Main Idea: The Spirit’s kindness is produced from a life that is deeply connected to the kindness of God.

A recent commercial on television portrays for us the power of what we generally think of as kindness. It shows a series of people where the first person does something kind for another person and then that person does something kind for another and so on. It is something like a chain reaction of kindness that springs up and continues because someone initiated a single act of random kindness. The point is that by doing something kind for someone else will inspire them to do something kind for another until we all sing "We Are the World."

I had a moment like that the other day. A few weeks ago I had to make a quick trip to the grocery store for something and needed to get back to the church for a wedding. After getting the items I needed, I got to the check out line and noticed a family checking out in front of me. They had several kids and the Dad was carefully sorting out the items and giving them to the checker. When he was finished the cashier told him the total cost, which was more than he had. So he looked back through his items and took out a box of frozen chicken patties and put them back on the counter. The cashier deducted them and he had enough to pay for the rest of his items.

When I got up to the cashier I told the cashier to put his item on my bill. I walked over to the man and put them in the man’s cart and just said, "I thought you might need this." He was very surprised and very grateful! He asked who I was and I told him my first name. He said that if he could do something for me he would. I told him to just do something for someone else who needed it. I could hear again, "We are the world…."

Now here is the question: Was that the "milk of human kindness" or was it the kindness of the Holy Spirit? Now I would like to think that my "random act of kindness" was the result of being inspired by God and that those in the commercial were compelled by mere human motives. I want to imagine that surely as the pastor of First Baptist Church that my actions are moved and motivated by something deeper than just momentary generosity. That is the question I want us to wrestle with today: Is the kindness you show "random" or "connected." In other words, is the source of your actions of kindness inspired by the sight of need in someone’s life or is it the result of a deep connection to the kindness of God?

I need you to understand that it is entirely possible for people to perform "random acts of kindness" that have nothing to do with the fruit of the Spirit. A good example is the work of the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation in Africa. The Gates Foundation is working to develop breakthroughs in medicine, economics and agriculture in Africa to try to stop the death and destruction on that continent. That is an enormously kind and merciful thing to do. I hope more people of wealth would be so inspired because it takes those kinds of people more than governments to change broken systems of life for underdeveloped nations. Is God using them? Yes! Are they Christians? I don’t know. Is that wrong if they are not? Absolutely not! All I am saying is that when we talk about the Spirit’s producing the fruit of kindness in our lives that it should be something more unique than what a secular foundation can offer. Do not hear me criticizing or diminishing the work of any secular benevolent group from Rotary Club to Red Cross or the United Way. They each are doing things that are changing lives and as believers we need to partner where we can. They are vital and doing things that the church sometimes fails at doing. I am saying that the kindness the Spirit produces is to be uniquely different from what is capable on a mere human level. How is the Spirit’s kindness different? What I want us to see today is that the Spirit’s kindness is produced from a life that is deeply connected to the kindness of God. The kindness that the Spirit produces isn’t random. It is connected!

The text we have been anchored by in these weeks is Galatians 5:22-23. Galatians 5:22 says, "But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives he produces this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness…." The word that Paul uses for kindness comes from the same word that we use for good. In Hebrew it meant something excellent, genuine or costly. It came to mean a genuine concern for the best in someone else’s life. I like the way one writer described it as "goodness-with-a-smile." He said "kindness is warm and attractive; it’s goodness wearing a smile; it’s goodness that draws you by its warmth." (Discipleship Journal). I like the way that sounds – "goodness-with a smile." So kindness is more than just a random act, it is inviting a relationship.

That’s how Paul used it when he reminded the Ephesian Christians about the danger they were bringing to relationships in the church, their community and particularly the Holy Spirit by the ways they were living. In fact he said that the way they were living in relationship to others in the church was so damaging that they were bringing "sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit" (Eph. 4:30). He goes on to tell them that they should recognize their true identity as belonging uniquely to God and they were to abandon all destructive behaviors like "bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander" (Eph. 4:31). They were to replace those divisive behaviors with "be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God through Christ has forgiven you" (Eph. 4:32).

In those words is the clue that makes the kindness a Christian shows different from the kindness of a person or institution that is not Christian. The difference is the source of the kindness not the act of kindness. For a believer, kindness cannot be separated from a deep connection to the kindness God has shown us in Jesus Christ. Paul told the Roman Christians, "Don’t you realize how kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you?…Can’t you see how kind he has been in giving you time to turn from your sins? (Rom. 2:4). Paul is saying that there is a possibility that as believers we can get to a place that we assume God owed us what he did on the Cross of Christ by forgiving all of our sin. We can forget that it was God’s kindness toward us that caused him to open his heart to our lostness and send his Son to die on our behalf. He could have refused to redeem us! There was nothing in God that forced his hand to save us! It was strictly out of his kindness that he saw our desperate circumstance and "…made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ" (2 Cor. 5:21).

Someone described God’s kindness this way: "His glory moves toward me at the depths of my greatest rage against Him. He moves toward me with searing kindness and strong, open arms; with eyes that weep with delight at my return. Through faith I see beyond the veil of my presumption of innocence and into the heart of the Father who forgives sin." (Discipleship Journal). Beth Moore said that through God’s kindness we see how he "knows the intense pain of intense love." Hear those words again: "searing kindness" and "intense pain of intense love." God’s "searing kindness" is what allowed him to endure the intense pain of his intense love for all people and through Christ forgive our sin. We were the objects of his "searing kindness." When we fail to understand that that is our connection for the Spirit’s kindness to be produced through us then our kindness is no different from the kindness of any other human being. The Spirit’s kindness is produced from a life that is deeply connected to the kindness of God.

You see the "searing kindness of God" looks beyond the immediate need for the action of kindness. It reaches deeper and farther and touches something eternal. That is why it is a reflection of a person being under the Spirit’s control. Anyone, even the hardest hearted person, can express some random act of kindness but only a believer, deeply connected to God’s kindness, can produce the kindness, the "goodness-with-a-smile", that comes from the Holy Spirit. It’s the difference defined so eloquently by one of our volunteers at a dental clinic we had two years ago in our Huntington Mission. While being fully supportive of the kindness of providing dental care, she said, "If they don’t know Jesus they just go to hell with better teeth."

How does the Holy Spirit work in our life to produce this type of kindness? How can I connect deeply with God’s kindness to allow the Spirit’s fruit of kindness to be seen through me? Well, let me give you some ideas on how that can happen so that we all can "be kind to each other." The first is that the Holy Spirit enables us to learn how to get inside someone else’s skin to understand what they feel and what they need. This isn’t easy because we can get caught being overwhelmed by so much need and hurt that it is easier to say, "That’s their problem. I have enough of my own." But the Holy Spirit won’t settle for that if you are a believer. The Holy Spirit will so work on you on the inside, reminding you of God’s "searing kindness" toward you and your sin that over time you are able to readily empathize with a person who needs your kindness. Sometimes He can do this literally allowing you to endure the identical need of others. He will stop at nothing to cause us to truly get inside the pain of someone else.

Another thing that God’s Holy Spirit does is to move us beyond the shared feelings of pain or need to actually participate personally in another’s need. That is what God did for us in Christ. God was not content to observe the distress and sin of people and agonize over it. He moved beyond that to becoming human and dying for us. As God’s Holy Spirit works on us He causes us to see that a call, a card, a check are not bad ways of expressing kindness; they’re just not enough. Those are for some all that can be done and they are appropriate. However, for others God says, "I want your body to be part of the solution. I want you to personally participate in this need." There is nothing like your presence when someone is struggling. That may be volunteering in some crisis or ministry. It may be surrendering to God’s call for missions. It may be just showing up at someone’s office or house to just be in the room. However you do it, you are joining with them, participating personally in the pain of another. That is how God’s "searing kindness" expressed itself to us and how we will show it to others.

There’s one more way that we can connect deeply with God’s kindness to show the Spirit’s kindness. I believe that God’s Holy Spirit will assist us in taking the appropriate action. We can get so worried that we are becoming too vulnerable that we are paralyzed by our fretting. Yet as you trust God, the Holy Spirit will show you exactly what you need to do to express God’s kindness. When you do this you avoid what I call the "mandarin orange and black olive" solution.

The "mandarin orange and black olive" solution is my name for trying to meet a need without the appropriate action. Back during September of 2005 when we hosted the Katrina refugees we were receiving large amounts of canned food. There had been specific instructions for the canned goods to be staple items—beans, corn, etc. Well, one person came up to me and handed me a small bag and inside the bag were cans of "mandarin oranges and black olives." Now there is nothing wrong with mandarin oranges and black olives. There was nothing wrong with this dear person giving mandarin oranges and black olives. But when you had 180 people to feed three times a day, mandarin oranges and black olives were not what was needed. They were fine, the person’s heart was in the right place but was it meeting the appropriate need? No.

The Holy Spirit wants to produce kindness through us that meets the appropriate need. That will mean slowing down, praying and allowing yourself to listen to God’s Spirit. When we listen to God’s Spirit, we will filter our motives before we act. We will ask the questions: Am I doing this for me or for them? Am I doing this for the rush of emotion I get from showing kindness or am I doing this because this is the kindness this person needs? When we stop and let God show us what is appropriate we begin to count the cost of what is really needed. Counting the cost is a reflection of the "searing kindness of God" because his kindness compelled him to pay the ultimate price on the cross for us. God wasn’t tossing out "mandarin oranges and black olives" on Calvary, he was redeeming our lives!

So how do we express the Spirit’s kindness? We do that by deeply connecting with the kindness of God. How do we connect with his kindness? We allow ourselves to get inside another’s life. We choose to share personally their pain and we listen long enough to God to act in an appropriate manner. That’s how we allow Holy Spirit to produce kindness through us.

Do you know what is tragic about the reflection of kindness through Christians today? It is this: We have become known for being morally arrogant about moral absolutes and about things that are not even biblical absolutes. Being Christian is now associated with belligerence, intolerance, judgmental and narrow minded. I am not saying that we are to abandon our absolutes but because of our moral arrogance we have lost the high ground of kindness. I don’t know that we will ever be able to get that back. Yet may it be known that at least in one place, the people who gather at the corner of Main and Jefferson, produce the Spirit’s kindness because they are deeply connected with the kindness of God!

In his book The Clown in the Belfry, Frederick Buechner wrote,

"Be kind because although kindness is not by a long shot the same thing as holiness,

Let us be people filled with the Spirit’s kindness!

Sunday, October 1, 2006

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org