1620. The Battle Within

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 continuing 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. In today's message, Steve will teach us how the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, which is the battle within, and this is from Galatians chapter 5. This morning we're going to look at the continuation of a message that I got through about halfway last week, and our theme, of course, this semester is Walking in the Spirit, and my message last week was, what does it mean to walk in the spirit?

And so just a little brief review and overview. The theme of the book of Galatians is the theme of Christian liberty, and that liberty is freedom from the law as a means of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. That is, Christ came, lived the law out in perfection by his life, and he died fulfilling the judgment of the law in his own body, and through Christ, we are literally freed from the law as a means of salvation through faith in Jesus. It's not our perfection that gets us into heaven, it's his perfection.

It's not our sacrifice, it's his sacrifice. But not only are we freed from the law, but we are also freed from our own sin nature that lives within us. And we are freed from our own lusts through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. So when we come to Galatians 5 and verse 16 and 17, he is telling us to live out Christian liberty. What is Christian liberty as it's lived out? It's not the freedom to do what I want to do, it's the freedom to do what I ought to do. And the greatest commandment of God is to love him and to love others, and that's the freedom that God gives us.

The freedom to live an unselfish life as we live to serve other people. So how does that work? And that's where we pick up in verse 16. When he says, this I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. He's making an affirmation, a statement.

He says, here's my advice, here's the way it works, here's how Christian liberty works, here's how love works. Walk in the Spirit. Now what does it mean to be in the Spirit? It means the Spirit is in you. That's what Galatians teaches us. That was God's promise that he made to Abraham.

The blessing on the earth would be the blessing of salvation, and in that salvation, it's not just that God gives you a ticket to get into heaven, he literally comes to live inside your heart because God is changing you and transforming you and fitting you for heaven. And how does he do that? Through the Spirit that lives inside of you. The Spirit is the one who animates life, illuminates us. He makes the Christian, he makes God real to us.

We have a relationship with him. Then to walk in the Spirit is essentially to order our life after what God has revealed in the Word of God. In other words, as we live out our Christian life, the Spirit that wrote the Word is working through the Word in our own life. So it's a pursuit to know God through the Word of God and to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus as it's revealed in God's Word. So that's essentially what it means to walk in the Spirit.

Then we came to the next phrase, and that's where I want us to pick up this morning. When he says, this I say then, walk in the Spirit, and then he gives a contrast or he's responding to the effect of walking in the Spirit. He says, if you walk in the Spirit, here's the result. He says, you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now let me just stop there and say instead of this, Paul's not really talking here so much about how to walk in the Spirit as he's talking about the effect of walking in the Spirit. That is, if you're walking in the Spirit, then those sinful desires that you struggle with, you are not going to fulfill them.

You're not going to give in to them. Though they are there in your heart, though you feel them, you don't have to be a slave to them. That's the point that he's making. And when he talks about the lust of the flesh, let's go back and think about that. What is the lust of the flesh? Well, the flesh here is referring to sin dwelling in your heart. Everybody here, when you were born, you were born as a member of the family of Adam.

I've said this many times. There's only one race. That's the human race. We're literally all a part of one race. When I go to fill out a government form that says, what's your race? It says Caucasian, African American, Asian, and then it says other.

I always check other. And then write in the word human, because that's my race. You say, well, how do you describe everybody else? It's called ethnicities. So you can be of different origins or different backgrounds. And that's important because as a Christian, we understand that there's one race, the human race, and we're all descendants from Adam. When Jesus came into the world, what did he come to do?

He came to start another race. We are then taken out of Adam and placed into Christ at the moment we believe, and we are members of a heavenly kingdom. We have our citizenship in heaven. But when we get saved, you have to understand the body that you're living in is not been redeemed yet. And that's why when you get saved, he doesn't just save your spirit, but he also is going to save your body so that that body that you live in, that you struggle with. And when the Bible speaks about the body, it talks about the body of sin because sin is in your heart and it lives out its desires through your body. That body that you are living in is going to one day die and decay and God through his promise is going to resurrect it from the dead. You know, the most boring place on the planet is a graveyard except on the day of resurrection.

And man, is it going to be an exciting place to see those graves open and literally people will come out of the grave and a brand new body, the resurrection of the body. So as we live in this body now, we have not experienced full and complete salvation. We're justified in Christ. One day we are glorified in Christ and today we're being sanctified. And what is the sanctification process? It's putting off the old sins of Adam and putting on the righteousness of Jesus Christ by being sanctified. We have his righteousness, but we're starting to live that out.

And how do we do that? Through the Holy Spirit. So he tells us if we walk in the Spirit, we're not going to fulfill the desires of the flesh. Now just let me say a word about the desires of the flesh. The word lust there is not necessarily a sinful, a word of it. It's not referring necessarily to sin, it's referring to strong desires. In this case, it's referring to sinful desires. And those desires come out of your own heart.

If there is any reason why we ought to be humble, it is because of the condition of our own hearts. We are all sinful. Evil dwells within us. And these desires are very powerful and they constantly are crying out for fulfillment. And that fulfillment comes out through your body. And I mentioned last week, let's take the idea of anger. How often do we express anger through our body? We express it through our mouth. We express it through our eyes. We express it through our ears.

We often express it through our feet, through our hands, the way we respond, the way that we react. All external conflicts are a result of the internal conflict of your own heart. James 4.1, where do wars and fighting come from? They come from the lusts that warn your members.

Every external conflict is a result of the conflicts that are going on in your own heart. And those desires are the foundation for temptation. What is a temptation? It is the strong desire that dwells in your heart that is crying out for you to give into it, for you to fulfill that desire. James says, every man is tempted when he's drawn away of his own lust and enticed. And the flesh creates desires. The desires cry out for fulfillment.

So what happens when you give into those desires? That's called sin. That's why James says, when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin, sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. Sin is when the will surrenders to the lust. Therefore, what's the battle of the Christian life? The battle of the Christian life is that ground between your desires and your decisions.

Now listen very carefully. The measure of your spiritual growth comes as you separate the distance between desire and decision. Does that make sense? You have an evil desire but you don't give into it. How many of you have ever been tempted to say something but something inside of you said you better not say that? How many have ever experienced that?

Yeah. What's the distance? The distance is between the desire and the decision. And as you grow in the Christian life, you are growing and separating that. Now, for example, what's a stronghold? A stronghold is something in your life where there's no gap between desire and decision. You have an evil desire and you give into it so fast you don't even think about it.

That's called a stronghold. And often times, God has to confront you by some kind of confrontation. It could be a person, it could be a trial, it could be a problem. By the way, one of the reasons why we go through trials is God is pulling you apart in that realm of desire and decision. So spiritual growth comes as we choose to obey God and not yield to the desire. The Bible says don't let sin, that's the desire, reign in your mortal body. Now, it is with this reality of this struggle that we all face that Paul makes an amazing statement.

Let's look at what he says. He says, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. That is an amazing, amazing promise. That statement you shall not fulfill is written in the double negative, okay? For you though Greek people, it's ooh and may. It literally reads this, walk in the Spirit and you will not not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

It's the most emphatic way you can say it in the Greek. And the word ooh, which is not, and the word may, which is not, have different slight meanings. The word ooh is referring to a fact, a promise, a statement. The word may is referring to a reality.

So here's what he's saying. He's saying if you walk in the Spirit, it is a fact. It is a promise of God, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

And it is a reality. No one who has ever been walking in the Spirit has ever fulfilled the lust of the flesh. That's what he's saying. He's saying if you walk in the Spirit, it's not possible to fulfill the desires of the flesh. Or let me put it this way, if you turn to the right, you can't be turning to the left.

If you turn to the left, you cannot be turning to the right. If you walk in the Spirit, you will not not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Are you saying that the human will is strong enough to fight and defeat lust?

The answer is no. The Spirit is willing, but what is the flesh? The flesh is what?

The flesh is weak. What we need is an inner power that is greater than our inner lust. There are some of you sitting here today who are in bondage to a particular lust. The fact is we are all by nature in bondage, okay? I'm not just saying, okay, out of 2,500, 25 of you are in bondage to a lust and the rest of us have no problems. That's called baloney.

That's a Greek word. You can find it if you'll look carefully enough. Everybody here is in bondage to some kind of wrong desire. That's just human nature. And we all know we need a power on the inside that is stronger than the sinful desires of our own heart. And here's what Paul is saying. If you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

It's a promise. Now maybe you're sitting there saying, okay, I understand what the Bible says but that sounds too good to be true. Because that's not my experience. It's not that I don't want to live for God.

I do, but I find myself struggling. Well, Paul, of course, understood this and that's why he gives us the next verse. Because verse 17 is actually written not to show you how to walk in the Spirit.

That'll come later on in our study. But what he does in verse 17 is give you confidence. The confidence is that what he has said is true and here's why. Look at what he says in verse 17. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would. What is he doing here? He is telling us why we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

The word for is here's the reason why. And essentially what he is saying is this. Number one, he is saying the reason why if you walk in the Spirit, you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh is because there are two natures that dwell within you. There's a dual nature, if you could say it that way, that lives within you and these both are unchangeable natures. The flesh is indwelling sin. And by the way, your flesh is never going to get better.

You understand that? You can put perfume on it, it's going to stink. It's never going to smell good. You cannot sanctify your old nature. You have to crucify it, not sanctify it. Secondly, you have the indwelling Son, Jesus living in you through the person of the Holy Spirit, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Be strengthened with might by his Spirit on the inner man that Christ might dwell in your hearts by faith. Now these natures are mutually opposite.

One is evil and corrupt, the other is perfectly holy and righteous. The desires of these natures contrast with one another. The flesh will always lead you this way. The Spirit will always lead you this way. The flesh will never lead you this way and the Spirit will never lead you this way. They are unchangeable natures, but both of them are inside of you. And that's why it is important that you learn to walk in the direction of the Spirit and not in the direction of the flesh. Excuse me, folks. I'm not going through puberty. We're okay.

All right, thank you. Secondly, these natures are not only unchangeable, but they are unalterably antagonistic. What does the Bible say? It says the flesh lusteth, or the desires against the Spirit. That is, the desire of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit are completely against one another. It's not like they mix together.

They don't go to parties and hang out with each other. The Spirit is here, the flesh is here, and they're against each other. You could call it the civil war of the soul. That's why every person in this room who walks in the Spirit lives with attention.

Let me say that again. Everybody in this room who walks in the Spirit lives with attention, the reality, the sense of the presence of the flesh. I used to think, man, if I'm living with this tension, I must be carnal. Actually, I've learned the opposite. I'm actually learning to be spiritual. I'm actually learning to discern what's of the flesh and what's of the Spirit.

Some of you are clueless in Seattle. I mean, literally. You can't tell what's flesh and you can't tell what's spirit. You know why? Because you're really not very spiritual.

As you grow in the Lord, you begin to discern that's of the Spirit, and you begin to discern that's of the flesh. In the state of South Carolina, we have two football teams. You say, no, in South Carolina, there's all kind of football teams. Obviously, you're not from South Carolina. There are only two football teams.

Who are those teams? Show us the picture. There they are. On one side, that's the flesh side is Clemson. On the other side is the University of South Carolina. You say, well, you know, I thought there are other teams.

Well, you must live outside. You must be from Michigan. Because in Michigan, there's only two football teams. There's Michigan and Ohio State. And if you're from Michigan, you hate Ohio State, and if you're from Ohio State, you hate Michigan.

I grew up in Columbia, the capital city, and I hated Orange all my life growing up. Always, always. Now, I live up here, and I have to live at peace, okay? But the point of the matter is, there's always a rivalry. These natures, the flesh and the spirit, oppose one another so that when one nature would lead you to do one thing, the other nature is there to oppose. And by the way, that is a great encouragement for us. Because when you would want to do right, evil is present with me.

We have that sense in us. Paul said it this way in Romans 7. The good that I would do, I don't do. And that which I don't want to do, I do. And I'm struggling back and forth between good and evil. And then what did Paul say?

O wretched man that I am. That's Romans chapter 7. That's why you got to go to Romans chapter 8. Because there we learn that there is a power in the Holy Spirit. So what the Bible is saying is I can overcome these desires, but I can't do it through self-effort. And that leads me to the third point, and that is the desires of the spirit are stronger than the desires of the flesh.

That's what you need to understand. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes me free from the law of sin and death. You understand this with the law of gravity and the law of aerodynamics. If you get in an airplane and fly, the law of gravity is still in effect. What goes up must come down. But the law of aerodynamics overcomes the law of gravity. It doesn't change it. It overcomes it.

That was one of the best illustrations I had been given as a young Christian. And I realized I cannot overcome the law of sin. I can't overcome the law of gravity. If I jump off of a 15 story building, I'm not going to fly.

I'm going to fall. You cannot overcome the law of sin in your own self-effort. But God has provided for you a power that is greater than the law of sin.

The law of aerodynamics overcomes the law of gravity. And the walk in the spirit, I overcome the flesh. Now how do I know that?

How can I be so certain of that? And the answer is found, you can read it in Romans chapter 1 verse 3 and that is this. Who resurrected Jesus from the dead? Who brought him up from the grave?

Well let me ask you a question. How did Jesus come into this world? He came into the world by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit that brought a conception in the womb of a virgin named Mary. How did Jesus Christ come back from the dead? The same power. The power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead.

Now I want you to look at me very carefully and we'll be done. The power of Jesus Christ, let me say it this way. The power that raised Jesus Christ up from the grave to overcome sin and death is the power that lives in your heart right now.

Right now. Man when I learned that, I've been a Christian for less than a year. I can't tell you what that did for me personally. To understand that I have this antagonistic conflict going on in my heart which is normal and natural for a Christian.

It's normal and natural. But to realize that God's Holy Spirit that lives inside of me is more powerful than the law of sin. I learned that I cannot avoid the battle but I don't have to be a prisoner of war.

I learned that I will not avoid all temptation, that's impossible, but I can avoid transgression. And that my friend is true freedom. The reality of the Holy Spirit within you is greater than the reality of the power of the flesh within you. That's why Christians are not victims.

You're not a victim. People grow up, they think I'm a victim because of this and this and this and this and this and this and I am telling you the Bible does not teach that. The Bible teaches that you are a victor.

It tells us very clearly that we can overcome by the power of the cross because Jesus overcame sin through his resurrection. And if we will learn daily, and it's a process folks, you're not going to get it in one day, but if you'll learn to walk in the Spirit, you will not not fulfill the lust of the flesh. You know what we ought to do?

We ought to go out of this building fired up. That God has given us his power and he's put it in our heart. Lord, we give you thanksgiving for what you have done for us. The very blessing that you gave to Abraham has been passed on to us through Jesus Christ in his spirit. Lord, forgive us of our sins. We humble ourselves. We are we are flesh in the sense that we have sin a sin nature. But thank you Lord for those of us who are redeemed. You have given us the Spirit and help us to walk in the Spirit in Jesus name. Amen.

You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Steve Pettit from the study series in Galatians called Walking in the Spirit. My name is Wyatt Smith. I'm a senior here at Bob Jones University studying multimedia journalism. And I want to tell you a little about my experience here at BJU. I've been here a little over three years and I truly cannot say enough about the community here at BJU. Whether it has been in the halls of the dorms, in my incredible society or even in the classroom, I have always felt a very strong sense of community around me that has aided in my growth as a person and as a Christian. BJU's commitment to academic excellence has also pushed me to discover and refine the skills and talents needed to succeed in life after school, such as communication, critical thinking and problem solving.

My time in the classroom has allowed me to gain hands-on experience in my field of study, all while giving me the freedom to think creatively and build my skills. One aspect of BJU that I have really appreciated is that I have been continuously challenged to develop and grow my faith in Christ through the preaching of God's word and chapel and the daily discipleship of those in community around me. I have truly loved my time here at BJU and I hope others will be able to share the experience I have had. If you or someone you know is interested in an experience such as mine, I would encourage you to check us out online at our website bju.edu and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at bju.edu. For any further information, please feel free to give us a call at 800-252-6363. Thanks for listening and join us again next week as we continue the study in the book of Galatians, preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel platform.