Episode Transcript
[00:00:19] Amen.
[00:00:20] So I want to welcome you. My name is Brad. I'm one of the pastors at Redemption Hill. If, if you are a guest, would love the opportunity to get to talk with you and get to meet you today and let you know about the life of Redemption Hill and see if you live in Fort Worth or in the area that this might be the church home for you.
[00:00:37] We're spending five weeks talking about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. What's typical for us is we'll take a book of the Bible and we'll just walk through verse by verse books of the Bible. So we just spent a year and a half in the book of Hebrews.
[00:00:49] We're taking five weeks now and talking about the person and work of the Holy Spirit and, and preparation for Advent, which is beginning November 30th with our worship night and then carrying through the month of December. And then we're going to jump into the Book of Acts in 2026 and that's going to be all of 2026 is the book of Acts.
[00:01:07] But to prepare us for that, we need to understand who the Holy Spirit is. Who is this person of the triune Godhead that by all accounts seems to be either forgotten or emphasized in a way that neglects the Father and the Son.
[00:01:23] So either maybe you grew up in a context or you're familiar with the context within church that under emphasizes the Holy Spirit.
[00:01:31] We just don't talk about him because people do crazy things out there and we don't want to have anything to do with that. So we just pretend like he doesn't exist kind of a thing. Though none of us would say that.
[00:01:41] Or you know, maybe we come in with from a context where the Holy Spirit is emphasized in a way that would go beyond the teaching of the Bible.
[00:01:52] And so either way, we need to be kind of realigned with how has God revealed himself through his word. The Holy Spirit is God.
[00:02:01] God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. This is who God is. And so we're on week three of talking about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. And today specifically, we're going to talk about the Spirit empowered life.
[00:02:14] Okay, so what does it mean? What does it look like essentially to live as a Christian, though imperfectly, as you and I all do. What does it look like to live as a Christian? I had the opportunity to take my kids to the zoo this weekend and we have five kids. I had four of them.
[00:02:35] And so after our trip to the zoo, we were all pretty tired And I was pretty tired, and I was just kind of in, like, checkout mode. I didn't really want to proactively engage. And so we get in the car, and I'm getting ready to turn on some music for my kids. And. And especially lately, I've kind of had this, like, internal tension going on when I do get in the car. And I'm like, I could turn on something for the kids, and they're not gonna talk, they're gonna listen.
[00:03:00] But I have felt kind of checked by that. Like, man, what's going on with that? And so, you know, my kids are tired and they're ready for lunch, and they start to kind of fuss with one another a little bit in the back. And I find myself just playing referee. Like, I'm not necessarily proactively giving advice on how to handle conflict in a healthy way. I'm just kind of a stop, stop, do this, do that.
[00:03:23] And it was kind of a moment of, I think, the spirit of God revealing in me what the Father does not do.
[00:03:30] Okay, so God the Father doesn't parent his kids that way.
[00:03:35] God the Father is not reactionary. He's proactive in all he does and all he teaches. He's given us His Word. He's given us His Word not to just know him and about him and what he's like and what he's done for us through sending his own son, Jesus, to redeem us from sin, as we'll talk about in a moment, but he and instructs us on how to live. He's given us this in His Word. He's not a reactionary Father. He's proactive.
[00:04:01] And so the question that I want you to consider before we jump into the passage is this. There's actually a couple of them, but as it pertains to the Christian life, this is what I want you to think about.
[00:04:16] Are you trying to know God and relate to him on the basis of your own wisdom or His?
[00:04:24] So are you here today, and would you say, or could you say, that you are trying to know God and relate to God on the basis of your wisdom? What you think that means, to relate to God and to know God? Or are you seeking to relate and know God on the basis of his revealed wisdom, which is His Word?
[00:04:42] Okay, so that's the first question.
[00:04:46] The second.
[00:04:49] But are you seeking to live the Christian life on the basis of your strength or the strength he provides?
[00:04:59] Are you seeking to live the Christian life on the basis of your strength or the strength that he provides? And this is what I think if we're all honest in the room, okay. Or maybe it's just me and you all could counsel me in this.
[00:05:15] But I think that if we're honest, what we would say is most of us go through our day and give very little thought to the person of the Holy Spirit.
[00:05:23] Okay? We wake up and we put our clothes on and we go through. We go to work and we come home and we eat and we exercise, maybe, and we do these various things. And we do that pretty much on the basis of our own strength and knowledge.
[00:05:37] I would venture to say that few of us wake up in the morning with this deep awareness of. Of how desperate you and I actually are.
[00:05:45] Like, how little we can actually do.
[00:05:47] Not just the breath that you breathe, which is a gift from God, by the way.
[00:05:52] Right. Every breath. But just the ability to live the Christian life, oftentimes in our own minds, is a result of our own attempts at strength and wisdom. So what does God say about how you and I are to live the Christian life?
[00:06:10] He really gives one kind of command in Galatians 5. And this is the command, walk by the Spirit.
[00:06:18] This is how you and I are to live the Christian life.
[00:06:20] This is how you and I are to live every day. This is how we are to.
[00:06:25] We relate to God through faith in Jesus. But this is how you and I are to live the Christian life. This is how you grow, by the way, and how I grow.
[00:06:33] This is how we mature. The point of Galatians 5, friends, is not the fruit of the Spirit.
[00:06:40] That's a significant part of Galatians 5, but the big thrust of Galatians 5, what the Lord Jesus, what the Father, how the Father wants to parent us this morning as his kids, for those who belong to Jesus by faith is to tell us this, that to live the Christian life, you and I must walk by the Spirit.
[00:06:58] This is how we live the Christian life, by walking by the Spirit. But before we get into that, as with any passage in the Bible, you have to understand passages in the context of the books in which they're written. So this comes in chapter five, which means there are four chapters prior to this of context that are necessary for us to understand what is God telling us through the Apostle Paul who wrote this book. He wrote the book of Galatians.
[00:07:23] And I think that the primary context that you get is found in chapter three, verse ten.
[00:07:29] And this is what that verse says. It kind of summarizes the whole letter of Galatians. Paul's writing to this church in Galatia about a particular problem and temptation that they had. And that temptation was to leave behind relying upon Jesus and to put their reliance in the law.
[00:07:47] So it was to leave behind faith in Jesus and put their faith or their trust or their reliance in the law and what they accomplished for God rather than what God had accomplished for them through Jesus. That was the dilemma that this church was facing. And so Paul writes this, and in chapter three, verse 10, he says, all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.
[00:08:10] Okay, so I just want us to stop and think about that for a moment.
[00:08:14] All who rely on works of the law are under a curse, he says. Cursed are all who do not abide or obey everything that that is written in the law.
[00:08:30] So this was the problem of the self righteous in the first century, and it's still our problem today that we have this tendency, friends, to think that we can cherry pick parts of the law. We do that good. We don't do that too good.
[00:08:45] This is West Texas slang coming out a little bit. We do that well. We don't do this well.
[00:08:50] And so we kind of do this with the law of God. There are certain things that we know we don't do well, but other things that we do. And so we have this tendency to kind of look out at everybody else and judge everybody else on, on the basis of how much better we are than they are.
[00:09:02] And here's what Paul's saying. He's saying, listen, if you don't abide by everything in the law, everything in the Old Testament law, then you're cursed.
[00:09:15] Why?
[00:09:16] It's because the law is holy.
[00:09:20] The law is perfect.
[00:09:22] The law was given by a holy God who is himself perfect. The law is a reflection of, of who God is.
[00:09:30] And when you and I are face to face, side by side with one another, comparing one another to one another's faults and failures, then we can look pretty good. But when you and I are face to face with the holy God of the universe, we're ruined.
[00:09:43] And so everybody who doesn't abide by all of the works of the law, by all of the law, is under a curse. And so Paul is belaboring to communicate to this church this is not just vanity, but it's foolish and it's destructive. If you choose to walk the path of I'm going to be a good enough person for God to love me and forgive me and save me, then you're under a curse because you cannot do it.
[00:10:14] And so what does God do?
[00:10:17] Well, in verse 13 of chapter 3 in Galatians, he says that Christ redeemed us.
[00:10:24] That when the fullness of time came at the right time, over 2000 years ago, God sent forth his Son, his only begotten son, not created. His begotten Son took on human flesh.
[00:10:40] Why? To redeem us.
[00:10:43] So if you know that you're under a curse and that you can't do anything to get outside of that curse, then you're really in the best position you could ever be in, because that puts you in a position to know that you need to be saved, you need to be redeemed. And when the fullness of time came, God in love sent his Son to redeem those of us who were under the curse of the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And so Paul belabors by the power and person of the Holy Spirit to communicate this to the church. And the Bible is timeless, right? It's not just a history book. It's living and active. It speaks to us today. It speaks into an American culture that's hell bent on working as hard as we can to be as good as we can so that God will accept us to be a balm to the soul. To you and I. To say that, hey, that's vanity and that's foolishness. You're never gonna be good enough.
[00:11:39] You cannot obey all of the law of God perfectly. Only one could. And his name is Jesus, and He came and he's redeemed you.
[00:11:47] And so don't go back to putting your hope in the law.
[00:11:50] Stand firm in Christ and what Christ has accomplished on your behalf. This is the whole point of the book of Galatians. And so when he gets to chapter five, he begins to get into some practical application in light of what Jesus has done, of what it looks like to actually live the Christian life. And this is what it is. Walk by the Spirit.
[00:12:11] Walk by the Spirit. You're like, man, that's so impractical.
[00:12:15] Like, if he could just tell me, do this and do this and don't do that, don't do that, do this. I mean, there's a lot of that in the New Testament, okay? None of it saves you. But there is a lot. There's a lot of command. There's a lot of imperative in the New Testament that we are to do. But all of it is done only in one way.
[00:12:32] Walk by the Spirit.
[00:12:34] Okay? We said this last week that you and I are like sailboats out in the middle of the water, trying to live the Christian life out of your own Strength is like putting the oar in and trying to just row against the current of life.
[00:12:47] You need the wind.
[00:12:49] I need the wind.
[00:12:51] And so we've said this for a long time, but we want to continue to reiterate it, especially going into 2026 in the book of Acts, that you and I need power.
[00:12:59] Like, I hope and pray as I hope and pray this for my own life.
[00:13:04] That you desire more of God, that you're hungry for more of God, that you're not content to just show up on Sunday and do this for an hour and a half and then go home.
[00:13:17] I hope you want more than that.
[00:13:21] And so we're to walk by the Spirit. We can't walk by the Spirit if we're not hungry for the Spirit.
[00:13:30] The Holy Spirit is God.
[00:13:32] He is our helper, as we talked about two weeks ago. He convicts us of sin. It's John 16.
[00:13:39] He regenerates our hearts, meaning that if you're here today and you're not a Christian, but you're kind of like, maybe on the verge, like, I don't know, I'm kind of interested in Jesus. That's because that's God working in you.
[00:13:52] And if you're here today and you're a Christian, you're here and you're a Christian because the Holy Spirit worked in you first.
[00:14:00] He regenerates our hearts. He endows us with gifts, which we'll spend the next two weeks talking about.
[00:14:07] He emboldens us for mission, which is a big part of the theme of the Book of Acts. That he emboldens the church for witness to proclaim Jesus in the midst of a dark and twisted culture.
[00:14:18] And then today, the Holy Spirit grows us in holiness.
[00:14:22] He is the Spirit of holiness.
[00:14:27] And so he says that we live the Christian life by walking with the Spirit. So let's just talk about what that means. I'm going to read verses 16 to 18, and then we'll talk about a few things. But he says verse 16, but I say, walk by the Spirit. So there was division and friction and argumentation, just relational difficulty, turmoil going on in this church.
[00:14:55] And so he's addressing that, telling them to love one another, because by loving one another, they'll be witness to Jesus and who Jesus is and the means by which they are to do that. He says in verse 16, walk by the Spirit.
[00:15:09] He says, walk by the Spirit. And you will not carry out the desires of the flesh, for these are in opposition to one another. So that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the spirit. You are not under the law. So Paul's going to contrast two things.
[00:15:31] The works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit.
[00:15:35] The works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. This is a common contrast that the apostle Paul writes about throughout the New Testament. The flesh and the spirit. The flesh, by the way, because I've heard it preached this way. The flesh is not just the meat on your bones.
[00:15:53] I've actually heard it preached that way, that the Greek word for flesh just means, like, our skin. Okay, that's not true.
[00:16:01] That's not all that that word means. It's a more holistic term that includes the mind. The.
[00:16:08] The flesh in the Bible is like a power.
[00:16:11] But here's the thing about the flesh. In the life of a Christian, the flesh is a lesser power than the power of the spirit.
[00:16:20] Okay, so there's a war and a battle going on in your heart and in mine. It might be tempting to read this verse in an overly simplistic way, like, hey, if you just walk by the spirit, you won't gratify the desires of the flesh. Again, I've heard it preached this way. I've heard it counseled this way. Some sort of, like, deeply complex emotional issue where the application is, hey, you wouldn't have a problem if you walked by the spirit. Because if you walk by the spirit, you won't gratify the desires of the flesh. That's not what Paul's saying. Here's how I know.
[00:16:53] Look at the words that he uses. He says in verse 17, the flesh sets its desire against the spirit.
[00:17:01] That's like warfare language.
[00:17:04] The flesh sets its desire against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.
[00:17:16] For these are. Look at this word in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
[00:17:26] And again, there's debate over how to interpret that first. But I think essentially this is what Paul's saying for the Christian.
[00:17:34] Our desire, because you have the Holy Spirit living in you, is to follow and obey Jesus.
[00:17:41] Generally speaking, not in every moment of life, but generally speaking, the flow and ebb of your life ought to be one where your desire is to follow Jesus. If that's not the case at all, friends, then you're probably not a Christian.
[00:17:55] But you're here because of the grace of God, so that you would turn from sin and believe upon Jesus.
[00:18:02] But if you're a Christian, then your inner workings are at odds with one another. They're in war against one another.
[00:18:11] And so he's saying that the Spirit keeps you, or, I'm sorry, the flesh fights to keep you from doing the things that you want to do, namely obeying and following Jesus and obeying his Word. So there's conflict going on.
[00:18:25] Essentially, what Paul's saying is. He's saying the Christian life and growth in the Christian life, this walking by the spiritual is not like jumping on an escalator, okay? You step on an escalator, and the escalator just, like, takes you to the top effortlessly. That's not what the Christian life is like, but that's what many of us think it's like.
[00:18:42] And so when it doesn't go that way, when you take two steps forward and one step back or two steps forward and then you fall on your face, like, really bad, and you do that thing again and you're just like. Then all of a sudden, you're not saved.
[00:18:54] Right? Which is the way that we think.
[00:18:57] So the Christian life is not. It's not like an escalator that just kind of propels you to the top without any failures and any faults and any of that. You're still you.
[00:19:08] When you become a Christian, you become a new you, empowered by the Spirit, given a new heart, with new affections, but you're still you. I'm still me. Some of the things that I still struggle with at 38 are the same things that I struggled with when I was 8.
[00:19:23] Some of the same fear, some of the same insecurities, some of the same, like, that's. This is life.
[00:19:30] So it's not like an escalator. It's more like a hike in rough terrain where you're gonna have some really high ups and some really low lows and lots of stuff in between that's kind of more so what the Christian life is like. But it is the person of the Holy Spirit who not only abides in us, but walks with us and help through it.
[00:19:55] Okay? The Christian life is like. We've talked about the.
[00:19:59] The transition period between D Day and V Day, okay? The battle has already been won on D Day when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy. But there's still a lot of fighting to do. There's still a lot of blood to be shed. People are still going to die.
[00:20:13] That's the space by which you and I live as we await our V Day, which is the return of Jesus. So we live in the already and the not yet. Does this make sense? Christian life is not an escalator. It's got all sorts of ups and downs. But the Holy Spirit Abides in you and I, Jesus.
[00:20:28] Jesus has already secured our victory.
[00:20:32] He's already secured our salvation. He's already forgiven us of sin, and he's filled us with the Spirit. And he's walking with us as we walk through the ups and downs of life. So Paul says, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. This simply means to follow the Spirit, go where he goes, listen to his voice, discern his will, follow his guidance. And the Spirit is always going to lead us to Jesus through His Word. That's where the Spirit's leading us.
[00:21:04] Okay? The Spirit speaks to us through His Word primarily.
[00:21:11] And so as we're walking through life, we're to follow the Spirit. As the Spirit of God brings the word of God to mind.
[00:21:19] This is what it means to walk by the Spirit. And so verses 19 through 21, this is kind of how we're going to second half of our sermon here, verses 19 through 21, he's going to talk about the consequences of not following the Spirit. So if the way to live the Christian life is to walk by the Spirit, follow the Spirit. As the Spirit leads us into obedience to the Word of God and empowers us to follow Jesus, then verses 19 through 21 talks about the consequences of not walking with the Spirit. And this is what he says. If you'll look at it with me now, the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you that those who practice these things, such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
[00:22:22] So this is a warning passage.
[00:22:25] All of these things, I think, can be wrapped up in this term self centeredness.
[00:22:32] So all of these which. This is not an exhaustive list of evils, by the way.
[00:22:38] There are all sorts of evil things that we could think about, that we could insert into that list of what the Apostle Paul is communicating to us here. His intent is not to give us an exhaustive list of all of the works of the flesh, but to highlight for us the chaos and the disorderliness and the wreckage that comes as a result of you living for you and me living for me.
[00:23:07] And he says that those who practice such things. That word's going to be important in just a moment, and I'll explain why.
[00:23:16] That those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
[00:23:22] He says a similar thing in 1 Corinthians 6, 9, 10. He says, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
[00:23:31] Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
[00:23:48] What do we do with this? Given this reality that you and I, in a variety of ways, all fall guilty to those texts, if what the apostle Paul is saying here is anybody who ever falls into these things, or anybody who ever does these things at any time, no matter what, will not inherit the kingdom of God, then all of us are without hope in the room.
[00:24:16] So what is he saying? Well, John Calvin, regardless of what you think about Calvin, he was a great pastor.
[00:24:21] And so he gives some really warm pastoral advice and talking about this passage. And here's what he says.
[00:24:28] For who is there who does not labor under one or other of these sins?
[00:24:35] That person doesn't exist.
[00:24:38] I reply, paul does not threaten that there shall be excluded from the kingdom of God all who have sinned, but all who remain unrepentant.
[00:24:49] The saints themselves are heavily burdened, but they return to the way because they do not surrender. They are not included in this catalog.
[00:25:02] Pardon is always ready with God.
[00:25:05] God loves to forgive sinners.
[00:25:10] He delights to lavish his love and lavish his grace and lavish his mercy on undeserving sinners, as all of us in the room are.
[00:25:22] And so this warning isn't for struggling Christians.
[00:25:25] This warning is for those who love their sin and neglect to ever turn from it and turn back to Jesus, those who practice such things, those who make a lifestyle out of such things.
[00:25:43] And there are lots and lots of people in the world today who are doing that.
[00:25:48] They love their sin, and so they will not repent.
[00:25:56] But because God is loving, because God is gracious, and because God is unfathomably kind, he is ready and willing to pardon any and all who will turn from sin and believe upon his Son.
[00:26:13] So Paul gives a warning in verses 19 through 21 of what life apart from the Spirit looks like. And it's chaotic and it's disorderly and it's dark.
[00:26:21] Okay, but then he goes on in verse 22.
[00:26:26] But here's the contrast to that.
[00:26:29] For those who, through faith in Jesus, not through works of the law, but who through faith in Jesus, have been redeemed by God, sealed with his Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit. The result of that is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.
[00:27:00] Against such things there is no law.
[00:27:05] And so if the result of living by the flesh without the Spirit is enslavement, which is what all of the works of the flesh are, by the way, that's not true freedom.
[00:27:23] Then the fruit of the Spirit is freedom, true freedom.
[00:27:30] Christ has.
[00:27:31] He hasn't just forgiven you in the sense of like if you imagine a person in a jail cell, they've committed crime and let's say that they've been pardoned. That jail cell that they've been behind for many, many years has been opened for the first time, okay? This is how many of us think of salvation. The jail cell has been open, we've been forgiven, okay? But few of us actually step out of the jail cell, right? Like, he hasn't just opened the jail cell. He hasn't just forgiven you, he's actually reconciled you to God.
[00:28:05] He's given you his Spirit, who empowers you. The person of the Spirit empowers you. And I to walk in the freedom from the works of the flesh, though imperfectly love, which several scholars and I just like this. I don't think you can read too much of this into the text, but I think it's helpful. Kind of categorizes the fruit of the Spirit in three ways. So there are nine graces, so to speak, that we would consider to be the fruit of the Spirit. And you can kind of break them up into groups of three. Okay? So you have the first three that have to do with the mind, the next three that have to do with others, and then the final three that have to do with yourself.
[00:28:46] Love, joy, peace, graces of the mind.
[00:28:51] Okay? We can love only because we know the love of God for us in Jesus, because we know the death of his love that sent his own Son to the cross. Though he was without sin, knew no sin, he became sin on our behalf. He stretched out his arms on the cross. He suffered punishment and flogging and mocking and people spitting on him and calling him names and betraying him and killing him. He did all of that in love for you.
[00:29:17] And when we know that love and we behold the cross, then we're able by the power of the Spirit to love one another in the midst of hurting one another.
[00:29:26] It's a cross centered love.
[00:29:29] And it's the first one that he mentions in the list of the fruit of the Spirit because it's the one that really drives all the other ones.
[00:29:35] It binds Them all together.
[00:29:40] Love, joy, peace, have to do with the mind.
[00:29:46] Patience, which is just being slow to take offense.
[00:29:52] That's hard, man. That's hard to be patient, but it's being slow to take offense because that's who Jesus is.
[00:30:02] And can you imagine a life with Jesus where he wasn't patient with you?
[00:30:08] Like none of us would be here today, none of you would be. I wouldn't be.
[00:30:15] He's otherworldly patient with you.
[00:30:21] Kindness.
[00:30:22] Kindness.
[00:30:23] Stephen, I'm going to call you out. Stephen said this in pre service prayer and I was like, yeah, that was really helpful.
[00:30:28] Kindness is not niceness.
[00:30:30] Those are two different things.
[00:30:33] We confuse them.
[00:30:36] Niceness, often I heard a pastor say this is rooted in the fear of man.
[00:30:42] I want your approval. So I'm going to be nice to you mean it's always bad, but it's often rooted in the fear of man. Kindness, however, is rooted in the fear of the Lord.
[00:30:52] I can tell you something hard and do it because I love you.
[00:30:58] There's a difference between the two. Niceness is not a fruit of the spirit.
[00:31:02] Kindness is a fruit of the spirit.
[00:31:06] And goodness.
[00:31:09] Gentleness.
[00:31:11] Gentleness in a similar vein of kindness is strength under control.
[00:31:17] Gentleness is not weakness.
[00:31:20] Jesus is not weak.
[00:31:22] He's gentle and lowly in heart. He has more strength than anybody.
[00:31:31] He's upholding the universe by the word of his power right now.
[00:31:35] And yet he's gentle. It's strength in control.
[00:31:39] That's what gentleness is.
[00:31:41] And that's something only the Holy Spirit can give. You and I, we're not called to be weak for weak sake and to be doormats. That's not the call. That's not what it means to turn the other cheek.
[00:31:53] Gentle men are to be women too. But I feel like men often have this more of a propensity to not be this are to be gentle, to take your strength, the strength that God's provided you and put it under control by the power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:32:07] Gentleness, faithfulness. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
[00:32:12] That's hard in like the little stuff. It's easy in the big stuff, it's hard in the little stuff.
[00:32:19] But this is what the fruit of the Spirit does in our life, that we learn to be faithful in all things as God is faithful in all things. And then self, self control.
[00:32:34] This is the fruit of the Spirit and it's a glorious picture, isn't it?
[00:32:39] Like, I don't think there's a single one of us in the room who look at that list of things and say, yeah, I don't want that to be what my life looks like.
[00:32:50] Not going to be perfect, but we want that. And the way in which Paul is telling us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that we grow in that way to look more like Jesus is by walking by the Spirit.
[00:33:08] And so just want to conclude with this because I think that this really gets to kind of the impetus of how you and I, what it actually means to walk by the Spirit so that it doesn't feel as maybe ethereal as we're tempted to make it feel to walk by the Spirit. What does it actually mean to walk by the Spirit? Well, I think the context of the book of Galatians helps us a lot with this.
[00:33:36] Walking by the Spirit really comes down to a question. And this is the question.
[00:33:40] Are you going to choose to rely on the law or on the gospel?
[00:33:46] Are you going to choose to rely on the law?
[00:33:49] What you do?
[00:33:51] Many of us live. This is a Ray Ortland thing, but I've always found it to be really helpful in this kind of law shame cycle.
[00:33:59] Here's how the law shame cycle works in our life. And I really, I want to encourage you to pay attention to this.
[00:34:06] Okay? It's law plus shame plus now.
[00:34:10] Law plus shame plus now law equals do this, shame equals or else.
[00:34:20] Now equals don't struggle.
[00:34:23] Do this or else don't struggle.
[00:34:28] Many of us live our life like that.
[00:34:32] Do this or else don't struggle.
[00:34:36] And you can fill in the blank with whatever you want to fill in with as it reflects your life.
[00:34:45] Friends, there's no enjoyment of God in that.
[00:34:49] Enjoyment of God and assurance of salvation aren't the things that make you saved.
[00:34:57] But assurance of salvation has a direct correlation to joy, to enjoying God as your Father, not just believing that he's your judge.
[00:35:13] Do this or else don't struggle is a common cycle that many of us find ourselves living in.
[00:35:22] And so will you put your reliance in that?
[00:35:26] Or will you be reminded this morning of the gospel?
[00:35:31] What has been done for you, what God has accomplished for you through His Son.
[00:35:39] This is how the fruit of the Spirit grows in our life.
[00:35:42] Not by looking at your sin, not by looking at the law, but by looking at Jesus, his perfect life, his death for sin, his resurrection from the grave, his ascension to heaven, his eventual return by looking to Jesus.
[00:36:00] Then the Holy Spirit of God begins to cultivate in you and I the fruit of the Spirit. This is a different cycle. So if do this or else don't Struggle is one end of the spectrum. Here's the other end of the spectrum. That is gospel. Gospel plus safety plus time.
[00:36:16] Gospel plus safety plus time. And here's this equation.
[00:36:21] Gospel equals Jesus did.
[00:36:25] Jesus did.
[00:36:27] That's your hope today.
[00:36:29] Jesus did. Isn't that awesome?
[00:36:32] No matter what you're going through today, that can be a sure footing for you, that you don't have to sink in the thing. Because Jesus did.
[00:36:46] Gospel equals Jesus did.
[00:36:49] Safety equals here's grace.
[00:36:54] Time equals here's patience.
[00:36:59] God is patient with you.
[00:37:02] He's not a reactionary father.
[00:37:05] He's not flying off the handle at you when you fail, when you don't get it right.
[00:37:12] That's not who he is. He's patient with you.
[00:37:18] Here's patience.
[00:37:20] Verse 24. Last thing I'll say and then I'll be done.
[00:37:24] Verse 24 reminds us that we already belong to Christ. Jesus says, you've already been crucified with Christ, the old you defined by the works of the flesh, that you was crucified and put to death over 2000 years ago at the cross.
[00:37:46] That you isn't alive today.
[00:37:48] The new you that's been raised to walk in newness of life by the power of the Spirit as Jesus was raised to newness of life to walk by the Spirit. That new you is the you that's alive today. Though your sin still exists in your heart and in your mind and in your body. You belong to Christ Jesus.
[00:38:10] You belong to him. And it's by being reminded that you belong to him that we walk with the Spirit and so comes by the grace of God, more and more of the fruit of the Spirit in our life. Let's pray, Sam.
[00:39:03] It.
