Exploring My Strange Bible - I am who I am Part 6: The Spirit and the Fruit

Episode Date: November 20, 2017

The longest part of the series is about God’s spirit… what does that even mean? In this teaching called the spirit and the fruit, we are looking at God’s personal creative presence as the one who creates and generates growth and life. What does it mean for the spirit to be at work? We’ll address this in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right. Well, in this episode, we're continuing in the series called I Am Who I Am. This was a number of teachings I did years ago, exploring the vast and robust portrait of God throughout the scriptures.

We camped out on Yahweh, the God just presented in the Hebrew scriptures, and how that connects to Jesus as the physical embodiment of that God in the New Testament and the Gospels. And the longest part of the series actually was about the Spirit, the portrayal of God as a personal presence and Spirit. What does that even mean? So in this, this is one of the second teaching on the Spirit. It's called the Spirit and the Fruit. We're looking at the images of God's personal creative presence as the one who creates and generates growth and life. Literally, like in the last episode, as creator. But then through this metaphor, the fruit of the Spirit, growth and change in human life and maturity. So we're looking at the image from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians.

He uses this famous metaphor of the fruit of the Spirit. And what does it mean for the Spirit to be at work changing or at least prodding us towards change, moral growth and character growth and maturity over the course of our lives? Why doesn't it feel like that happens more quickly? Why does it take a long time? And why is it that you and I have to work so hard alongside the Spirit to accomplish that character change in our lives?

So we're going to explore these kinds of questions and look at a whole bunch of passages in the Scriptures. So there you go. Let's open the Bible and learn together. I invite you to get out a Bible, get out your Bible, and turn with me to the New Testament, to Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 5. the New Testament to Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 5. We're into the third part of the series that we've been in for a few months now. We're exploring what a Christian means when they use the word God, which is very ambiguous in our culture. And so what is a Christian vision of God? And we are kind of building this all around the vision of God as Jesus revealed the reality

of God to be, which is a God who is the one true God, but who is three in one, who is Father, Son, and Spirit. And so we're now in the third part of the series. We're going to take, I don't know, we're somewhere up to two months and just explore and learn about the reality and the work and the person of the Spirit. So the first week we explored the Spirit's role as creator and as life giver, the one who gives the breath and vitality to all living things. We explored in the second week that the Spirit is Jesus' gift to his people,

and that the story of what happened at Pentecost in the book of Acts is about the empowering presence of the Spirit to come and take up his dwelling among us and to empower us to become humans and to do things that we wouldn't otherwise do. And so today we're exploring a different role of the Spirit, which is the Spirit's role in messing with you, in messing with your mind and your heart

and beginning this process of change and transformation that we all really desperately need to undergo. And so if you have Galatians chapter 5 open, look at verse 22. And this is, to some of you, might be a really well-known little section in Paul's letters. If you grew up around church, you probably know a little melody. You're going to have a little melody in your head because you learned a song that had this in it. Chapter 5, verse 22. What's this about?

It's about the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. How many of you had a little melody in your head? Some of you did, a handful. So this is one of the most condensed descriptions anywhere, descriptions in the New Testament anywhere, of what happens when the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Jesus really gets a hold of someone's life and begins to change and transform them. And so if you're a follower of Jesus, this is what our lives should look like. Ready, set, go. Go be this. Do this. Do I need to say any more? I'll pray. I'll just pray

now, and we'll be done. All right? So no, no, no, that's not, it's actually not that simple at all. And so here's what's interesting, you know, so how many of you feel good about yourselves after reading that list of nine? You're just like, oh, really? Maybe got one or two of those going. Notice that it's singular, the fruit. It's not the fruits, the fruits, not the fruits. It's not like here's nine things that could grow in your life, you know, because the spirit is here is the one thing. And here's it from nine different aspects, which means we're all deeply in trouble. Because if you've got love going on but no patience, then that doesn't really matter. It doesn't really work.

So why can't we just close it? Because this is complicated. Why can't I just pray and end the message here? Go be this and do this. Because we all know just from day-to-day life experience how I'm growing and changing as a human being. That's a slow, complicated, difficult process, right? And to just boil it down to, well, I guess I'm a Christian, the spirits of my life now, so I guess I'll pray one night and I'll wake up and just be this, whatever. And how many of you

had success at that? So you wouldn't raise your hand because you would be patient and humble and kind. You wouldn't do that if you were. But, right? So, no, we all know that this is much more complicated because, so you have someone who became a Christian in a very kind of quick, or, you know, you might call it a kind of a quick ignition kind of conversion experience. Say, for example, some of us have had that experience where there's a very short season of a month or a week or even a day or a moment where you realize your desperate need for Jesus, and you look to Him in faith and trust, and I'm going to follow Jesus. For some of us, that was a moment or a very short period of time. And for someone who

had that experience, very often there really is a marked difference where, like, last month I was living that way. I decided to follow Jesus. Boom. I'm going to go this way now. And so for someone with that story, there is often a marked difference in this direction of the fruit of the Spirit. For others of us, we have more of a slow burn conversion, not quick ignition, but slow burn conversion where it's this slow process and you realize over years and months, or maybe you grew up around the church or something, but as you become older and become an adult, you realize, like, whoa, I had no idea what this was really about. And so this is a slower process, but at

the same time, you can see maybe a trend of some kind of growth in some of these ways sometimes. But here's what happens, is that whether slow burn or quick ignition, a year goes by, three years go by, four and a half, five, a decade goes by. And there are in all of our lives these issues, these traits, this baggage of patterns of thinking, of real deep flaws in my character, of just ways that I process and treat others or deal with circumstances, they just keep coming back. And they don't seem to go away, and they just have this afterlife that lasts. So I'm finally to the point where I'm nearing the halfway point. I'm a Christian at 20. I'm nearing 40 in about four years here. And so, I'm just like, whoa, why am I still dealing with that? You know what I'm saying? How many of you

know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're like, I'm a Christian. The Spirit's in my life. Why isn't more of this happening just real simply? And why do those things keep living on? And so, I think, you know, memorizing this little thing through the Spirit as a song or something, I think it's good. It can bury it in our hearts. But at the same time, I think it can actually present a real challenge to us because we think that this ought to be just simple and I ought to just be able to pray one night and then I wake up and no more anger problems or no more whatever, problems with money, mismanagement, and whatever your deal is, right, that you feel like

is not this direction. And so we feel like it's simplistic. We feel like I'm failing this Christianity thing. Why doesn't it work? Why isn't it changing me? Why doesn't Jesus just bonk me on the head and make me new, right? And so why isn't it like that? And when we just sing the song of this little passage and we think that that's all there is to it, it would lead you to think that that's what the process is like. But what we neglect to do is do what you should always do, which is like read the passage in context, for example, right? And what you realize is that in the flow of this whole section of the letter, Paul is wrestling with exactly those issues. Why is it that real deep character change is such a slow process in our lives?

And what do you do when it is like this battle of the new you and the old you constantly colliding? And it's two steps forward, one step back, and one step forward, two steps back, and this constant. And it takes so long. And it's exactly what Paul's wrestling with in the whole passage overall. So what we're going to do is back up to verse 16. wrestling with in the whole passage overall. So what we're going to do is back up to verse 16, and we're going to walk through one of Paul's most beautiful explorations of the Spirit's role in this long process of changing and transforming us to become more like Jesus. But I want to reframe it, because notice, what's the metaphor Paul uses here of the Spirit's work in our lives? Look at verse 22. It's a metaphor. What's the word? Fruit. Fruit. Now, that's extremely significant.

Anytime you see Paul or any New Testament author using a metaphor like that, it's worth just pausing and saying, like, what are the layers here? Because the fact that he uses this word and this image actually gets a window into how Paul sees this whole process working itself out in our lives. So let me reframe that in a way that's at least been helpful for me in thinking about it. So as I've shared before, I grew up in Portland, but I had a long hiatus. My wife and I moved here from Portland to the upper Midwest for about nine years where I did continued graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, the wonderful state of Wisconsin.

Anybody? It's a great state. It's a great state. So we moved to Madison, Wisconsin. It was nine years there. It was awesome. It was a great season of life. And we knew we were going to be there for a while,

so eventually we bought a small little fixer-upper home in Madison. And one of the things we really wanted to do, Jessica grew up with her family having huge gardens in the backyard, vegetable gardens and so on, so we wanted to have room for a garden. And so that was a big criteria was a yard with good sun exposure to be able to grow a garden. Any garden? I mean, you actually eat a lot of food from your garden? Anybody? You do this? So, this Portland, for goodness sakes.

What's wrong with you? This is just normal, right? It's actually not normal not to grow your food in Portland. I don't know. Anyway, so that's what we wanted to do. And so there was nothing going on in the backyard. It was just a lot of grass. And so over the few months before we moved in, we made it happen.

And so I'll just show you a picture here just because I'm proud. I'm so proud. This was the only, anyway, I just love it. It was a quaint little backyard, lots of sun. And so what I had to do was get a rototiller, and I just chopped up a 10 by 25 foot rectangle, and made some raised borders, and put up chicken wire, and so on. And then my wife was responsible, because she knows a lot more about this, about what she wanted to grow, and peas, and beans, and squash, and cucumbers, and peppers, and tomatoes,

and raspberries, and all these other things. And it was really great. So the first summer we had the garden, it was awesome. We actually, like, almost all of the vegetables I consumed in the summer of 2009 came from that 10 by 25 piece of dirt. And it was incredible. It was so fun. It was just a really fun experience.

And it was so much work. I can actually see why none of you garden, right? Because it's so much work. Are you kidding me? So that itself took enough work. Now here's, so let me just ask you, here's what I did not do. What I was not able to do was Jessica and I go to the seed store, or we get, you know, starts, tomato starts or whatever from friends, plant it all, and then just like forget about it for six weeks or whatever and just expect it to be full of fruit, right? In six weeks, and I just go out and pick it, right? That's what I did not do, right? Because what would happen if I did that? I just neglected it.

Would there be any fruit in the garden that I had forgotten about for six weeks? Would there be any? There could be some, right? There could be one really strong tomato plant that survived the neglect, you know, and a few cucumbers going. So there might be something. There'd be a lot of weeds, a lot of weeds, and a little bit of fruit that just happened to, by happenstance, just survive. If you actually want to make a plot of ground produce lots of fruit, what do you have to do? You have to learn how to be a gardener, right? You have to learn how to be a gardener. You have

to learn the patterns of watering and what plants need how much. You have to learn, obviously, just the skill of weeding, which isn't too terribly difficult, but it was for me because I kept picking up things that were actually we were supposed supposed to be eating, right? So I had to learn the plant identification process, and so whatever, that's a skill that you develop, you have to learn how to spot, you know, mildew, some of our tomatoes got this blight or mold one year, you have to learn how to spot all that stuff, and that you also specifically have to learn how to deal with predators of your garden, right? So I have chicken wire there because, at least in Wisconsin, there's lots of tiny rabbits everywhere, just like there's wild cats all over Portland. That's against the

law in Madison. You can't have cats outside in Madison, but there's rabbits everywhere, and so they will destroy your garden, so you have to put up chicken wire. But here's what happened. This is really what I'm getting to. This is the best part of the whole experience, was that the second summer that we had the garden, when things were just starting to really grow, and the squash and cucumbers were coming in, and so on, the peas, and we went out one day, and Jessica noticed that the peas were just decimated, like just shredded.

And we're just like, what? It's happening. This is a monster rabbit? Like, how did it get in, you know? And then right here at this section here, the lower right section, the chicken wire was all, like, compressed, like something had lunged over it and gotten caught or something. Like, it was a heavy thing. And we're like, what on earth?

And so I, you know, set rat traps or whatever. It'd be a really big rat, but I don't know. Set traps. And then over the next week or so, like, the cucumbers decimated, the squash and half the tomatoes and so on. And it was, it just ruined our garden. And we're like, what is this? What animal is this? Is it a herd of elk or something? Like what's going through our backyard? So after about a week of setting traps and wondering, Jessica came around the deck, around the garage to the back. I'll never forget this because she just screamed and yelled. And then I went to the window and I saw her running

and I saw this large, brown, fuzzy creature like lunge, hit the fence, roll over it, which is why it was all good, and then like go right under our neighbor's garage. And then we're like, what on earth was that? It was this huge, brown, it was like a beaver, the size of a large, large beaver, but without the big tail.

And so then, you know, we're Googling brown, fuzzy creatures or whatever. And then about two days later, I came around, and I saw it, and he was right. He was eating something. I don't even remember, and it was so classic. It was like this moment, the zen moment of eye contact, you know? It was just like, what? He's caught, and he's just like, what's this guy going to do? I had a rake in my hand, and so I ran towards it, and it, you know, did the same thing under the fence. And I really got a good look at it.

We Googled pictures. I was battling a woodchuck, a huge, huge woodchuck that was living under our neighbor's garage, like under the cement. He had, in the dirt, he had a whole little world under there, I guess, apparently for him. And so over the next week then, we were actually leaving to come out to Portland to see family and so on for a week. And so we got a deal with this before we leave, just going to eat everything while we're gone. And so my mission that whole week was to catch this thing. And so I got a live cave trap from a friend and put that back there and was baiting it, but unrigged with apples. I cut up apples and placed them around a bowl, a plastic container that I filled

with Coca-Cola and floated marshmallows in it. So I was like, lots of sugar, lots of sugar, and then some fruit. And so it was totally eating this like four days in a row. And then the fifth day I set the trap and got the woodchuck. And do you want to see him? I just, come on, you have to see him. There he is. Look at him. No, I don't, I mean, I don't know. In the lower picture, you can kind of see I'm kneeling. He's huge. He's the size of a medium-sized dog. It's a gigantic, gigantic animal. And it kind of looks like Narnia.

He would talk to you or something like that, right? So here's my whole point. One is I just, this was, you know, this was a primal experience for me. I'm battling nature over my food. So I don't have those experiences very often. But at the same time, it was just this, like, what? All we're trying to do is grow food here. And this took, not only did it take an enormous amount of work to prepare the garden and to

make the food actually grow, but then you have this outside influence, right? These things you can't anticipate that come and decimated over half our garden. So I trapped him. You want to know what I did with him? Sorry. So I'll relieve your consciences. I didn't kill it. I took it 20 minutes south of town. There's like a wetland nature preserve and I let him lose. I carried him in my trunk. And of course he pooped everywhere while he was in the trunk of my car. He was probably frightened that I was going to kill him or something. So anyway. So what's the point here? What's the point here again? Come back with me. Come back with me. So let's say we still got some

fruit out of our garden here. By the end, we can take it down. You can take it down now. some fruit out of our garden here. By the end, we can take it down. You can take it down now. We still got fruit, specifically tomatoes. He didn't eat all of the tomatoes. And so let's say, you know, a few weeks later, we get back and we're having a salad and some lettuce and tomatoes from our garden. An enormous amount of work that Jessica and I did to protect and defend and make the garden grow some food. But even after all of that, can I sit down at that meal and say, I grew this tomato. Can I say that? Is that true?

Did I grow that tomato? No, I didn't grow that tomato. Right? What did I do? What I did is I was a gardener who put in a lot of effort to provide an environment where fruit could be grown. But how does fruit actually grow? Well, there's this huge ball of gas that's very far away called the sun, and it emits a huge amount of energy and heat, and that's

crucial. How much control do I have over that thing? Zero. And the cloud cover and how much sun radiation gets mediated and so on to the plants, like zero control over that. And how much control do I have over the genetic structure and the health of the tomato plant? Zero over that. And then there's this whole process of photosynthesis that you learned about and forgot about a long time ago. And there's that whole thing that goes on. And like, I have no control over any of those things. That's what grows this fruit, this tomato. And so who is the one who's, what is the one that's growing the fruit? It's these forces and realities that are way, way outside of myself that I have no control over. But yet my role is crucial, isn't it? I do not grow the fruit, but I can hinder the

growth of the fruit if I don't play my role as a gardener. You guys with me here? Why does Paul choose this metaphor to talk about the work of the Spirit in our lives? And it's very intentional. It's brilliant, even, because fruit is one of these realities, and here it's in this process of character change, that when the Spirit's at work in my life, it's absolutely this outside influence. It's the person, an actual person, who's trying to influence me and address stuff in my life and change me and make me more like Jesus.

And that is, I'm not in control of that. I'm helpless when it comes to that. That needs to come from something outside of myself. I cannot change my character. But at the same time, I can hinder this growth process in my life. Like Paul says, you can grieve the Spirit. You can extinguish the work of the Spirit in your life or in a church community. You can do all kinds of things that will minimize the work of the Spirit. And that's the issue that he's getting at in the whole of this chapter here. You guys with me? Okay, reframed. Let's dive in. Verse 16 of chapter 5. So I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Now, even now, we're driving, we're coming into this passage mid-flow of thought and so on. It takes 20 minutes to read the letter aloud. I highly recommend it. But we've got to start somewhere here. Verse 16 is kind of where the place I want to pick up at. So we have this command here, walk by the Spirit. So what's he doing? This is another metaphor here, walking by the Spirit.

So it's this metaphor of life as a journey, and every day and decision, choice that you make, it's like steps on this journey, and you have a choice. Whether the Spirit's in your life and you have a choice. Are you going to walk by or with the Spirit or are you not? We're all walking. You're walking no matter what. The question is with whom or by whom is your life being empowered and are you walking? And he says by the Spirit. Okay, so let's, this is one of the key words that's going to dominate the whole passage here. So Spirit. So we've already been exploring and studying this word. This is the same word for breath, vitalizing breath as a sign of life

or of wind. Spirit is the New Testament's way of talking about the very personal presence of God the Father and of God the Son of Jesus with his people in and among his people. And so the first thing about spirit is that the spirit's in your life. He's addressing Christians here, and the spirit is the person of God who's with you, in you, animating you, and vitalizing you, and so on. This is just a key starting point, right? So he says, walk by the spirit. He assumes that the spirit's in your life.

It's a key starting point, right? So he says, walk by the Spirit. He assumes that the Spirit's in your life. One of the clearest, I think, and just simplest passages to go to to explain this whole thing is in another letter that Paul wrote in Ephesians chapter 1, where he says this very simple statement that kind of sums it up here in Ephesians chapter 1. He says, you all, he's writing to Christians at Ephesus, and he says, you all were included in the Messiah, in Christ, when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. And when you believed, you were marked in him with a seal,

the promised Holy Spirit. So whether, again, whether you had a real quick ignition conversion experience and you realized very quickly, like, holy cow, like the gospel of my salvation, and I'm really screwed up, and I need Jesus to do what he did for me. When you believed and you gave your faith and your allegiance to Jesus, Paul's saying something very significant happened. That the very presence of Jesus actually takes up residence in your life, or you could maybe say it this way. He's already everywhere, right, and animating all things, but I woke up to the fact that what Jesus did was for me, and I opened myself in a new way to the reality of the

Spirit in my life. And he says that what happens in that conversion experience, whether it was slow burn or quick, he says, it's like you got stamped. He uses another metaphor right here of being marked with a seal, of it getting stamped. And so when I give my faith and my allegiance to Jesus, I open myself and receive the spirit of his presence into my life to guide me, to change me, and direct me. He says it's like you got marked, stamped, this one belongs to Jesus now. We cannot undo that. You can't get marked again. You don't need to. You already did, right? One of the other metaphors used in the New Testament

about this moment is the word baptism, right? Which Josh talked about the other week, which just means immersion. And actually, Paul uses the word baptism, too, in another letter that he writes to talk about the baptism of the Spirit. And we're never told to be baptized again or get marked again. This is something that happens to you, marked, belonging to Jesus. But now, once you're marked or immersed in the Spirit, what we do have control over is how much influence the Spirit gets in our lives. We do have control over how much of us the Spirit is going to be able to transform, which is why Paul says, don't grieve the Spirit. Don't minimize the influence of the Spirit. Be open. Don't extinguish the work of the Spirit. And here he says, walk by the Spirit, because you cannot.

You can have given your faith to Jesus for a long time, but not walk by the Spirit in a lot of ways. And that's both a sad and scary reality. And so that's what Paul's getting at right here. We need to both receive the Spirit as something outside of us that we have no control over, but at the same time, I have to become a gardener. If you want fruit, you have to become a gardener. You can't expect the sun and photosynthesis to do everything for you.

Are you with me here? This is what Paul's getting at. So he says, walk by the Spirit. And he recognizes, of course, that we're all following Jesus in an environment that is not neutral, which is what he gets at here next in talking about this battle. He says, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of what? Okay, flesh. So flesh is what I think probably most of your English translations have.

Some of you might have sinful nature right there instead of flesh, which is fine. That's actually a really good translation or interpretation of this word. So by flesh, what Paul means is this. He doesn't mean just simply your physical body, as if somehow just your physical existence as such is bad or wrong or screwed up. as if somehow just your physical existence as such is bad or wrong or screwed up. Paul's, he's Jewish, he's a rabbi. He grew up steeped in the Hebrew scriptures. And according to Genesis chapter 1, the physical material world,

including the humans and the physical bodies that we are, what, good or bad? Genesis 1. Not just good, very good. Genesis 1, 26, right? And so it's like the artist surveys everything that he's made, and he says, love. This is exactly, exactly what I wanted it to be. It's very good. That is the biblical view of our material world. Very good. But it is a material and physical world that has become compromised. It's become vandalized by evil and by human and by human sin. And that's what Paul means when he uses this word. It's not just physical existence, but our physical existence in bodies and in a world that's become deeply fractured and compromised by sin. And so that's

why some of your translations have, instead of flesh, they say sinful nature, because that's what Paul means. And so he essentially develops this kind of worldview. You could just depict it in a very simple way, that you and I exist, as it were, with a foot in both worlds. If you've given your faith to Jesus and your allegiance to him, you are indwelt and the Spirit has taken up residence in your life. You're marked. You're immersed. He's got your number. You can't do a darn thing about it. He's going to mess with you as long as you live now, right? So that's a reality. But at the same time, we live in physical bodies and we live in a world order that is deeply compromised by sin and evil. And so what you and I have is this choice, right? We have this choice of, well, which world am I going to choose to live in? And this isn't just about

living in the world. This is about what kind of human existence am I going to live now that I have this power and presence and person available to me who's pulling me in the direction of life. And so Paul knows this is not simple. Paul knows this is not just, you know, pray on your couch one night, like take this lifelong character flaw issue away from me, is not just, you know, pray on your couch one night, like, take this lifelong character flaw issue away from me, and then boom, you wake up, and it's like, oh, that was easy, you know. So he knows that's not what it's going to be like, because we have a foot in both of these worlds, and that's what he goes on to explore. Let's keep going. Verse 17. He says, so the flesh, the sinful nature, it desires what's contrary to the spirit.

And the spirit desires what's contrary to the flesh. They're in conflict with each other. So that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. So Paul fully recognizes that there's this battle, this conflict going on inside each one of us. Now, in terms of theology, this is how he depicts it. These two realms that you exist in as a follower of Jesus. This is not your full identity, but you still live in the world and so

on, and so here we are. It's going to be difficult, but we now have this outside source, the sun, radiating this redemptive energy into our lives and pulling us towards life, but it ends up with these moments, what he says, of conflict because it's like we live in these two worlds. Now, you describe it there in terms of theology. This is very practical, actually. This is not, this will take me all of five seconds to get us all on the same page. You have, you're in a, well, maybe more than five seconds.

So you have, for me, it's never just five seconds, is it? I'm so sorry, being long-winded. Anyway, so you have a moment. You're in a tense moment with someone, whatever. It's a family member, it's a co-worker, friend, stranger, whatever. And it's a tense moment, and the thought comes into your mind, here's what I could say. Oh, here's what I could say right now, right?

You know? And what I could say would like, man, they have no clue what they've been doing over the last five months, and I could really make them feel despicable right now. And so there's that comes into your head, and then it's like voices in our head sometimes, at least me. I think it's for both of us, right? These impulses inside of us. Then you have another one that's going, dude, like that's exactly not the kind of human you know you want to be. Like, just two days ago, you were just talking with your friend, and they made that kind of decision and said something like that. And you thought that was so lame, and that's not.

And, you know, you're like, no, that's not. And you go in this back and forth in your head. And this is all happening in seconds. How many of you know what I'm talking about here? It's exactly in that moment. And Paul says, look, you're living in the midst of this conflict, and depending on which woodchuck you've been feeding more lately, so to speak, right? You know, actually, no, that's bad. The spirit is not a woodchuck. The flesh is

a woodchuck. The flesh is a garden-destroying monster, right? That's the woodchuck. And so, you have the rays of the sun that are doing their best work, but depending on which one I've been tending to more will probably determine a lot of how that conflict is going to go. And so depending on whether I have the truth of Scripture buried in my heart, depending on whether I have Jesus on my brain at all that day whatsoever. I mean, there's all these other factors of if I've been gardening my life to be an environment that's conducive for fruit to grow. And if you haven't been gardening your life so that the Spirit can do what He needs to do, then don't be surprised if you don't grow. And don't be surprised if you

don't change, because the woodchuck is a monster, and he's never going to stop, and he's going to eat your lunch every single day that you let him. That's what he's saying right here. It's contrary. It's this conflict that's never going to let up. And so what you end up with is situations where he says it right here. He says, you're going to do things that you don't want to do. It's like these moments of insanity. How many of you know what I'm talking about? It's these decisions that we make, and it's us making them. Nobody's pointing a gun at our head and saying, do this. But a week, an hour later, a week later, a month later, we're just like, what is going on with me? Why can't I get

past this? Why do I keep making that stupid decision? You guys know that we're all on the same page here. This is what Paul's getting at. And he knows that this is challenging, and he knows that this will last a very long time, and he's just trying to paint it as stark as he can. But the hope here is not the hope of, so therefore, go do the fruit of the Spirit. The hope is more just recognize the nature of the situation, and recognize the nature of the Spirit. The hope is more just recognize the nature of the situation and recognize the nature of the foes and the enemies and the realities within and without that are going to destroy us if we let them, and that they don't have to. They don't have to. So what Paul's going to go on from here is he's going to explore both of these worlds.

He's going to explore the many-sided face of the woodchuck and then the multifaceted fruit of the spirit. Let's keep going. He says in verse 19, he says, The acts of the flesh are obvious. Some of you have the deeds or the works. Some of you have the works of the flesh are obvious. Some of you have the deeds or the works. Some of you have the works of the flesh. Yeah?

So this is really key, the words that he uses right here. So the works, stuff that we do, stuff people do. Right? So this is nobody taught you how to be selfish. It just happened. You know what I mean? And if you live with toddlers, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Capable of immense love and immense selfishness in the same moment.

And so this is just what humans do. Stuff humans do. Just left to our own devices. And he lists 15 facets of the broken, sinful human condition here. But he does break them into little categories that are interesting here. So he says the acts of the sinful human nature, they're obvious. He begins with sex, broken sexuality. He says sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery.

Debauchery, who used that word this week? What is that even, right? Debauchery. Debauchery, who used that word this week? What is that even, right? Debauchery. Debauchery, at least the word Paul uses, it means a complete lack of inhibition and self-control with regard to sexual decisions that I make. So he has these three. Sexual immorality, which is the broadest term

in all of the scriptures. It's used by lots of different authors in the New Testament, Jesus, Peter, Paul, James. And they use this word to describe any act of sex that's not within the protective boundaries of a lifetime marriage covenant between a man and a woman. That's what every time that word occurs in the New Testament, that's what it means. And what Paul's saying here is how do you know whether or not your life is being taken over more by your old humanity, nature, or whether it's being pulled in the direction of Jesus by the Spirit. And he says the first place is to look is your sexuality. Broken sexuality says something about the human condition. And this is strange to us as Americans, of course, because we have, there's the view,

you know, of sex that we grew up with is that it's either simply just a physical appetite, or that it's a primarily emotionally driven experience or desire, and that it's a recreational activity between two consenting adults. That's roughly the portrait of sex in our culture. And what's interesting is that in our culture, the view of sex that it's between a man and woman in covenant marriage, that's not only a laughable, ludicrous idea in our culture, the view of sex about that it's between a man and woman in covenant marriage, like that's not only a laughable, ludicrous idea in our culture, it's even viewed as oppressive, right? And so it's often argued, you know, the Christian view of sex, it's archaic,

it's ridiculous, it's laughable, and it's like this view that sex is dirty, and so same people their whole lives in the bedroom, and keep turning the lights off, and you know, like this kind of thing. It's this Christian's prudish, low view of sex. And I would just really encourage you, man, to think, think long and thoroughly through this. And I would argue that it is actually precisely the opposite. That the Christian view of sex is that sex is so profound, and it's such a whole person embodied spiritual, emotional, sexual experience about this mingling of body and soul between two people, and that that has such incredible potential within a relationship. It's so powerful and so volatile that the scriptures portray this

beautiful environment where it can be protected in the covenant of marriage and actually, at least ideally, it doesn't always, tragically, in our broken world, but ideally to produce new life within the context of a covenant family and so on. That's the scriptural vision. It's beautiful. It's actually the highest view of sex and of the body. And what our culture does is it actually wants to give us a low view of the value of your body and a low view of what sex is all about. And it's just emotionally driven, physical appetite between two consenting adults. And we're actually robbed of the immense power of what this is really at. So that's my little aside about sex. But there's a reason why Paul goes there first.

It's because if I want to know whether or not my life is a hospitable environment for the work of the Spirit, one of the first places you can look is in a person's history, in a person's choices that they're making. Very few of us have any regrets, you know, over bad decisions that we made with regard to our sexual past or stupid sinful decisions somebody made that affected us. Like, those are not things that just like we forget about, you know? There's not light matters. Those are events in our lives that deeply shape us and that we carry with us for a long, a long time. Sex matters a lot. Our bodies matter a lot. And the Spirit is all about the redemption of our bodies and the healing of our mind and soul and body. And so that's why Paul starts here. The second category he looks at starts in verse 20.

The acts of the flesh. He names two that are connected here. Idolatry and witchcraft. And so here he's talking about two activities about how we relate to the spiritual realm, so to speak. And so idolatry is about giving our allegiance to something that's not the one true God. And witchcraft or sorcery, this is about viewing spiritual beings or spiritual realities as something that I gain power over and manipulate

to gain power over other people or to make things happen in life, you know, whether it's make the rain come down or put a curse on someone, this kind of thing. In both cases, my relationship to spiritual realities is I'm the boss, I will determine what I worship, and I will determine, gain power over those. And it's precisely the opposite, right? Because in the biblical vision, we're humans made to reflect. We're dignified beings made in the image of the Creator, and we're made for relationship and worship in humble service as we are guided by the wisdom and love of the Creator. It's not this way, it's this way. This is the acts of the flesh. The third category he really goes off on, he gives eight here, and it's all about relational breakdown. He says hatred, discord,

jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy. Every one of these is about relational breakdown or personal character flaws that lead or contribute to breakdown and unhealthy relationships in our lives. Now, he's named eight here. Which do you think is foremost on his mind? Clearly this one, right? And that's because he's writing a letter to a group of churches in the region of Galatia that are dividing and bitterly dividing over a really contentious issue of theology and cultural practice and so on. Just go read the letter. It takes 20 minutes. But so here, this is really interesting to me. It's

because this is not an issue of like religious people and irreligious people, right? Or like the religious people and the pagans or something like that. Can you think of any like times where you have seen discord and fits of rage and selfish ambition and faction and dissension, say, in the lives of the church? Maybe. Maybe. Right? So clearly, this is not about like, oh, the pagans, they have a monopoly on the acts of the flesh. It's no, it's this is a human thing. And in fact, it might even be that some of the most religiously driven people that you know, it's actually not about Jesus. It's more about selfish ambition. And they might end up being the most factious, you know, envious, divisive people that you've ever, ever met.

And so he lands right here. And Paul just says, if you want to, again, see which you're feeding more, which world you're living in more, look at the health of your relationships, and it will tell you. The health of your personal relationships will tell you a ton about whether your life is a friendly environment for the spirit to grow fruit. Look at how he concludes with two more. Drunkenness and orgies, which in his culture were connected to the worship of the gods, that involved a lot of alcohol and a lot of ritual sex and so on in certain temples. So drunkenness, orgies, and the like. He says, I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now what's he saying here? What he's saying is we can reach a point or we can come to a point where you so allow your identity, your life, your choices to be completely cut off from Jesus. And this will happen before, and there's a whole debate about whether this can actually happen after you become a Christian and so on. That's not really what he's talking about here. But his whole point is that you can be a point where actually, no, thank you. I don't want the influence of Jesus or the Spirit in my life. I simply want to be completely determined by my own whatever vision of reality. It's a life and a person completely defined by the flesh. And that could be a very religious person, given the eight that he lists here.

It could be a very irreligious person. That really doesn't matter at all. And so Paul says, essentially, if I come to be so completely defined by these choices and these realities, and this isn't about, oh, I fail and then I look back to Jesus. This is about, I'm through with it. Like, no, thank you. I don't care about and want anything to do with this. Then Paul says, such people have chosen not to inherit the kingdom of God. If the kingdom of God is about the realm of the Spirit and of new creation and where Jesus receives the object of worship and gratefulness from the renewed humanity and so on. Someone whose life and identity is determined by this,

like of course they won't inherit this. They wouldn't want to. Why would they want to, right? So if someone truly despises Jesus, why on earth would they want to be in a kingdom where they're gonna worship him forever and live forever? And that would be somebody's version of hell, I would imagine. And so that's what he's getting at here. If I so allow this to determine who I am, there's no me left to make it here, right? Because I've cut myself off completely from

the influence of Jesus. Now, there's a whole bunch of people that fear to struck in your heart. And if fear to struck in your heart, you are definitely not included in that category by the fact that fear to struck in your heart. You know what I'm talking about? The fact that you would be concerned, am I this? You're not that by the fact that you're concerned that you are that. Does that make sense? The whole point, okay, I could say about five more times, but I won't.

You get my point. So that's the flesh. That's a big monster, and it's complicated, and Christians live with a foot in both worlds, and we do give in here, but Paul's relating this so that we know the enemy so that he can give us hope here as we're trained to become gardeners. Look at verse 22. give us hope here as we're trained to become gardeners. Look at verse 22. He'll give the opposite now. He says, so here's the fruit, the fruit of the Spirit. So remember, this difference is so important. Here's what just humans do. Here's what the Spirit wants to grow in our lives if we will partner with the Spirit. If we simply declare that we want our lives to be a place where the Spirit can grow these kinds of Jesus-centered

character traits. And he explores this ninefold fruit of the Spirit. This is all different facets of one thing. What's the first one he names? Love. Love, which is not emotion in the Scriptures. It's action that seeks the well-being of another person, regardless of how they respond to me. And they kind of go together in pairs, too. Joy and peace. This is about joy and peace in the New Testament. It's about a decision that you make that because the Son of God loved me, he lived for me, died for me, he's raised for me, he's given me his presence in the Spirit, life might become extremely difficult. But my fullest identity, my vision of who I am in reality is grounded, not in how my life is going, but in what Jesus did for me. And that gives me a groundedness, a centeredness, that whatever comes my way, I can choose to have joy.

And I can choose to live in a state of tranquility, knowing that none of this surprises Jesus. He's got my number. I'm stamped. I belong to him. And he's with me. It's about joy, joy and peace. to him, and he's with me. It's about joy, joy and peace. He says patience and kindness and goodness, this is about, these are all relational terms. They kind of balance the categories of the works of the flesh. And so in relationships, this is about not being that super reactive person. It's about knowing that I had a lot in my life that Jesus died for. And so like, yeah, like that person's annoying and they keep, they often, they have this thing and they always do that to me. But you know what? I'm probably annoying to people too. And you know, whatever, and I, in ways that I don't know, and Jesus died for me. And so I can just be patient with this

person. You hear Paul talk about patience in his letters. That's the process that he, that he goes through about About kindness and goodness. Just as Jesus has been kind and generous to me, we reflect that out towards other people. Faithfulness, this ability to be a source of stability in the lives of other people, right? If not flighty and not doing what I say I'm going to do, but constancy in someone's life. Gentleness about this, not the severe, harsh reality. And then what's the last one? This is really interesting. What's the last part of the fruit of the Spirit? What does he say? Self-control. Now that's super interesting because the fruit of the Spirit, we thought,

was about who taking control of us? The Spirit. How do you know someone who exhibits the fruit of the Spirit, we thought, was about who taking control of us. The Spirit. How do you know someone who exhibits the fruit of the Spirit in their life? Someone who has self-control. So is it you or the Spirit? Exactly. How did fruit grow in my garden? Because of my work or the Spirit's work? Now, whose work is more primary? Well, here we can play out the metaphor, right? So without, it's exactly right.

The whole point of the theology of the Spirit in the New Testament is not that you become like this religious, like stoic, disengaged person. Paul's saying the most Spirit-filled people you know are the most fully humanfilled people you know are the most fully human people that you know. It's a human in control of their impulses and their desires and so on, and who truly takes all of that energy and generosity and love and patience and so on. And is it human or is it the Spirit? Exactly. The whole point is that the Spirit is trying to pull us into fuller humanity. Because who is the one human who actually lived this way? Exactly.

We're being made into the image of Jesus. And it wasn't, well, was it God or was it Jesus? I mean, there we're back to the first part of the series. It's like, yes, it's fully God and fully human. And when the Spirit's at work in our lives, it's that he makes us more ourselves as followers of Jesus. So he explores these two worlds. Now how do you, so how do you get at that? How great do you feel about yourself now? You're like, man, if I did the math, I'm like seven to three, you know, or something

like that. How do I make that happen? And this is how he concludes. Look at verse 24. How do you actually garden your life knowing this about the two realms? Verse 24, he says, Those who belong to Christ Jesus, you have crucified the flesh, the sinful nature, with its passions and its desires. and its desires. So since we live, we exist by means of the Spirit, let's keep in step with the Spirit. This is such a profound way of concluding the paragraph here. So how does this work out? Okay, it's theologically, this is where this is going. How does this work out? This is very practical how he ends right here. He says, what has happened to your sinful old humanity here, according to verse 24? What happened to it?

What did you do to it when you became a follower of Jesus? Look at verse 24 and tell me. What does he say? He says, you killed the woodchuck. You killed that thing. You didn't take it to a nature preserve. That thing died. The monster died. Now we read, look at verse 24. You're just like, really? I think I would remember something like that. You know what I mean? Like my sinful nature is dead and out of commission. then why does it still give me so much trouble?

And so it's the same question that we ask when we say, look, Jesus died for the sins of the world, and then he was risen again as a conqueror and victor over death. So why does death and evil still have so much influence in our world? It's the same exact question. And the answer that the New Testament gives is Jesus rose from the dead. He rose from the dead, and he is the one human being who has entered into and brought about the reality of new creation in the power of the Spirit.

And until he returns to fully reconcile heaven and earth and bring about the act, the reconciling act of new creation, we in faith embrace this truth about the world, but hear about yourself. Namely, that your old self, your old humanity, it died. It died on the cross with Jesus. Just like Jesus died and absorbed the sins of the world into himself, and we explored this at Easter, by the power of whom was Jesus raised from the dead? In Romans chapter 1, we explored this, by the power of the Spirit. So look at what Paul says. He says, listen, if you have attached yourself to Jesus in faith, you died. What's true of Jesus is now true of you. Your identity, who you are, your self-worth, the true reality of who you are is not governed by this anymore.

It died with Jesus on the cross. And what's true of him is now true of you, namely that you live and exist by the Spirit. You're stamped, you're marked, and you can't undo that. So he says, you live by the Spirit, so keep in step with the Spirit. Well, wait, I thought I lived by the Spirit. Yes, exactly. So play the role of a gardener and keep in step with the Spirit. Well, that takes a lot of work. Well, yes, but you live by the Spirit. So do I live by the Spirit or keep in step with the Spirit? Exactly. I mean, do you see what he's getting at here, right? And so it's learning. Here's what it's learning to do. Flip back one page, and with this, we'll land the plane.

Chapter 2, verse 20. It's a little summary of the gospel that was clearly very personal to Paul, and I commend you to memorize verses 20 and 21 and bury this deep in your heart. Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer me that's alive. It's no longer I who live, but it's Christ living in me. The life that I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me

and gave himself for me. Who died on the cross? Jesus. Who died with Jesus on the cross? Every single one of us. If you choose to accept that what he did was for you, and if I choose to accept that what he did was for me, I now live not simply as just a human trying to be a good moral person and pull up my bootstraps.

I live with a new person in my life. And it's a new person who is speaking good news to me. This is what he's talking about here is learning the habit of preaching the gospel to yourself every single day that you wake up. And even in those very difficult moments, you bury scripture in your heart, a passage, just do it. Just experiment with it. Spend 30 days, memorize this passage, and just watch how the Spirit will bring these words to your mind in the moments of insanity. Just do it, right? And see what happens.

And all of a sudden, you're in those moments of the choice, flesh or I'd just do it, right? And see what happens. And all of a sudden, you're in those moments of the choice, flesh or spirit, flesh or spirit. And all of a sudden, that's the moment to announce the good news to yourself. Like this habit, this mindset, this character flaw that I have, this does not define me. This is not who I really am. This me died 2,000 years ago with Jesus on the cross. And the me that I am right now, it doesn't exist by any of my own power. It exists purely because of the grace of Jesus towards me. Holy Spirit, please empower me to make the right decision right now. And are you with me here? This is very practical. This is not abstract at all.

It's learning how to preach the gospel to myself. That's how we garden our lives. And we garden our lives first by listening to the gospel, and then we garden our lives by, in our moments of sobriety, so to speak, or sanity, actually making choices that will make my life an even more hospitable garden or whatever. And so, like, dudes in the room, if your smartphone is killing you because of porn, get a flipper, dude. Just get a flip phone. You know what I'm saying? And you're saying, no, my life, my career or whatever,

it's so difficult, like, do I email or whatever? Whatever, dude. Are you kidding me? In a moment of sobriety and sanity, you're going to let that issue of convenience allow this deep distortion of your character to keep killing you. Like, just go to another dude, confess, say you need help, and get a flip phone for three months, and just see what happens, right? I mean, just, I'm taking light of it, but I'm also not at all. Like, just, it's very practical. If a weed grows up in your garden, don't just, like, feed it. Kill the thing, you know what I mean? In Paul's letter to the Colossians, he says, execute, put to death. Don't mess around with, don't, like, execute and put to death the deeds of the flesh, he says. And get gnarly, get serious, right, in the moments of sanity,

so that in your moments of insanity, where you're trying to preach the gospel to yourself, and the voice is in your head, you actually have already tended the garden to be prone towards life. Are you with me here? This is what you do. Go see the therapist, finally. Like, swallow your pride, go see a therapist, right? Go do whatever your issue is. Go to that person and just confess what you said or what you did to them. Like, just do it. Just do it. And all of a sudden, as we preach the gospel and learn the practice of cultivating our lives through our choices and behavior, Paul says, watch. Watch the Spirit grow fruit in your life. behavior, Paul says, watch. Watch the Spirit grow fruit in your life. And it's not you doing it.

It's you playing the role of a gardener to allow the Spirit to make you more like Jesus. How you guys doing? It's very practical. I don't know what your version of the woodchuck is. We all have these weeds and woodchucks in our lives. I didn't plan that it would be two Ws, but it just happened, right? Weeds and woodchucks. But man, I just, in our time of worship that remains, I just really encourage you guys. You know, we have this every week. We have a moment of quiet, and this might be the only moment you get in the weekend, right?

To just be quiet and listen to the poetry of the music and read the scriptures and allow the bread in the cup to speak good news to you and remind you who you really are as a Christian. And so I'm going to pray and I just encourage you to use this time to allow yourself to be under the influence of the Spirit. Let me close with some prayer. You guys, thanks for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. I hope this opened up a whole bunch of not just theological new horizons for you, but a bunch of personal questions too about what it means to keep in step with and walk in line with the Spirit

as a partnership as we grow together. So there you go. Thanks for listening. Have a great day, and we'll see you next time. Субтитры создавал DimaTorzok