No perfect people, right? And there are no perfect
churches, right? See.
Yes, there we go.
It's true. That became really true for me
when I was 22. When I was 22, I signed on to
become a youth minister at a church.
That church had had 11 pastors in a nine year period.
I was 22 and I didn't think that was a really big deal.
It should have been like this major red flag saying no.
But I I really said God had called me or God had given me an
assignment. Maybe that was more appropriate
is to say that I said God had given me an assignment.
I was working on my Master's at the time of was living in Fort
Worth, TX. I was dating Ellen at the time,
so she came along to that church too, and by year 2 at that
church, Ellen would cry in the morning on Sundays all the way
to church and then she would just go to sleep when we left on
the drive back to the city and the campus.
It was a hard place to be. The little community that it was
in was called the Armpit of Fort Worth.
You ever been in a place like that?
It was just sort of this forgotten place.
And if if you forgot about it too long, it would stink, it
would smell. It was a really difficult place
and it was a really difficult church.
I my assignment was to build up a youth ministry and so I have
never done that before and just trusted that somehow God would
help this happen. So I started meeting youth and
God was so gracious to us as we sort of built this bubble inside
the Church of kids who are really loving each other and his
parents who are enjoying each other most of the time.
I tried to go door to door until there was a church, a person who
let their Doberman pincher dogs out on me at the porch, and I
was like, door to door is a bad decision in this neighborhood.
The youth asked for a lock in. Anybody done one of those?
They're terrible. I had said I would never, ever,
ever do a lock in. Never say never.
So I did a lock in at about 1:00 in the morning.
I hear all this rattling around and and a youth she had snuck
out the window. So I go running around and I'm
in the parking lot and there's a truck and there's a guy driving
the truck and she's in the passenger side and they're
backing up. So what do I do?
I just stand behind the truck and this kid gets out.
He's 20, I'm 22, she's 16, and I say you are not leaving with her
unless you run over me. It was such the moment, right?
I don't know what possessed me in that moment to do that, but I
was like, I've been given a responsibility, I've been given
an assignment, I've been given a charge, and she is my
responsibility. I said, let's compromise.
You can come in for the Bible study we're about to do in the
middle of the night and you can sit beside her if you need to.
Is it OK? Churches and life situations can
be really, really difficult. The church in Galatia was
experiencing a really, really difficult time.
And Paul is writing to them about this to say your conflict
with each other that you've been thrown into now as Jew and
Gentile and how to figure this out and a really stressful
situation there in the retirement center of Roman
soldiers. You're trying to be church here,
and I've given you an assignment as a church to humbly serve one
another in love. And I think some of them were
probably thinking, how do we do that?
How do we do that? Where do we find the power to do
that? Won't you just give us a list of
things to do, a recipe? I think Paul anticipated their
question after he's been pressing theologically his point
over and over to say you must not become circumcised, you must
not live under the law, you must live and run the race of grace.
Now some of them are going humbly serve one another in love
when we're already fighting with each other.
How do you come down off that ledge in order to love?
So I think that's the question he's answering now in Galatians
chapter 5. If you have your Bible, open it
and let Let's imagine that Paul's inviting some people to
stand behind a truck. In order to see Christian unity,
to stand behind a truck, in order to see that they're
treated well, to stand behind a truck, to see that they actually
grow in maturity. And so here's what he here's
what he writes. Galatians 516.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the
desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is
contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the
flesh. They are in conflict with each
other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the
law. The acts of the flesh are
obvious, sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery,
idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage,
selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness,
orgies and the like. I warn you, as I did before,
that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of
God, but the fruit of the Spirit is Lovejoy, peace, forbearance,
gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no
law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus
have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each
other. Remember what Paul is
envisioning. Paul is envisioning that this
church would know God in his fullness, that they would know
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that they would come to
deal with this trinitarian reality of God, and that they
would experience deliverance from sin and deliverance from
the powers of darkness. This is what he was envisioning.
He had the Longview for the finish line.
Remember our marathoner? He was running that race fast
last week, but it was a long run.
Likewise, he envisions that they would be a new family, Jew and
Gentile, slave and free, male and female.
That they would be following Jesus, the crucified Messiah.
We use the term Messiah there very particularly to say we're
reaching back to the promise that God made to Abraham to
create a family. He's doing it now through
Messiah Jesus. And that they, this church would
actually reveal Jesus and the freeing power of his gospel by
transforming relationships everywhere with God's love.
That they would transform all of their relationships in the
church and they would they would transform relationships in their
society. Now Paul is directing the church
to use their freedom. He says, yes, you are free, but
you are free to love. You have been set free in order
to love others. Particularly he phrases it this
way, to serve one another humbly in love.
Let's call this little phrase Serve one another humbly in
love. The Christ life 'cause I need a
shorthand reference today. What is the Christ life?
It's to serve one another humbly in love.
You know Jesus told his disciples, Look, you watched me
wash your feet, you actually experienced me washing your
feet, and you call me Lord and Savior or Master.
That's what I am now. You will be blessed if you do
the same thing. This is the Christ life, serving
one another humbly in love. And I think this people in
conflict are wondering, how do I serve humbly in love someone who
wants to run me over with a truck?
How do I serve humbly in love someone who wants to devour me?
How do I serve humbly in love someone who wants to curse me,
cut me, ruin me, exclude me? That's not the church I want to
be a part of. I think I'll just go.
He's pleading with them to find a way to Christian unity in a
church that was struggling. He wants them to live the Christ
life, serve one another humbly in love.
Even Jesus served Judas. This is a huge calling.
Where do we find the power for such extraordinary expressions
of love? Let's see what he says.
Let's review what he said since we just read it.
I mean, he's pointing them to a who perhaps they wanted to know
how, how can we do this? And he says, I don't want to
give you a how I want to give you a who the Holy Spirit
empowers you for the Christ life.
Over and over through Ephesians, he's been emphasizing this.
He says, look in verse 5, through the Spirit we eagerly
await by faith through who? Through the Spirit he encourages
them, I want you to walk by the when we use the word walk, walk
this way, he's actually using what we would sometimes call
your lifestyle, your way of life.
So your way of life is to be by the Spirit of God.
The Christian way of life is meant to be guided,
personalized, animated by the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God then is not an it.
The Spirit of God is a who he says, listen, if you are led by
the Spirit and he goes on, he says, look, the fruit of the
Spirit can be in your life. And he says since we live by the
let us keep in step with the Spirit over and over and over.
He's just sort of repeating himself.
Look, your life now in Christ is to be by the Spirit.
You know, Jesus, the Spirit didn't just spring up out of
nowhere. We see the Holy Spirit involved
in the creation, right in Genesis chapter one.
It says that the Spirit of God that was hovering over the deep.
The Spirit of God is always involved in the creating of what
God desires and wants in his world and in our lives.
And Jesus says that his gift of the Spirit is actually also our
life. On one of the festival days that
actually speaks about water, Jesus stood up and he said, let
anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink, whoever believes in
me. As the scripture has said,
rivers of living water will flow from within them.
By this he meant the Spirit whom those who believed in him were
later to receive. Up to that time, the Spirit had
not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
Now one of the interesting things about John is that when
John speaks of the glorification of Jesus, he's actually Speaking
of Jesus being lifted up on the cross, being crucified.
And so the pathway to the Spirit of God being released in our
lives is Jesus cross. Do you know when I do tabling
like in Totem and we set up a table and I've got chocolates
there, sometimes students will run up and say, can I have one
of those chocolates? And I'm like, yeah, the pathway
to the chocolate. Chocolate is the question.
And so there's a question there. So answer the question.
You can have a chocolate, OK? And then they go for it.
But here's Jesus showing us that the pathway to him releasing the
Spirit of God to us was through the cross, and that's the great
miracle of God's work in our lives.
Jesus goes on to speak about the gift of the Spirit, he said.
Next slide He says in in Luke 24, after His glorification, He
opened their minds so they could understand the Scripture and He
told them, this is what is written.
The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,
and repentance for this forgiveness of sins will be
preached in His name to all nations, beginning beginning at
Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these
things. I am going to send you what my
Father has promised, but stay in the city until you have been
clothed with power from on high. What is the gift promised by the
Father? It's the Holy Spirit.
What is your inheritance from the promise of Abraham?
It's the Holy Spirit. Now Paul's bringing it very
clear to say, look, this pathway for you to live in unity
together as the church is to take that suffering and go
through it with the Spirit of God.
This is where moral and character transformation
happens. As a people, if we are willing
to go through the awkwardness and difficulty of relationships
in the church to experience the fruit of the Spirit in our
lives. But there's a problem which
we've been dancing around here, and that is that the Christ life
actually contradicts and conflicts with the flesh.
This idea of serving one another humbly in Love Actually
conflicts and contradicts the flesh.
When Paul speaks to the flesh, we can say there's three things
he's sort of interested in here. One, there's the the flesh work
of these agitators, the false teachers who had come and said
you need to be circumcised in order to be complete in front of
God, in order to be fully accepted.
We could say, Oh yeah, that's part of the flesh.
But there's a second part of flesh.
And that could be the fleshy desires of each member of that
church, just the desires that they wanted.
Most of some of us are a couple ways when it comes to conflict.
Some of us run away. Are you a runaway when it comes
to conflict? Some of us are run right towards
it. What there's conflict, I'm going
to run right towards it. And then some of us, we are
freezers. That is possibly what happened
to me behind that truck because I just froze.
But some of us very similar are sort of like fawners.
We sort of fawn, OK. Four kinds of responses to
conflict. And in each mode the flesh may
desire something that's opposed to the Spirit of God.
That's why you need to listen and know the Spirit of God in
your life. There's another kind of flesh
that he might have had in mind, and that's this idea that that
there's a societal norm that could be idolized.
That's actually an aspect of the flesh that said, oh, that's now
normal. And we idolize that.
We aspire to that and we'll we'll get to this a little
further next slide. Notice he says, walk by the
Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
I know my flesh has desires. I have human desires, but it can
also have disordered desires. This is where addictions come
from, where I'm trying to solve a problem and I become addicted
to something else as a temporary solution to a greater problem.
He says, listen, the flesh desires what is contrary to the
spirit and the spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh.
They are in conflict with each other.
We are sometimes walking conflict zones.
Ellen's dad used to say to her when she was a teenager, you are
just a conflict looking for a place to happen.
And sometimes we are. We are just a conflict looking
for a place to happen. And we don't even realize it
because those habits are so automated.
Somebody offends us and we just thought, but then we get in
another setting and we take it out on somebody else.
We have stress in one area. It squeezes the balloon of our
life, and we pop out over here in a rage.
They are in conflict with each other.
Paul wants you to know that sometimes you are a walking
conflict. Notice how he says this in
Romans. This might be another great
cross reference for you to study later.
He says once I was alive apart from the law, but when the
commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.
I found that the very commandment that was intended to
bring life actually brought death for sin.
Seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me
and through the commandment put me to death.
He's saying, look, this is how God's law works.
Sin comes up in our flesh. The law points it out, but then
sin just holds on tighter. How do you get free notice?
He says, I find this law at work in me.
Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me, for in
my inner being I delight in God's law.
But I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law
of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at
work within me. What a wretched man I am who
will rescue me from this body that is subject to death.
Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.
He's saying, look, you are a walking conflict zone, you
yourself. And sometimes we need to realize
that even in the life and church and fellowship of the large body
and even a small group, we can have walking conflict zones.
But most of us really don't like conflict.
And so we ignore the conflict in ourselves.
Unless you're journaling. Is anybody journaling here yet?
Do you journal honestly about the conflicts you're
experiencing? Let me encourage you this week
to maybe take a little time and journal your conflicts.
I was listening to Darryl Johnson, who's was a pastor at
the Way Here and, and he was saying that he journals and then
after he gets everything out, he takes a black marker, a Sharpie,
and he covers up some of it. He's like, yeah, I don't.
I wrote it down. It was real.
It was the truth. I just don't need anyone else to
read this, just me and God. That's a good journaling process
for those of you who are anxious about what if somebody picks it
up? But we need that process of
actually being honest about the conflict within ourselves.
And that honesty with the light of the Spirit of God actually
brings us to the cusp of a miracle.
He says, look, the actions of the flesh are obvious.
I, I don't know that these seem so obvious to them.
Maybe he was thinking that they, they had this sort of grade.
Well, this kind of act of the flesh is only a 70, or this act
of the flesh is only, you know, a 10.
And maybe they graded the acts of the flesh.
I think we do that. But he starts off with what they
would have known as familiar sexual immorality, impurity and
debauchery. Then he says idolatry and
idolatry and witchcraft. And they would have been going,
yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, You're right.
And then he gets to this other part of the list that would have
really frustrated them because they felt like they were
standing behind a truck. Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits
of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.
And they would have gone. Oh my goodness.
Like, why did he put that in the list?
You know, I'm just trying to find my people.
I'm just trying to be comfortable.
Why do you have to put that on the list?
And then he he lets up and he gives them the familiar thing,
drunkenness, orgies and the like.
And he's grouped all that together and he says, look, if
you're living like that, you're not inheriting the Kingdom of
God. The rule and reign of God is not
at work in their lives. You will not inherit the Kingdom
of God. And so those are all symptom of
the conflict that's happening inside.
So what is the solution? The solution is a who?
The Christ life actually requires your cooperation, your
willful participation, your willful cooperation, He says you
have been crucified with Christ, it has happened, you have been
redeemed, you have been delivered.
And now to walk in that way, you have to cooperate with the
Spirit of God. Dallas Willard said it this way.
He said, listen, God is not opposed to effort.
He is opposed to earning. We do not earn the Kingdom.
We do not earn His approval. We do not earn His love.
We do not earn His forgiveness. That is a free gift of grace.
But it does require effort now to walk in the way of God.
And when you walk and keep in step with the Spirit, He
actually generates fruit. He generates fruit.
Would you say them with me? Lovejoy, peace, forbearance,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control. Against such things, there is no
law. My friend who was pastoring up
at SFU at at the Point Church, Victor Thomas, before Victor
went back to South Africa, he sort of lived through some of
the COVID difficulties and people would get frustrated
with, you know, what are we doing?
What are we not doing? And he could feel the, the
temperature rising among them and the conflicts that they were
sort of having inside and outside the church.
And he says, hey, let's do the things for which there's no law,
things that there's no law against it.
There's no law against loving. So go humbly, serve one another
in love, find a way to do it. There's no law about that.
He's right, Right. I think Paul was sort of tongue
in cheek here saying, hey, look, there's no law about this.
So do it when the church finds itself under pressure, whether
it's in China or Iran or Myanmar or Canada or the US or Mexico,
wherever the church finds itself under pressure, we must return
to this. Hey, let's do the things for
which there is no law. Let's be the things for which
there is no law. And the only way to get fruit is
to actually tend the soil in which you have been planted.
So I can't make an apple tree, make apples, but I sure can tend
to the conditions of the soil that help produce it.
Here's three ways to tend to the soil of your life.
Well, let's let's look at this. So some of some of us get into
this temptation to make religion and life with God sort of a
tourist mindset. So here's what Eugene Peterson
said. There's a great market for
religious experience in our world.
There's little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of
virtue. Isn't that great line?
Virtue, Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
All of those are virtues, and they're achieved or acquired
through patient endurance, a long obedience in the same
direction. So here are three things I want
to suggest to you. One, make it your habit to
simply pray. Come, Holy Spirit, come, that
when you're having a time before the Lord and you just sit and
rest and come, Holy Spirit, come.
And let your heart and life settle and just trust that the
Spirit of God is coming. Second is treat the difficulties
of your life as if they're seeds to be sown from which the Spirit
of God can produce his fruit in you.
For Ellen and myself, when we were serving in that church, it
was a difficult time, but God was sowing seeds in my heart and
life that changed my character, that transformed virtue and
changed relationships, changed my whole vision of what it was
like to serve and lead in a church.
We stayed there 3 1/2 years and then the only reason we left is
because we were moving to Vancouver.
A long obedience in the same direction means that you're
going to take the difficulties of your life and say these are
actually seeds. If you read the Bible, you will
find that the Bible is replete. It is full with really difficult
experiences in life. I don't know what difficulties
you're facing right now. Some of you have put them in
your prayer requests. And so we know that anxiety is
on the rise. We know that some have returned
to this new term with dread. We know that some are struggling
financially. We know that some feel awkward
about relationships. We know that some are longing
for some breakthrough in their life.
Let those difficulties actually be the seeds from which the
Spirit of God brings new fruit. Teaches you how to love, teaches
you and generates the joy of the Holy Spirit.
And then third, persevere in the community of the church even
through awkwardness and conflict.
It's the spirits school of love. Some people get anxious because
they're like, why does Paul always talking about loving each
other? Why won't he talk more about
loving the world? Wouldn't you rather love
somebody on the other side of the world?
It seems easier to do that rather than love the person
sitting next to you in church. And so one of the challenges for
university church life, let's be honest, is to actually find
yourself with the people and stay there longer than a year.
To stay there two years, three years, four years, and then
you're like, my struggle now is to graduate.
But what if you stayed with a people for longer and actually
saw what God might do in your life and in a people because you
were with them longer? Something to consider.
Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, I want to just pray
right now as the worship team comes.
Lord, you know those who are struggling with anxiety today,
They're anxious about something. I pray that you would come and
meet them. Lord, You know those who are
anxious about their future and money.
We pray that you would come and meet them.
We know, Lord, You know those of us who are just preoccupied with
our Saturday night life and anxious about our Sunday morning
life today. Lord, you know, those of us who
are struggling with relationships with family and
somehow, Lord, we, you know, those of us who are struggling
because we've, we've seen terrible things on our feed and
we're like, how could, how could people do that?
So we pray, Lord Jesus, that today you would transform our
character. Come, Holy Spirit, come.
Lord, it was the, it was one of the names of our ministry here
that we were born for more. And I, I really think as a
church we were born for more love, more joy, more peace, more
forbearance, more kindness, more goodness, more faithfulness,
more gentleness, and more self-control.
So come, Lord Jesus, and see our yielded lives, that you might
yield that fruit in our relationships.
Lord, you've said that unless a seed dies, it will not bear
fruit. And we thank you, Lord Jesus,
that you laid down your life and we are the fruit of your laid
down life. And so now we live by your
Spirit, we come to your table by your invitation, and we
celebrate and remember your body broken for us, your blood poured
out for us, that we might now enjoy the age to come.
In the communion of your Spirit. Let's stand together.
If you need someone to pray with you, I'm going to invite our
prayer team to go ahead and move to the landing.