Flesh or Fruit: Goodness
Flesh or Fruit • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Intro:
16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
We are in a series on the Fruit of the Spirit entitled, [Flesh or Fruit]. The subject of today’s message is [Goodness].
When I hear the word goodness, I think of being good. When I think of being good, I go back in my mind to my childhood. I always wanted to be good, but as you know, sometimes it is hard.
On the Sunday night before school started, Pastor Tucker always had the students come to the altar for special prayer. He came to me and I asked, will you pray for me? I want to be good in school, but I can’t help but be the funny guy.
He answered, it is okay to be funny, but we will pray God helps you act right and become a good example.
That was my habitual prayer, Lord, help me be good. As long as I was at church I was good. It was when I was at school that I wasn’t always good.
By understanding of good was the absence of being bad. Many people share this understanding. We will look at someone’s actions and think, what they did was bad, therefore they are probably bad.
Dr. David Jeremiah explains, “Goodness is often misunderstood as the absence of evil. But in the Bible, goodness is not an absence of anything. It is the presence of something good.”
We often go through life trying to stop doing bad, when God wants us to invite Him and allow His presence to overflow in us. We cannot remove the bad without receiving the good.
Should we try to “be good” on our own, we will fail miserably.
2 God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. 3 Every one of them has turned aside; They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one.
1 The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and have done abominable iniquity; There is none who does good. 2 God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. 3 Every one of them has turned aside; They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one.
We see this played out from the earliest age. It is good I did not know this scripture as a child. When I was bad, I could explain, “it is not my fault, there is none who does good?!” I know that would have made my parents proud.
The simple fact is, on our own we are incapable of:
doing good deeds
thinking good thoughts
living good lives
We see it is impossible to be good in our own strength, yet Paul describes goodness as a marker of a genuine Christian.
Goodness is as important as love, joy, peace, kindness, and patience. How then can we display a life of goodness. We cannot look within, we must look above for help from God!
Remember, these are the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of the individual. On my own, I am not very loving, joyful, peaceable, kind, patient, or good. But I take hope in:
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
Through Jesus, we can possess goodness. One author defines goodness as, “moral excellence.” Our human nature is sinful and immoral.
Yet when we surrender our lives to Jesus and we walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, God enables us to do what we cannot do on our own. Sure, there is none good, no not one.
However, we have an avenue that will cause goodness to become obvious in our lives. Let’s see how goodness, moral excellence, operated in the life of Christ.
To see this, I want us to look at Jesus’ interactions with Zacchaeus. I have three points, [An Immoral Man], [The Moral Messiah], and [The Memorable Message].
Let’s begin
1. An Immoral Man
1. An Immoral Man
1 Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. 2 Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. 3 And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way.
Right before Jesus goes to Jerusalem at His Triumphal Entry, He makes a pitstop by the town of Jericho. We do not know all Jesus did that day, but news of His arrival caught everyone’s attention.
One of these people was Zacchaeus. The most I knew about Zacchaeus was what I learned as a child:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the Savior passed that, He looked up in the tree
And said, Zacchaeus you come down
For I’m going to your house today, for I’m going to your house today.
I always liked Zacchaeus because they called him a wee little man. Having a brother that has been six foot as long as I can remember, I often felt like a wee little person in his shadow.
But the fact is, no one liked Zacchaeus. In fact, he was one of the most loathed men in Jericho. The reason for their hatred was all to do with his occupation.
He was not just a tax collector, he was the Chief Tax Collector. They tax system of the Roman Empire was brutal. They demanded a certain amount from every person and they did not care how they got their money.
The Jews were under the authority of the Roman Empire, but they did not like them or their religious beliefs. Therefore, the Jews stuck together, doing as little as possible to keep peace with the Romans.
In order for the Romans to get their taxes, they contracted Jewish men to do the dirty work. These men could charge as much as they wanted as long as the Romans got their cut.
A Jewish tax collector was despised because they took advantage of other Jews. A Chief Tax Collector was hated because they led the immoral, but legal theft of other people’s money.
Tax collector and sinner were used interchangeably, that is how much they were hated. Zacchaeus knew this, and he walked around with this stigma.
Not only was he a wee little man, he was also a wee little despised man. What is worse, this was not the plan his parents had for his life.
The name Zacchaeus means “pure” or “just” (Complete Biblical Library). There were many men with that name in Jewish history who had sterling reputations.
From the outside looking in, there was nothing good in Zacchaeus. When he heard Jesus came to town, he had to see him. The problem? He was a wee little man.
He would not dare ask the crowd to let him come to the front to see Jesus, so he ran just outside of town to climb in a tree, not just any tree, specifically a sycamore tree.
SHOW PICTURE OF TREE
One author (Kenneth Bailey), who lived in the Middle East for years, explains sycamore trees were on the outskirts of town. They had large leaves, with branches low to the ground, about seventy-five feet away from the city gates.
While everyone ran toward Jesus, Zacchaeus ran out of town and hid in this tree, hoping to see Jesus, but hoping to stay disguised.
He knew his immoral lifestyle made everyone hate him. He was not good enough to meet Jesus with all the bad he did, but at least he could say he saw him.
2. The Moral Messiah
2. The Moral Messiah
5 And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” 6 So he made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully. 7 But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, “He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.”
5 And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” 6 So he made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully.
7
As Jesus made his way out of town, Zacchaeus saw Jesus come and he hoped to see Him go without being caught. As Jesus got close, He stopped, looked into the tree and called Zacchaeus by name.
SHOW PICTURE OF JESUS
We do not have record of Jesus meeting him prior to this, so we have to believe that the Holy Spirit revealed this information to Jesus.
Zacchaeus had to be worried and confused. He didn’t know what Jesus would say. All he probably thought was, here I am an immoral man, there is nothing good in me, and here is Jesus a good and just man, what is coming next?
Those traveling with Jesus and any other bystander might have expected Jesus to scold Zacchaeus. Perhaps they expected Jesus to say:
Zacchaeus, you are an immoral man. You work with the Romans to oppress these good and hard working people. You are thief, you have betrayed your God and your country. You must quickly quit your job, go to Jerusalem, repent, and become clean. Then and only then will I speak to you, you are just too bad for my goodness to get close.
Had Jesus said that it may have been warranted. Zacchaeus was bad and consumed with evil. But remember, goodness is not the absence of evil, but the presence of something good.
Before Jesus spoke it seemed that He might scold Zacchaeus and then leave town. Instead, He stopped, told Zacchaeus to come down for Jesus planned to stay the night at his house.
The anger in Jericho shifted from Zacchaeus to Jesus. The crowd could not believe that Jesus would lower Himself to stay with people like Zacchaeus, a notorious sinner.
What they did not know:
4 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
Romans
Jesus displayed the fruit of the Spirit. He was kind and patient with the Chief Tax Collector. The result of Jesus’ goodness?
Zacchaeus was convicted of his immoral ways. He made a decision Jesus did not force him to make. He decided to take half of what he had and give it to the poor. Then he would return four times what he took from people.
What prompted this response?
The bad in Zacchaeus could not withstand the good in Jesus. When the immoral man met the Moral Messiah, repentance quickly followed.
3. The Memorable Message
3. The Memorable Message
9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; 10 for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; 10 for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Through Jesus encounter with Zacchaeus, we have a message that remains steadfast through the ages. Was Zacchaeus bad? Sure. What Jesus good? Absolutely.
But the goodness of Jesus led Zacchaeus to repent. Upon his repentance, Jesus restored him and reminded him, you have worked for the Romans, but do not forget you are a child of Abraham.
Then to everyone who listened, Jesus explained His purpose on earth, to seek and save that which is lost!
While Jesus’ decision to go to the home of Zacchaeus was a sign of grace, it goes deeper than that. Yes Jesus was good in going to his house, but His goodness shines even brighter in how He dealt with the sin of Zacchaeus.
At the beginning of the story, the town was hostile toward Zacchaeus. We see this because they refused to let him through to see Jesus. Had he asked, they would have insulted him, because they hated him.
However, the hostility turns from Zacchaeus to Jesus. The moment He ate with him, people couldn’t believe that this moral man would dine with the likes of the immoral tax collectors.
But by coming to the sinners home, Jesus brought salvation. He shifted the anger of the crowd from the sinner to Him. Why? Because He took Zacchaeus’ bad and gave him God’s goodness.
Isaiah foretold this:
He shifted the anger of the crowd from the sinner to Him.
3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.
Isaiah 53:
At the beginning of the the story the town despised and rejected Zacchaeus. By the end, they despised and rejected Jesus. Why? Because on our own, there is none good, no not one!
But God had a plan. Jesus would come, and remove our sins, but taking them upon Himself! Now whenever we come to Jesus with our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us.
The penalty of sin, which is hostile and leads to death, is replaced by the goodness of God, displayed in us through salvation! Jesus took time to speak to an immoral man to display a memorable message:
HE STILL SEEKS AND SAVE THAT WHICH IS LOST!
Close:
As hard as we try, it is difficult to be good, especially in a world that seems to be okay with people being bad. What then is the church’s answer?
We must remember, our world will not change if people simply stop doing bad. We cannot pass enough laws to make people do good. We have tried that before and it didn’t work.
Prohibition outlawed alcohol, people took it underground, and it was eventually overturned.
Theft is a crime, yet people still steal.
Murder is a crime, yet people still kill.
Lying under oath is a crime, yet people still lie.
Speeding is a crime, yet people still… well maybe I should stop!
My point is, we can’t simply expect people, who are bad by nature, to start living the good life.
However, we also cannot look at the bad and decide, I am tired of being good. It seems no one else cares how people live, why should I even try?
Everybody else lies, cheats, drinks, gossips, skips church, and lives in sin, what does it matter if I do the same?
9 And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.
We can’t just stop being bad and start being good.
Sin only leaves when Jesus comes in our lives.
The bad in our lives is only replaced when the Good comes in our hearts, minds, and lives.
How then does goodness become an active part of our lives? We have to surrender our life, our will, and our desire to Jesus, and let the Holy Spirit fill us!
When the presence of the Spirit comes, the sin and darkness of life cannot stay!
Every good and perfect thing comes down from above. Therefore, we must look to Jesus, depend on the Holy Spirit, and God will remove in us what should not belong and put into us what He wants us to have!
I want to ask an honest question, who can say, everything in my life is good? I never have one bad thought? I never commit one bad act? I am always good?
Let me follow up with this question, who can see room for improvement in our hearts and lives?
At least once a week I pray, God if there is ANYTHING in my life that does not belong, please remove it and replace it what you want from and for me!
If we will pray that way, Jesus will respond, the Holy Spirit will fill us, and the goodness of the Lord will become obvious.
With His goodness will flow:
morality
generosity
honesty
loving attitudes
kindness to others
And people will see us and think, there is something in them I want but do not have!
Remember, goodness is not an absence of anything. It is the presence of something good.”
Let’s ask God to overhaul us, removing the bad, and replacing it with every good and perfect thing that comes from above!
