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.

The Power of Unity

 

Text: Galatians 3:23-29

Focus: Unity in Christ

Function: To help understand the importance of Unity as it relates to racial relations

²³Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. ²⁴Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be reckoned as righteous by faith. ²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Happy Father’s Day everyone! My dad has been gone for almost 28 years and I still miss him. I am comforted by a few passages in the scripture. In Luke 16, Jesus tells of a conversation that He recently had with Abraham (in heaven) about Abraham’s concern for his own children, the Jewish people.

It suggests some sort of link between us and those who have already died. And I find comfort in that. In Hebrews, the author says that we have come to the Spirits of righteous people made complete. He is again, speaking of the heavenly and earthly realm’s chance encounters with each other and he says it to comfort us with the knowledge that there are Saints in heaven that can also intercede on our behalf.

Unfortunately, this is not a Protestant doctrine, but I like to think of my father asking God to help me out in difficult situations.

And I love to believe that being in heaven already, he has a better idea of what it means, when we pray: “They will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

And that brings us to the last verse of our passage. If you belong to Christ, then you are also the children of Abraham, that is Children of God by faith in Jesus Christ, and you to are heirs according to the promise of God.

We are heirs to salvation and we are all included.

I like to think of heaven and what it might be like. The bible says that we cannot really imagine what glory will be, but that it will be wonderful. In Ephesians the Apostle declares that in the ages to come God will take the time to demonstrate to us what God’s love is really like.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a wonderful place. He speaks at the beginning of the passage about how we are bound, like kindergartners obedient to their teacher, to the OT law until we believe.

And the requirements for the kingdom of heaven are simple, trust in Jesus’ love for humanity.

I believe that God symbolized it in allowing God’s own self to die in place of our need for vengeance. Through Jesus we learn how to live and to die.

When I was a child, something about unity, and the reality of war, bothered me. My father told me his war stories from WWII, just a few weeks before he died. Let me sum it up to say that there are no atheists in foxholes. The proximity to his own death brought him back to his childhood faith.

So I asked my dad, how could Christians on either side of the conflict take the life of another Christian, or potential Christian? Or even worse, if they are not Christian, how could a Christian send them to hell without giving them a chance?

And dad told me that in heaven, all will be forgiven, and we will get along with one another.

I wondered if that meant would we ask forgiveness of each other in heaven, or what?

Jesus said we would be known by our love for others and it confused me that if we loved them, we certainly would not set out to kill them.

And I often questioned how we could get along in heaven if we hated each other on earth?

I bring that up because the passage has a great emphasis right there in the middle about what the kingdom of God represents. The emphasis is unity.

Verse 28 from the Message: In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.

I have mentioned on several occasions how important this verse was to the early Church. The translator of the Message takes it out of the recital of a vow and makes the vow that they said when they were baptized personal.

When they were baptized they all were recognizing that God’s kingdom is already here and now and it is completely different from the class system of the culture surrounding it.

When they were baptized they literally said in their baptismal vows: “there is neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor Free, Male or female, but all are one in Christ.”

I have said it before but it is important to emphasize, there are no race distinctions, class distinctions or gender distinctions in the Kingdom of heaven.

And that, I believe is why Paul the Apostle called both Apollos, a non-Jew, and Priscilla, a woman, “fellow apostles” just like him.

It wasn’t God’s intent for the Christian religion has reverted away from the equality of women that was evident in the first three centuries.

It wasn’t God’s intent that parts of the Christian religion justify warfare and imperialism.

The church was radical, and this concept of loving others was designed to change the culture. It was certainly appealing to all those who were outcast because of their race, gender or class. And that was pretty much everyone. And because of its commitment to the poor and dispossessed the church experienced incredible growth those first three centuries.

The Church was the progressive voice for change.

So, what about today? How do we grow the body of Christ?

We are in the age of Post-Modernity.

Our preaching has to do with a relationship with God’s family through faith in Christ that is proven by the fact that our actions show a genuine care for others.

When I was trained in evangelism and outreach, it was the age of Modernity.

We were taught how to argue for the existence of God.

I have great arguments for a few atheists and a few evolutionists who denied the creative power of God.

In post-modernity, we are defending the faith by arguing for the love of God.

One of the worse things that happened during the age of modernity is that believers got so focused on what they believe and defending it that they forgot to practice it.

For me, it was just a little bit different.

I was raised to believe that all these promises were for the future when we get to heaven.

But those early believers were not talking about breaking down the barriers between the races in heaven, but here on earth.

The Kingdom of heaven is already here and believers live by the standard of conduct of the Kingdom of heaven.

Remember, it is simple. As the passage says, now that we have faith the law is done away with.

That does not mean we get to do whatever we want to whomever we want.

It means that we are constrained by the love of God for others.

We Love Jesus who saved us.

And we show the love of Jesus by loving others.

God is Still Speaking, Are We Listening?

Text: John 16:12-15

Focus: The Spirit of God’s leading

Function: The fact that the Spirit of God is still speaking and has made several changes in culture.

¹²“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

We are still focusing on the theme of Pentecost and the moving and the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers.

I enjoyed the time I spent in both Bible College and Seminary. Besides the lectures that the professors gave us, we spent a lit of time in discussion among ourselves, guided by our professors as we learned to search out and study scripture for ourselves and try to do our best to discern the meaning of the scripture in light of what is going on in the current social/spiritual/political climate.

The discussions were lively, engaging and meaningful to me. I helped me to understand what the Holy Spirit was teaching me in my preparation for ministry.

All this happened during the height of the Charismatic movement.

The subject of today, the power of the Holy Spirit as He/She comes and moves in our lives was very controversial during the movement.

And one of the Scriptural manifestations of the Holy Spirit was the gift of speaking in tongues. For many Charismatics, it became a sign for who was actually in and who was out in the kingdom of God. They believed you had to have it.

Of course, 1 Corinthians 12 tells us that there are believers filled with the Spirit who do not speak in tongues. So, the movement became very divisive. And that was sad, because the Spirit of God is given to bring us together and make us love each other.

I was in the middle. I’m a mystic and I believe in tongues and practice it regularly. But I don’t believe that you have to do it. As a matter of fact, the proof of the Spirit of God in our lives is not the manifestation of the gifts of God but the love of God evident toward others.

I defended the gifts, but I preached against the division that it was causing. Pride is what causes that kind of sin. And pride is the sin with which we saints are the most affected.

And. Sinner that I am, I was more proud of the fact that I understood both sides and had praise and criticism for both.

I thought I was better than them.

And that is sin.

Now, what does that have to do with our scripture?

Jesus said, I will send my Spirit and he will reveal to you more truth. I don’t see and end to this promise. As a matter of fact, Jesus promises to be with us, leading us by the power of His Spirit until we get to heaven. Praise God!

It is the Spirit of God that leads us into this kind of revelation that keeps us humble and loving others as much as we love ourselves.

It isn’t easy at times because we have to forgive and make exceptions for people whom we do not understand because they are different from us.

But we are called to love them like Jesus loves them.

So God is still speaking and the question is, are we listening?

It is important for me to remember that at times God’s voice has spoken and the whole world trembled.

I am speaking symbolically here when I speak of the way the Holy Spirit worked in the hearts of men like William Wilberforce, Abraham Lincoln, Fredrick Douglas and a myriad of abolitionists who worked to abolish slavery worldwide. It was a move of God, let by the Holy Spirit and it was exactly what Jesus was prophesying in this passage as He tells His disciples to expect God to keep on moving in their midst.

How do we know the Spirit is leading? I believe that the Spirit will always lead us to love Jesus by loving others.

I don’t know how to explain this it, except for me, it seems to happen deep down in my Spirit.

Prayer is a big part of the leading of the Spirit in my life. I find this during prayer, God changes me. God, in a still small voice or by a gentle nudging of thoughts in a certain direction, by the power of the Holy Spirit always leads me to love others and to try to see their side of things and understand the sincerity of their actions.

Prayer changes me to love and forgive and that always seems to release the power of the Holy Spirit in my life.

And conversely, when I feel the heavens are as cold as brass and my prayers seem useless, I have to stop and examine myself. Why does the life giving source of the Holy Spirit seem dried up inside of me?

And the answer is almost always a place of unforgiveness.

The Spirit of God is leading and we need to continue to listen to He/She speak to us.

And it isn’t just a personal conviction that God’s Spirit fosters on a society. I already mentioned how God’s Spirit changed the times and seasons when God’s Spirit lead the Church to abolish slavery worldwide.

God is still speaking and I would be remiss not to mention what I believe to be the next great move of the Spirit.

Tony Compolo has been an inspiration to me all my life. He was ardently against the idea of same sex marriage.

And he describes a journey similar to mine of how God, by the Holy Spirit helped him to see the humanity of the LGBTQ community and eventually in his passion for social justice, include them in the picture of people whom God has redeemed.

So, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to always be with us and to lead us.

When the Spirit leads, He/She changes hearts in order to change cultures and bring about the justice and love for our neighbor that Jesus preached.

So, the Spirit is leading, are we listening and open to the changes God wants to bring to redeem our culture?

Confused?

Text: Acts 2:1-21

Focus: Pentecost

Function: to help people see the unifying nature of the Holy Spirit

2:¹When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

⁵Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
    and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit,
        and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above
    and signs on the earth below,
        blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood,
        before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Today, we say, Happy Birthday Church.

I once lived in a town where the largest church was the traditional Pentecostal Church. And I loved their pastor as a colleague whenever we were planning joint worship services for the entire community. He was as flamboyant as a Pentecostal preacher can be, but he was sincere. And every year at Pentecost, they were not to be undone. It was an huge celebration for them as they brought back to remembrance just what it means to them to be saved.

I get the feeling, without judgment of them, that what it means to them, is the sense of personal empowerment, strength, hope and joy of the Holy Spirit inside of them. They know that the Spirit of God living inside of them makes them special people.

And I agree. God loves the entire world equally. God does not play favorites with humankind. But being part of the Church means that we are people who are part of the family of God here on earth. We have the privilege of calling God our Father and knowing that God cares for us more than we probably realize.

The day of Pentecost, at 9:00 AM must have seemed odd to them. It was bewildering, or as I titled the sermon, it was Confusing.

I preach a lot about equality of the races. I believe that overcoming racism in our culture is a primary challenge facing the church today.

And I had a disagreement with a man who held a literal interpretation of scripture. For me, the problem with that is that at times the scriptures are speaking symbolically and not literally, so the best and most accurate dividing of the word takes that into account. I would be abusing my authority as preacher to take a scripture out of context by making a symbolic passage literal.

Anyway, this man -whose theology was based on a white supremacist interpretation of the scriptures- stated that at the tower of Babel, God separated the races and that racism was given to us by God and we should not fight it.

So look at the story of the tower of Babel from Genesis 11:¹Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. ²and as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. ³And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. ⁴Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” ⁵The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. ⁶And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. ⁷Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” ⁸So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. ⁹Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

He said this supported racism.

On a few occasions, I have reminded you the the baptismal vows of the early church included the statement: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, Male nor Female, Slave or Free, but all are one in Christ.” It meant that there was no race, no class, and no gender more important than the other but we are all one in Christ. Being part of the Church meant that we acknowledged this kind of equality.

On the day of Pentecost, we see the power of the Holy Spirit unleashed on the Church so that God can build the church.

And the movement was the movement of the message of Jesus and the one that Jesus commanded us to proclaim; “The kingdom of God is here, now.” It was/is an appeal to join the Kingdom of God and to do things God’s way and not the way of the world.

And we have seen that simply put, the way we do that is to care for others with as much dignity and love that we expect for ourselves.

They killed Jesus because His message was directed against the societal barriers that kept people in bondage.

And now we see the beautiful symbolism inherent in the miracle of speaking in tongues on the birthday of the Church.

I am not against speaking in tongues. I pray in the tongues of the Holy Spirit regularly because I believe it brings the wisdom of God and my passion into the problem as we answer in prayer.

But the focus of this miracle at Pentecost is not the miracle of the tongues but what it symbolized.

The white supremacist who justified his racism with the tower of babel missed the point of the symbolism.

The different languages were still there, but God was communicating to them the message of salvation to them through these people who had no previous knowledge of the language they were speaking in.

The barrier that God had set up was now broken down by the power of God’s Holy Spirit inside of them.

The Spirit of God overcomes the barriers between people who once were enemies.

God is using us to break down the barriers between the races, the genders, the nations and the world.

The tribalism that keeps us motivated so that “our side wins” is defeated by the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

Praise God that the Spirit of God is what drives and motivates the church.