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Pastor David Mitchell
Let's pray and we'll get started. Lord, thank you so much for this time of the service that you yourself may teach us from your word, your eternal word, a book that is eternal, always has been, always shall be, and is perfect.
And so thank you for preserving it for us on this sinful earth, and even using sinful men as penmen, you brought about exactly every word and every dot of the I and cross the T that you wanted and to be in it.
Thank you for that. Thank you for giving us your spirit that that emboldens us to understand these things and and helps us to learn your word. And we ask you to accomplish that in the next hour in Jesus' name.
Amen. Well, just to summarize there in Galatians chapter 5 verses 1 and following, the first thing we saw that walking in the Spirit causes us to bear fruits of the Spirit, and this has nothing to do with the deeds of the law.
And the scripture there in verses 1 through 6 talks about that has nothing to do with the deeds of the law. It's not about keeping a list of rules. It's not about even memorizing what the fruits of the Spirit are and then trying to be that way.
It's not that at all. It has nothing to do with the flesh or with the law or with anything you can do in your own power. That was the first point. The second point was that Paul says we have liberty, that we're not bound by the law, that Jesus when he was crucified, the law was crucified with him, nailed to the cross.
But with this liberty that we have, it brings the ability to have occasion to the flesh. And he said the cure to that is to serve one another in love. So it's like Otis used to teach, Brother Otis used to teach, it's not best to go around thinking about stuff you can't do or shouldn't do.
It's better to find a good thing to do and go do it. Spend your time doing that and then you don't have time to do the bad stuff. So it's kind of what it teaches there in verses 13 and 14 because it teaches that loving one another and serving one another in love is the key to not letting the liberty cause us to sin because we can.
You know, that's not a good attitude for a Christian anyway, is it? Sin because we can't. That's not how Christians really think, but that shows the solution to the problem, serve one another in love.
And then the next thing, next point, the third point was that spiritual warfare takes place between our ears, okay? It's in the mind and verses 17 and 18 talk about that. Alright, so then the fourth thing was that we see now a study on what the fruits of the Spirit are and that's where we are now.
And last time we even talked about about one and a half sets of it. There are nine of them. You can divide them into three groups and the first group has to do with on the inside, fruits of the Spirit that predominantly have to do with who we are on the inside.
The second three, you can call them things that we do towards other people or they're at least they're really still on the inside but they're exhibited more to other people that we live around. And in the third group of three, more to do with fruits that specifically go towards God himself.
Now all of them are interchangeable though because some of the last group also affect you and come for all of them come from the inside so it's not a it's not like they can only be in these three, you know, one of these three groups and they stay in there.
They kind of they're kind of everything but it's a good way to think of it and it really gives kind of a natural division as you look at it. So last time we started verses Galatians chapter 5 verses 22 and 23 and we talked about this inward fruit.
Like obviously these are on the inside. Now do they show to other people? Absolutely they should. All of these. I mean the whole idea of bearing fruit is it hangs on us and shows. The world can see this fruit but it doesn't come from the branch.
It comes from the root and that's Jesus. So the first one is love and we talked about it last time but that's agape love which is different than human love right? It has nothing to do with the object of love.
It all comes from the giver, the lover. Second one was joy and it has the connotation in that particular Greek word with the idea of cheerfulness and gladness and delight. My favorite definition was calm, delight.
Calm, delight. And then the third one we talked about was peace and it's interesting because it comes from a little Greek root word that means to tie or bind together. So because we're bound together we can have peace and that's sort of the meaning of it.
And those were the inward fruit. Then we started looking a little bit at the outward fruit and you'll notice as you keep reading there in Galatians the next three, the fourth one which would be we're gonna put these next three in the outward group which is things that we show toward one another and the first one of those is long-suffering which some people define that as patience but I like the Old English word long-suffering.
It describes it better because it comes from a Greek word that literally means having the disposition to bear injuries patiently. So like other people hurt you, you can be patient under that and not have to swing right back at them and hit them back.
The Bible says Jesus was reviled but he reviled not again. He didn't have to come right back at you and he didn't often. He often he just took it meekly and just let you say what you're gonna say and he would either say what was important or move on to the next thing.
He didn't always have to just get you back did he because he was meek which is going to be another one of these. But the first thing long-suffering, patient, lenient, it's got all these different kinds of concepts but the ability to bear up under suffering that another person brings to you without striking back is kind of the connotation.
I don't think patience is a bad word to use. It's a good modern word but it's deeper than that. It's more than just being patient. It's being willing to stand up under suffering that another person brings to you and still be patient with that person is more the idea.
So gentleness was the next one and this one and we didn't get to talk about this one a whole lot so this was about where we started running out of time last time. Gentleness is interesting to study through the different concepts in the Greek but you get, I found several different triples of, triplets of words.
Like the first one I found was honesty, respectability, and worthiness and I'm getting these out of Greek dictionaries. The next one was kindness, friendliness, and mildness. So you, what we see from this is this word in Greek has a lot of colors to it.
It's not just one thing. It takes quite a few words to describe what this word means, just this idea of gentleness. Now remember all of these things, let's put it in the negative, none of these things are things you can produce by just wanting to do it or striving to do it.
You can't say okay one of the fruits of the Spirit is gentleness. I'm a Christian, I'm supposed to be gentle so I'm just gonna be gentle and then work at it. It just, it just won't work that way. It doesn't happen that way.
It comes from holding Jesus' hand and walking filled with the Spirit and letting His gentleness show through your life. That's how it happens. It's the only way it can happen because it's not coming from you.
It's coming from the root and it hangs off of you like fruit and people can see it and they can know that you're with Christ when they see it. But don't ever take credit for it because it ain't you and it ain't me if we're talking about the old man.
But who is the real you and me? Is it the old man or the new man? It's the new man. So this is us but it's been formed into us by Christ. It's been when we were born again we had new genes. We have God's genes and this is part of His genes.
So it is us but it's not our old man. Does that make sense? Nothing to do with how we grew up or our natural state or trying to learn to be better, stuff like that. And yet so many churches are built around character traits and trying to be better.
And a lot of Christian schools talk about that a lot too and I'm not against it. I'm not against teaching the kids these good character traits but I think it's smart to add, you know, the way you get them is to be saved and have Christ and then it shows through.
That shows through in these qualities, in these ways. And these are on a higher level than some human attempt at creating them within the old man. It just can't be done that way. So gentleness is interesting.
It comes from a root word which means to be employed or to be useful. To be employed or to be useful. But it carries this connotation of honesty, respectability, and worthiness. So I would put, to narrow that down, I would just say honor.
It has the idea of being useful. It has the idea of being honorable. And then if you want to talk about kindness, friendliness, mildness, goodness, mildness, and so forth, I would just say you could add the word upright.
So it's not so much the English word now. Gentle doesn't describe this word very well because it has to do more with honor and uprightness in the world among your brothers and sisters. Can you be trusted?
Are you useful to the church? Are things happening because you exist that wouldn't happen if you weren't here? Are you contributing to the kingdom of God through your life? And do you have honor and uprightness?
And all of this fits into this word. So you know what? One English word to me that can almost describe this, not exactly, but it gives you more the connotation than just the word gentle, is the word gentleman.
Ladies, maybe you can relate to it. Like when you think of what is it, what's the difference between a gentleman and just a man, right? What's the difference? A gentleman is so close to the meaning of this, except this relates to women too.
So you'd have to say a gentle woman too, but you see the meaning of the word gentleman fits this better than the word gentle, I think, but except it's for both sexes. It's not just for men. But so I think the bottom line to remember is that this fruit of the spirit carries the root meaning of useful, useful to the Lord, useful to one another, useful to the church, but it carries with it an honorable, upright, useful person.
Does that make sense? That's the best I can do with it. And that's not something we can try to be. It's something that we are when we're connected to Christ, and we are not when we're not. The third one in this group of fruits that go outward to other people is goodness, is the English word goodness.
The Greek word does mean goodness. It's translated that way many times. It also means virtue, goodness. It means the quality or state of doing or producing good. So it's almost more like a verb than a noun.
So you could say it's goodness in action, and that's why we put it in the list of outward ones towards other people. It's not just being good on the inside, but obviously it has to start there, and the only goodness that we have is Christ in us, the hope of glory.
You're correct. So because we have Jesus and his spirit and our spirit become one spirit when we're spirit-filled, then we have his goodness within us. We can certainly display that before the world, but it's not just something people look at.
It's something they see you doing. So you're doing good things. Not that you are good. You are. You have the goodness of Christ, right? You are that first, but it's not just that you are good. It carries the connotation of the active action word, action verb, doing good.
You're going about doing good, and the only reason is because you have Christ in you doing that good. So now let's talk about this last group of three, and I would call it upward fruit. It's fruit that relates to our Father first of all.
You'll see how these are interchangeable. It relates to each other. It also comes from the inside, but you can kind of see what I'm talking about when it had a special relationship with these three with God, because the first one is the word faith, and the first person that this should have a relationship with is between you and God, don't you think?
Because who is it you have faith in? It's the Lord, and so faith is a fruit of the Spirit. Now here's what I think is fascinating about this. It wasn't until probably, I don't know, when I when I met Brother Otis and maybe two or three years into our relationship when the two of us saw this concept of how we're saved by the faith of Christ, not in Christ.
It kind of sounds weird even saying it, but you can read older writers 100, 150 years ago that talked about it, but you won't read modern ones anywhere in the bookstore that talk about this anymore, and we've talked about it so many times, but it's kind of obvious to me that if this is in a list of fruits of the Spirit, this is not something we did.
It's something that hangs on us, but where does it originate? Where does fruit originate? From the root. So it's obvious in the concept of what fruit is that it's not human faith. It's not human believing that saves us, and we've been taught our whole life that it is.
So to hear that it's not from a man that no one knows about in the world from a little bitty church, you go, well, that can't be true. That's too weird. It's different from everything I've ever been taught.
I think we are taught by just believing. I mean, I think we are saved because it's what everybody has always taught me, and yet the Bible never taught it. It never taught it that way. It taught that it is a fruit of the Spirit, which means it comes from the Spirit.
It doesn't come from you. It doesn't come from me. It doesn't come from a mental pep rally of saying, I believe, I believe, I believe like we've always been taught. That saves no one. Hebrews chapter 10 in the last two verses in the chapter teach very clearly that there is a belief unto salvation, but there's also a belief that's not, and that's the human belief.
It's not unto salvation. There are many people who believe in God, and they'll never be in heaven. Many, many people because they just chose they would believe in God, and that's not what saves us. This is a fruit of the Spirit.
Look at it. It's called faith. It's a fruit of the Spirit. It's something that Christ creates in you, something that Christ creates in me. It's not something I did for him. It's not something I did to get saved.
I couldn't have done it in the first place. It's not my fruit. It's his fruit, and it's a wonderful miracle and gift that he gave it to us, and we sit here today as a small group knowing one another quite well.
Like Ron said, I know you, so I can say this song right here has to do with you. You couldn't know that in a bigger church, and I'm not against big. I wish we had a huge church. It'd be awesome, but we have what God wants us to have, but the one thing that we can sit here and know this morning together without making anybody angry, without ruffling any feathers, which you couldn't say that for any group I could talk to this morning, any larger group.
If I spoke of this, I would end up, if there's a break, answering questions for an hour or two, saying what I'm about to say, but faith is a gift of God. Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 has nothing to do with works, not by works which we have done, but according to his grace, he saved us.
It's a gift from God, and here it is right here. It's a fruit that he puts in us and lets hang off of us, so it could not have saved us, and let's put it this way. It did save us, but it wasn't us that produced it.
It was him. God did all the work to save us, including giving us the faith of Jesus Christ, and here we see it in a completely different way than all the verses that call it literally say we're saved by the faith of Christ.
This is a completely different way. It just calls faith a fruit of the Spirit, and so here it is, and it is the same word for faith throughout the New Testament, pistis, which means, I like this definition, persuasion.
Now, does it make any sense to you this morning if I stand here as a preacher and say, well, here's how you get saved. Here's what you got to do to get saved. You got to believe, and I'm making it sound like it's something you have to do, and if you don't do it, you're going to go to hell, so you better do it.
So do you want to do it? Oh, yes, preacher, I do. Well, how do I do it? Pray this prayer. Do Jesus come to my heart and say amen, right? If it's really like that, it totally defies the definition of what the word faith means in Greek because the word faith means persuasion, and persuasion is something someone else has to do to you.
It's not something you can do to yourself. You can't make yourself be persuaded in something. Something on the outside has to persuade you. An argument, for example. Someone gives a great argument, and that persuades you.
Or your mama says it, so you think it's true, so that persuades you. But in this case, the very definition of pistis means that you have been persuaded by God that God is real and you're not him, basically.
That's like it's a heavenly thing. It's not something we do. It's not human. It's something God does to us and for us. It is conviction of a truth. It is conviction of the truthfulness of God, and another way it's translated in the New Testament is the word assurance.
This same Greek word has been translated assurance. So it is an assurance of the existence of God that God himself puts in your heart that you didn't used to have in and of yourself from your flesh. You couldn't have worked that up.
It's something he gave you as a gift. It is a conviction of the fact that he is God. It is a persuasion that he puts in your heart that Jesus is exactly who he claimed to be, the Messiah of the world.
And only God can put that persuasion in our hearts, and he does, and the definition of the word means the same thing. So it's interesting because it comes from the little Greek word apetho, which means to convince.
So someone had to convince us, or we would never would have believed it, and that person is the Holy Spirit. So that first part of upward fruit that goes between us to God is faith, and it's a fruit of the Spirit, which means you can't have it till after you're saved, which tells me it cannot be the cause of your salvation.
It's an effect of it. It's something you got with the regeneration. When God saved you, this is a gift he gave you. So he did the saving. He didn't require you to do anything to get saved because then it's not a promise.
It's not an unconditional promise like the Abrahamic covenant anymore if you had to do something. So we all knew that, and we talked about it, but we never put it together until we really get in the word and see it.
New baby Christians can't know this. They can only learn it from scripture. A baby Christian is like a baby human. The baby human thinks the whole universe centered around himself or herself, right? Baby Christians are the same way.
Let me share with you my testimony. Here's what I did to get saved. I accepted Jesus. Smile real big. Smile with them. Don't correct them. It's okay if they think that. They need to think that for a while, and as they get into the study of the Word, they go, you mean that was a fruit of the Spirit, that belief that I thought I did?
It's not really something I did. It's something I had, and it was a gift from God. Praise you, Lord. You saved me. You know, that sort of thing. All right, let's look at the second one. Meekness. This one should convince us that obviously these are not things we can do ourselves.
These are things that God has to put in us, and it's actually Him in us. It's Christ in us that causes these things to be displayed in our lives. Meekness. Now this one, probably a good one-word definition would be gentleness, but then you got to start adding other words to get all the colors.
Humility is a good word to put. In English, the English word means enduring injury with patience and without resentment. So think about that. Enduring injury from other people with patience and without resentment.
Is that human? Do anybody in here accomplish this in the flesh? No, no, no, no. You can't accomplish this in the flesh. Anyway, it is a high, high thing that comes from God to us and from Jesus. When you think of the word meek, you just picture Jesus.
You picture how He was. He didn't have to answer everything because He was above the person that was sending this slanderous thought out into the world anyway. He didn't even choose to always answer it.
Sometimes He would answer it in a different way and say something about them like, I'm from above, you're from below, where I go you cannot come because I'm of my father in heaven and you're of your father the devil.
He would say things like that, but it wasn't a direct answer to what they just said about Him. So He is meek and He is gentle. One thing about the word meekness, it does not mean weak. In fact, it's the highest strength there is, is to be able to endure damage from another person without having resentment and without striking back.
That is the strongest strength a person can have and certainly we don't have it within our flesh, but the Lord gives it to us as part of the fruits of the Spirit when He comes to live within us. Other one-word definitions, mild, in other words not violent, moderate is another word, humble, freedom from pride or arrogance, and I think the best way to understand meekness is simply to sit down and read the book of Luke like we're studying through adult Sunday school and look at the life and the works of Jesus Christ and you'll see what meekness is.
But because we have Him, we have the ability to put this out. Now notice I put it in the group of upwards, so let me put something on you this morning, it doesn't feel real good, but as we walk through this life and we are attacked by other people, by the government, by whatever, as we get attacked, what is our first thought and our first response?
And it's really humbling when we realize it's usually from the flesh and it's never meekness, it's how do I zap them back, how do I get them back, right? And so then the Holy Spirit comes to us and says, now okay, back off just a little bit and look at your Savior, look at your leader and see what he would do.
Now think about that and a few seconds later you change your direction completely, right? That's the fruit of the Spirit, is you do have the ability to be meek, but it's a secondary, it doesn't come from the flesh, it's not going to be your first thought unless you're walking in the Spirit at the very second the person hurts you, which would be good, be good for the other person if that were the case too, wouldn't it?
And if you are, you won't hit back, you will simply turn the other cheek and stop and think about it, pray about it and exhibit this beautiful fruit of the Spirit called meekness. I like Webster, you do know Webster was a Christian, he was a born-again Christian that wrote the Webster's Dictionary, but he defined this word as enduring, you would think he got it straight from Christ and you may have been thinking about it when he wrote this, enduring injury with patience and without resentment.
What a beautiful definition and I think that's otherworldly, I don't think it's something natural in this world, I don't think it's something humans have, I think God has to put it in the world and he puts it in there through putting it in us and if they don't see it in us, they ain't gonna see it.
All right, the third one is temperance. Oh, I didn't make my final thought on the second one though, meekness. Think about, if you make this be one of the ones between you and God, think about the Lord watching us every step of the way and how we respond, it's kind of a response word, like how do we respond when the world throws this at David or at Ron, how do we respond and even with illnesses like you just went through, you know, you can think this isn't fair, why'd this happen to me, right?
Or attacks from other people, you think this isn't fair, why'd this happen to me, Lord, I walk with you all the time, why'd you let this happen? You can think like that if you want to but that's not meek, that's prideful, that's self-centered, so think about meekness with regard to the Lord watching us as we respond and it really helps us to understand why this fruit is important because God is watching us and he is watching and observing how we respond.
All right, so now let's move on to temperance, the third, this is the ninth one but it's the third one in the third group of three and this is towards God too but you can see how this also is towards others, it's even on inside as we monitor ourselves, you're going to see this one, temperance, and this one literally means self-control, it comes from a little root word in Greek that means strong in a thing, to be strong in a thing, it really carries the idea of strength, so temperance, when we think of that, you know, we think of things, it's almost like self-control, like not being an alcoholic, if you are an alcoholic and you stop being an alcoholic, now all of a sudden you're exhibiting temperance because you're showing strength against that temptation and so forth, so to be strong in a thing, another word is to be masterful in a thing, how to master something, not just know about how to do it and sort of do it a little bit but actually practice it enough where when you show it in front of other people you're a master of it, you can think of musicians real easily with this word, it's a difference to be able to play guitar but it's something else to master it where when you hold it it sounds like a human voice singing when you play it, that's a whole nother level and that is the underlying connotation for temperance, it's how to master maybe certain temptations of the flesh, how you master the ability to avoid it, you master the ability to be strong against it and that's really a high level in the life of a human being and it can only be while holding the hand of Jesus because it's his fruit in us and you think about his fruit, now think about this for a minute, I think men can relate to this better than women even, is that the Bible says that Jesus Christ was tempted in all points as us and yet without sin, that is temperance, all points as us and yet without one sinful thought and certainly one sinful deed, a whole life, a whole lifetime, if he had fallen in one area we would have all gone to hell, we would have all perished if he had fallen in one area, so temperance is maybe one of the most important things that ever existed in God's universe because if Jesus hadn't had it we would all pay the price for our own sin, think about that, he was a man, he wasn't just God, he was a man too, fully man, but he had this fruit, temperance, his whole life until he gave up the ghost and so beautiful to think about those things that way.
All right, well as we move on the chapter didn't stop right there, we now have verse 24, right after these nine things are listed, did I say chapter, I meant to say verse 24, it says, very interesting because it just shows these nine things that at first read you think it's something I need to learn to do but as you study it more closely you see these are things that God does to me as I hold his hand, right, it's Christ in me actually, the hope of glory, Christ in me, so the next verse says, and they that are Christ's have crucified, in the Greek that means have already crucified, it's something that's already happened, the flesh with the affections and the lusts, they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts, what this does is it shows our position, our position in Christ, our position is one that has the flesh and the lusts already crucified, that is our position and as we hold his hand that is our reality, as we let go of the hand and fall back into the flesh it's not a reality, at least for those moments, in God's, in the Father's viewpoint, thank goodness it's an eternal reality, he doesn't see us sin, the Father doesn't see sin in us at all, but living in time when we hold the hand of Christ then our flesh has already been crucified and when we let go of the hand we sink and could drown in the water, right, and so at that point that flesh has not been crucified yet, now it has been from God's viewpoint though, isn't that wonderful, from God's viewpoint it's something that's already happened, from our viewpoint, a practical viewpoint, it's yes, while we hold the hand it is already happened and no, when we let go of the hand it's the flesh is still alive and that's something and that is a very difficult life I think, but it's one we all live by God's will, God said that he put this treasure in earthen vessels, what treasure, this born-again person, the real, the new you is put into a body that can sin on purpose because when you do ever get it right everyone will know that God did that because we're so weak, they'll know we didn't do it, they'll know it's God in us, it's the fruits of God that just showed forth in that person and there's Christ in that person, there's Christ in the world through that person and that gives God all the glory, so they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, notice you can't turn that around backwards and say well those who crucify the flesh those are the ones that get saved because God looked down at him and saw him crucifying the flesh so he saved him, we don't get saved on the basis of stuff we do, this is an effect of our salvation not the cause of it, those who are already in Christ, those who are already saved have the effect of crucified flesh, it shows up from time to time that we don't just live for self, right?
We do when we're in the flesh but when we're in the spirit we don't just live for self, we live for others and we live for Christ. Verse 24, when I was a new Christian and starting to study a lot I would go back to that verse many times wondering what it meant as I observed my own life and I even questioned my salvation a few times but never more than a nanosecond because for some reason with me I got saved later in life I guess 24 years old I was so certain that God had saved me and I knew he saved me I knew it wasn't me doing anything that I never really doubted my salvation ever I just not more than like if I had a thought of that it would be gone in a nanosecond and this I think that's the Holy Spirit witnessing with my spirit that I'm a child of God that's been really strong in my life since I got saved.
I think maybe it is stronger in people that get saved later in life because you see how you were and now you see how God changed you maybe more than someone to get saved at a very early age but when I would look at verse 24 I would have a few nanoseconds of doubt because I would say well golly I'm not sure I have crucified the flesh.
I'm not sure I've crucified the flesh with the affections and the lusts. So maybe I'm not really saved. And then when you really study that you have to ask the question did Christ crucify himself or is that something others do to you and with regard to us.
Do we ever crucify ourselves or is that something God did to us. So I mean I can't do well or fail at this because it's not me that did it. Does that make sense. It's the Lord that crucified my flesh and he did it when he crucified when his own flesh was crucified when his body was crucified I was in him I died with him.
And when he rose again I rose again with him. So this is all the work of God. And it took me years to study to understand verse 24. It's a little bit difficult for a new Christian I think. But look at verse 25 it starts to help a little.
It says if we live in the spirit and I want you to think about this. We had three kinds of spiritual fruit we had inward outward and upward. Right. So which one of the three would this be. If we live in the spirit.
That's inward. Like if while we're walking in this life we're living in the spirit which means we're what like we're walking in the new man on the inside I'm holding the hand of Jesus. So that's inward.
Then it says let us also walk in the spirit. What's that. That's outward. That's what the other people see. They see our walk. And if we're living in the spirit on the inside let that be seen by others on the outside is what this is saying.
And it will be it will be seen by others. And in verse 26 now it has shown us that we ought to be walking in the spirit. The flesh should be crucified counted as if it's already dead. We're walking hand-in-hand with Christ.
That's who we are on the inside. That's what should be exhibited on the outside. And in the next verse it says some things that we need to willfully avoid by that I mean we need to make the choice to avoid these things.
It says let us not be desirous of vain glory. So the first one is fight pride. You know willfully make a choice to not desire to have glory among in the front of other men in this world. Fight that desire because we all in the flesh kind of have it.
You know when we see a movie star. Well why couldn't everybody know me like that. You know we all from time to time from the time we're born as we grow up and mature in this life you you have a predisposition in the flesh to be prideful.
We all do. It was the first sin. It's the sin Satan did. Right. The first sin selfishness is tied to this as well. So one of the first things that we're told to avoid once we're walking with the Lord and we're living this Christian life in front of the world is to avoid the desire for glory now that is very important in the church especially with these bigger churches when you have seven eight thousand people out there it can.
It could probably be pretty easy for a young preacher to want to get up in front of those people and just wow him with his clever words and how he looks and how he handles himself. And for young preachers they have to be really help careful with this desire for vain glory.
But it can happen with all of us at any age in any size church you can have people who walk in and they want to be known as a very spiritual person. And I want to be given really good spiritual jobs. And I want everybody to know I've got that job.
That is something that the scripture says right here in this discussion of fruit-bearing don't desire glory. If you desire glory God won't give it or it will be seen by other men that you had that desire and it won't be pretty right.
So that's the first one. Provoking one another is the second one. Do you know that the Bible speaks of grieving the Holy Spirit right. Do you know that when you read the context of one of the few places where it uses the phrase grieving the Holy Spirit the whole context is about division in the church.
So we're talking about a person who would cause division or try to cause different groups to follow me and you got this other group over here following that person. You guys need to be over here on my side that's called making parties like Democrat Republican parties.
That's what the word means creating parties in the church all of this that's things that grieve the Holy Spirit. So obviously that has to be done in the flesh. That's not a fruit of the spirit. It's a fruit of the flesh right.
So that's one of the things we need to avoid is provoking one another. In the third one listed here is envying one another and that those things are things towards God that when God sees us behaving this way it grieves him.
And so the Bible says look as far as our walk with regard to our relationship with God the vertical relationship you really need to avoid wanting glory. You need to avoid provoking other Christians and you need to avoid envying other people and other Christians because the Lord is never pleased by those things.
And you can have a fellowship problem develop between you and the Lord. So that's listed interestingly enough in verse 26 you know right after all this amazing discussion on the fruit of the spirit he just throws that in like here's stuff you need to avoid it which is funny to me because that's really things of the flesh.
Right. It's the opposite but you may come to realize guess what the scripture is about to go into right after verse 26 it's about to talk about what are the fruits of the flesh. It's gonna list those and I'm not going to go into those today at all.
In fact I'm only going to go into a couple of other verses and we'll be out of time. But when you look at when you move into chapter 6 of Galatians you're looking at me like we did the guy who was going to preach through the book of Revelation one Wednesday night and we'd been there an hour and a half.
He was a missionary. He'd been there an hour and a half. He says now we're gonna talk about the bowls and we went because there's a bunch of them you know. But anyway so I'm not going to go into this much just a little bit but we need to look at these bowls here.
They're interesting all. Right. Galatians chapter 6. If you go from verse 1 all the way down through those first few verses you see a whole lot of interesting things that and it's kind of interesting to me that it comes after the chapter of the fruits of the Spirit and sort of almost like armor that we have the fruit of Spirit battles against the flesh and the flesh against the Spirit.
Right. But this gives a list of things to do when you fail. Isn't that interesting. It first teaches us here's how you should look look at Christ. This is how you should be. Right. Look at Christ. He's meek.
He's all these things. This is how you should be. Don't you think it's interesting that the very next chapter gives us a whole list of things to do when we fail. What's that telling us we're not there yet.
Are we. We're not perfect. We're in a we're in an earthen vessel. We are not going to walk in the Spirit every moment of every day. We should and know where that says we couldn't we can choose to do that.
It's just we don't. We could but we don't. So what happens when we don't. And that whole next chapter chapter 6 is about that. And I'm not going to go into it this morning. You can't handle more this morning.
But I mean it's kind of interesting. I just want to point out that that's what he puts that next. What's that telling us we're not going to be perfect. We're not going to get this higher level of being walking in the Spirit every moment of every day in this life.
So what do we do when we mess up. And that's what chapter 6 is about. And what's interesting. It's got like nine points. Isn't that interesting. It's the same the fruits of Spirit were nine of them three groups of three.
And this has nine things to do when we fail. So we'll look at those Lord willing next time we come together. I can't wait to come back next week and have Bill reveal his secret on the kingdom of God. And so we have some things to look forward to.
We'll get with those things next Sunday morning. Lord willing let's stand and have prayer together. Father we thank you so much for your word and your spirit. We thank you for the water and the spirit.
Without that without both we could not be saved. And without both we could not grow. So we have to have the Word of God in the Holy Spirit. And thank you that you've given us both. And thank you that you you bring the Word of God to life by your spirit.
And you teach us things both old and new every time we get together. So Lord we just ask you to go with us into this week always help us to be prepared for the week to come in these last days on the planet Earth.
And thank you that you let us live in the most interesting of days prepare us to do what we're put here to do and prepare our children and our grandchildren as well. Thank you for the food we're about to have in the fellowship.
And we pray in Jesus name amen. See you in a few moments.