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GALATIANS 5:22e
(Reading: Isa. 54:1-10; Lk.6:27-36; Gal.5:19-25)
The Fruit of the Spirit is ... Kindness
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
A lawyer once wrote a collection of stories about what happened in his life. One of these incidents in his life occurred during a prize-giving at his school at Harrow, in England. It was during that prize-giving that he was astonished hear his name being called by the headmaster.
He wasn’t expecting a prize and so he was more than a bit scruffy. But all untidy as he was, he braved the watching 1200 eyes and went up on the podium and back again.
The book burned in his hands, as he knew he had not earned it. And when it was all over, he made his way to the dais again, and haltingly explained the position to his form master. That teacher went to the principal and said, ‘Ah, Headmaster, there seems to have been some mistake. This, ah, boy, is not entitled to a prize, and so he’s brought the book back.’
The Headmaster took the book from his hands, and looked at the grubby boy before him, who never felt so much ashamed. Then he smiled, and gave him the book back. ‘Take it back, my boy,’ he said, his face beaming, ‘you’ll be worth it one day.”
Congregation, there spoke not only a great gentleman but kindness itself! And that boy never forgot it! In fact, it impacted on him immensely.
Because what a difference kindness makes! That’s why, in the first place, we see that ... KINDNESS IS THE EXTRA SOMETHING EACH ONE OF US NEEDS.
So what is this extra something? Well, actually, it’s the very thing that matters for everything! It is to be loved! That’s our most desperately deepest human need. That’s what is much more to life that doing our jobs, living with our families, playing sport, having hobbies, and so on.
You and I aren’t machine-programmed to do what we’re told. We aren’t simply going along in our lives, as though we are only cogs in some huge human engine! Mind you, we might easily think that with the way modern society treats us. One song put it this way about what’s happening to mankind today, “You know my name - look up the number!” We ring up a government department. First thing you’re asked is, “Your tax-file number please.” The bank, the insurance company - it’s all the same. You have to have a number. Oh, yes, they’ll ask your name. But really it’s the number that counts.
George Bush Sr., a former President of the United States, saw this trend. When he became President, he said, “I am working for a kinder and gentler America.” He recognised that under his predecessor America had become very wealthy. But there was that something extra missing. Something that mattered most of all. Because he noticed there wasn’t the same love for all as there was before.
Now, I don’t think he achieved his aim. In fact, it has only got worse. When our Parliaments are considering legislation regarding how our representatives are to behave then you know it’s actually a lot worse! Because if that’s how bad they’ve become what does that say about the rest of us? They are not only called our representatives because we vote for them. They also show where we are as a society. Which is exactly why we don’t see much ‘kindness’.
You see, kindness is love as thoughtfulness. It is a gracious accommodation to others; it represents an attitude, a style - a way of being in life. Kindness is a double gift - it’s the ability to help someone else while not hurting their self-respect. And we can’t legislate that!
But let’s first put this kindness in its context. How does it fit in with the four aspects of the fruit we have seen before it?
Well, it has to have something to do with love, doesn’t it? Love is not just first by coincidence. It is what fixes our eyes firmly on what God has done.
Congregation, we cannot be here under false pretences! Love comes from God. We cannot dare to start anywhere else. Since love is the first fruit of the Spirit so it speaks to us of Jesus Christ, the first fruit of God. It’s in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God’s Son, that love can only be based. So love and faith are one and the same!
And unless we have faith all is absolutely lost! Then this building, all our groups and classes, and whatever we do, are absolutely futile! But love counts! Paul is very serious when he wrote in verse 6 of Galatians 5 that the only thing that counts is “faith expressing itself through love.” And this chapter also declares in verse 14, “For the whole is fulfilled in a one word: ‘You shall ove your neighbour as yourself.’”
This is kindness! For those first four fruit have transformed people within. Love, joy, peace, and patience have begun here, in my heart. But now the Holy Spirit says, “Not here - over there! And over there, and there, and there!”
This is what Isaiah pictured so vividly. And didn’t he also describe it a bit strangely? I mean, wasn’t verse 8 in Isaiah 54 a bit out of the ordinary? There the Lord our Redeemer is quoted as saying, “In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love” – kindness – “I will have compassion on you.”
Now, could it be that our God stopped, even for a moment, in his perfect and intimate love for his people? Surely that could never be!
So what’s the point? Fellow believer, in comparing God’s brief anger with his everlasting kindness, which was it we should have expected? If the one we had loved so much left us, how would we be? Angry of course! What, then, do we deserve from God? How have we treated him?
To say, “Not very well”, is putting it lightly. Are we honestly surprised God is angry? For here it’s not wrong for him to be so upset. Like the reaction of Jesus to the money-traders in the temple, he’s completely righteous!
Congregation, his everlasting kindness is shown up for that extra something which it is. By contrasting it with the anger we should have expected we see this kindness is really what we need.
That’s what God’s people have come to see. And so, secondly, we note ... KINDNESS IS THE VERY THING THAT ANYTHING DOESN’T WANT.
This point is about the darkness this world brings. For it cries out, “Anything but true kindness!” The last thing it would want is putting someone on the same level as yourself. Oh, they can have those personal-sounding commercials. Especially for you! You are our No. 1! But you know it’s only to keep them No. 1 – or make them No. 1!
Now, when you were young, you might have been told not to cry. But imagine if the person saying that to you is telling you that you’re not really hurting. “Come on Jimmy, there’s no pain. It’s all in your mind. You can get over it.”
You know, pretty soon it doesn’t seem like the pain isn’t so bad after all. Jimmy’s a big boy. He won’t let his mind bother him! And we do the same when we ignore the needs of others. We get used to just thinking of ourselves and salving our consciences when it comes to loving others. “It’s their fault they’re like that! I’ve done well for myself - they can too! If we give them money it will only teach them to be lazy!”
Maybe it will! But that’s not the real point, is it? We don’t really want to part with our money, our time, our love.
One person wrote about when their church helped give out winter coats to some children in their neighbourhood. He writes about bringing three coats to a lady for her 8, 10, and 14 year old children. She accepted them, blew cigarette smoke in his direction, and flicked cigarette ashes at his feet. She didn’t say one word of gratitude.
As he turned to leave her house, he was thinking, ‘Would it have been too much for her to say ‘thank you’ for a hundred dollars’ worth of clothing?’ But straight-away he thought, ‘God forgive me!’ He had lost sight of why they were clothing those children in the first place. It wasn’t for their neighbour’s appreciation, but for God’s glory.
When we talk about love we’re really talking about our faith. To not show love is to say faith doesn’t count. So what Jesus did in his doing and dying doesn’t matter.
That’s a situation James has no time for. This early church leader emphatically states in his letter, chapter 2 verse 14, “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?”
If it’s in the very nature of God to love, as he so wonderfully did in Jesus Christ, then should those created in his image be any different? Then indeed our faith won’t save us. For it only shows that it was just a faith in ourselves. Just as little Jimmy is told to deny his pain, so we can deny those right next to us!
Congregation, some Christian couples claim to believe all the right things. They even genuinely believe the Holy Spirit is in their hearts. But they are so mean and nasty to each other! They have lived together long enough to know all the chinks in their spouse’s armour. And when they start fighting, which it seems they so often do, they really tear into each other. The words they speak, and the expressions on their faces and bodies, hurt each other so terribly! If someone were looking in on them they might well wonder if it’s the acts of the sinful nature which we practice, rather than the fruit of the Spirit!
Congregation, who of us can claim exemption from any of those fifteen acts of the sinful nature? In fact, didn’t we feel a bit upset having to read through them all over again! What a negative passage! But also how sharp!
And yet it wouldn’t bother us if we didn’t know it to be true for ourselves. The truth does hurt. But let’s especially pray that it will hurt us because we’ve been clouding over that something extra with anything at all! We tried to bury the grace of God. Together with those who shouted at the trial of the Lord “Crucify! Crucify!” we didn’t want to know.
Though the cloud hid our Lord from the sight of the disciples as he was taken up to heaven, he didn’t, for that reason, stop being the Lord. The blindness is ours. If only we could see! Yes, if only we could truly love. As he loves!
If only, if only…! And yet we can! It’s all a fruit of the Spirit! That means it never came from us anyway. All that we were doing was covering it over. That’s what God’s Word has been so busy telling us. His is the light to shine! His is the strength which is divine! As Psalm 18 verse 35 describes it, “You give me your shield of victory, and your hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great.
Fancy that, God stoops down to make me great! He goes to a level far below his own to make us what he so gloriously is! How very kind!
The apostle Paul draws this even further in saying that God’s grace is expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. He explains in Ephesians 2 how it’s this action of love which has made us alive in Christ.
Dear friends, it’s this love which has been so powerfully shown in our lives that we need now to show to others. Luke 6 verse 36 says it simply, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
God knows our weakness. He looks down from his throne above, and sees what we’re really like. That’s why he gives us the power of the Holy Spirit. He gives his people the ability to be kind, as he is kind. Now we can, as we look at others, always see a sign on them that says, “Fragile - Handle with Care”.
And so, for the third part, we realise, KINDNESS IS THE WONDERFUL LIGHT THAT WILL BE SEEN. For the special mark which sets apart Christian kindness is that it keeps being done when it’s not wanted, appreciated, or returned.
In his ‘Sermon on the Mount’, Jesus spoke about loving our enemies, praying for those who persecute us, and otherwise returning good for evil. And he especially contrasted the tendency of the pagans and Gentiles to be kind under some circumstances to the kindness he was calling his disciples to show. As the Lord says in Matthew 5 the verses 46 till 48, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The natural and expected thing is to be kind to your own. That’s returning favour for favour. That’s scratching the back of the person who scratches yours. But Jesus wants his followers to do more than that. He wants us to copy the perfect example of the Father.
This is true kindness. We go that extra kilometre for someone else. We think of what blesses him or her.
That doesn’t mean we become a soft touch, or never say anything that could be construed negatively. What we are doing is thinking about their welfare, so what they need - not what they might want! We’re bringing into their lives the light which shines in our life! With the utmost respect for what they are, we become God’s way to take from their lives any thing which clouds up their lives. Time and again we let his extra something be the shining light it so naturally is!
Fellow believer, how are you open to being kind? You know it starts within. For it’s no good expecting others to be what you aren’t yourself!
If we haven’t seen the cloud that hovers so constantly over our own lives, then we certainly cannot help our neighbour with theirs. Whether that neighbour be our spouse, or child, or parent, or fellow Christian, or the unbeliever we work, study, or live with. We should see them all as we see the Lord.
Congregation, we’re looking forward to the day when he will say to us those memorable words of Matthew 25, the verses 25 and 36. For when anyone was hungry we gave them something to eat; when they were thirsty, we gave them something to drink; when they were strangers, we invited them in; or as they needed clothes, or were sick, or in prison, we came and searched them out. It was all in his Name! He did it all. And we rejoice to give so freely out of that storehouse of love!
Can you see, congregation, that you who have been the most unlovable, have become the most wonderfully loved? For if we don’t see that grace clearly ourselves it reflects in what we give out. Without the love, joy, peace, and patience of the Holy Spirit, we aren’t celebrating the fullness of faith.
Instead, we commiserate our lack of it! What we give to the other isn’t a true gift. It’s not something freely and completely presented. We say to ourselves, “Not that I expect it to help! They’re not going to change anyway!” And our kindness is clouded.
But what’s commiseration got to do with kindness? How are our feelings meant to enter into celebration? Can they be anything but happy?
So let’s seek to serve as the Lord served. He - of all men - had that extra something! Because he was the extra something!
Kindness is being willing to be involved in the needs of others. It’s the virtue we don’t have when we avoid the hurts of this world and cut ourselves off from its pain.
Kindness is what we see perfectly in Jesus Christ. He faced the worst hurts of this world. He took on its worst pain.
That’s “kindness”. He thought of us.
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
O loving heavenly Father, how kind you are! How wonderful that you think of what we need for our bodies everyday.
But especially how loving you are in thinking of our spiritual need by sending your One and only Son, Jesus Christ!
In His saving Name, we pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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