Fruit of the Spirit: Self Control

Well, hey, if we have never met, my name is Josh, and I'm glad you're here. And whether you've been a part of Whitewater for longer than I've been alive, some of you, or today is your very first day, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here in the room. I'm glad you're here listening online today. And I'm deeply convinced that it's not an accident that any of us are here today.

If you are in the room today and after the service, you'd like to take a step here at Whitewater. We would love for you just to do one thing. Go to the information desk out in the foyer, introduce yourself. And our team there would love to help you take a step. We're in the 10th.

And can you believe it's been 10 weeks? This is the 10th week of this Fruit of the Spirit series that has been so rich, it's been so good, so many great conversations through all of this. If you saw on the way in or the way out, we've got some cheat sheets for the Fruit of the Spirit, half sheets that have all of our definitions and all of the calls to action on the back, the challenges as well. So we hope you'll take one of those as you go today. But the Bible tells us that the Fruit of the Spirit is both the evidence and the inevitable outcome of abiding in Jesus.

The fruit is the proof that he is our source. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, this fruit is causing us little by little, over time, over the length of our lives, it's causing us to look more and more like Jesus. It's our vision for this church that we would be a people who actually embodies these characteristics. They're actually in us. When people run into us, this is what they see.

People who actually grow this fruit on our branches. And don't forget that this fruit is produced not for the primary benefit of the vine or the tree, not for the primary benefit of us. It is actually produced at cost in energy, in resources to us. But it is produced primarily for the benefit of others. And inside this fruit that is being produced are seeds.

And those seeds have the capacity to plant more vines and more trees which can grow more fruit and have an eternal impact and an eternal harvest. This is the biblical economy here this week. We're looking at self control, everybody's favorite topic. And I'm pumped to share with you, truly, what God has been sharing with me this week as I've been Praying and studying and writing. This has been a week for me.

I feel like God, like full speed, T boned me in the side this week. And all these things I thought I understood about self control. I'm just pleading with you today to allow God to disrupt what you think about self control.

And I know that today's message is a message that the enemy does not want us to hear. And so I want to pray before we get into this that God will have his way. Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, you were the one who spoke the world into being. You were the one who knows every cell in our bodies.

You formed us together in our mother's womb. You were the one who holds the keys to life and death. You were the one who is the source of all truth and all wisdom and all power and all understanding. And I pray right now that you would break down every assumption in us, that you would break down every bit of resistance and every bit of pride and ego that might keep us from hearing what you have to say to us today. And I pray that you would open our ears, our eyes, that you would till up the soil in our hearts to be able to receive your word.

Father, teach us powerfully today what the enemy does not want us to know.

I pray that you would make my words like eternal seeds planted in each of us that would bring about a rich harvest. And I pray all of this in your power, in your glory, in Jesus name, Amen. All right. Are you ready? Both of you?

So many of us have a misunderstanding about what being a Christian is. We think it's about not doing bad things, making sure that we do good things, avoiding hell. And hopefully on the exit exam, we score high enough that we get to go into heaven, which is this place up in the clouds where we all get wings and a harp that we've never played before. And we get a little thing, a little circle floating over our heads and we will sing forever. But church heaven isn't just some distant place in the clouds.

It's not just reserved for those who are good enough after death. The Bible does promise eternal life with God, but it's not just for those who are good enough. It's for those of us who are found to be in Christ. But heaven has just as much significance here and now as it does. Then, over and over, Jesus declared that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.

It's close enough to touch. Why? Because heaven is the full reality of God's rule and reign. It exists wherever his will is being accomplished, wherever King Jesus Reigns as Lord, there heaven is. This is why Jesus tells us that the highest aim of a Christian is to become one who seeks God's kingdom first.

And how do we do that? We seek his kingdom first by fighting for what God wants done to be done. We then are ministers of reconciliation, of putting things back to the way that God intended them to be. And because of Jesus, life, death and resurrection, and because of the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit inside of us, the very same resurrection power that raised Christ from the dead, by the way the Bible says is in us. We who are Christ followers have died to our old selves.

We've been resurrected to life with Jesus. And now we have the marching orders to bring heaven to earth, where what God wants done is done in every place that we stand. We are not in the good behavior business. We are not in the make everyone feel better business. We are not in the pain management business.

We are not in the get out of hell free business. We're not in the self help business. We are in the business of restoration. And our work here on this earth is not done until King Jesus is rightfully enthroned in our hearts, in our homes, in our workplaces, and in every, every sphere of influence that we have in this life. We are ambassadors of reconciliation.

We are sent and empowered by the King of Kings. And wherever we are standing is kingdom soil. Come on. This is what it is to be a Christian. It's way better than moralism.

And it's so important for us to look at all of this entire series through this lens. This is the only reason it matters. Everything we do, every spiritual battle we fight, every prayer we pray, every fruit that is grown in us, all of our worship, all of our Christian activity, it is all on the way to one thing. It's the thing that we keep talking about over and over and over. It is shalom.

It is peace. It is reconciliation. It is restoration. It is getting things back to the way God created them to be and intends for them to be. And if we misunderstand this last piece of the fruit, we will completely miss what might well be the most important element of walking in the Spirit.

So what could we possibly be missing? I mean, self control sounds like the perfect period at the end of the sentence, doesn't it? None of this other fruit can grow in our lives if we don't have self control. Self control sounds exactly like what we need to accomplish kingdom living. If we don't like how our life is going, we need to put our Big boy, pants on and go do something about it, right?

Get ourselves together, make ourselves do hard stuff, get out of bed. What is there to misunderstand? Self control is control of self. But there's one huge problem. When you look at the original language for this fruit.

In the Greek, the word self is nowhere to be found. The word self is literally not there. The Greek word here used is the word enkratia. It is a compound word formed from two smaller words, en en, which just means inside or within. And the second word is kratos, which means dominion, power or mastery.

And together, literally, this means inside power or inner dominion. And while there's certainly a place for self discipline and good practices in Christian living, the idea of self control is the exact opposite of everything we've been teaching through this whole series. Think of it this way. Imagine you own a sailboat and you can maintain it and you can study the best sailing techniques. You can surround yourself with experience and even master all the terminology.

You can push off from the shore. You can get everything ready, hoist the sails with all your strength and position the boat just right. But you can't make the wind blow. You can't. Our role is real, but it is not the source.

It's not the source of the power. Our job is to prepare, position and respond and be ready when. When the wind moves. The wind is the real power. In the same way, we have a part to play in our spiritual lives.

No doubt we seek and surrender and obey, but the power, the movement, the transformation that comes from the Spirit. True biblical fruit of the Spirit is not producible in our ability or strength. True biblical fruit of the Spirit is only growable by the power of the Holy Spirit. The inner dominion or inside power that is producing this spiritual fruit is not self, it's the Holy Spirit. We cannot produce true biblical spiritual fruit without the Spirit, any more than a random severed branch can grow an apple.

Without the source of power, nutrients and energy from the vine or from the tree, fruit cannot grow. This is why Jesus said, apart from me, you can do nothing. I think he meant nothing in that same section of scripture that we looked at in week one. It's in John chapter 15. There's a phrase that I think we have a high tendency to just fly over and completely miss.

And I believe this phrase can unlock our understanding of not only this final piece of fruit, but of all the fruit. Let's read Jesus words John 15. Starting in verse 4. He says, Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine.

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit apart from me. You can do nothing now. Because we're humans and because we're egocentric, nearly all of us will read these words from Jesus.

And the part that sticks out to us is what we think is our part. Remain in me. And when we produce good fruit, we say we had a good week of hanging onto the vine. We did a good job self control. But when we have a bad week, we feel shame because we didn't hang on strong enough, because our grip slipped off.

We'll work harder to hang on next time is what we conclude. But the part that we walk right past is the part that isn't our part. It's the part that is his part, as I also remain in you. The inner dominion or inner mastery that Paul finishes this list with is not just us in Christ, it is Christ in us. We all know that when you plant cucumber seeds in the ground, you grow cucumbers.

When you plant watermelon seeds in the ground, you grow watermelons. No one believes that planting watermelon seeds right next to a bunch of cucumber seeds will produce something that looks less like a watermelon and more like a cucumber, because the seed determines the fruit. But the way that we so often live our lives ignores this truth. When the fruit that comes out of us is the wrong kind of fruit, we try everything in our power to change the fruit without changing the seed. But just like no amount of fertilizer or sun or weeding or pruning or proximity can make a cucumber grow from a watermelon seed.

There is no amount of prayer or generosity or volunteering or better thinking or church attendance or proximity to Christians that can produce true spiritual fruit in us. If what is planted in us is not the Holy Spirit, which Paul calls many times the Spirit of Christ or the Spirit of King Jesus, these are interchangeable. It's Christ in us, the Holy Spirit in us. He must be in us, and we must be in Him. And when we translate this word as self control, I think we miss this too.

Many of us are trying to work up the self control to hang onto the vine with all our strength and hope that we can somehow grow fruit that looks like Jesus when the offer given to us by Jesus himself is not just that we would hang onto him, but that he would be the very seed planted in the life giving power of Christ must flow through us from the inside out. His presence within us is the only true source of spiritual fruit. And we can be sure that if the fruit that is coming out of us is not spiritual fruit, there is a different seed planted inside of us. So I want to give us a better, what I believe is a better translation and a better definition for this final piece of the fruit. I want to use the word inner dominion in place of self control.

Inner dominion, that's the power of the spirit reigning over our inner lives. Inner dominion is the power of the spirit reigning over our inner lives. In the book of Proverbs, King Solomon, who the Bible says is the wisest man who ever lived, he's getting towards the end of his life, he has several sons and he wants to leave wisdom behind to them, which is the majority of what's written in the book of Proverbs. And in chapter four, Solomon uncovers something that helps us down this road. Proverbs 4, starting in verse 22.

My son, pay attention to what I say. Turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and health to one's whole body. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

In the Hebrew in verse 23, it is literally above all guarding, above everything you deem worthy of guarding in your life. Above all guarding, guard your heart, for from it are the outflows of life. In the Bible, the heart is viewed as the center of the self. It is the soil from which our life grows and produces everything that is produced. This verse is not just about guarding our emotions and activity.

It's about guarding the very core of a person's being, thoughts, desires and affections. Self control is all about guarding what comes out out. Inner dominion is all about guarding what we allow to be planted in to begin with into the soil of our heart. Self control is about controlling what comes out. Inner dominion is about controlling what comes in.

Self control builds a fence to keep pests out. It pulls weeds, it hides the bad fruit. It makes sure there's a nice waxy sheen on the good fruit. But ultimately, when we're tired or stressed or angry, what's actually in us is what comes out of us. Now, I don't know about you, but I would much rather Solomon has said, guard your hearts because outside forces cause you to do stuff.

He says, no, you're the problem. What is in you is the problem. Guard your hearts. When we looked at the fruit of Faithfulness, you might remember we talked about the Book of Hosea. It's a troubling book.

And in the Book of Hosea, God comes to Hosea and instructs him to marry an unfaithful woman. And his life becomes this giant, tragic object lesson for what it looks like for God's people to be unfaithful to him. But God keeps taking us back over and over and over, despite our infidelity. And towards the end of the book, we get to chapter 10 and we read these words. Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit.

The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built. As his country improved, he improved his pillars. God blesses his people. He plants them as a choice vine, and as they get blessing, they build more altars. That means that they're looking to him, they're thanking him, they're worshiping Him.

But the next sentence is, they built up pillars. And this is the language that tells us that at the same time, they're letting false gods into their worship as well. We pick up in verse four, they utter mere words with empty oaths. They make covenants, so judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field. In our language from this series, they hang fake fruit on their branches by doing stuff that looks like good activity but isn't.

True spiritual fruit, but God sees right through it. And as that happens, poisonous weeds grow up all around the vine. And then God calls His people to plow up the ground and plant new seed. Plow up the ground and plant new seed. We pick up in verse 12.

Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love. Break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord that He may come and reign. Righteousness upon you. You have plowed iniquity. You have reaped injustice.

You have eaten the fruit of lies because you've trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors. Therefore, the tumult of war shall arise among your people and all your fortresses and shall be destroyed. This is the false fruit of self control, building up the strength of armies, strongholds, human power, and none of it is strong enough to last. And in chapter 11, we see this beautiful and tragic bleeding heart of God as He responds to his unfaithful people. He says, when Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws.

And I bent down to them and fed them.

I was listening through the entire Book of Hosea in the car this week, and it wrecked me. And I had this question in my mind, what have I done? Oh, what have I done? How unfaithful am I? And God is like the Father who is looking at their child, who looks at him and says, I don't need you.

I've got my own strength and I've got my false gods. God loved them, he cared for them, he provided for them, he healed them. But they look the other way. And as the book of Hosea comes to a close, it doesn't end in sorrow. God looks to a day when his people will repent, turn toward him again, and he promises to bless them.

When they do. We pick up in 14, verse 4. I will heal their apostasy. I will freely love them, for my anger will have turned from him. I will be like the dew to Israel.

He will blossom like the lily and take root like the cedars of Lebanon. His branches will spread and his splendor will be like the olive tree, his fragrance like the forest of Lebanon. The people will return and live beneath his shade. His shade will be for other people. They will grow grain and blossom like the vine.

His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim, why should you have anything more to do with idols? It's I who answer and watch over him. I am like a flourishing pine tree or a flourishing evergreen. Your fruit comes from me.

Do you see the pattern? Israel is squeezing their self control muscles. They're trusting in their own strength, their own way, their own power. And what do they reap? They reap injustice, idolatry, the fruit of lies.

They thought they were building something strong. They thought that they had something secure. But in the end, their fortresses crumbled because they placed their trust in the wrong power. And if we're honest man, we do the same thing. We do the same thing.

We try to manage our own lives, control our own outcomes. We white knuckle our way into fruit production only to find that our fortresses are just as fragile as Israel's. But there's another way. There's a better way. There is a kingdom way of doing Things living in medieval times, the nobles, the kings and queens and other nobles, they were the highest rulers of authority in the land.

And they would make judgments and govern different matters. And because they often traveled between multiple houses, multiple palaces or castles or whatever, they needed a way to be able to signal to the people around that they were in the residence. And this led to the tradition of what they called the royal standard. The royal standard was just a banner or a flag flown at the highest point on the building or the castle or the home. And when the flag was raised, it declared to everyone around that the ruler was in residence, seated on the throne, ruling and ready to reign.

You see where I'm going with this? The fruit of the Spirit is the banner flying over the castle that shows that the king is in residence. It is the banner waving in the wind declaring that the ruler is inside, seated on the throne, ruling and reigning. It is the evidence. And if the fruit of the Spirit is not waving high from our lives, if love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness are not on display, then we have to ask who or what is really sitting on the throne?

Because the fruit of our lives will always reveal the ruler of our hearts. The fruit of our lives will always reveal the ruler of our hearts. I don't like that sentence. But the fruit of our lives will always show us who is seated on the throne. Self control is not strong enough to produce this fruit.

No amount of trying harder will make love, joy and peace appear. Where bitterness and anger and anxiety have been planted. We cannot manufacture the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot will ourselves into transformation. But when Christ is truly enthroned in us, his fruit grows.

His presence overflows from us. The banner of his reign flies high above our rooftops. This is why Hosea's words are so crucial for us today. God's people thought they were fruitful. They had activity, they had altars, they had prosperity.

But when they were actually, what they were actually growing was the fruit of lies. They were trusting in their own strength, they were trusting in their own way. They were trusting in their own armies and their own power to sustain them. And what was the result? The fortresses fell, the strongholds crumbled, their self sufficiency just failed.

Church if we are going to try to live this life in our own self control, we are planting the same seeds that Israel planted and we will get the same result that Israel got. These seeds will fail us. But God in His mercy offers us a different way. Remember Hosea 14:8. Your fruit comes from me.

Did you hear that? Your fruit comes from him. It does not come from you. It comes from him. He is the seed inside of us.

The only way for us bear real spiritual fruit, the kind of fruit that actually looks like Jesus, is to enthrone Jesus in our hearts, that seat from which all of life's activity flows. We can't just acknowledge Jesus. We can't just try to act like Jesus. We can't just hang out with people who know Jesus. We must surrender the throne of our hearts to him completely.

If love is missing, it's because something else is sitting on the throne. If joy is missing, it's because something else is sitting on the throne. If patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness are missing, it is because we have crowned something else as king and we are allowing that false king to rule our hearts and reign on our throne. And as much as I would love to be able to tell you that if you just get Jesus on that throne, you just get him on that throne once you're set forever, the truth is that until Jesus returns and finally vanquishes sin and death and kills Satan forever, we are still at war. We're still at war.

And everything is fighting for space on the throne. And the biblical design for Christian living is to get the right king on the throne and guard that throne with everything we have. Stand firm with his full armor about us, fill ourselves up with the power of the Word and stand side by side with other warriors, watching each other's backs, holding up our shield of faith to protect each other, helping each other get up when we fall, because we will. Guarding our hearts is a minute by minute, day by day war. It's a war.

So it's time for us to check the throne. It's time for us to do a throne check. Church. If you never have given your heart to King Jesus at all, then it's time to till up the soil. It's time to till up the soil and give whatever false king that's seated there in eviction notice.

It's time. If you want to talk about a relationship with Jesus, don't let today go by. Don't let today go by. We're going to have some people at the bottom of the ramp after the service. You can go talk to them.

You can come find me. Talk to the camera guy. He knows. Jesus. Take a step.

Take a step. Let those tines get into the soil and turn it up. It's time that we check our thrones. And if you have enthroned Jesus as your king and savior. Then guard your hearts.

Guard them like your lives depend on it. Get in. Community. Stay in the Word. Armor yourself up with the armor that God has given us, to stand firm against the enemy.

Because Satan would love nothing more than to convince you to allow something else, a little bit of space on the throne. Your comfort, your pride, your control, your desires, your fears, your past, your success, your relationships, your reputation, your bank account, your need for approval, your plans, your pain, your dreams, your good works, anything. He would love for anything to take a little bit of space on the seat. And he doesn't need to get us to renounce Jesus outright. He just needs to convince us to make some space, to shift our trust even slightly to something else, to let something compete for the throne rather than surrendering it completely to King Jesus.

Because whatever sits on that throne is what rules us. It shapes our thoughts. It drives our decisions. It determines our direction. And the moment that anything other than Jesus takes that seat, the fruit of the Spirit starts to wither.

Peace fades. Joy drains. Love is conditional. Strength falters. But church, we were made for a different kind of life.

Jesus didn't die so that we could sit around and not worry about our hearts. Jesus died to be the king on the throne. He died so that we could have a life ruled by the King of kings, where his power governs our hearts. His truth shapes our desires. His spirit is what strengthens our every step.

A life where we aren't striving to control ourselves, but we are giving into yielding to the One who reigns in us, letting his dominion produce the fruit we could never grow on our own. And yes, we should practice and yes, we should make sure that we are guarding our hearts. But the wind in the sails we cannot make it comes from the Spirit. So check your throne. Check your throne.

What's in your heart Today there is only room for one king. And the Bible teaches us that there is only one who is worthy to be seated on the throne. The throne in heaven and the throne in our hearts. We read in Revelation, chapter 5. It describes this picture of heaven, the angels singing and all the elders and all the creatures, they're crying out, worthy is the Lamb who is slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.

It says to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever. There is only one who is worthy. There's only one who is worthy. His name is King Jesus. It is time we check our thrones church.

What would it look like if we were a church full of people checking our thrones and guarding them with all of our strength, all of our minds, all of our souls in community together. What could God do with a community like that? That's what it looks like to be a church that embodies the fruit of the spirit. You will never get there on YouTube.