Now, I want to talk about you for a second, even though I don't know you. one of the strangest things about you. And there are so many strange things about you. I mean, I don't know, but you just ask your closest friends. One of the strangest things about you is that while you know what's best for you.
Because you know yourself best, sometimes, maybe oftentimes you you you ignore your own good advice and me to health advice. Financial advice on relationship advice, marriage advice, parenting advice that you like. You have acted against your own best interests. So here's what we all have in common. This isn't a Christian thing. This is just a thing thing.
We have all been our own worst enemies at times. In fact, your greatest regret, which I bring up all the time. I don't know why, but your greatest regret. It's true. And this is true for all of us. Your greatest regret when you were moving in the direction of that greatest regret, you kind of knew it was a mistake.
You knew that. You know, I don't know if this is the wisest thing to do. The smartest thing to do. Your mama warns you, you know, people warned you, but you're like, you know, I can figure this out. You kind of knew what you were getting into, and then you act as surprised when it all fell apart. You're like, I can't believe this is happening.
And there's a part of your mind going, yeah, you can, because you kind of knew, I mean, and so why do we do this? It's like, it's like we can't help ourselves. We promise ourselves over and over, never again, never again, never again. And three hours later, the next day, whatever it might be, you have broken promises you've made yourself.
So here's the bottom line to get us started off. Everybody on the same page on this happy, uplifting message. You've been unfaithful to you. And the good news is not just you. In fact who will rescue us from us, who's going to rescue me from me?
Who's going to rescue you from me? Who's going to rescue you from that? Have it from that thing, from that secret, from the thing. That's not all that bad. But you really don't want to do it anymore. You just. You believe in self control and you've got self control in this area. But for some reason, this is like you've become a slave to some kind of thing.
Who's going to rescue you from that? And that's what we're talking about in this series. What our world needs now is for Christians to act Christ like. Now, if you're not a Christian, you're like, finally, a Christian acknowledges you guys don't always act very Christ like, you want me to become one of you, and you're not even very good at what you're supposed to do.
To which I just acknowledge exactly. We're working on it. But what the world needs now is for more for more Jesus followers to live their life as if they're actually following Jesus. And here's why there are so many of us. If we would just act Christ like, things would change. Things would change in our homes, things would change in our communities.
Things would change, and our nation. But let's be realistic. You you can't dunk like Anthony Edwards. You can't putt like Jordan Spaeth. You can't dance like Bruno Mars, you can't sing like Beyonce.
And you're expected to live like Jesus. I mean, I can't even live up to and measure up to other people at this. How in the world I supposed to live my life like Jesus and act and react like Jesus? And according to the apostle Paul, we can't. Not consistently anyway. And Paul talks about this throughout his epistles. But the one where the passage we're focused on in this series is found in a letter he wrote to a group of churches in modern day Turkey.
And in this passage of Scripture and what we call the book of Galatians, it was a letter that was a letter that circulated around these little house churches in Turkey, modern day Turkey. In this in this particular letter, he actually gives us a list of what Christ like looks like this. This is a list of what Christ like looks like, but it is not.
And this is where we get confused. It is not a to do list because we have all two tried, right? And we have all two failed. This is different. He says no, this is not a to do list because you can't do this consistently. This is a fruit list. It's a and he calls these the fruit of the spirit.
Now a fruit is something that's produced through you, not by you. It's a it's a list of things. And characteristics. And honestly, they're mostly just reactions that are produced through us but not by us. And he refers to these as, the fruit of the spirit. He says, the Spirit of God, if you're a believer, lives inside of you, and if you will allow the Spirit of God to, he will burst, and he will create in you and through you the fruit of the spirit.
So I came up with my own definition. Then we're going to look at one in particular. Basically, the fruit of spirit is this it's reactions. Because again, most of these are reactions. Reactions produce through us as a result of our submission to God's Spirit within us.
And here's how he sets it up in Galatians. Here's what he writes this. And again, he makes it so simple. He says this. He writes this since we live by the spirit, that is, since God's Spirit lives in you. And again, if you've invited Jesus to be your Savior, the Holy Spirit came to live inside of you. But even if you haven't, even if you're not a Christian, did you know that you have been made in the image of God?
There's a divine spark. There's a divine spirit within you. Which is why at times we look up and say, if there's anybody out there, help me. There's just something in all of us that knows there's more to this life than this life. And so he says that since the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, he says, I love that imagery.
Let us keep in step or let us. Maybe your English translation says, let us walk by our keep in step with that spirit. In other words, since God's Spirit lives in you, you are to keep up with, keep in step with, pay attention to let the Spirit of God inside of you, animate you, influence you, and nudge you toward the fruit of the spirit and to pause when you run out of goodness, and to pause when you run out of patience, and to pause when you run out of self-control, and to pause when you run out of joy, and to pause when you run out of kindness and to say, Heavenly Father, I'm.
I'm at my limit. I need you to take it from here. I can't you can. I need you to do this through me. And that is what you, as a Christian, I as a Christian, are invited to do and to experience them. He gives us a picture of what these fruit looks like. He listen, he says this, this is what the Holy Spirit's going to nudge you toward.
The fruit of the spirit is love, which is kind of the banner piece is a summary of all of these love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. These are the things we run out of eventually, especially with specific people in specific environments faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. That. I love this line. This is one of my favorite lines in all of the New Testament against such things, and I wish I could just been 20 minutes on this.
There is no law. In other words, you can’t max these out. There's no law against these, and there's no law that can make you do these. This is the amazing thing about the Christian life and following Jesus. There's no law against these things. So for the next few minutes, I want to unpack faithfulness.
Now this one, this faithfulness should be easy for us because we are so disgusted when we hear about someone who's been unfaithful not just in a marriage, but somebody who's been unfaithful at work, or a corporation or a company, was unfaithful to an employee or two group of employees.
And you hear the story and you're like, I can't believe they would treat people that way, or I can't believe he treated her that way, or I can't believe he she treated him that way. When you hear stories of unfaithfulness, it's so it's so immediately disgust us that certainly we shouldn't struggle with faithfulness.
But here's the thing, and this is why we're talking about it. Like all the fruit of the spirit. Like all the things on this not to do list that the apostle Paul gave us, like all the rest of the fruit of the spirit. Faithfulness is easy when it benefits us all these things are easy when it benefits us, right?
Faithfulness is easy when it benefits us, but faithfulness because if your boss find out he's going to fire you. Or faithfulness. Because if your husband found out, he's going to be on his way out, that is not the fruit of the spirit. We call that the fruit of self-preservation.
And we're all really, really good at that. Right? This is different. This is, again, a characteristic that when you run out of your gas, you run out of gas, you run out of your juice, you run out of your ability, you're at your wits and your patience is out. Your kindness is out. You don't know that you can remain faithful.
This is when we are invited to pause and allow and ask the Holy Spirit to kick in on our behalf, to produce through us what we cannot produce on our own. So here's the question. When it comes to faithless, what does spirit induced or spirit produce faithfulness look like? And the short answer is it looks like Jesus, specifically Jesus in the Gospels.
This is why I tell you all the time, follow Jesus through the Gospels. Follow Jesus through the Gospels. Follow Jesus through the Gospels. You discover what God is like and you discover what following God looks and acts like. Jesus in the Gospels. Faithful in spite of reliable. Regardless, someone who made and kept his promises. And that's what the Holy Spirit will walk us and nudge us toward it.
Here's the thing about Jesus when you follow him through the Gospels, Jesus was faithful to the men and women entrusted to him. He was faithful to the men and women entrusted to him. Out of devotion to his Father in heaven. This is the difference. He was not devoted and was not faithful to them on the just because he thought they were worth being faithful to.
He was here to explain what God is like, so he illustrated and demonstrated faithfulness when confronted with unfaithfulness. Because if you've read the stories the men and women entrusted to him, especially the guys, gave Jesus very little reason to remain faithful to them. He was faithful, not because they deserved it, but because he came to reveal the character in the faithfulness of God. Our Father. Now, this is where my story intersects with this.
Because I grew up. I mean, I've been a Christian since I was six. I'm a preacher's kid. I know the Bible backwards and forwards. Like I said before, you know, when I sin, I can go to the verse that goes, talks about my sin is terrible, okay? It's wonderful and terrible. And so many times growing up and maybe you can relate to this.
I have broken my promises to God. The longer you are a Christian, the more promises to God you break. Have you noticed that if you're a brand new Christian, God bless you. You got to. You know you got a short. But I'm telling the rest of us, God never again God. And of course, you know, in high school and college, God, if you will allow no one to find out about this, I promise I will not.
You know, I was kind of doing a deal with God and bargaining with God, and I was so unfaithful to my promises to God. And God has remained so faithful to forgive, to show up in my life. This is the picture of faithfulness is returning faithfulness for unfaithfulness, returning faithfulness for faithfulness. That's easy. But faithfulness in the face of unfaithfulness is the ultimate expression of the faithfulness of Christ.
Now I want to be really clear about something. Okay, I am not suggesting, and I'm not advocating for anybody remaining in a toxic, dangerous relationship at home or at work. That's not the point. In fact, Jesus wouldn't recommend that either. You're taking notes. Just write down Matthew 1023. Matthew 1023. That's not the point. Here's the point what I'm advocating for.
That when we run out of one of what we would consider, Paul considers the fruit of the spirit that we pause and we ask the Holy Spirit to empower us to be like Christ, rather than becoming like someone we don't even like. Rather than returning the favor of unkindness or unfaithfulness to say, you know what?
No, that's my that's the normal way. That's the way everybody else does it. This is my opportunity. This is my opportunity. Because who would remain faithful? Who would follow through? Who would be reliable? Who would keep a promise to this person or this group in light of how this person or this group treated me? And that's our moment.
That's our moment to shine. That's when Jesus said, let your light shine in such a way that people see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven. Being faithful when it's easy that doesn't give God any credit is when we're faithful, when it's difficult, when no mere mortal would do what we've decided we want God to do through each of us to respond like our Savior.
When someone has given you every excuse not to. Now it's not just me. You've seen this as well. But when you do what I do for a living, as long as I've done it, maybe I've seen it more than you. I. I've seen this play out both ways. I've. I've watched men and women walk through the valley of the shadow of abandonment and betrayal and show no evidence of it.
On the other side, you have to. You've met people who just seem so wrinkle free. Their life seems so easy and breezy and everything's just going their way. And then you hear their story of the child, the family they grew up in, and mom was gone or dad was gone or, you know, or they, you know, somebody walked off and left them during a first marriage.
You you hear these, these extraordinary, painful stories of abandonment. And you're like, you're shocked because you don't see any evidence of it. They're not wearing it. They're not carrying it. It's like they've somehow it's it happened and they weren't happy about it, but they somehow it hasn't shaped who they are, they their identity. This is the power of inviting God's Spirit into those moments to say, I can't.
You can. You got to do this through me. I do not want to become like someone I don't like. I want to be Christ like. And here is my opportunity on the other side. I've seen abandonment and betrayal defined people. They wear it like a coat. It just defines everything about them. Maybe that's you. And let me just be super honest, okay?
If I heard your story, I would not guilt you. I wouldn't shame you. I wouldn't say, what's wrong with you? If I heard your story of abandonment, betrayal, I would say, goodness gracious, my heart breaks just like your Heavenly Father's heart breaks. So nobody's going to shame you or criticize you.
But your heavenly father, He's going to invite you into a different way of life, because unnatural or supernatural faithfulness in response to unfaithfulness, that's how somebody emerges with what will always be a painful memory, but not a debilitating identity.
This is part of the invitation to follow Jesus. It's doing for others, for what they don't deserve you to do for them, like your father in heaven. But there's another angle when it comes to faithfulness, sort of turning things the other way. there's another, I guess, facet of Holy Spirit empowered faithfulness that's equally is unnatural. That will require maybe even more from you
Here’s why I say that. You're the guilty party. You've been unfaithful. Maybe at work that you know what they expect. You're not doing it. Nobody knows. Who cares? Maybe in your marriage you've been unfaithful. Maybe in a previous marriage, you were unfaithful. Maybe with a fiance. Maybe with a friend. I don't know, you've been unfaithful. And here's what you've done, I get it, you've excused it.
It's not a big deal, is Bovary. You know, you kind of story. It's really their fault anyway. You know, you've rationalized it and you've done what we all try to do with our past. You've buried it or you've tried to, but it's a really shallow grave. And for the next ten minutes, I'm brushing the dirt off. And here's here's the problem.
If you're a Christian, okay, this is so important. So if you're not, if you're not a Christian, I don't have any right to tell you what to do. And please don't hear me saying I'm some sort of authority. You got to do what I say. No, no, no, no. But if you're a Christian, if you're a Jesus follower, you claim to be when you bury and don't, when you hide and conceal and don't confess and reveal, do you know that you are resisting the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you?
When those memories ding your conscience and you do nothing, you're actually actively resisting Christ in you. Who wants to liberate you? Who wants you to own, acknowledge, and take responsibility for the truth and in doing so will ultimately set you free. And you can take off this code that you don't even know you're wearing. But the people around you know something's up.
They don't know what, but they know something's up. And to say yes to the God who's whispering to you. Confess. Come clean. Acknowledge, not confess to God. He knows and God is fine. The only thing that makes God unkind about your sin is that it's it's eroding your confidence in him and possibly eroding other relationships you're not even aware of.
Because when we carry things that we don't confess, when we try to keep things in the dark, they don't get weaker, they get stronger, and they crawl out into all of our other most important relationships. To confess that the person or the people affected by your unfaithfulness, until you do, until you do, you'll never ultimately be at peace with you or others because secrets leak.
Or summarize it this way faithfulness acknowledges unfaithfulness, faithfulness, Holy Spirit produced, and this faithfulness acknowledges unfaithfulness. That's what faithfulness does. It takes full responsibility for its actions and its reactions. Say faithfulness makes things right by bringing those secrets. I'm not trying to be cute. faithfulness, makes things right by bringing those secrets into the light.
And yet, yeah, there's oftentimes a consequence when you do that. But can I just push a little bit? You're already paying a price for keeping it a secret. You're already paying a price for the fact that nobody knows, and nobody's ever going to find out. You just that's just yours to carry, even though there are people out there somewhere whose lives would be better and who would be set free if you were to acknowledge your unfaithfulness.
Most of us, are familiar with the name Zacchaeus. And Zacchaeus was a tax farmer, which meant he had other tax collectors working for him. And he was an Israelite. He was a person of supposed faith, a Judean or a Galilean. and if you know the story, Jesus comes to his village. He's heard Jesus is coming. He does not want to mix with the crowd. It is not safe for him.
He probably has security and he can't see over the people in front of him. So he climbs up a tree. Jesus passes by. Jesus stops. If you know the story. He looks up in the tree and this made the crowd so upset. Zacchaeus, he said, I want you to come down and take me to lunch at your house.
And everybody in the crowd is like, of all the people in our village, in our in our town, he is the most unworthy for you to have lunch with. That is not fair. He gets one on one time with his famous rabbi. The rest of us just have to watch him walk by.
And I kind of think, I'm guessing that Jesus set this up for us so we would discover something that maybe we won't discover any other way. After lunch, Zacchaeus comes out and there are people around me.
These villages are not very large, and people know Jesus is in there. So they're, you know, keeping their distance, but they want to see him again. And Zacchaeus comes out and he says the following. He says, here and now I give half my possessions to the poor half. And if I have cheated, anybody in the crowd kind of murmurs like, enough, really?
But here's the thing and Zacchaeus is mine. What he was doing was absolutely legal. It was absolutely legal. But if you're on the other side of that kind of legality, you feel like you've been cheated and taken advantage of. So what he's saying is this: if I discover that what I've done legally has hurt other people unnecessarily, if I've cheated anybody out of anything, I'm going to pay back.
The law says two times, I'm going to pay back four times that amount. And Jesus doesn't say, oh, Zacchaeus, you don't have to do that. That's between you and God. Just ask forgiveness and move on. Jesus said to him, this is amazing.
Today, today, not until today. Regardless of how many times Zacchaeus has gone to the temple, regardless of how many sacrifices he's made for his sin, regardless of how many prayers that he's prayed, he says, today, salvation has come to this household.
Zacchaeus brought his unfaithfulness into the light, and then he began to make things right. Jesus makes this incredible statement, the sermon on the Mount. I'll wrap up. He says, blessed or blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. The opposite is true as well. Those who have not cleansed their heart and owned their stuff will have a difficult time recognizing the work of God.
The presence of God, or the activity of God even in their own life. The blessed are the pure. So Jesus was saying, Zacchaeus, today salvation has come to this house because you have been faithful, you have seen clearly, and you have acted on that thing that dinged your conscience. You are making things right and now you stand in right relationship with your Heavenly Father.
So I ask a question like this: have you been unfaithful? And is there somebody out there somewhere whose life would be instantly better just to know you owning it? Somebody who would say, now I know what's been going on. And now I understand because I knew something was up. Your heavenly father who loves you says, come on, come on.
I came because there's better sense. Come on, he says, since, since you live by the spirit, since God's Spirit lives inside of you, keep in step. Keep up, keep in step, keep up. Pause, submit. Take a step toward freedom and take a big giant step away from for what I want to do, I do not do but what I hate, I do.
You don't have to live this way. Here's what Paul said. Here's what he discovered. Here's what some people around you have discovered. Jesus came to rescue you from that, if you will submit so when tempted to be like to people you don't even like, instead of like your father in heaven, when you run out of juice, you run out of patience.
You run out of self-control. You've run out. You've run out of goodness. You've run out of kindness. This is as far as I can go. This is as far as you know. My strength can take me when tempted to unfaithfulness. Even in the small things. That's your cue. That's when you say or pray out loud. You say, Holy Spirit, I need you, Holy Spirit.
I'm out, I'm out, I'm out. You're sitting in the driveway. You're about to go in. I'm out. You hear the car? Pull up. I'm out. You hear the somebody coming up the stairs? I'm out. You pull up in front of the school, and here she comes. Here he comes. And you know, here comes the excuses and I'm out.
Holy spirit, I need you. I can't, you can. Do this for me, through me.
What our world needs now is faithfulness. Let's cover up more. Owning up less. Just like and more Christ like. What our world needs now is for Christians to keep in step with the Spirit of God, to walk in the spirit, to keep in step with those nudges and those promptings of the Holy Spirit that when he dings our conscience, we act instead of cover up and bury.
And what your world needs now, what your family needs now, what your company needs now, what your group of friends you need now, what your world needs now is for you to lead the way.
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