The Fruit (09/24/2000)

Park Meadows Church

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For those of you who are visiting or haven't heard Harvey play before that Paul sat down before he started

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So Paul was not playing the piano. That was Harvey Doing both now you try that and What's amazing?

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I've seen him do that and sing at the same time before but I can't get him to do that here Thank You brother

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Harvey Turn to 2nd

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Peter chapter 1 this morning, please It's been a wonderful day already the matter of fact

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I could hear the here Start over. I could smell the lunch cooking during Sunday school this morning so we have yet more to look forward to and then dessert this afternoon with brother

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Otis and It's gonna be a good day we're talking about fruit bearing and This Morning we get to the good part.

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We're going to talk about the actual fruit. Let's pray and we'll begin father. We ask you to Take our

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Lives our minds our hearts at this time and teach us that which you have for us

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It is my prayer that each of us are prepared at this moment. We've had some time to contemplate

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Our walk this past week our walk up until this moment and if we have needed to Confess sin and we've had opportunity to do that this morning.

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We thank you for the beautiful music that we've heard that Takes our minds and hearts to the heavenlies.

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And so now we come to the Word of God Which is the most important part in our life because everything else we do is

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Perhaps us speaking to you us bringing our request to you us praising you us talking with you in fellowship, but now we come to the time where you speak to us and That is all important in our lives and we ask you to bless it at this time in Jesus name and for his sake.

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Amen Second Peter chapter 1 and we spent quite some

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Time discussing verse 1. So let's go to verse 2 this morning

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And follow along with me as we go through this Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our

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Lord I just want to point out that last Sunday we Recognize that we begin here with relationship

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Because the grace and the peace is multiplied through the knowledge of God and of Jesus in the way that we have knowledge of God And of the

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Lord Jesus is through the fellowship that he's given us In him and with him.

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So as we walk with him and as we learn of him Then that relationship grows and it is a growing thing and it is by this

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Relationship that the grace and the peace are ministered to us and multiplied in our lives by the

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Holy Spirit and so We talked about that a little bit last time now, let's look at verse 3

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According as his divine power Hath given unto us all things

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That pertain unto life and godliness the first part of the verse deals with last

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Sunday's sermon because we were still talking about either positional sanctification or Experiential sanctification, but remember there's two kinds of Sanctification to deal with our experience or our walk in time one.

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I call passive and the other I call active Passive is what God does to us So it's interesting that the passive part is in the positional area and in the area of experience the positional of course

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Comes from the third heaven it comes from outside of time where the father dwells and you can't change that There's nothing we can do to change that which is positional but you come into time where we are and where we live in our dimension and things happen in experience and There are two aspects to that experience one we can call passive and that means it's stuff

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God does to us while we're in time. Now, let me ask you this. How does he accomplish that or through what?

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Means does he accomplish that most of the time and I'm talking about Dealing directly with himself not with circumstances

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But through what means is he accomplished that where he does stuff to us to cause us to grow in time?

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Would that be by it would that be That's the right answer By the

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Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts remember how we're talking about the first and second year

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We have fruit we partake of the fruit the third year we're supposed to do some some plowing and some preparing and some sewing and We have this beautiful garden that the

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Lord has prepared and he put a tower right in the middle of the garden What is the tower? represent

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His his presence right in the midst of this garden, which is our lives the garden of our life

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And so the when we talk about experiential it means in time and when we say passive it means the stuff

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He's doing to us whether we like it or not whether without us But there is a part of this

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Though scripturally if you want to count scriptures and talk to see which scriptures talking about which

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You'll find that this is not the main part because God has to come first God's love had to come before we could ever love him

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We respond to his love and so forth God comes first first that which God does has done for us comes first We see this at the first part of verse 3

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According as his divine power hath already given unto us all things.

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That's everything We need all the equipment is there is like he said I put a hedge around this this garden

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I put the best soil there. I put the best seed in the soil I put a tower in the midst of it and on and on he's done everything

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To create good fruit in us to cause us to bear good fruit. It's all been done for us. That's the positional part

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He had his divine power has already given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness that has to come first But we're just about to get into an area that is important and that is the part of the experiential part

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Which means it's in time. It's in our dimension It's where we are and I call it active which means it's stuff

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We're supposed to do and it's stuff. We're held accountable for by God It kind of goes into that part of the scriptures where he said what more could

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I have done? I? Did everything I could have done and I looked to see you bear grapes, but you brought forth wild grapes and that is a picture of the wrong kind of fruit and And He held them responsible for it and not a one of them could look up at God said it was your fault because you're sovereign

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So somewhere we see somehow in this study of sanctification We see God's dimension of the father of being outside of time and not bound by time and being the eternal now

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We see that dimension Reaching down into our dimension of time Where we're held accountable and responsible for every thought we have and every choice we make

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And we're gonna move into that area as we go today. So let's go on with verse 3 through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and Virtue now notice that this once again has to do with knowledge

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Therefore it has to do with relationship an ongoing in time relationship

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Greg If you would turn me down just a hair doesn't have to be much but just a little bit I got a feeling this might be one of those shouting sermons and I don't need quite as much amplification

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Hallelujah All right Let's go to verse 4

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Whereby are given unto us that means according to these precious promises or according

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I'm sorry, it means according to this these Positional things that come from out of our world that come from the father whereby are given unto us exceeding and great precious promises

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Now if they're given to us, they have to be extended down into time because that's where we are

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Isn't it interesting how God punched a hole in that portal and put this down through it and left it here for us

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You see this is a timeless Eternal book. It's always been this way a

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Lot of people don't understand that but this book is not changing that's where the charismatics are wrong. You can't add to it

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You cannot have a genuine gift of prophecy right now because it to prophesy and to add

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Words of God to this book would be impossible because this books finished eternally from from that viewpoint now

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God punched a hole in time and stuck his hand down in this dimension and gave this to us bit by bit and Now It is there for us and that's just an example of how

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God comes down and works in time where we are But it says whereby are given unto us exceeding and great and precious

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Promises remember in the Greek this exceeding great is like mega and the Greek word is mega mega

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Promises and most of us use that word a lot. It's kind of a popular word today Mega promises and precious promises is the in the

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Greek language The word precious is in the superlative. It means the very most precious thing there is

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It doesn't mean better than this or this is better than that. It means the best it can't get any better It's the superlative the absolute greatest most precious promise that there can be

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Not only is it the most precious it is mega It's a mega promise promises that God has given us and so that by these promises you might be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust and all of us kind of summed up in This one verse all of the reasons why we need to make sure that we actively

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We understand the passive and now we understand the positional and now we're gonna look at the active that third year

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Where God says the first year you'll eat of the fruit of the land the second year You'll eat of the same fruit thereof, but the third year

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I want you to do some things Why is it important for us to grow the place where we see a responsibility?

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To work with God in the garden of our own lives Well, why is it important that even more fruit?

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That we bear even more fruit than we might have Had we not had this third year?

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Well, we begin to see why as we go on into our study We See that We see a little change in the grammar as We go down into the second part of verse 4

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It says that by these and it's speaking of these mega promise the promises You might be partakers of the divine nature now when we look at this little phrase you might be it is

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Errorist which means it's not so much Interested in the time whether it be past present or future

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It's it's kind of talking about it as beyond time or above time or outside of time

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We're still really not dealing with time. This verb is not But we do see that it's active that you might be partakers of the divine nature

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It's it's not passive. It's active. But the interesting thing is it's subjective now I want you to remember because I mentioned it right at the end of the sermon last time

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But this is what really brings us into what we're talking about today Subjective mood. What does it mean?

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It means the same thing in English as it does in Greek It is a mood of possibility or potentiality

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Which the grammar then proves that we are now in time. We have to look at this from an end time

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Dimension where we are we're not looking at this from the father's point of view Although he can look at both point of views because when you're in a higher dimension

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You can handle that dimension and any lower dimension and be in all of them, but you can't do it the other way around Now I don't care if you get that or not this morning, but it's a fact of science

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You can't be in a lower dimension and comprehend the higher one to its fullest But so God the father does not have a problem with this, but sometimes we do

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Sometimes we have a major problem trying to figure out how he's in control of everything and he is sovereign and yet we are responsible

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And yet from his dimension, that is not a problem. It is not a dilemma from our dimension

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It is quite a dilemma. It seems to our minds anyway, but Let's suffice it to say this

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God has now changed the subject a little bit. He's no longer talking about positional sanctification

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He's not talking about passive sanctification where he does the stuff to us he's talking about what he expects us to do and as he begins to talk this way he goes from the

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Perfect mood into the subjective and the subjective means there is possibility there is

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Potentiality there is both the possibility that you will do this and the possibility you might not do this and the consequences will come

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Depending on what the truth is And that's the very grammar of this where it says you might be partakers of the divine nature now

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What's interesting that this word partaker? Is a beautiful Greek word. It's the word coin onos

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Which is the word that's always translated into the word fellowship So the

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Bible says then in this verse that by these Mega promises you might be you might partake of the fellowship of the divine nature

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Isn't that amazing it it speaks of being a partaker of God's nature But it doesn't put it like it does in the

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English where it says there it is I'm gonna get it and I'm a partaker of it. It's more like a fellowship or a oneness

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That causes us to be able to partake of this divine nature it is our fellowship and unity with the

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Father Himself That causes us to take part and to take advantage of this marvelous thing

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God has done to us at regeneration. Now. What's what's interesting is that when it speaks of Being partakers of this divine nature

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It speaks of it as the beginning of it not as if the whole thing is completed in a moment

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So sometimes I think we think at the at the moment of salvation That all of a sudden we have the divine nature

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The truth is where it says by these you might be partakers of It means to become or to begin to be

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To begin to be where the word be where it says you might be partakers that little word B is important because in grammar

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It's not a little word. It's a big word. In fact, it's pronounced Jim. Oh, oh, may he

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It's much easier to say B, isn't it? Jim ohm a he and What it means is to come into existence or to begin to be now

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Do you see the difference in English when you say let it be you mean like it's already all there It's like you're looking at the at the complete

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Ripened fruit but in the Greek it's like let it begin to be you could be talking about the early stages of that fruit and It's going to continue to grow and so that's how this divine nature comes to play in our lives when you get born again

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Yes, you have the divine nature because you are one with God You have his nature

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But it's like the early stages of a fruit of any fruit and it's not ready to be taken and eaten yet Or to be used completely yet But it is perfect for it with regard to the fact that it's as perfect as it ought to be for its age right now

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And that's found in this word this little word be that you might be partakers

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That little word B means to begin to be so that shows that as we grow in our lives

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The we become more and more like God's divine nature or that is manifest more and more

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I should say in our lives Now, I think it's beautiful too that This word partaker is the word coin onos

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Which means you're a fellow shipper in this divine nature. You have fellowship with God in his nature that's powerful now, let's go into verse 5 and Beside this giving all diligence add to your faith virtue and we're about to get into an area where God is telling us

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To do some things in time and he's holding us accountable for it So we're moving into the active part of experiential sanctification stuff we're supposed to do stuff

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God tells us to do and Holds us accountable for doing it

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It's really kind of interesting if you take the first part of verse 5 The first three words are not in the

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Greek you see where it says and beside this Doesn't say anything like that It is one

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Greek word and it is the word autos Which two thousand one hundred and forty two times in the

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New Testament is translated into the word himself So I believe that's what it ought to be.

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So let's read it this way look at verse 5 Let's go down towards Let's go down Let's read kind of the last part of verse 4 and pay attention to what

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I say when I get to the first part of Verse 5 cuz I'm gonna read it in the literal Greek the last part of verse 4 says having escaped

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So this is talking about us in time. I mean, this is us God's children in time having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust himself giving all diligence

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You see I mean, that's where it's much stronger It doesn't say and besides all this other stuff.

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It said you yourself me myself Myself this I am accountable for this

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I am supposed to get down in the garden of my life and get on my knees and start working that soil a little bit

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With God he's already doing it. He's already done it The father outside of time can see the whole complete fruit already.

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That's why he says we are glorified but he extends himself into time by Jesus Christ and Certainly now by the

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Holy Spirit and he says now I'm looking at you in time and I expect to see you do these things Now there's no way the father can do that unless he does it through the

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Holy Spirit I assume I mean, I guess that's the way at least I can see that's how he can come down into this portal into time into our dimension and Watch and see us do things sequentially and speak of it in that way

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So he says in verse 5 himself That's the man himself the woman the teenager the boy the girl himself giving all diligence

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I Want himself to add to his faith now, where'd the faith come from?

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the first year That came from the first year, I mean the stuff just came up and we ate it.

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I mean we didn't do anything And we found ourselves in a garden God had placed us there

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God had already put the perfect soil the fence around it He had already put the perfect seed in there, which is his seed

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Which is you and you came up and then you found yourself there and he said now you got a couple of years

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Let's you know take partake of the fruit that I've provided But now he says himself giving all diligence and diligence add to what

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I've given you now The faith is what he gave us. That is an absolute gift from heaven It is Jesus's faith and he gave us this faith.

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And now he says I want you to give diligence Yourself give diligence and add to this faith and then it's going to give us a list of things to add which we'll look at in a moment

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First of all, look at this little word diligent in verse 5 It's the

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Greek word spoo day Which means speed It almost sounds like speed a little bit

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I suppose it implies dispatch eagerness earnestness

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So himself with all dispatch add to your faith

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Listen, you know, we wait around to the third year if we'd known better we should have started the second year But the point is wherever you are today is the day to start adding to what

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God's given you In his grace as he tells us to he says to add to our faith now

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With all speed with all dispatch with eagerness. We should have a desire

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You know, I've always felt like that a genuine Christian is like someone has a cold He has some symptoms that go with it like a runny nose like a cough back there

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No, hopefully it's just like my wife says it's always just something in her throat. She's never ill Are you okay?

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There's something in my throat okay, but There's symptoms to having a cold

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There's symptoms to being born again when you get regenerated and God comes to live in your body and your body becomes the temple of The Holy Spirit the temple of God you can't be the same as you were before he came in there

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So there are some symptoms That come about one of the symptoms

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I believe is this eagerness there is an eagerness and a Dispatch in the true believers life to go on with it to move on with it and to walk with God Not just to sit around saying oh, we'll see what

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God will do with me now We we know it's true that God is working in our lives and most of the verses you find on sanctification

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Really have to do with what he's doing to us Not what we're doing the huge majority of them have to do with God's work in our lives

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Despite what we do. Why do you think it has to be that way? Because we're this way

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All right But still he says but come with me Come work together with me in this garden of your life with speed with dispatch with eagerness with earnestness

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And he says add to your faith Remember what the word ad is.

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We've had it already in the previous sermons It's two little

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Greek words the first part is a B which means about toward Are surrounded by different things like that depending on the context?

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But the last part of the word is the word that we translate into English choreograph Isn't that beautiful?

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So he says add to the faith he wants us to take what God's given us and choreograph a life around it and That's a beautiful word.

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Well, let's look and see what he says to add what the first word is the word virtue Now this word virtue in the

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Greek language Is arete And it literally means manliness.

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No, I don't want you ladies to be offended by that But that's what the word literally means.

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It means add to your faith manliness So ladies, you need to be strong. All right strong in the faith

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But it carries the implication of valor valor That is the root meaning of this word.

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It can come to mean excellence So you see how it comes from the root of manliness

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Comes into the strength that a man is supposed to have the bravery the valor and it comes to mean moral excellence just excellence so we have what

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God has given us in this faith of Jesus Christ and that faith as it works in our lives as it brings us into the

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Word of God as it brings us into the fellowship of the believers and into more important than anything else this knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ remember that means relationship the relationship that we have with him as We are moved into a deeper and deeper relationship we are supposed to add to that valor our excellence

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Now the second thing it says to add or to choreograph around this faith that God's given us is the word knowledge

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Now just make note of this in the Greek language. This is the word gnosis and It means this taking in knowledge

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So it's not talking about knowledge as an abstract thing it's it means to actively take in knowledge

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It is almost like learning but to take in Knowledge so we take the faith we add to it virtue and we take in knowledge

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So we're supposed to choreograph our lives in such a way that we're always taking in knowledge of God.

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How can we do that? Well, Jesus is the word And the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 through 3 that in the former days

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God hath spoken Hath means he used to talk this way. He used to speak through the prophets and Through dreams and so forth

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But in these last days hath spoken unto us by his son hath by the mean way means hath already and that's why

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I say we have a Finished eternal book and this is the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially the

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New Testament Gospels and and the epistles of Paul and all that Jesus said to the apostles

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He said you're not ready for this. But when I go I'm gonna send the Holy Spirit He's gonna teach you of me and that which he says will be of me.

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It will not be of himself He will teach you of me and then Jesus later says I don't say anything that the

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Father hasn't given me to say So I'll teach you of him So it's almost like that It is like the Holy Spirit leads us into the word

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The word is the is the written word which Jesus is the living word and the living word is that which reveals the

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Father? So only by this relationship. Can we know God? But it is part of what we're supposed to add to our garden or to choreograph into our life is an ongoing

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Effort on our part to gain more and more knowledge of God.

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That's why it's such a sin I believe in our land that most churches you go into and probably this one if it'd been very many years ago

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You probably come in and you'd hear stuff about how to be successful You know how you can find

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Bible principles for a successful living how what the Lord has done for me what the

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Lord has done for us and that's all well and good and wonderful and All of that is in the Bible but I would wonder if you went back in time to the year 1900 or 1890 and you walked into any church no matter what name was on the sign out front and you sat down and you heard the

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Preacher preach I'd be willing to bet you'd be preaching about God He would be preaching about God himself about the person of God So that we might know him better and we're supposed to make an effort as we study the scriptures

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Not just to look for little things we can argue or look for little things It'll help us be more wise or help us this that of the other but to help us know him better than we knew him ten minutes ago and Then the next word let's go to verse 6 and to knowledge

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Temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness that gives us a few more.

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Let's look at these now we have We have here first of all temperance

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Which is the third race that's mentioned Temperance Good way to say it in English is just self -control

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Self -control it comes from a root Greek word, which means strong in a thing so like have strength against Whatever your weaknesses were before you got saved and all of us know where our weaknesses were

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And then when we were born again, we had these sins that that easily beset us as lost people and then when you're born again

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You're made free from every lower Lord and Jesus becomes your Lord So you don't have to be a slave to any of them and yet the old flesh still has those habits as you come into salvation

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Well what the Bible is saying here is God then gives you faith. He frees you. He says hey

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You're you're not bound by that anymore. You are not a slave to sin Romans chapter 6 You're no longer a slave to sin.

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So believe God with the faith that he gave you trust God that he's true Reckon it to be so but he says at the same time add to that reckoning as you reckon that I'm telling you the truth

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Add to it some temperance be strong in the thing where you used to be weak

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Now What we're gonna find out Lest you think

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I am a heretic as We relate these graces

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To the fruits of the Spirit that are mentioned in the book of Galatians chapter 5 starting with about verse 22

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We're gonna find out the source of all of these fruits is where? The root in Fact these very graces.

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I don't think we can understand them much better in this life than to say that they are Jesus Jesus Is the one who had virtue?

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Manly valor and excellence and everything that he did Jesus is the one who had knowledge so that when he was a little bitty child

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He could show the foolish teachers of the day the religious teachers where they were wrong

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He could he could take the Word of God that they'd studied all of their lives I'm a 60 70 80 perhaps 90 years old and show them.

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Here's what it really means as a little child He could do that. He had learned about the father by a very early age.

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Jesus is the one who was strong in a thing He was the one who was tempted in all parts as we are and yet without sin

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And then he brings us to another one. He says add to this patience Add to it patience.

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I love the Greek word for this. It means cheerful endurance. It's exactly what the word means

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Patience in the Bible language means cheerful Endurance, it can even mean hopeful

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Endurance it means constancy Constancy in cheerful endurance, so we have cheerful endurance

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No matter what circumstances are is that natural? No, we can so we can so easily see that these are things we cannot do in the flesh

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We these aren't things we can work up and learn to do and so what's fascinating to me about this whole study is that God Has placed this in the subject subjunctive tent or mood

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I should say Which means there's potential that we will or won't do it and then he tells us to do it and expects us to do it

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And yet it's impossible for us to do it on our own. What does that tell me? He is telling us we always work together

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We're working together there is nothing none of this that we can do on our own but all of it he expects us to do

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So what does it bring you back to and you'll see this whole study began with one word? It's going to end with it in a minute if I ever get there.

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It's the word relationship what does relationship imply a togetherness a

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Unity doing things together. That's why marriage is supposed to be Doing things together enjoying doing things together more than you enjoy doing things with anybody else in the face of the earth

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And that's the way it should be with the father We should enjoy doing things together and he's wanting to do things in our lives.

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How beautiful But he wants to do them together There's no doubt in my mind that he could and can just make us be anything.

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He wants us to make make us be But he hasn't chosen to do it that way he chooses for us to Work in the garden with him, especially in the third year after we've had some time to grow after he's nurtured us and gotten us going and growing

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So we're going to add to the faith that he's given us Temperance which is self self -control being strong in a thing.

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We're going to add patience which means Cheerful endurance as we go through trials and so forth

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Now you can also see how God's working through circumstances in our lives create these things in us if you want to go into the passive Part where he's doing things to us because he does bring circumstances that cause us to be patient We always joke about that.

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Don't I don't need more patience Lord because we know that that comes through suffering and then the next one is

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The word godliness I Like this little simple definite definition of this word

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Because it could have a lot of meanings in English Really, you know to be godly you can mean a lot of things you could think of all the attributes of God and say well

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I want to be like that. I want to do like that I want to do like that and the beautiful thing about this word in the

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Greek is it doesn't mean anything about you trying to Be like this or be like that It doesn't have anything to do with you going out and doing something because you think that's what

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God would do or going out and acting Helping a lady across the road or something like so many people in this world think they approach

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God by being godly But you know, I'll be like him and that way he'll like me and he'll let me into heaven

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It's not what the word means at all the word literally means in the Greek language a godward attitude a

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Godward attitude it's something on the inside It's something where the predominant thought of your life and your mind as you walk in this world is toward God not towards this world and the things of the world and Then the next thing that it says to add is brotherly kindness and then it's gonna say charity after that Let's just talk about let's contrast those a little bit brotherly kindness is

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More the fraternal affection that a human brother would have for a human brother because of their blood relationship but charity comes from the word agape

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Which is a deep love of God that comes from the love of the will and of the mind where a choice is made to have this love

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Now, let's read verse 8. Hold your breath About 10 minutes, that'll fix it

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Look at verse 8 You didn't know everyone was noticing but it's not a problem

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Look at verse 8. I Wouldn't have done that if they hadn't all been looking at you, but Everybody over here is looking over there instead of listening.

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That's okay All right verse 8 For if these things be in you and abound they make you that ye shall neither be barren

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Nor unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we started out with this idea of knowledge, which is relationship

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Where do we end up? We end up with knowledge and relationship. All right

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Now, let me let me close this little study with this because we're just about out of time I want you to turn to Galatians chapter 5 just for a minute

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Galatians 5 22 Mom go with him because you don't really want him to hold his breath 10 minutes

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Galatians 5 22 Now when you see this list

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Of the fruits of the Spirit and I'm not gonna read the verse you have it there in front of you I'm just gonna give you the The fruits of the

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Spirit which some called the character fruits Look look what they are

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There are nine of them Love joy peace some people would put those in a group and call those inward character fruits

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Things you have on the inside and then long -suffering which is the same as patience gentleness and goodness

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Someone say those are outward which are things you do towards your fellow man, and then the last three faith

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Meekness and temperance would be upward. So you have inward fruits outward fruits and upward the last three are towards God And you say well meekness seems to be towards man well, it can be but meekness is the opposite of pride and pride is a spiritual problem and So if you have meekness, that's that's the opposite of pride and that is meekness is always towards God There's no way you can have meekness without having that towards God attitude that we talked about earlier so you have these three groups of character fruits that are listed here and what

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I think is beautiful about it is you go into 2nd Peter chapter 1 and you You see our list that we just studied we have about seven

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Virtues or graces we might call them and let me show you how well they line up with these

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And I'm gonna I'm gonna give them an order that we have in our study today not not the order of Galatians 522

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But if you'll stay there in 522 and look at those you'll find these but remember that our first one was virtue

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Well, I can line that up almost perfectly with the Sixth one that's listed in Galatians goodness and our second one is knowledge and I can line that up with meekness

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Because if you have spiritual pride, you don't need to learn anything. You already know God If you have spiritual pride, you know, you know everything there is know about God You have

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God in his box and you're comfortable with it and you ain't changing Doesn't matter what scriptures

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God or man can show you where you're wrong That God is bigger than that or greater than that or that you missed something of or you don't know everything about God yet None of that matters because you know everything now you see that's the opposite of meekness

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So meekness is something that you can only have in Christ and it tells us that we need to learn more of God We need to know more

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About We don't need to stay like we are so I see how those two fit well together

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Now the third one is temperance and over in the Galatians We see the word temperance that matches fairly well temperance means temperance.

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So self -control The fourth one is patience and in the

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Galatians Passage it calls it long -suffering same identical thing. The fifth one was godliness and And where there is no exact parallel over in the

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Galatians passage you can take two of those or even more but I pick joy and peace Which are inside Traits that a person has only if he has a godward attitude as he walks and then the sixth one brotherly kindness

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I think fits gentleness quite well Don't you because brotherly kindness is different than love brotherly kindness means the kindness is the result of love.

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It's love shown Is what it is brotherly kindness is love shown and then

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The seventh was charity and in Galatians is love same thing It's a gopi the love that comes from God the love that comes from a will to love because of God's nature

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So we really see that these things Line up where they are the same and so therefore we can conclude that they are

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Fruits of the Spirit they come from the root the Lord Jesus Christ for if these things be in you and abound

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They make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge the relationship the growing knowledge of God and our

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Lord Jesus Christ and that's what causes us to bear all this fruit and to Gain the results of the fruit and the last message that we'll have on this section on Fruit bearing will be next

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Sunday the Lord willing And it will just simply go back And look at two things

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What happens to the garden? of life that chooses not to Do some things with God and then what happens to the one who does?

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And therefore which choice are we to make and be kind of obvious want it But that's what we'll close with next

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Sunday. So let's stand and have prayer together brother Harvey Would you come I'd like to have an invitation this morning

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Bow your heads with me and close your eyes and just Think about what the

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Lord has done for you and your individual life Don't even think about your family your children or your parents or whatever the case you just think about You and your life and I know all these other people play a part in it

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But think what God has done in the garden of your life think what he did before you even knew enough scripture to do anything with it and Then think how he has now brought you to the place where you can actually do some things

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You can actually make a choice to Study the scriptures to pick a topic and study it on your own if you chose to or you can choose not to this week

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You can actually choose to spend 20 minutes in prayer with him this week two hours in prayer with him this week two minutes in prayer with him

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Nothing in prayer with him this week You can choose to pray as you go while you're driving or you can choose to do that plus get in your

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Closet and spend just quality time with him You can choose to be a witness

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You will be one whether you choose or not on that issue, but you can choose to actively witness or you can choose not to You can choose to be in church next

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Sunday or you can choose not to you can choose which church you're in so you have all these choices and So think what

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God has done in your garden of life And let's ask ourselves. What ought we to be doing and what are we doing?

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and if any of you feel a need to come to the altar this morning is certainly open and You pray as the piano plays