If you turn in your scriptures
to Galatians chapter 5. We looked at this very briefly last
week. We looked at the works of the
flesh. There are 17 works of the flesh
in verse 19 and they are manifest, they are revealed and they are
seen by all. And what a list they are. What
a list of our fall in our father Adam. Adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies, envying,
murders, drunkenness, reveling, and such like. What a great description
of this world and fallen man in it. And such like, of which
I tell you before, as I have told you in time past, that they
which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."
And here we have one of the glorious buts in scripture, isn't it?
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against
such there is no law. And they that are Christ have
crucified the flesh with affections and lusts. If we live in the
Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous
of vain glory. All man's glory is vain. It's
empty, isn't it? Provoking one another, envying
one another. So this morning, the Lord willing,
I would like us to just examine this fruit of the Spirit in a
little more detail. I think as I said towards the
end of the message last week, the fruit of the Spirit is a
glorious description of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a glorious
description of the inheritance of all the saints. It's a glorious
description of life in the new creation. But it's a glorious
description of what God has promised. to do in His people here and
now. Just look at it again. There's
a really important word in Galatians 5. We can overlook these little
words. It says, but the fruit of the
Spirit is. It is right now. It is the gracious gift. It is the inheritance. the birthright,
the working of God in the hearts of all of His people. It is a wonderful description
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just think about Him, His love
for His Father. The fruit of the Spirit is love,
love for His Father, His love for His Father's character, His
Father's name, His Father's honour, His Father's glory, His Father's
word, His love for His people. What remarkable love, for God
so loved the world that He sent His Son. What a great description of Him,
His love for His Father, His joy, for the joy set before Him. He endured the cross and scorned
the shame. He is right now in heaven in
joy. This world, as much as it troubles
us, as much as the sin is an affront to His Majesty. Our Saviour
sits on the throne, untroubled and with joy. He looks out before
Him right now as He speaks, and what does He see? He sees his
blood-borne bride, he sees his father's gift to him, and he's
filled with joy, joy unspeakable. He delights to do his father's
will, his peace. He is the Prince of Peace. and
His peace is to rest in His Father's will at all times, and to take
His people into that place of rest with Him. What extraordinary
long-suffering. What extraordinary long-suffering.
He has borne of Adam's fallen race throughout this time. What an extraordinary long-suffering
toward us in our fallen state, unregenerated. What remarkable
long-suffering right now our Saviour shows to us. What gentleness,
what graciousness He shows, what goodness, Goodness, as we'll
see a little bit later on, is the capacity to forgive. Moses
said to the Lord after those trying times at Mount Sinai,
he said, show us your glory. I just want to see your glory. And what did the Lord say? I'll make my goodness pass before
you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee,
and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will
show mercy to whom I will show mercy." His goodness, his faith,
his faith in believing God, his faith in trusting himself into
his Father's hands. What a great description of our
Lord. Faithful and true. The meekness of our Lord Jesus
Christ. He says, Come unto me, all you
who labour and heavy laden, and take my yoke upon me, and I'll
give you rest. He says, For I am meek, I am
meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your
souls. Temperance. the temperance of
the Lord Jesus Christ, his self-control in every situation. Ryan read
out of Hebrews 9 about the inheritance, which is the inheritance for
the children of God. It's very difficult to talk about
the fruit of the Spirit without spending a little bit of time
in John chapter 15. Why don't we just turn there for a little
bit. And John chapter 15 verse 16
he says, You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and
ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and
that your fruit should remain, that whatever you shall ask of
my Father in my name, He may give it to you, these things
I command you, that you love one another. He speaks of himself
at the beginning of the chapter, doesn't he? I am the fruit, the
true vine, and my father is the husbandman. Every branch in me
that beareth not fruit he taketh away, and every branch that beareth
fruit he purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit. And this
lovely description of his work. in the lives of his people. You
are now clean through the word which I have spoken." Unto you
abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can you except
you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. for without me you
can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he
is cast forth as a branch and is withered, and men gather them
and cast them into the fire, and they are burned, if you abide
in me." I love these next words, and my words. To abide in the
Lord Jesus Christ is to abide in his words. If you abide in
Me and My words abide in you, take rest and remain there. You shall ask what you will and
it shall be done unto you. Herein is My Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit, so shall you be My disciples. as the Father has loved me, so
have I loved you. Continue in my love." Familiar
verses, but wonderful verses, wonderful promises from our God,
wonderful promises from our Saviour. What a remarkable contrast to
those descriptions of the flesh of man, the flesh that you and
I inherited from our father Adam, the flesh that you and I must
needfully confess is still active in our lives. A few things we
need to bear in mind before we look just briefly at these nine
fruits of the Spirit. Firstly, it is singular. If you have one You have them
all. If you have the Spirit of God,
if you are born again, if you are made by His grace to be a
believer, then you have them all. That's one. The works of
the flesh are many and Paul doesn't, even though he names 17, he says,
and such like, there is just a multitude of the sins of the
flesh. They're busy, they're works,
they're working all the time. The fruit of the Spirit is just
one. And the fruit of the Spirit,
of course, so evidently, is it's the fruit that are produced in
believers by the Holy Spirit. We just read it in John chapter
15. Without me you can do nothing. And what a great comfort that
should be to our souls, to all who believe this fruit is produced
by God the Holy Spirit and everything one member of the Trinity does,
all others participate in equally. The fruit is God's to give and
it's our God's to exercise. And it's given in such a way
that our great God gets all the glory. So it's not fruit produced
by me, but it's fruit produced in me. Every believer possesses
this fruit. It's the gift of God. Proverbs
13 says, The desire of the righteous is a tree of life. The tree of
life, living in a believer, produces these things. Deuteronomy promises,
in the Old Testament, Moses promised that God would circumcise your
heart. See, it's not a circumcision
of the flesh. that these false teachers in
Galatia were encouraging people to do that produces any of this
fruit, because this fruit is wrapped up in love. But the promise
of God is that the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart,
and the heart of thy seed He'll circumcise your heart to love
the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thine soul
that thou mayest live. See life, spiritual life, is
a circumcised heart. Not a circumcision done with
a piece of flint or a knife, a circumcision done in the heart
by God. We've got to keep bearing in
mind the context of Galatians. There was Paul, the servant of
God, sent by God to these people in remarkable acts of providence,
remarkable, remarkable provision of the Lord to afflict Paul's
flesh that would cause him to go to those regions of Galatia,
probably to find some soothing waters for the problem of his
eyesight, it seems. And there he preached to the
Lord Jesus. And there these people believed. And now Paul, wherever he may
have written this letter from, is in distress because these
people have been assailed by people who've come to them and
said, it's all very well, it's all very well that you love Jesus,
it's all very well that you believe, but now I'll show you some little
things so that you can live in a little bit more of a holy way. You can live like we Jews do.
You can believe Christ and you can go back under the law. You can do something. You can do something with your
flesh to gain more of God's favour. God's children are perfectly
accepted in the Beloved. They are perfectly complete in
Him. You cannot touch perfection without
spoiling it altogether. And Paul is horrified and he's
incensed. He speaks to these Galatians.
Just go back to chapter 3 for a minute. Graham read to us about
that inheritance. The fruit of the Spirit is the
inheritance of God's people. It's the inheritance. In Galatians
3, Verse 10 it says, For as many as are of the works of the law
are under the curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone that
continueth not in all things which are written in the book
of the law to do them. You go back to the law for one tiny
little thing. and you are obligated to do all
of it, and you are in a cursed position. They're not my words,
that's God's description of the law keepers that proliferate
this world and pollute the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But that no man is justified
by the law in the sight of God, it is evident. For the just shall
live by faith, verse 12, and the law is not of faith. But the man that doeth them shall
live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written,
Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that the blessing
of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,
that we might receive the promise of the Spirit. through faith. If you receive the promise of
the Spirit, you receive all of the fruit of the Spirit with
it. You must. It cannot be divided. He goes on in verse 15. Brethren,
I speak after the manner of men, though it be a man's covenant,
yet if it be confirmed, no man disanulth or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham and his seed Don't
forget we're talking about the promise of the Spirit through
faith. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. And he saith not unto seeds as
of many, but as of one, and to thy seed which is Christ. To Christ the promises were in
the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this I say, that the covenant
which was confirmed before of God in Christ the law, which
was 430 years later, cannot disannul that it should make the promise
of none effect. was given to Abraham and his
seed. It wasn't given to people who
had the law or had any ability to obey the law. If the inheritance
be of the law, it is no more of promise. If you don't have
the promise, you don't have Christ. If you don't have Christ, you
don't have the Spirit. So that comes to another point
regarding the fruit of the Spirit. No matter how much unregenerate
men and women may seem to possess them, they do not have this fruit. This is the fruit of God indwelling
His people through faith. It's Christ in you, the hope
of glory. And where Christ is, His fruit
is. Where Christ is, His spirit is. So no matter how much the self-righteous
legalist may seem to possess them, they do not have this fruit. They think and they will talk
about the fact that they have them. They would say that they
have temperance, which is self-control. They would say that they have
goodness and gentleness and love and faith. If you are led of the Spirit,
Galatians, And if you are led of the Spirit, if the Spirit
of God is indwelling you and creating fruit in you, you are
not under the law. Then necessarily everyone who
is under the law does not have any of this fruit, no matter
how much self-control they have. We know, Simon and I have met
a fellow who said that he's so worked on mortifying his sin
that he just had one left. He should be absolutely horrified.
One little tiny one is enough to fire the fires of hell forever. God's children have had all of
their sins taken away completely. And the one that he hasn't had
taken away is self-righteousness and pride. The one that he hasn't
been given is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan masquerades
as an angel of light. There is nothing more appealing
to the flesh of men and people who appear to be religious and
righteous. People look at the Dalai Lama
and they think, dear Obe, what a peaceful man. Not according
to this. Not according to this. Pope John
Paul, Mother Teresa, a good person? No, not according to God. God
determines what is good and right. This is the fruit of the Spirit.
It's the fruit of God's work in the lives of these people.
The fruit comes from life. The law of the spirit of life
in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
It only comes, only those who have spiritual life have this
spiritual fruit that's being defined here. The natural man,
and especially the natural religious man, knows absolutely nothing
of this fruit whatsoever. We are talking about spiritual
things. They can be masqueraded and earthly
things can look very much like them, but they are not the same. They are a different category
of being altogether. Those that have this fruit According
to John 15, the Lord Jesus promised, didn't He? Those who have this
fruit of the Spirit will have it exercised. Every branch in
me that beareth fruit he taketh away, and every branch that beareth
not fruit he taketh away, but every branch that beareth fruit
he purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit. There will
be, from God's good hand, a pruning. There will be an exercising of
that, won't there? It is the ongoing work of the
Lord. And pruning, as you gardeners
know, pruning does remarkable things, doesn't it? Sometimes
I've pruned Lisa's hydrangeas with a chainsaw, and it doesn't
work very well. But what you normally do when
you're pruning, if you're careful and wise about it, you actually
go down the stem and you find a bud. And a bud signifies life,
doesn't it? And so you cut off, and there
is still life. Life. See, pruning creates new
life, vibrant life, fruitful life, and this fruit comes from
a growing life, and it grows and it matures and it's sweetened. The other thing that's a promise
from God in so many places, but we've read it in Galatians 5.17,
those who have this fruit, this fruit of the
Spirit, will find Galatians 5.17 to be true to their whole Christian
experience. The flesh lusts against the Spirit
and the Spirit against the flesh. These are contrary one to the
other so that you cannot do the things that you would. So the spirit is actively involved
in that battle. That battle only exists where
the spirit is. The man who says that he's got
one sin left doesn't know anything about the battle. The man who
says that I've got rid of nearly all of my sins and I just have
the occasional slip-up has no idea of the battle, brothers
and sisters. The Galatian false teachers would
have had no idea of the battle. When Paul wrote Galatians 5.17,
they would have been scratching their heads. They would have
been able to go to that list of the works of the flesh and
say, we've got rid of all those things, fornication and adultery
and all of those things. They would have gone to the list
of the fruit of the Spirit and said, we've got some of those. In fact, we've got all of them.
The reality is that one of the signs of the Spirit's work in
the lives of these people, according to the promise of God, is that
there will be a battle. And that battle, as we've seen
in past weeks, is a tooth-hole battle, isn't it? You cannot
do the things that you would. What would believers do? They would love God. They would be faithful in every
situation. They would love their neighbour
as themselves. They would. They would. And they find their flesh is
actively fighting against it. But the other thing is also true,
brothers and sisters. They would commit all of that
list of works of the flesh. But the promise of God is that
the spirit inside his people restrains, constrains. and causes his people to go again,
back humbly, back dependent, back to lean on the Saviour's
breast. Without me you can do nothing. The believer loves to confess
that. I believe. Help thou my unbelief. And just before we go and look
at them, and they'll have to be brief, but the next part of verse 23, the last phrase in
verse 23, he's given the list and he says, against such there
is no law. Now obviously there is no law
that says don't love and so on and so forth. But the reality
of what it's saying is it's referring to people. Against such people
there is no law. Against God's children there
is no law. God's children don't try and
keep the law of God. We've kept it perfectly. If you're trying to keep it,
you'll never keep it. God's children have kept it.
2,000 years ago, I kept the law of God perfectly. 2,000 years ago I suffered the full
and complete punishment of the broken law deserved in my substitute. He kept it and He bore the penalty
for it. There is no law against believers. Believers don't need that sort
of law, that law written on tablets of stone, to control them, to
constrain them. We're constrained by the love
of Christ. We're constrained by the Spirit's
Word in us. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit. And if you are led of the Spirit,
you are not under law. The law As 1 Timothy said, he's
not given for a righteous man. A righteous man doesn't need
a set of laws to guide him and to direct him. He doesn't need
the Ten Commandments plastered all over his house. He just looks
to the Lord Jesus Christ. The law is not given for a righteous
man. A true Christian, someone wrote,
conducts himself in such a way that he does not need any law
to warn or to restrain him. He obeys the law without compulsion. The law does not concern him.
As far as he is concerned, there would not have to be any law. I think that's so true, brothers
and sisters. We're constrained by the love
of Christ. We'll just look, and our time
is running short, so we'll just have to look fairly briefly at
this list, but it's a wonderful, wonderful list to contemplate
and to think about, and it always needs, I trust, to be seen in
the context of that, that they are promises, and as much as
we divide them up, we need to put them all back together again
as quickly as possible, and we need to see them in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And I think it's right that people
divide them into three parts. With reference to God, all believers
have in them love, joy and peace. And the next three are with reference
to one another. All are given long-suffering,
gentleness and goodness. And with reference to themselves,
all who know God are people of faith, meekness and temperance. The love, the fruit of the Spirit,
is love. Love is from God. God's children, born-again children,
really do love Him. God's born-again children know
the time of their lives when they loved everything but Him. God's children love Him. We love
Him because He first loved us. We don't love Him as we would
wish to, and we don't love Him as we know we ought to love Him,
and we don't love Him as we will love Him in heaven, but we really
do love God. See, the love is the fruit of
the Spirit, it's not the fruit of the flesh. As I read in Deuteronomy
30 verse 6, He'll circumcise your heart. Someone with a circumcised
heart, with that heart of stone removed and a heart of flesh
given them, they will love the Lord their God with all their
heart and with all their soul. And that will be life for them. Believers love God. They love
God because they have met Him. They love God because they know
Him. To know Him is to love Him. To experience His grace is to
love the God of all grace. To know something of the work of the Lord Jesus
on the cross and what He suffered for us is for His people to be
drawn to love Him. And these gifts, these gifts
of the Spirit, He takes the things of the Lord Jesus and He reveals
them and shows them to us and we are brought to love Him. We're brought to love Him because
He first loved us. See, He loved us everlastingly,
Jeremiah 13, verse 3. He's loved us from everlasting. He loved me when I was a blaspheming,
God-hating rebel. He loved me. He loved me unchangeably. He loved me because He'd always
seen me in His Son. He loved me as He loved His Son. He loved us before we had any
idea that we needed His grace. He loved us before we had any
desire of repentance or faith. He loved us. He chose us. He redeemed us. He sent His Son
Cain because He loved us. His love is the cause of our
love for Him. And we love Him, and I don't
have time to read, but if you go and read 1 John 4-5 you will
see that to love Him is to love His people. And we really do. God's children. I just read a
letter that was sent to us from North America. It's an expression
of love. Where did that come from? Who
generates that love? Who exercises that love? There
is a real love between brothers and sisters in Christ. We have
been blessed of the Lord for Him to send His servants from
around the world to our little flock here again and again. And
the one thing they testify and bring a testimony of is the fact
that we are loved by our brothers and sisters. It is difficult
for us, being so far removed from so many of them, and I'm
envious of our brothers and sisters in so many other parts of the
world. They get to have much closer fellowship, ministers
and members of congregations. But it's been good for us, brothers
and sisters. It has been part of God's good
and loving plan for us. But not only do we long for it,
but He fills our needs and does it in such a way that we are
encouraged to look again to Him. The brothers and sisters in Christ
really do love one another. Everyone that loveth him that
begat, everyone that loves him who causes his children to be
born again, loveth also him that is begotten of him. There is
a love between the brothers and sisters in Christ, which is a
love that's generated from outside of us, but it's a love that's
very real inside of us. And it's exercised and it's restrained
and constrained and grows with a growth that is from God. It's
by His Spirit He builds and grows His people. And the reality is
that God's children do love mankind. We want what's best for them.
We want what's best for them. We want what's best for their
eternal souls. We really do love them. They may not appreciate it or
understand it, but God's children have love exercised in them. It is the fruit of the Spirit.
It is, with all of the others, something that God brings into
the hearts of His people. The fruit of the Spirit is joy. People who have been saved by
free grace, by God's sovereign hand from eternity upon them,
enjoy A gladness of heart. and I enjoy and experience a
joy that the world doesn't know anything of." You see, He brings
us joy. For the Kingdom of God, Romans
14, 17, for the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness,
His righteousness, peace, peace with God because of Him, and
joy in the Holy Ghost. What joy it is to think that
our surety, our substitute, has taken away all of our sins, and
we are holy and spotless and blameless presented before the
courts of God right now, in the midst of the trials of life. That's joy, isn't it? God commands
rejoicing. Rejoice. And we rejoice, it's
His will to make us rejoice Him. There was a blind fellow in one
of the villages in India who I believe is a believer, but
when you asked him how he was he used to quote Habakkuk 3.17.
I'll just read it to you. He says, and he was blinded by
welding. They used to weld over there
with little bits of black glass and he was only a young fellow
and he was blinded just after he was married and he never got
to see his two children. But... Solomon was his name. You used to go and see Solomon,
he lived in the house next door to the church, and this is the
verse he quoted to you. Although the fig tree shall not
blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, the labour of
the olive shall fail, and the field shall yield no meat. The
flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd
in the stalls. Yet will I rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. Philippians 3 says that those
who have no confidence in the flesh, no confidence in any works
they do, no confidence in any of their law keeping, they rejoice
in Christ Jesus. We rejoice to know that our sufficiency
is of God. We should rejoice to know that
He who is our Saviour is rejoicing right now. He rejoices over us
with singing. Isn't that what He says? He is
delighted in His people and He's delighted in His work on their
behalf. The fruit of the Spirit is peace. God's children have peace with
God. The peace of God has ruled in
our hearts. He is the Prince of Peace. And
the peace of God has spoken peace to our hearts, giving us faith
in Christ. I love what Romans 5 says, isn't
it? Romans 5, 1, therefore being justified, and if you have a
Bible in your hands, remove the comma and put it there. Being
justified, by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. Now the God of hope, Romans 15.13,
fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound
in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. We have peace
with God. Graham read it, didn't he? How
much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge, cleanse your
conscience from dead works to serve the living God. We have a peace of conscience,
a peace that the world knows nothing of because of who I am
in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with our brothers
and sisters in Christ who want nothing of theirs, that they
have, and we long for them to have all of the blessings that
the Lord could bestow upon them. We want for them to be at rest
in His arms, to be taken as the shulamite was into His banqueting
house, and to know that the banner over them is love. We long for
them to, like the Shulamite, find herself in the arms of her
beloved and saying to the others, don't disturb him. Don't disturb
him. To have those times of communion
with he who is the peace of God. We find ourselves at peace because
we are satisfied and we are delighted in Him because He is delighted
in us. The fruit of the Spirit towards
other believers, they are the three fruits of the Spirit which
people I think in some sense rightly attribute to our relationship
with God. The next three are attributed
to our relationship with each other. He creates life in our
souls and He gives us the desire of our heart, that tree of life.
He causes us to be long-suffering and really what it means is It's
an act of self-restraint in the face of provocation. That's literally
what the word means. And we can be long-suffering
because God is on the throne. He rules all things and orders
all things perfectly. And when I see my brother and
sister fall and stumble as they do, I can with any honesty and
I must say, there are my sins on display. The Lord has been
remarkably long suffering to me when I've done exactly the
same things. The stumbles that we have are
common to all. It's a great experience. Grace experienced by the Spirit
of God in the hearts of His people makes saved sinners slow to anger
and ready to forgive. It changes our attitude when
we look to Him. What long suffering He's displayed
towards us. how little a thing it is for
us to exercise a tiny amount of long-suffering towards our
brothers and sisters. What a sweet thing it is to contemplate
that this is a promised gift of God to His people. And He
does, and He will, exercise it in us. The long-suffering of
the Lord is salvation. The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. We have that as a description
of the Lord Jesus, don't we? The gentleness of Christ. Ephesians 4.32 speaks of being
kind, one, tender-hearted. Be ye kind, tender-hearted, Forgiving
one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven
you. Be ye kind. That's the same word
as gentleness in our text here. Be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving
one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. It's the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, the
wisdom that is from above, says James 3.17, is gentle. The Lord Jesus Christ, just think
of His gentleness. Think of His gentleness when
He met with sinners in need. With sinners who had nowhere
else to go and for this world had turned them aside. This religious
world had cast them aside and they met him and he's just remarkably
gentle. It doesn't mean that gentle people
won't be bold and courageous. Gentleness is that spirit of
meekness and humility. If you turn in your scriptures
to Galatians 6 you'll see how it operates, isn't it? Brethren,
if any man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual, restore
such in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou
also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and
so fulfil the law of Christ. We weep for those who weep. We
rejoice for those who rejoice. The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness.
The fruit of the Spirit is goodness. We read earlier, didn't we, from
Exodus, I quoted from Exodus chapter 33, goodness. According to Exodus
33, the goodness of God is the capacity of God to forgive. It's His glory. Now show me Your
glory, I will make my goodness pass before Thee." He causes His people to be ready
to forgive because they are forgiven. And He causes His people to live
a life which is characterized by goodness. It's not characterized
by us working it, but it's the fruit of the Spirit. See, the
word good is so often bandied about, isn't it? What about all
your good works? But in the Scriptures, good works
are always associated with acts of brotherly love, kindness,
self-denial and sacrifice. And good works, works acceptable
and pleasing to God, are works of faith, and works by which
faith is shown. You can read about it in James
Chapter 2. And good works are never spoken of in the Scriptures
except as something that is a revelation, a manifestation, as it were,
of faith. If faith without works is dead,
a good work is a work of faith. It's a work of faith connected
with Christ, without which it is impossible to please God. Anything that's not of faith
is sin. And any good works that people
might think they have are only acceptable in the Lord Jesus
Christ. God will accept His Son and those
who are in Him. The fruit of the Spirit is faith.
Believers believe. It's a great description of believers,
isn't it? They just believe. They believe
the Gospel and they rely, they rely and they rest on the Lord
Jesus Christ. As the Lord promised in that
passage we read in John 15, His words abide in us. God's children believe, quite
simply just believe what God says. The fruit of the Spirit
is faithfulness. We come to the Word of God and
we see the promises of God and we see that our God, it says
that He abides faithful. He's faithful and He works when
His Spirit indwells people. He creates faithfulness in them. They are faithful to God, they
are faithful to His Word, they are faithful to His glory, they
are faithful to one another and they are faithful in their lives.
Believers believe God and believe the Gospel and believers can
be believed. The fruit of the Spirit is meekness.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly
in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Meekness is a
spirit that is not easily provoked. Where the Prince of Peace reigns,
meekness reigns. Meekness is that frame of mind,
says some writer, that disposition of soul in believing men and
women that arises from a recognition of the fact that we are sinners
forgiven and accepted of God in Christ and that we belong
to God our Saviour. We are His property, His children,
His servants. Meekness, of course, doesn't
mean that man is weak. Moses was the meekest man, was
very meek, above all men which are on the face of the earth.
Moses was meek, but he wasn't weak. The meekness of the Lord
Jesus Christ drove him to the things that we read about in
the Gospel. He set his face like a flint
to go to Jerusalem. In meekness he denounced the
hypocrites of the legalistic religion around him. In meekness
he told the truth. The fruit of the Spirit is meekness.
The fruit of the Spirit is temperance. It really means control from
within. Paul describes his life. May the Spirit work in us to
be able to say as he does in 1 Corinthians 6 and 9. In 1 Corinthians
6 he describes that freedom that he has, 1 Corinthians 6, 12,
all things are lawful unto me. All things are lawful under me,
but all things are not expedient, all things are not helpful, all
things don't serve the purpose, all things are not proper and
suitable. All things are lawful for me,
but I will not be brought under the power of any. Meat's for the belly and the
belly for meat, but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for collocation,
but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. In chapter 9, verse
24, beginning at verse 24, the Holy Spirit says, Know ye not
that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the
prize, so run that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for
mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible
crown, but we an incorruptible. Therefore I so run, not as uncertainty,
so I fight, not as one that beateth the air, but I keep under my
body, and bring it into subjection, lest by any means, when I have
preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. There is a genuine humility in
Paul. He had walked and talked and
ministered with people like Demas who were lost forever. God's children are kept humble. The fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, long-suffering gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law. If you're led of the Spirit,
you're not under law. One of the wonderful things about
the fruit of the Spirit is when you think about their activities,
they do exactly what the scriptures describe in terms of God using
His Spirit to build His body and to knit them together. From whom? From Christ. The whole body fitly joined together
and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to
the effectual working in the measure of every part, making
increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."
It's God's work. It's God's work. to get glory
for himself in the gifts of his spirit exercised in the one place
on this earth where he has promised to glorify his son. It's in the
church. Let's pray.