Response of the Holy Spirit | Galatians 6:1-10
This message was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, October 23, 2022. You can watch the video in full by clicking below.
As Bob pointed out when we live by the Fruit of the Spirit, it reflects not only inward but outward too.
Verse 5 - Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.
Seems pretty straightforward. So, when we live by the Spirit, we follow the Spirit’s leading by demonstrating love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in every part of our lives.
Sometimes we forget about that last part - “In every part of our lives.”
We live segmented. One part of our lives is disconnected from another.
We have different sets of friends - work friends, fitness friends, social friends, kids’ parent friends, church friends.
We have different habits for different situations. At home we might be orderly and structured but at work we might be chaotic and running behind all the time.
So how do we make this connection between living out the Fruit of the Spirit in every part of our lives? How does the Fruit of the Spirit, following the Spirit’s leading, become central to who we are?
Let’s put a pin in this for a moment and jump over to the story of the Transfiguration, or a complete change in appearance into more beautiful or spiritual, in Matthew 17.
“Six days later Jesus took Peter and the two brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone.”
You might be familiar with this story, but let’s just pause here for a moment. I think we get so familiar with a passage we tend to skip over these context sentences without giving much weight to them.
Peter, James, and John were going with Jesus to be alone. They were already experiencing something amazing and unique, to be alone with the Messiah, but this must have seemed pretty normal to them.
Let’s not glaze over the everyday life that Peter, James and John were living. They were in routine with Jesus. Spending time with him. Eating with him. Sleeping next to him. Traveling with him. Jesus permeated their day-to-day life.
Let’s pick it up in verse 2, “As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared and began talking with Jesus.”
Can you imagine being in this most holy moment? This is up there with moments like Moses at the burning bush or witnessing Daniel surviving the lion’s den or the crucifixion itself. So I can’t say I blame Peter for his immediate and rash response:
“Peter exclaimed, “Lord, it’s wonderful for us to be here! If you want, I’ll make three shelters as memorials—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
How rashly do we express our desire to stay on the mountaintop? Again, Peter was in a day-to-day routine with Jesus, but he was still seeking the experience, wanting to stay in this holy space. But we see in verse 9 Jesus leads them otherwise:
“As they went back down the mountain…”
When I was growing up, I went to a youth conference every year. You may have heard about it - Acquire the Fire. It was AWESOME. Not only did we go and listen to amazing worship songs and learn about Jesus but we got to stay overnight in hotel rooms with our friends. It was pretty much the coolest thing ever.
We were all high on the experience of Jesus. We were all in!
But you know what happened after we came back from those conferences?
We came down off the mountain. We entered back into the real world where we now had to put into practice what we had just learned.
But there was a problem. What we learned hadn’t yet become ingrained in who we were yet. So, all those teenagers who committed to turning all of their attention onto Jesus and not on anything else quickly met the reality of the world around them. They… We… We were sucked right back into the life we had left behind only a few short days earlier.
We meet Jesus in some great isolated experience - maybe on a retreat or at camp or a church service - and we think to ourselves “Yes! I’ve made it. This is where I want to live. I want to stay here forever. This is the holiness I’ve been seeking.”
We seek to stay on the mountaintop or in the cabin or in the hotel or at the church building and we hold on tightly, gripping to whatever will keep us attached to that place. Because, like Peter, we ask to stay on the mountaintop.
It might be best summed up in this prayer:
“Dear God, I’ve been very good today. No grumpy thoughts, no swearing, no smacking people in the head, and no whining at all. But I’m about to get out of bed now, so I may need Your help with the rest of the day.”
The question now becomes - how do we live out the Fruit of the Spirit in “every part of our lives?” To put it another way, how do we lean on the Holy Spirit to empower us?
I believe Galatians 5:26-6:10 provides us with application insight on how to live out love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
These next 5 points aren’t on your bulletin, but feel free to jot these down.
1. Invest yourself into what gives life
Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.
As we talked about last week, we live in a very “me” centered society. It is too easy to fall into the trap of what I am entitled to, what I deserve, rather than thinking about the two greatest commandments: love God and love your neighbor. Life stems from thinking outside of our own wants.
2. Acknowledge you are not the only one God speaks to
5:26 Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.
6:3-5 If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct.
We can become pridefully inflated with ourselves, believing that we are the only one that God speaks to. This is one aspect of the Friends church I have come to love, that we operate together to seek the Spirit, rather than the mantle falling one leader’s shoulders.
3. Sometimes we have a responsibility to hold others accountable
Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself.
When we speak up to hold others accountable, we must seek to do this in both truth AND love, through the lens of John 1:16
“From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”
The humility and grace come from the recognition that you and I are not absolved of the possibility of this misstep overtaking us too.
4. Seek out the best interest of others.
Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ…Those who are taught the word of God should provide for their teachers, sharing all good things with them. Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith.
Seek out loving others. Before you leave today, ask someone how you can pray for them. Aside from praying for them, you might have additional insight into how you can help them meet a need too. Again, We should do good to everyone.
5. Persevere in doing good
So let’s not get tired of doing what is good.
At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
It took Peter some time before he finally got it. It didn’t take the mountaintop experiences, the one-offs, to change his life. It took time and regularity with Jesus day after day and it took Jesus’ amazing, never-ending, gracious love and forgiveness to Peter’s missteps. And it took the empowerment of the Holy Spirit for Peter to live out the life he was called into.
Your last point on your bulletin, I know some of you have been waiting to fill that in. Well, this is our concluding thought, and here it is…
Like Jesus, I must COME DOWN from the mountaintop to bring GOD to the rest of the WORLD.
OPEN WORSHIP
We are going to go into a time of open worship. As we spend some time reflecting, praying, and meditating on God and his truth, we embrace this space of quiet. The world around us is noisy and insistent on being heard. Intentionally, each week, we take a step back from the noise. We search for the Lord and we ask him for his guidance and direction, both in our individual lives and corporately as a church. Sometimes the Spirit so overwhelms us, like Jeremiah in 20:9 - “there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones” we can’t help but to share what’s on our hearts. If that is you today, there is a mic available to share or you can share in the online chat if you are watching online.
We’ve spent a lot of time talking over the last 3 weeks about who the Holy Spirit is, how the Holy Spirit empowers us, and how to follow the Spirit’s leading. Now is just one opportunity of many you will get today and this week to practice this.
You can use the above questions as prompts to consider,
What will I begin doing immediately, or start doing this week, to "walk by the Holy Spirit" and let God's Spirit guide my life?
Who will I love today? How will I love them?
or God may take you a different direction. Again, feel free to share the insights God reveals to you.
Let’s pray:
Father,
We praise you. You are holy and we declare your holiness
We thank you for all you’ve taught us over the last few weeks about your Holy Spirit
May we yield to your Spirit’s leading in our life
Show us who to love today and how to love them
Reveal to each of us our next step to take to follow you
We ask for you to pour out your Spirit on us now
