Fruit, Not Nuts

 

Text: Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Focus: Fruit of the Spirit

Function: to help people see what God wants from their actions

¹For Freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm, then, and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

¹³For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. ¹⁴For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

¹⁶Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. ¹⁸But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. ¹⁹Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, ²⁰idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, ²¹envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²²By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. ²⁴And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

Fruit, not nuts is the title of the sermon.

God is looking for Christians who bear the fruit of their salvation through the power of the Holy Spirit. God is not looking for nuts who impose their will and power on others in order to try to justify themselves.

Today we are looking at the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. We are looking at what happens when a person is born from above and the power of the Holy Spirit takes up residence in their own heart and mind. We are looking at the spiritual transformation that comes from placing faith in Christ.

But we would be remiss if we did not start off with the first verse of our text. “It is for Freedom that Christ has set us free.” We are set free from the retributive curse of the law through our faith in Jesus’ life example for us.

When evil happens, we want revenge. Symbolically, God took all the revenge for sin on God’s own self through the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. This only works for me if Jesus is divine, God incarnate who takes upon God’s own self the errors and evil of the world as prophesied .

When we become believers, we give up the right to revenge because Christ Jesus took up the revenge for sin on His own self through the cross. The perfect one, who is the Light of the World came to shine a light against evil and the need for revenge by taking evil upon Himself symbolically.

He who knew no sin became sin for us.

Right before Jesus left the disciples, He breathed onto them the Holy Spirit and gave believers the power to forgive sins.

And the whole point of that first verse is that now that we are forgiven, we are set free from any curse of the law to come. Our sins are already forgiven. But the whole passage goes on to say that this is not an excuse to do evil.

He contrasts the deeds of the flesh with the leading of the Holy Spirit in our life.

We could say that practicing the deeds of the flesh to the detriment of others is committing acts of evil, and is certainly not consistent with the calling that Jesus has given us to reconcile the world to God and each other.

He gives a plan to be led by the Spirit. (Vs 10) And he tells us how to recognize the voice of the Spirit compared to the voice of the flesh.

He gives us an incomplete list of what being led by the flesh appears to be like in verses 19b-20: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, ²⁰idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, ²¹envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

And he contrasts these acts of evil with what happens when a conscience is guided by the life giving power of the Holy Spirit inside of them.

He says this is noble and that humanity agrees with the value of these qualities because no human law prohibits them and they are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, and self-control

This, or these, depending on how you look at it is/are the fruit/fruits of the Spirit of God inside of us.

Paul is telling us that the Spirit of God is inside of us to lead us into these qualities, but that our flesh is selfish and resists the Spirit of God.

In Romans 7 and 8 he describes the dilemma and ends with the victory Chant that Jesus has set us free from the judgment of failure to live up to the command to love one another by the power of God’s Spirit.

And the chapter is about the fact that even though we have been set free, we cannot use it as an opportunity for selfish pleasure.

We have a political divide in our country right now that has to do with what side gets power, not with what is best for the nation.

And it sometimes can be summed up in what it means to be living as a free person who only considers themselves or a free person who considers others.

The text says, use your freedom to serve others. It is our command as believers, to live as servants of Christ who taught us to wash the feet of others.

And both sides are guilty of selfishness. One side says they have a individual right to a gun regardless of how that right affects the safety of others. They are living for themselves. The other side says the individual right of the woman supersedes the collective rights of the woman and the baby. That does not mean that I believe in forced pregnancy. I believe in choice. God gave us choice from the beginning About abortion, I believe laws won’t stop abortion, so we need to make it unnecessary, not illegal by providing for the woman who is so desperate she might face the choice to terminate her pregnancy.

I needed to clarify that based on last week’s news, but I don’t want to get off the point that this freedom is given to us for the purpose of service toward others.

But I point out the fact that WE ALL fall into this error of asserting personal freedom over the collective benefit of society.

Jesus said, we are free to do as we please, but we are commanded to use that freedom to love others in the way that Jesus did.

And we are not alone in the ability to do that.

Paul gives us some examples of what evil behavior is like. I make it much more simple. Anything that keeps us from loving our neighbors equally as ourselves keeps us from the mission of Christ and is sin to us.

But again, we are not alone. For me, the leading of the Spirit seems to be having my conscience on steroids.

The Prophet Elijah was seeking the voice of God and he heard a great windstorm pass by, But God wasn’t there. He heard an earthquake, but God wasn’t there and eventually, he heard a still small voice telling him that God was with Him.

God’s Spirit will always lead us to love others, forgive and care for the least of these.

God’s Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit inside of us if we listen.

We don’t want to be nuts who use our religious passion and zeal to impose our power on others. We want peoples everywhere to come to the knowledge that Jesus has given to us a better way of living through the power of the Spirit of God inside of us.