Book of Romans, 8:1 - No Condemnation For Those Walking After The Spirit, Pt. 4 (08/18/2019)

Our church, Lord, I ask you to take care of the needs here.

Lord, you know what the needs are. We thank you for opportunity you have to give. And we ask you to help us as we give that you would make me pleased with what we do.

We thank you for the opportunity you have to do that. Lord, I thank you for our pastor and ask you to help him this morning.

Can you give him the words and the mind and his heart to say what he needs to say and we'll get a blessing from that. We love you.

In Jesus' name I pray, amen. That trombone scholarship is really paying off, ain't it?

You're musically declined, my dear. I was reading something this morning and it said that if David can face the giant, if Joshua can face the wall of Jericho, if Jesus can face death with God, you can face anything.

There's nothing that can beat you. There's an old saying that if God's for us, who can be against us? And the reason is, is

Calvary. If you'll turn to page 245, we're only gonna sing the one hymn today because my pianist decided to sand floors yesterday and she's sore, so anyway.

♪ Years I spent in vanity and pride ♪ ♪

Caring not my Lord was crucified ♪ ♪ Knowing not it was for me he died on Calvary ♪ ♪

Mercy great was there and grace was free ♪ ♪ Pardon there was multiplied to me ♪ ♪

There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary ♪ ♪

By God's word at last my sin I learned ♪ ♪ Then I trembled at the law

I'd spurned ♪ ♪ Till my guilty soul imploring turned to Calvary ♪ ♪

Mercy there was great and grace was free ♪ ♪ Pardon there was multiplied to me ♪ ♪

There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary ♪ ♪

Now I've given Jesus everything ♪ ♪ Now I gladly owe him as my king ♪ ♪

While my rapture hell can only sing at Calvary ♪ ♪

Mercy there was great and grace was free ♪ ♪ Pardon there was multiplied to me ♪ ♪

There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary ♪ ♪

Oh the love that, oh the love that true salvation's planned ♪ ♪

Oh the grace that brought it down to man ♪ ♪ Oh the mighty gulp that God did spend at Calvary ♪ ♪

Mercy there was great and grace was free ♪ ♪ Pardon there was multiplied to me ♪ ♪

There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary ♪

Now it is with great pride and pleasure I bring up Pastor Mitchell. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Kenner. Thank you,

Kenner. We're gonna miss you. You're taking off this week? Thursday? Well, you've been wonderful to play so often this summer.

We appreciate it very much. And I hope you'll get graduated soon and just come right back.

Good to see all of you today. I guess I better dismiss the children's church before I forget that since I commonly do forget it.

So you guys can head on back. We will be out of town next

Sunday and we will miss you. Brother Ron's gonna do the main service at 11. Brother Bill will be here for Sunday school, so we won't miss a lick.

But we'll miss you guys and pray for our travel safety, please. And it is tough work over in Hawaii, but somebody's gotta do it, you know?

So we will be heading over there to meet with clients and do some training.

And so we try to make it where we don't miss Sundays, but that far away, you can't pull that off.

Can't quite get back. So we will miss you. Good to see all of you, though. Looks like we got most folks starting to get in.

As we get closer to school starting, everybody will be back. Good to have Paul and Glenda back.

And why don't you go ahead and be turning to the book of Colossians, where we will be here in a moment.

We're actually preaching through Romans, and we're in Romans chapter eight, verse one.

So I'm gonna read that verse because it's sort of our launching pad for this study that we're looking at here the last couple of Sundays and today.

All of chapter seven of Romans, so much of it, deals with one of our three main enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Chapter seven deals with the flesh. And that's talking about, in the bad sense of that usage of that word, the carnal

Christian. You've heard that phrase before. But that, excuse me, it deals specifically with that part of us that we sometimes call our sin nature.

We're all born with it. Came from Adam and Eve, and we've inherited it.

And we come into this world with it. And when the Holy Spirit saves us, it says that he saves us while we were yet in sins.

So we come that way. And so that old nature is still with us.

And that's what sometimes the Bible uses, the New Testament in particular, uses the word flesh to describe the old sin nature.

But sometimes it'll, you know, you talk about the body is not evil in and of itself, so we don't mean that. But it's just biblical language to use the concept of the flesh in the bad sense.

It's talking about the sin nature, so just keep that in mind. But all of chapter seven talks about that. And then all of a sudden you come right into this, you know, perhaps the greatest

Christian that ever lived, the Apostle Paul, right at the end of chapter seven, was saying, oh wretched man that I am.

You know, he said, I find myself doing that which I don't want to do, and I don't do that which I want to do.

And he says, oh wretched man that I am who will set me free from the body of this death. That's the part of his body that he's talking about is the old sin nature part.

And he says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So Jesus Christ is who sets us free from that.

Well, now the Bible tells us we're the new man. If you've been born again, you are the new man.

You still have the old nature as part of yourself, but the real you is the new man.

And first John teaches us he can't sin and won't sin. So when we sin, we're reverting back into the old nature.

And so all of seven talks about it. And then here we hit this very first verse of chapter eight.

Look what it says. There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, talking about that same person that chapter seven was talking about.

Oh, wretched man that I am, but there's no condemnation for us if we're in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

Now, to me, the difficult part of this verse is the second part. And a lot of people mistakenly take that to be some sort of condition of salvation, but it's not, it's an effect of it.

It's not the cause of it. It's the effect. And as long as you keep that straight, the whole

Bible makes sense, especially the book of James. The book of James is predominantly a book about the effect of salvation, not the cause of it, though it mentions the cause.

And where it does mention it, it agrees perfectly with the book of Romans, the book of Galatians, the book of Ephesians, everything the apostle

Paul wrote. So about the cause. So here we see there's no condemnation.

The mercy of God has, in Christ Jesus, covered our sins and better than that, removed our sins from us.

The blood of Jesus is what saves us, and we know that. So as we look at this second phrase, what does it mean then when it says, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit?

Well, the great John Calvin said that that whole phrase is simply talking about the indwelling of the

Holy Spirit, which I found fascinating that he worded it that way. But it makes sense because it's the effect.

It's not the cause of the salvation. It's there, the walking, not after the flesh, but after the spirit, certainly is not a natural thing for human beings.

The natural thing for human beings is to walk according to the flesh, the old sin nature.

That's how we come into this world, walking that way. We built habits before we ever got saved. And then when we got saved, we were instructed to renew the mind, weren't we?

Because we had imprinted these worldly sinful habits in our minds, and it's there.

So we're supposed to renew the mind, aren't we? And so we have these problems that already dwell in our flesh before we ever get saved.

And then when we get saved, we're a new man, a new woman, a new boy or girl, and we're supposed to walk according to the spirit at that point.

So here where it says, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, it's talking about the predominant walk of the life has changed directions and now is moving toward being more like Christ and away from being like the world.

That's the predominant walk. It's not a reference to whether we ever sin, because we do still sin from time to time, but we don't have that predominant walk if we're born again.

So the same person who has no condemnation, the saved person is the same person who walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

It's not talking about a minute by minute perfect walk. It's talking about the direction of the walk.

Do you see the difference? And Calvin was absolutely right. It's tantamount to simply the person who's indwelt by the spirit is who it's talking about, because a person who is not indwelt by the spirit never walks after the spirit, never, ever.

It's impossible. He says it cannot discern spiritual things. So this is talking about a Christian. It's not the cause of a

Christian. It's not a condition for being saved. It is the effect of being saved, the second half of the verse.

Now, I took upon myself, though, to make sure that Mr. Calvin was not just saying that because he already believed it.

Does the Bible actually say it? Well, we've gone through three Sundays now, going through scriptures that show exactly where he got that idea, that it's the effect of salvation, not the cause.

And we ended up in Colossians chapter one, so I think you're already there. And I wanna continue through there, because it's a fascinating chapter.

There are over 33 things that the Holy Spirit does to us and for us at the moment of our salvation.

None of it is something we did for God. All of it is something he did to us and for us.

And about 30 of those are mentioned in this one chapter. So let me just discuss the things we've already seen.

Up until now in this chapter, we've seen that one of the things the Holy Spirit does when he saves us at the moment of our salvation is he changes us into faithful people.

He makes us faithful. Secondly, he gives us grace, and this particular word is talking about growing from grace to grace.

So he gives us the ability to continue to grow, to be more like Christ. He puts that in us when he saves us.

Third, he gives us peace. And the root word for peace there, Iro means to be joined to something.

You cannot have peace without being joined to Jesus Christ. And so he connects us to Christ at the moment of our salvation through what we call the baptism of the

Holy Spirit. It's talking about spirit baptism. It means to be immersed into Christ and connected with him and with each other and with the

Father. So that happens. And then the fourth thing is that he gives us the gift of Christ's faith, not our faith, his faith, the kind that walks on water, the kind that can save us.

That's a gift that he gives us. And the fifth thing is that he gives us love for the brethren.

You don't get that naturally because we come into the world loving self. So it's a spiritual gift when we get the ability to love other people, especially

Christians, other brothers and sisters in Christ. And that's one of the things he gives us is that ability. The sixth thing is he gives us hope, which means a joyful anticipation of a future in heaven.

He gives that to us and puts it in our heart at the moment of our salvation. The seventh thing is that he gives us ears that hear.

And I'm not saying these things happen in order. They all happen at once, like boom, it's just done. You have all these things, you're equipped.

So the eighth thing was he makes the Bible bear fruit in us.

We talked about that last Sunday, if you remember. It's not talking about us bearing fruit right there. It's talking about the

Bible bearing fruit in us as we read it and study it. That doesn't work when you're not saved because it's a boring book when you're not saved.

It's just words on a page when you're not saved. But when you get born again, the Bible comes alive and it begins to bear fruit in our lives.

We talked about that in detail last Sunday. And then we mentioned last Sunday also that it helps us to know grace.

Now that's interesting because how many friends do you have that go to churches and yet they say, well,

I'm not sure I'm saved, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, well, maybe I didn't do enough of that so I'm not so sure.

Well, that's not grace because grace by definition is undeserved favor from God and it's by the blood of Jesus plus nothing.

So you don't do anything to get saved. You receive salvation as a free gift and that's grace but lost people can't understand it and churches are filled with lost people.

The Bible calls them tares. Churches are filled with them and the larger the church, the more you have and they cannot understand grace and they'll argue with it till they turn blue in the face and make you wanna turn blue in the face but you have to understand it's a lost cause arguing that with them because a lost person doesn't understand it because one of the ninth thing that the

Holy Spirit gives you when he saves you is a knowledge of grace and you don't have that as a lost person. So they're not gonna get it until the

Holy Spirit gives them that and that takes place at the calling when the Holy Spirit regenerates them or quickens them.

So it never hurts though to tell them the truth and that's our job, isn't it? We can't save people. Our job is to tell them the gospel, the good news that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of his people.

That's our job to do and whether they hear it or not, we cannot control that, can we?

Helps to keep that in mind though I think or we get very frustrated sometimes. So those are the nine things we've talked about. Now, today we're on number 10.

So go to Colossians chapter one verse nine and we'll see this verses nine and 10.

So here's the 10th thing that the Holy Spirit does to us and gives us at the moment of our salvation.

For this cause, we also since the day we heard of it do not cease to pray for you.

Now he's talking about, Paul is talking about he's praying for some of his converts and here is what he prays.

He says, we don't cease to pray for you and also to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you might walk worthy of the

Lord unto all pleasing. So I would say that the 10th thing that the Holy Spirit puts in us at the moment of our salvation is he begins to cause us to have the knowledge of God's will for our lives.

Now, how many times have you wondered, well, how do you know God's will? Or I hear people say this at church and I think this is a disaster, but oh, he got out of God's will.

He got out of God's will and the train hit him. You know, you hear people, boy, I hope

I stay in God's will. Well, think about it. If God is sovereign, whose will do you think you're gonna stay in? Yours or his?

Like who's God, you or he? And I'm not saying we don't make choices and that we don't have a will because we do, but you're not the boss.

Like we think, we say people, we don't think that anymore, but we used to think we ran everything, didn't we? We thought we were

God actually. And that's part of what repentance means is the change of the mind. We change our mind about who

God is. It's not us, that's repentance. And the Holy Spirit does that to us. He changes our mind when he saves us.

All of these things are the cause because the cause is the calling of the

Holy Spirit. When he touches your life, opens your eyes, opens your ears, and does 33 things or more to you in a nanosecond of time, he regenerates you.

While we were yet in our sins, hath he quickened us? It's all something God does to us. And yet you have people all over church say, well, what do

I have to do to get saved? You don't do to get saved. God did.

It's like you said in Sunday school, I loved it. You said, I believe in salvation by works. That was kind of tricky. Yeah, because God did thousands and millions of works to save us.

Who knows what all God did to save us? He gave his own son to save us is the main thing. He gave the blood of his own son to save us.

So that took a lot of work, but no work on our part. We rest in it. We have a

Sabbath in Christ. We rest in Christ for salvation. So it's better don't say, well, what do

I have to do to get saved? You say, well, how do I have to rest in my salvation? Would be better, but I know that doesn't sound good.

But you're talking about being in God's will. Now you are in God's will. Every lost person is in God's will.

Every lost person on the face of this earth serves God. He is the sovereign.

He put them here for a purpose. He put every rock and every tree and every animal and every plant and every planet here for a purpose, for his divine purposes.

Every human is here to serve the Lord. They just don't want to hear about it. They don't like it. And they'll tell you they don't know him or believe in him.

But they're like brother Otis said, God put them here to put everything on the shelf that God's children needs, need, bad grammar, sorry.

God put them here to put everything on the shelf that God's children need, because that's how it is.

Now you have two kinds of lost people. So that means you have three kinds of people in the world sitting around us, hopefully not in here.

But when we go to work, when we go to the grocery store, we have three kinds of people.

We have goats, who are people Jesus said are never going to be saved. And he said,

I didn't put them here, especially when he called them tares. He said, I didn't plant the tares here. Satan put them here. I put the wheat here.

So you have the goats. And then you have lost sheep, who are people who will get saved someday, but they don't know it yet.

And we may not know it yet, but they're lost sheep, and they will all be saved. Because Jesus said, no man comes to me, but by the

Father drawing him, and of them I shall lose nothing. So you have the lost sheep, and then you have the saved sheep.

So you have those three people everywhere around us. Now, all humans serve the

Lord. They just don't all want to. They don't all do it with joy. The saved sheep do. That's part of the gift

God gives you is the ability to love the Lord and to want to walk with him and serve him.

So, however, when we talk about knowing God's will, there's a couple of ways we can talk about it.

And obviously, when I said all humans are in God's will, I'm talking about his sovereign will there.

I'm not saying they're all pleasing him. That's two different things. So there's a couple of ways we can talk about God's will.

One is we can talk about his revealed will. And here it is right here. It's in this book. The Bible is

God's revealed will. And it touches on every issue of life, though not every detail.

Every issue, but not every detail. It's not gonna tell you which house to buy when you're moving to a new house. Where's Ron, right?

I mean, the Bible didn't tell you which house. Now, the Holy Spirit can lead you that direction.

And I would assume in your life, that's exactly what happened. But the Bible touches on every issue of life.

In fact, it's the owner's manual for human beings. And it has every issue of life is touched upon in the

Bible. So that's God's revealed will. But the second thing, we might call it God's secret will.

And that is he has a plan and we're in it, and there's only one. It's the best plan, it's the only plan, and we're in it.

And that plan included Adam and Eve falling, didn't it? How do we know? Because that's what happened, all right?

So what's interesting about it though, as you try to study God's sovereignty, we run into a mental difficulty or dilemma when we wanna talk about man's will, man's ability to make decisions and do what he wants to do.

And man always, by the way, does what he wants to do. And God always, by the way, holds him accountable for that.

So what did Adam and Eve want to do? Well, what did Satan get them to want to do? One simple, very simple little thing.

Oh, well, you don't know good and evil, you just know good. We know good and evil. God wouldn't wanna hold that from you since he knows it and I know it.

He'd want you to know it too, Eve. And so she was deceived into taking the forbidden fruit, wasn't she?

And so what did she ask for when she bit into that fruit the first time? What was she asking for?

To know what? Both good and evil. To have both good and evil.

And so that's what we have. And so many people look and say, well, if God is a good God, why does he let this?

Why does he allow that? Well, for one thing, God doesn't allow anything. He's the cause of all things. Chew on that one this week.

But why does he let bad things happen to good people? You'll hear a million things people will say blaming God as if they can shake their little fist up at God and say, why'd you do that if you're so good?

That's dangerous. I don't stand very near those kinds of people, especially not in the thunderstorm or even if there's not one.

Because one could come up really quickly. Shake the little fist. Well, listen, you know what

I tell people? Because people come to me, they know your pastor. They'll come and say things. I had one at a meeting up here in D .C.

Or was, no, sorry, might've been, where was it? New York or D .C.? New York, it was

New York City. And we only advertise for Tradeway on Christian radio.

And she was a little Jewish woman. So she's a Jewish woman who was listening to Christian radio and she came to a stock market meeting.

I'm bivocational, since you're visiting, in case you didn't know that. But she's visiting there.

And we have a lot of Bible in our Tradeway meetings. We talk about all the economic and financial principles that came from the

Bible, the oldest book in the world that has those, and we talk about it and she was enjoying it. But my goodness, she'd come up to me at the breaks and she was bitter.

Her husband had left her and she was bitter and it was God's fault. I didn't realize she was

Jewish at first. So I'm thinking, I've got this supposedly Christian woman very angry at God and telling me about it, blow by blow.

So what I told her was this very thing we're talking about this morning. I said, no, wait a minute. So what you're saying is some evil things happen in your life.

Your husband turned evil on you and treated you poorly and verbally abused you for years and put you down where you don't even feel the same anymore about life.

She said, that's it. And I said, well, have you ever stopped to think that that's what Adam and Eve asked for was to have good and evil.

I said, you're not gonna ever just get the good. That doesn't mean God's changed or that God's bad.

God is good. But think about the clouds and the seas and the waterfalls and the grand babies.

And that's what I like to think about the most nowadays it seems like. And all the beautiful thing, Hawaii, think about that.

Think about the air in Hawaii, the water, the salt air. It's almost not cursed

Hawaii. That's one of the few places that has very little curse in it Last time

I said that two hurricanes almost hit us while we were there. Think about those things, the goodness of life, your spouse, the first time you fall in love.

I won't say this because there's some teenagers. Yeah, well, your first boyfriend or girlfriend, it's inevitable, right?

I mean, think about those good things but it comes together with the bad things too. You never get just one, you get both.

And that's man's fault, man made that choice. And people love to blame God for that. Adam and Eve made the choice and they're our parents and we were, you can telescope us right back to their loins.

We were there when they made it and we were born in the world with their sin nature. So God is good and he is sovereign and his will shall be done.

And part of his will was that man would fall because part of his will was that man would be saved by his own son.

And the scripture says Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world. He came in the triune being and said, among that counsel of God, I will die in their place.

Father, you have certain human beings that you're going to save from that entirely lost race and you're going to adopt them as your children.

I will die for them and my blood will take and cover and remove every sin that they have so that you can righteously receive them as your own.

And that happened before God made anything. And we know that, but wouldn't you agree that as we are a little bit limited on our abilities to see the future, we're not like God, we're not omniscient.

We don't know everything. We don't see the future. I think it's good that we don't see the future, don't you?

And so we want to be in God's will. We are going to be in God's will, but we want to be in his will too at the same time.

In other words, what are we saying? We don't know the future. We don't know all things. We wanna take some steps today and tomorrow.

And when we take those steps, we want God to be pleased with them. That's what we mean when we say we wanna be in God's will, right?

It's a little different meaning than that his plan is gonna happen. His plan's just flat gonna happen.

We know that, that's the sovereignty of God. That's gonna happen, we know that. But at the same time, we make choices. As Christians, we make choices every nanosecond.

And we want those choices to be pleasing to the Lord, and that's what we mean when we say we wanna know God's will, isn't it?

So it's a little different. So how do we do that? How do we know where to step, which direction to go?

Well, I'm gonna give you five points this morning, and the beautiful thing is that God gave me two wonderful mentors, aside from my dad and my mom.

And one was Dr. Erwin Freeman, you all know about Brother Rocky, we called him

Rocky Freeman. And the other was Brother Otis, who sat right over there, right where Bill is, for 13 years, and then went to be with the

Lord. Those two men were, their influence on me only overlapped by two years, because Brother Rocky died two years after I met

Otis. And they knew each other for only two years, and the first year, they did not like each other, because they were jealous over me, and they each thought the other one might lead me astray.

But the second year, they both learned to love and admire each other. And I remember how it happened.

It's so funny, they were so different, the men, the two men were so different. When I knew Otis was okay with Rocky, we were at coffee one morning, he said,

Brother David, this was the second year after the first year telling me, I don't know about him, you know. But the second year, Brother David, I think he might be the most brilliant man

I've ever met. Well, I knew that meant he liked him, all right. So then I went to see Brother Rocky at his house about the same week.

He had just, Rocky had just been here to preach for us, and Otis, of course, sitting right there while Rocky was preaching.

So I went up to see Brother Rocky, and he said, Brother Rocky. No, he said, Brother David, that Otis okay, isn't he?

And that's how I knew he liked him. It was great for me.

I didn't like that little battle. And so then Brother Rocky went to heaven. So we had

Brother Otis another 11 years after that. But what's interesting, they both taught me five, actually four steps to know

God's will, and they meant the kind we're talking about where we're moving into the future wanting to please him with what we choose to do.

Does that make sense? They both gave me four steps, and guess what? They were identical, and they didn't even know each other.

They didn't know each other except for two years, and they had long since both taught me their ideas on that, and they matched, and here they are.

Now I added a fifth point myself. I'm gonna give you that one too. So here's the first one. So you're wanting to know

God's will for your life, and of course what Paul preached was that he desired that they might be filled with the knowledge of God's will, and all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

God wanted that for his children. I'm sorry, God, yes. But Paul wanted that for his converts, and we want that for each other, don't we?

So how do we have the knowledge of his will? The first thing is ask this. Does my heart desire to do this thing?

So maybe you're looking at something in the future, and you're wanting to know if it would please the

Lord, and if it's what the Lord wants you to do. Ask the question first, do I desire to do it? You might say, well, that's a dangerous question to ask.

Well, remember, I didn't say it's the only question. Excuse me. I'm having some allergies.

I think that ragweed is kicking up all of a sudden. Anybody else notice that?

Only the ones who have allergies. So Dave Huber and myself are noticing it, and Sammo.

Where was I? Totally forgot where I am. Point number one,

I know that. It was a sub -point, like little b or c under that point number one.

Okay, all right, I remember. It's a dangerous question if it were the only point, wouldn't it? That could never be, here's how you know

God's will. There's only one point to it. Do you want to do it? That wouldn't work. But it is the first question you ask.

Do I have a desire to do this thing? Now, why is it a dangerous question if it were the only point, though? Because we just started out this morning talking about two natures that we have, right?

We are the new man, but we have the old man still with us. And he desires to do lots of stuff the

Lord wouldn't be pleased with, doesn't he? That's why we have to be careful about giving him control of our mind and body.

And part of him is our brain, by the way. Part of the old man is the brain. But the new man is the spirit being that controls our brain.

It's us, we should control our brain because it's part of our body. We're supposed to be in control all the time of what our brain is thinking.

When your brain will think stuff you don't even want to think. That's what Paul was talking about. I find myself doing that which I don't want to do, not doing that which

I want to do, thinking things I don't want to think. Has that ever happened to you? Realize that that's normal.

That's a normal part of the Christian walk because that's chapter seven of Romans. So when your brain thinks something you don't want to think, how do you deal with it?

Your new man should come in and say, Lord, give me the mind of Christ. That's not what

I want to be thinking. Give me the mind of Christ. And when you pray that prayer, that's very good spiritual warfare praying, immediately the other thought will leave.

It'll have to flee. And you walk that way all the time. So if you ask, do

I have the desire to do this? We have to be a little careful with that because if we haven't been walking in the spirit predominantly, then we might desire to do something

God doesn't want us to do, correct? So it's not the only point. However, I will say this, if we've been predominantly walking in the spirit and I would have to say, if you're saved anyway, that that becomes pretty much directly proportional to how much you're in this work.

The word of God. Because if you're in the word of God and walking with the Lord, you're predominantly walking the spiritual walk and the spiritual walk is gonna have the correct desires.

The new man cannot sin. First John teaches us that. He cannot and won't sin. So if you're predominantly walking under the influence of the spiritual you, the real you, then the desires of your heart are actually a whole different thing.

In fact, if we go into John chapter five verse, I'm sorry, first John 5, 15 and Psalm 37, four, which we may not have time to actually read those, but if you'll check them out later, you'll see that the

Psalm says that God gives us the desires of our hearts. It's interesting to do a word study on that.

Does it mean that he sees what we desire and grants it or does it mean he puts the desire in the heart?

There's evidence that it means he puts the desire in the heart and that's why it's the first step in knowing what

God wants you to do of God's will. Where do I go tomorrow? First step is do I have the desire to do it?

Because if God wants you to do it, he'll put the desire in your heart. Now you say, well, God will have us do things we don't desire, that's right.

That's how we know he had to put the desire there or we wouldn't have done it because our own desire did not wanna do it.

You see my point? Second step is this. Do I have the means to do it?

So do I have the desire to do it? Did God put in my heart a desire to do this thing? Secondly, has

God made a way for me to do it? Because if he's gonna have you do it, he's gonna make a way for you to do it. Now you may not see all of the way but can you see an inkling of the way?

Can you see a way he might could make the means available for you to do this thing you're wanting to do? And that's a great second question to ask.

If you look in Philippians chapter two, verse 13, it says that God not only causes us to do his will but he causes us to want to do his will and he also provides the means for us to do his will.

He will bring forth the physical things and the physical universe that we need to accomplish whatever it is he wants us to do.

All right, so do I desire to do it? Do I have the means to do it? The third check is this. Does it contradict scripture anywhere?

Because all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is all we need to thoroughly furnish the man or woman of God to do the work of God.

So the scripture will touch on it, maybe not specifically that thing but it will touch on areas of it and we need to make sure that it lines up with scripture and doesn't contradict anything.

The scripture would clearly say, and what do we call that? The revealed word of God. It does not contradict the revealed will of God.

Okay, so that's the third one. The fourth one is, can

I do this and have peace with the Lord? Do I have a peace about it as I contemplate this very thing?

In fact, I would like to read a little bit of that one because I think I'm going too fast today which is really unusual for me.

So turn to Psalm 85 with me if you would. All right, let's just look at verses one through eight.

Okay, it says, Lord, thou has been favorable unto thy land.

Thou has brought back the captivity of Jacob. Thou has forgiven the iniquity of thy people.

Thou has covered all their sin. Thou has taken away thy wrath.

Thou has turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. Turn us, O God, of our salvation.

Now that phrase, turn us, is kind of like turn us in the right direction.

Would you agree with that? Cause thine anger toward us to cease.

Wilt thou be angry with us forever? So this is maybe, you know, King David saying,

I took some steps in my life that didn't please you. Now that doesn't mean it wasn't part of God's sovereign will for David's life.

And it was or it wouldn't have happened. Sometimes to teach David a lesson, we don't know all the purposes of God and all the things that he brings to pass.

But at the same time, David was making choices and he was making choices that didn't line up with the revealed will of God, therefore it didn't please

God. Both can happen at the same time. It can be God's will, if you're talking about his sovereign will, but it might not please him if you're making choices that contradict the revealed will of God.

And this is the place David found himself in, but verse six, he says, wilt thou not revive us again?

What does that mean? Cause me to walk in the new man again. Now, David didn't fully understand the idea of walking in a new man cause that happened after Pentecost, but he foresaw it and he saw it through a glass darkly, didn't he?

He didn't fully understand it, but he knew about it. And so for us, that's what this would be.

Wilt thou not revive us again and bring us back close to you, walking with you? That will help us to take the right steps, won't it?

That thy people may rejoice in thee. And so here we start to see that once God turns us and we're back walking according to the spiritual man and according to his spirit, we then start to have some joy in our heart again.

We can rejoice again. Show us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation.

I will hear what God the Lord will speak. So there we are now, we're combining the word of God, the written word of God with the

Holy Spirit speaking to us with the word of God. Some people among Presbyterian groups and even some

Baptist groups don't think the Holy Spirit speaks to us that way anymore, but he does. But never to the contradiction of the written word, never.

Always in line with it. But certainly he can speak to us in a way that the

Bible cannot because the Bible could not tell you which house to move in, Brother Ron, but the

Holy Spirit could. Always remember that. If you read too much Presbyterian stuff, which is what I read for theology, the

Presbyterians are the mind of God, the Baptists are the heart of God, maybe. Used to be, anyway. I'd probably say used to be for both camps, unfortunately.

But the Holy Spirit can speak to us and does, and maybe not with an audible voice, but with impressions and a feeling of peace, and that's what we're talking about here.

So verse eight says, I will hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace unto his people and to the saints.

But let them not turn again to folly. So you see, as we talk about us walking in God's will, and what we mean by that is walking in a way that pleases him, that question of do

I have a peace in my heart about this as I contemplate doing this thing out in the future is very important because God will take away the peace if he doesn't want you to do it.

If you're honest, if you're an honest Christian walking in the spirit, God will remove peace and you won't want to do it because you won't have a peace about it.

How many of you have experienced that before? See, that's all around. It's how it works. So now we have four things.

Number one, do I have a desire in my heart to do it? I'm trying to figure out if something moving forward is

God's will for my life. Do I want to do it? Number two, do I have the means to do it? Has God put the means around me to do this?

Number three, does it contradict scripture? And number four, do I have a peace with God as I contemplate this thing?

Now that's what my mentors taught me. I've added a fifth one. And you might say it this way, if the other four are go, go, go, go, and go, then the fifth thing you should do is take a step.

You should take steps because you can't just believe something, you have to do if you're going to get things done for God.

So turn with me to Psalm 37. Let's take a look at that one. And probably for sake of time, we'll just go to about verse 23.

Take a step. You have some grit about it and take a risk.

If you study the parable of the talents, you'll understand that God put something in the universe called the risk -return trade -off.

We study it in business all the time. In churches, it's not studied much, but it's in the scripture and God invented it, put it in the universe.

Can't do business without it, but you can't really do life without it. It's a risk if you date somebody.

It's a risk if you go, we used to call it go steady, now they call it date, I think, which is totally wrong.

Should be the way we did it, all right? It's a risk if you get engaged and it's a risk if you get married and it's a risk when you have children and it's a risk when you have grandchildren because God could take any one of those to heaven, in your opinion, early at any time and break your heart.

Right? Think about that risk. Well, are you willing to have that risk? Well, let me tell you this.

You don't get the good by itself. You get the good with the evil. That's what we ask for and that's what we live in, that world.

So we have both. We will have death in our families, won't we? And all of us who are older hope it's us first, right?

You know, that's how it should be, we think, but it's not always that way, is it? So are you willing to take risk?

Well, if you don't want that risk, you just don't date and you certainly don't get married and you certainly don't have children and you certainly tell your children never get married.

If you're not willing to take that risk, but I'm willing to take it, the greatest joys in my life have come from all those things

I just mentioned and still do. So if you're gonna accomplish anything in life, you have to take a step towards it.

That's called a risk because you don't know it's gonna work, do you? You don't know the future. It's a risk.

There is no return. There is no reward in this life without risk and God loves educated risk.

In business, don't ever do something you hadn't studied everything about how to do that business because God doesn't like gambling, but God loves educated risk in all of businesses like that.

So life is a gamble if what you mean by that is you don't know how it's gonna come out, but it's not gambling because gambling, the house has stacked it against you.

In business, you've stacked it in your favor by knowing the skill sets. There's a big difference. So with life, same thing.

So let's see what the Bible has to say about taking steps. Psalm 37, verse 23. But the steps of a good man are ordered by the

Lord, and he delighteth in his way. And though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down for the

Lord upholdeth him in his hand. That's where we get the courage to take a risk.

Right there. It says, yes, you're gonna fall. You're gonna, some of the decisions you make as you seek to please the

Lord are going to cause you to stumble and fall. But you'll never be utterly cast down by your shepherd because it's his job to pick you up and get you going again.

And you always are in his hand. That actually is my favorite Bible verse out of the whole

Bible and has been for the last 40 years. So take a step. So now,

I think we have the wherewithal to realize that we can have the knowledge of God's will for our life.

In fact, the Apostle Paul's great prayer for his people was that they might grow and be filled with the knowledge of God's will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that we might walk worthy of the

Lord in all pleasing. That walk is actually doing things. It's the life we live. And we need to know his will for that.

And that's how we do it. All right, now, if you go on into the next verse, the next verse somewhere else, unless I'm gonna look it back up again.

Okay, look at verse 12. Let's see. Yeah, I got a little time. Look at verse 12. So now we've talked about the 10th thing that the

Holy Spirit gives us when we are first saved and continues to help us with our whole life.

And that is knowledge of God's will and having spiritual understanding. We might say that that concept of spiritual understanding, we could call that the 11th thing.

Because think about it. The Bible says very clearly that those who are not born again have no spiritual discernment.

They cannot understand spiritual things, right? So one of the things that he does when he does save us is he brings us knowledge of his will and spiritual understanding.

So the 11th thing then is he gives us that gift of ability to understand spiritual things. I remember when

Brother Otis used to ask, how do you know if you're saved or not? And one of the things he would say, well, ask yourself this question.

In studying the scripture, have you ever learned anything new, spiritual, from the Bible? And if the answer is yes, you're saved because lost people cannot do that.

And I've always, I remember that was one of the ones we've talked about. Sometimes Brother Otis would say something and you go home thinking,

I'm not sure I agree with that one. That was one for me. I don't know about you. What'd you think about that first time you heard it?

I didn't either. But what did you come to think about it? Me too.

Me too. Because I came to know what he meant by it. And the truth is a lost person cannot learn anything spiritual.

It's impossible. Scripture says that. So if you're learning, if you're growing, don't let the devil talk you into thinking yourself you're not saved because we still sin.

That's all of Romans chapter seven. We still sin. We're not sinners because in the scriptural language that means a habitual lifestyle of certain sin habits.

We're not that anymore. We're walking towards the light. We've turned our back on the darkness.

We're walking towards the light. But we still make mistakes and we sin, don't we?

All right, so are we to a place though where we have spiritual understanding?

And if the question is, that doesn't mean you understand every passage. There's some difficult passages in the Bible and we never all learn them at the same time.

That's so we can teach each other. That's on purpose too. All of it's on purpose. So are you learning spiritual things?

That's a great sign of your salvation. All right, so now let's go on to the next verse.

Look at verse 10. And we're back in Colossians chapter one now, by the way.

That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

And I wanna look at this 12th point here, being fruitful in every work with the little bit of time that we have left.

Now earlier, if you go back to verse six, in case you weren't here last time, go back and look at verse six.

We'll draw your attention to a significant, slight difference in meaning. Verse six says that one of the things that God does for us when we get saved, it says, which is coming to us as it is in all the world.

Now what's it talking about that came to us? Well, if you look up at verse five, you'll see it's talking about the word of truth. That's the

Bible. The written word, the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, which is coming to us as it is in all the world and bringeth forth fruit.

So what is it that's bringing forth fruit there? What's the subject of that sentence? The Bible.

So verse six talks about one of the gifts God gives us when we get saved is it makes the Bible bear fruit in my life because he's made me to be good ground.

It's like planting seed in good ground and God fertilizes it and it grows and it bears fruit. But verse 12 is a different thing.

Verse 12, I'm sorry, verse 10, point number 12, the 12th thing God does for us is different.

It's talking about us bearing fruit. Now it's impossible for us to bear fruit if the

Bible's not bearing fruit inside of us. But if it is, then another gift the Holy Spirit gives us is the ability to do good works that in God's view are actually good.

To actually bear fruit, to be fruitful in every good work.

Now, we'll just get started on that this morning because that's a topic in and of itself and we're about out of time.

But when you wanna talk about fruit bearing in the life of a Christian, there's some very important things to know.

So I'm gonna start off, we got, I don't know, five minutes or so. Turn to Mark chapter 11.

I'm gonna get you thinking about some things to take home and think about before Sunday after next. I won't be with you next

Sunday, but God willing, Sunday after that, I'm gonna pick up right here on this 12th point. The 12th thing

God gives us is the ability to bear fruit. Lost people cannot do this. This is a spiritual thing.

And I just wanna get you thinking about the whole concept in the New Testament in particular about fruit bearing.

So the place I would like to start is right here in Mark chapter 11 where Jesus is entering and on his way to Jerusalem and he's heading to the temple in Jerusalem.

And let's pick up the story right there at verse 11, chapter 11 of Mark. And Jesus entered into Jerusalem and into the temple.

And when he had looked around about all things and now it was evening, he went out into Bethany with the 12.

And then on the morrow, in other words, the next day, when they were come from Bethany, Jesus was hungry.

So they went in, he went into Jerusalem, he looked around the temple and then they went back out of town to rest for the evening.

And then the next morning they were headed back into town and this is what happened. On the way in, Jesus was hungry.

What does that teach us about Jesus? The humanity of Jesus Christ, he was fully man, he was hungry.

And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, in other words, it was green, it was alive, he came to the fig tree, if happily he might find anything there on to eat.

Now, what would you typically find on a fig tree to eat? A fig or maybe a bird, but probably

I think he's talking about the fig, don't you think? All right, so he looked to see if there was anything there.

And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves for the time of figs was not yet.

And Jesus answered and said unto the tree, now he's talking to a tree, why can he do that?

Because he made the tree. No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever.

And the disciples heard him curse the tree. Why did he curse the tree?

Because it didn't have what on it? Fruit, it didn't have fruit and he was what? Hungry, and so he cursed the tree.

Now, let me ask you, do you really think that he cursed the tree because he's angry at the tree?

It was a lesson, wasn't it? And it caused exactly what he wanted it to cause because the next phrase says, and the disciples heard it.

Well, they don't hear his lectures, but they do hear his object lessons. That's how humans are, isn't it?

And so that's what he wanted, they heard it. And he didn't say a word about it right off the bat because he wanted them thinking about why did he do this?

And they came to Jerusalem and they didn't have the guts to ask him, why'd you do that? But they were freaked out. Not nearly as bad as they were the next time they left town and went by that tree and it was dead.

Only like a day later, it was dead. And it was fully green leafed and healthy when he cursed it.

So they're not quite as freaked out as they will be, but they are already. And they came to Jerusalem and Jesus went into the temple.

And he began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple and overthrew the temples, the tables of money changers and the seats of them that sold doves in the house of God.

They were merchandising and making profits in the house of God. All of this is a study on fruit bearing, by the way.

And I hope to bring out the hidden meanings in this as we go through it in the next few

Sundays. So remember, we're talking about a tree that was not bearing fruit.

We get into town and he begins to cast out those who were selling and doing things they weren't supposed to be doing in God's house.

And he would not allow that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.

And he taught saying unto them, is it not written, my house shall be called of all nations, the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

So now with this overall topic of fruit bearing, Jesus is pointing out that sometimes we allow the house of God to not be what it's supposed to be.

Now tell me there's not a lesson in that as we look at the modern church in America today. Tell me there's not a lesson in there as we look at the mega church.

And I'm not saying church is bad because it's big. But if you look at the typical mega church and what made it big, there are a lot of things there that Jesus would cast out.

And how I know that, he's already done it. He's done it in this story.

And so that's part of, if you look at a corporate church bearing, like the whole group of people in that particular place bearing fruit.

If you're in a church where you have people bearing fruit versus not, one of the things you wanna be very careful is that in that church you don't have things that Jesus would cast out, or at least you look for those things, try to get rid of them.

You know, you try to not being doing the things that he would cast out of a genuine church that had the lamp in it, which means his presence in it.

And so we see allusions to that here. And he taught saying, I'm sorry, we covered that.

Verse 18, and the scribes and the chief priests heard this and they sought how they might destroy him. Well, I will tell you this, if you attempt to change a religious organization from being just a religious organization to being a real church, they're gonna wanna kill you.

Pharisees hate the truth. What is a Pharisee? It's a person that would rather set up a system, a group of programs in a church where we have this, every night of the week we got programs going on, and we have this list of things that makes you a good

Christian are not so good if you do or don't do these things. And every church tends to go through a cycle of going that direction, sadly enough.

And it's not a good thing. And if you went in and you tried to reverse that cycle and move that church back towards true spirituality and letting

Jesus be the lamp in the church, the ones that are there in power will try to literally kill you.

Now, they may not in our society literally physically try to kill you, but they will assassinate your name and your personality by gossiping behind your back and this and that and the other.

So keep that in mind, it's been this way and it will be this way, it's how it is. So the scribes and the chief priests, the religious leaders who liked it like it was, they liked the carnal church set up under man's rules, not the way

God said set it up at all, and they like it, so when Jesus comes in there and cleans it out, they wanna kill him, quite natural.

And when evening was come, oh, by the way, let's finish that verse, they saw how they might destroy him for they feared him.

Now look at this, because all the people were astonished at his Bible teaching because it didn't put him to sleep, it wasn't dead out boring.

He could bring forth both old and new and he was filled with the Holy Spirit and he was anointed to teach.

And they had not seen that from these Pharisees. And this made them wanna kill him even more because they saw the people loved his teaching.

Now they're jealous. And when the evening was come, he went out of the city and in the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots up.

It had died from the ground up and it was dead. And Peter calling to remembrance, wait a minute, isn't that the tree he cursed?

He said unto him, master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursed is withered away.

Let's just leave it there and we'll pick that up next time. There are many lessons about fruit bearing that we can find in this passage that are very helpful, both to us individually, but also to the church corporately.

Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that you give us all that we need to know to be thoroughly fit for your service through the word of God and by your

Holy Spirit being our teacher. We must have the water and the spirit both to be saved and also to grow.

Thank you that you've provided both to us. Lord, thank you that you've given us each other to strengthen our mutual faith together.

Thank you that you've given us your presence here with us today as well. We ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship here coming up.

Bless the meal that we're gonna have and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, we'll have lunch.

We do lunch here every Sunday, so we'd love to have you stay. We always bring plenty for everybody.