WWUTT 1787 Walk By the Spirit, Part 1 (Galatians 5:16-26)

There are two ways that we can walk. We can walk by the flesh or we can walk by the Spirit. Those who have the

Spirit of Christ dwelling in them are no longer walking in the passions of the flesh. The two are contrary to one another when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the Word of God that we may be conformed to the image of Christ.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Well, we start a beefy sermon today in our study in the book of Galatians.

This one's a three -parter, so we're going to hear part one today, part two tomorrow, and then pick up with the third part of the sermon on Monday of next week.

We are on to the section of Galatians that the book is probably most known for where we read about the fruit of the

Spirit. Galatians 5, verses 16 -26. This is part one of a sermon entitled,

Walk by the Spirit. The Apostle Paul writing to the churches in Galatia, 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 evidence, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, 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 its 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.

Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, as we come to Your text today, we ask that Your Spirit would teach us and guide us.

That we would be convicted in our flesh so that we might walk by the Spirit. That we would not gratify the desires of our flesh, but we would desire to please

God. And may we come to understand what it is that You have asked of us according to Your Word.

Not thinking of ourselves as, well, I can worship God the way that I want, or I can love people the way the world says that love is supposed to look like.

We define our terms according to Your Word. We keep in step with Your Word. We walk according to Your Word.

For it is the Spirit that gave us Your Word. And it is the Spirit that helps us to understand it.

So may we walk by the Spirit and live lives that are pleasing unto our

Lord who saves us. It's in Jesus' name we pray and all God's people said,

Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Over the course of this letter to the churches in 1st century

Galatia, the argument being made by the Apostle Paul, his appeal to these churches, is that they come to understand the true gospel.

We are justified by faith in Christ alone. I saw a quote this morning from Martin Lloyd -Jones, that if a preacher cannot stand in the pulpit and give a defense for justification by faith alone, then he has no business standing in the pulpit.

And in the churches in Galatia, there was someone that had come in preaching a gospel different than the one that we had received justification by faith alone.

Jesus Christ has died for our sins and He has conquered death by rising from the grave.

Whoever believes in Him is forgiven by faith alone. Jesus is enough.

The work of Christ is sufficient. And if someone comes to you preaching

Christ plus something else equals salvation, they are preaching a different gospel.

For the Galatians, they had been seized by the Judaizers into believing that we are justified by faith plus works.

The work of Christ was not enough, they thought, and I need to keep these other works in order to be saved.

This, of course, was not the message that Paul and his missionary brethren had first preached to the

Galatians when they came to them. He said in chapter 1 verse 6, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting

Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another gospel, because there is no other, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

This new gospel was as good as no gospel at all. In fact, Paul said in verses 8 and 9 that to believe such a false gospel would lead not to life but a curse, the worst curse, and that is the judgment of God.

As we considered last week, Paul said, I wish that those who unsettle you would go the whole way and cut themselves off from the body of Christ instead of dividing it with their false teaching.

Sound doctrine always unites. Bad doctrine always divides.

As we read last week in verses 13 through 15, for you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

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

But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

And now, in context, look at verse 16. But I say walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

To walk in something is a Hebrew figure of speech for how one lives their life.

So another way that we could understand this, Galatians 5 .16, is live by the

Spirit. We see multiple comparisons to walking in the faith throughout the

New Testament. Ephesians 2 .10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Colossians 2 .6,

Therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.

1 Thessalonians 4 .1, Brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please

God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. 1

John 1 .7, But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

In the first half of Galatians 5, which we looked at last week, we read about how we are set free in Christ.

We are free from the bonds of sin and death. We are released from the burden of the law.

Therefore we should not submit ourselves again to a yoke of slavery. We should not use our freedom as a license to sin.

Consider verse 13 again, For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity of the flesh, but through love serve one another.

If we are selflessly serving one another, we are not selfishly trying to appease the passions of our flesh.

You have been cleansed of your sins, not so you can go get dirty again, lest you be living for yourself.

You've been washed so that you might live unto God to love sacrificially as God has loved you.

It is a very common pattern, particularly among professing

American Christians, to live life one way on Sunday and then live a completely different way of life through the rest of the week.

When I was in high school, we used to make fun of, me and my friends, we would make fun of our Catholic friends and even some of our teachers who were

Catholic. They would live like the devil during the week and then they would go to Mass on the weekend to be pardoned by the priest.

It would be several years later before I realized I was living my life that exact same way.

It's not just a Catholic thing. It's just I had no priest and I had fewer smells and bells by which

I conducted my sin or thought that I could just ask for forgiveness and then go and live in sinfulness again knowing, hey,

I've been washed, now I can go get dirty again. Well, the Bible calls this hypocrisy.

Calling yourself a follower of Jesus but living like you're a follower of Satan? Saying you're a citizen of the kingdom of God but behaving like you are perishing with the rest of this fallen world?

If that's the way that you live, then you haven't been saved from your sins. You're still dying to do them.

If there's no difference with the way you live your life and the way your unbelieving friends live, examine yourself to see that you are truly in the faith.

Some people will excuse their sinful living, whether it's their own sins or it could be the sins of a loved one that they just don't want to believe is heading to hell if they continue on the course that they're on.

They will say that this sin is an opportunity for God to show more grace.

They might quote Romans 5 .20 which says, where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Or Romans 6 .14 which says, you are not under the law, you are under grace. But neither of these passages is permission for you to sin.

Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. This means that you were once dead in your sins and your trespasses, but by the grace of God, you have been made alive together with Christ.

You are not under the law, but under grace means that you will not be judged by the law you've previously broken, but you will live under the grace of God which we have in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6 .1 -4 says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death. In order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Verses 15 -18 say,

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under the law, but under grace?

By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to righteousness?

But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Notice some key words there. We've become obedient from the heart. We are to walk in newness of life, obedience leads to righteousness.

We come back again to this understanding of what it means to walk by the Spirit and walking by the

Spirit means obedience. Obedience to what?

What are we supposed to obey? The law of God.

But wait! Didn't we just read that we are not under the law, but under grace? Well, that doesn't mean that the law no longer applies to us.

Quite the contrary, it means the law has been applied to us.

Here's what I mean by that. In Jeremiah 31, beginning in verse 31, God talks of a new covenant.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when

I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the

Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their

God and they shall be my people and I will cleanse them from their sin.

These words exactly are repeated again in Hebrews 8, verses 8 through 12, showing that they have been fulfilled in the people of God, His church, through the

Lord Jesus Christ. Revelation 21 .3 says, And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying,

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be

His people and God Himself will be with them as their God. This people,

God will put His law within and write on their hearts, is us. This is the work of the

Holy Spirit that God has put in the heart of every single

Christian and this is walking by the Spirit, walking according to the commandments of God.

In his commentary on Galatians, Ronald Fung, professor of biblical studies at China Graduate School of Theology, said the following,

The guidance of the Spirit can be experienced as a reality in the life of a believer, a sign that Jeremiah's prophetic word about the new covenant has been fulfilled.

In Old Testament times, the Israelites knew God's law as an external code, but in the

New Testament dispensation, the law of God is set in His people's understanding and written on their hearts.

God's will is now an inward principle, the result of the leading of the

Spirit within the believer. Consider also these words from the

Lord in Ezekiel 36, starting in verse 25, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, from all your idols

I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a soft heart and I will put

My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey

My rules. Same thing that was said in Jeremiah under the promise of a new covenant.

I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey

My rules. The law of God has been written on our hearts through the

Spirit of God that is within us. In this way, the law has been applied to us.

It has not been abolished. That should be very clear considering that we just read in Galatians 5 .14

the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

That is a commandment, is it not? Do you believe that you are to love your neighbor?

Then you believe the law of God still applies. Now let me make this emphatically clear once again.

Salvation is not by the law. Honor your father and your mother will not save you.

You shall not murder will not save you. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not steal, bear false witness, or covet. These things will not save you.

You are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. We read in Galatians 3 .10

that everyone who relies on works of the law is under a curse. And then verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

So do not think that I am talking out of both sides of my head saying in one instance that you are justified by faith and in another instance that you are justified by the law.

Romans 3 .20 says, For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

It is through the hearing of the law that you became aware that you had sinned against God.

But now having called upon the name of Christ and received His forgiveness, He has written

His commandments upon your heart and your love for Him, your love for God, is expressed in your obedience.

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

You can find a link to the blog through our website www .utt .com Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.