There are many today who claim to be living a spirit-filled or spirit-led life, and they demonstrate it by some sensational or remarkable and sometimes even miraculous means.   But IS THAT THE GOLD STANDARD… the ultimate proof that a person is really being controlled or moved along by the SPIRIT of God?

Actually, it is not.  The ultimate proof does not even lie in a demonstration of the gifts of the Spirit, whether that is tongues or healing or prophecy or others as the Bible defines those.  In 1 Corinthians, a body of believers who were apparently demonstrating works done by the Holy Spirit were critiqued by Paul as not showing a true Christian character and lifestyle.

No, the ultimate evidence that a person is being controlled by the Spirit is not sensational acts.   It’s not even something that a TV ministry would be built around.

Quite simply, it’s fruit.  Is there fruit?  Jesus said clearly you will know His authentic followers by the fruit demonstrated in their lives.  Fruit is not attendance numbers, or numbers of converts, or social media followers.  Largeness in a ministry is sometimes a blessing from God, and sometimes not.

And make no mistake.  Jesus gave an unbelieving world the RIGHT to judge the followers of Christ using this metric:  Does their personal and private character match the character of the Savior?  If it doesn’t, this person is to be rejected as deceptive at worst or inauthentic or maybe self-deceived at best.  “By their fruit you will know them….” (Matthew 7:20)

Spiritual fruit.  The fruit proves a connection to the Vine, who is Jesus.  Far too many gullible Christians are swept up in a search for sensational signs and wonders, whether or not the person performing the miraculous signs demonstrates evidence of this fruit.  We would save ourselves heartache and the church much dishonor if we would take this simple test seriously.  No fruit… no follow.  It’s that easy.  No matter how much charisma, or popularity, or charm the individual may have.  Whatever it is it is not from Jesus if fruit is not also in evidence.

You have every right, and in fact, a responsibility to examine those who are in positions of spiritual leadership for evidence of that fruit.  And you have every right to call any leader out who is showing signs of being out of step with the Spirit and living a fruitless life…

…even the one writing this to you!

In 2006 we moved from Switzerland to our house in Fruit Cove.  It was early spring when we moved in, and a full crop of oranges hung off our only fruit tree.  And each year after,  hundreds of ripe oranges filled it.

Two years ago, the crop was a little more sparse.  McCail and I enjoyed throwing the hard and mostly rotting fruit over the fence into the woods behind my house to feed the deer.  But this year… nothing.  Just ugly, gnarled sticks and a few sprigs of leaves.  Now it’s ugly… and fruitless.  And it illustrates the question made by a man about a tree in one of Jesus’ parables:  “Why cumbereth it the ground?”

So this year, my orange tree will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  It’s not even a pretty tree.  It’s just… fruitless, and the odd orange that does show up is not edible.  I’m not going to allow it to “cumbereth” the ground.  Now no doubt I killed it… don’t send me links to information on how to grow fruit.  I’m gettin my fruit the normal way… in a bag from Walmart!

But it’s kind of sad isn’t it?  To have a tree that is supposed to bear fruit but doesn’t?

Something of this sorrow is captured in the Old Testament when God refers to Israel as a vine He planted but when He came to examine it, there was no fruit or at best, sour grapes.

“Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes....For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!”   (Isaiah 5:1-2, 7 ESV)

Jesus picks up the imagery again in John 15:1-5

“”I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.   Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

(John 15:1-2, 4-5 ESV)

We are the branches that are supposed to be connected to the vine and “abide” (stay connected) to it.  If we aren’t, we’re just taking up space.  God looks at us when we don’t bear fruit like I look at my dead fruit tree in the backyard.  He’s disappointed.  Even heartbroken.

We are meant to bear fruit.  One writer explains it this way:

“Fruit is the result of a long organic and living process.  The process is complex and intricate.  Fruits are not something made, manufactured or engineered.  They are the result of a life of faith created by God.  We do not produce fruit by our own effort.  We do not purchase it from another.  It is not a reward for doing good deeds, like a merit badge, a gold medal, a blue ribbon.  Fruits are simply there.”

Fruit is outward evidence of an inner, invisible power and reality.  When we are fruitful, we are giving external proof that our profession of faith is the real thing.  We have the Holy Spirit living in us, working the fruit out.  As I told you last week, what you are inside will come out of you.  Especially when you get squeezed.  Whatever your cup is filled with is going to come out when you get tipped over.  The pressures and problems of life are opportunities to prove what you possess within you.  This is why we are reminded to be “filled with the Spirit…”

The question this leaves before us  today is an important one:  ARE YOU?

There is a “religion” that is pleasing to God, according to The Letter of James. It is characterized by caring for (“visiting”) the orphan and widow in their affliction and second, to “keep ourselves unspotted from the world.

He describes both an outward activity (not religious ritual or even faithful attendance at worship), but caring for those marginalized by society.

Then, inwardly, we are to guard ourselves from worldly pollution.  Both are necessary to be accepted by God.

STAND Sunday is an opportunity for us to demonstrate the integrity of our religion through our commitment to caring for children in foster care or in need of adoption.

You will meet many families in our church who have done that.   You will be given opportunity to move in that direction yourself if God so leads.

But above all else, we will be about STANDING with those who have moved to embrace children without families who can care for them.  And on this day we will be called to STAND together with those who are of special concern to the Father.

I look forward to seeing you on this special day!

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”  James 1:27 ESV

A few years ago, comedian/commentator Steven Colbert coined a word to describe how issues of truth and falsehood were being handled in our culture. The word was “truthiness.” It became Harvard Dictionary’s “Word of the Year.”

“Truthiness” is truth without backbone, sentences without meaning, words that mean, as the famous “Cheshire Cat” said, “exactly what I want them to mean.”

How do we move, think, and even communicate in a culture where the foundations have eroded so badly?

As we have lost truth in our culture as a solid reality, everything else around it becomes liquid. Today, young people speak of being “fluid” in their sexuality. The word “sex” or “gender” now mean “exactly what we want them to mean.”

The truth that Jesus spoke about, however, was robust. Unchanging. Life-altering. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” There is a power that comes with truth.

Truth tears down strongholds, and sets captives free. Falsehood erodes our minds, our relationships, and our country. Russia learned this in their failed effort to hide the truth about the Chernobyl disaster from their own countrymen and the world. Boris Gorbachev, in a later memoir, said the Chernobyl disaster and resulting coverup led directly to the fall of the Iron Curtain.

A nation without the truth drowns in the resulting “liquidity.” An individual without truth drowns in their own falsehood and efforts to cover the lie. When we reject the truth, Paul said, “we believe a lie.” And we believe many lies today.

“The truth is out there,” the old X-Files television series would repeat. It is. Not in outer space, but much, much nearer.

It is found in Him Who is “the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life.” The truth, not “truthiness,” can be found in a relationship with one person.

His name is Jesus.

Holding on to Contagious Joy

Philippians 4:10-23

With this message, we will bring our series on Philippians to a conclusion.  It’s been a very odd time to preach on joy.  Every news headline seemed to fly in the face of the text I would be preaching the next week.

Life was normal when we started this series in February:  The coronavirus was something that barely got a news headline.  It was, at that time, happening “over there” in another world.  The economy had not upended.  We were able to gather in our church sanctuary without masks and meet in our Bible studies face-to-face.  Students were in school classrooms, not at home working from the kitchen table.  Or maybe now, YOU’RE working from the kitchen table at home and that’s your “new normal.”

But we’ve been talking about contagious joy over these months of drastic change.  In Philippians, there are 14 uses of the word JOY:

• I always pray with JOY because of this
• I REJOICE
• I will continue to REJOICE
• your progress and JOY in the faith
• your JOY in Christ Jesus
• make my JOY complete
• I am glad and REJOICE
• you too should be glad and REJOICE with great JOY
• REJOICE in the Lord!
• my JOY and crown
• REJOICE in the Lord always I will say it again: REJOICE!
• I REJOICE greatly in the Lord

Now if you are tending to get down, read those fourteen verses out loud to yourself and I can almost guarantee they’ll get you in a better frame of mind.  I say that because I’ve done it!  It works, even writing them out.

If we’ve learned one thing, I hope it is that we understand joy has nothing to do with our emotions or our life circumstances.  Joy comes independently of those things, although our emotional mindset or distressing circumstances will choke our joy out if we let them.

And to a degree we must CHOOSE joy, remembering that it is not just a decision we make.  The joy that Jesus offers is something He wants to give, and we must want to receive, but there are some things we must do to hang on to it.  So, let’s hear Paul’s closing words to the Philippians today in the last 13 verses of Chapter 4.

Hanging on to joy means:

We must learn to prize contentment

Let’s remind ourselves one last time that Paul was not writing this from the deck of yacht or a cruise ship in the Caribbean.  He was in prison, either in Caesarea Philippi or Rome.  He was awaiting possible execution and chained by the wrist to a Roman guard all day long.

. . by great endurance, by afflictions, by hardship, by difficulties, by beatings, by imprisonments, by riots, by labors, by sleepless nights, by times of hunger . . . (2 Cor 6:4-5)

Three times I was shipwrecked. I have spent a night and a day in the open sea. On frequent journeys, I faced . . . hardship, many sleepless nights, hunger, and thirst, often without food, cold, and lacking clothing. (2 Cor 11:25-27)

He could rightly have said, and we would have understood, that, “under the circumstances I’m doing alright.”  Now I hear some folks “catch” us when we say something like this: “Well the Christian shouldn’t live under the circumstances.  You should live OVER them.”

That is a Christian cliché.  How do you live OVER circumstances? You are IN your circumstances.  Now we shouldn’t live washed away by the pain and tribulation of life.  God never intends that.  But humanly speaking, your circumstances are where you live, and sometimes what you must endure.

A more authentic reply is, “I’m pressing on in spite of my circumstances, and learning to find victory in them.”  Joy is not about learning how to “float above” life without being affected by it.  That is what Buddhism teaches is possible.  It isn’t.  You’re going to be swamped by the waves of life sometimes.  But you don’t have to drown in them.  WE read a moment ago in verse 13 “I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength.”

By the way, that verse is probably one of the most misquoted verses in the New Testament.  In context, the verse is saying “after learning to be content in little and learning to be content in much, and even now sitting in a prison cell on trial for my life, I now know that Jesus is enough.”  The Stoic philosophers of Paul’s day taught the virtue of self-sufficiency.  Paul was teaching the contentment that comes with CHRIST-SUFFICIENCY!

It’s not saying “I’m going to go be a Christian athlete…I can do all things…”  It’s not saying, “I’m going to go be a brilliant and wealthy Christian businessman or woman.”  Those statements still rest a lot of the heavy lifting on you…what YOU are going to do…. what YOU are going to accomplish.  He is saying “whether my life circumstances are good or bad, high or low, rough or easy, Jesus is all I need.”  “I can do (bear) all things through Christ Who strengthens me.”  This is Christ-sufficiency.  Jesus is always enough.

Contentment, we learn here, is independent of what we are going through in the moment.  “I have learned to live with plenty, and with nothing.”  Later in 1 Timothy 6 we pick up on contentment again where Paul tells those with plenty that “godliness with contentment is great gain.”

Three things that might help us:

1. Contentment must be LEARNED.  It doesn’t just fall on you.
2. Contentment is a SECRET.
3. Contentment is independent of our circumstances or possessions.

Again, Christian joy and contentment do not come through what we have, or through what we lose.  Now understand, this is not about becoming stoic and phlegmatic or just learning to be self-sufficient.  It’s about becoming fully dependent upon the sufficiency of Christ, and nothing and no one else… because everything, and everyone you have…can be taken from you.

“If we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” (1 Tim 6:8)

We must learn to practice gratitude

A part of the motivation for the Philippian letter was to thank the church for a financial gift they sent.  By the way, your gratitude to God at some point will take the form of what you give.  Giving should never be about fund raising for the church.  It is always about worshipping as an expression of our gratitude.

They were showing their gratitude for what the Apostle had done for them.  They understood the cost he paid for starting their church.

But from this, Paul helped us understand the importance of our giving.  We never give because God needs our money.  We never give to “pay” someone’s salary.  And we don’t give so we can get our way.  We give…. get this…. because we NEED to give:

1). To overcome the grip of covetousness that money has on us.  Jesus said our life does not consist of the things we possess.   The bottom line in our bank account does not guarantee quality of life, or absence of it.

2). To demonstrate our gratitude for what God has done.  We’ve been able to help keep our mission partners moving forward by your generosity.  But God keeps the records.  “I want a gift that will be credited to your account,” Paul said.

I am incredibly grateful for your faithfulness to continued stewardship during this time of being separated and shut down by the pandemic.  It is not the case in every church.  I am encouraged and blessed that you are continuing to demonstrate mature stewardship, which partly means you don’t just give when you are here.  You give even when you can’t be.

We also need to take heart in understanding the verse that says, “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”  When we give gratefully, we are saying “I believe that God will supply all my needs and will continue to do so.”

We are laying hold of that truth that our income, our possessions, our needs are not simply met because we work hard or have a great job or a great boss.  We have a great God Who owns everything!  “It is He Who gives us strength to get wealth.” If we really believe that we will not struggle with giving.

So, gratitude is not about simply being polite.  It is not just a nice habit to build into our children or into ourselves, although I really hope you are teaching that to your children.  I look at a child that is grateful and, without even knowing the parents, I think, “That child is being raised well.” Folks we are either living as grateful people, or as entitled ones.  Giving is a lifestyle choice that involves everything we have.

“When I survey the wondrous cross” contains a stanza which states,

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small
Love so amazing, so Divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all. 

We must learn to prioritize community

We need each other.  We truly cannot, nor should we try, to do this alone.  Circumstances may shut us up alone; lockdowns may keep us at home to avoid illness, our groups may not be able to meet face-to-face.  But all of us have learned through these hard days that community is essential.  We need each other!   Paul mentioned “the brothers with me” and “those of Caesar’s household” in his farewell.

I’ll admit it. I’m over summer. It’s been terrible in many ways for some, and intolerable for others. Who would have thought that we would go through summer breathing through cloth masks?  So usually by the first week of August or so, I’m ready for something to look like fall.

Guess I’ll have to settle for pictures though. I don’t have a “leaf trip” to the mountains planned. And nothing changes in Florida, except the daytime highs drop to the upper eighties instead of the mid-nineties.

Maybe it’s not just fall I’m rushing. I’m kind of over 2020. I’m trying to be optimistic that 2021 will be a much better year, but it may have its own level of awful too.

But I want to see kids buying school supplies, and I’m actually kind of excited to have to be waiting on big yellow school buses to start picking up and letting off their eager payload of students. I want to see ONE leaf turn! Just ONE! Anything to say we are moving forward and making progress. Bring on the pumpkin spice scented face masks!

Ok that’s my rant. It’s wrong. We shouldn’t wish our lives away like that. Every day we have on God’s earth is precious, even though not always easy. Each day has its own “new mercies” if we’ll stay tuned in for them. (Lamentations 3:23)

And, as Christians, we are to “redeem the time,” not wish it away. We have an opportunity TODAY, whatever our circumstance, to make Christ known; to enjoy the grace of living in our Creator’s world; to serve a person in the Name of Jesus.

Who knows? This may be our last day… or many, many more years lie ahead of us. Whatever God chooses (since He has “numbered our days”), let it not be said we wasted or wished one away.

Let’s live for Jesus

THE CONTAGIOUS JOY OF A PASSIONATE PURSUIT

PHIL 3:12-21

“Not that I have already obtained this (vv 10-11) or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own (“apprehended”  “laid hold of”) .   Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.  Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

Florence Chadwick, the first woman to swim the English Channel, decided in 1952 that she wanted to swim from Catalina Island to the California coast, about 26 miles. No woman had ever done that before. It was very foggy when she started her swim, and she couldn’t see. After 15 hours in the water (yes, you read that right), she looked up at her mother in the little boat beside her and said, “Mama, I can’t make it; I can’t go any further.”

Her mother tried to encourage her, but, after swimming for another 55 minutes, she gave up and got in the boat.  A couple minutes later, she discovered she was half a mile from the coastline.  When asked later why she quit, Chadwick said, “It was because I couldn’t see anything. If I could’ve just seen the coastline, I know I would have made it.”

Two months later, she got back in the water, and not only did she swim from Catalina Island to California, but she also beat the women’s world record for that distance.

And the men’s.  By two and a half hours.

Interestingly, the second time she swam, it was even foggier than the first time. She could not see anything. When reporters asked her about it afterward, she said, “I was ready this time. And it’s really simple: I kept a picture in my mind of the shoreline. Even though I could not see it with my eyes, it was ever before me. I never lost sight of the California shoreline, and so I felt like I was always closing in on it. As long as I lived for the picture in my mind, I could keep slogging through the fog of my challenge.”

What is “the picture in your mind” that you are running toward?  Is there an overarching goal, an all-consuming passion that encourages you when you are weary, and picks you up when you’re discouraged?  What’s awaiting you when you get where you are going?  Goal… life not just journey

In this part of Philippians, Paul is telling us what it was that drove him forward through trials and difficulties and pain and deprivation and persecution.  It was what kept him focused on the race when a normal person would have dropped out.   One author called this paragraph “an explosion of spiritual longing.”

Sometimes the fog of our circumstances, or even our being blinded by pain or seduced by the pleasures of the flesh or of this world, are enough to keep us from the joy God has for us; from the glory of finishing the race God has called us to run.

From this part of the letter, God’s Word points us to three things that need to keep us oriented to the goal set before us.

First, we see the importance of:

Pressing On:  This One Thing

We have notoriously short attention spans.  Microsoft research discovered that human attention span has dropped from 12 second to now about 8 seconds.  Your little goldfish flitting around in its bowl, on it’ way ultimately to that great white Bowl in your bathroom, has an attention span of 9 seconds!  You know why?  Because goldfish don’t own cell phones!

We cannot focus.  We have become spiritually ADD.  I am rushing this morning because, well, I’ve already lost some of you.  Our sermons, due to moving to digital services, have to kind of wrap up in about twenty-five minutes.  Let’s be real.  If you’re sitting down in front of your computer screen or gathered around your radio while you’re watching us this morning, you’re a minority.

But the price we pay for trying to give attention to so many things at once has a spiritual consequence.  It is the inability to find the ONE THING God wants us to focus on.  This one thing…   Paul said, “I press on…”. I am running toward one goal, not many.  His goal?  “The high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”  Few men were more productive than Paul, but he was productive because he knew what his priority, his “one thing” was. We try to do so much in an anxiety-ridden hurry.  CS Lewis said, “the future is something every person reaches at 60 minutes per hour, no matter who he is or what he does.”

Paul was reflecting back on the day in his life when the risen Christ “seized” him; “apprehended” him like one who was running away; but it is stronger.  He “seized me” with the intent of “owning” me.

Paul could be joyful because he knew his “one thing.” He did not chase squirrels.  He did not get distracted.  When you know the “one thing,” that allows you to say yes to important things and no to things that are just distractions.  When you know the length that God went to pursue you, to “apprehend you” and then to “own you,” it pushes every other priority out of your heart.

Maybe you had that at one time.  You were awe-struck that God would “seize” you and “own” you, but you’ve let other priorities and other problems and struggles squeeze the wonder out of you.

Letting Go:  What Lies Behind

Moving forward in the way Paul describes for us is dependent upon our ability to do one thing well.  But doing one thing well-meant letting go of a lot of other pursuits, and labors, and even some of earth’s joys.  Our brains really don’t forget anything.  We are capable of creating 80 memories per second for 75 years.

If you are going to pursue Olympic gold, you have your goal set clearly before you.  But pursuing that goal means you have to let go of a lot of other things that distract.  Olympic athletes do not participate in much of normal life that a middle or high school young person would know.  You “let go” of that.  You don’t go binge on pizza, or attend prom, or kill a Friday night at a ball game.  When you find that one special person in your life, you “let go” of all the other options and opportunities.

So, you set your goal.   You run.  You swim.  You ski.  You practice and give up sleep to do that.  You eat an Olympic diet, not filled with junk food.  You let go of the things that would hold you back.  You say “no” to things other people say “yes” to.

But it’s not just that.  Paul was talking here about letting go of accomplishments from the past, and of pleasures in the present, but also of past regrets and disappointments.

“Besetting” sins are sins that entangle you and keep you from running the race well.  (Hebrews 12). Sometimes it’s the guilt of those sins that hampers us. When we drive, at least when we drive cars that don’t have backup cameras, we use the rear-view mirrors. But if we spend too much time looking back it will wreck you as you go forward!  What does the runner do?  He “forgets as he runs.”

REACHING FORWARD:  A Worthy Goal

This is the picture of the runner about to reach the finish line…victory is just a few strides away…the goal line is less than ten yards and a touchdown is about to happen…. what does the athlete do?  He “leans forward….” straining toward the finish line.

Paul’s heart was set on heaven.  CS Lewis said, “If we aim at heaven, we get earth thrown in.  Aim at earth, and we get neither.”

What are you “aiming” for?  Paul was pressing toward a heavenly home where his citizenship was, and toward receiving a glorious body, (“who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory…”).  The Bible says, in 1 Corinthians 15:53 (NLT): For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. The way that it is now is not the way that it shall be.