation.
If your peace is easily shaken; if your fall to pieces at every little thing, then perhaps there needs to be more peace in your heart.
Longsuffering is a seed that grows from the peace within you. If you are at peace with yourself and with God, other people won’t be able to get to you so easily. People who are longsuffering are not easily angered. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get angry, it just means that your anger is harder to arouse and then tempered by love once it does.
A person who is longsuffering doesn’t get upset when others do wrong and get in their face. Longsuffering means that I will suffer being wronged, suffer being mistreated, suffer in allowing others to make mistakes, for a long time before I allow it to affect my attitude toward them.
The love of God gives me joy and an inner peace with myself so that others cannot affect me unless I allow them to do so. The love of God makes me want to keep a good relationship with everyone who will allow me to.
Gentleness is the next fruit mentioned. Gentleness is a natural sequel to longsuffering because we aren’t walking around with our feelings out on the end of our sleeves and therefore we are able to concentrate more on what others need than what we want or need.
Gentleness is the lack of anger and the ability to control our reactions to what happens and what others do.
Everyone loves a gentle person because they are usually so polite and considerate. Quite often, it takes long time to develop this fruit. Perhaps that’s why those who are older have more patience with people and are gentler in nature. It’s because they have learned that it is truly more blessed to give than to receive.
Faith is another of the fruits mentioned. This faith speaks more of dependability than it does belief in God even though these go hand in hand.
A person who is filled with the love of God, who has the joy of the Lord, who is at peace with God and man, who is longsuffering toward others and the hardships and requirements of working for the Lord and who is gentle in spirit will always be faithful to perform the duties of his/her calling.
When someone isn’t faithful, a lot of times it means that they are lacking in some of the other fruits also.
The next fruit of the Spirit talked about is meekness. Most people don’t know what meekness really is.
Meekness is not lying down on the floor and letting others walk all over you. I know that Jesus said that we are to turn the other cheek when someone hits you on one side of the face but that doesn’t mean that you allow someone to stand there and beat you to a pulp.
Meekness means that I will not be easily provoked into a fight. I will be longsuffering and gentle and do all I can to appease or make peace with anyone who comes against me.
But, I will tell you, that there may come a time, and it comes often, that you cannot allow anything or anybody to destroy you without putting up a defense.
As a side note – perhaps there are those of you who wonder, is it right to fight a war or kill in battle when the 10 commandments specifically say, “thou shalt not kill”?
Remember this, that even God commanded the Children of Israel to wipe out every living thing, man, woman, child, beasts – everything – when they conquered some of their enemies.
God has also said in his word that love may require you to lay down your life for your friend. He also said that he who does not provide for his own is an infidel or an unbeliever.
The Love of God will eventually force us to take a stand and fight back when there is no other choice.
Meekness simply means that I won’t fight at the drop of a hat and carry the hat so I can drop it myself. It means that I will do all I can to be reconciled before I fight.
The last fruit mentioned in these verses is by far the one that more people have trouble with than anything else.
When you have begun to show for the fruit of Temperance, you have come a long way baby, as the old commercial once said.
Temperance is not something that you can control completely within your own power. In fact, without all of the other fruits of the Spirit being there first, temperance is nearly impossible.
It takes the love of God and the power of God to bring us under control of our passions and lusts. There is not one of us who is capable of overcoming every temptation in our own power.
What temperance means is that we recognize those things in life that would tend to tear us down or draw us away from God and we deny ourselves the indulgence of those things so that we may stay close to Him.
The fruit of temperance won’t allow us to be gluttonous, drunk, braggadocios, or full pride.
Temperance requires bringing our body under subjection to the desires of the Holy Spirit within and denying the flesh those things that would do nothing more than satisfy our personal desires and draw us from being the best that we can be in Christ.
As we close this message, let me ask each of you this question.
After examining yourself through the course of this message, how many of these fruits of the Spirit are being made manifest in your life?
If you really want to see if they are, ask another person. Someone else will see those fruits on your tree quicker than you will. They will also be able to tell you very quickly whether they are evident or not.
I really don’t want you to ask someone else. Who is to say that the one you ask has the ability to even see your fruit? They may have rotten fruit themselves and want to appear better than they are.
Examine your life in the light of God’s Word. Let the Holy Spirit reveal to you those areas that need improvement. Inspect the fruit on your own tree because no one knows your heart better than you do except the Lord.
If all of these fruits are not there then its time to learn and to grow.
We must all learn to be good “Fruit Inspectors”. We must learn to look for these things in everyone and everything around us. This helps you to “discern the spirits” around you. Once you have become good at this process, you will be able to quickly see who is and who is not part of the Kingdom of God.
