The Civil War was by far the bloodiest
conflict this nation has ever been a part of.
From 1861-1865 there were over one million casualties, both military and
civilian. In no other war has there ever
been such bloodshed. What made it worse
was how often it would pit brother against brother or family against
family. It was such a horrible time in
our nation’s history. It’s hard to
fathom what was going on in some people’s minds.
We are talking about neighbors, friends and
loved ones who had so much in common who basically decided that we are right
and you are wrong and we feel so strongly about it that it is worth killing
each other to prove it. It basically
boiled down to one side saying they wanted to live this way but the other side
said, no, you need to live that way.
It tore our nation apart and in some ways,
even 150 years later, we still haven’t healed.
Is there anything worse than two family members fighting against each
other? Yes. Yes, there is. What’s worse than two family members fighting
is one person at war with himself. The
book of James says a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways and yet
every single one of us has, not just the tendency, but the innate programming
to want to do what is right…and evil at the same time.
You thought it was just you, didn’t you? You thought surely you were the only one who
ever did what he didn’t want to do. You
want to do the right thing. You know
BOOCOD. You know the benefits of obedience and the consequences of
disobedience. You love Jesus. You have a personal relationship with God
through His Son. You are filled with the
Holy Spirit. You go to church. You worship.
You even raised your hands on that last song! There’s even a fish symbol on your car and a
cross around your neck and yet you often find yourself going to God in prayer
asking for forgiveness for the same old thing that you swore you would never do
again.
Right now some of you are thinking, “Oh great!
The preacher saw me doing that thing!” and some of you may be right
but probably not. The reason I know this
is simply because the Bible says it but also, and I’ll be honest, I know it
from being there in my own life. I know
the regret. I know the shame. I know the consequences and I don’t ever want
to be there again. So…what do we have to
do to not be in that place of regret, shame and consequences?
We first start by turning to Paul’s letter to
the Galatians, chapter 5, verses 16-26.
Paul knew this frustration as well.
He could relate. He even said as
much in Romans 7:15. “I do not understand what I do. For what I
want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
Does that sound like you?
Sure it does. It sounds like
everybody and that’s the good news. The
bad news is that in God’s eyes, it doesn’t matter that everybody does it. It is still sin and you still put a barrier
between you and God every time you sin so STOP IT! But how?
Galatians 5:16-26.
Galatians is between 2
Corinthians and Ephesians in the
New Testament and is written to church-going people; people that were truly
believers but who had drifted off the path of the pure Gospel as being the only
way to Heaven and had started to believe that maybe it wasn’t just God’s grace
that allowed them in and that maybe they weren’t saved only by grace and through
faith. The Galatian churches also knew
the regret, shame and consequences of not doing what they wanted to do. Here is what Paul told them.
“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”
I know I have told you this story before but it is a good reminder and I want to tell you again, briefly, about my duck friends who live in Duckville. It was Sunday morning and the bells of the First Baptist Church in Duckville were ringing, calling all the wonderful ducks to church and so all the ducks waddled down the road to the duck church, waddled in and sat in the little duck pews. They sang and worshiped and then the little duck pastor waddled up and began to give the sermon.
He said, “My dear duck family, we may not be eagles but we too have wings and God has called us to freedom. We don’t have to waddle everywhere. We can fly! God has given us wings to soar like eagles!” All the ducks said “Amen!” and they were all so moved at this inspirational message. It just blessed them all so. It was just great - and then they all waddled home.
That’s one of my greatest fears, my dear little duck family. Y’all are always supportive and I appreciate that. But I wonder sometimes if all of us don’t waddle home after church and I don’t just mean the way it feels leaving Dos Chiles on Sunday afternoon. Waddling home might be easy to do in a passage like this and we will see why in just a minute.
First, I want us to break this down into manageable chunks. Paul starts by describing that civil war that rages inside each of us. Then he gives examples of the results of not making the right choice and then he illustrates what making the right choice should look like and all through it he gives us the way to keep from making the wrong choices.
Robert Robinson wrote a hymn in 1758 that we still sing sometimes around here. The song “Come Thou Fount” has these words. O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
That’s an honest song. We all have hearts that are prone to wander away from God. Without a conscious effort we all will wander away. I have heard it said that nobody drifts toward God. If we are drifting, it is always away from God so we have to be vigilant about our walk with God so that we don’t drift. The reason that we drift is because of that civil war inside of us that causes us great damage.
Paul says the sinful nature is at war with the Spirit. You’ll notice that “Spirit” is capitalized. No, Paul didn’t use capitalization when he wrote it but we do because it is talking about the Holy Spirit; the Spirit that lives inside each believer. 2 Timothy 1:14 says, “Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you.”
Now, you would think that when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives that there would be no way the sinful nature could still have any control but we are born with this sinful nature. Paul sometimes calls it the flesh or the old man. It is who we used to be but we don’t have to be that person any more. The problem is we sometimes make provision for that old man. In Romans 13:14, again Paul encourages us to make no provision for the works of the flesh. Instead he tells us four times in our passage in Galatians what to do.
He says in verse 16 to live by the Spirit. In verse 18 we are to be led by the Spirit and in verse 25 we are to live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. So, there you go. That’s all you have to do to avoid sin and avoid the regret, shame and consequences that come with it. Live, be led and keep in step by the Spirit. It’s that easy.
So, I appreciate you being here and I’ll see you tonight at 6 but for now we can all just - waddle on home. What do you think? I don’t know about you but I don’t want to waddle home. I refuse to leave here unchanged. I want to know more about what it means to live, be led and walk in step with the Spirit. Paul tells us that to not do this results in a lifestyle starting in verse 19. We don’t want that.
We want the fruit or the evidence of the Spirit living in our lives that starts in verse 22. I want love, joy and peace and all those other good things but what does it look like to walk in the Spirit? That’s so churchy. It sounds good and we all want to do it but how is my life going to change when I am walking by the Spirit? What parts of my life, my attitude, my habits need to change?
Well, let’s think about this. If you said you lived your life by...I don’t know, politics, what would it look like? If you decided you were going to live, be led and walk by the Democrat party, what would you do? First, I recommend counseling because that’s a bad idea but just humor me here for a minute and let’s use it as an illustration.
If you wanted to live by the Democrat party, you would go to all the meetings. You would watch all the debates. You would go on the website and find out everything there is to know about the party; what they believe, why they believe it and where it comes from and you would try to do whatever was needed to get the word out about how great you thought it was. If your life was to be devoted to it then you would rarely be at home watching TV. You would want to be out helping the cause and most importantly, you would never listen to or support or make any provision for the other side. You know. Sort of like CNN.
Make no provision for the other side. Make no provision for the old man, the flesh or the sinful nature. Allow Satan no foothold, no matter how small. I’ve told you before that at Unchained Biker Church, Ben often led us in songs that were classic rock and roll songs that he had changed the words to and had made them into great worship songs but when he came to be our music guy, I asked him not to play some of those.
Do you know why? It’s not because I don’t like those old songs. I actually do. I really do. The problem is that some of those rock and roll songs bring back memories of a time when I was definitely not walking by the Spirit and I was doing some things that weren’t right. The thing is, I was having fun doing those things. I know I’m not the only one to ever have had fun while sinning. The Bible even says that sin is pleasurable for a season (Heb. 11:25).
So, when I hear those songs, even when they
have different words, it takes me back to a time when I was having fun for a
while but I knew the regret, shame and consequences all too well. But I hear those and start to have a
conversation in my head. “Man, those were some fun times, huh? We ought to do that again. It’ll be different this time, though” and
I don’t want to open that door for those thoughts. I don’t want to make any provision for that
old man because while a part of me wants to go back to that, the part that is
walking by the Spirit hates that old man and the lies he tells and wishes he
would go back to hell where he came from!
It’s not wrong to listen to rock music or
country music in and of themselves. It’s
not wrong to watch TV. It’s not wrong to
surf the internet but if anything leads you to sin then shut that down. Don’t go near it. It is just what Jesus meant in Matthew 5:30 when He said, “And if your right hand causes you to sin,
cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your
members than that your whole body go into hell.”
To really walk by the Spirit you have to be
tuned in to the Spirit. You should spend
the majority of available time reading God’s Word, studying its meaning and
praying over it, listening to Christian music, being in church with other believers,
finding out what pleases God. In Ephesians 5, Paul says, “and find out what
pleases the Lord. 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of
darkness.”
How are you going to know what pleases
the Lord if you are not consistently in the scripture, if you are not
consistently in church and consistently in a state of prayer? F.B.
Meyer said, “This is the bitterest of all--to know that suffering need not have
been; that it has resulted from indiscretion and inconsistency.” Ezekiel 36:26, 27:
A new heart I will give you and a
new spirit I will put within you . . . I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.
How can you walk in His statutes if you don’t know His statutes? You have to be consistent and you have to
have a plan. Without a plan you will
wander and drift and you don’t want that.
You need to make a plan for how much time you are going to allow
yourself to watch TV or play golf or whatever else you may do that might not be
wrong to do but might keep you from spending quality and consistent time with
God in prayer and in His Word.
Have a plan right now so that no matter what else comes up, if you are at
all able to, you will be at church on Sunday.
How many of you know that missing church one Sunday makes it twice as
easy to miss the next Sunday? Do you
know what missing church does? It makes
a provision for the flesh. It opens a
door – maybe a little door or even a window to just look through – but it opens
it for sin to come in and pretty soon you have regrets, shame and consequences
and all you did was miss one Sunday.
These are some of the secrets to living by the Spirit but there’s a
problem. If you do all these things; if
you never miss church and you spend time every day in the Word and in prayer and
all you listen to is Christian music – all those good and necessary things –
it’s still not enough. You have to do
those things to keep from making any provision for your sinful nature but you
can do all those things and be Mr. and Mrs. Goody Two Shoes all day long and
still not be able to conquer your own sinful nature, much less Satan when he
attacks.
If you could do it then think about it.
How proud would you be of yourself?
Look what I did. Look how I
overcame the old man. I am a pretty good
person. I’m a really good
Christian. That is the same as being
under the Law and verse 18 says if
you are led by the Spirit then you are not under the Law. Let me read Ezekiel 36:26, 27 again:
“A new heart I will give you and a
new spirit I will put within you . . . I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.” God says He will cause you to walk in His
statutes.
You have to make sure you make no provision for the sinful nature. You do what you can do but acknowledge that
you can’t do it. You can’t fight off the
sinful nature on your own. Only God
working through you can.
If God said that to be a good Christian and go to Heaven that all you had
to do was jump from the ground up to the steeple on top of this building, then
you would prepare yourself. You would
put on good tennis shoes. You would
stretch out and eat a good meal that morning and you would plan how you were
going to jump and where you were going to land exactly but when it comes time
to make it all the way up there you would say, “God, I can’t do it. Please do
it through me.” That is right where
God wants you to be.
Romans 6:14 says, “For sin will have no
dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” Do
you believe that? Do you have faith that
God is able to overcome your sinful nature and that He wants to do it through
you and all you have to do is make no provision for that old nature?
I want us to stop
right now and bow our heads and close our eyes and spend time with God right
now asking Him what in your life needs to change. You don’t have to. You can waddle on home and keep fighting that
civil war and struggling and dealing with regret, shame and the consequences of
living in sin or you can ask God to search you and try you and see if there be any wicked way in you, and lead you in
the way everlasting. (Ps. 139)
Do that right now as the music plays.
*Turn off recorder*
Invitation / Prayer
This is just the tip of the iceberg in
unpacking this wonderful passage of scripture.
But if you don’t have a real handle on this aspect of walking by the
Spirit then it will be a hard and frustrating life for you. Come back tonight at 6 and we will continue
to unpack this.
No comments:
Post a Comment