Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I want to talk about spirit life because that's what the series is about, and the main passage of scripture I keep coming back to after little forays, of course, is Galatians chapter five. If we would just renew our memory here, starting to read at verse 16. So I say, live by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what's contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what's contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under law.

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

There are different ways that you can study the scriptures. I want to start there. The passages that pertain to any subject you want, just find the passages in the Bible like Galatians five. When I was thinking, what would I do with this series, my part of it on the fruit of the spirit, then I knew where to start because it's this priceless passage of the contrast of the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit, et cetera, et cetera. So you can find many other places as Stewart has been pointing out in the Old Testament and the New.

You know the New Testament is in the Old concealed, and the Old is in the New revealed. The two are one. And so obviously the things that are taught in the Old Testament are there, and the New Testament sort of explains them or throws more light on them. Remember the diamond? Just think of a whole diamond as truth, all those facets on it, and you just keep turning that one truth to the light and seeing another facet of truth. It is a treasure chest. There is no way in a lifetime you could ever even begin to turn one truth and figure out all the different facets like the fruit of the spirit.

Secondly, you could study the acts of the Holy Spirit in the acts of the apostles. It isn't the acts of the apostles; it's the acts of the Holy Spirit in the apostles. I remember at my college where we had to be taught scripture because by law we had to teach it in the English school system in my day. And so teachers had to teach the students the Old Testament, New Testament, Anglican curriculum, wonderful. Just straight through the Bible and then we would go into the public schools and teach it.

It was a wonderful thing, actually, because there are people like me that weren't a believer, but I had to just listen to what I had to teach and go away and teach it to other people. And the word did its own work. I know friends of mine who were literally converted as they were teaching the curriculum that they had learned how to teach at college. Our professor was a Quaker. I didn't know that then. All I knew was I couldn't wait to get to her class. And there was something about this very tall, upright, godly woman.

I remember her coming after she'd been through the gospels and we'd written all down so that we could go and do our lessons to the students when we eventually graduated. She came to the acts of the apostles and she said, "Now we will study the acts of the Holy Spirit." And we're all looking in our Bible saying, "Professor, it says the acts of the apostles." And she said the first verse, Luke speaking to Theophilus who he's writing to, his Greek friend: the former acts of Jesus I have written about in the gospels. Now I will tell you the acts of the Holy Spirit in the history of the church.

And I thought, how fascinating, what is she talking about? What do you mean the Holy Spirit and what acts? Well, of course, much later on when I came to faith, I went back. It was in my head and I thought, I'm going to just study the acts of the apostles and just read every time I see the word Holy Spirit, I'm going to take the passage and look and say, what is the Holy Spirit doing? You can study the Holy Spirit just doing that.

I remember the second bit I found was the Holy Spirit gives us boldness. And that's found in Acts quite near the beginning of Acts, and it's where the disciples are beginning to get persecuted and tough things are beginning to happen. And their prayer meetings get longer and more intense immediately. And they get a prayer meeting together after Peter and John have been hauled in front of the Sanhedrin and allowed to go free, which is amazing because they were very bold. They were very bold.

As soon as they go free, they come to the prayer meeting and they tell them what has happened. And fear fell on everyone. What's going to happen? What's going to happen? And they turn to prayer. You should read that prayer. At the end of the prayer, the Holy Spirit fell on them. And one of them prayed, "Give us boldness." One of the things the Holy Spirit does, he gives us boldness. Are you bold? I'm not bold, I'm a timid sort of woman.

And what I needed as a student having just come to Christ in a very tough university situation, post-war at Cambridge, what I needed was boldness. I needed boldness to tell my friends knowing that as soon as I did I would lose them, which I did. I needed boldness to do it anyway. I needed boldness to do my school practice in the London schools. And I just needed to be bold. And so in my little way, I prayed Holy Spirit make me bold. It's one thing he does, he gives you courage to do the right thing.

So you can study the Holy Spirit through the acts of the Holy Spirit in the acts of the apostles. You can study the Holy Spirit through the symbols of the spirit. I wrote a little book, Little Pot of Oil. Oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Water is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Remember Jesus talked about, "Out of you shall flow rivers of living water." Start there, folks. Start there, and you will find water used as a symbol of the third person of the Trinity starting back in the Old Testament all the way through. Just one symbol, that will take you two or three months.

Symbols of the Holy Spirit: oil, water, fire, symbol of the Holy Spirit. Get back into the tabernacle and see, and it is used as a symbol of the power of the Holy Spirit. And you can trace that if you've got a good reference Bible all the way through to the New Testament. Of course, wind, breath, Stewart used it in one of his studies, Ruach, the name for the breath of God. Remember when he'd made our bodies he breathed into Adam and Adam became a living soul, the breath of life, Ruach of life.

And when Adam sinned, God having done this [breathes out], did this [breathes in]. Man began to die. The breath of life. Follow that symbol and you will find it is a symbol of the Holy Spirit all the way through. That's pretty exciting study. So you can study the Holy Spirit: passages that pertain, through the acts of the apostles, symbols—water, fire, oil, wind. You can use a concordance as I did in this study on the word joy. Just get a concordance, look up the word joy, and a good concordance will give you every single time that word is used in the Old Testament right to the end of the book.

Now that'll take you three or four months, just work through every single time you get joy, write down what you learn about joy. So that's something you can do. You can use motifs and pictures, which is what I've used with the vine and the branches, right? And Jesus in Matthew 21, nothing but leaves, that whole picture. You can study Jesus' life in the spirit. I think Stewart's going to touch on some of those things in his final messages: Christ's life in the spirit.

You know 1 Corinthians 13, wonderful passage of scripture. I learned that off by heart as a non-believer in my school prayers because we had to learn that passage as wonderful poetry, we were told, which it is, of course. You know in the Old King James, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I'm a clanging gong and a cymbal, just making a big noise. I'm a big nothing," it says. Wonderful picture.

And then in four through six, there is a portrait of pure love. Love is very patient and kind, doesn't envy, doesn't boast, it isn't selfish, it's not puffed up with pride. Remember? And it just tells you love is. If you want to know what love is, take one of those phrases and dig into it and you'll figure out. Jesus sat for that word portrait. When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13, Jesus sat for that portrait and you could put his name in there: Jesus is loving, Jesus is kind, Jesus is patient, Jesus doesn't boast, Jesus is meek, et cetera, et cetera.

So just take 1 Corinthians 13 and take one of the aspects of the fruit of the spirit. It'll take you a couple of years to do all of the aspects of the fruit of the spirit. Paul's passages, of course, Galatians five, et cetera. And you can also just look for a whole book where the theme of what you want to find out is. I mean if you're interested in self-control, which none of us are, none of us want to study it, but if you are, then you can do that and you can just look at a book. Which book talks about the lives of people where self-control was an issue?

And that might be interesting to you, you can do that. I was looking at joy and I just, I studied it in all sorts of ways. This was quite a few years ago. And one of the things I did, I thought, I just want to find a whole book about joy. And of course, my mind went to Philippians, it's the epistle of joy written from jail. And here is this man sitting in jail, and of course that's my book on Spiritual Arts, that's the book of Philippians: the art of finding joy in dark places. And the whole book is just ringing with God's joy, with Jesus' joy.

And so as I studied the book of Philippians and taught it and wrote it, what I did was take the theme of joy and kept picking it out. It's like playing the piano, you find the main chord, joy, and then your fingers can go all over the Bible but you keep coming back to the theme of joy. So you can do that. And the other book, of course, much to my surprise, was Ecclesiastes. Do you know that Ecclesiastes is all about joy? I didn't when I started to study it and teach it and write it. I had no idea and I'll touch on that as we go on here.

And so all of these things you can do. You can study the disciplines that get you producing the fruit of the spirit. Keeping in step, what does it really mean? If you're not going to live after the flesh, how do you keep in step? How do you keep up with the spirit? How do you keep in tune with the spirit? How do you not grieve him and all of that? So we at the moment are looking at the Galatians five passage and contrasting the fruits of the flesh with the fruits of the spirit.

And so I want to run through for the last time before we take on the fruits of the spirit just quickly, what are the fruits of the flesh? And I'm going to look at the opposites, that's another way—the contrasts of things in the Bible is a way to tackle all of this. And we read the catalog of the flesh words and Paul says it's not exhaustive. And such like, you know, he reads this horrible list of stuff and other stuff and such like. And just as the fruit of the spirit in Galatians five is not exhaustive, you can add 1 Corinthians 13 aspects of love that are not in Galatians five, but they sort of are.

So these lists that Paul gives are not exhaustive. Sins of immorality, impurity—the word is uncleanness, defilement, sexual sin. The dirt of it. Have you ever done something and felt internally filthy or dirty? That's what this is talking about, the defilement, the defilement of sin. I got a very sad letter from a lady as a result of her listening to one of the broadcasts who is, I hope, still alive. But the sense and the conviction of sin, she said, "I just am filthy inside. What do you do when you're filthy inside? Is there any soap to wash this away?"

Well, of course I was able to tell her about Psalm 51. Because after David sinned with Bathsheba and after Nathan came to him and said, "Thou art the man," and immediately David said, "I've sinned." Immediately Nathan said, "And you are forgiven." But you can kill somebody and you can be forgiven for it, but the body is still there. And so David began to deal with the repercussions, the consequences of sin. We are freedom to kill who we like. We are not free to choose the consequences of our actions of the flesh.

And so David in his filth, dirt, and he uses all these words wrote Psalm 51, if you remember. And Psalm 51 talks about how he felt inside after he had sinned with Bathsheba. This is a psalm I use constantly in counseling and if you know someone that can't believe God could forgive them, walk them through Psalm 51. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions, wash me, cleanse me.

I know my transgressions, he says. I wake up with it, I go to bed with it, I know they're ever before me. Have you ever done something and you can't get away from it? You can't get away from it. Against you, you only have I sinned, really. I think he sinned against Bathsheba, I think he sinned against his best friend who he killed, I think he sinned against all sorts of people. But any sin against man is a sin against God. Against you, you only first and foremost have I sinned and done this evil in your sight; you're proved right when you speak, et cetera.

And then look at seven: cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean, wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you've crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, blot out all my iniquity. This little word cleanse me with hyssop, do you know what hyssop is? Hyssop's a little tiny spongy plant. If you go to the holy land on a holy land tour and you go to Jerusalem and you look at the temple wall where you see the people praying, you know the famous picture of the original piece of wall of Solomon's temple that's still there.

It's old, cracked, hundreds of years old stone, but in the cracks and crevices is this little plant called hyssop, this little spongy plant. And hyssop was used by the priests in the temple ritual when somebody had come with a lamb to offer because they had sinned greatly. The priest would take the lamb and would sacrifice the lamb for the family or for the person that brought his sacrifice, and he would take a bit of hyssop, the sponge, and he would dip it in the blood and he would sprinkle it over the man who had brought this sin offering.

And he would be forgiven. He would repent and be forgiven. The other thing they did with hyssop was when a leper would miraculously be healed. There was absolutely no cure for lepers. If you got leprosy you went outside the city gates and like Job with his skin disease sat on the dung heap, that's where you were till you died. And you removed yourself from the community. Leprosy was an incredible scourge. And sometimes, as Jesus did in person, a leper was healed. Jesus touched—incredible thing—the leper.

He touched the leper and healed ten once, only nine came back to say thank you, but ten lepers he healed. Then Jesus did something, do you remember? He said, "Go and see the priest," because the priest was the only one that could examine the skin and declare him clean. And if that was done he would sprinkle him with the blood of the sacrifice the leper would bring. And David said, "I know what it's like to be filthy. I feel like a leper. I am a leper. Cleanse me with hyssop, the blood, and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow."

And so this word, the sin of immorality, uncleanness, defilement because of sexual sin—only God can do anything about that. Only God can forgive sin. Only the one we've sinned against can forgive us. Cleanse me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Debauchery. William Barclay says this is a sin so reckless and so audacious that a man has ceased to care what God or man thinks of his actions. Have you ever met anyone like that? Someone who ceases to care what God or man thinks of his actions?

The word is debauchery. They are sinning so recklessly and with it the arrogance, in your face. We're seeing that sort of behavior, just a surge of it even in America, I think, today. Jeremiah 6:15 says unbridled wantonness of Israel in his day and this is the quote: Jeremiah 6:15, "Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they don't know even how to blush." Have you ever heard somebody or seen somebody behaving like that?

The word is debauchery, it is an act of the sinful nature. Total loss of limits. Anybody behaving like that today? Yes. Lack of restraint, decency, self-respect. Open your newspaper, watch your TV. The contrast, of course, is love. Love doesn't violate another person. Love doesn't violate another person. So the fruit of the spirit is love, the fruit of the flesh is debauchery, et cetera. Then the sins of idolatry, they're all grouped these sins of the flesh.

And it's to do with heathen worship of false gods. Ancient fertility cults of Baal, Corinth and sacred prostitution worship in the temple of Aphrodite—homage was accompanied by sexuality. In the story of the little woman who was a widow with a little boy, Elijah, the story of Elijah, do you remember? God said, "Go to Zarephath," which was Jezebel's hometown actually, amazingly he went. Jezebel was looking for him to kill him at the time.

And God, who is so clever, thought the safest place to hide Elijah is in Jezebel's hometown because she would think, and Ahab would think, which they did, "Well, he'd never go there." And that was the safest place. So God said, "Go there, I've told a widow woman, do you remember, to look after you." And he gets there and sure enough there's this widow woman who's starving to death and the little boy who's very malnourished. She's going to make their last meal and amazingly Elijah says, "Can I have your last meal?" and incredibly she says yes.

And this miracle story begins. And that woman was a Baal-worshipping woman. That little boy was a Baal-worshipping child and Elijah moves in with this Baal-worshipping family. Every time that woman went to the temple she gave her body to the priests because that's who she was worshipping and it was part of your Sunday ritual. Okay. And of course she comes incredibly to faith, the first convert just in sight of Jezebel's palace. Yes. I love it.

So those sort of sins to do with heathen worship, sins of idolatry are gathered in a group here. It is a fruit of the flesh. And the contrast, of course, is joy and peace, et cetera, et cetera. And then we come to sins of animosity, a whole group of them. There are eight nouns all to do with the breakdown of relationships. These are the fruits of the flesh. So it isn't just the people that are doing this way off stuff. If you are living after the flesh, listen to these nouns, folks, for you and I are as guilty as guilty can be.

One of them: discord. These are the way these nouns play out. It means strife and discord in church, it's used here. In the fellowship, in the community of faith, the word discord and strife are used right the way through Paul's letters and Paul's writings. In Philippians, Paul says some preach Christ out of contention, "I don't care as long as Christ is preached," fabulous piece of Pauline autobiographical here. He's sitting in prison, he's going to be executed, he's preparing his case before Caesar, okay.

And some of the people in the churches he has planted, some people are going to heaven because of Paul, okay, and as soon as he gets put in prison they say, "Yes, now we can take his place and do the preaching." And they have been wiggling to get his platform. It's talking about that sort of stuff. Does that go on in the church? Yes, I'm afraid it goes on even today. Strife and discord, wrangling ill will. Jealousy, coveting. This has to do with relationships.

I think of David, Jonathan, and Saul as examples of this. And that's another thing you can do as you're studying these words: envy, jealousy, coveting. Just sit there and think, is there a Bible story where envy and coveting and jealousy pertains? And go there and look at it and say, "Boy, yes, this is one of those." Saul became jealous of David, remember? First Saul was God's chosen king. He blew it. And God withdrew the Holy Spirit because in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit rested on somebody and could be withdrawn, not so now when we have received the Paracletos.

So in the Old Testament, Saul was anointed to be king and with that anointing of kings and priests came the power and anointing and the hand of God on that person. But if they were disobedient, if they blew it, then God would withdraw and take away the Holy Spirit from them. That is why in Psalm 51 David prays, "Take not your Holy Spirit from me," right? Now if he'd been living in the New Testament he wouldn't have prayed that. But he had seen it happen with Saul. God withdrew his anointing, his power, his hand, his pleasure, his acceptance from Saul when he turned his back on God and did something God forbid him to do.

And put it on David through the anointing of Samuel. And Saul knew it. And at that point David was harping on his harp because he'd gone half mad, Saul had gone half mad and somehow music calmed him. And so the shepherd boy was brought to play music for Saul. And as Saul watched David singing his psalms he became jealous because he saw the anointing of God and he knew he had lost it. From that point Saul became David's bitter enemy until one day as he was playing his harp, Saul picked up the javelin and tried to kill him, right?

Where was that coming from? Envy and coveting. Coveting says, "I want what you've got." Jealousy says, "And I don't want you to have it either." Now you're in trouble. The root starts when you look at somebody and say, "I want what you've got." In the ten commandments it gives you a list: you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, you shall not covet, and it goes through these things. You shall not look at your neighbor and say, "I want what she's got."

You shall not look in the workplace at a job somebody else has, at a position somebody else has that maybe they got ahead of you unfairly and say, "I want what he's got," because that begins the envy and then it grows into the green-eyed monster, which is called jealousy. That's why Jesus in the gospels said it begins in the heart and the mind. If you look at a woman to lust after her you have committed adultery, maybe not the act yet, but that's where it begins. And Jesus said the thought can and maybe will lead to the action.

So it all begins simply with coveting. And that can happen in the church as much as it can happen with things. It can happen with positions. It can happen with people that want to be leading something, preaching something, doing something that somebody else is doing and that's what literally had happened in the church at this point. And out of that coveting and jealousy, another of those nouns is fits of rage. Moses, there's your perfect example. If you just follow Moses, his problem was temper, right? He broke the ten commandments—you always break the ten commandments when you lose your temper, remember.

And he threw them down and literally broke the ten commandments. Why? Because he could not control his temper. And it dogged him all his life. Fits of rage, passionate bursts of anger, hostile feelings, uncontrollable verbal violence, flying off the handle, losing it, et cetera. Selfish ambition: political office seeking. The word is Greek here and it means in that context or the way the word is used, canvassing for political office. But Paul uses it as canvassing for Christian position, wanting something that you haven't been invited to have that somebody else has, et cetera.

1 Corinthians 13: love isn't puffed up, love isn't proud, love isn't full of itself. If you want to know if somebody's puffed up, listen to them. Listen to their language: I, me, my, mine, right? That'll tell you something. Listen to yourself. Okay. Dissensions, party spirit, factions when you come together. There are factions among you and the word here, the root of it is heresy. There is doctrine that has not been understood that you are perpetuating. Be very, very careful, be very, very careful that you don't go up to people and say, "The Lord has told me to tell you this," unless the Lord has told you to tell you.

You'd better and I had better be very, very, very careful where doctrine is concerned and be humble enough to make sure we know what's theologically right and until we do we should keep our mouths shut. Okay. Dissensions that come from that, factions, envy, unacceptable rivalry, et cetera, et cetera. Sins of intemperance: drunkenness. The Roman Empire was absolutely awash in alcohol abuse. One of the reasons it brought the empire down was the drinking that went on and the alcohol abuse in the Roman Empire and it even got into the church.

It even got to the communion where people would come to the communion to get drunk. That, of course, was a fruit of the flesh. So sins of intemperance, drunkenness, orgies, reveling, carousing, wild parties, horsing around the cotton patch gospel puts it, horsing around. In the New Testament as now it led to marital unfaithfulness and erosions of family life. So let's look at the catalog of grace. It shouldn't be very hard to recognize which fruit your life is producing.

And before we go to three of the catalog of grace, let me just turn you to James for a minute, James chapter one. How do we know if we're producing nothing but leaves, if we're just producing the fruit of the flesh? Well, what you do is look at this, you look in the mirror. This is the mirror, this is the picture that James uses. The word of God is a mirror. And he says that we need to look in the mirror and see who we are. Just look in the mirror, look in the word of God.

Anyone who listens—23—to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, he goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this, not forgetting what he's heard but doing it, he will be blessed in what he does. Years and years ago, our daughter Judy and I would be ministering together in different ways.

And we were asked, Judy and I were asked to go down to the Caribbean to a radio station there and they would bring women from the Caribbean to this island. And we would do a conference for five days. Well, they had just had their very first child, so you can tell how long ago this was, Drew had just been born, he was about three months maybe. And she said, "Well, sure, we can bring Drew and you know, that's fine." So they got this newborn baby and her husband came with her and said, "Well, we can stay on a few days, that's fine, and I'll come too."

And so Drew and Greg and Judy and me got in this plane and got ourselves down to the Caribbean. There was one problem because my geography is terrible—I thought it was just off the coast but it was half a world away where we were going. So it was not a very easy flight for a newborn baby and mother and father. Anyway, we get there. It is so hot. There is no air conditioning, we're on this little tiny island and we've got a three-month-old who doesn't like the heat.

But it isn't the heat, it's the mosquitoes. And so they give us this little sort of foreign little place for the baby to sleep, and then they put their mosquito nets on top, which are this thick. So of course, I'm petrified the child is going to not have enough air, especially in the room. And so I keep muttering, "Is he all right?" And Greg the father is putting all these nets until it's just a wad and I'm thinking, "Well, he's going to suffocate, there's no air."

And so I'm grandmother and I'm rushing around making myself obnoxious. And Greg in the end says, "It's all right, Jill, it's fine, he's got enough air, there's enough air." Well, I can't sleep. So I wait till they're asleep and then I creep into the room. You've never heard this story. So I creep into the room and I sort of just take a bit of it off so that at least you know and in the middle of this Greg says, "Jill, what are you doing?" Anyway, so I rush back to my room, I couldn't sleep, I was so worried and I got up early in the morning to see if he was dead or alive and of course he was fine.

So then Judy and Greg say, "Mom, will you just keep Drew and we want to go for a run?" I said, "Sure." Well, he is fit to be tied, he hasn't slept, it's hot, there's you know, I mean you can imagine. And I cannot get this child quiet. And so I pick him up and hold him, you know, with my hand underneath him in front of the mirror. Because that's the only thing that would stop him crying because suddenly he sees a baby, right?

So I'd have to stand if I moved away he'd start and cry, so I just hurry up run, run, run, get yourself back here. So eventually they get themselves back here and, "How was he, Mom?" "Well, as long as I stood with him in front of the mirror and he could see himself." And Judy, who is a psychologist, says, "Oh, he doesn't know it's him." I said, "How do you know he doesn't know it's him?" But I bowed to her superior knowledge and I said, "Well, who does he think it is?"

And she said, "He thinks it's another baby, but he doesn't know it's him." And I thought of James. So we look in the mirror and we see another baby. Oh, that's Jane, huh. Ah, that's Tom. No, it isn't, it's me. Of course the more mature you get, Drew grew up until he knew it was him. So the idea is we grow up, we quit being childish, which is what 1 Corinthians 13 says. Grow up. When I was a child I acted like a child but I grew up to live a life of love, to live a life of producing the fruit of the spirit.

So if you want to know if you're producing the fruit of the flesh or the spirit, hang your heart over this, be honest, look in the mirror and realize it's you that's looking back to you. This is how God will show you who you are, how you're doing, how you're living, and what sort of fruit you're producing or if you're nothing but leaves. So in this catalog of grace, first of all, we have love. It's the most frequent word in Paul's vocabulary. We think of Paul as strong as austere, as rather sometimes not a very lovable person.

And yet the word he uses more than anything else is love. Now I talked about this book my first or second lecture, it's called A Promise Kept. And I'm just going to read you a little story, so settle down, get comfortable. This is a story about a friend of ours we have been privileged to know whose name is Dr. Robertson McQuilkin. He was president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary after being 12 years a missionary with his wife in Japan.

And he was for 20 years the president of Columbia, very famous and wonderful university now. And one day he noticed that his wife repeated a joke that she had just told a minute before and he thought, "That's funny." The diagnosis quite quickly when she was pretty young was the onset of Alzheimer's. And this little book is called A Promise Kept: in sickness or in health, till death us do part. And I'm going to read you little bits out of it because if you want an example, a modern example of somebody who has the Holy Spirit in them, you have one in Dr. Robertson McQuilkin.

The care of Muriel was not only challenging and incidentally for 25 years he was her total caregiver. The care of Muriel was not only challenging when we reached our destination, it was equally challenging en route. He's talking about the journey of caring for a beloved person who has Alzheimer's, very early, tragically early Alzheimer's. Airline attendants watched in well-guarded bemusement as I crowded with Muriel into the tiny cubicle that houses the in-flight toilet. I knew what they didn't: if she ever got the door shut, unlikely as that might be, she could never have gotten it open again.

Once our flight was delayed in Atlanta and we had to wait a couple of hours. Now that's a challenge. Every few minutes the same questions, the same answers about what we're doing here and when we're going home. Every few minutes we take a fast-paced walk down the terminal in earnest search of what? Muriel had always been a speed walker, I had to jog to keep up with her. An attractive woman, executive type, sat across from us working diligently on a computer. And once when we returned from an excursion she said something without looking up from her papers.

And since no one else was nearby, I assumed she'd spoken to me or at least mumbled in protest of our constant activity. "Pardon?" I asked. "Oh," she said, "I was just asking myself, will I ever find a man to love me like that?" For months a friend of mine had been counseling a couple whose marriage was in shambles. The wife had seen a lawyer and was pursuing divorce, and our mutual friend had given them a copy of Living by Vows, which this was called before this new title.

When she finally filed for divorce, she said George in effect abandoned our marriage, he chose his priorities and I have not been one of them. Both partners are struggling to be free and had worked themselves into even deeper bondage: broken hearts, broken home, broken church, a ministry permanently hobbled. Of course, it's not just the shackles of an unfailing marriage, I constantly hear about those who have refused to assume responsibility for a handicapped loved one or who fulfill an obligation with such resentment that both caregiver and carer are mired in misery.

And every story fills me with sadness, for it need not be so. Bondage can be a delightful liberation to love. What a statement. Bondage can be a delightful liberation to love. Recently a student wife asked, "Do you ever get tired?" "Tired?" he says. "Every night, that's why I go to bed." "No, I mean tired of..." and she tilted her head towards Muriel who sat silently in her wheelchair, her vacant eyes saying "no one at home just now."

"Why no, I don't get tired," I responded. "I love to care for her, she's my precious." "Well, I certainly would." And she would, in fact, she does. In a marriage young and bubbling with romance, two handsome, healthy, smart people with big dreams. But as she told me, a person can get tired of always affirming a mate, especially when there's so little to command or commend. Shouldn't love make a difference? Love is said to evaporate if it's not mutual, if the other person doesn't communicate, if they don't carry their share of the load, if it's not physical.

And when I hear the litany of essentials for a happy marriage, I count off what my beloved can no longer contribute and contemplate how truly mysterious love is. I was preparing dinner recently when the voice of a renowned radio preacher announced something that really startled me. He said an authoritative study indicated that when terminal illness strikes a mate, seven out of ten American spouses split. And since husbands leave home far more frequently than wives in such circumstances, what must the numbers be for them? Nine out of ten?

Just when they're needed most. And I thought to myself, "How could they do such a thing? Maybe they're having a love affair with themselves." Indeed, love is a mysterious thing. And the five-column headline read: Love helps Alzheimer's victims survive. The study says: what's love got to do with it? Just about everything, says a researcher who studied what happens in a marriage when a spouse gets Alzheimer's disease. And I was there when Dr. Lorie Wright gave that report and in her study of 47 couples over a two-year period, she predicted with 100 percent accuracy who would die based on her analysis of the love relationship between the husband and the wife.

I attended a workshop in which another expert told us there were two reasons people keep a family member at home rather than in a nursing facility: economic necessity or feelings of guilt. Afterwards I spoke with her privately trying to elicit some other possible motive for keeping someone at home, but she insisted there were only two. Finally I said, "What about love?" "Oh," she replied, "we put that under guilt."

So much for love. So much for love. Twenty summers ago Muriel and I began our journey into the twilight. It's midnight now, at least for her. Sometimes I wonder when dawn will break. Even the dread Alzheimer's disease isn't supposed to attack so early and torment so long. Yet in her silent world, Muriel is so content and so lovable. I sometimes pray, "Lord Jesus, could you let me keep her a little longer?" Jesus took her home. How would I miss her gentle, sweet presence.

Oh yes, there are times when I get irritated, but not often, it doesn't make sense. And besides, I love to care for her, she's my precious. I don't have to. I get to. That's love. I don't have to, I get to. If Robertson looked in the mirror, he would have seen the fruit of the spirit all those years. And in the end he resigned his position to care for her for the last eight to ten years. Very convicting. But that's what love does. Always extra concern for the other person before themselves.

So love's the most frequent word in Paul's vocabulary. With love goes joy, closely related to hope. With love goes joy. There is a joy in this book, you have to get this book, you have to get a pile of that book. You have to keep them for all the people you and I know who need that book. Incredibly, I hand it out all over the place. And with it goes his joy, if you read the whole story there are absolutely incredible pieces in this and laced through it is music, laced through it is the exuberance of the fruit of the spirit. Joy is exuberance. The word is spinning around, just spinning around, spiritually dancing, faith dancing.

That's what joy is. And so what do we find joy in? It was at this point I took this book, Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, and I just looked up joy and I spent a couple of weeks in it just looking at the word joy. And it is a picture word. It is used to celebrate life as a festival of joy in Paul's Philippian experience sitting in jail. Philippians 4:4, one of the best known verses that I've ever known since I came to Christ: "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice."

The message renders that, "Celebrate God all day every day, revel in him, spin around in your spirit." That ever happened to you? It's a fruit of the spirit. Well, it's a fruit of the spirit when you're in step with the spirit. But if you are living after the flesh, you won't know any joy. Joy isn't happiness. Only God can give you joy. Everything else can give you happiness and as my husband loves to say, happiness happens to happen when your happenings happen to happen.

Okay, I'll let him tell you next week. But happiness only does depend on your happenings happening to happen the way you happen to want your happenings to happen, right. And so joy happens when your happenings don't happen to happen the way you want your happenings to happen because joy is Jesus, God in Galilean cloth making my heart smile. Joy's Jesus. So the object of joy is God. God is made of joy. I will go to the altar of God to God my joy, my delight. Psalm 43:4. I delight greatly in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God. Isaiah 61:10. Celebrate God all day every day, revel in him.

What do you know about that? What do I know about that? If I am not in step with the spirit, if I am not in obedience to what God is telling me to do. If I am not saying no to the devil and yes to the spirit, I will not know joy. I will know fleeting happiness. As it says about Moses in Hebrews chapter 11, he rejected the life he was offered as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing to suffer with the people of God rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

And the devil promises you what he cannot deliver. He promises you what he cannot deliver. "You will be so happy if you just enjoy the pleasures of sin," but the pleasures of sin are so fleeting they don't last, he won't tell you that. Won't tell you that. Promises what he can't deliver. Stewart and I were in Thailand once, a long time ago, and we had to go to this conference and for some reason they had it by a swamp, I have no idea why.

But we lived in these mosquito nets and unfortunately had to come out of them to do our work. So just before we went we were at a missionary place and the people who received us the night we came in said, "You'll need some mosquito spray. Do you have any?" And I said no. And so she fumbled around and said, "Look, don't go without it," and she came back and she said, "You know, the only thing I've got is children's mosquito spray, but it's fine." And so she gave us this mosquito spray.

And on it it said: "Guaranteed to make you invisible to mosquitoes." Not. I want you to know, not. It certainly didn't make me invisible to mosquitoes. But that's what the devil does. He promises you what he can't deliver. Promises you what he can't deliver: happiness. He never offers you joy, no, he can't do that, that would get your attention, you know he can't do that. But he certainly offers you happiness, but joy, the object of joy is God himself.

Another way that you can find joy is claiming the promises of God and fulfilling the conditions. 1 Peter 1:8: You love him even though you've never seen him, says Peter. Though you don't see him, you trust him. And even now you're happy with a glorious, inexpressible joy. What are you and I know about a glorious, inexpressible joy? It's a fruit of walking in step with the spirit. He says it's unspeakable and it's inexpressible and it's also indescribable.

So what am I trying to describe it for you? It's beyond anything I could say. But it can be known only when we're looking in the mirror, when we're repenting of all those things we talked about at the front, when we see ourselves as we really are and as we walk in step with the spirit. Another thing that will give you joy is the prosperity of Christ's kingdom. The church sent them on their way and as they traveled Paul and his companions through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted and this news made all the brothers very glad.

What makes you glad? If you could make a list. One of the things that Stewart and I make us more glad than anything else is good news from a far country; it's like a cool drink of water, Proverbs says. And I was on the phone last night, I don't know if my friend is even watching, a friend I was talking to, she didn't know this was streaming and I told her about it. But I haven't talked to her for a long, long time, she lives in another state but she's one of my prayer partners and I hers.

And she said, "Tell me about what you were seeing last year as you circled the earth," which we did, twice round the world before June. "Tell us what God is doing." And I began to tell her about the church in restricted countries and what God's people are doing and how the gospel is spreading and she couldn't get enough of it. She couldn't get enough of it. "Oh, tell me more, tell me more." And the prosperity of Christ's kingdom, the happiness, the joy of these people was giving her joy.

Do we care? Does it do that for you? When somebody walks up to you and says, "I've brought my mom and she found Jesus last night," what does that do for you? What you find your joy in? Very different from happiness, huh. Only God can give you that. And of course the Bible talks about the joy in the hope of the state that we face in heaven. And the other piece that I just want to finish with is in the book of Ecclesiastes. Let me give you an absolutely racing run-through: joy in Ecclesiastes. Ready? Just fasten your seatbelt. Okay.

Erma Bombeck, the comedian, said, "If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?" Remember? And Erma Bombeck actually was a woman of joy. She knew Christ, and she needed him when she died, not a very nice death of cancer. But she said in those days, "If life's a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?" as she sought to find joy at the end. Well, there's a certain rhythm to life as the teacher explains: sometimes it's a bowl of cherries and sometimes it's the pits, that's life under the sun.

But there is a rhythm of life in the sun: life lived in relationship with the living God through Christ. Not under the sun, but in the sun, means he comes to our pits and he offers us outrageous joy, a peace that passes understanding, a joy that beggars the mind. That's what I found as I began to study this book, it was not what I expected. First and foremost, joy is to be found in his ever-present presence. It says in this book: God keeps the man who knows his God occupied with gladness of heart.

It's another way of putting it and the idea is to be occupied in the inner recesses of your life with God himself. Not God and. And you can read chapter two to try and find out how Solomon tried to find joy with God and. Didn't work. God and riches, God and health, God and women, God and kids, God and the woman on the side or the man on the side, et cetera. Just God and God things, that's where you're going to find joy.

The good things graced with his presence, the bad things graced with his peace. So the cry of a human heart is for happiness and joy and something is very wrong with the human heart, and the teacher in Ecclesiastes knows it's sin that's made the human heart frown. And he said, "I discovered that God created man to be upright but they've each turned to follow their own downward path and live after the flesh, not after the spirit."

And so the teacher turns to the reason for that and of course he said, "I tried this and I tried that and I couldn't find happiness anywhere," et cetera, et cetera, until I realized that only in God and obeying him for the whole duty of man is to know God and obey him forever, right. As I was writing this book we were in Israel and we were in a hotel where they were busy blowing up at that point in the history of the intifada, they were blowing up bus stops with people in them.

And the bus stop outside our hotel was the place where they threw a bomb and two people waiting for a bus were killed. That was happening just outside our hotel. But one night we attended a meeting, which was quite amazing that we actually—hundreds and hundreds of people went downtown Jerusalem to this celebration. And Christians had come from Europe with a choir actually from All Souls Langham Place, which is in UK, Dr. Stott's church.

And they were going to have a celebration and they were going to have Christian artists, dancing and singing and just a celebration of God. And so Stewart and I went. And one of the songs that I couldn't get out of my head was a UK song: Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart, teach me to move in the power of your spirit, teach me to walk in the light of your presence, teach me to dance to the beat of your heart. Teach me to love with your heart of compassion, teach me to trust in the word of your promise, teach me to hope in the day of your coming, teach me to dance to the beat of your heart.

You wrote the rhythm of life—that's what Ecclesiastes is all about, the rhythm of life—created heaven and earth, in you is joy without measure. So like a child in your sight, I dance to see your delight for I was made for your pleasure. Let all my movements express a heart that delights to say yes, a will that leaps to obey you. Let all my energy blaze to see the joy in your face, let my whole being praise you. Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart.

And as the choir and orchestra from All Souls Langham Place in the UK began that, the whole congregation in that great church rose to their feet and they began to sing it, and they wouldn't quit. And when they'd finished they sang it again and they sang it again. And then they eventually went all over the place, we couldn't go with them, and this was the song they sang. And it was in the situation with the bombs going off and this horrible, horrible situation, it was such—it was such an evidence of the present presence of God and greatly impacted the city of Jerusalem at that time.

Just outrageous joy. And in Ecclesiastes, joy is the theme of it. He talks about the enemy of joy. We know the devil who kills our joy and robs our lives of significance and promises us what we can't have. And in the end, Solomon says the devil is a killjoy, a robber, and a fearmonger. Marvelous verse. When you've got everything you've got in the world and you find yourself not even happy, never mind joy. And you've accumulated all these things you can't sleep because you're frightened somebody's going to steal them.

Or if you leave them to your son, what's he going to do with it? And this is one of the verses I love: "What does a man gain from all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days are work and pain and grief, even at night his mind doesn't rest; this too is frustrating." His body lies down and his mind sits up. Have you ever had that experience? I love this verse. Have you ever tried to go to bed and you've all these things you've got to keep or hide or ensure or protect? Of course you can't sleep.

And your body lies down and immediately your mind sits up and you can't get to sleep. The only way you can get to sleep is to know that it's not in things, right? It's in him. It's in him. And so the teacher says: banish fear, send it away, and get back to what life is all about. The whole duty of man is to glorify God. What does the catechism say? Enjoy him forever. A little boy that was learning his catechism thought it said "endure him forever." No fun in that, no joy in that.

And so read the book of Ecclesiastes and every time you get to the place where it talks about joy in God, make a note of it, think about it, pray about it. Look in the mirror. Look in the mirror through the book of Ecclesiastes, that will keep you a time or two. So the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, and peace. Just one word on peace. Augustine said, "Peace is the tranquility of order." When you order your life after the orders of the God of order, you'll know peace. Peace like a river.

God will keep you in perfect peace if your mind is stayed on him, fixed. God will keep you in perfect peace. God will keep you. You can't keep yourself. You can't manufacture peace. God will keep you if you do your part he'll do his. You mind your mind and God will mind your heart. That's how it works. If you read the Lamentations of Jeremiah chapter three, we go straight to the 23rd verse: "Great is thy faithfulness, his compassions are new every morning."

Read the first 16 verses, will you? You wouldn't know the same man wrote them. And he's got God all out of perspective. "You're like a bear tearing me in bits, you're like a lion chewing me up, you're using me for target practice." And right in the middle of that chapter there's a turn about 22nd and 23rd verse. It says, "When I thought of all that had happened to me and all God you have done for me," he got God and life all mixed up, thought God was doing all this to him. Well, it wasn't, it was the famine and his enemies, right?

I was counseling a couple not too long ago, and the man left and the woman said—he was not treating her well, to say the least—and she said, "Why is God doing this to me?" I said, "He isn't, your husband's doing this to you." Don't get God and life mixed up. And Jeremiah got God and what had happened to him mixed up. "You're doing this, you're shooting at me, you're doing this, you're not listening to my prayers." Got God and life mixed up.

But the turn comes when he says, "When I thought about all the things that had happened to me, my soul frowned," is the word. So he puts in another tape. All he'd been doing was getting up every morning, going to bed every night was: this happened to me and that happened to me and they put me in a pit and tried to drown me in mud and then they tortured me and then they did this, that, and the other, and he just catalogs what had happened to him. And while he was doing that, of course he was miserable.

So he puts in another tape. "This I call to mind," very strong word, "this I demanded my mind think about: the Lord is good, the Lord is compassionate, the Lord is faithful." And he begins to smile. And the turn was what he put his mind to do. The compassions of the Lord never fail. And if you think about everything bad, everything the devil wants you to think about—forget happiness, joy, forget anything but misery. But if you start as Philippians four says to think on these things, God things, then you'll begin to lift and lift and lift.

You mind your mind, it's your job, it's my job. And God will mind your soul. It's up to us. So rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice. Celebrate God all day every day, revel in him. And you will know the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace. Pray with me.

Heavenly Father, I think of all the things you've taught me about joy and love and peace. Thank you that I can read. I'm literate. And thank you that this book, this mirror, this instruction book, this God-filled book, this God-breathed book tells me how it works, how to walk in the spirit, how to keep in step with the spirit, how to live in obedience, how to find the power I don't have. Show me the difference between happiness and joy. Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart till my spirit is spinning around. Because that's what attracts people to you. Who wants to be miserable? So may we, not just for our sake and our family's sake, but for your sake, dance to the beat of your heart. So little joy, Lord. So little fruit. Forgive us. May it be different from now on. Amen.