The following message was given at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Coconut Creek, Florida. We turn for one last time to Galatians. And as we did in the previous session to chapter five, And we're going to begin at verse 19, and we're going to read through verse 23. Galatians 5, 19 through 23. But the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. A little piece of Shakespeare's Hamlet as we begin this final session. What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculties. In form and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a god. The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. Human beings are extraordinary. All these amazing things of which we are capable. The things that we can make, things that we can do, the places that we can go, the qualities that we are capable of displaying, heroism, selflessness, courage, integrity, generosity, indomitable perseverance, love. Quite apart from what he is through grace, man at his best is a magnificent creature, but it's the magnificence of a magnificent ruin. Shakespeare uses the word beauty, the beauty of the world. And when you think about the qualities that even apart from grace we are capable of displaying, it is an appropriate word to use. the selfless love of a mother for a sick child, or the selfless love of a son or a daughter or parents in their latter years. It is a beautiful thing, but it is the beauty of a beautiful ruin. What is missing? What is missing is the magnificence, the beauty of holiness. Even at our very best, we are not the creatures that we were when we came at first from our Creator's hand. Sin has robbed us of the holiness, which is our highest beauty. And until that holiness is restored and perfected, we are only ever a magnificent, beautiful ruin. Now, I know very well that for plenty of people, such a notion is utterly laughable. They can appreciate the beauty of a sunset, they can appreciate the beauty of a tree, or of a mountain, or of someone's face, or of a soldier's heroism, but they can't appreciate the beauty of holiness. It's one of those things that was lost through the fall. But for those in whom the grace of God is at work, it is entirely different. For us, there is no beauty to compare with the beauty of holiness. as we see it in God, as we see it in the human life of our Lord Jesus, as we see it in our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Well, it is to the beauty of a holy life that we turn in this closing session. The Spirit's goal in His restorative work of salvation is to remove the ugliness of sin and replace it with the beauty of holiness. And in Galatians chapter 5, Paul directs us to a particular aspect of that restorative work. beautifying work. He produces in us certain kinds of fruit. Verses 22 and 3, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. He has given us this long list of ugly things, the works of the flesh, sexual immorality, impurity, and so on. Here are things that are morally ugly, and over against these, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. against such things, he adds, there is no law. It's an intriguing statement. I wonder what he means by it. The function of law, says John Stott, is to curb, to restrain, to deter. No deterrent is needed here. There is, when it comes to the works of the flesh, not when it comes to the fruit of the Spirit. The more of that fruit there is in our lives, the better. For the more of the fruit of the Spirit there is, the lovelier our Christian lives become. Well, let's think in the first place about what this fruit of the Spirit implies about the Spirit's work. What it implies about the Spirit's work. And what it implies is that there is a great deal of work to do. There's a very popular TV show in the United Kingdom called The Repair Shop, when people bring articles of value to them that are somewhat the worst for wear to a team of experts who restore them. Well, my wife and I were watching an episode of this not all that long ago. And someone had brought in a fine old automobile, a 1927 Lagonda. This man bought this old car when he was 17, and he had been working on it for 43 years. And now, there was only one last thing to be done. 43 years! tells you how much work he had to do in order to restore this glorious old car to its former glory. And the Spirit has a great deal of work to do when we come into His hands. I think about some of the magnificent ruins with which my country and other countries in Europe are peppered old ruined castles and abbeys. What a lot of work to restore these ruins. And so with us, when the Spirit gets to work on us, He's got a great deal of work to do. And we have an illustration of it right here in our text. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. What a long list. And Paul could have made it longer had he so wished. What does its length imply? It implies that on all these different fronts, the Holy Spirit needs to work in order to make us like Christ. If we are to be the loving, joyful, peace-filled Christians that God wants us to be, the patient, kind, and good Christians, the faithful, gentle, and self-controlled Christians, the Spirit of God needs to make us so. Here are nine areas of the Christian life evidently in need of repair. And when you consider, one, that each of these has multiple aspects to it, and two, that they are not the only characteristics that Paul could have listed, we're given a glimpse straightaway of just how much work the Spirit has to do when we come into His hands as He gets to work in us to make us lovely again. Let's think in the second place about what the Spirit actually does in producing this fruit. And here we touch on an all-important question. Why are the love, and the joy, and the peace, and the patience, and the kindness, and the goodness, and the faithfulness, and the gentleness, and the self-control listed here called the fruit of the Spirit? And you understand why I ask that question. These are character qualities, and each one is to be found in the heart and life of those who do not have the Holy Spirit. Love, for example. Christians have no monopoly on love. We're not the only people on this planet who love. You remember Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount? If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? Non-Christians love. It is the merest truism to say it, and often with great selflessness. And unbelievers can be joyful, and peaceful, and patient, and kind, and good, and faithful, and self-controlled as well. All these qualities that are said here by the Apostle Paul to be the Spirit's work are to be found in those whose hearts are closed to the Holy Spirit. So why are they called the fruit of the Spirit? What makes them distinctively His fruit? Well, I find it helpful to think about it like this. The role of the Holy Spirit is to take qualities that are common to humanity and do something unique with them, something that only He can do through His presence and ministry in grace. We go back, for example, to the first of them, love. It's common to Christians and non-Christians alike. Both love. But it is only Christians who love God and who under the impulse of that love obey Him and serve Him from the heart. It is only Christians who have a distinctively Christian love for other Christians and show that by their prayers and by their concern for their Christian walk. You see, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, love becomes enriched. It comes to have new objects. It comes to expression in new ways. And so with joy, Like love, joy is common to Christians and non-Christians alike. Both rejoice. But it is only Christians who rejoice in the Lord and in his great salvation and in the progress of the kingdom of God. In the hands of the Holy Spirit, joy, like love, is enriched. It, too, comes to have new objects. and comes to expression in new ways. And what is true of love and joy is equally true of all the other kinds of fruit that Paul lists for us. Let's ask in the third place what we find when we look for the Spirit's fruit in our own lives as Christians or in the lives of others? What do we find? The answer is a great unevenness in regard to which these qualities are present. One Christian may be, for example, very loving, but not very joyful. Another may be joyful, but lacking in self-control. A third, maybe a model of self-control, but lacks kindness. A fourth, maybe wonderfully kind, but know little of God's peace in their heart. Or think about it in terms of ripeness. Your wife sends you to the supermarket to buy some fruit, and you're having a look at all the fruits that's on sale, and you see that it's in various stages of ripeness. The apples and the oranges are deliciously ready for eating, but the bananas are green, and the peaches and the pears and the plums are hard. They've still got ripening to do. And so with the different kinds of fruit that the Spirit produces in our hearts as believers, it is at different stages of ripeness. In some, love is far ahead of peace, joy than self-control, faithfulness than gentleness. He always has more work to do. Some of you will know the name Charles Simeon. He was one of the outstanding Anglican evangelicals of the 1700s into the early 1800s. When he was a young man, he enjoyed the friendship of an equally outstanding evangelical Anglican, Henry Venn. There is a story told of what happened when Charles Simeon, as a young man, went to visit Henry Venn in his rectory. He did not make a good impression on Mr. Venn's daughters. First, one Miss Venn, this is after he left, First, one Miss Venn and another exclaimed about his harsh and self-assertive manner. Come into the garden, children, said their father. Now, pick me one of these peaches. But it was early summer. and the time of peaches was not yet. How could their father ask them for green fruit? Well, my dears, it is green now and we must wait, but a little more sun and a few more showers and the peach will be ripe and sweet. So it is with Mr. Simeon. And so with us as well. Spirit of God has plenty of work to do in us before the fruit is fully and equally ripe. So we thought about what the fruit of the Spirit implies about the Spirit's work. He's got a great deal of work to do. And we thought about what he actually does in producing this fruit, taking common qualities and doing something unique with them. And we thought about what we find when we look for the Spirit's fruit, unevenness, unequal ripeness. Now in the fourth place, and this really brings us to the heart of the matter, what we become what we become as we bear the Spirit's fruit. There is something that we become as the Spirit produces this fruit in our lives, and that is increasingly like the Lord Jesus. How often Have we heard about it, thought about it, prayed about it, prayed for it, being like Jesus, becoming like Jesus? What does that mean? What do we look like if we become like Him? Tie it in with Romans 8, verse 29. Paul tells us that those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. What do we become as God's purpose is worked out in our lives? One way of answering that question is with reference to the fruit of the Spirit. He comes to live in our hearts. He gets to work there. He takes these common qualities of love and joy and peace, et cetera, and He begins to do something with them, something that only He can do through His presence and grace. What are we becoming as He does His work, as under His influence we begin to bear this fruit of the Spirit? The answer is, like Jesus. And the more of the fruits of the Spirit that we exhibit, the more like Him we are. So let's take a closer look. And there are three lines of thought that I want us to follow out as we think about becoming like Jesus by bearing more and more of the fruit of the Spirit. Here's the first. Let's think about Jesus bearing the fruit of the Spirit in His own life. It was the plan of God from eternity to make the nature in which man sinned and fell the instrument by which we would be saved. Sin would enter the world through a man, our first father, Adam, and it would also be through a man that salvation would come. That was the plan. And it led to the incarnation of the eternal Word, and the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We think about it every Christmas. Without ceasing to be what He had eternally been, the divine Son of God became one of us, a man. among men. And in that nature, the divine Son lived among us, and He did so exactly as humans should live. by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. From the beginning to the end, from conception to the cross, there was a very special ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the incarnate Son of God. It had been prophesied long before by Isaiah. Chapter 11, verse 2. The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord." A prophecy of the coming Messiah. What would he be like? a man on whom the Spirit would rest. And here is how it would be seen in his wisdom, his understanding, his counsel, his power, his knowledge, and most remarkably of all, in his fear of the Lord, in all these things that made him a man of God, that made his humanity godly humanity, that made his nature holy. And when we turn to the New Testament records, to the four Gospels, we're able to trace the details of this ministry out. It is a large, important, and sadly neglected topic, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the incarnate Jesus. We can only touch on one aspect of it, the Spirit's fruit. through the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit in Christ's humanity, His humanity was holy. And that holiness showed itself in this very same way that it does in the case of His people, in the love, and the joy, and the peace, and the patience, and the kindness, and the goodness, and the faithfulness, and the gentleness, and the self-control that the Spirit alone can produce. These qualities that we exhibit in our humanity as Christians, He exhibited in His. And it is to the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit that we trace it. Let's think in the second place about Jesus bearing all the fruit of the Spirit. And we go back for a moment to ourselves and to the ruin that sin has made of us. How much of a ruin? What has sin done to us? Well, one way of answering that question is to say that sin has so damaged us that until the Spirit of God comes to live in our hearts, we exhibit none of its fruit, none of it. We have been thinking about how these character qualities listed by the apostle are to be found in those who do not have the Holy Spirit. But it is also the case that in the unbeliever, each and every one of them is defective. Each lacks what makes it the fruit of the Spirit. In our unconverted days, we loved. but we did not love God. We had joy, but it was not a joy in God. We had peace, perhaps, but it was not the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. Apart from the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit, people do not display any of the fruit of the Spirit. Until we are born again, All that makes this fruit distinctively the Spirit's fruit is absent of the Lord Jesus, who is entirely the opposite. If we, by nature, lack all of the fruit of the Spirit, He, by nature, exhibited it all. Spirit created His human nature wholly. as He did in Adam's case. And in that holy human nature, all of the Spirit's fruit was present. None was missing. So, we thought about Jesus bearing the fruit of the Spirit in His own life, Jesus bearing all the fruit of the Spirit, and then this. Jesus bearing the fruit of the Spirit to perfection. We come back once more to ourselves and to the question that we've been asking, what do we find when we look for the Spirit's fruit in our own lives or in the lives of other Christians? Unevenness. all with some characteristics that stand out from others. We're all of us strong in some areas, but not so strong in others. Not so the Lord Jesus. He had all these things, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And at every stage of life, He exhibited them to perfection. Now, that is not to say that there was no development. There was. We may think of Him, for example, maturing in His love for God and man as His knowledge grew. We may think about Him coming to have the experience of a deeper, fuller, richer joy in God. and in God's gifts as he progressed from boyhood to manhood. But nothing was ever lacking. He never had to repent of the shortcomings and failings with which we ourselves are so familiar. And that is why we become more and more like him, the more of the Spirit's fruit that we bear. That is why when the Holy Spirit has finished His work in our lives, as He will one day, we will, like the Lord Jesus, bear the fruit of the Spirit to perfection. So we thought about what this fruit of the Spirit implies about the Spirit's work. And we thought about what the Spirit actually does in producing this fruit. And we thought about what we find when we look for it, and we thought about what we become as we bear this fruit like Jesus. And then this fifth point, what we ourselves must do to bear the Spirit's fruit. What we ourselves must do. It's what we were glancing at in the closing moments of our last session. Actions walk in the Spirit, live in the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit, follow the leading of the Spirit, sow to the Spirit. Victory over sin, growth and holiness, the bearing of the fruit of the Spirit don't just happen. It's not a matter of passively sitting back. We have a plum tree in our backyard. For a little while, we had christened it the barren plum tree. because it was not producing any fruit. And then, for a couple of summers, has borne abundant fruit. Now, my wife, who takes care of things, does her best to create the best conditions. She prunes it, whatever it is that needs to be done. But when that is done, we have to just sit back and watch. and wait. There's already been pruned. I don't know what sort of crop of any we will get this summer. We just have to passively sit back and wait. That is not how it is when it comes to bearing the fruit of the Spirit. I'm just going to repeat myself. There are paths that in the Spirit's strength we need to take, the paths marked out for us in Holy Scripture. There are means of grace, public and private, that we need in His strength to use. There are sins that we must put to death. There are disciplines of prayer and Bible reading that we must practice. There is church life in which we are to immerse ourselves That is the context in which the Spirit works to produce more and more of this fruit. I think of the blessed man of Samoan. Do you remember how he's described? He is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. It is a picture of stable, healthy, fruitful Christian life. What's the secret? He does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. It is in just such ways, brothers, it is in living like this that we bear more and more of the Spirit and thereby have the privilege of rendering ever more fruitful service. Let me tie it all in in the closing part of this message with the theme of beauty. When God planted a garden in Eden, Genesis tells us that he made trees to spring up that were pleasant to the sight. As human beings, we were created with a capacity to appreciate beauty, and God gave us beautiful things to look at. That capacity to appreciate beauty is enlarged when we are born again There is a measure of that capacity that was lost in the fall, but which is restored to us in saving grace. We are able once again to appreciate the beauty of holiness. It gives us great pleasure to see it in our Christian brothers and sisters. It gives us great pleasure to see it in the Lord Jesus. We're thinking about the beauty of holiness when we think about the Spirit's fruit. So in the light of that, please take to heart the following. Number one, this is a beauty that is attainable. When it comes to physical beauty, there's not much that most of us can do. When I was a young man in my early 20s at seminary in Edinburgh, I had the privilege of enjoying the friendship of a man much older than myself. He was coming on for 70 when I first knew him. And I remember him being described by someone who met him as having a very lived-in face. And I am not being modest when I say that again and again when I look in the mirror and see these lines, David, you've got a very lived-in face. There's not much we can do about it, is there? But here is a beauty that is attainable. It's the very reason that the Holy Spirit is living in our hearts and at work, so that we will bear this fruit and thus become more like Jesus in His love, and in His joy, and in His peace, and His patience, and kindness, and goodness, and faithfulness, and gentleness, and self-control. Brothers, Think about all these ugly things that cast a shadow over elders' meetings, deacons' meetings, members' meetings, those things that cast a dark shadow at times over our homes, lovelessness, joylessness, impatience, unkindness, at times sheer badness, lack of gentleness, lack of self-control, and especially in speech. There is no excuse for it. It is to our shame. Physical beauty diminishes. Spiritual beauty ought to increase. And every one of these respects, and they will do, as we walk in the Spirit, as we follow His direction in His strength. It is a beauty that is attainable. Secondly, it is a beauty that brings pleasure to God. Beauty gives God pleasure. You see it in the creation account, as he surveys the work of every day, God saw that it was goods. He's taking pleasure. And what he has made, you hear it in his commendation of Job, there is none like him on the earth. You hear it too in the father's words to the Lord Jesus at his baptism, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. This is the God who has pleasure in the beauty of his son, the beauty of his holiness. Or let's bring ourselves into the picture. Paul in 1 Thessalonians speaks about believers living in such a way as to please God. Something that was not possible in our unconverted days. How do we please Him? By living a holy life. As we walk in the Spirit, live in the Spirit, as in His strength we bear more and more of the Spirit's fruit. We give God pleasure. Take it as an incentive to grow in holy beauty. We give God pleasure. It is a beauty, thirdly, that brings praise and thanks to God. I'm noting here how both of Paul's letters to the Thessalonians begin on much the same note. We give thanks to God always for you, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. That's at the beginning of the first one. And at the beginning of the second one, Very similarly, we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love, every one of you, for one another is increasing. Paul sees in these beloved Thessalonian believers the fruit of the Spirit, how beautiful their Christian lives are becoming, and it moves him to praise and thanksgiving. This is the Lord's doing. And it brings Him praise and thanks. Take it as another incentive to grow in holy beauty. It gives God pleasure. It brings Him praise and thanks. Fourthly, it is a beauty by which we adorn the gospel. And you know where I'm taking that language of adorning the gospel from, don't you? By the way that we live, Titus 2 verse 10, we may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. Or as the NIV puts it, we can make it attractive. It is only too possible to live in such a way as to make the gospel repellent. How sad it is when sons and daughters grow up in a home and the gospel becomes repellent to them because of the hypocrisy that they see in a father that turns them off. hypocrisy, lovelessness, joylessness, impatience, unkindness. It prejudices people against the gospel. But if by walking in the Spirit we bear more and more of the Spirit's fruit, we do the opposite. Here is the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of the holiness that it produces. And then one last thing, one last point. It is a beauty that will one day be perfect. And I wish I had some photographs to show you. There is a castle in the northwest of Scotland called Illin Donnan Castle. It's one of the most photographed castles in Great Britain. It's forever appearing on calendars. It has been used for movie sets. There it is in the water on a little island, and there's this beautiful bridge goes out to it, and in certain lights and from certain angles, it is just magnificent. What most people don't know is that nearly 200 years ago, Eilean Donin Castle was in ruins. And you can Google it and see, and you'll find an old black and white photograph of this little rock outcrop and this ruin sitting on top of it, and there's no land bridge, and no one would think of having it as a movie set or making it a calendar photograph. That's how it was until the early 1900s, when someone with money and vision decided that it was time to restore it. And over a period of time, he did. And what a transformation. No one would guess, just by looking at it, that this was once a ruin. God is one day going to do the same with us. I mentioned that TV show that's very popular in the United Kingdom called The Repair Shop. I have never watched anything that better illustrates the gospel than that program. Right at the end, when someone comes to get back this article that they've brought in for repair, that they come in and there it is on a table and it's covered with a rug. or a blanket and they'll be asked, do you remember what it was like when you brought it in? Oh yes, yes, it was this, it was that, and then they take off the blanket and there's often tears as people look at this amazingly restored piece that when they brought in was so broken down. And we are going to be presented faultless before the presence of God to the eternal praise and glory and joy of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're in the hands of a master builder. who has not finished yet. We're in the hands of a master gardener who has not finished yet, but one day he will be. So take heart from that. We were thinking last night about taking heart from the fact that the indwelling Jesus is at work. And He is more than equal to the strength of our sin. Take heart from the fact that one day, one day, He's going to be finished. And when we are, what magnificent creatures we will be. And it will not be the magnificence of a magnificent ruin. It will be the magnificence of a magnificent restored human being, perfectly like our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that we were not what we were when we were in our sin. We thank you for the restorative work that is going on. We thank you for the work of the Spirit of Christ in our hearts. We thank you for the measure of his fruit that we bear and exhibit to your praise and honor. Holy Spirit, be so at work in us that we will bear more and more of this fruit. make us more and more like our Lord Jesus Christ in His holy humanity. We thank you for the assurance that you are not going to give up. We thank you that you are going to go on working in us until we are complete. We thank you, our Father in heaven, having begun a good work in us, you will carry it on until it is complete. We thank you for the vision of the bride, beautifully dressed for her husband, descending out of heaven from God. We thank you that the goal of Christ's death, a church without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish will one day be fully realized and every member of that church sharing in the perfection. Lord, we pray that you will encourage our hearts and we pray that we may be able to press on day by day and Lord help us to gladden one another and to adorn the gospel and enrich our respective churches and bless our brothers and sisters in Christ and our homes, our wives, our children by a growing likeness to Jesus. Thank you for these sessions together, and we do pray, our Father in heaven, that there may be abiding fruit from these moments together. For Jesus' sake we pray, amen. We hope you were edified by this message. For additional sermons, as well as information on giving to the ministry of Emmanuel Baptist Church and on our current building project, you can visit us online at ebcfl.org. That's ebcfl.org.