All right, well, if you have your Bibles this morning, would you turn with me once again to the book of Galatians? Galatians in chapter number 5 this morning. Following the message, we'll be receiving new members into the church. I don't know that there's a right or a wrong way of order of things, and I guess I felt as though this was maybe the right for today. But anyway, we'll do that following the message this morning. We are in a section here in the book of Galatians that's very familiar to most of us as we think about the fruit of the Spirit, and it's something that Again, we've had Bible school themes and whatnot, Sunday school lessons, many of these things, but we're trying to dive into them a little deeper and really understand what it is that God is saying to us, instructing us when we consider this thought of producing the fruit of the Spirit. And we see in the context of the fruit of the Spirit, back in verse 16, that walking by the Spirit and producing the fruit of the Spirit go hand in hand. And so that is an essential part to remember. So anyway, before we begin, let's read the scripture together. And if you're able and willing, would you stand with me in honor of reading God's word this morning? Galatians 5, beginning to read in verse 16, the Word of God says, 4. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Amen. You may be seated. Thank you so much for standing this morning. Last week, we looked at the fruit, love, joy, and peace, and there's, I think, somewhat of a pattern here in threes, love, joy, peace, followed by patience, kindness, goodness, is where we're going to group these three today. And then next week, Lord willing, maybe, I don't know yet, I'm still praying about a political sermon, It won't be all that political, just some wisdom politically speaking, I guess you'd say. Still praying about that. But anyway, next week or at some point, we will look at faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But the thought I had in introduction to these next three was that of fruit itself, just to help us to continue to keep our minds in the context of what the Apostle Paul has written to the Galatians. Again, the entire book of Galatians was written to prove one point. to emphasize one truth, and then from that one truth, there's so many things that come out of that, that are attached to it. And that one truth is this, that salvation is a gift of God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Not according to the works of the flesh, not according to the keeping of the law of God, but according to faith in the fact that Jesus Christ has indeed kept the entirety of the law for us, And therefore, we have no dietary restriction, we have no fellowship restriction that Jews and Gentiles alike can eat the same things and can live among one another. Hey, I would even go as far as to say that they can intermarry with one another. It's not about the keeping of that law, but rather that keeping our faith in the one who has kept the law, which then in turn produces fruit, fruit of the spirit specifically. Again, as Paul pointed out, he says, we need to walk by the spirit. That's, that's not a suggestion that that is a command. That is something that, that, that the word of God is instructing us to do walk by the spirit. And when you walk by the spirit, you will produce the fruit of the spirit. Now I'm so thankful because I'm not all that smart that the Bible uses physical things. material things to represent and explain spiritual things, right? And so when we think about fruit in general, it's right down my alley. I grew up on a farm that for all of my memory, I was surrounded by the production of fruit and vegetables and crops in general. And so when we think about this, when you have fruit, it is always and forever pointing to something else, specifically that there was a root, that there was a vine, or there was a tree or whatever, right? That actually grew. and produce fruit. The fruit itself cannot produce itself. But the interesting thing is that with inside of the fruit, there is the seed that has the ability to reproduce right. And and so as it is with Christians that that when God saves us, he puts inside of us that his spirit and His Spirit is all together focused upon and living by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that seed that was scattered abroad and on some hearts it found good soil, and praise God, I believe that's you, you're representing the good soil today, that the seed of the Gospel landed in your heart, And here was the first fruit that the gospel produced in your life. The very first fruit that we see when the gospel takes root in someone's heart is faith. That's the first fruit of the work of the spirit of God, that there is faith, faith in what Christ has done, faith that he was the son of God, faith that he lived a perfect and sinless life, faith that he gave up that perfect and sinless life, he laid it down, not by coercion, not by forcing Him, but willingly, He gave up His life upon the cross, poured out His sinless blood as an atoning sacrifice for your sin, He took the punishment that you deserve, God accepted that sacrifice. How do we know? Because three days later, He was raised from the dead. And so we believe our faith is in His life. Our faith is in His death. Our faith is in His resurrection. Our faith is in His ascension. Our faith is in His rule and reign right now. Our faith is also in that He's coming again. Praise God. And that is the first fruit of the work of the gospel in our hearts, that we believe these truths. The second fruit that we would see is, is that of repentance, right? That we would, we would go from walking and, and living by the works of the flesh to then repenting of our sin and following Christ. in producing the fruit of the Spirit. In other words, it's the evidence that we actually have faith in that life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, rule, and return of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, here's the thing. Production of fruit though, doesn't go from seed to maturity in one day, right? There's a season. There's a, there's a progression that takes place. And again, I just got to throw this in there because it pops into my mind. Isn't it interesting that there are those who will teach to you that you can become a perfectly sanctified saint just by praying a prayer and, and walk in an aisle or surrendering, whatever. No fruit. Fruit is a process. Fruit is, it begins. You go to your apple tree this coming spring, right? And those little buds start to swell on the tips of the limbs. That's the first sign that that fruit is coming, right? And the longer it goes, the warmer the sun gets. And the longer the days are, the sun is shining upon that tree. That bud will one day, it will crack open. Right. And you'll see a little flower come out and depending upon the variety, it'll be white or it'll be pink. Right. And, and then a few weeks later, those petals fall off and you think, Oh no. Oh no. Oh. No, the flowers had to fall because now it's not a pistol anymore. Now there's a little apple there and that apple begins to grow. And through the course of the season, right? It's it's sizes. It doesn't look like all that much at the beginning. It's not all that impressive, right? But at the end of the season, when that apple is fully ripened, You can go out there and you can pick that fruit. You can admire it, but you can also enjoy it, right? It produces gratification for those around it, okay? But the point is that along the way, the fruit itself, it doesn't always look that impressive, right? but it is indeed there. And so I want to encourage you today by this, by this reality, that when we, when we examine the fruit of the spirit, we are, we tend to be, I think, I think, I don't want to speak for everybody, but I think we tend to be a little bit hard on ourselves. Now, don't think for a second that I'm trying to lower the standard at all. I'm not. I'm not lowering the standard of the work of the Spirit of God. But I am saying that because we are born again by the Spirit of God, yet in the flesh, our production of fruit by the Spirit sometimes is not all that impressive. And we could even say this, because we go through the variables of the seasons of life, there are points along the way where we are challenged so much so, maybe we could call them the droughts. Our life or or they're also the those soggy moments where it seems like it just never stops storming, right? There's there's difficulty there's hardship But you know what when when those seasons come and you go to that apple tree that apple that that fruit is there Amen, it's there But it's not doing a whole lot, right? Because of the adversity that is around it. And so again, I don't want you to be overly critical of yourself. And I want you to be encouraged by the fact that if you are indeed in this walk, right, if you are indeed warring against the flesh and following Christ, that's where you need to be. Continue in that walk by the spirit. And it says, you'll not gratify the desires of the flesh. So, let's look at our first one for today. That is patience. The fruit of the spirit is patience. Now, patience simply means to be long-suffering. It also can mean restraint from action. with the ability to avenge and with control to not, okay? It's a really important part of thinking about the fruit of patience. And the fruit of patience, again, it's coming from the source of the spirit of God. Now that's really important because the word of God calls us to do certain things and the spirit of God empowers us to carry them out, right? It's not by our, our best efforts, so to speak, although there's effort involved, right? There's effort involved. But at the end of the day, the reason that we can actually produce the fruit of patience is because the one who is ultimately all patient with us is living and dwelling inside of us. And think about that. Having the ability to avenge. That could be verbally, that could be physically with control to not. So patience, uh, the, the reason that patience is a virtue, a fruit of the spirit and not, and not something that is common to natural man is because we, we struggle with a battle of fatigue. Right, you can get tired physically, but how many of you know, you can also get tired mentally, right? Relationally. Um, let me put it this way. There are people and there are situations of life that can wear you out. I mean, where you out to where you're like, I don't know if I can take any more, right? You understand what I'm saying? And patience, the spirit working in us, producing this long suffering, this restraint from action, this ability to, to avenge. In other words, it doesn't mean you can't say something or do something, but it means that there's control not to respond in a sinful way or in a, in a harsh or unkind way. the fuel, the fuel that, that helps us to be patient, I think is, is remembrance. So remember, we said that for each fruit, there's both an attitude and an action, right? The attitude is we have to remember, we have to remember that, that whoever it is, or whatever it is we're dealing with, Right is is in this same sin-cursed world that we are in other words. We have to give people the benefit of the doubt because By the but by the grace of God so go we right we could be in that same position but but What is it that actually helps us to accomplish this, this action of patience, of not avenging or not producing some kind of action against another person? Well, again, it's because we can remember, we can maybe remember, Hey, I'm in the thick of raising kids. And if you are on the other end of that, and you've already walked that road and your children have grown up and they're no longer in your house, you went like this. Right? But you know what? It's funny. People tell me, they say that watching their kids go through difficulties harder than actually raising their kids inside of their house. And I'm like, I don't understand why that would be the case. I don't, maybe I'm, maybe I'm just not there yet. But at that point in time, I'm just like, hey buddy, that's your problem now, right? But when you're in my house kicking and screaming and moaning and groaning and all that, it's my problem, right? But anyway, so you need patience to raise children. Amen. Oh, you do. But, but listen, we'd be foolish. We'd be foolish to not be patient with our children because guess what? We were a kid once too. And, and listen, I've rubbed shoulders with enough of you to know that you weren't perfect when you were little, right? None of us were. So we need patience. We need patience raising our children. We need patience with our spouses. Amen. Don't get upset with them, they're married to you. Do you know how hard that is? Right? They're married to you. You're married to them. Listen, we need patience in our marriages, amen? We do. but by the grace of God. Hey, we need patience when it comes to dealing with extended family matters, right? Why? We're in an election cycle. That should say enough, right? Some of you have family members that don't think the same way that you do politically. Now, most of the time, that's because they don't think the same way as you theologically. Amen. This is why I don't feel like I have to get into politics. I believe if you're a Bible believing, and I mean that in the most literal sense, that the word of God is the word of truth, right? You should know how to vote. Now, here's the challenge. Here I go. I'm getting into it anyway. Here's the challenge though. Sometimes, sometimes Christians struggle because they look at one and they say, there ain't no way, right? And they look at the other and they say, well, he's not all that great either, right? What do we do? What do we do? Well, we need patience for one thing, right? We need to be slow to think about it, but at the end of the day, there has to be action, right? There has to be a choice. Anyway, patience. I read a book that was given to me by a pastor friend, and it was written by Joel Beakey. Joel Beakey's an incredible preacher and theologian. He wrote, him and Paul Smalley wrote four-volume systematic theology But Beakey was in pastoral ministry for probably about 40 years or so. And he wrote a book called Pastors and Their Critics. It's a funny title, but it's incredibly helpful, especially if you're in that position. But Joel tells a story in that book about a man when he first began to pastor the congregation there in Grand Rapids, Michigan, of this man in the church who every single week When the sermon was over, he could almost clock it, but this man was going to show up and sit down, and he was going to go over Beaky's sermon with a fine-tooth comb. And Beaky, being a young man, knowing that he did not know everything and also wanting to be patient and kind, he endured. The lectures week after week, month after month, this would go on and on and on. And this guy just, he tells the story, you know, he was, he was wearing him out. Can you imagine that? Like if you knew you were going to do something and at the end of doing that thing, there was somebody who was going to come and just basically rip it to shreds. That takes a lot of strength to keep doing it, does it not? But it also takes a lot of strength to not say, hey buddy, go fly a kite, right? That's what we'd like to do. But Joel tells the story, he was patient with this man, he was an elder, and finally, finally, he prayed so hard that God, that this would stop. One time, this man ended his rant to Joel, and Joel just sat there and didn't say anything at all. And he said, just like that, this man goes, oh, I'm so sorry. He said, I am so sorry for doing this to you. He said, will you forgive me? Because it just hit him like a ton of bricks, what he was doing to him. And Joel said that he jumped up from his chair and he threw his arms out and he said, brother, I love you. Give me a hug. Of course, I forgive you. Right. And it ended there. It ended there. You know, that story could have ended much differently. Right. If Joel would have if Joel would have been impatient with this person. And guess what? You know, it's challenging sometimes to know how to handle those situations. It takes an abundance of wisdom, but it also takes an abundance of Our patience is only reasonable, though, because of how much we have stood and continue to stand in need of patience from God Himself. Amen? Boy, do we need God's patience. And again, it's God who, working in us, produces the patience that He Himself desires. The next is kindness. Kindness. Now, kindness, it comes from the root word kritos, which is a noun, and it means to be useful or profitable. Automatically, almost indefinitely, our minds, when we think of kindness, is immediately drawn to another word that's similar, and I think we often equate it as a synonym, but it's really not, and that is niceness or being nice, right? You can be nice, but not kind in the same breath. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, because of the way that they're the root of this word, useful or profitable. The word kindness, it means to be useful or to have usefulness, to have kindness. And another word that's used here is benignity, benignity. Now, if you're in the medical field, you hear the word benign, there's automatically, you know, it makes you think about something in particular. And the opposite of benign would be malignant, right? If somebody has a tumor and the diagnosis is malignant, it means it's cancerous, right? It's a bad thing. But there's also times when there's a benign tumor, meaning it's not cancerous, it's there, but it's not producing death or deterioration, right? So benign, malignant, the opposite there. And I think that helps us to sort of think about the nature of kindness itself. We don't wanna be malignant. We don't want to produce death. We don't wanna produce any kind of deterioration. We don't wanna do anything that is hindering the edification, the sanctification of another brother or sister in Christ, right? We're to be building them up, strengthening them, encouraging them. And sometimes, sometimes that includes confrontations that don't seem all that nice, right? But whether to know something is kind or not is if it's profitable for them, right? If it's profitable for both you and them. So kindness is flowing out of a consideration for another. Okay. Uh, so there's the attitude. Kindness has to be driven by consideration for someone else. If you're doing an act of kindness for what it produces for you, it's the wrong attitude, right? It's self-serving it's selfish. It's self-centered, right? So kindness, kindness has to come from the attitude of I'm going, I'm going to say, or I'm going to do this. for the good, right, for the usefulness, for the profitability of the other person. and specifically that it would be an encouragement to their faith, right? Or their wellbeing, right? And so that again, kindness could show up in a word. You know, the truth is that man that would come and sit down in Joel Beegee's office and criticize what he was just preaching and teaching, he actually could have done that in a kind way in order to help Joel to grow. But, but I think it was clear because of his repentance, that's not exactly what he had in mind. His, his criticism was not in kindness. It was, it was in maliciousness, right? It was tearing him down. It was, it was not being encouraging to him. So here's the thing. Kindness can be shown to somebody who's living in gross sin, right? You can be kind. Listen, you think of the person who's most unlike you in every way, shape, and form, the way that they believe, the way that they act in life. You can be kind to that person. without two things, without affirming their sin and without participating in it. Amen. How do we do that? Truth, right, can never sacrifice truth, and we give it in love. That is where we see kindness at work. We're being constructive, useful, profitable to that person for their faith and for their well-being. We see Jesus kind of illustrate this truth in Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, in verses 13 to 16. You don't have to turn there. I'm not gonna turn there for sake of time. But Jesus calls us to be salt, and light, right? Salt and light. Salt is a preservative. We think of salt today in comparison to what they were thinking about it and how they were using it. It was for the preservation of things that were prone to deterioration. And a Christian, he says, is to be salt, salt, a preservative. Hey, listen, here I go again, getting political. You want to see America change? and go back to the way it was, begins in our homes, begins in our families, begins in our churches, that we begin to be salt once again. You know what though? It's so easy to lose the saltiness. Why? Because we get wore out by what's going on around us. Amen. and the works of the flesh show up, and where we should be patient and long-suffering and continue to be kind and encouraging to people, we lose our saltiness. And what happens when the church... Listen, the world's not been called to be salt. Amen. Because the truth is they can't be. There's nothing preservative about this spirit of the age. It produces nothing but death, right? This, if it feels good, do it mentality is altogether poisonous to everyone who's involved. Theological liberalism, there's no salt in it because it just produces truth that's your truth and my truth and anybody's truth. And the truth is there's no truth in it at all. So we need to be salt. Kindness is salt being salt, being preservative, but also light, light, light exposes things. Listen, you want to show somebody that the way they're living is, is absolutely positively contrary to the nature and will of God live like they should. Amen. Be a, be a demonstration of the gospel at work in your heart and life. And listen, Jesus is gonna go on to say, right? That a city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Let your light so shine before men that they see your good works, right? And bring glory to your Father in heaven. Alexander McLaren says this, kindness makes a person attractive. If you would win the world, melt it. Do not hammer it. The fruit of kindness is a beautiful thing. It really truly is. But we got to keep moving. Kindness, patience, kindness. And then the third one for today and last is goodness. goodness. The root word again here, goodness is Agathos, which means benevolent. So to, to be goodness or goodness is an active production of good, right? An active production of good. Now here's, here's the thing. While patience and kindness can be done in somewhat of a secretive way, goodness, on the other hand, is hard to hide. Okay, did you hear that? Patience and kindness can be done in somewhat of a secretive way. In other words, you can have the fruit of patience and kindness, and there's a lot of people around you that are just gonna miss it, right? Instead of them recognizing the fruit of patience and the fruit of kindness in your life, they will sometimes just simply label you as passive or, well, I think that's the best word, passive. You're not a threat, okay, so to speak. So patience and kindness could be seen as weakness. That was the word I was trying to think of, right? That you're weak. No, that couldn't be further from the truth. You realize it takes far more strength to be patient and kind than it does to be a short-tempered jerk, right? Am I right? Yeah, it does. It takes far more strength. But again, it's not being produced in us, by us. It's being produced in us by the Spirit of God, who is altogether perfectly patient and kind. But goodness, goodness is something that's hard to hide, and it's demonstrated in acts of giving and service. Goodness is demonstrated in acts of giving and service. You know, when I was thinking about goodness and I was thinking about specifically, I'm like trying to remember or think of a person in my life who, who I would say, man, they, they're full of the spirit of goodness. And the truth is my mind went immediately to a man who recently passed away. And the reason, not only the reason that we can say there was goodness being demonstrated there because of what was said and done, but looking at his life, looking back over his life, there was this fruit in his life. But it showed up in a very particular way at his funeral service, which, hey, by the way, one day, every single one of us are going to die, and more than likely, people are gonna gather to remember your life, okay? Keep that in mind. Because, man, I get to do a lot of funerals and there's people that just lie through their teeth at those things. They do. They say all kinds of things that aren't true, like, oh, he was such a great person, right? No, he wasn't. Stop lying. Just say things that are true and move on, right? But anyway, that's, I'm sorry. But keep that in mind, right? Because I'm not going to lie about you. But if it's not kind, I won't say it. Amen? But this particular funeral, in this particular funeral, the fruit of goodness was praised because of this man. And it was done in such a particular way that I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. So sometimes, you know, there's an opportunity to share a story and to remember a person and to just, you know, just to honor them, right? I think it's a good thing to honor their life, to praise what's praiseworthy. Well, this one widow gets up and she walks to the front of the service there and she takes the microphone. I'm going to try not to get emotional because this is a friend and it means a lot, thinking even about it. This woman, she said, when my husband died, she said, Mike showed up at my house with a load of firewood and not just came and dumped it, but he, he filled my shed and he, he got a group of guys to come and, and help him to do this. And, and she was just, she was just blown away by the goodness, right? That he showed to her in her time of loss when she lost her husband. Right. And that was great. But guess what? Two minutes later, another woman stands up and she comes to the front of the service. And she said, when my husband died, he did the exact same thing for me. And I just praise God, praise God for people who see a need and meet it. Amen. Listen, it's the fruit of goodness. And I hope and pray that every single one of us here, when we go to see the Lord face to face, and should it not be when God returns to take us all, but one by one, we travel down that road. I hope and pray that somebody can stand up and have the courage to say, this person, this man, this woman did this for me, right? And we can say, praise God for that work, but we can say, glory to God for producing that fruit in their life. It's not about putting badges on our coats. It's not about hanging trophies on our walls. It's about bringing glory to the God who loved us and gave Himself for us. That's where the goodness comes from because the one who's altogether good has been so very kind and good to you and I, amen? So what a testimony of goodness. We often hear people say, you never know what you're giving or serving may do for someone else. Again, this sounds good, but the truth is we actually do know. We actually do know when somebody says you just never know what it'll do. Yes. We actually do know it's going to produce glory to God when you, when you are good to your neighbor. And this is when the spirit empowered hearts show and share the love of Christ. It helps people with real needs. It encourages people with real heartaches and pains, and it brings real glory to the God who created us. Will there be people who take advantage of your goodness? Absolutely. All the time. But guess what? Do it anyway. Will there be people who are ungrateful for your sacrifices and your service? Absolutely. But you're not doing it to glorify yourself or them. You're doing it to glorify the spirit of God at work in you. Amen. That's you, that's me. Look over, cross page, chapter six, verses seven through 10, and we're done. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith. Amen. May it be our endeavor today, today to live in or walk by the spirit, producing love, joy, peace. Patience, kindness, goodness. And we'll look at the other three in due time. If you're here today, and you've never trusted in the one who's altogether loving you, the one who, while you were yet sinning, Christ died for you, you understand the magnitude of that sacrifice and love that God has shown to you. If you trust in Him today, not only will you receive His love, but you'll have a joy in your heart that is unspeakable and full of glory. That joy will produce a peace in your heart that passes all understanding. You can't describe it, you can't understand where it comes from, but it's real and it's there. And then God begins to produce in you patience and kindness and goodness and all these other things that will be demonstrated to not just God who saves you, but to those around you who are also standing in the same need that you and I are. Trust Him today without delay, and He indeed will save you. Let's pray. Father, thank You for Your Word today. We love You. We're so thankful, God, that You truly are patient and kind and good to us. And so as we think of these fruits of the Spirit, as we look for examples of them in our lives, we know that the greatest example is seen in Christ Jesus our Lord. And so, Father, I pray that You would produce in us that which You desire and that which brings You glory. Help us, Lord, to truly love and to care for those around us. But Lord, help us also to speak truth in that love, that God, we would not withhold truth, especially to those who are lost and perishing. Let us, God, be good and kind to everyone, but let us also, Lord, care for one another. Help us, Lord, to obey these things. Help us, God, to glorify you in them and by them. And Lord, for that soul that's here today that maybe doesn't know where they'll spend eternity, I pray that the love of Jesus Christ and the work of the Spirit of God would pull their hearts, open their eyes, create faith in them, and produce a repentant, obedient life. And God, may it all be done for your glory alone. And we ask this in Jesus' name.