That was a little weak, but I know sometimes in this room the sound doesn't, you got to try a little harder in this room because of the acoustics. So, good morning. That's better, alright. It's good to see you guys.
It's been a couple weeks since I've been able to be here. here with you and I'm looking forward to diving into this new study on the fruit of the Spirit. I hope you're excited about it. I'm excited about it because I like learning new things and every time I study the scripture, even things that I've studied before. God teaches me new things.
And when God teaches me new things, it's because God's got new adventures for me in discipleship and growing in Him. Have you ever heard the phrase, we can do this the easy way or the hard way? How many of you have ever been in that situation where you had to make that choice? Yeah, it's not always so fun.
Sometimes that's the way I feel when Chris gives me an assignment for preaching and the topic that's going to be. began our series on the gifts of the Spirit, and I knew the series on the gifts of the Spirit was going to be a challenge. Why?
Because many of you who are here on a regular basis and those of you who, well, hello. Thank you. That's called the strobe effect.
But many of you who are joining us online are from many, many varied backgrounds and expressions of the body of Christ. and have come with many different views on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And you've been impacted by good experiences and also some bad experiences. And so I knew that when we dove into that topic, I needed to make sure that we studied the context of what led Paul to that topic on the gifts of the Spirit.
Now today we're going to talk about the fruit of the Spirit. And you may be thinking, well, this is much easier than the gifts of the Spirit. I mean, the fruit of the Spirit is only love, joy, peace. peace, patience.
I mean, how controversial, how difficult can it be to do that topic? Well, the easy way would be for me to just jump into the nine gifts, or the nine fruits, which is kind of what everybody expected me to do with the gifts, and I didn't do it. Why? Because if you know me, I just can't skip the context. And by the time we get to Paul's teaching on the gifts of the Spirit, we get there after about 11 chapters of Paul kind of laying out the flow.
flesh-spirit battle and the carnality that has gripped the Corinthian believers in spite of the fact that he has blessed them with literally every spiritual gift. And so the controversy is literally what sets the context. And so you think, well, man, I just thought the fruit of the Spirit was just this nice, pleasant, you know, Sunday school thing we can talk about.
But he doesn't get to that topic until he tells you the reason. reason why that topic is so important. Before we study what they are, we have to understand why they exist.
And in that, we'll discover how they literally can change the way I do life. Will you pray with me? Abba Father, I come to you, B'Shem Yeshua HaMashiach, in the name of Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, the One who ascended to the right hand of the majesty of God.
on high received the gift of the Holy Spirit from the Father and has poured it forth into our lives. Father, we're here today because we want to know what that means, what he does within us, and how we can be more faithful disciples by submitting our lives and our hearts to you to grow your fruit and your presence and your righteousness within us. So Lord, I pray today that you would give us discerning hearts and open minds to...
receive that which is from your word, and not from me, but from you. We'll be careful to give you all the glory. And all God's children said, amen.
So let's just dive in. Today, the title of my message is The Fruits of Righteousness. When we began our study of the gifts of the Spirit, I started with the gifts of righteousness. And the reason for that is because of of the context of the problem that was going on in Corinth, which I want to remind you about. The Corinthian believers had been given every possible spiritual gift and manifestation of the Spirit to help them overcome their carnality.
And you have to have some compassion for these people. Corinth is a port city. It is literally, it's where all the vessels come in from all over the world. It is just ranked with sexual immorality and idolatry, prostitution, serving the men coming in from the ships.
And many of the believers had been a part of that system. And so the Lord was very gracious to pour out, as Paul says, virtually every spiritual gift to help them. Because Paul was beginning to realize that carnality was beginning to corrupt the body of Christ. And Paul knew very much how dangerous that could be. How did he know that?
Because Paul was a Pharisee. Paul was a Jewish rabbi. Paul knew the spiritual condition of what was going on within Judaism in Jerusalem. You had four dominant groups, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Zealots.
And Judaism was literally imploding on itself. Add to this, you had the narcissistic behavior and interpretation of the Pharisees. The Pharisees who had sat themselves in the seat of Moses were giving incorrect halakha, incorrect interpretation about how to walk out the Torah.
Along with their incorrect interpretation, they were manifesting hypocrisy. They didn't even do the things they were putting on other people to do. The result of this was an implosive divisiveness that multiplied division and really century or sometime later, when it came time to give a reason for the destruction of the second temple, that was the reason they gave. This hatred, this divisiveness that ruined their community and ultimately resulted in the destruction of the second temple.
And Paul didn't want that to happen in the Corinthian church, and he doesn't want that to happen in our church or anywhere else. Because as the body of Christ, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Yet we run the risk of making the mistake of giving into that flesh-driven life, that carnality.
And when we do that, one of the ways you know what's happening, divisiveness, disputes, factions. It's obvious. The gifts of righteousness, by the time he gets to those in Corinthians, were given for the sake of the body, for the building up of the temple of the Holy Spirit Christ Church. Paul wrote to get their focus off of serving themselves and raise their sights to a life of doing selfless righteousness for somebody else. Because honestly, the only way to get out of yourself is to start serving somebody else.
They're the only way to stop. being selfish is to stop being selfish. There's no magic cure for it. You've just got to get out and do it and get involved in somebody else's life. But before Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, to a people living in that coastal city of Greece, he wrote a letter not to a city, but to a region in Asia Minor called Galatia.
The letter would be circulated among the communities and cities where Paul had first established churches. on his first missionary journey. To those churches, Paul wrote either shortly before or shortly after the council in Jerusalem of the apostles had met to determine whether or not Gentiles had to be circumcised.
We'll come back to that here in a little bit. Paul writes this letter to reinforce what will eventually become the gospel. the halachic ruling of the apostles. The fruits of righteousness that Paul describes in Galatians 5 are the evidence of a person's right relationship with God, not physical circumcision. And that's what makes this topic so incredibly significant and incredibly important.
How many of you want to know and walk in a true sense of knowing You are a child of God. You are a son of God. You are a daughter of God. You are a spirit-filled person. How many of you want to know that?
Not as many as I thought. If you don't have a bunch of hand raisers, it's okay. I don't judge you. A little bit, maybe. Yeah, we want to know that.
So how do we know? Check the fruit. Check the fruit. If the fruit is there, then the Spirit is there.
If the fruit isn't there, well then, I'm not going to say the Spirit's not there, but... There may be a misunderstanding of how we let the Spirit manifest and grow His presence in our lives. So, why does Paul describe these manifestations of the Holy Spirit in our life as fruits? Before we dive into what Paul wrote in Galatians 1, I want you to go with me to Romans 6. And when I say go with me, I don't care if it's on your telephone.
or on your lap, I really want, we're going to do a Bible study today. We're going to look at two different sections of Scripture. We're going to start in Romans 6, and then we're going to go to Galatians 5. And so we're going to be reading these verses, and then we're going to make some comments about them. 6, verses 12 through 14. Now understand this book, this letter was written long after the Galatian letter. But notice, you'll recognize the consistency of what Paul says on these topics.
Beginning in verse 12, therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lust. And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God. Now notice that Paul is framing a previous way of life with a new way of life.
Now sometimes people don't want to accept that. When we went through the book of Hebrews, there's this constant juxtaposition between an old covenant. and a new covenant, and some people just don't want to accept the fact that you can't juxtapose the new with the old or the old with the new if there is no new and there is no old.
The juxtaposition tells you that there is something that is different. There's a way of life that's different. So Paul continues with the question, how can we live, in Romans 6 he asked at the beginning, if we died with Christ, remember Romans 6 starts with the whole being baptized into his death, the likeness of his death, the likeness of his resurrection, and he asked question, if we've died to sin in Christ, how can we continue in it any longer?
But then Paul makes a statement that believers have been wrestling with for generations, and we are still doing it today, for you are not under law, but under grace. The easy way would be to avoid this. You understand my dilemma?
That would have been, oh, let's just talk about love. Let's just talk about joy, but that's not the context of why we get to those. This is the context of why we get to those.
Whatever Paul means by this, he sees our death with Christ and in Christ as one having not only changed our relationship with sin, but also in some way it has changed our relationship with the law, the Torah, the instructions of God's righteousness. Something has changed. It's not a bad thing, but something has changed.
He also continues his consistent use of the imagery of slavery or servitude as a means of making this juxtaposition between what was and what is. Now, I wish, let's just be honest, I wish there had been another way he could have done this. All right? Because slavery is just an uncomfortable topic, period. In our own nation, it brings up very uncomfortable, painful memories of our own past and our origins.
It brings up painful images of people who have suffered under that. But it's not something that's from the past. Because right now there are more people in slavery, there are probably more people in slavery right now in the world in which we're living in right now than even when the slavery of Africans was going on in the United States.
Sex trafficking. Literal slavery. So I wish slavery would go away, but it hasn't.
I wish there was a more comfortable way to talk about this, but it's the one he chooses. And it's really quite effective, in spite of it being uncomfortable. We will see him do the same things in Galatians.
And before we get defensive, please know there's a very good reason why he uses this imagery. Paul immediately anticipates in Romans 6 a ludicrous conclusion to what he has just penned and rebuts it before we even have a moment to think about it. Verse 15, what then? Shall we sin because we're not under law but under grace? God forbid may it never be.
So if your mind went there, you should have read one more verse. Does not being under the law mean you can now do the things the law identified as sin? Well, no. All God's people said, well, duh. No.
So not being under the law doesn't change the definition of sin, and it doesn't change the definition of unrighteousness, which is sinfulness driven by selfishness. That's unrighteousness. Paul is talking to us.
About a relationship. Verse 16, he says, do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one of whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness. Paul says there's two types of servitude, one that leads to death and one that leads to life. And it all depends on who you present yourself to be a slave to.
Now that kind of gives us a hint of... the indentured servitude that he's talking about. All right, this isn't just the willful, this isn't the captured slavery image, although it can apply there too. Verse 17, but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart. Would you people please just repeat those three words with me?
From the heart, from the heart. Underline it in your mind, do whatever your little apple lets you do. We became obedient from the heart to that form of instruction to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
Now, did you notice what he said? We became obedient from the heart. There's something about this new connection to righteousness that is not foisted upon us. It is not obligatory to us, it is something we choose from the heart to attach ourselves to. We're talking about a relationship.
What else is the heart about? Now why is this important? Because it points to the change that was always coming when obedience was to shift from obligation to love. Now, don't misunderstand me.
Israel was called to love the Lord their God with all their heart, their soul, their mind, and their truth, or their spirit. But there is something that happens at the coming of Jesus that so dramatically affects us in the heart that we have a different kind of attachment to the pursuit of righteousness. We're going to try to explore what that is.
Listen to what he says, verse 19. He says, I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members, your body parts, as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
Now, Paul tells us, hey, I'm speaking in human terms. What does that mean? He's using a terminology they'll understand.
And what is that terminology? What is that context? Slavery. Uncomfortable, but known.
It was a part of the whole Roman economy. The whole world functioned with, whether it was in Asia Minor or wherever it was. Slavery was a reality, and the people understood it.
He's using this terminology they understand, and the terminology that they understand is what it means to be indentured or bound over to another and required to do something that is not necessarily their will to do. They do it because they must do it, not because they want to do it from their heart. They have no choice because, here it comes, they are under authority.
Are you with me? They are under authority of someone else. They are under obligation because they have to, not because they chose to. Slavery was so prevalent in the ancient world that it was an easy, understandable way to juxtapose a life of servitude to a life of freedom. So when Paul starts talking...
in the context of slavery to sin and the law being something we felt like we were enslaved to. Guys, can we just all grow up? Paul is never, not once in the Scripture does he demean the Torah.
He's helping us understand a relationship to how we pursued righteousness here. Versus how we now pursue righteousness here. He's using a common frame of reference, which is uncomfortable, but it makes the point. If you can't get past that, you will simply ignore what he says about the law.
That's the bottom line. You'll simply ignore it because you're emotionally triggered. and not listening with the Spirit.
He's not demeaning the law. Verse 20, he says, for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. That's kind of funny. You know, when you're a kid, freedom, you know, oh, I'm a kid, they'll forgive me.
You know, I mean, there's a certain level of freedom you have. When you're just sinning because you're enslaved to sin and righteousness doesn't get in the way. You know what I'm talking about? Remember when it was really easy to sin before you knew Jesus. And then it got uncomfortable.
I think it's funny. Because it's true. We're just like, you know, just going out there, sowing our oats, doing our thing.
We don't care. Until suddenly we come smacked up. Faced with righteousness, uh-oh, now it doesn't feel so fun anymore.
Now it doesn't feel so free anymore. Verse 21, therefore what benefit, ooh, we're getting to the big reveal here. What benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you were now ashamed for the outcome of those things is death, but now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God. you derive your benefit resulting in sanctification and the outcome, eternal life. Oh, that biblical translators would just translate the stinking words.
Did I say that out loud? Sorry, it kind of slipped out. What am I talking about?
Here's the big reveal. The big reveal that helps us build to our topic of the fruits of righteousness. the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
In both of those verses, the word, the New American translation version, translate benefit, is actually the Greek word for fruit. And if you've ever celebrated Passover and gone through the 15 steps of the Haggadah, you already know what that word is. It comes when we take the parsley.
and we dip it. Does anybody remember what the name of that section is? Carpas. That's the word that Paul uses, fruit. We dip the carpas twice.
We dip the fruit of the land twice to remember what? Our gift of freedom, and our gift of freedom from what? Slavery.
Oh, that Jewish thing we do, the Passover, that just slips in one little Greek word on us that's completely relevant to what we're studying. Freedom, because the fruit of the Spirit is about freedom. Paul asked, what fruit did you derive from the life of slavery to sin. What was your benefit?
What was the fruit? Well, the fruit was death. Verse 22. Here we go, juxtaposition. But now, what's the juxtaposition? There was then, and now there's now.
You can say it out loud, it's okay. There's then, and then there's thank you. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, I got to stop right here, enslaved to God. Now we're just doing it because of an angry, no, he's using an illustration, grow up. It's just an imagery.
Is God an evil taskmaster? No, now you better start talking. You sit there and don't answer that, you're not, don't go outside until you repent. No. Is that what it means to be enslaved?
No, he's using a cultural illustration, something we understand about what it means to be under obligation or in submission to. You can tell I'm a little irritated by people who take these things to ludicrous degrees. Because when we do, we miss the power of the imagery that Paul is using. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your fruit, karpos, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome is eternal life.
We now, since we have been freed from sin and are now in servitude to God, we now have a new fruit, a new benefit, a new result of our righteousness. The first is sanctification, the transforming work of the Holy Spirit who doesn't... just give us the rules of righteousness, but begins to actually change us and rebirth within us a hunger for righteousness.
The benefit is not just knowing what sins I'm not supposed to commit. It is the birthing of a renewed appetite for righteousness within me. It's not about changing my behavior. It's about changing me. I don't need more rules.
We didn't do well when we just had one. Come on. Really, I don't know what made him think 613 would fix that, but I'll tell you what it did do. It exposed just how much problem I have with sin.
It exposed just how much my willful flesh, the minute you tell me, do this, my flesh says, no. Don't do this, my flesh says, all righty. I don't need a new rule.
I need a new me. I need a then, but I need a new now. And that's the Holy Spirit.
And that's the role, the Holy Spirit, the fruits of the Holy Spirit. These are not this love, joy, peace. This is not going to be a behavior modification course. Shame on you for not loving as much as you should love. How helpful was that?
I establish a rule that you must love. What does your flesh say? Nope. I encounter love by the presence of the Ruach HaKodesh, the presence of the God of love within me. And I'm in relationship with him.
And that starts changing me. Sanctification, which leads to eternal life. Not just a future hope, but a present reality. My eternal life begins when death no longer has control of my destiny because it's no longer in charge of me and it no longer has a charge against me. Death only has authority in my life because of sin.
If I've been freed from sin, it no longer has mastery or ownership or authority over me. It is no longer my master and neither is death. I have been set free. Karpas. And that's the result.
That's the end game of the fruit of the Holy Spirit within us. It shouldn't surprise us, should it, that God turns this whole thing around with fruit. Well, duh. That's how this whole thing got started.
I mean, we messed it up with fruit. God says, I'm going to fix it with fruit. We messed it up at a living tree. God says, I'm going to fix it with a death tree where you can come and dine on the fruit. of my righteousness.
I love God's Word. Not just what it says, but how He says it. Two trees and fruit. How do we mess this up?
Now to Galatians 5. We're going to do the very same thing with the first part of this chapter as we've done with Paul's letter in Romans. Let me begin in verse 1. It was for freedom that Christ has set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery.
Oh, Paul, please. find a different illustration. Nope. He's going to do the one that works.
Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Messiah will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision. receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole law. Did you see how he used the word under there? Under obligation.
And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he's under obligation to keep the whole law. You have been severed from Messiah. You who are seeking to be justified by the law, you have fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit by faith are waiting for, and there it is, the hope of righteousness.
Now we know why Paul was using the slavery servitude terminology. As I said, it was not to demean the Torah, but to explain the relationship. To help us understand how the relationship changes from slavery to freedom, from slave to son. And that's what makes the conflict context essential to our understanding. The conflict context in this case, and again, this was way before Paul ever wrote Romans, is that Jewish believers were demanding that...
Gentile men be circumcised to have right and covenantal standing with God. Now we already know that in Acts 10 Peter had gone to the house of Cornelius. We saw that six men from the circumcision had witnessed the Holy Spirit circumcising the heart of Cornelius and his household and pouring out the Holy Spirit and gifting.
But... In the course of the gospel going into the regions of Asia Minor, the further you get away from Jerusalem, the less that reality is known. So when did this letter get written? Well, some say it was before the council in Jerusalem, and the reason they say that is that...
This letter was likely the thing that helped raise the issue to make the necessity of the Jerusalem Council come to pass. Meaning Paul writes this letter, makes these bold statements about circumcision, and the apostles haven't even... talked about it yet. That's one view of this.
Other people believe, no, he wrote this after the council, and those who hold this view see it as affirming the council's decision, but he doesn't really cite it. He doesn't actually cite reference to it. And some people say, well, because he didn't cite reference to it, that means that it had to have been written, you know, maybe before the council. But let's be honest about Paul. Paul didn't get his gospel from the apostles, did he?
Paul makes it clear that the gospel he preached to the nations was the gospel he received from Jesus himself. He didn't need the permission of the apostles to preach that gospel. So this is just a point of information for you. Some commentaries will say before, some commentaries will say after.
What we do know is that this is the conflict context. This is what the body of Christ, the early church, was dealing with. So why is it the conflict context?
Because it raises the issue of who is doing the work of sanctification and where it's being accomplished. Let me just sidebar for a minute for these people that were, you know, Paul's pretty rough on them in Galatians, and he was there, and he has the right to do that. But let's remember, let's have a little grace for these Jewish people who have their entire lives believed this is the way to have right standing with God. Let me ask you a question. When you came to Messiah, did you have to work some things out with your old way of life?
Was there some struggle with maybe some friendships that you didn't necessarily want to lose, but in the context of walking out faithfulness to him, those relationships started feeling really uncomfortable? Was that easy? How easy do you think it was for the Jewish people to suddenly have something as sacred and holy to them as circumcision suddenly being said, they don't have to do that.
Now Paul never said to the Jews, you need to stop doing that. He just said, you can't tell them as men they have to do that. I have grace for these people, but eventually they have to be called out. for what they're doing. Why?
Because it goes to that issue of how am I being sanctified? How am I being saved? Is it by the hands of men in the flesh of men, or is it by the work of the Holy Spirit in my heart? Is it the shedding of my blood that sets me right with God, or is it the shedding of Messiah's blood that sets me right? The issue had to come up.
It had to be dealt with. And the reason Paul gets so amped about it is that he's tired of people telling Gentile men, you're not right with God unless you let me do something to you in your flesh when the Holy Spirit has already done something supernatural in their heart. I'm going to go with that for multiple reasons. That's better.
Paul tells them that if they accept the yoke of circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to them. And this is this word here. This is why I know that Paul uses the word karpos very, very specifically, because that's not the word he uses here.
There's a generic word for benefit. That's the one he's using here. In the other times, he's drawing our mind to the fruit of the Spirit.
Paul says the problem with accepting circumcision is that you then obligate, you then put these men under obligation to keeping the whole Torah. Did that save you? No. What did it do?
It inflamed your flesh. You ask, well, would that be so bad? It's not.
the way the Father wants to move us from slavery to sonship. And by the way, when you left first grade, and by the time you got to high school, and you strange people who took classes called trigonometry and algebra and all those crazy things, one plus one still equaled two there, right? What you had learned, the fabric, the foundation of what you learned was still in place.
It's just that the Father wants to move us from slavery to sonship. The Torah can teach what to do and what not to do, but it doesn't intrinsically, internally change me. It doesn't fix or restore the fallen appetite. It doesn't replace the Yetzirah.
I don't want another law. I want to be different. I want to go...
I don't want to go back to Sinai, as Chris says. I want to go back to Eden. I want to go back to that place that God created me where my default wasn't no.
My default was, of course, trust. I don't want to live in a world. I don't want to live in a body that every time I hear God calling me to do something and I want to go that direction, my flesh wants to drag me the other way. I don't want another law.
I want freedom from that. And the Father has a way to do it. He doesn't leave us to battle alone. And that is not what the Father wants for his children. He doesn't want obedience to be obligatory, an act of slavery required by an unwanted master.
He wants obedience that comes from faith expressing itself through love. Listen again to verse... Five, and I'm going to amplify it. For we, we now, as opposed to we then, through the Spirit. The gift of righteousness given to the Messiah by God to be poured out as our inheritance as sons, not slaves, by faith, like Abraham before he was circumcised, are waiting for the hope of righteousness, eternal life.
We must understand when the subject of circumcision is brought up, it's in the context of sonship and inheritance. But Paul is about to say something shocking and amazing. but usually completely misunderstood.
In verse 6, he says, For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything but faith working through love. Now, this is one of those places where you can misread this verse and put the wrong emphasis on the wrong place and come up with the wrong interpretation. He didn't say circumcision means nothing.
He didn't say uncircumcision means nothing. He said in Christ, circumcision or uncircumcision mean nothing. Where?
In Christ. So he's not telling Jews to stop circumcising their sons, and he's not telling Gentiles to start circumcising their men. He's saying in Christ.
It is not the power that changes you. And actually, that's what the word means in the verse. It's not the power of change, but faith working through love. If you ignore where circumcision doesn't mean anything, you'll miss the point.
It doesn't mean anything in Christ. And the reason I amplified that verse was to remind you that Abraham's faith was credited as righteousness. before he was circumcised.
He received the gift of the promise, the change of his name, all these things so that he could be the father of us all. Because in Christ, because of my faith in the promise of the son, like Abraham, in Christ, I am identified as a son and an heir of the promise. It isn't determined by my flesh, it's determined by his flesh. Come on. I mean, aren't you glad?
The older you get, the more unique your relationship with your own flesh becomes. I used to have to do something athletic or heroic to hurt myself. Now I just get out of bed. My relationship with my flesh is changing.
My eternity isn't determined by my flesh. John 1.12, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right. to become the children of God, even to those who believe in his name.
Giving us the right to become children of God was always the intent. So this statement is amazing. Faith working through love. This is the definition of what a disciple looks like. Faith, again, like Abraham's, working.
Anytime you see that working, remember the context in which it's originally given. When Jesus is teaching the Sermon on the Mount, and we're talking about works righteousness, and you're talking about the misinterpretations of the Pharisees and how they taught people to work out righteousness. But what works is he talking about? When Paul uses that word, in his mind, works means the doing of righteousness.
And Paul is saying there's a different way that we're going to work righteousness. There's a different source from which our righteousness is going to come. It's going to come from the faith, like unto Abraham, working through Christ. love by the Holy Spirit. When we think of the word love, we think of an emotion, but the Hebrew mindset would immediately go to the word chesed, grace, meaning loving kindness.
The Holy Spirit gives us gifts of grace to do the works of righteousness. He also lovingly gives us the fruit of the Spirit to transform us, because it's not just about doing, it's about being. Be ye transformed.
By the gifts of the Spirit, I do righteousness for others. By the fruit of the Spirit, I am literally being changed. My appetite, one piece of fruit changed, gave me an appetite for sin.
So what do you think the fruit of the Spirit is going to give me if I partake? It's going to birth a hunger for righteousness. This is important stuff, isn't it? Because it changes, just for me personally, just coming to understand the real context of righteousness is giving charity and the thing that we're called to do is to manifest the love of God the way God manifested his love to us by giving. That's changed, I mean, Tanya can tell you, it has changed the way we live.
Verse 13. For you are called to freedom, brethren. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Get out of yourself.
Paul is so consistent about this. Verse 14, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word in the statement, you shall love the Lord, or you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Did you notice how he phrases that sentence? There's one word in that commandment that frames the whole law.
What is that word? Love. He says, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
What's the one word? Love. What is love?
A manifestation of God's righteousness. Verse 15, but if you bite and devour one another, take care, or you will be consumed by one another. If we don't partake of the fruit of righteousness, guess what we start munching on?
Each other. We turn communion into consumption. I'm going to find my significance by chewing on yours.
That's what the flesh will do. Why does he insert this here? Because like the Corinthian church, he knew that they would experience sometime in the future.
The churches in Galatia were already beginning to experience the negative impact of living in the flesh and people telling them. That to have right standing with God, you've got to do these things in the flesh instead of submitting and becoming under the Spirit. Verse 16, but I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
Every time you hear the word walk, you have to know that this first century Jewish rabbi is thinking of the halakha, the interpretation of how do you walk out the instructions of righteousness. Guys? All right.
Paul is teaching us a new halakha, how to walk out and in righteousness. How do we do it? Submit to the Holy Spirit.
Pursue Him. Verse 16, but I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of your flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.
For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, here it is, you're not under the law. It doesn't mean the law's lessons have gone away.
It means the Lord has moved you. from slavery to sonship. He uses the illustration in chapter four of Galatians, which we don't have time to go into, to talk about how the law was a tutor, put in place by the father, and he literally says, until the time the father has set to bring you out to live as a son.
The Father sets that time. Verses 19 through 21 set up the juxtaposition that we will begin to explore next week. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. of which I warn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit, the transformation that's happening within us, not because of us, but because of Him. is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Worship team, you can come back. Now those who belong to Messiah Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit. You see, the Father set a time to send the Son to redeem those who had been held captive in sin. And what God did for Israel physically in the Exodus from Egypt, He is trying to do for us internally in our own bondage. You say, well, Brent... But he gave the law and that was supposed to help us.
It did, but it inflamed the flesh. In fact, Paul says in Romans that because of the law, sin increased. You're like, wait, that's not the way it's supposed to work, but that's the way it did work. Why?
Because my flesh hasn't been changed. You see, when the spirit comes into us, When we call on the name of the Lord, when we're immersed into Jesus, when we die to sin, when we covenantally find ourselves as the sons of Abraham by faith, trusting in the promised son, and we rise to walk in the new life, what is that new life? The same life that it was in Genesis when God breathed the breath of life within us, and we became nephesh hayah.
We became living beings. My friends, the study of the fruit of the Spirit is not about behavior modification. It's about Holy Spirit sanctification.
It's not about, well, I'm going to go home and I'm going to try to love more and I'm going to try to be more patient. Yeah, see how that works. It's not about me, me, me, what I'm going to do, what I'm going to do.
It's what I'm going to submit. and seek the Holy Spirit to do in my life. And I would remind you of this one thing in conclusion, that in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, when Paul tells us to earnestly desire the gifts of the Spirit, he uses the same word that Jesus uses or is used in Matthew to tell what Jesus said.
That same word about how the enemies of us will pursue us, to overtake us, to take charge of us. And he says to you and I that we are to pursue the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We are to pursue life in the Spirit. We are to aggressively press in. But think about our origin story.
How much time has been wasted while we try to figure out what the halakha is, of how to pronounce his name, or what is the right. day or what is the right holiday or this, what amazing waste of time have we spent pursuing the right interpretation of that while we've done nothing to pursue, to overtake, to be filled with the ultimate gift of life. The thing that moves us from slavery to freedom, from being a slave to a son.
And I'm going to tell you right now as I close. This series on the fruit of the Spirit will be utterly worthless to you. If you don't walk out of here and put your running shoes on and start running after Jesus and start pressing into the Spirit, it's not about you trying harder. It's about you coming under.
His grace. You see, the difference is, that was a rule. This is a relationship.
And I don't have to fight by myself anymore. That voice doesn't get to be the only voice anymore. I get to be in relationship.
I get to be in communion. with the spirit of righteousness. And I'm going to tell you right now, a church, a congregation of people who actually begin to consume the Holy Spirit, to receive the fruit of the Spirit, to allow, you know what's going to happen? We're going to stop consuming each other and start being a force of real righteousness in this world. Will you let these thoughts simmer, mature, resonate in your heart and mind as we stand and worship?