Fruits of the Spirit, Part 4

The Apostle John records many instructions that Jesus gave His disciples on the night before His crucifixion. At the Passover, many times, we go through parts of John 14, 15, 16, and 17, because these are all instructions He gave them that night. Let's go to John 15 and look at some of the instructions.

In fact, this is so common that many times we read through this and really miss the importance of what He's saying here. So, verse 1, Jesus says to His disciples, I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser. Now, if you look at some of the other analogies that we've been going through, this series of sermons on the fruits of the Holy Spirit, we've been showing these different parables and different analogies that are in the Bible that God expects us to bear fruit. But here we find something very profound about this concept. Here we have, of course, that God the Father is the vine-dresser. He's the one in charge of... and this here has grapes, other places we've seen this, other trees, fig trees, so forth, but here we have grapes.

And He's the vine-dresser. He's the one who owns this vineyard. He's the one who takes care of this vineyard. But the fruit comes from being attached to the vine. He goes on, He says, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, He proves that it may bear more fruit. So God is dealing with us as we are attached to Jesus Christ. Now this is very important to understand. When we receive God's Spirit, Christ will live His life in us so that we act like Him. The fruit we bear is His character, the character of God in a human being. And so as He lives in us, God interacts with us.

If we don't bear fruit, then we're in trouble. Even if we bear fruit, it says He proves us. In other words, there's work God does with us. As we bear fruit, He comes along and cuts off pieces. That's not pleasant, but that's what He does. So even as we bear fruit, because He wants us to bear more and more fruit. Now some of you may have had grapes in your life that you've grown.

My parents had a grapevine in the backyard, and they never pruned it or anything. It was just wild grapes. And sometimes there'd be lots of grapes. Sometimes there'd be no grapes. Sometimes those grapes would be so sour. You'd eat one of them, and you'd have to spit it out. You couldn't even eat them. You never know what you were going to get. God, in your life, wants to know what He's going to get.

He wants to produce His fruit. But, through God's Spirit, we have to be attached to Christ. Christ's life must be in us. And this is vital to understand this. Now, you say, well, what is God producing in me through His Spirit? He's producing the life of Christ. You know, when Christ says He's our brother, He literally means that. So He's producing that life in us so that we become more and more like Him. He says, you are already clean, verse 3, because of the Word which I have spoken to you.

He tells those disciples there. He says, abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me. Now, that word abide is very important. That's a whole sermon in itself. Abide means live. You abide in a house. You live in a house. Christ says here, what the analogy here, of this vine, and we're attached to the vine is, you know, what comes to the vine?

All the nutrients that create the fruit comes from the vine. It goes into the branch and into the fruit. So He says, you must live in me and I in you. That's a remarkable relationship. Once again, that would take a whole sermon to explain. A relationship in which God, through His Spirit, is creating a relationship with Christ, can reproduce His life in human beings.

And He lives in us, but it also says we live in Him. So this is a relationship where He literally isn't here. He's literally inside of us. When we receive God's Spirit, it's no longer an external force. You know, God's Spirit is an external force that guides us. It's His mind.

It's His love. It's His power. It guides us, it steers us. But when we receive it inside of us, it's inside. Your mind and God's mind become linked together, where He is living in you. He's literally in us. But the remarkable point here is we are in Him. So that relationship is very important in understanding how we bear the fruits of His Spirit. Christ has abided me, and I in you, as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself. Verse 5, Christ says, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit. For without me, you can't do nothing.

We can't bear the fruits of God's Spirit by ourselves. Oh, you can, you know, you and me can build a little bit of character. You know, we went through self-control. I've seen people build, you know, remarkable self-control without God's Spirit. But what we're talking about is spiritual self-control. You know, more than just the ability to say, no, I'm not going to have the second piece of pie, okay? Or the ability to say, yes, I get up every morning at the same time, or yes, I'm going to exercise every day.

That's self-control. But this spiritual self-control goes beyond that. As we showed when we went through that fruit of the Spirit. He says, verse 6, if anyone does not abide in me, this is important. You could be part of this vine, and you could be a branch, and there's no fruit. Because the Spirit of God is not flowing through Christ into us. So the life of Christ, the life of Jesus, is not being produced in us. There's no fruit. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.

That's a pronouncement of eternal judgment. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. Now, verse 8 is very important. By this my Father is glorified. How is God's glory shown on the earth? When Christ returns, we'll see God's glory. We'll see Jesus Christ coming back. But right now, how is God's glory shown on this earth? He says, by this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples.

We are supposed to be the proof of the greatness of God. Not because we're doing this on our own, but because, wow, that's remarkably spiritually people. Those are just remarkable people. They're so smart. Now, that's not us. What people should see in us is that God is producing something in us. That people can say, look, that person is different. Why are they different? It's something to do with their religion. It's something to do with what they believe.

Because it's not us that become the center of attention. It's what God is doing in us. It's God that's the center of attention. Anytime we make ourselves the center of attention, we're missing the point. It's what God is doing in us. And He's bearing this fruit. This is the fourth sermon in our series. Excuse me, I'm sorry. All week has been bad, so the snow has made it a little better. This is the fourth sermon in our series of Fruits of the Holy Spirit that are mentioned in Galatians 5.

Jesus says here that if we're going to really be His disciples, we have to bear this fruit. As I said before, we must understand this fruit is as commanded as the Ten Commandments. It's as commanded as the Sabbath day. This is required of us that we submit to God, that Christ lives in us, we live in Him. And this character of Jesus Christ is being reproduced in us. And it's not anything you and I can do ourselves. We can't. We will fail. But with God's help and His power and His Spirit, He can do this work in us if we submit to Him. So, so far we've discussed self-control, meekness, and faithfulness. The next one on the list in Galatians 5 is the fruit of goodness. Now, it's very interesting because goodness and kindness, which is the one after this, they actually balance each other. So, we're going to talk about goodness and what this means today. And then next time we'll talk about kindness because it's amazing how when we go through each of these fruits of the Spirit, they're not independent of each other. We can study them independently, but they work together. Now, we talk about self-control, but that meekness is a submission to God. So, self-control without meekness is just, it's not really self-control, spiritual self-control. We talk about faithfulness. Now, we're going to talk about kindness. Well, okay, so today we're going to talk about being kind to people. This word is a very interesting word in Greek. It means, literally, act of goodness. In other words, it's not just, okay, I'm being good, you know. How many times have you said to the kids, are you being good? It's too quiet in there, right? And you hear, we're being good. You go look. Now, if they're playing, they're being good. That's not what this is talking about. This is active, okay? This is an active kindness. It must be seen in actions. But it's more than that. When we get into, or act of goodness, when we get into kindness, we're going to see something that balances this. These two things work together. So, today we're just talking about one segment. This active goodness has to do with not only being actively good, but standing up against what is not good. So, if you look this up at lexicons or Greek dictionaries, they will always say, this is about being actively good. So, people can see this goodness because it's actions. But also, it involves rebuking or correcting or standing up against what is not good. So, it's very active even in the negative sense. When we get to kindness, you'll see how it's balanced out. So, how does this work? You know, it's interesting. This word is only used, there's a derivative of it, that's used different ways. But this word itself, exactly what's used here, it's only used a few places in the entire New Testament. And one of them is in Ephesians 5. So, let's go to Ephesians 5. Now, we have to read a fairly long passage here to really get the context of how Paul uses this word. Because he uses this word more than anybody in the New Testament. See, he's writing to the church in Ephesus, and in verse 1, he says, Therefore, the imitators of God is dear children. So, we're to imitate God. How in the world do we do that? Well, the only way we can do that is through Jesus Christ. We see the character of God. We see God who became flesh. And now we see how this works. And he says, okay, I'm going to imitate God. He's all powerful. He's all knowing. As was said in the Sermonet, I can't even remember people's names. I have a hard time remembering my name, half the time. I actually forgot my name one time. I was selling some advertising to some president of some company, and I walked in and said, Hi, I'm... And for a second, I couldn't even remember my own name. It was pretty bad.

But I can't remember if I got the account or not. I just remembered for that split second, I paused and then said my name because I was so nervous I couldn't remember my own name.

Anyways, imitators of God as dear children. How do I do that? He's so great! Well, verse 2. And walk in love as Christ also has loved us, and given himself for us, and offering it a sacrifice to God as a sweet-smelling robot. So what we have is this example set by Jesus Christ. Now we know how to be imitators of God. We can look at his life, we can look at what's written about him, we can look at what he taught and say, okay, here we have the Son of God, and I'm supposed to become a child of God. So he shows us how this is done. So we now are imitators of God. Then, in verse 3, he says, but fornication... He really now hits the Ephesian church very hard about things that you should not see, that we should not do in the church. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as it's fitting for saints, neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving to thanks. But this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

So he says... Remember, he's writing to the church here. And he says to the church, remember, if we practice these things... Now, once again, we know that God forgives when we slip and we fall and we sin. But if we practice these things without forgiveness, without repentance, he says you will not inherit the kingdom of God, which shows that universal salvation is not true, or the fact that you receive God's Spirit and immediately you receive salvation.

If that's for me, tell them I'm busy.

So, verse 6, he says, Let no one deceive you with empty words. Because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. So here he says, those who practice those things, God will punish. Therefore, do not be partakers with them. So he even says, don't even hang around with people. If your neighbor just goes out every weekend and just picks up women and gets drunk, he says, don't hang out with that person. Don't be partakers with them. Whatever you do, don't go with that person.

And we're going to go through some difficult scriptures here, and what does it mean to stand against evil?

What does it mean to be so actively good, or practicing act of goodness, so that we stand against evil? Verse 8, for you, okay, the church, were once darkness. It's interesting. He doesn't say you were once in darkness. He says, you were darkness. We were filled with darkness. But now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.

The word goodness there is the same Greek word as goodness in Galatians 5. He says, the fruit of the Spirit is this act of goodness. Now, this act of goodness involves finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. So, act of goodness is not by our own standards. This is important to understand, too. Act of goodness is something we make up. We'll get into it in a minute. We'll even talk about how we make judgments. Is it by our standards? So, act of goodness is a fruit of God's Spirit, and we have to accept or look for and search for what is acceptable to the Lord.

God defines what goodness is and what we actively must do. But the next verse, which is part of this whole context, is very important. And have no fellowship with the unfulfool works of darkness, but rather expose them. So, act of goodness isn't just seeking the acceptable will of God. It is exposing what is opposite of the acceptable will of God. It is exposing the unfulfool works of the flesh that's also in Galatians 5. So, it's not a matter of, okay, I can be good and just draw back and live in a bubble of goodness and stay somehow untouched by the evil that is around me.

This act of goodness literally, at times, will make a stand or expose evil. It will expose what is unfruitful, what is the opposite of the fruit that comes from God's Spirit. How many times have you heard someone say, well, okay, I understand I need to be good, but I can't judge anybody else. I can't judge anybody else. It's interesting that I was reading an article today, and it was just interviews with Christians all over the United States. And how many of them said, well, you know, we can't judge anybody else. We believe our beliefs, but we can't judge anybody else. It went so far.

It wasn't just the United States. It was happening in Europe, where in three major cathedrals in Europe, Catholic cathedrals, and one in the United States, they now read from the Korean during mass, because they don't want Muslims to think they're judging them, because as Christians, they cannot judge. And they used the same argument. People said, we cannot say anything bad against homosexuality, or homosexual marriage, or abortion. We can't say anything against those things. We have to accept anyone who does that as equal, because we cannot judge. We cannot judge if two people are living together and not married.

We cannot judge that, because God tells us not to judge. In fact, Jesus said, do not judge. So now we have a fruit that is actively good, and part of the act of goodness is exposing unfruitful behavior. And yet we have a belief system that's becoming more and more common in the United States, that nobody can stand up and say anything's evil, because you can't judge, because Jesus said, do not judge. Okay, let's go look at what Jesus said, because this is the most often quoted verse in this whole argument.

Matthew 7. In fact, this is becoming a verse that is the basis of a brand new Christianity, a brand new way of looking at the Bible. And this way of looking at the Bible basically is, you love everybody equals, loving everybody equals not judging anybody over anything. As long as they have love in their heart, how far has this gone? How many of you remember, some of you older people in here, remember Billy Graham when he was young? Billy Graham when he was young, some of you, he's still alive. He's 90, and he's 90s, you know.

He just wrote another book. Billy Graham in the Protestant world is a major influence in the Protestant world. So since most of you are not involved in the Protestant world, you younger people don't know who he is. But if you go back into the 1950s, 1960s, so some of you raised your hand, I barely remember him because I was a child at the time, so some of you older than me. But Billy Graham was the most famous preacher in the country.

When Billy Graham would come into a place like Nashville, his advance team would come in weeks ahead of time and contact all the churches in Nashville, and they would work together to tell people to come. And when he would come in, it would be unusual to have 10,000 people show up. They would fill huge stadiums. And he did that up until probably 10 years ago. Huge stadiums. And he would do altar calls where thousands of people would come down and give their heart to the Lord. But he taught all his life that if you do not give your heart to the Lord, you're going to go to hell. That was the basis of what he taught. You go on YouTube and look at some of his old sermons when he was young. He'd be thundering out, repent. You know what he believes now? It's because of this new religion that's formed, and this is the basis of it. He believes that Muslims, Hindus, many of them are all going to heaven. Because Jesus is in their heart and they don't know it. Jesus is in their heart and they just don't know it. Even if they don't believe in the true God, pagans, you can worship trees and rocks and have Jesus in your heart and not know it. That's what he believes now. Because his false belief about hell led him to a conclusion. Why would God send most of his creation to hell? And he could solve that one. So instead of changing his belief on hell, he bought into, judge not lest you be judged. As the basis of Christian thought. But active goodness is to stand up against evil. So how do we put this together? Well, let's look at what Jesus actually taught. Verse 1, judge not that you be not judged. Okay? So he is actively saying that we should be not judging, going out and judging. Does that mean don't judge anything? Can I judge that murder is evil? If you say yes, then we have to say that his statements must be tempered with something else. Correct? Either there is no evil, but see, we like to cherry pick this one. Well, you can't judge two people who are in love for living together. You can't judge that. That's wrong, because he says don't judge. Well, how about murder? Well, yeah, that's wrong. Well, aren't you making a judgment? I actually had a conversation that was borderline argument when I was a young man with a Baptist lay minister over this, because he said you don't have to keep the Ten Commandments. And I remember saying, okay, let's take murder. He said, all you have to do is love. Have Jesus in your heart and love. Okay, what about murder? He says many people murder someone in a fit of anger, but they love them. So God doesn't judge them of that. We can't judge them either. So murder was okay. No, it's not okay, but God doesn't judge it. He'll just go to heaven when they die, because they love the person as they kill them. I didn't have an argument after that. I just looked at him and said, there's no way we come together. There's no way we can even talk. We have no middle ground to discuss here. And he just thought I was so deceived. And I thought he was so deceived. Okay, what does it say here? So let's go to verse 2. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. And with what measure you use, it will be measured back to you. So he says, whatever standard you use to judge issues is how you're going to be judged. And the issue here is by God. So whatever standard you use to judge and the severity in which you pass sentence, judgment isn't just about passing sentence. We have to understand that. Judgment is determining whether something is right or wrong.

So judgment has to do with determining whether something is right or wrong. And it has to do with passing sentence. And we are told here, being very careful about passing sentence. But we're also told, so we either have no standards at all. So if I say murder isn't wrong, then it's okay for me to murder. Either there's no standards at all, or what are the standards by which we must judge? Now notice, this is all in the same context. This is all part of the sermon on the mount. Notice the example he gives. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, and do not consider the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye, and look, a plank is in your own eye. The hyperbole here is great. Wait a minute. Oh man, there's something in my eye. Here, let me get it out for you. And you've got a 2x4 coming out of your own eye. So you smack him up alongside the head as you try to get in, or you knock him down, he stands up, you knock him down again, because you can't even get to the guy, because there's a 2x4 coming out of your eye. So this is hyperbole he uses here. But notice there is a speck, in other words, there's something wrong, and you have a plank, there's something wrong. Now the next statement should be, do not judge your brother's speck, and do not judge your plank because you should not judge. Right? But that's not what he says. Hypocrite. First, remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. You are actually judging the speck in your brother's eye. And you're judging the plank in your eye. So his first point is, okay, let's not be going around passing sentences with everybody here, and we have to understand the standards by which we judge. Let's be very careful about all this. And two, when you do judge, judge yourself first. If you cannot make any judgments, you can't remove the plank from your eye. So he's talking about not passing sentences on everybody. You and I have no right to put anybody in the lake of fire, right? We're not passing eternal sentences on people. That's God's doing. We're very careful about the standards by which we judge people. Because mercy is a standard, by the way. Mercy is a standard that you find all through the Old Testament. That's not the New Testament. That's all through the Old Testament. Mercy is actually part of the law. It's a commanded part of the law. And when we judge, we judge ourselves first. The next sentence is one of the most judgmental statements in all the Bible. Verse 6, do not give what is holy to the dogs. Now, he's not talking about literal dogs here. He's talking about human beings that Jesus has labeled as dogs. And he's telling us, don't give what is holy to people who are like that. What a judgment statement! And for you and I to carry out that judgment statement, we have to know what it means. We actually have to make a judgment. Now, notice the emphasis here is holy. In other words, we don't take what is God's, and we share it with people who hate what God is doing.

Or a rebellion against God. Do not cast, nor cast your pearls before swine. He calls people swine. Pigs! This is Jesus here making a judgment statement in which we're supposed to make the same judgment. Not that we call them dogs or pigs, but we don't share what is holy with them. Is that judgmental or what? Let's say, they trampled them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces. He says, be careful. If you share what is holy with certain people, they will destroy, try to destroy what is holy, and then they will come, and they will come after you.

Interesting, isn't it? Do not share what is holy. Do you know what this means? This means that there are people that you and I should not associate with because of their rebellion against God.

I mean, all of you have people at work that you work with that you wouldn't go over their house and have eaten with, right? Come on over tonight. We're all smoking some weed. You're not going to go. You're not going to go. You're not going to go get drunk. You're not going to go over their house because of various conduct they have. Why? Because of this kind of statement. But you realize you're making a judgment, aren't you? You're actually making a judgment. Now, you're not judging them eternally. You're not saying to them, you're going to like a fire. In fact, when you work with them, you treat them nicely.

There are certain people that, as harsh as this sounds, I will not let come to Sabbath services unless I counsel with them first. Now, if I have a man that just got out of jail because he spent the last 20 years in jail because he sexually abused children, he's not coming to this congregation until we counsel first. Am I against him? No. Do I want to be converted? Yes. But understand, I have to make sure he's being converted. Well, that's a harsh judgment. It's this verse. So when judge not lest you be not judged, you have to ignore the rest of the passage. In fact, you have to ignore the whole context of the Sermon on the Mount.

Look at what he says in verse 15. Let's go to verse 15. Beware of false prophets. So if I'm to be aware of somebody, I have to know what to beware of. Now, I have to make a judgment. I have to actually make a judgment. Who come you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. Now, here's how you will know them. You will know them by their fruits. Oh, I have got to bear. I've got to make a judgment.

I have to look at the fruits of God's Spirit and the fruits over now. Remember. As we go through the fruits of God's Spirit, there's one thing that's apparent. I've had people here in Nashville come up to me and say this to me. I said, yes, I know because I feel the same way. As we go through each of the fruits of God's Spirit, I look and say, oh my, there's times I don't do that at all. We're not talking about the fact that we're struggling with bearing these fruits.

He's talking about people who have the fruits of the flesh. Who show none of the fruits of God's Spirit, but have completely the fruits of the flesh. He says, do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? He says, you're going to go out here to some poisonous plant with thistles all over it and get grapes off of it. No, you're not! When the fruit is not of God, and it's repeatedly not of God, then he says, you have to be aware of that.

You have to make a judgment. Is that the fruit of God, or is it not the fruit of God? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Therefore, by their fruits you will know them. Now, this is all part of the sermon about...this is just minutes after what he said, what we read in verses 1-6.

He's teaching this, and this comes out just minutes after, do not judge, but I want you to judge people with good fruits and bad fruits. So you know whether to associate with them. He did say go out and stow them to death. But he did say whether you should associate with them or not. So we're to be careful about who we associate with. And that takes what? Judging by whose standards?

You're not allowed, you and I are not allowed to not associate with people because we don't like them. We're not allowed to not associate people because we don't like their personalities. We're not allowed to do that. Oh, I don't like associate with that kind of person because, well, they're too jovial. Or they're too serious, or they're too whatever. They're too depressed. I don't want to ever talk to that person. You and I are not allowed to do that. Because that's not God's standard. So we have to be careful how we judge. But we are not to associate with people who practice these things. Active goodness isn't just actively doing good. Remember the meaning of this word. It is exposing the evil. It is seeing what the evil is, and it is withdrawing from the evil. So we have a couple of key points here. We have to be careful about being judgmental. Approach everybody with meekness. Remember, meekness is what we've already gone through, and one of the fruits. When we get the kindness, we'll see how that mellows this whole thing out. We must not judge others by personal standards, but by God's standards. And we have to judge ourselves first. That's so amazing when you judge yourself first. A lot of times you look at the other person and say, It's not really that important. It's not really that important. I'll pray for them. I'll pray for them. Romans 12. This word isn't used in Romans 12, but the meaning of this passage is very similar. After this, I want to go through two examples in the Bible where we see active goodness in action against evil. Not just actively doing good, but actively exposing evil in cases where they should have. Romans 12 or 17. Repay no evil, or no one evil, for another. Repay no one evil for evil. Let me re-see that. I've said that verse three times and I've all been wrong. Repay no one evil for evil. You got it now? Okay. So the point here is, if someone does something wrong to you, don't do something wrong back. That is an active goodness. That is active evil. Active goodness is dealing with evil. Now, here we're dealing with someone who does you wrong. We have to be careful with us. Okay, someone's already wrong, so I can pull out my sword and slay them. Well, is that what active goodness does? It stands against evil, but does it always...you can't repay evil with evil. You can't say one evil deed justifies another evil deed. It does not. So active goodness cannot justify repaying evil with evil.

Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men. He makes a real important point here. If possible, you do your part to be peaceable, understanding that sometimes the other person won't do their part. You can't live peaceably with all people. It is not possible. But he said you have to do your part anyways. So active goodness is being peaceable even in the face of someone mistreating you as much as you can.

Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. So he says, you know, when someone is mistreating you, you just step back and say, God, I'm giving this one to you. Because sometimes, I mean, we're going to look at it a minute. There is a time to stand against evil. But the reason I'm reading this first is because we have to do this first if it's personal. Okay? If it's personal, we have to do this first. You know, when we make a stand against abortion, it's not personal. We're standing against an evil.

Right? We're standing there and saying, that is wrong. Hasn't personally hurt me, but God says it's wrong. But here He says, okay, someone did you wrong. Maybe someone said to get you, maybe they gossiped against you. Did you read the life lesson I had in the pastors' update about gossip? That little story just explains so well what gossip does.

You can't fix gossip. It destroys people's reputations. And you can't go fix all the day which one has been done. Maybe that's happened to you. He says, therefore, and I quote from the Old Testament, this is verse 20, If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will keep cold to fire on his head. In other words, do what's good. This is act of goodness.

Someone does you wrong, actively do good.

And here's why, verse 21. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So if we respond to evil with evil, we've now jumped into pit with evil.

We've all done that. Responded to evil with evil.

And then you find, where am I? Oh, I'm down in the pit with evil.

I'm in the place where I was supposed to fight against.

So when we're dealing with act of goodness in terms of personal conflict, personal issues, we should respond with active kindness. When we get into kindness, we'll see that.

But we still have the issue of responding to the evil in the world.

How do we do? Is our response, judge not, lest you be judged?

We can't be. We've already gone through what Jesus said in Matthew 7.

Don't give what is holy to unholy people.

Stand against them. Beware of false prophets and you'll know them by their fruit. Stand against them.

So how do we make that kind of stand? How does active goodness come out in that stand?

Look at two cases. The first one is a case involving Jesus, the perfect example.

Matthew 21. I read one time where this could not be part of the Bible because the Jesus this person believed in could not do this.

Because Jesus would never do what this story said he did. But he did do it. Now what we're looking at here is active goodness. Verse 12.

Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, overtook the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold those.

Now understand, the temple, and people would come in from all over the world to the temple.

They couldn't bring sheep or turtle doves, which could be sacrificed. They couldn't bring these animals with them.

So there were people there who would sell them. Well right outside the temple, it would become a giant marketplace.

And there were people making really good money. Oh wait a minute! I could buy a dog for practically nothing back in my home town. Yeah, but that's ten times more.

They're literally making the temple a place of business.

I talked to someone recently. He went to a megachurch. And it was in San Antonio.

And I said, yeah, I always wanted to go to that megachurch just to see what it's like.

I watched the guy on television. And they said, well it is interesting because when you walk in, there's this huge open area.

And of course there was 9 to 10,000 people there every given Sunday. And they said, all it is is shops.

And you get to Starbucks. And you get where you can buy books. And you get where you can buy tapes.

And you're just a giant business.

Jesus walks in and sees this going on at the temple of God.

And He throws them out. Now, I want you to understand something.

You don't take a group of men, who it's their livelihood and their business, and how they make money, and throw them out by walking in and say, okay fellas, you've got to leave.

He's committing an act of violence. He's grabbing tables and throwing them over.

One of the cases that says He actually gets a whip and starts whipping the animals. He creates a stampede.

He drives the animals out. He's physically driving these people out of the temple.

Was He committing an act of violence? Actually He is.

This is act of goodness when you stand against evil.

This is act of goodness.

He sees the evil and He will no longer tolerate it in the temple.

Now, what does this produce? Does He go get a sword and kill all the guys?

What's interesting here is what it produces. Let's look at what He says in verse 13.

He says to them, and he quotes from the Old Testament, He says to them, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

He says this is just anathema. This is an abomination to God.

People come here to pray to God, to worship God, and you're out here making a buck off of it by selling merchandise.

He physically drives them out.

And what is the result of it?

Act of goodness has an interesting result.

Verse 14, Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. Notice the result?

It doesn't say He got His disciples together, strapped on swords, and went out and tried to hunt down and kill all the people who had been selling in the temple.

He physically, violently drove them out, and then they brought people in to be healed by God.

Act of goodness produces goodness.

And this is one of the greatest examples.

If you understand active goodness standing against evil, that you'll find in the Scripture.

Because you see the direct product of it.

That's why we have to be careful.

Judge not lest you be judged.

We may think we're making a stand against evil, and we're actually not.

We're doing it for our own self-righteousness. We're doing it for our own motivation.

So it doesn't produce good.

It simply produces something worse.

So we have the perfect example. Now there's one other example I want to give.

Because this one can be misused if we're not careful.

You know, Jesus is obvious. It's obvious.

And how He made His stand against evil, and it produced good.

Many people, lame people, blind people, are being healed by God.

Let's go to Numbers 25. We actually talked about this person in our last Bible study we had on the book of Judges.

Because this person was mentioned in the last few chapters of the book of Judges.

But let's go to Numbers 25. Our last example today.

We'll go through the story so you can get the whole story here.

First one. Israel remained in the Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab.

Now here's what happened. The Moabites figured, why pick a fight with the Israelites? There's a big group of people.

They figured out a different way to do this. And this was with Balaam's help, if you know the story of Balaam.

What we'll do is we'll seduce them.

Why fight them?

The Moabites, they said, why? Let's just party.

And the Israelites sort of liked the idea.

If you can imagine coming over the horizon, there were thousands and thousands of Moabites, not with swords, but jugs and women all dressed up to have a party.

And they brought their idols with them.

And they had a big party!

People got drunk, and they said, we want you to worship your God, but our God, you get a lot more fun.

So you worship both of them.

So they're worshipping God. You know how I know that they haven't given up, but don't they still believe in God? The tabernacle is still there. They still do sacrifices every day.

Sabbath is still observed.

The pillar of fire, pillar of smoke is still there.

They know God's alive. The God of Israel is right there.

Well, boy, there's other God. He's a party God.

He knows how to have fun, so we'll worship both of them.

So thousands and thousands of Israelites begin to just do this giant party right in front of God.

They know this is sin. They know it's wrong, but they can sort of have their cake and eat it, too. We'll just take a sacrifice to the temple when we're done, you know?

But there's this absolute rebellion, this hard-heartedness against God.

God passes a judgment order.

So verse 2 says, They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.

So Israel was joined a bale of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was a rout against them.

So they're committing harlotry. I mean, this is just spiritual harlotry. There is just mass fornication going on. This is sexual freedom. I mean, the God of Israel is so repressive. You can only have sex in marriage, only between a man and a woman.

Here, they're just having a big party. There's a big orgy going on.

Then the Lord said to Moses, He makes a judgment here. Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the Lord out of the sun that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. He says, okay, take all the leaders who are participating in this, hang them out for everybody to see, and tell them this is God's judgment, so you better stop it. God makes a judgment.

Now, when we go through this story, Phineas is the person we're going to talk about, He did not make a judgment. He followed God's judgment.

So the standard set by God, idolatry, all this wild sexual sin, all this drinking, all the things that are going on, is not acceptable to God. And He has said, I've made a judgment here on what all the leaders have all done is killed. So, verse 5, Moses said to the judges of Israel, every one of you kill his men who are joined to the male pior. And indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brother, a many-anite woman, in the sight of Moses, in the sight of all the congregations of Israel, who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of meaning. There are people there crying. And there are other reasons why, as God was sending a plague, the people were there, and they were there, and they were there, and they were there, and they were there, and they were there, and they were there, and they were there, and they were there, sending a plague. People were starting to die. The people who were involved in this were starting to die. So, probably friends and family, plus people who had committed these things, now came over to the tabernacle, and you have all these people praying and weeping, saying, God, please forgive us. This man who prays in, if you read through the whole story, is one of the great leaders of the tribe of Simeon. Actually, his dad is. He's the son of one of the leaders of the tribe. The woman who's with him is the daughter of one of the kings of Amedian. And he prays her in, in front of everybody, and says, I get to choose what I want here. Nobody can judge me. Nobody can judge me. I worship God, and if I want to have this woman as my wife, that's my choice. How dare you, Moses, judge me? You want to hang me? Come get me. Now, it doesn't say anybody had been hugged yet. They said we were going to hang people, so I'm sure there's lots of Israelites running around with swords on their hips saying, Come get me. You want to hang me? Come get me. Because I like this part of your bit. You can't judge me. God had made a judgment. So it says, verse 7, Now, when Phidias, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, and we know that Phidias was the high priest at the beginning of the book of Judges, saw it, he rose from only the congregation, took a javelin in his hand, and he went after the man of Israel who, into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman through her body, so the plague was stopped among the children of Israel, and those who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand. God had already killed twenty-four thousand people. And he still weren't stopping. And the rest of Israel was praying and saying, I hope he stops with the ones who committed the sins. And nobody will stop. And Phidias takes a javelin and kills both of them.

This is an example of goodness in action. Why, that's violent! Yes, it is. God had made a judgment, and they refused to follow the judgment. This man was blatantly, openly, defying God, and God had already said to Moses, take all of those who are doing that, all the leaders, and hang them, and the people will stop. He's a leader. And he defies them. You can't judge me. How dare you judge me? And he brings in the Princess of Midian, takes her into his tent, and everybody knows what's going on inside the tent.

And Phidias goes and kills him. How do we know that this was an act of goodness, of this goodness in action? Verse 10. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Phidias, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the children of Israel, because he was zealous with my zeal among them. In other words, it wasn't his standards. It was like, God's going to kill all of us if we don't do what he wants. We have to stand up for what God wants.

God is good and righteous here. This is wrong. This is evil. And so he carries out the judgment of God. He didn't hang them. But he killed him and the woman together. So I did not consume the children of Israel and my zeal. Therefore, say, behold, I will give to him my covenant of peace. God says, I will make a covenant of peace with this man. He and I will be at peace together, because he actively carried out my judgment.

For many, many more people would have sinned, and many, many more people would have died. And it shall be to him in his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God and made an atonement for the children of Israel. He was zealous for his God, and he stopped the sinning. Wow! That's active goodness. Just as much as Jesus going in and throwing out the money changers was active goodness.

Either that or Jesus did evil, or Phineas did evil. And God blessed Phineas, and Jesus is the Son of God, God in the flesh. See how much we've been affected by this new Christianity that's been building for the last, probably, 30 years?

Judge not. That's the basis of all morality. Judge not. That is not the basis of biblical morality. The basis of biblical morality is judge how God judges. And by the way, it's interesting that Phineas didn't pass the death sentence on this Prince of Israel and Princess of Midian. God had already passed the death penalty on them. He's carried it out.

Because of his zeal, it's interesting that in some Greek dictionaries, when we go back to this word goodness in Galatians 5, zeal is attached to it. It is a zeal to do active goodness, including to stand up against evil. Now, we have to take a step back from this. I have to give a little caveat to Phineas here.

Phineas goes on, becomes the high priest of Israel, probably sometime at the end of Joshua, and we know it during the beginning of the time of Judges. But Phineas did not spend the rest of his life walking around with a javelin, waiting to find somebody to stab. It's a one-time event. The reason I mention that is I see people with what we call the Phineas complex. They walk around with a spiritual javelin just waiting for somebody to do something wrong because that shows how righteous they are.

That is not active goodness. That is active self-righteousness. Those are two different things. And if you find yourself thinking it is my job to go around correcting everybody, then you probably have the Phineas complex. Well, look at the life of Phineas.

You find out Phineas, and that's not how he lived his life. This is a one-time event. And God said, good, that's what you should have done in that case. You know how he spent the rest of his life? Making up tobit for people's sins. That's what the high priest did. They came with sins, and they did sacrifices so that God would forgive their sins.

Mercy was his job for the rest of his life. With people who were not rebellious. You see? Well, we're not rebellious. God shows us mercy. He will not. He will not put up with raw, naked, ugly, rebellious evil. He will not. And we're supposed to make a stand against that. But don't worry around with your spiritual javelins, because at that point, you're not doing what's right either. But there are times when we have to make a stand.

There's a time when you must say, no, that's not right. There's a time when you must say, no, I will not associate. I'm sorry. I mean, we can work together, but I'm not going to socially spend time with you. You don't have to tell them why. There's times you have to tell people why.

There's times you have to say, no, I will not. Come on. You're a drug dealer. No, I'm not going to spend time with you. I only mentioned that because I remember casting people one time, who the person hung out with drug dealers all the time, because they had a good time with them, knowing they were drug dealers. They couldn't figure out why I said that Christians shouldn't do that. She didn't stay in the church. No, you should not. You should stand against evil. No, I'm sorry. We're not going to spend time together. Now that you don't walk around with a javelin killing them either. But there's a spiritual javelin at times you say, no, I will not. I will not associate. I will not participate in. I will not participate in your evil. You make a stand. We all have to do that. And sometimes it's public. Sometimes it's public. We've talked about this. This is why people said, why are the broadcast and the television program in the last two years much more stronger than they have been? Because we as the presenters sat down and discussed it and said, we have to make a public stand. We have to. We have to say, no, this is not acceptable to God. And so we've started doing that more and more. Not that we didn't do it in the past, we just didn't stay it as strong. We do now. I don't mean being obnoxious about it. And not telling people you're all going to, you know, God's doing the same Christ back to fry you. It's repent. Turn to God. The message is return to God. Like God, clean up your life. So you can see that we can study the fruits of God's Spirit individually. But they actually all work together. They come together, working together to produce the character of God, the godly character, the character of Jesus Christ. And what we also know is as we go through each of these fruits, we see that all of them are aspects of God's character. With this kind of act of goodness, we see that God is actively involved in our lives. God will also actively correct us. When you do something wrong, when I do something wrong, God actively corrects us. Now, He's always balanced with His mercy, but why is He correcting us to remove the evil from our lives? He will correct the world. And the rebellious world someday will face His wrath. So the whole book of Revelation is about the return of Jesus Christ. They will face His wrath. And we can't downplay that either. So we have the act of goodness of God. We see it in Him. We see it in Jesus Christ. We need to have it in our lives. So next time, we will show how to balance out the act of goodness so we don't get the Phineas complex. Because we will go through the next fruit of the Spirit, which is kindness.