Paul, over and over again, not
just here but in Romans before this, give us a clear and almost
condemning picture that says grace alone is our salvation.
Any iteration of the law applied to us is our condemnation. So
that's why I say clear and condemning. And that anyone who takes on
the law in any way is no benefactor or no beneficiary of Christ's
work. And if you remember last week when we stopped, let's start
reading in verse 13 and we'll go down through the end of chapter
5. Says, for you were called to
freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom
as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled
in one word. You shall love your neighbor
as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch
out that you're not consumed by each other. 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're led by the spirit, you're not under the
law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. They're obvious.
Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery,
enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of angers, fits of anger, rivalries,
dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things
like this. 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 and joy and peace and 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 keep in step with the
Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying
one another. Now, as always, In Paul's teaching,
he gives, and this is an exaggeration or an impromptu statistic, it
is not to be taken literally, he gives 90% of his time to the
gospel and to grace and to the effectual work of Christ, and
he gives 10% of his time to applying the therefore because of our
security in the finished work of Christ. Let's live that way.
Let's act that way. Let's understand and think that
way. Let's do this for the sake of
one another. Now, I know that the conversations
between law and gospel, and the distinctions between the two,
and the work of the law in the context of the gospel, etc.,
etc., etc., I've labored over those points contextually for
years, and I will labor over them continually until I die.
But when it gets to the end of the day, we have to understand
that the instructions to the church are not law. It is not
law when Paul says, walk by the Spirit. But I say walk by the
Spirit. What does the Spirit do? We'll
see that in just a minute. It is not law when He says don't
do the desires of the flesh. It is not law when He says don't
have these things even named among you as He says to the Ephesians
church or the church of Ephesus. It's not law when He says love.
It's not law when He says to have this joy and peace. That's the fruit of the Spirit.
It's not law. It's grace. It's always grace, for if it
were law, these things would catch us. These things would
condemn us. These things would bring us into
a place where we would be no longer under grace, but under
condemnation. Because if we are under law,
we are condemned. The law was never given that
there may be life through it. The law was given to show the
righteousness of Christ, who is our life. We remember that
out of our teaching of Romans, especially and specifically Romans
3. So when we look here at this,
let's keep in mind these things. Paul is talking about the freedom
that we have in Christ. Just like he told the Church
of Rome, do not use that freedom as a license to sin that grace
may abound. That is absurd. Paul, if he were
to use my vernacular, he'd say, you're dumb as a bag of hammers.
You're as dumb as a bag of grits. What's wrong with you? Don't
say, oh grace, grace, now I can gratify the flesh. We don't do
those things, and if we do, we're supposed to be taught otherwise.
We're supposed to be instructed. We're supposed to be counseled.
We're supposed to be disciplined, so that we would learn that which
is pleasing to the Lord, and more importantly, you might think,
what's more important than pleasing to the Lord? And here it is,
that we are together in unity and love, because that is what
pleases the Lord. to love one another. And that
if my sinfulness and the things that I do in my life cause us
to have division, cause us to not be together, cause us to
not love one another, then I'm not loving you in the way that
I should. The beauty is now, because the
law is summarized in that, and Christ has loved because God
is love, then I'm not condemned because of the seasons that I
don't love. I may worry, I may be labored, I may have consequences,
but these things are not condemnation. So when we come to Paul here,
the context in which he speaks about sinfulness and things of
that nature is directly related to the intimacy of the body of
Christ together, to the witness of the work of Christ. So where
no one ever says who believes in the one true gospel of free
and sovereign grace, none of those people who are truly converted
of God ever say, and you must look the part because if you
don't, you're not saved. Only unconverted people say that.
Only ignorant people say that. Only blind people say that. Only
confused people say that. See the word there, there's no
positive adjective to put before the person that says that. You're
either lost or you're confused or you're bewitched. You believed the lie. You believed
the cultural distinction of American Christianity. You believed the
cult of evangelicalism when you think that how we live and how
you live your life is directly related to the assurance of your
eternal destiny. It is only in Christ. So the
whole law, Paul says in verse 14, is fulfilled in one word,
you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite
and devour, you know, if you're biting and devouring, you might
be consumed. Somebody might eat you for breakfast.
Somebody may take a chunk out of your heart or a chunk out
of your head or a chunk out of your leg. And you will find that
if you bite, you might get bitten. That's what Paul's saying there
in that picture. So don't bite one another. I mean, think about
as we who are parents and all of us in the room are children
of someone, and even if our parents are no longer with us, we have
been children and are children. We know what it's like to be
reprimanded. We know what it's like to be corrected. We know
what it's like to do what we know we shouldn't do. and know
that we're going to have to face mom or dad or granddad or aunt
or uncle or somebody and there's never going to be a comfortable
way in which that confrontation goes. Even if it's pleasant,
that was really poor of you to do. I'm disappointed. It's just
as bad as, here's the stick, quack, you're dead. I mean, it's
just as bad. It bears on our conscience that
there's a problem. We knew better. But at none of
the times, and this isn't a holistic analogy that always fits perfectly,
that's the point of using illustrations, it's just to help us get the
idea, but even in the normal way of parenting, when we were
corrected for doing things that were wrong or disobedient, never
has there ever been a time where my father had come to me and
said, son, oops, sorry, no longer my son, you're dead. Or my mother with her fly flaps
and switches and belts and chains and whips or whatever else she
could find, animals, my brother, whatever she could get close
enough to hit you with. Has she ever told me you are no longer
my son? That was the last straw. Because
if I weren't, she wouldn't deal with my discipline anyway. She'd
send me to my new mother or to my new father. In the same way,
when we are disciplined by our Father, we are still His children.
Doesn't Paul establish that in Hebrews chapter 4? When he says
that God disciplines those He loves. So when we find that our
way of thinking, our way of speaking, our way of living is definitely
not right, we are not condemned before God, we are disciplined
by Him. And He does that because He loves
us to teach us, to train us, to grow us, to mature us. to
understand the reality of God's glorious grace for us in Christ
Jesus and the fact that what God has done through Jesus Christ,
Christ took the guilt and the condemnation of all of our sin,
past, present, future, and ontologically. We exist as sinners. Christ took
all of that guilt on himself and he was crushed And that grace, not the law,
that grace is an extremely powerful motivator for us to evaluate.
And an extremely powerful motivator for us to consider how we're
loving one another versus pleasing ourselves. So then Paul says,
but I say, You were called to freedom, brothers. Don't use
your freedom as an opportunity to flesh, but serve one another.
But I say, walk by the Spirit. This is Paul's pastoral wisdom. This is what Paul is now telling
these young, confused, bewitched, and battered Christians of the
region of Galatia, whose confidence is being chopped
away like an axe at the root of a tree. one day to topple
over and shatter on the ground because of Judaizers, because
of law keepers, because of those who impart the idea that law
is security. But I say walk by the Spirit
and you'll not gratify the flesh and its desires. Now let's think
about that for a moment. What is living by the Spirit? Living by the Spirit is, indeed,
as we've already seen, believing in the grace of God, by the work
of God, by the mystery of God, by the power of God, through
the Spirit of God, we have been granted to believe in His grace
alone and we're no longer looking to find a satisfaction in any
type of fleshly righteousness. So we do not gratify the desires
of the flesh even in the concept of righteousness. And we also
then have been given the freedom to know that we're not condemned
when we gratify the flesh in its fleshliness. But it's not a license to continue
in the flesh. And just like he says in Romans,
he also says here in Galatians. Matter of fact, he said it first
here. Walk by the Spirit. How do we live by the Spirit?
How do we walk by the Spirit in a spiritual sense? We believe
the Spirit is our life. We are indwelt with Him. We are
sealed in Him. He keeps us. He prays for us in our weakness
when we cannot pray. When we doubt, He considers us.
He's always present with us. He is our hope. But now Paul is making a clear
argument. The desires of the flesh are against the spirit. And the desires of the spirit
are against the flesh. Why? Because these are opposed
to one another. Let's play that out for a moment. My neighbor
aggravates me. I hate them. I wish they would
move. My enemy hates me. This would
be what Jesus would say. Or what the spirit would say. I lay my life down for them anyway.
I give them eternal life. Jesus lays his life down for
the elect, for his sheep, who are his enemies. Paul loves that
language. You are hostile to God in your
natural state. You are enemies of God. God,
Christ, gave his life while we were still enemies. He died for
us because of his love for us. He says, turn the other cheek,
he says, to give your enemies even the clothes if they need
them, or food if they're hungry, or what? Lay down your life for
them. Now this is counterintuitive
to the natural man. It's also very counterintuitive
to the religious man and to the self-righteous man who would
always look to an opportunity to satisfy the flesh. Jesus,
who was God in all ways, did not take equality with God something
to be grasped, but made himself a nothing. obedient unto death,
even on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted
him and gave him the name which is above all names, that at the
name of Jesus every knee would bow and every tongue will confess
that he is Lord." So, as Jesus has the mind of God, we have
the mind of Christ because we have the Spirit of God. But,
oh boy, aren't they always at odds. They're always at odds. Never a time is our flesh spiritual. It cannot be spiritual. The man
that is inside of us, the new man, Jesus Christ, by the Spirit
of God, this is the new man. The imputation of Christ's righteousness
is an alien righteousness. Therefore, the newness in us
is an alien newness. It's not us. And if you don't
remember that, you can go back to Romans 6 and 7 and listen
to those messages on the website and just sit for a minute and
think about that. It's a misapplication of the
teaching of the new man and the new mind to think that God gives
me some kind of spiritual wisdom that's mine and earthly fleshly
righteousness that's mine. That's impossible. It's impossible. Because even in complete obedience
today, it's also complete disobedience because it's not perfect. But even though that's the case,
and even though Christ has satisfied all the wrath of God for eternity
for us, and we will not be condemned, it does not give us the license
to say, you know, God loves me enough for me to get away with
this. Paul is saying that's a foolish
thing to say because the Spirit is against the flesh, and vice
versa. Don't think that way. That's
the command here. Don't think that way. Think this way. And
if you think as the Spirit thinks, if you have the mind that Christ
has, what does that mean? You're thinking how you can lay
your life down for others rather than live your life for your
own flesh. That's the point. It's not a
difficult prescription. It's not some spiritual mojo
baloney that you can just walk away from grace. Oh, no, you
can't. You never had it. That's garbage. It's garbage. You cannot walk away from grace.
And even when you have it, you can live as though you don't. In the eyes of the world. But the flesh keeps us from doing
the things we want to do, doesn't it? The Spirit wants what is
good and holy and righteous. The flesh, which is me, wants
what is good for the flesh. How am I identified before my
Father? What name do I have upon my forehead? What name do I have
written on my hand? Is it the name of perfection?
Is it the sevens? Or is it the name of humanism? The sixes. If you are in Christ,
God's name is upon you. He has marked you. You are His.
And you are marked by the fruit of the Spirit. You are marked
with the fruit of the Spirit. Even when that fruit is not visible. Because the fruit that we're
looking for is the truth of Christ in you. The mind of Christ granted
to you that you believe in the work of Christ alone. Now, historically,
people call that easy believism. And if that's what they want
to call it, I call it the only recipe for life. But they call
it easy-believism as a knock against grace. These men are
demonic. I'm going to say it just like
that. People who call the grace of God easy-believism are demonic. And they may stand in powerful
pulpits and they may write volumes that never cease. But they are
teaching lies in the name of God and they blaspheme. We are
always in the battle. But the leading of the Spirit.
Now see, understand the differences in Paul's language. There's a
leading of the Spirit. There's this practical living
out that we do by faith. That could go well and could
not go well. But if we are to keep our minds, remember Romans
12, if we are to keep our minds constantly renewed on the grace
of God and the finished work of Christ, it transforms us. Back in the early 80s when programming
became more popular and it was taught in the schools, I remember
learning the term garbage in, garbage out, or gigo. If you
program crappy, crappy program comes to life. If you put the
wrong code in, the wrong thing, if a recipe has the wrong ingredient,
it doesn't come out the way it's supposed to be. If you put trash
in your brain, trash comes out your mouth. If you put trash
in your body, you become trash. I mean, you know, it's an easy
recipe. I think one comedian said it
years ago in the late 80s. He said, if you eat a lot of
fat, greasy food, you can become a fat, greasy dude. So where
are we to take that stupid illustration straight to the heart of the
gospel? If I find myself struggling in my flesh to do that which
I do not want to do, what is typically wrong in my life? Is
it because I'm lost? Not at all. It's because I'm
feeding my flesh. I'm setting my flesh a plate. Yet the opposite of that is not
fighting the flesh, strangling the flesh, wrestling the flesh. As long as I'm fighting with
the flesh, I'm with it. It's resting in the grace of
God. And we do that by renewing our
mind on the grace of God. Instead of worrying about our
sin, we look at the cure. Instead of fighting with our
flesh, we rest in the hand of God. Instead of focusing on what
we wish we were, we look at what we really are, you see. And the
list goes on and on. We can have those back and forth
until the sun comes up, where it stops raining sometime in
the next 600 years. And you need to see this clearly,
because as we see verse 18 here in chapter 5, he says, but if
you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. See, being led by the Spirit
puts our heart and mind and focus and lives at the center of the
grace of God, always and forever in the grace of God alone, so
that we never, ever, ever find ourselves subject to the consequences
of the law. Because the very second that
we put ourselves under the law, the scripture says that Christ
is of no consequence to us, no benefit to us. So you are led by the spirit
are not under the law. Now in this, this is not a theological
treatise on justification or salvation. This is a practical
pastoral application, teaching the church of Galatia, the ins
and outs of life together. This is an intimacy issue of
fellowship and honoring the Lord Jesus in our lives. So that we don't go, no law,
carpe diem. Our identity is found not in
the law, but our identity is found in the grace of God by
the Spirit. So that no matter how we look, or how much we wore,
or how horrible we've had today, And see, there's something else
we need to understand. If I grumble, listen to this, if I grumble
in my spirit about my boss, like Yosemite Sam, you know that guy,
or I cuss him to his face and punch him in his throat, which
would feel real good, I've sinned equally in both circumstances.
I'm still a murderer. Now I have given witness to that
murder. Don't fall prey to think, oh,
I just held it in. I didn't sin. Yes, you did. You
just didn't sin as much as you could have. When our spouse does the thing
that always makes us mad, it's never really a problem. It's
just our problem. Why do they leave their shoes
there? Why does that underwear in the hallway? Why are the children
not cleaning off the table? Why is there syrup on the ceiling? I mean, you know, you never know
what's going on. And we feel pressed that if everyone
would just be cordial, would just be logical, would just be
human being for one day, we would have a better life. That's sin.
Whether we say it or not, do not relegate sin into distinctions
of wickedness. It is all wicked. So being led by the Spirit, we
are not under the law, for we are led to Christ. We are led
through and for Christ. We are led to the finished work
of Christ. We are hopeful in Christ. And yet there are some identifiers
of those who are not in Christ. But let's look at the list. The
works of the flesh are evident. Listen to this. sexual morality,
impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife. And
by the way, sorcery is not science fiction, and sorcery is not fiction
writing, and sorcery is not magic tricks, okay? Enmity, strife,
Jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envies,
drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. It's not an exhaustive
list. It's just a little list. Now, when we hear those, a lot
of us could say, oh man, I'm not like that at all. Liar! Why didn't he put liar there?
Because he knew everybody was going to say, I'm not like that. He didn't
want to put liar. He wanted to think they were not in the list. Let's
go through it. Sexual immorality. If you look
at a woman with lust, if you look at a man with lust, if you
consider the idea of an ambiguous person with lust, you've committed
adultery in your heart, you're sexually immoral. Impurity. Laughing at that which is not
funny. Laughing at that which is sensual. Mocking. Sensuality. Idolatry. The love of the Lord
your God with all your heart, mind, soul. And sorcery. I don't
think I've ever done sorcery. It ain't about Harry Potter.
Read Harry Potter if you want to. Good writing. It's as godly
as C.S. Lewis ever will be. Because he's
lost and says he's saved. There you go. I said it. So,
sorcery. How about reading that horoscope?
How about being scared of the boogers? How about out of wake
you think somebody's spirit's there? Sorcery. How about taking
drugs to change your mindset? Pharmakeia, that's the word there
for sorcery. Emnity. You know what that is?
Hatred. Strife. Sort of along the same
lines. Jealousy. That includes covetousness. Bits of anger. Well, I lost my
temper a long time. Woo, you can keep it bottled
up then. You're fit of angers on the inside then. And not everybody
suffers with the same things, but I guarantee we're all on
the list. Rivalries. Dissensions. Divisions. And I know people in sales are
rivals. People at jobs are rivals. Well, I'm going to outperform
this person and keep my job. He's going to get cut. That's
dissensions, divisions, envy. Divisions are about opinions,
about politics, about food, about clothing, about righteousness.
Divisions. Envy. Drunkenness. Orgies. There we go. None of
us in here have ever done that. Thank God. Maybe we have. Maybe
we haven't. Maybe we've lusted in our mind
against somebody and two minutes later somebody else and then
two minutes later somebody else. There's an orgy. And things like these. So who's
not in the list? Things like these, if you are
on those lists by some miracle of God or some blindness of your
own conscience, then it's in that and things like these. So
these are the works of the flesh. Now what I'm about to say is
going to sound to a majority of people extremely condemning and
blasphemous. And it's going to put a label
on me of antinomian if there ever was one. But in the context
of this teaching, follow the word of God and get our minds
out of the traditions of history. Historians are not God. I warn you, he says, as I warned
you before, that those who do such things will not inherit
the kingdom of God. How in trouble are we if we let
that stand as a separate sentence? How in trouble are we? John would
say, beloved, in the fellowship test of 1 John, in this intimacy
issue that John is dealing with in his first epistle, and James
for the Jews who are believers, he says, these things are written
that you may not sin. I'm writing to you about the
love of God for you little children and fathers and sons, my beloved,
See what kind of love the Father has given to you that you should
be called the children of God. And so you are. He says before that
these things are written that you may not sin, but if you sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous,
who is our propitiation. So when we see immorality, impurity,
sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, envy, strife, drunkenness, orgies,
and things like these, and we see our heart turning to these
things and desiring these things and rewarding these things, and
of course we don't do the grotesque. We're able to walk away from
those horrible things that really engage. Sometimes we let ourselves be
tempted and we walk into that temptation and we fall prey to
that temptation and we fall right into the cesspool of debauchery,
yet we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous. And all the while that we're
walking in those ways, we are not intimate with our Lord. We
are not intimate with His Word. We are not intimate in prayer.
We are not intimate in our homes. We are not intimate with our
brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not serving anyone but
ourselves. Don't do that. Paul says, serve
one another. That is what it means to be led
by the Spirit. How can I serve one another?
Because you understand the mind of Christ who served His sheep. 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,
self-control. Against such things there is
no law. So when we are in the flesh and we are judged by the
flesh and we are fighting according to the flesh and we identify
Look at this. We identify as either having
put away all this sinfulness and go, wow, look at my life,
oh my goodness, I don't do these, I don't do that, I don't do the
other things. We are judged by the law. If we're identified as sinners
or as those who've not sinned, we are judged by the law because
we are bringing ourselves under the authority of the judgment
of God in the law of righteousness. We are guilty. It's easy for us to say, well,
I know some people that are like that. They're not saved. That
is not what Paul says. Paul says when we gratify the
flesh, and we are not in the Spirit,
and we put to death the flesh in the context of this, and thus
identify ourselves as having not these things. We lie, John
would say, when we say we don't sin. But our identity is not
in our sin. Our identity is in our forgiveness.
Our identity is in our justification. Our identity is in Christ by
the Spirit of God. Is Jesus an adulterer? Is Jesus
a liar? Is Jesus a murderer? Was Jesus
ever involved in anger and rivalries and drunkenness and orgies and
divisions? No. We are not doing these things. We are not these people. So when
we practice these things, when we fall into these things, we
are acting as those who are not in Christ. Self-righteousness included.
Don't forget what we've already learned in the last few weeks.
But the fruit of the Spirit, the things that Paul says we
should look at, what is truly identifying us, who we really
are. We are people of love and people
of joy and people of peace and patience and people of goodness
and faithfulness and people of gentleness and self-control.
And because we are these people, because God the Spirit, the new
man in us is our righteousness, we have no law against us. Act
as you are, beloved. Live as you are with the mind
of Christ. This is an incredible encouragement
to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. It's not about where
your hope lies, whether you're doing good or bad. It's about whose you are. And if the grace of God doesn't
motivate you, something's deeply wrong. If the law of God motivates
you, something's deeply wrong. If the consequences of sin motivate
you, something's deeply wrong. See? You can't have both, can
you? You can't be on the hot plate and the beanbag at the
same time. This is the only thing that popped
into my head. Think about sitting in a warm,
beside the fire with a beanbag, just resting, just laying there
enjoying the day versus throwing yourself into the fire. If you're
in the fire, you're subject to the law and you're scared to
death that you're not saved. If you're resting in Christ, you're
just chill. Sit in the grace of God. And so those who belong to Christ
have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires. It
is over. We have won. It does not count. What would happen if we were
crucified? You ever thought about that?
If each of us in turn were crucified, what would be the implications
of that? What should we think of that? First, we deserve it
because we're guilty. We're not coming back to life
because we've earned our wage. There is no way to pay for our
sins, so we're permanently and forever judged. Eternally. And after an eternity of eternities,
which is silliness, but it gives you the picture. We are still
guilty. We are still worthy of death,
and there is no escape. Christ dies. He dies in our place. He pays the penalty, but he is
not guilty. And when we are dead in Christ,
Christ didn't stay dead. And when Christ rose, we rose. All of that will be literally,
literally established in glorification. Perfectly. And I have theorized
and I have chased the butterflies of my mind down the meadow of
stupidity for years asking how that is going to look and what
it's going to be like and how, you know, sort of imagine in
my mind the poetry of that experience and there is no word that I can
write. There is no element of my heart
that can produce the expression of what that shall be because
I cannot fathom what it is. I just know what it will take
from me. And that in itself, that which
is taken from me, this flesh is satisfaction enough that I
won't worry with it anymore is enough. And maybe that's the
outcome of it. What will it be like? It is imaginable. Unimaginable, I mean. It is unimaginable. There is no one who can contemplate
it. All I know is I want it. And
the only thing else, something else that I know is that I have
it. And you have it too in Christ. You have it too in Christ. So
when Paul tells us we have crucified the flesh with his passion and
desires, that is an encouragement to know that Christ has died
and Christ is risen from the dead. And therefore, With the
mind of Christ in the disciplines, and I'll use the phrase, the
means of grace that God has given us together as the church through
the scripture and intimacy together, we can encourage one another
on to work in good deeds, because every time there is sin in our
lives, it is that we're not serving one another. Whether it's private
or not, beloved, you know good and well, when we have private
sin, it hampers our intimacy with our brothers and sisters.
And when the intimacy together with brothers and sisters is
hampered, our intimacy with the Lord Jesus is hampered. So then if we live by the Spirit,
if we have life through the Spirit, if we've been given the Spirit
of life and we know that we have a forever hope of a foundation
and a temple and a city that is built by the hand of God,
then let us also keep in step with the Spirit Let us look to see the work of
God's Spirit working through us. Do not praise me if you see
gentleness in me. I'm not a gentle person. I'm
not. I'm melancholy, but I'm not gentle. So if there's gentleness in me,
praise the Lord for it. If there's faithfulness in me,
praise the Lord for it. I'm not faithful. Because I would
love to do everything I want to do, wouldn't you? Yet there's
a grace of God that works with us, that shows us, wow, you know
what I really, really want? I really want this, but I don't
want that. I want what the Lord is pulling
me to. Someone asked me a few weeks
ago, and I've shared some of this with some of you over these
weeks, was it always your dream to be a pastor? No! Ever, never, ever, never, never,
never, ever would I dream. It's not a dream. It's a nightmare.
It's a nightmare. And if I tallied up all the good
times I've had in the ministry, I'm done. And I've not even left
the left hand yet. Oh, okay. It's not about good
times. It's about good intimacy. It's
about good people who have been made righteous by the Lord, and
you struggle together, and you laugh together, and you cry together,
and you war together, and you rest together, and you do it
all for the sake of the glory. There's nothing else that I'd
rather do, but it wasn't a dream. It's not a dream. I wanted to
be a surgeon. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a composer. Those things would have been
so cool. Yuck! Thank God! He didn't put
me there and give me my dreams. He gave me something better.
An eternal call that I could not escape. That I love most
days, but it's still not a dream. And I would never do anything
else. God would kill me dead if I ever had to stop. I would
rather die than not be a shepherd of God's people. We rest to live by the Spirit
and keep in step with the Spirit by these things. We do not please
ourselves. We do and serve and God gifts
us and equips us to serve one another. We serve one another
in the way that God has prepared us to. And that is what we're
here for. And when we're doing that, you
know what we're not doing? We're not satisfying our flesh. That's why John tells us, I keep
going back to 1 John because it's a very, it's a parallel
reality here of what's being taught. But John says, you know,
we should confess our sins to one another. When we see sin in our life,
we confess our sin to the Lord who has forgiven us in Christ.
He's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us
of all of our unrighteousness. And our intimacy is good and
it's whole. We don't have to work ourselves
back into one another's lives and prove that we truly are the
genuine article again by the way we live. We're honest about
our relationship with our flesh and we're honest about our doubts
and our worries and our troubles and our trials in the context
of grace. And we work together to encourage
each other in these things. This is the way it works. And
when some of us decide to stamp our feet like a child that doesn't
get its way, and we refuse to stop being divisive through our
own selfish gains, and our own selfish ways, we are begged by
the rest of us to stop and to put to death that which Christ
has died and killed already. and to live as the new person
that God has put in you and the Spirit of God that rests in you,
live in a manner worthy of that together. Please stop these things. You are ruining our household. And when someone stomps their
feet and says, no, we kick them out of the house. It's as simple as that. It's
as simple as that. This is not antinomianism, it's
gospel life. It's good news all the time,
forever. You see, I remember those days
as a child hearing these powerful preachers on stage and on television
and on the radio and hearing them and thinking to myself,
what man could ever live to that standard? Jesus the Christ, that's
who lived to it. It's very easy to subject someone
to the law and to get a response of guilt and shame and fear and
hopelessness. You want to escape that hopelessness?
Just step out of your seat. You see how easy that is? It's
so easy. Now come on down here. You want to be free of sin? Stop sinning and believe in Jesus. By the time you get home, you've
already screwed it up. So you've got to rededicate your life the
next Wednesday and the next Sunday. And evangelicals, they push hard.
We've got to get people saved. We've got to help them escape
the judgment of God. We've got to teach them to... And they
give every prescription but the Bible for salvation. Then they
spend the rest of the lives of those people telling them that
they're not saved and they shouldn't have any hope at all. Demonic. You might say, well, isn't it
the other way around, though? Isn't there a problem on the
other side of this, that if we're living by the Spirit and we're
doing well and we're walking in a manner worthy and we're
following the mind of Christ and we're really serving, isn't
there a possibility that we might even become self-righteous in
that? Look at the last sentence. Let's not become conceited. Let's not provoke. Let's not
envy. You know what it looks like? If all of you would live like
I live, you'd honor the Lord. That's what it looks like. Or,
I'm not going to say a thing, but buddy, I know. I know what
Johnny boy over there has got going on. Thank God I'm not like
him. That's it. Or, Johnny Boy, if you were really
saved, you'd get your life together. Seen those woodchuck commercials
at Geico. I thought of myself the other day, I'd love to have
like a stack of wood, and people start talking foolishness, just
hit them in the head with it. It seems so humorous, it fits
with the culture, and it's not about chopping people in the
throat. Serves the same purpose, though. Don't provoke one another. Don't push buttons. Don't aggravate
and pester people in the journey of grace. And don't envy those
who have overcome. Don't envy those who have a different
way of service that's a little bit more visible than you. You've heard me say many times
over, nobody wants to be a bag of eyeballs or a bag of toenails.
Nobody wants to be an eyeball or a toenail. Or even if they
do, they don't want to be in a bag of them. We can't have
a bag of eyeballs. It's nothing. It does nothing.
It's worthless. A bag of toenails, nothing. But
if you take a toenail off a foot, it hurts if you hit that toe.
If you've got an eyeball missing, you're not getting around too
well. As a matter of fact, in some states, you can't even drive. So everybody
has a role to play. Everybody has a gift to give.
Everybody has service. At the minimum, we need to labor
in prayer for one another. And as the Spirit leads us, we
engage in positive and profitable conversations concerning the
grace of God, so that we might know the gift of God in Christ
Jesus together, and therefore we grow and mature in that way.
And along that journey, as the Spirit of God sees fit, He will
help us understand how to mortify the flesh by trusting in the
finished work of Christ. We don't put the flesh to death
by fighting it, or by focusing on it. We put the flesh to death
by knowing that Christ crucified it. And that sounds so surreal
and esoteric and all this other kind of stuff. It sounds philosophical.
But brothers and sisters, it is spiritual. It is spiritual. And by the mercy of God, we can
see it. And you might think, what in
the world are we to do? See, James, you are not preaching that text
correctly. Yes, I am. As God is my witness, it is what
it says. And anyone who disagrees with
me is not willing to hear the truth. And they would not be
called my brother if they stomped their feet and made an accusation
of antinomianism against you, my brothers and sisters in this
church. They are not my siblings in the Lord Jesus Christ, who
is the God of grace, if they think that what I just said is
wrong. Not that they, I don't understand
it. Would you help me? I'm talking about those who would
call foul. Because in the very next breath of Paul, he says,
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are led by the Spirit,
go and restore him in a spirit of gentleness. When's the last
time you ever heard of works, lordship, salvationist? Humanist,
be gentle with a sinner. When's the last time you ever
heard of anybody who believed in the assurance of salvation
through a transformed life of morality? ever be kind and gentle
and patient with someone who is struggling with sin in their
flesh. When is the last time that's ever been done? It's not
done. And they will harp and bark just like the Jews did.
And Jesus is saying to them the very thing he said to the others,
you shut people out of the kingdom of God. Because you prescribe
to them burdens that you yourself cannot keep. It's tough. It's tough. But all of us believers can be
trapped by this. We can all be trapped. We can
all be bewitched. We can all be scared. It's easy
to scare anybody. Look at the coronavirus. You
can't buy hand sanitizer in Evans County. And as soon as people
figure out that you can make it by yourself, you can't buy
the parts to make it. I got the second best thing, gasoline.
Don't lie to Matt. No, I'm just joking. Y'all look
at me like I'm crazy. You can't buy it. People are
scared to death. I don't know if they're drinking
it, putting it in their coffee, or what, but they're scared to
death. 3M, stocks going up. Selling
masks that don't keep you from getting a virus, keeps you from
giving a virus. It's awesome. Common cold's probably
gonna be eradicated because of this. Before it's over with. It's easy to scare people. But only God can give us hope
in the midst of the impossible. That he himself would come and
take on human flesh and die in the place of his people and then
secure us from everlasting to everlasting, from one degree
of glory to another, we are his and nothing can stop him. Next
week, we will look at how we are to restore each other. But
I've already said it, and I've already taught it a dozen times
over, and I've already said it in this little rant tonight.
It is that we are together, and we are encouraging each other
in the grace of God in Christ, and we are sharing the word together
in gentleness, knowing that we, who right now are not struggling
in our flesh the way our brothers and sisters may be, are to restore
one another in gentleness. And we are never to think that
we're too good not to fall with them. Let's pray. We thank you,
Lord, for your loving kindness and your grace in Christ, for
the beauty of the finished work of the cross, Father, and I pray
that my dogma in this is a righteous anger. I am so labored, Lord,
as you know my heart, for the sake of my brothers and sisters
here, I am labored over the constant counsel of trying to help people
overcome their fear of condemnation when they need to see the gospel.
Lord, give us clarity as we teach it and preach it and proclaim
it to one another. And Father, I pray for our brothers and sisters
throughout our lives and across this world who are so bewitched
that you would teach them the truth and help them rest in it.
And Lord, those who claim to be yours but who double down
on an unrighteousness or a self-righteousness or a wicked false gospel, Lord,
would you call them to repentance by granting them faith? If your
will is done, Lord, it shall come to pass, and it is what
we ask for in Christ's name, by His authority. Amen.