Your Christian Life Of Conflict With The Flesh

The Old Testament reading today is in Genesis 4, 1 through 8. Now Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore

Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again she bore his brother

Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time,

Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock.

And of their fat portions, and the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering. But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard.

So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?

If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

His desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and when they were in the field,

Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Today's New Testament reading is

Galatians chapter 5, 16 through 26, on page 975.

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 walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, and envying one another.

You may be seated. Good morning.

Open your Bibles to Matthew 11, please, Matthew 11. Just in case if there is any confusion, there might not have been, maybe

I'm thinking about myself too much here, but Andrew that he's referring to in the letter was not me.

His wife's name is Sarah, too, so I just wanted to make sure it might have been a little confusing. Maybe, I don't know.

I can't remember if that was cleared up before or not, so. But yeah, it was an

Andrew that's in jail. His wife is Sarah, and I was able to be a part of that counseling, just watching

Tim in action there, watching the Spirit in action, really, because it was just such a, oh, it was marvelous to see the truth transform

Andrew and Sarah. I remember before the first session, Tim and I were sitting in his old office, and we're just, you know, we're just kind of like, okay,

I wonder how this is going to go. A guy in jail, you know, not Skyping, what's the word for it now?

Video chatting, whatever it's called nowadays, Zoom, yeah. It was just a very interesting thing, but man, to see the

Spirit already working in them and to see the Spirit develop them through the Word, it's such a marvelous thing to behold.

And it's great to see God open up doors for Tim to go to the jail and give teaching through what happened with Andrew and Sarah.

So, I'm always amazed how God, He allows things to happen that we just don't understand for His glory, and He just does that over and over and over again, and that's a great picture of that.

But with your Bibles open to Matthew, I'm going to go ahead and open up in prayer, and then we'll begin.

Our great God in heaven, we are needful people. We are needy people, God, and I was reminded this morning that any time that You show us our need, that we feel the need for You deep within our soul, although it doesn't feel good to be needy, it's not a comfortable place to be in, to not be able to do things of our own power, we know that that's where You call us to be, because it's when we're needy people that we look to Jesus.

Lord, if we're not needy, we don't have a need for Christ. So I thank

You, Lord, that You have called us to be people of humility, not people who have everything figured out and are able to do anything that we will, but rather we are people that we recognize that of ourselves we are truly bankrupt, and that we at every moment need

Your grace and Your power through Jesus Christ and the spirit that He sends to His elect. So I pray,

God, that here, right now, every one of us would prove to be needy people, that I would be needy as I declare

Your word. I know it's going to be weak. I know it will be full of weakness, but I know that in weakness,

You're made strong. So I pray that You would show Your strength even in the weakness here that I am about to do.

And I pray, Lord, that the people before me, that they would be needy, that even a weak sermon could be used powerfully by people who are hungry for Your truth.

And so I pray, Lord, that You would open up hearts and that all the truths that are found in this sermon, it would be grabbed hold of,

Lord, and it would transform lives. We know that the spirit's needed for that. So be with us in our need,

Lord. You are faithful, and we praise You for that. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, if you—I'm a history major at Oakland University.

I got a history degree there. I really like history. I really like European history. And one of the interesting things about World War I is if you look at World War I, if you look at the men going to war during that conflict, we look at it from our perspective.

We know that it's a major affair and major casualties. And if you know anything about the war at all, you can see that it was as close as you can get to a hell on earth with trench warfare, gas, and everything.

But it's interesting, if you could get into the psyche of the men who went to war, in their minds, it was something that was going to be short and glorious, and they would get all sorts of fame for it.

And so it was very much approached—and I don't want to speak for everyone, but it was understood that this would be—this war that's happening would be a short thing, and it would just be a glorious thing that you could get home in time for supper.

And it's really because—the reason why that was in the psyche is because for 100 years prior to World War I, it was just peace.

Not just peace, but it was mainly peaceful in Europe. Any wars that did happen were very minor, it didn't drag on very long.

And so we can see that World War I came on the very end of almost a century of peace because what happened 100 years prior is

Napoleon raged through Europe, so the European nations got rid of him, and they decided we need to make sure that something like that doesn't happen again.

And of course it would 100 years later with Germany. But nevertheless, it was not understood that these boys were going off to war, and this war was a serious business, that it was going to last a long time, and that there was going to be deaths that they couldn't even fathom would be even possible.

Because now, in World War I, you have modern warfare with old battle tactics, and those things don't mix very well.

And so you have millions upon millions of people dying, and it was just unthinkable at the time as the boys went off to war.

The conflict level, the deep -rooted conflict that was about to happen was unthinkable.

I think a lot of times, as we consider our Christian lives, as we consider what we are called to, the nature of our

Christian life, I think a lot of times, especially young Christians, whether they are young in the faith or they're young men or women leaving the home as Christians, whatever it may be,

I think a lot of times we're not privy. We don't quite understand the nature of the conflict that we are called to, the nature of the conflict that Christ calls us into.

It's something that we shouldn't go into lightly whatsoever, but the conflict is very, very large. And as we talked about last week, we talked about why that conflict would be so large.

It's because when Satan took over, so to speak, when he took over with his kingdom of darkness, he took over in a way, his kingdom works by deceitful desires and pleasures.

And our desires and pleasures, they're strong things within us. They're made to be strong. We're made, as we talked about, to be desirous people, to have desire and to meet that desire.

That's something that's very much we're made for. But Satan takes that and twists it and he makes it part of his kingdom in which the things that in our natural depraved state, we desire sin and disobedience.

And so with Jesus coming and undoing that work on the cross and undoing that work in his resurrection, we ought to understand that what he is doing is he's bringing us from that original state that Satan has brought us into, which are natural desires and pleasures, and he's going to undo that and bring our natural evil desires and pleasures back to where they were supposed to be in its original state, to where we naturally desire the things of God and our pleasures are found in the things that God finds pleasurable.

Indeed, we're made in the image of God. So Jesus is coming and reversing it back to that original state in us.

But we got to understand that that reversal, although made possible by his death and resurrection and bringing us his spirit that changes our hearts, as we talked about, although it's made possible by that, that process from when you are saved to glorification is a conflict that is beyond anything that we can comprehend.

We cannot go into it thinking that this is a short affair and we'll be back by suppertime.

And I think the problem why we see so many people leave the faith is because they're brought into a salvation that is very low conflict.

It doesn't hurt too bad because that fits our society very well. We have a very much a society that's all about feeling good and this is a lot of the

Christianity that we bring young people into or even an older person coming into the faith that coming into Christ is not the greatest conflict you'll ever face in your life as you serve him.

And I think this is dominant. Jesus said for a reason with these great crowds, you know what he tended to do with great crowds?

He tended to offend them. Instead of trying to ease them into following him, he tended to offend them.

And one of the things that he would offend them with, what he would say, is he would say, if you're going to follow me, great, but you better count the costs first because this is going to be the greatest conflict that you'll ever face is serving me and my kingdom rather than naturally going through the flows of the kingdom of Satan.

And so really what I want to focus on on this second parter of desires and pleasures is

I want to focus on the fact that Jesus, this is going to be three main points here, Jesus called you or he calls you in conflict.

He called you in conflict. We'll look at what that means. Jesus called you to conflict.

So Jesus calls you in conflict. Jesus calls you to conflict and Jesus leads you to new life through conflict.

And this conflict I'm talking about because everyone has conflict. When we're living in sin, you will have conflicts beyond, conflicts beyond, all over the place.

But the conflict I'm talking about here is a divine conflict. It's a miraculous conflict. It's a conflict of when your natural sinful desires come crashing in to divine desires given by the spirit.

You see that Jesus is all about conflict with these two things worn against each other so he can have the glory whenever the one conflict overrides the natural conflicts to sin.

And so Jesus is all about conflict and it's important for us to hold on to that and know that so that we don't go into this

Christian life thinking that we're going to coast. But rather we go in there knowing it's going to be conflict.

We know our sinful desires are still going to be there and we know that Jesus' whole purpose is to get glory as we get through those sinful desires and grow in these godly desires.

And so to begin that, to begin this, look at the fact that Jesus called you in conflict.

And that means, again, conflict with your wicked desires with new desires coming in. He calls you in that conflict.

Look at Matthew 11, 25. We alluded to this last week. I just want to spend a few minutes on there just to point to a few things in it.

Look at Matthew 25. Actually, let's look at 28 first.

Remember what Jesus says? Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

See, there's a few things I want to point out in just that one sentence. Notice the word all. This is, I think a lot of times people think that Jesus is talking to literally everyone.

I don't think he's doing that there. Because if you look at the context there, look at the verses prior to that.

Look at verses 25 through 27. Jesus says, at that time, Jesus declared, I thank you,

Father, Lord of heaven and earth. In verse 25 of Matthew 11. That you have hidden these things, or the gospel, or the kingdom of Christ.

You have hidden the truth, you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my

Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the

Son chooses to reveal him. You see, we are in this state because of our natural desires for sin, we can't even see truth right.

We can't even see Jesus right as he provides us with a new life in him. We can't even fathom that because our minds are so corrupted into sin.

And so the only possible way that we can actually see that truth is if the Son reveals it to a people.

The Son must reveal before we can actually understand because of our sinful condition. Because we'll follow our desires of sin every time.

The Son must reveal first. And so with that concept in mind, in verse 28 he says,

Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

See, I think what Jesus is saying there is, he's saying that you'll know that you're being called out whenever you experience conflict.

Well, what conflict is that? Well, whenever you're heavy laden with these, he says heavy laden.

Let me make sure I get the words right here. Heavy laden and labor with that heavy load on you.

What does it mean? What load are we talking about here? What is he referring to when he says to those who are feeling heavy laden with work, come to me and I'll give you rest.

What does he mean by that? Well, I think the heavy laden, what he's referring to, is that the things that we used to go through life with and we were reasonably satisfied.

In other words, we didn't really look for anything else. That doesn't mean we lived happy lives, but nevertheless we were satisfied.

All of a sudden it becomes a great burden on our back. The things that we used to just do, whether it's our natural desires to sin, and we just did it because that's what felt good, and so we did it because it was our pleasure.

All of a sudden now those things become a heavy burden on our back. All of a sudden it becomes laborious beyond degree.

Now this probably is referring to legalism as well. I think it can refer to both our licentiousness to sin, but also legalism.

That we recognize that we're wrong, we recognize that we fall short, and so we try our best to be right with God by keeping laws.

And remember what we talked about that. Why does that not work? Because we can keep all the laws in the world, but if our heart is still hardened in sin, it is worthless.

Because we're not doing it with a heart of worship, but we're doing it out of a laborious, labor -intensive necessity.

That's not the kind of worship God wants. But the point that I'm getting at here is that, notice he says that no one can come to the

Father unless if I reveal that person to the Father, unless if I reveal them to the people. And then he says, come whenever you are heavy laden, when you feel that what you're doing is not working for you, and I'm going to give you rest.

And so the point is that you know that you're going to, you're starting to be called out by Jesus when he places that conflict on your back.

When he places that labor on your back, when he replaces and he makes you realize that, I can't do this anymore.

We know that we are being called out whenever we start to feel that burden on our back. Remember, and I love the

Pilgrim's Progress, and I like to study it. That book is amazing. And remember, why did Christian leave the city of destruction?

Because he felt a burden on his back that he needed to take care of. And that burden is a divine burden, a divine conflict on your back that Jesus places there, so you'll go to him and find your rest.

Jesus calls you in conflict. He doesn't call you and everything are rosy and beautiful.

He calls you in conflict. And he says, I will give you rest from this conflict that I've shown you to have.

He says in verse 25, take my yoke upon you. In other words, take the yoke that you have on you that's not doing you any good, that's just making it very difficult for you, that's not working.

Take that yoke off you and put my yoke upon you instead and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Remember what we talked about that, what makes his yoke easy, his burden light, is because when we come to Jesus for rest, he gives us a new heart.

He gives you a new heart. He prepares you for that new heart by saying, I don't want this anymore, this isn't for me,

I need help. And you come to Jesus and he, through the new covenant promise, he will place a new heart within you.

And it causes you to desire to serve him from the heart, desire to obey him from the heart, desire to want to be with him from the heart.

So you don't do what you do in order to follow a legal code, you do what you do because Jesus has changed your heart to desire the work to be done.

And this yoke that he places on you is a much better yoke because it is a glorious thing to serve

Jesus in his kingdom. It is a marvelous thing. It is good for our souls. We do it because it's a delight to us and therefore no longer a burden.

This is the rest that Jesus offers to those. But notice it only comes whenever he places that conflict or that burden on your back.

See the problem, the problem with not knowing this, that Jesus calls you in conflict, is that if you don't realize that conflict is really is what

Jesus works in for your good, when you don't realize that being not satisfied with the desires of the flesh, when you realize when that's not at the centerpiece of what draws you out of that, then whenever desires of the flesh come after you come to Jesus, then you start to then leave

Jesus for those same desires and fleshly pleasures. You remember in Mark 4, 19, the seeds and the sower, remember one of the seeds that does not produce fruit in Mark 4, 19, is the one, the one who, if you look in Mark 4, 18, the ones who are sown among the thorns, they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires of other things enter in and choke the word out and it proves unfruitful.

So the point is that whenever, if you haven't been called out because Jesus hasn't placed a burden on your back, that those desires are wicked and not good for you and you don't want them anymore, then what happens is you go to a different Jesus and whenever those desires present themselves to you, you fall prey to those desires and you prove unfruitful and you leave the faith.

You see, Jesus calls you in conflict and that conflict he calls you in is the one in which you are no longer satisfied with those desires.

And so if you are someone who has no conflict at all, you do not battle your sin at all, you don't battle your desires at all, then

I am calling on you right now to ask Christ that you would show me that my wicked desires are not good for me, they leave me nowhere good and I must repent of those.

You see, Jesus calls you in that very conflict. But notice he says,

I'll give you rest. He says, I'll give you rest. I'll make you desire that rest by showing you that your wicked desires and pleasures are no good and I'll give you that rest by giving you a new heart and I'll give you rest.

Now what is rest? It's kind of like peace, I think, with God. You remember in Luke, the angel saying, glory be to God and peace to men.

The peace that God provides is not necessarily you have in peace with others or you have in peace in general in the world.

The peace that God offers is you between you and God. You understand that?

So when God says, I will give you peace, he's saying, I will give you peace between me and you. And when God says,

I will give you rest, he's saying, I'll give you rest and you'll find rest in me. But the thing is though, what happens whenever our rest and our peace come toe -to -toe with the sinful world and the condition of the world?

What happens when it goes toe -to -toe with our flesh? Well, we are no longer at peace with that.

There's only warfare. And the rest that we have in God necessitates that we have war with our flesh.

And that's exactly what my next point is. Well, if you look at James 4 .4, let's look at that first.

What is James saying in 4 .4? He says, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. So the point being is that if you are a friend of the world, you're gonna be an enemy of God.

But what happens when you're a friend of God? Well, you're gonna be an enemy of the world. And the world there is a whole total statement of all the fleshly system of the desires of the flesh, the pleasures we see in our disobedience.

It's the whole thing, right? So if we're going to be a friend of God, that means we're gonna be an enemy of that whole system.

And so that means if we're gonna be at rest with God, we are going to be at war with our flesh. If we're gonna be at peace with God, we're gonna be at war with the whole system of sin, wherever it's found, namely within our own very souls.

And so the rest that we are given by Jesus does not mean that we get to coast through life, but the very opposite.

The rest that we have in Jesus means that we get to rest from our sin, and that means we get to fight our sin.

We have the power to fight our sin for the very first time. So really, Jesus calls us in conflict, and he also calls us to conflict.

Jesus calls us to conflict. And to see that, let's look at Galatians 5. Let's look at Galatians 5.

Jesus doesn't call you out just so you can then live a life of ease. The reason why that's the case is because your flesh still hangs on to sinful desires.

And so as a Christian who has been changed by the Spirit, we do not have that luxury to coast, but rather we must be fighting the leftover flesh and desires of our flesh.

And this is why Jesus calls us to conflict with that flesh. Look at Galatians 5, 16. Well, actually, first look at verse one.

For freedom, Galatians 5, verse one, for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

So there again, Paul is echoing the words of Jesus. He says, if you have taken off the yoke of deceitful desires and sinful desires and following after your own way of trying to be right with God and all of that, if you've taken off that yoke and you put on the yoke of Christ, you've got to understand that Christ has given you a yoke of freedom.

That is, a heart changed to obey him because you want to, not because you're forced to. So do not then take on a yoke of slavery again.

In other words, don't go into sin as you once were a slave to it. But rather you need to live with the yoke of freedom.

He says in verse 16, what does that look like? Well, it looks like you being at conflict with your flesh.

He says in verse 16, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Now notice, he doesn't say walk by the law because if you walk by simply the law, seeing what God says is right and you just try to do it without the spirit's help, you will not succeed because you will not do it with a renewed heart.

But he says walk by the spirit because the spirit is the one who changes your desires. He says walk by new desires and if you walk by your new desires found in the spirit applied by Christ, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Now what's important about that is he doesn't say if you walk by the spirit, you will never feel a desire for sin again.

You notice that? The desire to gratify the flesh is still there. It doesn't go away.

Now, mind you, sometimes when you come to Christ, there are certain sins, desires of the flesh that Jesus will just take out of you wholesale.

He'll do that with certain things. I remember it was early afternoon and I was about to play video games for the next probably 15 hours.

I had nothing to do that whole day, that whole night and the next morning so I was just gonna go, right? And I had this game that I was wanting to play and I was ready to go.

This is just what I would typically do as a useless teenager. And I was just, I'm ready. And I start playing the first hour and this is me at 18,

Christ had just grabbed hold of my heart and all of a sudden I start playing and I'm going, I'm telling you, 15 hours is minimum.

And all of a sudden it felt like something just tearing at my gut. My desires used to be met there for sure.

My pleasures were found there. But all of a sudden now that was not so desirable. In fact, I couldn't do it anymore.

I was done. Now, that doesn't mean I don't ever play any kind of games but I do not run 15 hour marathons because I'm sorry, that is wicked.

But nevertheless, the whole point is that Jesus, for whatever reason in his sovereignty, he just took that desire out.

But Jesus doesn't do that for everything. When you come to Christ, your desires for fleshly things, they're still there.

You still have a desire within you that's competing with that new spiritual desire, that spirit -filled desire to gratify the flesh.

Paul does not say walk by the spirit so you don't have desires of the flesh.

No, he says walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh that are still there.

You see, when Jesus brings the spirit within you, he's calling you to conflict against those fleshly desires.

In fact, that's why he keeps the desires there for the flesh. You realize it's not like Jesus is like,

I just wish so bad I could take all those fleshly desires out of you but I just can't. My hands are tied.

He leaves things in your life so you will fight it. That should be something that encourages you,

Christian. If you are really just overwhelmed right now with a conflict with sin, do you realize that Jesus has left it there for your good?

Because he wants to express himself to you in that conflict. So you will learn something in that conflict and don't you dare then give in to it and say, well,

Jesus wants me to. That is not what I'm saying. But I am saying that Jesus has not taken the desire of that sin away from you because he wants you to fight for him.

He wants you to have an opportunity to walk by the spirit so you will not gratify that desire.

Because when you say, in my fallen state, I would have done what my sin told me to do because I was a slave to it but now

I am of Christ and I have a spirit from above that has came within me, I have a way to fight now.

I will not give in like a slave to that sin. You see the power exhibited in there that Jesus in his divine power can tell you, can put the spirit within you that causes you to not do the things that you once did.

Because look what it goes on to say, four, the desires of the flesh, the sinful flesh with all its desires of disobedience to God, you'll find your pleasures there, all that kind of stuff, those wicked desires that Satan has brought all the world to, those desires there, the desires of the flesh are against the desires of the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.

So you see what's going on in you in there. There is conflict, there is war, they're both there now and the whole point of your

Christian life is to watch the desires of the spirit override the desires of the flesh because Jesus is glorified in that.

So why does he leave those fleshly desires? To watch you see victory in Christ.

He says, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Now, different commentators have different ways of explaining exactly what Paul means by to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

But I think what Paul is getting at here is that before you did what you wanted to do and it was sinful and that's what you did because you were a slave to it.

But now you have a power within you to keep you from doing those things that you'd ordinarily would have done because of in your flesh.

And this is the thing you need to tell yourself as you're having conflict with those things is that my new identity, my identity is not in that fleshly desire.

I'm not a slave of that anymore. I don't need to do that anymore as I did before because I have the spirit within me and he gives me new desires that even when

I desire that sin, that new desire coming from him can stop me from doing that sin.

And he says we just don't have time to exegete all of this which is rich but his whole point is that if you walk by the spirit, you will not need to walk by the law because the spirit places the law on your heart to do it from the heart.

And so he goes off and what walking by the spirit looks like, right? In verse 18, if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are evident, right? 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. Why is that?

Because if you are living in sin, it shows that you do not have the spirit working in you to work against those sins, period.

But the fruit of the spirit, he says in verse 22, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

Against these fruits, this fruit of the spirit, there's no law against any of that.

So those who belong to Christ, he says, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

So Jesus calls you to conflict. He calls you in conflict so you can no longer be satisfied with the things you once were.

And when he calls you into rest, he calls you to conflict against the leftover flesh and sins, the desires of it that's within your very soul.

I can tell you this, one thing that I am looking forward to most in heaven and then in the renewed state when the new earth and the new heaven is made and everything is made right is

I am so looking forward to that time when I can lay down my weaponry, I can lay down and completely rest in the fact that I no longer have to fight my evil desires.

Do you realize that, Christian? The one who's in Christ, you realize how much of a battle that is. You realize how hard it is and how sometimes you get in a state, it's like I am so done with fighting my flesh over and over and over again.

You realize that it's supposed to make you then to anticipate the heavenly reality, the renewed state when you will only ever do, desire what is good for you.

Can you imagine that? You only ever do what is, I'm sorry, you only ever desire what is actually good for you.

But you see, we're not there yet. And right now in our fleshly state, even with the spirit, we desire things that are not good for us.

And so Jesus calls you to have conflict with those things and it's by a higher power, that is the spirit's power to change your desires for something that's greater than that desire for the flesh.

And so we do battle. There is conflict there and it is tiring.

It is something that is hard. But even in that, as we see victory happen over time, it is truly rest with God indeed.

And that's what we're gonna get to next. Jesus, not only does he call you in your conflict, he calls you to conflict, but Jesus leads you to new life through your conflict.

You see, if all we ever did was fight, fight, fight, and nothing ever grew, nothing ever changed, well, that would be very sad and depressing indeed.

But you realize that it's through this conflict that you actually start to experience the new life found in Christ now.

What do I mean by that? Well, look at Ephesians 4. Go to Ephesians 4, it's a few pages over. Ephesians 4.

The main thing I wanna point out is at the end of that little paragraph there in verse 24, but there's some good summary points made before that.

So without losing focus of the sermon, I'm gonna read through 17 to 24.

And Paul says, Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the

Gentiles do. Now I think by Gentiles, he means unbelievers. He says, don't walk like the ones who do not have the spirit within them.

He says, they walk in the futility of their minds. Their minds are futile. The thoughts that they have are always constantly for things of wickedness or disobedience to God.

Even in doing something that's good, it's always done in a disobedient way to God. I probably shouldn't even mention that because there's a whole theology behind that.

But nevertheless, he says that their minds are futile. They are useless, so to speak. They are, verse 18, darkened in their understanding.

The unbeliever is alienated or separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.

You see that difference between a Christian and unbeliever? What's the difference there? Well, the unbeliever has a hard heart.

The believer has the spirit who's came inside of our heart. Big difference there, isn't there? They have, the unbeliever, become callous without feeling and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

But that is not the way you, oh Christian, have learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.

Two, what are we to do now that we know Jesus? Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.

And to put on the new self, which is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Now, the point that I want to get to is that as we're putting off our old self, putting off the wicked desires, right?

As the desires of the flesh come at us, we put those off saying, I am no longer a slave to that. Instead, I'm going to put on Christ.

I'm going to put on the spirit's desires. What is happening in that process? Well, he says what's happening is, in verse 24, you are putting on the new self, which is created after likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness.

You see, you are being transformed after the original image we were created in before Adam screwed up and sin took dominion over him.

You see, we are reverting back to when our desires and pleasures were right. Where we desired the things that were good for us and not desired the things that were in rebellion to God.

You see, it's very important that as we are putting off the old self, we see the desires of the flesh and we say no to it because of the desires of the spirit that's within us, his power.

We got to understand that as we're doing that, we are growing after that image of Christ or holiness, righteousness.

And so those desires for fleshly things, when you are doing this process constantly as a

Christian, those desires that you once had for sin, they start to grow smaller.

As you reflect the image of Christ in a greater way, as you grow in sanctification, those desires of the flesh become a lot smaller.

I can attest that the sins that I struggled with the first few weeks of my Christian life was rampant wickedness.

If I were doing today, I would not be eligible for ministry at all. But nevertheless, there's still things in my life today that I'm battling that I have grown to see that there's more things that I am to battle.

But they're not the same desires and weakness I had before. And so as we grow in our walk with Christ, those wicked fleshly desires, they become less and less alluring.

They become less and less enticing. And our desires for godliness, for righteousness, holiness, grows bigger.

In other words, we start to see victory through our Christian life as we take on this process of taking off sin and putting on righteousness.

We start to see victory. But one of the amazing things about sanctification as we grow in this identity after Christ is as we get to see who

Christ is more and more and the perfections and the holiness that's involved in there are little sins that we would have said, oh, those are little back when we were new

Christians. They become a lot bigger deal. And it keeps us humble, doesn't it? The things that I'm struggling with today,

I would have thought to be no big deal as I first came to Christ. But as I grow closer to the image of Christ, I realize those are big deals.

That's wickedness. And it keeps us humble as we grow in the Lord in this way. The point that I'm getting at is that Jesus leads you to new life through this conflict.

You start to image the life of Christ more and more. And that doesn't mean that then he stops showing you your sin.

He continuously shows you sin. And as you bring that through that whole ordeal of taking off the flesh and its desires and putting on the spirit and the new desires, you start to see that you start growing.

You start to see that you start growing Jesus in his image and your desires start to change. And so we can see that conflict is at the very center.

It's at the very center of the Christian life. He calls you in your conflict.

He calls you to conflict. And he brings you to new life through your conflict.

And that conflict is the conflict that you have with sinful flesh, desires. You see, there's many people who don't have any conflict at all.

And I'm calling on you that something that is a really helpful tool for you is that have a journal and write down what are the conflicts.

And by conflicts, remember what I mean here. I mean the desires of the flesh that are very desirable to my heart.

What are those conflicts that you have, right? What are the things that I'm struggling with right now that I think in disobedience to God, this is pleasurable for me and I want to do it?

What are they? Write it down now. Write it down in your head. And if you have nothing to write down, if you have no idea because you haven't even considered that, well, consider the gospel afresh that Jesus has called you to those conflicts.

You need to identify them, be aware of them, know what they are. And there's this beautiful thing that as you identify these things that your flesh still hangs onto despite the fact that you have the spirit within you, you will start to see that the spirit will transform you to have new desires to conquer those and you'll start to see that there's new conflicts that come up.

So if you've been keeping a diary for 10 years, I guarantee you that those desires of the flesh, they're gonna transform a little bit.

But you'll see that Jesus has given you victory over those things. And he's placed new desires within your heart.

But if there is no conflict, if there is no fighting of the sinful flesh within your heart, this is a good way.

This is one example how this can happen where we don't realize any conflict. For instance, and this has happened to me, this is the way that I can try to avoid conflict and see no growth because of it.

But I can be short with my wife or short with my children, right?

And I'll say words to them that's not edifying to them, that's not lifting them up in love. It's very short and curt with them.

But then I think, well, I didn't yell at them. I didn't yell. I could have yelled, but I didn't. So I'm all right, right? And that's a way

I can pass a buck. I can create my own law, my own standard and say, well, I didn't yell at them, so I'm good, right?

And so there's no conflict there. I'm good. I don't have to wrestle with that at all. Or I can actually look to scripture and see that no,

I'm to say everything that's edifying to my children and my wife. I'm not to speak harshly with them, right?

And so what do I do with that? Now I'm confronted with what God's standard is.

And what do I do with that conflict as my desire is my flesh? I want to be rude with them. I want to act this way. What do I do is

I remind myself of the identity I have in Christ, that he's given me new desires in the spirit.

And part of that conflict means that I seek repentance, that I seek to give this to the

Lord. And I ask him to give me new desires to give a soft answer to my wife and children.

And see, the next time I then do that harsh answer, what do I remind myself? This is not right.

I need to bring this to the Lord, ask him for new desires. And over time, you will see, and I have seen, and I'm still working on that all of a sudden now, as I'm about to be harsh with my wife or my children, all of a sudden there's something in me that doesn't desire to do that anymore.

And it helps you to then solidify you to break free from that sin. But again, if there is no conflict, if we just give into those things, there is no growth.

And there is no new desires taking root in the heart. And we will just stay in that unproductive state.

So Jesus, again, has called you to conflict. It is a blessed thing. And if you are weary of conflict, if you're tired of it, that is a good thing to a certain extent.

It shows that you are actually fighting. Make sure you're doing it by the spirit's power. And make sure you're reminding yourself of where the spirit has brought you to look greater like Jesus.

And it will encourage you to fight on as you look forward to that final state, when there is no more fight, there is no more battle.

We only desire what is good for us because we're in that final renewed state. So remind yourself of what's to come, where he has brought you.

And it will encourage you to fight on another day by the spirit's power. God in heaven,

I thank you for the spirit. I thank you for the conflict. I thank you, Lord, that you did not just leave us in the state of sin, in which there is no conflict with our sin.

We do it because that's just what we desire to do. It's our pleasure. But instead, Lord, you have called us, Father, to,

Jesus, you have called us to see the conflict. You have called us to recognize it, to see that there is a great burden on our back, that the old way of living, it no longer suffices anymore, but there needs to be something else.

And you show us who that is by showing us the beauties that's found in your cross, in your resurrection, in the spirit that you give.

And so in that state, Lord, that being saved, you show us all the different fleshly desires that are left over.

And so you call us into conflict with those fleshly desires. And by taking care of that, by taking off the old man, putting on a new man by the spirit's power, we grow after the image of Jesus.

And it is a rewarding growth. I'm so thankful that you give us victory over time, that it encourages us to continue to fight.

And then we have this great image of the eternal state in which there will no longer be any fight, being perfectly made new in Christ.

What a great reality we have before us. And so let us be encouraged by the conflict, knowing that this is our growth.

And let us know that the spirit is the one who provides the strength to do so. So let us rely upon him, even in the midst of that conflict.