[Worship Drama—Oh, My Joyce!]

     Bingo!  Joyce thought using God’s name as an expletive was no big deal, because she didn’t really mean it.  How many times in my life have I thought the same way?  God won’t really mind if I do this or think that because He knows that deep down I really love Him? I don’t mean anything by it.  This morning’s message is the final “installment” in our Back to Basics Series on the Fruit of the Spirit.  As I reflected on that final aspect, “Self-Control,” it occurred to me that while the other eight aspects:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness may seem more important, more “spiritual,” that self-control is the “glue” that holds the Fruit of the Spirit together.  Let’s read the Apostle Paul’s statement about the Fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23 together one last time as we prepare to focus on self-control:  ²²But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! Galatians 5:22-23.  When we allow the Holy Spirit to fill us and control us the outcome, the consequence, the fruit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  The first eight aspects of the Fruit of the Spirit are intuitively obvious as the outcomes or consequences of a “spirit-controlled life.  But “self-control” isn’t.  In fact, as I point out in the daily reading booklet “SELF-control”, with an emphasis on SELF is the last thing we want in our lives.  It was Adam and Eve’s SELF-control that brought sin into the world in the first places.  They took control of themselves and the result was disastrous.  The same is true in our lives.  When we take control, pushing the Holy Spirit aside the result is not love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness.  It’s the opposite.  So, Paul obviously wasn’t talking about “SELF-control” in Galatians 5:22-23.   The word Paul used in the original letter to the Church at Galatia is “egkrateia.”  The word has a relative “egkrates,” which means self-controlled or disciplined.  Now, we’re getting somewhere.  We all know what it’s like to exercise “self-control” in the sense of discipline.  Someone makes a smart remark and instead of returning in kind, we pause, we don’t respond.  That’s self-control.  But Paul’s usage goes beyond even this, because as we’ve said throughout this series, each of the aspects of the Fruit of the Spirit can only be lived out under the control of the Holy Spirit.  When Paul tells us that the Fruit of the Spirit includes “self-control,” he’s actually telling us that it includes being Spirit-controlled isn’t he?

     Let’s look at our focus Scripture from 1 Peter 1:13-16 right now, because it helps to make that clear.  Please stand and join me as we read God’s word together:  ¹³So think clearly and exercise self-control. Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. ¹⁴So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. ¹⁵But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. ¹⁶For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”  1 Peter 1:13-16 NLT Let’s pray…….Amen.  (Please, be seated.)

     So think clearly and exercise self-control.  We didn’t read the first twelve verses of 1 Peter 1, so we don’t realize that Peter was exhorting believers—believers who like us had never seen Jesus face-to-face as Peter had—to look forward to the day when they would meet Him.  He reminded them that the prophets of old eagerly desired to know the Messiah, and that even the angels were watching eagerly to see how we would handle belonging to Jesus.  With that background, Peter challenges His readers—and we are among His readers—think clearly and exercise self-control.  Peter uses a different word, than Paul used. It’s a verb “nepho” and it means “be sober” or “be self-controlled.”  I’m not sure whether Peter had the same, precise idea in mind as Paul, when Paul listed the aspects of Fruit of the Spirit, and included “self-control,” when Peter challenged us to exercise self-control, or to be self-controlled, but I’m sure of this:  Both Peter and Paul understood that the only way to live a self-controlled life is to give up SELF-control and be controlled by the Holy Spirit. 

     Peter tells us to look forward to the gracious salvation that will come when Jesus is revealed to the world—that’s when Jesus returns—and then he exhorts us once again to self-control. He just uses different words:  ¹⁴So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires.  Here it is again---Obedience is the key.  Loving God is trusting Him enough to obey Him.  Faithfulness is trusting obedience.  Self-control is the “glue” that holds our life in the Spirit together.  When we exercise self-control in the power of the Holy Spirit, we live obedient lives.  Peter reminds us not to slip back into our old ways of living to satisfy our own desires.  We can break it down like this:  Old life=SELF-control.  New life=Spirit-controlled.  Peter even tells us that when we were living the old life, we “…didn’t know any better then.”  One of the biggest mistakes we make as followers of Jesus is to assume that those who are still living the old life need to “clean up their acts” before they’re welcomed among us.  As if a person living the old life, can live the new life without becoming new.  I never expect a person living the old life, to act as if they’re living the new one.  In fact, I don’t even expect someone who has been born again to live the new life unless they are growing in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  I used to expect it.  I used to get really upset when people who said they had been born again, acted like they were still living the old life.  Then one day when I was complaining to God about that, He made something clear to me that has made all the difference:  Being born again is no guarantee of growth.  Being born again is God’s way of dealing with sin in our lives, and making us presentable to Him.  Jesus’ blood shed on the cross of Calvary washes us clean and makes us new.  But then something else must happen or we will not look any different on the outside, or act any different on the outside than someone still living the old life.  That something is we must give up control to the Holy Spirit.

     The most important and practical truth God has impressed on me in the past seven years since starting New Life, is that living the new life requires our absolute dependence on God.  That may not seem like a news flash to you.  I hope it doesn’t.  But let me ask you this:  Are you living the new life in absolute dependence on God?  I do for moments at a time, sometimes for hours at a time, but the process of moving from SELF-control to Spirit-controlled is not easy.  It’s easy from the standpoint that all we have to do is give up control and let God reign in our lives through the Holy Spirit.  But one of the toughest things a human being ever does is give up control and trust God or someone else.  Let’s stay with that thought for a minute.  We wake up in the morning and we know that as followers of Jesus, we are called to live in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  We know when we do that our lives will produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  But because of the ongoing power of the “old life” in us, we say, “No. I’m not going to do that.  I’m not going to let the Holy Spirit control my life.” Now, we don’t say it that obviously most of the time.  Maybe we never say it that way.  Nevertheless, our lives are evidence that the Holy Spirit does not have complete control in them.

     Let’s use me as an example.  I know as well as anyone here this morning that God expects me to pursue Him in every area of my life.  I know that such a pursuit is doomed to failure in my strength. That’s why God sent Jesus, and then the Holy Spirit.  He sent Jesus to overcome the sin in my life.  He sent the Holy Spirit to empower me to live the new life I received through Jesus.  I’ve been living that life for nearly 39 years now.  But in the area of self-control alone there are massive shortcomings.  I eat more than I need to eat.  I show less love than ought to show.  I sometimes get distracted from seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and let the pursuit of worldly things take the place of that first and foremost pursuit.  If I gave up complete control of my life to the Holy Spirit then every minute of every day I would be an amazing Christian, husband, father, pastor, friend.  Everything I think, say and do would bring glory to God.  But it doesn’t.  I fall short every single day in every area.  You may be thinking, “Chris, don’t be so hard on yourself. None of us is perfect.”  Thanks if you’re thinking that, but here’s what Peter wrote:  ¹⁵But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. ¹⁶For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”  Are Peter’s words true? Yes, they are!  They come from the Bible, the word of God.  That means that I must be holy in everything I do, just as God who chose me is holy.  The same goes for each one of you.

     So what are we to do?  No one in this room is holy in everything we do, right?  I don’t want to speak for everyone, so is there anyone in this room who is holy in everything you do?  The prophets eagerly desired to experience what we experience and didn’t.  The angels are watching with anticipation to see what we will do with the life in Jesus Christ we have been entrusted to live.  How in the world are we going to live it?  There’s only one way:  In the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  Friends, please don’t go out of here this morning feeling bad, because you’re not perfect, unless of course that feeling bad, that sorrow, leads to repentance to turning away from any sin in your life, any lack of willingness to give up control of yourself, so you can live a life of self-control in the power of the Holy Spirit.  As a person, I never want to make people feel bad, but as a pastor, I know that growth only takes place when we confess that we haven’t been producing the fruit God intends in our lives, when we let Him “prune” us so that we can grow more fruitful.

     What I really pray none of you who are here this morning do is go out and try harder to be a better person, to be more “self-controlled” in the sense of disciplined.  I pray that we won’t think that if we just gave it a little more effort this week, we will succeed in living the Fruit of the Spirit.  My prayer and my challenge for me and all of you  is this:  TODAY’S CHALLENGE:  I will give up control of EVERYTHING to God, so that He may live through me!  Imagine what that will look like in our lives.  When we wake up in the morning, instead of thinking about whether we’re going to give God control today, instead thinking about whether we want to be “good” today, we’ll just say, “God, fill me with Your Spirit today, so I can produce His fruit today.”  That won’t mean that we can just forget about it after that.  It will mean that moment by moment, decision by decision, action by action, we will get out of the way, and let the Holy Spirit work.  It means that when we don’t feel like being loving to a family member, a friend, an enemy, we won’t be ruled by our feelings.  We’ll be ruled by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Everyone of us will either be ruled by God’s presence and power in our lives, or we’ll be ruled by the desire to avoid pain and gain pleasure.  What separates us as human beings from all the other created beings on the planet is we don’t have to live our lives to avoid pain and gain pleasure.  God created us alone in His own image and likeness.  The fall of Adam and Eve tarnished that image, but Jesus came to restore it.  Jesus came to pay the penalty for sin, and then He sent the Holy Spirit to empower us to grow more and more like Him every day. 

      TODAY’S CHALLENGE:  I will give up control of EVERYTHING to God, so that He may live through me!  One of the biggest failings of American Christianity is that it calls us to such a low standard of living.  At the one extreme it calls us to lives of “cheap grace,” relying on the truth that in Jesus Christ God forgives our sin, and thus excuses us from all sin---which is not scriptural.  Or it moves to a rigid legalism, where if we dress, and talk and act a certain way we’re “mature.”  The problem is we’re like Joyce.  We can put on the right “face,” say the right words, do the right things at church, or school or work, and then when we’re alone we’re still the same.  Exercising self-control doesn’t mean that we don’t swear at church, school or work, and that we do when we’re with our friends, or family, or by ourselves.  Exercising self-control doesn’t mean that we act pleasant when we’re at church, or school, or work, and then act any way we feel like acting when we’re at home.  Exercising self-control means admitting that we are going to get it really wrong, if we don’t put God first, and calling on Him to fill us with His Spirit.  It’s great to look and act good on the outside, if our only goal is to look and act good.  But if we want to be holy in everything we do, because God who chose us is holy, then it’s going to take more than we are, more than we can do on our own. 

     Please stand. As we close this series on the Fruit of the Spirit, I’m going to invite anyone who wants more of the Holy Spirit’s control in your life to come forward as we sing our closing song this morning.  If you’re a guest here today, know that we don’t invited people forward every Sunday here at New Life, because we know that makes many folks uncomfortable.  At the same time, we do invited folks forward from time to time to make a commitment to Jesus, to renew our commitment to Jesus, or as in this case to receive prayer for receiving God’s divine work in us.  So, let’s sing “May the Words of My Mouth” together, and then we’ll pray and ask God to live through us fully today and every day.  Amen.