Why Lent?

At first glance, the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5 seems either like an impossible checklist or an arbitrary virtue list. But Paul’s instruction to “walk by the Spirit” so we can bear fruit actually goes back to the Garden of Eden. God commands his people to be fruitful, and he promises to help them do it. After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, he sends us his Holy Spirit to do in us what we can’t fully do ourselves — bear fruit. The fruit of the Spirit isn’t a random list of things we should try better to embody. It’s a picture of what a life yielded to the Spirit can look like. To help us submit ourselves to the work and pruning of the Holy Spirit, we observe Lent. By fasting, abstaining, or just saying “no” to things that pull our hearts away from God, we allow his Spirit to bear fruit in us that we can’t produce on our own.

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Just try to be a little more Jesus y.

I was on my hands and knees in the dirt outside of our church lobby wearing cargo shorts, flip flops, and a white tee that I had written Jesus across the front of with a sharpie. Now for context, a week prior to this I had been asked to play Jesus in a skit for the rest of our youth group. I was in 11th grade and we were rehearsing.

Now, the intent of this sort of theatrical little mini production was to lift the all too familiar stories about the days leading up to Jesus death and resurrection from the dry pages of scripture and give them new life that would result in a kind of mini revival among the rest of our youth group. Uh, but the results were, uh, pretty underwhelming.

Now, we were rehearsing the scene where Jesus has that chat with the woman caught in the middle of an afternoon affair, so if you know the story, I was stooped over writing mystery words in the dirt while another fellow student, a poor fellow student, was standing next to me waiting for me to rise and then forgive her in front of the masses that had gathered to watch us rehearse.

But it was becoming more and more apparent to everybody there, myself included, that I was not what people thought Jesus was like. Like, just try to be a little more Jesus y. That was the only bit of direction that I got from the youth leader who was counting on me to usher in this theatrical revival, by which I assume he meant something like be the perfect embodiment of grace and truth, calm and confident, but righteously angry, merciful but not too merciful, just try to be more like Jesus.

So the fruit of the Spirit, now there’s a really bad way to interpret What we just read, the fruit of the Spirit. Now, I could come up here, read these verses, and give you some half decent advice on how to become more loving, joyful, or patient. Advice that you might take, and advice that might actually work for a day or two, until you have that fight with your spouse, that outburst of anger towards your kids, or the stack of weeknight decisions that seem to blur the line between unwise and sinful.

Now it starts on Sunday, today as a motivating energy to be more kind would end up on Saturday with exhaustion and frustration. Just try to be a little more Jesus y. Or on the other end of the spectrum, maybe you’re here this morning and honestly, you’re just not really buying it. Now you hear these fruits listed, you know the song from VBS, I know you know it.

But after a life of experience and failure, you don’t see the fruit as anything realistic, possible, or honestly even that necessary. Now you hear teachings like this and you’re not motivated at all because you don’t really think it’s possible to embody this. Just try to be a little more Jesus y? I mean, sure, these are good virtues, virtues that may or may not pop up in your life every now and then if you keep going to church and praying before your meals, but they’re an afterthought.

A random list of behaviors and character traits that Paul, who’s writing this, thinks would make you into a better church member. So we’re starting a new teaching series this morning. Uh, it’s just, it’s called Lent. We went through a lot of different ideas and what we ended up on was, just call it Lent.

It’s Lent. But the plan is to spend the weeks leading up to Easter working through the Fruit of the Spirit one by one and giving you ways throughout the series to participate in this historic season of Lent. But today we are going to set it all up because I believe Paul has so much more in mind when he writes this list of the Fruit of the Spirit than just try to be a little more Jesus y.

In fact, when Paul uses the word fruit to describe what a follower of Jesus could look like, he’s actually picking up on an ancient biblical theme that goes back to the opening pages of Scripture. So, if you want a roadmap of where we’re headed, four key ideas. Fruit, Spirit, Death, and Lent. Sound good?

First service, it didn’t sound good to them either. That’s okay. This is what I wrote, so this is what you’re going to get. First, fruit. And on the opening pages of the biblical story, God puts humans in the middle of a fertile yet untamed garden and essentially tells them to get to work. Adam and Eve, as representatives of humanity, are given the task of cultivating the ground, taking the raw material of God’s good creation, and making it into something good, productive, and even more beautiful.

The language specifically that God uses is this, Genesis chapter 1, verse 28, Be fruitful. Multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth. So using language of royalty like subdue and rule, God gives humanity a purpose. Be fruitful.

Have offspring, just at a base level, that’s what that means. But also, take what I’ve given you and do something with it. Now this happens before the fall, so if you know the story, you know that things go wrong pretty quickly after this. Adam and Eve can’t control their appetites and choose to eat the forbidden fruit that God specifically told them not to eat.

So they get kicked out of the garden, and though they are fruitful, they also begin to spread sin, death, and wickedness throughout God’s creation, or what Paul calls the works of the flesh. But God doesn’t leave humanity there. In fact, fruitfulness. Is a theme that begins in the garden, but continues throughout the rest of scripture.

It’s one, not the only, but one of the many threads that actually ties the whole book of the Bible together. So, fast forward a bit in the story, and God’s good creation has gone horribly wrong. wrong. Instead of goodness and fruitfulness being spread throughout the earth, alongside fruitfulness is sin and wickedness and evil that have also spread.

And so God decides to do something about it. He decides to flood the whole earth for 40 days, but he chooses to spare one family. Noah is the only one on earth who has stayed in right standing with God. And so he does the whole ark thing with the animals and all of that, and miraculously after the 40 days of flooding.

He survives. And here’s what God says to Noah’s family after those 40 days of waiting on the ark. Genesis chapter 9. God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful. Multiply. Fill the earth. So, rather than abandoning his human project here on earth, God saves Noah. Renews him after the flood.

And reminds him of his purpose. Now, from Noah’s family line, uh, he grows and he is fruitful. He has lots of children and his family grows. So God chooses one man from his family, Abram, and decides to use his family, Abram’s family, to then renew all of creation. Genesis chapter 17, this is what God tells Abram.

Then Abram fell face down and God spoke with him. As for me, here is my covenant with you. You will become the father of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations. I will make you extremely fruitful, and will make nations and kings come from you.

Notice, extremely fruitful. So it started as a command to a newlywed couple in a garden becomes an invitation and a promise from God himself to a whole people group. I will make you extremely fruitful. You’re no longer to be able to bear fruit by yourself, but I’m going to help you do it. It’s a promise that’s repeated throughout the rest of the Old Testament.

If you know the story, this family of Abraham that God chooses grows and grows and grows until it becomes the size of an entire small nation. Now that nation migrates to Egypt where, according to the first page of the book of Exodus, they literally were fruitful, it says. Increased rapidly and multiplied.

So much so that the pharaoh in Egypt becomes afraid of them, enslaves them, and then they then have to be rescued by God through a man named Moses. So when you get to the book of Leviticus, just after Moses leads the Israelites, which, again, is what, uh, the family line of Abraham turned into, this group called the Israelites, when Moses leads them out of Egypt, he meets with God for 40 days on Mount Sinai, where God gives Moses the law that’s going to guide his people into fruitfulness.

And God tells them, if they keep this law, Leviticus chapter 26, he says, I will turn to you, I will make you fruitful, and multiply you, and confirm my covenant with you. So there it is again, the promise. I will make you fruitful. I will help you do the very thing you were made to do. Again, if you know the story, God’s promise to his people was meant to hold their devotion to him, but instead of following and living within the parameters of God’s law, they abused God’s grace and abandoned him time and time again.

So fast forward through the story again, and eventually The entire nation of Israel is almost decimated because of their repeated rebellion against God and neglect of his commands. They’re exiled from their land under the oppression of stronger nations. But, even after centuries of not keeping God’s law, he still promises the same thing.

Speaking through the prophet Isaiah around the time of the exile in Isaiah chapter 37, God tells them this, This will be the sign for you. This year you will eat what grows on its own and in the second year what grows from that. But, in the third year, sow and reap. Plant vineyards and eat their fruit. The surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward.

For a remnant will go out from Jerusalem and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord of Armies will accomplish this. See, fruitfulness is a repeated promise that God makes to his people throughout the entire Old Testament. It’s an anchor to orient themselves around, something real and concrete to put their hope in.

Align yourself with God, and he will help you do the thing you were literally created to do. Now, I don’t have time to give you every instance that God promises to make his people fruitful, but it happens in almost every single book in the Old Testament. So by the time we get to the New Testament, Jesus, God himself in human flesh, hasn’t forgotten about that promise.

At the tail end of his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, he gives a helpful teaching on how to discern between true and false teachers. Here’s what he says, Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You’ll recognize them by their fruit.

Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? I, I don’t know. Jesus, maybe. I don’t In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit. But a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit. Neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

So you’ll recognize them by their fruit. Oh, it’s a warning. Everybody is going to produce something. In other words, you can tell if someone is really a part of God’s family by what the product of their life is, or my paraphrase of Jesus teaching, your life is teaching something. What is it teaching? Later in John’s biography of Jesus, he includes this, John chapter 15, Jesus talking to his disciples right before his death on the cross.

I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes, and he prunes every branch that does produce fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you, so remain in me, and I in you. It just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.

I’m the vine. You are the branches. The one who remains in me, and I in him, produces much fruit. Because you can do nothing without me. Jesus makes it even more clear a few verses later. Verse 16. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go. And produce fruit. And that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you.

All of this to say, you were made to produce fruit. So whatever you believe about the meaning of life, at some level, the purpose of humanity according to the biblical story is to bear fruit. To do what Adam and Eve were meant to do in the garden, which means we all carry those innate desires to leave things better than we found them, to create, to give more goodness than we receive, to orient our lives so that we produce something for the benefit of others.

But what exactly is the fruit? So next, spirit. So going back to our main text this morning, Galatians chapter 5. Verse 22. Paul writes, I say, then walk by the spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh for the flesh desires. What is against the spirit? And the spirit desires what is against the flesh.

These are opposed to each other so that you don’t do what you want, 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’m warning you about these things as I warned you before that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. So right off the bat Paul is alluding to what we talked about week one of our fasting series about a month ago. You have a flesh that’s working against you. Again, it’s not your body, go back and listen to our week one teaching of fasting, but it is a part of your body, your sin nature within your body.

And so, taking what Jesus says about his disciples and what he teaches them in Matthew 7, along with the rest of the Biblical story, and then adding this teaching from Paul, here’s what we get. You will produce something, but by default. What you produce are the works of the flesh. Meaning, if you live your life with no consideration to the type of person you are becoming, this is naturally what will come out of you.

Sorcery and carousing. Now to summarize New Testament scholar N. T. Wright’s explanation of this passage, you are born into a sinful flesh. And that sinful flesh is full of passions and desires that will lead to these works if left alone. But, by the grace of God, if the gospel is announced to you, and if you respond to the gospel, meaning you receive Jesus, you align yourself with Jesus, then immediately God’s Spirit goes to work in you.

You slowly get renewed from the inside out. Your desires change. Your impulse towards anger slowly transforms into an impulse to love. Your impulses towards selfish ambitions slowly transform into impulses to be kind and good. Your impulse towards moral impurity transforms into an impulse towards self control.

See, it’s the fulfillment of that Old Testament promise. I will make you extremely fruitful. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self control. Now there’s a reason that Paul contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. You can’t create fruit. Anything you can create by your own will and power is only a work.

It might appear to be fruit, but it’s ultimately a cheap copy of the real thing. Fruit is a byproduct. Something that grows as a result of careful cultivation, pruning, attentiveness, and a little bit of mystery. That’s God’s part. So what Paul is naming here is the obvious and inevitable byproduct of a life of deeply cultivated intimacy with God.

The person whose life is so oriented around the Spirit that they become people defined by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. You cannot will yourself to be more loving. That’s a work. And it might work for a little bit, but ultimately it’s going to fizzle out until your true self is revealed.

That’s exactly what Jesus teaches in John 15. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Meaning, apart from me, you cannot do the thing that you were made to do. Apart from me, all you can produce is the natural byproduct of your flesh, these works, your sin nature. So then what does it mean to walk by the Spirit?

Well, honestly, it means a lot of things. For one, it means being rooted in a Jesus centered community, working shoulder to shoulder with other spirit filled people who have also decided to follow Jesus, who can hold you accountable, encourage you, sustain you, and uplift you, teach you. Walking by the Spirit also means fighting sin, creating habits that orient your life to be formed by Jesus, to use the language of our church.

But walking by the Spirit is also habitual. You don’t have to think about walking. You tell your body where you want to go and your body naturally does what it’s supposed to do. So walking by the Spirit means creating habits that rewire your heart, soul, mind, and strength to do what they were meant to do.

To cultivate joy. To cultivate peace. Kindness. Gentleness. In the Spirit. And also walking is slow. Notice Paul doesn’t tell us to sprint by the spirit or even jog by the spirit or walk fast like you’re at Disneyland by the spirit. Second, amen. There it is. See, growing fruit takes time. And God is never in a hurry.

But there’s another element to walking by the spirit that we often ignore. So third, death. In John chapter 15, Jesus includes a harrowing line that we kind of, uh, move over pretty quickly when we read about abiding and fruit bearing. Verse two, every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes and he prunes every branch that does produce fruit so that it will produce even more fruit.

See, abiding in Jesus or walking by the Spirit isn’t a joy ride. Key to Jesus understanding of what it means to bear fruit is this idea, pruning. Now Jesus explained this even more clearly just a couple chapters before this in John chapter 12. Right before, again, he starts this teaching before he’s about to be crucified, he’s talking to his disciples.

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. See, the one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

If anyone serves me, he must follow me. Where I am, there my servant also will be. But if anyone serves me, the father will honor him.

If fruitfulness is a theme that’s woven throughout the storyline of Scripture, then also woven throughout the storyline of Scripture is the constant interplay between death and life. Long periods of waiting, pruning, and restraining come just before seasons of new life. What should end in death actually ends in renewal.

Noah, 40 days on the ark. What should have been the death of all of God’s infected creation ends with the renewal of humanity through Noah’s family. Or Moses, spending 40 days on Mount Sinai. What should have ended with the massacre of the Israelites by the hands of the Egyptians ends instead with the renewed covenant between God and his people, or Jesus, 40 days in the desert.

What should have been an unbearable test of willpower and strength as Jesus fasts from food and water for 40 days actually ends with a victory and the beginning of Jesus’s world changing ministry, ultimately resulting in salvation, the renewal of the world. So it seems that just before every defining moment in the story of God’s people, there’s a period of waiting, of pruning, of testing, and suffering.

See, if God’s going to help us bear fruit, something has to die. It’s the death of our false self. The death of our own ideas of success. The death of our flesh and all of its works. This is what the Bible calls repentance. We give up our flesh so that the spirit can bear fruit. If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself.

Take up his cross and follow me, Jesus says. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life because of me will find it. Or Paul, in verse 22 of this passage that we keep on going back to, those who belong to Jesus, verse 24, those who belong to Jesus have crucified the flesh along with its passions and desires.

See, this is painful. And it feels a lot like suffering. But to participate willingly in pain and suffering, no matter how big or how small, is to allow God to form in you something he otherwise wouldn’t be able to form. To allow God to meet you in a way that he wouldn’t otherwise be able to meet you. And that is exactly what Lent is about.

So Lent is the season just before Easter. 40 days leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Now historically, Lent was first officially recognized in the 4th century, just after the Council of Nicaea, where the official day of Easter was canonized. That’s where they decided that it has to do with the moon, or the rising of the moon, or something like that.

So that’s why Easter’s on a different day every year. It’s within, like, a certain window. Ask me about that later. Now some actually argue it goes back to the 2nd or 3rd centuries. We have an example, uh, in the 2nd century of the Saint Irenaeus writing about a pre Easter fast that his church participated in.

But, the true origins of Lent go back to the 40 day pattern of pruning, waiting, and suffering experienced by key people in the biblical story. Now, traditionally, Lent is observed with a fast. Forty days leading up to Easter, these are the original rules of Lent based on my research. Here’s what you were allowed to do.

You could eat one meal a day for six days a week. On the seventh day, you feasted with your church community. But for those six days, you only ate one meal, no earlier than 3 p. m., no meat, no fish, and no dairy. To no one’s surprise, that didn’t last. Very long. By the 1400s, people began eating their one meal earlier and earlier, adding a snack before work, eventually to just kind of keep their energy up while they work, and then eventually abandoning the practice of fasting altogether, choosing instead to abstain from luxuries and commodities.

So during Lent, we restrict and deny our flesh as a way to stand in solidarity with Jesus. To participate in the sufferings of Christ alongside him in order to develop a deeper and more innate appreciation for his sacrifice on the cross. We look ahead to Easter, but not before coming to terms with the reality of our sin that makes Easter necessary.

We participate in. Our victim to and contribute to the brokenness and wickedness of the sinful world around us. The works of the flesh infecting God’s good creation. Lent is an opportunity for us to realize that. To observe our sin and to hand it over to Jesus. But Lent is actually more than just a way to suffer alongside Christ.

It’s a way for us to hold the sins and vices keeping us fruitless before God, to open up the parts of us that we’re used to hiding and numbing in order for the Spirit to go to work, to put ourselves in a posture of submission through willful, small but still effective forms of suffering. See, Lent allows us to be pruned.

We fast, or we give something up so that we’re left alone. Bear before God with our true selves. We allow God to prune us. We allow the vices that we are used to numbing to come to the surface, and we hold them with open hands before God. We give ourselves room by eliminating the things pulling our devotion in a million little directions.

See, Lent is about the suffering before the growth. It’s about the death of winter but the coming of spring. Because repentance always comes before renewal. So, between now In between Easter, technically Lent starts on Wednesday, with Ash Wednesday. We are going to walk through the fruit of the Spirit as we observe Lent.

Not to try and be more Jesus y, but to try and be more fruitful. To accept God’s invitation to pruning, to make the most of our suffering. And to allow God to do in us what we cannot do in ourselves. Now you’ll work out the details if you’re in a Together group this week. If you’re not in a Together group, uh, that’s okay.

You can go to our teachings page and find our Lent series and follow along on the guides with us. Or just see an overview of Lent where we list some helpful practices to make the most of this season. Again, all of this is invitational. You don’t have to do this. But this is what we are doing as a church community, and we invite you to participate in that with us.

Now in a few moments, we’re going to stand and respond, um, to God’s Word. But to prepare our hearts to do that, I just want to ask these questions. What if the thing that you are striving for, the thing that your life is oriented around right now, The deepest longings are actually longings for fruitfulness.

See, what if your longing to be approved or respected by others isn’t really a longing for that. It’s actually a longing for love. Genuine love, both received and given away freely. What if your longing for flesh level satisfaction That take up the hours that make up your day isn’t actually a longing for flesh level satisfactions, but actually points to a deeper longing for soul level joy.

What if your deepest longing isn’t actually to be liked by others, it’s actually to be a person defined by kindness or goodness, self sacrificing your life for the sake of others? And what if the thing holding you back isn’t your willpower? It’s not your inability to just try and be a little more Jesus y.

What if the thing that’s holding you back is actually your submission to the Spirit of God? What if God wants to make you fruitful? To meet your deepest longings, where they really are. All you have to do is say yes to the pruning.

So why don’t we stand and respond?