The Fruit of the Spirit
Part 8 – Faith
Rev. Bruce A. Shields
First Baptist Church Tawas City Michigan
www.TawasBaptist.org
WELCOME
We are continuing our Series on The Fruits of the Holy Spirit.
We’ve spoke over the past few weeks on Love, Joy and Peace, longsuffering, gentleness and goodness. Today I would like to talk about the Spiritual Fruit of Faith.
PRAYER FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT AND UNDERSTANDING
INTRODUCTION
A. In his letter to the Galatians, chapter 5, vs. 22, the Apostle Paul writes, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness & self-control."
And this morning we’re going to focus on “faith” or "faithfulness."
ILL. A few years ago the headline of a major supermarket tabloid proclaimed, "And they said it wouldn’t last!"
The paper was celebrating the first wedding anniversary of a very well-known couple whose marriage many had predicted wouldn’t last.
The tabloid was gleefully proclaiming that the predictions were all wrong, and that the marriage was healthy and strong.
Who were they talking about? Who was this famous couple?
It was Michael Jackson & Lisa Marie Presley, whose marriage ended soon afterward.
Now not only was the tabloid absolutely wrong about the state of their marriage, but it also reveals a weakness of our modern society in suggesting that if a marriage lasts one year, it has really lasted.
ILL. Hallmark has a card that fits the mood of our time by saying, "I can’t promise you forever, but I can promise you today."
That’s about as deep a commitment as some are willing to make in the world today.
B. But in contrast to that, God exhibits and honors faithfulness.
Psalm 100:5 says,
"The Lord is good & His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations."
Every time you see a rainbow, remember that God is faithful - He keeps His promises.
Every time you pick up a Bible, remember that He said in Matthew 24:35, "Heaven & earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away".
Every time you gather to worship with brothers & sisters in Christ, remember that He said in Matthew 18:20, "Where 2 or 3 come together in my name, there am I with them".
Every time you partake of communion, every time someone answers the invitation for Christ, remember that He said, "I will be with you always, even to the end of the world."
And when you stand on the brink of death, remember His promise in Matthew 14:2-4, "In my Father’s house are many rooms...I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go & prepare a place for you, I will come back & take you to be with me. For where I am, there you will be also".
ILL. The songwriter Thomas Chisholm is so right in the lyrics he wrote in 1923;
"Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father...
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided.
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me."
Oh, I wish could do justice to singing that!
But even though I can’t, I can still proclaim that our God is a faithful God, and that "His faithfulness continues through all generations."
APPL. And if we allow His Spirit to work within us, then the fruit of faithfulness will be real and evident in our lives, too.
The more we yield to His guidance, the less indecisive, and the less vulnerable to discouragement and the less tempted we will become.
And as we are filled with His Spirit, others will find in us reliability, trustworthiness, a staying power through both good & bad, a faithfulness that the world doesn’t understand.
I. A DEFINITION OF FAITHFULNESS
A. To begin with, let’s define "faithfulness" & make sure that we’re talking about the same thing.
If you were going to define faithfulness, as Paul uses it in the N.T., how would you do it?
Well, if you looked in the dictionary, you would find a technical definition that says, "Faithfulness means to follow through with a commitment regardless of difficulty."
That’s a good definition.
But let me give you one that may be easier to remember,
"Faithfulness is love hanging on."
It is love saying, "I will not quit. There may be misunderstandings, there may be disappointments, there may be discouragements, but I will not quit."
It is love hanging on.
ILL. If someone says, "I really love my spouse," and then goes out and has an affair, you may call them a liar. You may call them a cheat. But most of all, you will say, "They were unfaithful."
That is what they have been.
And as long as they continue to be unfaithful no matter how strong their arguments may be, no matter how loudly they proclaim their love for their spouse, you will not believe them because their unfaithfulness negates their proclamation of love.
Actions do speak louder than words.
ILL. And if someone says, "I really love the Lord," or "I really love the church," and then is unfaithful, then it’s hard to believe that they really do love the Lord.
Because, you see, faithfulness & love always go hand in hand.
Faithfulness is love hanging on regardless of the situation.
You may get discouraged. You may be disappointed. But faithfulness says, "Even though there is discouragement & disappointment, I will not let go, I will not quit. I will keep on attending & giving & serving, because God has called me to be faithful."
And I will be faithful to my Lord regardless of what he says, or she says, or they say, or what ever may happen, I will not quit.
B. Listen to what the Bible says. Here are some of the scriptures that challenge us to be faithful in many areas.
1 Corinthians 4:1-5 - challenges us to be faithful in stewardship.
“1 So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. 2 Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. 3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.”
When judgment comes, and Christ brings to light what is hidden in darkness and exposes your true motives of your heart, will you receive praise from God?
You will if your motivation is Faith.
If your motivation is personal gain or selfishness, then it will be a different story.
Ephesians 6:21 talks about being faithful in service.
1 Timothy 5:9 About faithfulness to the widows.
Revelation 2:15 speaks of being faithful in witnessing.
Romans 12:12 says we are to be faithful in prayer.
Colossians 1:7 speaks of being faithful in ministry.
Revelation 17:14 says we are to be faithful in following the Lord.
Proverbs 31:26 speaks of faithful instruction.
III John 3 says we are to be faithful in the truth.
Revelation 13:10 speaks of faithfulness even in times of persecution.
Revelation 2:10 says we are to be faithful unto death & then we’ll receive the crown of life.
What motivates your behavior?
Why do you make the choices and decisions you do?
You may fool some of the people around you, but the Lord will bring into light your true motivation.
Faith is the only motivation we need.
Faith is how we receive Salvation.
It’s what allows us to hear our call.
Faith is the first step in following the Holy Spirit.
Faith can move mountains.
ILL. One of the big box office attractions some years ago was a movie called "Bridges Over Madison County."
It was advertised as "the world’s greatest love story."
I didn’t see it, but I did read the reviews.
I think perhaps many a man were duped into seeing this movie thinking to themselves, “It can’t be that bad, it’s got Dirty Harry in it.”
It starred Clint Eastwood, not as a renegade cop, but as a traveling photographer & Merryl Streep as a housewife.
They meet, and begin having an affair. Then, after 4 days, they end it and go their separate ways.
And Hollywood called it "the world’s greatest love story."
APPL. You see, this world really doesn’t understand faithfulness.
And it surely doesn’t understand Love.
It doesn’t even have a clue as to what Paul is talking about when he says the fruit of the Spirit is "faithfulness."
II. A DEMONSTRATION OF FAITHFULNESS
A. To help us better understand faithfulness; let’s look at a demonstration of faithfulness in the Bible.
Once again, the example is Jesus, and it is found in the 16th chapter of Matthew.
Vs. 21 tells us that Jesus brings His disciples together, and tells them that He is going to Jerusalem.
He tells them, "I know what will happen there. I’m going to be arrested, & beaten, & crucified. But I’m going anyway."
You may remember that in the next verse Peter tries to stop Him.
He said, "Lord, don’t go!" But Jesus says, "Get thee behind me, Satan."
Now here’s the reason that He called Peter "Satan" - because Satan was using Peter to try to get Jesus to quit, to be unfaithful.
Again and again throughout His ministry Satan tried to tempt Jesus to be unfaithful.
"Don’t go to the cross. Don’t die for their sins. Just quit. It’s going to be too tough. There will be too many obstacles, too many difficulties. Just turn around and quit."
Yet here the King James Version tells us that "Jesus set His face steadfastly toward Jerusalem."
Jesus was determined that no matter what happened, He would be faithful to the mission God had for Him to do.
So "steadfastly" He goes to Jerusalem.
Even while He was hanging on the cross, the people below Him were mocking Him, saying, "If you really are the Son of God, come down from the cross."
That’s what Satan was saying, too. "Quit! Come down. It’s not worth it. The pain is too intense. The people don’t care anyway. Just quit!"
But He continued to hang there until finally He says, "Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing."
And "Into thy hands I commit my spirit."
That’s faithfulness.
That’s faithfulness unto death.
And the faithfulness of Jesus has inspired the faithfulness of others down through the ages, those who hung in there, through the good & the bad, through times of plenty & times of want.
ILL. There are those here today, who were here when the fellowship hall was first conceived of.
There are people here today who worked through the construction of it.
There are those here today who have seen many Pastors come, and go over the years.
They have witnessed the tearing down and rebuilding of that very same fellowship hall recently.
They were here through the good times & they were here through the bad.
There must have been many times they were tempted to quit, tempted to say, "I’m sorry, it’s too big a job. I don’t want to hang in there."
“I can’t keep doing this.”
But God had called them to be faithful.
So down through the years they hung in there and they were faithful.
And we are the recipients of their faithfulness.
ILL. George Muller was an English evangelist and philanthropist who built and ran orphanages in Bristol England.
George Muller began praying for 5 of his friends.
He prayed 5 years before the first one was converted; for the next one he prayed 10 years; for the third one 25 years; for the fourth nearly 50 years.
The last one was converted after 52 years, at George Muller’s funeral.
George Muller was faithful, even unto death.
III. HOW DO WE DEVELOP FAITHFULNESS?
A. Finally, let’s ask the question, "How do we develop faithfulness?"
In order to answer this you need to realize that an apple tree doesn’t stand out in the middle of an orchard saying, "Now how do I develop apples?"
An apple tree produces apples because that’s what apple trees do.
And when we are Spirit-led Christians, when we are a branch attached to the vine who is Jesus Christ, then we produce fruit because it’s the natural thing to do.
We don’t have to sit around and think about it and analyze it.
But we do have to be careful that our branch is never detached from the vine, or that some disease will destroy our fruitfulness.
To detach from the vine is to be in our will instead of our Lord’s, or to attempt to do something in our strength instead of His.
Diseases that can destroy our branch are gossip, bitterness, backbiting and all the other things that people do to hurt other members of the body of Christ.
When they attack members of the body of Christ, they have to step out of God’s will.
And when they step into their selfishness, they become poisoned with the words of their mouths.
B. So there are certain things that we need to be careful about.
1. #1, we need to realize that temptations will come. Just as surely as Jesus was tempted to be unfaithful, we will be tempted to be unfaithful - in our marriage, in our relationship with the Lord, and in the church.
That’s what Satan does. He will tempt us to be unfaithful.
2. Secondly, we need to seek the Holy Spirit’s reinforcement & develop regular, positive, spiritual habits.
This world is not a Christian world.
This nation is not a Christian nation.
And we’re being pressured on every side to develop negative habits, tempting us to be unfaithful in church attendance, to be unfaithful in prayer, unfaithful in studying the Word of God.
To get away from what the word says, and dwell on what the world says.
But if we’ll say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," and be determined to serve God faithfully, then people will be able to count on us.
We’ll be consistent, and trustworthy, and reliable.
We’ll develop these habits so they come automatically.
And when Satan tempts us, we will not be severely tempted because we’ve developed the habits of faithfulness, and we will not quit.
3. Finally, we need to get back up when we fall or are knocked down.
ILL. Simon Peter is one of my heroes in the scriptures, but not because he always did right. Sometimes he made glaring mistakes, even denying the Lord, and he wept bitterly because of what he had done. But every time he fell down, he got back up again. So when it came time to choose someone to preach the very first gospel sermon on the Day of Pentecost, guess who was chosen?
The Holy Spirit said, "Simon Peter, you do it. You’ve had the experience of being down and getting back up again. You’ve made some mistakes, and these people need to know that. They need to hear how vulnerable you’ve been, but despite all that, God is able to do His work through you."
ILL. The same is true of Saul of Tarsus who became the Apostle Paul. He experienced all kinds of persecution, all kinds of discouragement, all kinds of temptations. Yet he didn’t give up.
Then came that glorious day when the old Apostle Paul wrote these words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:6b-8, "The time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day - & not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing".
Many of God’s people, like the nation of Israel, waste 40 years out in the desert of life because they do not believe God.
Far too many Christians are like the faithless spies who saw the giants in the land of Canaan and ran home to cry, “We are as grasshoppers in their sight.”
We need to have the Faith of David, and stare that giant square in the eye, and say, “Devil, you have no power over me!”
And let that rock fly!
When the Spirit is in control, life goes forward under the full conviction of God’s ability and power.
CONCL. I wonder, are you going through a painful experience?
Do you feel that you’ve been knocked down or maybe that you’ve fallen? Are you tempted to quit?
Don’t stop. Keep pressing on. Hang in there, because faithfulness is love hanging on.
If you’re here this morning outside of Jesus, & you don’t know Him as your Lord & Savior, we want you to know that Jesus didn’t quit. He went all the way to the cross & gave His life so that you & I might have the promise of everlasting life.
And His salvation is available to you. This morning you can begin your journey with Him. He will never leave you or forsake you. And when you’re knocked down & you try to get up by yourself, you’ll find His strong arm there to help you get back on your feet again.
So if you’re here & you have a decision on your heart, we encourage you to come forward & make that decision this morning, & not delay any longer.
Will you come as we stand & as we sing?
(adapted from a sermon I found and cannot find the source again...)
