1101. The Resurrected Life

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're concluding a study series entitled, Walking in the Spirit, which is a study of Galatians chapter 5. Through this study, we'll see how believers can have freedom in Christ as they walk with him each day.

If you would like to follow along in the study booklet, you can get one on Kindle or you can order a printed copy from the website thedailyplatform.com. Let's listen to today's message where Steve will discuss the resurrected life from Galatians chapter 5. I'm going to ask you to please take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to the book of Galatians chapter 5. Well, we have spent the entire semester in our chapel on and off working through the theme of walking in the spirit. We've actually had 10 messages and this is the last and final of the messages of our theme, walking in the spirit. I don't know how it's been for you, but for me, it's been personally enriching to work through all of these sacred texts.

It's been a wonderful blessing. Just a few reminders, we began in Galatians chapter 5 verse 13. We worked our way down through the passage and in verse 16 we find where Paul commands believers that they are to walk in the spirit. And it's right here we realize that walking in the spirit involves an active engagement of the will, the obedience of the believer. And then in verse 18 he says that we are to be led of the spirit and here we came to realize that it's not just an active obedience, but we can say it this way, it's a passive dependence on the Lord. So you could sum it up even in the song Trust and Obey, there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey, that's really what's involved in walking in the spirit. However, it's not until we get down to verses 24 and 25 where Paul really tells us how this works.

And he tells us that the key to understanding how this works is described in two events that we all know well. The crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ. And since we are united to Christ, since we are in Christ, then for us as believers walking in the spirit involves both a crucifixion and a resurrection. As Jesus was nailed to the tree and rose from the grave, so we as believers are to experience both in our own life a painful crucifixion and also a powerful resurrection if we walk with him. So you may not remember it very well, but a couple of weeks ago we started out with the crucified life of the believer.

That's verse 24, notice what it says. And they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Walking in the spirit involves a dying experience. It starts at the moment of our salvation when we choose to die to ourself, to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts. Simply that means that we are dying to our self-centered desires.

That's what happens when you get saved. You are turning from self and sin to Christ. But although this begins at salvation, it has to be lived out. What is Christian living? It's living out the crucifixion of Christ day after day as I choose to say no to myself and yes to Christ.

And Paul used a term that we looked at last time. It's the word mortify. It refers to the action of the believer towards his sin. Romans 8 13, for if you live after the flesh, you shall die. But if you through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. As John Owen put it this way, he said, kill sin or it will be killing you. For us as believers, this involves a ruthless attitude towards our own sinful thoughts and desires.

It includes cutting off supply lines that feed your lusts. Paul writes in Romans 13, do not make provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof. I'm sure in the last five days, you have had plenty of opportunities to say no to the flesh and yes to the Lord because Christian living is an intentional separation from sin. That's the crucified life of the believer. But this morning, I'd like us to continue on in verse 25 with that thought. And now we turn to the resurrected life of the believer.

The believer's life that is lived in the power of God. And let's look at verse 25 and notice what Paul says. He says, if we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.

Now notice the opening statement. He says, if we live in the spirit, this is what we call a statement of fact. It means this, if we really are living in the spirit, the idea is that we really do. You could translate it this way, since we are presently alive in the spirit, since we right now are new creations in Christ, since we have God's spirit indwelling us with the dynamic power of God, since you are alive in the spirit, you have been resurrected for the moment that you were saved, not only did you die, but as Paul says in Ephesians 2, we are made alive. We are quickened with Christ.

We are alive in Him. And then he goes on to say that in addition to this, he says, if you are alive, then let us walk in the spirit. Now the first thing I think you should note is that the word walk here in verse 25 is actually a different word than what we find in verse 16. In verse 16, it means to behave as one in whom the spirit dwells. Live out your life walking in the spirit.

But in verse 25, it's very different. It means to keep in step with the spirit. It's a military term. It's like marching in a platoon to the cadence of your platoon leader when he calls you to attention. And then he says, forward march, and he counts out one, two, three, four, and you're stepping out and with everyone else, you're keeping up. It means to get in line and to stay in line with God's spirit.

It means to persist in a certain way. It's like taking a class and keeping up with your assignments. How many of you have ever gotten behind?

It's not confession, I'm just asking a question. And most of us learn in college that one of the keys to good grades is just staying up. Keeping up. It's like a person who joins a gym and they want to get in shape and they want to look good and they want to feel good. So they go and join a local gym and they get a trainer and the trainer comes walking out.

He looks like he was in a magazine and you think I want to look like that guy. But after 30 minutes of exercise, you're not so sure you want to look like that guy. And the key to getting in shape is keeping up, staying with it. And what Paul is saying is this, that walking in the spirit involves a continuing perseverance in your walk with God. We are not only to obey God and depend on God, but we are to persevere with God. So how does a believer keep in step with the spirit? A book that I read as a young Christian was entitled by J.I.

Packer. It was entitled Knowing God. Packer writes about a personal experience that he had as a young Christian when he picked up the copy, and I mentioned it last time, of John Owen's book entitled Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers. And he makes this statement about how to keep up with the spirit. He said, I chanced upon a mini treatise by the Puritan John Owen, and here was God's chemotherapy for my cancerous soul.

Reaching across three centuries, Owen showed me my inside, my heart, as no one had ever done before. Sin, he told me, is a blind, anti-God, egocentric energy in the fallen human spiritual system, ever fomenting, self-centered, and self-deceiving desires, ambitions, purposes, plans, attitudes, and behaviors. Now that I was a regenerate believer, born again, a new creation in Christ, sin that formally dominated me had been dethroned, but it was not yet destroyed. It was marauding within me all the time, bringing back sinful desires that I hoped that I had seen the last of, and twisting my new desires for God and godliness out of shape so that they became pride perverted too. Lifelong conflict with the besetting sins that besetting sin generates was what I must expect. In other words, he said, I didn't think I could ever get victory.

So what do I do? Here was Owen's answer. In essence, he said, have the holiness of God clear in your mind. Remember that sin desensitizes you to itself.

Watch. That is, prepare to recognize it and search it out within you by discipline, Bible-based, Spirit-led self-examination. Focus on the living Christ and on his love for you on the cross. Pray, asking for strength to say no, to send suggestions, and to fortify yourself against bad habits by forming good ones contrary to them. And ask Christ to kill the sinful urge you are fighting.

Does it work? Yes. 60 years on, I can testify to that. How do we walk in this resurrected life? Number one, it involves absolutely a disciplined pursuit of God. The Bible says, exercise yourselves unto godliness. That word exercise in 1 Timothy 4.7 comes from the word gymnos, from which we would get the word gymnasium.

It's the idea of training or conditioning or getting into shape. The word has the smell of the gym on it. Have you ever been in a gym that smelled? Have you ever been in a smelly men's locker room where guys have come in pouring sweat and they throw their clothes in the locker and it smells like a locker room? The idea is that sweating is good.

I grew up in South Carolina. Some of you are from the West and you don't like humidity. You're used to dry weather. I love humidity. I love sweating.

When I was a kid, I used to love walking out in July and August and feeling that heat attack you. You just start sweating because I felt like I was doing something even though I wasn't doing anything. The idea here of exercise is directing your spiritual sweat towards spiritual growth. There's no godliness where there's laziness. God's people are diligent people and this includes disciplining yourself in the various means by which we get grace. What is grace? God's power. God's enablement. But where does grace come from?

What's the means of grace? It comes from his word. It comes from praying in the Spirit. It comes from the fellowship of God's people and worship in God's house and the taking of the Lord's Supper. We are not spiritual but just because we have disciplined ourselves to do our duty in reading our Bibles but rather we become more spiritual because we are consistently drinking from the fountain of grace. So if you are inconsistent in availing yourself to those means of grace, then you are being overrun by your flesh because you cannot control the flesh by your own self-effort.

The only way to kill sin is God's way. And so as we consider the fruit of the Spirit, the qualities of Christ, or you could say the fruit of the Spirit is a definition of what holiness looks like. Love and joy and peace. Goodness, gentleness, meekness, temperance, faithfulness, long-suffering.

All of these put together, that describes what Christ is like. That defines what holiness is but that does not come without habits. That's why Paul says in Galatians 6, 8, for he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. The sowing process is decision-making. Where the will is choosing to follow the flesh or follow the Spirit and it's in the present.

It's what I'm doing right now. And he says let us not be weary in well-doing. What does it mean to be weary?

You know what it means to be weary. How many of you crashed during your vacation? Anybody crash? I did. I was, I was, I was worthless on Wednesday and Thursday of last week.

Totally worthless. I sat there, my children all think I'm a zombie because I am worn out. The word weary means to lose your motivation, to accomplish your goal. You lose your heart, you lose your drive. And the Scripture says don't be weary in well-doing. What is that well-doing? It's sowing to the Spirit. It is developing in your life Christ-like character. And so therefore, we must be intentional.

But if we will be faithful, if we will persevere, then we will change and we will grow and become more like Christ. So number one, it involves the disciplined pursuit of God. Then secondly, it includes a spontaneous response to God.

We're not robots. There's spontaneity in our life. And that's true in our spiritual life. I heard many years ago Dr. Lesolola say that revival is obedience to the initial promptings of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit works, revival is when you instantly obey. And by the way, that also includes a discipline, getting used to that.

I wondered, is that true? Is that really what revival is? And years later as I was studying the text in Philippians 2 verses 12 and 13 where Paul says, wherefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both the will and the do of his good pleasure. I realize that God works first.

God is the first cause of all things. God is working in you. He's prompting you. He's stirring your heart. He's convicting your conscience. He's challenging your faith.

He's illuminating your mind. All of this comes through his Word, the means of grace. But as a believer, my will must be surrendered to instant obedience to the Spirit of God. When God speaks, my will is in submission. And then daily, that is lived out as I walk in obedience to the leadership and the guidance of the Spirit of God. And it's this obedience that God empowers. God animates us to accomplish his purposes.

So when we consider the resurrected life, it's not a passive, do-nothing life. But it is life that is filled with the grace of God as we discipline our habits and as we respond to the working of God in and through our life, this is the way that we walk in the Spirit. So let me conclude this morning with just three big reminders of what we have learned over this semester.

And we're not going to retain everything. But three big things I want you to remember as we finish up this whole study on walking in the Spirit. First of all, let me first of all say that walking in the Spirit is the only way to live the Christian life. And nothing else is going to work.

I hope that's clear. We learned earlier that Christian liberty is freedom from guilt through the cross and freedom from lust through the Spirit. The flesh is deceitful. It will lead you to a religious self-effort that leads to self-righteousness or the flesh will lead you to loose living, totally rejecting the constraints of the law.

You could say it real simple with two terms, libertarianism or license and legalism. But in the middle is liberty. It's like driving down a highway in Louisiana.

You don't want to get off the highway because you're going to end up in the swamp. The only way for the Christian life to work is for the believer to walk in the Spirit. I hope you understand that.

And I hope you're striving by God's grace, persevering to keep up with the Spirit. Number two, I want to remind you that the desires of the flesh and the Spirit are mutual opposites. And they are in continual conflict with one another.

It's a civil war going on in your soul. You cannot follow one and the same time follow the other. You cannot be a fan of the flesh and be a fan of the Spirit. Which team are you on?

Who are you following? And the difference Paul spells out between the two are clearly evident when we saw the works of the flesh, the darkness. And then we saw the fruit of the Spirit, it's beauty. And the wonderful truth is this, that the power of the Holy Spirit is greater than the power of your flesh.

You may feel at times that you are sinking into a vortex that you cannot get out, a sinking into temptation. But I want you to understand that Christ rose from the dead and His resurrection power is in the heart of every believer. And we can overcome sin.

God has given us that. Do not walk away from this school thinking that the sin of your past or the experiences of your life have made you a victim and you are enslaved to those things. You are not a victim in Christ, you are a victor in Christ. And then finally, spiritual living involves an active daily engagement in the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We live in Christ. So therefore there's no instantaneous sanctification. Boy, I sure wish there was. Wouldn't it be a blessing? If I could give an invitation this morning and say all of you that want to be instantly sanctified and perfect, come forward. How many of you would come forward? I would.

I'd be the first. Free from temptation, free from the own struggles of my own heart, living in perfection before our God, but it doesn't work that way. There's nothing that you can do that will bring instantaneous sanctification. However, we can have ongoing growth and overcoming victorious power over the sins of our flesh as we mortify the flesh and obey the Spirit and walk in the Spirit.

We have to be engaged. And it is going to require this of you. Here's my concern for many of you is that you are in a spiritual environment unengaged. You're not getting up in the morning reading your Bible. You are not putting on the armor of God so that to go out and fight the sin because, I mean really, really at Bob Jones is there like really sin?

Really? Because we're sinners. The problem's not out there. The problem's in our own heart. And we have to be engaged so that when temptation rises, we cry out to God for strength and choose to obey. And my concern is that you develop a passiveness, a passivity about your spiritual life so there's not that drawing from the means of grace that enables you to change and grow and then suddenly you graduate and not only are you not any better but in some ways you're worse because you've deceived yourself thinking you're okay and in reality you're not. So may God grant us the help that we need and the promise that He has given His people is still true today when He penned it 2,000 years ago that if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. My listening friend, can I ask you a question? Have you received the crucified resurrected Jesus as your own personal savior? No doubt God is speaking to your heart.

There's a knock on the door of your heart and He's asking to come in. Would you personally, individually, right now call upon the name of the Lord? Ask Jesus to be your savior for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Let me urge you to do that right now. May God bless you. You've been listening to a sermon from the study series in Galatians Chapter 5 by Dr. Steve Pettit, President of Bob Jones University. For more information on Dr. Pettit's series, visit our website, thedailyplatform.com, where you can get a copy of Steve's study booklet entitled Walking in the Spirit. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.