Sermon Tone Analysis

Big idea: righteousness flows out as the Spirit grows virtues within

intro me

competing desires: get up?

sleep in?

normally law: have to get the kids to school therefore have to get up

but a moment of freedom: in the US on a trip last week - Had the opportunity to speak to around 40 church planters from across the US.

thanks for your prayers - my audience were certainly thankful - they had to put up with a 3h torrent from me but most seemed to survive as a result, I expect, of your prayers.

desire #1: sleeeeeep in.

No breakfast or coffee available.

No-one expecting anything from you until US morning.

And yes, I’m tired.

desire #2: return well.

Hard to be away, places an extra burden on your family.

I want to land back in the UK ready to serve, ready to help.

And if I slip into US time, that’s just not going to happen

Life is full of competing desires like that, internal wrestling matches.

I’d love that to have been a total walkover, no struggle at all, but 3am in the US, there I am wrestling with my pillow!

Today we’re heading into the next section of the short letter we’ve been looking at in the Bible called Galatians (because it’s written to a group of churches in an area called Galatia) - and we’re taking it slow because there’s a lot here.

There’s so much here, in fact, we could go far, far slower!

If you were with us last week, we read about competing desires inside Christians, where the Bible teaches us that although God the Holy Spirit has come to live within us, the good and holy things he desires are in competition with the darker things our old human nature still desires, that there’s a conflict.

Today’s passage picks up the story with two lists reflecting what flows out of these two competing sources.

Let’s read together - and I think Cameron is going to be reading for us today as Ruth’s out with covid.

Ruth, we’re missing you!

Let’s pray for Ruth quickly before we read.

… pray ...

page 1172 Gal 5:19

Thanks Cameron.

That list of the fruit of the Spirit is a pretty famous bit of the bible, pretty well known.

But it’s set out in contrast to another list, a list of the sort of things our old human nature produces.

Here’s what I want you to notice: although these two lists reflect the two different and competing desires we looked at last week, the lists are not direct opposites.

They’re not mirror images of each other.

It’s not like one pulls left and the other pulls right, 180 degree opposites.

See how one starts with sexual immorality?

A mirror list would start with sexual purity, then, right?

And the mirror for witchcraft might be the worship of God.

But it’s no mirror list - they are lists of fundamentally different things.

First there’s a list of “acts” - deeds, things we do - then there’s a list of “fruit” - which is a bit of an abstract metaphor, but if we were trying to define the sort of thing in that list, we might use words like character or virtue: who we are rather than what we do.

Why is that the case?

Why are these positives, these goods, focused on who we are, not what we do?

The answer, I think, is our author highlighting a big truth for us: God is changing who we are on the inside, not just what we do on the outside.

That’s the big thing we’re going to be exploring today.

The Bible’s vision for the outward Christian life, our acts, flows out of an inward change, our character.

That’s what God works on, what he is changing.

Before we dive in, as I was preparing, it occurred to me that we should take one further step back and ask the question of whether internal change is actually ok: should we change who we are on the inside in the first place?

What does our world, our culture say?

On the one hand, there are enough self-improvement books written to fill a library; there’s a whole industry built around it - so there must be a lot of people willing to pay for insight into how they can change.

But on the other hand there’s lots of talk about being true to yourself too; lots of value placed on being free to be “who you are inside” in our society.

And the two are in tension.

It can’t be true to yourself to try and change yourself, right?

So should our goal be “to be who we are inside”, or “to change who we are inside”?

Is our problem more that the world around us squeezes us out of being who we truly are, and things would be so much better if we could just be ourselves?

Or is our problem that, try as we might, we just can’t stop who we are inside oozing out of us in ways we don’t like, and things would be so much better if we could truly change?

Would it be good for you just to truly be yourself, to let it all hang out?

Or do you wish you could change, are there things inside you that you want to fight?

Everyone has to answer that question for themselves - only you know who you really are inside - if anyone does at all.

Speaking for myself, I know inside of me there are things I want to fight.

Certainly that’s the bible’s view of humanity: that humanity is broken, that there are things inside each one of us that should not come out.

That’s the bible’s explanation for the mess our world is in: all too often, that darkness inside of us has been allowed out.

And I think that’s a pretty compelling explanation.

If you’re willing to entertain that answer, at least for the next few minutes - that the problem is us, that we need to change - then our next question is “what’s the solution?”

Is there a solution?

It’s very common to start from the outside and try and work in.

I had a quick google of how to grow in patience and probably the top answer from the articles I skimmed was “practice”.

Grow in patience by being patient.

Make rules for yourself to enforce patience in small things, like letting one car merge ahead of you each day.

Well, I have to say, I’m a big fan of self improvement stuff.

I like a lot of these books and I think they have helpful things to say, that we can make some progress, begin to develop some better habits - but the problem is these habits are so hard to build, yet easy to lose, right?

During these last few months, as we’ve studied our way through this letter, Galatians, we’ve talked about the Jewish Torah lots, a huge set of rules God gave the Jewish people telling them how to live.

Could that, or something like that, be a solution?

Something focused on acts, deeds, things we do?

Could that ultimately re-calibrate who we are inside?

Galatians’ answer is clear: “no”.

The Jewish Law doesn’t solve our fundamental root problem, that we, humanity, are broken; twisted.

That we’re not right, not what we should be.

It doesn’t change the fact that our default setting, our default orientation, is not reliably towards what’s good, right and true.

Yes, it limits the damage, constraining our warped nature.

Yes, it shows us the problem, highlighting our failures.

But it’s no solution.

Rules don’t change hearts.

And this idea, that a focus on external acts isn’t enough to deliver internal change, isn’t just an idea you find here in Galatians - think of Jesus speaking to the Pharisees, a super-religious group of Jews who were unbelievably scrupulous about following the Jewish Torah.

On the outside they look seriously impressive - if external acts were going to change anyone, it’d be them.

When they’re surprised Jesus and his disciples don’t make a big deal of washing rituals around meals, here’s what Jesus has to say to them:

That outside act, washing, doesn’t change anything.

It’s what’s inside that matters.

That’s where true change flows from.

Any true, lasting change to a person, any true transformation is inside-out, not outside-in.

So how do we pursue inside-out change rather than outside-in?

Change which doesn’t start with our actions, but change which starts with who we are?

How is it that we can change who we are?

Rules don’t change hearts, like we already said.

So what does?

This letter we’re studying, Galatians, tells us the only solution is an inside-out transformation.

And it tells us that transformation starts with joining a new family.

A few weeks back, we read this:

Through God’s son, Jesus, the Bible tells us we can join a new family, God’s family.

And as members of God’s family, we have real hope for an inside-out transformation.

The game has changed - because God himself, God the Holy Spirit now lives inside of us.

We have new desires from him competing with our old, warped ones.

Our reading today, those two lists, really are the problem spelled out, and the solution spelled out.

The problem is the actions which come out of what’s inside us, our broken nature; the solution is the inner change, the renewed inner self, which God’s Spirit grows inside of every true follower of Jesus.