At War with the Flesh

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Transcript:

Turn with me to the book of Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5. As I told you a couple weeks ago before I left for vacation, actually, and more than that because we had praise night, but anyway, as I told you weeks ago, we’re nearing the end of Galatians and we’ll move on to something else.

I want to talk to you tonight about the war that rages within each and every human being, well, especially within the believer. the war that rages within us between the flesh and the spirit. It’s addressed here in the book of Galatians as he’s moved from telling them all the ways that they’re free in Christ. He made the transition somewhere earlier in the chapter about it’s not just freedom to do what you want.

The freedom that we have in Christ is the freedom to do the right thing. Because before we come to Christ, we are in bondage to sin. And so what we think before we come to Christ, what we think is freedom, What the world looks at and says, I’m free because I can do what I want.

What they don’t realize is they do the wrong things, not because they have the freedom to choose, but they do the wrong things because they can’t help themselves. And that’s not to pick on them because each of us, before we came to Christ, before we were born again, we were also bound in sin. And we sinned because we are sinners by nature, and we could not help ourselves.

But for the first time ever, once we’ve been born again, for the first time in our lives, we have the freedom to choose to do the right thing. We have the freedom to do what God says that we’ve never had before. And so he’s told them this freedom that he has spent chapters writing about to them is not freedom that they’re to take and abuse to live wickedly, but to use it to love other people and to serve God the way he’s called.

And then he tells them about the war that really rages within the believer. Because, see, I think you would agree from just your own experiences that as soon as we’re born again, we don’t immediately become perfect, do we? I wish.

I wish. I remember early on when I got saved, I looked at people much older than me who’d been saved a lot longer and thought, well, surely you get to their stage in life and you must be perfect. And it was a real burst to my bubble when some of the people that I most admired as older Christians said, you never get past this and that.

You never get past that. You never become perfect. And I thought early on, you know, eventually I’m going to have all this down and be perfect.

Thought that as a five-year-old. I don’t know if I would have said it in those exact words, but I thought when I get to be so-and-so’s age, I’m going to be like them and be perfect. Well, I’ve been a Christian for 20, 21 years now, and I’m still waiting on that perfection.

It doesn’t come, does it? But Phil, are you perfect yet? I love how you can I love how you can throw your voice like that.

Can you do that while drinking a glass of water? It doesn’t happen. And some of the great preachers that I looked up to, to hear them not even being asked, but just preaching and talk about how they’ve served God 40, 50 years and they still struggle with some of the same sins they struggle with as young men.

And I thought, well, that’s a let down. But it’s true. There’s a war that rages within the believer.

We’re at war with the flesh. And we have this war going on, and folks, we never do completely win at this side of heaven. However, God gives us some instructions on how to have the battle go in our favor.

Galatians chapter 5, starting in verse 16, says, This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye 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, and these are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. And Paul knew where he spoke because he wrote later on, the things that I know I’m supposed to do, the things that I want to do, I can’t do.

And the things I don’t want to do, those are the things I do. And he was talking about stumbling into sin, the things that I know I’m not supposed to do, the things I don’t want to do, I end up doing them anyway. Excuse me.

Y’all bear with me tonight if you would. I’ve had trouble with allergies all day, and it’s kind of making me short of breath. And these are the contrary, one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

He said, the flesh lusteth after the Spirit. And we typically think of this as a, the word lust is a carnal thing, but it means a desire. And so the, basically what he says here, the flesh desires to get the better of the Spirit, and the Spirit desires to get the better of the flesh, and they’re locked in this struggle.

And it said these things are contrary, the one to the other. means they are diametrically opposed to one another. Like, I would say, oil and water.

They don’t mix. You can shake them up and you can kind of get them blended temporarily, but they don’t mix. They will always go to their separate corners.

The flesh and the Spirit do not coexist in peace, and so that you cannot do the things that you would. But if you be led of the Spirit, you’re not under the law. He spent all this time talking to them about not being under the law, and what he meant by that was they were not under the constraints of the law, that they had to do certain things in order to be saved.

They did not have to keep the Old Testament law in order to be saved. If it’s been a few weeks and you’ve forgotten, I want to make sure I make this very clear, that when we talk about not being under the law, it does not mean, again, that we do whatever we want. It does not mean that the moral law of the Old Testament is no longer applicable.

It means the civil and ceremonial laws that they were under, The sacrifices, the festivals, the ritual washings, those things are no longer required of us. The dietary laws, those are no longer required of us. The moral laws, we’re no longer bound to those to try to earn our forgiveness, to earn our salvation.

But they are still God’s will for us. The things that God taught in the Old Testament about stealing, about lying, about adultery, about all of the things in the Ten Commandments and more, the moral law is still there. Now, we can’t be justified by it.

We’re not bound to do it in order to be justified, in order to have our slate wiped clean with God and be forgiven. But as believers, we still have the responsibility to try to live by the moral law because it’s right and because we choose to do those things that are pleasing to God. He tells them, if you be led of the Spirit, you’re not under the law.

You’re not bound by the things that the law tells you to do in order for justification. Now, the works of the flesh are manifest. They’re made evident. Which are these?

Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. He says that the works of the flesh are made manifest. It means they’re made evident. When the flesh is in control, it’s going to be apparent.

It’s going to be evident. When we are not walking with God in the way we ought to, it’s going to become evident sooner or later. We can fake a walk with God.

We can fake a relationship with God for a little while, but eventually what’s in here comes out. I talked several weeks ago, I can’t even remember how long ago, on a Wednesday night about how Jesus said, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. What’s in this well will eventually be drawn out here.

And we can fake a good walk for a while, but eventually the mask comes off. So he says the works of the flesh are made manifest. They’re evident. And he lists these things, and I’m not going to go through every word in here, not in great detail, because we know what some of these mean.

But just to go through the list very quickly, we know what adultery is. Fornication applies to people who aren’t married. I heard people say just recently that the Bible speaks against adultery, but that’s the only problem with sex outside of marriage.

No, the Bible also speaks against fornication, that within the confines of marriage is God’s only plan for this. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness. That just means a general uncleanness of mind, impure thought.

Lasciviousness, we talked about that a little bit, what, a few minutes I was in Sunday school this morning. It just means wickedness. Idolatry, my goodness.

I feel like I’ve preached on nothing but idolatry for the last several Wednesday nights. Putting anything in God’s place. Witchcraft, this is an interesting one.

Because witchcraft, we think, is just about casting spells on people. The word there is pharmakia in the Greek. And the word pharmakia is where we get the word pharmacy from, or pharmaceuticals, or all of those words.

It doesn’t mean it’s wrong to take medicine. That’s not what it’s talking about. But pharmakia, or sorcery, back in this day referred to any practice where you would try to put yourself or other people into an altered state, especially if it was for spiritual reasons.

And a lot of people that are involved in drugs, now there are some that just like the high of it, But a lot of people that are involved in drugs have been drawn to it for what they would call spiritual reasons. They like the, and I don’t speak to this with any experience, but having heard some of them interviewed, the man who started the LSD craze in the United States, Timothy Leary, was drawn to it because he felt he could connect with God in a completely new way. Well, folks, we don’t need to connect with God in a completely new way.

He’s given us a sufficient way to connect with Him through Jesus Christ. But if you want to reject Jesus Christ, maybe you can connect with God in another way. that’s the idea behind pharmakia. That’s the idea behind witchcraft.

Drug abuse, the narcotics that so many people, the altering substances that so many people are involved in today, they don’t realize that that’s part of what the Bible talks about when it says witchcraft. That those things used to be tied to the spell casting and all of these things. Pharmakia is not just magic, but it’s any kind of altered state, whether it involved the magic or not.

Hatred. We know what hatred means. Variance.

Some of these words overlap a little bit, and that’s okay. Variance means strife, to be contentious. Emulations.

Excuse me. Emulations means jealousy. Wrath.

Unjustified anger. Strife. We know what that word means.

Factions being divided. Seditions. Sedition, if you don’t know what the word means, it used to be used a lot more in our country.

they had what they called the Alien and Sedition Acts. And during the, I believe, the War of 1812 and World War I, where if anybody seemed to be undermining the government, it was called sedition. And it was, even if you spoke against the government during World War I, it was called sedition.

You could be put in jail for it until they realized we had something called the First Amendment and thought we’d better bring that back. Sedition is when you’re undermining authority. What it’s talking about here with sedition means undermining authority in the church, whether it’s your spiritual leaders, and no, that’s not a blanket, don’t say anything against the pastor.

I don’t believe that. If the pastor’s wrong, he needs to be corrected too. But whether you’re undermining the pastor, whether you’re undermining the elders of the church, whether you’re undermining the Bible, it’s a work of the flesh, this sedition.

Heresies, we know what heresies are, false teachings, envyings, jealousy, murder, drunkenness, revelings, that means this kind of party attitude that people have, and such like. He doesn’t just limit it to this list. He and such like, things like this. These are the manifest. These are the evident works of the flesh.

And if somebody is walking after the flesh and not the Spirit, you will begin to see these things and their cousins. Of the which I tell you before, as I have told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, he’s not telling us that if we sin, if we slip momentarily, that we lose our salvation.

In this and in the part that’s to come in just a moment where he talks about the fruits of the Spirit, We’re talking about patterns of behavior. We’re talking about lifestyles. I, as a Christian, will, on pretty much a daily basis, do things that are displeasing to my Lord.

I will sin on a daily basis. I try not to. But folks, I’m not perfect.

Neither are you. You will sin on a daily basis. But as a believer that walks after the Spirit, the Spirit should not allow us to remain in that sin, to wallow in it, to think that it’s okay, and excuse it and just go on and veer deeper and deeper into that sin.

As believers, we have a responsibility when we sin to realize it, to call it what it is, and to deal with God about it instead of letting it continue. But if you see somebody, if you see somebody that is characterized by a lifestyle of these things, odds are they are following the flesh. And if it goes on continuously, it’s a good sign that they’re probably not a believer.

And so anybody whose lives are characterized by these things, as I said, if it goes on long enough, it’s pretty good evidence that they may not be a believer. And if they’re not a believer, if they’re somebody who walks according to these things, these people will not inherit the kingdom of God, he says. But the fruit of the Spirit.

Somebody was talking to me about this this morning. It may have been Brother Ted. He doesn’t like when I mention his name from the pulpit, but he’s not here, so he can’t do anything about it.

was talking about how, I think it was him, said that somebody was talking to him about not liking all the things the Bible says not to do, and how he told them that if they would worry more about what the Bible says to do, they wouldn’t have time to be doing the things that the Bible said not to do, if that makes any sense. And the don’ts will take care of themselves if we’ll take care of the do’s. A friend of mine has always said nature abhors a vacuum.

It doesn’t like a vacuum. Where there’s an opening, nature takes care of that. When there’s an imbalance in pressure, I think of the people in the little submarines that go down to the deepest part of the ocean.

Well, they have a lot less pressure inside that submarine than is on the outside. Nature doesn’t like that. And I’ve heard them say if there was even a hole in it the size of a pen, immediately the thing would implode.

Nature would take care of the disconnect. When we’re not running the air conditioner in here, When we leave here today and it’s cooler in here than it is outside, nature takes care of that lack of heat energy in here. Because I’ll come back in later in the week and it’ll be 90 upstairs in here.

It’s lovely. Nature doesn’t like a vacuum. Whenever there’s empty space in nature, something else comes in to fill it.

Well, the same is true in our spiritual lives, I believe. That there’s not just a vacuum that can exist there. God could have told us all day, don’t do this, don’t do this, get rid of this wrong thing, get rid of this wrong thing.

And we could spend all of our time clearing out the wrong from our lives and just sit here empty, waiting for those wrong things to come and fill up our time and our focus again. And Satan would be only too glad to send those things to us. But God doesn’t tell us just get rid of the bad things.

God is so smart. Smart is not even an adequate word for describing God. God knows our shortcomings better than we do and realizes that it’s not just enough to tell us to get rid of these things, to not do these things.

God tells us the things that we are supposed to put in their place. Because if we’ll put the good things, if we’ll put the things of the Spirit in place of what we’ve taken out, there won’t be room for the flesh to crowd back in. But the fruit of the Spirit, he’s talked about the rotten fruit of the flesh, now the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

Against such there is no law. And again, we know what most of these words mean. We know what love means.

We know what joy means. Peace, not just that everything is going well in our world, but that we have a sense of peace. We have a sense of being under the protection of God.

And instead of anxiety, we have peace here. Long-suffering means patience. Gentleness, we know what that means.

Goodness, that’s just kind of a catch-all word. We know what that means. And faith.

Meekness. Meekness is often given a bad rap. Meekness does not mean weakness.

Jesus Christ was meek. But folks, anybody who could willingly endure what he did on the cross, knowing that’s where he was going and go there anyway and do it, could not be a weak person. Meekness means power under control.

It means power under control. Temperance is just good old-fashioned self-control. He says, against such things there is no law.

I’ve always wondered what that meant, until you read it in the context of the whole passage, where he’s told them if you walk in the Spirit, you’re not under the law. In other words, if you do these things, You don’t have to worry about what you’re not supposed to do because there’s nothing in God’s law against any of these things. And he tells us these are the fruits of the Spirit.

If you’re walking in the Spirit, these are the things that will manifest themselves. These are the things that will quickly become evident. Now, does it mean you’re not a Christian if you don’t have all of these things down perfectly?

Goodness, I hope not. Anybody else with me? I hope not because there are some of these where I’m lacking.

As a matter of fact, I’m probably lacking in all of them. I look at long-suffering or patience, for example, and I’m not the most patient person in the world. I’ve gotten better, but I’m nowhere near the patience that I need to have.

Some of these others, joy I talked about this morning. I’m not always as joyful as I ought to be, especially when things go wrong. You see, none of us have any of these down perfectly, and my guess is we won’t have any of them or all of them down perfectly until Jesus wraps all of this up and we go on to be with him.

But for a Christian, let me point it out to you this way. You don’t plant a plant and expect to have fruit immediately, do you? I’ve tried my hand at growing blueberries, and I might get blueberries if I ever could keep them alive for more than one season.

So far, the heat and the precipitation have not been with me on that. But I’ve been told you have to grow the blueberry vines for something like three years, and then they start bearing fruit, and the first crop you actually have to throw away. Several people have told me that, so it must be true.

I’ve not gotten to that point yet. But you don’t expect all the fruit that you’re going to have to come to you immediately. There’s cultivation there.

There’s growth in the plant. The berries have to form, and it takes a while. That’s where my patience could come in a little bit.

It takes a while. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we can’t be planted. We can’t be born again and expect overnight to bear all the fruit we’re supposed to bear as Christians.

Now, I do believe there’s an immediate change. But as I’ve told you before, I believe sanctification is both instant and ongoing. I believe we’re set apart unto Christ and we spend the rest of our natural lives growing to be conformed to Him.

We as Christians can’t be expected to have all of these down perfectly. But we should exhibit some of these characteristics at some times. And we should show some growth in these things.

As I’ve said before and several times during this message even, I am not perfect. And I fail miserably on some of these. But I can look at some of these points and say, where I was even five years ago, wow, I’ve gotten a lot better at that one.

And I know it’s not because I’ve just gotten so wonderful. I know it’s because of the Holy Spirit working in me. I know it’s the fruit of the Spirit.

I used to be known for my mouth, that when somebody stepped out of line, I could tell them off like nobody’s business and point them back in the line. I was kind of known for that in high school and wish now that I wasn’t. And I think my heart was in the right place and the things that I was teaching were in the right place, but I didn’t go about it quite the right way.

And I look back to that almost 10 years ago and say, wow, in the gentleness category, I’m not where I’m supposed to be, but I’m way ahead of where I was. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. We should show some kind of growth in some of these because it’s evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.

If we are not saved, we will not show a consistent pattern of growth in these. That’s not to say that there are not lost people in the world that are nice, that are well-behaved, that are self-controlled. But folks, I’m talking here again about the pattern of our lives.

If the pattern of our lives does not indicate growth in these areas, then something is off. He says, and they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. These things that get us.

Again, there’s this war that goes on in every believer. But we should have the upper hand in it. We shouldn’t just throw, it’s hard sometimes, but we shouldn’t just throw up our hands and give up and say, well, I’m going to trip and fall anyway.

I might as well wallow in the mud while I’m down here. He says, and they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Those things have been defeated for us already.

They just don’t realize they’re dead yet. But they’ve been crucified. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

He’s talking to believers. As believers, we have the Holy Spirit. we live in the Spirit, and basically what he says is let us act like it.

If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit. And he’s already told them earlier that if we, I’m sorry, no, he hasn’t. That’s coming up.

If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit, and let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another. Two things I want to share with you just real briefly, and then we’ll close, is that as I said earlier, the flesh and the spirit are constantly at war with one another. And we can get so discouraged because we find ourselves as Christians, we think it’s been 20 years, it’s been 10 years, it’s been 5 years, and I’m still not perfect.

I sinned yesterday, I sinned today, I let God down. It can be discouraging, and we can feel like giving up sometimes. But what we’ve got to realize is that there is a battle going on.

It’s not that we’re worthless Christians. It’s that we are sinners who have been saved by grace, and that sin nature that we’re born with is still there in the flesh, and yet we also have the Spirit of God within us. They’re at war with each other.

We need to recognize that it is a war, as I said, so that we don’t get discouraged and think, well, I’m just worthless. No, this is what happens when you become a Christian, but also so that we recognize the seriousness of it. We can’t afford to say, I’m just going to walk after the flesh a little bit.

I use the word, I can’t think of a better word for it, so I use the word flirting a lot, flirting with things. We’re just going to flirt with sin for a little while. We’re going to enjoy it.

We’re going to keep it over here at arm’s length where we can get to it, but not too close, but not too far away either. And we’re just going to spend some time dabbling in sin from time to time and enjoy it. And then we’ll come back.

Folks, we’ve got to realize it’s more serious than that. Sin is the enemy, and there’s a war going on. And it’s a war for our spiritual growth.

We’ve got to realize the flesh and spirit war constantly with one another. And we’ve got to realize, second of all, that walking in the spirit is the best defense against the flesh. As I said before, we could spend all of our time worrying about, well, I’ve got to make sure I don’t have this first list. Okay, idolatry, we’re good there.

Witchcraft, I haven’t taken any drugs today. Haven’t cast spells on anybody. Hatred, we’re good there.

Instead of worrying about making sure all of those things are gone, and we should make sure we’re clear of those things, But instead of worrying so much about those things, because we can spend the rest of our lives fighting those things and say, I’m getting rid of it, and now it’s gone, I’ll wait it’s back. Getting rid of it again, fighting it again, and leaving ourselves open. Instead, we need to walk after the Spirit.

The danger for us comes when we try to walk the middle line between the two. I think back to World War I, not that I was there, but I’ve read enough about it and seen enough shows about it where they would dig the trenches on the western front and they would get down in the trenches and they would shoot at each other. Somebody would stand up over the trench and shoot and get back down and the other guy would.

And this went on for years because it’s hard to shoot somebody when they’re down in the other trench until they get up in the no man’s land. The most dangerous place to be in World War I was out on the no man’s land, the strip in between the two countries. Well folks, the most dangerous place for us is on the line between the two because it’s easy to get gunned down by the flesh.

We need to try our best to be squarely and securely over here on the side of the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit is our best defense against the flesh. These two sides rage within us.

And I’ve told you before the story about the two dogs, and I’ve seen it illustrated myself now, actually. We have turtles. And I remember telling you all earlier on, about a year ago, about my pet turtles, and I found out some of you all thought that that was when I was a boy.

No, my parents wouldn’t let me have turtles. My wife is nicer, and she’ll let me have turtles. We have two turtles, Otis and Delilah, and she’s Delilah because she’s bad.

And we had a third turtle, it was Benjamin’s, for a couple weeks named Ferdinand. And Ferdinand was sick when he came into the house, and we got him from one of the pet stores that apparently didn’t do good screening. He made Otis, which is my turtle, sick.

And Otis is kind of small anyway. And these turtles, they like the light, and so they’ll get up on the rock place that they have so they can bask, is what they call it, in the sunlight. And they always compete to see who can get on top of the other one and get closer to the light, and then they’ll lay that way.

But until they get settled, it’s kind of a competition to see who gets on top, closer to the light. And we noticed after this other one, this third one died because he was sick, and he made Otis sick in the process. And Otis, his eyes were closed for two or three weeks, and I was having to give him eye drops every day.

That’s pitiful, having to give eye drops to a turtle. Giving him eye drops every day, several times a day, and trying to get him to eat something, and he was sick, and for weeks he didn’t eat. Now, he’s better now, but once his eyes opened, it was still another week or so before he would eat anything because he was so weak.

And he would try to pull himself up on the rock, and that big old Delilah would come and fling him down off the rock and climb up there herself. Or she would hold him down and climb on top of him. And I’ve talked about the two dogs and which one’s the strongest. I saw it illustrated with the turtles.

The turtles are in this constant competition to see who gets to be on the rock or who gets to be on top. Well, which one’s going to be the strongest? The one that gets fed.

See, Otis hadn’t been fed in about a month, not for lack of trying, but he’d been too sick to eat. And when he finally tried to get back on the rock, he wasn’t strong like she was because she’d been eating the whole time. Ladies and gentlemen, not to make too much light of it, but it’s the same situation within us.

We’ve got the flesh and we’ve got the spirit. In constant struggle in our lives, trying to see who comes out on top, which one is going to be strongest? It’s going to be the one we feed, isn’t it?

Instead of worrying about the flesh, or instead of thinking about how we can spend time with the flesh and still be all right, we need to take everything we’ve got. We’re not going to be able to do it perfectly, but that shouldn’t stop us. We should take everything we’ve got and devote it toward walking in the spirit, Because the Bible tells us if we’ll walk in the Spirit, we’ll not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

That’s God’s promise to us. That’s God’s principle for our lives, that if we will walk after the Spirit, if we’ll worry about the things we are supposed to do, the things that we are not supposed to do will take care of themselves.