The Vineyard Church of North Grand Rapids, MI

Ray Befus Galatians 5:16-26     The Sufficiency of the Spirit 3 January 2010

This morning we’re making a dramatic change to our service plan.  After a brief “Call to Worship” (or some Sundays just a personal welcome) a pastor will share a teaching from the Bible. Worship and (this morning, the Lord’s Supper) will follow the teaching, as a response.  We’re doing this for our guests.  Guests do the heaviest lifting of anyone in the room.  They’re walking into a strange building, meeting people they don’t know, sitting through a meeting they’ve never experienced, with no guarantees of a positive outcome.  And, for the most part, very little is explained in advanced.  And, for many who have no background in church, 20-30 minutes of singing to a God you don’t really know—personally—can be tedious.  So, our plan is to begin with a pastor’s talk so that we can provide a meaningful context for deciding to trust him and serve him . . . so that worship makes better sense.

From time to time, I myself have visited churches.  I remember visiting First Assembly of God one Sunday morning for a 7:30 am service.  I had no idea Protestants went to church at 7:30 on Sunday mornings.  But, there they were, at least a thousand of them, bright-eyed and busy-tailed! I arrived early of course, I was a guest.  The room was mostly empty at 7:10, so I went down front and sat by myself in the second row.  By about 7:25, the room was almost full and it was buzzing.  Just then, something happened that I’d never experienced in church before.  I was blindsided by love . . . in the shape of an elderly lady (she looked to be in her mid 70’s).. There I was—a stranger in a big room— sitting alone, down front—a thirty-five year old single guy with a beard.  I wasn’t wearing the uniform: a coat and tie.  I didn’t know the songs or the routine.  I certainly didn’t raise my hands during the music (I wasn’t one of them). To anyone who cared to look, I was a guest . . . a guest who was hurting at home and trying very hard to hold together a difficult career.  A minute or two before the service started, this older lady slowly walked down front, glanced around for an empty seat and then sat down right next to me, arm-touching close. That was too close! And then bent over and ,she looked at me (right in the eyes), and repeatedly smiled at me with noticeable warmth.  So, I did what an insecure guest might be expected to do: I smiled once and then looked straight ahead and consciously decided to ignore her. “Let her talk, I thought to myself: she’ll soon see that I am a brick wall.  I’m not going to budge”.  Truth is, I was intentionally cold toward her.  But, during the singing—the worship— I started to relax and I felt my attitude toward this grandma beginning to shiftI I actually started to feel embarrassed for my coldness toward her. But not embarrassed enough to turn and smile at her.

After the singing, there was a break for a welcome and some announcements.  Taking this lull in the service as her opportunity, the old lady turned on the kindness faucet again and began hosing me. Clearly, during the music, she had decided to to ignore tmy coldness. She was on a mission. If she had lost the first battle, she was determined to win the war! I was a guest, was I? Would I like to fill out the visitor card? Why not? How did I happen to visit?  Oh, I was a pastor . . . how wonderful.  God has a special place in his heart for pastors.  Visiting pastors are special gift to the church. Did I know that?”  I was starting to get it: she was genuinely interested in me. As I listened to the pastor’s talk, I began to think that  this lady might not be so bad.  Actually, I was hurting for some kindness in my life. I just hadn’t expected it to come in an ‘old lady’ package.

As the pastor’s talk drew to a close, I was starting to feel bad for treating her with, what I assumed was discernable contempt.  She was just trying to be kind to a stranger.  When the service was over, she turned to me a third time and told me how happy she was to have been able to worship with me.  She said that when she walked into the auditorium, she had asked God who she should sit with, and she believed that God had drawn her attention to me.  So, she was sure that God had his eye on my life and had blessing in store for me. With a contrite heart, I thanked her for her kindness and admitted that I was grateful for her kindness to me throughout the morning.  She walked away, and I (feeling chastened) started ambling around the church’s cavernous facility.  As I turned a corner and started wandering down a hallway, here she came again, waving as she walked briskly toward me, towing her husband.  She introduced me to her husband like I was long-lost family, and then he began shaking my hand and praising God for my faith, my ministry, and my decision to bless First Assembly by visiting that Sunday morning.  By this point, I was deeply embarrassed by my coldness toward this woman.  I was overwhelmed by her kindness . . . graciousness. Frankly, it felt like love—real love, love that I had never felt before when visiting a church. How often does a 75 year old single woman sit down next to a 35 year old male stranger, and pester him with unrelenting kindness? On my way home that morning, I started to feel like I had met God.  

Brennan Manning (our tour guide for this fall-winter study of God’s amazing grace) writes that Jesus didn’t die on a cross so that we could become nicer people with better morals; he died for us so that we could surrender all our regrets, fears, and angers to become men and women who are free to love other people in the same kind of ways and with the same heart that God loves us.  Love–the kind of persistent, self-sacrificing love this Spirit-filled woman showed me—is the goal of our spiritual growth. This is Paul’s point in Galatians, chapter five, the portion of the Bible that we’re studying this morning.  Please take a Bible and open it up to Galatians 5:16-26.  In this section of his letter to the Christians living in (what is now) central Turkey, Paul has spent four chapters arguing that no one becomes more like Jesus—becomes more godly or Christlike or holy by law-keeping.  We’ve been set free from law-keeping.  Instead, we grow spiritually by stretching our faith and risking our hearts to love other people by serving them, even sacrificing for them.  When it comes to spiritual growth, Paul has written, “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love” (5:6).  Then again, “serve one another humbly in love” (5:13, and “love your neighbor as yourself” (5:14). Paul is quite clear: spiritual growth comes as we relate to other people as though we are their servants . . . loving them in ways we ourselves desire to be loved.  Will this be a morning of spiritual growth for you and me, or just an exercise in religious routine?  Ultimately, that will be determined by our decision either to love and serve these people in some meaningful ways, or simply to be nice to them.  It’s the decision to love and serve other people that produces growth toward godliness; polite, ‘churchy’ niceness on a Sunday morning is a religious dead-end.

This morning we’re going to focus on verses 16-26 in this ancient letter, where Paul is contrasting two paths through life.  The first path is the path of the flesh or the sinful nature.  This is the path of following our inner impulses, maybe our hormones—going with the flow of the rest of the world. Basically, it’s the path of self-centeredness. This path will lead you away from God and spiritual growth.  The other path is the path of love for other people—love that pulls you into serving their needs ahead of your own, which isn’t natural; this ability flows from the Holy Spirit, who comes to live within every person who decides to trust and follow Jesus.  So the subject of this section, is spiritual growth or, “How to live in freedom from the law, in ways that reflect God’s heart and are empowered by the Holy Spirit who is living within you”.  Every morning that we get, every church service we attend, we must choose between the path of profound selfishness and the path of love.  When we choose the path of loving and serving, we’ll discover the Holy Spirit empowering us to take fresh steps of growth.

Read vv. 16-18.  Sometimes our own inner desires, longings, impulses, passions, and commitments can be the enemy of our spiritual growth.  They can destroy any possibility of a meaningful relationship with God.  Right away, Paul writes that the way to counter these self-destructive impulses and passions is to walk in the Spirit—i.e., just keep your heart open to the Holy Spirit, keep asking for guidance, keep asking him to speak to you through the Bible, keep asking him to help you love others like Jesus loves you, keep confessing your failings, and keep taking risks with subtle leadings, keep choosing to love.  Walking in the Holy Spirit’s presence and power is no bigger or more dramatic than just getting up every morning and making your focus God and others, and asking the Holy Spirit to help you take the first step . . . and then the next and the next and the next.  The greatest enemy of our spiritual growth isn’t out there in the world.  It’s not the Devil. The greatest threat to our spiritual growth—becoming more and more like Jesus—is something Paul calls “the flesh” or “the sinful nature” (vv. 16, 17, 19, 24).  What is our sinful nature?  It’s a deep and unrelenting human temptation to live in profound selfishness.  It’s inside you and in me from birth; we take it everywhere we go. We get up with it every morning.  It is a life-long human temptation—an inner pull—to make my life all about me.  I will decide what’s true for me.  I will decide what’s best for me.  My needs and interests and dreams come before everyone else’s needs and interests and dreams. I will serve when serving makes sense to me, when serving will leave me feel fulfilled . . . when I’m convinced I will get back more than I put in. I will make promises that make sense to me and . . .  I will give myself permission to break promises when I feel like it. If you ask me to make a decision, I decide what’s best for me. If you ask me to make an investment, my first thought is, “Is this good for me? or does this feel right to me?” My daily decisions, my priorities, my relationships are all about me—what makes sense to me, what meets my needs, what makes me happy, what helps me get ahead.  A fleshly life or a life characterized by the sinful nature, is a life turned in on itself. Sin, at it’s core, is profound self-centeredness. In legalistic churches, sin is often defined as breaking God’s laws. That’s a convenient definition; it allows us to be religious without being righteous—i.e., truly good people. Legalism is truly self-serving; it allows us to be religious without being good. 

Paul defines sin as a decision to try to force my world to wrap itself around me—what I think is right, what I want, what I need. A man or woman living from their sinful nature may come to church or go to work with a pleasant disposition; in other words, he or she may be a truly, a nice person.  A fleshly person may be devoted to keeping the Ten Commandments with careful attention to detail. But a fleshly person doesn’t reflect God’s heart or reveal God’s heart to others.  God is love, and love is, by definition, a decision to give myself—sacrificially—for others . . . to put their needs, interests, and dreams ahead of my own. Though they are often unaware of their own motives, fleshly men and women use other people for self-fulfillment, or self-promotion, or self-protection.  So, when fleshly people don’t get what they want from their relationships, they  attack or withhold their hearts or walk away from the people they say they love.  Sounds a lot like normal life, doesn’t it?

If the Christians in Galatia wonder, what does a life dominated by the sinful nature look like when we go home from Sunday meetings, Paul gives a representative list in vv. 19-21.  READ.  Paul lists fifteen ways our sinful nature may come out in daily life. These fifteen ways the sinful nature works it’s way out Monday through Saturday, break down into four groups.  As you read through the list, you’ll notice that the TNIV breaks the list down with commas and semi-colons, to mark the groupings.  First, there is illicit sexual activity: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery—i.e., using people sexually to satisfy our passions, satisfy our needs for intimacy, or to medicate our boredom or anxiety. Next, there is illicit worship: idolatry and witchcraft—i.e., alternate expressions of spirituality (instead of trusting and following Jesus).  Third (and you’ll notice that this is the biggest grouping): breakdowns in relationship—i.e., hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissension, factions, envy. This is how fleshly people respond when the people closest to them are as selfish as they are. The last category is destructive excesses—i.e. drunkenness and orgies.  Again, the phrase, “and the like” lets us know that Paul understands that other excesses could be added to this list.  The list is suggestive, not exhaustive.  So, three expressions of illicit sex, two expressions of illicit worship, two expressions of destructive excesses . . . and eight descriptions of relational breakdowns.  So, as a student of Scripture, where do you think Paul is putting the emphasis?  Yes, on relationship! If you want to live your life in such a way that you draw closer and closer to God and become more and more like him, you don’t want your life characterized by anything on this list.  But, you want to watch out especially that your life isn’t characterized by these kinds of relational breakdowns . . . relational attacks, and relational betrayals, using people, punishing them, and abandoning them when you don’t get what you expected from them!  How different this is than the list legalistic Christians will make up in their own minds . . . where illicit sex is the worst of sins, and illicit worship is almost unforgiveable, and excesses like drunkenness and orgies are abominable . . . but relational breakdowns between husbands and wives, parents and children, supervisors and employees, and fellow church members are . . . just normal life, even in church meetings.  Paul adds that if a person’s life is characterized by these works of the sinflul nature, he or she may be the nicest person you’ll ever meet on a Sunday morning, but this person is not going to heaven.  This person isn’t a genuine Christian; he or she doesn’t have the Spirit of God living within him or her.  God is not like this . . . at all . . . so there will not be any of this in heaven in his presence.  The Father hates these works of the flesh, Jesus died to free us from the grip of these kinds of things, and the Holy Spirit has come to free us to overcome these temptations. A genuine Christian, growing in his or her faith, may momentarily fall into any one of these traps, any place along the way.  But, real Christians sorrowfully get up, confess their failure, and take fresh steps to begin walking in the Spirit again.

Just this week, church watcher, George Barna and his associates published a summary of ‘spiritual trends’ in the United States in 2009.  The Barna group reported that American’s are increasingly interested in faith and spirituality, while less and less interested in the church.  Barna suggests two primary reasons.  The first is the acidic effect of anti-Christian media. From radio to television, magazines to movies, the Christian church is stereotyped and maligned.  But second, Barna says that American non-Christians who are polled, say that they just don’t see that people in the church are any different than people outside the church . . . not in ways that Jesus was different. Non-Christians like Jesus, but they say that it’s harder and harder to find people in the church who really live like Jesus and talk and serve life Jesus—in self-sacrificing love.

Paul moves on in vv. 22-26 to say that the Spirit of God invades the life of every man or woman who decides to trust and follow Jesus, precisely to produce the character of Jesus within them.  If you decide to trust and follow Jesus . . . if you keep your heart open to the Holy Spirit, day by day, these character qualities will grow in you.  The Holy Spirit will see to it.  Slowly, but slowly, the Christ-follower who lives with a yes in his heart to the Holy Spirit, will become more and more like Jesus.  Law-keeping can’t add a thing to to the work of the Holy Spirit within us.  If the Galatians wonder what this fruit will grow to look like over time, Paul gives another list—the inner transformation the Holy Spirit produces.  READ.  

Last week I noted that we as American Christians, when reading Galatians 5, frequently define freedom and love in profoundly individualistic and self-centered ways.  We celebrate our freedom in Christ because we think freedom means independence from you.  I can do whatever I want however I want to do it, regardless of your needs and interests!  Same thing with love.  We frequently define love as the good feelings I experience when you give me the things I want from you. We also tend to read this list of the fruit of the Spirit as a list of qualities I experience personally, individually within myself.  But that’s not what Paul has in mind.  This list doesn’t refer to inner, individual character strengths; rather this list reveals the corporate character of our relationships when we’re all walking in step with the Holy Spirit.  This list is not about me sitting down alone in my home drinking a cup of coffee while reading my Bible, feeling good about my personal growth over the past year.  This is about how we do church together, week by week, in good times and in hard times, when we feel appreciated and when we feel used, when we feel like serving and when we don’t, when we’ve got extra time and money and when we’re stressed out and over-committed, when we’re on top of the world and when we’ve fallen into a deep hole discouragement.  This is list of the qualities a church guest will see and experience on a Sunday morning like this when you and I are walking in step with the Holy Spirit.

Here’s a surprise: love is the first thing on the list—people putting each others needs and interest ahead of their own. Old and young, singles and marrieds, black and white, professionals and blue collar workers living like they are servants of each other.  Self-sacrificing love is the ultimate expression of God’s character, so the more we grow in God’s character, the more self-sacrificing we’ll become in our Sunday and mid-week relationships. When we live out of the sinful nature, every decision to attend, to serve, to give, to worship begins with me and how I’m feeling.  When we let the Spirit fill us and lead us, every decision to attend, to serve, to give and to worship begins with those I love.  Then there’s joy and, Paul probably had in mind rejoicing or rejoicing in the Lord (not a feeling of happiness)—people going through hard times coming to church meetings and home groups to tell stories of how God has answered their prayer, supplied their needs, kept his promises, and used them to advance his kingdom. And peace, which is not an individual sense of inner calm, but a discernible sense of fullness—shalom—between people in this section and this section, and this section.  Then there is patience which, literally should be translated “long-suffering” or suffering long . . . forgiving 70x7 . . . being as patient with others as you are with yourself.  And kindness.  Kindness is compassion that puts on work gloves.  Kindness is compassion that gives money and time.  Kindness is compassion that invites the poor and hurting into our hearts and our homes, not just our meetings.  And goodness.  Legalists choose being right and in control over being good, because it’s less costly, less messy.  Being right and religious requires so much less than being a truly good, righteous, or loving person.  So, legalists fixate on law-keeping—doing the best they can and challenging everyone else to do better.  If you have legalists in your home group, you can’t tell your home group how difficult your life or marriage has really become, because they legalists will jump on you with religious counsel or even religious correction and try to fix you on the spot. They’ll use the word grace, but they believe that grace is for good people, people who get it right, people who avoid mistakes, people who stay in control at all times.  But they’re wrong, grace is for sinners who have the faith and courage to admit they need help.  Grace is for those who have the courage to accept the good news that God accepts them just as they are.  When you and I get past going to church, and invest our hearts in being a Spirit-filled loving church, we make the Gospel of grace believable.  We become a colony of heaven living on earth and giving our neighbors a taste of heaven. Who in their right mind would ever choose a life of religious law-keeping over this life of walking in step with the Spirit?

God’s OT law is a gift to us, a part of our story.  It’s impossible to understand Jesus life and death apart from the law.  But Jesus’ death on a cross for us has made law-keeping irrelevant to relating to God and to other people.  The law was an ancient revelation of God’s righteousness; its right to love God’s law. But because of jesus’ death on a cross and the coming of the Holy Spirit, law-keeping is no longer our path to righteousness. We have died to the law (2:19) as surely as we have been crucified to the sinful nature (5:24).  Neither law-keeping nor follow your sinful passions will produce spiritual growth or lead you to God.  The path to righteousness is trusting and following Jesus as a guide through life, extending ourselves in love toward other people for their good, and inviting the Holy Spirit to fill and empower us each step of the way.  And the good news is that there’s nothing you have to do to step onto this path of grace today.  You don’t have to earn a place on the path.  You don’t have to clean up your life.  You don’t have to get past your struggles.  All you have to do is decide to begin trusting and following Jesus  with child-like simplicity today, just as you are.  Salvation Prayer.

We’re going to transition now, from Bible teaching to worship.  You can actually leave and go home now. You might be too busy to worship.  You might be feeling too low to worship. Life is very, very hard.  But, most of us are going to stay and respond, because we are busy and stressed and desire to become more loving in the midst of life’s stresses and messes.  And worship is the biggest door to spiritual growth you’ll ever discover and walk through.

In just a few minutes, we’re going to respond to God with thankful hearts, singing and praying our thanks to him.  We’re also going to respond by taking the Lord’s Supper (a little, 2000 year old drama that draws us back to the cross in gratitude.  We’re going to use music to open our hearts in fresh ways to trust and follow Jesus into a new year.  We’re going to use music to open our hearts to the Holy Spirit and invite him, during the singing to produce this kind of fruit within us and between us.  If you think of the Bible teaching like the spreading of good seed deep within your heart and mind, you might think of worship as an  opportunity to invite God’s Holy Spirit to water this seed as you turn simple songs into personal prayers.  And that is exactly what the Holy Spirit does when we take time to open ourselves to him in worship. He produces this fruit.  So, I hope you’ll stay around to worship with us.  You can make your decision based on what’s best for you.  That’s your right. Or, you can make your decision based on love for him and for us . . . or some mixture of this and that.  I promise not to judge you, either way.

Upcoming Events Calendar