Character Produced by the Spirit, Part 1

Transcript

GR 2109
01/28/2018
Character Produced by the Spirit, Part 1
Galatians 5:22
Gil Rugh

We are going to Galatians chapter 5. Moving through this strong epistle of the Apostle Paul and as we have talked about also referred to in connection with the study of the book of Revelation. The people of God are in a relentless conflict with the enemy, the devil and his forces. And the Apostle Paul carried the Gospel out into the Gentile parts of the world but as soon as he did that the devil raised up opposition even among those who had come to believe the Gospel that Paul preached. He made it his goal to infiltrate among those believers and the churches that were established and begin to weaken them and undermine them to bring false doctrine and error in, create conflict and division.

So Paul has to write a very stern letter to the Galatians. There is an attitude, a godly attitude of impatience with such conduct and acceptance of error. And, has been made clear from the beginning, Paul said there is just no excuse for this and it needs to be dealt with and corrected.

He has been dealing in chapter 5 with the freedom we have in Christ. We don’t go back under the Mosaic Law. We don’t assume responsibility to the Mosaic Law. The Gentiles are not to become Jews or Jewish. The Jews have been set free from the law and certainly the Gentiles should not be going under the law. But that doesn’t mean we are free to do what we want and that is what he is talking about. Verse 13 and following: “You were called to freedom brethren only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another.” We “walk by the Spirit” (verse 16) and when we walk by the Spirit under His control and direction “we don’t fulfill or carry out the desires of the flesh.” And that conflict, the flesh – what we are apart from the work of the Spirit in our lives and then now the new life we have in Christ and the power of the indwelling Spirit to enable us. And he is drawing a contrast now as we move further into the chapter between what the flesh looks like as it manifests itself and then what the Spirit manifests itself and His work looks like.

You know we have been made new in Christ. We are not what we were. We sing about it, we talk about it. We have been cleansed. We have been made new. We have been set free.

Leave your marker in Galatians and come over to Peter, the first epistle of Peter moving toward the back of your Bible just after the book of Hebrews, that large book then James and you are into I Peter chapter 1 and in verse 3: “Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again.” The transformation brought about by the salvation God has brought to us is so dramatic it is called a new birth, being born again.

Over further in chapter 1, verse 23: “For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is through the living and abiding, enduring Word of God.” So God is the power and the cause of our new birth. The instrument He uses is the Word of God. So, He has caused us to be born again. We are made new from the inside. That is the dramatic change. That is what Jesus talked about with Nicodemus in John’s Gospel chapter 3 and He told this Jewish teacher, “You must be born again.” Nicodemus said “I need further explanation on this. I don’t understand.” And Jesus said, “You should understand because Jeremiah the prophet prophesied with the coming of the Messiah there would be a new covenant and the Spirit of God would be placed within the child of God.”

So, remarkable change. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, a new creation. Old things have passed away. New things have come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17, so repeated through the New Testament that emphasis on the power of God’s salvation that makes us new. It doesn’t matter what we were. We have been made new.

Come back to I Corinthians, chapter 6. This is where we left off last time in Galatians. The emphasis Paul has here, we will pick up in a moment as we return to Galatians. Note verse 9 and this is in the context of the problems the Corinthian church was having. You know there are churches filled with conflict, parties, lawsuits. We think church today, what is happening? Well look at the church at Corinth. Believers suing one another in the congregation, defrauding, verse 8 but look at verse 9: “Do you not know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.” They need salvation. “Don’t be deceived. Fornicators, idolaters, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, drunkards, revilers, swindlers, none of these kinds of people will inherit the kingdom of God.” Not because they are worse than other people but because they have never experienced the redemption that is in Christ.

Note what he says in verse 11: “Such were some of you.” Some of the ones he mentioned, all of us were sinners. Our sinful nature manifests itself in different ways with different sins “but such were some of you but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God.” You know the same kind of emphasis we have seeing in Galatians.

He goes to verse 12: “All things are lawful for me but all things are not profitable.” And he goes on to talk about how we use our bodies. We have been washed. We have been cleansed. We are new creatures so we don’t live the old life and the old ways and those who do will not inherit the kingdom of God. You note he mentioned that at the beginning of verse 9. He mentioned it at the end of verse 10. “None of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Come back now to Galatians chapter 5 and he talked in verse 9 about the deeds of the flesh and we have looked through these and it’s a sampling. And the point is not to walk through and say well, do I do this one, do I do this one? But these are the kinds of things that characterize the unbeliever and “those who practice such things,” (the end of verse 21) “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” That is where we are going. Remember out study of Revelation? The end of that book in chapter 20, 21 and 22 we are in the kingdom and that is the eternity in God’s presence for those who have been cleansed from their sin, made new. So if you are not going to inherit the kingdom you are not a believer. We might say “You are not going to heaven” because that final form of the kingdom is what? It is God’s presence in the kingdom on the new heavens and the new earth. Heaven has come to earth if you will. So if these are the characteristics of your life, you are not on the way to God’s eternal salvation.

So he is drawing the contrast, these kinds of things. Any believer can commit any of these things. That is why he has to deal with it. The Galatians are committing some of these things. We saw that the Corinthians have been involved even as a church.

Martin Luther, that great reformer as he writes on this passage, stresses “Any believer can commit any of these things but they are out of character for us.” That’s what he wants these Galatian churches to take note of. You don’t want characteristics of the unbeliever being manifest in your life and if this is the characteristic of your conduct, this is what you practice, these kinds of things, then you are not saved.

That is the glorious thing about our salvation. We are made new. Now the sad thing we often don’t manifest that newness with the consistency that we should and we sometimes have excuses for it but we are reminded. We never have to sin. One thing that was impressed upon me early in my studies, a man who is now with the Lord “You never have to sin as a believer” because we have been set free, we have the Spirit. Sometimes we slide back to the old ways and want to but the contrast – if that is what an unregenerate person looks like, what does a regenerate person look like?

So that is where he is going now in verses 22 and following. We want to see the contrast, how different it is. It is the difference of night and day. It is the difference between spiritually dead and spiritually alive. It is the difference between being a child of the devil and a child of God. It is a remarkable salvation that we have entered into.

He is going to list nine characteristics of those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit. They are called the “Fruit of the Spirit.” This is what the Spirit is producing in the life in contrast to the works that are being done in the energy of a fallen person who is living in constant rebellion against God. Remember we looked into Romans 8, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Even their best works are done with selfish intentions and not to bring honor to the living God because the first step to bring honor to Him is respond in faith to His salvation so that He can transform us and now we can serve Him, so the Fruit of the Spirit.

If you were going to give an overall title of characteristics it is “Unselfish Service to God and to One Another.” We had mentioned this back earlier in verse 13, “You were called to freedom brethren only don’t turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another and the love that is being produced leads us to serve one another.”

So we pick up with the Fruit of the Spirit and the first one will be “Love.” You note it is fruit singular. It is not fruits of the Spirit so we pick and choose here. There are spiritual gifts here, plural but the Fruit of the Spirit you know is what comes out as the Spirit controls us. Now again we are growing, we are maturing but we don’t want to make excuses for ourselves. We want to be careful.

I had someone talk to me about preachers and say, “You know preachers become experts in the seriousness of other people’s sins but they don’t see their own sins as serious as other people and that can be true of us and that becomes an attitude of self-righteousness that we don’t want.

The Fruit of the Spirit – what the Spirit will produce in the life. If the Spirit of God as a result of our salvation comes and takes up residence within us, our bodies now become the temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit of God Himself. Think of that. Jesus said it would be better that He left this earth and return to heaven so He could send the Holy Spirit with His special kind of ministry. Christ was present with His disciples on earth but when the Holy Spirit comes, He took up residence within us and now is producing through and in us the characteristics which really are characteristics that conform to the character of God. God’s nature, we have become partakers of that nature. We haven’t become deity but His character is produced.

The Fruit of the Spirit begins with love and back in chapter 5, verse 6: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision or uncircumcision means anything but faith working through love.” Verse 13: “Love is the fulfillment of the law” because that is putting others before ourselves, doing what is best for them, serving them.

You are familiar with self-sacrificing kind of love. Two basic kinds of love talked about agapao love, a verb and phileo love. Agapao love, more of a self-sacrificing love. Phileo love more of a reciprocal love. Both are true of Christ but the self-sacrificing love dominates but there is a place also for brotherly love, the love for one another and it is reciprocal but this is talking about agape love, that self-sacrificing love.

Come back to chapter 2 of Galatians, verse 20 Christ obviously being the ultimate example. “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.”

We have talked about on other occasions not only the Holy Spirit living in me but Christ lives in me because remember Christ said that the Father would come and take up residence with us, the Son would come and take up residence with us and the Holy Spirit would come and take up residence within us but it is the Holy Spirit’s ministry that is emphasized and His work through us. “Christ lives in me. The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” That is the life lived. The faith that I placed in Him at the beginning of my salvation is a faith now that is a constant characteristic of my life. “I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Now that’s becomes dominating characteristic of us as believers. This is the way we live. Christ loved me and gave Himself up for me. Now I am to live a life sacrificing myself in service for others. A selfish life is an ungodly life. It manifests itself in all those ugly things we saw as works of the flesh and creates conflicts and divisions.

You know why. Because when you are focused on yourself no one ever does enough for you. You know, always looking, why didn’t they think that? Nobody thought about me. Nobody included me. Nobody did anything for me, me, me, me, me. It goes no place. But the love the Spirit of God produces is the love that Christ had for me. He gave Himself for me when I was wretched and ugly and worthless. That is one of the most ugly things that has been developed in Christian theology is people who say, “We were so valuable, Christ died for us.” The emphasis of Scripture is just the opposite. We didn’t have value. He died for us in our ugliness. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” I bring nothing to God. I add nothing to Him. All I am is a result of His grace bestowed on me. So Christ died for me.

Come back to John 13, John’s Gospel chapter 13. Christ talked about this. Verse 34, John 13:24 “A new commandment I give to you,” now note this. “That you love one another even as I have loved you that you also love one another.” There is a standard. Christ’s love for us is to be reflected in our love for one another. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” It becomes a dominating characteristic because it becomes basic for everything else. Like “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” That is self-sacrificing action for the good of someone else no matter how undeserving, unworthy. I mean what have we deserved? We deserve hell. We have not deserved mercy. You can’t deserve mercy. If you deserve it, it is not mercy. If you earn it, it is not grace. So this is to be the characteristic. Why would we be like that? Well because that is the love that we have experienced.

Come over to I John. We think of the Apostle John as the Apostle of love because he wrote so much about it but remember he is one of the Sons of Thunder that during the earthly ministry of Christ was ready to call fire down on some of those who he didn’t think worthy of anything else. But I John chapter 4, verse 7 and talking about the contrast between a true believer and an unbeliever. Then we come to verse 7: “Beloved, let us love one another.” This love one another. You know we as believers of course talk about our love for God and our love for Christ. The hard thing is loving you, loving me, loving one another. “Let us love one another for love is from God.” That is what is produced in His children. It is a fruit of the Spirit. “Let us love one another for love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” Not in the way the world talks about love and sings about it but this true, Spirit produced self-sacrificing love and often God gives us the occasion to manifest it when we have to deal with this fellow believer who for some reason is awful ugly and difficult to love. That is the love God had for us. “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God for God is love.” This is His characteristic. “By this the love of God was manifested in us that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation” (the satisfaction) “for our sins.”

You realize we were sinners under the wrath of God. Christ had to come and step into our place to turn the righteous wrath of a holy God away from us. “Beloved if God so loved us we ought to love one another.” You know God saves us and puts us together in a family of believers called the church. The Bible doesn’t have to write about this because you know, why does it write about it so much? It is just automatic. It is not automatic. We are growing. We get on each other’s nerves. Sometimes one of us slips into the flesh and there is no excuse for that but we take it as an excuse for us to respond in the flesh. All I have to worry about is what my responsibility is. Christ loved me, paid the penalty for my sin. “Now if God so loved us we ought to love one another.” It is not contingent on what you do or don’t do. We sometimes think, “well if this is not reciprocal, I am not obligated anymore.” I mean and we get into this standoff.

Verse 12: “No one has seen God to anytime. If we love one another God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.” Jump over to chapter 3. He has talked about this, it is repeated emphasis. Verse 13 of chapter 3 of I John “Don’t be surprised if the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murdered. No murderer has eternal life abiding in Him. We know love by this – He laid down His life for us. We ought to lay down our life for the brethren.” It is amazing how quickly we will give up on each other and none of us here have gone to that extent because we are here breathing. So that is an indication none of us have had to lay down our lives for the brethren but that is the extent we are ready and willing to go and whatever it takes. So verse 18 of chapter 3: “Let us love not with word or with tongue but in deed and in truth.”

Back to chapter 4, verse 13: “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit,” so that is where the fruit of the Spirit. Verse 16: “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love. The one who abides in love abides in God. God abides in him.” Verse 19: “We love because He first loved us.” Verse 20: “If someone says I love God and hates his brother he is a liar.” You know bitterness, anger, those things are not characteristic of believers. They are the works of the flesh. Verse 21: “This commandment we have from Him that the one who loves God should love his brother also.” That doesn’t mean we excuse false doctrine. Paul has been dealing with that in Galatians. Certain things have to be dealt with but something is wrong in the family when it is the works of the flesh that are manifesting themselves rather than that self-sacrificing love and we are familiar with the love chapter of I Corinthians 13. Putting it into practice is the challenge. You know that consistency of our lives.

We will jump to Colossians. There are so many verses in the Scripture we could go to. Colossians chapter 3 and this will take us back to Galatians. Colossians chapter 3, verse 12: “So as those who have been chosen of God holy and beloved.” And here we are going into the side of things we will talk about with the fruit of the Spirit as we move along. We put on a heart. You know this is what is coming from within. “A heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiving each other whoever has a complaint against anyone just as the Lord forgave you so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love which is the perfect bond of unity.” When that unity that God has produced in us which we are to maintain gets broken by conflict and all that goes on with that love has been sacrificed, set aside because love is the bond of unity and when the unity is all broken up among believers you know what is lacking, love. And it is love that covers a multitude of sins and somehow we become impatient with each other, we become upset with each other, we can’t tolerate it any longer, the unity is broken down because the love is gone which means what? We are no longer walking by the Spirit.

You know we have all kinds of excuses for it but what happens to the church? You know it becomes proverbial. Churches have one battle after another. The sad thing is, often it is just battles among believers like the Corinthians, like Paul had to warn the Galatians.

Come back to Galatians. You see the kinds of things we talked about in verse 20 that are works of the flesh, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissentions, factions. Those aren’t things that are characteristics of unity. So when they show up among believers, love is the perfect bond of unity, the first in the fruit of the Spirit has been sacrificed and we justify our ourselves and think we can be spiritual and that’s why we do it. The Spirit of God didn’t direct the writing of all of this because it wouldn’t be necessary. It is preserved because it is an ongoing issue that we have to take seriously.

So the fruit of the Spirit is love. That is the perfect bond of unity and it is “a love” – Philippians 1:9 we won’t turn there “which is to abound still more and more in all knowledge and discernment.” So we are to be growing in love as we grow in knowledge and discernment. That is not an indiscriminant love that allows false teaching and false teachers and that to permeate. That is not love. This is the love that is concerned with helping other believers with building them up, with recognizing when they stumble, when they fail. It is not an excuse for us to do anything but love. There is discipline; there are those things but never at the expense of love.

I fail to understand the bitterness that settles in among professing believers. Something is wrong and it can be a bitterness that is not passing. Something is wrong. I mean I am not talking about people who decide they are going to another church but the bitterness, things that are said. What in the world; we pride ourselves that we are Christians. There is something wrong. It is sure not the work of the Spirit. He doesn’t produce the works of the flesh. We want to be very careful. The only person I can control is me in the power of the Spirit. The only person you can control is you in the power of the Spirit and we decide it is our role to control someone else we are going to have conflict. It doesn’t mean if there is sin, it doesn’t have to be dealt with, but something is wrong with ongoing bitterness, slander, dissention, attacks. You know if someone believes the Lord wants them in another church I want them in another church too. I don’t want people here that the Lord wants somewhere else. That doesn’t mean we ought to be enemies, we ought to be bitter, that we want to be on the attack.

I want to attack false doctrine but fellow believers, we can disagree. We can disagree about a lot of things. This ongoing bitterness is not a characteristic of the Spirit’s work in our lives. That is love.

The next one is joy, joy. Now in Paul’s day as in our day joy was associated with happiness which was caused by good circumstances and situations. That is the world’s joy or happiness. It is the world in which we live. When things are going our way we are happy. When they are not we are throwing a fit. Look at what is going on in our country. Things don’t go the way people want, they are unraveled and it becomes characteristic in different places in the world and people are walking around sour believers. They want everybody to know, “I am not very happy.” Well get over it. Let the Spirit take control of your life and He will produce joy. That comes from within. It doesn’t come from circumstances. It doesn’t come from the situation. Paul told the Philippians in Philippians chapter 4, verse 4: “Rejoice in the Lord most of the time;” no that is not a good translation. It is “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again” if you didn’t get it “I will say it again, Rejoice.”

Now interesting to me, as you know where Paul was when he wrote Philippians, prison. And he says “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice.” He could have been sitting there saying, “I didn’t deserve this. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve this kind of treatment and there were believers who were even trying to make the imprisonment even more unpleasant, even in preaching the Gospel. They are doing it with a hope of making Paul’s situation more difficult.

Amazing, people preach the Gospel with a motive like that. It is amazing what extent will go when we get entangled in things. “Rejoice in the Lord always.”

Come back to 2 Corinthians. You know this is true for all of us. We all as believers as given counsel to Christians in difficulty. “Well, you can have the joy of the Lord. The difficulty is not for me to give you advice. It is for me to take the advice of Scripture which is more than just advice.” 2 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul was talking about what it was like, what his life was like and he made it a point in verse 3 to “Give no cause for offense in anything but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, distresses, in beatings, in imprisonment, in tumult, in labor, sleeplessness, in hunger, in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness in the Holy Spirit in genuine love.”

Down to verse 10: “As sorrowful yet always rejoicing.” You know it is amazing. We as believers can be in sorrow and we often will be but that doesn’t take away the joy of our heart in knowing that the Lord has a purpose in this for me. His purposes for me will be realized. So even in my sorrow there is joy. You know the sorrow doesn’t overwhelm me. It doesn’t crush me and beat me down. There are times, we are human, we grieve at the death of a loved one but we don’t grieve like the world because we have the joy of the Lord that knows that believing loved one is in the presence of the Lord and we will be restored in fellowship but you see the contrast. With the world when things are bad I am down and then I get depressed and then we need something for the depression. I just can’t face life. I just can’t go on and the world is overwhelming but we have the Spirit of God who is within us and learning to depend on Him and you know trials and difficulties are part of God’s purpose. “Count it all joy my brethren when you fall into variety of kinds of testing whatever they are for you” because that is how I grow, I learn to trust the Lord.

We know we can’t shelter our children indefinitely so they have to learn to handle difficulties and trials. That is what God is doing with us. I learn to trust Him when, when the pressure is on, when there is difficulty, when there is trial. We want to be strong in the Lord but I don’t want any difficulty and I learn to accept, “Lord this is what you have for me. That doesn’t mean if I have opportunity to be removed from the difficulty, fine. You know I don’t know what to do and I can’t get over it and I sure can’t live with it.” Well wait a minute. God is not in control anymore. So the Spirit can’t do what the Spirit would like to do because the circumstances are too great. We don’t really believe that, we just live like it, so Joy.

Paul said and you can turn here you are in 2 Corinthians, come over to chapter 13. Paul’s statement in verse 9: “For we rejoice when we ourselves are weak but you are strong. This we pray for that you may be made complete.” You see that self-sacrifice attitude of Paul. “I am willing to be weak. I am willing to suffer the physical trials, the work of the devil that God allows to afflict me because that enables God to use me in a greater way so that you can get stronger.” That is that self-sacrificing love. We serve one another and His joy is that others are growing.

We have that little Gospel ditty, “Jesus and others and you. Jesus and others and you. What a wonderful way to spell Joy.” Most of our life we want to live with the “O” you know, me first; at any rate joy. And joy comes with what, settling down in the Spirit.

Come back to the fruit of the Spirit, love joy. You know it is encouraging as this is what God has for me. This is what God wants for me, produce His love, His joy, His peace. Peace here referring to that inner tranquility of heart. We have peace with God so we experience the peace of God, the peace with God and so we have the peace of God. Why the unbeliever can’t have inner peace in a final true way is because he doesn’t have peace with God. He is in constant tension as he is resisting God’s will, opposing God. So there can be no real final, inner peace. Sometimes he papers it over but true peace of heart comes from God. It is called the peace of God.

We will just go to Philippians 4 again. Again many passages but come to Philippians 4 and you will note the context, verse 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say rejoice.” The verse I just referred to. The context of that joy, “Let your gentle spirit” (we will be getting to this fruit of the Spirit also) “known to all men, the Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing.” Isn’t it nice to be able to live in the world without any anxieties, anything to worry about, anything to be afraid of? “But in everything by prayer and supplications with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God.” Here is the cure. Here is for believers. You have a heavenly Father. Tell Him.

You know we sing that song, ‘Take it to the Lord in prayer.’ That is what we do. “Lord, here is the problem. I am turning it over to You. We want to come and tell the Lord what the solution is. “Lord here is the problem. Here is the solution. Please do it.” Well it doesn’t always work out that way. We can tell the Lord, we can bring our request. “Here Lord is what I would ask You to do” but I don’t have to have anxieties because I can bring it to Him. “Let your requests be made known to God.” Note verse 7: “And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will stand guard, will guard your hearts and minds” and that is the picture. It is like that sentinel there standing guard at your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. I can have His peace. Why I have left it with the Lord. Now sometimes I pray about it and then I go away and worry about it and I haven’t really given it over to the Lord. So He tells me what to think about, “Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good reputation if there is any excellence, anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” We focus our mind on these things and we put into practice what God said we should do. There we go. We go on trusting the Lord as Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. You know we don’t worry about tomorrow. Each day has enough trouble of its own and we have the confidence. The Lord takes care of the little birds that aren’t counted as worth hardly anything but He takes care of them. He provides for His creation. How much more will He provide for us as His children? So we can be free from anxiety and have peace.

Romans 14, we won’t turn there because of time. Romans 14:19 “So let us then pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.” You know we are to have inner peace because of our relationship with the Lord which will reflect itself in peace with one another.

Turn back to James chapter 4, James chapter 4 and James writes and this is not good for believers, “What is the source” (verse 1) “of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust you have not. You commit murder. You are envious. You can’t obtain. You fight, you quarrel. You don’t have because you don’t ask.” You ask with improper motives and you have become like the world is the point. I am not saying they committed a murder necessarily but we are living like the world and it comes from where? What is going on in my own heart and then it disrupts my relationship with you. No, that is not right. My problem is you. Well my problem is me because I am back to the only person I can deal with is me.

Stop and think what the problems are. What we are looking for is to fix them, change them. I can’t. What is going on in my heart? I am churning. I have a conflict within myself and it is getting stronger and it is burning more fiercely. And it is going to come out and so we fight and quarrel.

God provides His peace. Jesus promised that He would give us His peace. “Not as the world gives do I give you” he said in John 14. The world gives a transitory peace. Calm the circumstances, put everything around the way I would like it to be. Then I feel relatively good but Jesus gives a peace not conditioned by those things.

Come back to Galatians 5. We will touch on one more, patience. A word that sometimes can be translated long tempered. It is in contrast. If you wanted to give the antonym for this it would be ‘short tempered.” We talk about a person being short-tempered. The opposite of that is being long tempered. You don’t lose your temper. That is what this patience is. It is the ability to put up with other people when it is not easy to put up with that other peoples. You know it is easy to put up with some people. They are always so nice, so thoughtful, so considerate. They always do for me and treat me, what? It is the rest that get on my nerves. You know I can drive under control until that dummy in the left-hand lane going ten miles under the speed limit doesn’t get out of the way. I am using that as an example for what I have observed in other people. You know it is easy. It is the things that put pressure on us and that happens in our family of believers. Somethings they can get on our nerves and all of a sudden it is not the way it was. I am upset about it and I am irritated. I lose patience. The Spirit produces this and then things stay under control.

We are having here what is manifested perfectly in the character of Christ and Paul referred to Christ as the one in I Timothy 1, verse 16: “Who exemplified perfect patience in dealing with Paul.” And that is why Paul got saved. And we have experienced that patience of God. How does God put up with us? Even before we were saved His patience with our rebellion and our actions and even now as His children how often have we failed but He is patient with us. We ought to be patient with one another.

Turn to Colossians chapter 1. Look at verse 11 and this is one of Paul’s sentences here with his prayer that started in verse 9: “For this reason since the day we heard of it we have not ceased to pray for you that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects; bearing fruit in every good work.” You see the tie to Galatians. “Increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience joyously giving thanks to the Father.” You see all these things are woven together that we are talking about even with the fruit of the Spirit and we are strengthened, verse 11 “with all power according to His glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness,” steadfastness. That is patience, remaining under pressure and then the word translated ‘patience,’ that longsuffering, that long endurance. It comes from the strength that God gives. We are strengthened with all power according to His glorious might. This is what God has done for us in our salvation. The Spirit has taken up residence within us. This Spirit that was there involved in the work of creation in Genesis 1 hovering over the face of the deep. I mean the third person of the triune God and we have His strength and His might. We are weak in ourselves but He is all powerful and it is His work that enables us to do what He would have us do.

So I Thessalonians 5:14 puts it simply: “Be patient with everyone.” You know the all-inclusive words, rejoice always, be patient with everyone. When God does a work in a life He does it completely.

Now this simplifies my life and we will stop here. It enables me to be what God wants me to be. I can’t control you. I can’t take responsibility for what you do. Nor can you for someone else but here is what the Spirit of God will do for me and in me and that I have responsibility for. I can walk by the Spirit no matter how anybody else around me walks. That is liberating. That sets me free. Because if it is dependent upon what you do I have no control over that.

If my joy depends on you, my patience depends on you, the love I show depends on you or someone else then it is out of our control but here the Spirit desires to control us all the time and I have control over that. In the Biblical sense I can choose to submit to the Spirit. That is why I am instructed to walk by the Spirit. I can do that but Lord you know how difficult it is. You know what this person is like. You know how that has affected me. You know what they did to me. You know what has happened. Now wait a minute. That doesn’t have anything to do with anything. The Lord tells me what? If I come and stand before Him, when I stand before the judgment, “you know what they did, you know what so and so did? I am talking about what you did and what I provided for you and we are liberated so whatever else has happened whatever else is going on, whatever someone else is doing in no way keeps me from walking by the Spirit and having Him produce in my life everything He intends to produce to conform me to the character of Christ. In fact I can be sure that what has come into my life, good or ill has been brought by the God who loves me so that I can grow. That is why Paul could say, “I ask God to remove the weakness but He said, ‘My power is demonstrated in your weakness.’” Then Paul said, “Bring on the weakness because when I am weak I am strong.” We like to think when we are strong, we are strong. In weakness we manifest the greatness of His character.

So rejoice in the freedom you have in Christ. The Holy Spirit if you are a believer in Christ indwells you and you can have His fruit produced in you regardless of anyone else. Now God’s intention in putting us in a family then is we contribute to one another in a positive way that we might grow and our relationship together is to that end and sometimes it will have rough edges. I have to be careful that doesn’t turn me away from dependence upon the Spirit. I can’t control what you do. We want to be involved in one another’s lives to help grow but I have to be sure I am where I ought to be with the Spirit and growing as I should be. Then we will grow. If everyone of us had that attitude we will be growing together in the Lord and it will be sweet unity.

Let’s pray together. Thank You Lord for the greatness of our salvation. You have done for us what we could not do for ourselves and You have continued to do for us what we could not do apart from Your power and Your grace, Your provision. Lord the sad thing is sometimes we fail to draw upon what You have provided for us. We fail to walk under the direction and power of the Spirit. We find excuses outside ourselves. Lord there is no excuse for any of us as your children not to be everything that You have saved us by Your grace to be. We want to continue to grow, mature and manifest more fully and clearly even in the most difficult situations and circumstances, the power of Your Spirit at work in our lives. We pray in Christ’s name, amen.