Latest / Circle of Life / Dumbbells, Deserts, and the Holy Spirit
Transcript
- Christian Williams: Everybody, welcome to the podcast. Our goal here is simple to give parents, students, and volunteers regular insights connecting the Bible, theology, and everyday life, pointing straight to Jesus, so we can learn to think, live and love like him, to the glory of the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit. Each week we break down our previous Wednesday night sermon in about 15 to 20 minutes, walking through the passage's main point, the core message, and each teaching division. Whether you're a parent wanting to know what your student is learning, a volunteer looking for a quick midweek refresher, or a student wanting to dive deeper into God's word as you grow into adulthood, this space is designed to equip and encourage you. Today, we're diving into our Wednesday night study from Galatians 5, 16 through 26. To set up where Paul is taking us today, picture this. Imagine I handed you a 20 pound dumbbell and told you to hold it straight out in front of you parallel to the form. For the first 30 seconds, you're confident, you think, no problem, I can do this. By minute one, your shoulders start burning. By minute two, your arm is shaking violently. And by minute three, no matter how much mental toughness or grit you think you have, gravity wins and the weight drops. Unless someone comes alongside you, physically grabs your arm and holds it up, you're guaranteed to fail. The physical exhaustion is the exact picture of how so many believers are approach their walk with God. We treat following Jesus like a high stakes, white knuckle test of moral willpower. We think, God's saving by grace, but now it's up to me to keep my arm up. It's up to me to grind out holiness, bite my tongue, crush my sinful desire, and manage my own behavior. And what happens? We burn out. We get frustrated, irritable, exhausted, and deeply discouraged. Because the reality of our fallen condition is clear. It is so much easier to give in to our sinful desires than it is to walk faithfully. It is easier to be lazy than productive. It is easier to harbor bitterness or indulge in lust than to say no. If your Christianity has been reduced to trying to willpower your way through the gospel, saying, God, you did your part on the cross, now watch me do mine, Paul writes Galatians five to completely dismantle that delusion. The Galatian churches were being infiltrated by false teachers, insisting on legalism, adding works, circumcisions, and human effort to faith in Christ. Paul roared back, salvation is in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. On the flip side, others swung to license, saying, well, if we're under grace, I can live however I want. Paul says no, Christian freedom isn't the freedom to sin, it is the freedom to finally not sin. What we see is the main point of the text is that Paul called the Galatian believers to live by the Spirit, which conquers the lingering desires of the flesh. And the main point of the sermon, right, 2,000 years later, is simply this: that because Christ crucified our old self, we must actively keep in step with the Holy Spirit to conquer the flesh's lingering desires. And Paul very clearly in Galatians 5, 16 through 26, shows us not just that this is possible, So if you have your Bibles or you're listening while you're driving, don't open your Bibles, but just listen along. This is Galatians 5, 16 through 26. And this is what Paul writes. He says, I say then, walk by the Spirit, and you will certainly not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh wants what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious sexual morality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, outburst of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things, as I warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. Patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Wow. What a passage. Today we're looking at three ways. We continue to walk in the Spirit from this passage. Three ways are submit to the Spirit, observe the obvious, and remember the good news. All right, the first way we walk, or continue to walk in the Spirit, rather, is to submit to the Spirit. Look closely at verse 16. It says, Walk by the Spirit, and you will certainly not carry out the desires of the flesh. Notice what this verse does not say. It does not say, Conquer your flesh. Clean up your life, and then God will give you his spirit. Legalism says, conquer the flesh to earn the spirit. The gospel says God gives you his spirit through faith in Christ, and by the indwelling spirit you conquer the flesh. Notice also that Paul is not giving two disconnected commands. Command one being walk by the Spirit and command two, don't do bad things. No, rather, it is a cause and effect promise. Walking by the Spirit renders the flesh powerless to complete its desires. Pastor David Platt captures this dynamic by saying: Victory over the relentless pull of the flesh comes not through our own moral willpower or the crushing weight of the law, but through daily, moment by moment, surrender to the Holy Spirit. Surrender is the operational word. Think about your daily routine. If you roll out of bed, Dive straight into your schedule, jump in the car, rush through tasks, and rely entirely on your personal grit, where are you by evening? Agitated? Short-tempered? Trained? It's an empty exhaustion. But when your day is built on moment by moment dependence, praying before you start your car, asking for patience before an awkward conversation, submitting your mind to the Lord before you even open your laptop or start going through your schedule, looking at your iPad. You operate from his strength. And yes, at the end of the day, you might be faced with agitation or you might be faced with exhaustion. But by submitting to the Spirit, those things won't control you. Those things won't define your day. Rather, you'll be able to look to Christ saying, God, thank you for how you've worked in and through that. Now, moving on, verse 17, pulls no punches. It shows us that a war rages within you every day. When your feet hit the floor in the morning, you aren't waking up to a playground. You're stepping onto Omaha Beach, right? You're enormity. Your unredeemed flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh. Our default human nature, what we inherited to from Adam, as seen in Romans 3, does not drift towards holiness. It drifts towards self-exaltation. Trying to win the battle by simply rearranging habits or moving things around in your life will never work. That is not what ultimately gives you freedom. It might help, but it's not what ultimately gives your freedom. Consider Jerome in the fourth century, right? Early church father, desperate to conquer his lust and passions, he abandoned the worldly city of Rome and moved into a barren cave. But listen to what he wrote. He says, how I often imagined that I was in the midst of the pleasures of Rome when I was stationed in the desert. My face was pale from fasting, but my mind burned with anger. Passionate desires within my freezing body, fires of lust seethed. Jerome could remove himself from Rome, but he could not remove the fallen nature within his own chest, within his own soul. You cannot geographically move your way or kill the sin in your life. You cannot white knuckle your way out of sin. Victory happens only when you acknowledge your total helplessness and surrender. Daily to the Holy Spirit who indwells in you. The question is, do you daily submit? The second way we walk in the Spirit is observe the obvious. In verses nineteen through twenty-one, Paul doesn't speak in vague abstractions. He states plainly, Now the works of the flesh are obvious. You don't need an advanced theological degree to know when sin is occurring. Even a five year old caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Knows right from wrong. Paul catalogues them: sexual morality, impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and then adds, and anything similar. That is Paul's way of saying the list is far from exhaustive. I could fill pages. Now be honest with yourself. Where do our eyes gravitate when we read that list? We look at scandalous items sorcery, wild carousing or orgies, overt immorality. Maybe we comfort ourselves, well I'm doing fine. I don't mess with those things. Yet look at what sits squarely in the dead center of the list strife, jealousy, outburst of anger, selfish ambition, dissension and envy. We downplay gossip. Bitterness and passive aggressive as a minor personality quirks while treating external sins as catastrophic. But in God's economy, they come from the exact same corrupt taproot of the flesh. Then Paul comes sobering with this warning in verse 21: those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Pay careful attention to the language. Paul does not say those who stumble into sin or those who commit sin. He uses the Greek word prosantes, meaning those who make a settled, ongoing, unrevented lifestyle of practicing these things. New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner summarizes this balance, saying those who are justified by God's grace are also empowered by the Spirit to live in a new way. If the works of the flesh dominate, then there's no es catalogical, or in other ways of saying there's no end time reward that will be received. Good works are not the basis of justification, but they are most and certainly, through those still imperfect and partial, a consequence of justification. We are not saved by our good works, but genuine salvation inevitably produces good works. And remember, inward sin never stays private. No sin exists in a vacuum. You may tell yourself that your hidden thoughts, private internet viewing, or secret envy hurts nobody else. Well, that is a lie straight from the enemy. Unchecked sin corrodes your character and will eventually surface, damaging your relationships, your family, your peers, and your local church. When people in the world observe believers living with the same jealousy, pride, and division as nonbelievers, our witness is severely damaged. They rightly ask, Why would I need your Jesus when you live exactly like me? We must observe the clear danger of the flesh, refuse to play games with it. And bring it immediately into light of repentance. Is your life characterized by this truth? Does your life show the truth of Christ? Even if you sin, you can show people, hey, there's forgiveness and there's change. our final and third way of continuing to walk in the Spirit. Remember the good news. In verse 22, the atmosphere completely transforms. But the fruit of the Spirit, Paul says, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Notice the singular grammar it is the fruit of the spirit, not the fruits of human hustle. Fruit is not forced by mechanical strain. It grows organically from the sap and life of the vine. An apple tree doesn't grow in an orchard straining to pop out an apple. It bears fruit naturally as it remains rooted and nutrient-rich ground, soaking up rain and sunlight. Martin Luther explained this distinction in his work on Christian liberty. He says a good tree brings forth good fruit, yet the fruit Does not make the tree good, but the tree makes the fruit. So the person must first be righteous before he can do righteous works. The law can tell your can tell you to love your neighbor, and it can rightfully condemn you when you hate them. But the law, the rules can never provide the supernatural capacity to love. Only the spirit and dwelling a justified believer produces true biblical virtue. Consider how impossible these virtues are to fake when life presses in. It is easy to claim patience when everything goes your way. It is nearly impossible in human strength when you are running late, stuck in heavy gridlock traffic, or when someone is consistently disrespectful and ungrateful towards you. Consider genuine suffering. When a family member, this is a true story of someone that Rachel and I know, some students who That we know at another youth group, at another church, who are dealing through this right now. But when a family receives a terminal medical diagnosis, or a 17-year-old student has to stand at a hospital bedside saying goodbye to their mom and hospice. In those valleys, you cannot simply instruct someone to muster up human joy. If the Holy Spirit is not supernaturally anchoring that soul from the inside out, despair will overtake them. The gospel does not promise an easy life, easy life. It promises that the living God indwells us by his Holy Spirit, providing supernatural peace and perseverance when earthly circumstances collapse. Paul finishes his passage in verses twenty-five and twenty-six by emphasizing intentionally. About church community and what it means to be intentional in our church communities. He says, if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. The Christian life is not passive. We don't sit back and wait for spiritual feelings to wash over us. We actively go. We we work, we love our families, we study, we serve, and disciple others. Intentionally aligning our strides with the Spirit's guidance. And Paul concludes with a direct warning against disunity. Why? Well, it's because our God has eternally existed in absolute harmonious community as the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit. We were created in his image to reflect that harmony. Sin shattered it. And when Christians pick petty fights, look down on others, or envy someone else's gifts, we misrepresent the character of God. In Christ, we are on the same team. We must kill our pride and fight fiercely for unity. And how do we fight fiercely for unity? But through the willingness to have conversation. The praying with one another, reading scriptures with one another, gathering together regularly, confronting each other with f with sin, confessing sin to one another. And if we are not doing this, well then we will, as we saw back in verse 15 of Galatians 5, we will bite and devour and consume one. Alright, landing the plane. To pull all these threads together, step back and see how Galatians five fits into an overarching storyline of scripture. I want you to think back to Ezekiel thirty six. These Old Testament passages, especially these long prophet passages, can seem overwhelming or confusing, or only the weird Tuesday preppers, right? Those are the ones that read Ezekiel and Isaiah in all these passages. But I challenge you to go to Ezekiel thirty six. When we read Ezekiel 36, we find that the people of Israel had defiled the land. They worshiped idols and were scattered across exiled. They were spiritually lifeless. And God calls them out. He says that you have defamed my name. You have worshiped idols. He says, What I'm about to do, I'm going to do it for my sake, for my holy name, and not for your sake. And what does God promise? Right? They have disobeyed and sinned against God. And how does he respond? This is what he says. He says, I will sprinkle you clean. I will sprinkle water on you, and you will be clean. He says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes. Centuries later in John 14 through 16, Jesus gathered his disciples and promised to fulfill this, telling them he must ascend. So the helper The spirit of truth could come. In Acts 2, that exact promise arrived as the Holy Spirit filled the church. In Galatians 5, Paul instructs us: because that promised spirit lives in you, you are no longer enslaved to flesh. Walk and step with him. And where does this lead? Where does the spirit take us? Well, in Revelation 21 and 22, John sees the new Jerusalem descending. And he says, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will be their God. From Ezekiel's prophecy to the upper room through Paul's letters to new creation, God has been executing one grand design, securing a redeemed people who walk by his spirit in his presence forever. If God was faithful to promise the Spirit in Ezekiel 36, And pour him out an acts, he will certainly finish the good work he started in your life. Before you go about your day, sit with two questions. If you are in Christ, what lingering temptations, secret compromise, or pattern of bitterness is distracting you from Christ and hindering unity in your home or church? Where are you still trying to white-knuckle your way through it instead of surrendering to the Spirit? Too, if you've never truly trusted Christ, how does the mirror of God's word expose any self-righteous belief that you can make it on your own? Whether you are in Christ or you are not, take a moment right now, lay down your own strength, submit to the Spirit, observe what is obvious about sin, and rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we love you and we praise you. We thank for Christ and for your spirit. God, we thank you for salvation that comes through the gospel. God, we thank you for the fact that in Ezekiel 36, you promised to give your spirit. Through God the Son, Jesus, continued, affirmed that promise. And in Acts 2, you gave us that spirit, that we can now obey you. In Galatians through Paul, you show us that, God, even when we sin, there is a way in which you can correct us, in which you continue to redeem us, in which we can continue to walk in the spirit. That because of Christ, we now have the ability, we can have the strength and desire to obey you, but it is only if we submit to you. And God, that all of this, God, all the promises will ultimately be fulfilled. A new creation. When you come, you duel with the old, you bring in the new, and all those who by the Spirit are standing in new creation, like it says in Ezekiel 36, will finally be able to experience the fact that we are in a Place, as a people where your presence dwelled, where we will be your people and you will be our God. God, help us to walk in the Spirit today, to live in community, to be in prayer, to be in your word, that when we come to a decision, when we come to a crossroads, when we come to a place of tension, God, that we will ask ourselves, God, how can we love you and how can we love others in this? God, help us to do that. Give us the strength and desire that we may obey you. Amen. Well, guys, let us go on. Let us put to death the works of the flesh in our hearts and cultivate the fruit of the spirit. The love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, generosity, and self-control, that we may be unified in the spirit, and that we may keep our eyes firmly fixed on the new creation in Jesus' name. Grace and peace.