Gal 5:16 …let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. (NLT) 5:22… the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23a gentleness, and self-control. (NLT)

I’ve been quizzing you on this the last three weeks…Let’s work just on the nine fruit for a few minutes. I’ve broken it down into three sets of three.

(right side, left side, under 50, over 50)

(first set, second set, third set)

If I ask 50 people who know you if they would describe you as kind…what would they say?

This is actually a little tougher to put a finger on than the Fruit of Patience last week. If I'm impatient…other people immediately know it… and quite honestly, I know it too.

But kindness is more subjective. There are people in all of our lives that we get along well with who would, probably, vote unanimously for "being kind". Some of us have other people in our lives who think we are not very nice. Even, in my role, as a Pastor, I have spoken hard words into people's lives and they have not loved me for it. These people are sometimes referred to as:

Help me here… Aren't there some people who qualify to receive your unconditional kindness and then there are others who are not worthy of your kindness. There needs to be some sort of a system that lets me determine who I am going to be kind to, and who is a jerk and doesn't deserve any extra effort on my part….right?

Once you determine that, you then have to answer an even more basic question:

Kindness- the state, quality, or habit of being kind. - Webster

Wow, that's helpful…. When you look up the definition for "kind" you find 13 lines of gobbligook, with only one line that is helpful…but that one line heads us down the right road:

Are you these things? ….Are you these things to a select, pre-chosen group of friends and relatives, or are you these things to people in general?

Considering that this is a Spiritual Fruit that grows in the lives of God's children ….does it not make sense that these qualities are supposed to characterize our lives no matter who… we are with, or what the circumstance happen to be?

I've told you, repeatedly, that all nine of these fruit are implanted into us from the Source.

The only reason any of us have love, or joy, or peace, or patience…is because God is those things! God doesn't have the characteristic of love…He is love and he when He implants Himself into us… he creates in us the capacity to love in ever increasing measure.

The same is true of kindness…. GOD is Kindness!

There are people (perhaps some in this room) who believe in God, who have committed their lives to him, yet they do not view their God as, particularly, kind.

I serve God…I'm afraid not to. I don't want a wrathful God to send me to hell, so I will submit my life to him as fire insurance.

I led a lady to Christ, one time, who came to a Bible study I was teaching in Pt. Salerno….she was attending another church in Stuart. She came to me one day with a list of things that they had told her to correct in her life and she said they told her if she did not get these things corrected that God would kill her kids.

Is that really the God of the Bible? We do read of God's judgment coming against people, and even whole civilizations, that rejected him. Is God like us then…sometimes kind… but often burning with wrath, and impatience, and sometimes God's anger impulsively, boils over….. and you better not be standing in the wrong place or bolts of lightening will fry you.

We don't have time, today, to fully deal with the justice part of God's character… but you need to hear me when I say that God's justice came only to those who rejected him after long periods of warning…. It was never malicious on God's part… he, sometimes, had to stop one group of people from their rebellious sinfulness…. because their actions were leading to the spiritual destruction of countless others. When God had to eliminate one person to save thousands of others… you must try to understand the pain in the heart of a Heavenly Father who loves every person in his creation equally.

God certainly doesn't see himself as mean or vindictive, or unkind…. Quite the opposite, in fact…

God spends lots of pages in Scripture making sure the Israelites thoroughly understand that he is kind, loving, and patient. In fact, Webster's definition of Kindness exactly fits God's description of himself.

Watch this tiny sprinkling of what God says about himself…

The Old Testament followers of God, who we sometimes feel sorry for… "having to live under God's heavy-handedness"…didn't view God the way we sometimes imagine they should have:

>> Job 10:12 You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit. (This after Job had lost everything)

>> Ezra 9:9 Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem. (This from exile in Babylon)

The Israelites knew that when they ran into a block wall, it was not something their impatient, unkind God had done to them…it was something they had done to themselves. Their Heavenly Father (much like a human father does to his child) had graciously warned them, "If you do this sinful action this will be the result". They went ahead … committed the sin and, sure enough, the result was exactly as God had warned. They knew that didn't make God a bad God…it just made them sinful people.

We sometimes look back on them and say, " God sure was rough on them…I suppose he'll be just as mean in his treatment of me…. and the whole way of thinking is built on a misperception that God was ever mean to start with!

God didn't think so…and neither did the Israelites! They thought God was far kinder to them than he needed to be…and that is good theology!

Isaiah 63:7 I will tell of the kindnesses of the LORD, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the LORD has done for us— yes, the many good things he has done for the house of Israel, according to his compassion and many kindnesses.

Please understand… God made all of the universe to house the centerpiece of His creation…. Us…Humanity! He created us, in his image so he could have someone who would commune with Him, and love him, and develop a relationship with him…with willing hearts. What's the first thing God's "centerpiece of Creation" does?

Rejects Him… Rebels against him…aligns themselves with satan…the enemy of God. What would a mean God have done at that point?..... Forget mean…what would any Creator have been perfectly justified in doing at that point?

Wipe us out!!! Start over… The fact that one hour after Adam and Eve's sin …. there still was humanity on this earth points to the patience and kindness of God!

And it didn't stop there!!! For the next 7000 years, God pursues his "imaged" Creation trying to woe them back into relationship with him. Does anyone not see the patience and kindness in all of that?

Finally in one last flourish of God's immense kindness… he himself comes to this earth, becomes a man, take all the sins of mankind on himself, dies in our place, then offers all who will accept his gift, eternal life!!!

Non-Christians ( or Christians for that matter) who promote the idea that the God of the Bible is not a kind God…. just don't get it!...They are clueless! You can't have a basic understanding of the true message of Scripture and not see a picture of a God that is just oozing kindness all over his Creation.

Titus 3:3-7 Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient….Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other. 4 But—“When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, 5 he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. 6 He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior. 7 Because of his grace he declared us righteous and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life.”

God, himself, says that the coming of the Savior was a direct act of kindness on his part. It's interesting to me, though that, in the New Testament, when he mentions his act of kindness in saving us, it always includes the context of us becoming different people.

In the Old Testament God declares himself to be kind in spite of His peoples rebellion and rejection… In the New Testament God declares that his eternal kindness to us is going to change our character to be like his own. Let me show you what I mean:

Ephesians 2:3-7 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions… God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus

It's odd isn't it that we sometimes mistake kindness and patience, in each other for weakness… The man who is sympathetic, friendly, gentle, tenderhearted, generous, cordial, loving, is great as a white haired grandfather but don't put him at the head of our countries corporations. (That thought, by the way, has bled into our churches. The desirable church leaders, in many cases, have become the hard-nose businessmen who don't take any prisoners.

That's all nonsense, you know… It takes a much bigger person to be patient and kind than it does to rant and rave. The person who expresses tender-hearted gentleness is miles deeper than the "one who just calls 'em like they see 'em".

Jesus wants to be sure you understand that his "kind" death for your sins was an act of immense strength. He wants you to understand that if you have responded to his powerful act on your behalf… you are. purely, responding to his kindness

Jesus, also, wants you to understand that if you are going to become like him… you are going to have to be willing to grow an orchard full of kindness inside you…so you can become increasingly stronger and stronger…more and more like him.

Oddly (or not so oddly) when human kindness is commanded, in the Bible it seems to always be contrasted to our sinfulness. One has to go in order for the other to thrive.

Colossians 3:8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator…. 12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Rid yourself vs. clothe yourself…

Ephesians 4:29-32 Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them. 30 And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. 32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. (NLT)

Don't use/ get rid of vs. instead be….

Genesis 40:13-15 Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your position, and you will put Pharaoh's cup in his hand, just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer. 14 But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison. 15 For I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon." (NIV)