This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

So the title of today's sermon is holiness in a world where anything goes. If you know a little bit about your biblical history, there is the book of judges. And the Book of judges is about basically a time of great failure in Israel. They failed to find leaders who could hold them together. There's occasional good leader comes along and progress is made and the nation stays together.

But for every good leader, there's a guy like Samson who causes as much trouble as he cures. But one of the things that goes on through that book time after time is this sentence says, there was no king in Israel. People did exactly what they liked. There was no king in Israel. People did exactly what they liked.

And the implication by the writer is this culture of just doing what you wanted was disastrous for the country. It needed some kind of authority, it needed some kind of direction. And it couldn't just be what I think is great, because what I think is great was often causing harm to those around. So when christians are called to be free in this passage, as they are that debs has just read to us, this freedom is not licence. And licence is a freedom where you just make all the choices you want and you just do what you want.

This is a freedom to be responsible. Doesn't that sound like an ex school teacher? The freedom to be responsible. The freedom to use God's gifts in a way that will bring him glory and the world knowledge of his salvation. So firstly, let's look at this idea from the passage about we're called to be free for those of us who are eighties children.

Belinda Carlyle had a hit called live your life, be free.

Those of us who are slightly more esoteric and like our philosophers, know that Rousseau said, man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. Quite clever, that we feel we're free, but there are so many restrictions on our freedom. Freedom is something that human beings seek. Sometimes they seek it in a selfish way, just for their own personal freedom, for their own indulgence. Sometimes they seek it in a dynamic and effective way that true justice is seen in a society.

Freedom for the Christian begins with what God has done for us in Christ.

Christ was sacrificed on our behalf. He died in our place. Freedom for the Christian begins not with a philosophical idea about I've got rights and entitlements because I'm a human being. It begins with the freedom that comes from the cross, that releases me from the power of sin. It comes from the empty tomb that instead of having the freedom to despair, I am given the freedom to hope and it is based in the power of the ascended Lord who will return and has history under his control, called to be free, not called to do what you want when you want, but called to be free to serve this powerful God who freely chose to save you, who freely chose to create you.

That's a powerful responsibility and that freedom is a gift worth having. It's a freedom that means that when others are trapped by some attitudes, christians should not be. So. Our freedom should be about choosing not to hate. Our freedom should be about choosing humility, not making ourselves the centre of everything, but making others and God the centre of everything.

Now, last week I bought a book on humility. I haven't made much progress, I've read the book, but I've got a lifetime where I know I'm going to have to work on that.

There will be many characteristics of the spiritual life that will be very difficult to work on. Loving those who don't deserve our love at one level, our own humility, our own self destructiveness at times. But we're going to choose freedom in Christ. We're going to choose humility where we put the needs of others before our own. We're going to choose, above all, love, because we saw love on that cross for us.

Now, there is a very famous sketch by Peter Cook from the 1960s, and it's about Galatians, and it starts by always telling them off a lot. And there is a list of various things in this passage where Paul says, this is not good, do not do these things. These things are really difficult and will compromise and destroy your spiritual life. Now, it could be very easy for me to start with the first three and for many of us to feel like, oh, that's not too bad. I'm not too bad on those.

So the first three on the list are sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, you might think, not problems, I'd be careful because there probably are issues related to those areas that are in your mind from time to time and you need to deal with them. You might think idolatry. Well, I havent recently worshipped a false idol. Yes, you have. If you thought that money is the key to your success.

Yes, you have. If you thought that your career was the most important thing in your life all the time, were tempted to idolatry might not be a literal, physical golden idol put up in church that we bow down to, but idolatry is basically usurping the place of God and putting something else there which shouldn't be there. So you might think, well, okay, witchcraft, I guess I would want to extend that to any sort of superstitious belief or practise, not necessarily full witchcraft, but something where, again, you trust something more than you trust God. Now, that bit of the list, you might go, oh, yeah, not too bad. Look at the next bit.

Hatred. Who of us can say that we have not had to deal with hatred of others at some point? And if you are that holy that you've never hated anybody, wow, I'm really, really impressed. But I wonder whether or not you've looked into your own heart, because I'm sure that all of us at some point have done that. Discord.

Now, discord is that ability or lack of ability. Well, you deliberately go our way to make things difficult for other people. If you again can say, oh, well, I've never kind of picked a fight or I've never been awkward, congratulations. But that's certainly not me. Jealousy.

Have you never been jealous? You might think, oh, you know, I'm not a particularly ambitious person. I've not been particularly jealous of X, Y or Z. I suspect it's been there at some point, in some way. Rage.

Now, rage isn't righteous anger at something that's wrong. Rage is the kind of anger that you have when you're asserting yourself. You're the one in the right, but you're not the one in the right. And you're angry in a way that is destructive to you and to others. Selfish ambition, all about me.

Your life becomes all about you and achieving what you want. Dissensions and factions, kind of deliberately, again, picking fights, building up groups of people to take on other groups of people. All of these things. Now, don't just look at the exotic sins on this list, the ones you think, oh, well, that's never going to be me. Because in that list there are plenty of words that apply to you and to me, and we need to be honest about that.

So that's the negative stuff. I was asked whether I wanted the confession before my sermon or after, and I said I did say I didn't want to spend too much time on the negative stuff. Okay? And we've already had the confession. So now I want to talk about some of the more positive stuff from the passion, from the passage.

So let's think about the fruit of the spirit, which is towards the end of the passage. Now here's a challenge. How would you like to be remembered when you're dead? How would you like to be remembered when you're dead? So in one of the newspapers I read, there's a little column after the formal obituaries of the big and important people who die each day called other lives.

And I like other lives because other lives is literally what it says. It's people who are not well known, but are important to their family or have done something in the community that should be celebrated. So they're quite often the person who's worked in a laboratory for 40 years and helped find a cure for something. Not necessarily the guy who did all the technical stuff, but they're slightly more humble people, although the people who worked in their community selflessly, in a food bank.

And those other lives, really good to read about them, not just the famous people and what, you know, who had a hit with so and so and who once run a country, but the people who day to day improve our lives by their service. Now, it's nice to read their obituaries because sometimes they're so challenging to me about why did this person do all of this, and how fortunate the community and the family was to have that man or woman as part of them. Now, a few years ago, I was on what's called a retreat. So I'd gone away to think and to pray, and I was challenged by reading a book called God of surprises by a guy called Gerard Hughes. And in it he says, write your own obituary.

So imagine that it's hopefully decades into the future, and write down what you would like people to write about you, to sum up your life. Now, this is the one I don't want. So Cavern never thought about anyone else. He was mean and selfish, and he's best forgotten, right? That would be the nightmare obituary.

Ask those who know me whether or not that would be what they say. Hopefully not. Now, what is our calling? Well, our calling is to walk in the way of the spirit. That's what Paul talks about.

And by walking in the way of the spirit. And here he's mixing his metaphor, similes, whatever they are, because he then talks about the fruit of the spirit. So what should characterise a Christian? Well, it should be, firstly, love. And that word in the original list is agape, self giving love, like the love shown on the cross.

That's the minimum standard of a christian life, not the maximum. That's what we ought to be trying to live in that way. It's secondly, peace. And I guess underneath there, when Paul's writing that word, he's thinking about the word shalom back from his hebrew background. The idea of everything being healed and brought back together and being under the lordship of Christ.

It's about joy.

Now, Joy isn't. Put the grin on. Let's go to church. Okay. I have this expression that I use sometimes called church face.

So if you ever meet me in sainsbury's, it's not a place that I find conducive to rest. But I have been known that if you were to suddenly appear from behind the beach roots or something, I might go put the smile on and try the church face on you. Now, that will not do. That is not joy. That is deception.

Joy means that you are able to find the purposes of God in good times and bad and know that he is Lord. So even when your heart is breaking in a situation, you can still find the purposes of God there and you can trust him in that. So it isn't about feeling happy. It isn't about feeling, I'm really worshipping tonight because I'm so joyful sometimes. Your joy may be characterised by a life that ultimately, outside might be described by other people as miserable, but that, you know, even in the midst of all that difficulty, Christ is with you.

So love, peace, joy, forbearance, patience and understanding of other people. Bearing with difficult people.

It seems to me that dealing with people who are difficult is one of the most difficult things in the christian life. And it's one thing that God keeps sending me in the direction of finding people who I find difficult, so that I have to learn humility, goodness and kindness. Simple kindness in our world is very, very much in short supply. Simple acts of kindness. But this is a kindness that comes from a supernatural source.

It isn't just being really nice to your auntie at Christmas or making sure you buy some flowers for your next door neighbour if they do you a nice turn. Kindness is really thinking about those around us and trying to show and demonstrate in practical ways love. It's about goodness. Trying to live a life without mixed motives about, oh, it's all about me, or oh, if I do this good thing here, I can get this good result for me there.

It's about gentleness.

Gentleness. We do not live in a world that prizes gentleness. We live in a world that prides itself in aggression and assertiveness. We live in a world where putting somebody down is often seen almost as a good thing because that shows what power you've got over them. But being gentle, one of the loveliest descriptions of Jesus from Isaiah, is a bruised reed.

He will not break. There's a gentleness in our saviour which we should show as his followers. So we choose as christians freedom not to hate. We choose humility to follow the king of kings. And we choose love, not destruction.

Now, how do you learn to walk in the spirit? Well, you do it the same way that you've learned to walk now as human beings. You fall over a lot when you're learning to walk, but I very seldom have meet any children who decide, oh, I've fallen over so many times, I'm just going to give up on this walking thing. You keep going until it becomes natural. So hopefully none of us this evening, if we walked here, have had to go right.

Which foot do I put in front of? The next one. It is now part of your nature. When we walk in step with God's spirit, it will be learning to walk. When we were small children.

It becomes part of who we are, right? It becomes instinctive. You don't have to think about how to walk. If people have an accident or they have brain damage or something like that, then they are in a situation where they have to be taught to walk again. But as far as I know, in church today, we don't have to think about it.

I might be wrong and apologies if you're in that situation, that it is a real struggle to think about that, but it is now a natural thing. And we don't walk in the power of our good intentions. We don't walk in the power of some system. There's a programme on radio four that I really quite like. It's called just one thing.

And Doctor Michael Moseley every week gives you advice about how you can improve your health. This week's was volunteering. That'll be a good thing. That'll help your physical and mental health. The week before it was drink more coffee.

Who knew? Who knew? Those of you who love coffee, you'll feel very relieved. Those of you who hate the smell of coffee will feel very angry about the good doctor's instruction. But he comes up with all these different instructions every week about just to try this one thing.

I tried one or two of them. I've had a cold shower. I'm not doing that again. Right. Apparently that was really going to change my life.

But no, no, thank you. But here's my just one thing, not from Doctor Mosley, but from scripture. Just one thing this week. Walk in the spirit. Walk in the power of God.

And think about in particular those qualities from verses 22 to the end of the passage to the end of chapter five, the fruit of the spirit. How can they begin to develop a new this week? And don't worry if by this time next week you haven't grasped much progress it takes a few months to learn to walk but then hopefully you walk most the rest of your life and you will pick up direction and you'll pick up speed and God in his blessings. If you keep walking in his direction, walk in yours. Let us pray.

Father, thank you for this passage. It's very challenging about some of the way we think and behave towards other people. Help us to respond to that negative challenge and to think about where we are very far from you. It's very challenging in a good and positive way about the people we could be if we lived in the power of the spirit, walked in the spirit, developed those fruit. Think of the glory that we could give to you and think of the peace we could share with the world.

Help us this week to know your spirit and to live and work to your praise and glory. Amen.