If we will take your Bibles in
turn with me to Galatians chapter 6. Galatians the 6th chapter. We'll be looking again at verses
22 and 23. The title of the message this evening
is The Fruit of Faith. The Fruit of Faith. And let's read our text of Scripture
together. Galatians chapter 5, I'm sorry,
Galatians chapter 5, not Galatians chapter 6. Galatians chapter
5 and verse 22. The scripture says, but the fruit
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law. And Lord willing, tonight we're
just going to be looking at one, and that's faith. Faith. Now,
last week we saw that in verses 22 and verse 23 that Paul makes
a contrasting statement here. He says, but... He is contrasting
the things he had previously stated in verses 19 through 21,
which were the works of the flesh. And he contrasts the works of
the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. And remember last week,
we saw that works there, the works of the flesh are plural,
while the fruit of the Spirit is singular. And this shows us
that there is only one source for all the fruit of the Spirit. There's only one source, and
that is the Holy Spirit of God. In other words, any one of these
fruits can never be wrought or produced in man. In other words, love, we never
loved until the Spirit of God came and wrought love in us. We never had joy or peace until
the Spirit of God came and revealed Christ to us and we saw joy and
peace. None of us could ever produce
any of these things in ourselves. But to whomsoever the Spirit
of God will sovereignly come, and determines to give life and
quickens the soul, that man is given a new life, a new principle
of life. And the Spirit of God plants
the seed of the fruit in each one of those who believe on Christ. This is the fruit of the Spirit,
and every one of these fruits is manifest in every child of
God, every one of us. These things are in us by the
Spirit of God, and He works them through us. Ephesians chapter
2 and verse 10 tells us this, we are His workmanship. That word workmanship, I like
that because it means a skilled work. A skilled work. You know, I can do some general
work, and that's basically all I can do in carpentry, but this
has the connotation of a skilled laborer. And God has wrought
in us, He's worked in us, created in us in Christ Jesus. unto good
works. And my friend, that is the fruit
of the spirit, the fruit of the spirit. If any of us do any good
work, it is the spirit of God that works in us and not ourselves.
Paul says in our flesh dwelleth no good thing. And we perform the works of God
which He hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
And this fruit tonight that I'll deal with, this fruit of faith,
is altogether important. It is an altogether important
fruit of the Spirit. If you'll remember last week
when I said something about love, I said, is the sweetness of all
the other fruits. Remember that? Love is the flavor
of every fruit of the Spirit. And every fruit, joy and peace
and faith is all wrapped up in love. Love is the jewel on the crown. You know, a king has a crown
and there's one jewel that sets in the center of that crown and
that's love. The fruit of the Spirit of love
is the center jewel of the crown. Well, my friend, just as love
is the jewel of the crown, faith is the crown. Faith is the crown
wherein love sits. If love is the sweetness of the
fruit, then, my friend, faith is the fruit itself. Faith is
the substance. The foundation of all the other
graces. Faith is the foundation of grace. This, my friend, this grace of
faith, is the channel by which God flows salvation to every
sinner that He will save. Faith is the grace that He will
wrought in every sinner He saves. There's not one that will miss
out on this. This grace of faith. Ephesians 2.8 says, For by grace
you are saved. How? Through faith. Now, faith isn't the saving efficacy,
grace is. Grace is what saved us. God,
by His grace, chose us in eternity past. God, by grace, sent His
Son to die for us. And God, by grace, came to us
with His Spirit and He saved us. But everyone that He has
grace on, He will have grace through this one grace, and that's
faith. For by grace you are saved through
faith." Through faith. How does God manifest this grace
to a sinner? If God has had grace, you remember
that Christ already accomplished salvation at the cross. He was
a victorious Savior. He already wrought redemption
for all of God's people. Yet, when I was born into this
world, I was born just like every other lost sinner. I was a rebel. I hated God. Didn't like the
things of God nor care for them. How is it that God came to me
to show me my sin and my need of a Savior? Through this grace
of faith. All men My friends have some
type of faith. All men have some type of faith.
If you're here today and you're lost, you have some type of faith,
just as we have a type of faith who believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, who have true faith. All men have some type of faith
and believe in something. You take an atheist or an evolutionist,
somebody who doesn't believe in God at all, they have faith. Don't be mistaken. They have
faith. I was listening to a man, a very
educated man. He was an atheist. Another man
was pressing him with questions, very basic questions. And he
said, where did the world come from if there is no God? And
he said, well, there was this bang and molecules and so forth. And he said, well, where did
that come from? And the man said, well, that came from this. And
he said, well, where did that come from? And he said, it came
from this. And he said, well, where did that come from? He
said, well, I get where you're getting at. You want to know
what happened in the beginning? Where did the molecules come
from? And he said, well, they must
have come from some higher power, some being somewhere, but not
God. You see, they have faith. They have faith, but it's not
faith in God. Every man has some type of faith.
And I'll tell you this, many religious folks have faith that
is not saving faith. Many folks have faith that is
not a fruit of the Spirit. It's not a fruit of the Spirit. For the most part, some people
have this faith which we would call historical faith. Historical faith. Or faith that
acknowledges, that accepts something as fact. Some people have a faith that
acknowledges certain facts of the Bible. And this is what most
religions call faith today. If you talk to a free will, works
religion people, when you say faith, I want you to understand
they're going to think something different than what you think.
They're going to think faith is just an assent to something
that's true. This is why they use the tactic
like this. They'll go to a lost man. They'll
say, hey, you believe in God? They'll say, well, yeah, I guess
so. They say, well, you know what?
God says in His Word that all are sinners. You believe that?
They say, well, I don't know. He says, it says it right here.
Look, God says all have sinned. It comes short of the glory of
God. Don't you believe that? They say, well, yeah, I guess
so. And then they say, well, Jesus died for sinners. It says
it right there. Jesus died for sinners. Don't
you believe you're a sinner? Well, yeah. Well, then you must
be saved. And they get people to try to make some kind of assent
mentally to their gospel. That's not faith. Many times
in Scripture it tells us of people who believed on Jesus, but the
Scripture said Jesus did not commit Himself unto them. Why? They did not have true saving
faith. They only mentally assented to
the truth. That's not faith. Every man can
assent to facts, right? My son, little boy, I tell him
a fact, he can say, that's right. I can tell him a fact about Jesus
Christ, about the blood of Christ. I can tell him about the Trinity.
He can assent to it, but that doesn't mean he believes it.
Assenting to something is not this faith that I'm talking about.
It's not this faith at all. Well, what then is saving faith?
What then is the faith of the Spirit? It's vitally important
that every one of us understand what is true saving faith so
we can know if we have it. Don't you think that's important?
I do. I think it's vitally important
that we know our faith comes from the Spirit of God and not
ourselves. You want the scriptural definition of faith? Flip over
to Hebrews chapter 11. Flip over to Hebrews chapter
11. It's going to give us a scriptural definition of faith. Hebrews chapter 11 and verse
1. This is God's definition of faith. Now faith is... Here it is. Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Now what does that say? What
does that mean? The substance of things hoped
for. Let me ask you this. If you hope for something, do
you have it now? Paul says, if we have it now,
then why would we hope for it? So something hoped for is something
that's not tangibly seen. It's not tangibly seen. Faith
is said to be the substance of that. The foundation, the ground
of our hope. Faith is the ground
of hope. You remember the Lord Jesus when
He was saying the parable of the sower and He said, the sower
went forth to sow seed. When He threw the seed and it
landed on good ground, that good ground received the seed and
it grew. This is what faith is. Faith is a foundation for our
soul. Whatever you believe in, you
are resting in to stand before the living God. What is your
foundation? That's faith. Faith is a foundation
of things hoped for. It is a resting on the truth
of God's Word It is the evidence of past, present, and future
things not seen with the eyes or senses. Illustrate this, look
at verse 3. Paul illustrates it for us, just
so we don't get lost with it. Through faith, we understand
that the worlds were framed by the word of God. Were you there
when God spoke the world into existence? I know some of y'all think you
might be. Some of y'all, sometimes we feel like we were, but we
weren't. Nobody was there. How do we know God created the
heavens by His Word? How do we know that? Faith. I believe God. That's faith. I believe God's
Word and what God says. And nothing else matters. This,
my friends, is my foundation of my faith. You want to know
what I believe? It's right here. It's in God's
Word. I know God created the heavens
and the earth because God said so. God said so. Faith, my friends, speaks of
things that have not been seen, nor have happened, and it speaks
as though we were there. I believe that God created the
heavens and the earth by his word more than I believe you're
sitting there this evening. I believe you're sitting there.
But I'll tell you what, you could probably convince me that you're
not there more than you can convince me that God didn't speak the
heavens and the earth into existence. To those who possess faith, these
things of God are not debatable. They are a certain fact. They are certain. They're certain. It is certain that in eternity
God elected a people. I believe that because God has
revealed that to me in my heart and it is the foundation of my
faith. God in eternity chose a people. Christ agreed to be their surety
and died for them on the cross. And the Spirit of God is moving
even now to save His people from their sins. I believe that with
all my heart, with everything in me. It is everything to me. I know this to be certain and
real and true, not because I saw it. but because the Spirit of
God has revealed it to me in my heart and has given me faith
to believe it." Believer, how come you believe these things
and the world around you laughs at you? How can you believe these
things and the world around you says, well, I don't know those
things. Well, you may be right. But this person over here may
be right. Or this person may be right. How do you know you're
so right? Because God has wrought in me
faith to believe. I know these to be certain because
God has revealed them through His Word. It is by faith that
we now possess the things that are promised before we actually
experience them. My friend, you that believe in
Jesus Christ, has not God promised you a multiplicity of things
you have not yet experienced? And yet I know of a certainty
that they are Mine. They are Mine. And no one can
take them from Me. No one, not life or death or
angels or principalities or powers or anything shall take them away
from Me. This is faith, my friends. It
is a rock-solid assurance in God Himself. It's to believe God. Now, these
Old Testament believers, they had the same faith that you have. They didn't have a different
faith. Now, they looked forward to the things of Christ that
they had been promised. Remember in the beginning, Eve
was promised, he said, the heel, he shall crush the head of the
serpent and the serpent shall bruise his heel. They had a promise
of a Redeemer to come that would crush sin. And you know what? They believed Him to come. They
believed it. Abel believed it and he sacrificed
accordingly. They had looked for the coming
of Christ. as their only salvation. And
even so, we in the times of the New Testament, this time that
you're living in now, even so, we have the same faith that we
look back at Christ. And even though we weren't there,
we know that He was come in the flesh. We know God was manifest
in the flesh. I believe that. And I believe
that Jesus Christ is my only hope. He's my only hope. He's my life. And by His life
and resurrection, we by faith embrace the promises of eternal
life, of heaven, of peace with God, and atonement for sins. How? By faith. By faith. Faith, my friends, is what we
rest in for the salvation of our souls. What do you rest in? Where is your faith? Which brings me to the next point.
What is the object of this faith? Faith is a rock solid assurance
given by divine God into our souls. And this faith as though
it has one source. God himself is the source of
true faith. If you have it, God must give
it. You didn't have it before. I didn't have it before. But
one day God came to us and gave it. And this faith, as it has
one source, it also has one object. One single object, and that is
Jesus Christ and Him crucified, Jesus Christ and Him risen from
the dead at the right hand of God. This is the object of my
faith. This is the object of our faith.
In John 16, the Lord Jesus Christ tells us that the Spirit of God,
when He shall come, He won't testify of Himself. Well, who
is He going to testify of? When the Spirit of God came to
us, did He testify of Himself? If He did, it's not the Spirit
of God. The Spirit of God did not come
to testify of Himself. He came to point us to one object. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is the testimony. He shall
testify of me, said Jesus in John chapter 15. This is because
he is the object of all true, authentic faith. When the grace
of faith comes, it has in view only one object, one source of
forgiveness of sins, and that is the person and work of Jesus
Christ. When the Spirit of God came,
we recognized that we must have some mental ascent to the things
of Christ, right? In order to have true faith,
mental ascent is part of it, but that's not the whole thing.
Mental ascent is just part of it. But it is true, we must have
it. But by itself, it is no faith
at all. The many people who have this
mental ascent of faith are those that have faith in
their faith. My friends, if you have faith
in your faith, your faith is vain. It is not of the Spirit
of God. But all who are saved have no
confidence in our faith. I'll tell you what, my faith
is like a roller coaster. I know you've been on a roller
coaster. It goes up and it goes down. And it goes up and it goes
down. It is never constant. I would
to God my faith was perfect. But if I were to lean on my faith,
how weak is our faith? Can your faith sustain you in
the presence of God? No. Faith never saved anyone. We'll say it again. Faith in itself never saves anyone. It is the object of our faith
that saves us. It is Jesus Christ and Him crucified
that saves us. And therefore, our faith looks
to Christ alone all the time. I told you this story and I love
it. I think it illustrates it very well. You remember the African
fellows that came into the city and the first time they saw running
water from the faucet? They went in the hotel and saw
the running water at the faucet and they were enamored with it.
They just turned it on and turned it off and turned it on and turned
it off. They never saw anything like that. Water coming in to
the room where they were. They always had to go draw water
from a well. And they thought that faucet was wonderful. So
what they did is they took the faucet and took it home with
them. And when they got home, they tried to cut it on and cut
it off. And they didn't have no water.
There was no water coming in. They didn't understand. That's
what it's like to have faith in our faith, my friends. Faith
is nothing more than a channel by which salvation comes. Faith is just the channel, but
the source of our faith, the salvation of our souls comes
from Christ Himself, the object of our faith. My friends, don't
have faith in your faith. It's not good enough. The only
thing that's good enough is Christ and Him alone. Our faith shows us who we are. God gave us faith to see who
we are and to see our need of a Savior, of mercy. We know that salvation is by
grace, but my friends, it will always come through faith. It
will always come by the channel of faith. Do you believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ as your only Savior? You see, that belief is only
a channel by which God sends His mercy and grace. What a blessed channel. Praise
God for the fruit of faith to believe. Have you seen that He
was wounded for your transgressions and bruised for your iniquities?
Have you seen that God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all? Have you seen that God has seen
the travail of His soul and was satisfied? My friends, if you have seen
this as your only hope, then you, my friends, have been blessed
with the fruit of true saving faith. That's what the Spirit of God
does. He brings to us and works in us faith to believe, looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. I didn't begin this faith, my
friends, and I won't keep it, and I can't keep it. Couldn't
try. If I tried, I couldn't do it.
Same way with you. My friends, the only faith I
have comes directly from God that gave it. And even the faith
I have now comes from Him. Well, this brings me to my last
point. What is it to walk then in faith? If Paul says we are
to walk in the fruit of the Spirit, walk in the Spirit of God, how
is it then that we walk in faith? What does that mean to walk in
faith? As I said, faith had one source, the Spirit. It has one
object, Jesus Christ, whom God has sent for His people. Even
so, as we have received saving faith, let us also walk in saving
faith. For the Scripture says, the just
shall live by faith. If you have been justified by
God through the blood of Jesus Christ, then you, my friend,
who begin this walk by faith, you will finish this walk by
faith. This walk of faith is not a one-time
operation. It is a daily, moment-by-moment
walk of faith. I cannot trust in faith I had
a few minutes ago, nor will I trust in faith that I will have a few
minutes from now. I must have faith even now and
walk in it, walk in it. Believer, let us therefore embrace
the promises of God. Let us embrace the promises of
God by faith and walk according to these promises. Has God not
promised you eternal life? You that believe, has He not
promised that to you? Shall He not give it to you?
How many times have our faith waned in this? Surely God won't
give me that now. Surely, there's no way He can
give that to me. My friend, if God's promised
it, shall He not give it? Walk by faith. Believe God. Peace and heaven and glory. God, who cannot lie, has promised
them. Walk in these things. Let me
illustrate it this way. You're living in a one-bedroom
shack, a little tin-roof shack. Didn't have any money and you
was broke. Some old lawyer come up and he
said, hey you, I got some good news for you. You had a rich
uncle and he died and left you everything. There is a 10,000
square foot home in Beverly Hills waiting for you. As soon as the
paperwork's finished, it's yours. He also left you a vast fortune. to be able to take care of that
home and take care of yourself for the rest of your life. And by the way, he gave you $100,000
as a down payment. Here. Now let me ask you a question. Would any sensible person take
that money and try to fix up a shack? Would you spend that
money trying to decorate that shack and make it look really
nice, really comfortable? No. You'd be getting ready to
get into the other house. I'd be looking for furniture
to fill the other house, not fill the shack. But how many
times have we not done that? My friend, this body is nothing
more than a one-room shack. And how often do we spend our
time, our effort, our energy, our money, everything we got
to make this old shack look a little bit better? Why would we be walking after
the things of this life or the things of this world when we
have such a reward waiting for us? It makes no sense. My friends,
walk by faith and not by sight. Don't walk by sight. Don't be
disturbed by the circumstances of troubles that come on you. Peter says, don't think it's
strange that fiery trials come on you. And yet when they do,
we're surprised, aren't we? Oh my! Well, God, do you hate
me? What is wrong? Do you not love
me now? My friend, walk by faith. God
has always loved you and He always will love you. And the trials
that you are going through are only for your good. Don't walk by sight. Believe
God. Believe God. Faith, my friends, is a rock-solid
foundation that we can fall on every time, and it'll support
anything if God is the one that gave it. God, if you have true
faith, my friends, rest in Christ, the object of your faith. There's
much joy and peace in it. Don't rob yourselves of the joy
and peace that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Keep your eye on the
prize. I pray that God would bless this
to our hearts. Let's stand and be dismissed in prayer.