Well, happy Sunday everybody. Turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 5. We're going to learn something very interesting today. We're going to learn about walking according to the Spirit. Last week, we looked at Romans Chapter 8. And if you take any notes on the sermon, you'll want to note Romans Chapter 8, because from Romans Chapter 8 last week, we saw that we either walk according to the Spirit or we walk according to the flesh. See, we're exploring our identity in Christ. And as we explore our identity in Christ, we began by asking the question, who we are? Who are we in Jesus Christ? We looked at the inheritances that we got from creation and from sin. And we looked at the fact that when we become children of God, we are forever different. And then we looked at the importance of seeing ourselves for who we really are in Jesus Christ. And then last week we looked at something old and something new within us. There's the old flesh, but the old man is gone. The old man is dead and buried. Crucified with Christ is what we learned. And a new man is what has come into being by the Spirit of God. We have received new life. We are indeed new creations. But yet the flesh remains. And the flesh, that being our mind, And our will and our emotions, all those things are strongly imprinted by the old man. So the old man has left his mark on our minds. And that shows itself in our habits, that shows itself in our will, and that shows itself in our emotions. And we saw that even aside from the spiritual influences outside of us, and the negative influences that are in the world, We have influences within ourselves that battle against our new spirit for control. And so this battle between the flesh and the spirit is what we're expounding on today. And we want to find that we can walk according to the spirit, that we can walk according to the spirit. And we're going to look today at what walking according to the spirit is, because I'll be honest with you, I can't tell you how to walk according to the spirit. It's difficult. It's different. I can't tell you how to walk according to the Spirit any more than I can tell you how to be married to your spouse. Because that depends. That depends on who you are. That depends on who your spouse is. It depends on how you interact and how you get along with one another and what your strengths and weaknesses are. See, it's individual matter. No two marriages are the same and no two walks with Christ are the same. And so we can't prescribe for you a routine of how to walk in the Spirit, because frankly, if we did, would it really be walking according to the Spirit? Or would you be walking according to some formula that someone's made up that maybe worked for them, but might not work for you? And so we're going to, rather than to try to tell you how to walk according to the Spirit, we're going to tell you what walking according to the Spirit is. And here's what we're going to find out. We're going to find out that it is liberty. It's not license and it's not legalism. It's liberty. We're going to find out that walking according to the Spirit is active and not passive. We're going to find out that walking according to the Spirit is walking and not running. We're going to find out that walking according to the Spirit is following, not leading. And we're going to find out that walking according to the Spirit is proven by its fruit. It's proven by its fruit. So we're going to look here and we're going to start in Galatians chapter 5, verses 16 through 25. And we're going to find out there's not a particular formula for this, but it's relationship. Here's what it says. It says, But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let's pray. Father God, it's our earnest prayer this day that the meaning of these verses and the other verses that we'll discuss will leave an impression on our mind. and that it will begin to erase away some of those old impressions there. And Lord, we pray that you will guide us and you will help us to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. Lord, it's our earnest prayer this day that in doing so we glorify you and we show by the fruits of the Spirit the work of God happening inside of us. In Jesus' name, Amen. So we are to walk according to the spirit. The first thing we want to note here is that it's liberty. It's liberty. Look at verse 18. It says, if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. You are not under the law. He's writing the book of Galatians to predominantly Jewish believers, and he's writing it for this reason. People were coming around to him after Paul had already visited them. and preach the truth of the gospel and they accepted Jesus Christ and everything else. They received the Holy Spirit. They had magnificent things happening in their church. Then other teachers came along and said, oh yeah, this faith in Christ stuff, this is great, but you still have to follow the law. All you Gentiles among you, you're all going to have to get circumcised. All of you are going to have to follow all the laws that are there in the first five books of the scriptures there. And that's what you're going to have to do. So I want you to get about doing all those things right now. And Paul's writing this letter to them saying, no, no, no, no, look, you were saved. And what was started with the spirit, are you now going to finish it with the flesh by following all these rules? And he explains them the importance of the law and the benefits of the law. But then he steps back and says, look, you're not under the law. You're under the law of Christ, which is entirely different. And so he's explaining this to them throughout this letter, and it's an incredible letter that you really need to read, particularly if you come from a legalistic background. This is a critical letter to understand and read. It is my prescription to those who have come to the Christian faith out of some other faith that is works-based, which indeed, most of them are. It's liberty. It's real freedom in Christ, and here's the real freedom. Okay? Because someone would ask, well, what does that mean? We have no rules? No, it's not really what it means. It means we have the ability to choose to live responsibly within the context of the protective guidelines God has established for our lives. Every law that God has given is for our protection. Every law that God has given is for our protection. But now in Christ we have the freedom to follow those things and we're no longer a slave to sin. And we're no longer a slave to the law to define what's good. We have a companion. We have a relationship with a loving father that can walk with us and guide us. Rather than us to consult a book of rules and try by a rigid gritting of our teeth and clenching of our fists to obey them. Decision making. is no longer in a Christian's life consulting a rule book, but walking with the Lord through each and every decision. Listen how Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians. He says this in chapter 3 in 2 Corinthians. He says, we are servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. And when he says the letter, he's talking about the law. He says, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. There it is, liberty, freedom. It's liberty to be led by the Spirit. We are not under the law. But it's not to be confused with having a license to do whatever you please. Raise your hand if you remember the buggy ride at Kings Island where you drive the old-fashioned cars around the track Anybody remember that or am I the only one? And you're a kid because you're all excited because I really get to drive a car and it's got a gas pedal and a steering wheel and I get to drive the car around the track but there's a difference there isn't it? See, it has a rail down the middle of the road and if you turn one way you'll turn a little bit but you'll bump into that rail and then you turn the other way and you bump into that rail and you're turning back and forth And it's fun to watch your kids on there because just for fun they'll go like this. And mom or dad are sitting next to them looking like a rag doll tossed back and forth. You know, the kids giggling and having fun and mom and dad are going on my back, you know. But they can't go off the road no matter how hard they try. They bump into the rail, back and forth, back and forth, bumping into the rail. But you ever notice the older kids that get on the ride, they've been on the ride before, and what do they do? They try to drive around the whole course. without bumping the rail. You ever try that? And you're trying to drive so that you don't bump the rail. You want to show what a good driver you are and you're driving and here comes a turn and you're concentrating trying to drive it so it doesn't bump into the rail because you want to be the one to do it. You want to be the one to steer it without the help of the rail. Being a believer and having liberty in Christ is a bit like taking the rail off. Okay? There's no longer that thing to bump into and you're free. You're free to drive how you want to drive. But there are consequences going off the road, aren't there? It's a bad day for that analogy, isn't it? Rachel and Connor drove off the road. There are consequences when you go off the road. You know, someone could get hurt. See, I'm free to rob a bank. I'm free to rob a bank. As a Christian, I can do that. I can go out today and decide I'm going to rob a bank. Now, I'm not free of the consequences, am I? Because I'll spend the rest of my life running from that act or paying for that act in one way or another. I'm also free to lie. But if I lie, don't I have to lie again and again and often have to lie to cover up the lie and to back up the lie and pretty soon life is a lie because you told a lie. I'm free to take drugs. I can do that. God's sovereign hand is not going to come down and lock me in place when I'm thinking about it. But I'm not free from the consequences of it, am I? Or anything else for that matter. And you can use any of the things on the list there of the works of the flesh there in Galatians. We're free, but we're not free from the results of these things. See, using liberty to sin puts us right back to being slaves to sin again. Paul says in the book of Romans, look, you're not slaves to sin anymore. You're slaves to God, which is far better. He's a far better master. You're not slaves to sin anymore. I love the Bob Dylan song. Bob Dylan got saved. Did you know that? And he wrote an album called Saved. And it's a really fantastic album. And one of the songs on that album is called You Gotta Serve Somebody. And that one actually hit the charts. And, you know, it was, you've got to serve somebody. Who are you going to serve? Are you going to serve sin? Are you going to serve God? It's your choice. All the laws of God are for our benefit. They are all protective in their nature. And so while being led by the Spirit is total liberty, it is not a license to behave however we want. Now, on the other hand, it's also not legalism. It's not legalism. It's liberty. And legalism is the other extreme of taking it as a license to do whatever you want. Legalism is adhering very stringently to a set of new rules. Well, that's not walking according to the Spirit. As a matter of fact, that often kills the Spirit, is walking to a set of rules. It's interesting, as I was reading a book by Mr. Anderson called Victory Over the Darkness, He says in the book that he was once speaking to a class, a theology class at a Catholic school, and one of the children asked him, and they said to him, does your church have a lot of rules? And he said, well, you mean, does it have a lot of do's and don'ts? And he goes, yeah. And he goes, what you're really asking me is, are we free? And he goes, well, yes, we're free. He says, yes, we're free, but we're not free from the consequences of our actions. We're not free from bringing insult to the name of Christ when we behave in a bad way. We're not free from hurting others by our sins. And he goes, but we're absolutely free how we're going to act. But it's not legalism. We don't need a long list of rules because that often kills the spirit. I can't tell you how many times I've experienced, and I seem to experience this more with people who go to very legalistic churches where they've got a bunch of rules about how they're supposed to look and how they're supposed to act and how they're supposed to worship. And if they have this long list of rules that determines their appearance and determines what kind of things they do and what kind of places they're seen and things like that, the focus then begins to be on following the rules. And time and time again I will see someone who's involved in one of these very legalistic type of religions act like an idiot. Why? Well, because their focus is not on their behavior moment to moment, their focus is on whether they follow the rules. And they go, OK, well, I've got my house the way it should be and I've got my clothes the way they should be. And I've got my church attendance and my tithing the way it should be. And then they're faced with a situation one day where someone offends them in some way and they just blow up at them. All kinds of ungodliness spews forth out of their mouth. Why? Because that's not a rule. They forgot to make that rule. But Jesus didn't. He said, love your neighbor as yourself. And so they'll stomp all over the big rules when they're trying to obey all the little ones. It is not legalism to walk in the spirit. To walk in the spirit is not to rigidly adhere to a bunch of rules, but it is to be in relationship with someone, the Lord Jesus Christ. You're walking with him. The law is a curse, according to Paul in Galatians 3, and it's unable to give life. It's unable to yield life to you. And making laws doesn't empower obedience. It simply serves as an additional temptation. And even the laws that we have, the unwritten laws we have in the Baptist church and even in our own church here. You know, I get up here every week and the conclusion of every sermon is pretty much the same. Read your Bible and pray. But even those can become rigid laws if we're not careful, not part of our walk with the Spirit. Are laws bad? Well, no. Again, they're protective. They set a standard. They can be a guideline. They can help keep our focus. But it's within the law that we are free to nurture this spirit-to-spirit relationship with God and it's the essence of walking according to the Spirit. So, walking according to the Spirit is liberty. It's not license and it's not legalism. The next thing we want to understand about walking according to the Spirit is it's active and not passive. Look at the command. Yeah, look at the command he gives in 25 there. He says, if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Who's doing the walking? We are. It's an active verb. That means we're the ones doing the action. We're not receiving it. We're not being walked like a dog. We are walking. There's a great difference, right? We are not being walked. We are not sitting, waiting for someone to walk for us. We are not paying the preacher to walk for us. We are walking according to the Spirit. It's not putting our mind in neutral and just coasting along with what's going on. And it's certainly not being towed. It's not sitting back and waiting for God to do everything. The mere fact that Paul uses this language to describe our relationship with God means that we are proactively involved in that relationship. We are walking with the Spirit. And next thing I want to point out is that it is walking and not running. See, this proactive nature of walking doesn't mean that we do everything that we conceive to do. One of the most difficult parts about the Christian life is deciding what to do and what not to do when they are good things. Sometimes we have trouble saying, OK, I've got this good thing I can do and this good thing I can do and this good thing I can do. OK, I'll do them. But sometimes we need to be walking with the Spirit. God might have someone else for that task. And what that task might be, maybe you can't conceive that anybody's going to get it done. But let me tell you, if God doesn't want you to do it, it's not worth doing, even if it's good. See, that's the problem is many people have exchanged God's best for God's better. Well, it's better for me if I do this. Well, yeah, it might be better, but is that what is best? You get what I'm saying here? We need to be careful. Not to confuse doing God's business with busyness. There's a difference in the two words, in addition to the spelling of the two words. Right, Matt? We had those two words this year. It's like we did? Thinking that doing large quantities of exhausting work for God makes us more spiritual, we think. Sometimes we think that if I have a good long list of things I'm doing for God every week, then I am a good spiritual person. Guess what? We're making a law. We need to be careful. It's often a trap of Satan. Often he'll get us busy with a whole bunch of little things so we're not toying the big things. And he'll get us busy with so many activities in church that we don't have an hour to sit down with a friend who desperately needs to know the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's a trap that he'll set for us, and very often we walk into it. See, it's walking, not running. And specifically, it is walking in step with Jesus himself. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 11, verses 28 to 30. He says, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Now, I always thought about this, that when we go to Jesus, we have a yoke. We're carrying around this burden of sin, which is so well illustrated in the book, The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan. It's so perfectly illustrated that he's got this great burden on his back, and he's walking through everything he's going through with this great burden. It's making his life difficult. And when he gets to the cross of Jesus Christ and realizes what it means, the burden falls off. And Jesus says, you know, look, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. So I always thought you exchanged your burden for another yoke that Jesus gives you, but it's a light one and it's a good one. But I want to point out a little word there. And he says, take my yoke upon you. It's Jesus yoke. And if it's called Jesus yoke, that means that's the yoke that he has on him and he's asking you to put it upon you. Well, how can it be both on him and on you unless you are yoked together? It's not that you're exchanging your burdens for another burden to carry. You're exchanging your burden to be yoked together with Jesus Christ in the work of God. Think about that. Let that sink in a moment. It's a restful walk in tandem with the Lord Jesus. So that's how it can be light. He carries the burden. He carries the load. And if we pull too hard and we pull harder than he's pulling, and we try to go faster than he's going, the yoke will give us pain and it will chafe against us. See, animals that are paired together under a yoke, if one is trying to pull and the other one is not, they will both be miserable. It's light. He carries the majority of the load. He's done the work necessary for salvation. He's done all of that. And now he's on a walk with us. And notice that also slacking off will get you dragged along. And that's not comfortable either. And so the goal here is to be in step with him. It's learning his pace, it's learning his habits, it's learning his direction that he's going. And nothing happens without cooperation. Okay. If Jesus wasn't on his side of this yoke, it won't get pulled. If you weren't on your side of the yoke, it won't get pulled. There are some things that only he can do. There are some things that only you are given responsibility to do. And it takes working together. It's a cooperation. It's a relationship. Have you ever seen two people work together and they're so in sync? You know, you see this a lot in athletics. And you see it a lot, you know, I like to watch the figure skating and you say, well, that's kind of fruity, isn't it? No, I think it's neat, you know. I don't like the interpretive dance and all that stuff. I like the jumps. I like the spins. I like when the guy grabs a woman and just throws her up in the air and it's like, how did he do that? And then he catches her. You know, and I think, wow, that's really cool. That's acrobatic. Can they do that without being perfectly in step and in sync together? No. They have to work together. We have to work together with our Lord. It's a beautiful thing when we do. It's walking and not running, and it's walking in step with the Lord Jesus Christ. Another thing we notice about it is it's following, not leading. In Romans 8.14, it indicates the fact that only the sons of God are the ones who are led by the Spirit of God. And that means we're led by the Spirit. We don't try to lead the Spirit. We don't try to use the Spirit to our advantage. It's popular in many churches today to emphasize the role of the Holy Spirit, which the role of the Holy Spirit is important, and indeed, it's under-emphasized in most churches. But some churches over-emphasize the Holy Spirit to the point where they've got the Holy Spirit like it's this tool at your beck and call to do whatever you want to do. But it's not. See, we're to be led by the Spirit of God. And the Spirit of God is what determines what direction we go in and how fast we go in that direction. See, the Great Shepherd illustration is really lost on the Western mentality. When God inspired the psalmist to write down Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Everyone know that one? Okay. When he inspired the psalmist to write that. And when Jesus came along preaching and he indeed said, I'm the great shepherd, he was saying it to a culture and he was saying it to a place that had a different way of dealing with sheep. We're likely to put up electric fences and send a couple of dogs out there to chase the sheep where we want them to go. But it wasn't like that in the ancient world, at least in the eastern world. In the east, what they did was they led their sheep. They trained their sheep to know their voice. They trained their sheep to follow them. And they would stop in a pasture for a while and they'd want the sheep to eat. So what would they do? They'd stop. What would sheep normally do when they're stopped? They'll eat. And then when he decided they had enough to eat, because if you don't move along, sheep will just keep eating and keep eating, the shepherd would get up, he'd say a couple words to his sheep and he'd walk off and they would follow him. And it's an amazing thing. You still see it to this day. The nomadic Bedouins who live in that area in Arabia and in the Middle East and stuff that lead their sheep around. They don't drive them to and fro. They walk and the sheep follow. Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. He leads them to lie down in green pastures. It's always him in the lead. See, God will not force you to walk with him. And the devil cannot force you to walk with him because you're a child of God. The spirit leads and we follow. Now, finally, walking according to the spirit is proven by its fruit. And that seems to be the main thrust of this, this piece here in Galatians. How do we know we're on the right track? Well, you look at the fruit. If your life is described by those things that appear in verses 19 through 21, all kinds of ungodliness, all kinds of envy and strife and just bad things, well then you're obviously not being led by the Spirit. You're obviously not walking according to the Spirit. But if you're walking according to the Spirit, what will be the result? The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Two fantastic memory verses that you should add to your list. So the fruit of the Spirit teaches us when we're on track. Now, we can't look at that list of stuff in verses 19 through 21 without recognizing, okay, that sometimes, yes, and me strife in my life, sometimes I make mistakes, sometimes I have the wrong kind of thoughts, things like that. What do I do? If any part of this is a formula, it's simply this. Admit it and correct it. When we get out of step with the Spirit, what do we do? How do we walk according to the Spirit? The way we walk according to the Spirit is the very moment that we find ourselves out of step, we get back in step. By confessing it first of all to God, and straightening it out with Him, but then confessing it to anyone it has affected. Now this is important. Because if you have sinful thoughts, or you have doubt, or you have lack of faith, or you have anger, or you have anything like that, who do you need to apologize to? Only God. You only need to confess it to God. You don't need to confess that to people. You haven't hurt anybody that way. But if you've wronged a person, and if you've said something you shouldn't have said to somebody, you need to go make it right with that person. You don't need to stand in front of the congregation and tell everybody about the horrible thing you did to so-and-so. Just between God and whoever's affected, we correct it moment by moment, day by day. Right, Dylan? Moment by moment, day by day, we admit, we confess, we agree with God. That's all confession means, is going to God and agreeing with Him that what you did was not the right thing to do. and repenting of it, turning from it then, and getting back in step. If you watch very closely, I love to watch the military on parade because it's an amazing thing to see a hundred people marching in step. That's just a powerful thing. You watch them marching in step. Every now and then you'll see somebody get off step and they will immediately correct. They don't all wait until we turn around next time and get back in step. No, they don't do that. They immediately shuffle their feet to get right back in step so that they don't get even further off as they go. We need to get day by day, moment by moment, confession and repentance, getting back in step with God. Open confession models the right kind of growth and it will testify to sinner and saint alike. How many times have you heard, raise your hand if you've ever heard someone say that some Christian folks are hypocrites? Yeah. You know, if you make a mistake, someone might say that about you. Someone might say that. Oh, look at that hypocrite. They say they're a Christian, but they did such and such. But, if you properly confess the wrong to all who were wronged and repent of it, They can't say that about you. Because then you've acknowledged that what you have done is inconsistent with the walk with Christ. And you've made it right with them. And you've gotten back on track. And that is the true Christian way. It demonstrates the love, the goodness, the kindness, the faithfulness, and self-control that's mentioned here as fruit of the Spirit. See, part of the fruit of the Spirit is going and correcting things when we are wrong. That's the goodness, and that's the kindness, and that's the self-control. Let's summarize by saying this. At salvation, we were given new natures. The old nature was done away with, and a new nature was put in its place. The Spirit of God was given to us. But the flesh remains. And the flesh and the spirit battle for control of our lives. And they battle daily, decision to decision, moment to moment. There's this battle. And we can have victory in two very important ways. The first one is walking by the spirit. Taking one day at a time so that we hear more clearly the spirit's cry than we do the cry of the flesh. And some people describe it like this. They say you've got two people inside you fighting for attention. The flesh and the spirit. And the one that wins is the one you feed. And that's not a bad way of looking at it. Walk according to the spirit and you feed the spirit and you'll starve the flesh. The flesh will be re-imprinted with the new nature and that walk will become easier and easier day by day. The other way to have victory is by renewing our minds. And that will become the topic of the next couple of sermons, two or three sermons will be about renewing our minds, because there the mind is the battlefield. You've got the flesh battling the spirit. Where are they battling? They're battling in our mind. But we can restructure the battlefield to favor the spirit. And we're going to talk about over the next few sermons, how do we do that? So as we come to a time of invitation, I want to ask you these very important questions. First of all, this sermon will mean nothing if you do not actually have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in you. This sermon will not mean a whole lot and it will not benefit you unless you actually have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in you. And the question is, how do I get that Holy Spirit of God dwelling in me? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Confess Him as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. And Paul says in Romans chapter 10, if you do those two things, you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and you confess Him as Lord, you will be saved. And it's at salvation that the old man is crucified and a new spirit is put inside you. And now you have something to work with. Because until that happens, you are fighting a losing battle. You have an old nature, and you have the flesh that's been imprinted upon it, and you have no one on your side inside here. And it's important that you wrestle with that, and that you consider, am I really one of those? Am I really one of those believers? Do I really have the Spirit of God inside me? It's the only chance to know that you're saved. Secondly, understand that you have two entities fighting within you. But understand this, believer. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you fight from a position of victory. The old self is dead. The old nature is gone. Only the flesh remains. And the flesh will be renewed. It will be renewed. Someday it will be done away with. But you fight from a position of victory. Jesus Christ has already done what it takes to make all that happen for you. Only you stand now on a battlefield in what we would call a cleanup offensive. The victory is basically won. Now it's up to you to get the stuff out of the land. So I invite you to come and pray if you need to pray to God. Are the altars always open? Let's pray. Father God, we praise you this day for your great work by your Spirit. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the sacrifice upon the cross that makes it possible for us to stand before you and receive your Spirit into us. For Father, until we have a new nature put in us by you, we cannot even receive instruction from you. We cannot receive your Spirit. Lord, we ask you this day to minister to us by your truth, to guide us by your Spirit, and indeed to help us walk by the Spirit day in and day out. Father, I pray for those here today that might not know the Spirit. I pray that you would give them the faith to respond to your call this day, and Lord, to lay aside their own desires, to lay aside their own burdens and give them to you, and take your burden upon them, which indeed is light, and to be yoked together with Christ in a new walk. Father, we ask you this day to minister this to each of us as we have been. In Jesus' name, amen.