Fruit of the Spirit ~ Faithfulness

All summer we have been looking at the fruit of God’s spirit. In talking to his disciples, Jesus said, I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me will bear much fruit. So as we abide in Jesus, or as we stay connected to God through Jesus Christ, we will bear much fruit – but what is this fruit? In Galatians 5:22 the Apostle Paul defines this fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. So as we stay in a close personal relationship with God we find that these qualities of faith and character develop within us and while there are some specific things we can do to help these qualities grow, one of the common themes we have found is that for this fruit to mature completely, the key is to stay connected to God. If fruit is going to mature ripen, it needs to stay connected to the vine and if we want to grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, then we need to stay connected to God. If we try on our own to just be more loving, joyful, patient and kind, you know what happens, eventually we fail. We might find success for a while, but in the long run, we will fail. On our own we can only get so far, but as we trust God to develop these qualities within us and as we give more of our hearts and lives to God – the more these qualities develop.

Today we are going to look at the fruit of faithfulness by looking at a parable of Jesus found in Matthew 25. In this story a man is going on a journey and he takes his property and divides it among his servants with the expectation that they will be good stewards of his money and do something productive with it. When the man returns from his journey he calls his servants together to see what they have done. 25:20-29

Now what separates the first 2 servants from the third is faithfulness. The first two were faithful to their master and they used his money to make more, they did something productive with the gift they had been given. In many ways that’s faithfulness – it’s doing something productive with the gift God has given us, not just the gift of our lives, but the gift of our faith as well. We don’t think often about it, but faith itself is a gift from God. The Bible defines as faith as the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. Faith isn’t just our knowledge about God (who is unseen), faith is also the assurance we have deep within us that we know and trust that God is real and powerful and loving and that God is always with us. This kind of faith, any kind of faith really, is a gift from God because God is the one who reveals himself to us. That know anything about God: who God is or how God works in the world or how God’s love and grace works in our lives, that we know anything about God is because God has revealed himself to us. The bible says that the only reason we love is because God firs loved us. The only reason we can have faith in God is because God has revealed himself to us, God has come to us and told us and shown us who he is and how he works and how much he loves us. So our faith is a gift from God and so faithfulness is our response to that gift. What will we do with the faith God has given us it? One of the things this parable of Jesus shows us is that faith isn’t given to us just for us to hold on to. God gives us faith to use and to share with others. We are to do something productive with the gift God has given us. Just as the servants in Jesus parable were to put their master’s money to work – so are we to put our faith to work.

When it comes to our faith, we really only have 3 choices on how to respond. We can reject it. We can accept it and then do nothing with it, or we can accept it and then act upon it in our daily lives. The first two choices, rejecting faith and accepting the gift of faith but then doing nothing with it will both lead us to the same place - separated from God. It makes sense that rejecting faith will separate us from God because rejecting faith means in many ways rejecting God, but accepting God’s gift of faith and then doing nothing with it will also separates us from God. Remember what happened to the third servant who accepted the one talent from the master but did nothing with it? Eventually the gift was taken away from him and the servant was cast out into the darkness. What God calls us to do with our faith is to not only accept it into our hearts and lives, but to then act on it everyday. Faithfulness comes when we step out to do what God calls us to do and live the way God calls us to live, trusting that God power and love will be with us.
All week at VBS the children having been hearing the stories of Moses, and Moses was a great man of faith, and what made Moses faithful was that he didn’t just accept that God was real and powerful and that God loved him, he acted on what he knew. Moses lived out what he believed about God and what he heard from God. We grow in faithfulness when we act on what we know of God, and when we live out what we believe about God and what we hear from God, but this action doesn’t happen overnight – faithfulness is a process of growth. Faithfulness takes place when we hear something from God and then trust that word enough to act on it. We grow in faithfulness step by step, and again, the story of Moses shows us what this pathway looks like. As we read about Moses through the book of Exodus, we see that he grows in his faithfulness over time.

For example, after God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, he first had to go to Pharaoh and ask Pharaoh to let God’s people go. Pharaoh said no, not once or twice, but 10 times and each time Pharaoh said no, God sent another plague upon Egypt. While this process of going to Pharaoh over and over again wore down Pharaoh and the people of Egypt to the point where they finally did let the Israelites go, this process also did something in Moses. I was thinking this week, why 10 plagues? Why did Moses have to go to Pharaoh 10 times? Maybe it was because it was going to take those 10 steps for Moses to grow in faithfulness. You see, each time Moses went to the palace to ask Pharaoh to let the people go – he had to trust God to be with him. And each time Moses said another plague would come upon the people, he had to trust in God’s power to bring that plague. On his own, Moses couldn’t turn water to blood, and on his own Moses could not produce a plague of frogs, gnats, boils, darkness or death. So each time Moses went to Pharaoh, he was not only acting upon the word of God, he was living out his faith and trust that God would not only be with him, but that God would do what God said he would do and bring the plagues upon Egypt. This process of going to Pharaoh again and again and having to completely trust God each time he went helped Moses develop and grow in faithfulness.
By the time the people of Israel finally left Egypt, Moses had grown in his faithfulness to the point where he was able to trust God to do some pretty major things, which was a good thing because the biggest challenge was still ahead of him. After God’s people left Egypt they came to the Red Sea, which they could not cross and yet hot on their trail was the army of Pharaoh so they couldn’t go back. It looked like the people of God were in an impossible situation – they can’t move forward because there was no way to cross the sea, and they can’t turn around or the Egyptian army would slaughter them. While all of the Israelites are afraid, Moses is not and do you know why he’s not afraid? It’s because of his faith. In the months leading up to this moment God had proven himself faithful time after time after time, and so now Moses faith and trust in God was strong. Because Moses had seen the power of God at work in the plagues, his faithfulness had grown, so while all of Israel melted away in fear, Moses stood firm in faithfulness. Exodus 14:13-14

These are the words of faithfulness. Do not be afraid. Stand firm, and then did you hear the last part? The Lord will fight for you. Faithfulness isn’t doing great things for God, it’s allowing God to do great thing through us. Faithfulness is just standing firm and trusting God to not only be with us, but to actually help us and strengthen us and fight the battle for us. Moses simply stood in faith. He listened to what God told him to do – he held up his staff, and watched as God parted the Red Sea.

Moses shows us that to grow in faithfulness we need to just take one step at a time. After Moses was called by God in the burning bush he didn’t immediately return to Israel and lead God’s people through the Red Sea into the promised land. Moses grew to trust God one step at a time, and it was only after many small steps of faith that he was able to get a place where he could stand firm with his arms stretched out over the waters and allow God to work his miracles through him. Too many times we think growing in faithfulness means we have to go out today and do something great for God, but that’s not it at all. Faithfulness is just being willing to do all the little things God is calling us to do today. Faithfulness is taking the faith God has given us and acting on it in all the small ways. As the parable of Jesus shows us, if we will be faithful in the little things – God bless us and use in even bigger ways. In fact we will never be able to stand firm and faithful in the big things until we have proven ourselves faithful and proven God’s faithfulness in the little things.

So faithfulness grows when we step out trusting and loving God in all the little areas of life. Faithfulness doesn’t require on hour of prayer, it starts with 5 or 10 minutes and grows from there. Faithfulness isn’t sitting down and reading the entire Bible this week, it’s being willing to read a little bit every day so we can hear God’s word and learn how to live out all of God’s promises. Faithfulness grows in all the little areas of life, like being willing to return to worship next week, and find one way to help our neighbor this week, and being willing to forgive just one person who has hurt or offended us. Faithfulness is not a revolution – it is an evolution. Faithfulness takes place slowly over time as we not only stay connected to God, but as we give more and more of our hearts and lives to God one faithful step at a time – one faithful day at a time. If we will do this, if we will be faithful in the little things then we will get to the place where we will say will be able to say with confidence and courage: Do not be afraid, stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still.