Self-Control

I don't know if you've been keeping up with the fires over in Galveston, in Gattlenburg.

I've been keeping up with that. I talked to my brother-in-law last night. He was talking about the Alamo Steakhouse. We were there for the feast one year. We all went to the Alamo Steakhouse. It burnt to the ground. Other, you know, at least 150 houses. There's hundreds of structures that have been burnt. And in watching that and going online and seeing the various videos and so forth that's posted, I kept thinking about the trees, you know, those mountains. Those mountains are so beautiful. And if you've ever seen an area, the Appalachian Mountains, where fires go through sometimes, it can take decades for that to all come back. Of course, there was a lot of fallen leaves. They were all dry. Once it caught fire, you know, they had a hard time controlling it. And I kept thinking, it would be a shame to have some of those mountains probably without trees now. Now, where we lived when we first moved to Texas, back many years ago, was a little town called Uvalde, Texas. Worked at the radio station there. And Uvalde was in West Texas, basically surrounded by mesquite and sagebrush and, you know, purple sage. It really is purple at certain times of the year. But there weren't a lot of big trees. Wherever you'd see trees, that's because there was water. You might see a well in lots of trees, or a creek bed, and trees along the creek bed. In the city of Uvalde itself, there were trees, and trees were really valued. The result was that they would build roads and leave the trees in the middle of the road. The road would just go around the tree. In fact, on the four-lane highway headed into town from San Antonio, if you were headed west on Route 90, there was one point where right in the middle of the two lanes was a huge oak tree. They finally had to cut it down because, obviously, people buzzing along at 60 miles an hour in the middle of the night were running into this tree all the time. But they literally left it in the middle of the road. They did want to cut down the trees because they didn't have a lot of big trees. So finally, they had to take them out of all the major highways. But still to this day, if you go to Uvalde, Texas, there's no reason to go there, you would find roads through the town where there's trees in the middle of the road. It's interesting that in the Bible, David, in one of the Psalms, calls a godly man like a tree. He's like a tree. Let's turn there and take a look at that. Psalm 1. Psalm 1.

He's talking about a godly man, this man who walks in the counsel of God. He doesn't stand in the path of sinners. Verse 1, doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful. Verse 2 says he delights in the law of God. So this is the kind of man he's talking about. Verse 3, he shall be like a tree. This man of God is like a tree planted by the rivers of water, brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also will not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper.

He goes on and complains to the ungodly. They're not like trees, they're just blown around like leaves all over the place. Why would he use this ungodly man as like a tree? And what is the imagery that he's using here? You know, I just finished here a few months ago the series of 11 sermons that I gave on the Ten Commandments. And both in here and in Murfreesboro, when I asked for people to give input for sermons, I've had a request that people said they would like me to cover the fruits of the Spirit.

This is the beginning of a nine sermon series, which will, you know, with other sermons thrown in once in a while, it's going to take us three or four months to get through. But we need to go through all nine of the fruits of the Spirit. And we will go through in each of the sermons also places in the Bible where we see this imagery used, this agricultural imagery, how we are bearing fruit. We are like bushes.

We are like trees. We are like vines. Why are all these images used? It's something very important that God wants us to learn. So here we have David talk about that a tree is planted. One of the lessons we learned from this is that you and I are planted by God. Now people say, oh, I wish God would have called me earlier before I made all my big mistakes.

Or I wish God would have called me later. So I wouldn't have lost my job over the Sabbath. I've literally had people say that. I wish God would have called me at a different time so I can live my life differently, which shows a total misunderstanding of what life is all about. But God calls us when He wants to call us. He plants us where He wants to plant us.

Sometimes we live where we live because God plants us there. Now sometimes He sort of pulls us up, bundles us up, moves us someplace else, too. But we have to realize if we really are following God, and we're going to understand what that really means even a deeper way as we go through these fruits of the Spirit, that we are planted by God where He wants us to be so that He will do in our lives what He wants.

And where are we planted? This is very important. We are planted by living waters. You know what dead water is? I mean, you've been someplace where you've seen water that's stagnant, has bacteria in it. I mean, you can't drink it. It'd kill you.

Animals can't even drink it. You know, they can't even plant anything around the Dead Sea. It won't grow. That water will not nurture life. Dead water will not nurture life. It's useless. Living water, which is properly balanced water, and usually it's moving water, you know, it's stagnant water. It's moving water. And this moving water produces plant life, animal life. It produces life. So the imagery is obvious. A righteous man is like a tree that's planted not next to dead water, but by living water.

As we go through the fruits of the Spirit, we need to understand this concept of living water. Keep a marker here. We'll come back to it. Let's go to John 7. John 7. Something that Jesus Christ said is very important here. Verse 37 of John 7. On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, if anyone thirsts, no one wants, and he's talking about spiritual thirst here, no one wants dead water.

Even if you were dying of thirst, you wouldn't want to drink dead water. People, even salt water. Human life can't live off of salt water. There's lots of people that have been shipwrecked or they're in a raft someplace, and they end up drinking salt water. It kills them. You have to have living water to live. And he's talking about, as in Psalms there, David's talking about a spiritual water. Jesus explains it here. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now, stop here a minute because think of what he's saying. If you are drinking in of this water, it flows out of you. Out of you will flow waters. Out of you will come something. Out of you and me, something will proceed if we are planted and our roots are drinking up this water, something will be produced.

Verse 39, And he spoke concerning the Spirit of those believing in him would receive. For the Holy Spirit was not given because Jesus was not yet glorified. The living water is God's Spirit.

What we're going to talk about in these fruits, we can see parts of these in human life. You can have someone you know and say, wow, they really have this particular part of God's Spirit. But when you look at this as a whole, and you look at all these fruits as a whole, and what is to be produced in our lives, it must be from God. This isn't fruit you get from a Dale Carnegie course. The fruits of, you know, Galen Swetonius, to go back to the first century, his fruits. Actually, Galen was a physician and Swetonius was a writer, but I made up some guy here. You know, we get fruits from their lives. That's what we're just talking about. And it's not something you and I can do on our own. So this must come from God's Spirit. In fact, we have to realize that we can have almost retarded the conversion process. We started to keep the Holy Days. We started to keep the law. We started to do things, the things we should do. That's not all there is to this. Keeping the law was required. It is not all there is. Keeping the Holy Days are required. It is not all there is. God has a conclusion He wants in our lives. And when we begin to understand the fruits of the Spirit, we begin to see the conclusion. We begin to see the goal of what He wants to achieve and what He teaches us in the Scripture. Let's go back to Psalm now. In verse 3 of chapter 1, it says, He is like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth fruit in its season. It must produce something. This living water that flows into us must flow out. God did not give you His Spirit so that you can somehow bottle up His Spirit, hold on to it, and live a life and stay the way you were. You say, well, I don't keep Christmas anymore. That's good. But that's not enough.

Our obedience to God is supposed to produce something. It's supposed to produce fruit that comes from inside of us and comes outward. And as we go through the fruits of the Spirit, it's amazing how every one of them has to do with something that's in the person and then comes outward. It comes out in actions. So let's go to Galatians 5.

The sermon that's a little bit just sort of let in to what I want to talk about here. Galatians 5. Paul starts his discussion about the fruits of the Spirit by first saying, this is what is natural for human beings. So this is what will be naturally produced in our lives. It comes easy for us. So let's start in verse 19. He says, Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. And then the rest of the sentence is very important, of which I tell you beforehand, I've told you this before, just as I also told you in the time past that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now he's talking to the church.

And he says, in all of our lives, oh, we're part of the church, we're okay. We're part of the church where God brings us here, but remember, we're not saved by the church. We are saved by God through Jesus Christ and the receiving of the Holy Spirit. And then put into the church. It's not reversed. Oh, I'm in the church, it means I'm saved. I get salvation through being part of... No, you're put into the church because you've gone through a process in which you're receiving the salvation in which God is working in your life. And this is our natural state.

And then he says in verse 22, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now you say, oh, yeah, those are good things. I like those things. I have some of those things once in a while. Understand. This is the moving point in our Christianity.

This is what we must be moving towards because this is what God's Spirit leads us to. This is the fruit. When we come into a relationship with God, what we have is the fruit of the works of the flesh. Just rotted out fruit all over the tree. And God starts having that fruit dry up and drop off, and He starts new fruit. You say, oh, yeah, well, I sort of like that idea. One of these days, peace is—I don't know what peace means. Well, yeah, I sort of like to be kind, but everybody else is so lousy as how to be hard to be kind. Understand, this is a result of God's Spirit. I don't like long suffering. I don't like that. I finally got to the point where I said, okay, God, I'll accept suffering. Short suffering. Three minutes is okay. Short suffering is all I will take. I want peace and joy and, you know, kindness and jealousy. Okay, I like that stuff, but not the suffering part. Paul said, no, no, no, long suffering, being able to suffer long, is a fruit. It is what God's Spirit produces in someone who is very receptive to His Spirit.

You know what? You know what? Keeping the letter of the Ten Commandments is child's play compared to what we're headed into. We've been through the Ten Commandments. And realize how tough that God is, we went through the Ten Commandments, right? As we went through each commandment. I don't know how many people came up and said, I had no idea that commandment was so broad. Yeah, well, that was just like kindergarten. We're moving into where our next steps are. We do those things in order to have something produced in us. If we think, oh, I keep the Ten Commandments, therefore I am now righteous, how are we any different than the young man that came to Jesus? And he said, keep the commandments that I do. And he said, okay, you'll sell everything you have. He didn't say, no, you don't. He said, okay, you do. Except covetousness. He hadn't figured that one out yet. But these fruits are to be produced in our lives. And remember, they're the fruits of the Spirit. You and I can't do this ourselves. We can create little bits and pieces of it, maybe. You just have a real strong personality. You can do a few things. You can't do what these two verses say. You can't have this produced in your life and the way that God wants to, unless it's God doing it. Because it's not the fruit of your mind. In my mind, it's the fruit of what? Tell me. Spirit. God's Spirit. That's right. It's the fruit of God's Spirit.

The first one then, and we're going to go into verse order. There's a reason for this as we go through it. You'll see. He starts with agape, the love of God. To really understand that one, we have to build through all the rest of them. Now these aren't something you do one at a time. Okay, this year I'm going to work on this one. And next year, no. But you do start at the bottom on this because once you begin to have God unlock the first one, it opens the doors for the other ones. So we've got to go back and start at the starting point, not the end point. And the first one is self-control. Now that's an odd statement. That God's Spirit produces self-control. Wait a minute. It seems like God's Spirit would produce God-control. And it doesn't. It produces self-control. And that tells us something very important about this whole process.

To bear the fruit of God's Spirit, we have to allow God to work in our lives.

In other words, and this is the oxymoron that's part of this, in order to achieve true self-control, I have to give control to God. If it was God-control, He'd just take over your mind and you'd be a robot. But it's self-control. So God's Spirit, you can't have this kind of self-control without God's Spirit. So that means we have to submit to God. And we'll talk a little bit about how we do that. We have to break this down to make it practical. We have to submit to God, and in our submission to God and giving up control, we get more control. It's a very complicated process here. But remember, it all has to do with fruits of God's Spirit. This only comes through Him and our interaction with Him. You know, we live in a world where self-control is not a popular idea. Now, I've never gone shopping on Black Friday. But on Thursday, when I guess all the Black Friday sales start Thursday night, my son-in-law said, I need to go to Walmart. They're having a special sale on computers, and I need to get one. And it was such a great price. So I went with him. What an experience! It was as fun as going to the circus! But there wasn't a lot of self-control going on. He got his computer that he needed, and he bought an old toy for the kids. I bought the Eagles greatest hits.

And we got out of there. You know, we live in a society, the same way in Western Europe, where everybody believes they deserve everything. They deserve the best of everything, and we deserve it right now. It's ours. We own it. It's ours. Good. Give me, give me, give me, give me. And there's no self-control. It reminds me of a story I read many years ago by Leo Tolstoy, the Russian writer. And the name of the story was, How much land does a man need? And the story was about a man who was a peasant in Russia and scraped enough money after years and years of working to buy a piece of land. And he was so happy. And then it got to where it wasn't enough land. So he worked and scraped, and a couple of years later he bought another piece of land. And he did this over a number of years until he became a landowner. And he was sort of middle class. And, you know, he was really somewhat important. And then he found out about this tribe that lived out on the steppe of Russia that was selling land cheap. So he went out there and he found out it was incredible land. Just rich soil, beautiful land, water sources, you know, clumps of trees. This was every man's dream. And he says, How much can I buy and how much is it? And he said, a thousand rubles a day. Which I guess a thousand rubles wasn't an enormous amount of money at the time. A thousand rubles a day? They said, yeah, you start, you pick your starting point and you walk. And whatever land you can walk around and get back to this starting point before sundown is yours. If you get back after sundown, we keep your money. That's incredible. So he planned it out. You know, he'd walk two hours, one direction, two hours, another two hours, you know, make this big square in eight hours and be back. Well, after two hours, he thought, no, I'll just go a little longer. Now I just go a little longer. And then, oh, it's getting real late. He's got to make it now. Well, like, you don't have time to go as far as I want. I'll have to go back this way. It's getting sundown. He's a long way from the starting point. He walked off a huge piece of land, but he could... So he started to run, and he runs, and he runs, and he runs, and he gets to the starting point just as sundown and drops over dead. And the conclusion of the story was, six feet from head to heels was all he needed. The point is, without self-control, what does it mean? He just ran himself to death for no purpose at all. We have to have self-control. All of us are slaves to a lack of self-control one way or another. All of us are. We are slaves to sins. We are slaves to habits. We are slaves to thoughts. We are slaves to emotions. Three things I want to center on a little bit here in this part of the sermon is how we lack self-control in our thoughts, emotions, and habits. Because it's our thoughts, emotions, and habits that produces behavior. This is why we do what we do and how we lack self-control. Now remember, I keep talking about self-control, but we're going to have to learn how this is a fruit of not my spirit, but God's spirit. That God's spirit develops in us self-control. That we are doing what God wants because it's what we want. Something has changed in us. Our nature has changed. This is some of the hardest work we will ever do in life. We have to interact with God's spirit so much that our thoughts, our emotions, our habits are given up so that His ways and His power helps us control what we do.

Why do we get to agape? Why do we get to gentleness? Why do we get to some of the other ones? But you can see as we go through this why you start with this one. I've reversed the order. If I can't start this process, I'll never get to the other fruits.

Thoughts. You know, as I've said before, our behavior is ultimately determined by how we think. Second Timothy 1. How many times do I go to this scripture? This is a scripture I go to quite often in the course of a year. Second Timothy 1 verse 6. Paul reminds Timothy, therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands, the Holy Spirit. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. Now understand, when you receive God's spirit, we receive power. Whose power is it? This is why our understanding that there is no trinity, that the spirit of God is not just some kind of force, either. I remember 50 years ago hearing a sermon where the man compared God's spirit to a power plant where electricity was being produced and sent out into our minds. Uh-uh. Whose power is it, God's? So who does it come from? God. In fact, the scripture says it comes from both God, the Father, and Jesus Christ. Whose love is it? It's not mine. It's not yours. It's God's love. It's the love of Jesus Christ. Therefore, whose mind is it? It's God's mind. It's His mind that comes into us.

And what is that supposed to produce? Fruit. That fruit begins with obedience. That fruit begins understanding His law and His ways and the Holy Days. But it also is supposed to produce something that comes into us and comes out, flows out from us. It is internal. At the core of who we are, something is produced. And it goes to the opposite of what we think and do sometimes. Look at 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 10. 2 Corinthians 10, verse 4.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They're not fleshly things. We are in a spiritual battle for our minds. And the weapons we have are not guns and planes and swords. No, it's spiritual weapons. Carnival, mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity, to the obedience of Christ. And there we have the beginning of understanding self-control. And that is a huge statement. Our goal to have this fruit developed in us is to bring every thought and make it captive by Jesus Christ. Every thought to be what He would think. The secret to the self-control developed by the Spirit is to let our thoughts be captive to Christ. To let Him own them. He said, well, I wouldn't want God to own that thought. I sure wouldn't Christ to hear that thought. He does. They abide in us through the Spirit. So we're looking at self-control through bringing every thought into the captivity of, is this the way Jesus Christ thinks? We better know what is written in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and tells us how Jesus Christ thinks. This is the beginning of the self-control of the Spirit. I can't even know what to think, and I have to go to nowhere to think, and Paul makes it clear, well, He has to be captive to Him.

Is this what He would think? Emotions. Some people think that the key to emotions is not to have any.

If I could just control all of my emotions and be emotionless, I'd be the perfect, you know, perfect being. I could be like Data on Star Trek. Some of you are too young to even know who Data is.

But you know, that's not how God designed us. We have emotions. Unfortunately, because of Satan's influence, we have a lot of negative emotions, too. We are, you know, there's a time when anger is actually a proper emotion. There's a time when grief and sadness are proper emotions. There's all kinds of emotions that are proper in their time and place. There are other emotions that we should never have. And the hatred, emotions that lead us to sins, lead us to actions, lead us to a state of unhappiness. Look at Proverbs 25. You know, you're never really happy if you're controlled by your emotions. And yet when we are controlled by our emotions, why aren't we trying to achieve happiness? We're actually trying to do something that will produce the exact opposite of what we want. So you say, well, I'll just give up emotions. You can't do that either. God doesn't want us to give up emotions. He is an emotional being. It grieved Him that He made humanity. In other words, He actually hurt so much for us, for humanity. He felt grief. Look at His response when they killed Jesus Christ. Physically, the ground shook. That was an emotional reaction from God. His emotional being. But His emotions are always under control, which for you and I is a really good thing. Proverbs 25. First, if you get the Proverbs, it will help. Proverbs 25 verse 28.

Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls. That doesn't mean a lot to you and me, but they lived in a society where walled cities were absolutely necessary. If you live in a small town with no walls, no way to defend yourself, every army come through with what? Steal everything you have, kill people, rape, pillage. Every nomadic tribe coming through would do that to you. Every big band of gang running around through the desert would come through and do it. A walled city was a defenseless place that was constantly under attack from others. And He says, if you can't control your own spirit, and He's talking here about our own emotions, our own thought processes, He says, well, we can't control those. You know what you're like? You're like a city that's constantly being pillaged from things outside because you're always being controlled by what's outside of you. And your inside is always reacting to that, and so you really have no control over anything. That's a remarkable statement, a remarkable understanding of the human state.

That we have to be careful that we aren't an all unwalled city emotionally. And so that we need to learn self-control over emotions with God's help. So it's a spirit-led self-control. He said, well, I'm just going to go control my emotions. Good luck on that.

Yes, just control your emotions all the time. You know, I know people who never show anger and one day die of a heart attack because they held everything in. Showing anger is wrong sometimes. Not dealing with anger properly is bad for you. It's just as wrong. Do not let the sun go down in your wrath. Oh, where did I get that one from? The Bible, that's right. Oh, yeah.

Emotional self-control is being able to express the right emotion at the right time and the right reason. Many times we express the wrong emotion at the wrong time. We have the wrong emotion at the wrong time and the wrong reason. It's being able to control. Ultimately, self-control is about learning to be unselfish. It's when we begin to have God develop this, it is, and we begin to then grow in all the other fruits. But we have to really, I think, almost start with this one. I don't mean you to separate this from the other ones. I mean, this is the gateway to the other ones. I talk about habits as that third area of self-control. Habits are behaviors that are done over and over and over again. So they actually become imprinted on your mind. You know, they talk about teaching children to brush their teeth, you know, and it takes 21 days, or whatever it is. And once they do that, when they get up in the morning, if you get programmed, that's the first thing they need to do. You've actually imprinted a habit in their minds. You and I have habits imprinted on our minds. Good ones and bad ones. The thing is, once in a habit, it's automatically, it's the default response from your brain. It's just how your brain responds. Changing habits are tough. It's what self-control is all about. It's learning to change habits. Because since we have a corrupt human nature, all of us have habits that lead to sins. In fact, sometimes our sins are so habitual, we feel like we can't get out of it. We can never break out of the sin. It's just the way I am. You know, everybody's like, it's just the way I am. I can't change that. I can't help it. I'm just overly sensitive. So that's why I hate everybody. Because everybody treats me so bad. We will actually justify our habitual responses. Self-control is about learning to overcome and change habitual responses. This is why self-control, like all the other fruits of the Spirit, is God doing something and us responding. You can't do it on your own, but you can't lay back and say, okay, God, give me self-control. It doesn't work either. Like a couple, I knew that met each other many, many years ago. They're very attracted to each other. And they're a young couple. And one night, they went out in the backseat of a car or whatever and did something wrong. So what they did was every time they got together, they prayed, God, please don't let us do that again. As they stopped at the same place and got into the backseat of the car, and it failed over and over and over again. We have to understand that to break habits, and I mean, their hearts were right. They could not control what was going on. This is why one of the greatest principles for dealing with sinful habits is run away. Right? Flea. How many times the Bible say, flee people who tell you lies. Flea sexual immorality, which Joseph literally did. He said, well, if Joseph would have had better self-control, he just said, sorry, I know that you're the most beautiful woman in the world, but no. Sorry, putting your arms around me like that and kissing my ear means nothing. Sorry, but boy, do you smell good. He understood. You know what self-control is at this point? Run away.

We're told to flee all kinds of evil, flee idolatry, flee useful lust. In fact, in Timothy, Paul tells Timothy to flee the love of money. Flee it. He says, if you don't, you'll get addicted to it. It'll become a habit.

Remember that. When you hear something say, run away, that's probably God's Spirit telling you exactly what to do. Turn the TV off. Turn the computer off. Turn this off. Don't do this. Don't go there. Don't go there. Don't go there. But, you know, I probably shouldn't go there. Okay. I'll go. So, a friend comes up and says, hey, we want to go out to this bar. I probably shouldn't go there. That's not a good place to be. I won't go there. No, I can't go there. Oh, come on. No, no. Just for a drink. Okay, I wonder. And where are you now? No? Run away. And those cues you are hearing, and sometimes feeling, that is God saying, let me produce some fruit in you, child.

Let's get some self-control going on here. And we have to respond to that. Proverbs 25, 16 is the perfect, simple statement of self-control. Proverbs 25, 16.

Solomon says, have you found honey? I love honey. And we have a big jar of organic honey all the time, and I just, that's what I eat. Try to stay away from sugar, you know, eat right. But then think of this. Have you found honey? Eat only as much as you need, unless you be filled with it and vomit. Too much of a good thing, uncontrolled a good thing becomes, what, a bad thing. And that's a perfect little summation of self-control. Avoid the bad and be balanced with the good. But then we also have to be reminded by what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9. 1 Corinthians 9. Now, this is a passage that is read so many times that we hear it all the time. Read it all the time. But it's so powerful. Let's not let this become a cliché. Paul says, do you not know, verse 24 of 1 Corinthians 9, do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize, run in such a way that you may obtain it? And everyone who competes with the prize is temperate in all things. He says, we have to learn. He's telling the people of Corinth, you're going to have to learn some self-control here, but it is a product of God's Spirit. It is submitting to God. You say, well, how do... Explain how what do you mean? You've got to submit to God. He doesn't control you, but by submitting to God, you get self-control? Yeah. Because in this moment, and the story of Joseph pops into your mind, what is that? At that moment, that's God's Spirit saying, this is what you do. And if you do that, you've now submitted and you've learned self-control. The next time, it may be a little easier. But who gave it to you? God.

His Spirit's there. And the more you reinforce what doing right, the easier it is to do it, because the stronger God's mind is in you. The less you reinforce it, the easier it is to push it away. He's still there telling you what to do. We're just ignoring it. He's still there telling us, don't do that, don't do that, popping into your mind. You know, if I go to H&R Block this year, and they say, you owe more taxes. First thing I'll say is, I don't know, Mr. Trump said I wouldn't have to pay more taxes. Now I'll say, you know, my emotion will be, I don't want to pay taxes. I mean, I paid my share, why do I have to pay more? And then I'll write out the check. Why? Why not go with my emotion? Because what'll pop into my mind is, Jesus said, pay your taxes. Right? Now God's Spirit has brought in the thought, I must bring every thought into subjecting, the captivity of Jesus Christ, that's what Jesus said, that's what He wants me to do. I must now emotionally submit to that, and I'll write a check. See what I mean? It's God doing something, but self-control, it's not God just saying, I'm going to control you, I'm going to teach you self-control, and the more of my Spirit that you submit to, the more power you have. The more power we have to control these issues, the closer we are to God, and let that mind and that power and that love come into us.

Where am I here? Be temperate at all things. Now they do it to obtain an imperishable crown, but we do it to obtain an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty. And I find this interesting. Remember, He's talking in context to the people in Corinth, of the Olympian games. They had seen wrestlers and runners and boxers. That was all part of their culture. The Greeks were people who believed the gymnastics and athletics and the development of the body. That's why they produced so many statues of the perfect bodies, because that was one of the goals of life. They have a perfect body to be athletic, to be strong, to do things. This was part of their whole culture. So He hits them with a cultural reference that they would have understood. You want that laurel reef?

Okay, they do it for a laurel reef. You're doing this for the Kingdom of God. And you've got to run. And you know all runners train.

And He says, in all fighters, He says, thus I fight, not as one who beats the air, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection. That's what I have preached to others. I, myself, should become disqualified. He's not a shadow boxer. My opponents just stand there looking at me, and I just keep punching the air. That's not what I do. He says, I learned how to fight. Self-control is learning how to fight the spiritual battle.

It's learning how to fight the spiritual battle that you and I fight every day and letting God help us win. You and I have failed too many times because we're still trying to do this on our own. And you and I cannot do this on our own. It is not possible. It is God in us that makes us possible. And is that submission to that? Even our self-control isn't enough. That's what I find so ironic about this. Well, I'll just have more willpower. It won't produce the self-control of the fruit of God's Spirit. More willpower can't get you there. God's willpower can. Understand that. God's willpower can get you there. So you better let Him be in you doing this. We're submitting. And in it, this fruit, the little fruit, it starts using it as a very small bud. When fruit comes out, you don't have a great big pear right away. Oh, look, we've got some blossoms out there, right? It starts and it just grows. That's the way the fruit of the Spirit is. But as these fruits grow, all those fruits of the flesh start drying up and dropping off. You can't have a tree that has complete fruit of the Spirit and complete fruit of the flesh. It's not possible. So as we grow in one, the others start to wither. The more we grow in the Spirit of God and the fruits of the Spirit, the more the other fruits start to wither. That's what we want to see God doing in our lives. Now I want to break this down and make it practical.

What do we do to deal with issues of self-control? First thing, be honest with yourself and admit you lack self-control. You know, it's funny, in AA, and I'm not always espousing AA, some AA chapters are good and some are not good. But I will say this, some of their principles are very good. And one of them is, you have to stand up and say, I'm an alcoholic. In other words, you never move forward until you admit, I don't have any control over this. I have lost control. And I just have more willpower. I say, no, you won't. You'll still fall down. It takes more than willpower. It takes God's willpower in us to do all the things He wants in us. We're submitting to His willpower. So be honest with yourself and admit your lack of self-control. Now, once you admit it to yourself, confess it to God in prayer and fasting. And it's not like He doesn't know, but He tells us to confess. It's an actual command to confess. Be specific in asking God for help. Ask Him to give you the power to overcome. Now remember, that doesn't mean the fruit may appear the next day completely there, right? Yeah, I've been a heroin addict for 10 years. Prayed, confessed, tomorrow, it's all gone. Well, if that happens that way, which by the way, I've actually talked to a few people, or things like that have happened, God has blessed you. Usually it's a lot harder than that. Usually it's a lot harder than that.

But we've at least gone to God and said, I know this, I acknowledge it now. Now, help me, because I can't do it. It's your first steps. Then, study what the Bible says about self-control and your specific problems. You know, I have to admit, I really like studying about the resurrections, and I really like giving sermons and Bible studies about the resurrections, and we need to. I mean, the basic doctrines, without those, we really have no church. But, it's a whole lot more fun than studying covetousness, or envy, or resentment. Because I got those, and I'd rather talk about the resurrections.

Sometimes you have to go to the Bible and say, what does it say? Because in all of these issues, there is in the Bible instructions on how to overcome these issues. Now, the problem is, sometimes we don't like the instructions. We want a different way out.

But God, this person really mistreated me. I'm angry with them. I hate them. God says, okay, the anger at this point is okay, stop hating. But God, you haven't punished them yet. And God's answer is, yeah, I'll take care of the punishment part. You stop hating them. I'll stop hating them when you punish them. Now we're bargaining with God and determining how He's going to punish someone. You know what? When you do that, just remember, there may be somebody bargaining with God about how He should punish you.

Maybe that's what the other person is doing towards you. So what we have to do is realize that we have to look at what the Bible says about that particular problem. You have, you have, I have. Is it easy to look at other people's sins and say, wow, how come they can overcome that? That's okay. Because if we all knew your sin, there'd be somebody who's saying, how come they can overcome that? So you deal with yourself. This is about self-control. It's not about other people. Analyze what character and personality traits and past experience have led you to have this lack of self-control. Now, I'm not saying you go back and then stay there. I'm saying sometimes it, it helps. You know, you sit down with somebody and they said, I've been addicted to tobacco for 30 years and I can't stop. I can't stop. And here's the first thing I'll ask him is, when did you have your first cigarette? I was six years old and Uncle Bob, well, I didn't want it, stuck it in my mouth and I haven't smoked it ever since.

So why did you smoke to begin with? Why do you smoke now? Why do you have this addiction? So we know why now. As we begin to know why, we can begin to maybe help that person find the scripture to tell them where to go.

What we're going through today is the most important information to help you overcome your sins. It's also the most important information to help you in all your relationship problems. See, I can give lots of marriage principles or family principles or how to deal with conflict between brethren. But unless the fruits of the Holy Spirit is being developed in those people, most of what is taught won't be producing anything. The more we have the fruits as we go through these fruits, the easier it is to take the biblical instructions and apply them. The more we don't have the fruits of God, the harder it is to take biblical instructions and apply them.

So then analyze what you must do to change both your thinking and behavior. Now remember where you started? Acknowledging the problem, going to God, studying the Bible, and thinking about, how did I get here? Now you can start saying, how do I get out of it? But only because you've gone to God and studied the Bible. Only because you went there first. Make a plan. Measure your progress. Once again, we go back to AA. I've met a lot of people, and before long they say, yeah, I've had a drug problem. You know the first question I ask you? Ask him, how long have you been clean? And he's thinking of a smile, and they say, eight months, four days, they're measuring their progress. Well, I went 10 years, fell off the wagon, but I've been back on it for two years. They're measuring their progress. They're not talking about the little time they fell off. They're talking about the time they haven't used. How long have you been clean? How long have you been sober? It's not like they don't want to tell you. They want to tell you, usually. Because why? I've done something here of value, especially if they know God did something in me. This is the way we should approach all of our sins and get support from others. You know, that's one of the reasons we have a congregation here. Every one of us have problems we need others to talk about. Now, sometimes it can't be a person in the congregation. Maybe it's a family member. Sometimes it's a friend. Sometimes it might be an organization that helps you with the drug problems. But the thing is, to overcome things, we need help. We need accountability.

I know people that have paid people, paid people, to get them out of bed in the morning.

Wrestle them out of bed, because they wouldn't get out of bed.

I've, you know, that seems awful drastic to me, but people say, no, I've got to be accountable. You know, I've known cases where men and women had certain issues in their lives, and there were other men and women, they held accountable. Those people called them on a regular basis and said, how are you doing? And they knew if the person was lying or not. They actually knew if they were lying or not. They could tell. Yet support from others. That's not a sign of weakness, by the way. There's issues in my life. I have others that I go to, other ministers. Usually it has to do with my thinking. I get pretty grandiose thoughts sometimes. So I get a call someone every once in a while and say, hey, I have a new interpretation of the buy of this passage, only to have them tear it apart, shoot it down, and tell me what an idiot I am. And that's okay! That's okay! Because that's what we all need. Accountability.

Accountability. By the way, I haven't come up with anything new yet. I keep trying. Now, I made a comment at the first part of this sermon that when we submit to God's Spirit, so that God's Spirit is producing this kind of self-control in us, we receive freedom. They go, freedom? What's that? Freedom from what? Let's think about some of the things you would like to be free from. How about freedom from selfishness and being controlled by emotions of anger, hatred, resentment, jealousy, and feelings of worthlessness. Anyone here want to keep all those? I don't. I like to give up every one of them. God's Spirit begins to free us from these things. If we are controlled by these things, we're not bearing one of the fruits of God's Spirit. Now, I'm not saying you don't struggle with them from time to time. As human beings, we can struggle with all these things from time to time. We're talking about being controlled. This is your life. This is how you feel all the time. You're angry. You're frustrated. You're filled with resentment. You have envy towards everybody. You're jealousy. Well, that's not God's Spirit. Those are all issues of lack of self-control. Well, there are other issues, too. But as we go through the... All the fruits of the Spirit are also connected to each other. You can't really separate them. You just sort of get a starting point. Freedom from despair. Because we know that our present suffering is necessary for the great rewards Christ will bring with Him when He returns. He doesn't say freedom. I'm not saying freedom from pain or hurt, discouragement. We all suffer that. We all suffer those kinds of feelings. This is absolute despair, despondency. Why? Because when we get to long suffering, that's the point. What we learn at times through suffering is faith in God. This has to do with self-control. So you can't separate... Once every one of these we go through have an element of self-control in it that comes from submitting to God. Freedom from hatred of proper authority because we've accepted God's ownership. The example of me paying my taxes, perfect example. I will not resent the taxes I pay because Jesus told me to pay Him. So, okay. I can now, even though I think the authority is wrong, I submit to it. Because it doesn't tell me to do something against God. Why? Because God owns me. That's why.

Because God owns me. So I don't have to worry about someone else's misuse of power. Freedom from broken relationships. Until we learn certain levels of self-control through God's Spirit leading us there, we will always have broken relationships. Because we'll respond to each other through anger or disappointment or, in other words, responding in a negative emotion. You never measure up. You're not good enough. I don't love you. Just negative emotional response to everything, which destroys relationships. Absolutely destroys them. Freedom from the bondage of being controlled by our own bodies, including immoral sexual practices and gluttony and those kinds of things. And this is where we have real trouble in our society, too, because these things are acceptable. In fact, at times they're glamorized, right? I mean, wasn't that part of the... I mean, you know, when Sean Connery was James Bond, started that whole franchise, Watt was one of the things that attracted everybody to that, at least men. He could drink as much as he wanted. He could beat up anybody he wanted to. And he could have as many women as he wanted to.

Oh, isn't that cool?

So this is ingrained in our society. Freedom from compulsive entertainment, where we enjoy vicarious sin. We have to control the amount of television and video games that we can just inundate us. Freedom from that is self-control. Freedom from needing to control others. The more self-control we have through the leadership of God's Spirit, the less need we have to always be in control of other people. Freedom from the bondage of chemicals like alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. The fruits of the Spirit help us break those habits. Freedom from the bondage of the wrong use of time. Now this list could go on and on. I just created this list to show if we start to put in place that this fruit is being developed in us by God's Spirit, that we're taking these things to God, we're confessing, we're studying, we're fasting, we're asking for His help, and then we implement what He says, and we become sensitive to His prompting, sensitive to His Spirit as He tells us what to do. As God says, don't do this, do this. As the Scriptures come to mind, oh yeah, that's what we're supposed to do. Yeah, that's what Jesus said. Yeah, I remember when Paul said that. I remember that law. As those things happen to us and we respond to them, self-control becomes easier and easier. But we throw those prompts out because as long as we stay in the flesh, it's easier to be lazy. It's easier to do the same old things with the same old people, with the same misuse of alcohol. It's easier to do whatever, fill in the blank. It's easier to waste our times with our families because we're surfing the net. Now there's a term probably a lot of people don't even know what that means. How many don't know what surfing the net means? Oh wow, must be a lot of people from the 80s in here. No, we couldn't surf the net till it must have been close to the year 2000 before we could surf the net. But when we have this self-control that God develops in us and we receive freedom, when we think though that what human nature tells us, that self-control keeps us from doing what we really want, human nature believes that submission to God's way and God's prompting and God's teachings and God's law brings about slavery. The truth is that self-control, the discipline to put ourselves under His guidance, is the only way out of this mess and is one of the fruits of God's Spirit. It is one of the traits of His character because all the fruits of His Spirit are traits of Him. It is one of the traits that He wants to develop in us. And once we learn the doctrines, and once we learn the laws, we move forward into the mind of Christ. And it's the fruits of the Spirit that we really begin to understand the mind of Christ, the mind of Christ. So next time, we'll start with the second of the fruits of the Spirit.