"The Promise" - The H.s. Provision, Part 3 Series

“The Promise” Part 3 The Provision

Pastor Glenn Newton June 8, 2003

GAL 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and

desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not

become conceited, provoking and envying each other. Gal. 5:22-26

This morning we are continuing our Journey of learning about the Holy Spirit, as we talk

about the Holy Spirit’s Provision for our life, in other words I want to talk to you about

What the Holy Spirit wants to provide to you in this relationship that we all can

experience as Christians with Him.

How many of you have ever picked fruit off of a fruit tree? Do you remember when you

were kids, finding that apple tree and climbing up the tree and picking you a ripe apple to

eat?

Of coarse, if it was a green apple tree, we didn’t eat many of those, but we had some

wonderful times throwing apples at each other.

Around here I’m sure you climbed alot more peach trees than apple trees didn’t you?

How many times did you look up into that peach tree and notice that the peach tree was

producing Oranges? Anybody? Are you sure?

It just doesn’t happen does it. We can know a Tree by what kind of fruit it produces,

right?

This morning we are going to talk about the Fruit of the Spirit that the Holy Spirit

produces in our lives as a growing Christian, and how we can know each other by what is

being produced in our lives. Not everyone who calls themselves Christian is producing

Fruit of the Spirit.... Did you know that? It’s available to every Christian, but I hope you

have learned by now that there’s nothing automatic about the Spirit’s ministry. Every

believer is baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, and every believer has the

Holy Spirit indwelling presence, but neither of these guarantees that we will experience all

the Spirit’s benefits.......

So let’s talk about those qualities of theSpiritual life that the Holy Spirit will produce in us

if we submit to His filling and control, ... notice the word Submit is key today.

The Apostle Paul lists the Fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5:22-23 which we have read this

morning, two tightly packed verses that we will study. It would be great just to turn to

these two verses and let the juice of the Spirit run down our arms, so to speak, as we dig

into their goodness and all that God has for us.

But to do that, we would have to climb over the verses that preceed verses 22-23,

which means ignoring the context in which Paul’s discussion of spiritual fruit occurs. But

even more important, if we skip over verses 16-21 of Gal. 5, we will miss a truth about the

Christian life that is critically important to understanding and experiencing the Holy

Spirit’s Fruit.

So let’s Whet the Appetite.

Let’s look at verses 16-21 in Gal. 5 together, what we are doing is whetting our appetite

for the juicy, sweet, and satisfying fruit of the Spirit by giving us a taste of the dry, rotten,

and unsatisfying deeds of the flesh. Sometimes we don’t develop a real hunger for the

good stuff until you’ve gotten your fill of the bad stuff. If you’ve ever tried to live the

Christian life on your own power, without the power of the Holy Spirit, then you will

know what I’m talking about.... it’s utterly bitter.

In fact, the believers in Galations were trying to live the life of the Holy Spirit in

the energy of the flesh, on their own power, and Paul was astonded, listen to what he says

in Gal. 3:1,3 “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus

Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?.... Are you so foolish? Having begun by the

Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

Why was Paul so upset? The Galatians were being tempted to substitute rules for a

dynamic relationship with the Holy Spirit. This idea is still with us today. We have all met

Christians who have a list of rules for us to follow if we want to be victorious...., the

Christian life does include rules.... There are definite do’s and don’ts. But the power for

victorious Chrisitan living is not in the rules.... It’s in the Spirit. Paul clarifies how it

works in this classic passage in Gal. 5: 16-18........ What he does is give us a good taste of