The Spiritual Life

Okay, I was thinking about, of course, I was trying to figure out who

Brother Andy was talking about, but I guess that was me. But anyway, I thought about one thing

I was thinking about was that, well, how are you going to introduce things and stuff this morning?

I guess the only word I came up with was surprise. So, anyway, this morning, if you'll be turning into your

New Testament to chapter 5 of the book of Galatians, Galatians chapter 5, we're going to be reading verses 13 and all the way through verse 26.

Naturally, as the pastor has said at times, I don't know if we'll get through each and every one of them, but this morning

I want us to concentrate on this one theme called the spiritual life.

Now, it's been a little while since I've steadily been in a pulpit and what have you, and I really wasn't sure how that was going to be like again, and it's about like what

I thought it would be like again. I'm a little nervous, but everybody says you're supposed to be. But at least

I'm not at the point where we were at one time. My wife and I were at a conference in Brunswick at St.

Simon's by the sea. We had a little extra time one day, so we went to Jekyll Island.

I don't know if she remembers this or not, but we went to Jekyll Island, which you know is pretty adjacent to that, and we were looking around at all the rich people and looking all around, and we noticed people riding bicycles.

And I got this wild idea. I told her,

I said, let's get some bicycles and ride like they're riding. She says, okay, so we did.

Well, she gets hers and goes. A preacher friend of mine told me that preaching was like riding a bicycle.

You'll never forget it or anything else. Well, I don't know how that went because I got on that bicycle and things were pretty wobbly.

I mean, things were like this and going this way and going that way, and I said, man, if that's what preaching is like, hopefully it won't be that wobbly this morning, but hopefully not.

But in Galatians chapter 5, starting with verse 13, if you would stand with me in honor of this most precious, sacred book, the

Word of God, and we'll begin with verse 13. For you, brethren, have been called to liberty.

Only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another.

I say then, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissent, pretensions, heresies, envies, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which

I tell you beforehand, just as I told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long -suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with his passions and his desires.

If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Let us pray. Father, we do thank you for this book. And as that gospel song says, ancient words ever true, changing me and changing you.

Let us come with open hearts and let the ancient words impart in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right, today we're going to be talking about the spiritual life. Now, a lot of people, well, if you talk to somebody, they're going to tell you, well,

I live the Christian life. Well, that is true. We do live, as Christians, we live a

Christian life, or we should live the Christian life. And the Bible pretty well points it out here what that is.

And we're going to see it here in a minute. Because in these passages of Scripture we read today, Paul is telling us what the spiritual life is, but he's also telling us what the spirit life is not.

And as we look at this spirituality thing, many people, I'll tell you this, I guess to sum it all up real quickly without going into great detail.

You cannot live the Christian life without the spirit. You cannot live the spiritual life or Christianity without the spiritual life and the work of the

Holy Spirit in your life, abiding in you and working in you. You can't do it. Someone says, well, excuse me, someone says, well,

I'm trying to do the best I can. That's not good enough. Never has been good enough. Never will be good enough.

So today we're going to see that God calls us into a certain liberty, into a certain life, but he also tells us we don't have the right to do anything and everything we want to do whenever we want it, however we want to do it.

You can't do that naturally. So naturally you cannot do that spiritually. And so as we look at this freedom today, and there are people who are abused in this

Christian freedom or this Christian liberty, as Brother Richard mentioned earlier this morning, or this

Christian liberty, because freedom and liberty, as you know, can be abused.

So in verse, as we start in verse 13, notice he says, brethren, don't, you've been called to liberty, but with this liberty, don't use it as an opportunity of the flesh.

Well, what kind of liberty is he talking about? Well, God has called us in Christ to be free in three aspects of freedom.

One is we are free from the condemnation and guilt of sin. We're free from that.

Therefore, if anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away.

Behold, all things have become new. If that hasn't happened, you haven't had the experience. Nicodemus asked

Jesus Christ, he says, you know, he had all his religion in front of him. He has all his good works in front of him.

He had all his finances and everything in front of him. And Jesus says, you must be born again. So here we are.

First of all, our first freedom in Christ is we're free from the condemnation and guilt. The second thing is we're free from the bondage to a bitter law of ordinances.

Can you think about those ordinances that were back in the Old Testament? What you had to go through just to get your sin atoned for, not forgiven.

That's very important because the cross took all those sins that had been atoned for and took them all upon him.

And then the third kind of freedom we have is we have the freedom to be knit to him by his adopting spirit, to be partakers of his nature.

Now, I don't know about you, but it's always been an exciting thing in my Christian life to know that the

Holy Spirit of God abides in me no matter how much I mess up. And I agree with Brother Andy, we're a mess.

I know I am. And I guess if you start investigating, you'll probably come up with a few things on your own as well.

So we see then that even though we have this freedom, we are not free to use it any way we want to use it.

Freedom is something that God has given us. And by the way, freedom not only gives you liberty, it gives you a right standing with God.

And when you have that right standing with God, that's freedom. To know that if I do mess up,

I can claim 1 John. I can claim that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Now, that's something to have. Well, even though we have this liberty, there are people today who feel like they can use this liberty to do whatever it is we want.

We see this all across our social media today. We see all this across our television media today, our internet medium today.

We see all of this going on about us. Well, if we are free in Christ, then what are we not free to do?

Yes, there are some things that you're not free to do. In fact, earlier this morning, I heard the passage that we're not to look upon ourselves, but to look upon others and try to serve them.

What are some of the things in our liberty that we cannot do?

First of all, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that we are not free to indulge in carnality.

Carnality is nothing more than the flesh or the old nature, which I'm going to touch on in just a little bit down the line.

And by the way, I just happened to notice, we don't have any clocks around here. But anyway, I guess we can tend to that in just a minute.

But anyway, when it's 1 o 'clock, will you let me know, Mike? Okay, when it's 1 o 'clock.

Okay, all right. So anyway, we see we're not free to indulge in carnality.

That is fleshly things. In fact, the whole book of 1 Corinthians was written to a carnal church.

They lived after the flesh, in the flesh, and they lived, and Paul says, you can't do this.

Are you not yet carnal? If you have these divisions, if you have these thoughts, if you don't care for your brother, if you come to the

Lord's table and you abuse the people who are not able to have something to eat or whatever, because they had feasts as well around that.

We're not free to indulge in carnality. To abuse our freedom to indulge the flesh would not be liberty.

That is no more than anything but license. And when people are cut loose without any constraint or without any restraint, you see what we got today as we look around us.

So we're not free to indulge in carnality. One of the old writers, and I like to read the old guys,

I guess it has to do with me getting old, but F .W. Robinson said this,

There is a great mistake about liberty from law. Some Christians think it means free so that your sin, the law, will not punish.

This is the liberty of devils. Free to will what you want to do, but yet not suffer is heresy.

The love of Christ causes us to do right without a law of compulsion.

And see this is the difference in freedom and liberty. The law was compulsory.

You had to do it or die. This do and live.

Is that not what it says throughout the book of the law? From the time Moses gets it, this do and live.

This do and live. If you don't do this, you're not going to live. And when the time comes for everlasting life, you will not have it.

So we see that we got to be very careful. John Calvin said liberty lies in the conscience and it looks to God.

The use of it lies in outward matters and deals not with God only, but with men. Because I will tell you one thing about your right standing with God.

If you are living the spiritual life and you are living in a right standing with God, I can assure you, you are going to look out after somebody else.

Selfishness is inbred in us. It's been inbred in us since Adam said, you know, that's not such a bad deal after all.

I'll take some of that Eve. So we're not free to indulge or to live in carnality.

Now when we think about the flesh, and we see we should not use the liberty as an opportunity for the flesh.

The flesh here stands for the old age or the old redemptive history. Now, do we have an old man?

Well, yes, in many ways we do. Thank the Lord that if we walk in the spirit and we live in the spirit, and we try to learn from God each and every day, we're going to overcome some of those passions.

We're going to overcome some of those things. The word for serve here is very interesting.

He says, brethren, I want you through love to serve one another.

This has to do actually with a slave. And as you know, a slave has no rights of its own.

A servant does. They have days off. They have this. They have that. A slave does not have those opportunities.

So we see, first of all, we can't use our freedom to indulge in carnality.

Then if we look in verses 14 through 15, we see that we are not free to indulge in conflict.

We are not free to indulge in conflict. Look at this. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another.

So we're not free to indulge in conflict. Christian liberty is always controlled.

Christian liberty is a power. It's love. It's only when liberty is under control.

Love, as 1 Corinthians teaches us, is only when that liberty of ours is under control.

If it's loose, it's not love. Today we have a liberty disguised as personal rights and not love.

Everybody wants their right. And if they don't get their right, then they're going to cause all kinds of problems, all kinds of difficulties, et cetera.

So we see then we're not free to indulge in conflict. To love one's neighbor as itself, as it says here, means that the whole legal code of the law can now be abolished.

And I'm so thankful for that. I would hate to have to be raising goats and sheep to be bringing here every

Sunday morning where someone can sacrifice that for me. I'm glad that's not happening.

So we see then after that, he says love. Okay, what about love? He says, all right, let us, brethren, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The law is fulfilled up in this. Well, I can tell you this. The believers were quarreling with one another, probably over the whole question of law keeping in Galatia.

But here is something love will not do. Love will not commit adultery. Love will not steal.

Love will not bear false witness. Love will not covet. Love will not be an idolater.

Love can cover all of those things.

But then he gives us kind of a sarcastic warning in verse 15. But if you bite and devour one another, well,

I keep forgetting how sometimes you can get tongue tied up here. But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another.

The believers were quarreling with one another. Paul uses a very graphic language here. He pictures a pack of wild animals tearing and devouring one another.

We find a touch of sarcasm in his words. When I was studying this passage this week, there's a little situation that comes back to my mind when

I was pastoring a church in Georgia. And the church that I was pastoring, it was a lot of people who worked for the

Rainier Company, which is a paper company which raises, grows trees, cuts them, plants them back again.

And these were pretty well high up people in the Rainier Company. I wasn't, but they were.

And I remember one day that one of these individuals come up to me and says, Preacher, we want to take you hunting.

Well, I'm not a hunter. You can go hunt. Shoot it, clean it, bring it to me, then

I'm a hunter. Okay? In fact, if you want to cook it, that would even be much finer for me as well.

Okay? I am not a hunter. So I said, well, you know, don't worry about that,

Preacher. We'll be by four o 'clock in the morning to get you. I said, in the morning? They said, yes.

I said, okay. So, you know, in fact, I said, man, I don't know about this.

But anyway, I went fishing with them, loved to fish. The only problem was there was no fish. So they picked me up, and we go.

And he has this truck that must be as long as a

Greyhound bus. And in the back of it, he has about five dogs. And they're just a bark.

I walked by, and one of them went, grr. I said, you know, the Bible tells me to beware of dogs. So I'm going to do that.

So I get in the truck with these guys, and they got these biscuits, and they got these other things, you know. And we're heading to the hunting.

All I can hear coming down the road is all these dogs barking. So we get to the hunting area, hunting space, wherever it was.

I was still asleep. We get there, and they said, okay, preacher, we're going to do some hunting now.

I said, okay. They said, now, here's how we do it. What we do is we're going to spot people in East, West, we're going to spot.

And then if the deer comes by, if a deer gets loose or comes by,

I'm going to shoot in the air and say, if you see him, shoot. Well, he needed to be a little more literal with me than that, which we'll find out in a minute.

So anyway, so I'm getting ready to sit down next. I said, sit down next to this tree. And he goes, no, preacher.

I go, what? He goes, I look up there. I said, what?

He says, you go sit up there. I go, why would I want to sit up there? He says, that's where the deer go.

And I'm sitting there. I've never seen one climb a tree, but that's okay. I said, I am really in a mess here.

So I get up there, and then he lets these dogs loose. But I notice a couple of these dogs, they were just downright mean and were already barking at the other dogs.

So I didn't think nothing about it, really. So I got up to that little thing, and I think they call it a tree stand.

Is that right? Yeah. Though you don't stand. It's just a tree. So I was up there, and next thing

I hear, I hear a big boom. And boy, I hear the dogs coming, and I see the deer.

And that deer is just a running, which I wouldn't blame him. He was just running, and I saw him, so I just shot up in the air.

That's what they told me to do. So they catch up with me. They come up to me, and they go, did you see the deer?

I say, yeah, he came right by here, right here in front of me. He says, well, did you shoot him? I said, no, you told me to shoot in the air.

But the next thing I know, I hear all this commotion. The deer had tripped up or something, and the dogs, and these two other dogs were just not only biting into the deer, but maybe not a good picture to tell you this morning, but he was also tearing at the other dogs.

And so the other hunters got up there, and I was still up in my tree stand, because I figured if I was up there, I was going to stay up there for a while.

And so he pulled these two dogs off somehow, and when he did, they were biting and devouring at each other.

And I got down, and I said, well, what's wrong with those dogs? He says, they're just not fit for this type of work anymore.

That's why I bought them to see if they might fit in and work in. I said, but they're biting, and they're devouring one another.

He says, yep, they're no use to us. And I tell you, in the spiritual life and in the church, there is no place for biting and devouring one another, where we are taught to lift each other up, to encourage each other.

That's what we should be doing, and that's what we ought to be doing. There should be no social status.

There should be no cultural status. There should be no educational status. There should be no employment status.

There should be no financial status. We should all be as one. Quite a goal, quite a goal, but it can be obtained.

I've seen it. Okay, then we get to verses 16 through 18, and we see that we have some provision for Christ's likeness.

I say then in verse 16, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. These are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Paul's letters have always been unique. They have a doctrinal statement in the front, and then they have a practical statement after the doctrinal statements have been stated, which basically means one must precede the other.

I can tell you this. You cannot act right in the spiritual life without proper doctrinal grounding.

You can't. You've got to be right doctrinally before you can be right righteously.

You've just got to be that way. It's just that's the way it works. Our spiritual life, as we see here, the flesh lusteth against the

Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to another. Our spiritual life is always in a tug of war, and if you've not been in that battle, you need to check your spiritual life, because I can tell you right now, it's a battle.

And Paul refers to that in chapter 6 of Ephesians. He talks about that we have a battle.

He says we do not wrestle with flesh and blood. He says we wrestle with spiritual things in a spiritual life, because one thing that you inherited when you got to spiritual life was, you now have a battle on your hands.

You didn't have a battle before. Everything was cool. The arch enemy had no problem with you.

Now there's a problem. Our spiritual life is always in a tug of war.

What kind of tug of war? Well, we vacillate between determination and doubt, security and insecurity, firmness and fearfulness, trust and trembling, confidence and cowardice.

We deal with all these things. But what is the answer to it all?

Verse 16. I say then, walk in the

Spirit. That is what has been endowed to us. That is what has been given to us as a result of our regeneration, as our justification by faith, is that the

Spirit dwells in us and enables us to live a spiritual life. One way we can live that spiritual life is to be like Jesus.

This is a substance of all practical teaching. Here we're shown that God has made it possible for redeemed sinners to be like Jesus.

We have that command, I say then, walk in the Spirit. It could be translated this way.

My meaning with you brothers is this. Keep walking with what is Spirit and you will not carry out any craving of what is flesh.

So we have this spiritual life. We have this tug of war. How do we win this tug of war?

Well, God gives us the answer right there. The Holy Spirit is God's answer. There's no other answer to evil.

There's no other answer to immorality that accompanies this as well. The problem with people today is they think they can get right with themselves and right with their neighbors and right with everyone else without the

Holy Spirit. That's what they think that they're able to do. Now, when we think about us in sin when we once were there, keep in mind that the way we are now when we lived in sin is really not the way that God intended us to be.

That's not the way He ever intended it. He never intended it at all. But I tell you, we're now a product of a diabolical individual known as Satan.

He does like to tempt. He does like to discourage. He likes to do anything he can to keep us from being

Christ -like or walking in the Spirit. Now, Paul talks about the flesh, how they war against one another.

Well, in Romans 7 .15, Paul says, In me, that is, in my flesh dwelleth...

Ready for this one? No good thing. Nothing good. You say, well, before I got saved,

I was a nice person. Well, hopefully, when you got saved, you're a nicer person.

When I got saved, I still... Before I got saved, I still liked my neighbor and what have you.

Good, you have good neighbors. But Paul says, In me, that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing.

In Romans 8 .8, he says, They that are in the flesh cannot please God. He also adds,

The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God. Would you turn over to 1

Corinthians 2? 1 Corinthians 2.

There's something I want to point out here. There's a lot of verses before it, but I just want to point out verse 14.

Chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians 14. But the natural man does not receive the things of the

Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

So what he is saying here is, that natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.

And then here's what happens. That natural man that we have left, now kind of hangs around once in a while and kind of,

I don't want to say haunts us, but I can tell you this. It sure hangs around and tempts us once in a while.

But we see we walk in the Spirit we don't have. The flesh controls the mind, the heart, the will, and the senses.

Before regeneration, such an individual is known right here as the natural man. When a person responds to Christ as Savior, there are several basic things that happen.

Various miracles take place, but the first one is, your inner man is cleansed by the precious blood of Christ.

You become a habitation of God through and by the Spirit. Another thing, the

Holy Spirit takes up permanent residence in that person's body and quickens their life again to human spirit within.

The Holy Spirit's command here to us is very blunt, and it's to the point. Walk in the

Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Make this a constant practice.

I can tell you one thing about the Christian life. It is not a perfect life, but it is a separated life that's different from everything and everyone else.

And again, I want to reiterate in the spiritual life, if this is not happening in your life, if you don't feel there had been a work of the

Spirit in your life, then basically it boils down to this, we're lost.

It doesn't go anywhere else or any place else. The potential life, the potential for living a holy life is ours because of the cleansing power of the blood of Christ and the permanent residency of the

Holy Spirit. Adam may have failed, Jesus did not.

Adam failed, but Jesus did not. And then in verse 17, we see a contrast there where two natures lie in constant conflict with one another.

They are not opposites that lie far apart. Paul uses this in a term that means it's in constant clashing with one another.

Now, I want to make clear that we're going to stumble in the spiritual life. We're going to fall in the spiritual life.

But the thing about the spiritual life is we've got the capacity through the Holy Spirit to get back up and go again.

And thank God that's based upon forgiveness. And when you think about the spiritual life, is there anything in that spiritual life that you did anything to get or that you really deserve to have it?

No. No, it's for by grace are you saved through faith. And that not of yourselves.

Note we are regenerated and dwelt by the Holy Spirit. One of my favorite

Bible teachers over the years has been Dr. John Phillips. The key, and he says this, the key to all this spirit -filled life is obedience, availability, a willingness to let

God be God in us. The only thing that hinders us from wholly demonstrating to a lost world what

God is like are our inbred disobedience and self -will. All too often, we're simply just not available.

We resist and we will grieve and grieve the Holy Spirit. So next came that contrast and what he had to do with that.

Now, what kind of tug of war necessarily is this?

In the scriptures, we find the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are paired off against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The Bible is very clear on this. Now, in verses 19 through 21, and I'm not going to spend much time here at all, it says the works of the flesh are evident.

Paul says we would not do the things that we would. The works of the flesh are evident. Now, there is one thing about, one thing that we do know about sin.

It is that we know it when we see it. We know it when we see it because we used to practice some of it on a constant everyday basis and never thought anything about it.

So, Paul categorizes all, notice what he says. There's all these sins here. And believe me, when you look at them, you know, yep, that's sin.

Yep, that's sin. Notice adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery.

Yep, that's sin, all right. Somehow or another, we know how to identify and we know what sin is.

Thus, Paul says we are without excuse. We are without excuse. And here's how

Paul sums up the life of the flesh. Look at verse 21.

And the like of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

There are people today who believe that they can do whatever it is they want to do, live however they want to live, and in the end, everything's gonna be okay.

And to those people, I will again say as I've said throughout the years, you're wrong.

Nope, it's not gonna be that way. You're gonna wake up one day and realize that this is not the way that it is.

Now, then we get to verse 22 and we see but, and this is where I wanna spend a little bit of time on that we have left, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long -suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

Against such there is no law. Notice that word but.

And here we begin seeing the spiritual life really revealed. You wanna know what the spiritual life is really like?

We've already looked at what the fleshly life is like. You wanna see what the spiritual life is really like?

Here we are, right here. In a nutshell, in kind of a clamshell if you wanna call it that.

And we see that the fruit of the spirit, but, the fruit of the spirit, but.

I want us to go over to Ephesians for just a moment in chapter two. And I want us to get the concept of this word but.

Sometimes that hinges everything and changes everything and puts us into a whole new light.

In Ephesians chapter two, as soon as I can get there.

Now I want us to look at chapter two and look at verse one.

And you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

Look at verse four. But God. I look at my life and I can say just two words, but God.

Because he's the one that turned it around. I didn't know he was going to.

I wasn't sure what all was going to happen. But I do know that one day I was at that place where I was supposed to be, with the wrong motive, but I was still at the place where I was supposed to be.

And God chose to elect and bring his spirit to me that day.

That much I do know. So, bless and assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine.

I'm heir of salvation, purchased of God. Can you ask for any more?

Can you ask for any more? Well, the thing is, you don't have to ask, he gives it. He told the lady, well,

I'll give, she says, I'd like to have some of that water. He said, well, you take that water, you're going to thirst. She says, well,

I can give you water that springs up into everlasting life, which means it just keeps coming. It just keeps going.

It just keeps coming. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you one thing about the spiritual life, that is true, it just keeps coming.

It just keeps coming. And I don't do anything to make it keep coming. So now we get to the fruit of the spirit.

Now this fruit is all in one, all encompassed. Now the flesh spreads out in many categories and in many ways, but the spirit follows only one direction.

That spirit puts us only in one direction, and that spirit is that it puts us in the will of God.

C .S. Lewis said in one of his books, if you don't have the spirit of God, you don't have anything. And this was an agnostic at one time who had everything, financially, status, and what have you.

All right, let's look at the first three fruits of the spirit. They're emotional. Notice they're love, joy, and peace in verse 22.

The fruit of the spirit is love. Now the Greeks only had, the Greeks had a word that was called philanthropy.

We get our word philanthropists, philanthropists from that. The people that help each other, okay?

That's good. You got that, okay. If you can pronounce that word fine, just don't bother me with it. Okay, so, and here's what it meant.

It did not go any higher than among the Greeks in giving a man his proper due. That's all it did.

It never did anything beyond that. It was ranked much lower than the word Philadelphia, where we got that one right, where the love of one believer for another, a genuine brotherly love.

But then we get this kind of love, and you've heard the term, and you've heard the word, it's nothing fancy, it's agape.

And it's the word that's commonly used in the New Testament to describe the match less love of God.

There is no other way to define it or to determine it. The matchless love of God was at the cross that day.

The matchless love of God was in that blood that was shed that day. The matchless love of God has us sitting here instead of someplace else.

Love defines all other spiritual truths. Paul mentions them here. And in three verses, he just gives us a short amazing analysis of what this supreme love is.

And it's based upon 1 Corinthians 13. Notice Paul talks about patience, long suffering.

Talks about patience. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us, Love suffereth long in his kind.

Notice kindness. Generosity, love envieth not in 1 Corinthians 13.

Humility. Love volunteeth not itself. It's not puffed up. Unselfishness.

Courtesy. Good temper. Guileness. Sincerity. Jesus himself said that love is the complete consummation of 613 commandments of the

Mosaic law that he lived in in his day. Now there were a lot of added ones to that.

But notice what it says in Matthew 22, 37 through 40. He said,

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.

And the second's likened to it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

It's all based upon love. One thing the law did not have, if you look at it very closely, it did not have a significance of love in it whatsoever.

It was demanding. It was cruel. It showed no mercy.

And God comes and does all of that. So we see love is a paramount thing in the spiritual life.

Without it, you're not going anywhere else. For Paul said,

If I have not love, of all men, I don't have anything. Notice the next one's joy.

Joy's just not another word for happiness. Human happiness depends on what happens.

What do you mean? Well, things going good, we're joyful. Not so good, maybe not so joyful.

Joy, it smiles in the face of even the most adverse circumstances. In John 16, 22, the

Bible says, I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you.

John 17, He said to his father, And now come I to thee and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

Basically, Jesus says, Father, give them joy in their walk from the flesh to the spirit.

Give them joy. When they're walking in that spirit, give them joy. Charles Spurgeon spoke of joy as this.

And Charles Spurgeon, of course, he's, I guess if I had a mentor or anyone, though I didn't understand early in my ministry half of the things he was saying, but he suffered with depression.

He suffered with gout, as we call it today. And he said this of joy.

Joy is a boundless exuberance of God, quickening the pulse of a child of God in whatever circumstance they find themselves.

Now, joy does not mean that you're gonna be happy all the time or you have to be happy all the time.

Life's not gonna work out that way, amen? No, it doesn't work out that way.

I wish it did. Now, notice the next fruit of the spirit, and we'll try to get through these very quickly.

The next fruit of the spirit is peace. Romans 5, 1. For we have peace with, therefore, being justified by faith, we have what?

Peace with God. Philippians talks about there's a peace that passeth all understanding.

I do not understand the things that God gives me, but I am very thankful for them, and you should be too.

You say, well, I don't have a lot. If you're a Christian, you got a whole lot more than you had before. Jesus exhibited this peace.

Jesus was never in a hurry. He was never upset. You say, oh, wait a minute.

He got a little riled up. Yeah, but all of that was under control. When he was driving out those money changers and things, it was all under control, and he was never disturbed.

Do you realize, Jesus, the crowd and the things he had around him all the time was walking through a great big crowd, and there was this woman who had had an issue of blood that no, she'd spent every cent that she had to try to get it cured, and it would not cure, and she reached out and touched the hem of his garment, remember, and immediately, the issue was gone, and Jesus and all this big crowd and everything else stops a minute, and the disciples, they have this, someone touched me, and remember they said, well,

Lord, there's a crowd around here touching you and everything else, and finally the lady comes forth, and Jesus said, you know, it's your faith.

It's not the hem of my garment that saved you, that healed you. It was your faith. One of the fruits of the spirit is peace.

We sang my favorite hymn this morning, and I agree with Brother Adam. It should be just sang over and over and over and over again.

When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, what?

It is well with my soul. Is it? Is it well with your soul today?

If you knew today was your last day here, and I pray and believe me that it would not, that would not be the case, but if it was, is your soul well?

Are you well with God? Now we have three other fruits of the spirit.

One is long -suffering. This means one who, it comes from a compound word meaning to temper and basically short or silent.

Now, it doesn't take long to figure out somebody who's short -tempered, does it? You know, it don't take very long.

They're gonna reveal that in many ways. You know, but, and they're gonna reveal that in several ways, but let's continue on.

A long -tempered person is the opposite of a short -tempered person. A long -tempered person, says the

Bible, has a forbearance and plenty of patience. Long -suffering is that capacity of self -restraint in the face of provocation.

I can tell you who had this type of long -suffering. It was the early church martyrs.

They would gather together hand in hand, not knowing if they were gonna get thrust through, eaten alive, burnt alive.

They didn't know, but they stayed together. Patience is that quality that does not surrender to circumstances, and that's what patience is.

Then the next fruit of the spirit, of course, is goodness, and goodness is that which benefits the

Christian community and the society as a whole. It comes from a word that means constitutionally good.

Everything's great about it. Goodness is good, but it has a benefit for others. It has a benefit for others, that spiritual goodness, and we could go on with meekness, and as time begins to press us, we can go on with meekness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control, but notice in verse 23 what it says.

Against such, there is no law.

You walk in the spirit, you don't need a law to give you compulsion to do what is right.

You're just gonna do it because the spirit has revealed it to you to do it. And then in verses 24 through 26,

And those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.

Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

So how do we practice some of the things that I've touched so briefly on today?

First, there must be death to the flesh or the old person.

Verse 24. Those that are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. One of the first scripture memorizations

I had was Galatians 2 .20. And it says, I am crucified with Christ, yet I live.

Yet not I, but this life that I now live in the flesh, I live according to the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

And then secondly, Paul gives us to walk in the spirit.

Verse 25. If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.

Paul says this, The fruit of the spirit cannot be generated by energy or efforts of the flesh, no matter how much and how hard you try.

So this morning, how is your spiritual life?

I hope it is well. If it is not, you can get that taken care of today.

There are plenty of people, myself, there's deacons here, there's an elder here that could talk to you as well because I can tell you this, it will not just be the first day of the rest of your life, it will be your life forever.

Father, thank you. I pray your word is going forth now.

That's all I ask. And as we begin to take this table, may we maybe spend just a few moments pondering the spiritual life.