Sermon Tone Analysis

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Anger
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This week we are looking at the fruit of goodness.
Kindness and goodness are a pair – you need both together and so they belong together.
Kindness may be found naturally among some people but, and this is where the distinction between kindness and goodness is found, no one is naturally good.
We have a rich young ruler come to Jesus and implore Him as found in:
The upshot of this is that we can never be called good because only God is good.
Here is an excellent illustration of God’s goodness found in one of the famous books of fiction:
In The Adventure of the Naval Treaty, Sherlock Holmes is found studying a rose.
Watson, his faithful friend, narrates: “He walked past the couch to an open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green.
It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show an interest in natural objects.
“ ‘There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,’ said he, leaning with his back against the shutters.…
‘Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers.
All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance.
But this rose is an extra.
Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it.
It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.’
God gives us so many extras.
We have the famous Psalm 23 saying:
That is God.
People on the other hand...
I hear the argument made that all people can do good…and to a point that is true but in the eyes of God the good that we do is not pure but tainted by sin.
So a Buddhist or an Atheist, for example, can do good, even lay down his life for another – which is love and is good – but the eyes of God sees our nature, sees our motives, see that even the greatest of sacrifices cannot come up to God’s standards.
Even our good deeds are to God are blots on paper or as it says in:
Those filthy rags are literally a filthy garment.
We live in an age that thinks that humans are basically good in essence; that morals are relative; that we are all better than each other.
I don’t know how we all can be better than each other!
With whom are we comparing ourselves?
What we do is feed the flesh, we have a right to do whatever we want and then new laws are passed to allow our depravity.
When people are asked on the street most think that they are good enough.
However, the law of God is perfect; however, the standards of God are much higher than even the best person in the world.
It’s like at Swansea Arsenal game last week where Abraham’s goal was ruled off-side.
I’m guessing his discussion with the referee went something like this: oh come on!
there are 59,000 people here who know that that was a goal!
And the referee replies: Maybe so, but my opinion is the only one that counts.
No goal!
Christians are also pressed by the weight of numbers who are against the moral law of God.
But the Christian knows that in the end, only one opinion counts: that of the Referee of all human affairs.
We are ultimately answerable to God and it is Him alone we offend whilst doing the things that are right in our own eyes.
We are not even able to keep one of God’s commandments.
However when one is born of God we are a new creation and have been given the Holy Spirit to indwell us who guarantees our salvation.
Now that we have a new nature it is in a battle with the old, for not one of us is sinless even after becoming Christians, but we can, now, do good deeds with pure motives in the sight of God.
Now we, who are His, have God’s divine nature in us through the Holy Spirit so that we can manifest true goodness.
But the starting point for us is that no one is good, no, not even one.
But God is perfectly holy, righteous and just.
It follows, then, that God, and God alone is the source of goodness.
The only way we can be good is because of the price that was paid:
What a transformation has taken place - we were wearing a filthy garment, the filthy garment of our good deeds, which in the sight of God were dead works but now we are wearing a robe of righteousness and garments of salvation, not of our good works but of His.
So, let us define what goodness is.
It is Uprightness.
It is moral excellence as well as goodness.
It is pleasing to God and beneficial to others.
It is the engagement in doing good deeds.
It is the person who has the quality of being good (ἀγαθός).
And we should put in an antonym here: evil.
Evil is the opposite of good.
And those who do evil Scripture says:
Ecclesiastes 9:18b — 18 But one sinner destroys much good.
But those who are born with the Spirit of God are those who are good in God’s sight and doing good.
And so we become fruitful for God:
It is clear that goodness should be more and more evident in our lives for Paul had confidence that the Christians he wrote to were good:
Peter, a man who was very self-aware of his sinful condition wrote a great deal about goodness.
It is one of his key words in his first letter.
He equated knowledge and goodness as being tied together; as we grow in our knowledge of God, of who He is and what He has done it effects a change in us towards goodness.
We must do our good works where they can be seen.
OK – but doesn’t this conflict with what Jesus said about doing things in secret?
Well, it would appear so…but the difference is found in our motives.
If our motive is so that we get praise from others then we must learn to do our good works away from the eyes of others.
But if our motive is the glory of God and we are pointing to Him as the one who is doing the work through us then the good works that we do in Him cannot be hidden anyway.
It seems amazing to me that most of the fruit of the Spirit has as its corresponding catalyst suffering for these fruit to be formed in us.
Joy, as we saw, seems to be out of suffering.
And it seems it is the lot of one who wants to do good in Christ that suffering is the result.
And as a result of suffering doing good is the result.
Making a very circular argument.
Do good you suffer.
You suffer so you’ll do good.
And on and on.
And this is unavoidable if we are born of God:
Because of His Spirit we are made good.
In our being we are now good.
And our actions prove it.
And the result of our actions seems to be false accusations or misunderstanding that lead to suffering.
Of course, we have to be careful that those accusations are not actually true.
For if they are true then we have every right to suffer!
And how can we demonstrate these good deeds?
Well, there is an excellent passage for an example.
We’ll look at it properly in due course, God willing, but it will suffice just to read it for now:
So, not only do we do good deeds to others we are in effect serving Jesus in the process.
Another very crucial passage in all this is found in:
Instead of giving back to people what they deserve we remember that we were shown mercy and instead we do good to those who despise us.
This again reveals the extent of suffering that goes before and after good deeds.
We see how the rest of the fruit of the Spirit comes into play here with love, with kindness, with patience and all done in the Spirit of joy.
And how can we forget some of the other verses that ought to be well-known to us:
We have to be open to the way the Lord leads us.
It may be that God has put things in front of us to do.
The one who sees what needs doing is usually the one who should be doing it.
God has prepared good works for us to.
It is in our interest and for the Kingdom of God that we do it.
It is in our interest because we gain a reward from God our Father simply by doing what He gives us to do and for the Kingdom of God because God is honoured and the Kingdom advances against the devil.
Good deeds are developed by applying the principles of God’s Word to our relationships with the people around us seeking only to do the things that are in their best interest, rather than in our own best interest.
Because of the work of God in the believer we are becoming more like His Son every day…if we allow Him.
Only the Holy Spirit can be holy through us.
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