Sermon Tone Analysis

Living the Christian Life

Please turn with me to for our text for the day.

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Read and pray.

Today as we begin our time of preaching in the Word, I want to walk through a story that will help us understand the theme of this passage.

Jim was a young man who was genuinely converted by God in his younger years.

He grew up in a Christian home and was blessed beyond measure to be in a healthy Church.

Yet as he began to grow into adulthood, he was confused as to what he should be doing with his life.

Should he be pursuing a call to ministry?

Should he sit around and wait upon the Lord to make His plans for Jim’s life extremely clear?

Maybe he should just start doing something and wait upon the Lord to reveal to Him what it is that he should do?

This confusion ran rampant in his mind and he finally decided to approach one of his elders about it.

It was then that Jim recieved some of the most freeing advice that he has ever been given.

(Slide)

That advice was this, “Walk with Christ and do what you want!”

Walk with Christ and do what you want.

Because of this, Jim was able to go on and live a life where he both faithfully served the Lord through the local Church and pursued a career choice of his hearts desire.

Now I understand that any analogy that I could give here is going to fall short of truly explaining the idea here.

But the gist of this idea goes far beyond a mere career field or industry.

This idea and theme goes into every portion of Jim’s life.

It’s not merely his career choice that is being impacted by this ideology but all of his life is impacted by the idea of walking with God and doing what you want.

So today, my question for you is this;

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How do we know that we are walking with Christ?

That is actually what Paul is illustrating here in this passage.

“What does it mean to walk with Christ and do what you want?”

Paul examines the idea of living by the flesh and by living by the Spirit and in order to understand the distinction, we have to examine both of those.

The flesh that Paul is referring to is what we are by nature.

What we have inherited with this fallen condition which is sometimes called a lower nature.

The flesh is what we are at natural birth.

And by Spirit,Paul is referring to the Holy Spirit which regenerates the heart of men and gives them faith to believe upon Jesus.

And during this regeneration, the Spirit gives us a new nature and then dwell’s within us.

The Spirit is what we become by the new birth.

And these two natures will always have a conflict with each other.

There are many teachers who would claim today that these two have no conflict with each other any more.

That the flesh nature is now somehow completely repressed and it is only the spiritual side of man that remains alive after regeneration.

There is actually several sects who would claim to be Christians who swear by the idea that they never sin anymore because they’ve been made new in Christ.

This entire passage contradicts any idea of this.

Living this Christian life in the Spirit does not mean that you as a new creation will never struggle with sin.

That you as a new creation will never have thoughts of lust or desires of the flesh.

Instead, what Scripture teaches is that you will struggle between these two.

And that conflict will arise time after time.

But that you also have hope.

And because Paul wanted the Galatians to know that there was hope, he shows us how to discern our hearts by using this tool which shows you where you’re at.

As you begin to walk in the Spirit, the flesh side of you begins to become increasingly subdued.

You begin to desire more and more the things of the Spirit.

But if you are not walking in the Spirit, the flesh in you will not be subdued and you will increasingly fall prey to that side of you.

This is all of God

So how can we tell these two apart?

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The first thing we

If it is true and possible that we as new creations are able to walk with God and do what we want, how do we check our hearts to see that we are truly walking in the Spirit and not in the flesh?

The first thing we need to do is understand some terminology.

In verse 16 Paul lays out a term which because of our modern understanding of the word we need to revisit its definition.

Paul says to walk by the Spirit and not the lust of the flesh.

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In our time, the term lust is almost always given a sexual connotation.

Now there is good reason for that but we cannot change the original intention of the original language.

Paul will go on to explain sexual immorality in a minute and this first verse will contain a part of that but is not exclusive to that term.

Instead what the Lord was intending for us to see is that in our hearts we can lust after anything.

Our sinful fallen nature that we inherited through Adam has desire to have what does not belong to us.

And we do this in a multitude of ways.

When we look at other people whom we perceive to be better of financially than we are and we desire what they have, we have begun to lust after that which is not ours.

If I as a Christian, desire to have the successful life or career that the Lord has given to someone else, then I have already lusted after that and there is nothing sexual included.

Now this does not mean that the word can never be applied to that.

Each of us in this room knows that there is a proper time to use the term lust in a sexual term.

Yet this is not it

The second thing that I would say is that the works of the flesh are evident.

It is very apparent when someone is walking in the flesh.

The reason for this is that their desires become that which Scripture reveals to be the flesh.

Just think for a moment about the first work of the flesh that Paul mentions in Verse 19.

(Slide)

Sexual immorality.

If your walk with God includes sexual immorality, than you are not walking with God in a right manner and instead are gratifying the desires of the flesh.

Paul says to walk by the Spirit and not the lust of the flesh.

Now notice I didn’t say that you are not saved.

A person who struggles with sexual immorality in their life because they have a desire to live right before the Lord is revealing in their heart a care for Christ.

If they had no care for Christ or no struggle with the sin, that very well might be a different story.

But for the moment, we’re presuming that this person is a believer because after all, that is the context of the people that Paul was writing to.

He wasn’t writing to a group of unbelievers but was instead writing to Christians.

And realistically, each of these sins could be lumped into four categories.

One deals with sex.

The next one is religion, then society and lastly to drink.

But in this realm specifically, sexual immorality goes probably far beyond what many of us would be comfortable talking about on a given day.

But the gist of the theme here is that sexual immorality impacts the root of the

It would include impurity and licentiousness as well.

The idea behind impurity would be along the lines of pornography, lustful desires or something like that.

The idea of licentiousness would be in the arena of open and reckless behavior.

Now my common practice is that when I plan to go into any more detail or implication concerning sexual issues is to give at least a weeks notice for younger ears and such in the room so I will not go much farther with this thought.

The very last thing I will say is that sexual immorality can include anyone.

Whether you’re married or unmarried.

Young or old.

And when it grips onto your heart it will lead you into some of the darkest areas that you would have never wanted to go.

If you see this in your life, it is possible that you are not walking in the Spirit.

Instead, you are walking with yourself and doing what you want and the end of that road is not somewhere you want to be.

The next work that Paul mentions is in the realm of religion.

And this comes in many forms and is probably the one issue I would argue is most prevalent within the hearts of God’s people.

And that is the area of religion.

As human beings we are inherently religious.

And this is found in the area of idolatry.