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Date: 2021-11-21
Audience: Grass Valley
Title: God’s Victory
Topic: How to Grow Fruit (Joy/Peace) of the Spirit
Text: (if applicable): Various
Proposition: God’s Victory grows fruit
Purpose: Live in Victory
Introduction
Grace and peace!
22 Butthe fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
Against such things there is no law.[1]
That’s Galatians 5:22-23, and it is a description of the fruit which should be abundant in the lives of those who follow Jesus.
The visible outgrowing of the Spirit in our lives!
-Illustration
I’ve mentioned that I had relatives in Washington who owned apple orchards while I was growing up.
Every autumn we would be invited to spend a few days visiting and harvesting some of the fruit for our family.
These were good-sized orchards and they were healthy trees.
Strong limbs, well maintained.
They were cared for, given the nutrition they needed, pruned to remove dead or bad limbs.
They got plenty of water and plenty of sunlight and the fruit they produced was proof of that.
People who complain that Red Delicious apples have no flavor never ate an apple right off a good tree just after they hit the peak of ripeness.
These weren’t those little, lopsided, bruised up globes you find in a grocery store either!
These were large, symmetrical apples with deep red skins that would fall off the tree with a little gentle tug.
The Goldens were amazing too – sweet, firm, crisp, and they almost seemed to melt as you bit into them.
And their natural color was the yellow of happiness and sunshine.
Over the years I’ve lived a few places that had an old, poorly maintained fruit tree or two on the property when I arrived.
The fruit from these gnarled old trees was usually small, hard, and bitter, be it an apple tree, orange tree, or lemon.
Trees that are not well-maintained and cultivated don’t bear the best fruit.
And that takes work!
Thought, planning, and sweat equity are all required to make sure the tree or bush or shrub or whatever fruit-bearing plant is going to be able to bring forth the best, sweetest, most memorable delights possible.
Like those apples.
-Reference to Proposition
We want to do all we can to cultivate the growth of fruit in our lives, and the thing which helps more than any other is an awareness of the Victory of God in our lives.
-Reference to Purpose
Because it is when we live in expectation of God’s victory that we find the ability to grow and ripen the fruit of the Spirit.
-Transition Sentence
Today we are particularly interested in what it takes to grow the next two flavors we see on this list after love: Joy and peace.
What are they and how do we multiply these traits in our lives?
Body
-Main Point #1: God’s Victory creates Joy
If you want to experience Joy in your life, you need to recognize and celebrate the victory of God.
Why?
Because God’s Victory creates Joy!
-Discussion
Joy = chara = exultation = celebrating triumph/elation
Biblically-speaking, Joy is always related to Victory – specifically, the victories of God.
Joy is a celebration, not a feeling!
NOT happiness.
A joyful life can make you happy but being happy doesn’t create joy.
Happiness is an emotion and emotion is an undirected response – ebbs and flows like a tide; rises and falls like a roller coaster.
Not reliable!
Emotions are often nothing more than response to stimulus.
An addict may feel happy when they get a supply of their drug of choice, be that heroin, alcohol, or a chocolate bar.
That same happiness may surge up even if they are in recovery and haven’t touched chocolate in years.
Like every other flavor of the Fruit of the Spirit – Joy comes from CHOICE, not chance.
DECISION, not feeling.
Happiness can’t be turned on and off at will.
Joy, though, is something you opt into or out of.
-Illustration
Israel in Egypt – Exodus – Plagues – Red Sea – Border of Promised Land – Refused to accept victory – God could have abandoned – Cared for them 40 years in wilderness, got them ready – Brought them into Promised Land.
Victory on top of victory!
God cared, God saved, God delivered, God kept them close, God continued to care, God brought them home.
God decreed an annual festival – holiday to remember a lifetime spent in his care while they lived in tents, homeless.
Deut 16:13-15:
13 Celebratethe Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress.
14 Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.
15 For seven days celebrate the festival to the Lord your God at the place the Lord will choose.
For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.
[2]
Be JOYFUL!
It’s a command!
Sages and Rabbis took to heart.
Would plan out ways to express joy.
Not a FEELING – a CHOICE!
Jokes, acrobatics, feasts, decorations.
A week devoted to celebrating the victories of God in the lives of his people!
Victory over circumstances – God provided for them in the wilderness – and victory over SIN – God provided for them in their rebellion.
Saved them from Egypt, saved them from destruction, saved them from themselves.
Salvation story!
-Supporting Scripture
People are people – act without thinking, without remembering… David, king of Israel, got involved with a woman not his wife.
Big mess – effectively ruined the two families involved and dozens of others besides.
God called David on it, letting him hear and feel the depth of pain he had caused in the world.
David, in deep repentance, penned Psalm 51, where he said:
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.[3]
Don’t leave me aside!
Don’t leave me alone!
Help me remember to celebrate you salvation!
Give me the ability to always remember!
I don’t want to forget again!
Because God’s salvation is joy, something to hang onto, something to give us strength, something to remind us that the LORD cares.
It’s victory in our lives and it’s always there and should always give us hope for the future, because where God has been, he will always be, and that’s right with us.
No matter how lost we feel we might have gotten.
Jesus in Luke 15:
4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.
Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?
5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home.
Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’
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