OK, so we're going to look at Galatians five, nineteen through twenty six this morning. As we try to put these within the context of the larger part of the passage, but this week I want to focus especially on the things that are in these two lists and. And the differences between. The works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit didn't get a lot of time to do that last week, and I I thought that it would be important to look again at these things. So in these seven verses or so, the word flesh and the word spirit are actually very significant, but they're also significant throughout the rest of the New Testament. And if you were to do an Old Testament search, you would find especially fruit is found everywhere. The term flesh is used a little bit differently in the Old Testament than it is in the New. But this is a major theme of the entire Bible. The word flesh is the word sarks, and it occurs in twenty two of the twenty seven New Testament books. That was my count anyway. This week, a total of around one hundred and fifty times. The word fruit is the word car parts. And it occurs in 18 of the New Testament books, a little over seventy five times. So that's quite a bit of information that we could draw upon if we were I'm going to look in a lot of detail and say class or something at these two things. Now, in our passage, these two words show two sources from which a person might commit an action. And we see, of course, that the flesh is the source of no good actions, but only fragrant, flagrant acts of disobedience and sin. And they are called works of the flesh. But in the passage as well, fruit comes from another source and it produces only good things, God honoring actions. In this list, there is no hint that the flesh ever produces a good action. And I want you to keep that in your mind. It never produces a good action or that fruit from the other source ever produces a bad one. And I think that you would be hard pressed to find anything different anywhere else in the Bible. And that would take a long search, but best as I thought, I couldn't think that the flesh is ever put in terms of look at the good things that it produces. And I say this to you because it leads to a difficulty. The difficulty is that Christians do display works of the flesh and non-Christians display some form of the fruit of the spirit. And what I want to ask is, how do we rightly understand this? The answer to the Christian's dilemma is something that I talked about last week, actually, for quite a while. And it's that we live between two ages, as I told you about. We've been raised with Christ, and yet our bodies have not been raised from the dead. So I won't go into that anymore. The answer to the non-Christian's dilemma might surprise you. I think it begins by thinking about the fact that they are image bearers in Genesis. You have to remember also that it is the Holy Spirit who gave life to the man and the woman in Genesis, not just to Christians, but to all people. The spirit works in a general way to convict the world of sin. We learn in John 16. And he comes upon pagans like Balaam and Cyrus in the Old Testament so that they can prophesy and help God's people. And we don't have any indication that either one of them was ever saved. Now, since the flesh cannot produce anything good, and since the Holy Spirit comes in some way upon all people, We have to conclude, therefore, that when unbelievers display fruit like love and patience and kindness, that it has to be the work of the Holy Spirit in some kind of common grace. And so I want to ask, what is the difference between the two people? That's really the key question, because the Holy Spirit does not come upon all people in the same way. For Christians, the fruit that they bear demonstrates their repentance and acknowledgement of utter dependence upon the Holy Spirit to regenerate them and to give them life. But for nonbelievers, as John Owen says in his great work on the Holy Spirit, he says, quote, Some indeed receive him in a sort or in a way as to some ends and purposes without any advantage, finally, to their own souls. So do they who prophesy and cast out devils by the power of the name of Christ and yet continuing workers of iniquity are rejected at the last day in the quote. It is the source and acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit that makes us differ and of Christ and of the father, and those differences are going to continue not just until we die, but on through all of eternity. Now, this morning we will look at two conflicting sets of actions. and at the source of each of them. And the first set of actions are vices familiar to the New Testament in many different lists to ancient Jews, to the Greek world and beyond. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to tell you that, you know, it's not just Christians who talk about doing these things. These things are specific applications of the Ten Commandments, which are things forbidden by God that all people know because they are written on their hearts. There are 15 things that are mentioned in this list, and it's not an exhaustive list by any means, because Paul concludes the list by saying and other such things. Some have tried to categorize the list, and the most popular categories are into four, where the first three are sins of sensuality and the second is two sins of worship, heathen worship. The third set are eight sins having to do with conflict. And then the last is two sins having to do with drunkenness. And that's if you want to categorize them. It might just be that this is a general list like a grocery list that might have some order to it, but it's mostly just jotted down as things come to mind. And of course, in your mind, things often come together. So let me go through these words and give you the Greek word for each of them. It's kind of fun to think about the roots of these words, because a lot of these words you can recognize by some of the English words that we have. The first word in the list is pornea. And it is sometimes used narrowly of prostitution, especially temple prostitution. And sometimes it's used broadly of immoral sexual relationships. And so the ESV has sexual morality. In the Greek world as today, this vice was so common that it was generally not viewed as very bad at all, except when carried to excess. William Barclay in his commentary writes, it is significant that it is with this sin that Paul begins. The sexual life of the Greco-Roman world in the New Testament times was lawless chaos. Paul lived in a world in which such sin was rampant, and in that world Christianity brought men an almost miraculous power to live in purity. The second word is a catharsia. And this word can mean dirtiness in the physical sense or pass or impurities in the medical sense or uncleanliness in a ritual sense or lack of purity and loose looseness in a moral sense. And it is often used with ceremonial uncleanness in the Old Testament. And as the first word, it seems to have sexual connotations here, though it can also refer to just general error. In some places in the New Testament, the ESV renders this word as impurity. The next word is a salvia, and the word denotes licentiousness or debauchery, or as Barclay puts it, a love of sin so reckless and so audacious that a man has ceased to care what God or man thinks of his actions. It can refer to exhibiting oneself as in that idiot flasher caught this week in Boulder who said that as soon as they release him, he's going to do it again. But it can also refer to any devising of lascivious behavior, and so the ESV translates it as sensuality. Now, these three words speak to our own sensual, sensually supercharged, sexually explicit Western culture. that has uncanny parallels to the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Paul says that we are especially to watch out for this because every other sin that's committed outside is committed outside the body. But these sins are committed against the body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It's evident that these things are wrong and we are not to do them. So that's the first of the four categories. Now, starting with the second category, The word is idolatria. And it obviously means idolatry, although this word is never used in classical Greek or in the Septuagint, Paul uses it with reference to an image of God. Or to the worship of another god, and so the first and second commandments are wrapped up in it. It also has is used with regard to eating food that has idolatrous associations. Or it can be used more generally in the New Testament of just covetousness or being greedy. And the last use of the word is interesting because it connects the first and last commandments together, like a chain is linked with the fastener. If you break any one commandment, you break them all. Now, there's a second word in this list if you go by it, and I tend to think that these categories are probably at least worthy to think about. The word is pharmacia, and we get our word pharmacy from it. Now, it can be a neutral meaning, but here it probably refers to the use of drugs for poison or the use of sorcery or witchcraft. And so sorcery is the word that the ESV chooses to give it. It clearly has otherworldly implications, as the 60s proved with the world that had forgot to the world that forgotten that certain drugs are doorways through to the realm of forbidden things. They do things to our souls that are unnatural and they allow contact with creatures that are malevolent and powerful and do not have our best interests in mind. We are to stick with the common ordinary communication of God that he gave to us through the word and sacrament. Now, we're going to start the third list, and it's a long one at three, I is the word, and it begins. This list with the word that means enmity, hostility or hatred, and the ESB gives it the definition of enmity. Now, this is not the word for hating that Jesus uses for hating your brother in your heart. It's an even harsher word that depicts the relationship to God when a person is a friend to the world. He says that if you're a friend of the world, you are an enmity, hostility to God and James. The next word is Eris, and it means strife or discord or quarreling or wrangling or contention. In the ESV, it gives the definition strife and clearly this word in the previous word and the several that follow have to do with how people treat one another and think about one another in the context of Galatians. This would have to be focused primarily and especially on their relationships with others in the church. And so I wonder and ask out loud, have you ever been in a church where people acted With discord and quarreling and contentions towards one another, churches are not immune to those kinds of things. The next word is zealous, and the word can refer to noble passion like a zealot or negatively can refer to envy. It can mean intense devotion to God or to some other person or thing. It can refer to anger arising out of such devotion. It can refer to jealousy. That's what the ESV has, which is an unfriendly feeling about somebody else's well-being or envy or coveting, having what is not yours, but which belongs to somebody else. And it's obviously closely tied to the last few of the Ten Commandments. Fumoi is the next word. The word has a good and a negative sense, like so many of these words do. It can refer to courage. We're going to refer to fits of anger. It is used for God's wrath, it is used for Satan's rage, and it's also used for human rage. And here it clearly refers to the last of those three. This is unbridled anger that shoots up like Mount St. Helens erupting. Have you ever had this kind of uncontrolled anger come out of you? Eretheia is the next word, and it's used in Aristotle for canvassing for office or for seeking office. Pretty interesting word. More generally, it's used for working for wages. And those are all kind of just neutral meanings. But over time, this word took on a negative meaning, which is something like self-seeking or selfish devotion to one's own interests or selfish ambition. I thought nothing has ever changed. You think about politics and how the word, which just meant seeking office, all of a sudden becomes seeking your own self worth. It seems to me exactly what's happening in our political landscape today. The ESB has the word rivalries. which can certainly be caused by self-serving interests, especially when we think about some of these other words in it at the same time. The next word is Vickostasiae and this word means dissensions in the ESV or seditions. The only other occurrence of it is in Romans 16, where Paul warns the church to watch out for those who cause divisions. The word certainly applies to the circumcision party that is attempting to split the churches of Galatia. The next word is Arisace, it can mean a choice or a plan or preference or purpose. That doesn't seem to be a sense here because that's just neutral in meaning, but it can also mean taking captive or capture. And so the ESV has divisions. Different parties within Judaism that you have all heard of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots are different divisions and they were at hostility with one another. And the churches kind of have the same thing, although not necessarily evil denominations have certainly tended in the past to act. As divisions. And so it could refer to party spirit within a church or causing divisions by grouping together into different factions or political parties within the church that is opposed to another group of people. Not only the church, but individual churches have seen a lot of this throughout the centuries, and in fact, it's frankly the reason why we have almost all of our church splits today. Paul addresses it in this word right here, and he says it's a work of the flesh. Most people seem to think nothing of it, but it's listed in the same category as sorcery and sexual morality. And that leads me to a point. Big sins is what we would usually think of the first group and the second group and small sins, which is the way we kind of tend to treat these in the third list. They're all together. There's no picking and choosing which sins you can enter into and which are really offensive and which are acceptable. In God's eyes, sin is sin. John Piper on his Facebook yesterday posted a little blurb. He goes, so I can remember it. Have you ever committed the sins of Eve or Lot's wife? Just a bite and a glance. Think about it. Sin is sin. Fully half of the sins in this list have to do with how we treat one another in church. The next word is fathanoi, and the last this word means ill will or malice or envy. Envy seems to dominate the New Testament usage. It's closely related to jealousy. Clearly, God cannot stand abuse like this within the body of Christ. And so you're not to treat each other in these ways. Now, the last of the four categories, the first word is meth and it can mean strong drink or drunkenness, a strong drink, while not forbidden in the scripture, certainly leads to drunkenness, which is forbidden in the scripture. Why is drunkenness so bad? It's because it makes a person lose control. Think about what happened to Noah as soon as he got off the ark. Drunkenness opens the tongue to all manner of wicked speech. It causes people to make decisions that they might not otherwise make. It makes foolish people and stupid people. It causes chemical addictions that ruin families and children and relationships, all while making the person think that there's not really a problem. Basically, of all the other sins that are listed here, they're all enhanced by drunkenness. Maybe that's why he puts it at the end. And then the very last word is come away. This word means reveling or carousing or orgies is the way the ESV has it. And these were often related to pagan worship, such as the cult of Dionysus, and it does have a certain fit with drunkenness that also kind of brings us full circle back to the first part of the list. So those are the words in the list. What do we notice about it, about these things? Let me give you some thoughts. The first one is that, as I said, it covers a broad range of sins. Second, it puts big sins in the same categories, little sins, because in reality, there's no such thing. Third, some of these words have positive meaning, but each of them is being used for a destructive end. The fourth half of these things deal with violent, hateful, divisive actions in the church. And fifth, these are all works of the flesh. Now, what each of these sins has at its absolute base is a love for self and disdain for others, sexual sins, treat the other sex as an object to be conquered rather than divine image bearers. Sins of worship seek guidance explicitly forbidden by God, often for the power and puffing up with a person that's participating in it. Sins of anger and jealousy, divisions and the like are ways that we treat each other as subhuman. There are ways to usurp the power structure that God has ordained in the fellowship God wants in his church. Sins of drunkenness are a sign that a person no longer cares about themselves, but rather abandon self to other things, which is ironic because it ends up being just as selfish as the other things as the self-pity of the drunk is still selfish. After he completes the list, Paul gives an ominous warning. And I didn't feel like it dealt with this long enough last week, and I think it's pretty important that we think about it. This is in verse twenty one. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. With things. The works of the flesh. And you remember what Paul says, flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God. It's similar to this. In that same passage, that's first Corinthians 15, he tells us that even heavenly beings have a kind of flesh, just as Jesus has a kind of flesh in his resurrected body. So some kind of flesh inherits the kingdom of God. So if some flesh can inherit another flesh can't, what is going on in this passage? Paul tells us that the problem is that Our flesh is perishable, sown in dishonor, in weakness. It is natural. He says Adam was created a living being. But Jesus, who has a new flesh that inherits the kingdom, is a life giving spirit with a spiritual body that's raised in glory and power and imperishable. Adam came from the dust. And what does God say to the dust? You will return. Jesus has been raised forever and has ascended into heaven. This is, in a nutshell, what all things in the flesh do, they cannot inherit that which is eternal because they are temporary. They must be raised from the dead and sown as imperishable seed. This warning is not talking about Christians who do deeds of the flesh. I want you to think about some of the Christians that do some of these deeds of the flesh already gave you one Noah. If drunkenness can't get you into heaven, no, it's not going to be in heaven. How about sexual sins, David and Solomon? They're not going to be in heaven. How about all sorts of factions and trouble within a body so much for the twelve brothers of. Joseph, the sons of Jacob, you see, if you want to just pick on the list and say the things here is what the problem, it goes much deeper than that, friends. Paul acknowledges in other places, as I began with this morning, that Christians do deeds of the flesh. But something has changed with us. This is the one I gave you last week to think about in 1 Corinthians 6. We were washed, we were sanctified, we were justified. And the key is the tense of the verb. The verb is were. Past tense. How does this occur? It occurs through faith and repentance. And so Calvin says Paul does not threaten that all who have sinned, but that all who remain in penitent shall be excluded from the kingdom of God. The saints themselves often fall into grievous sins, but they return to the path of righteousness and therefore they are not included in this catalog. In a different passage, Paul says, while we now listen, while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in the members to bear fruit for death. But now that we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. That's in Romans seven, and it offers a nice transition from the first part of our text this morning to the second part of our passage. The first thing it does is it shows us what we were. We were living in the flesh, but no more. That's what he says in Romans seven. You were living in the flesh, but no more. And yet that's the very contradiction that I spoke about last week for almost the whole sermon. We are still in the flesh, and yet we are not living in the flesh. And the explanation for that is legal and mystical. Legally, we died to the law. How? Through mystical dying with Christ. We have been united to him through faith in a legal declaration that we are not guilty and that his righteousness is now our righteousness. And mystically, we've been raised with him in his resurrection. So Paul can say, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who live in me. which he says earlier in our very letter in Galatians chapter two, so that the life I live, I now live in the flesh by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. See, Paul's not crazy. He's not contradicting himself. He understands the tension between the two ages, and he deals with it when you start looking at these broader ideas throughout the rest of his writings and even earlier on in our very letter. So we both live in the flesh and yet we don't live in the flesh because it is both I who live and yet Christ lives in me, though I have not died, I have died. And though I have not yet been raised, I have been raised because Christ went before me and did those things. And God has united me to him in mystical union. Pretty remarkable, isn't it? You could spend the rest of your life thinking about these things. In verse twenty six of our passage here, he says, those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If something's crucified, what's its state? It is dead. In Corinthians, he says, we walk in the flesh, but we are not waging war according to the flesh. So you see, you can keep going back and forth like this. We have divine power to destroy strongholds and arguments and lofty opinions and everything that wages war against our flesh, he says. So that's one transition moving from the works of the flesh to the fruit of the spirit. Second, in the Roman seven passage, it says that the works of the flesh bear fruit for death. I thought that was an interesting phrase fruit for death. This is what Paul talks about next in Galatians, only this time it's the fruit of life and the fruit of the Holy Spirit. He's the source of the fruit, not the flesh. It is the source of the works of the flesh that is the world, the flesh and the devil versus the source of the fruit, which is the Holy Spirit. That's the real contrast that's going on here. The second set of actions, then, are virtues. Also familiar to the New Testament, to ancient Jews, to the Greek world and beyond. There are things against which there is no law, and they are as follows. I'm going to do the same thing I did before. The first word is agape and it means love. And it is a word, believe it or not, that you cannot find in classical Greek. They divided love into three categories, as I'm sure you've heard many sermons on this. If you're like me, I've heard a lot of sermons on this. The three categories were brotherly love, physical love and familial love. They are Philea. What is Philadelphia? The city of brotherly love. They are Eros, which is a physical love, erotic. And then they are Storge, which is a kind of a familial love that you have as a bond between brothers and sisters and things like that. The kind of love in mind with Agape has encyclopedias worth of information written about it. You've heard a lot about it, it's a favorite topic of evangelicals, and it's a very good thing. Agape is the kind of love that God himself has, which is expressed in John 3, 16, that God so loved the world. In our passage in Galatians 5, it's defined these ways, faith expressing itself through love, so it has to have faith. Through love, serve one another, so it's a serving of other people, it's not just selfish. It has other people in mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. It is a selfless, unconditional, serving love that always does not just once, not just feels, but does the best for other people. It is the highest moral end that you can achieve. All other virtues have it at their heart. And so I think there's a reason why he begins with love, because love is part of all the rest of the things in this list. Kara comes next, and it's the word joy. Joy is something highly esteemed in the Greek pagan world. And it's even used in the old world as a proper name, just like we use it in our day to day. You've met somebody named Joy, probably. It's connected with happiness that resulted in finding your way between extremes in the midst of pleasant circumstances. But Christians came along and used the word in a new way that incorporated not only pleasant things, but unpleasant circumstances, trials and sufferings. You can have joy in the midst of this. So what does Paul say? Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. It's the same word. And you think of something like Buddhism that will tell you that you can have joy in the midst of suffering, but they do something very different with that. They deny that suffering is real. A big problem. Christians embrace suffering as real. and find its meaning in the suffering and death of Christ. And therefore, we can have joy like nobody else can have joy. The third word is arena, and it means peace. Now, peace is the universal quest of humanity. Something that they're always seeking, but never quite able to find, not quite able to grasp. The Middle East cannot get peace. The United Nations will never bring peace. Treaties are worthless in a world full of treachery and distrust. But God gives peace. And this is not merely the absence of war or pain or trouble of mind. It is a word that epitomizes the perfection of relationships. To have peace here is to know that God not only doesn't hate you, but that he has positively been reconciled to you as your friend and your father. So it's not just the absence of war, it's the presence of a positive relationship. Macro thumia is the next word. It means patience. It means steadfastness, patience, long suffering in the face of persecution or provocation. Now, when someone is out to get you, when trials come your way, when things are not going the way that you'd like, when the enemy is at the door, when the government is dissolving around your feet, when the teacher is being unreasonable in school, when you're being egged on to commit some sin with others on the playground or in church. Patience is a fruit of the spirit. It is exhibited toward other people in the way that you treat them. whether they are in front of you or not. So it's not just kind of a I'm going to bear with it and not say anything. Patience is actually something flows out of being patient. And I think that's where some of these next words come in. Christosis is kindness. The word means excellence, refers to things like goodness, honesty, kindness when referring to people. It is found throughout classical Greek. I got the Sunni is goodness. It is like a copy, it's found only in the Bible, it's a synonym for kindness when you act kindly or goodly or acting for the benefit or betterment of somebody else in a way that is not obligatory, like you have to do it or begrudgingly kicking your feet in the ground while you do it. It is acting goodness freely and willingly. That comes out of being patient. Pistis is the word that's usually translated as faith. We are saved by faith, but it's also translated faithful. It has its roots in God, who is faithful. And because of its placements in a list like this, it doesn't refer to faith in God, but to faithfulness towards other people. It's the opposite of being treacherous or untrue or an apostate or cheating or adulterous or disloyal. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Those who are faithful will have friendships wherever they go. Proutis, this word means gentleness, it signifies mildness or consideration or modesty in dealing with people. It is teachable and submissive and humble. It is the opposite of being harsh and ruthless and cruel and merciless. And yet it is not the inability to get angry or have emotions. Like some kind of a stoic. Or a Vulcan. Aristotle defined it as somewhere in the middle, a gentle and quiet spirit is beautiful in God's eye. Edkratia is a word that means self-control. It was talked about all the time by the ancient Greeks. It's the opposite of overindulgence, whether it's in food or sex or anything else. It's the ability to keep yourself under control of your passions, be they lust or anger or covetousness or pride or any of the vices or any good passion that you can use to access. And so it's fitting to complete the list with a word that means self-control. Now, one of the things I noticed about this list is how it is singular fruit, not plural fruits. Like Mason's, the first person that ever pointed this out to me, I never thought about it before you said that. I don't know if I'm making too much of this or not, but what I think this may mean is that the fruit displays itself together at the same time. What does it mean to love? It means all these other things. What does it mean to be patient? It means to act kindly and goodly and faithfully towards other people. These are not gifts of the spirit. Where one person has one gift and another has another gift, these are fruits of the spirit. You are not to seek one of them and to the exclusion of all the rest of them. They should all be exhibited in your life on an increasing basis. And this is because this list of nine fruits of the spirit. Are attributes of God, things that show his character to and through the world, inasmuch as he gives them even the pagans, he shows the world what kind of a god he is. And how true that is, since he gives them virtues, even though they hate him. But there's more to all this than just doing good things, as if these two lists were Do these good things and don't do these bad things. That's the way too many people approach this passage. And I refuse to do that. That isn't what's going on here at all. To understand this, you need to understand the metaphors or at least this metaphor, because it's different than the previous one. That which comes from the flesh is a work. That which comes from the spirit is fruit. And though Paul can speak about fruit for death and therefore he makes the metaphor the same here, the idea is that the flesh. In the flesh, you are not in anything lasting or eternal, but in the spirit, you've been transferred from one kingdom to another kingdom. So there's several things to consider here. First, how does a person get into the spirit or how does the spirit get into them might be a different way of putting it. Well, not through flesh, but through the Holy Spirit. Now, that should sound obvious. That you get into the spirit through the spirit. But to so many people, it isn't because they glorify something that is impotent and they should know better. John says that we are born not of the will of the flesh. Or the will of man. but born of God. Paul says the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God because they are folly to him. He's not able to understand them because they're spiritually discerned. So we don't get into the spirit through the works or the will of the flesh, but only through God's mercy. We've become spiritual by the Holy Spirit in order to be spiritual. It's not the other way around. This change does not begin with the flesh. Nor does it continue with the flesh. Because what does the flesh produce? Only bad things. So that leads to a second thought. Becoming spiritual comes through the gift of faith and repentance. Now, these are gifts of God. There's all sorts of verses that say these are gifts of God. A person receives these gifts Through the word of God coming to them, changing their hearts through the conviction of their sin and the new desire to love and to serve him. And when they come, what does a person do? They act upon them. Have you exercised faith in Christ? Have you repented of your sins? I tell you that you have to. Because without that, you will not inherit the kingdom of God, even if you're eight or nine years old. If you're still wondering about all this, I want you to think about this, consider it's incredible that John the Baptist could say to the Pharisees as he's baptizing in the Jordan River, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And this shows that even the Pharisees could bear fruit. But John's focus is on what matters. Repentance, their fruit is cannot just be outward fruit. It has to come from repentance. When John said when Jesus says a little bit later in Matthew's gospel, you will know them by their fruit. At least part of what that has to mean is their repentance, because it's repentance that God uses as a means to generate the fruit. You know them by their repentance. And of course, the other side of repentance is faith. I want to point out that both John and Jesus say that every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. And that's similar to what I said a minute ago. It's similar also to the idea of Paul, who says that those who commit these vices will not inherit the kingdom of God. What's the problem here? The problem is that the tree is bad. The tree is bad. Imagine a scenario. You're going to go, this is why I don't give examples too often, because I'm terrible at it. But imagine this scenario, OK? You have this job. Some guy hires you to take care of his peach orchard over in Grand Junction. But you neglect your duty. And all of his trees die. But you hear that he's coming back to check on the harvest. And so you go to the store and you purchase all the peaches that they have at the store. And you hire a bunch of needy, unemployed, unscrupulous people. And you go to Home Depot and you get glue and you get nails and you get screws and you start to put the fruit on the trees. Now, you think that that would be ridiculous. Because it wouldn't fool anybody. It's absurd, but this is exactly what people are trying to do when they try to manufacture fruit apart from faith and repentance. Anybody who thinks they can fool God by doing these things are simply trying to glue good fruit to a bad tree. And you aren't fooling God. Jesus says our grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the disease tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can the disease tree bear good fruit. It's interesting, there's another story I just thought of where he says a guy plants a tree in the first year, nothing grows up or the tree grows, but there's no fruit. So let's grow the next year. Still, there's no fruit. So he says, wait one more year, and if there's no fruit, then chop it down. The third year, the tree comes up and the fruit comes. So the fruit isn't something that automatically like this is growing kind of a thing, but every good tree will eventually bear good fruit, good fruit. So what is Jesus's solution? He says either make the tree good and it's fruit good or make the tree bad and it's root bad because the tree is known by its fruit. So how does this happen? Happens by being found in Christ. And so Jesus famously said in John 15, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Note that we're not the vine dresser. The father's the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it might bear even more fruit. He has this hope for the disciples saying already you are clean because the word I've spoken to you abide in me and I in you and the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing. This is by my by this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. And a little later, he adds the nail to the coffin of anybody who's still thinking all of this is done by the will of the flesh. John 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. And that your fruit should abide. And so therefore, we come back to the very heart of Galatians. All of this discussion about works, the flesh and fruit of the spirit comes after saying in every conceivable way you can think of that you only have life through Christ and you only have Christ through faith in him. And this is why it's so important to keep going back to the gospel. But then the gospel always has implications for the way that we live. If we're in the vine, we're alive. And if we're alive, we produce that which comes naturally to living healthy branches. This is not a matter of try really hard to produce more fruit in your life. I mean, I could I could speak all day long to the fruit tree in my backyard and tell it to come on, try and produce more fruit. It's not going to do you any good. All of this has its lifeblood. The sap through the Holy Spirit. He makes these things grow in us. He causes them to sprout. He infuses all of our works with fruit that's pleasing to God. He is the he and not the it. The call here at the end of the chapter in Galatians five is a call to responsibility. These things come naturally, but they also have to be cultivated. You cultivate them by being faithful to the means of grace. By diligently putting to death the misdeeds of the flesh, by praying to God, repentance for your evil works and by trusting in his promise to justify, sanctify and glorify you. He says, if we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit and to walk by the spirit is to serve one another in love. In Romans, he says, now that you've been set free from sin and become slaves to God, the fruit You get leads to sanctification and it's in eternal life in Ephesians, the fruit of life is found in all that is good and right and true in Philippians, be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. There is a great city that is coming down out of heaven in the middle of the city. There is a throne. And flowing from that throne, there is a river of life that makes its way through the central street on either side of that street. Beside the quiet, still waters of the river, there is a tree of life. And this tree has 12 kinds of fruit yielding its fruit every month, never going dormant, always bringing healing to the nations. Make every effort, therefore, to be found in that city. For it is the city of the living God, the city of Christ Jesus and his church, the city that will last forever. Let's pray together. Father, this well-known passage of. Works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit, we've heard it a lot of times, we've read these lists many times. I pray that you would, through the proclamation of your word cause fruit to develop in the life of your people. Help us to weed out the works of the flesh by attending to the means of grace, by trusting in the promises, by believing you, taking you at your word. By being filled with the Holy Spirit. Thank you that you give him to us, and I would ask that he would do the work that's promised here in our lives today so that you can be glorified in the church. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.