Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 7, 2021 | Youth Sunday - Finding Freedom with the Spirit (Connor Kraus)

Transcript

February 7, 2021 | Youth Sunday - Finding Freedom with the Spirit (Connor Kraus) · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: You might have noticed this morning some people running around with these awesome big weekend t-shirts.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't miss the memo.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's exclusive apparel, only for the student ministry.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um this weekend was our big weekend.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's our second biggest event of the year, where we have the opportunity to just dive really deep into something that we want to be talking about.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this weekend we had the chance to talk about something that the church honestly doesn't talk about that much, which is the Holy Spirit.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think most Christians we we know the Holy Spirit about as well as like that distant cousin at Christmas time.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like you've got maybe two or three topics of conversation you're okay discussing, and then once you've run through those, you like need to talk about how nice dinner was or something like that.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is not something that we talk about a whole lot in the church.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's a real shame because there's so many important things to know about the Holy Spirit.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: But interestingly, even though we don't talk about it as much as maybe we should, it's one of the most controversial doctrines in the church over the last 70 years or so.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's particularly because it's not that the early church didn't like talking about the Holy Spirit, but it's only in this like post-Enlightenment, post-scientific revolution era that we're living in, where everybody wants to put things in a box and figure things out very concretely.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's one thing to know about the Holy Spirit is that it's hard to fit God Himself and His presence manifested into a box.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when we are looking at the Holy Spirit, we do need to answer a really important question, which is which is, there we go.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Who is the Holy Spirit?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Who is the Holy Spirit?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not what is the Holy Spirit or something like that, because who is the Holy Spirit?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is God.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is God's presence manifested and realized.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, you know, like Casper the Friendly Ghost or somebody's grandmother who read their Bible every single day and got elevated to a nice position in heaven.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like Star Wars where we've got the force and people can interact with it, and it's just this general sort of presence.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the third member of the Trinity.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is God Himself.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the way he moves in the Bible is amazing.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And his primary job and desire is to carry out God's will and help and empower people to do that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the best way that we can learn about the Holy Spirit and what he does is by first looking at how the Old Testament authors described him.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: See this this word in Hebrew, it's ruach.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you have to like pop an altoid and really get behind it, okay?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ruach.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to, if you take like a really, really deep breath.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, that that feeling that of energy, of power, of vitality, it's the same word that was used to describe the spirit, um, but also breath and wind over 130 times in the Old Testament.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: This this sort of strange yet powerful force that is coming and going, and it's hard to tell, but yet there is a presence behind it.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: That was what the Old Testament writers were trying to capture when they described their interactions with the Holy Spirit.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the Holy Spirit sort of had different jobs, like I've mentioned, throughout the Bible, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, he sort of makes these cameo appearances.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: He is helping Joseph uh determine the dreams while he is in prison of the other prisoners.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: He is um super cool.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: He is he is um giving skills to the artisans who are building the tabernacle for God.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the first signs that we see later in the Old Testament of somebody getting a spiritual gift.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're like spirit-empowered blacksmiths, and it's awesome.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Holy Spirit rests on the kings of Israel.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit gives words to the prophets so that they can give God's word and direction to the nation of Israel that needs it in a really desperate time.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the Holy Spirit really kicks into action in the New Testament.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: In a fulfillment of prophecy from Isaiah 11, the Holy Spirit rests fully upon Jesus Christ.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: That moment is seen very clearly and hopefully kind of clearly, when the Holy Spirit comes in a physical form of a dove during Jesus' baptism.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus then immediately, led by the Spirit, goes in to be tested by Satan in the desert.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the big watershed moment that we see in the Bible, and the one that has carried us on into our present age, was Pentecost.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pentecost was after Jesus had been resurrected, and all of the disciples were kind of figuring out what they should do and were sort of terrified about what the life of ministry and telling people about Christ was going to be for them.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: They were hiding out together, and then the Holy Spirit came and filled the room like a rushing wind, put fires above their heads, they started to speak in different tongues, and they were empowered to carry out the ministry of the gospel.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Peter then went on to share the gospel with the crowd that was gathered before him, and 3,000 people came to the Lord that day.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Far more than anybody who had ever come during one of Jesus' messages that we read about in the Bible.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit was God's present to the disciples after he left to help them do all of the things that he had asked them to do.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they were empowered to do it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: They were empowered to carry out and do miracles.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were able to cast out demons, they were able to speak in tongues and do things that, if we're honest, sometimes when we read about might make us a little uncomfortable.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why the Holy Spirit maybe hasn't been talked about as much as it should, because there are some people who have taken the doctrine and theology pretty far.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, we're not going to handle snakes, all right?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: There are some folks, I'm sure well-meaning, out in the Appalachian Mountains where they read this verse in Mark that says that those who are empowered by the Spirit will be able to handle serpents.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so they keep a box of rattlesnakes behind the pulpit and preach with them.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not today.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I decided to leave my rattlesnake at home.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to make sure everybody was comfortable.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: But there is an aspect of this, and maybe you have experienced it.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you've grown up in a charismatic church or are familiar with the Pentecostal movement or something like that.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Fun fact, by the way, Pentecostal movement, no joke, got started in Topeka, Kansas in 1901.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a guy named Charles Parham over off of Forth in Jackson that was teaching at a Bethel Bible school, and he left his students to, he basically was like, didn't have a lesson, and he was like, go study the Bible, and when I come back, tell me what you've learned.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when he got back, they were like, We think that you need to speak in tongues in order to receive the Holy Spirit.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, sounds good to me.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so then that basically movement gets transported then to California and then spreads like wildfire.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem there is that when we don't want to engage with the Holy Spirit or the knowledge of the Spirit or the power of the Spirit, we are hamstringing ourselves and our relationship with God because since Pentecost, the Holy Spirit has been sort of the welcoming party for new believers.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: You believe in Christ, you receive the Holy Spirit.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: You believe in Christ, you receive the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the power of the Holy Spirit shouldn't be ignored.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It should be accessed because God has given it to us to carry out his will.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: But that brings up the question: what does the Holy Spirit do?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because, like I mentioned earlier, we do kind of like to put things in a box and figure out, you know, how we can use it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Holy Spirit does a lot of things.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I already mentioned some of them in the Old Testament.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can basically summarize it by saying that when God wants something done through people, the Holy Spirit is there.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are obviously familiar with Jim's Exodus series that he's going through right now.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the one that is guiding him through the desert.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the one who is with God's people, like I mentioned, who are building the tabernacle.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is moving through the Exodus, through the captivity years, through ultimately into the New Testament and then into Pentecost.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit gives life and sustains life.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: He gives power to believers to do amazing things.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: He reveals things to us.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is going to help us to remember the teachings that He had given so that they will come to mind and we can live a life that is honoring to Him.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: He says the Holy Spirit purifies us.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many of you have one of those like handheld water purifiers at home that no matter what brand take way too long to purify the water, right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: We've got one of those at home.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the process of purification, that is one that the Holy Spirit is intimately a part of.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of time, but he loves to walk with us through it.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is also focused on the process of fellowship and unity within the church.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: In Philippians and 1 Corinthians, when Paul is giving either an address or sort of a closing statement, he loved to use these Trinitarian ideas, and he would always associate fellowship of believers with the Holy Spirit.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: But those were things we had the opportunity to talk with the students about all day yesterday.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a different lesson for you this morning, and one that I think is hopefully answering the most important question that we can ask about the Holy Spirit, which is how do we find freedom through the Holy Spirit?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: You might think that that is maybe an odd question.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: But this word freedom is one that God uses very specifically to describe what our relationship with Him should feel like when we are living through the Spirit, when we are accessing the power that the Spirit has for us, when we are living the life that God has intended for us, we should feel free.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And for many of us, freedom is not the feeling that we have experienced, whether in life or just even in our Christian walk.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: We have been tied down and we feel stuck in the mud and the mire, feel like we're in a rut sometimes, and freedom is maybe not the word that we would use to describe it.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to talk with us this morning about freedom, because all of us can access the power that the Spirit has by engaging with the God of the universe who dwells within us to help us feel this feeling of freedom.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now this this brings up to our theme verse for Big Weekend.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's on our shirts right here.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's on our shirts right here.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I know you probably couldn't read that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's 2 Corinthians 3.17.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: It says, Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where God's presence dwells, there is freedom.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Might seem odd too, because one of the cheapest but most popular accusations against Christianity is, hey, we're a bunch of people following a religion filled with rules.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want you to have fun.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity is legalistic and that it's just about what you can't do.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: One of the worst arguments in the world.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because a life that is lived with Christ, a life that is lived through the power of the Spirit, it feels free.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason it feels free, and what I want to show to you, is that when we follow the life that the God of the universe, who made us and knows us better than anybody else, when we follow that life to its fullest extent, we understand what freedom truly does feel like.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to follow along in your Bibles, I'm going to go to this, I'm going this morning to the text in Romans 8.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 8, 1 through 11.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to notice as I read this here for us, how many times I'm going to either say the word spirit or flesh and freedom.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: In your translations, it might say like a spirit of sin or something like that, but the word translated correctly is flesh.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk about what that means.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: So Romans 8, verse 1 through 11.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: For what the law was powerless to do, and that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature or the flesh, but according to the spirit.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the nature desires.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: But those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: The mind of sinful man or the mind of flesh is death.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: The sinful mind, the mind of the flesh, is hostile to God.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, not by the flesh, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who lives in you.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a lot.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: But there are two really important things that we can take away from that passage.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that Christ has set you free, he's done all of the work.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the second one is that freedom is found when we walk by the Holy Spirit.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the first item there, the first item has already been accomplished.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is done.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: You are free in Christ.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you believe that Jesus has died for your sins, you are counted as righteous by God, you have been justified by Him, and you have received form uh furthermore the Holy Spirit that we've been talking about, which is how you are then able to look at freedom.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: But this second aspect here, when walking by the Holy Spirit, that is up to us.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom is something that we find when we access the power that the Holy Spirit has.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 8, 5, to go back and kind of look at how we do walk by the Spirit.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It says, For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in a second, I'm going to talk about what flesh and spirit means, but I want you to focus here on what Paul is saying about minds and mindset.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Mindset is a word that our culture loves to use now.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is entered into our verbiage very strongly.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the Greek here that Paul is talking about, this mind is not just what we are thinking about, but it is a full body expression of what we believe and hold to.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is a conviction, it is a passion, it is something that we cling to dearly.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is here saying that the minds of the flesh and the minds of the spirit are opposed.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And those who live according to the Spirit, which is what we're shooting for, set their minds on things of the Spirit.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the word mindset, okay, you can look up through Google the prevalence of a certain word.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Since 1975, the word mindset has increased its use by 18,517%.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I did that math like six times.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: The word mindset has skyrocketed in its use.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in our secular culture, normally what we're referring to is sort of kind of a manifesting your destiny, a growth mindset, some other sort of buzzword that our leadership books want us to use.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul is using mindset in a different way.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: He is saying, I want you to be committed to living a life by the Spirit, that that is your goal, that that is your aim, and that everything that you are doing behind it is just so you can greater live by the Spirit.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Paul wants our minds to be so focused on the Spirit that there is nothing about the flesh in them.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: But what is the flesh in the Spirit?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 8, 6 again says, for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: The flesh is every single thing about us that is within our nature and loves to rebel.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is every part of us that writhes at the idea of following Christ.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when the thought of following the God of the universe and submitting to his will is put on the table, we step back out of aghast.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is everything in us that says, I don't want to follow God, I don't want to follow Jesus, I want to follow my own way.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Self-gratification is my aim.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, when that is your mindset, when it is what can I get out of this life?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Furthermore, what can I get out of God?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: When that is your mindset, the only path that that leads to is death.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Conversely, the mindset on the Spirit is everything opposite that I just said.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: If the Holy Spirit is God's presence manifested, which it is, then it means that when we find the Holy Spirit and we find freedom, we have to understand that it is every attitude and thought of the joy that can be found in Christ Jesus.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Paul already said to start off Romans 8 that we have been saved by Christ.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: He has done that work.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when we enter into that realm, that mindset, that is where the key is found.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it is only done through the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a very real spiritual reality that is going on here.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a dividing point, there's a fork in the road where we have to determine which of these mindsets we want to pursue.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because at no point in those journeys do they intersect.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: The life and the mind focused on the flesh does not cross later down the road with the mindset focused on the spirit.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: These two things are separate directions.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to understand that.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the doorway, the path, the first step of this journey to following God, it starts with submission.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 8 7 says, For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, it cannot.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean it cannot?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is speaking on two levels here, right?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: First level.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: What Paul is saying on a broad spectrum is he's like we have talked about before, with um, if you're familiar with the seed that God has and the seed of Christ and the seed of the evil one, that God or Paul is saying here that those who follow God by virtue of who they are and what Christ has done, they are people of the Spirit.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And those who have rejected Christ, who don't know him, who do not call upon him as their Savior, they are people of the flesh.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's sorting sort of lumping them into two categories, and that's the first level that he's talking about here.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: When he says those whose mind is set on the flesh are hostile to God, he's saying that those who do not know Christ, they are not concerned about what he says.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: An atheist should pay no mind to what the God of the universe says is important because they say that they do not care and they don't believe.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: That mindset of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to his law.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, it cannot.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the pathway through the Spirit, empowered by Him, that leads to life and peace, the doorway that we pass through first is submission.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: The other level, though, that Paul is speaking about here, if the first one is just on almost a matter of salvation, the second one that Paul is speaking of is the reality that we are keenly aware of that Christians still sin.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that we love to sort of live this duplicitous life.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: We sort of waffle back and forth between the life of the flesh and the life of the spirit.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: We want all of the benefits of both of them.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of like the traveling salesman who's kept both families and hasn't committed to the one that he should.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: We love to dabble secretly in the life of the flesh.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul is absolutely getting at this statement here, too.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: When we decide that we want to go back into those old ways, we are still not submitting to God's will and we're falling into the same trap.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I was growing up, um, my favorite author, okay, hands down, was Rald Dahl.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Rald Dahl, great author.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote books like James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, um, he wrote um Easy O'Trot, The Giraffe, the Pelly Me.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: I could list like nine more that he's written.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: But his most famous work is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you might remember, is known for both creepy movies, okay, and spoiled kids.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you remember the original uh Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder, you remember that these spoiled kids, they get the golden ticket right to be able to go in, and then one by one, these kids are terrible and they abuse the chocolate factory, and the terrifying umpalompas take them away, right?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Talking about making them into fudge and things like that.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the very first kid to leave is a kid named Augustus Gloop, all right?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Augustus Gloop does not even make it past the first room.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like the entryway, the foyer into the chocolate factory is just like this amazing landscape where there's like, I don't even, like lollipop mushrooms and chocolate, there's a chocolate river.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes over and starts drinking from it and falls in and then gets sucked into the fudge tube, all right?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's an awesome book, I promise.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then he is taken out of the tour and we don't see him for the rest of the movie.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of us live our Christian lives like Augustus Gloop.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: We love the idea of being inside God's kingdom, and we have been granted that through Christ.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we've entered into the doors, but then we are just content to stop there.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't experienced the full majesty of God's kingdom that can be found here on earth, because for some of us, we've looked at God as a get out of jail free card.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And even though God is never going to kick us out of his kingdom, you've got to imagine he is not just real jazzed about all the people who've gotten just within the gates of heaven and sat down until their time is up.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: This idea of submission to God is a hard one to accept because our culture loves to say that by being your own master and creating your own destiny, that that is where freedom can be found.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And God's gospel says that that is not the case.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: It says that when we submit to his law, that is where freedom can be found.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Galatians 5 1 says, for freedom Christ has set us free.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: The slaves in this situation are the ones who go back to sin.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: The things that I can almost guarantee every single one of us has been wrapped up in at one point or another in our life.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: That sort of whirlpool of sin and depravity that we have been unable to escape except by God's grace.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Once more, Jim and his Exodus series, the Israelites, they had sort of a foreshadowing moment of their future soon after they were rescued from Egypt.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're out in the desert, and it hasn't been very long.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: God has provided all the food that they need, all the sustenance.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: He has helped them cross the Red Sea, as we've talked about.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: All these amazing things are happening.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Egypt had better food.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: These Israelites, they were so fed up that they said, you know what, it is better to go back to the backbreaking and murderous, um, deathly lifestyle of being a slave in Egypt because we had good food than it is to live in the freedom that God has under the restrictions that God had.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And as the reader, as we're going through this story, we can see their mistake, their folly.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's being done right before our eyes.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, what are you thinking?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: You just escaped from 400 years of slavery and you want to go back?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: But yet that is what we do every single time we say, you know what?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go back to my old ways.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want to pursue those things that once gave me so much pleasure, not realizing that Satan loves to traffic as an angel of glory, yet within there is depravity and there is discontent, there is anxiety, and there is so, so much pain.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the things that are awaiting us when we pursue the flesh, not God's direction.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: So Paul has sort of set up this dividing point here.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: He said, the flesh leads to death, and the spirit leads to life.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it's important to recognize here, Paul is not giving a persuasive argument, okay?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is not like, you know, in your high school speech class where you had to debate whether it was crinkle cut or waffle fries that were better.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is the flesh and the spirit, and there is one right answer.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a debate to be had.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: The life of the Christian, hear me now, the life of the Christian should be the life found in the spirit going towards life.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: The life of the Christian should be the right side here, period.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: The life of the Christian should get to experience all of the things that God has in store for us through the power of the Spirit.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: But as I've mentioned already, we often don't access it, are scared to talk about it, and furthermore, we love to do everything in our power to put stumbling blocks in front of ourselves to reach that point where we feel free in Christ.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom is found when we walk by the Holy Spirit, and that is done through submitting to God and setting our mind on his ways instead of our own.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is the way.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So this brings us back full circle to our verse for the weekend, right?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 3, 17.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever God's Spirit is, his true presence makes us feel free.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is on us if following God's will and being a part of his kingdom has made us feel anything other than free.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we are following in his spirit, that is what his spirit manifests itself as.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you might be asking yourself the question, and it's a good question.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like Paul, there are many of us who recognize that I don't do the things that I want to do, and I don't do the things that I know I should do, right?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do the things.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: That verse is always missed.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do the things that I know I want to do, and I do the things that I know I shouldn't do, thankfully.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying this, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he knows that the life of the Christian, even one who is following Jesus so closely, is one that is still marked by this pull of the flesh to draw us back into the life that we once knew.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is, how do we find the power to do this?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And our verse this morning, our our section in Romans 8 tells us but if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, which it does if you are a believer in Christ, he who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit was the one who raised Christ from the dead, that same Holy Spirit is within you right now, and that same power is at your fingertips.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: That same power of God that is manifesting itself and allowing the disciples to do amazing works is within you right now.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the Spirit is life, the Spirit is peace, but you don't need to go anywhere to look for the Spirit because for 2,000 years the Spirit has been within you.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is within you right now if you know Christ.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: So this isn't some kind of like weekend at Bernie sort of deal where like the dead are raised back to life.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: What this is saying is that God knows that your body, it is dead.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your body, it left to your own devices.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: You do not have the strength to do what he has called you to do.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a hard truth to accept.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: You probably, if you've been a Christian for a while, you know this reality.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know that just based on your own strength, you haven't done the best job of following God.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: But thankfully, God did not leave us there.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: He did not call us to something great and say, good luck.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: He gave us the Holy Spirit.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this Holy Spirit will lift us in our mortal bodies, these bodies that are decaying and fast approaching a time where they will expire.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: These bodies that desire the flesh more than anything, and in our natural bend, want to rebel against God.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I have given you the spirit, though, because it dwells in you, and that is the power that you need to do all of the things that I have called you to do.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the question this morning, right, was how do we live in freedom?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Henry Ironside, who was the pastor of Moody Church in the early 20th century, said, Christianity is not the natural life lived on a higher plane.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about being morally superior.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is a divine life manifested in the energy of the Holy Spirit.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is when we are flowing with the Spirit, this thing that is difficult to define, yet very real, when we are following after God and walking by the Spirit, when that life is found, okay, we find ourselves the closest to heaven that we will be until we actually make it there.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because that is what God created us to do.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is why, if you didn't know until now, that is why in those moments where you do follow God, you feel intrinsically this sense of peace.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not that you're just doing a good work or something like that, but the God of the universe who made you and designed you and knitted you together in your mother's womb says, I know you, I know you better than you know yourself, I know what is going to bring you joy, and so listen to me, because that's what following me results in, is this joy and peace that is found because we have pursued him.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't do it because we get peace, that is just a natural byproduct of the life lived following after Jesus.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, God has done all of the work for you, but you must submit to him.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is the doorway down the pathway which follows the Spirit.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: God has given you all the power you need to break free from sin, but you must use that power, which is the Holy Spirit.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, if you take nothing away or nothing else away from this lesson this morning, if furthermore you're a guest with us and you've never heard about the Holy Spirit, I understand that that is a lot to take in.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: But let's simplify it this way.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: The same God who loved you so much that he sent his son to die on the cross for you, he also wants to have a deep and abiding relationship with you.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in order that you could have the deepest relationship possible, even though we often walk away from him, as he comes towards us, the thing that he has done is given us his personal spirit.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Moses didn't have it.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham didn't have it.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: David only had it for a period of time.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have it all the time.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And God has done that because he cares about you, because he loves you, and because he knows that what he has asked us to do is difficult, but he wants you to find freedom.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you can only do that through the power of the Spirit.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So let us submit to God through the power that we have been given, because we have everything that we need to find what God has intended for us.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Would you bow your heads with me?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: God, thank you for your Holy Spirit.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you have rescued us from the domain of sin and darkness by the power of Christ.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving us your Holy Spirit.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Another one of those things that we do not deserve, yet you have freely given.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, as we try and work through what it means to have you dwelling within us, as crazy as that seems, God, we know that there is power there.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a presence there that we can access because, Lord, you have given it to us.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Father, would you help us?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Would you help us by the power of your spirit to understand more deeply what it means to walk by the Spirit?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: It can be such a foreign concept to us if we're not used to it.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, please help us to find the freedom that you have because we know that there is peace and life after everlasting at the end of that path.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you and we thank you.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name that we pray.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great Sunday.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Go Chiefs.