Turning Point

Guest (Male): Real change in the Christian life doesn't come from trying harder. It comes from walking in the Spirit. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah considers how the Holy Spirit quietly transforms a believer from the inside out to produce visible fruit.

Learn how to focus on the Spirit's work and turn a blind eye to earthly desires in the conclusion of David's message, The Fruit of the Spirit.

Dr. David Jeremiah: And I thank you for joining us today as we continue our journey through this series we've called The Holy Spirit You May Not Know. And that title is the title of a book from which this material originated, along with the sermon series. We're so excited to make this book available. It's quite a task to get the sermons done, the book written and published in time for it to be on the air, but we managed to do it this time and we're so excited because you can have a copy of this book right now for a gift of any size to Turning Point.

That's all you have to do is send a gift and say, "Please send me the book on the Holy Spirit." Do the best you can, but whatever the size your gift, we will send you the book. And especially during this month, when we're marshalling people together and saying, "Come on and help us a lot because we're at the end of our fiscal year." We encourage you to make your gift and whatever your gift may be, ask for the book and it's on its way to you.

We appreciate this opportunity to extend the ministry of Turning Point into your home through the printed page. The fruit of the Spirit. It is a wonderful truth. And we're about halfway through the list of these nine characteristics. We'll get to the rest of them in today's program. So keep your Bible close at hand and if you're following along in the study guide, you can do that as well.

By the way, your study guides are great for small groups. The study guide that you may have, if you have one, you will see that it's built for that kind of an environment. The guides have an outline, some basic truths from each lesson, passages to look up, questions to answer. The study guides are being used all over the country now in small groups, and we want to recommend them, especially this one on the Holy Spirit.

Here is part two of The Fruit of the Spirit from Galatians chapter 5 verses 22 and 23.

Dr. David Jeremiah: We have joy, we have love, we have peace. Isn't that an encouraging thing? John 16:33 says, "In Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

I was teaching on this not long ago, and it suddenly dawned on me that there was a very special lesson hidden in this verse. And here it is. If you read this verse, you should expect it to say, "In Me you have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome tribulation." But it doesn't say that. It says, "I have overcome the world." Listen to me, you guys.

When we have the peace of God, He doesn't just overcome tribulation, He overcomes the world in which the tribulation happens. He really does do that. This little section should strengthen our faith in God. Be of good cheer, take heart, says the scripture.

Because our Lord is bigger than any circumstance in which we could ever find ourselves. In Philippians 4:7, Paul says that this peace is a peace that surpasses all understanding. Philippians 4:7 goes on to say that this peace will guard your heart and your mind through Jesus Christ. Praise God for His peace.

You may be asking, are those things, that love, and joy, and peace ever interrupted? Of course they are. We're flawed human beings, but when you are filled with the Spirit, when you are walking the Spirit-filled life, these three things will little by little take over who you are. You'll be a person of love, you'll be a person of joy, and you'll be a person of peace.

And if you're a Christian and you've started to walk with the Lord, you should begin to sense those things kind of moving into your spirit and taking over in your life. That's fruit toward God. Now, the next section is a little more personal and a great deal more convicting.

Because our personal experience with God is followed by our personal experience and relationship with others. Love, joy, and peace are God-ward. But the next three are man-ward. These are three characteristics that will exhibit in your life with regard to other people. Here's the first one, are you ready for this?

The fruit of the Spirit is long-suffering. That's a wonderful word. It's a word for patience, but in the Greek language, it's actually two words blended into one, makrothumia. The word makro in the Greek language means long, and the word thumia means heat or temper. So the word long-suffering means to have a long temper.

When I grew up in the Midwest in Ohio, firecrackers were both legal and plentiful. And because of that, I am very grateful to have all the digits on both of my hands. I have lit firecrackers that almost blew up in my hands. Did you ever light a firecracker with a short fuse?

You touch a match to it and, bam, it goes off almost in your face or in your hand. You know, some people have short fuses too. That's what this is about. Long-suffering means to be long-tempered, to be patient.

It's not much fun to be around someone who is short-fused. You find yourself wincing when something goes wrong. When will he blow? When will she go ballistic? The slightest little spark can trigger an explosion. And I'm talking about Christian people here.

The people get hurt in the explosion. And if you're walking with the Lord, you get embarrassed. One writer defines long-suffering as self-restraint that doesn't retaliate when wronged. Paul prayed for this when he spoke to the Colossians. He said, "I want you to be strengthened with all might, according to God's glorious power for all patience and long-suffering with joy."

When you are filled with the Spirit of God, you relate to others with patience and grace, instead of losing your temper when things don't go your way. You may have a little trigger that goes off inside of you, but the Spirit of God gets control of it before it releases. You start to say something, but the word dies in your throat.

You write that hot letter and you throw it in the fireplace instead of in the mailbox. Or you compose that speech and you give it in the car when you're driving. I've actually done that and said it out loud, and people looking at you like, what is wrong with that man?

But you never deliver it. There are times when we will find ourselves in very volatile situations, sparks flying every which way. But the Spirit of God can give us the strength to display long-suffering in our lives. And when you are keeping your cool at the very moment when everybody else is losing theirs, believe me, the spiritual fruit of long-suffering will be very, very evident. You will stick out.

If everybody else is going ballistic and you're sitting there or standing there with a smile on your face, not getting involved in the reactions, something's going on in that person that's different. And we know what that is, it's the Spirit of God. Secondly, the fruit of the Spirit is kindness.

Someone has said that kindness is like the impress on a coin, which tells us who the owner is. Kindness is the impression of God upon His creatures because you see, God is kind. The virtue of kindness is becoming more and more unusual in our world.

What were once common courtesies are becoming most uncommon. We seem to live in an angry world, a world with a chip on its shoulder, a world that's in a big hurry. You know what happens when something becomes increasingly rare, don't you? It becomes increasingly valued and treasured. A person who has kindness is a great treasure.

I remember the first verse, I think it's the first verse I ever learned as a child, it was in kindergarten and in Sunday school, and it was Ephesians 4:32, "Be kind to one another." I think you need that in the nursery. You need that in Sunday school. You need it as you grow up. You need it throughout your life. Be kind to one another.

John Wesley was said to be one of the kindest men who ever lived. He was a strong preacher. I mean, he was a vigorous champion for the faith, and yet on an individual basis, those who were around him knew they were in the presence of a deeply kind man. Wesley had a little rule of life for himself that he sought to live by in the strength of the Spirit.

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you can. That is a pretty good model to live by, isn't it? Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, for as long as you ever can. Be kind.

In other words, be kind in your home, be kind in your workplace, be kind wherever you are. Be filled with the Spirit of God, and your relationship with others will be long-suffering and kindness. And then the third one on the second branch of fruit is, the fruit of the Spirit is goodness.

Have you ever heard somebody say about someone, "He's a good man"? Or she's a good woman. That's what they should say about us when we're Spirit-controlled. That doesn't mean we're perfect. That doesn't mean we don't make mistakes, but men and women who are filled with the Holy Spirit are just good people.

The fruit of their goodness is obvious everywhere they go. Don't you just like to be around good people? People with long tempers, people who are courteous and considerate. Praise God for people like that. They bring glory to the name of their master and the one who has called Himself the good shepherd.

We've seen the first two clusters of fruit. Love, joy, and peace. And the second, long-suffering, kindness, and goodness. The first was our relationship with God. The second was our relationship with others. And the third is our relationship with ourself.

Listen to this. This final part of this trilogy, the fruit of the Spirit arranged in three sets of three. The fruit of the Spirit, first of all, is faithfulness. When I first began to study this, I thought the word was faith, but when I studied it more carefully, it is really the word faithfulness. Faith is a theological term, faithfulness is an ethical term.

Faith is what you believe and faithfulness is how you live out what you believe. Paul is saying that when you are filled with the Spirit of God, you will be growing more and more into the kind of person about whom it is said, "He is a faithful guy."

He has integrity. Or when she says she'll do it, she always does it. In other words, fidelity is produced in your life by the Holy Spirit as you walk with Him. Proverbs 20 verse 6 asks a question, it says this, "Who can find a faithful man?"

Pastors and leaders of every sort are always looking for such people. When we hire staff here, we want people who are faithful, who show up every Sunday and throughout the week and do the things they're committed to do. We need faithful men and women of God. The Bible says when the Spirit of God controls you, one of the developing virtues in your life is the virtue of faithfulness.

You become a person who can be counted on, trusted in. Your handshake is for real. And people know about you this truth, "Whatever that man says, you can count on it, he will do it. If he says he'll show up, he'll show up." And we need more of that in our lives, not just in the church, but in everyday life, to be people of integrity, to do what we say we're going to do.

The fruit of the Spirit for ourselves is to be faithful men and women. Then it says in the Spirit of meekness. I have struggled all my life as a pastor, trying to help people understand that meek is not weak.

When you say, "Oh, there goes a very meek man," what do you think immediately comes to your mind? He's just weak. Well, that's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible says that meek means to have great power under control.

Meek means that you have the capacity to do great things, but you don't always have to be doing those things to prove that you have the power. The Lord Jesus Christ was considered a man who was meek. The Bible invites us to Jesus Christ by describing Him as a meek man.

In Matthew 11:29 we read, "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and meek in heart, and you will find rest for your soul." Was Jesus weak? Watch him in the temple, you guys. Watch him in there with his whip cleaning out the temple. There was not a weak thing about him. He was a strong, virile man who was impressive in his strength.

Aristotle wrote this about meekness. A meek person is neither too hasty tempered nor too slow tempered. Meekness doesn't get angry with people it ought not to get angry with, and it does not fail to get angry with people it ought to get angry with. The man who is meek is the man who feels anger at the right grounds, against the right person, in the right manner, at the right moment, for the right time.

Jesus was meek. He had the greatest possible strength available to him. The Bible says that when he was on the cross, he could have called legions of angels to come to his aid, but he did not. Could he have done it? Yes. He had the power to do it, but he did not do it. He stayed on that cross and he died so that you and I could go to heaven. He expressed meekness in his death, even though he had the power to do whatever he wanted to. He could have called the angels and been delivered immediately.

But he was meek. He had power under control. And finally, the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Self-control is a word in the Greek language that means to yield. It means to take hold of your life. Have you ever taken hold of your life by the power of the Holy Spirit?

Are you constantly getting chewed up and beat up in some thing that you do because the discipline of the Spirit of God wants to develop within you something that you won't let him develop? I'd like to say this after what I've been through the last two years. You cannot let your body tell you what to do.

Your body will always want to help you get off easy. Take another hour in the bed. "Well, that means you won't be able to." "Yeah, I know, but I'm tired." You need to walk because if you don't walk, you're not going to walk again. "But I don't feel like walking." Body, get going. Walk.

Paul said it this way. He said, "I keep my body under." What does that mean? Under control. Paul said, "I don't let my body take over my life. I allow my body to do the things that I know I'm supposed to do, and I am in control of my body."

Paul may not have been the first, and he certainly wasn't the last preacher to make use of sports in his sermons. Nevertheless, his analogy is classic. Listen to this passage. 1 Corinthians 9.

"Don't you realize that in a race, everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win. All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for our eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I'm not just shadow boxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others, I myself might be disqualified."

Who receives the prize? The person who enters strict training. The person who is temperate and self-controlled. In athletics, you have to discipline yourself for the goal. And Paul says that when you're filled with the Spirit, you take control of your life.

Who is my greatest enemy? It's me. Who is your greatest enemy? It's you. Who is my greatest challenge in ministry and in life? It's me. The Spirit of God wants to gain more and more control over my life. It's not really self-control as much as it is Spirit control.

Amy Carmichael, who has written so many wonderful thoughts about our walk with the Lord, wrote this little poem as her prayer. "God, harden me against myself, the coward with pathetic voice, who craves for ease, and rest, and joy. Myself, arch traitor to myself. My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, my clog, wherever road I go." She was honest.

She was saying, "The challenge I have is not the circumstances, it's not other people, it's me. Lord, help me to get control of me." Self-control means control of yourself. And that, the Bible says, can happen when you trust the Holy Spirit. You say, "Well, I'm just not in all that disciplined stuff, pastor."

I don't know who is. But listen to me, I can tell you, the Holy Spirit of God can give you a disciplined life if you will yield yourself to Him and say, "Lord Jesus, I'm not into this myself, but this is what I want more than anything else. I want a disciplined life that brings glory to God." And He will provide that for you if you ask.

Paul says that when you walk in the Spirit, constantly depending on Him, you will begin to notice certain things in your life. A little bit more love, a little bit more joy, a little bit more peace. In your relationships with other people, it may show itself. Longer fuse than you used to have. You're not as touchy as you used to be.

There's a spirit of kindness within you that you didn't notice before. And a desire to help others that shows up as true goodness. In your personal walk with the Lord, you discover a great degree of self-control. Where you used to shrug things off, you become more concerned about faithfulness and integrity.

When you live in the Spirit, those are the characteristics of your life. You say, "Will I get all the fruits in one big fruit basket with a bow on top?" No. Will God just lay it on my doorstep? Will it happen all at once? Probably not. But when you are filled with the Spirit, you begin to sense these things are happening in your life.

The Bible says old things are passing away, all things are becoming new. This is the opportunity we have. This is the goal that is set before us. Let the Holy Spirit control your life and become the person you always wanted to be in the first place.

According to Richard Wentz, Saint George by the Vineyard is an old church nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. This church owns a vineyard that locals say produced the most delicious grapes in the region. Every year, members of the church gathered to pick the fruit or make wine that is said to be the best anywhere.

People often wondered why the vineyard flourished, because nobody ever took any care of it. There was nobody tending to it. Then old Jeremy, the sexton of the church died. His family had served as sexton for generations. He had quietly devoted his life to caring for the church. After his death, a note was found by his bed that read, "The key to everything is under the altar."

The senior warden searched and found a key and beneath the altar, a stone slab with stairs leading down into a crypt. With flashlights, the group descended and discovered the sound of running water. There they found a spring along with a chart showing how Jeremy had faithfully released its waters to irrigate the vineyard.

That was the secret to its abundance. A hidden spring, unseen, but life-giving. So it is with us. The Spirit of God within us is our hidden source of power. Others may not see where it comes from, but they will see its fruit. They will come up and say to you, "What's happened to you? Why are you the way you are? You used to be."

You will discover fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If you walk in the Spirit, you will be too busy growing fruit to fulfill the desires of the flesh.

Notice, the Bible doesn't say, "Do not fulfill the desires of the flesh," although that would be a good command. No, it says, "Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh." Don't concentrate on the negative things, concentrate on the positive things. Fill your life with the fruit of the Spirit, and the other things will be pushed out of existence. They will just go away.

The power of positive replacement in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I speak of this, first of all, out of my own desire to be that kind of person. I want to be that kind of person in my life. I believe I'm becoming that kind of a person. I want to continue to be that person.

And more than anything else, I want you to have the opportunity to be people like that too. If you will just take God at His word and trust Him and give Him control of your life, you will begin to develop the things that you always wish you could do, but could never do because you don't have the strength to do it yourself. The Spirit of God will empower you.

And one day you will look up and wonder, "Who is that guy I'm looking at in the mirror? I used to know him a long time ago. Look what's happened to him." The Lord Jesus Christ is in the business of transformation. He wants to make you a new person. You have to give Him permission. Give Him permission to do that.

Dr. David Jeremiah: Amen. The Holy Spirit comes to live within us not just to be a resident. He comes to be the president to change life for each one of us, to be the one who gives us direction and helps us to know what to do. So be sure to understand that and take advantage of it.

Hey, tomorrow we're going to talk about a passage of scripture that is truly phenomenal to me. This passage says that you and I can do greater works than Jesus did when he was on this earth because of the Holy Spirit's ministry. That is an astounding statement and when you first read it, you think that couldn't possibly be true. But it's in the Bible in John 14:22. That statement is made and we're going to spend a couple of days talking about it beginning tomorrow right here on this good station. And we'll see you tomorrow.

Guest (Male): Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Write to Turning Point PO Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org/radio or call 800-947-1993.

Ask for your copy of David's new book, The Holy Spirit You May Not Know. A valuable resource that's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app for your smartphone or tablet, or search in your app store for Turning Point Ministries to access our content. Visit davidjeremiah.org/radio for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue The Holy Spirit You May Not Know on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.