1619. Walking in the Spirit

One of my favorite was when he broke down like Fruit of the Spirits and he was like talking to each one and how you can apply that to your life. I've learned a lot from Dr. Pettit's message, Walking in the Spirit.

It's been my favorite message series of this whole university experience. I think because it applies in so many different ways. It's easy to just walk in the flesh, to follow your flesh's desires. It's just a day-to-day struggle as a believer. You know, I've been really challenged about that this semester to, am I walking in the Spirit?

Am I keeping in step? Am I focused on Jesus or am I distracted by the everyday activities? It's just a really good reminder of dying to yourself and the flesh and how to just be in better communion with God. I've been re-reminded of how important it is, like I knew already, but these messages really help me re-center and re-focus myself in walking in the Spirit. I've learned from Chapel that I'm dead to the world and the world is dead to me. I'm to live like a dead person, but I can't do that without walking in the Spirit.

When he was going through the fruits of the Spirit, that was probably my favorite message specifically about love and that being the root of all of the other ones and how that plays into everyday life. Definitely just that if you're walking in the Spirit, you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. It's just so easy to be led astray by your own desires. I mean, James 1.14, but if you're following God and you're taking the next right step, then you're not going to be anxious about what's ahead of you.

You're not going to give in to those desires that are there because you have that knowledge and you're putting that into application. That I need to constantly die to myself and actively choose to walk in the Spirit. I've learned how to really walk in the Spirit, that we need to live our lives how we start. Welcome to The Daily Platform, a radio program featuring Chapel messages from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. You just heard several BJU students talking about Chapel programs preached from the Book of Galatians. For the next several days on The Daily Platform, we'll be hearing Dr. Steve Pettit lead us through a study in the Book of Galatians called Walking in the Spirit. I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles and turn with me please to the Book of Galatians, Galatians chapter 5 this morning as we are working through our theme of walking in the Spirit and that's actually the title of my message this morning because I would like us to take a few moments to look at these very, very important verses found in Galatians chapter 5 verses 16 and 17. Now previously we introduced our theme and we've come to understand Galatians a little bit better and we also talked the last two weeks about the theme of Christian liberty. What do we learn about Christian liberty?

Christian liberty first of all is freedom from the law as a means of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus alone. In other words, we can't work our way to Heaven. We can't ever measure up to God's standard.

God's standard seen in the law is something that we miserably fail. That's why Christ came to be for us what we could never do for ourselves. But not only is it God's freedom and salvation where we have a relationship with God, but secondly that the Christian liberty that God gives us is actually freedom from our lusts or freedom from our sinful nature through the sanctifying work of God's Spirit. So God saves you, He justifies you, but God is in the process of changing you. He's cleansing you.

He's making you a new person. And so with this freedom, we enjoy this, we come to understand it. But also Paul expresses his concern about the abuse of liberty. As we learned last week, it's just human nature to take the idea of liberty and because of our self-centeredness to think of it in an improper way.

And so last week we learned how the flesh can misuse liberty. We can think of liberty in the light of our own selfish desires. We can teach and practice that the believer has no responsibility to the law at all or we can live in strife with other believers fighting over our freedoms and our liberty. So the question is this, what does Christian liberty look like when a believer is living it out properly?

How do you know that Christian liberty is being properly used and not misused or abused? And the answer is found here in Galatians chapter 5 when he tells us here in verse 14, for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The answer to knowing that we're living out the life of liberty is it's seen in the lifestyle of love. So love and liberty go together. He says by love serve one another. It is a life that sacrificially serves others. Now how do we live that way?

And that's the big question, the how question. I want to live that way, I'm a believer, but how do I live that way? And that's where we start this morning in verse 16 and verse 17. Let's read God's word together. It says, this I say then, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.

And these are contrary the one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would. Paul starts verse 16 with a very important statement, one that we overlook. He says, this I say then. Now what is he doing here?

He's actually giving us advice. So naturally when he tells you to live a life of love and to live it out in your life, you're going to wonder, well how do I do that? And so he is telling us how Christian liberty works. This I say then, or here is my advice, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Christian liberty only works when believers accept their responsibility to conduct their lives according to the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit. If you're a child of God, you have a relationship with God through the Holy Spirit that has come to indwell inside of your body. So you have to believe that, accept that, and also be responsible to it. So if I could summarize it this way, walking in the spirit is the only way to live the Christian life and nothing else works.

Nothing else works. We've already looked at the Christian life as kind of like driving down a highway in Louisiana, not Kansas. Louisiana, when you go off the road, you can go down an embankment into the swamp and you can go to the right side or the left side. The right side would be some various forms of legality or legalism, trying to live up to a standard that God said you could never live up to anyway. That is self-effort. But the other side is more of a libertarian license. I'm free in Christ and I can live any way I want. And both sides are self-centered. It's the middle road of Christian liberty that is basically manifested in a life of love that is driven by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And folks, I want you to understand this. You can't live the Christian life by yourself. Living the Christian life is not hard. It's impossible.

You can't do it. And therefore you have to learn how to walk in the Spirit. So how do you walk in the Spirit? Let's begin first of all with the command Paul gives here. Look at what he says in verse 16. This I say then, walk in the Spirit.

It's a very clear command. He's telling us something to do. So two questions. What does it mean to be in the Spirit?

Number two, what does it mean to walk? First of all, what does it mean to be in the Spirit? Would you go back to Galatians chapter three and note if you will please verse 14 because Paul speaks about this. He says in verse 14 that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. God had made a promise to Abraham that a blessing would come to the Gentile nations through Jesus Christ. So what is that blessing?

What is the blessing that we receive? Look at what he says in verse eight. And the scripture for seeing that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before the gospel unto Abraham saying in thee shall all the nations be blessed so then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Now what is he saying here?

He's simply saying this. That the blessing of Abraham is found in two things. Number one, in the preaching of the gospel, that's the blessing, through which we can be justified or saved by faith. Or to make it simple, our sins are charged to Christ in his death on the cross and Christ's righteousness is credited to us the moment that we believe.

That's the blessing. God saves us. We are children of Abraham by faith. Now, included in this salvation is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Go back and look at what he says in verse 14. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.

Here's what he says. That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. What is the gift that we have in justification that God gives us his own Holy Spirit?

I mean, think about that. God Almighty comes to live inside of your heart. Now, why is this so significant? Because first of all, the Spirit of God is the one that gives you spiritual life. Do you realize that before you're saved you're dead? Have you noticed something about dead people?

They don't do much, do they? I mean, go out to the local graveyard and see what's happening on Saturday night. Nobody's partying. Nobody's drinking.

Nobody's carousing. Because when you're dead, you're dead. Spiritually, you're dead until you are quickened and regenerated by the Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit is to raise you out of spiritual death. My greatest burden here at the university in many ways is that there are many of you sitting here who are, in a sense, saying that you're Christians but you've never been resurrected from the dead. You're still as dead as somebody in the graveyard because you have no spiritual life. You can't force spirituality. You were born with it through the Spirit of God coming to live inside of you when you get saved.

And so first of all, he says God gives you spiritual life and then the Holy Spirit is the one who makes real your relationship with God. When I got saved at 19 years old, it's like everything changed. And all of a sudden, I realized God was everywhere. My brain, my mind was consumed with the reality of the presence of God. I would read my Bible.

I would understand it. I would want to pray. The Bible says in Galatians 4, 6, and because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts crying Abba, Father.

Abba means daddy. And just like if you were to call your father this afternoon and you call him dad or father, whatever you call him, God has put within your heart a sense that God is your father and you want to talk to him and you want to cry out to him and you want to ask him for help. How many of you have ever asked your father for money? Raise your hand.

Yeah, everybody. Now you didn't ask somebody else's father for money. You asked your father for money. It is the nature of a believer to ask their father for the needs of their life. Prayer is natural to the believer. And so our relationship becomes genuine and so here's the point. To be in the spirit is another way of saying that we have a personal, genuine, real, authentic, living relationship with God. So let me ask you a question.

Do you have a real, genuine, authentic, personal, intimate relationship with God? That's the work of the Holy Spirit. Now since we have this relationship with God through the Spirit, what is our responsibility to that relationship? And the answer is found in the command when he says walk in the Spirit.

So what does that mean? Well let's try to understand the concept of walking in two different ways. Number one, the first comes out of the Hebrew world. And that is the relationship between a Jewish rabbi and his disciples. Remember Jesus is a rabbi. Peter, James, and John are called disciples. Now the whole idea of being a disciple is that you lived with your rabbi.

Could you imagine what it would be like to live with your teacher? And what did the rabbi do? Well, the disciples, they lived with him, they learned from him, they listened to him, they observed his life, and they obeyed his teaching. And the end result of being a disciple is to be like the rabbi.

You lived, you listened, and you learned. The Bible says in Luke 6 40, a disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher. So living with the rabbi, you become like the rabbi. A disciple will become like his teacher. So what does it mean to walk in the Spirit? It means to walk in the presence of your rabbi, that is Jesus Christ, and over time, you become like him.

You talk like him, you think like him, you do things like him. But then there's a second illustration, and that comes out of the Greek world. The book of Galatians was written in Greek. And it's very interesting that the Greek word for walk is the word peripateo.

You say, well why do you say that? Because Aristotle, who was a Greek teacher, had students. And his students were called peripatetics.

Why? Because the way he taught was not in a classroom, he would teach as they would walk out in nature. And they would follow him, and they would walk with him, and they would listen to him, and they would obey his instruction. So how does walking in the Spirit practically happen? Listen to this verse, it is crucial. John 8 31, Jesus said to those Jews which believed on him, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed.

You are a disciple of Jesus when you continue in the word of Jesus. You see, the Spirit of God is the author of the word of God. And when we walk in the word, we walk in the Spirit. It's not like you separate the Bible from the Holy Spirit, you put the two together because the Holy Spirit wrote the words of life. There are two parallel verses in the book of Ephesians and Colossians, perhaps you've seen these before.

But they're very interesting in that they are similar but they're slightly different. Let me read to you Ephesians 5 18. It says, and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. So he says be filled with the Spirit and the effect of that is that you worship God in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.

Now Colossians 3 16. It says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly and all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Now when you read the two verses, the effects of what you're to do is the same.

You worship God, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. But the command is different. One says be filled with the Spirit and the other one says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Are these two different things?

No, they go together. Spirit filled living is word filled living. To walk in the Spirit then is a passionate pursuit to know God through his word and then over time be conformed to the likeness of our rabbi Jesus.

That's what it means to walk in the Spirit and it is powerful. It is life-changing. Man when you get up in the morning and read your Bible it doesn't have to be long.

Ten or fifteen minutes in many ways is sufficient but you can go as long as you want. What are you reading? You're reading the powerful word of God that was written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and this book breathes life into you. And I mean this is like, I don't know how to describe it, awesome, incredible, cool.

Thank you. Two amens. I should have gotten, somebody ought to be amen and amen. Amen. I mean think about it. The Lord who created the universe by the power of the Holy Spirit has come to dwell inside your body. Don't tell me you can't live for God. Don't tell me you can't walk with God.

Don't tell me you can't overcome sin in your life. He says walk in the Spirit. You will not fulfill the desires of the flesh. Now that leads me to my second point. I have three points.

It is quite clear I'm not going to get through them all today. So I will pick it up next week but I want you to look at the second half of verse 16 because he gives the effect of walking in the Spirit, a powerful confirmation. He says walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now what are the lusts of the flesh?

Well let me ask you a question. What's the flesh? The simplest definition I know is a biblical one, Romans 7, 17.

Here it is. Now then it is no more I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me for I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. What is the flesh? It is sin dwelling in you. When you were born you were born with indwelling sin.

When you were born again you have the Spirit of God now dwelling in you. So simultaneously you have sin living in you, flesh, and you have the Spirit living in you. Now how does the flesh work? We talk about walking in the Spirit but how does the flesh work?

Well you know how the flesh works because you live with it. The flesh works through the creation of strong desires. Those are called lusts. These desires are within your own heart, they are evil, and they're very powerful. They are constantly crying out for fulfillment through your bodily members with the promise of satisfaction.

Let me just simple illustration. Let's take a lust that we all experience that's called anger. How many of you ever get angry?

Okay thank you. So how do you express anger? You express anger through your body. You express it through your eyes. Have you ever seen your mama mad?

You know fireballs coming out. You express it through your mouth. You express it through your nose.

Have you ever seen somebody get mad and they can barely breathe? You express it through your fist. You punch somebody in the face. You express it through your foot.

You kick them in the face. You express anger through your body. So what's the lust of the flesh? It's your own anger. Now these desires are deceitful because it makes a promise that if you give in to it, it will satisfy you.

You're angry, you're upset, so you curse somebody out and you think it satisfies you. And these desires are the foundation or the basis for what we call temptation. What is a temptation? A temptation is the desire to sin before you ever sin. All sin starts with desire.

Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. So the flesh creates desires and those desires cry out for fulfillment. So what happens when your will gives in to obey these desires?

Everybody here understands how this works because you do it in some cases all the time. The Bible says when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. What happens when your will gives in to obeying these desires? You sin. So it becomes quite clear that the spiritual battle that we all face is that gap or that ground that lies between your desires and your decisions. Do you understand that?

Are you hearing me this morning? The battleground of the Christian life is between your desires that you all have that are sinful and your decision to yield to those desires. That's why Paul says let not sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in the lust thereof. Sin reigns when you obey your lusts. Now, it is with this struggle that we all face.

Everybody here faces it. It is this struggle with the desires of our flesh that Paul presents an amazing powerful confirmation. Here's what he says. If you walk in the Spirit you shall not fulfill the lust of your flesh. In the Greek it is a double negative. It reads this way. If you walk in the Spirit you will never never fulfill the desires of your flesh. Now listen to me very carefully.

I don't know where you are. But when I was your age if I heard a sermon like this I would be on the edge of my seat and I would be saying preacher tell me. Tell me how? How is it that I can overcome anger? How is it that I can overcome lust? How is it that I can overcome pride?

How is it? And what he does is he shouts out an amazing promise that if you walk in the Spirit you will never never satisfy the desires of your flesh. That's almost too hard to believe. Now that is exactly what Paul is saying. You say how does that work? Come back next week and I'll tell you. Amen. God bless you.

You're dismissed. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Steve Pettit from the study series in Galatians called Walking in the Spirit. Steve is now utilizing his gifts as a compelling communicator and expositor of scripture and travels to local churches with preaching, concerts and conferences emphasizing Gospel-centered evangelism and Christian leadership development. You can get more information about Steve's ministry at StevePettit.com. That's StevePettit.com. If you would like to re-listen to any of the sermons preached at Bob Jones University or want to share them on social media, go to our website, TheDailyPlatform.com. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study in the book of Galatians preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel Platform.