Galatians 5:22-23

This is week one of Galatians 5, 22, 23 and then next week will be part two of this section of chapter 5 where we'll look at 24 through 26. I decided to include 5.1 and 18 as well because as I was preparing for this I realized that this is in a longer thought that Paul has. It's thematically consistent through chapter 5 and even the whole of the text of Galatians.

So I've included it here and I hope you'll bear with me in that. I don't plan on doing extensive recovery of the exposition that already happened but I do want to read those and take a look at them in context because I think when we look at the fruit of the Spirit. It's easy to just compare and contrast with the works of the flesh and not take it in the whole scope of Galatians. And so I wanted to highlight that part of the passage so that we keep it in that context. So I appreciate your indulging me on that. So I'm going to go ahead and read this out loud and you can follow along. It's on your handout or maybe in your Bibles.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to yoke of slavery. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

All right, so why did I include verse one? I'm going to give you a broad sweeping statement about it. In the mornings on the way to school, I drive Abby to school three or four days a week. We do a Bible memory verse. And as it happens, because I've been teaching through Galatians, we were doing Galatians 5.1 for Abby. That was her Bible verse.

And so she's memorizing Galatians 5.1. She's got it down pretty good. If you stop her in the hallway and ask her, she'll be a little embarrassed, but I bet you she can do it. As I was having her recite this in the car, I was thinking, you know, this really is actually important to the 22 and 23 verses that I have to teach this week.

Not just a little bit, but this is the foundation for where he sets this foundation of we're going to be free. Well, what does that freedom look like? Well, it looks like the fruit of the Spirit. And so, there's a continuity there that I wanted to emphasize. Just to repeat it for the sake of thoroughness, it is for THE freedom. There's a definite article in front of freedom there. It's not just some theoretical or ideal freedom. It's the freedom that God gives. It's a very specific freedom.

And so it is for freedom that Christ set us free, therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery. If you're not subject to the yoke of slavery, what are you subject to? Christ. Okay. And that gets worked out in our own relationship with God because the Holy Spirit was given to us through the Holy Spirit working in our lives. So we have this fruit of the Holy Spirit doing something.

So there's not a yoke of slavery, and then as 18 says, but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. So again, not the yoke of slavery, not the law, instead the fruit of the Spirit. Instead, walking in grace and having the Spirit live through us.

I apologize, by the way, that on your handout that my printer didn't print the font for the Greek for the definite article. It's a little square on the handout. I apologize. Drawing that out is probably unnecessary, but it was one of those things where I didn't realize it until I got here this morning that it didn't have it. It was on my Mac. It was not on my Windows computer where my printer was.

I wanted to take just a few more minutes to say How many times do you hear people say, live today like you won't see tomorrow? Or some kind of inspirational quote. Or, you're going to take life by the horns. You're going to live life to the fullest. It's inspiration based on this idea that if death was either known at a certain time or not an obstacle at all, you would live a certain way.

But as believers, because we're identified with Christ and His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating, and the first part of that is His death, we can live life that is His life. It's His life through us. And so we want to make sure that that's the context when we see the fruit of the Spirit, that it's the fruit of His life, the Spirit living through us and directing us in our daily walk.

One of the things that we have to take in, as we look at the comparison and contrast, last week Roger finished up the works of the flesh. As we discussed that, it was a bummer. Let's spend an entire hour talking about the negative garbage. As we do that comparison contrast, the flesh is one way that is powering one group of people. But Paul is saying we need to live another way. And that other way is the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

This week, my poodle puppy dog that we have, it's a year old this month, just wanted to disobey me the whole week. And when he disobeyed, my temper just shot to the ceiling. I get really angry at this dog because he wants to pee on the carpet or run away or not listen or do all these things.

And I was humbled as I was preparing this lesson because I thought, oh man, I shouldn't be teaching this passage because I don't do these things. I understand this. And everybody who probably comes to this passage says the same thing. You look at this and you go, I'm not the perfect example of this. Roger, do you think he should continue to teach? I will step down any moment now. This is Christ life. And that's the point. This is Christ life. It's not me teaching because I have achieved awesomeness. It's not me. It's the Spirit working through us. And we've got quite a list of attributes here that are true of the believer as we walk in fellowship with the Lord.

So we'll go through it. If we don't finish this week, we'll just pick up next week. I'm not going to race through this. If you've got comments or thoughts, as the discussion unfolds. I don't have an interval time that I've set up for going through these things.

One thing I do want to point out is that the fruit edifies the body. Paul is talking about these things are true of the individual believer but the purpose is spread out for the whole body. It comes through the Holy Spirit. It's worked out through the individual's life to the impact of the body, and even for evangelistic purposes. How many times have you found that the argument against Christianity from a secular mindset is that all Christians are all hypocrites?

They don't have the fruits of the Spirit. Now, of course, there's other problems with that assertion. Randy, I mean verse 18 so nicely. And keep in mind now, this isn't working at being led by the Spirit. I'm going to try harder today to be led by the Spirit.

Well, no, it's certainly not. I mean, this is a life, isn't it? Yeah, well, absolutely. And by God's great grace, we can live a life by trusting that we're created as new creations and led by the Spirit. I mean, do we believe that? human mindset says, I need to work harder at this. That's law.

We're going to take a look at some other passages where Paul, and particularly Paul writes to Timothy, that we need to be seeking these character attributes. So we need to reconcile this with those passages and make sure that we have a broad understanding of those things and how do we interpret those things in parallel without feeling like we have to do a bunch of tap dancing. What's the context for those recommendations? I thought it was interesting too, you said the Spirit was for the body.

The first impression is that it would be for me. Yeah, and when you look at the works of the flesh, the deeds of the flesh, those things are entirely selfish. The selfishness of the flesh works itself out in these things, envying, strife. When we look at the list as we go through the fruit, it's going to be obvious that it's a strong contrast and the results of the flesh are selfish and cause issues between human beings and the results of the spirit reverse that? How many times, and not everybody here is married, but in marriages, how many times have you had to come back to your spouse or even a friend in the case of where you're like, I was walking in the flesh, I'm totally apologetic, you know, I'm sorry that I blew it. That happens. Why? And we can own up to it. Why? Because we know that the flesh is what it is, but the Holy Spirit draws us to relationship and draws us back to that life. and we can come back and we can work and it brings greater unity.

So let's dig into the text here. So he says in 22, but the fruit of the Spirit is love and love is agape. It's definitely a word that we've covered in different contexts. Agape love is a benevolent love. It's a non-selfish love. Agape love gets its definition, I would say, through and out of God. The word, if you define it outside of God, is going to fall short of the fullness of the meaning that it could have.

I've got several see also passages, but Romans 5.8 I think is a good short one. We've got 1 Corinthians 13, 1-8, but that's a whole section. I would recommend you take a moment to look at that later on this week if the Lord draws that to your attention. Actually we'll start in 5-8. He says, but God demonstrates His own love towards us, or toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's a benevolent love. It was not a merited love.

How many times have you watched some kind of television show or some movie or seen it even in the lives of people around you where it's like, oh, that person has earned my respect and it becomes a manipulation scenario. If you do this first, or somebody will come to you, their marriage is having a difficult time, or their relationship is having a difficult time. Well, he did this first, and I'm not going to talk to him until he apologizes for that. Or she did that, and I can't believe she would do that.

There is not a benevolent love in that. That's a selfish, earthly, fleshly love. But the Holy Spirit working in us is going to give us this benevolent love. What does that contrast with in the list of fleshly things? Well, I guess we could say broadly all of it. But specifically, which of the fleshly things does he contrast with this?

If you think about love. Go ahead. Hatred and discord. Hatred and discord, okay. How about jealousy? Strife, jealousy. Think about how that would work out. If someone came to you and they had these attitudes, they're being selfish, and your response was benevolent love, it would be frustrating for someone else. If they were being fleshly, it would be like, come on! I've got this issue and you're not responding in the way I expected.

But we have this benevolent love. The life of Christ flowing out through us is going to respond with benevolence and with this agape love. So he's got love as one of the fruits of the Spirit. And I should point out, and I didn't do this earlier, that this is a finite list. of the infinite life of God that will flow out of us. So just because it's not on this list doesn't necessarily mean it's not the work of the Holy Spirit. If we use this as our checklist, that's a problem. Because it's a checklist in the first place and secondly because God works beyond the limitations of this text. So we have love. Love is the fruit of the Spirit.

The next one he has here is joy. I think as the Lord has before used Hal and more recently used Peggy Harris in her situation, it is amazing to see the joy that God has flowing out of the lives of these believers where Our natural thought is to think, oh, this person is going to be overwhelmed. Are they overwhelmed? To a certain extent, sure, that's their life. But you see this joy that comes out. And that's amazing. Where's this gladness come from? We're supposed to not have gladness, right?

Because it's a terrible situation and yet the Holy Spirit works in the life of the believer and he brings gladness. How many times in his letters does Paul talk about suffering? over and over again he talks about suffering and yet he talks about being thankful and yet he talks about having joy and gladness and that has to be the Holy Spirit. It has to be the life of Christ being lived out in the believer.

I'm going to scoot this thing forward because I keep bumping into the chalkboard behind me and that's bothering me. I'm going to have joy in the bumping of the chalkboard though, right? That's the attitude I should have. Pardon my humor. But we see that joy is supposed to be part of the believer, right? We're supposed to do that, right? Trick question. We don't do that.

The Holy Spirit is going to bring his joy through us and it's going to be something that is supernatural. We're going to see the supernatural work of the Lord, the manifestation of God's attitude and character in the life of the believer. So we have love and joy and then peace. The believer's life is not his or her own and with that in mind we know that God, the God of the universe will bring about His will and so we're able to abide.

Philippians 4, 6 and 7 talks about the peace that passes all understanding. That's one of those passages where you read it and you look, oh, I'm supposed to trust the Lord for this. I don't give myself peace? Oh, okay, well that's consistent with the rest of Scripture. This peace that comes from the work of the Lord.

How many times have you found yourselves overwhelmed? where all of the earthly resources are exhausted. That happens for me. And the funny thing, let's bring this in a broader scope, I keep being reminded of Hassan and other believers that we've met from Africa and in other places where their daily income might be about two dollars a day. their earthly finite resources are going to be exhausted so much faster than our wealthy American, you know, they don't have credit cards. They don't whip out their Discover card and take care of that or do those kinds of things.

They come without those earthly resources and so the Lord draws them and brings them to that point of, oh, I have to trust the Lord again a lot sooner. often than what we find ourselves. And I'm always grateful when the Lord brings me to a trial because I know that it is going to be Him that has to work it out. And so that peace comes because of Him, not because I could figure it out. And that's an important thing because When we find trials, what do we want to do? What's our fleshly reaction to a trial?

Fix it. Or run. Or try the same thing over and over again. Maybe you'll have a different outcome. But the Lord comes and His work in our life is to bring about peace. And that's going to stand out in the world around us. things like Hurricane Katrina or these various events take place, I'm always amazed to see the opportunity that churches have to go in and comfort people. We can do it. Where's FEMA? Who cares about FEMA? Where's the church? Where's the Holy Spirit working through the lives of believers in this place? bringing about peace. In our own lives, when Jessica has had several miscarriages, it is only by the Lord that we have peace. There wasn't anything that we could do. When you have that situation, you can't fix it.

Roger immediately said, fix it. He knows. When Jessica comes to me with a problem, I'm going to fix it. Engineers are made to fix it. A temptation to fix it. Yeah, well I'll fix it. And there are so many times when something happens and I want to fix it and I can't fix it. And so I have to go to the Lord and He says, how about I give you peace and you trust me because I can fix it. You can't fix all kinds of things. We're not in as much control as we'd like to be in. Instead we have to come to Him.

Peace is one of those things where... Go ahead. I have a perpetual calendar that I read daily and one of them says that peace is not the absence of trouble but the presence of the Lord. Absolutely. That's a good quote. Put that in perspective. It should be every other day. Yeah, that's one of those things where you want to have it in front of you. For me, in front of my computer, so every day I sit down in front of my computer, it's there to remind me the Lord is working and doing something. It's funny how that works. So the Holy Spirit brings about peace. The Holy Spirit does those things in our lives. It's not something we can do because we can't fix it. We can't do it. The flesh wants to fix it. The flesh can't. It comes up short every single time.

It's also like that picture of the tree, of the storm, and it's a close-up of the bird sitting on the nest. Have you ever seen that? I don't know what you're talking about, I'm sorry. It's a fairly famous painting, or picture, and it's this raging storm that's going on, wind and rain and all this other kind of stuff, and the tree and everything's blowing this way and that, and then it shows this little bird sitting on a nest, taking care of her future family. Oh, okay. And every time I see that, I always think, wow, you know, and God uses so many times the example of the birds and the flowers and his creation to give us a metaphor or a lesson. Yeah. You know, that really speaks to me. Sure.

Taking care of her family. a small section of scripture that relates to that. Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. So I love doing these all really reflected in those two versions. Absolutely. That was Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Thanks, Bob. That's really good. Stan, did you raise your hand? Out of the corner of my eye. All right.

And I'm going to read three even though you didn't ask me to because that's going to relate to the next one we're going to look at. It'll be a good transition verse. For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. So that you will not grow weary. The next one on the list is patience. So we have this concept of patience that we that we look at patience.

One of my least favorite things that I have ever heard, and Roger's nodding his head because he knows exactly where I'm going. You ever hear people say, don't pray for patience because the Lord will give you an opportunity to need it? Or something along that line? I hate that! I mean, really, that causes me to, you know, the flesh goes, what? You know, because I'm going to, why would you do that? Hey, here's an opportunity for God to work through you. Oh, whoa.

Don't pray for that It just it just for some reason that ruffles my feathers. I think that's the flesh and not the Holy Spirit though. So Maybe he's his righteous indignation, but I'm not going to go that far But patience is an important thing. It's an opportunity for for God to manifest himself in your life and People say oh don't pray for that That's ridiculous. You know, what's amazing is I said, okay, who's got prayer requests? Bob says, Hey, I've got this retinal hemorrhage. My appointment's on Tuesday. It takes a while, but God's going to do something. He's going to use it. Patience. You can't rush it. You're not going to do anything but trust the Lord. That's all you can do at this point in time. And that's okay. It's patience in that situation, long-suffering, this concept of waiting things out. In our world, where it can do, we've got to do it now, and it's going to happen tomorrow. It's very difficult sometimes to say, okay. Sure. Well, as a parent, I always find that the Lord emphasizes some of these things very clearly.

It's like, hey, that's the flesh, and this is not where I'm going with being conformed to the image of His Son. With patience with Abigail over the last several, about two months, she's just emotionally been easy to ignite. She gets really panicky and she worries and does these things where she's not rational, basically.

And at first I thought, oh, we're going to deal with this. It's going to be OK. It's going to be great. And then we were still having problems. And then we're still having problems. And I ran out of patience. It was terrible. Oh, now I've blown it as a parent.

And the Lord, He draws these things to mind. He says, you know, I'm going to work this out. Oh, okay. And so actually the last several weeks I've been able to be much more patient realizing this is in the context of something God's doing and not what I have to do. Oh, okay. But he works those things out. And I wish I could fix my daughter. Let's fix it. I'll fix you, child, and this will be all good. Randy, it doesn't get any different. We have older parents. We might fix our older kids, too. It never changes.

You know, Randy, I think we have to be careful here in terms of these fruits of the Spirit, because I know plenty of unbelievers who are patients can be. Exactly. So what do you make of that? I mean, the patience in a believer is sourced from above. It's entirely citizenship played out in the Christ-like You and me and Randy, it sounds like. But I think we really have to be very careful in terms of looking horizontally at these issues.

Sure. Hopefully with my illustration that was obvious. It's the vertical. I'm going to fix this. That's a horizontal mindset. And then it's like, oh, wait a minute. No, no, only God can fix this and He's going to grow Abby in this, He's going to grow me in this, and Jessica in this, and maybe even Evelyn a little bit. And that patience has to be sourced in Him. It's not my patience, because my patience ran out fast. That was the flesh. We're all done with that. Donna?

I was thinking that the fruit of the Spirit, in some respects, it's a response and understanding who we are, that we're securely in Christ. And out of that Hebrews, we look to Jesus. I mean, he's the answer for all of that. As we focus there, the fruits of the Spirit just flow.

Yeah, absolutely. It's not of our own doing. It's not a calculation. And what you're seeing here is that exemplified in the person's spirit. Again, we have to be doctrinally positioned as to who we are. Remember, there's no condemnation of those that are in Christ Jesus. So even when we fall back into fleshly ways, we're perfectly righteous before God. And I think that provides a rest and a comfort that the spirit deserves to be given, you know?

Absolutely. But I think watching human behavior, we're too quickly to jump to conclusions about what the source of that quote, fruit, truly is. Sure. Well, it's easy to get anecdotal. You were implying that. No. I'm just raising it as a point. Yeah. Well, experience is easy to get anecdotal with, rather than what is the text speaking clearly and saying. Stan? I think it's also, obviously, it's not the same for each person. It has a lot to do with your personality and your position. I mean, if you're a CEO of a large corporation, you may not be exercising a lot of patience.

You can be a Christian And when you do exercise patience, it would be directed by the Holy Spirit. And it might be more noticeable to a person like that than a guy who stands on the street corner with a sign that says, need work. I mean, he has a lot of patience. He can stand down there for hour after hour after hour.

But his situation is totally different. So, to compare, you know, it would be like comparing one of us to Paul, for example. It's not, you know, we're supposed to be like Jesus and like the apostles and live like them, but we aren't always going to look like them because we aren't them. Some of us have class A personalities, some of us don't.

Well, it is interesting because as I look through this list, part of these things, you know, the patience thing became really relevant because in my own life I felt like, oh, all right, here's been a void. Whereas in some of it was less obvious, but it is contextual and that's why the Holy Spirit, if he's our source of life, it will be appropriately contextual as those things come up in our lives. Well Randy, actually kind of a counterpoint maybe to where this stands.

I've had the experience at work, and maybe Bob and others have had it too, where I've seen people that are just, they have their checklist and their stoplight, so to speak, and they're going to push everything, they're going to be on you or other people in the office, everything there is going to push, push, push, push, push. And what I found is sometimes I said, okay, I see that lifestyle, but Lord, what's the lifestyle that glorifies you?

And I've actually tried to back off and say, okay, I won't ask Sam or Sally, every five minutes for the rest of the day, if they're finished, I'm just going to say, here's the situation, and Lord, they're going to finish it. And Joe Glover here with his stopwatch is just going to pound them. And I watch that happen. And I also watch it. Well, thank you, Lord. I can rejoice in the fact that it happened without me just pounding them every second. So I mean, I've learned something and grown just by doing that, by saying, okay, I know, I see how the world, they want to just Pound them away.

The way to get things done is just to be on their case constantly. Never let go and that will get the job done. Say, Lord, I don't think that's the way I want to operate. I want to operate trusting you. This is what has to be done this day and let the person do it. Maybe they don't finish them that day. Maybe you get a negative check mark for that day or whatever. Anyway, I was trying to sum up. I agree.

It's interesting because we were in Sunday school class, not here, but another place, and this lady in class was saying how this one employee that she worked with had, I don't know, a Bible or something that indicated that she was a Christian on her desk. And she said, I just hate that. She said, she's just not an example of a Christian. Then she went through all this stuff. The checklist of failure.

The first thought that came to my mind and I said was, can you imagine what she'd be like if she wasn't a Christian? That's a good question, yeah. Back to your point about the body though. I mean, the first spirit allows us to look at one another in our earthly failures. The Christ kind of benevolence goes far past any human emotion. That's body stuff, that's not individual. I think you pointed that out very well.

When we get to gentleness, I want to cross-reference Ephesians 4.2. Ephesians 4 to when I first read it offended me, but when we get there You'll I'll tell you why but we're not there yet, but it's related to all those things It's the body nature of kind of patience is important the body nature of kindness the next one here it's it's a disposition and mellowness and not just acts of niceness. But that again is a result of the Holy Spirit causing us to have what appears to be this disposition of mellowness or kindness. Not, oh that person's nice. There's a believer that I follow on Twitter and he keeps saying about people, that guy's a good guy.

And I happen to know that the guy he's talking about is an atheist and is a skeptic. And I'm thinking, he's a good guy, by what standard? And I realized, oh, wait a minute, this is not, he's not speaking about Holy Spirit stuff, he might be a nice fellow, but it is certainly not the kindness that Paul is writing about here. He's not just a kind guy or a nice guy, he's lost. He happens to be friendly. Tom? Or as C.S. Lewis put it, a guy's a jolly good fellow, but that doesn't mean that's the Holy Spirit for him. Yeah, yeah. The Holy Spirit is definitely going to rot out a different kind of kindness. And God is the perfect judge of wood, hay, and stubble. He's going to be able to identify, hey that's a gem. In the life of us believers, the wood, hay, and stubble gets burned and we're not accused. We stand at the throne of grace. works of the flesh.

That's not for us to pay attention to. God calls us to an act of faith. He's continually working out the image of his Son in our lives. Absolutely. I've got on the second sentence on our kindness, it reflects that a believer would not retaliate when provoked. That's got to be the Holy Spirit.

Because when we're provoked, the flesh responds. in some sort of response that it's not going to be kindness. And that element is there. When we contrast that with the works of the flesh, this is certainly going to stand out. When being provoked, not responding with anything but kindness will stand out. It will be the Holy Spirit. It's also edifying for the body.

If you think about it in the context of the body, sometimes things happen. If you don't respond by... I used to be able to argue and I used to be quick-witted about things and it was just like my... that was the flesh. I thought I was being clever. I was young and stupid. Now I'm just... Yeah, I was like, oh, I've walked into this. That was not quick-witted.

But the Lord is teaching me, and sometimes through situations in my family, either as a child living under the roof of my parents, or even as an adult, we've left churches. And I can testify to the fact that a lot of these things, patience was certainly not in that list of things. We left churches, we didn't work things out, we were not full of joy, we were not full of love, we were full of righteousness in certain situations. That doesn't mean every time we left a different church it was wrong. But sometimes those church split situations are the flesh just manifesting and the Holy Spirit is not working through the lives of the believers. That's difficult.

And sometimes in those situations people are provoking one another. Hey, I'm a Calvinist and God's playing Cosmic Barbie Doll with you, so deal. And I feel provoked by your Cosmic Barbie Doll theology. And so I want to outwit you and I want to outsmart you and instead I need to be walking in the Spirit.

He's going to kindly and gently respond in these scenarios. So, the kindness is one of those things where it's not just on the surface, a nice person. We need to take a look at that in that context. The next one is goodness, which again is not, he's a good guy. It's more than that.

The concept in the Greek is that it's an active goodness or an energized state of the heart. The Holy Spirit is directing your thoughts to things above. And so this would be called in our earthly context, goodness. But it's not goodness of our own accord. It's not goodness of, He's a good guy. He's a good God working through the believer in an energizing way. Goodness is one of those words that on the surface I thought, well, duh, he's a Christian, he's a good Christian even, you know, but how often do you But it is the Holy Spirit, His fruit working through us. It's His energizing power.

And I think that's important. We've talked about that a number of times in the different Sunday School classes. That it's not me being a good Christian. It's not me doing it. It's the energizing work of the Holy Spirit. And that's important. His empowering. As we abide, as we rest, how much of your energy is involved with resting? You're not. It's His life working through you over and over again. It's almost like there's a theme through the fruit of the Spirit or something.

But we're still in a position of responsibility to respond by faith, right? Yeah, we respond by faith. God's great ground of grace is infinite. But yet we still need to respond by faith. not let go, let God. We have a great rest, but do we believe that I was saved, I'm being saved, and I will be saved by the power of faith? Sure.

Well, and that's why the next one is faithfulness, and actually that's an important part of what the definition and understanding of faithfulness is. It's a quality of having consistent, unwavering belief and responding in faith in the life. So do you sense in a way that the faith that we respond to God's great grace with builds on itself then? Is this faith squared?

Faith is one of those difficult things because we have a whole branch of Christendom that has based their whole theology on this idea that faith is volumetric and you need to get more of it. You need to have more faith, then God will give you a million dollars. And you need to give seed faith of $1,000 so that he'll give you $10,000. And then when he gives you $10,000, give that so that eventually you'll work your way up to being a millionaire for Jesus, right? And so they use faith in that context and it becomes troublesome.

But when faith is the act of believing and trusting the Lord, seeing his faithfulness, then it's easier even more to understand that when the next situation comes up we can trust the Lord and He shows us faithfulness and we can understand. So it does almost become like faith squared in the sense that God as He shows His character to us we learn in more and more ways how we can trust Him.

There are there are going to be every opportunity in life, especially if you look at Romans 8.28 where he says all things, that the Lord is going to work all things. I'm going to turn there.

Romans 8.28, he says, and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. I have to walk by faith that all things actually means all things. And my faithfulness in trusting the Lord in all...

Are we talking about the same thing or am I hitting a different... by faith that the life that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm sensing that this faith that's listed here as a fruit of the Spirit is that increasing filling of the Spirit in our lives. I mean the faith is our response to God's great grace, right? Again, same faith that exists to be saved that I will be saved is the faith that grows us in grace, right? Sure, yeah, we walk in that relationship. Again, faith scored may be a little bit obscure in terms of an explanation, but being increasingly filled with the Spirit, we're all doing that, right?

And what's that from? Well, again, it may be his faith's already there as a principle, and now the Spirit, as he continues to work on our lives, builds us up and fills us more with the power of Spirit. Sure, and he shines a light on the faithfulness of the Father, and enables us and empowers us to have faith in a more deep way. It's like anything else, as God continues to work That's a principle that builds on itself as we trust Him more, isn't it? Well, that's part of growth.

That's right. We can't fix it or make it better. We say, Lord, I have to trust you more. I say, well, I can't take care of this. As God shows Himself more in your own life, don't you tend to want to trust Him more? It's kind of a matter of the intellect. And this is another dose of faith, not that it wasn't adequate to begin with, but that's the way the spirit continues to grow. And the principle of spiritual growth, fitting through all of the fruits of the spirit, is that we start at a point where our understanding of faith is only so much, and he continues to grow those things over time.

Oh, okay. This is, you know, for, you know, for example, with even the concept of grace, my understanding of grace was so weak until, you know, the last several years when the Lord just was like, okay, look, you need to understand grace. And I was like, wow. And then now that I understand grace, he continues to show me how big grace is. And I'm, I, I start to understand, okay, when God says he's infinite, His grace is also infinite. So I'm never going to run out of things to find out that God's gracious about.

That's cool. And with faithfulness, He shows His faithfulness and He works in me to respond by faith. Just like He shows His grace and we respond with grace. It's cool that His faithfulness leads us to be walking by faith. And that continues to expand and continues to grow. And that's one of those things that is amazing. It boggles the mind. The next one we've got here is gentleness and this is the one where I said we'd get to the part where I got offended.

Gentilists or Mignists will show itself in interaction with others as Galatians 6.1 shows and Ephesians 4.2 shows.

Since we're coming up on Galatians 6.1 in a couple weeks I'm gonna go ahead and we'll skip over that and we'll let whomever gets to teach that class teach that passage and talk about Gentilists.

I'm gonna however ask you to turn to Ephesians 4.2 and And I'll tell you why I got offended. So I'll start with 4.1 just for the sake of continuity.

Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another and love. And what offended me was that word tolerance because I'd heard the world use tolerance over and over again in such a nasty way that I was offended that he would even consider using the word tolerance and then I realized it was intolerance and love through God's working in my life and then it was okay so I could stop being offended. But that word tolerance really got my hackles up. But here he says, with all humility and gentleness And this concept of gentleness and meekness, it's power under control is the way I've heard it described over and over again. But the idea is this, if it's my gentleness, how good is that? Again, just like the patience, I'm going to run out of it eventually. I'm going to go Incredible Hulk and lose control and it's going to get ugly and hopefully not green. But with gentleness here, we have this concept that it's the Holy Spirit working through us, causing us to gently come alongside.

In the Galatians 6.1 passage, he says to come alongside in gentleness to restore someone to walk in faith. And that gentleness there, it means coming alongside.

When I was in seminary, I wanted to correct bad theology badly. Listen, that's the worst theology ever. Here, let me fix you. For example, I mentioned Calvinism before. Now I'm going to logically pound Calvinism out of you. Not that I'm an Arminian either, but we won't go into that. But I'm going to pound these bad theological ideas out of you. That way you will never be wrong. You'll be right like me. My father-in-law, Claire, is here. He can testify.

But the problem is that it was not with gentleness. It was not with love, or joy, or peace, or patience, or kindness, or goodness. It was with self-righteousness, which is strangely not one of the fruits of the Spirit. Instead, the Holy Spirit working through us is going to lovingly and gently allow us to come alongside things.

As a father, I pray, Holy Spirit, may I be gentle. Be gentle through me as I come into this parenting opportunity. Because my response is to want to really let her know with a very strong, dominating fashion that I'm in charge. I say her because I have two daughters. because I want to be gender-specific, but I have two daughters so I only get the opportunity to exercise it on hers. But that the Lord would move and the Lord would be gentle through me in the correction.

It doesn't mean I have to be wussy about it, but it's His work through me, not me being better. So it means to not hurt, right? Yeah, I would think that's definitely part of the element is that you're not hurting. Now Christ was being directed by the Spirit when he went against the Pharisees and he did go in and he did knock over the tables. So it's one of those things where we can't say that he didn't He was doing that for your own good though. I understand what you're saying. He didn't intentionally or even not intentionally try to hurt them because Christ had no guile. He was a man of perfectness. He couldn't do that. That's an important thing.

It's one of those things where gentleness is What we are called to in six one he's going to say believers need to come along one side one other gently It doesn't mean that we ignore the truth. There's a firmness in the truth, but it's done gently So I guess I hurt you could be gentle like a puppy or gentle like a grizzly bear Yeah, well Paul, when he writes to the Colossians, he says, do you want me to come with wrath or do you want me to come with gentleness? Do you want me to come with discipline? Do you want me to come and be like, hey you guys, your theology is screwed up, you're walking in the flesh, you're being jerks to one another and you're proud? Or do you want me to come in gentleness?

He wants to become a Gentiless and they want him to become a Gentiless too. But some of that, it's not a compromise in truth at that same time. And that's a difficult thing. If it were to be in the flesh. If it's the Holy Spirit, He knows that perfect Gentiless.

Was that double bell ringing to tell us that we have hit the second bell? That's the first bell. Wayne just rang it twice, huh? Does Brian usually do that twice? I don't know, because it is 10 o'clock. Okay, well I don't want to teach into the first hour. Brian's not here, so there's much confusion.

Since we're to the last one, if you'll bear with me for a few more minutes, we'll do self-control and then we'll pick up on the last half of 23 against such things there is no law next week and then we'll continue on. So self-control, and this one is one that I personally wrestled through, and so maybe you will immediately pick up why I wrestled through self-control. Because if it's the fruit of the spirit, how much of myself is in control? That's where I was wrestling with this, so you need to follow with the logic there. The idea of self-control is not that I am in control. It's that I am not given to the fancies, passions, or whims that I might have in my own fleshly nature. So self-control does not mean that I'm in control because the Holy Spirit put me in control. self-control is that I'm not given over to these passions, these lusts.

The word appears to have some roots in not being given to drunkenness. But the idea was... Oh, see, there's the second bell. It wanes on. up self in the Greek? It actually isn't the word self, that's the thing. It's in control is the Greek compound word. But it's not self, it's just that's the English translation. Which for me that helped a lot because then it made it a lot less me because it wasn't the self. Therefore there's no law to all this, right? Because it's the old man being controlled. There's no law to get your man to conform. And that's important because it fits in with the concept of freedom. It's freedom to be walking in the Spirit. It's freedom to be having Him direct us in these things and so much more. Tom? The self would be our bodies more than our intellect. Randy, isn't that also the life that is given when Jesus sends you another comforter, the comforter of the Holy Spirit? Oh yeah, absolutely. The comforter of the Holy Spirit.

I would say I would interpret that as when we see these things come upon us ourselves, to maintain them. Yeah, that's where we can have all of these fruits. And the closing thought I had with the there is no law against these things is that the Holy Spirit enables us to have a life that is more righteous in more contexts than the law. And we'll pick up with more on that next week. Fruits of the Spirit is where it says God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

And you know it's a gift, that righteousness is a gift. You know I had years ago somebody say to me that if we could even begin to imagine how much God loves us and grows us in that benevolent love and when we see it in more places and more ways it becomes more amazing.

Let's close in prayer as apparently that was the second bell and we'll go before the Lord. Heavenly Father, we just thank You for sending Your Son to die on our behalf and identifying us with Him. And then even more so, sending Your Holy Spirit to our daily lives to live Your life through us. We ask that as we contemplate the truth that Your Word reveals in our lives, that we would continually Be drawing our minds to things above and setting our minds on things above and submitting ourselves to your Holy Spirit that you may be forming through gold and silver and precious stones things that are rewardable in our lives. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.