Nick Roark | The Fruit of the Spirit

[00:00:00] Amen. Good morning. [00:00:02] So welcome. We're starting a new equipping class this morning. It's called the Fruit of this. It's a mouthful. The Fruit of the Spirit in the life of the Savior. The Fruit of the Spirit in the life of the Savior. And so this morning we're going to be just considering more generally the concept of the fruit of the Spirit. [00:00:26] And then hopefully by the end of our time today, you'll understand kind of what does the fruit of the Spirit? What does that have to do with the life of the Savior? [00:00:36] And if you have a Bible, we're gonna be kind of in Galatians 5. And then we're gonna be running all around Isaiah, but we'll get there. Okay, so some of you love to read. And Scott and I actually got this idea to start this class or to do a class on this topic after reading this book, this one right here called the Character of Christ by Jonathan Landry Cruz. [00:01:04] So it's short, it's really simple. [00:01:08] And the book was so interesting to us because we never thought of it this way. Namely, I'm going to. And then I guess here's Jerry Bridges and here's Sinclair. [00:01:21] But basically with the Fruit of the Spirit. If I were to ask you, hey, we're doing a class on the fruit of the spirit, you would probably think we're gonna do something like this. So what are the fruit of the spirit? Someone just call it out. What are the fruit of the Spirit? [00:01:37] Yeah. Love, joy, peace, patience. [00:01:47] Yeah, patience, kindness, goodness. [00:01:51] You can't even read this. Goodness, gentleness. [00:01:57] What? Faithfulness and then self control. [00:02:04] Right? [00:02:06] Is that all of them? [00:02:08] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. That's it. Right. [00:02:12] Okay, so if we did a Fruit of the Spirit class, first of all, has anyone ever done a Fruit of the Spirit class or study. [00:02:19] Okay, now if you've done this, you probably did something like this. I imagine you just take each one of these like this and you say, okay, this week we're going to talk about love. And you just kind of stare at love and think about love in the abstract. And then the next week you think, joy, let's study Joy. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's a good way to do it. Right? But what this book kind of helped us to think about is what if we look through each one of these fruit, not in the abstract, but actually through the lens of the life of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So instead of thinking about love in the general, we're going to think about Christ's love because he is the one who's led by the Spirit. He's the anointed spirit, Spirit filled Messiah. We're going to be looking at love through his life. We're going to think about the joy of Christ and the gentleness of Christ, the faithfulness of Christ. [00:03:20] And so in other words, I didn't circle gentleness. Yeah, there we go. So in other words, this is what the class is not. Okay, you know what this is? [00:03:30] This is a fruit inspector, right? I didn't. I googled fruit inspector. I've heard of it before. [00:03:36] It's like. It's like. What we're not going to do is like, take each one of these fruit and just look at it and like, okay, that's pretty good. Put it back on the. On the assembly line. Okay, so we're not doing this. Okay, we're not doing this because this is the whole point of this class. By the way, pray. Thank you. Thank you all for sitting up in the front. I have like a. The back row Baptist here. Okay? Y' all have to come up next time. [00:04:00] But what we're gonna be doing is this. This is why we're not doing this. Okay? I don't want you to think of fruit inspector class. [00:04:07] The whole point of this class this morning, and really the whole point of the whole class is in one sentence is this. [00:04:14] I put this in the back of your, like the last page of your handout, but you want to write this down. The fruitful life of the Spirit is the life of Christlikeness. [00:04:29] The fruitful life of the Spirit. That is the fruit of the Spirit. When you see the fruit of the Spirit in your life, in others lives, in the lives of those around you who know the Lord, in the lives of those in this church. When you see the fruit of the Spirit, beloved, you're seeing Christ likeness. [00:04:53] You're seeing Christ's own character on display. I want. The whole point of this class is to connect the life and ministry and the fruit of the Spirit, of the living God, the Lord and the giver of life. [00:05:11] His ministry of producing fruit in our lives is the producing of Christlike character in our lives. [00:05:22] So fruitful life of the Spirit is Christlikeness. So instead of this image, the image I want us to see in your minds, that we're gonna be doing in this class. Is this right? [00:05:36] What is that guy doing? This may even be. AI. I found this on the Internet. I don't even know if this is real, but what is this guy doing? Can y' all Even tell what he's doing. You see that? What's he doing? [00:05:46] He's looking at a diamond. That's the diamond I got Allison for her engagement ring. [00:05:51] No, I'm just kidding. [00:05:53] Yeah, we're gonna be staring at a diamond. So we're gonna be taking the diamond, as it were, of the character of Christ, and we're gonna be taking that diamond and turning it each week, looking at one facet. We're gonna look at his love, we're gonna look at his joy, we're gonna look at his gentleness. [00:06:15] It's a whole diamond for us to behold. Okay, Jonathan Landry Cruz, in this little book, he says this. Think of the fruit of the Spirit not as nine separate jewels, but rather as nine separate facets or sides of one single shimmering diamond. [00:06:39] Okay? And so we're going to gaze, right? We're going to gaze at the diamond of Christ's character for 12 weeks before we're called to any action, right? Because you might do a Fruit of the Spirit class and be like, okay, the fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. Therefore, just be gentle. [00:07:01] The fruit of the Spirit is love. Just be more loving. You could actually take the Fruit of the Spirit class and make it into a kind of to do class, right? [00:07:11] And certainly, as we are filled with the Spirit and led by the Spirit, and as we walk by the Spirit, we do take spirit inspired action. [00:07:19] I'm not saying we don't. We just kind of let go and let God. But the accent is that it is the spirit of the living God in us, working that out in our lives. [00:07:30] And so this morning we're going to think about it not as a to do class, but like as a he did class, right? Jesus. He did class. Okay, so I'm going to stop there. Any questions about diamonds? I did a lot of research about diamonds last night or about what we're doing in the class. The fruit of the Spirit, the fruitful life of the Holy Spirit in our lives is Christ likeness. Y' all with me? [00:07:56] Can I get an amen? Okay. All right, good. All right, here we go. We're going to keep going. So in order to see this, we're going to start in Galatians 5, spend some minutes in Galatians 5. And then I want you to see kind of the Old Testament background of this imagery of the fruit of the Spirit to help you see from the Bible how the Bible itself connects the fruitful life giving spirit with Messiah, with the Spirit anointed Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not something Paul's making up. This is where he got. He got this from the Old Testament scriptures because the scriptures promise this very thing. Okay, so let's look at Galatians 5, 16, 25. And again, this is going to be kind of a. We're flying through this. We're not going to spend four hours here. We're just going to spend a few minutes. Okay, so you remember Paul the Apostle wrote to the churches in Galatia, there was a false teaching that had crept in, remember? And that false teaching was adding right works or circumcision to the gospel. Right. [00:09:09] There was a kind of teaching that you have to be circumcised in order to be a Christian. Right. And so these judaizers, right, were adding to the gospel. And Paul is writing to these churches and warning them, hey, you're being foolish. You're moving away from the true gospel, the Gospel of grace, the gospel of faith alone, in Christ alone. And so in the letter, he's contrasting, right, Life under the law and the life of the Spirit now that Christ has come. And so we get to chapter five and this is what Paul says, but I say he gives this command, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. So you see this contrast between spirit and flesh that's going to run all the way through this passage. Four, the desires of the flesh are. They're against the Spirit. Right? [00:10:11] And the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. [00:10:21] But if you are notice, led by the Spirit. So walk by the Spirit. If you're led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. [00:10:32] Right. [00:10:33] He goes on to say, now he's going to give us two pictures. He's going to give us the picture of the works of the what? [00:10:40] The works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. Here's the contrast. Okay? Now the works of the flesh and you can see this passage in your handout, if you want to look at it there. Now the works of the flesh are evident. And he's going to mention a couple things. First, he's going to mention like sexual related sins. [00:11:00] He's going to say sensuality or sexual morality, impurity and sensuality. Okay? [00:11:07] And then he's going to give a list of worship sins, idolatry and sorcery. Okay, Witchcraft, Right. [00:11:17] Then he's going to give a long list of kind of social sins, sins that would affect a group or a congregation or. Right. [00:11:27] And he Says enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger and rivalries, dissensions, divisions and envy. Okay? These are all works of the flesh. [00:11:42] And then these last two are kind of sins of excess, right? Sins of excess, drunkenness, orgies. [00:11:52] And then notice he says this phrase and things like these, that last phrase, what does that indicate? [00:12:01] I'm sorry I said everything's bad. Everything is bad. That is true. Good observation. What is that? Language? And things like these, what would that indicate to you? [00:12:13] This is not an exhaustive list. Thank you. [00:12:16] He could have kept going. He's just giving us a picture. And he says, they're the works, you see that? Plural works of the flesh. And there's many other works of the flesh he could have listed. He's giving us a sample, okay? [00:12:29] And he says, look, if you practice these things, if you look at your life and you're like, yep, that's me. [00:12:37] That's me. Now, Paul's not saying you have to be sinless, but if you're looking at your life and you're like, yep, every single one of these. I did all of those yesterday, right? [00:12:47] This is bad. It's bad because he gives this really stern warning. [00:12:52] He says, as I warned you before, I warned you earlier, those who notice, those who do such things, he promises, will not inherit the kingdom of God. [00:13:03] And so part of those warnings that Paul gives us is to be a means of grace, to put those things to death, right? To not practice those things. [00:13:13] Now, he's going to contrast the works of the flesh with the fruit of the spirit. Okay? So look what he says. Verse 22. But there's the contrast. But the fruit of the spirit. [00:13:27] Notice the fruit of the spirit, Is that singular or plural? [00:13:34] Singular. [00:13:35] So what would the plural of fruit be? [00:13:40] There you go, see, you add an S. [00:13:45] I went to seminary for that. You add an S. [00:13:48] So the fruits of the spirit. I've sometimes hear people say, the fruits of the spirit. Eh, wrong. It's not fruits of the spirit, it's fruit. So when I see works of the flesh, and he lists out a bunch of stuff that makes sense to me, when I see fruit of the Spirit, and he lists out a bunch of stuff that makes me go, hmm, need to ponder that. We'll come back to that later. And he's gonna list it out, the fruit of the spirit, it is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. And he says, against such things there's no law, right? [00:14:23] And then he says, and those notice who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. [00:14:34] And he says, if we live by the Spirit, let us also. I love this. Keep in step with the Spirit. [00:14:42] So just think about this passage for a minute. It starts with walking by the Spirit, being led by the Spirit. [00:14:54] It's those who belong to Christ Jesus who are united to Christ Jesus, live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. [00:15:04] So you can see that Paul understands the Christian life is begun by the Spirit. He says this earlier. He says, having begun by the spirit, remember Galatians 3. Are you now being perfected in the flesh? No. That the Spirit began the Christian life for you. [00:15:22] Right. And he is the one that we live by, the one that we walk by, the one that they are led by. [00:15:29] Right. So the Spirit of the living God kind of capstones this whole passage. Right. Those who belong to Jesus live, keep in step with and walk. And as we do that, how do we know that we're living and walking and being led by the Spirit? This fruit of the Spirit shows up in our lives increasingly. Okay, increasingly. [00:15:56] So let's just again, summarize real quickly before we go to the Old Testament. Right. This is really basic. I just want to draw attention to a couple things. First, fruit, not fruits. [00:16:15] Now, help me understand, why would he say fruit instead of fruits? [00:16:25] Yeah. So we're supposed to be marked by all of those. Yeah. There's another way to think of it maybe, is that there's a unity to this. [00:16:36] If you receive the Spirit, his ministry among us is going to produce all of these. There's a unified aspect of this. Right. [00:16:46] It's. [00:16:48] It's one fruit. Going back to that picture earlier. Remember, it's not an assembly line where we're inspecting the fruit. What is it? [00:16:56] It's a diamond. [00:16:58] It's a diamond with different facets. [00:17:02] There's a fruit of the Spirit, and each aspect of it is that long list. Okay. Does that make sense? There's a unity to it. [00:17:11] Second thing is, it's of the Spirit. It's fruit of the Spirit. [00:17:19] And this over here is contrast to works. Right. Plural. And there's lots of other ones. [00:17:26] This is of the. [00:17:28] I'm sorry, y', all, I can't write flesh. [00:17:32] If Paul says it's the fruit of the Spirit, what does that mean? [00:17:38] What does of the Spirit mean? [00:17:43] Okay, this is the answer corner here. Okay. I'm going to ask all our beloved in the back. [00:17:49] The back, Brethren, this is the anxious bench up here. Then in the back. Right. [00:17:56] What is of the. I'm talking to y'. All back there. What does of the Spirit mean? [00:18:01] Belonging to the Spirit. [00:18:04] What was means belonging to the Spirit. What else? [00:18:10] David Wyatt. What? [00:18:13] Produced by him? Yeah. I think that when we belong to the Spirit, he is the one producing this in our lives. [00:18:22] He's the life giving Spirit. So to say, it's the fruit of the Spirit in contrast to the works. What of the. [00:18:32] When we sin in the ways that he lists it out in the works of the flesh, what is creating that? What power? It's the flesh. The power of our flesh. Right. That we have to put to death. [00:18:45] Right. It's coming from that sinful nature. [00:18:49] Whereas the fruit of the Spirit, it's not like over here, you know, we're doing it in coordination with the flesh. [00:18:57] Paul's highlighting that. That when you see gentleness in your life, when you see love in your life, when you see faithfulness in your life, you know what you don't do? You don't go to the mirror and say, great job. [00:19:12] You say, yeah, the fact that there's faithfulness in my life. Yeah. I demonstrate it this way. But guess who gets the glory for it? The Spirit of the living God. You see, he gets the glory. [00:19:26] If you finish the Christian race, it's not because you were better than other people or stronger than other people. It's that the Spirit of the living God kept you and carried you every step of the way. [00:19:39] He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion until the day of Christ. [00:19:44] Philippians 1:6. [00:19:46] Okay, so I just want to. You're thinking, this is so basic. Why is he spending so much time on this? Well, I just want us to see that this is not a class where it's like, the fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. Go be gentle. Right. [00:20:00] We're gonna talk about applications and implications, but we need to see that this is the Spirit's work within us. Okay? Now, I know y' all hate this. I know you hate it. Some people don't even know what this is. Who is this? [00:20:12] This is Bob Ross. And so I've used this illustration, and I'm gonna continue using it until I die. Right? I'm gonna use this illustration. Bob Ross is one of my. Is Rembrandt's my favorite. Number two, Bob Ross. And then number three, Jim Wilson is my favorite painter. [00:20:28] But you notice he has this palette. And if you ever watch that show, he always puts the paints on the bottom of the screen. [00:20:35] Van Dyke Brown and burnt sienna and yellow ochre and midnight black or whatever. Here's the deal, when Paul is writing in the New Testament, he's also using paint. He has a palette, right? And his palette, his paint is Old Testament paint. Okay? So when you see things in the New Testament from the apostle and from the gospel writers, you don't need to be like, oh, I guess they just made this stuff up, right? No, no, no. He's painting these beautiful portraits of the ministry of the Spirit, of the living God. And he's using Old Testament paint. What paint in particular? Well, he's using Isaiah. [00:21:16] It's always a good guess to say Isaiah, but. And I'm not gonna go. We're gonna look at really just two passages, really. [00:21:24] We're gonna look at this in our next section. If you're following along in the notes. This is on page two. This is the fruitful Savior. Okay, we're gonna look at Isaiah 5 and Isaiah 11 here in a minute. But let me just give you a snapshot real quick that we're not gonna look at, which is a preacher's way of saying, I'm gonna dump it all in right now and not make you turn to it. Okay? But just think about what God says in Isaiah. Okay, I'm just going to give you a heads up. In Isaiah 63, verses 10 to 14, we're told that during the exodus from Egypt, the Spirit of the living God dwelt in the midst of Israel. [00:22:01] We're told that in the Exodus, they grieved the Holy Spirit. [00:22:07] All right, this is all in Isaiah 63, we're told they were led by the Spirit from through the Red Sea, and that he brought them into the land where he rested them. [00:22:18] Isaiah 63. You can go read it later. [00:22:21] And then in Isaiah 32, we find out that Isaiah says that there's a day coming when the Spirit will be poured out upon God's people from on high. [00:22:37] And when the Spirit of the living God is poured out on God's people from on high, what will happen? Fruitfulness. [00:22:44] There's going to be justice and righteousness and faith and peace among God's people in the land. [00:22:51] Okay, and then Isaiah 64:1, because Isaiah's looking forward to that pouring out of the Spirit. Isaiah prays in Isaiah 64, verse 1, oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. [00:23:08] Oh, that you would cut the heavens and come down. [00:23:12] Right. Which is what Mark alludes to in Jesus baptism. [00:23:16] So there's all of these amazing references. You think about Isaiah 42, that the servant of the Lord is going to have the Spirit rest upon him. Remember in Isaiah 61, remember in Luke chapter 4, when Jesus gets up to preach his first sermon at his hometown synagogue? Remember Nazareth? Remember what he did? [00:23:36] He stands up. And what's the scripture reading that day? Isaiah 60:1. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the good news. Remember that? And then they throw him off a cliff. Or they try to at least, Right? [00:23:50] So all I'm telling you is there's all of these amazing references in Isaiah to the coming of the Spirit, connecting it with Messiah and saying it's going to bring about fruitfulness among God's people. You can read it for yourself. Okay, now, this morning, I just want us to see the contrast, okay? That Israel was supposed to be fruitful and they weren't. [00:24:15] And you might think this morning I don't see a lot of fruit in my life. Well, the solution is to be united with our fruitful Savior by his Spirit. So let's look at the fruitless vineyard of Israel. Let's look at Isaiah. This is Isaiah 5. OK, okay, real quick. [00:24:32] This is what Isaiah says. He's describing Israel. And listen to what he says. He says, let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. That's Israel. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. [00:24:47] He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it, hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes. So again, real straightforward, good land. [00:25:03] Everything's good so far. [00:25:05] The goal is he wants grapes from his vineyard. [00:25:09] But what did it yield? [00:25:12] Wild grapes. [00:25:14] I've never had wild grapes. I don't know why that's bad, but it's bad. Apparently, it's not grapes. It's wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. [00:25:28] What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it when I looked for it to yield grapes? [00:25:37] Why? [00:25:38] Why did it yield wild grapes? [00:25:42] And now I tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be what devoured. [00:25:52] I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled on. [00:25:56] And I will make it a wasteland. [00:25:59] And it shall not be pruned or hoed. [00:26:03] And then look what's going to grow up. Instead of grapes, briars and thorns shall grow up. [00:26:10] And I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it. [00:26:16] Here's why. [00:26:19] For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. [00:26:23] The men of Judah are his pleasant planting. [00:26:27] And he looked down for justice, but behold, bloodshed. [00:26:33] He looked down for righteousness, but behold, an outcry. [00:26:39] That is, you think about an outcry. [00:26:45] So what is Isaiah telling us here? [00:26:50] God led Israel out by his Spirit through the Exodus. He brought them into a good land. He provided everything they needed, right? And instead of Israel, his people, his vineyard, producing good fruit, they produced bad fruit. [00:27:09] And you can see how this is what he's describing there at the very end. He wanted Israel to be a just people, a righteous people. [00:27:18] But instead, what did he see? Bloodshed and outcries in the streets. Wickedness, you see? [00:27:28] And so you see Israel right there in chapter one, you see it. Chapter five, you see it that Israel is in desperate need of. To be revived spiritually to bear good fruit. And so you would. If that was the whole story, right? That'd be really depressing. [00:27:45] But Isaiah doesn't stop there. He doesn't just point out the problem, he points out the solution. [00:27:53] And so the solution to Israel's spiritual barrenness, the solution to Israel's spiritual need for fruit, for good fruit, for. For righteousness and gentleness and holiness, and all of those things is going to be found in the servant, in the Messiah. And how do we know this? Well, we're going to talk about the fruitful vine, the Lord Jesus. [00:28:20] So if you have your Bibles, just flip over a few chapters to chapter 11. Chapter 11 of Isaiah. [00:28:26] Okay? [00:28:28] Chapter 11, we go from the fruitless vineyard to the fruitful vine, and we have this wonderful portrait of the work of the Messiah prophesied for us in Isaiah 11. Okay, let's look at. We'll just look at verse three verses, okay? We could read all the way down to verse five. We're just gonna do one to three. [00:28:55] Isaiah says, there shall come. Okay, so it's the. This is looking ahead. There shall come forth. Notice this phrase, a shoot from the stump of Jesse. Now, someone help me understand, who was Jesse? [00:29:11] Can't be the. Sorry. [00:29:13] Who is Jesse? David's daddy. David's daddy. There you go. Right? We got five rows back. This is great. David's daddy. Remember Jesse? [00:29:22] David had a bunch of brothers. [00:29:25] And Samuel shows up and he looks at the brothers. They're with Jesse, and he's like, hey, do you have any other boys? He's like, we got another boy. He's out with the. Out with the. Out with the sheep, right? David, the youngest. [00:29:35] So David is Jesse's boy, and he's from what tribe? [00:29:40] Judah. Right? We know all the way back to Genesis 49 that there was a prophecy that the forever king was going to come from the line of Judah, right? And so he was going to be a lion king and he's going to come from Judah. And so David is important because that's the covenant God makes with David. In second Samuel seven. We know there's going to be a forever king on a forever throne from David's line. And we get to places like Isaiah 9, right? You can write this down, look it up later. We see that David's. That this future hope that a son's going to be given to us, who's going to be right, Everlasting father, mighty God, you know, he's going to be the counselor that we need. And the throne, his throne, the throne of his father David will be forever, right? So there's this hope that Messiah's going to come from David's line, right? And so this is this reference to the Messiah here. He's going to be a shoot from the stump of David, Jesse, right? [00:30:43] And a branch from his roots. Notice this. Shall do what? [00:30:48] What does he say? [00:30:51] Isn't that amazing? [00:30:54] He can't talk about this agricultural imagery shoot of Jesse, right? And a branch from his roots without saying what's going to happen when he comes. [00:31:04] Fruit. [00:31:05] And think, okay, there's the fruit piece. He shall bear fruit. [00:31:09] Now look at this, look at this description of Messiah and the Spirit. [00:31:15] Look at this. And the Spirit of the Lord shall what rest upon him, Rest upon him. [00:31:25] And then notice the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge, the fear of the Lord and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. [00:31:43] If you count all those up, there's seven, seven aspects of the Spirit's ministry in the life of the Messiah. This one from Jesse, this one from David. Notice the Spirit will rest upon him. If you were looking later in Isaiah, chapter 42, verse 1, right? [00:32:01] Chapter 61, verse 1, right? The Spirit will dwell upon him. The Spirit will come upon him. The Spirit will rest upon him. Now remember, we're gonna fast forward real quick at Jesus baptism. [00:32:15] The Holy Spirit, right? John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan. Then the Holy Spirit appeared as like a dove. And what did the Spirit do? [00:32:26] What are we told in the Gospels? The Spirit what rested, rested upon the Savior, right? [00:32:33] So the other thing is, what does the word Messiah mean? [00:32:40] What does Messiah mean? [00:32:42] Or what does Christ mean? [00:32:46] Anointed. Yeah, he's the anointed one, right? He's the anointed One. So remember when Samuel shows up and he finally picks David, you know, he's like, where's the youngest? Where's David? What did Samuel do that day? What did he pour on his head? [00:33:00] Oil. He anointed him, right? He's the king. [00:33:03] He was anointed as king. [00:33:05] The Messiah wasn't anointed with oil. [00:33:09] He was anointed with the Holy Spirit. [00:33:12] The Spirit rested upon him. The Spirit, as it were. He is the anointed One because he is the one anointed, led, filled. [00:33:22] The Holy Spirit dwells upon him. [00:33:25] He has the sevenfold Spirit, as it were, the perfect Spirit who will anoint him for his ministry. [00:33:34] Okay, so we go a little bit faster, right? Look at this. [00:33:40] What does Jesus say when he shows up? [00:33:45] Remember, the Messiah here is called what, a shoot or a vine from the stump of Jesse, right? What does Jesus say to us? John 15. What does he say? [00:33:55] I am the what? [00:33:57] I am the vine, you're the branches. [00:34:01] And whoever abides in me, right? And I in him, he, it is that what bears much fruit. [00:34:11] So you see, Jesus is drawing upon this imagery. [00:34:15] Being the vine, he's the stump, he's the root from Jesse. He's the life giving vine. And the only way we bear fruit spiritually is not by cutting ourself off and going doing our own thing, it's by what? It's by abiding in the vine. [00:34:33] And as we abide in him, we bear fruit, right? Because he's the vine, right? Apart from me, you can do lots of stuff. Is that what he says? [00:34:44] No, nothing. Apart from me, you can do nothing. [00:34:47] And so again, the whole point of all this, you're probably thinking, why are we doing all this? Like, why are we spending so much time on this? [00:34:58] I want you to understand this, okay, that when we receive Christ, right, we receive His Spirit. [00:35:07] Every one of you who have received Christ in the empty hands of faith, you've been indwelt by His Spirit. The Spirit of the living God unites us to Jesus, right, by faith. [00:35:16] And so we have his life within us. He's dwelling within us. And so the same one who says, I'm the vine is the same one who's giving us his fruit. Bearing fruit, providing fruit, generating spirit. Okay? [00:35:33] So just to remind you really quickly, if you look in your notes, look, this is on page the second to last page, just real quick. You may not have thought of it like this, but think about the earthly ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. [00:35:51] One writer put it like this. From womb to Tomb to throne. [00:35:59] The spirit of the living God was the constant companion of our Savior from womb to tomb to throne. [00:36:10] And just think about this for a minute. In his incarnation, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the what? Of who? [00:36:20] The Virgin Mary. [00:36:21] Remember that the Holy Spirit shall come upon you. Right? The same Spirit who hovered over the surface of the deep in Genesis 1. [00:36:34] Right. That same spirit, right? [00:36:38] Amazingly right. [00:36:40] Gave life like in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Jesus assumed a human nature. And it wasn't Mary doing it. It was the Holy Spirit at his baptism. We've already talked about this. The Spirit descends upon Jesus and rests upon him in his temptation. Who led Jesus out to fight Satan? That first go round the Spirit. [00:37:08] He walked in the power of the Spirit to fight against our enemy in his preaching. Go look at Luke 4. He is anointed with the Spirit. The Spirit is upon him and he's preaching and ministering as the Spirit ministers on the cross. This may not be one you've thought of. Listen to this. If you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus, the Bible talks about how apart from the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. [00:37:37] And so there has to be a payment, there has to be a sacrifice for us to be made right with God because we're told in other places that there's life in blood. And so because we've sinned against God, we forfeited our own lives. So if we're not going to die for our sins, if we're not going to perish because of our sin and rebellion against God, someone else has to die for us. And this is what the writer of Hebrews says. Listen to this. This is Hebrews 9:14. [00:38:06] It says that he's talking about how the blood of bulls and goats can't cleanse your conscience, right? And he says this. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. [00:38:34] When Jesus offered himself on the cross, he was offering himself on the cross to God through the Holy Spirit. [00:38:43] Isn't that amazing? [00:38:45] The Spirit was his constant companion even as he gave up his Spirit on the cross. [00:38:51] And so if you're here, you're not a follower of Jesus. [00:38:54] That's the only way you can be cleansed. It's not by trying to do a lot of stuff and to be these things, be gentle, be more holy, be more loving. [00:39:04] That's a ladder that will never reach to heaven. [00:39:08] The only Way to actually grow in these ways is to receive Christ in the empty hands of faith. He died and rose again. And he offers you himself. He offers you his spirit. The most amazing thing to me in all the world is that when Jesus ascends into heaven, before he goes, remember what he told his disciples. They're upset, they're concerned he's leaving them. [00:39:32] And what does he say on the night he was betrayed? He says, I'm going to go away, but I'm sending another helper just like me. [00:39:40] I'm sending a comforter just like me. [00:39:43] I'm sending you a paraclete. I'm sending you an encourager just like me. And he ascends to heaven and he opens up the treasury of heaven. And what does he pour out upon his bride at Pentecost? [00:39:59] He gives his church this pledge, this promise of his love, the engagement ring, as it were, the greatest gift he could ever give us. [00:40:14] The gift of the Spirit of the living God. [00:40:17] That's how much Jesus loves us. [00:40:19] And because of his Spirit, we're never alone. [00:40:24] He will be with us every step of the way. [00:40:27] And so the Spirit as it were, raised him from the dead. And Jesus pours out his spirit upon us. And so, brothers and sisters, this is the life giving spirit that unites us to Jesus Christ. And it's his fruitful ministry among us that produces that character of Christ, that Christlikeness. Okay, so we're back where we started. Okay, we're back where we started. [00:40:54] The fruitful life of the Spirit is the life of Christlikeness. Y' all get it? Pretty straightforward. And so what do we do to, how do we respond to this this morning, right? [00:41:07] What's the point? Okay, this is if you just say amen. Now what? Now what? Well, this is one I've quoted before. I'm gonna quote this one again, Sinclair. [00:41:19] We need to expend our energies admiring, exploring, expositing and extolling Jesus Christ, right? When you open the Bible, that's your marching orders, is look for the glory and grace of Jesus. [00:41:36] Because it's by beholding him, it's by beholding the diamond of Christ's character as revealed in the Gospel that we begin to be transformed into his image. [00:41:47] And so, brothers and sisters, we want to become like Jesus. By beholding Jesus. And I get this, as it were, we can ask the Spirit to help us to behold him more, right? And to see his beautiful character, his fruitful life as we do this study together to make us more and more like him. [00:42:10] And so we See this beloved there in 2nd Corinthians 3:18. This will be where we close and we'll break up. [00:42:18] Paul writes this. He says, and we all, with unveiled face. [00:42:22] With unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are what are being transformed, present tense, into the same image from one degree of glory, another. [00:42:39] Isn't that amazing? [00:42:41] Is that you might be thinking, I got a few more degrees to go. Amen. [00:42:45] I do, too. Right. We all do. [00:42:49] But as we behold the glory and grace of Jesus as described for us in the Gospels, when we see his gentleness, when we see his love, when we see his faithfulness unto death, when we see all of those beautiful fruit in his life and his character, the Spirit of the living God uses God's truth to transform us one degree, another degree, another degree into that same character and image. [00:43:21] And is it all based on what we girding up our loins to do all this? No. Because look at this. [00:43:29] For this comes from the Lord, who. What? [00:43:32] Who is the Spirit? [00:43:34] The Spirit is for us in this. [00:43:37] So, brothers and sisters, this morning, what we're gonna do is we're gonna spend the next few minutes. I'm gonna encourage you to just spend the next few minutes, just gather around with some of the folks that are around you, and let's discuss these questions this morning. [00:43:51] And then in about, I think, 15 minutes, we will sing the Doxology together. Okay? All right.