God’s Orchard (Part 1)
Galatians 5:22-24

In John 15:16 Jesus said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain. . . “ He was serious, for the following reasons:

1. Fruit displays God’s character (5:22-23a)
2. Fruit fulfills God’s Law (5:23b)
3. Fruit trumps our flesh (5:24)

This is probably one of the best-known portions of the book of Galatians, particularly verses 22 and 23, which talk about the fruit of the Spirit. It’s one of the lists of the apostle Paul and it’s an important one. It’s even more exciting to me when it’s understood in the context of the whole book of Galatians and what God is doing.

Galatians 5:22-24

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
²³gentleness,self-control; against such things there is no law.
²⁴Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Last week we talked about the works of the flesh (verses 20 and 21), and none of them are very good. Against those are all kinds of laws. Paul says contrast those works of the flesh now with a deliberate choice of words, the fruit of the Spirit.

 A number of years ago we had a 1982 two-wheel drive Suburban. It had a tired 305 eight-cylinder engine. It had no power to pass, no power to accelerate and poor gas mileage. It had a lot of miles on it so rather than get a whole new vehicle, I had a new motor put in. A local shop was running a sale on new factory 350’s. I arranged to have a 350 put under the hood of that Suburban to replace the tired old 305.

 We had power we never had before! We could tow things; we could pass cars without fear. It was a whole new driving experience. Why? Because of a fundamental internal addition that took place mechanically. Same on the outside, same appearance, but on the inside, no. Suddenly things were different. Suddenly we had power. I think of that and I know we enjoyed the fruit of that new motor. It made all the difference in the world to us.

 According to the Bible, when a person becomes a Christian, God Himself comes to live inside. How could that happen and there not be a change? That is precisely what the fruit of the Spirit is all about. It’s the fruit of the Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit of God.

 You’ve probably heard these verses before, but they provide an excellent backdrop for where this fruit of the Spirit list is going. In Philippians 2:12 the apostle Paul encourages the Christians in Philippi to keep on walking with God and trusting God and honoring God. He says in verse 13:

 Philippians 2
¹³for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

 I wonder how many Christians don’t begin to grasp that -- that God actually, literally, by His Spirit indwells people. Being a Christian is far more than just intellectually agreeing with a creed or statement of faith or identifying with a group of people. Being a Christian is being indwelt by the Spirit of God. That is what makes the change and that is the source of the fruit.

 One other passage is Colossians 1:29 saying very similarly the same thing. Paul says:

²⁹For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

 Have we begun to grasp this? That if we have put all our trust in Jesus only, the eternal God of the heavens has sent His Spirit to live in us? Have we ever wondered why once I’ve made that “surrender all,” once I’ve given my heart to Jesus, suddenly my conscience is a bit different? Could it be because God now lives there and my sensitivity is now alive? Things that before I might not even have noticed, now strike me as not good or really good -- because God is in there now.

 This is where the fruit comes from. Very clearly, God’s people will bear God’s fruit. If we consider ourselves to be Christians, put all our trust in Jesus only for time and eternity, then we can look at this nine-item list and say, “Does this look like me?” It’s fine to do that, and perhaps that’s where we need to be right now. But even beyond that, is my awareness of God’s love and concern for me reached this level where I’ve begun to grasp the fact that He is there, that He lives in me and He’s changing me. He’s changing me to be more like Jesus.

 Doesn’t it make sense that children reflect the character of their parents? Indeed if we are children of God and the Spirit of God lives within us, then His character more and more will mark our lives. Three reasons from these verses:

 Fruit displays God’s character - that tells us who God is
Fruit fulfills God’s law - that’s what God wants
Fruit trumps flesh - how God wins

 Fruit displays God’s character (5:22-23a)

 We have to understand that God’s plan for dealing with people and getting into our lives and changing us didn’t begin with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. That is not a New Testament thing. Actually, foundationally, I would direct your attention to the 36^th chapter of Ezekiel, where God’s working by His Spirit is predicted and described clearly.

 Look at verses 25-27 where God promises this:

 Ezekiel 36

²⁵"Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.
²⁶"Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
²⁷"I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

 I will take tired 305 and throw it in the scrap heap and give you a whole new motor and you will be different. You can’t help but be different because I’m going to make a fundamental internal change and we need to know that He has done that. If we are not a Christian we need to be ready because He will.

 The Spirit of God will make a difference. He cannot help but make a difference. From those three verses in Ezekiel 36, which are explained over and over again from many different angles in the entire New Testament, we can see such things coming through about God. Things like His holiness. “I will sprinkle you and I will cleanse you from your filthiness and your idols”.

 We see His grace and His forgiveness. “I am willing to take you who hitherto have been a mess. I am willing to clean you up and change your life and polish you into a trophy that looks like me.” (That‘s God talking). “And I‘ll do that through the agency of My Spirit. I will give you hope. I will restore. I will give you purpose in your life.” Did you ever wonder about that one? Why am I here? Why did God make me?. This goes to the very fundamental issues of what it is to be a human being. God made us for a purpose and that is to honor Him, to know Him, to represent Him, to glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever.

 If we don’t realize that purpose, we’re missing something in the gospel. We’re missing something, certainly, in life. He will give us purpose, wisdom, guidance. “I will cause you to walk in my statutes. You will be careful to fulfill My ordinances.” Do you see a different life on the one hand than on the other. That’s the difference the Spirit will make. So when we talk about the fruit of the Spirit, understand that it is a result of God living within. That’s the source of all this change. It’s the fruit of the Spirit.

 We’re not talking about changing our own lives and generating up a whole rack of good deeds. Those are things that in certain context in life we are encouraged to generate, but not here. This is not togo out and be good now. This is give God the avenue to be God through you and this is the fruit that will be borne. Do you see the difference?

 It’s all about fruit. It’s the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of our good intentions or our efforts. Secondly, it is fruit. Think of it. Fruit is the whole point of the process. When the farmer goes out and plants seed in the ground it’s so the seed will grow and produce fruit.

 In the Old Testament fruit trees were considered valuable. When Joshua led his hoards into the Promised Land to occupy the cities, remember, “Don’t cut down the fruit trees.” Why? Because it takes them a long time to grow but also because they are there to provide fruit for you. It’s your source of nourishment. It’s pleasant. It’s healthy. It’s necessary. Fruit has always been valuable in Scripture.

A point of interesting distinction. The word “fruit” in this verse, the fruit of the Spirit, is singular. That is to say it is a package, which means every believer is responsible for all of it. “Well, my gift is meekness. So I don’t have to worry about self-control, love, joy, peace.” No -- we may be able to say a modified form of that with regard to spiritual gifts because God does enable His people to do specific things through gifts for certain circumstances. But we can say that about fruit. All of it is a package for every believer, not quite the same as spiritual gifting.

Finally about fruit before we actually look at the list. Fruit is good stuff. It tends to attract. It nourishes and it perpetuates itself in a way. Those who are kind often tend to be treated kindly. Fruit contains the seed, the potential for yet more plants and yet more fruit. So it has its own perpetuating nature.

Now let’s look at the list in verse 22 and 23. It is contrasted with the previous list. That’s deliberate. There is an intentional establishing in these verses of the works of the flesh on the one hand being bad and the fruit of the Spirit on the other hand being good. That’s because the flesh, as verse 17 tells us, and the Spirit are battling and we can’t expect any eternal good from the flesh, which is fallen and a natural enemy of God.

Let’s pick out the middle batch, just ignoring the three on one end and the two on the other. Look at the deeds of the flesh, verse 19, idolatry, sorcery, enmity. These are works of the flesh, by way of contrast. We contrast enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissentions, factions, envying. We can talk about the physical sexual sins at the beginning of the list or we can talk about the drunkenness and carousing at the end of the list. Leave those out, because we’re good folks. We don’t do that other stuff. But this business in the middle can pinch.

Even the civilized, sophisticated, and morally upright occasionally can lapse into enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissentions, factions, and envying. Just picking on those eight. Look at the fruit of the Spirit -- a deliberate contrast. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. The flesh on the one hand and the spirit on the other. That’s what the apostle Paul wants us to see. Which would you prefer?

This is what the Spirit looks like. This is what God’s people look like when the Spirit of God is living through them.

Love. The top of the list is love. It’s the word “agape,” probably the most known and understood word in the Christian language. Love seeks the best interests of the other. Love on a horizontal plane means putting other people first. You don’t see that surfacing in the works of the flesh. This is the province of God. This is how God is. For God so put the interests of the world first that He gave His only begotten Son. (John 3:16)

Interestingly, there’s another list in Scripture that fleshes this out just a bit. Many would maintain that of the fruit of the Spirit, love is kind of foundational to the rest. You can hardly do the rest if you’re not operating out of love. See if you can see a parallel between these verses in I Corinthians and the ones in Galatians.

I Corinthians 13

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
⁵ does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
⁶ does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Is that not what we see in the rest of that list of the fruit?

God’s people will be people of love if in fact the Spirit of God lives in us. He will not let us get away forever with being unloving. He will find ways of opening our eyes to the needs and interests of others beyond ourselves and showing us opportunities to act on that.

Romans5:5
and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Love is foundational. Putting others first will mark the rest of this list. 

Joy. My best definition of joy is a calm delight. It is not mindless, giddy levity. Joy takes a look at circumstances and sees them through the lens of eternal optimism. A Christian is joyfully optimistic. A Christian understands that there is a God in heaven who is sovereign, wise, and good, and that He is working in all things to His glorious, good end. A Christian sees that and realizes that even when things aren’t good here, God will fix them.

Joy is what marks the attitude of Dr. Maxwell, president of Prairie Bible Institute and founder of the Institute many years ago. He had the tragic honor of preaching the funeral for his oldest son who was a missionary in South America and who was killed in a traffic accident. Dr. Maxwell stood at the podium in that packed auditorium doing what would arguably be the very most difficult thing an individual could do. His first words were these, “Well, there are worse things than knowing your firstborn is in heaven.” That’s joy. That’s optimism. Knowing that in the face of tragedy that hurts like fire, underneath indeed are the everlasting arms. We are looking on, shall we say, God’s bright side. That’s joy for a Christian. Pessimism, a dour countenance, doesn’t mesh with the joy of the Lord which strengthens and has strengthened saints of all time. Joy -- looking on God’s bright side with calm delight.

Peace. Very simply, peace is a sense of safety and rest because we know we are in the right place. Someone long ago issued a challenge to a group of artists to depict peace on canvass. The winner of the completion was not the one who could paint the most tranquil sunset or lakeside scene where all is calm. The winner of the contest actually painted a picture of a mother bird sitting on eggs, nesting on a craggy branch within feet of a roaring waterfall, totally at peace even though a wingspan away was tragedy. Why? Because peace means we take stock of our circumstances and know we’re safe where we are.

In my view the very best peace verse in the Bible is Romans 5:1. Having been made right with God we now have peace face to face with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Before we did not. Our backs were turned. We were un-reconciled. We were rebellious. We were at enmity with God and Jesus, by His merit, by His blood, through the cross, bought our peace and now we are safe where we are. There is therefore no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. That gives us peace -- a sense of safety and rest because we know we’re in the right place.

Patience. Patience is fairly simple. It means steadfastness, endurance. Love is patient, bears all things, hangs in there. Steadfastness of soul no matter what. Patience is brought about by trusting God through adversity, according to James 1 and Romans 5. When we see God come through time and again, when we are at the end of our resources we are encouraged toward steadfastness of soul, no matter what.

Kindness. Kindness means a basic benevolent disposition. Not a crab or a grouch, but a basic benevolent disposition, likeable, wanting positive things to come and displaying that in life and in character. One of my favorite books of the Bible is Jonah. The big miracle in Jonah is certainly not the fish. The big miracle is the fact that Ninevah turns to God from their wickedness.

God spared them because of their repentance. God did not give the capital city of rank, heathen Assyria what they deserved. They had it coming. Had God given them fire and brimstone they would have gotten off easy because they deserved it. Jonah knew that if God was going to go to the trouble of sending him 500 miles from Tarshish to Nineveh, God was going to do a great thing. Jonah really preferred to see the Ninevites get what they had coming. He did not want them to receive mercy. He trusted God to that extent.

So Jonah shows up at Nineveh, preaches the minimal message, waits for God to lower the hammer. God did not, instead repentance flooded the place and Jonah went and pouted outside of town.

By the way, the Old Testament has the greatest theological statements in all the Bible. If we want to know about God and His character, what He’s really like, Jonah chapter 4 is one place to go. In Jonah 4:2, he is sitting there outside of town unhappy because the Ninevites are still breathing. He was angry so he prayed to the Lord.

Jonah 4:2
²He prayed to the LORD and said, "Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.

God, I know you are good. I know that You are a God of kindness, of a basic, benevolent disposition. You are a kind God and you wouldn’t have sent me here if You had not intended to spare these people. Jonah knew it.

Goodness. Kindness is related to goodness. Perhaps the best way of comparing the two is to say that goodness is really kindness in action. So if God is kind, He’ll do acts of goodness. That holds for you and me. If we are kind, if we have a basic benevolent disposition, it should show.

In Nehemiah 9 is Nehemiah’s prayer of repentance, as he remembers his nation’s sins before the Lord. In his prayer, he reflects back on the conquest of the Promised Land. He goes way back in history, the conquest of the land and how God was so nice to the Israelites. He was kind so He treated them with goodness and this is how He did that.

In verse 25, speaking of the invading and conquering Israelites:

Nehemiah 9

25"They captured fortified cities and a fertile land
They took possession of houses full of every good thing,
Hewn cisterns, vineyards, olive groves,
Fruit trees in abundance
So they ate, were filled and grew fat,
And reveled in Your great goodness.

Houses they didn’t build and wells they didn’t have to dig. God’s kindness moves Him to action. Further along in his prayer, Nehemiah is saying in spite of all the goodness of God, our people didn’t respond. They acted a lot like people and went their own way.

³⁵"But they, in their own kingdom,
With Your great goodness which You gave them,
With the broad and rich land which You set before them,
Did not serve You or turn from their evil deeds.

God is kind, God is good, and people are people. But it doesn’t change His character, and that’s the point of the fruit of the Spirit. If we are God’s, we should look like Him, in contrast to what is natural.

Faithfulness. Never forget the Dr. Seuss story about Horton who hatches the egg.

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant
An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent”

 As Horton sat on that egg because he said he would, season in and season out in spite of opposition, in spite of discomfort, in spite of ridicule, he was faithful.

 We’re not talking here about faith that moves mountains. This is not a particularly, exclusively spiritual thing. This is talking about being a person of integrity, a person who is conscientious, a person who is reliable, a person who says what he means and means what he says. That’s what it’s talking about. Why? Because that’s how God is.

 God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent or change His mind. Has He said and will He not do it? Has He spoken and shall He not make it good. That’s God. God is faithful that way. God is reliable. When God makes a promise, He keeps it. God is never early. God is never late. God is never inadequate. God is always as He says He will be. He is a God who is faithful. Therefore His Spirit, with God living through us, will manifest faithfulness too on our part.

 Gentleness. It is also meekness. Jesus referred to Himself as meek. It is fairly common error to equate meekness with weakness as though someone who is meek is a wimp. Actually, quite the opposite is true. A person who is meek has strength and chooses for higher purposes not to use it when he could,.

 Jesus could have called legions of angels to rescue Him. Jesus had the strength in the 18^th chapter of John. When they came to arrest Him in the garden, He wants to know who they want. They say we want Jesus and He said, “I am He.” His mere words knocked them to the ground. He had the strength. He could have delivered Himself from the Cross. He could have spoken the word and taken the life of every person in the area.

But meekness is strength under control. It is not arrogance; it’s the opposite of arrogance. It’s not self-assertiveness. It’s controlled strength for the benefit of others. It does not oppress. A person who is meek does not manipulate, doesn’t need to. It’s a person of a submissive spirit. It’s informed tolerance. It’s not the person who over-reacts the minute something goes in an unexpected direction. It’s a person who has self control.

Meekness -- strength under control.

Self-control. Somehow there’s something about self-control that just doesn’t carry the same tenor as the others. Suddenly we have to do something. Suddenly we weigh in. The fruit of the Spirit, the Bible says, is self-control. Remember what’s happening now. You have an individual with two natures, a fallen one and a new one. The new one is represented by the presence of the Holy Spirit. There is always going to be tension between the flesh and the Spirit until we’re done breathing air. Once we’re in glory that’s done, but for now the flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. The Bible is very clear about that.

Self-control is where choices are made with regard to the Spirit and the flesh. We are tempted by the world, the flesh, or the devil on the one hand.  On the other hand we know what God wants and we are presented with a choice like do I say it or do I refrain? Do I take it or do I go do something constructive? Do I go the way of the world, the flesh, or the devil or do I go God’s way:?

We’re confronted with choices like this in our Christian growth all the time and self-control simply means I have chosen wisely. Self-control is the mastery of an individual’s desires given choices between what is good and what is not. Self-control is the shoe leather of the fruit of the Spirit, in my opinion. We must choose to do the loving thing. We must choose to do the good thing. We must choose to do the meek thing. We must choose to do the faithful thing. Those are choices we’ll make and the more often that we make those choices the more they become our character. Self-control is where they all come together in our behavior, in our life. It’s the litmus test of the Spirit’s presence.

Does that mean if we blow it we’re in trouble? No. Remember what we said last week. Those who are living this way, practicing this way, those whose lives are characterized by these choices, they are the ones in trouble. Self-control means we choose wisely and it becomes a way of life.