Well, amen. Hey, come on church. Let's pray together. Lord, come before you. God, we thank you for your goodness and your presence today.

God, thank you again. That, that we don't have to go seeking to find you. God, you chose to dwell among us that your spirit is in this place. It's your spirit is among us. And so, Lord, we thank you for your presence in this place and in this time, God, we pray that, that we will be able to celebrate even more stories of life, change of eternal rescue because of your movement today.

We pray that today will be the day that, that we fall more in love with you, God, that we experience you in a whole new way. Let God pray that you'll move, that you'll be glorified, that you'll be honored, all things we ask in your name. Amen. Amen. Well, hey, welcome to Venture Church man.

I'm glad that you're here today. I'm glad I get to be with you today. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name's Kyle, I'm part of the team. If we have met and you've been following along with our story, man, just thank you. I wanna say thank you to man, all of you that have been so faithful to, to pray and, and encourage and reach out.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, I, I'll catch you up, uh, a little bit real quick. Um, uh, a few months ago, back during the summer-ish, uh, time doesn't exist for me right now. Um, my wife and I spent about, uh, about a month, uh, really unexpectedly in New Orleans at Ochsner's with our almost 2-year-old Charlie Kate. Uh, we had kind of found some things on, on some scans, found a bunch of fluid in her lungs. And so we ended up in New Orleans kind of chasing all this down, trying to figure out what was going on.

We got some answers there, uh, but we, we kind of needed some, some more help to, to really solve some things. And so we, uh, Brooke corrected me earlier. I think we're on 30 something days now. Uh, we, we left going to Philadelphia. We got moved to Philadelphia, uh, not Mississippi, the big one.

The one where like, they know I don't belong by the way I talk. Um, we, we, we got sent to Philadelphia about a month ago, um, for a, a procedure, supposed to be about like a six hour procedure on her lymphatic system, uh, followed by about a week's worth of, um, recovery. And so we spent that six hour procedure, ended up being about a 12 hour procedure on our 2-year-old, almost 2-year-old, um, which then turned into, uh, about three weeks worth of recovery time for her. And so, man, we have just been all over the place. If I sound, if I sound like I'm all over the place today, it's because I am, uh, that's real.

Um, but we were, uh, discharged on Friday. We got to leave the hospital and took the girls back to the hotel there in Philadelphia. We got a few more things to, to conquer a few more, little appointments to do there. So I flew in, um, yesterday, flew in late to, to kind of hang out and be with you today. I'll fly right back out to go get them.

I think I'll actually get a little bit less than 24 hours in Mississippi. Um, so we'll go back to get them, do a few more things and then, um, be driving back. And so really excited to, to get them back. I, man, I love you. I'm glad I'm here.

I'm glad I get to be with you. Honestly. I'll be far more excited to get my girls back home. Um, so today, lemme tell you though, where we are, uh, today. We have been as a church, we've been walking through the book of Galatians for about four weeks now.

Galatians is a letter in the New Testament that the Apostle Paul writes to a church, writes to a gathering of believers, people gathered together in pursuit of Jesus, trying to figure out what it looks like to, to live, to follow, uh, Jesus in a world that does not point us towards him, right? And so Paul writes this letter, we've been walking through it for about four weeks now. And really we've been kind of circling this, this same thought over and over and over again, that God freely offers us freedom. That because of his love on the cross that he put on display on the cross through Jesus, God freely offers us the gift of freedom. We kind of reached this big crescendo moments, Galatians chapter five, verse one, where Paul says, for freedom, Christ has set us free for freedom, for the sake of freedom.

Christ has set us free stand firm, therefore, and do not fall back in or do not submit again to the yoke of slavery and the slavery that Paul is talking about. There is, uh, the, the oppression, the weight of, of constantly feeling like you have to earn God's favor through right? Living the chains, the bondage of always feeling like you've gotta get it right so that God's favor will be on you. Paul calls it slavery. But no, the, the good news that is the Gospel of Jesus is that simply because of his love, not because of anything you could do, have done, will do, but simply because of his love for you, God has freely offered you grace.

That's the good news of the Gospel. And, and that sounds like you say that, and it sounds almost incomprehensible to us because in, in our culture and our world, kind of the waters that we swim in right now is, is that love is this commodity that's spent, but also since it can be spent, it can be taken, right? Love is a thing that they, we use for momentary desires. Oftentimes selfish desires, love is a thing that I can give and I can take all based off of my interpretation of feelings or emotions in any given moment, right? And so it sounds almost incomprehensible to us that there could be a, a perfect God that freely gives, not because of anything you bring to the table, but he freely gives you a full and complete love.

And yet, as crazy as that sounds to us, as impossible as that sounds to us, it is the constant and consistent theme of God's word over and over and over again. We see it and we see it all through the Book of Galatians. So what we're gonna do now for the next several weeks, we're gonna kind of zoom in on one particular section in chapter five of this letter. And really we're gonna look at a section today, and then over the next like five or six weeks, we're gonna really zoom in on one verse. Hint here in this letter, okay, Galatians chapter five, we're gonna start in, uh, verse 16.

It's what we call the fruit of the Spirit. And now what's kind of being talked about here, what we'll see is what does it look like for me to follow God? Like how do I know I'm with God? How do I know God is with me? What does it look like to, to know and to believe that that my line, my life is aligned with God's plan and God's purpose and God's presence to me?

Is it that blessings flow? Is it that everything works out? Is it that I avoid the hospital stays? I hope not because our story's been jacked up. What does that look like?

We see that in these verses, right? We see what that looks like to know and have confidence that I'm, I'm walking with the Lord and that God that God's presence is with me. So before we jump into the text, okay, lemme just, lemme just tell you why, why this conversation, why we believe this conversation is so important right now. So we back in the summer, I don't May or June, our team got together and we started kind of praying through and planning through this series and what we were gonna be talking about and how we were gonna unpack all of this. And we intentionally landed it here on the calendar.

We put it here for a reason. And it's no surprise to any of us, right? That, that an election's coming, you know, that. Um, and with this election, with the presidential election just weeks away, uh, the, the, the divisive, the hate field, the fear field rhetoric is intensifying. And then let's just go ahead and acknowledge it's only going to get worse.

It's only going to intensify more as we get closer to the election. We get, depending on what, what you consume, right? Depending on what news outlet or what social media or where you fit in the algorithm, um, we consume this message, right? That like, Hey, look, you got a red pill, you got a blue pill, you gotta take one, one of them's gonna bring paradise and one of 'em is gonna bring hell, good luck, right? Like, that's kind of the picture we get and it feels so, so weighty.

And what comes with all of that weight and what comes with all of that pressure and pain is a whole lot of divisiveness. There's a whole lot of anger, is a whole lot of bickering, it's a whole lot of dissension. All things that we'll see in just a minute are directly opposed, the who God has called his church and his people to be. And so what we wanna do as the church is we wanna step into this moment in time. We wanna step into the, uh, this, this opportunity with a little bit of a different perspective, okay?

Because maybe hang with me maybe in, in a, in a, in a time and in a culture of, of confusion, of chaos, of, of hurt, of distraction, of division, maybe who we are matters more than who we vote for. Like what if, just consider for a minute, what if in a time and in a season where our world, our nation at least, is totally captivated by who our world needs. Now, what if you and I intentionally chose to be what our world needs now, what difference would that make in our communities? What difference would that make in the lives, the real lives of people around us? Now listen, hear me out, okay?

Like, I'm not saying that, um, you should, or that we as a church are in any way like wanting to avoid the political conversations. That is our current reality. It's not what I'm saying, right? I'm not saying like you should boycott the system. This is not right.

Like vote your values if you're, if you're a person of faith and vote your faith. My hope in my prayer is that, that, that we don't sacrifice our testimony along the way because here's the deal, no, no matter how weighty this is, no matter how big and heavy this may feel, no matter how much we, we step into the season and we hear the language and it's all or nothing and chaos or whatever, this election does not change who sits on the throne. I don't know if you've read to the end of the story or not. Spoiler alert, he sits on the throne, God sits on the throne, and this election isn't gonna change that. Okay?

And so what we wanna do over the next few weeks is, man, we just wanna step into the conversation with and step into our culture with a little bit more confidence of who God and what God has called us to be. Okay? If you disagree, you can email us at Jeff Clark. Uh, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

Um, alright, so with that being said, let's jump into the text. Okay? Galatians chapter five, verse 16 is where we're gonna start and what we're gonna dig into for the next several weeks. Okay? Here's where Paul starts, he says, but I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

We'll come back to that idea in just a minute. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit being the spirit of God. And the desires of the spirit are against the flesh for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. Now, lemme just kind of remind you, I said this a moment ago. This is a letter that Paul is writing to the church, right?

He's writing to believers gathered together in pursuit of Jesus. And in this, he's reminding us that, hey, listen, there's a war in you that there is a desire, that there are the desires of the flesh, and there's the desires of the spirit. And those things are competing in you. But verse 18. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

Now, the works of the flesh are evident, they're obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, this, um, Greek word porn is where we get the idea of pornography from idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife. This should start to sound very, very familiar to you. Jealousy fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like this. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, the emphasis there, some of your translations may actually say this, it's that those who make a practice of doing these things, meaning that Paul is not saying, Hey, if you had a bad weekend, right? He's not saying, Hey, if you struggle with this and you fell off the wagon or you had an outburst, then you've given up the kingdom of God. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, those who make a practice of those who do these things habitually, those who have made this a lifestyle, have given evidence and given proof that God does not reign and rule in their life. That's what he means by the kingdom, right?

The kingdom is the place in which God reigns and rules. And so those who make a practice of these things, God does not sit on the throne of their life. Self does, pride does. Verse 22. But, and this is where we're gonna kind of really key in on the next several weeks, but the fruit of the spirit is love, is joy.

It's peace, it's patience, it's kindness. His goodness, his faithfulness, his gentleness, his self-control against such things. There is no law if you're looking for a verse to commit to memory for yourself or for your family. Like that's a great one to start with. The fruit of the spirits love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Now, what I wanna do today is I want to kind of, uh, unpack this in a really broad picture. I wanna unpack just a couple of truths as we approach the fruit as a whole. And then I'll leave you with really just one thought on the first fruit we see in this list love. And then over the next several weeks, we're gonna kind of unpack these one by one. Okay?

Here's the first, here's the first thing I I want you to see in this is we talk about the fruit of the spirit and what it looks like to walk in the spirit of Biden in him. We'll see that in just a second, is that the fruit that's produced in you isn't for you. The fruit produced in you isn't for you. I have, um, at my house, I have a fig tree. Uh, my, my back deck kind of overlooks my backyard.

Um, and so right, almost right in the middle of my, my backyard by itself, there's this fixture, it's really ugly right now, but um, it's been there since we bought the house. Spring summer, it begins to bloom. You know, it really kind of fills out. It really, it, it actually gets pretty, uh, and then like this fruit begins to, to grow on it, right? You kind of see the bud, you see the blossoms happen.

You see this fruit begin to grow. You see the figs grow in size and begin to change colors. It's a here's the question. Who benefits from the fruit that's produced on the tree? It's not me.

Figs are gross, by the way. Like there's like crunchy stuff in. I don't know why y'all eat those things. Um, as birds are squirrels, I know somebody, here's the point. The tree does not benefit from the fruit it produces.

You see that like the, the tree there, there's life produced in this tree. There's life produced on this street, creates this fruit, it creates this food that can give life to others. And yet the tree itself, as it produces this, as it experiences this fruit, the tree does not benefit from the fruit on its own branches. And in the same way, the fruit that God produces in you isn't meant simply for your enjoyment. So that meant for my enjoyment.

Now, in a very broad sense, we could look at this list, the fruit of the spirit, love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, goodness, faith. We, we can look at that and say, Hey, these, this is, these are characteristics of God. They're part of God's nature. And so in that they are things that we do indeed experience from God. Like we experience love from God.

He is the one who first loved us. We, we do experience joy from God. He gives us what we do, experience peace from God. His peace stands guard over our hearts. Like all of that is good and true and beautiful of our heavenly Father.

But the point is, it's not meant to stop with our experience. It's not meant to be, oh, you've experienced it, good for you. Oh, it doesn't stop with our experience. The fruit produced in us isn't simply forced. Let me connect two biblical analogies here that I think will help us.

Okay? The spirit of God produces fruit in you so that others may taste and see that he is good when the spirit of God produces fruit in you, it is so that the world may taste and see his goodness. You ever wondered where that phrase comes from to taste and see that the Lord is good? It it is in the Bible. Uh, it is Psalm 34, 8.

King David writes this part of a song that, that David sings, Psalm 34 8. He says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. What's interesting about that is when David writes those, when David sings that song, he's not King David, if you don't know a story in the Old Testament, David was a shepherd, just kind of man. It was kind of the, the young, the black sheep of the family out in the fields. Nobody really knew him, wasn't a big deal.

And suddenly some dude walks up and David's anointed as the next king of Israel. And so he, he kinda rises through the military ranks there in Israel and everybody begins to know David. He becomes famous. They're singing songs about him because he's out on the battlefield just conquering everybody. David becomes a household named so much so that the King of Israel, king sa hates him, thinks he's after his job, tries to kill him.

And so David is on the run. He has to run from his home, his homeland, his family, his friends, his people. He has to run because the king's after him, he's so afraid. He goes to the enemy, goes to the king of their enemy. Problem is he's so famous that dude knows him too.

David walks up in the palace. I know you, you are the one that's been jacked up, my armies out there. And so he tries to kill David. So now David is on the run again. He has nowhere to go.

He's, he's running from his homeland, he's running from his enemies. Everybody, the two most powerful nations are out to get him. He ends up hiding in a cave by himself with nowhere to go. I mean, you gotta imagine like, it's hard to get much lower than that for David. And then all of a sudden people start gathering around him like everybody else, that, that can't get a job or can't get an apartment or have a bad credit score or whatever.

Like, I don't know. They don't have anywhere else to go either. And so they just start gathering around David, they hear he's in the heels and say they go find him. And David looks up and there's 400 people. Dude's like, I don't know if you've ever been in a really bad place, but like sometimes you just wanna be alone and in your own pity party.

Well, this turns into like a gigantic pity party, right? There's 400 people all just broken and messed up together. And it's there that David pins these words and a terrible season of his life. He's looking at people in a terrible season of their life. And he says, taste and see that the Lord is good.

He's inviting them into an experience because of what is happening in him. Not that his circumstances are great, they're terrible, but he's inviting people to see, I want you to see and experience God's goodness in me. It, it is honestly a, a, this is a terrifying thought. Is what it is. A terrifying thought to me that there are some people who their only opportunity to experience the goodness of God is me, is the fruit that I produce in my life.

Like if people consumed what your life produced, and I'm talking about like energy or vibes or whatever, like, I'm not talking about that, but like just the product of your life, like what you produce in life. If that's what people took in and consumed, your family, your kids, your parents, your whatever, would they taste that? Would they, would they consume that and think, oh, this is good. This is, I I want more of this. This is different than what the world offers.

Or would they taste what comes out of your life and think this is bitter, it's hateful, it's gossip, it's slander, it's jealousy, it's malice. Oftentimes, right? The person's opportunity to experience the goodness of God comes from the fruit that's produced in our lives. So just for you, which then gets me to my second thought and, and I'm gonna steal a line here, lemme just kind of go ahead and give a caveat. Like I'm not real big on like the, the like rhyming lines.

I think they're kind of cheesy sometimes, but this one I think sticks. This one I think is pretty good. Um, healthy fruit comes from deep roots. So what I want you to see is we think about the fruit of the spirit of the next several weeks. Healthy fruit comes from deep roots.

John, uh, chapter 15, uh, this is really important teaching there from Jesus. He talks about this, this idea, right? The fruit that's produced in our life, what's produced in our life. And Jesus says, there's John chapter 15, verse uh, five. He says, I am the vine and you are the branches.

He says, whoever abides in me or dwells in me. So the same, same kind of idea that Paul used here when he says the walk in the spirit, it means to kind of orient our life towards his presence. God's presence in us just says, whoever abides in me and and I in him, it's him. It's that person that will produce much fruit. But apart from me, you can do nothing.

This is one of those places that like our, our western like achievement based way of thinking really, really struggles here. Because what makes sense to you and me, right? Is that if, if, if love is evidence that the spirit of God is in my life and I want the spirit of God in my life, then I need to be a more loving person, right? Or if joy is evidence that the spirit of God is present in me and I want the spirit of God present in me, then I need to manufacture. I need to find some sense of joy, even if it's just in a appearance of it or peace.

I need to look like a peaceful person. Here's a problem with that. No amount of, of willpower can create that in you. Listen, no matter how much I pray, man, I wanted to be a person of, I wanted to be a person of love and joy and peace in that hospital room. But I'm gonna tell you, look, when them jokers came in there at 2:00 AM started changing trash, I was not a peace filled person like that fruit just wasn't evident in my life in that moment because willpower can't create it.

That's like me taking this apple and taping it back onto the tree that it was picked from. There's an appearance of the fruit. Look, there it is. That's the fruit you want. Lemme just stick it up there on the tree.

Lemme just put that in my life. And while it may look okay, it may look good for a minute. We know that's just actively decaying. It's not life being produced in that. Listen to me.

You, you cannot add love to your being. You can abide in the one who loved first. You cannot add joy to your story, but you can abide in the giver of joy. You cannot add peace to who you are, but you can abide in the prince of peace. And in that, as we abide in him, as we walk in the spirit, as we orient our life towards his presence and what he's doing, and his two things happen, healthy fruit is produced and the disordered desires or the selfish desires of the flesh are avoided.

Back to verse 16, I told you I'd come back to him. Lemme do this real quick. Um, Paul said, verse 16, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. We try to do that in reverse, don't we? Don't we fall into that trap where we think, okay, I wanna walk by the spirit, but I've got all this other junk going on in my life, this battle going on in my life.

So I've gotta get that out. I've gotta avoid that. I've gotta, I've gotta remove that and then maybe I can walk in the spirit, then maybe I can experience his presence. But that's backwards. That's not what the text says.

It says walk in the spirit, abide in, dwell in him, orient your life to his presence, and then you will avoid the things of the flesh. 'Cause as we abide, as we walk in him, what we learn, what we see, what we taste and see and experience, is that he offers us something so much better than the world could ever give. So if you're a note taker, here's your line. Okay? Um, if you just like your one liners, your note taker here, it is adding and avoiding can never substitute for abiding.

You can never add enough good things to your life. You can never avoid enough bad things in your life to make up for abiding in his presence. You can't produce it. You can't create it. It's not gonna, it's not gonna magically produce fruit in you.

As we abide in him, as we cultivate the experience for God to move in us, than fruit is produced, which only happens, the opportunity is only there because of his love for us. Now, here's where I wanna shift gears into this. This first fruit that we see in this, listen, so what we're gonna wrap up, okay, uh, we do need to acknowledge, I do wanna acknowledge here that what we see in this text is a, a singular, not a plural list, right? Like the, the language, you see it in the language itself, the words that Paul uses, that the fruit is, it doesn't say that the fruits are, I almost stripped up over that word for some reason, right? It says the fruit is, it's singular.

And so then we, we get this list. And so what, what's happening here, like what I, what I believe is, is happening here, is Paul's painting this, this picture for us, that that all of these things, while they're obviously unique in and of themselves, like love is different than self-control. We get that. But what's happening here is Paul's painting the full picture that all of this is meant to give us the experience of walking in him, of what it means for the spirit to be be moving in me. Like, like my car is still a car when I don't have tires on it, it's still a car, but I don't get the full experience of it.

You're tracking. And so while each of these things are a unique component and part of the experience, they all work together. So I, I believe the way I've said this is that, that these are meant to be experienced in tandem, but not in sequence. Meaning we don't figure out what it means to be a person of love. And now I can move on to joy and then I can move on to peace.

But no, we grow in this together collectively, they work hand in hand to paint the full picture of God's presence in us. You tracking with that? I hope so. I don't even know if it makes a lot of sense to me, but that's what I got. Um, so here's where we start.

We're gonna take the next several weeks and we're gonna kind of unpack these one at a time. But I just wanna give you one thought right here on the first fruit love. And I think Paul chooses this one first with intentionality. I think there's reason here, if you're new to Scripture, I mean there's a whole lot we could say about the idea of love, right? I mean, it's all throughout the pages of God's word, especially the New Testament.

I mean, Jesus even tells us like it is the greatest thing we could ever do. And Jesus was asking, Hey, what's the most important thing if I can only do one thing? What is it? She said? Love, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

And a second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Like if you've got nothing else, then choose love. Paul said it is a different letter. First Corinthians chapter 13, Paul said, these three things remain faith, hope, and love.

That's all there is. Faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. I'll set you up for that one. Come on.

He said that same chapter, Paul said, um, that, that if I could do like all of the big great, wonderful things, if I could do miracles, if I could heal people, if I could raise people from the dead, he said, if I could speak like angels, if I could interpret the words of the angels and tell you even what the angels are saying, if I could do all of this incredible stuff, but I do it without love, it's absolutely worthless and pointless over and over and over again. We see the power of love throughout Scripture. Here's the one thing I want you to see though. Okay. We say a lot here.

Here's the one thing I want you to see. One John four 19, very simple verse, just powerful we love because he first loved us. It's the whole point of this message is that the fruit isn't just for you, right? That the fruit is meant to be produced through you for life around you. But I need you to see the source as we get started.

It's his love. Nothing else matters apart from his love for you. Yes, there's a responsibility for us to love, undoubtedly, but our responsibility to show, to give love is first and foremost a response to God's love. It's a response to his love for us. And so, listen, if you get nothing else, I need you to hear this today.

He loves you. And I realize like, man, maybe you came today and, and you are hoping for something a lot more profound than that. Honestly, don't know that there is anything more profound than that. He loves you regardless of what yesterday looked like for you. He loves you.

Whatever disappointments you've been dealing with for the past two years, he loves you. He doesn't love a past version of you. He doesn't love a future version of you. He loves you. He doesn't love you when you get it all together.

He doesn't love you when you figure that out. He doesn't love you whenever you can. Finally put that aside, he loves you and he loves you so much that he offers you a, a new life, a better life, a more fulfilling and satisfying life in his presence. But he loves you. And I'm wholeheartedly convinced of this, that the more we fall in love with Jesus, the more the fruit will be produced, the more will be a person of love and joy and peace and patience.

But it's not gonna happen because I grip my teeth and I will, it, it's gonna happen because I fall in love with this presence in me. And so in a few, a few minutes, um, we will, across all of our campuses, a member of our team, a campus pastor, somebody will come out and, and just kind of walk you through, give you a way that you can connect with us. Maybe you have questions. You wanna know what it looks like to and what does it mean to love Jesus? So what does it mean for me to, to understand, to know his love?

I I know I'm missing something. Is that it? What does that mean? What does that look like? We'll tell you how we want to connect with you.

You can connect with us. We, we want, we wanna come alongside you in this journey. But, but what I wanna do right now is just give you a moment to experience it. Just kind of pause in his love for you is I'm gonna pray and, and our teams are gonna lead us in a time of worship. This is your chance, man, just to praise him, to sing back his love that fully and completely.

He loves you, you today, this you right now, he loves you and be your chance, man. You can move in this space. You mean if you need to get on your face at the altar, if you wanna spend some time at the crosses and lay down something that has been keeping you back from his love, you wanna pray with somebody, we'll have people available to pray with you, but it be your tense, you move, you worship, you respond. And then we'll, we'll come back out and tell you maybe how you can take a step in this. Okay?

Let's pray. Lord, we come before you. God, we thank you again for your goodness. God. We know that we can never love you the way that you love us.

We can never repay you for your love. We can never bring anything to the table to earn or deserve your love. And yet you love us fully and completely. So God, we just give you our thanks for that. And we give you what love we can.

And I pray in this moment that this will be a moment where hearts are open to you in a brand new way. We see your love maybe for the first time or maybe in a brand new way. We experience your love, pray that you'll move God and that you'll be glorified. All things we ask in your name. Amen.