Led by the Spirit

Morning, everybody. How you doing? Good. Good to hear from half of you. How's the other half doing?

Good. Well, my name is Mike Wiggin. If I haven't met you before, when Matt texted me and asked me to preach here this week, I feel like I was at the very bottom of the list and it was out of desperation, so I'm not sure how to feel about that. But we're gonna have a good day anyways. Okay.

So Matt is a dear friend of mine. We've gotten really close over the last several years, and you guys honestly are really privileged to have him as a pastor. He's an incredible man. You already know that. But, yeah, we definitely pray for their safe return back from Ghana.

So I'm excited to share this stage. Matt puts a lot of trust in me by sharing this stage, and I'm really privileged to be up here. So we're continuing. I'm continuing this series that you guys have been in for a while out of Galatians called Freedom and. And today is called.

It's not how you start, it's how you finish. And so we're going to do a little travel back. For those of you in this room and watching online that are followers of Jesus, I want you to go back to the moment of your salvation. Okay. I want you to think back and I want you to just stay there for just a minute.

Okay? And then we're going to come back. But what I want to ask you is what do you want to be known for when you die? Like, what do you want to be said about you at your funeral? I was thinking about this, like, you know, when Jeff Bezos dies, whenever that is, and when Bill Gates dies, whenever that is, I'm pretty sure what will probably be talked about at their funeral is the immense amount of money they had and maybe some humanitarian aid stuff, but, like, the things they did.

Right. It probably. I mean, I don't know either one of those guys personally anymore. We kind of lost touch over the years, but I'm gonna guess probably not a whole lot about who they are as people people. They're gonna be known by the accomplishments they've made, which isn't necessarily bad, but I don't want to be known for that, so.

But what do you wanna be known for as a follower of Jesus? When that day comes and you go see Jesus face to face and somebody's standing up and they're talking about your life, people are coming up to a microphone and saying, this is what I remember about this person. For me, let Me ask you this. If the rest of your days were lived as a person who just shares the hope of Jesus with the people around them that need it, and your life is evidenced by the fruits of the spirit that are just being produced from you all of the time, is that a worthy rest of your life to live? Now, before you answer me and say yes, because that's the good Christian answer, know that that comes along with a lot of things that we may have to remove.

So I want you to process that and I want you to think about what is going to be said about you at your funeral. So how many of you have a song that you like or maybe it's even your favorite song that was done by a one hit wonder? Anybody? Few of you? Okay, you guys know what a one hit wonder is?

Yeah. Okay, let's just put them up on the screen. Here's the most annoying one hit wonder of all time.

You guys remember that one? Super annoying. But I bet we can all do the dance. Yeah. That's why it's a viral sensation.

This one. Super cool. I was cool, so I knew all the words. Yeah. You guys, how about this one?

We've all said this before. There it is. One hit wonder. This one here. How many of you can do this dance?

Yeah. Starts like this. I'm not gonna do it. This was actually a really good one handed wonder. Somebody that I used to know, Incredible vocals.

Amazing. Oh, it's not up there. Amazing. People who sang this, absolutely incredible. This disappeared.

And then the worst one hit wonder of all time.

But I bet you're thinking it right now, right? I'm too sexy for my shirt. Okay. Every one of these artists started out intending to make it big. But the cruel and harsh reality of a fan base is they were just one hit wonders.

So some of them were the biggest global sensations we have ever seen. But I bet they would agree it's not how you start, it's how you finish. Because they all started out incredible. Some of them discovered just from videos circling around the Internet. Some of them doing backup vocals and just making videos.

And they became billion view icons once. Now, what about us as followers of Jesus? What does this have to do with us? Well, let me ask you a few questions. I want you to travel back to that moment, the moment of your surrender when everything changed in your life.

So we call it just like the Bible calls it, that death to life moment. Okay, That's a very clear, starkly contrasting comparison. It's like black and white. There's no gray death to Life. Okay?

I want you to go back to that moment, and I want you to remember the excitement that filled your life, the joy that happened, all of the things you couldn't wait to tell people. You didn't care who you told. There was no political correctness in you at all at that point. Right? You were just telling people because that's what you did.

You were so excited about that new life. For me, it happened when I was 25 years old. I was by myself in my apartment. I fell to my knees. I surrendered my life to Jesus.

And that death to life transformation moment happened in me. And I've never been the same since. And I remember at 25, going into my church where I was at and being so excited about this. And I was talking to a guy in his 70s, and he said, don't worry, you'll be like me one day. And the first thing I could say is like, gosh, I hope not, because this dude was one of the meanest people in our church.

And I was like, again, 25, not wise, and didn't understand repercussions. I was like, I don't even know that you love Jesus, man. Not the right thing to say to people, by the way, which obviously offended him. But it did lead to a good conversation. But I walked away going, oh, my gosh, if that's what the rest of this is going to be like, I don't want to be that.

And so I literally. That marked something in me that day where I said, how can I not be that when I'm older? Well, I wonder if you're noticing the past tense I'm using, because for a lot of us, it is past tense tense.

Most people's passion for Jesus wanes over time. Now, we can justify things here. Like my wife, when I first saw her, I was infatuated with her. Couldn't wait to marry her. We've been married 28 years, and now the infatuation's over and there's real love.

And I can justify that, be like, I don't have to take you on a date, baby. We're 28 years in. We're in love. Like, I'm not infatuated anymore. That'd be a justification and a pretty lame thing to say, right?

So a lot of times we can, like, make these things less. But I'm pretty sure that the God of the universe who sent his son Jesus to die on the cross, to take my sin and your sin on his back and bear the weight of that, deserves excitement. The rest of our Lives. Yeah. Would you agree?

Oh, wow. Is this on still? That was a question, people. Do you agree? Good.

So the question is if the transcript of your life is. I remember when I used to pray all the time. I remember when I used to read my Bible a lot and engage with it. I remember when I was really generous with my tithe and my offering and my time. If the transcript of your life would read like that.

Now here's what I'm going to ask you to do. I'm going to ask you to pause and I'm going to ask. I'm going to ask my people right over here because they know this. I'm going to ask one of them to yell out Romans 8:1. Yell it out.

You probably couldn't hear that, but here's what she said. There is now no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. So here's where we're going to make a distinction today. If you're feeling condemnation, that's from the enemy. If you feel conviction, that's from Jesus.

So let's make a deal that anytime you feel condemned, you get it out. Deal. That's not where Jesus wants you to live. But if the transcript of your life is written in the past, I don't want you to feel condemnation, but I do want you to feel conviction. Because we don't want to be known as one hit wonders, as followers of Jesus.

Now don't freak out, but let me tell you what I mean by that.

We are supposed to influence the people around us by the way that we live our lives and the evidences of the Holy Spirit in us always. We're gonna have off days, we're gonna have bad days, we're gonna have good days, but it's supposed to be continual. So we're gonna jump in and we're gonna look at these lists that are two diabolically opposing lists. One's called the works of the flesh and. And one is called the fruits of the Spirit.

Now there's some pretty hard hitting things in here. I'm so thankful that Joel went through that list and kind of prepared us for this. We spent that time repenting and hopefully confessing and repenting together. And so we're going to start working through this and we're going to read in Galatians 5, starting in verse 16, it's going to be up here on the screen for you. But here's what it says.

I say, then walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desires of the flesh. And that just seems easy Right. Let's just leave now and I'll go do that. Right. All right.

If I just live by the spirit, I'm not gonna carry out the desires of the flesh. Sounds easy. It's really difficult to do. He goes on to say, for the flesh desires what is against the spirit, and the spirit desires what is against the flesh. They are opposed to each other so that you don't do what you want.

So this is the way that every single morning you wake up and open your eyes. This is what you're living in. Just so you know, you are actually completely engulfed in a spiritual war. Your flesh wants to do one thing, the spirit inside of you wants to do another. And they are constantly against each other.

Now, if you're sitting here today or you're watching online and you're not yet a follower of Jesus, I want you to start to process what this would look like in your life. Because here's what I can say. You're gonna hear me use the word surrender quite a bit and say that the rest of your life is to be lived for Jesus. Those are all really good things. Don't let that scare you, because what's on the other side of that is incredible.

And we're going to see that. But let's go back to Scripture. It says verse 18, but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar.

I am warning you about these things, as I warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. That is a really, really bold warning. Those who practice these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now on the other side, verse 22. But pay attention.

Anytime you see that word in Scripture, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. The law is not against such things. Now, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Now, I'm gonna read the works of the flesh in the message version. Cause we don't use the words that I just read a lot of times. So pay attention to this. It's obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time. Repetitive, loveless, cheap sex.

A stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage. Frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness, trinket gods, magic show, religion, paranoid loneliness, cutthroat competition, all consuming yet never satisfied. Once a brutal temper, an impotence to be, to love or be loved. Divided homes and divided lives. Small minded and lopsided pursuits.

The vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into arrival. Uncontrolled and uncontrollable actions. Ugly parodies of community. I could go on and on. This isn't the first time I've warned you, you know.

If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom. Now let me make something clear. If you have a person here who's in the flesh not yet surrendered to Jesus, and a person who is here who surrendered their life to Jesus, we are always going to struggle with the things of the flesh. Perfection is not the goal. It's not what he's saying.

It's nothing Jesus ever said, it's nothing anyone in the Bible, God himself, no one expects us to be perfect. So we can all take a big sigh of relief because especially when we have verses like Romans 8:1, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, which means the expectation to struggle with sin is always gonna be there. But if you're a surrendered follower of Jesus, you're going to be producing things that people can see, yes, it's clear they're a follower of Jesus. Because this list, if I'm over here, the best I can do is everything to my flesh. Because the love on this list is a self sacrificing love.

I can only do that for so long in the flesh because the reason why love is the first on the list here and it's different from the love that's on the list over there, is because here, when I've surrendered my life, I've experienced the greatest love of all time that actually rescued and set me free. Jesus displayed the first self sacrificing love. I have now partaken of that in my salvation. And now I can love people that that way. But if I'm over here, I can only love you to the best of my ability in my flesh.

And when something goes wrong, I'm going to stop loving you. That's just the way this works.

So they make these distinctions. Now we're going to draw a dividing line here. Okay? Paul is writing to the Church of Galatia and he's making a very, very clear distinction. I Grew up in a church where there was a saying that said, once saved, always saved.

And it never made any sense to me. And so as I started reading the Bible for myself and as we started planting churches and I started preaching, I came up with a different phrase because I saw a two letter word in the Bible over and over and over and over and over again. And it was the word if. And so I started to say, okay, if saved, always saved. The Bible's really clear.

Nobody can take us out of the hand of God, right? We're secure and we're safe there. But it's if this is what this list is putting in opposition to each other, I can't say I'm a Christian and produce fruits of the Spirit. It's not possible. I can say I'm a Christian while not being one.

But what we're seeing here is there is a very clear dividing line that followers of Jesus will produce this. You want to know why? This isn't a list that you check off. This is who you become after your salvation. And in theology we would call this progressive sanctification.

It's becoming more like Jesus every single day. Well, if I'm to become more like Jesus every day, I have to get rid of more and more flesh in order for it to reflect Jesus. So it is an ongoing lifelong pursuit until you see him face to face one day. Now, I added a little bit of other things to this list. It's not on the screen, so I just want you to listen to it.

And no, I'm not adding to the Bible. This is just to help us see the difference in these two things.

I think sometimes there's just an apathy and an indifference towards Jesus that should never be present as a follower of Jesus, not for very long. It's gonna happen. My passion for Jesus is gonna do this sometimes, but as it comes here, it always should come back up if I'm a follower of Jesus, right? But we look at this and we say, if all the fruits of the Spirit on this side, I'm gonna add over here. It would be self serving over love.

It would be unhappy over joy. It would be anxiety over peace. It would be a hurried anxiousness over patience. It would be being rude or indifferent towards the needs of others over kindness and goodness. It would be inconsistency over faithfulness.

It would be harshness over gentleness. And you would give into vices and never be able to quit them. Over self control. This is what it would look like to live in the works of the flesh. So when he says those who practice these things will not inherit the kingdom of God, this is what he's saying.

It's because you've never surrendered your life to Jesus yet. Not those of you who are followers of Jesus, who do some of these things because you need to get him out of your life will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's not what he's saying. I just want to make sure we're all clear on that.

This is why we pay attention really closely to these lists. The first things on the list are the things they want you to pay attention to the most. The first thing on the fruit of the spirit is love. The first thing over here on the works of the flesh is sexual immorality. These two things are opposed to each other.

This sexual immorality is just a cheap love. You can download any app you want, go sleep with somebody in an hour. They don't even have to know your real name, who you are, where you're from. It's just a transaction. It's cheap love.

If I want a companion for the night, if I'm single, I can get online and I can find one and I can go and I can just have somebody. Cause it's cheap, right? It doesn't require me to invest any time or effort or energy. But this kind of love, this is why we're gonna spend a lot of time on this one first. Because it is so opposed to the works of the flesh and what the world would tell you you're supposed to go after.

I want you to think about anything that you see right now that is bombarding you with messaging is just do what you want. Just do what feels good. Just do what feels right. That is what is right. Self serving, self serving, self serving.

Then we get to this list of the fruits of the spirit. And there's several different meanings of the word love in the Bible. And so I want to look through here because there's four different ones we're going to look at today. So the first one is Phileo. This is just a friendship or a brotherly love.

I have a guy that I've been friends with since high school. I could not see him for five years, see him again, and immediately pick up in the conversation from five years ago. That is a brotherly love, right? There's this eros. This is a romantic or sexually sexual love.

Biblically, to only be to share between a husband and a wife. And then there's storge love. My family was at the first service. It was so good to see Them come in. It's a familial love.

It's a different one than these other three. But then there's this word agape, which most of the time we put with Jesus. And the definition is an unconditional love. But I think for us, it's hard to process what an unconditional love is. So I rearrange the words just a little bit, and I call it a no condition love.

A no condition love. I mean, think, what did Jesus get for making salvation possible? He was in heaven with his Father. His Father says, somebody has to pay the price of sin. This penalty, this debt, Jesus, I want you to go pay it.

You're going to go. You're actually going to be born. You're going to live your life on this earth. They're going to falsely accuse you, falsely try you, falsely kill you. They're going to hate you while they're doing it.

You're then going to get buried. Now, I am going to raise you back to life, and then you're going to come back and be with me. But you'll get nothing in return for this. That is a no condition love. We were the full and complete and total benefactors of that love.

So when we see this, this idea of unconditional love can make a little bit more sense to us. If I'm just in transactional love. My wife and I have been married 28 years. But. But let's say that I'm in a transactional love relationship with her and I do things for her and I love her and she doesn't notice, so she doesn't reciprocate them back.

Then I say, well, that's it. I'm not gonna do this for you anymore. That's a condition.

I'm gonna love you if you love me back. I'm gonna love you if you do something for me. So I came up with a saying a long time ago, and I want you to process this, okay? You only love Jesus as. As much as you love the person you love the least.

I'll say it again. You only love Jesus as much as you love the person you love the least. Now, I can back this up through scripture. There's an interchange in Matthew 22 where the Pharisees are pushing Jesus to get him to try to trap him. And they say, what's the most important commandment?

Jesus. Jesus. Like, okay, that's easy. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. That is the first and most important command.

All the law and the prophets hang on this. But there's one that's just as important. Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.

Now, anyone who's not us is our neighbor. Okay, just to be clear. So this means. Let's do a little test. Okay.

This is gonna be fun. You can already tell, right? Okay, I want you to picture the person or the people that are the hardest for you to love. Go ahead and picture. Maybe it's somebody who's betrayed you, maybe it's somebody that.

Who's hurt you at the deepest level, maybe through cheating, maybe abuse. Maybe it's a work betrayal. Maybe it's just people who don't agree with the way that you think.

What about somebody that doesn't like you?

What about those people who are just annoying to us and they're really hard to be around?

Can you. Or do you love these people like Jesus does, with a no condition? Love. Cause as a fruit of the spirit. The reason why it's first on the list is cause it encompasses all the other things.

This is the thing we're gonna have to work at the hardest. Because it's not easy to love people with no conditions. That's the way our world works, isn't it? And so as we start to work through this, I want you to process that saying, we only love Jesus as much as we love the person we love the least. I mean, it's really easy to love Jesus when we're surrounded by people that are nice to us and they're good to us and we actually like them.

But then when we're stuck in these positions where we don't even like the people who are around and I look at them with disdain or disgust or something else, and I say, I love Jesus. I think we could say that that's not true in its purest form. Doesn't mean we don't love Jesus, but it means we have work to do to display love as a fruit of the spirit. Well, let's start working through this list. The next thing on the list is joy.

Okay, here's what the definition is. It's to rejoice exceedingly and to be glad. But past that, it's to be well and thrive. You know, as followers of Jesus, we should be thriving in our lives. Now, I do not put any thriving of the world's expectations on that.

That does not mean you're successful. You have a lot of followers on your socials. You have a success. That's not what I mean. But joy trumps happiness in the flesh.

I can be happy and I can Go see the best movie. It was a comedy. We're laughing all the way out to the parking lot and I see a flat tire and now I'm mad. Happiness gone. It's temporary.

It has everything to do with the conditions and situations around you. That's not joy. Joy is the only way I can experience joy is the Holy Spirit inside of me. I can't live. A fruit of the Spirit in the flesh.

The next one is peace.

Now this is why Paul made that really clear dividing line. You want to listen to this definition. It's the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation. Through Jesus, I can be at peace. I remember when I was young, I used to ask Jesus into my heart all the time.

I wasn't sure what it meant. I knew I needed it at some level, but I just kept doing it because I had no peace. At 25 years old in my apartment, I've never doubted this a second past that day. I can honestly say that my soul is at peace because of this definition. Now it goes on.

It's the opposite of anxiety and stress.

Now as follows with Jesus. Are we going to deal with anxiety and stress? Yes, we are. But if we will believe Jesus, he says, give them to me because my yoke is easy and my burden is light. They are not for us to carry anymore.

This is evidence of living out the fruits of the Spirit. The next one is patience. Let's just hurry up and get through this one.

So I'm make sure you all still listen. This is a patient endurance, perseverance and long suffering. Amazing words we all love to hear, right?

But it also is a slowness in avenging wrongs. This is truly a posture of Jesus. Kindness and goodness we're going to put together. It literally means to be mild and pleasant as opposed to harsh and hard and sharp and bitter.

But there's a second piece that actually means a moral goodness and an integrity. It's what people should see in us as this fruit of the Spirit with kindness and goodness. This next one is faithfulness. Quite simply, you believe Jesus is who he says he is. There's no doubt.

We could call this living in a non anxious presence. Because when your life is falling apart around you the way that people would see this, and there's this faithfulness to you that says, I don't know what's going to happen, but I trust God that is it. Being a non anxious presence. You're not going, oh, oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm gonna do. God, you have to come.

What are you doing? Why are you taking me there? And we can become so rattled and rightfully so sometimes I get it. But producing the fruit of faithfulness means I don't know what you're doing in my life. I don't know what you're allowing me to go through this.

But I trust you. I'm not gonna be anxious and worried and stressed because you said in Matthew 6, I can't add a single hour to the span of my life by worrying about anything thing. And so I'm going to have this faithfulness. But here's what's crazy. We're all to live on this mission of God, this the Great Commission, where we're taking the hoe to other people who don't have Jesus.

You don't know what the root word of this is. It's to persuade people and win them over. People are drawn to a non anxious presence. People will want to be around you because they will desperately want what they see in you. And then gentleness is quite simply just a mild disposition.

It's a gentleness of spirit. It's the opposite of living for yourself. Then self control, this is the display a person who masters their passions and desires.

The root is ironically force and strength. So it's going to require force and strength to have self control. But the force and strength come only through the Holy Spirit.

See, self control is something that I think is missing in our society nearly every level. I feel like we are so bought into doing whatever we want, whenever we want, and it doesn't require any kind of control. But this is what we're called, to live as followers of Jesus. So how do we do this? Well, verse 24, anytime I've ever heard this preached, I don't know why nobody talks about verse 24.

It says those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. See, those desires are the forbidden things that no longer honor Jesus in this word. Crucify. This is actually a picture of the crucifixion of Jesus. If you've ever seen the Passion of Christ, picture that right now.

That horrific death that was so painful and excruciating for Jesus to go to. Listen to me, it's no different with our flesh. It's going to be painful, excruciating at times. But if I'm going to display the fruits of the spirit, I have to get rid of the flesh that wants to keep me over here.

So as you're processing all of this today, I told you this is about not how you start, but it's about how you finish.

All of those people that I showed you at first, they made massive impacts on the world once we as followers of Jesus are called repeatedly to impact the people around us over and over and over again. So if you would be sitting here today and you would be like, man, that's the script of my life. I would be considered a one hit wonder for Jesus. Because in the day of my salvation and the excitement that followed that, and then I just watched it wane and then I just settled into life.

Listen, I know if that is you, I know that you don't want that to be what people talk about as your future funeral. Wouldn't it be amazing if at my funeral one day somebody says, man, that guy loved like crazy, like the joy I always saw in him. It seems like he was so peaceful and he was patient with me. He was kind and good to me.

He was really gentle. The self control the guy displayed in his life was unreal. That's what I want to be said about me at my funeral, because it's evidence of a life lived for Jesus. It doesn't matter what I've done in this world, how many accolades that people could give me or what we started or what we've done, none of that stuff matters. Because when I stand in front of Jesus one day, I just want to hear, well done, good and faithful servant, and I know you do too.

But it says that we have to answer for the life that we've lived on this earth.

So the fruits of the Spirit should be evident in the life of every follower of Jesus in this room on display for people to see. So I'm going to ask you to just kind of close your eyes as we close the service. Now I'm going to ask you to be honest about your life today. Are your best days behind you when it comes to following Jesus? Two things.

The fruit of the Spirit can only be produced by those who have truly surrendered their lives to Jesus. And if you're looking at your life right now and you've never seen any of these happen, maybe you've never surrendered your life to Jesus. But today can be that day. You can come up and talk to me. There's going to be workers down here in the front in just a minute.

But if you surrendered your life to Jesus and you're not living this out, I'm going to ask you to confess that to him. More importantly, I'm going to ask you to repent of that. Which means you're going to stop what you're doing, you're going to turn around and you're going to move back towards Jesus. Go back and study these fruits of the spirit, embrace them and live them out the rest of your days until you see Jesus face to face. God, I just want to pray for my friends here today, family that's here, people I haven't met, people watching online.

I pray that a couple things happening right now that the enemy doesn't convince us that we don't need to pay attention to this because this is a flashing billboard for people who need hope so desperately in their life. I'm convinced every person that doesn't know you, Jesus, they're all looking for you. They just don't know it's you. And so if we can live as people who are producing fruit everywhere we go, people are going to be drawn to that. And us living out and being obedient to the Great Commission will become that much easier by just living and producing this fruit.

I pray that we would do business with you, Jesus, and if anybody needs to surrender their life to you today, I pray that today is.