Make the Invisible God Visible
Tom Shrader continues his series on staying morally grounded in a world that has lost its moral compass. Using Jesus' teaching about being salt and light from Matthew 5:16, he challenges believers to make the invisible God visible through their good works. He contrasts the deeds of the flesh listed in Galatians 5:19-21 with the fruit of the Spirit in verses 22-23, explaining that Christians must display love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as evidence of their faith.
“You don't know if you have patience until you're in trying circumstances, and you don't know if you got love until you come in contact with somebody that's unlovable.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2001)
Recorded: March 01, 2001
Duration: 44 min
Themes: witness, testimony, character, integrity, godliness, holiness, discipleship, evangelism, living in secular workplace, struggling with moral compromise, new believer, parent raising children, young adult, facing peer pressure, christian in public sphere, seeking authentic faith
Scripture: Matthew 5:3-16, Galatians 5:16-23, John 8, Genesis, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians
Theological Themes: sanctification, fruit of spirit, spiritual maturity, biblical authority, christian living, good works, moral theology, practical theology
Full Transcript
We are in session six. Let me remind you I've been doing virtually the same introduction, so it should be decent by now every week. The series is titled "How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World." The premise when we talk about a crooked world is this: it's not corrupt, although we know the world is corrupt. That's not the issue. It's a world that's lost its direction.
The phrase that we're using more and more is it's lost its moral compass. It thought things were wrong ten years ago and now has declared them not just right, but now they're mainstream. We see it not just here, because we tend to be very American-centric. It's not just here—it's around the world. We've been looking the last couple of weeks at Asia, which is having just major moral trauma on what to do, and they're really having a problem with this next generation. There's this younger generation that has lost a lot of the moral compass that was passed on by the previous generation.
Well, how do we attack against that erosion? Here's what we said to you. We're going to start by making the Bible the final authority in our life. When we have the Bible in our hands, we have a book that's not changing. Have you ever noticed that when you go in and buy a Bible, you never get updated revised footnotes—you know, "Year 2000 Bible for the 21st Century"? That's not what you have. You've got the same document, literally, that you've had for thousands of years. It doesn't change because God's mind doesn't change. He is changeless. We have a hard time with that because you and I are constantly developing and becoming. God is "I am," He says.
So we said establish the Bible as the final authority in our life. Now we have the compass, now we have the direction. Then we've got to learn what it says. Now that I've learned what it says, here's what I've got to do: I've got to do it. The Bible says do this—I've got to do it. Now I begin to make decisions that are godly decisions. When I make decisions, I want to make sure that those decisions I make are right. Because I've made godly decisions in line with what God has, I don't have to wonder what God's will for my life is. Now I live confidently.
Here's where I left off last week. I can't say, "Well, my spiritual life is here"—it fits in that component, it really works at home and it really works on Sunday, but it doesn't have any application anywhere else. Let me say it to you again: when we stop and kick the doors open and you go out into your version of the real world, your strongest asset is your relationship with Christ and having that Scripture.
Making the Invisible God Visible
Number six, and we'll spend the rest of the day on this: once we begin to integrate our faith, our task becomes making the invisible God visible. Number six: making the invisible God visible.
Let me talk just a little bit about the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has laid out what I think becomes the normal pattern for conversion. He says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." That's where conversion begins. Blessed are those who are spiritually bankrupt. I come and I say my cupboards are bare, my pockets are empty, I bring nothing. I'm spiritually bankrupt, God. I'm not trying to negotiate with You. I have no position from which to negotiate. You're God, I'm man. We're separated by my sin, and there's nothing I can do. I'm helpless and hopeless in this condition. God, I throw myself and accept Your mercy and Your grace, and without it I'm condemned. I'm as certain of hell as the people that are already there.
But when I understand that I'm bankrupt and that He's everything and I'm nothing, and Christ becomes now the Savior of my life—let me add to it—and my Lord and my master, because I don't think you can take Him as Savior and not have Him as Lord. Now when I come to that, my life begins to change. It's laid out in the Beatitudes: Matthew chapter 5 verse 3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the gentle, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who've been persecuted." That becomes the normal pattern for the Christian life.
After that, Jesus gives this word of instruction: "You are the salt of the earth." And then He says in verse 14, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do men take a light and put it under a bushel basket, but they put it on a stand to light all the house."
The Operative Verse
Here comes the operative verse for us: Matthew chapter 5 verse 16, "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." So here's what He says: you are like salt, you are like light.
We can do all sorts of things with this. Salt is a preservative, and when they're trying to preserve it, salt creates thirst. When we were kids—I don't know, I presume they don't do this anymore—we used to take salt tablets. We were so stupid we had to have something remind us to drink when we're outside. So yeah, I'm thirsty from the salt and I drink. Well, just like that, you go into the society and you create that. You can play with this forever.
But here's what I know about salt and light: for both of them, they have their intended effect. They have to be in contact with the object that they're designed to affect. A light has to come into darkness to brighten it. Salt, in order to preserve, has to have contact with that meat or whatever it is. That's like you and me.
So it makes perfect sense when He says in verse 16, "Let your light shine in such a way before men that they see your good works." Here's the first thing about your life: apparently, you being a Christian must be visible. That's what He says. If I'm supposed to see your good works, apparently I have the capacity as
The Capacity for Good Works
When the Holy Spirit works in my life, I have the capacity to do good works that are evident to people around me. People can apparently see that I'm a believer. I love back in the book of Genesis when we're talking about Joseph—two or three times the Bible says Potiphar could see God in Joseph, Pharaoh could see God in Joseph, the jailer could see God in Joseph.
So the question would be: do people see God in you? Do they see your good works? Jesus is really clear because He says, "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works and they glorify your Father who is in heaven."
Somehow when they see these good works, they're supposed to be able to say it's not about me—it's about Him. It's not me. I'm naturally a derelict. I'm naturally morally bankrupt. I'm naturally self-serving, self-seeking, self-everything. But what you see in me that is good is produced by Him.
I've said that to you a thousand times: anything that is in my life that is of any value, that's God-produced. All the other stuff—of which there's plenty, and I'm sure you're more than willing to help me identify it—all those things that are there, those things that are present, that's me. That's the real me right there.
Being the Light of the World
Now Christ comes in me and strengthens me—we've got all that figured out. What I'm saying to you is there's supposed to be a distinctiveness in your life.
Interestingly enough, in John 8 when Jesus was here, He said "I'm the light of the world." In Matthew 5 He says "You're the light of the world." Well, you can't get it right—which one is it, Jesus? What He's saying is when I'm here, I'm the light. But in my absence, you become the light. When I was the light of the world, I was the primary source. I'm the one that gave light. I'm the one who lit the world. Now you light the world—not as a primary source, but as you reflect my effect in your life.
So there's the distinctiveness. Here's what we're saying to you: number six, your task is to make the invisible God visible.
I hadn't been a Christian very long before I heard somebody say, "You may be the only Bible some people ever see." I thought, "What does that mean?" Now I see—I'm not sure I buy it all, but I see what they're saying. They're saying when they see you, they ought to be seeing God at work in you. How does that happen? In other words, how then does God begin to manifest Himself?
The Danger of Lists and Legalism
Let me take this an extra second on introduction, because the question becomes: what are those good works? There's always a danger when we start to line out lists, because you may make a list of these good works and look at yourself and look at the people that aren't where you are and become very proud. "I must be something really special here. Here's me and then here's the rest of mankind—I must be something special."
Or you may make this list and see that there's other people here and you're here, and you're so far behind, and now you become discouraged. Or you may become a person that says, "Here are the real things. Boy, I'm telling you what—if you're really a Christian and you really care about your kids and you're not homeschooling, something's wrong. If you really care, you homeschool."
All of a sudden you can become very—I don't know that legalistic is the right word there because that usually relates more to salvation issues—but you become, we'll use the word in its broadest sense, very legalistic, very judgmental.
Judge Yourself, Not Others
We're going to ask you this morning to be judgmental. I've got no problem asking you to be judgmental. Here's what we're going to ask you to do: judge yourself. Not your spouse that's not here, not your neighbor that's not here, not the person that's sitting to your left or right.
I hope you will refuse the temptation to say, "Oh, I've got to get this tape for Uncle Bill." I don't care about your Uncle Bill. Let him go buy his own. We're caring right now about you. Are you making the invisible God visible?
Also let me just put one more pitch in here before we get into it: are you rejoicing in the uniqueness of your life?
Embracing Your Unique Background
We have a guy in our church who started a prison ministry, and the reason he had a passion for prison ministry is one day, sleeping under his bunk in a cell for about the third or fourth time that he'd been in there, he responded to God's call in his life and became a Christian. His life has been transformed and changed.
On the other side of the coin, we've got a guy, Les Taylor, who finds great thrills out of finding guys like this other guy and throwing him into jail and locking him up. Now he's traveling around the world communicating to military and paramilitary and police organizations around the world. Two very different backgrounds, very unique, both being used by God in a powerful way.
Embrace that unique background God's given you. That's all I'm saying. Resist the temptation to say, "Oh, everybody's got to be like..." You know, "Did you have your quiet time? Have you ever had anybody ask you, 'Did you have your quiet time this morning?'" I've never had anybody ask me that who wasn't underneath saying, "Come here and ask me if I had mine, because I did, and let me tell you about it. Oh, the Lord and I, we were really communicating today."
"It was a special time between the two of you?"
"It really was."
"Well then, keep it between the two of you. I don't need to hear about it."
It's a special time, it's a special thing. You don't need to be—this should be very good news for you—you don't need to be like me, and I don't need to be like you. You just need to be like God called you to be.
Turning to Galatians 5
So how do we start to judge this? Galatians 5—if you've got your Bibles with you, that's where we will spend the majority, the rest I guess, of our time today. Galatians chapter 5. Paul is speaking and he's talking, and he makes a very simple point to this church.
Happens to be a very legalistic church, but he makes this point to them. He said I say to you walk by the spirit. You will not - when you walk by the spirit you will not carry out the desires of the flesh, for the flesh sets its desire against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.
When you see that phrase in scripture, "are you led by the spirit?" I think, and I'd have to go back because I haven't done the study in a while, but I think in each case in the New Testament it relates to some moral behavior. In other words, walk in a manner worthy of your calling, be led by the spirit, and the spirit leads you into moral conformity with God's law.
So here's what Paul said: if I'm walking by the spirit - and in the text there it's a capital S, he's speaking of the Holy Spirit - if I'm being led by the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit will produce in my life spiritual things. If I'm not being led by the spirit, then the flesh in my life will produce fleshly things.
Testing Yourself: The Deeds of the Flesh
We're going to give you a little opportunity to test yourself here. Here's what he says: Galatians chapter 5 verse 19, "The deeds of the flesh are evident." If you're not walking by the spirit and you're walking by the flesh, here's what it's going to look like.
Let me write them down. Immorality - that whole concept there and whole idea is in the area of sexual immorality. You'll frequently see in scripture that word pornea from which we get the English word pornography. The idea there is any sexual perversion, and I love using that word perversion because it could apply to adultery. Adultery is perversion. I hope you understand that when we hear perversion we think of bestiality and homosexuality and lesbianism. They're a perversion, but so is adultery because you've perverted God's plan. Fornication - that means you're having sex with somebody and you're not married. That's a perversion of God's plan.
Listen, if you got immorality, here's the next word: impurity. The word means literally unclean. In literature, Greek literature, it's used to describe a pus oozing wound. If your life is a pus oozing wound - kind of graphic.
Sensuality - that means here's what you're doing: you're just living for the senses. You see something and there's no regulator anywhere. You see a brownie, you just had a turkey dinner, you got a brownie. Whatever it is, you have nothing to shut it off. All you live for are the senses. You're like the child that says "I want what I want what I want" except there's no regulator. Now as an adult, it's ugly when you see it in a kid - "mine, mine, mine, that's mine." And now you've just learned to kind of mask that a little bit.
Religious Behavior Gone Wrong
In fact, it spills over into this: idolatry. Now some religious behavior - idolatry, any man-made religion, worshipping anything. By the way, let me just tell you that's anything other than orthodox Christianity. Anything other than orthodox Christianity is a man-made religion.
Sorcery - Aristotle uses that word in his writing and he speaks of witchcraft there. We got a group on a Friday morning - I have breakfast at the same place every week with a guy, we've been meeting for years. There's a group of teachers that come and there's one teacher - she is so loud and so obnoxious and so offensive. She's just awful. To think of her as a teacher is just an abomination to me. And one of her rituals every week is to read them all their horoscope. It's just an offensive, obnoxious thing. But they really believe this stuff. I talk about it being fun, but they really take it seriously. Black magic.
Relationship Problems
Enmity - now we start into relationships. Let me give you this in a list: enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissension, factions.
When Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, he says you got some problems there. You got some problems in the church and they flow from jealousy and strife. We could put all these things in those two categories. Jealousy is this inward feeling and it manifests itself outwardly in strife. You're at odds with everybody. Everybody's an idiot. The boss is an idiot, labor's an idiot, your neighbor's an idiot. Nobody can get it right. Everybody's stupid. You can't get along with everybody. "Everybody's picking on me." And that's just simply an outflow of your selfishness.
Outbursts of anger - the word literally means unprovoked anger. I mean, I was counseling one night, got a husband and a wife, they're not getting along. So I always - because I never start with a guy because he has no clue - I always start with a gal and say "well, tell me what's going on?" And she's just sweet, and I'm sure that she's not like this at home. I'm sure there's two sides to everything, but she's this sweet, just kind, quiet, soft-spoken. And she's just talking along and all of a sudden - and I'm watching her - all of a sudden the guy goes crazy. The guy just goes absolutely nuts and I'm a little bit worried that he's going to hit her, and I'm very worried he's going to hit me. I got to throw myself - I got to throw her in front of me to block him as I get out the door because I'm not going to get hurt doing this thing.
And I'd say "whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I missed it. What'd she say?" "She knows what she said." "She said no, I don't." We talked a little more and I mean BAM! And here's what I discovered: she's got this little remote control by now and she knows exactly where the buttons are and she can just go, with the sweetest little smile, boop, and he just explodes. That's what he's talking about - outbursts of anger.
The Root of Dissatisfaction
Disputes, dissensions, factions. Here you go: envy. "Boy, I want what you want. I'm never satisfied."
We had a fellow the other day that was teaching - Jerry Smith - and he was saying he was talking about an interview with a Catholic priest who'd been a priest for 50 years. And the guy interviewing said "Boy, I'll bet you've heard a lot of confessions." And he said "Yeah, I have." He said "I'll bet you've heard everything confessed in 50 years." He said "Not really."
He said there's one thing I've never heard confessed: jealousy. Never heard anybody confess to being envious. It's most of us drunkenness and carousing—they go together. Not just in life, but they go together here. The idea probably is that the carousing could also be translated with the idea of orgy. It flows from this idea of religious practice they were involved in.
Let me read the list and we'll close this section. You're living in the flesh if you've got immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, and carousing. These are the things which I forewarned you—I talked to you about this. Just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things don't inherit the kingdom of God.
The word "practice" is the key word there. It's an active present participle, and the idea there is if you are continually, habitually, unrepentantly involved in these, you've got no biblical assurance that you're a Christian. What He says is harder than that—He says if you're involved in these continually, unrepentantly, you're not going to heaven.
Making the Invisible God Visible
So we say to you: Are you going to make the invisible God visible? Because you're to be the salt and you're to be the light, and your light is to shine in such a way that they see your good works. Your task is to make the invisible God visible through the power of the Holy Spirit. He provides you that power.
Now if you've got all this list—if you are selfish, if you've got jealousy, if there's strife, if all the relationships around you're falling apart, you can't get along with anybody, you're involved in some sexual thing and you come back to it again and again and again and again, or you're just a little slanderous like a prying little person and you're unrepentant—the Scripture says you're in real serious trouble. You're going to hell, not a believer.
The Fruit of the Spirit
Now verse 22: "But"—so there's the contrast—"but the fruit of the Spirit." So if I have the Spirit in my life, this is the fruit. Let me make this point here because they get this thing about fruit that we miss. We've got two grapefruit trees in the front and orange trees in the back. I have to walk by the ones in the front. I've never once walked by a fruit tree and as I walk by I hear this—I never hear the fruit tree grunting and groaning trying to produce fruit. If the soil's right and the conditions are right and the system's right, fruit just happens. There's your bumper sticker: "Fruit happens."
My point is that's the same thing in the Christian life. I had somebody just the other day who was talking about how he became a Christian and was kind of a pretty bad guy, and all of a sudden he realized one day his language had cleaned up. It was just gone. He said he never set it as a goal. You know what? Because fruit happens. That's my point. These things are not goals—"I'm going to be filled with love, joy, peace." That just happens. Your life starts to change.
That's why it is so horrific, the teaching that says you can believe in Jesus but your life has to have no change. Where do you get that? All I hear this Scripture talk about is your life must change. Ephesians says walk in a manner worthy of your calling. You will change. If you don't change, then you got the deeds of the flesh, then you're of the flesh.
The Grammar of Transformation
Now we'll go through these. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Let me make just one observation about the grammar. Paul says the "fruits of the flesh are" and then He lists these things. When He comes to the fruit of the Spirit, He said the "fruit of the Spirit is" and then He lists nine things.
If we were right, now we would say "the fruits of the Spirit are," but you see here's what He's saying: You either got all of these or you don't have any of them. They come in a bunch. They start with love and they move out from there, and I think from the love—love of God, love of who He is—from that these other things flow.
He said the deeds of the flesh are—you may have one, you may just have a little envy, you may just have in your life drunkenness. But if you've got one of those, you got it. Rarely do you know people who are all of these things in the fruit of the flesh. But if I'm a Christian in my life, I'll produce these.
Love: The Foundation of All Fruit
Let me run through it. I just looked down and saw the note because I saw this bumper sticker again the other day. This is the dumbest bumper sticker in the world: "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty." The reason I hate that bumper sticker is because it perfectly describes and supports what I've said all along, and that is if you're not a Christian, you cannot have love.
We get a reaction every time we talk about this. By definition you can't—the fruit of the Spirit is love. If you don't have the Spirit, you can't have love. You may have a knockoff, you may have a counterfeit, but you don't have love. And the evidence of that is the world actually embraces "practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty." That's a perfect definition of life without Christ: random and senseless.
Why? I came from nothing, I'm going to nothing. There is no judgment, there is no creator. This is all an accident. If I think that way, why would I be nice? It would have to be random, it would have to be senseless. We don't live that way.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Love is first. Here's what Webster says about love: It's a strong—it's a feeling or strong personal attachment, an ardent affection.
or personal attachment, ardent affection. What we attach so often with it is this idea of feeling. So I fell in love, couldn't help it. When I went in there, she was just walking down the street singing, and the next thing I knew she's walking next to me. I don't even know what happened. I just fell in love with this—you know, it was like I woke up this morning and I was either going to get chicken pox or love. I just fell.
I mean, I had a guy in my office the other day, and his wife wouldn't come because she thought we might be literal in our approach, which is fine. So she agreed to see somebody other than me, which is okay—hurt my feelings a little bit, but it saved me a lot of time. He said what's the problem, and he said, "I bear a lot of responsibility because we've had problems for three years, but I've kind of gotten my act together in the last six months or whatever. But what she's telling me is she's fallen out of love with me. She has no feelings for me."
When we talk about love in this context, we're talking about it in the context of a commitment. I'm doing a wedding at the end of the month, and we will stand there and we will say, "Will you love and cherish the rest of your life? Sickness and health, rich or poor, better for worse?" Every time I do that, those vows remind you and they tell you up front there's going to be hard times. The vows anticipate difficulty: sickness, health, rich or poor, better, worse. We're talking about love. We're talking about a commitment.
The Process of Love: From Feeling to Commitment
Time's going to get away, but let me just give it to you for a second. When you're in a relationship, you probably spend a bucketload of time with people and they come to you and they say, "Listen, our marriage is falling apart. I don't have any feelings. Is there any hope?" And the answer is absolutely. And not just absolutely for saving the marriage—you can get the feelings back.
Let me tell you how you do it. First time I saw Susan, I had feelings for her. Here's what I did: I then acted on those feelings. I said, "You want to go out?" We went out for a while, and then one day we made a commitment—better, worse, richer, poorer. When I want to get the feelings back, I absolutely reverse the process. I start with a commitment and say, "Under no circumstances am I going to be divorced. We're not going to get a divorce."
That's the old Ruth Graham line. They asked Ruth, "You know, with Billy being gone and so much difficulty, do you ever consider divorce?" She said, "Divorce? No. Murder? Yes. Divorce? No." Well, once I say I'm not going to get a divorce, now I say, "Okay, I got two options. I can live together and be miserable, or I can make this something special." Once I say, "You know what, let's make it something special," then all I do is I begin to give that partner what they need most.
What Each Partner Needs Most
So guys, what the gal needs most is love. That does not mean sexual love—she may be part of it if things go right—but the idea there is she needs to be held, she needs to be encouraged, she needs to be taught, she needs to be told she looks nice, she needs to be romanced.
Gals, because I've got the basic theory that men understand women way better than women understand men—okay, and the reason it's really simple, it's a no-brainer—because for the last 15 years, all the guys have been taught is how a woman feels. But nobody ever has the guts to go into these women and say, "Hey, shape up. Let me tell you how he thinks." So for 15 years at least, the guys have been browbeat. They might not do anything about it, but they understand what a woman needs way better than women understand what a man needs. Isn't that right, guys? Let me hear it. That's exactly right.
Gals, here's what this guy needs more than anything else. It's really simple: He needs respect. That's why He responds so strongly to your direction in His life. I mean, I've used this illustration a billion times. That's why when you're going to somebody's house and you've been there 20 times and He's never been there, and you're at a red light and you say, "You turn right here," you've taken away options from Him. He can go straight and go left, or He can go in reverse, but He ain't going right.
Now what most guys will do is go left long enough until it becomes a right, but they're never going to say it's right. That's why when you're out—and I watch you do this, ladies, and I'm telling you, you're emotionally castrating your husband when you do this—when you say, "Oh man, it's a great place. We'll never have a place like this. Did you see how they said—yeah, I remember a place like this. We'll never do anything like that. We never do—you know what you've done? You've just taken this man and made Him a wimp. And after a while, you're not going to fight you anymore, so now you yield to Him.
Putting It All Together
So now you put these together: feeling, action, commitment. To get the feelings back, I reverse it: commitment, now I act. Guys, you want to be married to a ten? Very simple. Declare your wife a ten and treat her like one. You're married to a ten. Commitment, action, and now the feelings come.
We got a couple—they were there in our study yesterday. They used to dream about one another dying. That's how much they hated each other. They used to just dream, and the wife tells a great story about what a great widow she'd be and how she just hated—they hated each other. She came to me one day after one of these studies and said, "I can't handle this guy anymore. What should I do?" And I said, "Why, I'd go home and make Him dinner and make love to Him." That's my answer, by the way.
She said, "Really, would you do it?" And she said, "I knew that's what you'd say." She just went and was the wife that God called her to be, and God in His gracious mercy delivered to her a husband who fell in love first with the Lord and then with her. The two of them, if you saw them together, all they do is laugh and play around. It's fun. It's almost like teenagers.
Does that happen every time? No. But see, we're not worried about whether it works or doesn't work. We're worried about being obedient.
Love: An Action, Not a Feeling
The first one is love. Love is not a feeling as much as an action. "For God so loved the world that He gave."
Joy: Happiness Based on Spiritual Realities
Here's the second one: joy. Joy is happiness based on spiritual realities, not circumstances. Joy is happiness based on spiritual realities, not circumstances.
Note this about joy: for joy to be really evident, there has to be problems. There has to be difficulties in your life. If you go in today, there's a voicemail and says, "You came by yesterday and this is so-and-so. I'm a new client. You cold called me and you were trying to sell me 15 widgets. I thought about it and I don't want 15 widgets. I want 115 widgets." Any idiot in the world can be happy with that. We're not talking about that. We're talking about a happiness that transcends circumstances.
I wrote this down—I don't know if it's true or not, so at least I'm honest enough to tell you this up front—so that at least in theory, the most joyful experience I can have is to stand at the grave of a believer. That's got to be the most joyful experience I can have. The circumstances certainly aren't there. I'm losing somebody that I love deeply, somebody that I care about strongly.
I had the most magnificent experience. I did a funeral last week or two weeks ago and I might have mentioned it here. The most poignant moment: there was on my left the casket. Here's the open grave. We're sitting there. This casket's going right down into this hole. You can look down and you can just see there's a starkness. There's almost a cookie-cutter way that those graves are cut and there's a starkness to it. Here's the casket on my left. On my right is his granddaughter with her three-day-old great granddaughter, and I said, "Here's the bookends of life."
I think the most joyful experience you can have is to stand at the grave of a believer. The flip side of that would be the most sorrowful thing you could have would be to stand at the grave of an unbeliever. Happiness is based on spiritual realities. It's not based on circumstances, and no more graphic demonstration of reality is life and death.
Peace: The Presence of God
Love, joy, here's a third thing: peace. Jesus said, "My peace I give you. My peace I leave you. Not as the world gives." I'll give you a peace that's different than what the world gives. The world says, "You know what? Dump this one, get the new one, and you'll have peace." The world says, "You've got turmoil? Get rid of the turmoil and you'll have peace." God says, "No, peace isn't the absence of turmoil. Peace is the presence of God."
Now it is so obvious I think to everybody that you cannot have the peace of God until you have peace with God. Great Christmas carol with a great line: "God and sinner reconciled." If I say to you Mark, and you don't know anything—you don't know me, you don't know Mark, you don't know any of this—all I say to you is "Mark and I have been reconciled," and that's all I say to you, that's all the information you have, well one thing do you know for sure? There was a pre-existing form of hostility. We can't be reconciled until hostility exists. God and sinner reconciled. You are naturally at war with God.
Sometimes guys have a hard time with this. I remember sitting with a guy and saying, "You know, your problem here is you hate God." "No, I don't." "Yeah, you hate God, that's the problem. You're a pagan. You hate God." "No, I don't. You hate God." "I hate you, but I don't hate God." And I say, "No, you hate me because you hate God. That's why."
We just understand that. Now in my life comes this sense of supernatural transcendence, calmness and serenity because I'm not worried about yesterday. I don't have my shorts in a knot about tomorrow. I'm just relaxed about today because it's today, because God took care of yesterday—He forgave me—and He took care of tomorrow because it's in control. Now I can live with today. It's all I got to worry about.
Patience: Willingness to Accept Difficult Situations
Love, joy, peace, here you go: patience. Patience is a willingness to accept situations that are irritating and painful. Willingness to accept situations that are irritating and painful. They frequently come in the form of a person.
Patience—here it is again. Let me make this point to you. We're saying these are the things that are evident in your life if you're a Christian. Do you see the pattern here? You don't know if you got love until you come in contact with somebody that's unlovable. Joy, peace, patience—they all require difficulty, difficult circumstances to know if you have them. You don't know if you have patience until you're in trying circumstances.
How it manifests itself in the Christian life is you're dealing with somebody who's a Christian, but maybe they've only been a Christian six, seven, eight months. You've got to cut them a lot of slack and be very patient with them. Patience: willingness to just deal with irritating circumstances and people.
Kindness and Goodness
Kindness—the idea here is tender concern, common courtesy. Most of you are much more polite to a waitress or a receptionist or at lunch with a stranger than your own family. Kindness is nothing more than common courtesy.
Goodness—that's kindness in action. Now I begin to act as moral excellence. Paul writes in the last days people will hate...
I had a guy—and this is an old illustration, but it was so great—I'm sitting there one day and this guy I barely know comes up and says to me, he didn't say hi, didn't say anything. He said, "I hate Debbie Boone." Really? I said, "What? I hate Debbie Boone?" I said, "What do you know about Debbie Boone?" He said, "No." How have you formulated an opinion on Debbie Boone? "Why, she's such a goody-goody."
I said, "Well, yeah, I know. I mean, we've got—well, our girls are kind of just really growing up. They're about ten now, and we're really hoping they grow up to be a whore like Madonna. That's what we're hoping. That's what we hope. We don't want them to be anybody good." But in your own life, don't you have a little—you're off. There are such goody-goodies. You love goodness. You love moral excellence. You're repulsed by what you see.
The Foundation of Character
Goodness. Faithfulness—that means trustworthiness, honest, reliable. That means if—here you go, this is a good one—that means if the service starts at 9:30, you get there at 9:25. If you say you're going to do something, you do it. Not just in the big things, in the little things. Not just in the big things, in the little things.
I've got certain people that I'm supposed to meet at 7 o'clock, and it's 7:15, and I'm just going, "Well, that's just normal." I'm not concerned. I've got other people that at 7:03 I'm going, "Something must be wrong," because they're always on time. It's the idea here that faithfulness and goodness—they all come together.
I'm at Eggington's the other day, which for you up in this area, that's a very nice breakfast lunch place in East Valley. There's nothing that drives me more nuts lately than these people on the cell phones talking at a volume that's just unbearable. This guy walks, parades all the way through: "Yeah, we're going to get over there. We'll get that there. I'll get those things shipped." He goes into the bathroom. He comes back out still talking. "Hey, I'll get those things shipped," walks all the way through. "Yeah, we'll get them around." Yeah, the whole place has to stop. He goes out.
The most alarming thing to me was he had on a little bracelet that said, "What would Jesus do?" And I thought, "Well, I'd like to give Him that cell phone and see what He'd do with it." But you see, these all kind of come together: kindness and goodness and faithfulness, being honest, being on time. Being on time is simply saying your time is as important as my time. That's all that is. When you're late, you're saying to me, "I'm not very important to you," or that you're more important than I am.
Strength Under Control
There you go. Two more: meekness—that's strength under control. Want a picture of strength under control? That's Jesus on the cross. Very simple. When they're screaming at Him, "He saved others, but He couldn't save Himself," that's absolutely true. If He was going to save Himself, He could not have saved you.
And then lastly, self-control. You're not just blowing in the wind, pursuing every sort of excess from one extreme to the other.
Which Fruit Represents You?
Now here you got it. We got to go. You got to get to work. Here we go: which basket of fruit represents you? The fruit of the flesh—immorality and impurity and all those—or the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Which one?
See, if you're going to make the invisible God visible, that last bunch of fruit has to be present in your life. That's what the Spirit produces. You need to stop and take an inventory and see if the people around you see the good works in you. If you said to somebody today, "I'm a Christian," would they be shocked by that? Somebody they're working close to?
A Sobering Reality Check
We had a guy come in one day. He said, "Oh, God's a good guy," and I said, "Yeah, He is. I'm going to put me down for yes." "Yeah, well, I've been praying. I've been praying for a Christian coworker, and God brought one in." I said, "Well, that's neat. So I didn't know you guys were hiring." He said, "No, it's a guy we've been working together—listen—we've been working together 11 years. Eleven years."
I'm sensing that that bunch of fruit isn't very evident.
Now there is a close sister trait to this "make the invisible God visible." In fact, I think if you separate these two things, you got trouble. Next week we'll look at that.
Let's pray. Father, help us see that. Help us see the truth. Give us eyes to see our life as it really is. God, help us be honest in our evaluation. We pray that Your Spirit in our life would produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And then when people see that in our life, they would give glory to You. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.
See you next week.