Walk by the Spirit

Family, was it a special day? Tonight, we're going to be reading from Galatians chapter five. So if you want to read along, you can find your place there now. But before I begin reading from that passage, I want to just have us take a little bit of time to reflect on what we heard this morning. Pastor Goode taught us from First John four verses one through six, and hopefully you'll see some sort of link with what we read tonight. The scriptures that we looked at this morning taught us to test the spirits because, quote, many false prophets have gone out into the world. And the apostle gave us two major ways that we can perform that discernment. And Pastor Goad brought those out very clearly. And I just want to give you all a chance to remember. So if I ask you a question, I'm not being rhetorical. You have an opportunity to actually answer if we go along along the way. So the first the first kind of spiritual test that we were taught this morning was in verse two of First John, chapter four, and it says the spirit, if the spirit confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, he is from God. Otherwise, the spirit's not from God. And that's a sort of a doctrinal test. The second doctrinal test in the passage was in verse six, where the apostle claims that the teachings that he and others like him are from God and that he, quote, he who knows God hears us. So if the person that you're contemplating, is this really coming from God or not? If the person can hear and affirm the teachings of the apostles and the spirit is within them. And then Pastor fleshed out these tests of the spiritual source of truth or error by pointing out that there are three major classes of spiritual error that we need to be most concerned about. So who can remember maybe one of three major errors we were warned about this morning? Anybody awake? Either now or then or preferably both. Number one was, yes, denying the humanity of Christ. And actually, it's nice that that's mentioned first, because that's the specific Gnostic heresy that the Apostle John was teaching against in our passage this morning. If we if we read in verse three, it says every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist. Any others? Anybody else remember one of the errors? denying the deity of Christ. And personally, I may be wrong, but I think that this is the more common heresy of our day than than the former. This is the one over which we hopefully Orthodox Christians divide with Mormons or the Church of Latter Day Saints, Jehovah's Witness and other so-called Christian cults. We share a lot in common with members of these cults. We share an interest in pursuing a moral life and even service to the world at large, but we do not share a common gospel. As Pastor Goh pointed out this morning, if we deny the full reality of the incarnation, the full deity and the full humanity of Christ, we deny the gospel of its power. to reconcile the unity which we originally destroyed in sinning with sinning against God. So Jesus incarnation is actually a beautiful picture of what we hopefully aspire to, and that is to be united with God in the future. What's the final what's the final error that? The sufficiency of Christ, yeah. Or as Keith put it this morning, denying the completed work of Christ. And this is another common feature of cults that will often impose a legalistic path to salvation, and even many Christian denominations. that we might differ with on certain points. And I'll come back to this at the end. But let's quickly complete our review of this morning's sermon. The second type of spiritual test is an experiential one. And as was mentioned before, this is one that's very frightening, especially to Baptists. They get really jittery about the experiential aspects of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And there is significant mystery to this ministry, and no one can hand us an exhaustive list of how the spirit is going to work in our lives or in the lives of other believers. But there are doctrinal guidelines, as we as we have spent some time discussing this morning. Pastor mentioned that there are ways to kind of test the authenticity of the experience that you have with the Holy Spirit or you see in others. Again, mentioned three tests. Who can remember one of those, one of those three? It's hard, isn't it? With what? Yeah, if the experience that we're having with the Holy Spirit leads to deep conviction over our sin, we can trust that's from that's from that's from the Spirit of God. Any others? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, there should be fruit. We're going to get more deeply into that as we as we dig into the passage tonight. Any other remember? Yeah, does it lead your heart to worship? Are you overwhelmed by the glory of God? I've just been reading a new book since about the start of the year, and every time I read that book, it's just impressed upon me a sense of worship. And I can praise God that the author of the book is inspired by the Spirit to write. What else? This is the most painful one of the three. Suffering, right? That we may, by the Spirit, be led to share in the sufferings of Christ. And thankfully, in addition to being led, we'll be empowered to suffer, to suffer through it. These are scary things, as I mentioned, but the Apostle provides an encouragement that the spirit that is within us is greater than the spirit that is in the world. And so, this is a kind of encouraging affirmation. We don't need to be fearful of evil spirits, even when we work through these steps of discernment and we discern. This is bad. This is not from God. This is evil. We can call upon the power that is within us to protect us from other spirits or even from the desires of our own flesh. And it's on the basis of that last thought that we're going to transition to our passage tonight. In Galatians 5, where we are admonished to, quote, walk in the Spirit or walk by the Spirit. So here we find another test. It's one that Jennifer already mentioned a moment ago. A third type of spiritual test is to evaluate the fruit, the fruit of the Spirit acting in the persons or ministries or in the outworking of a teaching. So very simply, we can evaluate the fruit of a person, the ministry of teaching in question to determine whether or not it is of the spirit. And so the very familiar passage and we're going to just rest mainly on verse 16 of chapter five, very familiar passage opens with. quote, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. In short, if you or if anyone else claims to be walking by the spirit, yet you live in a way that's gratifying your flesh, you or whoever else that's making the claim. is being deceitful or being deceived or is deceived. So what are we to do? So just to focus on an application, I would suggest that we should saturate ourselves with scripture. In Romans is a familiar passage, be transformed by the renewing of our minds that by testing again, we're testing again, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Our present text is very useful with regard to discerning the source of various possible fruits. And I'm not going to seek to kind of teach through the whole passage. I think it's just useful to read through it. And so I'm going to read from verse 17 to verse 26 and just let the let the words kind of penetrate as as we read for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh for those are opposed to each other to keep you from doing things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit you are not under the law now the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality impurity sensuality idolatry sorcery enmity strife jealousy bits of anger rivalries dissensions divisions envy drunkenness orgies and things like these I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God and But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. So how do we know if we are being led by the Spirit? If the things into which we are led are characterized by the fruit of the spirit. And I always am led to song thanks to my wife. She always sings this. She always sings this verse. And it's the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And that's the only way I can manage to memorize scriptures by singing it. You should you should pray that the spirit would lead you. I must confess that the most convicting part of the sermon this morning was that that that that moment when when Pastor asked us, are you too busy? Are you too busy to pray without ceasing? And I certainly find myself many times saying, I'm just I'm just too busy or my mind just even if I don't think I'm too busy, I am so busy that I don't make time to pray. And I don't know who I'm quoting, but I remember one guy saying, I'm so busy. I'm so busy right now. I've got to pray. And I wish that I were more like that. Finally, I think it's useful to recall the context of this particular passage in Galatians. Paul is teaching his Galatian readers how to live the life of freedom that Jesus has purchased for us with his blood. You look at verse one of chapter five. It says very quickly, for freedom, Christ has set us free. Taken out of context, this might be viewed as a license to live a life of debauchery. In fact, I heard that a young Muslim man just asked recently, if Christ has really made payment for your sins, what keeps you Christians from sinning all the time, sinning like crazy? And in the words of our present verse, he could ask, what keeps Christians from wantonly gratifying the desires of the flesh? Does anyone have an answer for this guy? OK, give it to me. Okay, excellent, excellent. That is an excellent answer to the question. It's a doctrinal answer to the question. And in our present context, we learn also to walk in the Spirit. And this is it as it works, works as the Apostle John works through this truth. He portrays the answers not to re-enslave ourselves to legalism. You read between verse one and verse 16, where we focus tonight. It's saying don't. don't go back down that path. Rather, pray and seek to be led by the Spirit. And if you are led by the Spirit, you'll evidence the fruit of the Spirit. And I think I'll skip some of the ramble that I've managed to build into what I have. And I'd like to just cycle back, cycle back and summarize where we've been. So we're called to test the spirits. We've learned three types of tests to apply, a doctrinal test, an experiential test, and to test the fruit of that spirit's ministry. And I would just like to pray that we never lose sight of the fact that Jesus has purchased for us a life of freedom. And let us not build a legalistic structure in the hopes of gaining God's favor, but rather let us seek the Spirit's guidance in how to exercise the freedom that we have been given. And that we would exercise that freedom in a way that bears testimony to the fact that the Spirit lives within us. That our lives would give testimony to the fact that God's Spirit lives in us. And that's where I'll close. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the cross work of your son. We thank you that it is as has been proclaimed already tonight. It is sufficient, Lord. We don't need to do anything to add to what you have already done. Lord, we pray that we would come to understand this, that Lord, we would not seek to earn your favor by any acts that we might commit, whether it might be circumcision that was spoken of in Galatians or baptism that continues to be an issue of confusion in today's day. or any of the many other legalistic structures that we build around ourselves to try and please You. But rather, let us humbly come before Your Spirit in prayer. And Lord, we ask that You would give us a spirit of prayer, Lord. Help us not to be afraid to pray. Lord, I confess I have been afraid to pray. And I thank you for Ben's prayer tonight, reminding us that we have been adopted and that we can come boldly into your presence, Lord. And I just pray that you would answer the prayers that we raised to you, that we would evidence the fruit of your Spirit in our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.