The Fruit of Faithfulness and Goodness
Today, as we celebrate Pentecost, we start a sermon series where we reflect on the great gift that is God’s Holy Spirit. Every year, we spend some dedicated time just learning about the Holy Spirit, which is really important, because there is no greater gift and potential than the Holy Spirit with us. So taking time to really think about and get to know the Holy Spirit can only lead to a greater thankfulness and our empowerment. In the doctrine of the Trinity, we believe that the Holy Spirit is wholly and fully God, just like Jesus and the Father in heaven. That tells us that if the Holy Spirit is with us and in us, we have the fullness of God, his power, his goodness, his faithfulness living in us.
Over the last two years we looked at the names and characteristics of the Holy Spirit, so that we could purposefully try to get to know him a little more. These next two years we will be looking at what the Holy Spirit does in us. This year particularly, we are looking at the 12 Fruit of the Spirit: those qualities and experiences that the Holy Spirit works in us to become a part of who we are and how we live.
Today is about the Fruit of faithfulness and goodness. There is this pervasive idea in the church that we will never be good enough in this life. That it is not really possible for us to be faithful and good like Jesus, at least right now. I find myself falling into this trap of thinking I can’t be good enough. I don’t know why this idea is so encompassing. Maybe it is a comforting idea, because we know we don’t live up to our calling. Maybe it is a way of excusing some of the brokenness in the church. Maybe it is a way of lowering our expectations of ourselves and other Christians. But the more and more I thought about the Fruit of the Spirit, the more that I realized that this idea is wrong. We can be good enough and more.
If we have God’s Holy Spirit living in us, that means that God’s goodness and faithfulness live in us and that is more than enough. Our thinking is partially right. Our faithfulness and goodness are not enough. We know that. We can’t even be faithful to simple New years resolutions. We can’t even live up to the goodness we expect of others. Let alone being faithful to God at all times and living up to the goodness he meant for us. I think this is part of what Paul is expressing when he says, “I do what I don’t want to do and I don’t do what I want to do”. As Jesus says, “Our spirit is willing, but our flesh is weak”
Our weakness is not what we are talking about here though. Instead, we are talking about God’s strength as the Holy Spirit works in us. In fact, our weaknesses and faults should just remind us again and again that we truly do depend on God’s goodness to live through us. It is in our weakness that God shows his strength and God will show His strength through us as He did with the broken and uneducated disciples. In Psalm 107, which is all about God’s faithfulness, we hear that God will remove our sins from us, as far as the East is from the West, which is just a symbolic way of saying God will take away all of our evil. We even know that God’s faithfulness working in us can lead to repentance and redemption, which can lead to the transformation of our ignorance and wrong too. God’s faithfulness and goodness living in us are far more than our weaknesses. As we live out our lives we must depend on Jesus, and His faithfulness to live out through us.
The problem is that we are way more willing to depend on things that aren’t God. Our passage from Proverbs warns us of these. The passage tells us that we should not rely on our own eyes. This feels a little counterintuitive. We have phrases like, “Seeing is believing” or “I saw it with my own eyes”, telling us that our vision is what we should depend on. Yet, we also know that our eyes can play tricks on us, that we can so often miss what is right in front of us, and that our eyes can only see a limited amount of visible truth when there is so much more than what we can see. Not to mention that our eyes can lead us astray. The truth is that we cannot rely on what we can see or hear right in front of us, especially today when there are a whole lot of other narratives that people are trying to show or speak to us. Instead of trusting our eyes, we must depend on what God has shown us, what he has promised, and that even when we don’t see it, He will prove faithful again and again. Ultimately, we must trust God no matter what is before us. One of the amazing things is that by trusting in God’s faithfulness, God’s faithfulness will live out through us.
The Proverb also tells us not to be wise in our own eyes. This one is a little harder still. We know that we don’t know everything, but we often think we know enough to make decisions or at least we think that making a decision comes down to us. We can look at a situation and think that we know better than this person or that person. Elections often come down to who we think is most right and good. All of these examples again are us depending on our wisdom, our goodness, instead of God’s.
The proverb tells us, instead of being wise in our own eyes, we should rather fear the Lord. In these and all things, rather than looking to ourselves, we should first look towards God for his will, his way, and his goodness. This also speaks to another one of our weaknesses: unintentional sin. I would guess that a lot of unintentional hurt or sin is caused because we are doing what we are thinking is right, instead of looking to God for what is right, being faithful to God, and depending on God’s goodness.
This brings us to a really important part of faithfulness: remembrance. We need to remember to be faithful. We need to remember to turn to God. We need to remember to put Him first. That’s how the proverb starts, “Do not forget” and later says “Acknowledge God in everything”. The Holy Spirit will fill us as we allow him to and a big part of giving him room in our lives, is to simply, remember to give him space: giving him space in our decision-making, giving him space in our actions, and giving him space in shaping our hearts minds and lives.
In this, there is actually something really practical and simple that we can all do. We are all called to make a habit of turning to the Holy Spirit, whether that be in prayer, in giving, in silence, in recollection, or in action. We can all make more space for the Holy Spirit to enter into our lives and with that he will bring his good gifts and so his faithfulness and goodness can be lived out through us.
The other practical thing we can learn from remembering is that in order to remember God, we must first know him. I don’t mean you have to know everything about God, but the more you know the easier it will be. What I mean is that you have to have memories that speak of God’s guidance, his faithfulness, and his presence, whether they be from Scripture, from someone else’s testimony, or from reflecting on your past. The more you know God’s faithfulness through the past, the more you will be able to trust God’s faithfulness in the present even when you can’t see it. So, I would encourage you to reflect on stories, your own or others and find where God has been at work. Hand in hand with this is that we must remember our relationship with God and know what he has been and will be for us. Again, remembering this fundamental and reality-altering relationship with Jesus will only help every situation and lead to greater faithfulness and goodness in your life.
This remembering is just the first step as the proverb tells us, “Do not let loyal love and faithfulness forsake you, bind them around your neck, write them upon your heart”. This beautifully poetic line is saying so much, but basically, it is calling us to make God’s loyal love and faithfulness a part of us. It is so meant to be a part of us that it shows itself wherever we go like a massive necklace, leads us forward like a leash, or lives in us, shaping us like our DNA, or feeding us like our blood. This is a huge challenge to us as we are meant to help God infuse himself into every aspect of who we are and what we do, but it is so important because it is how we can truly be good - by sharing God’s goodness.
The interesting thing about this sentence is that the proverb writer, probably King Solomon, does not define if it is our love and faithfulness or God’s that he is talking about. I think he does this on purpose because they are meant to be so entwined that our faithfulness is not different. As we experience God’s loyal love and faithfulness, we become better able to live them out, and as we express them, we become better able to see God’s faithfulness. To really know God’s faithfulness it must both live in us and live out of us.
The amazing reality of this that we see at Pentecost is that God’s faithfulness living in and working through us by the power of the Holy Spirit can bear fruit in others too. As the disciples live and speak faithfully in response to the Holy Spirit, we see 3,000 people repenting and becoming followers of Jesus. Even the disciples themselves become more faithful and seek a more faithful life. It is as if the fruit the Holy Spirit bears in us, carries seeds that then are planted and grow in others too.
So, the Holy Spirit living in you desires to truly make you good and faithful. This isn’t about our weakness, it is instead about the strength of God’s faith working in us that can remove or even change our wrongs, while also working his faith in us to make it our own. We must know and remember God’s faithfulness in all situations so that by making space for the Holy Spirit he might shape us for his goodness. Ultimately, God’s goodness is meant to fully live in and through us in amazing and powerful ways that change us and the world so that everything truly reflects God’s goodness, which was the very purpose of all things from the beginning of creation. The Holy Spirit’s goodness and faithfulness are so powerful and wonderful that we should long for them in every part of our being and the beautiful reality is that as we do, God will make them part of us and through us can work that goodness into the world. AMEN
