“Don’t Let the Fire Go Out?” Sermon Transcript for June 21, 2009 “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
Prayer of Preparation O Lord, by your Spirit may we walk with you and receive from you the power and love to bear the fruit of righteousness and reconciliation, the fruit of the Spirit, in Christ’s name. Amen. The Message I once heard the story of a little boy who used to get out of his bedroom any time he wanted by climbing down an old fruit tree that stood right outside his bedroom window. Many times he would be punished and banished to his room, and then would escape down the tree to go and play. One day his father said that he was going to cut down the tree because it had not born fruit for years. Well, that night the little boy and his brothers went out and got a basket of apples and, under the cover of darkness, climbed into the tree and tied fruit on those unproductive branches. The next morning the boys waited anxiously to see their father’s response. He came down and sat at the table and said to his wife: “Mary, I can’t believe my eyes. That old fruit tree has been barren for years. Now, all of a sudden it is covered with apples!” And then with a twinkle in his eye, he looked at his son and said, “Son, that’s a miracle!” And the boy said, “Why do you say that Day?” And his dad said, “Because it’s a pear tree!” What a good story on Father’s Day! It raises a wonderful question about fruit: What kind of fruit are we bearing? As a boy, I always thought the Christmas tree decorations were spectacular. I can remember going from store to store and seeing all the beautiful ornaments. Every tree was clothed with parcels and bells, and all kinds of trinkets. As a child, I always thought they were real, until, following one Christmas, I realized that all the decorations went back into boxes, and all the trees were folded up or thrown away. After all, nothing had actually been growing on them! Everything looked magnificent, and yet it was all artificial./1/ Again, it raises the question: What kind of fruit are we bearing? Works of the Flesh and Fruit of the Spirit In this famous passage from the Letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit. After four in-depth chapters of arguing against the Judaizers, or those who felt persons should be circumcised before becoming Christian, and of arguing the proper relationship between law and gospel, Paul now shares a positive word about what true Christian freedom is – about what true Christian freedom looks like. And what true Christian freedom looks like, according to Paul, is the fruit of the Spirit. True Christian freedom, under the leading of the Spirit, looks like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, generosity, and self-control” (5:22-23). Against these characteristics, Paul says, there is no law (v. 23). When these fruit are evident among us because of the presence of God’s Spirit in our lives, the law is really not relevant. When we live by the Spirit, and in the Spirit, we live in freedom. Therefore, when we are filled with the Spirit, it is simply an oxymoron to say “You shall not murder” or “You shall not covet.” How can a person filled with God’s Spirit hate or have jealously? How can a person under the guidance of the Spirit break the law? According to Paul, when we live by the Spirit we take on the very character of Christ; it becomes visible in our lives. The very righteousness of God is produced in us (Galatians 6:2)./2/ And so, when we as persons come to faith in Christ, when we are baptized into the church, the Spirit gives us a new kind of freedom, a new kind of life. In fact, as our passages makes clear, it’s a life in contrast to a life driven by “works of the flesh,” or a life governed by wrongful desires and ambitions and attitudes, or sinful behaviors, a life governed by self-indulgence or self-absorption – a life given over to immorality or impurity, idolatry, anger, witchcraft, hatred, envy, drunkenness, selfish ambition. If allowed full reign in our lives, these desires and actions will ruin them, for they are no longer in line with God’s purposes. It’s as if the apostle Paul is saying “Our lives can basically go in one of two directions: we can live ‘according to the flesh’ or we can live ‘according to the Spirit.’ To focus on one is death; to focus on the other is life and peace.”/3/ Martin Luther, the famous Protestant Reformer, once remarked that two masters seek our allegiance: God and the devil. Each wants to direct our thoughts and actions. Each wants to govern our souls. Hence, the struggle to remain faithful! This struggle is given special clarity in our passage: there is simply a “fundamental incompatibility” between a life determined “by the flesh,” or self-indulgence, and a life lived “in the Spirit,” where there is openness to God’s word, where the fruit of the Spirit are born, where love is demonstrated through service to others, where freedom is celebrated./4/ Spiritual Fruit It’s a struggle we all face, isn’t it? Commanded to “walk in the Spirit,” we still fall prey to the “works of the flesh.” We still fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). More and more I realize how correct Paul was in saying to the Romans that “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….I can will what is right and good, but I can’t do it. I am of the flesh (Romans 7:15-20). In other words, on my own, I cannot manufacture or produce the fruit of the Spirit! After all, it is the fruit of the Spirit! I can only bear what the Spirit has given to me as I continually walk in the Spirit and as I continually To be sure, this is a biblical truth: apart from Christ we cannot bear fruit. However, it is also a biblical truth that the Spirit does not try to force or coerce us into accepting Christ. Instead, the Spirit is always eager to work in the church and in our lives to produce his “fruit” and to form in us the very image of Jesus./6/ In this sense, the Spirit is always eager to be received, and only needs to be allowed the opportunity [by us] to come in and take up residence in our lives./7/ The Spirit simply waits to be welcomed. Paul’s Assumption Last week, if you will remember, when we shared about spiritual gifts, we shared how the Spirit has given to us as Christians gifts to share. Though there are different gifts, and though no one Christian has all the gifts, all Christians have a gift to share – to glorify God and to build up others. This week we learn how all Christians are to bear fruit – not fruits individually, but fruit plural. Grammatically, the word fruit here functions as a “collective singular noun” (like sheep). Our passage doesn’t speak of the “fruits” of the Spirit – as if the Spirit creates the fruit of ‘love’ in you, and the fruit of ‘joy’ in you, and the fruit of ‘patience’ in you, giving these fruit individually./9/ No! Here, we all are to bear the fruit, whole fruit, and nothing but the fruit of the Spirit, so helped and produced by God – in season and out of season: the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, generosity, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). Every Christian, every church, is to bear and share all the fruit, all the time! Personal Confession How easy it would have been for me to preach a sermon on each individual fruit! In fact, as I was preparing for this sermon, I thought to myself, “How will I address each individual fruit? What am I going to say about love and all the aspects of love? And what I am going to say about joy and all the dimensions on joy? Paul shares a list of nine fruit. That’s nine different points. That means that if I preach on each individual fruit people are likely to begin to get restless listening to the preacher! That’s a nine point sermon. And when people get restless listening to the preacher they begin to wander, especially in a hot sanctuary! Right?! “Has he come to fruit number nine yet?” “Let’s see, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness. He’s on faithfulness! He’s got two more to go!” Back to the Assumption: it is assumed that you and I are already bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and so, taking time to focus on each individual fruit misses the other subtle message in this passage and that message is “If you not bearing the fruit of the Spirit, then what kind of fruit are you bearing? What other kinds of spirits or works or fruit are coming forth in your life? What Kinds of Fruit? Over the course of the church’s history, it has not always been pleasant to see what kind of fruit we as Christians have produced. Some rotten fruit has come to the surface! Rather than cultivate the fruit of love and joy the church has often engaged in division and conflict. Rather than bear peace, the church has often taken up the sword. Rather than practice self-control, the church has often tried to wield control, often in opposition to the Spirit. And what’s wrong with this picture is the damage that has been done to the church, for it basically makes the church invisible, as the church becomes a means to the end of a society that simply wants press people into a certain kind of straightjacket./10/; The litany of historical examples are too numerous and painful, of those times when the church has tried to engineer agendas that were distinctly lacking in the fruit of goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. Too often the visible and valuable fruit of the Spirit has disappeared under the weight of power, wealth, and control. More often than not Christians have blended in rather stand out, too much chameleon and not enough salt and light. As the pollster George Barna has observed over the years, more and more there is simply little evidence that Christians behave or think differently from non-Christians when it comes to issues of race, sex, class, war, or any other topic where Christians are to have a distinct witness./11/ It’s as if it has lost sight of the fact that it is to cultivate a peculiar kind of fruit that the world can taste and see and smell rather than push a cause, or, worse, remain indifferent! After all, wasn’t it Jesus who said “By their fruit you shall know them” (Matthew 7:20)? By their fruit you shall recognize who they are! Jesus didn’t say “You will know the people of Grace Church by their opinions. And he didn’t say you will know the people there by their power or popularity or prestige.” No! You will know them by their fruit! Good fruit or bad fruit – you will know them by their fruit inside and out! May we be recognized by good fruit inside and out, by the fruit of the Spirit, by the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, generosity, and self-control? That kind of fruit! Amen!
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