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Living Inside Out

11/25/2007 - Good Love, Galatians 5:22-23

This morning we continue our series called Living Inside Out. It's all about letting the life of Jesus that's inside his followers come out to bless the world, to make a difference in the world, to bring a little bit of heaven to this earth. And that will happen. Jesus promises that it will, if we stay connected to him.

The inspiration for this series comes from the words of Jesus that we looked at this summer when he said in John 15:5, I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. But apart from me you can do nothing.

Just like sap flows through the vine and into the branches to keep them alive and productive, so the life of Jesus flows through each of his followers keeping us alive and productive if we remain in him.

And remaining in him looks a lot like this, like what we're doing right now, taking time out of our hectic schedules to gather in community to worship Jesus and be refreshed and refueled by his words. This is a big part of remaining in him. It looks like a lot of other things too like using our gifts, talents, and resources to serve others, like meeting with other Christ followers for prayer and encouragement, like getting alone at times so that we can hear the quiet voice of Jesus that often gets muffled by the noise of our busy lives.

And as we remain in him he will produce fruit through us, "much fruit" Jesus says. Someone I read this week said, "The more fruit on the branch the heavier it becomes and the more it bends toward the earth. And so it is with us. The more fruitful we become the more we bend in humility to God." He's the one who produces the fruit, not us. The best thing we can do is stay connected to him.

And the fruit we've been looking at in this series is found in Galatians 5:22-23, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness and self-control.

And we've said all along that these nine virtues are really different expressions of love. And so we've been talking about joyful love and peaceful love and patient love and kind love and today we want to talk about good love.

I don't know about you, but to me the word "good" sounds so generic. How are you doing? "Good." How was your day at work? "Good." How was school today? "Good." How was your Thanksgiving? "Good." The word "good" is such a vanilla word. It's a word that we use and overuse all the time.

So when we talk about Good Love what does that mean? It's funny, when I sent Chris Slawecki the title of this teaching, Chris often prints up the labels for our CD's, he thought I meant Good Lovin' which was a 60's song by the Young Rascals. Anybody here remember that? Of course you don't. "Well I got the fever and you got the cure. Gimme, gimme some lovin.' Good lovin'." Does anyone here remember the 60's?

So what does it mean that the fruit of Spirit is goodness? Well, like all these characteristics we need to start with God and understand who he is. And our God is a good God.

Psalm 34:8 says, Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed are those who take refuge in him.

Psalm 119:68 puts it this way,You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees.

God is good. In fact, our English word "good" comes from the word God. Believing that God is good is the first step we all need to take if we're going to trust God with anything in our lives. Nobody wants to trust a bad God who does bad things or a moody God who has some good days and some bad days and you're never sure what day it is. But all of us can trust a good God who only does good things.

The Bible tells us that God can do no evil. James 1:13-17 says, When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone … ¹⁶Don't be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. ¹⁷Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Evil things happen in this world. They happen all the time. They happen in your life and they happen in my life too. But that evil is not sourced in God. God cannot do evil. If you want to blame someone for evil then blame the evil one, not our loving, heavenly Father. He is good all the time.

When I'm in Africa often they open their worship times by saying, "God is good, all the time and all the time, God is good." Ever hear that before? They do it responsively. One person says, "God is good." And everyone says, "All the time." And then the leader says, "And all the time." And they say, "God is good." And it gives me chills saying that in that setting knowing the struggles these people face every single day with poverty and sickness and war. Yet they know that God is good all the time. In fact, let's try that together. "God is good, all the time. And all the time, God is good."

When we were in Burkina Faso in February and had about a half hour with all those children from Compassion International at the church in Ouagadougou we taught them the sign language song, "God is so good. God is so good. God is so good. He's so good to me." At the core of our faith is a deep belief in the goodness of God. Don't ever let go of that, because it will be attacked.

In the garden God's goodness was attacked immediately. After he created the heavens and the earth and everything in them he said it was all "very good." But it didn't take long for the evil one to slither his way into the garden and start casting doubts on the goodness of God.

In Genesis 3:1-4 we read,Did God really say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden? You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

"God isn't good. You can't trust him. If God was good he wouldn't hold anything back from you. He doesn't want you to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because if you do then you're going to be like him and he doesn't want any rivals. So eat and become your own god."

The first recorded lie in the Scriptures is a really a slam against the goodness of God. But don't believe it. Adam and Eve believed it and look at the mess we're in because of it. God is good, all the time and all the time, God is good. And one of the expressions of the life and love of Jesus that's inside us is goodness.

One of my favorite descriptions of Jesus is found in Acts 10:38 where the apostle Peter says to Cornelius, You know how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. Jesus went around doing good and that's what he wants us to be doing too.

He puts it this way in Matthew 5:16, Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Goodness is an expression of the life of Jesus that he wants to come out of us.

And what does it mean to be good? Well if you go to Webster's dictionary you'll find that the word "good" means a lot of things. It can mean favorable like good news, fertile like good soil, fit like good food, attractive like good looks, amusing like a good joke, competent like a good doctor, kind like good intentions, virtuous like a good person.

Good can mean a lot of things. But what does good look like with skin on? What do good people look like? Someone has said that goodness is easier to recognize than to define. So let me give you two examples of good people who lived inside out and made a difference in this world. One is a man and one is a woman and their stories are both found in Scripture.

The man's name is Barnabas. And in Acts 11:24 we read that, He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. Barnabas was a good man and when we read his story in the New Testament we see why that is. The name Barnabas means "son of encouragement" and that's what Barnabas was. He was an encourager. He built other people built up and cheered them on and wanted to see them succeed.

If you have a Bible turn with me to Acts 9. When Saul of Tarsus was dramatically converted to Christ and eventually became the apostle Paul it was Barnabas who reached out to him and introduced him to the rest of the apostles. Everyone else was scared to death of Paul and for good reason. He was public enemy #1 and had made it his personal mission to wipe out the Christian movement. He was the very first persecutor of the church dragging Christians to jail, approving of their executions until Jesus personally appeared to him. He literally knocked him off his horse and changed his life.

But after that happened nobody wanted anything to do with Saul. Believers were afraid of him and were convinced he was a fake, just trying to weasel his way into the church to destroy it. It was kind of like Adolph Hitler saying, "Hey, I made a mistake. I want to become Jewish!" Yea right!

No one in the church wanted anything to do with Saul except Barnabas. He believed Saul and welcomed him in. That was a gutsy thing to do. And this is how it reads in Acts 9:26-27, When Saul came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. ²⁷But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus.

Barnabas was a good man who encouraged others. Humanly speaking Saul might never have become the apostle Paul without the encouragement of Barnabas.

All of us need encouragement. Remember we're all fighting a battle of some kind or another. This past Thursday a bunch from Valley View went down to the shelter to serve Thanksgiving dinner just to be an encouragement to those who for one reason or another are struggling right now. A few weeks ago a bunch went to Villanova for the Special Olympics to encourage those special athletes who are facing their own challenges in life.

I can think of good teachers and coaches and youth workers and pastors who encouraged me at different times in my life and I'm sure many of you can too. I know those who encourage me right now to stay on the journey and keep following Jesus. We all need encouragement to do that. Good people are often great encouragers and Barnabas was a good man and a great encourager.

He was also generous too. In fact, the first time he's mentioned in Scripture he's giving something away. In the book of Acts we read this thrilling account of the very first church starting in Acts 4:34-37 , There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales ³⁵and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. ³⁶Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Baranabas (which means "son of encouragement"), ³⁷sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet.

As we've often said the resurrection of Jesus Christ had a radical political, moral, social, and an economic impact on the first followers of Christ. Here we see them putting their resources together to make sure that everyone's needs are taken care of and Barnabas led the way with his generosity. He sold an investment property, cashed in his 401(k) and donated the proceeds to the church, all of it!

Good people are often generous with their money, their time, their words, their talents. We have a lot of good people in our Valley View community. Whenever we mention a need it seems there are good people ready to step up and meet it. Sue Gilmore told me that's what happened last week with meals for Helping Hands.

Barnabas shows us what goodness looks like in the life of a Christ follower. And so does a good woman named Tabitha. In Acts 9:36 we read, In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which, when translated, is Dorcas), who was always doing good and helping the poor.

But then something happened to her. Look back at Acts 9:37 , About that time she, that is Tabitha, became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. ³⁸Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, "Please come at once!" ³⁹Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. ⁴⁰Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, "Tabitha, get up." She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. ⁴¹He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called the believers and the widows and presented her to them alive. ⁴²This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord.

Tabitha was a good woman. She made clothes and gave them to the poor, that's what widows were in that day. They were all poor. And that's why they wept when she died. She had been such a help to them. Good people use their talents for the Lord and care about the poor and the needy. And that particular fruit of the Spirit, that concern for those less fortunate is where I see the growing edge in our church community right now. It's getting stronger in me and it's getting stronger in all of us. And I thank God for it. And I think he's thrilled as we continue to pursue this mission of Christ together.

God puts it this way in Micah 6:8, He has shown all people what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

The more fruitful we become the more we bend in humility to God.

Goodness is a fruit of the Spirit. We want to be good people, not to earn our way into God's favor, not to cut some kind of deal with him, but to reflect the Spirit of God who lives inside each one of us. That's why we were rescued in the first place. Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8-10, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - ⁹not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

The good works are out there waiting for us to do, both big and small. God has them ready for us. We just need to let his Spirit keep leading us to them. And as we go about doing good we do well to remember the words of Mother Teresa who knew something about doing good when she said, "It's not how much you do that matters but how much love you put into what you do."

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Valley View Community Church, feel free to contact us at info@valleyviewseek.org or call 610.631.2707.