God’s Vision for Spiritual Growth

Introduction

You’re making your way to Galatians chapter 5, Galatians, the fifth chapter. I’m going to read from there in just a moment. I’m going to be pretty quick this morning in getting to the point. I’m going to give you two acronyms toward the end of the sermon this morning that I want you to remember. I’ll go through them a little bit, but we’re going to get to some practical things this morning to deal with some of the problems that have been introduced in past sermons. The problem of hurry, being so hurried in life and busy that we get distracted with things that are unimportant. How can we deal with that? That’s one of the major things I want us to work through this morning. And just can continue with this idea of spiritual disciplines, things we can begin to introduce into our life that will help us in that regard.

So that’s where we’re headed this morning. Those of you taking notes, be waiting for two acronyms. You’ll see them when we get there, and we’ll work through those. Begin reading with me in Galatians chapter 5 and verse 16. Galatians 5, 16. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. We are entering the middle of a dialogue, really, that Paul is having with Galatian brethren that has to do with the law of Moses and faith in Christ. So we can’t really get deep into that discussion, but it does have to do with why he’s wording things the way he does.

For example, the term works or deeds is a term that’s often tied by Paul to the idea of the law of Moses. So he’s purposely joining that to the idea of works of the flesh. He’s saying the law of Moses isn’t going to be what works for you. Faith in Christ is what works. This is sort of the context of what he’s doing throughout the whole letter. But then embedded within that is this idea of what happens when we are tied to Christ. When we are fully immersed in the things of Jesus.

What the makeup of the Spirit’s fruit is, as opposed to what the deeds or the works of the flesh are. Now, what I’m not going to do this morning is go through all the works of the flesh and go through all the attributes of the spirit’s fruit. We’re not going to spend the time doing that this morning, you are familiar with that. You’ve probably done that in the class at some point. But what I really want to do is kind of take some concepts, some principles from what Paul says here in Galatians 5 and help us kind of filter through that in ways that help us in our spiritual journey that help us in our walk. That’s what he’s talking about here.

1. Not an Improved Self but a New Creation

This is about a way of life. It’s not a one-time decision. It’s not something that happens, and then you go about your life doing the things like you’ve always done them before, or pretty much like how you’ve done them before. No, the way Paul’s presenting this is something that’s completely different. Now, we get confused sometimes with the terminology and all that because of what he’s doing with the law of Moses and with faith in Christ. I don’t think Paul would have any problem saying that you’re going from one law to another law. In fact, he calls it the law of Christ somewhere else. However, he presents this more as going from one life to another life, or going from one creation to new creation. If you just look a few verses over in Galatians chapter 6, verse 15, he’s still working in this law of Moses versus faith in Christ sort of paradigm.

But he’s concluding the letter here for neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but new creation. And that’s for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. There’s a whole lot to unpack there that we can’t do this morning, but just a really neat verse of how Paul sees the world when you are in Christ, that you are part of God’s Israel, you’re part of his people. And he just unpacks all of that in two short verses. And the idea here isn’t that you just you get saved and then you go about your life. No, this is a new creation. And in fact, he does this twice in his writings. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5. He says, Is anyone in Christ?

New creation. Now, in your English versions in verse 17, it supplies some words there. He is a new creation. But in Greek, it just says, if you’re in Christ, new creation. That’s what you are. You’re not the old creation. Then he goes on to say, the old has passed away. What do we mean when we use those words? The old died. That’s what he’s saying. The old is dead, the new has come. So you’re no longer part of the old creation. In Romans chapter 5, he portrays it this way. There’s the Adam humanity, which is of the flesh, and then there’s the Christ humanity, which redeems us. Old creation is Adam, new creation is Christ. And now what he’s doing in a text like Galatians 5 and Colossians 3 and Ephesians 4 and various others is saying, this is now how you live if you’re new creation.

You don’t live like you used to live. There’s going to be a lot of changes that have to take place. You’re going to put off some things and you’re going to put on other things. So in Ephesians 4, he says, put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires and be renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God. It’s a new person. It’s a new creation. You’re not an improved self. It’s not the old self that has developed and gotten better. No, the old self is gone. And now it is a new self. In Galatians chapter 2, Paul words it this way, I have been crucified with Christ, and it’s no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

2. Choose the Master You're Going to Serve

Right? So this is a comprehensive thought that Paul’s making here in the book of Galatians and other writings. And here’s what he’s really getting at. When we kind of get to the principles of what’s happening in this text, I want to use some of the wording of Jesus Himself. First of all, Jesus says, You will know them by their fruits. I want us to have that deep in our minds as we’re working through this text. You will know them by their fruits. Good trees don’t produce bad fruit. Bad trees don’t produce good fruit. You will know them by their fruits, Jesus. And so here’s what we have to understand. We can’t serve two masters. We have to choose one. We have to choose the master that we’re going to serve.

Jesus says, you cannot serve two masters. You’re going to be devoted to the one and you’re going to despise the other. It cannot work. We can’t say we believe in Jesus. We can’t say I believe the right things and I go to the right church, but then I kind of go out and I live the way I want to live in the world. Those don’t work. If we do that, we’re serving the world. If we do that, we’re we’re we are doing the deeds of the flesh. We’re not walking by the Spirit. We may feel good about the things we believe. We may rest in the church we go to, but the reality is we’re still walking by the deeds of the flesh, if that’s the way we conceptualize this.

What’s important and what matters is not being the most rightist. It’s being the most Christ like. And that’s what scripture is trying to under have us understand here. Yes, we want to be right and we want to understand truth. And in fact, you can’t do the other with they have to work together. But if we’re so caught up in only the idea of what we believe that it never amounts to much action, it’s empty. It hasn’t done anything in my life. No fruit has been produced. And Galatians 5 is really connecting to this idea of what does my life actually look like. When I look at it myself, which is probably the main concept, or when others look at it, what do they see being produced in me?

That’s a good measure. That tells me a lot of what I need to know about what my life is actually like and the master that I’ve actually chosen. The spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other. They cannot work together. This is the idea of the text when he says to they are trying to keep you from doing the things you want to do. The spirit and the flesh, they don’t mingle. It’s like oil and water. You can’t put them together and everything be okay. That’s not gonna work. It’s a choice that has to be made. And so the choice you make naturally keeps you from doing the other. If I’m living by the Spirit and following the ways of the Spirit, I’m not going to serve the master of the world.

But this is essentially the argument Paul’s making from Romans 6 all the way through Romans 8. Right? You’re no longer a slave of sin or a slave of evil or wickedness. Now you’re a slave of Christ. You have a different master. Because you can’t have two, and that’s the idea. Choose which master you’re going to serve. And so I want us to understand this morning before we go forward, we’re making a choice. Even if we don’t want to make the choice, if we think we’re not deciding today, if that’s where you think you are, you’re making decision. If you’re not intentionally being led by the Spirit, if you’re not intentionally a disciple of Jesus Christ, you are allowing the world to be your master. There’s no in between.

You can’t serve two masters, it’s one or the other. These are the words of Jesus Himself, and the Apostle Paul is taking this concept and putting this into this Galatian letter where they’re struggling. Right? They’re struggling and going back to the old life. They’re allowing some people to pull them back into the old ways. And Paul says, Stop doing that. Choose the master you’re going to serve. Did you receive the Spirit by the flesh? Then why do you think you’re going to be perfected by the flesh? Going back to something like the law of Moses. It wasn’t that. It was by faith in Jesus Christ. And that’s the emphasis he’s putting here in the letter. And so he’s trying to get them to understand the need to choose Jesus, not some other kind of law system by which they are never going to be justified.

3. Crucify the Flesh and Practice the Things of Christ

So if we want to walk according to the Spirit, how do we do that? This is where we’re trying to push. This is where we’re heading. How do we go about this process? It’s fairly simple in word. I mean, it says, here’s the thing. If you’re going to live by the Spirit, you have to crucify the flesh. We’ve already talked about this. You’re just, you’re putting it to death. And so all that list of things there that are deeds of the flesh or the works of the flesh, the things like immorality or impurity or sorcery, jealousy, anger, all those kinds of things, you’ve got to get rid of them. Those are not fitting for a life being lived in the spirit. It’s simple. Right? Intellectually, the message is very easy.

The picture you have of what it is to walk in Jesus Christ is not any of that. You can’t have that. It has to be done away with, it has to be killed, it has to be crucified, it has to be mortified. These are all terms that are used in various places by Paul to talk about going from the old man and getting rid of these things in our life that are keeping us from being what we need to be in Jesus Christ and walking the way of life that we’re supposed to be walking. If you will be my disciple, Jesus says, take up your cross and follow after me. That message is you have to die. You have to die to yourself. That’s what Jesus is saying.

You don’t grasp on to who you are and keep the things of the flesh and the desires of the flesh and all these things. You don’t maintain this is who I really am, this is my personality, it’s too hard to change, or all the things that we convince ourselves of as those who are weak in flesh.

We’re honest about that reality. That someone who’s in Christ doesn’t do those things and doesn’t practice them. Right? So that’s the wording in verse 21. He says, I warn you, just like I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. That word do in Greek is the word we get our word practice from. So you’re on a sports team or you play an instrument, or even in your work environment, right? You’ll sometimes you’ll you’ll work through things over and over and over again to get them right. We don’t expect somebody on some sort of athletic team to go out and immediately know how to do everything. No, we practice it. We work through it, we grow and we build and we get stronger.

We put things into memory. We call it muscle memory, even though that’s probably not technically what it really is, but we do it so much that it’s second nature to us. This is really what Jesus is getting at in Matthew 6 when he talks about not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing. I mean, if you actually think about that, there’s no way to do that consciously. You know, like I’m gonna do this, but left hand don’t think about it. That’s not how it works. It’s that it’s done so frequently, it’s such a part of who we are that it’s just unconscious. Right? And that’s the nature of what training looks like. Becoming someone who is in Christ, it involves regular activity and training so that the things of Christ and being led by the spirit are done even unconsciously, because we have set up a routine or a system by which that takes place.

And here’s the thing when we don’t do that, when we live by the world and by the flesh, we’re doing those same exact things. Right? These are the practices of the flesh. The person of the flesh is lusting, they’re envying, they’re being jealous, they’re doing all these things that are part of life in the flesh. It’s what they do. And so when they encounter various situations, they resort to what they’re used to in the way that they typically think. This is what happens when we live life in the flesh. Now, I want us to understand something really quickly before I move on. It’s using this term flesh and spirit, right? It’s contrasting these ideas of flesh and the spirit. But I want you to notice that the things of the flesh are not just bodily.

Right? It doesn’t mean material and non material. You don’t envy with your body. You’re not jealous with your body. Even idolatry can just be in the heart. And so Paul’s not setting up something here where it’s like the body is bad and the things of the body and the things in the material world are bad, but the things of the mind and the spirit are good. That’s not what he’s doing. He’s talking about a way of life, the steps that we walk in. Right? And so the things of the body and the body and the mind can be either fleshly or they can be spiritual. It’s about how we use both mind and body. That’s the way of life. That’s the choice we’re making, which master that we’re serving.

4. Keep in Step with the Spirit

And so things like love and joy and peace and patience, they’re not just thoughts. Those things are realized, they are manifest, they’re revealed through action. There’s no way they can’t be. I cannot love without somehow demonstrating that. At some point, it would be fairly empty if I didn’t. If I told my wife I loved her, but then I never did anything to show it. How well will that be received? And when we know that doesn’t make sense. Right? So spirit and flesh here is not material, non-material. It’s about choosing two ways of life. And so he says, here’s what you have to do. If you want to live by the Spirit, you have to keep in step with the Spirit. I love that phrase. Now, some of your versions might say walk, which is fine.

It’s the same concept or idea, although it’s a different word in Greek here that you find in verse 16. They are synonyms in many ways, but the word here in verse 25 is really the idea of order, right? And it’s used other places. For example, the verse we read earlier in chapter 6 and verse 16, though for all who walk by this rule, right? It’s actually a military term. It’s about being in rank, it’s about order and structure. Right? So there’s a certain order or structure that comes with being in Christ. It’s also opposed to what we find back in chapter 4. Right? He talks about you once were enslaved. This is verse 3. You were once enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

It’s the same word. You were enslaved to this other way of life, but now you’re not. Don’t be like that. Don’t follow these basic foundational principles of the world where people live in envy and jealous, jealousy, and pride and that sort of lifestyle. Don’t do it. He says it again in verse 9. You’ve come to know God, he says, or rather to be known by God. How can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world? This is like the ABCs of the world, living the way the world lives. Why would you go back there? This is the question he’s asking. No, that’s the old life. That’s the life you don’t want to be a part of. And so if we want to keep in step with the Spirit, we have to start walking with the Spirit.

We have to start living by the Spirit and then producing fruit, which is the Spirit’s fruit. Now, it’s interesting this text uses the word fruit singularly. All of these attributes sort of come together to be what is the fruit of the Spirit. So it’s not like I can say, well, I love, but I’m not I’m not really kind or gentle. No, these all work together as one. They’re the attributes of the fruit that the Spirit produces. And they all need to be that which is working in our life if we are living by the Spirit. You will know them by their fruits, Jesus says. And whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

5. Pause: The Presence of God

But it’s choosing a way of life. Am I gonna live according to the ways of the Spirit and do the things of the Spirit, or am I gonna live according to the flesh and do the things of the flesh? Okay, so the two acronyms. I want us to think about this idea of slowing down. We’re so hurried and busy, particularly in our life, and get caught up in the things of the flesh, the things that don’t matter, the things that tie us in to not seeking the kingdom of God first. And so I want you to have this thought in your mind when you’re wrestling with that is to pause. Wherever you are, and we’ll talk about figuring out where you are here in just a minute in this whole process.

Be willing to pause. Just consider, first of all, the P presence of God, the presence of God and appreciate that in your life. This can be a 10-minute process, it can be an hour process. Maybe as we develop it over time, it’ll change. But it can be very simple, and it can be quick even at first, probably should be, as we’re learning to do this, because it’ll be uncomfortable because it’s new. This is not something we typically do in our religious culture or these sorts of things. Because we have believed, because of Calvinistic theology, that doing deeds is bad, and that’s against God’s grace, and that’s completely wrong. This is not about earning your salvation. This is not trying to get saved. This is about not trying to be right.

This is about being Christ like.

That’s a strange way to do anything. And it’s not what the Bible calls us to. It’s by allowing the Spirit to work through us. It’s allowing God to will and to do for his good pleasure, as Philippians tells us. It’s about opening our heart to allow this transformation to take place. And transformation is a process. It is a spirit guided process that is not like the world. It’s not like the old man. And so we have to stop and pause and appreciate that first and realize God is in my life. That’s the place to start. And so maybe we just stop with a simple prayer, or when we wake up in the morning, a simple prayer, Father, guide my thoughts and actions and heart today. Just the simple recognition that God is there.

How often do we go through a day without even thinking about that reality? God is with us.

6. Faster: Evaluating Where You Are in Your Hurried Life

And we’re so busy and we’re so tied up with all the things happening, that thought may not even cross our minds. How could it when we allow the ways of the world to enter in and guide us and lead us? And then this becomes a time of awareness, self-evaluation. There is a tool that’s used in a whole lot of recovery programs for addiction of various kinds by a guy named Michael Dye, the Genesis process is where this comes from, but it’s used all over the place. And it’s pretty appropriate for what we’ve been talking about. But this is a way of evaluating where you are in your hurried life. Right? So, second acronym, faster. So pause. We need to pause and think about spiritual growth. But then also, how do we identify where we are in this problem that exists in our world?

We work through this process and kind of figure out what is happening to me. Where am I? We have to be honest with ourselves rather than live in denial, which is what happens when we’re hurried and we distract ourselves with everything imaginable so we don’t have to wrestle with our own thoughts. But when we actually will stop and wrestle with our own thoughts, then we can identify where we are, identify the problems, and begin to try to work to fix them with appropriate measures. So, this is a proven sort of method here to think through where we are and how this process works cyclically. Right? When we go back to the old person we don’t want to be, there’s a process by which that happens.

We don’t just simply wake up one day and say, I’m gonna go back to who I used to be. No, there’s this works in a certain way. When we are allowing ourselves to get caught up, so it begins. This makes a lot of sense. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. So where does it begin? We forget our priorities. We neglect our family. We have less time and energy for God, so we don’t show up to church meetings or other activities that are happening that are important that actually matter in life. We’re obsessed with relationships, with other things that actually aren’t all that important sometimes. We procrastinate, we decide we just don’t get things done, or even we start lying about stuff. And some of this may be very subtle at first.

We may not even notice some of what we’re doing, but it eventually becomes anxiety or angst. And when we get to this part where we worry, we’re fearful, we’re resentful, we just keep replaying negative thoughts over and over in our head. We become perfectionists. Everything has to be just right because we want to control it all. We start judging other people’s motives quickly and rashly. We’re unrealistic with to-do lists. We have sleeping problems. We can’t concentrate. We seek out drama and gossip. Because these elements sort of make us feel a little bit better. They’re distractions ultimately. And this process, because then we want to outrun our anxiety, and we feel that and we know it’s there. We want to overcome it, so we start speeding up.

We suddenly get driven, right? Men, this is where we start working like 12 hours a day because we’re gonna overcome whatever anxiety we have in our life or things we’re we’re dealing with, or maybe wives, someone’s coming over, and so we haven’t done anything yet, but then we spend the entire day irritated at everybody cleaning the house, running through the house, doing everything, and everyone’s in our way, and we’re irritated and we have mood swings and we’re nervous about everything, and our body starts to sweat. You see how body and mind are connected. Men, have you ever come up here and it’s 72 perfectly controlled temperature in this building and you’re sweating profusely? Because our mind and our body are connected, right? Over time, you learn to manage that through practice, through training.

But we have to identify where we are, we have to be honest with who we are if we can ever get there. Right? So this anxiety then goes to the speeding up. We start overspending to make ourselves feel better, binge eating, or not eating at all. We don’t want to listen to other people. We make excuses for having to do it all, which is out of perspective. And then what happens is we just get angry. This leads to irrational thinking. We can’t take criticism, we’re defensive. People start avoiding me. Walking on eggshells, you ever heard that phrase?

That’s because when people are doing it’s because I have an angry aura about me. I’m mad. I’ve sped up to the process where people are just trying to stay away. They don’t want to face my wrath. They’ve seen I’m irritable. They’ve seen I’m I’m busy doing things. I’m not interested in who they are or what they are. We start to kind of disassociate from people because it’s all about whatever it is we’re focused on. We start having the digestive problems and headaches. We have obsessive thoughts. Sometimes it becomes we can’t forgive. We start blaming others instead of admitting our own problems. All of this is part of this anger process. And here’s what happens next. That is so emotionally tasking that then we are exhausted.

And so we become depressed and confused. We just start sleeping and not getting up. We’re overwhelmed. We cry for no reason. Our brains are foggy and we can’t think. We’re tired, we’re numb, we don’t care, we’re apathetic. We start isolating, we become really irritable. We have no appetite. And then the final portion here is that we give up and give in. We just go back to who we were. It’s too hard. It’s too much. You identify with any of that. No, it happens to varying degrees. But this is the cycle of how our brain works when we don’t understand the need for restoration. At any part of that process, if we’ve actually taken the time to think about where we are, we can then pursue restoration, accepting life on God’s terms, putting our trust in God, realizing that He has the answers, being open about our problems, looking to resolve them, keeping commitments and goals in our life, praying regularly, worshiping regularly, keeping our daily routine.

So if we’re out of our routine, that’s a good sign that we’re starting this process. Our priorities are off. Sometimes that just happens, it’s just part of life. But typically, when we’re in a good place, we get back onto that routine. We get back to the things that really matter, to the priorities in our life. But when we don’t, it all starts to cycle out of control. Awareness is pretty tough. Being willing to sit in silence for a few minutes and wrestle with my own thoughts, that’s probably one of the hardest things I have to do in life. Identify the problems I actually have, where I am on this scale. Am I willing to change? What am I going to do to change? But let me ask you, what do we have to do to do that?

Is it just that I believe the right doctrines? Does that take care of that? No, this involves actual real action in my life. Examination and evaluation. Right? So I have to be willing to then unpack these truths and these realities that exist in my life. When I face them, when I sit there for 10 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever it is, and I think about the things I’m really struggling with, and I confess them, and I offer them up to God, then I have to unpack what all of that means, and I need to be willing to surrender that to God, admit my weaknesses, cast my anxieties and my cares in the Lord, 1 Peter chapter 5, all this sort of stuff’s in scripture. And then I need to find some kind of simple way to take action.

It can be any number of things based on where I’m at and what I’m struggling with. Praise each family member today. That might be the simple action I’m going to take. Or say no to a desire or to that piece of cake or whatever it is that I’m struggling with. Speak well of someone that I may not align with in how I think very often. Find the joy in a difficult situation. These are the types of things we can engage on once we’ve sat and we’ve actually wrestled with truths in our life and where we are. What is it that’s actually going to help me? If I’m trying to walk by the Spirit and be led by the Spirit, and if I want to bear the fruit of the Spirit, how am I going to do that?

How am I going to engage that today to make that happen in a way and allow God to work through me in a powerful, transformative way to live a new life? And not simply just to believe some things, but still live my old life. That’s what Paul is after here in Galatians chapter 5. But it takes some intentionality. It takes some thought.

Conclusion

Some of those things are noticeable. Sometimes people can look at us and they can see the fruit, right? You will know them by their fruits. A lot of times, this is I have to evaluate myself and figure that out. And it could be that for you this morning, the place to start is you’re not even in Christ. You haven’t given your life to Jesus Christ. We would love for you to do that. To die with him and be resurrected, a new person, a new creation, to start living this new and better life. And it is new and it is better. His yoke is easy and his burden his light. This is the call of discipleship. If we will actually trust him and believe him, we will have a better life, even now.

But certainly in the life to come. Can we help you this morning? Why don’t you come now as we stand and we sing?