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In this passage, Paul says in
verse 16, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the
lust of the flesh. For the lust for the flesh, lust
against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these
are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things
that you wish. So we'll look at these verses
tonight. And last week we kind of set the groundwork for this,
some background just to lay the ground for this understanding
of this passage. We talked about three underlying
assumptions. As believers, every Christian
must acknowledge that there is still yet in all of us remaining
corruption. We still have what Paul says,
the flesh. We're not to give in, we're not
to walk according to the flesh, but walk in the spirit and not
fulfill the lust of the flesh. The flesh is that fallen part
of us as a result of this fall of Adam. There is sin and our
flesh was under the dominion of sin, but as believers we're
a new creation and it no longer dominates us, but it still remains. So it does not dominate, it does
not rule, but it does remain. And we acknowledge that, we know
that in our own lives. And as we looked at the story
and the history of David, we see this even in him, in the
great king of Israel, that he, in chapter 24 of 1 Samuel, did
well when he did not kill the Lord's anointed. Though he may
have been tempted to do so, he did not give in to his flesh.
But we find him in the very next chapter that he does give in
to this flesh, or at least he's pursuing this when he is going
to kill Nabal. And God arrest him in his steps
in that process. And so we have to acknowledge
the reality of remaining corruption in us. It's close at hand. It's crouching at the door. every
day of our life. And then every Christian is indwelt
by the Spirit of God. Paul says in Romans 8, 9, if
any man be in Christ, or if any man have not the Spirit of Christ,
he is none of his. So every believer is someone
who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. This is a wonderful gift
that God has given to us, the indwelling presence of the Holy
Spirit. And this is what is in view here,
that he has come to dwell within us. And therefore, Paul is calling
us to walk in this spirit who lives within us. And then the
third assumption is that every Christian's life will manifest
the presence of the Holy Spirit. this third person of the Godhead
who lives within the lives of his people. will live there and
he will not go unnoticed. He is there to bring about changes
in the life of every believer. And so his powerful presence
will be manifested in the lives of those who have been born of
God. They've been born of the spirit, they're indwelt by the
spirit, and the spirit is at work in them to conform them
to the image and the likeness of Christ. Here in verse 16,
we are given what we might call a hope-filled command. It's a hope-filled command to
walk in the Spirit walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill
the lust of the flesh. So we have this remaining corruption
that is in us, but here's a command, walk in the spirit and you will
not fulfill. You will not fulfill. You will
not give into this remaining corruption that is in you. And this is a command. It is a present tense command.
24-7 we are called to walk in the spirit. So this is a responsibility
that is given to the believer. And the idea is that walking
is talking about a course of life, the way in which we live
our life. 1 John 2, 6 says that if we say
that we abide in Christ, we ought to walk as he walked. And this
is what the spirit is at work in the life of the believer to
bring them to become more like Christ. We have been predestined,
Paul says, to be conformed to the image and the likeness of
Christ. So the spirit has come to dwell
within us to bring about this transformation more and more
where we are being conformed to the image and the likeness
of Christ. So he is leading in that direction. He is energizing and empowering
us to live in that way. Howard Voss said, to walk by
the spirit is to allow the spirit to be the governing principle
in one's life. If the believer permits the spirit
to control, he will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now there
is mystery here. I think for all of us to think
that the third member of the Godhead dwells within us, And
he is there to guide and direct us. I hope that we can all say
I've known of his work in my life. I know of the convicting
nature of the spirit to convict me of sin. Turn if you will to
Romans 8. I think this is a helpful passage
as we think of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Romans chapter
8 and verse 12. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors,
not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. Back in chapter
six, he says there that sin shall no longer have dominion over
you. You have the Spirit of God now.
So verse 13, for if you live according to the flesh, you will
die. This again is a present tense.
If one's life is characterized by living according to the flesh,
you will die. And the idea is, I think here,
eternally you will die. But if by the Spirit you are
You are you are I've got this underline nice Scratch out the
word. I can't read it and if any of
you are And if by the Spirit you are,
is it putting to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. So here is another present tense.
If by the Spirit of God, this is characteristic of your life,
that you are putting to death the deeds of the flesh, you are
doing battle against the flesh, then you will live, you will
live eternally. And then verse 14, for as many
as are being led, again a present tense, as many as are being led
by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. So here is what
the Spirit is doing. He is leading the people of God. This is an indication that they
are a child of God. and he is leading them. And so
here is the call that Paul gives that we are to walk in the spirit. We are to walk under the governance
of the Holy Spirit who lives within us. And how does the Holy
Spirit primarily work in the life of a believer? It is through
his word, your word, I've hidden my heart that I might not sin
against you. And it is the spirit who takes
the word of God and applies it to our hearts. It is the means
by which he does this work in us. So he convicts us of sin,
he leads us in the paths of righteousness and various other things. He
brings about illumination, but it's tightly connected to the
Word of God. And so here is this wonderful
command, walk in the Spirit. And it talks again about the
course of one's life. In day-to-day life, walk, be
controlled by the Holy Spirit, and then we're given this wonderful
promise. In fact, we could call it an
ironclad promise. And you shall not fulfill the
lust of the flesh. you will not fulfill. So as you
walk in the spirit, here is hope for the believer that they will
not fulfill the lust of the flesh, the remaining corruption that
is in them. And I think as believers, we
recognize, we're painfully aware that there is this power of our
flesh. Just as David felt it and knew
it, we know it as well. And it can be a very strong influence
in our life. We feel the pull of it day by
day. So this is no small force that
is still in us, this remaining corruption. It is a formidable
foe. And I think Paul talks about
that in Romans 7, There's this battle going on within him that
he wants to do what is good, but at the same time, there's
another law, another principle that is in him that is drawing
him away. And it's the principle of sin
to do what is displeasing and dishonoring to the Lord. But
here's this command, and here is the means by which we overcome
that. It is by walking in the spirit. And so Paul gives us encouragement
here. There is hope for us. We don't
need to live in despair or discouragement thinking that I cannot overcome
remaining sin. No, God has provided a means
so that we can and we're called to walk in the Spirit. And he gives the grounds for
this in verse 17. Four, the flesh lusts against
the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary
to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the spirit,
you are not under the law. So here's the spirit who's been
given to us. And Paul, I think, gives us here
a picture into the window of the heart of every believer. There is this conflict that is
going on. There is this battle, what we
might say this irreconcilable conflict in the heart of the
believer. The spirit is lusting against
the flesh and the flesh against the spirit. So here are these
combatants, if you will, that are going on inside of us. There
is the flesh. this unredeemed flesh, this remaining
corruption that is in us. And then there is the Spirit,
the Holy Spirit. We have been given a new heart,
we've been given new affections by the grace of God, but we have
also been given the Holy Spirit. And I think this is the Spirit
that is being referred to, the Holy Spirit here in us. And so these are the combatants. And we notice that this conflict
is intense. It is an intense conflict. The flesh lusts against the spirit
and the spirit against the flesh. So the lust, the flesh lusts
against the spirit. This is a word that has this
idea of a passionate desire, epithumia. It can be used in
a positive way or a negative way in the Bible, but it speaks
about strong desires. that are in the hearts of people. It could be used in a positive
way where Paul said this in Philippians 1, I am hard pressed between
the two, having a desire, here's that word, I have this strong
desire to depart and be with the Lord. to be with Christ,
which is far better. So it is used there in a positive
sense. And sometimes it's used in a
negative sense, in a lust, an inordinate desire, a burning
passion that is sinful by nature. burning in kind of a sensual
way. And it is used here in verse
17 that it is the flesh that has the strong desires against
the spirit and the spirit, the same strong desires against the
flesh. The ESV translates this, the
desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of
the spirit are against the flesh. So here's that conflict that
is within us, remaining corruption, and the spirit of God that is
there. And there is this ongoing battle inside of us. And Paul says here, he amplifies
it, that these are contrary to one another. They're opposed
to one another. They're against one another.
The word that is used here is a word that is often used in
a legal context. When you think about a courtroom,
you have a defense and a prosecutor, and these two are against one
another. They are adversaries. It's even
used of Satan, who is our adversary. He's the adversary of God, and
he's the adversary of God's people. And so Paul says, these things
are contrary, the spirit and the remaining corruption, our
flesh, these are contrary to one another. There's never going
to be a peace. There's this ongoing battle that
is going on in the heart of the child of God. They are antagonistic
towards one another. They cannot peacefully coexist. And so we also see here that
the duration of this conflict is that this is an ongoing thing. Again, in verse 17, these are
present tense verbs. The flesh is continually lusting
against the spirit, opposing the spirit, and the spirit is
continually opposing the flesh. So again, this is an ongoing
conflict. The spirit will never surrender,
the spirit will never quit, nor will the flesh. The flesh will
always remain with us this side of heaven. It may be a little
discouraging to think about that. I think we do make progress where
the flesh is not as strong, but it will remain. And there will
be this ongoing conflict that we'll never see. So we see here,
this is an irreconcilable conflict that goes on in every believer. But again, the good news with
regard to this conflict is that the spirit is at work in us to
bring about victory over the flesh so that it will not rule,
it will not dominate We have been given new life in the Spirit
and He lives within us. In Ephesians 2, it's just over
the page of my Bible, but these familiar verses to us in Ephesians
2, Paul is saying there that we once, verse 2, walked according
to the course of this world. We walked according to the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons
of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves
in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath. He says, this
is the way we once walked. This is how we live. We were
under the dominion of sin in our life. But it is the spirit
who brings about a new power. We see these words also in Titus
3, 3. We ourselves also, once foolish,
disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures,
living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. Paul
says that's the way we used to walk and live. And this flesh
was undisturbed and it had dominion. And we were willing servants
of our flesh, indulging in our flesh. This is how we formerly
lived and left to ourselves. We would have been happy and
contented to remain there. But no more. God has brought
about a new creation. He has brought about a new heart
and new affections. John Owen said, the dominion
of sin is present when sin exercises control over the will of a man
with no opposition from another principle. And that's the way
we were as fallen in Adam. There was not another opposition
against this principle of our flesh, but now, There's a new
power. There is something radically
different. It is the Spirit of God who has
come to reside within us, who is doing battle against remaining
sin that is in us. And the result is this, Paul
says here in verse 17, so that you do not do the things that
you wish. You do not do the things that
you wish. And I think he's referring here
to the flesh. Formally, the flesh did as...
as it wanted, it had dominion. And here he says, this is no
longer true. It no longer has the dominion. And you cannot do the things
that you wish, that your flesh wishes to bring about. Everett
Harrison said, behind the spirit's resistance to the flesh, is the
divine purpose that believers should be kept from doing things
they otherwise would do. Behind the Spirit's resistance
to the flesh is the divine purpose that believers should be kept
from doing the things that they otherwise would do. And again, is this not encouragement
for us as we live right in the midst of a fallen, broken world
where we find remaining corruption in us Here is an encouragement,
walk in the spirit and know that the spirit is at work in you
to counter and go against the remaining corruption. And so
he has been given to you so that you no longer will do the things
that one time you did and has given you the power to do that.
Now, how does the spirit bring this about? The spirit brings
this about as a result of a superior power to bear on our sinful flesh. These powers within us are not
equal. There is our flesh and it is
strong, but there is the Holy Spirit of God who lives within
us that is a superior power. 2 Corinthians 3.17 Paul says,
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. There is liberty. There's this
freedom that Christ has brought for us by giving us the Spirit
and we have freedom to now live differently. The flesh is not
able to overpower the spirit. So walk in the spirit and you
will not fulfill the desires of the flesh, the remaining corruption
that is in us. So no one as a Christian can
ever say, well, I was walking in the spirit, but my flesh was
more powerful. No, if you walk in the spirit,
you will not fulfill the lust of your flesh. Again, greater
is he, John says, that is in you than he that is in the world. Let me quote from John Brown. This was, I think, Spurgeon's
favorite commentator. He said this, here is the reason
the flesh cannot go on having dominion. A greater power has
come to bear on the Christian. Since the spirit contends against
the flesh, he cannot do what, but for this opposite influence,
he would be wholly inclined to do. The spirit brings new thinking
and affections. And though he still has his fleshly
desires and inclinations, he cannot fulfill them. He feels
not a natural, but a moral impossibility of fulfilling them. And he sets
himself to mortify, crucify, and destroy them. So here's this
conflict. Here's the struggle, this irreconcilable
conflict. And here's the solution to it.
Walk in the spirit, the all-powerful spirit who lives within you,
and you will not fulfill the lust of your flesh. I've always appreciated an illustration
that Mark Webb gave in his sermon as he spoke about this passage
of scripture. And he used the illustration
of flight When you think about these huge planes that are going
over our heads here at church day by day, you look up and you
see this massive hunk of metal up there in the sky. And it's
like, how in the world does that thing fly? Does it fly because
the law of gravity has been negated or is no longer in existence? No. The law of gravity is very
much in existence, is it? The law of gravity says. Everything
is going to fall. If I just let this Bible go,
it's going to fall. And so it is with the law of
gravity. It's going to press things down, not allow things
to go up. So how does it overcome gravity? Well, Mark goes on to explain
that the law of gravity hasn't been abolished. It's still there
and it's still active. But there's another law, a greater
law, a greater principle that overcomes the law of gravity. And that is called what? The
law of aerodynamics. law of aerodynamic lift. That if you have enough speed
and you have a wing and curvature that it'll eventually get off
the ground. Brian worked for many years with
those jet engines as well as some others. And when you get
enough speed going and you got the right curvature on the wing,
it creates this aerodynamic lift and this big hunk of metal with
all the people and all the luggage lifts up and flies. And as we
think about the work of the spirit of God within us, here is a superior
power that is at work in the life of the believer. John Owen
said, sin will have dominion and control of the will of man
unless there is opposition from another principle, another power,
another law. And that is the power of the
gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of God's
people. And so here is this law, the
law of the work and the ministry of the Spirit of God that is
able to overcome this power of the sinful flesh. And as we think
about that, There is what Thomas Chalmers called, there is the
expulsive power of a new affection. How does this come about that
a believer will choose what is good and right over his flesh
that is trying to get him to do what is wrong? Well, there
is a superior affection, a superior power that is at work to bring
this about. So the Holy Spirit tells us to
say no to sin, but there's something more that the Spirit of God does.
He gives us a greater affection for something far greater than
the love of sin. Chalmers said this, he was a
Scottish pastor, died in, I think, about 1847. And he was well-known
for this sermon and this book that was written, The Expulsive
Power of a New Affection. He said, it is not enough to
understand the worthlessness of the world and of the flesh
One must value the worth of the things of God. We know of no
other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our
hearts than to keep in our hearts the love of God. And no other
way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God than by building
ourselves up in the most holy faith. And so what the spirit
does is to bring about a surpassing new affection for the things
of God, a love for God, a love for Christ, a love for the gospel. And it is this new affection
that will drive out or expel those old affections of the flesh,
because there's a greater love. You think about Joseph. You remember
the account when Potiphar's wife was tempting him. And it says
that Joseph would not give in. And this went on for a period
of time. He would not give in to her.
Do you remember what his response was to her when she grabbed him
by the robe and was gonna seek to force him to stay and to come
and lie with him? What did he say? How can I, what,
do this great sin and sin against my God? He had a greater love,
a greater affection for God than for his own flesh, his own, I'm
sure, temptation of his flesh. I want to please God. And then
there was Moses, turn, if you will, to Hebrews 11. Hebrews
11, we see the same thing in the man Moses. Hebrews chapter
11 in the hall of faith, we see there Moses. And you remember
he was raised in Pharaoh's court. He was the adopted son of Pharaoh.
He was living life in the fast lane. But we read in verse 24
that by faith Moses, when he had become of age, he refused
to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to
suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing
pleasures of sin. What would make a young man do
this? to give up all the riches of
Pharaoh's home and all the things that he enjoyed and then identify
himself with slaves and to suffer affliction with them, well, We
read in verse 26, he was esteeming the reproach of Christ as greater
riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked to the reward. Here are new affections. They
are affections that override these other affections in his
life, and he seeks to live in obedience to God. Augustine was
one who experienced this as well. He was a very promiscuous man and he really
lived a sensuous life. But when he was converted, he
made this comment that God gives us so much pleasure in himself,
so much joy in himself that we triumph over the pleasures of
sin. And so here is the Spirit of
God who works in the lives of believers to give new affections,
new desires. for Christ, for love for God,
and a love for the gospel that we are able to triumph over sin. And this is an ongoing battle,
isn't it? We, day by day, are called to
this. Walk in the Spirit. Be led by
the Spirit. Be energized by the Spirit, controlled
by the Spirit. as he leads you and guides you
and you will not fulfill the lust of your flesh. May God help
us that we would so live day by day. Any thoughts as we close? Paul tells us to fight the good
fight of faith. It is a good fight and may we
fight. Let's stand and we'll be dismissed
with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you tonight
for your saving grace that saves us from hell, but also your sanctifying
grace that saves us from the dominion, the power, the love
of sin. We thank you for your spirit
who has taken residency in our lives. We have become the very
temple of the Holy Spirit. We thank you that he is there
to lead us, to guide us, to illuminate us, to chastise us, to take the
things of Christ and show them unto us. And Lord, we pray that
you will enable us that we, by your grace, by your spirit, may
walk in the spirit and not give in to the desires of our flesh. May we fight the good fight of
faith. Bless us as we enter into this new week. And I pray this
in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Lord bless all of you. Hope you have a good week. You
are dismissed.
Galatians 5:14
| Sermon ID | 1210243137940 |
| Duration | 33:33 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Galatians 5:14 |
| Language | English |
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