Welcome to the podcast of the White Church in Adelaide, South
Australia. Sin no longer has dominion over
us. Romans 6 We can live victorious
over sin over the flesh. We can live righteously, and we
should. But more importantly, we can.
Yeah. And I just want to just try and
help us define, you know, the flesh.
What is the flesh? When we say that, you know, we
need to not be in the flesh but in the Spirit, what is it?
What are we talking about? So we are, we are in the flesh.
You know, that might just mean our physical bodies, like
there's our physical bodies are made-up of flesh.
And you know, God breathed the Spirit into us.
So if we were flesh and spirit and God is spirit like there's
there's a difference between the man that he formed from the dust
and God himself. God is spirit. 2 Corinthians 3
says now the Lord is the spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty and it and it teaches that Jesus is the
word that became flesh. So that was God coming into a
fleshly body. God is not flesh.
God is spirit. Jesus is both.
But Jesus was, Jesus is very special.
Jesus was God as a man in the flesh.
Amazing. And so there is a difference
between the spirit and the flesh.
And we mustn't trust in our flesh.
We must trust in the spirit. I'm going to, I'm going to let
me just keep going. So there's, there's a
separation, as I said, between the spirit and the flesh.
And we're called to live in the spirit and not the flesh.
So the two like, although I am a spiritual being in a fleshly
body, but there is a separation and there is a difference.
And I'm and I'm called to live a life submitted to God the Spirit
and follow the spirit and not follow the flesh.
And we're and again, we're not talking about my physical body,
but but So what is the flesh then?
So the flesh, the flesh wants to to rule.
Gosh, I haven't worded this well so far.
Our flesh wants to rule, right? So, so when, when Adam and Eve
were created, we were created to be subject to, to God.
God ruled over over his creation over people.
And so there was a problem when when we stepped outside of that
of of that rulership, outside of that lordship, how did we step
outside of that lordship? God through sin.
So God gave us command, don't eat from that tree, from all of
these other trees, just don't eat from that tree.
And we stepped out from under the authority of God, under his
Lordship, under his rule. And when we did that, when we
separate ourselves from being under his, his lordship, do you
know what happens? We become Lord, we become they
chose to do what they wanted to do.
They listen to their own desires, their own flesh.
This is the flesh. It's it's wanting to rule.
Your flesh wants to be king. Your flesh wants to have its own
way. But we were never created to
live that way, to be the king, to be the Lord to to be the
ruler of of myself. We were always created to be
under the Lord, under his protection, under him.
This is what we're designed to do.
So when you step out of design, things don't work anymore.
You know, if I try to use a spoon to cut a steak, it doesn't
work. It's not designed to do that.
And so when we live outside of God's design, things don't go
well for us. And you can vouch for that.
Like, you know, think about the life that we've lived in.
Things just haven't really gone right for us.
There's a reason for that because we were never designed
to be Lord and to be king of our of our own universe.
And so we see that. Does this make sense?
So, so your flesh wants to the rule wants to be #1 that's the
thing inside us that we need to recognize.
That's what we need to be able to discern.
Am I trying to be my own boss right now, or am I submitted to
the Lord? We need to be able to discern
that. Satan tempted flesh, didn't he?
He tempted that desire to be king, to be Lord, to rule for
yourself. Did God really say that if you
eat that you will have this for yourself?
You what does he say? It says that you will be like
God, which is interesting, isn't it?
So you can see clearly that Satan is tempting this fleshly
desire that wants to rule and and obviously Adam and Eve fell
to that. They thought, sure, that sounds
good, wasn't good, right? And so, you know, the Bible is
very clear that, you know, that that temptation came from Satan.
Satan wasn't doing anything new. You know, Isaiah 1414 says this
of Satan. This is his words.
He says, I will ascend above the heights of the cloud.
I will be like the Most High. Do you see the problem?
Satan thought it was a good idea that he should rule.
Well, I, I'm wonderful, I'm powerful.
I should rule. You should share, you know, your
lordship with me. It's exactly the same thing.
This is exactly what Satan tempts Adam and Eve with.
It's the same thing that they fell to.
And so, you know, we would say that they, that you know, they,
they, they came out from under the lordship of Christ of God
and became their own gods. But we know that what really
happened is they became under Satan.
He was now their Lord God gave a commandment.
They rejected the commandment. Whose commandment did they
follow? Satan's.
They followed Satan's leading. Satan gave them an option, and
they took that option. Not gods.
So they became under his authority.
Do you see? All right.
I hope that's making sense. What happens with me is I go off
note and then I say all the things that are in my notes, and
then I have to come back in here and try and find out where I'm
at. Maybe one day I should just do
away with the notes, right? All right, so resisting the
flesh and coming back under God's authority and being led by
the Spirit. Well, I just gave it away.
What's that called? That's been called led by the
Spirit, right? We are called to be led by the
Spirit. And so when we, we choose, you
know, we spoke earlier about there's a choice that needs to
be made by us that we choose to open ourselves up to the Lord.
We choose to come back under his authority.
That's what happens when we're saved.
We say, Lord, you are my Lord, you are my king, you are my
Saviour. I yield to you.
And when we do that, we are yielding to the Spirit of God.
And that's like a moment by moment walk for you and I now,
because we still live in the flesh.
We still live with these desires that want, you know, I want
what's best for me, not what's best for others at any given
moment. Gosh, I just think about my life
and, you know, having kids and and these sort of things at any
given moment. I just want things to work out
better for me. You know, it takes sacrifice to
raise kids well because you have to put off your own wants and
desires to for them to help them to be raised up.
It's no different with the life that we live.
We have to submit our own wants and desires for the good of
others. And that's what love is.
When you define love, that's what love is.
Love is selflessness, isn't it? So we're where God is trying to
form us to be like him, loving. Did Jesus do the will of the
Father? Yes, of course.
Did Jesus do the things that he didn't want to do for the
greater good? Yes, he did.
Jesus didn't want to go to the cross.
Jesus's flesh really didn't want to go to the cross.
And we read that, which is a powerful thing because you know
Jesus. Like we see there's this pattern
here that Adam and Eve, they fell to these desires to do
their own will and they and sin came into the world and ruined
everything. Jesus, God in the flesh came and
lived and didn't succumb to the, to the flesh, to the, to the, to
the pool to want to do what he wanted to do, but he, he was
subject to God's will and he was victorious.
He saw that thing through, which is pretty powerful that you and
I could be saved because we didn't see it through either.
You know, I, I say that, you know, Adam and Eve is just like,
gosh, any single one of us in the garden would have made
exactly the same mistake as Adam and Eve did.
Every single one of us would have fallen.
God knows that. But thank God that that that God
sent his son Jesus, because he knew my son, my son will be
victorious. My son will not yield.
Yeah. And we are the sons of daughters
in Christ. And so let's just talk about
emotions for a moment here. Are emotions bad?
No. God gave us emotions.
Did Jesus display emotion? Yes.
Did what? What sort of emotions?
Joy. Peace, sadness.
You know, he, Jesus wept. Jesus showed compassion.
Jesus showed anger. Don't look at me like I'm just,
I'm just reading what the Bible said, right?
Jesus showed anger. Did Jesus show anger in a, in a
fleshly way? No, it wasn't selfish.
Jesus was angry for what they had done.
You know, Jesus made a whip. Jesus drove him out.
Jesus turned the tables. Was Jesus mad because they'd
messed things up? Oh my gosh, they've done it
again, throwing the tables. No, Jesus was had zeal for the
house. What if you guys doing to the
Father's house zeal, anger. You know, the the Bible says be
angry and do not sin, So you could feel anger and not sin.
Isn't that interesting? Like we think that if you're
angry that you've fallen into sin, that's not true.
What about people that are abusing children?
What about people that are doing horrible things in our earth?
Should we be angry about that? Should that stir something in us
to go, no, we're not going to stand for that.
Righteous anger is a good thing. Acting out in in a, in a fleshly
way because of the anger is a bad thing.
If I take it on myself to, to rid the earth of all of these
people, is that righteousness now?
No, I'm acting out in my flesh, right?
God will judge. God will deal with it.
All of the atrocities in our
earth, all of the things that have happened, God will deal
with it. I can be angry about it, but I'm
going to trust him, right? We're going to trust that our
Lord and Saviour, he's finished work and the work to come,
right? There's a finished work on the
cross, but God has work to do still.
God's going to judge the earth, right?
There's a work in that. And so all of that to say that
emotions are not an enemy. We just have to make sure that
our emotions don't rule over us, that the Lord rules over us.
We have to submit our emotions to the Lord.
Lord, I'm feeling something right now.
Gosh. Plus submit to you, Lord, just
just use me, do whatever it is you want.
Don't let me act out in my own flesh.
Don't let me act out in my own strength.
Lord, you know, we see that Jesus was tempted by Satan.
Did Jesus like it's the same story again.
The, the, the pattern is all the way through the Scripture.
Did did Satan tempt the Spirit of God or did he?
Did he tempt the flesh? You're hungry.
You've been fasting for 40 days. Why don't you just make some
bread and eat the bread you know you'd like?
You're the Son of God. Why don't you just throw
yourself down there and see if God will save you?
Why don't you just take the Kingdom for yourself?
It's yours anyway, right? He's tempting the flesh, and
Jesus is not having it. I will take nothing for myself.
I will let the Father decide, you know what he is going to
give me. I will yield to him.
I will do his will right. And and we love talking about
how Jesus fought, fought Satan in this by the word of God.
And he didn't just like, it's not like he just picked up a
Bible and just, you know, he didn't pick up a Bible, but it's
not just he didn't just speak these words to Satan to rebuke
Satan. It wasn't just like, well, the
word of God says this, so run away.
Do you know that he actually believes these words?
Do you know that when Jesus spoke the word that he was
submitting to the word, he was submitting to God, He was
saying, no, what you say is, is a liar.
These words are true. What the Lord says is true.
So it's not, it's no good just to know the Scripture and to say
it and to try and fight the enemy and fight your flesh with
the word. You know, it's believing it,
it's having it live inside you, it's trusting the Lord, it's
yielding yourself to to God and to his word.
That's how we fight the enemy. That's how we overcome Satan, by
believing it, not by just knowing it.
All right, I'm actually doing pretty good for time.
This is great. All right, so I'm going to read
when when Bruce was sharing in one of these meetings, I can't
remember which one it was, but a scripture came to mind for me
from John 831. And I'm going to read it for us
here. But I just want to sort of set
us up for this because I want to try and test us a little as I
read this. And so I'll give you some of the
context of the passage. Jesus is, is teaching and, and
Jesus says that he is talking to believers, those that believe
Jesus. And Jesus is sharing good news.
You know, he's talking about freedom.
Jesus is sharing a good thing. He's saying good things to
believers, right? That's the context or some of
the context. But I want us to be aware of how
these believers respond to Jesus.
I want to help us to be able to discern the response that's
going on inside them, whether it is of the flesh or whether it is
of the Spirit. And this is going to help us to
be able to discern in our own lives when the Word of God is
spoken to us. When you read the Word of God,
the things that I'm sharing today, what is our response?
Is it a fleshly response or is it a, a response in the spirit?
Because this matters a lot. And so I'm going to read from
Galatians 5 before we get there. And this is the fruits of the
flesh, right? These are the things that we
need to be looking out for, fruits of the flesh, enmity,
strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions,
divisions, right? Let's look out for some of those
things and the works of the Spirit.
These are the other, the other side that we need to be looking
for. Love, peace, joy, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control. All right, does that make sense?
We know what we're looking looking for.
Excellent. John 831.
There's a big chunk of Scripture here, so I'm just going to read
through all of it. So Jesus said to the Jews that
had believed him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my
disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set
you free. They answered him, We are
offspring of Abraham. We have never been enslaved to
anyone. How is it that you say you will
become free? Jesus answered them truly,
truly. I say to you, everyone who
practices sin is a slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the
house forever. The sun remains forever.
So if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.
I know that you are offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me
because my words find no place in you.
I speak of what I have seen of my father, and you do not.
And you have not heard from my father.
They answered him. Abraham is our father, Jesus
said to them. If you were Abraham's children,
you would be doing the works that Abraham did, but now you
seek to kill him. But now you seek to kill me, a
man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.
This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works of your
father, they said to him. We are not born of sexual
immorality. We have one father, even God.
Jesus said to them, If God were your Father, you would love me,
for I come from God and AM, and I'm here.
I come not to do my own accord, but he that sent me.
Why do you not understand what I say?
It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.
You are of your Father the devil, and your will is to do
the Father's desires. He was a murderer from the
beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no
truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of
his own character, for he is a liar and the father of liars.
But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.
Isn't that interesting? How are these believers going?
Not great, right? Not great.
Jesus is speaking to believers. How much joy and peace and
patience and self-control can we see in their response there?
It's like from the get go they're offended.
Oh my God, you, you can't say that, right?
Strife, jealousy, fits of anger, divisions.
There's the the fruit of the flesh is evident in their
response right now. I would say they are fleshing
out right and and it's crazy because Jesus again, Jesus is
speaking to believers and Jesus is offering them freedom.
He's offering those that believe him something good and they're
offended and they don't want to borrow of it.
And Jesus even tells us that they're in the flesh.
He says you are of your father the devil and your will is to do
the Father's will, right? Your will is not the Father's
will. You're not seeking the Spirit of
God. You're not being led by the
Spirit of God. Your will is to do the will of
of your father, Satan, which is again, it's what we started off
talking about. This is what happened.
People were LED astray by their flesh by temptation.
So you realize that this is super relevant for us today,
right? Because we do this like when we
hear the word of God, those challenging things that the the
challenging words that that start to to spike something in
here. Like we're we flesh out
sometimes to the word of God, to truth.
I can think of many things for me and I know that you can like
we've been, we've been under the word of God for long enough to
just go not listening to that thing.
And it's scary because it's like Jesus speaks to believers and
offers them freedom and straight away they're offended.
They don't hear a word that he says.
They hear nothing. And Jesus is almost marvelling,
actually not listening to what I'm saying.
But then he goes, of course you're not listening because
you're of you're of devil, you're of the flesh, you're not
of the spirit. Of course you can't hear, you
are unable to hear right. And it's, and it's relevant to
us today because we do this all the time with the Word of God.
God wants to shape us and form us and grow us to be like him.
And quite often we're digging our heels in and just unwilling,
unwilling to hear. And the problem is that when you
first dig your heels in, you're not going to hear the rest of
it. You could dig your heels into
something I said when I started talking and miss every other
word. You could dig your heels into
something that was said at the start of the meeting.
You could dig your heels into to something that we've sung.
You could come in with a heart that's already dug in because
something didn't go your way this morning and you could just
be fleshing out right. You might just come into church
and everything's gone wrong and your people did just hurt you or
whatever. You could miss the whole thing
And, and it's funny to us because it happens all the time,
all the time. None of us are safe from that if
we're not able to discern. You have to be able to discern
where you're at right now. You know, I said something to
Hillary this morning. I said he's up the flesh or he's
up the spirit. She didn't want to hear it like
I and I know that she didn't. And but we sort of we're joking
now and because it's because it's like it's lighthearted in
our relationship with one another.
You can get out of it. But when you're truly offended
and you're like, this person is just trying to ruin me, you're
not going to hear it, you know? So it's through relationship
that we're able to poke and Oh, I don't know that.
What about that one? And you just go, oh gosh, you
know, she does it to me all the time.
And you just walk away and you just go, I don't want to hear it
yet. Just give us 10 minutes, you
know, just give us 10 minutes to the for the flesh to settle
down. And then I'll listen.
You know, I'm going to get better at listening straight
away anyway. This is I'm getting sidetracked
here. And so again, like these, these
were believers, it said and, and Jesus said, like the scripture
says that that he was speaking to the believers.
And so, you know, our confession, like, how do we know
that we're sons of God? How do we know that we're
daughters of the king? How do we know that we follow
his will? Is it through confession or is
it through action? It is through action. 1st
through His confession, then through action.
But the action has to be there, otherwise it's just the
confession. These people were confessing to
be followers of Jesus. What did they do in action?
Rejected completely, couldn't hear him.
So for us, we need to be following Christ in confession,
but in action that means putting to practice the word of God.
And so I just got a couple of scriptures here that I just want
to read just to just to, you know, strengthen this point that
is through action and not not just through confession.
Matthew 715 says beware of the false prophets who come to you
in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous
wolves. You will know them by their
fruits. That's saying that, you know,
someone could be a leader in a church and they on the outside,
you know, through confession, they could say all the right
things, but through the life that they live and the things
that they submit to in in God and in his will, you will know
them by their fruits. You'll be able to look at their
the action side of this and you go, something's not right here,
right one John 2 but whoever keeps his word, truly the love
of God is perfected in him by this.
We know that we are in him. He who says he abides in him or
also himself also walk just as he walked.
So it's confession, but it's in action.
We have to. It's no good just to say that
you believe if you don't walk this thing out.
One more. James 214.
No, that's not right. I think it's 18.
Anyway, let me just read it. I don't know if it's I've got
the right number here, but someone will say you have faith
and I have works. Show me your faith through your
works and I will show you my faith by my works.
You believe there is one God. Listen to this.
You do well to believe that even the demons believe.
Even the demons believe that Jesus is who he says He is.
So it's no good for me just to confess that Jesus is Lord and
not submit myself unto Him, and to do what he's called me to do
and to live how he's called me to live.
Even the demons know that Jesus is Lord.
They don't submit to His will though, I can tell you that,
right? This is really powerful stuff
for us guys, because, you know, you could sit in a church your
whole life and confess, confess, confess, confess and it could be
meaningless. You would you, you could miss
that. It takes you actually living in
it. You know, if Jesus could have
confessed the word of God to Satan and it would have had no
power, but he, he knew it, he lived it.
The the power was in him. Do you see very powerful, I
mean, Jesus, you know, when Jesus tells Satan to run, he
runs anyway. So he's God, all right, So
learning to discern. I wonder what's going on right
now. I wonder what's going on in US
right now, whether there's this thing in US that just going, oh
gosh, I don't want to hear any of this or, or whether you're
just like, like, you know, I wonder what's going on or
whether we're sitting and we're like, Lord, I want to yield to
you. I, I struggle, it's hard.
I know that I must change. I know that I must, you know,
review my life and go, oh, I can't do that anymore.
You know, when, when we talk about the, the good seed of the
good soil of our hearts, I love this.
It says that, you know, when the word is sown.
Let me just read it. Mark 414 The so or so is the
Word and, and these are the ones on the path where the Word is
sown. When they hear it, Satan
immediately comes and takes it away.
The Word that was sown, that is a hard heart.
That is someone that is not yielding to God and to His Word.
That is someone who could hear the Word.
And Satan comes and tempts your flesh and grabs it and runs away
with it, and then it doesn't take root inside you.
So this is the soil of our hearts.
And so when we respond to God and to His Word and to His
leading and to His guiding, when we respond in the Spirit, when
we willingly yield ourselves completely over to Him, it's
just like, well, the Word of God says it.
That's it. If that's what you were telling
me to do, I'll try it. I'll try my best, Lord, but
you're going to have to help me. Do you know what I mean?
Like I like I want to Lord, you're going to have to give me
grace. You're going to have to
strengthen me. You're going to have to help me
work, work this out. You're going to have to help me
to be have courage to be accountable, right.
But I want to and I choose to. And so this is when the when the
seed can take deep root in our hearts.
So this is by but these are the ones whom that was sown on the
good ground. Those who hear the word, listen.
Those who hear it accept it, accept it, and it bears fruit.
Some 30, some 30, some 60, some a hundredfold.
They hear the word and they accept it and it and it takes
root in our hearts and there's a harvest there.
All right, So when Satan comes to steal the seed, how do we
fight that? What do what do we do with that?
Because he's coming and he does and he and he pokes the flesh
and you've got it. You know, you're not free from
it, right? So he's got Satan's got a way in
through the flesh. How do we battle that?
You know, it starts with humility.
It really does. Like it starts with being humble
with, you know, I've said all this already, but like bending
the knee of your heart to the Lord, humility, move right back
from the beginning that he would be God, that I would be not, you
know, that I, that I would be subject to him that he's Lord,
that I'm not that he's God that I'm not that I'm his servant.
He's my master. Humility does that.
You can't submit to God with a prideful heart.
It won't allow you to. We have to be humble to come to
God and you know that the word says God gives something to the
humble. Do you know what it is?
Grace. How good is that?
God gives grace to the humble to help us, to grow, to shape us,
to empower us. God gives grace to the humble.
We should be seeking grace because we need it.
How do we seek it? Through humility.
And I am closing here. I'm doing, I was like 4 minutes
to spare. We are we're smashing this
today. Thank you Lord, so you know,
everything that we need is in Scripture.
Hope you guys know that it's just like every single thing
that you need for life and God, godliness can be found in his
word. Everything.
There is nothing that you are lacking that God hasn't put in
his word for you to find. But you know, the word says that
like it's an honour to dig in there and to find it you have to
go searching. You know, you got to go
searching for the treasure and God's willing to give it to you,
but you have to do something. There's action, right?
Confession. Lord, I believe your word action
is going and finding out what it says, right?
And so God offers us these amazing promises in his Word,
and He also gives us the path to be able to take hold of the
promises. And so I'm just going to, I'm
closing by just reading this one last text here in James 4,
starting from verse 6. Have a look at this with me.
It says that James 4, verse 6, it says God resists the proud
and gives grace to the humble. Verse 7, listen for this.
This is a command. Verse 7, verse 7 is a command,
OK? And what we're looking at here
is God's commands and promises, commands and promises, commands
and promises. You know, that you can't take
hold of God's promises if you're just not willing to walk in his
commands, like these promises he's given us.
You know, there's conditions to the promises.
It's not. Yeah, freely, like just all the
promises of yours. Just walk in them.
Yeah, I'm just going to sin and, like, walk in the grace of God.
Like there's conditions to to receiving the promises,
humility, right? God gives grace to the humble.
But anyway, so verse 7 is a command.
It says therefore submit to God, resist the devil.
That's the command. Resist the devil, submit to God.
And then there's a promise. What is the promise?
And he will draw near to you. There's a command and there's a
promise. Verse 8, Command.
No. Did I do that one already?
Yeah. OK, so the next command is it's
the end of verse 8. It says clean your hands, you
sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded.
Lament and mourn and weep and let your laughter be turned to
mourning, and let your joy into gloom.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord.
It's like don't just go on living, you know, just in, in
ignorant bliss, just in happiness and joy and peace.
If if you're not willing to submit to the Lord and you're
living in your, it says like humble yourself.
Realize that you are broken. It takes humility to realize
that you are broken. You know what people don't want
to hear that they're broken. I've experienced this in the
last couple of weeks. Broken people don't want you to
tell them that they're broken. Maybe I just need to be more
tactful. I don't, I don't know.
And so, you know, that was the command.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord.
Promise, and He will lift you up.
How amazing are these promises? And He will draw near to you and
He will lift you up, right. So all of that just to say like,
let's be encouraged today. Let's not just live like, Oh my
gosh, that was heavy. There is such peace and and life
in the truth of the word of God. But in order to take hold of the
truth, it's going to require something of us.
And it's a simple thing. God hasn't made it hard for us.
God has just made it so that we would willingly, how good is
this, willingly submit to him. That's the reason that that's
what God has designed us to do. And there's such peace in living
in your design. My gosh, there's peace in living
in your design doing the thing that you're called to do.
How amazing is that? So I just, I encourage you like
I again, I don't know what was stirring in our hearts in this
place. In a sense, I, I, I hope that
there was a bit of the flesh going on because we're talking
about discerning. We're talking about being able
to see the difference between the flesh and the spirit when
the word of God is spoken. How am I responding to you,
Lord? But we don't I don't want to
leave us there in this place of of just, you know,
unresponsiveness. And so Ioffer us an opportunity
to seek the Lord together. You know, the word of God is
challenging, but it's challenging because there's a
powerful work that needs to be done in US and through US.
Amen. So let's just pray.
Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you for your divine purpose.
Lord, we thank you that that you are a good, good Father, that
you're a good God, and that you have nothing but good intentions
for us, your creation, your people.
We thank you, Lord, that you made a way for us through Jesus
and through the cross, through the death and the resurrection,
for us to be restored to you, for us to be able to overcome,
to be able to be empowered, Lord, to walk this thing out, to
have victory over sin. We thank you for that this
morning. And Lord, in in whatever the
things that you're speaking to us in this place, we willingly
choose to yield to you. And we know that we're not going
to just walk out of this place and get it all right and be
living, you know, perfect because there's still work to be
done. But we prayed earlier, Lord, we
want to leave this place greater equipped, shaped to be more like
you. And we believe we take a hold of
that by faith, Lord, that you would be doing a work even right
now, that we would walk out of this place empowered and strong
and able to walk this thing out. We thank you, Lord, we love you.
Lord, we bless your mighty name, Jesus name, Amen.
Excellent. Cool.
Yes. Yes, we are OK.
It's. The it's the problem of how hard
it is. You've spoken about it and I
think we all agree that when you're tempted, it's very hard.
And and I want to share 1 little thing that was a great blessing
to me. It has really helped me and that
is Jesus said I I must go for if I don't go, I can't send.
This is of course, paraphrasing. I can't send the helper, the
Holy Spirit. And he said when he comes, he
will, he will he he will lead you into all truths and all the
other things, but we need to nuts.
All right, I'm OK. I put my brakes on you.
So we don't as I got brakes, wheels and brakes.
The, you know, if you study, if you know something about the
history of our English Bible, it's in the most amazing story.
And we, it, it, it, it virtually was based on the Greek text of
the day. The Greek language, which isn't
the same as today was the, the, the lingua franca, the, the,
the, the, the, the language of the whole of the Mediterranean
spoke. It was the Romans had the power
and the Greeks had the, the culture, you see.
And so don't confuse those two. But it's based on that Greek,
that Greek text and the Greek that we translate as the helper
or and so on. The Greek word.
And I don't want to make you all Greek students now, but it's
pretty simple. These paracletos.
Now if you if you take that word and you break it up, you find
that para we know is alongside like parachute.
OK, Para is alongside Claytos is a form of kaleo, which is a
Greek word for calling. So it is calling something
alongside and it, it evolved from the the practice in those
days people were not wealthy. There were the masses were very
poor. Very few of them could have a
donkey, let alone a horse. And if you didn't have a donkey
and you wanted to get, take your, your produce to the
market, you had to have some means of transport.
So they made little carts and they, they would drag these
little carts behind them. And so the, and, and of course,
in those days, the roads were just tracks up and down the
mountains. I hadn't cut anything out.
So there were lots of hills. And the practice was that when
they, when, when you got to the bottom of a steep hill, there
would be a paracletos there. He's a guy that's waiting there
and you say him how much? And he will say OK, X amount you
pay him. Now this is the secret and this
is the thing that's helped me tremendously.
He you take the they, they would take the cart again and he would
start up the hill and the paracletos would go behind the
the the the cart and push. Now the, the key issue is this.
The two of you are pushing that card up the hill.
You're still straining working at it to get to the top of the
hill and and he's pushing. You don't feel, you don't sail
along, You don't. He doesn't push the whole thing.
He gives his, his, he's come alongside to help.
You see, when you get to the top of the hill, you turn around and
look down the hill and you think, Gee, I couldn't have done
that without his help. Now the secret is this.
And, and, and it has to do with that moment where you get to the
fork and your spirit of God is showing you what the Lord wants.
And the flesh is, is shouting its head off on the one side.
And and you, it's so hard. It looks impossible because your
your flesh, you know, even Paul said in, in, in Romans 7 and not
Romans 7. Yes, Romans 7, he said, I, I
want to serve God with my whole heart, but there's other thing.
There's another thing in me, this other law in me that that
is so, so making it so hard. Now the issue is this.
We think, if the we think too, we do not understand very often
how the Holy Spirit works. He's more gentle than harsh.
He can be harsh, He can blow the mountains away, but he works
gently. And so when you get to the fork
and you, you have the choice between the Spirit and the body
and the, and the, and the, and the flesh and you, you, you,
you, you make a decision at that point.
That's the problem. We have to make a decision.
I am going to walk in the spirit.
That term is not used very much. It's disappeared from our
scriptures because, and it's such a pity because we how do we
go through life? We walk along a journey.
See, that's what the Bible says, walk in the Spirit and not in
the flesh to fulfill its lusts. The.
Moment you make the decision as hard as it looks and you say I
will walk in the spirit and you launch out and do or say what
the spirit is showing you. The paratry starts pushing and
you find it's easy. You find you can do it.
You see we look at how hard it is and we I just go and do I'm
not that kind of person. I haven't you know, I'm not like
that. I'm I'm I'm I'm just this that
in the next thing and but if you make the decision and because
the spirit is there, the Paracleteus is alongside us all
the time. Actually English Anglicization
of that is Paraclete, maybe the Paraclete.
So the Paraclete is alongside us.
He's waiting. Jesus has paid him.
He doesn't have to be paid and and you and and so so if you and
it comes to any kind of temptation for food or anything
and and I think most of us men know that the problem is that
the big problem is to look away. You know, that's a big problem
and the ladies don't understand that their curves are a big
problem. Well, this is a real good all
you guys all you guys know we're talking about.
I'm really taking over your ceremony.
But, but let's say that the minute, the minute you, you are
tempted and you say, I will walk in the spirit, you find you can
do it. And what happens is that many of
the habits that we've developed in our lives because of the
flesh, we've lived in the flesh. We didn't know anything else.
All these little ones that are running around here are
operating in the flesh. That's why we're going to look
after them and we grow up in it. And, and, and, and, and so we
have a habit. So we habitually respond to some
of these things. Now you're going to break that
habit. And I can I can testify today
that if you keep choosing to walk in the spirit and you trust
the Paraclete to push from the back and you can get it done
eventually, break that habit. Thank you for joining us for
today's message. For more information about The
Way Church, please visit ourwebsite@thewaychurch.com dot
AU. Have a blessed day.