Turn to Galatians 5. We will pick back up on verse
13-26. The title of this lesson, Abuse Not
Your Liberty in Christ. Paul has so clearly set forth
the gospel of grace, the gospel of salvation in the Lord Jesus
Christ without any obedience on our part to any command of
the law, without keeping any of the ceremonies. He's made
that so clear that salvation in Christ is all of grace, and
it's all of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he said in the first verse
of chapter five, stand fast, therefore in the liberty wherewith
Christ hath made us free. We're free, we're free in Christ.
Whom the son sets free, he's free indeed. But you and I are
extremists, aren't we, by nature? We can't seem to find the middle
ground. We just can't seem to keep it in the road. So now he
says, don't abuse your liberty, because there would be some,
and those terrors that came in among the weak, they're going
to abuse it. And he's telling those who are,
especially those who are babes in Christ, don't you follow them,
because that's not the right road either. That's not the right
road. So now he's gonna deal with this
matter of our walk as believers. We don't walk after the law. Our walk is not trying to say,
well, we're supposed to do this and not do that. That's not our
walk. We walk in love. Love to Christ, love to one another. And that will adjust our conduct
and our attitude as we walk through this life. Let's look in verse
13, start here. He said, For brethren, ye have
been called unto liberty. Only use not liberty for an occasion
to the flesh, to indulge the flesh, but use this liberty to
serve one another in love. but by love serve one another.
That's what he's talking about. Use this liberty you have in
Christ to serve, to serve one another. In serving one another,
looking after one another, taking care of one another, we are serving
Christ. Because we're serving the body
of Christ. You are members of the body of Christ. And when
we serve one another, we are serving the body of Christ. We
are serving the Lord Jesus Christ. Literally, we are serving the
Lord Jesus Christ. But he says here, brethren, you've
been called. You have been called by the Spirit
of God. You've been called by the grace
of God. You have been called to the Lord
Jesus Christ. You have been called to liberty
in the Lord Jesus Christ. But do not use this liberty as
an excuse to indulge the flesh. Because we still have it. We
still have that. We'll see this in a minute. If
we use this liberty as an excuse to fulfill the lust of the flesh,
then we have forgotten. We have forgotten the rules of
moderation. The scripture teaches us to be
moderate in all things. For example, I thought about
this in the study. I love and enjoy playing golf. And I have to, I have to draw
back from time to time. I have to draw back because I
enjoy it too much. I can indulge that now. I could
indulge that. I can do it too much. You know,
the scripture says he's given us all things to enjoy, right? That's to enjoy in moderation. It's in moderation. And that's
what Paul's saying here. Keep the things that we have
been given to enjoy, not to indulge the flesh, but to keep it in
moderation. Keep it in moderation. If we
make our liberty a stumbling block to weak Christians, we
are abusing our liberty. Paul said, if it offends my brother
that I eat meat. So that goes into this area also. If it offends my brother that
I eat meat, Paul said, I'm not gonna eat meat because that's
abusing my liberty. I'm abusing it. And we don't
abuse our liberty even though we have it, even though it's
lawful for me. Paul said, all things are lawful for me, but
not all things are expedient. There are things that are lawful
for me, that are fine for me to do, but a weaker brother,
he may have trouble with it. Well, I don't need to wound his
conscience. I need to just forgo whatever
it is. It's just lawful for me, but I don't need to wound his
conscience. I don't need to abuse my liberty and wound his conscience. Paul was going to set forth something
here. He's saying this, if you want to talk about keeping the
law, see they were, the Judaizers came in and was trying to introduce
this law of circumcision. And Paul is saying in so many
words, if you want to talk about keeping the law, I'm going to
give you a word that exceeds all other commandments, all of
them. And not only does it exceed it,
it encompasses them. And that one word is this, love.
Love one another. You know, you can't love somebody
and be selfish. That's an impossibility. In my
studying this week and reading this, it just, it hit me. You
cannot be selfish and love someone. It just, it won't let you. It
won't let you. You know, when you love your
children, you do the best for them, don't you? You give them
the best. You give them, oftentimes we
give them too much, but we give them the best. We do, we give
them the best advice. I've learned that. I thought,
sometimes when I'm in a little bit of a dilemma, I actually
think, what would I tell Jason or Jeremy? What would I tell
them? That's what I do. My mother, when she was in the
hospital about a year ago, she needed to have a heart pacemaker. Her heart was just not doing
its job. She didn't want to do it. She
just didn't want to have that invasiveness. Surgery. And I called my sister. She was in the room. And I said,
ask mom if I were laying there, what she'd tell me to do. She
said, I'd tell him to have it. And he said, John said, would
have it. She said, OK. And she had it.
We give them the best advice. We do that. Here's why. Because
we love one another. We love them. We love them. And if you love one another,
you can't be selfish. And you look after one another
and you give one another the best advice. If they ask you
your advice, you don't just pop off. You simmer a little bit and you
think, you pray about it. I've said that many a times after
I got a little older and a little more mature in Christ. I said,
let me think about it. Let me pray about it. And sometimes I just don't know. Sometimes the answer is just
never clear, is it? Sometimes I've said this to some of you,
it'll just develop. It'll develop. The Lord will
develop it in time, in providence, and you'll have the answer. You'll
have it. But here's the one word that
Paul is going to give us, is this word LOVE. It's far better,
listen, it's far better than circumcision. You see, they just
wanted him to have circumcision as a matter of keeping the law,
being inducted into the covenant. And Paul said, I'll give you
one better than that, love. It fulfills the whole law. The
whole law is fulfilled in one word, love. He says in verse
14, For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Now, you want to know how to
treat your neighbor? the way you treat yourself. Now,
you can't have animosity toward your neighbor if you love him
like you love yourself. You can't mistreat him. I tell
you what, you won't even talk about him. You won't even talk
about him. If you love him as you love yourself,
you won't do it. You can't do it. You know, the moral laws of God,
they come at us in two ways. They come at us, first of all,
in our duty toward God and our duties toward men. And these
laws are fulfilled in this, love your neighbor, love God with
all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and your neighbor
as yourself. Do you need any more than that? We don't need
any more than that. Look over in Matthew 22. In Matthew 22, look in verse,
let me get there, I think it's 36. Master, which is the great commandment
in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt
love. the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment,
and the second's likened to it, thou shalt love thy neighbors
thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. It's fulfilled in this love.
It's fulfilled in this love. Our Lord, when He came into this
world, over in Psalm 119, David says, I love thy law. That's
the Lord speaking. That's Christ speaking. He loved
God's law and he loved his neighbor as himself. He kept it perfectly. All the
laws fulfilled in this, the love to God and love to men. You know, when we consider When
we consider what we do or what we should do, how we should act,
how we should talk, our deeds towards others, when we consider
that, it's only done properly when it's done in a spirit of
love. Not because I'm supposed to,
but when it's done in a real genuine spirit of love. And here's
something else about love. No commandment, thou shalt not,
no commandment is going to enable you to do what you ought to do. No commandment is going to do
that. No commandment, I want you to get this, no commandment
will control your personal conduct. No commandment will even control
the way you think. Like love, like a spirit of love,
it won't do it. Love will control the way I conduct
myself before the Lord and the way I conduct myself before men.
Love will do that. Not thou shalt and thou shalt
not, but love will do that. Love, for example, love, true
love, that's in the home, true love
that's in the home, it can, controls the way we conduct ourselves
as husbands and wives toward one another. We don't abuse one
another. We don't neglect one another
if there's true love there. And that's the same spiritually.
We don't neglect one another. We don't abuse one another because
we love one another. We look after one another. Because
now listen, where love is absent, where genuine love is absent,
meanness shows up. Meanness shows up. He says in verse 15, But if ye
bite and devour one another, over these issues, these issues
that was going on in the church, in the realm of Galatia, there'd
be different churches. One got this matter of circumcision
introduced, another maybe a Sabbath keeper, this and that. When you leave the gospel, when
you leave Christ, when you leave that, when you leave that true
love that's in Christ, and here's what happens. You start to bite
and devour one another and the spirit of love and peace is gone. You don't have it no more. You
bite and devour one another. Well, this is the way it's supposed
to be. Well, I believe it's this way. That's leaving Christ. That's leaving the gospel. If
you bite and devour one another, take heed that you'd be not consumed
one of another. You eat each other up to the
point there's no peace, there's no joy, there's no unity here
in the service. It's just tension. I don't feel
any tension here this morning. You feel any tension? I don't.
But I tell you what, if I start to preach another gospel, there'll
be contention. I guarantee there'll be contention.
That's how Satan introduces it, by another gospel. If you're
critical, if you become critical, and you become unforgiving, and
you get this party spirit, In this bitterness and division,
you destroy the unity of the saints. You destroy the family. You destroy it. But now here's the cure for it
in verse 16. You see, it says in verse 15,
if you bite, devour one another, you're going to consume one another,
but here's the cure for that. This I say, that walk in the
Spirit. Be guided by the Spirit of God.
Seek the Spirit of God. Seek His help. Seek His guidance. I was listening as Craig prayed. I was listening to the prayer. And I thought as he prayed. I thought as he prayed. This
is what was going through my mind. He's praying not to a God
on a shelf. He's praying not to a God whittled
out. He's praying, not to a God of
his imagination. He's praying to the living God
to come here and be with us and bless us this morning. And that
gave me courage to stand up here and do this. He asked God to
bless me. He didn't ask an unknown God,
an idol, but the living God who created the heavens and the earth.
You know how powerful that is? That's powerful. Walk in the
Spirit. This is your life. This is your
life. When you get up in the morning,
seek His guidance. When you go throughout the day,
call upon Him. You don't have to find a corner
to get on your knees. Call upon Him while you're driving
down the road. Call upon Him when you're sitting down to a
meal. Call upon Him, Lord help me, guide me, direct me. Ask
Him to guide your thoughts. I ask the Lord to guide my thoughts
because I know what can go through this head. Guide my thoughts, guide the
way I think today. Walk in the spirit. And if you
do this, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. If you
walk in the spirit of truth, if you walk after the example
of Christ, we are told to walk as he walked. If we walk in the
spirit of love, then we will not fulfill. We will not seek
to fulfill the desires of this flesh. They never leave. The
desires of this flesh, and he's not talking about, you know this,
he's not talking about skin. He's talking about a nature we
have, and we still have it. And the desires are still there.
Sometimes they're strong. Sometimes they come on strong.
And he says, don't feed it. There's a reason why you don't
feed the bears. When you stop, they bite you.
You're going to get hurt. There was the old saying, you
play with the fire, you're going to get burnt. You play with fire,
you're going to get burnt. He says, if you walk in the Spirit
and you're spiritually minded, and one of the great helps of
that is reading the Word of God often. listening to preaching,
preaching of the gospel, prayer, be much in prayer, and you'll
not fulfill the lust of the flesh because it's ever-present and
it's not going to go away. But I tell you this, just because
it's present and I still have it doesn't mean I have to obey
it. Sin shall not have dominion over you. And he's going to teach
us here that this is a warfare. It's not easy. Being a believer
is not easy. Like they try to make it sound
today, you know, in religious circles, in the so-called Christianity,
they try to make this matter of being a Christian, this thing
of happy, you know, you're just, no, it's not, it's hard. It's
not, it's difficult living right in a wrong world. That's just
all there to it. And it's difficult living right
with the wrong nature in you. Because it's still there and
it's still, it wants to be fed. It wants to be fed. Now there's
times that I'll tell you, there's times I just have to turn the
radio off because my mind starts in the wrong direction. I just
turn it off. When my mind starts in the wrong
direction, I just turn it off. Because it's just feeding the
flesh. I know what it's doing. I'm old
enough now and I'm mature enough in Christ that I know when my
thoughts are going in the wrong direction. And I'm like, no,
stop. Stop, because I'm responsible
for my thoughts. We need to control our minds
and our minds not control us. There's a mind in us that's natural. And that mind is not to control
us. That's the mind of the flesh. We mind not the things of the
flesh, is what it says. We don't do that. Now, he shows
us here in verse 17 the two natures of a believer. For the flesh
lusteth. That's a powerful word, isn't
it? That's a powerful word. You know, in other translations,
they use the word desire, desireth. lusteth is a lot stronger word,
it's a lot powerful, more powerful word. The flesh lusteth against
the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary
one to another so that you cannot do the things that you would.
You can never do the right thing that you would. Paul said, that
which I would do, I do not. That which I would not do, I
do. You can't do complete good without sin. But you cannot also do evil. You can't go completely to evil
because the Spirit of God won't let you. It's not going to let
you. You're God's child. He's your
father. He's your parent. He's going
to draw you back. So there's this constant warfare. There's
this constant battle within. One's struggling to do right,
one's struggling to do wrong. And they never agree zero. There's never a time that they
say, okay, I can compromise here. They can never even compromise.
They can't compromise. And every believer still has
a corrupt nature. It's not eradicated at conversion.
It's there, it's there. And then you have not only that,
but you have the Spirit. You have the Spirit of God, and
you're born of the Spirit of God. You have a new nature that
wants to do right. You would not sin if you could,
wouldn't you? I know you would. You can't believe
God did not desire that. You wouldn't sin. If you could
not sin another second, you'd say amen. You'd say it. But these, you've got both of
these, and these are contrary. They are as opposite as light
and darkness, as water and fire. They are that opposite. And they
are so contrary, he says here, so that you cannot do the things
that you would. You can't do it. You would do
perfect, but you can't do it. and your corrupt nature would
do nothing but sin, but you can't do that either because the Spirit's
not going to let you, not going to let you. But in verse 18,
but if you'd be led by the Spirit, you walk in the Spirit, now you're
led by the Spirit, you're not, but if you're led by the Spirit,
you're not under the law. You see, those Judaizers were
trying to bring them under the law. And what he's saying here,
if you're being led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. They're
wrong. They are wrong. That's not of the Spirit of God.
He's not leading you under the bondage of the law. He's leading
you to the freedom you have in Jesus Christ. We are led by the Spirit of God
to the Word of God. We are led by the Spirit of God
to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are led by the Spirit of God
to the throne of grace. We are led by the Spirit of God
in all areas. We are led by His, and when I
tell you this, we are led by the Spirit of God to fellowship
with God. Now, if you're being led in a
different direction, God's not in it. God's not in it. It's not the law which is our
leader, it's not the law that inspires us, it's the Spirit
of God within us. And He motivates us to love,
He motivates us to righteousness, to godliness, and not just in
some law keeping. Now he says, and he gives us
some works of the flesh, and they were well aware of them,
because they lived in these things, and we did too, at one time.
Now the works of the flesh, that old nature, are manifest. And he gives these things, and
they still crop up in us. They still crop up in us. Because
they're manifest, and they're manifest in us. You see them.
You don't always let them break out into action, but you see
them. You see them in your heart. You see them in that nature.
And here they are. They are these, adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft. You say, I've not done any of
these. Well, how about hatred? Now he's going into the spirit,
the attitude. Variance, emulation, wrath. Uncontrolled
wrath, that's anger. That's lashing out. Lashing out. Strife, fighting with one another. Seditions, heresies. Envying. Somebody gets something, you
envy them. God blesses one, you envy them. You say, I don't do
that. Yeah. Murders. Drunkenness. I haven't murdered
anybody who ever been drunk. You ever been a drunk? Drunkenness,
that's not saying you got drunk one time, that's your life. That's
your lifestyle, drunkenness. You know, we can not only be
drunk with wine, we can be drunk with the world. You know that?
You can be, drunkenness can be involved in just being drunk
with the world or pleasures or whatever it is. Revelings and
such like, of the which I tell you, Before, as I have also told
you in time past, that they which do such things, they who live
like this, they live in this, this is their life, they shall
not inherit the kingdom of God. If you think, if you think the
liberty that you have in Christ allows you to continue a lifestyle
like this, you've missed it. He says, you've missed it. You'll not inherit the kingdom
of God. These sinful practices, they're characteristic of the
flesh and not of the spirit. They're characteristic of that
old nature, not that new. Not that new at all. And we've
done some of these things. Noah. You know, whenever, it
probably had to be two or three years after he got off the ark.
It wasn't as soon as he got off the ark, he got drunk because he
had to grow a vineyard. But he got drunk one time. You
see, these things we've done before. Abraham, David, adultery. Had Uriah, her husband, killed. But he didn't do that again and
again and again and again. You know, it's not a lifestyle. At all. But now listen, he says
here in verses 22 and 23. But the fruit of the Spirit,
here's the evidence that God has saved you. There's evidence now, there is
evidence that God has saved us. If He saved us, there's evidence
of it. And it's of the Spirit now, it's not of this flesh.
The fruit, and it doesn't say fruits because it's plural. I mean, it's singular. Fruit.
It's not plural. Because it's one fruit. Just
like the law of God, it's one law. You know, we say ten commandments,
but it's one law. You offend in one point of the
law, you break the whole law. But here, it's the fruit of the Spirit.
And the first one he says is love. If that's absence, the
rest of it doesn't matter. That's what Paul said, he said
it's just a sounding brass and tingling cymbal. The fruit of
the Spirit is, and this is our experience of it, love, joy,
there's real joy in the Lord, there's real joy in your life,
and peace, peace of conscience, peace with God through the blood
and righteousness of Christ, through the Lord Jesus Christ,
who is our peace. Here's your experience of it,
love, joy, and peace. And here's the outcome of it
toward our brethren, toward one another. Long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness and faith, meekness, temperance, against us there
is no law. Now you'll notice here that he
speaks of the fruit of the Spirit and it's not of the flesh in
any way, shape or form. That means we can take no glory
in it for ourselves. It's produced by the Spirit of
God in us. It's not produced by us at all. And they, listen here in verse
24, and they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with
the affections of love. Now, it doesn't feel like that,
does it? Does it feel like you've crucified the flesh and you're
done with it? But by faith, by faith, you know that old man
was crucified with Christ. That old man does not reign.
That old nature does not reign. It's crucified. It doesn't rule
over us no more. It's not my master. It's been
crucified with the Lord Jesus Christ. And now if we live in
the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. If we live by
the spirit of grace, walk that way, live that way, conduct yourself
that way. And let us not be desirous of
vain glory, provoking one another, envying
one another. We are not desirous of honor
and esteem and applause from other men or any men or even
among ourselves. We're not desirous. And that,
I'm telling you, it raises its ugly head from time to time. It raises its head because it's
still in us. But we're not desirous of us getting the glory. Lord,
you get the glory this morning. Now, there's that nature in us
that wants the glory. There's that nature there. But we desire our Lord to get
the glory this morning. That's what we are here for.
We're here to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. Let us
not be desirous of vain glory, but let us walk in the Spirit.
Let us live in the Spirit. Let us seek the Spirit of God.
Let us do that daily, daily. Seek Him in His Word and prayer. And let us not, he says, be given
to this flesh. Don't indulge this flesh. Don't
take it to those places where it gets indulged. Just as Paul told Timothy, shun
every appearance of evil. If it looks evil, walk away from
it. Walk away. All right.