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Preacher: Pastor Chuck Holiday
Scripture: Galatians 5:13-26
On Father’s Day, we recognize that God calls all men to embody a fatherly role, initiating love and forgiveness even when it’s challenging, as exemplified by Jesus. The sermon begins a series on the fruit of the Spirit, emphasizing that love is the core fruit from which all others—joy, peace, patience—flow, rooted in a healthy spiritual tree grounded in the gospel. Satan’s primary tool is deception, leading us to believe lies about God’s love, but true fruitfulness comes from abiding in Christ, trusting in His righteousness, not our own. Despite our struggles and “leaky buckets,” we can love sacrificially by continually returning to God’s love, as Paul prays in Ephesians 3, asking the Father to fill us with the Spirit’s power to grasp Christ’s boundless love, enabling us to love others even when we feel empty.
Transcript
Happy Father’s Day uh to all you uh not just fathers but to all you men You know um I think God gives us a gives a father role to every man uh it’s it’s not and and you know I’ll reference that later but you know Jesus shows us how to be a father even though he didn’t have any biological children here on earth um men basically what the essence of being a father is you initiate you get to go first and going first is the hardest thing in the world when you don’t have enough to give and you’re feeling hurt and uh like you know going second is easy You know it’s easy to apologize to somebody after they’ve already confessed their fault to you but you know going first is hard you know and uh some this is not a father’s day sermon as such but but guys I want you to have that in your mind You know what god calls us as men to go first to initiate to forgive before we’ve been forgiven to love when we’re on empty And uh I want you to think about that But that’s true in a sense for all of us Now we’re beginning this new series that David introduced last Sunday the fruit of the spirit And I want you to um look at this graphic about a tree Most of us attack this issue of the fruit of the spirit by focusing on the fruit
If you’ve got a bad orange on your tree most of us you know spend a lot of time focusing on the orange Now those of you gardeners and farmers out there if you got bad fruit where do you put your attention
you got to focus on the tree I heard somebody say “But even that like what makes the tree a healthy tree it’s where where is it rooted?” Right you know you know the devil essentially only has one tool in his in his box You know what that is he’s the father of lies His power to deceive us is the only real power he has
Now he can afflict us in physical ways He can afflict us in emotional hurts and pains but the only real uh tool in his toolbox to steal our love for God and to steal our faith and trust in Jesus is his power of deception So it all comes down to where is your belief system rooted are you rooted in lies about who God is and about who you are or are you rooted in the truth of who God is and what Jesus did for us and how the Holy Spirit brings that into our hearts So if we want good fruit
Jesus said you’ve got to abide in the vine You know we’re g is is is a Jesus explanation of Galatians 5 The fruit of the spirit comes from a healthy tree You got to abide in the vine or in this case you know the tree Now so let’s think about this for a second Um and and and the first of the fruit of the spirit in Paul’s list is love We’re going to be talking about love today Love isn’t just one of the fruit When when Paul says the fruit of the spirit he uses the word fruit singular There’s a singular and plural to that Greek word And he uses the singular The fruit is love We we saw this in in uh we see it every Sunday morning What is the summary of God’s law of all God’s law to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself Right so every all the other fruit joy peace longsuffering gentleness it all comes from the in a sense if if we could change the imagery a little bit the trunk of the tree is love The tree itself is love Peace joy longsuffering are the actual fruit hanging on the tree But all that flows out of love
without and and Paul says in in 1 Corinthians 13 the love passage he said you can do a lot of wonderful things for people and not have any love in any of it He said there are even missionaries who give their lives to be burned at the stake for their for their witnessing for Christ who do it without any love And he says ‘You know what it’s not real love I mean we can serve God all day long without love People do it every Sunday Preachers preach sermons for their own self- glorification Lord knows I’m guilty Many days we can go visit the sick in the hospital because it makes us feel better You know we feel like we’re better people when we take a meal to somebody or when we ser Now I’m not saying those are bad things Those are wonderful things But but Paul said you can have fake fruit You know you can you can pick that orange off the tree and realize it’s a plastic orange and it’s not fruit at all You can have fake fruit but he said if it’s real fruit it always comes from love Okay it always comes from love Galatians 5 verse 6 which we didn’t read but let me read it for you Paul says in in Galatians 5:6 the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love He said all these good deeds you do none of it counts unless it comes from trusting God’s love and believing the gospel That’s the only thing that counts is is um where’ it go there we go Thank you The only thing that counts he says is your faith your trust in what Christ did for you on the cross And out of that comes love
It’s the only thing that counts In Galatians 5:13 and 14 the verses we read earlier Paul says “You my brothers were called to be free but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature or the flesh Rather serve one another in love.” He says “Because the entire law is summed up in a single command Love your neighbor as yourself If you keep biting biting and devour each other watch out or you’ll destroy each other.” He says “The only thing that counts is love.” So the tree if you if your roots are grounded in the gospel as opposed to the lies Now what are some of the lies God tells you god Satan says God will love you if you’re good He actually says God will love you if your tree is fruitful That is exactly the opposite That is a lie from the pit of hell God does not love you because you’re good He loves you because he’s good Right he’s you hear this voice in your head that says “If I can if I can just be good God will love me God will love me when I’m righteous you know he’ll be really really mad at me if I’m if I sin.” The gospel says God loves you because Christ was righteous in your place
Period You’ve received his righteousness and God looks at you and loves you even in your dark times because he sees the righteousness of Christ covering you That’s the truth that will produce a a tree of love and a in and a life of fruitfulness Now here’s the question Why does a good tree because Jesus said “If you’ve been converted written in in John 15 he said he said “You’re clean because I’m I’m going to die for your sins and you’re clean.” So why does a good tree that’s a converted tree God has given you a new life in Christ when you when you ask Christ to forgive all your sins and to be your Lord and Savior And some of you did that when you were seven years old And some of you did it when you were 15 Some of you did it maybe last week But it’s real God gives you a new life in Christ But the question that that haunts us and trust me I did not expect in my 70s to struggle as much as I still do to be a good Christian I did not anticipate that that uh I wouldn’t feel better about my behavior The truth is the longer you go the behinder you get
And I hope that doesn’t mean I sin more but it feels like I do because I’m aware of more I mean there are sins on my radar today that 20 years ago I didn’t even know were issues I didn’t even know they were wrong That’s the way it is God’s agenda is not actually to make you perfect in this life It’s to keep you humble and grateful because the fruit of the spirit can only grow out of a humble and grateful heart Okay So how does here’s the question Why does a good tree still produce such pathetic fruit
i mean honest can you be honest enough to say I that that’s a question you ask yourself i hope you do When you look in the mirror after trying so hard to be a good Christian for so many years don’t you have to say I know I I have to ask myself why is there not more fruitfulness in my life why do I still struggle so hard with being patient why is there so little joy in my life joyy’s a big one for me you know Um because I tend to just get so serious about life and so heavy you know and joy is elusive to me Okay But joy is one of the fruit of the spirit You know it’s easy to get a couple fruit But if you if you know they kind of have to all grow together If it’s genuine if the tree is healthy all the fruit’s going to look pretty good Well the truth is most of us look in the mirror and see that the fruit’s pretty pathetic sometimes You know why is that true why does a good tree still produce such pathetic fruit well there’s a couple reasons for that You know our love is a reflective love It never originates with yourself
The Bible says we love because he first loved us Now think of this in a relationship I I mentioned earlier u men you’re in a relationship with a woman who hasn’t been easy to live with lately She just hasn’t been affectionate She’s um hasn’t been particularly kind It’s been a long time since she made you breakfast You know you’re just feeling neglected Sorry that one that one hit close to home for a few of you uh
you begin to feel unloved right what what does a man do when he starts to feel disrespected and unloved well some men yell and scream and and uh get violent but most of us just kind of withdraw You know we we and we we end up punishing our wives Most of us punish our wives You know how not some some physical violence emotional violence is a horrible horrible thing But but you know guys um putting your wife in timeout is maybe even meaner
And we just instinctively know how to do that We can we can just put her in timeout Just leave We can be physically present and just leave emotionally tap into her deepest fear She’s going to be abandoned That she’s too much for you
So how do you break out of that because the truth is we can all love when we feel loved but how do you love when you don’t feel loved how do you forgive when the other person hasn’t owned their part
okay Yeah I did I did a little wrong but boy she did a big wrong to me And if she could own hers I could forgive her Well yeah you could But what if there’s no love coming your way you see well here’s here’s why we can do it Because who is the source of all love
i mean I I’ve I’ve talked to a thousand men who could love their wife if their if their wife would just be nicer to them
That’s just not that hard But how do you initiate how do you go first
well that’s why that’s why it’s hard you know um let me let me put up this slide here Uh the kids went to the youth group went to the water park the other day and um Hannah and Grayson were telling me about the you know I I haven’t been to a water park in a long time but you parents probably have seen this at a water park This bucket fills and fills and fills and then when it gets full what does it do it tips over and everybody standing under the bucket just gets drenched you know and then the bucket fills again and fills again Um now that’s a picture of how do we love how do we pour ourselves into other people
We we get filled When we’re full we can give Okay Now how do you get full when when the people around you your wife your kids your parents aren’t giving you what it feels like your soul needs how do you how do you give when you’re not getting there’s a source of love my friends The gospel tells us that God all love like the like this the moon is not the source of light is it it’s the sun Jesus is the son of righteousness rising with healing in his wings The light of the world is Jesus Okay So so why is why is are is is our fruit so pathetic we’re not filling our bucket Okay we’re not filling our bucket Said “But I’ve come to Christ I sometimes I leave Sunday morning full of the love of God and then by Sunday afternoon I’m yelling at my kids again.” What What happens well there’s there’s a couple things First of all your bucket leaks
Your bucket leaks My bucket leaks You know one of my mentors used to say you know grace leaks out of our hearts overnight You can go to you can go to bed at night feeling just rational and fine and the love of God You wake up in the morning and full of anxiety and stress and you ever wake up at you know an hour before you’re supposed to get up and you just the the cares of the world are just flooding your mind and you just can’t can’t get grounded
because because grace leaks out of our our buckets all the time But but there’s another reason and that is because love is actually emptying your bucket into somebody else’s life Love is sacrificial You you can’t love anybody without sacrifice Did you know that
it’s the two the concept of love requires giving up something that I need or desire for the sake of another person Guys this is what it means to love your family You’re called to continually substitute their well-being for what you want sacrifice Give up what you would like to have today for the sake of the people around you That’s what it means to love Paul said you know in his sermon on marriage in Ephesians 6 that you know it means laying down our lives for our wives men the way Christ laid down his life for for the church So why is it why is our fruit often so pathetic well our buckets leak And by the very nature of loving we’re constantly pouring out We’re giving up We’re giving away And you you can get to a deficit pretty quickly You can feel like you’re running on empty You know it’s easy to give when you’re feeling I mean what do you do when you get the call at three in the morning you know it’s like well if they call me at nine I could get up and do this You know my poor wife man our babies uh I she’s a good wife and I we’d wake up in the morning and I’ I’d pray that pray that God thank God for the great night’s sleep we got and she would kick me so hard like “What are you talking about i was up five times last night.” I thought “Oh really i guess I missed that You know it’s easy to love when your when your tank is full But can you love when you’re at a deficit when you’re when you’re so tired you know when you’re just depleted
Well in your own strength No that’s why it’s called the fruit of the spirit It’s not your fruit It’s the fruit of the spirit because the spirit has to draw us back to to where are your roots rooted Are you rooted in what God says that song we sang not yet I but Christ through me Does that mean something to you that Christ can move through his power when you’re on empty In fact Paul says that’s when we do our best work When we’re weak then I am strong When I’m poor that’s when I’m rich You know are you willing to live life poor and weak pathetic in the eyes of the world He says “That’s when you really get to love people through the power of Christ.”
So how can we keep filling our buckets giving more when we’re feeling on empty Um Galatians 5:25 he says “Since we live by the spirit let us keep in step with the spirit.” Keep in step with the spirit Cooperate with what the Holy Spirit is doing What is the Holy Spirit doing david David reminded us the Holy Spirit’s not a lamp for us to stare at He’s a search light that’s shining on Christ To be filled with the spirit doesn’t mean you’re looking at the spirit It means you’re looking at what the spirit is looking at Christ That’s always Christ’s mission I’m the spirit’s mission The father this is Trinity Sunday The father sent the spirit to to lead us and to focus our attention on what Christ did for us on the cross and what Christ will do for us for us from heaven That’s what it means to be filled with the spirit surrendered to the spirit’s vision helping us see Jesus I want to uh look just real briefly at Paul’s prayer And this is a great trinity Sunday prayer Ephesians 3 verse 14 See look at how the trinity is is just completely woven through this passage Paul says “For this reason I kneel before the father from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth deres its name.” Actually let me just say this because it’s father’s day That that word for family it’s fatherhood It’s the Greek word for fatherhood Can also be translated family But he said ‘I kneel before thee father like the the father of all God the father from whom his whole from all from whom all fatherhood in heaven and earth deres its name And I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith Then he says ‘ And I pray that you being rooted rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God How do you fill your bucket
you ask the father to send the spirit again with fresh power to help you see Jesus Now when he says rooted in love he doesn’t mean rooted in your love It’s rooted in the love God has for me You know how do you how do you get more love by letting yourself be loved Love is not something you can actively do Now you can do the actions of love but you can’t do anything to empower yourself to love more You can’t But you can surrender to trust the one who loves you
Have you ever tried to love a little orphan you know maybe some of you have reached out through adoption or um temporarily brought a a really lost hurting abused child into your home Have you ever tried to love a little child that’s never received love earthly love yeah It doesn’t matter how hard you try because their guards up they’re not going to they’re not going to fall for this one more time Foster parents deal with this all the time They they just won’t let you hug them right well my friends that’s you and me with God
He hasn’t moved away but but we’ve pulled away because we’re disappointed in him We’re disillusioned We’re scared he’s not going to really love us the way we need him to And so we avoid him And he says “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest come to me Takes trust doesn’t it a willingness to trust that he’ll be there that he’ll be kind that he won’t that he won’t ignore me
You know if you can do this we can if we can lean on the love that God has for me for me it will melt the icicles in our hearts It will give us the courage to get out of bed when when we don’t think we have the energy to do it To look for a job that we don’t think we’re qualified for To to risk things that might make us look stupid for the sake of others But you have to trust that God loves you and that Christ is your is your all your righteousness Paul says this frees us frees us from guilt You can’t love somebody if you’re with from a guilty conscience
Free frees us from self-righteousness from thinking you know frees us from comparing ourselves Would you like to be free from comparing yourself to other people
i’ve said this before You know you’re never going to win that war because you’re comparing your insides to their outside You’re comparing your life to their Facebook post How’s that going to work you’re going to always end up on the short end of that stick Unless you’re a narcissist then you’re going to feel like you’re better than all those people But either way you’re you’re a mess right you’re either deep in depression or you’re full of self-righteousness right wouldn’t you like to be free of comparing yourself the Apostle Paul in Corinthians says “I’ve stopped caring what you think about me.” He said ‘I don’t even care what I think about myself anymore because I’ve been to court and I heard the judge say “You are innocent Christ is your righteousness.” He says “So I’m free and then you can love.” Looking my friends it it all comes down to this Looking to Jesus He’s the one we compare ourselves to Now that’s going to do two things for you If you look at Jesus you’re gonna feel worse about yourself if you’re looking at your actions because you’re not going to measure up But then you’re going to see a smile where you expect a really disappointed frown on his face You’re going to see a smile where you expect to hear “Go get your act together and come back later.” What you’re going to hear is “Welcome home son.” Because you’re going to the real father The father of all fathers the father who is whose innate nature is to love God is love He loves you You don’t have to earn it You can’t deserve it You can’t ever pay him back He just loves you And you get to love him back because he loves you Look at Jesus for just a second on the cross
Unbelievably tired and tortured and pain does weird things to our minds you know but somehow he still had the presence to look at his mother at the foot of the cross and look at his his his disciple John and say “John would you take care of her?” How did he how did he focus on his mother now he was not a physical biological father but that was what fathers do That’s where Jesus showed us And you know if our moms live long enough guys right we’re going to father our our mothers at the end of their lives We’re called to father everybody around us I don’t care how old you are That’s your calling as a man for Jesus to hang there on that cross completely depleted of every bit of physical emotional energy a human being could possibly have and he still sees the people at the around him John would you take care of my mother and then he does the really unbelievable thing He looks at these people who are putting swords in him He says “Father would you forgive them?”
My friends that’s what it means to go first
Okay Now doesn’t that make you want to try harder and be better and quit being so pathetic
yeah
but at the same time I know but Lord I’m weak I’m not Jesus He says I know but I love you and you have no idea the fruit that we can bear when you abide in me And let my love abide in you God help us Let’s pray Holy Spirit this is what Jesus promised you would do for us This is why we need you This is why we come to church thirsty every Sunday because our buckets leak and we we honestly feel like we’re running on empty most of the time Holy Spirit help us again today to believe that Jesus did it all That the Father’s love is the love behind the whole universe that you don’t stop loving us when we mess up that you don’t pull away from us when we pull away from you that you’re always there with a glad welcome every time we come back And so Lord as continue through our service and our prayers and our readings and our especially as we come to the Lord’s supper may we anticipate the glad welcome home kiss of the father as we come to the Lord’s table at the end of our service receive again the love that you have for us in Jesus name we ask this Holy Spirit Amen Amen
[Music]
