Growing in Goodness

Well good morning everybody it's great to have you here with us whether you're joining us live in the auditorium or watching in venue or joining us on Facebook live. My name is René, I'm one of the pastors here and I just want to invite you to grab your message notes that look like this in your bulletin. I tell you what, if you like bulletin stuff with info, you are getting your money's worth out of church today because there's all kinds of stuff in there. But this is the most important thing: grab the sermon notes so that you can follow along with the message.

Miracle Grow is the name of our fall series on the fruit of the spirit. I just want to say if you're new to TLC—and I met a couple of brand new people here already this morning—and you're looking for a way to connect and maybe get into the Bible a little bit more, we have got small groups right now all over the County of Santa Cruz and beyond meeting on any given night of the week studying this topic specifically, studying this book called Cultivating the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. It's a little paperback and it ties directly into each week's sermons, and then the small groups study the chapter related to the messages that you hear. You can pick up this book and a list of the small groups at the info desk in the lobby. I really want to encourage you to do that.

Now I want to start this morning a little bit differently. I want to start with a little quiz. Here's where I found this: I was speaking over at Mission Springs Conference Center in Scotts Valley recently and I discovered that Mission Springs does outdoor education programs during the school year. One of the things they teach the kids is how to identify different animals, and as part of that exercise, they play a game with the kids called "Name That Critter." I'd like us all to say this out loud like Wheel of Fortune. Ready? Here we go: "Name that critter!"

I thought I'd run just a small part of this quiz by you tonight. They've got like 20 questions, but I'm just gonna run like three or four by you. Are you ready for this? In other words, are you smarter than a fourth grader? That's what I'm asking. Listen, here's the way we do it: listen carefully to the sound that you're about to hear and identify which animal makes the sound. Are you ready? Okay, round one, here we go. All right, what animal is that? How many of you say A, that's definitely a cat? Clearly you're wrong. B, squirrel? C, rat? Or D, Australian magpie? Well, all of those had guesses. Well, the correct answer is B: it's a squirrel. All right, very angry sounding squirrel, but you get the idea.

Okay, round two. What is this? Is not an amazing sound? All right, was that A, a badger? Don't be shy to say you think it's a badger if that's what you think. How many think it's a badger? A couple of people. How many think it's a goat? How many of you say hippo? When you say orangutan? All right, it's between a goat and orangutan. The correct answer is goats. Isn't that amazing? Goats are just weird.

All right, let's do one more here. This is round three. Listen to this. Okay, how many of you think that is A, a frog? How many of you B, woodpecker? C, antelope? D, prairie dog? And this is not on there, but how many E, that's an ambulance? How many of you would say that? All right, the correct answer is A: that is a frog. Show of hands, how many of you are glad that frog is not in your backyard? Exactly.

Now why do I bring this up? Well, in this series Miracle Grow, we've seen that the Apostle Paul is essentially saying that this is the sound that Christians make. This is the behavior that our species exhibits. This is how people should be able to identify us and peg us as Christians if our lives are showing this fruit. But the fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. He's saying this is how observers should be able to identify you. That's the sound we make; that's the trail we leave in this world.

Now this is a problem right now because most people, I would say at least many people in our culture right now, when they think of Christians do not think, "You know how you can tell a Christian? They are just the most loving and kind and joyful and gentle people." Many people in our culture today think of Christians as mean and judgmental and harsh and hypocritical. You might think that's a fair assessment or not a fair assessment, but here's my point: it's so easy to get drawn into that and want to kind of defend your reputation and maybe even fight back and get defensive or get aggressive. Instead, the Bible says—and people have been kept in thinking that of Christians from year one, right, fairly or unfairly—the Bible says when you hear things like that, don't get defensive, don't get aggressive. Instead, lean into this: remember who you are. Remember to be the people that God has created us to be.

We've been going through these qualities one a week, and this week I want to focus on goodness. Goodness. Say that with me: goodness. What does that mean? This is probably the most kind of amorphous of all these words, and it's so easy for us to think goodness, "That's easy, I'm a good person," and so we don't ever really challenge ourselves to grow in goodness because most people think they already are pretty good. What I'm saying is we define it so vaguely that it never really challenges us. Well, I want to change that this morning. I want us to think of goodness in a new way today, a challenging way, because really the best example of goodness is Jesus. That kind of raises the bar a little bit, doesn't it?

The Bible says of Jesus, "Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good." Now when you think of goodness in that context, clearly it doesn't just mean Jesus was kind of vaguely nice. The goodness of Jesus was muscular; the goodness of Jesus was unflinching; the goodness of Jesus was powerful. The goodness of Jesus wasn't kind of some milk toast, "I'm okay, you're okay" thing. His goodness both drew people to him like a magnet and it got him killed. So when we see that kind of raw goodness in Jesus Christ, what are we talking about? Well, there's really three biblical aspects of goodness that we see in Jesus. I want to explore briefly today. First, there's integrity—that's interior goodness. And then there's charity—that's exterior goodness. And then there's clarity about our Father in heaven and his goodness to us. Integrity, charity, and clarity—that's our roadmap today.

We're gonna look at three teachings of Jesus related to these three ideas, and if you get this, I think not only will your own idea of goodness be challenged, but you are going to be the kind of good person that the world is starving for right now. First, let's look at integrity. That's being good—goodness inside. Being good—goodness inside, not just on the outside. When I was in Israel last year, early one morning I went on a walk to a place that most tourists overlook. It's in a narrow ravine just outside the walls of the old city of Jerusalem, and it's one of the only places in the city where there has really never been construction for the last 2,000 years because it's a graveyard. There are ruins there of some gigantic tombs, like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. This is many, many stories high; there are thousands of these all throughout Jerusalem, and many of them survived completely intact like this one. These are all over 2,000 years of age; they were already there when Jesus lived and walked on this path which leads up to the Temple Mount.

In those days, they were always painted; they didn't look like a stone color. They were always painted a bright white because people wanted others to notice their tomb. Having a nice tomb was a status symbol, and these exact tombs were on the road in Jesus' day and were among the very ones to which Jesus was referring when he said, "Woe to you, you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!" Now the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, they were like the paragons of goodness in the days of Jesus. They thought of themselves as kind of the ultimate in goodness. But Jesus tells them, "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." He's saying you spent a lot of time looking good, but you need to have goodness even where others aren't looking.

Now what's this mean? What's this look like in real life? I want to show you a video of a very practical example of what this looks like. CBS News did a story about a Dairy Queen worker and what he did for a customer who was blind and unknowingly dropped a $20 bill. Watch what he does. Joey Prusak was behind the counter during the lunchtime rush when a visually impaired customer dropped a $20 bill. Before Prusak could say anything, another customer stepped in thinking she would return the cash. He remained quiet. The lady behind him picked it up so quickly that I figured out she's just gonna hand it right back to him. When she went and put it in her purse, stunned, Prusak asked her to give the money back. She declined. She goes, "It's my money." And I go, "All right, I'm gonna ask you to leave the store politely right now." And then she made a big scene, started swearing, and then she stormed out with the money gone. Prusak did his best to right the wrong. He took $20 out of his own pocket—two hours of pay—and walked over to the man. I told him, "You dropped $20. I would like to give you $20 on behalf of myself and Dairy Queen." A customer who observed the interaction was impressed and sent a letter to Dairy Queen's corporate offices. "I was in shock by the generosity that your employee had," the customer wrote. "I would proudly like to say that Joey has forever sealed my fate as a lifelong customer." In a statement, Dairy Queen commended Joey, saying, "We applaud his integrity, kindness, and compassion. He is an inspiration to us all." He even heard from Warren Buffett, whose company owns the ice cream chain. Buffett called to thank the team for being a role model. But for Prusak, it's still business as usual. Even his loyal customers stop in to hand over $20 tips for their $2 cones. "Thank you very much. I think what I did was so extremely nice when all I was doing was really the right thing to do." Just once again, another story just like the homeless man of someone doing the right thing when no one is watching. Is not a great story, but did you hear how she described it? She said, "A story of someone who was doing the right thing when no one was watching." That is the definition of integrity.

I like the way the dictionary defines integrity: the state of being whole, undivided. In fact, the word integrity actually comes from the same root as the word integer or whole number. When I have integrity, when I'm the same inside as outside, I feel complete. I feel like a whole number. I am not disintegrating; I have peace and balance in my life. And Jesus is saying here, "Be a whole number. Don't be fractured." So goodness inside—that's part of what the Bible means when it says goodness and integrity. But it also is talking about charity—that's doing good, goodness outside.

Second, doing good—goodness outside. Jesus modeled this and also taught on this in a very challenging famous passage. In Matthew 25, Jesus says one day he is going to separate people like a shepherd at the end of the day, separating his sheep from his goats. Now what is he talking about here? That doesn't really sound hard to us here in America or in Europe or New Zealand because our sheep have been bred for wool production, right? And so they look quite different from our goats, which have not been bred for wool production. But sheep and goats in the majority world, like the Middle East where Jesus was teaching this, are actually very similar looking. In fact, I found a helpful quiz on this online. It's Animal Quiz Weekend here at TLC. It is harder than you think to tell sheep from goats. I'll show you some pics; you try to guess. All right, number one: is this a sheep or is this a goat? What do you think? Shout it out. What do you think? This is a goat, right? That's weird, huh? Number two: sheep or goat? What do you think? Is this a sheep or goat? This is a sheep, not a goat. All right, number three: is this a sheep or a goat? Fewer and fewer people are shouting out their answers with confidence. This is actually a dog. No, this is a goat. It's hard, right?

So how are you gonna tell the difference between sheep and goats if you're not an expert? Well, here's the point of Jesus's metaphor: sheep and goats look very similar. See how we can miss that in our culture? They look almost exactly the same, hard to tell apart, but their behavior is totally different. They look the same, but their behavior is different. Sheep usually follow the shepherd wherever he goes, while goats, well, they don't really follow anyone; they just kind of do their own thing. They look the same, their behavior is different. And in these verses, Jesus's point is he's gonna separate sheep from goats by their behavior. Not that their behavior earns anything; their behavior is just a way to identify the species, a way to name that critter.

Watch this: he will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. And then the king will say to those on his right, "Come, you are blessed by the Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me; I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me to your home; I was naked, and you gave me clothing; I was sick, and you cared for me; I was in prison, and you visited me." And then those righteous ones will reply, "But Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?" And the king will say, "I tell you the truth: when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me." And then the goats get the opposite treatment because they never did any of those things. Get the point? The sheep and the goats look so similar, and of course he is applying this to people who claim to be his disciples, right? Who claim to be people of the Lord. They both carry their Bibles around; they both call themselves the same word; they both attend church very regularly; they both know the memory verses; they go to the home studies. But the sheep actually follow the shepherd; they serve the people Jesus served, and the goats just kind of do their own thing.

Again, Jesus is not saying our good deeds, our goodness earns us a spot in heaven. He's saying that those are the behaviors that our species does when you have found new life in Jesus. You will find yourself drawn increasingly to doing good and serving others, not to earn your salvation, but because it becomes who you are. I love the way Ephesians 2:10 puts it: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works." Not saved by good works, but were saved for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Amazing verse for so many reasons, but it says God created good works beforehand, like before you were born. There's a setup of good stuff for you to do as you walk through your life. Isn't that cool?

You might say, "Okay, like what kind of good works?" Let me give you three ideas to sort of stimulate your thinking. First, you can do good at work. Think of your job as a way that you are doing good in the world. Reframe it. For example, when things go wrong with my car and I bring it to Mike over at Stanford Automotive and Mike fixes whatever's wrong, that's a good deed in my opinion because I sure couldn't fix it. I mean, you're looking at a guy who once pumped his gas-powered car full of diesel fuel. I actually did that, no kidding. So when Mike fixes a car for me, that is a good deed. Just because it's his profession doesn't make it less of a good deed. Don't think of your job, whatever you do, as just a necessary evil to pay the bills. You work at a restaurant; you are feeding people—that's a good deed. You work at a clothing store; you are clothing people—that's a good deed. You work here in medicine or as a therapist; you're healing people. Are you in tech? You're giving people tools to change the world, attract their fitness level, or whatever. Are you a builder? You are housing people. Are you the manager or an owner of a business? You are employing people, enabling people to provide for their families—that is a great good deed.

You see, most of us spend more than half of our waking hours at work, so it's important to reframe that time as a way you can do good works. That's so important. And then there's, of course, doing good at home. Men and women who stay at home to raise children or single parents who do both—that's a way you do good works. You see the verse in the Bible right there in your notes? Paul tells Timothy that godly women who raised their children are doing that as a good deed. So you can reframe the diapers, the laundry, the dishes, the cooking, the cleaning as good works. I mean, very few jobs actually have more benefit to society than raising kids in a stable, loving home, whether you're a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home dad.

And then there's doing good to all. Well, wait a minute, to all? I can get doing good to like people who deserve it or to people in my church, but to all? Even to people who don't deserve it? Even to people who never say thank you? Jesus says yes. Why? So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good; he sends rain on the just and the unjust. How do I do this? How do I practice those kinds of acts of goodness? Well, flip your notes over and check out those not-so-random acts of kindness that we want to do as part of this fruit of the spirit study. We introduced some of these last weekend, and first I just want to give a big shout out to everybody who already did projects this weekend. Tons of you showed up yesterday to assemble gift bags for every single staff member at Aptos High School—all 120 of them got wonderful bags. Plus, we collected 568 pajamas for kids in crisis situations through Project Pajamas. Those two things happened yesterday. In fact, let's put our hands together and just express our appreciation to everybody who participated in those.

If you are still looking for a way to help, there's some ideas for you there on page four of your notes. Like, everybody knows the homeless situation is a crisis in Santa Cruz and everybody's going, "What can I do?" Well, you can help immediately in three ways, and you see them all there. We need volunteers to help serve meals at the winter shelter. I strongly recommend that; it's just so, so rewarding and it really gives you a lot of insight into who our homeless population is. Or you can help with the laundry van for the homeless—that's a very cool thing that an Apple engineer who goes here to TLC actually got a grant from Apple to put it together. He built this Loads of Love laundry van himself, and we need people to help him do that. We need folks to run the portable showers for the homeless, as you can see there in your notes. You can sign up for all of these at the tables outside this morning or you can email Robin at TLC.org.

Now you may say, "Well, I'm not sure if I can do one of those things." The biggest way, the giant way we want to help this fall is at the very top of page four: the Second Harvest food drive. I just want to explain, because I know you hear this a lot from me, why this is more important than ever right now. Did you know—let me give you another quiz; it's quiz morning at Twin Lakes Church. Do you know what the richest state in all of America is? Any guesses? Shout it out. It's California. California is now richer than New York, in fact far, far, far richer. There's no other state even comes close. In fact, I read that California has the fifth largest economy in the world. If it was an independent nation, the economy of California would be bigger than the entire United Kingdom. It would be bigger than France. Only the super big giant countries have bigger economies than California does. Now if California is the richest state, what state do you also think has the highest poverty rate in America? Any guesses? Also California. Our state has the highest poverty rate in the nation at 19%. It's enormous. Again, no other state even comes close, and it's almost solely because of the cost of living here, which we all know is astronomical.

But think of this: this means almost one in five of the people who live in our state are essentially living paycheck to paycheck. One in five have to decide at some point whether to pay the electric bill or buy good food, whether to pay their rent that month or buy food. And since bills are bills, they start cutting back on nutritious food and eating cheaper and cheaper food that's just junk and feeding that to their kids or not eating at all. And you know what else this means? This means the people who need food are not just what you might imagine as "poor people," whatever your mental picture is of that. This means it's one in five of us here in this room. This means it's not just people who don't have jobs and are unemployed; it's people with jobs. It's people with two jobs, and they just can't make their ends meet. It's just crazy here right now.

So what can we do? One big way is we can give them food—free food. You may not know we distribute, and we have for years, free groceries here at Twin Lakes Church—like really super good groceries, fresh veggies and so on—here at Twin Lakes Church every Wednesday afternoon. You don't have to qualify for it; anybody who wants to, you included, can get free groceries right here every Wednesday afternoon. And we get our food from the Second Harvest Food Bank because the buying power of the Food Bank—the Food Bank is basically an organization where about 80 agencies and mostly churches here in Santa Cruz County kind of band together and have formed sort of this co-op food bank. That means the buying power of all 80 of us put together is enormous. It's much bigger than if we just went out as a church and tried to buy fresh veggies for one dollar. The Food Bank can buy five pounds of food. And so I want to encourage you to donate this year, especially a lot of the growers locally. You might have seen the article about a week ago in the Sentinel. A lot of local growers actually have extra food this year; they've got overages, extra crops, and Second Harvest could buy it if they could only pay for it. The growers only ask that the transportation costs and so on be covered, so it's pennies on the dollar.

So let's do this in the name of Jesus. Our goal this year is one million pounds—that's over two hundred thousand dollars. Now that is a lot, but I pray that people will see this and all these acts of kindness and not just be grateful that they're getting food, but maybe they'll even say, "You know, I'm not a Christian, but I know a Christian when I see one." And that is how their species is supposed to act. And you know what? Maybe they're on to something after all. Maybe all Christians are not these blowhard hypocrites that I see on TV news channels all the time. Maybe these Christians over here, maybe they really know Jesus because that's what Jesus did. He fed people.

I really believe the best way in the long run to change hearts in Santa Cruz is through our goodness expressed this way. Goodness: it's about being good—integrity, not being a hypocrite; goodness inside and doing good—goodness outside. But you know what? Both of those things can get tiring; they can feel so burdensome. I've got to be good; I've got to do good—unless they are rooted in something bigger. And that's point three: receiving good—goodness inside out.

I love these next verses. Jesus says in Luke 6:45, "A good man brings forth good things out of the good stored up in his heart." He's saying my integrity, a good man, and my charity, the good things, the good works I do, they well up out of a goodness that is deeper down in my heart. What's he talking about? What good can I store up in my heart? What does this mean? Well, I love the way Paul puts it in Philemon 1:6. He says, "And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ." That's the goodness that's down in our heart. Please don't miss this, but you could put it this way: my integrity and my charity grow in proportion to my clarity about God's goodness to me. You get that? My integrity and my charity grow in proportion to my clarity about God's goodness to me. It's an inside-out thing.

Now what's this look like in real life? Let me tell you a story. There's a man named Ed Farrell, and he's a professional writer in New York City. He talks about how he decided to go for a two-week summer vacation one year to Ireland because his favorite uncle, Seamus, was celebrating his 80th birthday. This uncle was the happiest, kindest man he's ever known, and so Ed wants to go and maybe figure this guy out, right? Learn his uncle's secret before his uncle dies. Well, the whole family gets together in Ireland; they're gonna put together a big thing. And the morning of the great day, Ed and his uncle Seamus get up before dawn. It's still dark outside, and they get dressed in the darkness and they go outside and they go for a long walk around the shores of Lake Killarney. And then just as the sun starts to crest over the horizon, his uncle stops and turns and stands with his arms raised high toward the rising sun, and he just stands stock still and doesn't say anything, just like this. And Ed doesn't know what to do; he's standing beside his uncle. He says it goes on for almost 20 full minutes, not a word exchanged. His uncle's got his eyes closed like this toward the rising sun, and then when the sun has gone up over the horizon, his uncle, his 80-year-old uncle, goes skipping down the road and he's just beaming, smiling from ear to ear. And Ed Farrell catches up to him and he says, "Uncle Seamus, you look really happy." And in his thick brogue, his uncle says, "Ah, I am lad, I am." He says, "Oh, you want to tell me why?" "Yes, you see," and the tears just are washing down the old man's face and they get into his beard, and he looks at Ed with these tears in his eyes and a smile on his face and he says, "You see, my Father in heaven is very fond of me. My Father is very, very fond of me." And Ed says in that moment he discovered his uncle's secret.

See, if I asked you right now if you think God likes you—not do you think God loves you, because that's part of his job description, right? Theologically, God's got to love you because God is love. But if I ask you if you really believe he likes you and he's good to you and likes to give you good things because he's fond of you, and with gut-level honesty you could reply, "Oh yes, the Father is very fond of me," if you really believe that in your heart, do you know what would follow? The fruit of the spirit. You would overflow with all of this because you would bring forth good things out of the goodness stored up in your heart. You'd have a joy; you'd have a relaxedness, and good things would just overflow from you toward others.

So let me give you an assignment this morning—it's like school. We've had three quizzes already, so here's your homework. Sometime this week, I want you to just close your eyes and think of all the ways God is good to you. This is very important because if you get this, you won't be constantly saying to yourself, "Ah, I gotta get my act together." And if you're not careful, this fruit of the spirit series, your interior dialogue does start to sound like that: "Oh, I'm so bad; I gotta get rid of all these works of the flesh, and now I gotta be loving, and I gotta be joyful, and now I gotta be good and kind too. I'm so selfish, right?" That kind of thinking is never gonna produce the fruit of the spirit. And you know why? Because it's still a focus on yourself and not God. But instead, if you can, if you can for a few minutes divert your attention from yourself and your fears and anxieties to God and say like David did, "Oh God, you are good, and what you do is good," and if you're overwhelmed with the goodness of God to you, then that's going to change you because there'll be goodness stored up in your heart.

And here's how good God is to you: roughly 2,000 years ago, God stepped into human history and in Jesus, the awesome goodness of our invisible God became visible. And we saw him welcoming children and the sick and sinners, and we saw him giving his life for them all on the cross. And when that captures my imagination, I'm changed. What I'm saying is a truly good life doesn't start with trying to be good; it starts with relaxing into the goodness of God, almost like slipping into a tub of warm water. You let the goodness of God seep in and saturate and permeate and soak into every part of you, and then it becomes part of you, and then it starts to seep out of you. And then people start to see what you do and hear what you do and identify you and go, "I may not even be a Christian, but I know a follower of Jesus anywhere because a follower of Jesus would sound like that; they would look like that." I pray that this church is just filled with believers like that—people who show the goodness of God because they know the goodness of God.

And it's easy in this series to get it mixed up, to think this is a list of nine things that I'm supposed to do. But these are nine characteristics that come out of us when we allow the Holy Spirit to work in the core of our being. Mark, when he started this series, talked about the prayer of John Stott that's on the very first page of the book Cultivating the Fruit of the Holy Spirit, and there's a gentleman in my Wednesday night Bible study, Bill, and Bill made business card-sized editions of that prayer of John Stott. These are in your bulletins this morning, and I just want to encourage you as a way to soak in the goodness of God, as a way to remind you it's about showing God's goodness because first you know God's goodness. I want to invite you to just take these; you can tape them on your fridge or on your dashboard or put them in your wallet, wherever you think you're going to see them, and ask God to produce this fruit in you as his work, as part of his goodness. And in fact, let's just center down into the goodness of God right now. Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, may we live daily just soaking in your goodness more and more. And Jesus, thank you for giving your life on the cross for us. Some of us maybe for the first time want to pray thank you for that goodness, the ultimate show of goodness to me, and I want to receive you today into my life. I dare to accept you as my Lord and as my Savior—maybe some for the first time, some as a recommitment. And Holy Spirit, we pray that you will fill us with yourself, with your goodness, and then cause your fruit to ripen in our lives so that the world will see your goodness to them. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.