THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT – PART 1

(Dealing With The Sinful Nature – Gal. 5:16-26)

Sunday May 15, 2011

We are entering that time of year when many folks put in their gardens.

-- I have a friend who already says he has 80% of his garden in already and the radishes are already showing.

-- We haven’t had a vegetable garden in a long time but my wife enjoys flower gardening.

The goal of gardening of course is to ultimately get a beautiful blossom or a tasty vegetable.

-- When you get a package of seeds you don’t get a picture of unplowed ground or weeds, you get a picture of a flower or the vegetable.

-- But working up unplowed ground and pulling weeds is a necessary part of the process.

     1) Without it there would be no fruit, vegetables or flowers.

     2) If you are planting on a rough piece of ground you may even have to move some rocks!

(Illus.) At the recent District Summit in Appleton, the guest speaker for the missions’ banquet was born and raised for the first nine years of his life in an Amish family in Pennsylvania. The thing he remembers most about his childhood is helping his dad prepare the soil for planting. He was the one who had to move the rocks!

     3) Even after you move rocks, plow up the earth and plant the seed, you still have to pull weeds so the fruit bearing plants aren’t choked out.

Our relationship with God is like a garden, it must be cultivated, planted, and tended with care so that it can flourish and grow.

-- The fruit of the Spirit are Christlike qualities that every believer should have manifested in their lives.

-- In Galatians 5 we are given a picture of these qualities in vv. 22-23.

    1) This is the goal we are shooting for, like the picture of the vegetables on a package of seeds.

    2) This is the ideal of what God wants to produce in our lives.

-- If we are honest, many of us would have to admit that we fall short in many of these areas like love, patience, goodness and faithfulness.

    1) Sometimes they might even seem to be unattainable.

    2) But that is because we might think that it all depends on us in getting there which is a mistake.

    3) The fruit of the Spirit is attained only with the help of the Spirit.

Remember it’s, “not by might, nor by power, but my my Spirit saith the Lord” – Zech. 4:6.

But before our “garden” can flourish and grow we must deal with the undesirable “growth” in our lives.

¹⁶ So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. ¹⁷ For 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. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

¹⁹ The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰ idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and 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.

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. ²⁵ Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. – Gal. 5:16-26 (NIV)

God’s plan for us is to grow the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, but first He must deal with, what the NIV translates as “The acts of the sinful nature…”

-- This reads like a dirty laundry list compared to the fruit of the Spirit.

-- Paul is telling them about what they need to get rid of before what they need to grow and develop in their lives.

    1) He is showing them the fallow ground of their culture that was still prevalent and apparently, not yet eradicated from the church.

     2) They needed to move some rocks and pull some weeds before they could bear fruit.

What exactly is the sinful nature?

-- The KJV & some other versions have a more literal translation, calling it “the flesh.”

-- Because of other connotations in the English language for “flesh,” the NIV translates more according to its meaning and application.

     1) This “flesh,” does not refer to skin on our bones.

     2) Nor does it refer to meat from animals.

-- This flesh is not inherently evil, it was created by God and originally called “good” (Gen. 1:31).

The sinful nature is a spiritual condition more than a physical one.

-- It is that part of us that has a tendency or bent toward disobedience of God.

-- It is an inclination within us to oppose the will of God rather than agree with it.

-- Some have gone so far as to call it a genetic defect we inherited from our parents who inherited it from their parents and so on, all the way back to Adam and Eve.

How many of you have ever done something you knew was wrong and afterward wondered why you did it?

When we do something by nature we do something by tendency or by a consistent way of behavior.

-- It is something that we don’t even have to think about but just comes natural to us.

-- There are some things that come natural to us that are good and some things that are bad.

-- God’s will for us is to have more of the good than the bad evident in our lives.

     1) More Christ-like qualities and less unChrist-like qualities.

     2) More of the fruit of the Spirit and less of the acts of the sinful nature.

But how do we get there? How do we cultivate more of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives and get that sinful nature under control?

1. We must face the fact that we are sinners both by birth and by choice.

a. By birth – David wrote, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” – Psalm 51:5 (NIV).

Was David blaming his parents for all the things he ever did wrong?

-- No, he was simply stating the fact that he was born with a bent toward sin just as his parents also were.

-- That doesn’t mean he came out of the womb doing evil things of course but that he had the potential for evil already in him.

(Illus.) It is hard for me to look at our two baby grandsons and think that they have the potential for sin within them, but they do. They look so cute and innocent, which they are, but because of the fall and because of what some theologians have called “original sin,” they have the potential for sin within them. In a year or two it will become more evident, especially as they enter the so-called, “terrible twos!”

We all are born with this genetic defect.

-- When people get confused about how evil can exist in the world we need look no further than our own hearts for the answer.

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?” – Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV)

-- We may never have actually practiced some form of outward evil that is evident to all but we have the potential for evil within us.

    1) We may never have committed a murder but may have harbored hatred in our hearts.

    2) We may have never bowed down to a statue in worship but we may have gotten our priorities out of order and put something ahead of God.

    3) We may have never practiced some blatant form of witchcraft but we may have tried to manipulate events and people to suit our own ends.

It all comes from that tendency within us to disobey God and do our own thing.

b. By choice – Isaiah the prophet said, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” – Is. 53:6 (NIV)

We have all made conscious choices that have been more in line with our sinful nature than with God’s nature.

-- Most hardened criminals do not start out with some big crime overnight.

     1) They make wrong choices over little things first.

     2) Eventually they graduate from misdemeanors to felonies.

-- How many times have you heard, when the authorities catch the perpetrator of a shocking crime, that people are surprised.

     1) He seemed like such a nice guy!

     2) He was a family man and an upstanding citizen!

(Illus.) Who would ever have thought that a man who had two college degrees, a wife of 34 years with two children, who was a Cub Scout leader, city official and field supervisor for the U.S. census and a local church leader and a veteran, could be a cold blooded serial killer? That describes what the life of one Dennis Rader looked like on the outside, the BTK killer who was finally caught in 2005 in Kansas. The man had brutally murdered ten people between 1974 & 1991.

What was striking about this man was his incredible lack of remorse after he was caught. He defended himself in court and described his murderous rampage in detail with the cool calculation of a college professor teaching a class on science or philosophy. It was downright creepy. He was well-dressed, well-spoken and well-mannered. Not what you would expect from a monster! The man carefully chose, plotted, tracked and killed his victims. But it didn’t just happen overnight, the seeds were sown as a child when he would torture and kill animals.

2. It is important to note that the acts of the sinful nature do not refer to a single act of sin but the consistent practice of sin.

When Paul says that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God, he is referring to those who practice such behavior as a lifestyle without remorse.

-- When someone practices something they are being intentional about it.

     1) They are not only making it a choice but an accepted way of life.

     2) They don’t care about what God thinks or how it affects others.

     3) They might make excuses about it but never offer any apologies.

-- It is one thing to fail, recognize it for what it is, repent and seek God’s forgiveness.

     1) It is another thing to practice sin as a way of life.

    2) In fact it is usually not seen as a sin at all.

Some may look at Paul’s warning and think they have committed the unpardonable sin but this is not true.

-- Not one of the “dirty laundry” items are unpardonable.

    1) They are all forgivable.

    2) The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).

-- But we cannot abuse the grace of God either and think that these things are acceptable to God.

     1) We cannot imagine that this is God’s plan for our lives.

    2) Nor should we think that we can conquer these things in our own strength or by the power of our own will, we need the help of the Holy Spirit to live in the Spirit.

We must yield the “high ground” of our lives to the Lordship of Christ to rule over our sinful nature.

(Illus.) The battle between the sinful nature and the power of the Spirit in our lives is like a battle for a hill. In a war, whichever side takes the elevated ground usually has a strategic advantage over the enemy. That is why for centuries, armies have struggled over who gets the high ground. The battle for “Little Round Top” at Gettysburg, the battle for Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima and the battle for Hamburger Hill in Viet Nam are just a few examples of the bloody pursuit of the high ground.  

-- If Union forces had not held at Little Roundtop, the outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg may have been very different.

-- If the marines had not taken Mt. Suribachi (aka “Meatgrinder Hill”) there would be no war memorial at Arlington National cemetery..

-- Hamburger Hill in Viet Nam wasn’t as celebrated because it was abandoned not long after it had been taken, but it still shows how important the quest always is for the high ground.

3. The more we let the Holy Spirit have the high ground in our lives, the more of the fruit of the Spirit (Christlikeness) we will have.

But we have to do something a little painful, declare death to the sinful nature:

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires” – v. 24.

-- When we believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are trusting completely in what he did for us on the cross.

     1) We are acknowledging that only what Christ has done for us on the cross could ever atone for our sins.

     2) We are identifying with the cross as our only means of salvation because there is absolutely no way we can achieve it ourselves.

-- But the cross not only represents God’s payment for our sins, it also represents the means by which we put to death a part of us we don’t want to live any more.

     1) That being our sinful nature.

     2) The cross represents a death to our “old man,” so that a new life can take its place (2 Cor. 5:17).

     3) We die to an old way of life that we may live a new way of life.

Then there will be room for the fruit of the Spirit to grow and flourish.

-- We will have a garden with plenty of vegetables.

-- We will have an orchard with plenty of fruits.

The sinful nature will still make attempts to retake the high ground.

-- But we don’t have to let it.

-- With the Lord’s help and only with the Lord’s help, we can put it back in its place where it belongs.

(Illus.) A friend sent me a video testimony on facebook. It was the testimony of a guy named Brian Welch, a former member of a heavy metal rock band called Korn. Brian reached the heights of success with this band. He experienced fame and fortune and the adoration of fans all over the world. He also experienced the kind of lifestyle that seems to have become all too common among famous rock bands, the excesses of promiscuity, idolatry and drug abuse. In worldly terms, he got to a point where he could have anything and anyone he wanted.

Along the way two things happened that would have an impact on his life. He had a daughter with a girl friend. But the girl friend, who was hooked on drugs, abandoned her daughter and left her with Brian. He also heard the gospel preached and responded but only superficially at first. He didn’t really do anything about the “weeds” of the sinful nature in his life until he heard his little daughter innocently singing one of the band’s songs. It was a song with a particularly vulgar refrain. He was suddenly struck with the affect his lifestyle was having on his daughter. By this time he himself was also hooked on drugs. He couldn’t believe he had stooped that low. So he surrendered his life completely to Christ, he gave up not only the lifestyle but the band so he could raise his daughter.

Conclusion:

Everyone has a sinful nature.

-- No matter how good a person appears to be on the outside, how well-respected they are or how well-liked they are, they still have the potential for disobedience and yes, even evil within them.

-- They may not swear much, cheat on their taxes or treat anyone badly; they may even do some good deeds that draws the admiration of others.

-- But they still have a sinful nature to deal with.

Others, like Brian Welch, just let the sinful nature run rampant but they don’t care.

As we bring that sinful nature to the cross and yield to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, a transformation takes place.

-- We actually take on a new nature, one that is patterned after the likeness of Christ.

-- Just as we have the potential for disobedience, through Christ, we also have the potential for obedience and compliance to the will of God:

^“3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. ⁴ Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” – 2 Peter 1:3-4 (NIV)

It is a far better thing for us to participate in the divine nature than to let the sinful nature run roughshod over us.

-- As we participate in the divine nature, the fruit of the Spirit will grow and develop in our lives the way it is supposed to.

-- The sinful nature will not give up easily, but with God’s help we can take the high ground!