-Transcript-
00:39 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:43 Welcome to the cafe. What a great day we’re having here at the cafe. Hope you are doing good.
00:49 Maybe you’re noticing that weather outside getting a little bit cooler. We fired up the espresso machine today. Had lattes for the first time in a long time.
00:57 Of course I gotta have mine with oat milk but nonetheless it’s delicious. So glad to be here today. I hope you’re doing well.
01:05 And one thing that I love about this program is that we can take time to get into God’s Word. Even within a 15-minute segment we can take time to get into God’s Word.
01:16 In fact we’re gonna go over some really great stuff in the Bible and we’re gonna do that in four parts.
01:24 And this message is called How Not to Fulfill the Lust of the Flesh. And that is to walk in the Spirit. So we see here that saved Christians are waging an internal war each day.
01:35 A battle between good and evil. And so as a saved Christian, amen, we are God’s, right? We are God’s property. But we are still living in the flesh, are we not? When you got saved did you stop aging?
01:55 When you got saved did death just disappear from your life? When you got saved did no more gray hair grow in? I’ve got kids, amen, I’m getting more gray hair.
02:08 I looked in the mirror the other day I look like a porcupine, amen. I got gray growing all over, amen. But I’m saved.
02:14 I mean I know that I’m saved. I study this to preach it to you, amen. I pray to the Lord.
02:18 I know that I’m saved. And yet the mortal body continues to devolve, if you will, instead of evolve, it continues to devolve. And I can go on and on.
02:27 I won’t bore you with a bunch of stuff, but I will say jogging recently I had joint pain I’ve never had before. And I said, what is this? And you know, went to the doctor and the doctor really didn’t find anything wrong with me.
02:38 So now I know it’s just old age, amen, old age.
02:42 And so we see here that the flesh gets weaker. The flesh devolves. The flesh is still part of who we are.
02:52 We are still bundled up in this fleshly body, amen. And I’m taking and giving you a physical reference, but I’m going to take you into the spiritual here. Okay.
03:01 Because in the physical realm, we can see our bodies, right? And in the physical realm, maybe our bodies will desire things or there’ll be lusts and so forth that our bodies will crave.
03:09 But in the spiritual realm, there is so much happening here between the spirit and the flesh. Amen.
03:16 There’s a war going on and this war has far reaching consequences. And that’s why I mentioned in the We’ll make this a four-part message, amen. I think four parts will be enough to get through it right and exact.
03:33 But this war is very, very important because whether you like it or not, if you’re saved, you’re fighting this war. And this determines the consequences that happen in this war determine whether we are fruitful for God or not, whether we are sinning against God or not,
03:51 whether we are serving God or not, whether we are living in closeness to God or not, whether we are living in peace or not, whether we are living as God intended his children to live or not. Now, you just said, Brother Clark, that’s a lot.
04:06 Well, that’s okay. We’re going to walk through each one here briefly. But I want you to imagine the flesh and the spirit are warring against each other.
04:19 The spirit is that good God, godly aspect of you. Amen. It’s the Holy Spirit living within you, capital S. It’s the third part of the Holy Trinity, the triune God.
04:25 Amen. The three-in-one God. As my little kids say, three gods, one God.
04:30 And what they mean is there’s three parts to this one God. It’s the same God, but there’s three parts. In the beginning of Genesis, it’ll speak of counseling together.
04:39 You know, we decided this and this. And so what does the we mean? That is the plural, but it’s actually a singular because it is three, which is one. Amen.
04:50 Three, which is one. And that’s Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And that third part of the Holy Trinity is living within us.
04:58 Amen. And that third part of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is living within us to give us discernment, to guide us. The Bible calls the Holy Spirit the Comforter.
05:09 Amen. And at the same time, we have this fleshly body that we’re living in, and this sinful world that we’re living in, and the body is desiring things, and the sinful world is desiring things, and all of this is making its way up to our mind, amen, and our hearts, if you will. And we are fighting this battle.
05:25 And if we are going to be fruitful for God, we must be living for the Spirit. Because if we are not living for the Spirit, if we are grieving the Holy Spirit, we cannot be fruitful for God. The Bible tells us that a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
05:46 The Bible tells me that he that is not for him is against him. The Bible tells me that God does not desire a Christian to be lukewarm, or he’ll spit them out, on and on and on. So we understand that to be fruitful for God, we have to be living by the Spirit.
05:57 And in fact, if we’re not living by the Spirit in this battle, and we are choosing the fleshly side of life, which could be as simple as just saying a bunch of cuss words, or going and getting drunk, or cheating on your taxes, whatever it is.
06:11 If we are living a sinful life, then what are we doing? We are sinning against two. Against God, amen.
06:19 Against God. And the Bible tells us that you’re sinning against God, and then the one, I think, is fornication. You actually sin against your own flesh, which is even worse, amen.
06:28 But we don’t want to be sinning against God. We want to be fruitful for God. We certainly cannot serve God if we are letting the flesh win this battle, amen.
06:36 You can’t do anything for God. Now, a lot of people are doing, quote, good in this world. I see a lot of charities out there that are doing something good, and people applaud them.
06:48 I applaud them. I say, oh, you’re doing this. This is great.
06:53 But if it is not of the Spirit, it is not for God, correct? If it is not of Christ, it is not righteous. And if it’s not righteous, you know, if we say we’re righteous, then we’re crazy.
07:01 Because the Bible tells us that none are righteous, not one, that our righteousness is as filthy rags, as dirty gauze pads, as we’ve said in the book of Isaiah.
07:09 If we are living in sin, if we’re letting the flesh win this battle that day-to-day Christians fight, then we won’t be close to God. The Bible tells us, cleanse your hands, you filthy sinners. Draw nigh to me, and I’ll draw nigh to you.
07:25 I mean, you gotta, in order to get with God’s program, in order to draw close to God, you have to get right with God, amen. And you cannot be close to God if you’re living in sin.
07:37 The Bible actually tells us clearly that God hears the prayers of the righteous. What’s the inverse of that? He’s not, he’s far off from the wicked.
07:46 That actually is also, I think, in the Psalms. He’s far off from the wicked. So God hears the prayers of the righteous.
07:52 He’s far off from the wicked. And then how about this? If we are not on the winning side of this battle, if we’re giving over to the flesh, I can promise you one thing. We will not be living in peace.
08:02 Perfect peace comes from having our mind stayed on Christ, as the Bible tells us. Now how can we have perfect peace if our mind is not on Christ? How could our mind be on Christ all the time, and yet we were living in sin?
08:15 See, so in order to have peace, we can’t be losing this battle, amen? And of course, how can we fulfill God’s plan? How can we live as God intended his children to live, if we are chasing the desires of the flesh?
08:30 And I will say this and move right on. You know, some people, some Christians listening today, may think, okay, I passed all those tests.
08:38 I’m close to God. I’m repentant before God. I’m thinking on Him all the day long, and so on.
08:45 I must be living as He wants me to live. But there are these sins that, like, we don’t think that much about sometimes, or even know about, like coveting. Paul himself said he didn’t know what sin was until coveting, or violating the law until coveting came up.
08:59 And you know, it’s very easy and subtle to find ourselves coveting, whether it be a job, or a house, or a child, or a spouse, or whatever it is. And so we have to be careful not to draw just broad-line conclusions and say, oh, we don’t fit into this. Look, all Christians deal with this.
09:18 The disciples dealt with this. Matthew 26:41, watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
09:30 Well, what was happening in Matthew 26:41. Well, Jesus Christ was in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was, I was getting ready for the Passion there. He’s about to go to the cross.
09:40 He knew it. He was beyond, beyond despair, and His agony, and like anybody that would be thinking of what was about to occur, not just the brutal torture and humiliation that He would go through by the Roman soldiers,
09:56 but also drinking that cup of sin for all mankind. He was put up on that cross for all mankind so that all that turned to Him could be forgiven.
10:07 Well, if He only went to the cross for some of mankind, and yet it said that all, the Lord desires all to be saved, then how could all be saved if He didn’t go for everyone?
10:18 Certainly He did, and there’s a lot more examples about that, that Christ died for all, for all time with His Passion on the cross, and He was resurrected again. What happened there?
10:27 The disciples, He asked them to watch and pray, and what did they do? They fell asleep. Matthew 26:41, watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation.
10:36 The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak, but the flesh is weak, and so Jesus Christ Himself is pointing out this principle to the disciples of all people, and they couldn’t even stay up for an hour.
10:48 They couldn’t stay up to pray and watch with Jesus as He was about to be sent to the cross, amen. They couldn’t do that because the flesh, you know, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit wanted to be knit tight with Jesus and there with Jesus and so forth, but the flesh was saying, I’m tired, give me rest, right?
11:04 And the flesh went out there, and Jesus Christ is telling them, hey, look, you need to watch and pray that you don’t enter into temptation, and you need to identify that temptation so you won’t enter into it, and what Jesus is saying is, know this. Don’t be ignorant.
11:21 Understand the battle that you are in. Don’t try to wing it or just go how things should go, but know what’s going to happen here, and that’s what we’re doing here today at KJV Cafe, getting into the scripture here. I haven’t even got to our text verse yet.
11:29 That’ll be next episode from Galatians5:16-26, in case you want to do homework and catch up to it.
11:38 Galatians 5:16-26 is what we’ll be studying, but the whole thing that we’re doing here today is looking at the idea of not being willfully ignorant.
11:51 If someone told me there’s a lot of cars on the road, be careful, and I said, don’t worry about it, and I closed my eyes and I tried to cross a busy street, those cars aren’t going to go away, right?
12:00 Those cars will still fatally kill me if I get hit by one of them going fast, right? But my eyes are closed.
12:05 I’m not looking. I don’t see any cars. I’m just going with the flow.
12:09 I’m just a leaf in the wind, right? That is hazardous, and the same way it would physically be hazardous to go onto a busy road, say a highway,
12:20 and just hope nobody hits you because you don’t want to think about it, is the same way spiritually it’s very hazardous to go about life not thinking on this spiritual battle that we all are in,
12:29 those that are saved, those that accept the Christ as Savior, not thinking about what is happening and what we need to do to prepare and protect ourselves to watch and pray,
12:39 and we’re going to look at that as we get through these next three episodes after this. We’re going to dive into what happens here when we’re saved and how we get the Spirit living within us, amen.
12:50 And we’re going to look at the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, the idea of walking being an action step, the idea of we can choose our destination when it comes to this,
13:03 and the idea of how Christ calls us to live crucified with Him. We’re going to look at these principles as we go through this series and see how the Bible instructs us to prepare
13:14 and live so that we walk in the Spirit and not the flesh, and I promise you you’ll be blessed by this because we all deal with this, and this is much of the burden I believe that we bear in life,
13:24 is that conflict between the Spirit and the flesh, between what we would want to do for the Lord and what we end up doing in the flesh, and those two things that conflict,
13:34 and God is telling us through His Word, wake up, I’m going to serve it to you very straight, very plain, so you can understand exactly what to do with this information every single day until I call you home, and when I call you home there is no sin there,
13:48 God would tell us, and there’s light all day, there’s no night, it’s perfect, amen, and so we won’t need to worry about this, but until then we do need to worry about this because we are in the flesh, amen, and we were living in this sinful world.
14:01 So tune in next time as we get to more of these great spiritual truths, again we’re in the first part here, we’ll be in the second part, third and fourth here this week, tune in next time.
14:10 I thank you so much for joining me, take care, God bless, and amen.