Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 24, 2024 | Galatians - You too can Live the Spiritual Life

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November 24, 2024 | Galatians - You too can Live the Spiritual Life · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: How you doing this beautiful morning?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're all pretty psyched in the office about uh Hannah and Connor's baby.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: How much how cool was that?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Prayed about that, worried about that a little bit, but you know, every baby that they have has got to be exactly one week past two, I guess.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, we decided to give Connor a break.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So he doesn't have to preach this morning or next week.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we're in Galatians.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: We have three weeks left.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do the next two.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Connor will finish it up.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And my title this morning is You Too Can Live the Spiritual Life.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I got lucky.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Got the two greatest passages, in my view, in the book of Galatians, Galatians 2.20, and now Galatians chapter 5.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a familiar passage.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't help when I think of Galatians, which is known, by the way, as up there with Romans as the most theological, meaty, you know, chewy steak type epistle, Paul's, in the New Testament.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of theology, justification, five syllable words.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And but it's got this incredibly simple message.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that message, I think, could be titled Born Free, Live Free.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: When I was young, this book came out by Joy Adamson.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was a book about this, she wrote it in 1960, and I read it when it came out in Reader's Digest a year or two later.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was a kid, but I was just transfixed by this lion cub Elsa and her experiences in Africa with this lion cub, and it was a title Born Free, which was really cool and contrasted with, you know, the lions that we used to see in the Portland Zoo, which, you know, weren't free.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then a few years after that, um, 1966, though, um for me, this song didn't really hit until Andy Williams sang it a couple years later, 1968, and I bought the album.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: But this is this uh cool pop song, uh, Sing It With Me, Born Free.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm kidding.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, but it had these great words: born free, as free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows, born free to follow your heart.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then the second stanza, live free, and beauty surrounds you.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: The world still astounds you each time you look at a star.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Stanza three.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Stay free where no walls divide you, you're free as a roaring tide, so there's no need to hide.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Final stanza, born free.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And life is worth living, but only worth living because you're born free, which, if you think about it, is a really great metaphor for spiritual life, isn't it?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Life is worth living because you're born free.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like little Elizabeth, there was that time in your life where God's grace came upon you, and uh through really no effort of your own, by his grace, you popped out.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: You were born.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you had a whole life ahead of you.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question was, would you live free as well?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the text we're going to talk about, but I think it helps to start by recognizing the wonder and the greatness of the fact that we're free.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I can't think of any story that illustrates it better than one written decades ago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of the great books of the 20th century, Gulag Archipelago, which is about the uh chain of concentration camps in Russia in the 1940s, 1950s.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were killing millions of people over there, and he was thrown in because he was an intellectual.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think of uh that excerpt from the book, when he is finally released, he served his long prison term, and off I walk, he writes, free.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if everyone knows the meaning of this great word free.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm walking along by myself with no automatic rifles threatening me.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I look behind me, no one there.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: If I like, I can walk on the right, past the fence where the big pig is rooting in a puddle.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I prefer, I can walk on the left where hens are scratching.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot fall asleep.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I walk and walk and walk in the moonlight.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: The donkeys sing their song, the camels sing, every fiber in me sings.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am free.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I am free.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it would be wrong of me not to start by reminding us, Christian, do you realize what God did for you?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that you were hopelessly enslaved to sin and wrath and death and selfishness?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: But then God actually came and he set you free.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you were born free.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Say thank you, Lord.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So much of the world lives by a principle that keeps them from being born, and that is they don't understand that the way to be born is to be born free.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: They live this license or this sticker, how to get to heaven, turn right and go straight.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hit the ball straight, make sure it goes in the fair way, chip it up on the green, hit the putt, finish under par.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Gotta perform.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Gotta perform.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And God says that's not the way to do it at all.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's chapters one, two, three.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Typical in Paul's epistles are his theology as he lays the doctrine down, and then the last half of the book, he gets really practical.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in this book, he uh finishes uh in chapter two by talking to the Galatians about justification.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's by faith, it's free, it's not by any works that you do.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Get off the performance standard.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Don't listen to the Judaizers who are trying to tell you you have to keep all 613 commandments in the Mosaic Law.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then he moves into chapter three and he begins by saying, You foolish Galatians, who's cast a spell on you?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Are you so foolish?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: After beginning by the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he spends the next two chapters just going back to the birth and explaining again with illustrations that their salvation is free.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: But now in chapters five and six, he gets serious about application.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter five, verse one, he says, For freedom Christ set us free.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Stand firm then and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery, by returning to the performance standard, you know, the law, the rules, as the way to please God.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now we get down to our passage, and uh and in a verse that sort of concluded last week's Jeremy's sermon, he wrote, For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters, only don't use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So as we move into our passage, the question that arises is, okay, I now think I understand the freedom a little bit better, but what's this stuff about the flesh?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you parse this verse out, you'll notice what it's saying is that we used to live in slavery over there on the left, and then God brought us to freedom in Christ, and he broke our shackles.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, ahead of us in this life that we're living, this spiritual life, is a great danger.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he calls that flesh.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in our passage, he starts by saying, I say then, walk by the spirit, and you'll certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: For the flesh desires what is against the spirit, and the spirit desires what is against the flesh.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: These are opposed to each other, so that you can't do and don't do what you want.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he therefore Galatians now turns into this description of this knockdown, drag out battle, this war zone, and the war zone is you in which the spirit and the flesh are going nail and tongs against each other every day of your life.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is, and this is one of the most asked questions online about the book of Galatians, people constantly writing in saying, exactly what does Paul mean when he talks about flesh?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I could talk about it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of books written on this.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are possibly eight different ways that flesh is used in the Bible, but I've boiled it down to the main three, all right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And one is a green light, nothing wrong with it.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: One is a yellow light, which means it's a hint that there's uh that that there's something wrong, and the red light is the one we're gonna deal with today.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because oftentimes in the Bible, flesh is used in a very neutral way or a positive way.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that would be that I am flesh, in that I am a physical human being.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am made of flesh and bone, I have flesh and blood.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh, John 1, that was a good thing.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Paul had a thorn in his what?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: In his physical being, in his flesh.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the Bible then goes on, Paul actually in other places says, and you should use the opportunity you have in the flesh.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm not gonna die yet, I'm gonna remain in the flesh, and this is actually better for you because I can help you out.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we have an opportunity, you and I do, when we're in the flesh.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have all of these great programs here at the church.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we hand out food, we we we help out the school across the way, we do this, we do that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we have this Christmas project, we're gonna help kids out in the Philippines and all of this stuff.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have this opportunity, but this opportunity ends when they take our flesh and bones and drop it in the grave, right?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's flesh as a good thing.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm just gonna tell you, one of the main problems we have this whole discussion is the people sort of freeze-dry flesh and they they they interpret every passage as though it always means the same thing, and they just make mints meat out of the Bible.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: But typically in the Bible, words mean more than are used in more than one way.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the second way that flesh is used, and this is very, very common, Old and New Testament, is that I am flesh, in that I am a fragile, mortal creature.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm somewhat helpless at the end of Isaiah 2.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh God says to Isaiah, why do you put your faith in human humanity and in man whose breath is in his nostrils?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we're frail, we could stop breathing at any time, our heart could stop.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: All flesh is grass, he says in Isaiah 40.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Grass withers, flowers fade, but the word of our Lord shall stand forever.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's quoted again, I put down here in 1 Peter 1 24.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, flesh is a physical human body, is the way that Paul uses flesh in chapters 1 and 2.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's the way he used it in the last verse I preached that.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm crucified with Christ, I don't live, but Christ lives in me.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: The life I live in the flesh I live by, faith, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Chapters 1 and 2.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Moves into chapter 4, and he sort of goes, you know, uh, you know, uh Abraham in the flesh, through Hagar, gave birth to Ishmael, and there's a hint there that Adam's flesh was weak, that it was fragile, that it gave in, that it did maybe what it shouldn't have done.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is a yellow.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you you and I know many of us have relatives right now who are in the hospital or hurting.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're sad, and we understand at this point maybe better than any other time how frail, how fragile, how mortal we are.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that leads us, however, to I am flesh.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I am a sinner who wants my way, who has ego, who has pride.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: From the very moment I was born, my flesh desires what is against the spirit.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's Galatians chapters 5 and 6.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's our text this morning.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's Romans chapters 6, 7, and 8, where flesh is not a good thing.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this spiritual warfare going on inside us between flesh and spirit.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: On one side, we have the old house, shall we call it, of our flesh, our sinful nature.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: That word's not used in the Bible, but you find it in the NIV and so forth.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Trinity.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not used there, but that seems to be what this point is.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is the sinful nature, which ever since the fall has been part of my physical being.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole psychosomatic thing, right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And because I'm in the flesh, I have psychological issues, I have emotional issues, I have spiritual issues, you know, relational issues, and so forth.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm frail, and oftentimes I wake up in the morning and life is all about me.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have little children, you know life is always about them.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and you and you tend to live in self-centered independence from God, pursuing your own ends, going your own way.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the flesh, because the flesh house agenda, flesh house rules, shall we say, are to get you to live in me first pride and self-centered, I want what I want, and I want it now.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I do things my way, and that will never end until your flesh goes into the grave.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on the other side of the battlefield, inside you is the Spirit of God.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: When you came to Christ, that old you, Paul says elsewhere, died with Christ on the cross and you became a brand new person because the Spirit of God came inside you to take up permanent residence in your life, and the first thing he did was he broke the shackles that causes every unbeliever to naturally obey the sin nature.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: They really have no other nature inside them that rules over them, but the spirit and the new nature have now taken up residence.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: The spirit's got his agenda, and he nails that up on the wall.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the spirit has no choice, he's got to come into your old house, right?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the only place where you can live on this earth.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: But now the whole spirit of God's in there, and he's setting up a whole new program, and the battle is on because the old house is not happy about this.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was filled with termites.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was dilapidated, yes, it was breaking down, yes, it was stinky.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't want a new occupant in the house.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It liked being the boss, it liked ruling your life, and your old house of flesh says to the spirit, not in my house, you don't come in and do this.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not giving up control that easily.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've been running things here ever since this weak, fragile creature took its first breath.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ever since I taught it to lie by crying, when it simply wanted attention.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when I taught it how to say mine and steal toys from other preschoolers, I've been in charge.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna let some holy do-gooder late comer push me aside, and so like a cobra, your old house strikes, your flesh strikes, and they hate each other and they're fighting over you.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you are a young Christian, let's just say, and you are shocked at the sudden battle and the intensity of the battle raging inside your mind and your heart and your body, and because you have a new nature now that desires to do good and please God, you try to fight it on your own.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: You make lists of rules, you pump up your self-effort, you you uh read books on self-discipline, and you make lists, and you punish yourself when you go wrong.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you experience that horrible surprise that every young Christian experiences, that there's more spiritual conflict in your life as a new Christian, as a Christian there ever was in your life before you were a Christian.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're tempted more than you were ever tempted, it seems, as a non-Christian.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And as you try and fail, and get yourself back on your feet, and then try and fail again, and then again and again, you become confused, you become despairing, you become guilt-ridden.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I remember experiencing this.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was a born-again Christian, and I grew up, and then I had a good youth group, and went to summer camp and made, you know, through what we called f in the fire, you know, the Friday night, and stood up in the dark and you confessed all your sins and you said you were gonna do better, and you came home and you were all pumped up.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember, man, I was for the first time in my life, I'd go in and wash dishes without being asked, or I'd clean the floor.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: My mom would go, What is with you, Roland?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'd try to be nice to my little siblings, which was the most difficult.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, you know, by about Tuesday, they'd get on me and I'd forgotten, you know, what happened last Friday at the campfire when nobody could see my face, and and then I'd crash, I'd fail, and I'd try harder, and then I'd fail again.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'd come in and I'd come in crying, go, Mom, I'd I'd try, I can't, I can't do it.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just can't I can't live the Christian life.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd feel so guilty.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I needed someone to come along, and I know someone's probably come along to you, maybe a Sunday school teacher, who's somebody who's read Galatians 5 or Romans 6 through 8 or the other spiritual life passages of the New Testament, and they'd come along and explain what's going on.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: That when you were without Christ, before Christ, you only had one nature.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: You had the nature with which you were born, that nature that's been with you ever since you were little, your human, fallen, sinful nature.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that nature told you that you were wonderful just the way you you are.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you should grab for the gusto, and you should indulge yourself, and you should, you know, do things your way and demand your rights.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't stand up for yourself, nobody else will.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there was no inner turmoil or conflict inside you because there was no other nature inside you to oppose that sinful nature.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And life ran along smoothly for years as a non-Christian, because you only had one nature and it was unopposed.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was a shallow life, and yeah, at times you felt empty and knew that you were missing something important, and which is why, when you were introduced to Christ, finally you saw his glory and saw he loved you and he died to save you and forgive you and bring you into his family and give you eternal life and feel that emptiness inside you, that's why you embraced him with faith.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's why at that moment you were born free and everything changed.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then that person explains to you when the spirit came inside you and broke the chains.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's when the battle began, and that's why you're feeling all that conflict inside, and that's why you feel all that guilt, and you find that what is the verse?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: You find that you can't do what you want to do, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do, because you want to do good.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: You want to do good, but you can't do what you want.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 7 says the same thing.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I do not do what I want to do.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Apostle Paul, but I do what I hate, for the desire to do good is within me.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: But there's no ability to do it.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: But they explain to you that when the Spirit of Christ is inside you, the Spirit of Christ is not expecting you to live by that performance standard that you always used to live on before you were a Christian when you thought that was the way to get to heaven.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, they say, you know, having been saved by grace through faith, why would you want to go back to law and rules?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: That the Spirit doesn't tell you, live by the standard.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit instead whispers to you, I'll lead.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: You follow, walk with me, keep in step with me.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Friend of mine, who was chaplain of the Dallas Cowboys up until recently, compares the whole thing to a football game.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Where he says, like the other side, you compare the enemy, you compare them to the flesh.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where the other team opposes you across the line, you're the running back, and they look at you and they say, Don't even try.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Don't even try to advance the ball and get a first down.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you know, you run the ball our way, and you're gonna lose yardage.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you find out that's exactly what happens.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just like it happens in your Christian life.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: We keep getting pushed back.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: We we, you know, it's one step forward, two steps back, right?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: We try to maintain our line of scrimmage, then advance the line of scrimmage, but they're tackling us for a loss every time.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: But then in the huddle, my friend explains, he says, then uh 380-pound left guard steps forward.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Call him the Spirit.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: 380 pounds of solid muscle.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Listen, I I'm gonna let me be a pulling guard.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'll run interference from you.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'll pull from my position, I'll come sweeping ahead of you.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: You just grab the ball, carry the ball, and keep right behind me, step by step, right behind me, and I'll clear the way.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he explains, and I think it's a pretty good illustration.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Holy Spirit who clears our path.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: To the goal.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in this text, the Spirit tells us, uses four different phrases for us to try to help us understand the door that unlocks the spiritual life.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Walk by the Spirit is the first one.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Be led by the Spirit is the second one.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Live by the Spirit, he says third.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, in my favorite, in the next to last verse, he says, keep in step with the Spirit.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Keep in step with the Spirit.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now he moves.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, let me just say that at the end of 16 through 18, he wants us to see clearly the options in life.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not two options.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: The Judaizer said, well, the two options are either you keep the law or you're going to live in the flesh.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul said, no, no, no, there's a third way that's better.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the flesh includes both the legalism trench where you're slogging your way through to live the Christian life that will please God, or on the other side, the libertinism or the license trench, where you do whatever you want.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: But no, there's a spirit highway running down the middle where the spirit wants to lead you.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I like that because you know what's really interesting?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed that you can spend all day in the legalism trench with your list of here's what I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna call my mother after 12 years, or I'm gonna do this, or I'm gonna be nice to my, you know.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you struggle, you fail a little bit, and you struggle.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: You wake up in the morning and you find that you haven't woken up in the legalism trench, but you've woken up in the libertanism swamp.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, you don't just wake up there.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: You did something that you're ashamed of.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it interesting that?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm first to admit this is true of me, you know, you think, well, there's Pharisees, and they just hang out all their life in the legalism trench.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's those people down at the, you know, down in the Las Vegas Strip, and they spend their whole lives, you know, in the libertanism swamp, doing whatever they want.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't work that way, does it?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can live by the flesh, you'll find that you flop back and forth between them.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Even the best people, you know, you see it in the news, you see it in the news with these famous preachers or these other people or whatever, and you go, man, they were telling me how to live, man, they had the rules, man, they're talking about righteousness and everything, and all of a sudden you see their name on the front page, and you find out that behind the scenes they were flopping over into the other trench, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you start criticizing them, you go, yeah, that's the way I am, too.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I keep four out of five on the on my list one day, but then all of a sudden, you know, and I'm thinking I'm making it toward God and everything, and all of a sudden I've done the very thing I don't want to do.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just think this is brilliant of Paul to say, listen, there's a trench and there's a swamp, and we tend to actually flop back and forth between them, but I've got a new way for you.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: You want to live the Christian life?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't live it in either direction.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Live it on the spirit highway.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now let me describe that highway for you, he says, and he moves to 19 to 21.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting that what he does in order to make the spirit highway look even better and to show how wonderful it is, he decides to give us some rotten food first.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: He decides to show us how bad it is if we live by the flesh, right?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Wants to whet our appetite by showing us what the dry, rotten, self-centered life is really like, and you and I know it's like that.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, now the works of the flesh are obvious.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what he calls them.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: He calls them the works of the flesh.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to call the spirit what?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Fruit, right?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Difference between works and fruit.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Works is what I do.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Fruit is what's given to me.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: But works of the flesh are obvious.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then, I'm sorry.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like he takes, you know, his coffee and he just throws it.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like he slops out 15 things here, which are super random, and he ends it with, and there's a bunch more.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: I could go on all day.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not orderly, it's as chaotic as the flesh life is.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I got that.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Those are three very moral sins.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: They move from his most famous one, pornea, from which we get pornography, any kind of sexual morality, and then he moves to public, visible debauchery, promiscuity, where everybody can see and you don't care anymore.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the first three.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he begins most of he has uh, there's a dozen lists in the New Testament, and sexual immorality is usually at the beginning.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then he mentions two religious sins, and I thought you'd enjoy seeing the Greek words behind them.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Idolatry, guess where, guess what the word is in Greek?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Idolatry.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then sorcery, and you'll enjoy this.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sorcery was based in drugs at that time.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Drugs for abortion, drugs for uh, you know, getting yourself high and so forth.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Drugs was a big deal back then.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: They used them in sorcery, they used them in witchcraft.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's why in these lists there's always either sorcery or witchcraft.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's always the word from which we get pharmacy, pharmacia.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, it's pretty certain that in the back of his mind he would have included abortificants, that he would have included, he would have been thinking of abortion drugs in this case, too.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gets after these two religious sins, he gets to eight social sins.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, social sins are really big to Paul.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's just barely said, you know, love is, you know, take all your lists of laws and just live by the law of love.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he says in verse 13, 14.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he lists all these social sins, these relational sins, and you know them hatred, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how sloppy it is.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're plural, sometimes they're singular.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't care.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunk, uh, envy.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there's at least eight there.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then he ends, I don't know how to title these, because these both have to do with alcohol, drunkenness, and orgies, crowdsing, but they really centered on alcohol and they centered on going over the top, and and sometimes they're called intemperate sins.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I so I thought, two wild sins or two chaos sins.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, but anyway, and then he ends with and and and stuff like that.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I could go on and on, you know, and anything similar.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he really doesn't, he really doesn't, you know, he doesn't want he doesn't want to imply that this is the only way that you can do wrong.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people go, how come he didn't include murder?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: How come he didn't include adultery?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul goes, Oh, shut up.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just threw stuff down here.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm talking about.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you live by the flesh, you're gonna do these things, and some of them seem minor to you and they shouldn't, like strife and jealousy and outbursts of anger, and you guys who have outbursts of anger, you forgive yourself for those way too much, you know, but these are serious to God, okay?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Factions or envy.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're constantly looking at other people and wishing you had what they had.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Stop it.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the flesh, okay?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's verses 19 through 21.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then Paul says, now he has this startling verse that all, you know, causes us to sit up straight and go, oh my, I'm going to hell.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because he says, I'm warning you about these things, as I warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's three lists in the New Testament that he ends this way.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: And think these things won't inherit the kingdom of God.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is Paul saying that Galatians and I will be refused heaven?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: If I get in fights with people or I lose my temper or any of this stuff?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is no.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: So how do we interpret that, you know?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Paul's not saying we're going to lose our salvation if we get in an argument with someone.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, option A is Paul saying, well, don't do these things because it's not you.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: These are non-Christian type things, you know?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Walk like a Christian.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or option B, which is a little more popular by the comment in the commentaries, don't do it because though you're going to enter the kingdom as a redeemed child, you'll enter, you're born free, you're a good child, you're going to enter the kingdom, you won't inherit it as a mature son.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, R.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: T.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Kindle, a famous uh author and pastor of one of the main churches in London, writes, are we to say that anybody who does any of these things, envying and strife, is not going to heaven?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not at all.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: But such things as covetousness, foolish talking, as well as sexual immorality, forfeit one's inheritance in God's kingdom.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Tony Evans has put it this way: what living in the flesh does is disqualify us from inheritance in the kingdom, which I take to be a loss of full reward and full participation in the kingdom, not a loss of salvation.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now I could put your message on this.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you want that, but I'm not going to do it this morning because I really have a better and higher goal, which is to get you to walk by the Spirit and live that kind of a life, live the spiritual life.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I will say that I could go with either of these interpretations, and uh I'm tempted to go with this one, partly because every time the word inherit, you will inherit, every time it's a future in the New Testament, always has to do with future rewards.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's always addressed Jesus to his disciples.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're going, oh, you just promised those two guys a good, you know, uh rule in heaven.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: What are you going to give us?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, I'll give you this and I'll give you this, and you know, I'll give you this, and and and you'll inherit eternal life.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it can't mean you'll just go to heaven.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: That would be kind of stupid.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, so it seems like it means something more.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so I uh uh just understand that that as C.S.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis wrote in his little book, his most popular book, and if you haven't read it, you need to read these 80 pages, The Weight of Glory.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: As he says, God desires desperately, like any loving father, grandfather, to give us things when we get to heaven.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: He wants desperately to say, to give us the reward of commendation.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to give us a reward of responsibility.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've you've you've handled small things.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you big things, and so forth and so on.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's 521.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna get off of it.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: And now he moves to the fruit, the fruit of the spirit, and I'm sorry, I just my favorite gum, always has been.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Nine things beautifully laid out.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Three, three, three.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: The first, the first one, love, overrides them all.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Love, joy, peace are the main three.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, just notice that these are because it's fruit.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that you produce, right?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's in an orchard, and God makes the fruit grow.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a God thing, and it's given to you as a gift by the Spirit, okay?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's for other people's benefit.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Love is not self-centered.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things have to do with ego, the flesh, so forth.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: But this is not.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, loving others, joy for others, peace with others, patience with others.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things are for the benefit of the people around us that have to live with us.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, notice that they're visible.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: There should be, and they're recognizable.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: When people see them in you, they go, why are you that way?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: You go, well, it isn't me.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I trusted Christ as my Savior.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's working these things through my life, and you just happen to be seeing me on a good day, you know.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but but there are things that you can see, and there, and there are things that that that blessed the world.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what the Spirit promises us, and he ends this way.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: He says, the law is not against such things.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's kind of a joke.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's ironic.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: I like the way your Bible translates it.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Christian Standard Bible, which says, against such things there is no law.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course there isn't, because these things surpass the law.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: These things love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temper, self-control.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are so far above the law.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: So far above the standards.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course there's no law against such things.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, see, you don't need the law.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Quit living by a performance standard.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when you died with Christ on the cross, in a sense you crucified that old life, including the flesh, now you still have to live in that old house.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: That old house is still gonna war against the spirit.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna find that you're gonna be in a conflict and so forth, but walk by the spirit, be led by the spirit, live by the spirit, keep in step with the spirit every moment of every day.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Take a step by him, and you go, I can't do this, Lord, but Lord, would you help me?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord says, Yeah, I'll help you.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, you know, I my flesh is, you know, it's it's driving me.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want to do this.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: But but but and the Lord just says, you know, walk with the Spirit for a while.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let the Spirit handle it.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians 2.20, he says, let Christ live through you.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Send him to the door when temptation knocks, right?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: So let me let me wrap this up with with just three additional points, okay, that came to mind.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is sort of like the slopping it on their list, because these are just three that came to mind.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: These are not divine or anything, okay?
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, believe it or not, thank the Lord when you feel the battle.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank the Lord for the battle that goes on inside you.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because you realize I'm a battleground, right?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Flesh versus spirit.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Every day within you, the spirit is doing battle with your flesh.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: So don't question your salvation when your heart and mind feel like a battlefield.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: The sign that you are indwelt by the Spirit is not that you have no bad desires, but that you are at war with them.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Second, but avoid getting ambushed.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because isn't that what happens?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you weren't ready for that billboard, or you weren't ready for that person to cut you off in traffic, or that person at work to say that thing to you, you know, that was just, and you're not ready for it.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: But avoid the ambush by making your choice ahead of time.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: In the morning, Lord.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be a person of love today to everyone I meet.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want to think of their best good.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I want to, I'm not a naturally joyful person, especially not this morning before coffee, but I want to live, live with joy today, and I just want to spread joy where I go.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: And peace, Lord.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's conflict all over.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: We live in such a divided country, even my family and my friends were all divided.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let me be an agent of shalom today.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you go through that list and you say, Lord, prepare me for this.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go out into that thing, and then the flesh tries to ambush you, right?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you have already made a decision that you're not gonna pump it up all day long with death-permeated works, that you're gonna live by the supernatural, life-giving spirit.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're just gonna walk with him all day.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, remind yourself that God's not asking for your works.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's fruit that he's seeking.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: The very fruit that he supplies.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's so important.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you if you get on that performance standard, then I grew up on a farm.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: We had these, you know, and I was sort of in charge of a lot of chicken.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, as well as milk and the cows over the danger of being the oldest son.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but we had these banty, we call them banty hens, uh, they're called bantams or whatever.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but we call them banties.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when I find their eggs, they have these little brown eggs, and they were larger than bird eggs, but not much.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, this thing's not even worth taking the time to crack, you know.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and you'd be tempted to go over to where there was a clutch of these big, beautiful white eggs from your normal chickens, and you'd be tempted to take one up and take it over the band and go, look at this, work harder.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, come on, get after it.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's something inside you that comes from your flesh every day that goes, work harder! You knew better.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: And well, maybe you can for a little while, but you can't keep it up, and then you'll feel guilty.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's fruit that God is seeking, and He'll supply it.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're born free.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: So live free.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the fact that even though we are weak and frail and fragile creatures, and um many of us feel that fragility physically this morning.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: We know that even worse, we are in in our flesh, we are immoral creatures.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: We are still stuck with the fall, and uh looking forward to when we get rid of this body, though we want to use it well for you as long as we've got it.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to getting that new body, getting rid of all those temptations and and freely living a perfectly moral life and pleasing you.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we pray that in the meantime we can live this miracle that you tell us is possible, the miracle of living the truly spiritual life.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not by effort, but by keeping in step with your spirit.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.