Sermon: Niverville/Chatham Center United Methodist Church  1-July-2001

Be Fruity

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

 

1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
13You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.
14The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
15If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
16So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
17For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.
18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;
20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions
21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.
25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 

Most of us don’t want to be thought of as fruity, but this morning I want to show you why I think you should.  In fact, I not only think you should be thought of as fruity; I think you should actually be fruity!

As a boy, my parents taught me to put other people first.  Such values were once stressed more generally than they are today.  In recent years I have found myself asking how we got to where we are today.  Why is there such a lack of respect for authority?  Why is it necessary to pass laws about “road rage?”  Why are kids shooting people in school?   At one time I became rather depressed thinking about such things.  It seemed that the world was becoming worse and worse, and I looked toward the future with fear and worry.

I have come to see that the reason for these things is that such degeneration is the way of the world.  It is its “natural” state.  What I mean is that left alone, things generally deteriorate over time.  If you have a car that never gets started, it becomes unusable after a while.  Things rust.  Food rots.  Muscles atrophy.  They even tell me that the rotation of the globe is slowing and that the sun will someday burn out.

All of this points to something very important.  Without some form of sustenance, the world cannot improve or even continue.  What is this sustenance?  The omnipotent hand of God.

Scripture shows us that we are God’s chosen instruments in the world.  We are what God uses to accomplish His will and to make the world better.  In Matthew chapter 13, Jesus tells us 13“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.  In John 15:5 He says, 5“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

This week I have been thinking about why God has used these metaphors to describe His people.  Salt flavors and preserves.  It can do this because of certain properties it has.  If it loses those properties, it is of no value.  This is why Jesus says, “…if the salt loses its saltiness… it is of no value except to be trampled.”  We have the same effect on the world.  We flavor and preserve it.  Branches do not produce fruit; they bear fruit.  The production of the fruit comes from the root… the Vine.  In the same way that salt has natural properties, Christians—those who live by the Spirit have certain natural properties too.  Our passage this morning lists nine of them.  (I think you could find eleven if you searched a bit.) 

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control

The real question we must ask is, how do we manifest these properties?  Verse 17 says, “…the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.”  This is a struggle we all face.  We want to do what is right and good… but that guy in the checkout line went back three times for things he forgot and then took 5 minutes to write a check!

Although I’m sure this will be shocking for all of you to learn, it will come as no surprise whatsoever to Joan and our children… I am not perfect!  I find myself struggling with this conflict on a daily basis.  I want to be popular and accepted, so I find it a challenge not to join in when others are talking about the latest ridiculous decision by their boss.  I love my family dearly, but there are many times when I fail to demonstrate patience, kindness, and gentleness toward them.  I’ve lost a lot of my saltiness.  I don’t do a very good job of bearing fruit.

 As it turns out, I am in good company.

In another of his epistles (Romans 7:18b-25), Paul, the writer of Galatians, tells us, 18b “…I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 

…and we call him Saint Paul!  He continues…

20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.  21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  22For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;  23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.  24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?  25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Thus we struggle, yet our passage in Galatians tells us “…live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” And “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.”  These statements have confused me a great deal.  It seems that the harder I try to do what is right and have the fruit of the Spirit, the worse job I do.   I think what we are to learn from this is that we truly only bear fruit.  It is the Spirit within us who produces the fruit.  It is our job simply to be servants of the Most High.  It is God who changes us.  Philippians 2:13b says “…it is God who works in [us] to will and to act according to His good purpose.”

This is a big relief!  Our job is to be listening, paying attention, and obeying what is revealed to us.

Colossians 2:6-8 talks about this.  We read: 6So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him,  7rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.  8See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

Here we see the concept clearly.  It is not by the principles of the world that we are to become people of good character.  We are simply to live in Christ.  To be rooted in Him.  To be fruity, we need to build our relationship with God by talking to Him.  We need to listen to Him by reading His Word.  We need to pay attention, so that we can obey as much as has been revealed to us.  If we increase the time we spend reading God’s Word and talking to God in prayer and filling our minds with the things of God, the fruit will come… and people will probably think we’re fruity.

When I was young there were people we called “Jesus Freaks.”  I think today, we should each be called "Jesus Fruits!"  If we as Christians bear the fruit of the Spirit, there is a direct effect on the world.  We temper the devolving tendency of society.  We flavor the world.  We show an example, a little peek for the unenlightened, into the Kingdom of Heaven.

 So let’s go forth, be fruitful, and multiply!