-Transcript-
00:38 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:42 Welcome to the cafe. It’s so good to have you here today. Hopefully you’re having a wonderful day, a wonderful week.
00:48 Thank you again for joining us. Pastor Clark Covington here and we are getting right back into the scripture. We are in a second, the second part of a four-part series on how not to fulfill the lust of the flesh, how we are to walk in the Spirit.
01:05 And as I’ve mentioned in the last episode, saved Christians are waging an internal war each day, a battle between good and evil. This war we are fighting has real consequences that are far-reaching.
01:19 You think about this idea of fighting an internal battle, think about being a kid back when there was no internet.
01:28 That’ll date me a little bit. And a little kid, you know, and you turn on the TV and you’d have a cartoon, maybe Tom and Jerry or whatever, and you’d have the little angel on one side, the little devil on one side of the character speaking each into the ear, into the right ear, the left ear.
01:45 And it’s like, what’s the devil? Oh, you know, what’s the character gonna do? Go with the devil or go with the angel, go with God.
01:51 And as silly as that is, that actually kind of correctly illustrates what we’re dealing with on a daily basis in our minds. And there’s so much Scripture on this throughout the Bible about taking up our cross, about living, about dying to self and being dead to sin and being raised to new life with Christ, you know, crucifying the old self, all things becoming new.
02:16 And there’s a lot of Scripture on this in the Bible because it is such an important spiritual principle, that while we are new when we’re saved, right? Spiritually we become new.
02:27 Physically, we’re still in this body. And that physical also manifests into the spiritual realm where we’re facing this internal struggle between the flesh, quote unquote, not just like, you know, your actual flesh, but just the old man and the new,
02:44 the born again Christian, the one that is living for the Lord. And then on top of it, we’re living in a world that elevates and promotes the things of the flesh.
02:55 So you’re living in a sinful world and you have a sinful old body, but you’ve been bought, you’ve been born again, you’ve been bought with the precious blood of Jesus and you are now intended to live anew, afresh, differently.
03:09 And so it’s difficult because a lot of people, they just kind of want to go the way of the crowd and say, well look, if a hundred people are going to go take something from Walgreens that they shouldn’t, I mean, I’ll do it too, right?
03:21 You know, and so even though in God’s word it says thou shall not steal, I’m just doing what everyone else is doing. You know, and I talked to my wife about this, that sin in this world is bearing down on us like it’s never has before, amen.
03:36 And what I mean by that is before, you might have to seek it out a little bit.
03:41 You may have to go to the back alley, so to speak, to sin. And now it’s an open site. I mean, even some states, police units are giving away clean needles.
03:53 I saw a sign for that somewhere and about fell over. They’re going to say, okay, we want you to do drugs, but do it with a clean needle.
04:07 Or before, someone would go on the internet, you know, in a private room to look up pornography and now on the phone, it’s right there in front of you.
04:16 You know, people are getting, sending text messages with illicit pictures and stuff and young kids are involved in this, very young and on and on and on. I never thought I would say this, but it is a dark day in our, in our country.
04:26 When in our town, you can go to a casino and gamble, which is totally against every principle that I’ve ever read in the Bible, to gamble.
04:34 And you can do that. And then they boast of it. They sponsor the soccer games here in the area.
04:39 They sponsor the city events. And so now sin and gambling is right here with the, uh, municipalities, but don’t, Hey, but you, you can’t not, and then they don’t put up the 10 commandments now. Okay.
04:52 I won’t go on that tangent here, but you see how wicked this world is. Amen. And how anti-God this world is.
05:00 And you in your flesh are prone to that side of things because that’s how the world is. And the spirit is saying, but let’s live for the Lord and let’s be separate. Amen.
05:11 And let’s take a stand on these matters and let’s love what God loves and hate what God hates. And let’s understand the commandments and let’s follow the commandments
05:17 and let’s teach our children in these ways when they get up and through the day and when they go to bed and see the spirit and the flesh are at war with these things. Amen.
05:25 Jesus himself addresses this before I get to that though, let me get to the far reaching consequences that living, uh, for the flesh and not the spirit would result in this deals with whether we are fruitful for God or not.
05:42 Can’t bear fruit if you are not living for the spirit, whether we are sinning against God or not. Uh, you’re certainly, if you are grieving the Holy Spirit, you’re living in sin, whether we are serving God or not, we can’t serve God appropriately.
05:51 If we’re living in sin, he won’t have it. Amen. Whether we are living in closeness to God or not.
05:55 Do you think a Holy God can stand to be around sin? If he could stand to be around sin, he wouldn’t have sent his beloved Jesus Christ to the cross to die for your sins and for my sins and for the world sins that when we accepted him by the blood of the sinless spotless lamb, we’d be saved.
06:12 If he could stand sin, he wouldn’t have done that. And so he had to do it because he cannot be around sin.
06:17 So if you are living in sin and you are saying you’re close to God, you are a liar and you need to get right with God because the only way to be close to God is to repent before him.
06:25 And the Bible tells us if you’re saved, he’s faithful and just to cleanse you of all that unrighteousness when you give it to him. Another consequence, whether we are living in peace or not, the Bible tells me to have perfect peace.
06:34 I have to keep my mind stayed on the Lord. And now how can I have perfect peace if my mind is on sin?
06:40 The Bible talks about the natural man being at enmity or warfare with God, whether we are living as God intended his children to live or not. You want to do the will of God? How many people have sat in church say, I want to do the will of God.
06:52 I want to live for God. Well, guess what? We can not live for God if we’re letting the flesh dictate our day to day lives. Now, Jesus Christ talked about this himself.
07:03 He was praying in the Garden of Yosemite and he was getting ready for the passion. He knew it was on deck there about to happen. He was going to have to deal with this great, this great murder, torture, humiliation on top of that, dealing with all the sin for all mankind, past, present and future.
07:25 It was absolutely grievous to him beyond grievous. And he tells the disciples his closest confidants, the ones he trusted in the ones that he chose himself. He said, please stay here and watch and pray with me.
07:41 And what did they do? They fell asleep. And Matthew 26:41, watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
07:50 Matthew 26:41, the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And so we see here this contrast, this battle that we that we face. Amen.
08:00 And we have to be careful to understand that Christ himself is telling even the disciples that they have to watch and pray. They have to know they can’t be willfully ignorant. Amen.
08:10 They’ve got to know. Why is this so hard to do? Have you ever had something you desire to do for the Lord and it never got done? Maybe there’s a lot of things that turned out this way. Why? Let’s look in a biblical context, Galatians 5:6-26.
08:27 This I say, then walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary the one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would.
08:42 But if you be led of the spirit, you’re not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. Of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
09:12 But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law. And they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.
09:29 Let us not be desirous of vain glory,provoking one another, envying one another.” Okay, so there’s a lot here in the scripture, but let’s take a step back and let’s look at the beginning of Galatians 5:16.
09:43 How about that? This I say, then walk in the spirit andye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Galatians 5:6 tells us that if we walk in the spirit, we won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh.
09:58 And so as I spent much time talking about these last two episodes, as we face these battles in the flesh, it’s very hard in this sin-sick world and in our own mortal bodies to do the will of the spirit.
10:10 And so what we must do is walk in the spirit. I heard a is the side that’s going to come out ahead.
10:20 And I guess that’s true. You know, if you’re feeding the flesh all the time, you’re going to be obviously living in the flesh. But if you are feeding the spirit, you’re more likely to walk in the spirit.
10:30 But it’s not easy. If it were easy, there wouldn’t be a reason to discuss it here today. It’s not easy to walk in the spirit.
10:37 To walk in the spirit would mean that you are reading the Bible every single day, studying it, that you are praying every single day without ceasing, that you are living with God’s commands,
10:51 that you’re not stealing, you’re not coveting, you’re loving your neighbor as yourself, you’re charitable, you have that sacrificial agape love where you’re giving and giving and giving. You are not getting into the ways of materialism and pride and all these other things. That’s what it’s like to walk in the spirit.
11:08 And to do that, we must crucify the old Adamic nature. That’s that old Adam, the first Adam, the one that went into the garden of Eden with Eve and both of them ate of the forbidden fruit and they were expelled from the garden. Sin entered the picture and has never left since.
11:27 And we all have this nature about us. That’s why it’s so hard. Can I tell you, Paul struggled with this.
11:31 Paul struggled with this exact issue, amen. Romans 7:18-25, For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For the will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.
11:53 Now if I do that I would not, it’s no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
12:12 O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law ofsin. And so we see here Romans 7:18-25, a very powerful verse about how Paul himself struggled with this.
12:34 I read some commentaries that wanted to point to this being Paul talking about prior to salvation, but I really believe Paul is also writing about being saved, amen,
12:45 loving the Lord, wanting to do something for God, and finding himself falling short. And it could be just falling asleep when he’s supposed to pray, as Jesus had kind of rebuked the disciples for.
12:55 Or it could be something much more serious, amen, but he had the law in his mind and the law in his members and these things were warring together.
13:01 And so how do we walk in the Spirit? We have to walk in the Spirit by saturating ourselves in the ways and things of God, by keeping our mind stayed on God. That’s what the Bible tells us, that he will give us peace if we keep our minds stayed on him or always on him, amen. How do you do that? You listen to preaching like this, amen.
13:20 You study the Bible, amen. You listen to other preachers. Maybe you preach yourself or you serve in the, you know, you sing in the choir or you teach Sunday school.
13:30 You serve the Lord. You get involved in the ministry. You stay away from the bad thing.
13:35 You stay close to the good thing. And you continue to do that day in and day out, every single day. And it will just naturally, like osmosis, just start sinking in, amen.
13:43 And the Spirit will be revived, amen. And that sin, you’ll know, you’ll know when that sin approaches, amen, because you’ll be walking in the Spirit. And that’s what Paul, I think, is getting to, is that we have to walk in the Spirit.
13:51 And that means we have to stay away from the things and the ways of the flesh. And I could go into the whole idea that people think that they can flirt with the world and not get involved in the world, and they’re wrong, but we don’t have time. We’re going to get into that next message.
14:07 Tune in next time as we get to part three of this four-part message on walking in the Spirit. I thank you so much for listening.
14:14 Take care. God bless, and amen.