May 8, 2017 Show with Dr. Stan Gale on “A Vine-Ripened Life: Spiritual Fruitfulness through Abiding in Christ”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth. We're listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this eighth day of May 2017.

I'm delighted to have returning to the program today Dr. Stanley D. Gale, who is pastor of discipleship at Ironworks Church of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

He's the author of The Prayer of Jehoshaphat, Seeing Beyond Life's Storms, What is

Spiritual Warfare, Why Do We Pray, and others. He's founder and director of Community Houses of Prayer, and today we are discussing his book,

A Vine -Ripened Life, Spiritual Fruitfulness Through Abiding in Christ, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Stanley D. Gale. Hello, Chris. It's good to be back with you. Looking forward to our time together.

And I am as well, and co -hosting in studio with me is the Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hey, good evening.

And we are taking questions by email. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And for our listeners who are discovering you for the first time,

Dr. Gale, and on top of that, since your church that you are now pastor of discipleship, where you are now pastor of discipleship,

Ironworks Church of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, is a new work that you're involved in.

Why don't you let our listeners know something about Ironworks Church of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania? Sure.

Ironworks is a church about five years old or so. It started out as a church plant, and I had involvement in that in a supportive role.

And I was pastor at the church, Reformed Presbyterian Church in Westchester, for,

I guess, about 28 years. And this is the shifting gears for me, where I'm now coming on the staff of Ironworks Church on a part -time basis, working with developing a ministry of discipleship, which our topic today fits in very well with.

And the senior pastor at Ironworks Church is Darren Pesnell, Reverend Darren Pesnell, and he is an excellent young man, and he's doing a great work there in Phoenixville for the sake of Christ.

Praise God. And this book that you have written, Vined, Ripe in Life, a very interesting title, and especially a very interesting subtitle,

Spiritual Fruitfulness Through Abiding in Christ. What was the catalyst behind your writing this book?

Well, I guess the direct answer would be of studying the fruit of the

Spirit from Galatians 5, and then connecting that with what Jesus said in John 15, that apart from Him, we can't bear any fruit, and here we're looking and looking at the fruit of the

Spirit, and so that maybe got me thinking. But actually, the answer to the thing really, the catalyst to it,

I was a pastor of the church, and pastors are trying to encourage the congregation in their tithing and offering, and giving not just begrudgingly, or begrudgingly at all, but giving generously to the

Lord, with great liberality and cheerfulness. And I realized that the way that's going to happen is not from loading them up with guilt, saying, give, give, give, but it's from an overflow of a heart that is loving

Jesus Christ and wants to be invested in His church, and the growth of His church, and the expansion of His kingdom.

And so that brought me down to the heart level, rather than just making demands, that giving needs to be an overflow of the heart.

And that's kind of the way it is with spiritual fruitfulness. You know, we can look like nice little

Pharisees, you know, doing all the right things and being moral, but it's got to come from the heart.

It needs to be an overflow of the heart, which is the wellspring of life. And of course, that takes us to the

Spirit's work, and that fruit of the Spirit, that is the fruit of the Spirit. And we do already have a question from Bakersfield, California, for you.

How should a Christian prepare for spiritual warfare when sharing the gospel with someone they know?

This is a bit off topic, but you have written on this subject. Should we just go into a conversation with someone, praying that God would save them, and then leave it up to Him, capital

H meaning God? I hope my question makes sense. And that's Daniel in Bakersfield, California.

A bit off topic, but it is something that you've written on. That is true. A little shifting of gears there.

Well, let's see, going to a conversation, an evangelistic conversation with someone.

Well, we know that Satan is real.

We know that he we're told that he seeks to pluck up the seed of the gospel as it's sown.

And so we want to be aware of that, and to say, Lord, we pray, we want to pray that God would show mercy, that God would prepare the heart, that the heart that would receive it would not be thorny or rocky or the path, but would be good soil.

And of course, that can only come by the grace of God and the Holy Spirit who removes that heart of stone and gives the heart of flesh and gives the person ears to hear and that heart to embrace that gospel.

And so we want to pray against the efforts of the evil and pray that the Lord would work

His wonders, His saving wonders, but also pray against the efforts of the evil and to pluck up the seed of the gospel sown.

And also we want to listen, you know, what lies about God? What lies about salvation?

What other truths have they latched onto that come from this world system of which

Satan is called the prince of this world? So we want to be tuned in to that so they can respond with the truth of God's Word.

And of course, you know, when we respond, we don't smack somebody over the head or jam it down their throat.

Scripture says that we respond, we bring the truth of God to bear in four ways. Timothy, 2nd

Timothy 4, with patience and careful instruction. So we want to show them where they might be off base, but we don't.

We convince them, we woo them, we open the Word of God to them with patience, allowing the room for the

Spirit. And then Peter talks about, as we defend our faith, we do so with gentleness and respect.

You know, sometimes we can talk at people, and I think that Satan uses that for us to drive people away so that the good news, instead of being enticing, actually becomes revolting.

And so we want to trust in the Lord to handle things His way, recognizing that our eloquence, our persuasiveness, our comprehensiveness accomplishes nothing apart from the work of the

Holy Spirit. I'm assuming, going back to the original topic of vine -ripened life,

I'm assuming that some of the content of your book takes us to such places as Matthew 7, where Christ talks about a tree and its fruit.

And we have Matthew 7, starting in verses, starting in verse 15,

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they?

So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

So then, you will know them by their fruits. Am I correct in assuming that this is one of the texts that you have drawn from?

Actually, I don't think that I use that text. It's a short book. John 16,

I remember. Yes, but it is, that is right there, is that we want to, if a person, it's, it starts with the heart.

And scripture says, if you are light, therefore be light. So it's that overflow of the heart, you know, Proverbs 4, it says that, that indicates what is, what is in the heart.

So again, we can't, we don't work at the heart level. The Holy Spirit does.

And so that's why we need to look to Him and employ His means for the growth of true discipleship.

Now, one of the things that is somewhat confusing about bearing good fruit, and especially when we have our

Lord Himself saying that good trees cannot bear bad fruit and bad trees cannot bear good fruit.

What's confusing to me about that, perhaps you can help me out with this, is that the best of Christians sin, and the best of Christians can even commit heinous sin as long as, of course, they, since we believe in the perseverance and preservation of the saints, we believe a true

Christian, a truly regenerate person, a truly born again person will repent of that.

Their lives will not be marked by ongoing gross scandalous sin.

But good and godly men and women can fall into such wickedness, and you also have lost unregenerate people, sometimes being better husbands than Christians are, being better fathers or mothers than Christians are, being better employees or employers.

But, you know, you can go on and on with the list of remarkable character traits that even the lost can give evidence of possessing.

How do you sort that out when the Lord is saying that good trees cannot bear bad fruit and vice versa?

Well, I think you've raised at least three issues there, and I see if I can remember all of them.

One, a Christian does sin, and in fact, one of the marks, one of the hallmarks of true faith is an awareness of personal sin.

Because it says in 1 John 5 that, I write these things in order to you believe in the name of the

Son of God and in order that you may know that you have eternal life. So I think this is how you know that you're a Christian. And then in 1

John 1, he says that if you say you're without sin, you deceive yourself, and he says if you say you're without sin, you only deceive yourself, you may have got a liar.

So he's saying that we need to be aware that we are sinners saved by grace in constant need of the

Lord Jesus Christ. The other thing is that, and this is a whole thing to be worked out, drawn out in Scripture, but we are in the flesh still in the sense that sin is still present with us.

There's that gravitational pull of sin so that while we are not both regenerate and regenerate, we're either regenerate or regenerate, still this body of sin remains.

The members of our body and as we are, it's like we are misaligned cars and we need to constantly hold on to the wheel so that we can maintain it, maintain the road, the narrow way the

Lord has us on. So when we die, we will be delivered from that flesh and it will no longer exert its gravitational pull that is present in the fallen world.

And we look forward to glory when we will not be able to sin. So there's that whole tension that Paul talks about and he calls us spiritual men, not fleshly men, so that we are of the

Holy Spirit but we're still in the flesh. So there's that rustling and Satan, we're told, appeals to the inner desires, you know, that me oriental life, lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

So there's that dynamic and it actually is an appeal to our renewed will.

And so we're always told these imperatives to, you know, if we walk by the Spirit, we will not carry out the deeds of the flesh.

And so Paul is moving us away from the darkness, this is moving away from who we were as Gentiles, who we were in darkness, who we were at home in the world, to our new identity and new power and new life in Jesus Christ.

And the third thing that I think you're weaving in there is the common grace that we see in this world.

I'm not sure whether I used this illustration in my book, I think I did, but when my daughter was born 30 -some years ago, there was a strange sound with her heart.

And we, I was a seminary student, we didn't have two nickels to rub together, but the doctor, this doctor cardiologist, pediatric cardiologist, agreed to see her.

And he said, yeah, there's a hole in the heart. And he exhibited extraordinary, he was not a believer, but he exhibited this extraordinary, tender care and compassion that was a thing of beauty and gave glory to God as a hallmark of God's common grace.

So the people are not as wicked as they could be and people contribute a value to the society that God has made.

So there are a whole bunch of different dynamics at work there. It's hard to, it's hard, just as we did now, there are a number of things to be sorted out.

And by the way, I forgot to mention Daniel in Bakersfield, California, you have won a free copy of the book we are addressing today,

A Vine -Ripened Life, Spiritual Fruitfulness Through Abiding in Christ.

And if anyone else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Thank you, Daniel. Keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and keep spreading the word in Bakersfield, California and beyond.

And that book should be arriving within a week or so, compliments of Reformation Heritage Books and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be shipping that out to you.

Look for a package with the label cvbbs .com on that, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com.

And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for shipping out all of our listeners their free bibles and books, cds, dvds and other items whenever they submit questions to our guests.

And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for being faithful supporters of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio as well. So if you could summarize what you mean in your title by the fruit of the vine.

Well, it speaks to a couple things. One is that the Christian life will be a fruitful life in the sense that it will show the fruit of repentance.

It will show the fruit of new life, the fruit of a changed life that is now oriented to Jesus Christ, that knows him and serves him, and as Christ is formed in them, which is what

Paul talks about in Galatians 4, the chapter prior to his listing of the fruit of the spirit.

And of course, the vine is Jesus Christ. And so that's to say that the Christian life is a vine -ripened life.

We're by the Holy Spirit, we're united to Christ in our effectual calling, we have life in him, and then we grow through abiding in him.

And so it's a picture of the doctrine of union with Christ, which is

Paul's letters are filled with that. And Jesus himself says, you don't have life apart from me.

And so it's all pointing us, it's all rooting us. We're rooted and built up in Christ and overflowing with that fruit of the new life.

Now, obviously, as I said before, you can have lost people demonstrating that they are in the world's, according to the world's litmus tests, they can be very wonderful and loving and enjoyable people.

In fact, there are lost people that Christians even prefer sharing company with over and above some of those that profess to be

Christians. Yeah, that's something, yeah. And so how are we to be fruit inspectors, if you will, especially when there are lost people who even profess to be

Christians, there's millions of them out there. And unfortunately, even a number of them who are televangelists and radio personalities and authors, best -selling authors, you know, breaking records for sales and so on.

How do we become successful fruit inspectors?

Not that we can know the heart of man like Christ. We are not mind readers, but if you could, this is,

I think, obviously a very important issue in the life of the church. Yeah, well, we enter a dangerous position,

I think, where we think that we can know people's hearts and to judge their motives. So in the sense of being fruit inspectors saying, this is not authentic,

I think we need to tread carefully. We, in terms of ourselves, we can even deceive ourselves, thinking that, and we're actually, our motives always are mixed.

They're always tainted. And so there's this dynamic of the

Christian life where we are growing in Christ -likeness, but there's always this element of struggle.

In fact, Paul himself says, I wrestle as in childbirth until Christ is formed in you, and we ourselves wrestle.

That's why we had the words like work and run, and endurance are marked out for us to fight the good fight, and we see this is not an easy thing.

But let me, let's use love as an example. You know, love is the first in the list of the fruit of the

Holy Spirit from Galatians 5. And love is, the world has its understanding of love, and the scriptures have their understanding, have

God's understanding of love. And so the world sees love as often a feeling.

It's almost like a pit that you fall into. You're a victim to love. And so that when you fall in love, there's warrant to get married.

But then when you fall out of love and the feelings grow dim, and there's this coldness that's set in, then it's almost mandated that you get a divorce because you're violating your own service to self.

In Scripture, love is very much giving. God so loved the world that he gave,

Christ loved the church that he gave himself for her, and it is sacrificial. It is other -oriented, not self -oriented.

So, for example, with love and the world's notion, you have love that you're the victim of, and the feelings of love are preeminent, so that when you fall out of love, you get divorced.

But when you look at love in 1 Corinthians 13, for example, love is patient.

Love is kind. In fact, you never see a theoretical definition of love in the Scriptures. It's always operational.

And so when you say, am I loving? Am I being patient with my spouse? Am I being kind?

Do I have a record of wrong? Am I being rude? Am I being unbecoming in that way?

And we examine ourselves according to that list of God's Word, and you notice where 1

Corinthians 13 is. The church at Corinth was a mess.

It was rife with conflict. There were moral issues.

There were party spirit, infighting, just all kinds of things. And then

Paul brings them to this love chapter. And so love isn't something that you kind of frame as definition of love.

Love is patient, kind for your wedding ceremony. It's love that you bring out for triage in the midst of conflict, saying that this isn't about me.

This is about, of course, my responsibility, but it's about what we are to do to press on through this and to achieve the peace and the unity that our

God wants of us. So you see, the world has its distortion sometimes of love.

Although I must admit, as you say, the world can love in a beautiful way, the way they give and all that in some cases.

But in fact, in the book, what it does, it takes each of the fruit of the Spirit and gives a contrast between the world's understanding and the biblical understanding, and as that's exhibited in the person of Jesus Christ.

Amen. And we do have Joe in Slovenia, who says, please ask

Dr. Gale to address those who do not abide in Christ of John 15 verse 6.

If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up, and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Who are these branches, unfruitful believers, unbelievers, or other? Thank you for encouraging us to abide in Christ today.

It's an interesting question, because for the first time several years ago, I actually heard a pastor define those branches as unfruitful believers, whereas previously

I'd heard them described as the unbelievers. But if you could, Dr.

Gale? Yeah, you don't find John 15 verse 6 on too many wall plaques, do you?

Or greeting cards. That's true, that's true. Not thrown into the fire and burned. Well, a little bit earlier in the verse, it speaks of God, our

Father, being a husbandman or a gardener. He's the one who tends the vine.

And one of the things about this picture is that there's individual application. But there's also, this is one of the many pictures that we find of the

Church. You know, for example, even in John, you've got shepherd and sheep, for example, in John 10.

You've got a body, you've got a husband and wife in Scripture.

So you've got these different images of the Church, and each one contributes something about how our

God wants us to understand the relationship that we have with Jesus Christ and the functioning of the body.

So that, you know, you have the head and the body, and the body has arms and legs and all that, and we see there's a usefulness, there's a placement by God for the

Church and for the work of the Kingdom. Or the bridegroom and bride, the picture of intimacy.

I think this is another picture of the Church. Well, John 15 gives us a picture of the Church, and it's a

Church that has its life in Jesus Christ. And what it says is this, is that if we do not see fruit in our

Christian lives, you know, like, for example, Paul, Acts 26, preached that they should repent and bring forth fruit in keeping with their repentance.

If there is no fruit, then there is reason to believe that there is no root, that there is no genuine faith, there is no genuine repentance.

And so, in that sense, you know, John 15, 6 says that it reminds you of the wheat and the weeds.

You know, they're allowed to grow together in a field, they look alike, but there will come a day when there will be a separation of the wheat and the weeds, and the wheat will be gathered in the barns, the storehouse, in heavenly glory.

But the weeds will be gathered and burned. And so we see that same picture of the visible

Church, the Church as it looks like to us. And, you know, John, in his first epistle, he says that, basically, don't be self -deceived.

You need to see these various fruit in you. You're a fruit of the confession of Christ, you're a fruit of a changed life, all these different things.

So I think that fits in with kind of the picture of the visible Church that our

Lord is giving us, and it speaks against presumption, it speaks of easy believism, and it speaks against the whole idea that, well, yeah,

I can pray a prayer, or walk an aisle, or something like that, but I then go on my merry way, you know, once saved, always saved, and that's not

Scripture. Scripture speaks of perseverance of the saints, it speaks of a growing, a ripening by the work of the

Holy Spirit, as He continues to work in them. Yeah, would you say that those who are spreading that gospel of easy believism, it's now known as hyper -grace, they may have it right on the money that our works do not contribute one single thing to our salvation, but where they have it horribly wrong, and even in a damning sense wrong, is that they really diminish to a radically heretical level, and dangerous and damning level, what

Christ actually does to the person that He regenerates, the person that He saves entirely through His grace, and mercy, and love,

He transforms these individuals, He doesn't just leave them in their sin. Was not

Calvary meant not only to save men from hell, but also from enslavement to our sin?

Yeah, that's a great point. Also, Paul works that out, and as he moves on from justification to sanctification in Romans 6 -8, and says, yeah, just because you're no longer a slave to sin doesn't mean that you're autonomous, you're now a slave to Christ, and that shows up in your life.

You know, it's a whole idea that Christ is not only Savior, He's Lord. In fact, it is as Lord that He's Savior, because it means that He is now all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to Him because He is the

King of this new, everlasting, indestructible kingdom, a redemptive kingdom.

Amen. We're going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And by the way, Joe in Slovenia, you've also won a free copy of the book

A Vine -Ripened Life, Spiritual Fruitfulness Through Abiding in Christ by our guest

Dr. Stanley D. Gale, and thank you very much for giving us an American address where we can have that shipped, saving

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service a lot of money and shipping costs since it is a domestic address that you've given us for your daughter in Georgia.

So thank you very much for that and thank you for always contributing good questions to our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And we're going to be right back, God willing, after these messages with more of Stanley D. Gale and A Vine -Ripened

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back, and before I return to my guest,

Dr. Stanley D. Gale, I have a word from a guest of mine, a person who has been a guest of mine frequently on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and he's also become a very dear friend,

Pastor John Sampson. Pastor John Sampson's mother just went home to be with the

Lord for eternity last night, and he says, My wonderful mother, Grace, departed this world

Sunday night. While we as a family are feeling the deep pain of her loss, we are very much comforted knowing where she is just now.

She truly loved the Lord Jesus and His Gospel, and pointed so many to the Savior she cherished.

Her earth suit just gave up on her at age 91, absent from the body, present with the

Lord. What an amazing lady! I love her dearly, and am so happy that God allowed her to be my mother.

In good times and hard times she followed her Lord faithfully. I will miss her terribly, even though I know we will all one day meet again.

I would so appreciate your prayers for our family at this time. And that is

Pastor John Sampson, who is no stranger to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience.

He is the pastor of King's Church in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and he is the pastor of Rich Pierce, who many of you may recognize as the president of Alpha Omega Ministries, the apologetic ministry of Dr.

James R. White. But I just thought I'd mention that because I just found out about that, and also the ad that you just heard is voiced in part by John Sampson, who is originally from England, and he did the voice of Charles Spurgeon in that ad that you hear every day.

So please pray for the Sampson family. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr.

Stanley D. Gale, who is the author of A Vine -Ripened Life, Spiritual Fruitfulness Through Abiding in Christ, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. We have a question from RJ in White Plains, New York, and it has some bearing upon one of the chapter headings in your book,

Dr. Gale. He said, Is it correct when people refer to all humans as being the children of God?

I am of the understanding that only born -again believers in Christ can call

God their father in all truthfulness. Can we ever call somebody who is unregenerate and living a life of rebellion against God a child of God?

And that is one of the chapter headings in your book, is My Father the

Gardener, if you could comment. Okay, well that's an excellent question, and My Father the

Gardener, of course, that's right out of John 15 where Jesus says that speaks of His Father and what

His Father does, but RJ makes a good point, and it's important when we hear someone talk like that, you know, the brother of mankind and the father of all, we want to listen to them.

We don't want to jump to conclusions. You know, it says in Scripture, Hugh gives an answer before he hears it is folly and shame to him, so we want to listen.

We don't want to, you know, have a knee -jerk reaction. Where are they coming from, you know, what way are they saying that God is the father of all?

Biblically, there's fatherhood, the adoption is one of the glories.

I think J .I. Packer calls it the highest glory, the apex of God's redemptive graces, that God lavished such love upon us that we should be called children of God.

You know, we're now children of light instead of children of darkness. So we are part of, as Paul talks in 1

Thessalonians, that we now, as children of God, have a hope, as opposed to the rest of men who have no hope.

So you've got brothers with a hope, the rest of men who have no hope, I think that's 1 Thessalonians 4 .13.

So it's a redemptive concept, but there is a sense in which God is the father of all in a creative sense.

Paul, in his meeting with the philosophers in Acts 17 at the

Areopagus in Athens, said that he speaks of them as unbelievers,

I assume, as being God's offspring. Now, he's not speaking redemptively there, he's speaking of God as creator.

So there's a sense in which all of us bear the Father's image as created beings, but it's a fallen image.

But the redemptive grace of adoption restores that image in Jesus Christ.

So you can look at it by a creation point of view, a redemption point of view.

Well, thank you, R .J., and you have won also a free copy of A Vine Ripe in Life by our guest,

Dr. Stanley D. Gale. Please make sure we get your full mailing address so we can have that shipped out to you.

Compliments of Reformation Heritage Books and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. We'll be mailing that to you at no charge to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and we thank them for their loyal sponsorship and support of Iron Sharpens Iron.

And we do have a Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who says,

Is it true that many Christians almost spiritually exhaust themselves trying to produce fruit, without knowing that bearing fruit means to carry that which

God has produced through the Holy Spirit? Hmm, that's interesting. That is, yeah.

Yeah, very interesting question. Exhaust themselves, well...

It's probably a rarity if it exists. I was going to say, I was just thinking of a way to put that. Yeah, you don't,

I guess there are some senses of people really discipline themselves to the nth degree.

I think Martin Luther was like that, where he just, he worked so hard at these, because he thought it was a way of earning salvation, and so he worked on the basis of earning salvation rather than resting in Christ.

So it does, now there is, so we don't want to get that idea that we're supposed to be working, well, there's this sanctification.

First of all, Philippians 2, I'm sorry, Philippians 2 says that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is

God who is working on us with the will and to do for us good pleasure. So you've got that synergism there. Or Philippians 4,

I can do all things through Christ whose reign. So I'm the doer, and I'm to be a diligent doer.

I'm to keep my hand to the plow. I'm to pursue holiness, without which no one will see the

Lord. But it is through Christ that I can do these things.

It is through the grace of God that works in me. So that's part of the picture of sanctification, is that we live out what we already are in Christ.

So one of my favorite passages, I think it's Ephesians 5a, where it says, you are light in the

Lord, therefore be light. So the be light does not make us light. We already are light, and so now we are to live in a way consistent with our new identity in the

Lord Jesus Christ. We don't only get the idea there's a let go and let God. In fact, in the chapters for the environment and life, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, for every one of those nouns, there is, you can find, an imperative, a command.

We're to demonstrate that we are to be loving. We're to be patient. We're to be gentle.

And so that doesn't mean that we are earning these things or manufacturing them on our own.

It is by abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ that the Spirit works these things in us.

And the fruit of the Spirit, through abiding in Christ, in fact, this is what Jesus says in John 15.

He says, abide in me so that you can produce, and if you go through the chapter you can see these expressions, fruit.

Now that's fruit as in organic fruit. It's not where you add something to your

Christian life, what I've heard called fruit stapling, where you have these behaviors or the externals.

It's authentic fruit from the work of the Holy Spirit. He also says,

Jesus says, you are to bear much fruit. So God's design for us is not meagerness.

It is a bouquet of grace that gives glory to God. We have the scent of the aroma of the grace of God, of life in Jesus Christ.

So you've got authentic fruit, abounding fruit, and then you've got abiding fruit.

Jesus says, fruit that will last. And so this doesn't happen by our own machinations, by our own effort.

It happens by abiding in Christ and by putting into practice the things that he says, independence, reliance, and for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Do you think something about what Tyler asked, people exhausting themselves with works, you might even go to that famous passage in Luke 10, 38 through 42, where we have

Martha and Mary. And Martha is being distracted by all her preparations for the meal as Jesus is preaching in her home.

And she's actually angry that Mary left the kitchen and is sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to him preach.

And Jesus, after Martha is complaining about this, Jesus rebukes in a loving way,

Martha, Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only one thing is necessary for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

People can be caught up in doing a lot of things, and sometimes even to the point of sin, would you not agree, if they are neglecting other parts of their lives.

Like you have people who may be very caught up in every single activity at church, and yet they may be ignoring or abandoning their own families.

So just for one example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That passage with Mary and Martha, I think that's a wonderful example, because sometimes we can live our

Christian life just fine apart from Christ. It's almost like that we don't, we're not cognizant of the one whose name that we bear and in whom we have life.

It's a part of what it means to abide is that we don't just do

Christian behavior or Christian service. It all begins with that personal communion with Jesus Christ.

Now Peter says that though you have not seen Him, you love

Him. And so it's this love relationship with Jesus Christ, something that we're to grow in throughout our

Christian life, and an intensification of that love. But it's communion with the personal Christ, and it's just something.

Sometimes you hear the old thing about, you know, the Holy Spirit left the church. Would anyone notice? You know, because the church is doing its thing.

But we lose sight of where our life, who is our life, and where our life is rooted, and the one we need, who is the beginning and the end, and everywhere in between of our faith.

And you're mentioning love, and in fact you have been mentioning love throughout the interview.

You write of no ordinary love. The word love is thrown around a lot today.

Love is the excuse for sin. You have people who say, well, why shouldn't

Bob be able to marry Bill? He loves him so much. Or people who have false gospels and false religions but make some kind of profession of Jesus Christ.

How can you say that they are lost? How can you say that they are false Christians? They love

Jesus so much. Love is thrown around a lot, but you're speaking of no ordinary love, and if you could be more specific.

Yes. You know, Jesus said, if you love me, you will do what I command. And love in the scriptures,

I mean, love is a summary of the law. You know, you've got the Ten Commandments, and Jesus says the law is summed up in, love the

Lord your God with the entirety of your being, love your neighbor as yourself.

So isn't it odd that we think that if love is just doing what we want, that it becomes a summary of the law?

So we love by listening to the Lord of the law and putting what he says into practice.

And this is another aspect of abiding, actually. You know, we need to learn. If fruitfulness in the

Christian life is dependent on our learning to abide, then we need to learn.

We need to be taught it in church. We need to be trained in abiding, and one of the ways that we abide is by letting the

Word of Christ dwell in us richly. That's what it says in Colossians.

In fact, it says there, if I recall, it says this, and this goes back to the spiritual warfare question that was early on.

It says, see to it that no one, I'm sorry, it begins like this, as you have received

Christ Jesus as Lord, that means that he is on the throne. That means that he is the rule, you know, the gospel, and Jesus called the gospel the gospel of the kingdom, meaning it's not just a salvation issue.

It's not just a get out of hell free. It's a whole new orientation to life.

It's a whole new world view, so that now the gospel of the kingdom brings us to focus on the king and to live kingdom values, kingdom priorities, kingdom goals, kingdom ethics, kingdom behavior, all in service to the king around whom our life revolves and whom we serve.

I'm going to go back to that Colossians passage that as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and strengthen in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness, and so far so good.

We're to live out the lordship of Jesus Christ. That means that in respect to what he says about marriage, in respect to what he says about sexuality, what does he say in the scripture?

We bring that to dwell on us ritually, but there's a battle line. This is the spiritual warfare part. That passage goes on to say, see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on the principles of this world and the basic something like men rather than Christ.

So always the ways of the world are insinuating themselves, pressing down, saying, isn't this the better way, our enemy says?

Isn't this more gratifying? And what it does is it makes us Lord rather than Jesus Christ to whom that throne belongs.

We have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and country of residence if outside the

USA. And by the way, Tyler in Massack Beach, Long Island, you've also won a free copy of A Vined, Ripened Life by our guest

Dr. Stanley D. Gale. We'll be right back, God willing, right after these messages, so don't go away. Tired of box store

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we are discussing a vine -ripened life, spiritual fruitfulness through abiding in Christ, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. And Dr. Gale, one of the things that you write about in this book is joy inexpressible.

Sometimes this truth is distorted by the health, wealth and prosperity movement.

You have all kinds of televangelists offering instant joy as long as you become a

Christian and give them money. And you have preachers who are always smiling ear to ear when they are evangelizing from the pulpit or proclaiming whatever message they have prepared, and it makes me wonder sometimes on how on earth they can think they are preaching the whole counsel of God if they're always beaming with a smile.

But obviously this is something very specific you are talking about in regard to joy inexpressible, if you could define that more completely.

Well, you're certainly right. There are those who preach that the

Christian life is trouble -free and that there will be no difficulties.

But Jesus has a contrary view. In fact, coming to him you can expect persecution. And he says in this world you will have trouble,

John 16, but take heart. I have overcome the world. In fact, the writer of Hebrews 12 says that Jesus for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame.

And so there's always this larger point of view, this larger perspective that we need if we're going to be able to derive joy in circumstances.

In fact, James, he says that consider it all joy when you encounter trials of various kinds, for you know.

And that really brings us to the battleground for joy, to that which nurtures joy in our hearts.

For you know. And what is it that we know? And so whenever we encounter trials or those things that wage war against our souls and bring us down to despair, we want to remind ourselves what we know to be true.

And knowledge becomes sandbags of truth against the rising floods of the circumstance, the difficulty that threatens to overwhelm us.

And of course God himself is our joy. One of my favorite passages, and I mentioned this in that chapter, is from Habakkuk.

And if I can, I'd like to read this if you don't mind, just three verses here. Oh, definitely. Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit beyond the vine.

Interesting, huh? The produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food.

The flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls. So what do you see?

You see kind of a barren, barren life. And someone who's going to find his joy in circumstances, they're going to be in trouble.

But Habakkuk says, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the

God of my salvation. So the joy is not, even if the things were, all these things were reversed.

The fig tree blossoming, and fruit be abundant on the vines, and produce and flocks in the field.

Yet still the joy wouldn't be in the things. It would be in the Lord. And he goes on to say,

I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.

He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places.

And there's this picture of being able to find joy and delight and contentment that belies the circumstance.

Because our joy is in the God who does not change. And in whose mercies are new each and every day.

So I'm assuming that you have a different definition for joy than for happiness, although they sometimes can be used synonymously.

But there is a difference, isn't there? Yeah. Yes, there is. But the typical way to put it is that, you know, happiness is circumstance -based.

You know, when good circumstances lead happiness, bad circumstances lead sadness.

But joy is something that we can draw upon as the nectar, the nectar, the honey of our salvation.

Because the Lord is for us. He is not against us. He is with us. He is not distant from us. So our joy is in the

Lord, and we draw on that, and we remind ourselves of what we need to be. In fact, one of the things that Satan does,

I think, in his lies is he says, when we go through difficult times, his whispers are, is

God really there? Does he really care? Is he really able to do?

So it questions our view of God. And so when we bring those sandbags of truth against the floods that rise, then we are shoring up ourselves against those lies.

And you move on to a very related topic, peace beyond understanding, which

I'm assuming I have to be right this time that you're speaking about Philippians 4, where we have, starting in verse 4,

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your gentle spirit be known to all men.

The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

Let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

If you could exegete that for us. Okay. Well, certainly he says rejoice, rejoicing again.

You notice that's a command, that we're called to demonstrate joy, and there we're called to rejoice.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I'll say rejoice. And it reminds us of this in that passage.

It says, let your forbearing spirit or gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Sometimes in trouble, when we have villains in our lives, we have tormentors of our soul, disturbers of the peace, we forget that.

We forget the Lord is near. And so we want to, as the psalmist says in Psalm 46, 10, to be still.

To know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted over the earth.

And so we want to be still. Sometimes in our, you know, one of the things that worry does, anxiety does, is it tears us apart.

It's a tormentor. And so we want to have that peace in the Lord and rest in him.

In fact, later it says, not only will the peace of God be with us, but the God of peace himself will be with us.

Paul uses that turn of the phrase. But you've got to do not be anxious about anything.

So he says, not to do, but in everything, with thanksgiving.

And so one of the ways that we can deal with the disturber of the peace is to be thankful.

Thankfulness focuses on what we do have rather than what we don't have.

And so we want to bring to our mind those things. And we want to pray. We want to cry out to God with our need.

In that chapter, it's particularly meaningful to me because not long before my writing that,

I was on the tennis court. I loved to play tennis. And I was playing, and all of a sudden

I started to feel dizzy. And so I kind of put my hands on my knees.

And then the next thing I know, I had face -planted, completely blacked out, and blood gushing all over the place.

And I was conscious. So the guy I was playing with, he had the sense to turn my head so I didn't drown in my own blood. Wow. And I woke up to hearing all the crackling on the radios of the ambulances and all that.

And so I got taken to the hospital because I had not had any health issues or heart issues or anything like that.

And as I was in the hospital, I'd never experienced this before.

It felt like the walls were closing in. And I can only assume that it must be what people feel, what they call a panic attack.

And I felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. The walls were closing in. So what

I did was, in the middle of the night, here I am a pastor, and my peace is disturbed.

And what if I counseled others? And my spirit took me to that passage you just quoted.

And what I did was I used that as a template, as a guide for processing in the direction of peace.

And so I thought, you know what, as I cry out to God, remembering that he is near, remembering that this has happened not apart from his hand, not because he let go of me, but because his purpose is present and that he is with me and that what things can

I be thankful for? What needs do I have? What things is he showing me? And the battleground for this pursuit of peace is the mind, because that's where worry, anxiety, wages war.

And so we want to think about, that's what Paul says in Philippians 4, 8, whatever is praiseworthy, whatever is of good, whatever, let your mind dwell on these things.

And so I thought, well, what am I letting my mind dwell? And instead, what do I need to let my mind, bring my mind to dwell on?

And that exercise, you know, here I'm pastor all these years, that exercise of going through this and counseling myself,

I think was an equipping, a way in which God equipped me to better personally experience and to better minister to others for the comfort that I myself had received.

Yeah, I believe that be anxious for nothing is the command that I violate more than anything else in this life.

I get anxious fairly easily, much to my shame. And it's something that I definitely need the ongoing power of the

Holy Spirit to correct in my life, because I'm embarrassed that I get anxious about things that are comparatively very trivial in this life.

But this is one of those issues where we have to be careful, although we, you know, reading directly from God's word that he has breathed out for us in the scripture, we can take this kind of counsel or even command in our own lives when we are going through a trial like you are.

But this is where we have to be very careful when we seek to minister to others.

We are not to approach a hospital bed and see somebody lying there with bandages, casts, and tubes coming out of every limb and orifice and say, hey,

I don't hear much rejoicing from you. Come on, buck up, buck up. I mean, we have to be very careful not to imitate

Job's comforters, don't we? Oh, my. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And at times like that, just being with them.

In some respects, we're the presence of Christ to them. And, yes, to go in armed with, you should be thinking this, or you should be throwing

Bible verses at them and all that. Yeah, that is very, very unloving, actually. And God typically does not give us the grace to rejoice in the midst of our suffering until it happens.

I mean, I look upon the deaths of some very precious and near and dear people to myself who have gone home to be with the

Lord over the years. And if you had asked me prior to their deaths, are you going to be able to handle this?

I would have thought, no, there's no way I could handle it. I know theologically I'm supposed to and I'm commanded to, but I just don't think

I can. And then, of course, when it happens, the Lord does give you that peace that surpasses all comprehension.

And it reminds me also of people who have gone through trials and agony much greater than I have ever experienced and more than likely

I never will experience. People who were martyrs for the faith, people who were tortured in unspeakable and gruesome and brutal ways, who were able to rejoice, sometimes even being burned alive and singing hymns, which just utterly amazes me.

It is. In fact, one of the things you're pointing out here in terms of the sufficiency of God's grace, there's another passage in the

Sermon on the Mount that Jesus brings to bear where he says, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own. And so what he does is there, he recognizes worry.

There are things that could, you know, he's talking in the context of, are we going to have our daily needs met, all that.

And he divides for us a today category and a tomorrow category.

And in the today category, the grace is sufficient. The fuel is there. Whatever we need in order to honor him with the day's responsibilities, with the moment at hand.

That's the manna principle. The manna is there. The nourishment is there.

Everything that we need to sustain it. It's not there for tomorrow yet. But when we get to tomorrow, we'll find not only one that God is already there, but that his grace is sufficient for us in that.

Amen. You have another chapter heading, The Leaven of Patience. This is another way

I fail very often. Every day, numerous times a day, is lacking in patience.

Even though it's not a biblical text, I believe that it could be rightly said that the lack of patience is the root of all kinds of evil.

Because when you think about all the things that we do when we sin, when people have stolen money, it's because they were impatient to earn that money.

When people have committed adultery, they were impatient about being satisfied sexually in their own marriage bed, or to be patient even unto being with God for eternity.

Perhaps there are certain people who can't or will never be married, and they have to be patient until they are in eternity.

And you could go on and on with the things that humans do in rebellion and in sin.

Very often, they are tied directly to having a lack of patience for God to work in a way that gives them peace.

What do you say? I think it's right on the money. And your point about the other fruit of the

Spirit, the lack of patience being related to the other fruit of the

Spirit, I think it's right on the money. In fact, on page 73 of my book, it says that patience seems to be the cocktail to all the other fruit of the

Spirit. Love is the base, and the other fruit lending various flavors of grace. And then what I do is,

I give some bullet points showing where impatience leads us, the self at the center, and private control, and where patience leads us.

And if I could just read this one paragraph, like regulated blood pressure is an indicator of good health.

Patience with strangers, our spouse, and our children is a telltale sign of how well the other fruit of the Spirit are developing in our lives.

If our patience is lacking, we can be sure the other fruit are underdeveloped. It really does seem to, you can see it weaving its way through all the fruit of the

Spirit, including those outside of the Garden of Galatians 5. Amen. And we're going to our final break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air, now is the time to send us an email at chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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Don't go away. We will be right back, God willing, with more of Stanley D. Geil and A Vine -Ripened

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Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours has been and will continue to be

Dr. Stanley D. Gale, Pastor of Discipleship at Iron Works Church of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, a congregation within the

Presbyterian Church of America, more commonly known as the PCA. And we are discussing his book,

A Vine -Ripened Life, Spiritual Fruitfulness Through Abiding in Christ. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrissorensen at gmail .com

chrissorensen at gmail .com And Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County says that,

I find it most helpful when I am lacking in patience to remind myself of how patient God has been with me, a wicked sinner.

Shouldn't that be the key thing that goes through our minds whenever we find ourselves losing our patience with someone else?

Well, Ronald's got a good point. And that is that Christ is always our point of reference for the character that we're to display in our lives because it's all

Christ being formed in us. Yes, we love in respect to how God has loved us.

We are patient in respect to how God is patient with us and how long -suffering.

And each one, every aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, yes, we can look to God and we can learn what it looks like, but we can also be humbled to pursue that.

And Ronald, you have won our last copy of A Vine Ripe in Life, Spiritual Fruitfulness Through Abiding in Christ.

So please make sure we have your full mailing address and we'll have that shipped out to you. Compliments of Reformation Heritage Books and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

That's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com, CV, BBS .com.

Look for that on the return address on the shipping label and that should be out to you within a week or so,

God willing. And Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, has something to say. Well, it just, it dawned on me, you know, one thing that really helped a lot years ago was when

I finally asked the question and answered it that when I lose my patience or my temper or anything like that, especially over circumstances that just, you know, like, you know, you bend over to pick something up and you can't get it off the floor kind of thing, you know, and you start to lose it, who are you really getting mad at, you know?

And when I realized, wait a minute, if I really believe in the sovereignty of God, then the one

I'm angry with is God and I have no business being that way with Him. That's an interesting perspective, yeah.

You know, you ask yourself that question in the end. Good. And there's a very common or a phrase that is in vogue,

I should say, these days, probably for a number of recent years, that people should do random acts of kindness, but you have a chapter titled

Not So Random Acts of Kindness, or Not So Random Kindness, I should say. Oh, right. If you could explain.

Yeah, well, that's just to get people's attention. You need to turn to the phrase or get people falling asleep while they're reading the book.

So, yeah, God's kindness to us is exhibited in so many different ways. One of the things

I do in the book is I try to look into word studies and look at word pictures, you know, as these things come to us, you know, in God's holy word.

And kindness seems to involve two things. One is a sensitivity to need so that our eyes are open.

You know, we are in our life spheres, you know, we go to work and neighborhood and home and leisure time play, and we represent

Christ. And one of the ways that we can do that is by being kind, and where we are incarnational compassion.

So we're in their lives and we're sensitive to their need and we try to minister to that need.

It's kind of like Jesus, one of the ways that the kingdom was displayed was through these miracles, you know, the miracles that reverse the effects of the fall, you know, where the blind saw and the lame walked.

So we can be, we can make people's lives less harsh as we, in the name of Jesus Christ, in our own hearts, see people with the needs that they have and to step out to minister, not even when we're asked, but to be proactive.

And so it's not so random. We're going with an agenda. We're going with the agenda where we, where we, our good deeds, give glory to our

Father in heaven, and we want to, and we want to show that kindness to help ease their burden and perhaps we'll have the opportunity to testify to Christ, but either way we will bless them.

Now another very popular phrase is goodness gracious, but you have a chapter titled

Gracious Goodness. Yeah, more cleverness doesn't stop. Got my attention.

Oh, mine. Yeah. So goodness comes to us in a couple ways.

One, there's a matter of righteousness. You know, as Rich Young Willer said, or the

Jesus was approached saying, what must

I do to inherit, good teacher, what must I do to inherit to eternal life? And Jesus, why do you call me good?

No one's good but God alone. Of course, Jesus isn't saying I'm not God. He's saying that your standard for goodness is off.

The righteousness is of God. So that's one aspect of goodness. And the other aspect is that God, as our

Father, showers us with good things. Good things. And so you've got this generosity that we can exhibit in life.

So it's kind of like a freely given, as we seek to bless others in that way too, by being good.

Like a father will give good gifts to his children. You know, we can do that too.

Again, representing our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us. And tell us about a great faithfulness.

Well, I think one of the places that shows up is in our word.

You know, when we say something, we're going to do something, do we do it?

When we make a commitment, do we follow through? And I find nowadays that is not the case, and yet it should be with Christians.

Whether it's church membership or whatever it is they need to follow through. Let their yes be yes, their no be no.

One of the stories I have in there is of Robertson McQuilken and the vows that he made to his wife.

And she developed Alzheimer's. I lifted the story from his blog.

I think that's where I got it from. And just his tenderness to her and what was driving him was his keeping his word, his faithfulness to his vows to be there in better, good, bad, and ugly, whatever it might be.

And so that's a thing of beauty. Now, I'm not suggesting there that we can't deal differently with Alzheimer's people, but at the core, what's driving us is our fidelity to, first, to God, and then to our word before others.

Now, you have a couple of chapter headings that appear on their surface to be oxymoronic.

You have gentle strength and potent humility. If you could start with gentle strength and explain. Okay. You know, when we hear the word meekness, often our mind goes to meekness.

You think of... I don't know whether you're old enough to know Stanley Beamish, that kind of wimpy kind of guy.

But that's people's idea of meek. And Moses was meek.

Jesus is meek. And meek is nothing to do with weakness. In fact, quite the contrary. Meekness is gentle strength.

Gentle strength. One of my favorite images of Jesus comes from Isaiah, I think it's 42, where he says,

A bruised reed you will not break. In this smoldering wick you will not snuff out.

And there are those times in our lives when we feel like we're about ready to break off, where the fire is flickering low.

And here's this gentle Savior who is powerful, and yet He is gentle with us in this meekness.

And so there's a beautiful image of Christ that way. Humility. The nine fruits of Galatians 5 are not exhaustive of the characteristics of spiritual fruitfulness.

You've got righteousness, you've got holiness. Another characteristic is humility.

So that was kind of my nodding at the idea that there are other fruit of the

Spirit outside the garden of Galatians 5 that we're supposed to grow in as we grow in to become more like Christ.

But humility, it seems to, I didn't use this illustration in the book because I stuck with garden imagery, but it reminds me of insulin, where humility helps us to absorb what needs to be absorbed.

So the grace of God, it diffuses pride, which looks to self -sufficiency and self -glory.

And humility opens us up in dependence upon our Lord Jesus Christ so that those nutrients of grace are absorbed for our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace in Christ's likeness.

Yeah, humility is one of those attributes that sadly can be downplayed by the world.

In fact, the world often looks upon somebody with humility as someone who has nothing to be boastful about to begin with.

You know, you have people who vote for politicians because they have nothing but boldness and pride in everything that they believe about themselves or seek to accomplish.

You have teenage girls and sometimes women older than that, unfortunately, being drawn to men who have no humility but are very proud, arrogant, and boastful.

And for some reason that is attractive in the minds of some. It's something that is constantly looked upon as more of a flaw than it is an attribute that we should be seeking.

In fact, even the whole self -esteem movement seems to have a reversal in what our priorities should be.

I mean, obviously, self -loathing is not a good anecdote for somebody who has depression and so on or looks down upon themselves, but self -esteem isn't the answer either, is it?

No, because self -esteem looks to exalt self. You know, Scripture says, not unto us, not unto us be the glory.

You can fall on the other end where someone will praise us, encourage us, and what we do is we brush it aside instead of saying, well, yes, thank you, and then in our heart giving glory to God.

It says in Romans 12, I think, verse 3, it says that we're to look at ourselves not positively or negatively, but with sober estimation.

In fact, it says in 1 Corinthians 4, 7, Paul says, what do you have that you have not received?

And if you have received it, how can you boast as though you had not? The idea is who makes you better?

So even David, you know, with all that he had, he said, who am

I, O Lord? And that's kind of the question we have. Who am I, O Lord, that you would bless me so that you would take notice of me, that you would care for me, that you would pour out upon me such a great salvation?

In fact, don't you think that very often those who have the most palpable humility are those whose deeds are so obvious and whose gifts and talents and character traits are so overwhelmingly obvious that they are humble because they don't need to brag about them?

You know, I think a great example for that is someone like Roger Federer.

Now, I'm a tennis player, and I'm a big Roger Federer fan, and he has skills just off the chart.

And to look at him, to see his humility, what it does is it draws me, it draws others to him, as opposed to those athletes that they're so high on themselves and they're constantly bragging.

That pushes me, and I'm sure pushes others away from them. And the ones we're drawn to is this humility that recognizes that, yes, they've got great skills and they do great things, but they're not all talking about themselves.

Amen. And you have two words here in a chapter heading that people usually use as synonyms.

They would see probably no difference in these two words, but you contrast them, self -control or willpower.

Mm -hmm. And that's, of course, through the Spirit. But, you know, the world...

One of the things I do throughout these chapters is I contrast kind of like the world's version of things with the biblical version.

And willpower, it's... It contrasts with self -control in this way.

Willpower looks to me and to my own strength. Self -control does not look to me, but it looks to the

Spirit for strength. And that's kind of the way it works with all these fruit of the Spirit is that it is not...

It is having begun by the Spirit, we are now being perfected in the Spirit. We're growing in the

Spirit. It is independent upon the Spirit. Of course, it unites us to Christ. Now, that's the whole idea of union with Christ.

That's the idea of abiding in the vine is that the Spirit unites us to Jesus Christ, and it is in Christ that we're able to do these things.

So the whole point there is that it's not a matter of just the bootstrap thing or gritting our teeth and pressing on.

It's a matter of, Lord, I can't do this. Lord, I need you, and I need your wisdom.

You know, all that thing. So you see, it's a totally different direction, a totally different flow, different frame of mind in trying to grow in the

Christian life. One is in recognizing complete dependence upon Jesus Christ, but also confidence that we can do whatever

He calls us to do. You know, Reformed people often mock the term

God helps those who help themselves, and I think that very often it is rightfully mocked.

But isn't there... Well, I'll ask you. I don't know if you would agree with this. Isn't there some level of truth in that?

I mean, in other words, even we who are Calvinists and we believe in the sovereignty of God, we also believe in the responsibility of man, and we don't believe that men are just zapped by God and pushed through life as we sit by or lie back and effortlessly go through every challenge and trial in life as He pushes us along.

I mean, we have to battle with things, and sometimes that battle is exhausting and it involves fear and overcoming that fear, and it involves sometimes risking your own life, let alone your reputation.

And there are things that are not easy in this life, and we're not to be lazy, and I think that that just...

I'm trying to tie that in there with self -control and the fact that these things do not necessarily just easily pour out of us because we're

Christian. That's for sure. And we do have responsibility. You look at the imperatives, the commands throughout

Scripture, throughout the New Testament, where we're called to walk and to run, to fight, all these things, in Christ, of course, but yes, we are the ones who act.

If we're going to diagram the sentence, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. The I is the subject of that sentence.

And so that says that, yes, there is personal responsibility upon us.

And when Paul says, you are to look at it this way rather than this way, then that means that we have a decision to make.

Whose way will we follow? Whose wisdom will we seek? And so, yeah, we are responsible beings who are to follow what our

Lord says in dependence upon Him. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, the one who built this house in a way that will endure against the storm is the one who hears my word and puts it into practice.

So we're called to be hearers of the word and doers of the word. In fact, that's one of the evidences of the reality of faith in our lives.

Yes, we are totally passive in our regeneration, but we are not passive in our sanctification.

We're actively involved every moment of our waking lives. And explain grace grown, if you could.

Well, that looks mainly, that chapter deals with mainly two passages from Titus. Titus says that we're saved not by anything that we do, but by the grace of God.

But it also says this, and this is in keeping with what, you know, sometimes people think, when we think of grace, that it means that we don't do anything because they're for fear of legalism, for fear of encroaching upon and having any grace.

But this is what it says in Titus 2, 11. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self -controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great

God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And listen to this, this can be a little surprising. Who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

And so that's a transformed life. But do you notice who the teacher is? Grace. And grace will never teach us self -dependence.

Grace always teaches us Christ -dependence. Amen. And if you could, in a few minutes, just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Well, actually, there are a number of things we didn't talk about. For example, why it's called The Fruit of the Spirit instead of The Fruits of the

Spirit. We didn't talk about how the fruit of the spirit differs from the gifts of the spirit.

The book develops those things. But I would say this, if Jesus says that the only way we will be fruitful in the

Christian life is by abiding in him, then it is incumbent upon churches, it's incumbent upon parents to teach their children, to teach their members how to abide.

So often we call for these Christian behaviors or characteristics, but we don't teach people how to abide in Christ.

That the fruit produced will be authentic, abundant, and abiding.

We need to learn to abide. Amen. I want our listeners to make sure that they have all of your websites.

I know that the Iron Works Church in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania has a website, ironworkschurch .org.

That's very easy to remember. ironworkschurch .org You also have a website for community houses of prayer, which is chopministry .net.

C -H -O -P -ministry .net And of course, the

Reformation Heritage Books publishing ministry that donated the books today that we gave away.

Their website is heritagebooks .org heritagebooks .org And Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service where you can order any book by Dr.

Stanley D. Gale, regardless of what publisher brought that book into print. You can go to C -V for Cumberland Valley B -B -S for Bible Book Service dot com

C -V -B -B -S dot com Do you have any other contact information that you care to share? No, that's it.

The one you mentioned, the chopministry .net, that's my personal ministry website.

Okay. My books on there and other things. That's chopministry .net.

And I also want to remind our listeners of the upcoming events that I will be attending,

God willing, some of them with my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. First of all, we have the event coming up this coming

Monday, a week from today. It starts that the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals has sponsored.

That's the Faithful Shepherd Pastors Retreat in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey.

And that's being held in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, including such speakers as Carl Truman, Todd Pruitt, John Nielsen, and Amy Bird.

And the dates on that are Monday, May 15th, through Wednesday, May 17th.

For more details, go to AllianceNet .org. AllianceNet .org. And also all of you pastors and ministry leaders out there who would like to attend the

Banner of Truth U .S. Ministers Conference. I will be there, God willing, as well.

The dates on that are Thursday, May 30th, through Thursday, I'm sorry,

Tuesday, May 30th, through Thursday, June the 1st. Featuring such speakers as Dr.

Joel Beeky, who's been a guest on this program many times, Jeff Thomas, who I've also interviewed,

William Vanderwerd, Mark Johnston, who's been on this program a number of times, Jonathan Master, who's our guest the day after tomorrow,

Carlton Winn, and Ian Hamilton. For more information on this Ministers Conference, you can go to BannerofTruth .org,

BannerofTruth .org, and click on Events, and then click on U .S. Ministers Conference.

So I hope to see many of you there as well. And last but not least, the Fellowship Conference New England is being held

August 3rd through the 5th at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, and this will include such speakers as Don Curran, Mac Tomlinson, Jesse Barrington, and Nate Pikowitz.

For more details, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com fellowshipconferencenewengland .com

and that's August 3rd through the 5th at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine. I thank everybody who took the time to write questions today, and all of you who listened, whether you submitted questions or not.

I want to thank, obviously, my guest, Dr. Stanley D. Gale, and if you could hold on, I'd like to schedule another interview with you, if you could hold on after the program.

And I'd like to remind you all that I want you to remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater