-Transcript-
00:40 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:45 Welcome to the cafe. Great to have you here today. Hopefully you are doing great.
00:50 Having a wonderful day, a wonderful week. I thank you as always for tuning in and just enjoying our time here together. We’ve gone through here four messages.
01:00 This is our fourth message on walking in the Spirit so we don’t fulfill the lusts of the flesh. And as I’ve mentioned here, this is an issue every saved Christian faces every single day.
01:12 No matter how holy you are, you are still facing, matter of fact, if you’re trying to live holy, you’ll be facing more temptation than ever.
01:19 It’s not easy to be a Christian. Anyone that says it’s easy to be a Christian is not being honest. It is difficult because you’re being asked to do something you can’t do on your own.
01:34 You need the Holy Spirit living within you. And He, the Holy Spirit, say He, is the third part of the three-part Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
01:44 He’s not gonna force Himself on you. Amen. He’s not going to stop your hand every time you’re living in sin.
01:51 And so therefore you must saturate yourself in the ways of God. You must walk in the Spirit. What that means is to live as God intends for us to live, so that we don’t fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
02:04 Our text verse here, Galatians 5, starting in verse 16. This I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Verse 17.
02:17 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. But if you be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
02:31 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. Of the witch 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. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law.
03:06 And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.
03:21 And these last three or four verses is really what we’re gonna tackle here today on part four of this series of walking in the Spirit, so we don’t fulfill the desires, the lust of the flesh.
03:36 So I would say this, we know that Christ died for our sins, right? And that when we accept Christ as Savior, we’re born again. And here we see in verse 24, and they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
03:59 And so when we are Christ, we become Christ’s when we’re born again. Everyone is created by God, but not everyone is a child of God. The children of God are the ones that are born again.
04:17 So we are born the first time to a dead soul, right? We are born spiritually dead. We are born as the first Adam. We have this Adamic nature, which means that we are born without the Holy Spirit living within us.
04:22 How could we receive the Holy Spirit if we’re born with it? We’re not. We have to be born again. And to be born again, we have to realize our sin nature.
04:30 We have to realize that we have a sin problem that we can’t resolve, and that we, that Christ died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and three days later rose again miraculously by the power of God, walked the earth 40 days and 40 nights, and ascended up to heaven.
04:45 And today is at the right hand of the Father. We believe this to be truth.
04:50 We believe this to be the gospel. We believe that Christ died for our sin in particular. We understand that He died for us, that us being sinful, that price was paid on Calvary by Jesus Christ, who is the sinless spotless Lamb,
05:03 that He bought us with His blood, because there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood, the Bible tells us, and that Jesus Christ on the cross paid for our sin because He was sinless, born of a virgin, lived a perfect sinless life, 33 and a half years, never sinned.
05:21 Is that possible with man? No. Is it possible with God? Yes. The Bible tells us all things are possible with God, including sending Himself down through the person of Jesus Christ and living sinless for 33 and a half years to go and die for our sins.
05:35 And God poetically resolved the sin curse, broke the devil’s back on Calvary with death. God said, okay, here’s death, all right?
05:43 Death was brought in by sin, and death goes out through sinless, perfect Christ Himself. God Himself hung on the cross for you and for me.
05:54 And when we accept that free gift of salvation, it’s a very serious thing. We become Christ’s. We are no longer our own, amen. We are bought with the price, the Bible tells us.
06:07 Paul calls himself a prisoner of Christ, amen. If you look at the translation, I guess the literal translation and so forth from the manuscripts, it’s the idea is a bond servant or a bond slave, okay?
06:22 People say, oh, you know, you’re free to do whatever you want. Well, look, we’re no under the law. We’re no longer under the law, but we are possessed by God.
06:32 We are His possession. Now, that comes with a lot of wonderful promises, wonderful, beautiful promises, being heirs with, co-heirs with Christ, having access to God, being able to boldly approach the throne of grace, amen.
06:46 Having God’s grace and mercy on our life. There’s so many promises that come with being a bond slave to the Lord.
06:52 But there’s also responsibilities, and we are not to live as we would naturally want to live. That’s what the Bible’s telling us here. If you say, I wake up every day and I do what feels right, if you say that, then you have a big problem if you think you’re a Christian,
07:07 because God didn’t call us to live by what feels right or feels good, amen? It may feel good to go and eat four bags of popcorn, you know, that may taste delicious, but you’re making your body sick doing that.
07:15 It may feel good to go live in sin, amen? You pick the sin. The Bible says there’s pleasure in sin for a season, but the Bible also says the wages of sin is death.
07:29 And so in order to avoid falling into the sin trap, avoid backsliding, avoid a distance from God, avoid living for this world, avoid bringing shame and reproach to the one that died for you.
07:45 In order to avoid those things, we are to walk in the Spirit so we do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. And Jesus is our example. He was the first one to die to self.
07:55 Think about this. Jesus was obedient to the Father. Nobody would want to go to the cross, but Christ did.
08:00 He did, despite the agony that he felt in the Garden of Gethsemane, He went, amen? He did it. He fulfilled it. He was obedient unto death, amen? And so that’s our example, and that’s how we should be as we crucify the desires of the flesh.
08:13 We should say these are on the cross with Christ. We are no longer going to pursue these. You know well if you’ve been saved, the Holy Spirit, I’m sure, has convicted you of the sin in your life, and we are to bring it before God and confess that sin.
08:24 He’s faithful and just to forgive us that sin, and we are to no longer deal with that. We are no longer go around that.
08:32 I had a middle school coach that told us as young men, don’t go to this bad place where these bad ladies were hanging out if we didn’t want to have a problem.
08:44 And I’m giving you the g-rated version, but it was very effective for us young men that are hard-headed, don’t know anything going on, and he was saying here’s how you’re gonna protect yourself against falling into a problem.
08:59 Stay away from it. And then the other end of that was stay busy, right? And then the other end of that is stay busy doing something good.
09:04 Well that’s the worldly example, and the godly example, how much more so profound is that where we are to stay in the Word, stay living for the Lord, stay walking in the Spirit, so we won’t, again, if you’re walking in the Spirit you’re not going to be fulfilling the desires of the flesh.
09:17 I’m sure the flesh, if you were to take Christ as an example, would have wanted to wipe out his enemies, right? Would have wanted vengeance and all this stuff, but Christ did not do that. He was obedient.
09:30 He could have if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He was obedient. And I mentioned last episode when Christ was tempted of the devil in the garden, or excuse me, in the desert.
09:38 He was tempted of the devil in the desert three times. What did Christ do all three times? He quoted Scripture all three times, amen. And that is someone that is walking in the Spirit.
09:52 How can you quote Scripture back to the devil when you’re tempted if you don’t know Scripture, if you don’t study Scripture, if you’re not around the ways and the things of God?
10:08 You know, the Bible talks about the devil walking around like a lion looking who he might devour, amen? What’s the lion gonna go after? The most vulnerable prey, as I understand it.
10:14 What’s the most vulnerable prey? Those that are just willfully ignorant. You know, they’re spiritually anemic. They’re on the milk or nothing of the Word, amen?
10:18 And who are the ones that’s gonna make the devil quiver in his boots and shake in his boots? Those are the ones that are on fire for God.
10:22 Those are the ones that are reading the Scripture every day. Those are the ones that are studying the Scripture, studying what thus sayeth the Word of God. It’s our turn.
10:31 We are to suffer well. We are to crucify the desires of the flesh. And there’s no glory in quitting or giving in or chalking this up as okay.
10:40 This is not okay. This is a command from God in His Word that I feel compelled to preach about thoroughly because we are dealing with this. Everyone that’s been saved is dealing with this.
10:54 Not in a vacuum. We’re not dealing with like this, okay, the flesh is over here and the Spirit is over here. And which one are we gonna go with each day? We’re dealing with the world is sinful.
11:04 The world is wicked. The flesh is warring against the Spirit. And what are we gonna deal with? We’re living in a sinful world, amen? That is full of temptation, amen. Full of us having to, as Christians, depart from the unclean thing.
11:18 This is a temporary lifelong command. Now that may sound like an oxymoron, but a temporary lifelong command is what this is. In heaven, no sin will enter in.
11:28 So in eternity, we will not have to deal with this. So that’s your relief there. Hey, this is gonna have to go on forever.
11:34 This war is just going on for your life. And some people will say, wait a minute, isn’t that forever? No. Just your earthly life here, amen? It’s a temporary lifelong command.
11:44 Ignorance is not an excuse. God’s Word highlights this so boldly for a reason. He wants Christians to be aware, yet He won’t force it on them, amen. God gave His commandments for our good.
11:55 God gave the Sabbath for our good. God gave all of these things for our good. But He’s not gonna force them on us.
12:04 In fact, we’re not even justified by His laws. We’re justified by faith alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone. So we’re not justified by these things.
12:13 We don’t lose our salvation if we’re walking in the flesh, if we’ve been saved. God’s not a liar. He’s gonna keep His Word, amen? He’s giving us these things for our own good, for our own protection.
12:25 But yet Christians are guilty of this in droves, and they suffer so much unnecessarily because of it. My Bible tells me that we cannot have perfect peace unless our mind is constantly on the Lord.
12:38 How can we have our mind on the Lord if we have our mind on the ways and things of this world? As I understand it, the more that we’re living in sin, the further off from God we’re gonna get.
12:53 To bring God the glory, we must walk in the Spirit. That’s why we’re here, amen. And it’s a command. It’s a command.
12:56 I’ll read it again. This I say then, walk in the Spirit, capital S, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So we know that if we walk in the Spirit, if we trust the Lord,
13:05 if we live for the Lord, if we serve the Lord the best that we can—not perfectly, we’re not perfect, amen.—but we do our very best, and we’re hard on ourselves and a little bit easier on others, amen.
13:19 We’re just living as God calls us to live, then we won’t be prone to fulfill the lust of the flesh.
13:25 If you are praying all the time, and you’re in the Bible all the time, and you’re living for the Lord, you’re gonna know when sin is entering the picture. You’re gonna be more sensitive to it,
13:30 and you’re gonna know that you need to get rid of it and get away from it as quick as possible. And you’re gonna be able to serve the God of the Bible so much better by walking in the Spirit.
13:48 But it starts with knowledge, and it starts with getting in and studying His Word. How would we know this if we didn’t study the Word. We wouldn’t. That’s why we study the Word, so that we can grow as Christians and live victoriously in this life.
13:59 Live victoriously over sin by what Christ did for us, and understanding that it’s a battle even for the saved Christian until the Lord calls us home. I hope this was helpful for you. I thank you so much for listening.
14:10 Tune in next time as we get into more great spiritual truths from the Bible. Take care, God bless, and amen.