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[00:00:24] Speaker B: Thank you for spending part of your father's day with us this morning. We're in a series, you know, called the fruit of the spirit. And as we said last weekend, it is the fruit that God develops in the life of his kids. It is something that only God can produce within us. And so if you look with me in Galatians chapter five, we'll see again where the Bible talks about this. It says, the fruit of the spirit. Now, the verse begins with the word, but it's there in contradistinction to what has just been said. He identifies, as we talked about last week in the previous verses. If you started up in about verse 19, you would see what he calls the deeds of the flesh. The deeds of the flesh. And they're plural. There are many of those. There are many things that we do that are not pleasing to the Lord. But then he draws a line and he says, however, but this is something that I want to produce in your life. He said, but the fruit of the spirit. And notice the deeds of the flesh are plural. The fruit of the spirit is singular. I said, the fruit is really one fruit with eight different clusters. Think about it as one fruit with eight different flavors. And each weekend we're taking a different flavor, we're taking a different portion of the fruit, and we are examining it. And so he says, the fruit of the spirit is love. We started out with that. In the greek language, there are four different words for the word love. In the english language, we just have the one word. And so we have to use the word love in context so we know how we mean that. So when you say, I love peanut butter, and then you say to your spouse, I love you, you're not saying, I love them like I love peanut butter. We understand that, so we have to understand context. But the Greeks were much more explicit in how they express love. For example, you had the greek word eros. You get the word erotic from that word. It's sensual. It's a physical love. And so you have Eros. And then there was the word storge. It means an affinity for fondness for a person. You may not be very close to them, but you appreciate them. You work with people like that. The relationship is storye. Then you have the third word, which is filet o. It is brotherly love. Philadelphia. Right. So you have the idea. I didnt mean to bring that up. But anyway, you have the idea of friendship, and then you have the highest level of love, which is God's love, agape. And that is the type of love that he's describing here. It is the love that is selfless and sacrificial. It comes from the Lord. It is the love that we should aspire to. It is the love that we ought to have in our families and in our relationships. And that is something that he produces. And then we took the next step. He said, the fruit of the spirit is love. And then we said, it is joy. Remember last week I told you that joy is different from happiness. Happiness depends on happenstance, your circumstance. If you've got a good circumstance, you're probably happy. If you don't, you aren't. But joy is something you can have even with a bad circumstance. You can be joyful in the midst of a lot of trials in your life. And this weekend, we're going to look at peace. Peace, the peace of God, the peace that passes all understanding. And then he went on to say, and we'll cover these long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. And then he concluded with saying, against such there is no law. As I told you last week, there are a lot of laws that have been passed against the deeds of the flesh, against taking advantage of people and harming people. But he said, when it comes to what God will produce in your life, there's never been a law that's needed. No one is going to pass a law and say, you're way too loving. You've got to quit that. We're going to lock you up. You don't quit being so nice to people. You're way too joyful. You got to stop that. You bring so much joy into the workplace. We're going to fire you if you quit that. Don't quit that, right? Or you're peaceful. You're so peaceful. You're a wonderful person to be around. We just got to put you in jail because you're so full. There's no law passed against the fruit of the spirit, but there are law, laws passed against the deeds of the flesh. And so these are, again, things God wants to produce in our life. And when you think of fruit, when you think the fruit of the spirit is peace. You understand that? That's one of the top three things people said they wanted in their life once they were surveyed, they said, I want peace. I'd like to have peace in my head. I'd like to have peace in my heart. I'd like to have peace in my home. I talked to a guy and he said, man, you know, I'm in my sixties now, and my wife and I have talked about it. We just want to get along. We just want to have peace. When we were younger, he said, we fought over everything. Both of us had to win. He said, but as you get a little older and you get a little wiser, you get a little more mature. You understand there's some hills that aren't worth dying on. And he said, what we want more than ever in our relationship right now is some peace. Can you understand that? Can you relate to that? You just get tired of fussing and fighting, and what you want is peace. And it was, as I said, the top. One of the top three things people, when surveyed, said they desired more than anything is to have that peace. And then you circle back to where I'm going today, and that is, how do you get it? How do you attain it? For some people, it may be partly physiological. There could be some chemical imbalance going on in your life that's disturbing your peace of mind. That's why I would tell you, if you struggle with this, you ought to get a physical. You ought to get the checkup and make sure that all of those things are working right. You don't have some physical issue going on in your body that you're unaware of. Sometimes a good thing is to get a handle on your health. For some, it's physiological. For some, it may be psychological. You may be struggling with some emotional issues in your life. You may need to get help with that. You may need to talk to somebody that can help you, you know, deal with some of the things that you've gone through that's disturbing your peace of mind.
So you get the checkup, and then the other one is the checkup from the neck up.
And for most of us, it's the third one. It is spiritual. It is spiritual. The fruit of the spirit is spiritual, is peace. And once you've checked the box and you said, you know, I have gone, I've gotten physical, the doctor says, there's nothing I can determine that is wrong with you. Emotional. I feel like I'm a pretty emotionally healthy person.
My spouse affirms that, you know, friends have told me? No, your bubble's in the middle most of the time with you. So I feel like I'm a pretty emotionally stable individual. Then you have to come back and say, well, could it be spiritual? Maybe I'm missing something in this area of peace because I haven't given a great enough priority to my spiritual life, and I haven't given God the chance to develop this incredible quality of peace because of my fellowship with him. Now, for some people, they say, well, the path to peace is solitude and serenity. And I'm not against either one of those things. Sometimes you need to get away. Sometimes you just need to hit the big pause button on your life and get out of dodge and go out somewhere where you can just get reconnected and grounded with nature. And sometimes serenity and solitude is good for helping you establish peace. You need to get away. The Bible, institute a Sabbath for a reason. There was a Sabbath rest, and you need to take time off. You need to take time away.
I had a guy one time tell me, well, Bill, I just wired different and all this macho stuff, and he said, I'd rather, at the end of the day, I'd rather burn out than rust out. And I said, well, have you thought about it, sport? Either way you go, you're out.
You can burn out or you can rust out, but out's out. So you have to find balance in your life. So serenity and solitude are essential. I agree with that. And other people, they say, well, if I just. You know, if I just didn't have a lot of difficulties, trouble in my life, I could find peace. So their idea of peace is a life without trouble. I don't know about you, I've never been able to master that. Have you ever been able to find the zone where you're in, where you're not facing some kind of trouble? Now, I'm not in trouble all the time, but I'm in trouble a lot of times, and my life can be very troubled. I've told you before, the oldest book of the Bible is probably the book of Job. And when you read Job 14, one job opens this way, said man who is born of woman, and that's pretty much all of us. He said, man that is born of woman is full of trouble. Remember the cycle we talk about here this morning? You're either in trouble, you're getting out of trouble, or you're about to get back into trouble. It is a cycle. So if you're waiting till your life is trouble free before you have peace, you may not have much peace. Remember that famous passage in John 14 where Jesus tells his disciples, let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. John 14 opens with God talking to his people about trouble, and it ends. John 14 ends with him talking about peace. And so having peace is not necessarily the absence of trouble, by the way. It's not necessarily the absence of adversity. Adversity. You're going to have adversity. You're going to face things that will come against you. In Isaiah, he said, no weapon formed against you will prosper. Now, God's promise to protect you. But listen, what he didn't say is, there won't be weapons formed against you. He said, there's no weapon formed against you that will prosper. He didn't say there won't be weapons formed against you. Now, I'm not talking about physical weapons, but I am just suggesting that you're going to face some adversity. You're going to have adversaries. Did you know? Not everybody is going to have your best interest. Not everybody is going to want what's best for you. There will be people in your circle of life who will betray you and deceive you. If you hadn't already discovered that you will soon. Jesus picked twelve to be close to him, and one of them betrayed him. So if the perfect son of God could be betrayed while he's on this earth, then who are we to think we won't? So I'm just suggesting that when you think of peace, it's not the absence of adversity. It's not the absence of adversary, by the way, it's not the absence of oppression. Oppression. You and I will face oppression. It's one of those things that will hit our life. You're going to face spiritual oppression. The Bible talks about spiritual wickedness in high places in Ephesians six. You're going to face some oppression. There's going to be things that will come against you, that will oppress you, that will affect your spirit, that will affect you and bring. So oppression is a reality.
It's not the absence of opposition. You're going to have opposition in life, not unlike adversaries, and not unlike adversarial type circumstances. You're going to have opposition. Paul put it this way. He said, there is a great and effectual door open to me. And then he said, but there are many adversaries. Now, put that together. I've got this great opportunity, but I've got this great opposition.
What you'll find in life, if you haven't already discovered, it, is the door of opportunity often swings on the hinges of opposition.
As God is blessing you, the enemy will berate you. As God is trying to move you forward, he's going to try to push you back. It's the yin and yang. It is the blessing and the burdens of life. It is the things that challenge me while I'm facing some things that oppress me. It is the reality of life. And this morning, if you think about it, it doesn't matter how blessed you are, you probably are carrying some kind of a burden today. Now, I know we want to count our blessings, and we want to do that and stay on the positive, sunny side of life. But the reality is, no matter how much blessed you are over here, you're probably burdened over there. And God will allow that to happen, I think, to keep us balanced. I don't think he's going to give us too much of anything all the time. And so what I'm just suggesting to you is when you think about peace, it's not the absence of those things or the addition of other things. Peace is something that the holy spirit of God will produce in my life in the midst of those things.
You remember in Mark four when Jesus was on the boat, and it's in the midst of the storm, and Simon Peter was freaking out. I mean, he runs down into the bottom of the boat and says, lord, don't you care that we die, that we're going to die up here, we're going down. Now, understand? Simon Peter, of all the disciples, he was an experienced sailor. In fact, many scholars believe he was a commercial fisherman that owned several fishing vessels before he became a Christ follower and before he left that profession to be a minister. In fact, when Jesus preached to a crowd on the shore, remember, he called Simon Peter and borrowed his boat. He leased his boat, more or less, and he used it as a platform. His voice would bounce off the water and he'd kind of, you know, before those public address systems and they had a little amphitheater and had everything set up. Well, it was Simon Peter's boat that Jesus stood on to preach to the crowd on the shore that day. So he was a professional sailor. He knew. He knew how to do this. And when a professional sailor is nervous at sea, you get nervous. Like I told you before, as long I'm good on a plane, as long as the pilot's good, when the pilot's not good, I'm not so good. And I've flown on somewhere I've set close to him, and we hit some turbulence, and I'm looking, and as long as he's got a. You know, as long as he's got it under control.
We were flying into Grand Junction, and we're on a little regional plane from Denver over to junction. And it was in the afternoon in the summer. And you guys know how. How turbulent that can get. And when you go over the mesa and you drop down into the valley, you've got. Man, there's just all kinds of things. All of a sudden, man, we're flying into junction and that. And that plane we're on, we start just kind of. We start doing this. You know, we're just kind of fishing around and I don't know what this is. We've got some pilots in the room. You could tell me what this. I'm hearing buzzers going off in the cockpit, and I'm thinking, is that a stall warning I was hearing was that it could have been, maybe.
I'm thinking that, because I don't know anything about it. So that's where my mind was going. So I'm thinking, you know, I think we're. We might be in trouble. And so. But, you know, I knew we were going to be okay because I didn't have any peace.
And I thought if I'd had peace, I'd been scared to death.
Because God's promised us when it's our time to go, he'll give us peace. And I didn't have any.
I said, no, we're good. Somehow it's going. He did a masterful job. They got the plane, it landed. And so I stuck my head in the cockpit when I was getting off, and I said, man, great job. And he looked around me and said, that was a lot of fun.
You guys are crazy. That was a lot of fun. But I'm saying I was okay as long as they're okay. That's the point. When Simon Peter is nervous, everybody on the ship is nervous. And he goes to the last resort, which is Jesus. Have you found yourself doing that? The doctor says, I've done all I can do. You better pray. And you go, oh, my God, are we down to that?
I'm gonna have to pray now. That means there's no hope. And oftentimes he's the last resort. The last one we go to. Instead of being the first resort, he's the last one. And as a last resort, they go to Jesus. You know what he does? Peace. Be still. What's the point in the middle of a storm. Jesus had peace in the middle of adversity. He had peace in the middle of opposition. He had peace. This peace I'm talking to your hearts about this morning is something you can have in the middle of adversity. You can have peace in a troubled life. He didn't say, as we've pointed out before, let not your life be troubled. He said, let not your heart be troubled. And listen, you can have a troubled life and an untroubled heart.
And the peace that he's describing here is peace you have in a storm. It's peace you can have in adversity. It's peace you can have in oppression. It's peace you can have in opposition. And this is simply the work of the Holy Spirit. There's no other way to comprehend or understand how this can come around. Now, look, when God gives you peace, here's what it looks like. First of all, if you take notes, it is peace with God.
The first experience I have is I have finally peace with God. There's a sense within my heart that everything between my creator and me, everything is good. I've got a peace with God, meaning that I know if something were to happen to me, that God has me. If I were to leave this life and I were to leave this earth, I have peace. I have made my peace with God. Colossians, chapter one, verse 20. Through him who is Jesus, he reconciles. He makes everything to himself. He reconciles all things, whether they're things on earth or in heaven. How does he do that? By making peace. How does this peace come through his blood shed on the cross? When you connect with your creator and you invite Jesus into your heart, the first thing you experience is you have peace with God, everything with him, and you are okay. You know, you will never stand to account for the sins that you've committed because those sins have been covered at the cross. You have peace with God. That was one of the first things that got disturbed when you had the entrance of sin in Genesis three, man walked with God in the cool of the day. God walked with man in the cool of the day. And it was only until sin enters the picture that peace was disturbed. And for the first time in all of that recorded history, Adam and Eve hid from God. They hid their faces from him. They were ashamed of what they had done. They didn't have peace. And so I'm suggesting to your heart that one of the things that when we are away from God, one of the things that happened to us inevitably is it disturbs our peace. But when you connect with your creator and you humble your heart and you invite him into your life, one of the things his spirit provides is peace. You have peace with God. Here's the second thought. Not only have peace with God, you have peace from God.
Jesus said this in John 1427, peace I leave you, my peace I give you not as the world gives. He says, so don't let your hearts be troubled, and neither let them be afraid. Philippians four, verse nine. He said, whatever you've learned. Paul said, whatever you've learned, whatever you've received, whatever you heard from me or you've seen in me, put those things into practice. And if you'll do that, the God of peace will be with you. How do you have peace from God? I have peace with God. That's relationship. How do I get peace from God? That's fellowship.
Paul said the things you've observed, the messages you've heard, the lessons you've learned all of those things. Put those into practice. We joke about a gathering like this. We call it a holy huddle.
And what you do in a huddle, if you're familiar with the sports metaphor, what you do in the huddle is you get your play and you understand everybody in the huddle has a different position to play. And so what you're doing is you're understanding which position or what's your assignment for the play. I was listening to Peyton Manning one time and he was talking about when the quarterbacks are at the line and they're calling an audible, how some of the audible that you hear is directed toward the lineman. He's changing the way they're going to block. Sometimes it's to the receivers. He's changing the route they're going to run. Sometimes it's to the running back he's changing. In other words, he's calling audibles and he's calling them for every position on the field so that everyone is clear on the play that is about to be played. And it's a disaster when somebody misses an assignment, the play doesn't go. It's a beautiful thing when the play goes and everybody functions to their assignment and they fulfill it and the ball gets moved down the hill and we all cheer. But the point is, we all have an assignment. We're all players in the game of life, and I'm suggesting you that when we come into a room like this and we began to listen, we're listening for an assignment. We want to know what is the thing I need to take away from this moment that will make me more effective as a father, maybe as a spouse, as a business person. What do I need? What could I take from this? Maybe a song, maybe a moment where you just had this sense of, okay, that's it. That's why I was here today. And I'm suggesting that the way you continue to receive this peace from God is you fulfill your assignment, you put it into practice. James would say, this faith, apart from works, is dead. I mean, you can look, you can know all the truth in the world, but if you don't apply it, it won't do you any good.
We have access now with technology. You guys can hear the top theologians in the world on a various array of subjects. I listen to probably, I don't know, 15 or 20 sermons a week. As I'm preparing, I'm just. I'm just always. I pick up on some things. It's never a wasted time for me. I always will pick up on something. Sometimes I get a good illustration. Sometimes I get a different interpretation or an application of a verse. But I'm always wanting to learn and improve in that way. And so I'm suggesting, as we are learning and we're gathering information, we're trying to be more effective in the thing that we do. Putting it into practice and putting into play is essential, because if I don't take the things that I've learned and I don't think, take the things that I know and put it into practice, it doesn't get assimilated. It doesn't become a part of who I am. I've told you about the elephant at the circus when it was young, how they would chain that elephant to a light pole that was down in the earth, where that young elephant would pull against it and pull and couldn't get free. And after a while, something breaks down in the mind of the elephant that no matter how much I resist, that I can't be free.
And then I talked to you about going to the circus when I was a kid and seeing these massive elephants at the Ringling Brothers circus, and they're not chained to a massive telephone pole down in the ground. They're just chained to a little stake.
And that tiny stake is driven into the ground, and you have this little attachment to the chain. And I'm looking at that, thinking, as big as that elephant is and as weak as that, as that stake is, it could easily be free if it simply tried. And I researched it, and I found that once a young elephant gives in to the idea that it can never be free. No matter how hard it tries, eventually it just quits trying. It gives in. This is my life. Fatalism. It is what it is. I can't change it. That is who I am. I'll never change. I'll never have any. I'll never be any better. This is just my life. Grin and bear it.
And the reality is, you want to go up to that elephant, and if the elephant just knew the truth, the truth would set it free.
And I feel that way with a lot of people. I think, man, you're so close. If you can just apply what you've learned. A lot of it, guys, a lot of it. We don't need new revelation. We just need obedience to old revelation.
Have you ever found this in life? A lot of it is nothing new. You'll hear something over and over again, and it's not anything new. It's just obedience to what you already know.
It's like when you win the heart of your spouse, when you're dating and you do all those things to win the heart of your spouse, and then all of a sudden, you hit a season in life where it wasn't what it used to be. And what you realize you failed to do is to continue to do the things that you were doing when you initially attracted them. So what you then try to do is go back and repeat those habits, those behaviors, the little notes, the date nights, the sweet things. You start trying to do that again because you're trying to recapture something that you once had that you moved away from. It's not rocket science. It's just a matter of getting into a rhythm, of doing what we know to do. And we come to church, we hear this. Paul said, look, the things that you've been taught, the things that you know, the things that you've learned, put those into practice. And what's the payoff? Well, again, the verse I just read in Philippians four, he said, when you do that, verse nine, the peace of God will be with you. God's going to give you enormous peace when you put what you know to do into practice. Okay, here's the last thought then. You have the peace of God. The peace of God. Philippians four seven. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, Paul said, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. Have you ever thought about that? Peace is a guard to your heart and a guard to your mind.
When you have God's peace working within you, it guards your mind, it guards your thoughts, it guards your heart. You and I, as I've said we'll go in the direction of our thoughts.
Probably the most powerful thing God has given you is your mind. Your mind and man. If the devil can oppress you and if he can defeat you in your thinking, he can defeat you.
He's really not after your stuff. He's not after your family. He's not after your kid. Not primarily. He's after your mind. If he gets your mind, he'll get your stuff. If you get your mind, he'll get your family. If you get your mind, he'll get everything that's precious to you. And the Bible is saying, when you have God's peace active in your life, it guards your, your mind. And it's interesting that Paul would use that term guard, because at the time he wrote this, he was in a jail guarded by roman soldiers. And so he's chained between two soldiers being guarded twenty four seven. And Paul thought about, I have nowhere to go.
Nothing can happen to me because they're here.
They're guarding me. And Paul thought, man, that's God's peace. The peace of God is guarding me just like these roman soldiers are guarding me. God's peace is guarding me. And so he's challenging the people as I want to challenge you, as I close to understand the power of peace that's working in your life can guard your hearts, can guard your minds. I read about a presbyterian minister, Cleland McAfee. In 1903, he lost two young family members and he was struggling to find peace.
He was a minister that had preached peace and he had talked to people about peace. But when it hit his home, boy just he didn't know how he was going to survive. He didn't know how he would navigate, he didn't know how he would deal. And it was a crisis of faith and it was disturbing his peace.
And so what he did, in desperation, he just pressed into God. He trusted God. He said, God, you promised peace, and I'm focused on you and I'm obedient to you. And so God, I'm praying for that peace. And he said later, as he began to come out of that dark place and that dark experience, he wrote the words of this poem that were incorporated into a song and listened to the words that he wrote. There is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God, a place where sin cannot molest, near to the heart of God. O Jesus, blessed Redeemer, sent from the heart of God, hold us who wait before thee. Near to the heart of God.
And this McAfee minister said the thing that sustained him was the promise of God's presence, and in his presence was his peace. So I can tell you this morning, guys, regardless of what you're going through in life, you press into your savior. First of all, know him in a relationship. Then you press into him in fellowship. And one of the benefits of that is love, joy and peace. Let's pray together.
Father, again, we thank you for your word.
Thank you, Father. That it has such power to transform our thinking and that has the power to transform our life.
So, Lord, as we have tried to be sensitive to what you want to say to us, I pray we'll walk out of this room now better equipped to be more effective in what you've given us to do. Help us as we break out of this huddle, to execute the thing that you've called us to execute. Help us to put into practice and into play. And, Father, I pray for your peace to be abundant on the hearts and minds of these people. And if there's someone in the room or someone watching online and they've never trusted you as their savior, I pray this would be a moment where they'll just humble their heart right where they are and say, lord Jesus, with all that I know about me, I trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart. Forgive my sin. Give me your peace. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.
