Father, it is good to be amongst your people this morning. And Lord, you know that we're going to study a passage this morning that is one that we've read and heard quite a bit. But Lord, it's also a passage that is very necessary in terms of how we live and how we walk and how we actually are Christians in this world. I don't pretend to be able to do this well, Lord. I ask for your help. I recognize that it's not me, Lord, that ultimately is going to speak, but that it's your speaking through your spirit. But Lord, we covet that this morning. We pray that not only would you give us understanding, Lord, but that you would give us desire, that you would birth faith. All of those things that you do that we're unable to do, we're asking for this morning. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. So our text is going to be Galatians 5 16 and forward. And I anticipate that there will be a need for us to slow down a bit here. So I don't know how far we're going to get because this is one of those passages that is one of those key things in terms of walking with Christ looking like a Christian and I say it that way, I think, because so much of the time in our world, being a Christian seems to come down to whether or not I've signed a card or prayed a prayer or something, whatever hoop, whatever group decides to have people jump through. But it is not that. Christianity begins because of the work of God's Spirit in our lives. I was going to take you through John 3, but I would encourage you to read that on your own for the sake of time. But you will remember that there was a man that came to Jesus by night, Nicodemus, and he said, we know that you're a teacher from God because nobody could do what you do unless he were a teacher from God. And Jesus tells Nicodemus, you won't enter the kingdom of God unless you're born again. This created questions in Nicodemus's mind. He said, how can a man enter his mother's womb a second time and be born again? And Jesus says, no, I'm not talking about that. You've got to be born of water and the spirit and of course we could talk about the water thing but that's not our issue now but you have to be born of the spirit and then he goes on to describe the spirit so it's like the wind you feel the effects and you see what it does but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes so is everyone that's born of the spirit. Read through that and it may help your understanding of the passage that we're going to deal with now. But one of the first things that I have to ask you before we even read our text this morning, and it's necessary sometimes to talk about these things, is do you care to begin with? I mean, to me, that somehow is really important, particularly when we come to matters of the scripture, and particularly when we start talking about how we live, is do you care to begin with? And that's a big thing, because if not, all of this is going to just be academic. It's not going to change anything. But if you live in that place where I live, where those things that I want to do, I don't do, and my flesh screams out to do all of the wrong things, and I can't control my mouth, and I can't control my attitudes as much as I want to control them. I have difficulty with lots of different things, and I hate all of it, and I wish it were different, and I see God changing it over time, not as quickly as I would like sometimes. But it is my great desire to be more like Christ and to be pleasing to Him. And I don't say that out of a matter of pride. I say it mostly out of a place of weakness. But the issue has to be, if we're going to talk about walking in the Spirit, the first thing is, you have to determine, do you even want to? And that's a big deal. Because if you're happy where you're at, and you think you've got your get-out-of-hell-free card that you're waving around that you can show when you get there, and then you just want to be left alone and live your own life, then really this is not for you. But of course, in reality, Christianity is not for you either at that point. Let's read our text. Galatians 516. I'm going to read out of the ESV. But I say, walk in the Spirit. Walk by the Spirit, some of your translations will say. 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 one another, to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. 18. 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, rivalry, 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, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law, 24. And those who belong to Jesus have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires. Now the way that I've, we may go further than that or we may not get that far. I just don't have any idea how this is going to go this morning. I've chosen to handle this a couple of different ways, and one of them we're going to fly just a little bit higher. We'll get into the weeds in a little bit, but I don't remember how old I was, but young teens, maybe younger than that. We went to hear a preacher in Rodosa and I don't remember the church except for it strikes me because the church had a dove on the front of it like some churches have. This dove was lit up but it struck me at the time this was the oddest thing I'd ever seen because that dove instead of kind of flying like this He like had his head pointed at the ground. It was like taking a dive bomb into the building is the way that he looked. I won't forget that part. But the preacher that was there, a lot of things now that I look back on that he said that I probably wouldn't agree with, but this matter of walking in the Spirit, he gave me some really practical things that helped me at the time, at least in terms of my understanding, if not my practice. And they look like this. Everybody makes a big deal of walking in the spirit and you can hear whole sermons. You should walk in the spirit. You need to walk in the spirit. Okay, I agree with you. The scripture says I need to walk in the Spirit. You mind telling me how I do that? See, nobody wants to talk about that. It's this mystical sort of ethereal sort of a thing that nobody wants to talk about. How do you get there? Well, there is some mystery in it. We don't want to take all that out. But the problem is if we can't define it any better than that, then we're just telling people how to do something, telling people that they ought to do something that they don't know what you're talking about or how to do. So the practical advice that he gave me was this. Here's how you know if you're walking in the spirit or if you're not. And since we have this list beginning in 19, everything that is in the list of 19 coming on down, to 20 through 21, everything that's in that list, if you're doing those things, at any point that you're doing those things, if you're living like that, or if you're in the practice of doing those things, you are not walking in the Spirit. And that may be self-evident to some of you, but that was just an easy way to think about it. If you are doing those things, you are not walking in the Spirit. So whatever prickles that you're getting on the back of your neck, or whatever worship song that makes you feel really happy, or whatever is going on that's affecting your emotions, this is an acid test that you can look at and say, if these things or things like them are in my life right now, if I am doing these things, I am not walking in the Spirit. Okay? Now maybe that's self-evident to some of you, but that really helped me. So then the opposite then was also true. If I began to see these fruits of the Spirit in 22 and on, love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness. And we have to define all of those things. We're going to go back through it all. And the rest, if I see those things being manifested in any given situation in my life, and particularly if those are things that are not natural to me to start with, so they're not normally the way that I would act apart from the work of God in my life, if I see those things coming out of me, then I can say, I think I'm walking in the Spirit. I think the Spirit's having its work in my life. Now maybe that's really simplistic to start out with, and we will try to get a little bit more depth, but in this case, practically, You got to understand the practical first. You really do. Paul gives us this command so that we can understand whether or not we are walking with Christ abiding in Christ walking in the spirit letting the Lord lead however you want to term it. We need to be able to have a way to determine if those things are true of us or not. And I don't know if you're like me or not. That's really simple. But see, to me, when I look at myself, I don't want to look at things quite as badly as they are sometimes in my life. And so I like to have another category, which is the name of this category is kind of walking in the spirit. Right? So there's some good things in here, right? I mean, I still care about some good things, but at this given time and moment, I did something that was not very good, right? I thought something that was not very good. I had attitudes that were not very good, but kind of walking in the Spirit still. This helps me, this practical way of looking at this, because kind of walking in the Spirit isn't a real category. One is either walking in the Spirit or abiding in Christ, or one is not. And this is how you tell. Does that make sense? Okay. So now let's deal with it verse by verse a little bit, and we'll get a little bit more depth out of it. So look at 16. But I say, walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. So, here we have the answer to the question, I sin and I don't want to sin. I think things, do things, act on things that I shouldn't act on, don't do things that I ought to do, whatever it is. And now we have the medicine for that. And the medicine is the Spirit of God working within the believer's life. And this is why I started with, do you care? Because if you don't care, it doesn't matter. If your goal in studying the scripture of this passage is not to figure out how to deal with this monster inside of you called the flesh, and we'll define that in a minute, if that's not your goal to start with, then none of this matters. It doesn't make any sense to study it. But if I want to know, if I sense that tension within myself and I want to deal with that, then it matters a great deal. Alright. So we've got two things that are going on here. We have the spirit and we have the flesh. And we're not going to take tons of time defining both of those, but we need to spend a little bit. So the flesh, in case some of you are confused about that, we'll start there. We think of flesh, and this is the biblical word that's translated flesh. It's from a Greek word, obviously, called sarx. And that doesn't matter except that it doesn't mean your skin and blood and muscle. Right? It may be seeded in there, but it doesn't mean that. A better way to describe it would be your... in your inmost being, some people would call it your heart, it is desire within yourself. It is a desire within yourself. And... If we wanted to put the screws down even tighter though, this might not cover all of it It covers a lot of it. It is the flesh is the idolater within The flesh is the thing that wants everything that God wants to give you but it wants it his its own way. I It wants more of God's gift than he wants to give at any one time, sometimes. It wants itself to be God. The flesh is the thing within you that wants to call the shots. The flesh is the thing that justifies what you do and don't do. And it is very strong. The flesh makes up the part of you that has yet to be submitted to the will of Christ. Now the Spirit. This is a little tough because we know what the Spirit is, right? We could call the Spirit the third member of the Trinity. It's God's person in terms of dwelling within us. And that would be accurate. But that is, while that's true, there's a little more to it in this passage. It is those things. It is God dwelling within his people. But it's also the effect of God dwelling within his people. And so when a person is saved, we use this word around here quite a bit, that person is regenerated, born again. Use whatever term you want. And that person is given a new heart. That person is given a new heart so that that person over At the beginning but more and more over time against the love things that God love and loves and hate things that God hates and that part Through God's Spirit his person living inside the believer and changing that heart that Is the part of you that has been worked on that is not an idolater But that is the part of you that wants to give glory to Christ Because of who he is So it has the personage of God in it but also the changes that God has made in the believers life. It has both of those things in it when we talk about the spirit and walking in the spirit and those things. So now we've set up the battle because it said walk in the spirit and you won't fulfill the lust or gratify the desires of the flesh and then verse 17 for the desires of the flesh of the lust of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh for these two are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. In verse 17, verse 17 does away with my category of kind of walking in the Spirit. That's how we do away with that category. You say, well, we're never perfect. No, we're never perfect. And I don't mean to say that. But in any given point in time, after you've walked with Christ for a while, you can have the sense, mostly based on the scriptures themselves and what they tell you about yourself, not emotion, but the scriptures themselves. And then the emotion and the joy and all those things that come from that. you can tell, based on the actions that you're taking, where you are with Christ in any given situation. Now, I acknowledge that three and a half minutes later, you may not be there. But still, the issue is, in that moment, in that time, walking in the Spirit comes out as the fruit of the Spirit. Okay? That's how that comes out. Now, that's in the practical, real-time sense, okay? There's another sense that is the long-haul sense. So, when we look at Hebrews 11 and we look at all of those faithful people in Hebrews 11, the first time that I was able to think about that and began to look at all those faithful people in Hebrews 11, I thought about several of them and I thought, hey, I've read about some of these people and sometimes they didn't look so very faithful. But over the long span of their lives as God worked with them. their lives were characterized by the fruit of the spirit or we could say just the flip side of that coin by repentance and faith over and over again. That's what their lives were characterized by. And so in any given moment we can tell what walking in the spirit looks like. But also over the long periods of time we can tell what walking in the spirit is looked like and the work of the spirit in our lives. And an example of that is Have you ever been in the position where some circumstance has come up in your life, some trial, some relational problem, and you react to that, and then after that's over, you think about that, and you think, you know, three years ago, I would not have demonstrated the peace or the gentleness or the patience in that situation that I exhibited just now. And instead of that making you get puffed up with pride, you give glory to God because you know it's not you. So over the long haul, that works itself out within you and you're able to see that. Alright. The end of 17 says these things are opposed to one another and they keep you from doing the things that you want to do. Again another reason why I ask the question to start with. They should remind you of Roman 7 where Paul is spending all of this time saying those things that I want to do I don't do and the things that I don't want to do those are the things I do. And this goes on and gone. Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death. What's the next verse. thanks be to Christ. Because he's the one who delivers us from that. But Paul's going around and around chasing his tail. And he says, I've got the desire to do the right thing, but I can't find a way to do it. And of course, we know that the Spirit of God working within a person's life is the way that works out. But this battle goes on to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. Verse 18, But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. And now we come back to what Galatians is about and I think a lot of times we miss this so we'll spend a minute here. This whole book is about a bunch of people who have bought into a false gospel. Repentance and faith are not enough, but instead what they want to do is they want to add something to it. They've had false teachers come in that say, no, that repentance and faith is not enough. You need to also be Jews. We want to see circumcision. We want you to see the old ceremonies. We want you to follow the dietary laws. We want you to do all of those things so that you can be right with God. That's what it is. that the false teachers were doing there and the Galatians were buying into that and Paul spends almost the whole book saying no no that's a false gospel if you do any of that you're not saved because it's by grace through faith We'll boil it all down to just say, God is holy, and you are not, and you need to be rescued. Right? We do that over and over again, and Paul continues to remind them of that. And no following of a list of rules is going to accomplish those things. And so, what Paul is saying here is this. when you walk in the spirit or by the spirit that's kind of interchangeable so you can use it either way when you do that you're not under the law anymore now we look at this list particularly this list that's coming up and we think that looks exactly like law to me but that's because we look at everything wrong when we look at it through the eyes of our flesh See, everybody has this idea of God, that God is this ogre in the sky, whether we say it or not, that wants to do everything he can to keep us from doing all the things that we dearly want to do. Right? That's the way most people look at God. And so, of course, there's law there, if that's the way you're going to look at God. But that's not who he is. God is the one who knows everything that's perfect for us, that created us to glorify him. And when we are engaged in glorifying him, we're meeting our purpose. And we only find true freedom in that. That's the only place that we find real and true freedom is in that. And it's not so much all the things that we don't get to do, because they were so valuable, right? Some of you who have lived in the world for a long time, tell me how valuable all that stuff was. I mean, it was great, wasn't it? Not so much. But the thing is this, no, I'm not taking away from you things that are good things that I just don't want to let you have. That's not what God is saying. But I'm giving you all of the freedoms and all of the blessings and all of the grace in Christ. And in that, you'll be truly free. And so when he says, you're not under the law anymore, what he's saying, amongst other things, is that You don't have to worry about following a bunch of rules to please God anymore. That there is not this cosmic scale in the sky where your good deeds and your bad deeds are going to be placed on each side, and if the good outweigh the bad, then you get in. That's law. That's Phariseeism. That's, well, I'm a pretty good person, God. Why don't you accept me? You're not under the law if you walk in the Spirit. And you don't want to be. Because the law only brings death because you can't keep it. You can't keep it. Now we talk about the works of the flesh. Verse 19. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. There's our first group. The first group all has to do with impurity in a sexual way, right? So we've got immorality and we've got impurity, impure thoughts. We've got all of those things, and included in those things are fornication, adultery, put it in different translations, different ways. The idea is, though, these are things that are basic within the flesh. This is what the flesh wants to do in terms of human sexuality. Paul is saying, these are the works of the flesh. And this is a case of God gave you a good thing, but you want to mess it up. God gave you a good thing that was meant to be enjoyed, and you want to mess it up. And because you want to mess it up, these are works of the flesh. Because how many people have you met in your lifetime that these types of things completely control them? Not only do they completely control them, but they ruin their lives. They ruin marriages, they ruin families, they tear up their kids. It's constant, these things. These are the works of the flesh. And I have to tell you, that in this area, that I don't know over the years how many people I've met who told me how much they believed the Bible, and yet were obviously engaged in these things. Well, no, we're not married, but we really love each other. That's in there, right? And you can't get aside from that. And it's like, well, we want to come and we want to be a part or a member of Lawless Bible Church. Can't be doing that. Can't be doing that. And you say, well, that's really legalistic and hard and all those kind of things. Well, the reality is that we need to love people and we need to shepherd them. Sometimes I don't want to hear what we have to say, but we have to work with them. So at the same time that we're telling them that these things are not good, we need to be welcoming them and telling them about the things that are good, namely the gospel. But it is not loving, because if you look at the end of this list, what does it say? It says, those people who engage in these things will not go to heaven, period. That's what it says. We're going to cover what that means in a minute. But that's what it says. You can't get by with it. And so how loving is it if we take folks in who are doing these things as a practice of their life, and then we tell them, well, we're just going to overlook that. We're going to love you anyway. Come in and be a part. We'll consider you a brother or sister, all these things. Well, go ahead. Do it. But what you're doing is that you are encouraging someone in the practice of sin that was going to damn them to hell. Some of us don't believe that, I think, as strongly as we need to. I get that need's clarified, and I'm going to get to clarifying it when we get to the end of this. But the issue now is, take it as strongly as I can lay it on you. Because that one, at least at this point in time, you are not having to deal with maybe so many of you. But we're going to get to some on these lists that I guarantee you're dealing with today. So. If you have any questions about that, look at the first word in verse 20. Idolatry. See, here's the thing that people have to get about us human beings, and it is this. We worship. We were built to worship, and that's what we do. We worship. The question is, what? Who? You will worship, I will worship. The question is, what or who will we worship? And so, idolatry is, we know, setting up gods, setting up those things that we worship, giving the honor and the glory in our very lives to something other than He who deserves them. That's what that is. You say, how do we know if we're doing that? That's easy. I don't like to say it because I fall into it more than I ought to sometimes, but it's easy to tell you. I can tell you what your idol is. I can identify it for you this morning, if you would like. Some of you won't, but I'll do it anyway because you're a captive audience. Your idol is what you think about the most. When you have a spare moment during your day to think about anything that you would like to think about, What do you think about? And at that point, we can identify with your idol. And what does that mean? Does that mean that we're never able to do anything besides read our Bibles, and pray, and go to church, and all those things, and if we do anything other than that, then we're sinning? I just said I'm going to say no but first of all you have to understand how dumb that question is because if you're asking that question then you already don't get it. If I had the time or the ability to commune with God uninterruptedly in fellowship with his people in his word and in prayer. You're not saying I have to do that all the time are you. Really. Is that how we want to do this. No, God has much more for us to do than those things in terms of glorifying him. But you have to start with the right attitude, because if you don't, where you get to is, how much can I get away from, get away with, and still be okay? We spend a lot of time doing that. How much of this stuff can I get away with and still be okay? And if you start there, you're never going to understand this walking in the spirit thing very well. You're living under law. When the question is, God, how close can I get to you? What can I do to know you better? That pearl of great price, that treasure in the field, that all-glorious and awesome God, and if I could just spend one more second in His presence, or glorifying Him, or doing something that He wants me to do, it would just make my joy complete for that day. Isn't that not a different way of looking at this? It is. It is. idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy. Sorcery is pretty cut and dried, but in this context it is a whole lot about not just witchcraft and those things, though it's in there. But I think, Paul, and there's some guys who made me think of this, you can disagree with it if you want to, but... I think Paul is using this particular construct here to deal with those people who would make religion and religious rules really big in terms of quote unquote following Christ. So when he says idolatry and then he goes into sorcery there are a lot of people who sit in church pews that are on deacon boards that are elders of churches that are preaching this morning who are engaged in this word this sorcery because It's all about creating something for themselves. It's creating a following for themselves. It's building their own ego. It's creating a following, people to give money, all of those sorts of things. And of course it happens all around us. We see it all of the time. One preacher said, and it may be true, that there is a real sense in which in America that Sunday morning, the worship time Sunday morning in America is the biggest hour of idolatry in all of the week. I don't know if he's exactly right about that or not, but I see his point. We have to be so careful that we're not following some charismatic guy who makes us feel good about ourselves. And we need to be careful that in our own relationships that we're not that guy or that lady. That people are not predominantly attracted to us because of our great personality, our snappy wit, or the good stories that we tell. We want people to be attracted to Christ. Now we can move a little quicker down these. Enmity, strife, jealousy. People who envy one another, who covet the things that they don't have, that someone else has. People who just generally go around causing trouble because it gives them a sense of power. People who are jealous all of the time, who think that they should, that that person tried to drag another person down, another family down, another brother or sister down, or someone within the church and say, well, they're really not all that great. Let me tell you how great I am. Now, I'll get to the next one in a minute, but it should be clear to you at this point that the sins that we can engage in, the lifestyles that we can engage in, are not ultimately what Christians view as the bad things. Ultimately. Why is that? Because everybody wants to look at the outward. So, in other words, if I came in here drunk this morning, you'd be able to tell it. Maybe. But if I have a bitter heart, or if I'm envying someone in the congregation that's here, or if I'm jealous, you might eventually be able to see that, but you're going to have to get to know me. But by standing up here and trying to teach the Bible, you're maybe not going to know that. And so we do this, right? All of those outward things that we're trying to view, we think those are so much worse. No, they're not. This is all on the same list and the end of the list still says the same thing and you can't get past it. You just can't. You can't get past it. We like to rank sins, but in terms of the kinds of sin that will bring down the wrath of God upon the unbeliever, It's very wide, that is. One will just about do it. So, understand that these things, because you don't do the outward things that you can get caught on, that doesn't mean that you have arrived. You're just getting started. These things follow us around. Fits of anger. Fits of anger. I know a lot about fits of anger. Anybody else know anything about having a fit of anger? Yeah. The Lord has done work in my life that I can remember over a long period of time. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning mad and I didn't even have a good reason to be mad, I just was. Mad about everything, don't know why. And my family paid for that. But if you live like that, fits of anger, that's not walking in the Spirit. And if you continue to live that way and justify it, You can't be in Christ's presence. That's what this says. And we try to wash that away, the sting of that away, by saying, but yeah, but I'm staped, and God has washed away all my sin, and I'm justified, and now I'm going to heaven, and that may be true. But over time, at least, the fruit of that salvation, the effect of that salvation, will be that some of these things begin to be dealt with. Because if they're not, then there was never a work done to start with. Some people really don't like that. And some people say, legalist, OK, fine. Then let's just tear this out, and you all go ahead and go do all these things. And we just won't talk about them. I mean, I don't know what else to do but to bring this to our attention and to mind. We have to. Rivalries, dissensions, divisions. This seems to be, this part of things seems to be particularly what happens within churches. And those who claim to be believers those arguments about what color the carpet is going to be or whether or not we're going to have ham or beef roast for the public or I Don't know you name. Whatever it is whether we're going to Give money to this thing or that thing Etc. Etc. These are the things they happen a lot when I People get together, particularly in groups, and they can tend to be really bad in institutions called churches. And the thing is, if these things are really bad in those institutions, then that's the wrong word for them. This is not a church. It might be something else, but it's not a church, because those things have to be dealt with. And not that at times we don't fall into these things and have to deal with them. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that there are places, some of you could name them, that are known for these things for decades. For decades these things are going on. And don't call that a church. It's just a building. So is this, but even the people inside. It's just a group of people. These are things that we're doing that cause division, envy. Then he comes back out with some open things, drunkenness and orgies. And in this case, the orgies thing doesn't seem to be talking about the things that it was talking about in the first part, but more the idea of the drinking parties, getting drunk. That's the idea here. Let's deal with the rest of this and things like these. So don't think because we went through these that this is an exhaustive list. It's not. These are the sorts of things that Christ died for. These are the sorts of sins that Christ took upon himself. These are the sorts of things that we can engage in that don't bring God glory. That's what this is, right? So, things like these. Paul says, I warn you, as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, 21 should sting you, the end of it, and you should have questions about that. I do. And I'm going to give you some explanation, but before I do, sometimes the explanation of what all of this amounts to comes so quickly that it takes the sting away from the verse. And I don't want to do that. So if these things that are listed here in these works of the flesh and things like them are regular evident practices in your life, then what Paul is telling you is you should be very, very, very, very concerned. And you say, I don't need to be very concerned because I got wet. So had the Galatians. I don't need to be concerned because I go to church. This letter was written to a church, several of them, in fact. And what he is writing to them is, this is what your life looks like. You should worry. Whether or not and you say, well, I'm not worried because I've had these experiences with God and I've I've prayed and I've cried and I felt all of these things. This doesn't leave any room for that. Yes, God does those things in our lives. Yes, he gives us an emotions in order to enjoy him in order to feel as we interact with him, but There's not a category that says kind of walking in the spirit. One is or is not. And in this case, we need to understand that people who look like this or several of these things should be concerned. Now, the other side of that is this. I hope you felt that warning. We've already alluded to the fact that all of us have done many of these things, maybe all of them. I look down that list, there's not many things on that list that I haven't had some experience with. I don't know about you. So what does that mean? Am I going to go to hell? Because I have done these things. And the answer is no, but it's qualified. And so what we need to look at in this verse when it says those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. What it is saying is it's talking about a lifestyle. It's talking about those who walk in these ways, those who habitually practice these things. Another way to put it would be, this is who they are, these things, and repentance and faith never enter into it. See, the Christian life, if you've lived it very long, and it's a real Christian life, you've figured out that repentance and faith, they go on all the time. They have to. And it's a little more than, Lord, please forgive me for all the bad things I did today. It's a little more than that. It's, I want to change, and I can't. I'm angry, and I know I shouldn't be, and I know it doesn't please you, God. Do something. Forgive me. through the blood of Christ and change me into who you want me to be. Now, if you just wrote that down and now you're going to pray that for your forgiveness prayer, you just don't get it. Okay? That's not what this is. This is about a heart, deep down, gut level desire to want to be close to Christ. To want to do what he wants us to do. And if you have that, yes, at times you'll fall into these things But the Spirit will come and bring conviction, and there'll be restoration, and there'll be joy. But if you think that God forgives me and I can do anything I want to do, be very afraid if these things are natural parts of your life that God isn't dealing with. That's what I want to communicate this morning. We get to the good part in terms of the fruit of the spirit next week. And we'll move a little faster in chapter six again. But the thing here is Understand that if I am habitually practicing these things, I'm not walking in the Spirit. If I am at any one given time speaking, being impatient, speaking harshly, doing something that I shouldn't be doing that is along the line of this list, then I'm not walking in the Spirit. And the response to not walking in the Spirit is repentance and faith. for the believer. Repentance. Yes, God, I agree with you that what it is that I have done is a sin against you. It's something Christ died for. I agree with you about that, and I want to turn away from that, and I need help. And faith is that the work that Christ did on the cross was not just for the forgiveness of my sin, but it is also for my sanctification, the way that I'm now able to live my life, because he gives me power so that those things change. Sometimes quickly, sometimes they take time, but I stay after it. And believers, let me just tell you, I have not preached much as far as things go, but I can always tell. I can always tell when you preach a message, particularly a certain kind, and it talks about something that we're not getting quite right and we need to get it better. The people that are most affected by that message, nine times out of ten, are the most godly, humble people in the congregation. Because those are the people who are used to repenting and believing because they know they do stuff wrong all the time and they're pleading with God to change them. The hard-hearted Pharisees within that group will never be responsive to much of anything you have to say because the reality is they already think they're justified. They don't need to repent. They don't need to believe. They don't need to do any of those things. I'll leave it to you to determine where you're at with all of this. But is there any question that needs to be asked or comment that needs to be made before we close? Yeah. Can you idolize what? Time. Yeah, you can idolize anything. Yeah. It's amazing to me what we make idols of. We'll talk about that sometime. I've seen guys make idols out of a rock. It's amazing. But I've done worse than that. Let's pray. Father, forgive me for Maybe not being as clear in some of this as I'd like to be, Lord, I felt like that I was prepared, but I pray that you would use your word to speak to your people in spite of me. And Lord, I ask today as we go into the service that you would be glorified by what we do and say in that. Lord, give us grace to not just think about these things this morning. Lord, so many of them have ramifications that are eternal. I pray that you would make us diligent to study these things, think of them. Make us people who are able to walk in the Spirit by your power. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.