WORKS OF THE FLESH OR FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT? (GAL 5:19-26)

SERIES: FREE AT LAST, PART 22

GCEFC: APRIL 25, 2010

INTRODUCTION

1. If this passage serves no other purpose, it serves as a reminder to us. A reminder of who we are. A reminder of what we are. A reminder that we’re sinners at core.

2. A reminder that unless the Spirit of God enters us and transforms us—there’s no hope for our transformation. A reminder of what our unchecked sinful nature is capable of.

3. A reminder that a work we produce ourselves. While fruit is produced through a power we don’t possess.

4. Just as we cannot make a botanical fruit by our own power—we cannot make spiritual fruit by our own power either.

5. But there is something we can make all by ourselves with no assistance from God at all. That would be what the Bible calls works of the flesh.

6. We can all easily enough produce works that are evil and sinful. In fact, Galatians CH 5 teaches us that we can’t help doing so if left to ourselves.

7. That the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit. And that left unchecked, we’re only too glad to do its bidding.

a. When my children were growing up, there was one thing I never had to teach them. I never had to teach them how to be a sinner.

b. They came by it naturally. As did I. As did my parents. And their parents. And you.

c. Some things don’t need to be taught. They need to be controlled.

8. Paul has just spoken about the conflict within each believer. A conflict between our sinful nature and the Spirit of God.

9. It’s a lifelong battle that we can only win by yielding our sinful will to the will of the Spirit of God within us.

10. The battle is won through our surrender to the Spirit. Because truthfully, we cannot win the battle with our sinful nature. It’s too powerful and unrelenting.

11. And we’ve seen that to be pleasing to God and actually grow spiritually, we must walk by the Spirit. We must live in the power and control of the Spirit.

12. In fact, God is only pleased when the Spirit of God lives through us.

A. THE WORKS OF THE FLESH

1. So let’s continue our study by looking at 5:19: The acts of the sinful nature are obvious.

2. Not obvious in the sense of public or clearly visible—though they often are. But obvious in the sense that they’re the only thing the sinful nature CAN PRODUCE.

3. It’s obvious that a cat is going to produce kittens. It’s obvious that a dog is going to produce puppies. It’s obvious that a guppy is going to produce guppies.

4. The sinful nature is going to produce after its kind—so it’s going to produce sinful acts.

5. And not wanting us to be ignorant of what these acts are—he lists them. Not all of them—but a good sampling. Here they are:

a. Sexual immorality. This is the Greek word PORNEIA. You can guess what English word derives from it.

b. It refers to adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bestiality, and prostitution, as well as other things I won’t mention.

c. Scholars tell us that the sexual life of the Greco-Roman world was a lawless chaos. One writer says: It was an age when shame seems to have vanished from the earth.

d. Of course, we live in a sex-crazed world now. A world of rampant immorality of every type. Opportunities abound to fulfill every fantasy.

e. But though I don't want to minimize the problem or suggest it’s not a serious matter—it hardly compares to the first century Mediterranean world.

f. It’s been said that chastity was the one completely new virtue that Christianity introduced into the Greek/Roman world. The concept was almost unheard of.

g. The point is that it’s a natural expression of the sinful nature—and it’s to have no place in the life of the believer—in any century.

h. He next mentions impurity. An uncleanness of heart and mind that defiles a person. It refers to moral uncleanness in thought, word, or deed.

i. Next is debauchery. Debauchery is not just indulgence in what should be avoided—it’s uninhibited indulgence to the point of shamelessness, with disregard for what anyone else thinks.

j. There are a handful of celebrities that come to mind. But I won’t mention their names. You probably already know the names anyway.

k. These first 3 are all sexual in nature. The next 2 we might say are religious in nature—idolatry and witchcraft.

l. Idolatry is anything that takes the rightful place of God. Anything that captures our ultimate loyalty and commitment other than God.

m. Witchcraft is better translated sorcery. The word is PHARMAKEIA, from which we get our word pharmacy. This is because drugs were commonly used in the ancient world to induce altered mental states as part of pagan worship.

n. The next 8 are all social in nature. They include: hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy.

o. Hatred refers primarily to hostility between groups, often borne out of prejudice. Discord naturally arises out of hatred.

p. Jealousy is often confused with envy. Envy is the desire for what someone else has. Jealousy is the resentful suspicion that someone else has what is rightfully mine.

q. Even God is appropriately jealous over loyalty that belongs to him and to no other. But God cannot be envious because he doesn’t desire what anyone else has.

r. With us humans, both envy and jealousy are almost always ugly and sinful.

s. Next Paul lists fits of rage. These are sudden, out-of-control expressions of hostility toward someone else. It’s the classic violent temper.

t. Selfish ambition needs no explanation. We all know what that is. Then he mentions dissensions and factions. This is what happens when people quarrel over issues. The quarrels then create divisions.

u. The last two in the list are drunkenness and orgies. Drunkenness was not very common in the ancient world. But it’s extremely common in our world.

v. Orgies has the idea of carousings, wild parties, rowdiness, crude behavior, and lustful excess displeasing to God and man.

w. Paul ends the list with and the like, showing that the list is not exhaustive. He would need much more paper to list all the acts of the sinful nature.

6. But he adds an interesting phrase at the end of V21: I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

a. The term live like this, being in the present tense, indicates a pattern or lifestyle. It’s not saying that a believer forfeits his salvation if he engages in these sins.

b. But God’s kingdom is a kingdom of godliness and righteousness. And those characterized by these works give evidence that they are not in Christ.

c. And if not in Christ, then as Galatians says—they are not Abraham’s seed. And if not Abraham’s seed—then they’re not heirs of God’s kingdom.

d. True believers don’t live like this. It’s not their lifestyle or their pattern. There may be sinful lapses. But those who live like this give no evidence they’re true believers.

e. As Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount: A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

f. Our lives should correspond to our claim. If they don’t—then the claim is suspect.

B. THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT

1. So we’ve seen what the natural results of living according to the sinful nature looks like. It looks sinful. That’s because it is sinful.

2. And it’s entirely unpleasing to God. And for the most part it’s not even pleasing to us.

3. Now Paul contrasts the acts of the sinful nature with the Fruit of the Spirit.

4. V22: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

5. We don’t have time to look at the individual manifestations of the Fruit of the Spirit, but I refer you to a sermon series I did back in 1994, which covers all 9 with a full week devoted to each. Hopefully the tapes are still around. Check with Carol DiBenedetto.

6. What I’d like to do in closing is simply make some observations about the Fruit of the Spirit that I think will be helpful.

7. First—we should observe that the Fruit of the Spirit is produced by the Spirit and not by the believer. It's not the Fruit of the Believer or the Fruit of the Christian.

8. It’s the Fruit of the Spirit—in and through the believer. It’s not your fruit. It’s not my fruit. It’s the Spirit’s Fruit—through you and me.

9. Second—the Fruit of the Spirit is a UNITY. It’s not the FRUITS of the Spirit, which would imply a pick and choose scenario.

10. It’s not the Salad Bar of the Spirit. It’s not the Smorgasbord of the Spirit. It's not the Mid-Hudson Buffet of the Spirit.

11. The Spirit of God doesn’t want us to be:

a. Joyful Christians who hate people.

b. Self-controlled Christians who are unkind and selfish.

c. Christians who are unfaithful but at peace with it.

d. Loving Christians who are out-of-control.

12. The Spirit of God produces a balanced spiritual life. It’s spiritual life characterized by fruit—not individual manifestations of spiritual qualities. It’s about unity and balance.

13. Third—Don't confuse the Fruit of the Spirit with the Gifts of the Spirit. The GOTS are divine enablement for service/ministry. The FOTS is about character.

14. Put another way: The GOTS are about what we do. The FOTS is about what we are.

15. Fourth—Consider the purpose of fruit. Fruit is for eating. Fruit is not for sitting around on display—at least not for long—it spoils, it rots, and it’s ruined.

16. I like bananas. And after a couple days they look and taste great. But after a couple weeks they look disgusting and I don’t eat them—I throw them out.

17. To have the FOTS and not exercise it is like having fruit on display that’s never eaten.

18. The FOTS is for living out on a practical level—the FOTS is not just a state of being. The FOTS cries out for active expression. Fruit cries out to be eaten—not admired.

a. So love must be active, not passive.

b. Patience must be exercised under trial—when it most matters.

c. Self-control must take over when there’s a tendency to be out-of-control.

d. Joy must pervade our hearts when circumstances would argue for otherwise. Even unbelievers are joyful in joyful times.

19. Fifth—The FOTS is not a TO DO LIST we strive for so we can be proud of ourselves. Boast of our spirituality. Or be listed in the Spirit’s 500 annual publication.

20. If we try to express the law of God through our own efforts, we miss the point. That our self-induced so-called spirituality does not impress God—it only dishonors God.

21. It’s what the Pharisees had mastered. Keeping the religious rules so they would look good and feel good about themselves.

22. The FOTS means that the Son of God is living by the Spirit of God in the child of God. It’s not about us—it’s about him. That’s why the power is there.

23. FOTS brings glory to God. Glory to God because it’s the Spirit of God that produces it.

24. Suppose a philanthropist deposited $1 million into your bank account—no strings.

25. And you decide to buy a very nice home—no mortgage. And soon after you move in you have some friends over and they ask you how you pulled this off.

26. You say rather boastfully—it wasn’t hard—I wrote out a check.

27. When we live out God’s purpose for us. When we manifest the Fruit of the Spirit—it reveals that we’re walking by the Spirit. That the power of God is at work in us.

28. We’re all going to produce fruit—it’s just a question of the kind and the source. Our sinful nature will never produce fruit pleasing to God. While the Spirit of God will always produce pleasing fruit.

29. The best statement of this truth may be in the letter just preceding this one. 2 COR 4:7: But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.