Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be spread throughout the world so that all may know Christ. Join us now for a portion of one of our services here at Kerwin Baptist Church, located in Kernersville, North Carolina. Chapter 5. Galatians chapter five, and I'm so excited that Pastor Trust us to do this, to go along with the theme.
And originally, he had come to us and said that he had asked Jacob to come up with a theme this year. And we were sitting there, and Jacob was explaining to us the theme. For the gospel, and did an awesome job explaining to all of us in a staff meeting. And then the pastor said, Okay. The rest of you guys are coming up soon.
Y'all are going to have to come up with themes, and me and Frank and John looked at each other and went, oh boy, like, we're like, who's next? Like, he looked at one of them and said, Jesus wept when they got older. But. I'll joke to the side. Jacob did an awesome job picking that out, and I know that was on his heart.
And we had been praying about it, and the Lord had fit it all together. You know, Frank had mentioned when he preached a couple weeks ago. that he had went first and and to him He thought immediately the identity of the gospel, and I was like, oh man, he got that one. I was like, that's a good one. And I started thinking about the Lord had been working in my heart on the fruit of the Spirit actually for quite some time.
I've been praying about it, and we went towards the maturing in the gospel. And Pastor explained it so well: that the gospel affects every area of our life. And we're going to look at that tonight here in Galatians chapter 5. But I wanted to give real quick. Just a synopsis.
Let's read the verse first. I'll have John put it up on the screen of our theme verse. And this is 1 Corinthians 9:23. And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you. Talking about that, as Jacob had explained in his message, the motivation of the gospel.
And here's the four areas, the main areas that we've talked about so far with theme. First of all, we talked about the meaning of the gospel. Pastor had done a message on the meaning of the gospel and what's the point of it? Why do we even need it? And then we went into, he talked about the message of the gospel and did an awesome job on a Sunday morning laying it all out of the intricacies and all of that and simple by faith and the message of the gospel.
Brother Frank did a couple weeks ago the mark of the gospel. Our identity. Oh, I forgot, I skipped motivation. The motivation, Brother Jacob did that as well. The motivation of the gospel.
What moves us to tell others about Christ? And then our identity in the gospel of the mark of the gospel that Brother Frank did from Galatians just a couple weeks ago. And we had talked about that just, I think, a month or two ago. We were sitting down and praying about which directions to go in, and he had talked about the beginning of Galatians. And the Lord was leaning on my heart the end of Galatians about the maturing of the gospel.
So let's do this. Before we dive into the word this evening, let's go ahead and open in a word of prayer. To bless our time of study over Galatians chapter 5. Lord, we love you. We thank you for your many blessings, and we thank you for how good you are to us.
And Lord, please be with me tonight as I have the opportunity to preach your word. I'm so excited to be able to do this and that you would even want to use me. And so I'm humbled for the opportunity, and I'm so excited. And help us to have open hearts and minds for what you have. And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen. When we think of maturing, we think of different areas of our life. I automatically think from a baby growing up all the way to a teenager to adulthood, you mature in different ways, right? You mature physically, you mature emotionally, you mature hopefully socially.
Sometimes maybe, but in all seriousness, mature in every area of your life. And I know for myself, for many parents out there, At the beginning of having kids, you know, they're just babies. Gray's five now, so we're not obviously too far into it, but at first I thought, oh. The baby stage is so hard. They wake up all the time.
And, you know, parents would ask me, How's it going? And I tried not to complain, but they're like, okay. And some even said, Just you wait, you know, they're just kind of smiling and then they become two and they're like, oh, they're so sweet. And they're like, bye! You're like, whoa.
What's this monster? I mean, this blessing. You're like, wow! And then they get older.
So we have three kind of in different areas right now: Gray's and five, heading towards school age, and then Hayden's in the raptor stage. I mean, the toddler stage. And then we have Precious Cassidy in the baby stage. And so they each have their maturities growing up. And You know, throughout scripture, God uses different ways to describe maturing.
Obviously, as a Christian, when you first accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, it's so exciting. And the Bible talks about the milk of the word and growing up and eating the meat like a baby. The baby starts off milk and then weans on to hard food. We all know these basic things. And tonight, I know that everybody is probably at different places of their life, different seasons of their life, different points in their spiritual walk with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Some have just got saved. Maybe today I got to lead a little boy to the Lord after junior church, and that was so exciting. That was awesome. Maybe that's you. Or maybe you're at the season where you've been saved for 50, 60 years.
Maybe that's you as well.
So we're all at different points. And so at first, I, you know, I was like, the Lord's leading the direction. But as I was studying this out, I do see some. Patterns, some things here in Galatians chapter 5 that we can take from this as a As a blueprint or a map to follow in our spiritual walk, to always keep in the back of our mind. And so let's dive right back in here in Galatians chapter 5.
We're gonna look at verses 16 through 26. And here Paul, he's writing to the churches of Galatia, and he's encouraging throughout the whole book. At the beginning of the book, he's warning them of false teachers. He's telling them about their identity in the Lord. He then, in the middle of the book, talks, or in the middle of the letter, talks about, hey, you know, the Old Testament characters, they had faith, and he was connecting it with their faith of today, of believing in Jesus Christ.
And then we get to chapter 5. And he's warning them of their liberty in Christ, but also not living in the law or living in the flesh. And we get to verse 16, and first of all, we see the struggle. We see the struggle that's presented to us here in the Christian walk.
So let's look at verse 16. It says, This I say then, walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
So with the struggle comes the command to walk. The command to walk says, walk in the spirit. It's a simple thing here. This comes right after he says, Do not live in the law. You're like, what does that mean?
Do not live in the law. Basically, don't live. Like you don't have Jesus in your heart. He said, Don't live like this, don't live how you were before. You're something new now.
As it talks about in Corinthians, you're like a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. He said, so instead of living in the law, I command you to walk.
So the command here is: walk ye in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Seems easy enough, but he lays it all out here. And it's not that he just kind of candy coats it or he kind of, you know, be careful this little thing. He shows us the extremes here of the struggle. He shows us that it's a total war within yourself.
And yes, when you get saved, you're gloriously saved from your sins. You accept Christ. He comes in your heart. He's paying for that sin, but you still have that flesh that you have to deal with every day. You still have those desires that are within your heart.
It's not that you're going to lose your salvation. You have that eternal security, and that's wonderful. But we have that struggle that's within us.
So that's why Paul says, I'm commanding you, walk in the Spirit. But what does that look like?
Well, we see here In verses 17 and 18, the civil war of the Christians. We have a natural civil war going within us, we have something that fights within us every day, one against the other. And verse 17 says this: For the flesh lusteth against the spirit. And the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
He said, You have one against the other. He said, And they're fighting constantly. One wants one, one wants the other.
So. In our house, We're realizing that there's all peace till we have a civil war broke. breaking out every day. And it's not me and Sarah.
Well, maybe sometimes. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But it's Gray and Hayden.
And so I grew up with a sister. We were five years apart. We fought, but you know, not like brothers or sisters would fight if how sisters fight as well.
So their brothers, you know, they're playing. It's going great. They like the same things. They're only two years apart. And all of a sudden, you hear the action taking place.
You hear the rip of the toy out of the hand. And you just hear, woo! wailing and gnashing of teeth. You're like, And then sometimes working with one of them of not hitting back, you know, they rip the toys on, you hear they're like on each other. One day I walked by and one was pinned, one pinned down the other.
And I just went. And just walked around. I was like, we'll see where this goes. This is interesting.
So it was pretty funny. But we have that within ourselves. Have you ever felt that struggle? Maybe it's just me. You wake up and you go throughout the day and you're like, Okay, I'm going to live for the Lord.
And then something happens and something pulls you on the inside. You're like, I really want to live. Say this back, or I really want to do this or do that. Not, you know, I'm not going to naturally hit somebody. I would lose in a fight, obviously.
But, but in all seriousness, your flesh is fighting back and forth, and it's just a constant, constant struggle. And Paul says here, he says, you have it. It's natural. One's lusting out of the other to pull you this way, the other's pulling you the other direction. What do you do?
In verse 18, it says this: it says, But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law, saying you are not acting like how you were before you were saved. You're not acting under the law, trying to do good enough, trying to do this, and trying to do that. Have you ever felt like before? You've struggled with the same things over and over and over. We've all been there.
And it's discouraging and it's hard. And you're like, wow, is this supposed to be an encouraging message? Don't worry, we're getting somewhere with it. But it's that struggle over and over again. And I'm trying.
Have you ever left yourself in discouragement saying to yourself, I'm trying, I'm trying. I'm trying. And that's something that can be very discouraging. We have that civil war fighting against us. But then we see here, verses 19 through 21, the condemnation of the flesh.
Paul talks about this. He talks about the extreme going on here. If you're living in the flesh, if you're in the law, sorry, I hit that. If you're living in the law, you're living as a sinner. You're doing these things.
This is how the flesh manifests itself. This is the end of the line. He's not candy coating yet. He's saying, this is the end of the line of your flesh. This is what's going to happen.
And it says here in verse 19. It says, Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath. Strife, seditions, hearsays, heresies, I apologize, envyings. Thank you, Frank. Murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like, of which I tell you before, as I have also told you in times past, that ye which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven.
We like to uplift and encourage one another, don't we? Amen. He's saying here, this is the extremes, this is how the flesh is going to manifest itself. This is the end goal of what the flesh wants to do in your life. And from whether it's as it named here, and I'm not gonna go through each one, but in categories of sexual sins, of pride, of wrath, of fighting, having substances control you, like drunkenness, all these different things, he said, this is the end goal of the flesh.
He said, but be ye led of the Spirit.
So we see here the struggle, but now let's look at the Spirit. Paul paints for us two different. Two different dynamics, a struggle of two different things, but now he paints for us. This is the end goal where the flesh is at. But here's the end goal of what the spirit wants for you.
And it says here, the spirit. Verse 22 starts with it, verse 22 and 23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. meekness, temperance, against such There is no law. You see the theme here: against such, there is no law.
It's the opposite. You're not in the law, you're not trying to do good enough. You're yielding to the Spirit. You're letting the Spirit control in your life. You're letting Him come and lead you and guide you and direct you.
And I was studying this out, and I'm not gonna get super detailed in this. I know. Many of you have probably done Bible studies on the fruit of the Spirit, and I encourage you to do a Bible study on the fruit of the Spirit. It is awesome. Last year, I did.
I don't think we have any of our junior church kids in here, so if I say it, They probably won't do it, but I did a series on emotions. And in junior church, whenever I say the word emotions, to kind of keep their attention, I have them jump up out of their seat, spin around, and sit down. And I forget that I had that rule like... For this series, like six months ago.
So the other day I said something about being emotional, and they're like, And when 60 of them in a tiny Sunday school classroom, we had 63 this morning, first through fifth, and when 60 of them got up and you're like, and there's no carpet in that room, by the way.
So it's like, you know, like, but we started with emotions, and after that, it just naturally led into the fruit of the Spirit. We did a study on that, and I encourage you to do a specific study on each of the fruit. Brother school, as I was studying out, there's three different categories I want us to look at tonight of the fruit of the Spirit. And the first category is how the Spirit matures us is: first of all, it matures us upward. It matures us with the Lord, with our relationship with God, with the first three spirit, first three fruit of the Spirit, of what can show in our life as we're leaning on Him, as we're letting Him guide, as we're saying, Lord, not me, but you, you take care of this.
As we do that, The first three show here: love, joy, and peace.
So we see the first one: love. Letting God, now this is agape love. Everybody knows this. This is self-sacrificing love, a love only that comes from God. That this was shown as he came to this earth, lived a life for us.
And I don't know about you. But this 21 days of praise have been amazing. And it's been awesome. Uh Okay. You know, going through it as it started, I just thought, oh, this is cool.
This is something I ought to be doing, need to be doing, but it's. I did not expect the battle. To be honest, I don't know about you, but for me, Uh the battle of praise. And you're like, what are you talking about, Brother David? As I'm trying to praise the Lord, how Satan's trying to stop me.
and started fighting that. I don't know why I was shocked by that, but I saw that in my own personal life. And that was something as I was studying for this. I thought, Lord, as I praise you, and one of the praises. I want to say it was day seven or day eight was um Praise for certain things.
Don't say, How many times, Lord, when I start to pray, I pray immediately for praises of what you've done for me. And I was convicted on Praising out of selfishness. I said, Lord, I'm going to praise for just what you did in general, for your sacrifice, for your omnipotence, for your, and I'm thankful, you ought to be thankful for praising God for what he's done for you. You need to do that. But also, I was like, Lord, I just want to praise you just for you.
So, I can have a heart, a good heart mind towards you. And I just, I was driving through Walkertown, and that'll get you in the flesh quick. And I was. Good grief. And I was driving through, and I just, I was moved about thinking of.
Christ's sacrifice, not just on the cross, but coming down from heaven. And coming to love Love this earth and knowing Christ, knowing what he was going to go through, but doing it anyways. And that's the kind of love I want in my life. And that's the kind of love that God wants to instill in this fruit of the Spirit in your life. And so this is an upward fruit.
As we have our relationship with Christ, this is something that He is instilling in us of having that level just naturally come.
Now, how do we gain that? We gain that through getting to know Him. Studying the scriptures, getting to know him, praising him for it, praying to him, having that relationship as you would build any relationship with your life, building that relationship with the Lord, that love will naturally come. And I believe the fruit build one on another.
So if you're going to have that love, you're naturally going to have, number two, joy in your life. And I love studying the book of Philippians. I encourage you to do that. I've been reading through Philippians a couple times this week, and it just has encouraged my heart about the joy, no matter what a person goes through, they can have. Paul himself.
He was writing that letter of Philippi while he was in jail, talking about having the joy that God has given him, a life of service for him. And so we see if we nationally Are you going to God and building that fruit of love in our life? That joy will come naturally behind it. And a commentator. A commentator wrote that the formula of the third fruit here of peace.
is love and joy together. Peace will naturally come after those two.
So, if you're loving the Lord and the Lord's pouring into your life and you're having that love and that satisfaction in Him, and you're having that joy no matter what kind of day you have, and Satan trying to rile up your flesh within you, or your flesh is starting to hack up with all that, with that will come joy, the contentment within life's problems. And then peace will come when you have love and joy together.
So, this isn't a fruit of an upward relationship, maturing us upward with our relationship with the Lord. But, secondly, we see the Spirit matures us outward. Outward. This one's a hard one. Maturing outward.
This is our relations fruit that we can see as we work with other people. And maybe it's working with other people as our family or friends or maybe at the store or driving through Walkertown, whatever it may be. But those fruit are this right here: it's long-suffering, gentleness. and goodness. And so long suffering is a really interesting study.
It comes from A phrase of the long, long nose of God, and I encourage you to look into that. But long suffering is a patience. is a courage It's an endurance. I automatically just think patience, but it's more complex than that. It's having obviously uh Having a patience with others as other people are doing things and they're like, you know.
Lord, activate long suffering. Lord, please, I need that fruit now. Have that now. It's not just that, but it's endurance through life's troubles. It's endurance through life's trials.
It's a courage to face things, even a courage to face things that you may have anxiety over. Saying, ah. This may happen. Oh no, as you have stress, outward force come on you, and you think, oh, this may happen. There's a long suffering that God can develop in your life dealing with other things as you see it coming up.
So that's the long suffering. Gentleness is a kindness. Um Some people are naturally this way, some people are not, but it's something that you develop. And even the people don't be like, oh, I can't stand the people that are naturally kind. Those people have limits too, and they can be unkind as well.
So just saying. But everybody has a moment where they just don't want to be unkind. They just have an off day. And so this is a fruit that can be consistent with the fruit of the Spirit that God can develop with your life. Having a kindness, looking for things.
Not just a kindness of, oh, how are you today? But more of a kindness of, hey, that person looks like they're in need. I'm going to help them. Uh that person looks like Man, I know they've been going through things. I've been praying for them.
I need to be kind to them. It's an intentional kindness. We can naturally have like a facade kindness, but this is a natural-born kindness that only God can give us within our hearts. And then, lastly, is goodness, is love in action or living out righteously. Um A lot of times, good in the Bible is translated also over to righteousness.
It's only from God. It's a righteous type of living. And when I did this, I did a lesson just on goodness for the kids. I got so tickled studying that, just how Living in the goodness of God, that God has made me righteous because of Him, of what He's done in my life, because of what He's paid for, is that back to that identity factor, of living out the identity factor.
So that's the outward fruit. Of your life that you can have outwardly, that God can mature within your life as you do that.
So, as we've gone through it so far, I encourage you: if there's an area, don't be discouraged. Don't be, I've tried in this certain area. No, it's something that, hey, if you've tried, Keep trying. Keep asking the Lord. It's all right because God is always there with open arms.
I love the song that Jacob and Jacob. Jacob and Jimmy and Brother Awi saying for us tonight about know not one that God is always there with open arms to help us, to guide us, to lead us. And so this is something that we're maturing, that we're coming back time and time again, letting God work in our life. And then last of all, in the fruit of the Spirit, we see. Um the spru- the spirit maturing us inwardly.
Inwardly, this is character traits. That develops over time. And um As I was kind of looking it over this week, originally, Originally I was supposed to preach last week. And Pastor had talked to me on Saturday and mentioned, like, hey, there's a possibility. Kenny Baldwin come down.
I'm like, yes. Bring Kenny Baldwin. They don't want to hear me. They want to hear Kenny. I was like, but he did, you know, he sent me all that.
He's like, oh, he's coming. I was like, sorry. And then he said, be ready just in case. I thought, oh, man. I think I even said something in the lines of, it's like, oh, they're going to be disappointed.
And he was like, you know, we were picking back and forth about that.
So as he was, you know, he was still traveling while we were doing the service. And I'm sitting back there going, oh, I was like, uh-oh. I was like, not for the back of preaching, because I love to preach. I love to share God's word. But I'm like, these people want Kenny Baldwin.
They don't want me. And so he did awesome. But while he was preaching, he talked about, and he has a phrase in. I don't want to mess up saying it, but I'll give the concept of it. He talks about habits leading to character.
And I love that. He has a whole thing he goes through and talks about habits leading to character. And go back and watch that live stream from last week. And he talked about, and he said it all this past week at the conference we were able to go to about it, whatever your habits are, it'll eventually develop and solidify. in your character.
And that's exactly what the fruit of the Spirit is right here. And these character traits is faith.
So being faithful. being dependable. All that. We're, you know, naturally, you know, we can try to be. Maybe some people have some characteristics in their personality or their temperaments towards that.
But at the end of the day, are we going to be faithful to the right things, to the spiritual things? And that's what he's talking about here. This fruit of the Spirit will help us develop a faithfulness spiritually, a sense of strong faith. I think of heroes of the faith Whether it be preachers or people that have been in church their whole life that have walked with God to see their Bibles. I love, I love seeing that.
Last week, Kenny Baldwin left his Bible here. And uh we had a lot of fun with that. We saw it in the office and we were all walking in and one of the one at a time we saw this Bible. We were like, That's guinea boat. We're like trying to take pictures of it and take pictures of us with it.
And just to see those pages, it just, I don't know how to describe it. I should have put a picture up of it. I don't know if I would have gotten in trouble for that. But anyways, I was like, this is so cool. But I love to see Bibles of those who have been faithful to the Lord for a lifetime.
And it's so cool to see. My grandma, her Bible, I love seeing her Bible. It's just covered in ink marks throughout it where she has written notes. And what she does, she takes Bibles and fills them out with all the scriptures in her lifetime that have meant and impacted her. And she sends it to lost family members across the country.
And at times of need, she'll send them the Bible. She sent Bibles to some family members four or five times. And I know that has to take a lot of time to go through the entire Bible where she has written sermon notes and devotional notes and all that. That's faithfulness. That's a rock bed that can be in your life.
Also, another fruit is meekness. Power under control, a steadiness of knowing. When to say something, when to not say something, the wisdom and discernment throughout life, and then also temperament. Uh self-control. Of knowing that I need to do, or I know I want to do this, I want to do that.
That could be any area of your life of a temperament or a self-control, whatever that may be. But we see here, we have the natural struggle, we see how the spirit could help. And I don't know about you. But I know for me, I was studying this out and probably. I know for myself many times in my life.
I've tried. You've probably tried. You probably have had times you've wanted the Lord to work on a certain area of your life, and it's discouraging. And you've probably said, and within yourself, probably never out loud, but Lord, I have tried, I have tried, I come back to this. I struggle.
Maybe it's with a certain area, whatever it may be. Maybe it's a besetting sin. Maybe it's a certain fruit you're trying to let the Lord manifest in your life. Whatever it is, and you're like, I'm going back to it. I go to the altar.
I go back to my seat. I said, I'm going to do this. And I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm doing, I'm putting these in place, all of this. And I know for myself, it's just times of discouragements. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying.
And even as I study, There were a few things I was looking here. The Holy Spirit was kind of knocking on my heart. And there was a point I was looking at my Bible. It was sometime a couple weeks ago, and I. I thought, Lord, you know I've been trying this.
I've been doing, I've been doing, I've been doing. And then God said, read verse 24. And I read verse 24. And I looked at it, and it said, And they that are Christ have crucified the flesh. With the affections and love.
Thank you for listening today. We hope you received a blessing from our broadcast. The Kerwin Baptist Church is located at 4520 Old Hollow Road in Kernersville, North Carolina. You may also contact us by phone at 336-993-5192. or via the web.
at Kerwin Baptist Church.com. Enjoy our services live and all our media on our website and church app. Thank you for listening to the Kerwin Broadcast today. God bless you.
