Sins of the Flesh

Galatians 5: Freedom in Christ and the Battle Between Flesh and Spirit

Take your Bibles and open them to Galatians chapter 5. And we're going to begin to work our way to the end of this book. After chapter 5, we get to chapter 6, and it's a relatively short chapter. Chapter 6 is only really a few paragraphs.

So probably by... where are we at now? Middle of June? First of June? Well, probably by the end of July, we'll be completely done with Galatians and be able to look at the next set. Now, if you remember, chapter 5 of Galatians begins with Paul saying, For freedom Christ has set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. The freedom that he's referring to there is the freedom of the conscience that the believer receives when he comes to Christ and his sins are forgiven and he is then free from the condemnation of the law.

The law no longer has any ability to condemn you if you're in Christ because Christ has paid the penalty. Christ has already taken in Himself the complete punishment that you deserve. If you are in Christ, you're safe.

If you're outside of Christ, you're not safe. And I often liken that to the ark in the time of Noah. If you were inside the ark, you were safe from the wrath of God. If you were outside of the ark, the wrath of God was going to destroy you.

And that's the same way with Christ. That's a picture of Christ. If you are in Christ by faith and repentance, if you have received Jesus and have been placed in Him, the Bible says in Him many, many times that language is used.

If you're in Christ, it's just like being in the ark. The wrath of God will not touch you on the day of judgment. However, if you are outside of the ark, the wrath of God will destroy you and you will spend eternity in hell.

And so that's the distinction. And so when Paul says you're free, what he's saying is you're free from the condemnation of the law. But then in verse 13, he says, you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

You see, Paul is not saying that because you're free in Christ that you're free to sin. Because that would be in opposition to what Christ saved you for. Christ didn't save you to continue to live in sin.

He saved you that you might follow Him in righteousness. Never trusting your own righteousness, mind you. But being able to see in your life a growth in sanctity, a growth in holiness. The Bible says that without holiness, we will not see the Lord.

And so there should be a practical holiness that's growing in us. A desire for the things of God. And that is what brings us to verse 18 that we looked at. Actually, verse 17 we looked at last week, which says,.

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 one another to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. That tells us that the Christian lives a battle in his life.

The battle is this. In my spirit, that is my inner man, where the Holy Spirit lives within me, I have a desire to do what is good. I have a desire to serve the Lord. I have a desire to do the things that are pleasing to Him.

I have a desire to follow His Word. But then I have the flesh which yearns for that which is evil. Remember Pastor Mark's sermon Tuesday night? I got to come and be with you guys Tuesday. I don't often get to do that, but I enjoyed it.

And one of the great things about his message is he pointed out the proclivity to fail. And he used Peter as the example. And he says, what happened with Peter? He said, I'll never fail! And as soon as the opportunity arose where it was his skin on the line, where it was his life that was imperiled, I never knew him.

I tell you, I do not know the man. And the Bible says he even invoked a curse, meaning he cursed, and I don't know him! So we all have the capacity for failure, and why? Because Jesus said the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Weak. And so Paul in verse 17 makes a distinction between the spirit and the flesh. And he says one is at war with the other. Then we get to verse 18, and that's where we are today. We haven't really looked at it, but I want to begin at verse 18.

I want to read all the way down to the end of the chapter, and that's going to be our focus. Because what we're going to do today is we're going to look at the distinction between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit.

We're going to make the distinction between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. Beginning at verse 18. 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. Again, such things, there is no law. And those who belong to Jesus Christ 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, envying one another. So what we see here is we see Paul beginning in verse 18 to establish for us two ways of living.

Notice verse 18. If you are led by the spirit, you are no longer under the law. So the first, and I'm going to write it on the board backwards, because I'm going to make a line, and we're going to say that which is on the right is led by the spirit.

Paul says if you're led by the spirit, you're no longer under the law. Now that's kind of an odd way of saying what he's trying to get across. But it's important that we understand what he's trying to get across.

What he's saying is there's two lifestyles that you can have. You can have the lifestyle that's led by the spirit. And if you have the lifestyle that's led by the spirit, you're no longer under the condemnation of the law.

You're in the new covenant. Your life is now hidden with God in Christ. You are a new person and you have a new life. And that's a distinction. Being in the spirit, being by the spirit, being full of the spirit, being regenerated by the spirit.

That is a new life. But then you have the distinction here, you're not under the law. The reason why you're not under the law is because you're under grace. You're led by the spirit. You're in the new covenant.

But then you have the other side, which is led by the flesh. Now that's not the language he uses, but that is the distinction that he's making. So I'm being a little liberal with the use of language. That's the point that he's making.

He's saying you're either led by the spirit, and if you're led by the spirit, you're no longer under the law. But if you're led by the flesh, you're still under condemnation because you do not have the spirit.

So the difference is the distinction between those who are living according to the flesh and those who are living according to the spirit. And then in verse 19, he gives us what he refers to as the works of the flesh.

And I want to make a quick distinction here. He says works of the flesh. That's verse 19. And then he says fruit of the spirit in verse 22. That's the two distinctions. He could have said works of the flesh and works of the spirit.

Or he could have said the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. You say, well, he didn't say that. Why? I think the distinction is made in the use of language because the works of the flesh, these are what the flesh wants to do.

It wants to work out its pleasure. It wants to work out its desires. But the fruit of the spirit, the Bible, when it uses the word fruit, is always talking about something that's positive. And Paul is trying to make a distinction between works and the result of faith.

You see, the fruit of the spirit is not your works, but it's the works of God within you. Therefore, it's fruit. It's God-bearing fruit. What do we learn when we see the story of the four soils? It says the seed fell along the pathway and it was eaten by the birds.

Some fell among the weeds and it was choked out. Some sprung up for a time but was withered in the sunlight. But what was the fourth soil? It was the good soil, good ground. And what did it do? It produced a crop.

It produced, if you will, fruit. It bore fruit. Why? Because it was fertile ground. And here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize. I always try to point this out. Even though the text doesn't say it, it's implied in the text.

The land was prepared by the sower. God opens the heart. He tills the heart. And He implants the Word within us. That's the picture that James tells us. The implanted Word comes and that bears fruit. It's like a seed.

And the fruit is what grows out of that. So another way of looking at it, the works of the flesh are us. The fruit of the Spirit is God. As Augustine said, I am responsible for what I do that is evil.

And God is responsible for what I do that is good. Therefore, I can say, God, forgive me of what I do evil and thank you for those things that I do that are good. Because any goodness that I have is God within me.

So that's again why it's fruit and not works. Because it's not really us. It's the Spirit working Himself out in our lives. And what we're going to do, we're going to write every one of these up on the board.

And I'm going to try to give an explanation of each one of these words. Notice that from verses 19 to 21, there are, I didn't count them, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, there's 15 named works of the flesh.

And then there's seven fruits of the Spirit. So we're going to look at each one. I'm going to talk about each one. I don't know that we'll get through it all in one day, but we can. I mean, it's just basically defining language.

But the key to this, the key to this is at the end of verse 21, when He says, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. You see, the word do there is in the sense of making a practice in your life.

In fact, if you have an ESV, there's a little superscript. And if you follow to the bottom, the word do is expanded. You got an ESV, Bobby? What does it say at the bottom? That's right. It's the idea of making something your lifestyle.

Here's the thing. Nobody wants to hear this. But you can tell if a person is a Christian not by what they say, but what they do. And I didn't make that up. That's Jesus. You will know a tree by the fruit it bears.

And if a person is constantly bearing wicked, rotten fruit, we can be certain that it's a wicked, rotten tree.

For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, and a bad tree does not bear good fruit.

Now again, this is not saying we are saved by our works. And please be very careful. You've heard me preach for the last year on Galatians. By the way, we just reached over a year. It came up on my Facebook page.

It had my first set of notes. It was one year ago. So this is how long we've been in this book. And I've said since the beginning, it's not of works. But what do our works do? They testify of the state of the tree.

The fruit that's bore on the branch testifies to the health of the tree. So that's the picture here. The works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. I'm just going to write them down as we go. As I said, there's 15 of them.

If you want to write them down, that's fine. You don't have to. They're in your Bible. But I want to make a note about each one of them. And then I'm going to show you some categories that come up. We have sexual immorality.

Impurity. Give them to me. If you guys have your ESV, that's the translation. Sensuality. What's the next one? What is it? Idolatry. Sorcery. Thank you. Keep them coming. Hold on. I might run out of space.

Next one. Fits of anger. And then? Rivalry. Dissensions. Hold on. Dissensions, divisions. I want to make sure we're all on the same page. It's envy, drunkenness, orgies. That's what I have. That's why I've got to keep it in one translation when I'm doing this.

The ESV doesn't use the word murder. Does somebody else have murder? I heard somebody say murder. What's that, King James? That's fine. That can certainly be a translation of fits of anger and those things.

Hostility. We're going to go over all that. A faction is a division in a group. If you have two groups that are battling with each other, that's two factions. That's two groups. That's the thing I wanted to point out.

I wish I had a different color marker. What I wanted to show you is a lot of people think the works of the flesh is always about addiction or sexual sin or something like that. He does mention that. But that's not the main thing that's up here.

If you categorize these things and group them out, what you see is the main thing up here is not so much sins that we do that are things that we normally think of the flesh like sexual immorality and things like that.

The main things are social sins. The way we treat other people. That's a huge part of this. If you stop after sorcery, right here, the rest of it is how you treat other people. Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies.

The only one that isn't really about other people is drunkenness. The rest of those are all about how you interrelate with people. Why does this matter? What are the two great commandments? Love the Lord your God with all your heart.

Love your neighbor. You see why that's so important. When he's listing sins, among those listed is so much about how we treat other people. The very first one is the one that hits us all square in the face.

It's the one that every man battles. It's the one that I've met very few men in my life that I believed genuinely didn't struggle with this area of sexual immorality. That's the first one. The word for sexual immorality in the Greek, I don't have enough room to write it, but you may know this, you may not.

The word for sexual immorality is the word pornea. Pornea in Greek. It's where we get the word porn. Pornography means photograph. It refers to image. Pornography means an illicit image. But porn means something that is immoral, sexual immorality.

In the Latin, it's even more clear because remember the Bible was translated in Latin about the 4th century, well 5th century. In the Latin, the word is fornicatio. Fornicatio. What's fornicatio? Fornication.

I remember years ago having a conversation with young people because I used to be a youth leader. And I remember having a conversation with young people and they said, the Bible never says anything about premarital sex.

Premarital sex isn't wrong. Adultery is wrong. You shouldn't cheat on people, but the Bible never says anything about premarital sex. And I said, really? It doesn't say anything about premarital sex? And they said, not a thing.

So I took them to this passage and I said, what is the very first thing in the list of the works of the flesh? And they said, sexual immorality. And they said, oh, sexual immorality can be anything. I said, onene.

Words have meaning. Onene. Words have meaning. And if the word in Greek has a meaning, pornea, which means illicit sexual activity, and it's translated into Latin, fornicatio, which, again, means illicit sexual activity, and it's translated in English as sexual immorality.

What does King James say? Fornication, probably? Fornication. It says both? It uses both? Okay, that's interesting.

This is the New, it says adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contention, jealousy, outbursts of wrath, self inhibition, dissensions, heresies, envy, murder, drunkenness, rivalries, and the like.

Okay. And the point I'm making is the King James is actually translating it as two different things. Adultery and fornication. Because pornea can be both. If you remember when Jesus was talking about the issue of divorce, he said a man is not permitted to divorce his wife except for the cause of pornea.

That's the word that he uses. We often translate that as adultery. But it's actually sexual immorality. And so it's illicit sexual activity. And so my question to the young people was is it illicit to have sex outside of marriage?

And they said no. You probably know who I'm talking about. And they're like no! Because what's wrong with that? I said well let's take a step back. Upon what basis are you arguing that because they'll say well if two people love each other, then it doesn't matter if they have a piece of paper.

Ever heard that garbage? Maybe you've said it. It's garbage. Just so you know. It is garbage. Just so you know. Because marriage is a covenant. Marriage is not you going and having sex with a woman. If that's what made a marriage, then you maybe have been married several times.

I don't want to go there. The point being marriage is a contractual agreement. Marriage is a promissory note. Why do we give the ring? Because it's a symbol of a promise. You and you only till death do us part.

Now we can debate all day long how much influence the state should have in that. Because that's often the issue. Should the state manage marriage? Well at this point it does and the Bible says for us to be good citizens and to honor those who put in authority and so the state I think does have a legitimate reason for it.

Because the state is in the business of managing society and its laws in the smallest form of government in any society is a family. So it makes sense that the government would know who's in the family and what constitutes because when two men, or excuse me well that too, but when a man and a woman shack up that ain't a family.

I hurt your feelings, whatever, I ain't here to hurt your feelings but if you got sensitive toes you probably shouldn't come to my class. Then we'll step on them every once in a while and the reality is when a man and a woman shack up that ain't marriage.

I know there's something called common law and all that, but all of that is in violation of the very simple fact that Jesus identifies marriage like this. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will cleave unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

That is a contractual, covenantal relationship. You know why divorce is so evil? Because it takes what was one flesh and it destroys it by making it two again. It breaks apart what was one unified body into two.

What would happen if I took your body and broke it into two? You'd die. That's why divorce is so repugnant. That's why the Bible says God hates divorce. Because it's taking what God has brought together and it's rendering it asunder.

So marriage is, this is why Hebrews tells us, the marriage bed is held in high honor and no one should defile it. And this is why adultery is such a lewd and lascivious breaking of the covenant because you've gone out of your marriage bed and into the marriage bed of a whore.

So the question of whether or not sexual immorality is anything outside of marriage. And guys can be gross, so please don't be gross. But I've had people ask me questions. Does this count? If you have to ask, probably.

But going back though looking at, because I had working with teenagers for so many years. I used to work at a high school. I was a middle school substitute teacher. And people find out you're a pastor everybody wants to talk to you.

Everybody wants to ask you questions. And the big question was can people kiss before they get married? You might not think that's a big deal, but people say well, because then it's like how far? Can we make out?

Can we under the clothes stuff? You start getting into all these questions, right? What constitutes sin? Part of it's conscience. But also, I try to relate to the children. If I wouldn't do it in front of her father, I shouldn't do it when her father's not looking.

That's a good rule of thumb. But sexual immorality, specifically in this context, is anything that is done outside of marriage that is sexual in nature. And you can define that loosely or harshly if you want.

The point is if the simple fact is if two people have sex and they're not married, they shouldn't have. I mean that should go without saying. And the problem is our current society does not believe that.

And I didn't mean to make today all about sexual immorality as I stop on number one. I'm going to do 15 things. I should have known better. But society today doesn't believe that. Society, I mean, you watch any television show.

It's no longer about, it's no longer Father Knows Best, you know, Dad, Mom, and the three boys or whatever. It's no longer Warden June Cleaver. You have people living. Think about friends. Television show ran for what?

15 years. Nobody got married until like the last season when they all started splitting off and going their different ways. But every one of them had illicit sexual relationships throughout the show. And everybody was fine with it.

Do you know the time when they were filming I Love Lucy? They couldn't even show the bed in the bedroom unless it was two separate beds. And Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball were married. In real life. And they couldn't show them sharing a bed on television.

Fast forward half a century and there are nudity, is nudity on network television. Boy on boy, girl on girl. Yeah, and the thing about that is that's exalted. The best relationships, watch this if you watch television.

The best and healthiest relationships are always the homosexuals. And the ones that are unhealthy and the ones that are cheating on each other, the ones that are misbehaving are always the ones who are the heterosexual married couple.

They're always unhappy, they hate each other, they miss, they represent marriage as a curse and they represent homosexuality as a blessing. The Bible says, woe unto those who call good evil and evil good.

And that's exactly what we have. So like I said, I didn't get too far into that. But the next one is in the ESV, it's impurity. Each of these has a Greek phrase. This one's a little harder to say. Akatharsia.

Akatharsia. And what it means is lustful, luxurious, profligate living or licentious living. So he starts with he starts with sexual immorality and then he says impurity, which essentially is moral degradation.

Can you be morally degenerate and not be sexually degenerate? Yes? You can have things that are immoral or a mean person. Right? You can be immoral. Somebody said, well I don't cheat on my wife but I cheat on my taxes.

I don't cheat on my wife but I sure enough will steal or lie. People always want to announce their own goodness, right? What's the goodness? I don't cheat on my wife. I flirt with my secretary all the time.

And if she gave me the time of day, maybe you see what I'm saying? That's the attitude, right? I don't do this so I'm okay. No. Basically it's an expansion. If you think you're okay because you're not cheating on your wife or you think you're okay because you're not committing fornication take a step back and now he's expanding from that to a wider thing.

The next word the word is sensuality. I want to read the definition of this word. It says the conduct and character of one who is and the Greek word is aselgia and where this word comes from the root is selge which is the name of a city where the citizens were excelling in strictness in their morals.

So when you put the alpha primitive on the beginning that means putting an A in front of it like the word atheism. You have the word theist you put A on the beginning that's called an alpha primitive that creates the opposite.

So aselgia you have the selge's who are strictly moral aselgia would be the opposite of that. So notice he's gone from sexual immorality to impurity to sensuality. What is sensuality? That's a person who lives by the desires of the body.

They want to fulfill every desire. You ever heard of the stoics? The stoics tried to eliminate all pleasure in their lives and they tried to eliminate everything that brought them either joy or anger.

They tried to be stoic which means to be stoned to be like stone faced. They didn't want to be happy or sad. They wanted to have this almost sort of like buddhism. Buddhism teaches that you should find this place of harmony where you're not angry, you're not sad because the whole goal of buddhism is to become nothing.

That's the idea of nirvana. Nirvana means to go into the nothing and so your goal is to have no treasure, nothing of value, no relationships that have any long lasting meaning because all that's going to go away anyway when you go into the nothing so the idea is let go.

You ever see Star Wars? Remember when Yoda was talking to young Anakin and he said you have to learn to give up everything that you love. You have to learn to not love everything, not love anything. That is buddhism.

That is Taoism. The idea that the goal of life is to become unfettered by any type of relational connection. It's anti-human because the very nature of humanity is to have relationships, to have meaning in life and purpose.

I've kind of gone off the rails a little bit. The point is that was Stoicism. Stoicism said we're going to eliminate all pleasure. We're going to eliminate all those things. Well the opposite of that were the Epicureans and the Epicureans were the people who believed that the goal of life is self-satisfaction.

They would eat so much that they would make themselves throw up just so they could eat more. They loved the taste of food and the filling of their body so much that they would eat until they were packed.

They would force their finger down their throat, vomit it up just so they could eat more. These were people who were consumed with filling the flesh and satisfying. Have you ever heard in the Bible it talks about their god is their belly?

The people who are always trying to satisfy the flesh. That's the idea of sensuality. Sensual. Flesh-filling. Flesh-fulfilling. That's the idea of this word. Sorry, apparently I'm fourteen again. The first three.

Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. That is a group. That constitutes the first group of if I was wrong. We've looked at the first three. All of them essentially dealing with the lust of the flesh.

What are the three things that the Bible warns us against? Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. That's the three. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of possessions, or pride of life.

We've got those three categories. Here's the first category. Lust of the flesh. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. You could categorize them all together as lust of the flesh. The next two. Idolatry and sorcery I think are parallel, though not the same.

Idolatry is kind of a long word in the Greek. It's eidololatria. And if you know a little bit about the Greek language, latria means worship. And eidololatria means idol worship. That's the word. And so what it means is it means to worship a false god.

And as simple as that is, it's not that simple. Because idolatry is a problem not only of wood and stone and precious metals, but idolatry is a problem of the mind. I'll give you an example. If I say to you, God hates sin and he will punish sinners in hell, and you stand up and say, my God would never send anyone to hell, I would agree with you.

Because I would say you are worshiping a false god. Your god does not exist. You have an idol. You've created that idol in your mind. John Calvin said this, he said, the human mind is a perpetual factory of idols.

It's constantly creating something new to believe in so it can avoid believing in the God who truly exists. The mind is creating a false view of God so that we can avoid having to deal with the true God.

I've told this story before, but it's such a good one, I'll tell it again. When I was at Kmart. Walked into Kmart, gave the lady gospel track, she comes later, she hands it to me, I don't want this. Okay.

She stands there angry, okay, you want to talk, let's talk. She says, my goddess would not send anyone to hell. I said, that's true. I said, because your goddess doesn't exist. You literally made her up in your own mind.

You created a God that's like you. And by the way, that's what idolatry is. It's making God like us. Hey, we're back. Yeah, I said something right. Idolatry is making God like yourself. Because ultimately, everybody is really good at self-justification.

I mean, brother, you know this. When somebody does something wrong, what do they do? Well, I had a good reason. Justify. That's right. Self-justification. They want to justify themselves. And so they create a God who will justify them.

One of the things you will often hear people try to do is people try to... Yes. One of the things I hear people often try to do is they try to accuse Jesus of sinning. They'll say, well, Jesus surely sinned.

He was a man. All men sin, blah, blah, blah. But do you know why people are so bent on trying to argue that Jesus was a sinner? Because they want to... Huh? I'm sorry to interrupt you. Because they want to be like us.

What were you going to say?

I was going to say because they were trying to make it okay for their sin. That's right. That's exactly right.

They want Jesus to be a sinner because that would justify them in their mind. Well, if Jesus was a sinner and I'm a sinner, then it can't be that bad. When we say Jesus was without sin, that creates cognitive dissonance.

Our mind is like, I can't even imagine somebody... I can't imagine growing up as Jesus' little brother. Can you? I mean, you talk about... I have a sibling. It's tough enough to have an imperfect sibling.

I wasn't hurt in the morning. Amen. I've been going to him all day and he don't even sin. Yeah, I know. Jesus never sinned. But people want Him to. People want to have a God that's like them. They want this idol.

That's what idolatry is. And in the time of this historical period, it was very pronounced because there were temples and there certainly would have been temples in and around the region of Galatia where people would actually go and sacrifice to idols.

We don't see that a lot in America anymore. You don't see people carrying goats into your local temples and sacrificing them and then everybody going and eating the meat from the goat in a big festival in honor of Zeus or in honor of Jupiter.

We don't see people doing that today. But that would have been the normal lifestyle of the Galatians. They would have been seeing people do that all the time. They would have been seeing people living that idolatrous life.

But Paul's calling them and he's saying that's a work of the flesh. The works of the flesh, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality and idolatry. And then he says the next one which is sorcery. Now I said these two go together and the reason why I think these two go together is because sorcery is a form of idolatry.

Sorcery is trying to replace the miraculous of God with the magic of men. Go ahead brother. QJ witchcraft. Same idea. The actual Greek word is pharmakeia which is interesting because it's where we get our word pharmacy.

Pharmaceutical. Sorcery. Witchcraft. Medicine. I'm not saying medicine is witchcraft. Be careful. But having said that what is the scourge on so many people in our world today? I have a sister-in-law who passed away not because of heroin but because of doctor prescribed medicine.

Prescription. People go in. There's looting happening around the United States right now because of all the things that are happening and one of the things that has happened is people are going into pharmacies breaking in and stealing all the medication.

Why? Because they're going to turn around and sell it or use it. So I'm not saying medication is bad and certainly pharmakeia is it's gone through many derivations to get to the word pharmacy. It's like when I was a kid when my mom would say I'm going to the drugstore I would say drugstore?

Drugstore? Why are you going to the drugstore? Because you think drugs are bad, right? Same way with pharmakeia. The idea though is those who would seek to create some type of magic potions and sorcery and snake oils.

What's that? Oh yeah and I mean yeah a tonic snake oil and you see how this would go with idolatry, right? Why do people go into drugs? Because they're looking for something to satisfy a need a desire or something that they want.

And so if God is not satisfying I can be satisfied in the bottle or I can be satisfied in the needle or I can be satisfied in this sexual activity. I can find something else. Anything can become an idol, right?

Because it's finding your satisfaction in something other than God. In fact John Piper has a great quote and as I age I'm getting more understanding of what he meant. As I grow in my own understanding, John Piper said this God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.