Walk by the Spirit
Galatians 5:16-18 · Roger Henderson · Nov 24, 2019
Galatians (2018-20), No. 49
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926191726435

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. Well, today we're going to start on a new section here in Galatians chapter five. And this section starts off with a very familiar phrase, walk by the spirit. So we're going to learn about that. In fact, actually, we're just going to focus on one verse today. I'm going to review a little bit, but that one verse is pretty key to understanding this whole section. So let's just proceed here. First of all, I want to do a summary of last week a little bit. Some of the points from last week. Last week we learned, we talked about verses 13 to 15.

And we learned that every believer is called to freedom in Christ. And if you haven't noticed, one of the main themes of Galatians, the whole book of Galatians, is freedom. Freedom in the Christian life. And as we learned last week, freedom is for a purpose. Freedom is to serve one another, was one of the themes that we saw.

So one of the things that Paul brought forth is to stop using your liberty, this freedom in Christ, as a base of operation for the flesh. Remember we talked about the fact that this base of operation is sort of like the, you'll see some kids games and they'll have little bases, if you will, and their little soldiers will go out. Paul tells us that this base of operation for the flesh, the sinful nature, it's kind of that picture, is described by that picture. And then he talked about we are to serve, we're to serve as slaves, which is maybe a hard pill to swallow, we're to serve as slaves to one another through Christ's love. Remember slaves? Remember one another in Scripture many times talks about speaking of fellow believers in the Lord Jesus. So we're to serve one another as slaves is one of the topics we looked at last week.

And then also it kind of extends to our neighbors. We are to love those who are near. Actually, a neighbor in scripture in the Greek is a near one in the sphere of our influence. And then we're to love one another. The standard for love under grace is that we love one another as Christ has loved us. If you notice, if you're a good student of scripture, you'll notice that God always tells us His standard, and His standard is to influence our standard. We're to love one another as Christ has loved us.

And then lastly, he talked about this idea that in the Corinthian church there, there was Corinthians. In the Galatian church, there was biting and devouring, leading to almost this idea of consuming one another. And we'll look at that just a little bit here in the following slides. So that's kind of the quick review. And then I want to just review a couple of charts from last week. So we saw the idea that in verse 14 from last week, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So the whole law is actually fulfilled in love, in God's love.

So one of the questions that comes up, and I kind of alluded to it already, who is your neighbor? And actually, it's more than the person next door. So my neighbor is Joe or Sally or Sue next door, whatever. Well, in the Greek, it's a near one. So with that definition, a near one can be a near one here at church, a near one at school, a near one wherever you might be. So I like this idea. Anyone in your immediate sphere of influence is your neighbor.

And then we saw that this is a quote from the Old Testament. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. That actually comes out of the law. But our standard is different. We have a higher standard. You thought it was bad enough, you should love your neighbor as yourself? That sounds pretty hard. But under grace, it's even higher. Here's under grace. So what's the standard under grace? It's God's standard. Here it is, John 13, 34. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another even as I have loved you. It's God's standard.

And how do we do that? We accomplish that by God's love as we walk by faith and trust him to live his life through us. He's telling us basically, don't try to love your neighbor in your own strength. Let me love it through you. And our part is to focus on him. And He will love our neighbor through us.

Another parallel verse to that is in John 15. This is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down his life for his friends." So marvelous truths, and like I say, the old view from the Old Testament, under the law, with love your neighbor as yourself, our standard is to love as God has loved us. Just a marvelous truth, and we see that we're inadequate to do that, and we shouldn't feel nervous about that, so to speak. We should feel invigorated, because God wants to work through us to love our neighbor.

So let's talk about this kind of negative part. So the last verse we covered last week was if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. Pretty hard words. All these words, this biting and devouring and consuming, are all kind of terms from animals. An animal bites you and then it devours you and then it eventually consumes you.

And I have a little block diagram of that. I like block diagrams. Dave Demery knows about that. Engineers love block diagrams, right? That's our bread and butter. Anyway, okay. So Paul says, we'll now give a warning. Beware lest you destroy one another is another translation of that consuming. So the word is to take heed, beware, take heed, look out.

And this word consume is kind of a graphic word. to swallow down a person. Sounds kind of graphic. It is a set of destruction of a person, its well-being. So the picture, and I got this picture from, it wasn't actually in the like vines or one of the other word things that you have for the Greek language. They described it in words. I thought this would make a nice picture. So first you have biting.

If you imagine an animal bites away or kind of gets at you you can see people do that they bite away at you nip at you and Then the next thing is they devour you and then the final step you're consumed You're a swallowed whole if you will in the case of animals or snakes or that kind of thing So it's a pretty graphic picture. So apparently in the Corinthian Church Under the law that they were bringing in the Corinthian Church.

This was going on and Paul saying I Beware of this when you start biting and devouring one another you're going to you're going to Impact their well-being you're going to consume that person and that's a pretty sad picture So what's going to happen now is he's going to he's going to shift gears and he's going to talk about how we have another kind of freedom But before we do that, I got ahead of myself here a little bit just a final few thoughts on on these three verses that we covered last week and The only way we can manifest, we talked about loving one another as God has loved us. The only way we can manifest love toward others is when Christ is the object of our hearts and we walk in God's grace and not under laws. That was what I was talking about. Our focus as we love our brothers and sisters in the Lord, as we love our neighbors, is focused on Christ. So two contrasts here. Under grace, Christ's life is manifested and characterized by the fruit of the Spirit, which we're going to study here shortly. But under the law, self is manifest and characterized by this biting and devouring and consuming.

OK, so now we're going to get to verse 16. But first, we're going to have an outline. OK, so I like to use Macaulay here. Macaulay labels this section 13 through 26. He calls it the dynamics of the Christian life. We saw in verses 13 through 15 an outline of liberty.

Now we're going to look at an outline of spirituality. We're going to see in this section that we can be free, we can have freedom from the flesh. Pretty amazing statements he's going to make about we can actually have freedom from our flesh or sinful nature. So the command he gives, and it is a command, walk by the spirit, We're just going to look at the the promise that he has and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh Which is a pretty amazing promise and then he's going to talk about in the coming weeks we're going to talk about the conflict of the flesh versus the spirit and then being led by this spirit and then we're going to talk about the two and Two aspects, the work of the flesh, which David read for us, kind of a long list of very negative things, very terrible things.

Then we're going to talk about the singular. Keep in mind, the singular fruit of the spirit is a package deal. You don't just get one, you get them all, which is a wonderful deal. We got a package deal. What a God, what a God, a package deal here. OK, so let's go on. So let's start here. So to introduce this, walk by the spirit. So the metaphor that Paul uses here is a pretty familiar metaphor in scripture. I did a little searching on the computer. You can do great things. You can search any word you want in the original language or in English or whatever.

And so the word walk or walking shows up at least in the New Testament about 105 times. And many of those times it talks about the walking in terms of our faith, a walk of faith, if you will. A few times it talks about physically walking, but many times it talks about a walk of faith. It's used to express a whole round of activities in the Christian life. It's how you, if you want to think of walking, how do I conduct my life? How do I go here and there in my Christian life? How do I treat people? How do I interact with God?

And so on. It graciously tells us how to conduct our Christian life. It's used specifically of things we should do and should not do. We're going to see that shortly. Apparently, and the reason that Paul seems to bring this in, we just saw these kind of difficult statements about this biting and devouring. He wanted to put to rest the idea that the law, the law can control a man. Can the law really control this biting and devouring and consuming? It can't. Only God can control that kind of activity. Only God can control the sin nature. So Paul wants to put to rest that idea that apparently was in the Galatian church. So we're going to start the verse here finally.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. Okay, so but I say Seems like a pretty you know you can look at that you could say well Paul could just as well chopped off But I say and been just why didn't you start the verse with walk by the Spirit? You will not carry out the desire of the flesh He apparently put that in there as a way of spotlighting. What he was going to say next. It's a way of emphasis He's basically saying here's how you live the Christian life and So you will not fall into the issues that I presented to you in 13 through 15.

And what I found was, as many times you know, these phrases that the writers use, especially Paul, they will show up again in other writings. And this is the case with what I say. So a couple other places they show up. In Romans, he uses it in Romans 10, 18, he says, But I say, surely they have not heard, have they? Indeed they have. So it's a point, it's a way to spotlight what he's going to say next. Then he tells us again in 19, But I say, surely Israel did not know, did they? And then lastly, But I say to the unmarried and to the widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. So we find that that but I say is a spotlight for the rest of the verse.

So the verse starts, but walk by the Spirit. So you is implied there. You walk by the Spirit. And walking is this word peripateo. I think that's how you pronounce it. It literally means to walk about, figuratively signifying the whole round of activities.

I was I was looking at looked at the kind of the lexicon here and it talked about reminded me of my older son mark had a teacher at his high school and She would do this. She would do her lessons and she would just constantly do this Back and forth. I think when I visited she would just do that. She constantly talking back and forth it would dry, you know after a while you got dizzy he said I That was a way she conducted her class. I actually forgot what she taught, but it was just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So that's what she did to teach her class.

So that's what this peripateo is about, is walking around, conducting your life. Think of your life. Walking is a pretty important part of your life. I have a good brother in the Lord from work. He's a paraplegic. And he can't walk, but he has this little chair, and he's a demon on that chair, man. That's the wrong word, demon. He's a believer. He's pretty wild in his chair. He can do great things. He's a believer, so he's not a demon. Okay.

All right, so anyway, walking is just conducting your life. Okay, so the idea is, it's in the present tense, it's a command, active voice, Continuous action the present moment by moment living in our Lord Jesus. That's what it's about our walk and It's by the Spirit you could render that by means of the Spirit or Through the instrumentality of the Spirit. That's what we has so let's look at a couple of other other you know Paul and and maybe other writers that they use this walk or to describe many of the activities in the Christian life. So here's some of the other activities that a Christian is to do. Walk in newness of life, in Romans 6, 4. Walk after the Spirit, in Romans 8, 4. Walk in honesty. Walk by faith. Walk in good works. Walk in love. Walk in wisdom. walk in truth.

There's more positives. It's used both positive and negative. They're more positive than negative. One of the negatives I didn't have down here is that you walk no longer as the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind. You're not to walk that way. So it's describing your conduct in the Christian life. I'm probably belaboring here just a little bit.

Let's look at maybe some details in some of these verses. In Romans 6, 4, So that as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. And that newness of life is really Christ's life. He wants us to walk in Christ's life, is what he's telling us.

In 8.4 he tells us, So that the requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Actually, this is a very good parallel verse for our verse today. who do not walk according to the flesh, but walk according to the Spirit. We're going to learn in our verse today, we're going to learn that we can have freedom as we walk in the Spirit from the flesh, from the sinful nature. Then 2 Corinthians 5, 6, Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, and not by sight. Pretty familiar verse. Walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us as an offering, as a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. And then lastly, in 2 John, I was very glad to find that some of your children walk in the truth, just as he has received commandment to do from the Father.

So that's kind of a small amplification of those verses. that we talked about. So now let's look at another aspect of this. What I found was that in studying this I looked at our brother Hal's notes and he had some really cool stuff that I'm going to make use of here.

Many times people will think of walking in the Spirit and they want to combine other ministries of the Holy Spirit. So I'm going to present four other ministries of the Holy Spirit. There's actually one that really connects up amazingly well with the walking in the Spirit. I'll show you that in a second. So let's go. So these are related ministries of the Holy Spirit So this is a wonderful ministry.

We've been bad every believer in the Lord Jesus Baptism by the Holy Spirit We've identified or union with by the Holy Spirit into the person of Christ into the work of Christ his death burial and resurrection and into the body of Christ the church and So that's one of the wonderful ministries.

We focus a lot on that ministry of the Holy Spirit, but that's not walking by the Spirit. Walking by the Spirit is something different. Another one, which sometimes is confused, is indwelling in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit residing in every believer eternally. We're going to see that shortly. We're going to look at John 14 a little bit. And then filling by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit filling the believer with the things of Christ. We're going to see the wonderful ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is unseen. He's a spirit, so you can't see him. But he's unseen in the sense that he wants to show us the things of Christ. And we're going to see that here in a second.

And then lastly, being led by the Spirit. Leading and guiding, drawing, Accompanying the believer in the things of Christ and what we're going to see here, and I didn't actually coming into studying this verse I didn't actually make the connection, but the leading of the spirit and walking by the spirit are intimately connected They go together in a wonderful way So let's look at some verses. I have two pages of this.

Most of them are in the Gospel of John. But they talk about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in His leading role, if you will, leading a believer. So in John 14, 16 and 17 it says, I will ask the Father, this is Christ speaking, I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper, that's the Holy Spirit, that he may be with you forever. So first of all, he's talking to the disciples here. He tells the disciples that this helper, the Holy Spirit, is going to be with you forever. So every believer has a Holy Spirit forever. In 17 it says, that is the spirit of truth, another name for the Holy Spirit, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you Will be in you so the Holy Spirit is with you forever He's he's abiding with you and and will be in you he will indwell you wonderful, you know Christianity 101 right basic wonderful truths here then in 1426 it says but the helper the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name and He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. The Holy Spirit is our teacher. He's teaching us the things of Christ and brings to our remembrance. You know, and this, this kind of points up, you know, I'm thinking here, this sounds just so wonderful. So how do I, how do I receive this teaching and bring it to my remembrance? How does that happen?

And I'm going to be maybe a little preachy here. You know, I don't want to offend, I don't want to, be after you, but I'd be after myself too. It's directly related to the time that we interface with God's Word, whether we hear it here on Sunday morning, or we go to Sunday school, whether we read it, how we take it in. How can the Holy Spirit be our teacher if there isn't raw material to teach us? So it's intimately related to that. So I would implore you and I implore myself to spend time with the Lord and His Word so that you can receive His teaching and bring it to your remembrance.

Then John 16. But when He, the Spirit of Truth comes, and this is really cool, He will guide you into all the truth. And God is guided to lead the way. He's going to lead us into all the truth. And once again, If we don't have exposure to the truth, we're going to miss out. For he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak. And he will disclose to you what is to come.

So, some of you will appreciate this. I've had occasion where I've had... The ministry of the Holy Spirit is pretty unique, right? He says he's, in essence, he's a go-between, right? There's other words for that, but he's relating from the Father He will not speak in his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak. He will disclose to you what is to come. So the Holy Spirit is disclosing to the believer what Christ has to say, or what he did say, or what he has said.

I have an occasion where I have two phone systems. Some of you may know, I have one phone system that is for one area, this phone system is for another area, and I want to tell That person, what this person is saying, I could do this right, that would be a security violation in my world.

So what I do is I listen over here and I say, OK, OK, OK, OK. And I say, yes, OK, this is what we're going to do. So I'm a go between. I'm relating. So that's the Holy Spirit's job. He's taking the things of Christ and telling us about them, teaching us and instructing us about that. So that's kind of my little picture of that, what's going on there.

He will not. So he's not. He says he's not going to speak his own initiative. Isn't it amazing? The third person of the Trinity is not going to speak his own initiative. Whatever he hears He will speak and will disclose you what is to come pretty amazing ministry for the Holy Spirit Keep going here verse 14 in John 16. He will glorify me again.

He will take of mine and disclose it to you All things that the father has are mine therefore I said he takes of mine disclose it and discloses it to you and So this is just telling them, you're not going to miss out all things, all is all. All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore, I said, He takes of mine and discloses it to you. Okay, and then a couple of last verses here. Romans 8, 14.

For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. And then Mike will get to this, his part. But if you're led by the Spirit, you're not under law. Okay, so that's kind of a real quick snapshot of the Holy Spirit's ministry in terms of leading and other aspects. So let's look at some points about this.

The Holy Spirit, if you look at that, it's like a parent lovingly leading a child, like Christ leading us into His grace in which we stand, which is in Romans chapter 5 there. It's a leading into or entrance into the merits of another. Christ sent the Holy Spirit to indwell us so that He could lead us into the person of Christ. So we see that all of God's plans, all of God's work is focused on His Son and what His Son accomplished on the cross. And the Holy Spirit is an intimate part of that. We have entrance into all the things of Christ by the merits of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our living link with our glorified Lord Jesus.

Okay, so now this next, I have this called Believer's Dependence on the Holy Spirit, but actually what I want to talk about here is, what's the connection, since I started out this little discussion here, walk by the Spirit, what's the connection of walking by the Spirit and being led by the Spirit? Is there a connectivity there? And there is. Now what is the connection between the Holy Spirit's leading a believer and a believer walking by the Spirit? So first of all we saw that that we saw in these verses in the Gospel of John Christ tells us that is the Holy Spirit's responsibility He will guide us into all the truth and all the other things he talked about in those verses and then Paul tells us here In verse 16 that we are to walk by the Spirit by means of the Spirit So here's kind of putting those two together So we are to be depending upon the Holy Spirit's leading as we walk by the Spirit.

That's pretty important. We are to be depending upon the Holy Spirit as we walk by the Spirit. This is a chart here from Hal, which I thought was pretty appropriate. So he tries to answer quickly. How do we walk by the Spirit? How do we put this into shoe leather?

So I kind of arranged it a little bit differently than what he had. So the first part is going to become an outline. And the second part is going to be kind of points to be careful about. So the outline part. The Holy Spirit is the only one that can lead us. We're going to start with leading first. God the Father gives him that responsibility. Therefore we are to be depending upon his leading.

So walking by the Spirit is walking by faith and depending upon the leading of the Holy Spirit in the things of Christ and His Word. So pretty, I think that little one bullet kind of sums up walking by the Spirit. It involves the Holy Spirit's leading and our walking by faith in that. So a couple of points to be careful about. Walking by the Spirit is not baptism, indwelling, or filling. Hopefully I showed you that. Walking by the Spirit is not self-occupation with the Holy Spirit.

You know, there are groups of believers that focus on the Holy Spirit. And that's good, but the Holy Spirit has a mission, and we saw that. He's to show us the things of Christ. So we need to be careful about that. Walking by the Spirit is occupation with the glorified Lord Jesus Christ. It is beholding Him, depending upon Him, Christ being our all in all.

Okay, so now we've talked about this walking by the Spirit. Now there's a promise that comes as a result of that. And it's a pretty amazing promise. So that's the rest of the verse. And you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. It's literally...

Now what's interesting here is this is a double negative in the original. It's umme. Two Greek words, ume, together, the two negatives. So in Greek, two negatives don't make a positive. They emphasize that it make a point more emphatic, or they really nail it down to an impossibility. So he's saying here, you will not, will not, or Merriman has it, you cannot, you will never, never. So he's leading to a point here. So here's another usage of that ume, John 6 37 all that the father gives me will come to me and The one who comes to me.

I will certainly not who may cast out I will never never cast out any way you want to look at it So so carry out is the idea to bring to completion. So let's put this together You cannot you will never never bring to completion the desire of the flesh is what he's telling us. I Literally, it's an impossibility. So this is an amazing statement But I say walk by the Spirit and you will positively never never bring to completion the desire of the flesh Seems too good to be true and we're going to see there's a there's a battle Mike's not talk about the battle coming up here But this is an incredible promise, but there's some there's some things we have to be careful about here The desire of the flesh is a sinful nature See here Okay, so let's just look at the desire of the flesh for a second.

The desire of the flesh. Flesh is used in many ways in scripture for the physical flesh, our body, and other things. In this case, I believe, it's talking about our sinful nature from Adam. And desire here is the idea of craving, longing, mostly evil. Occasionally, it'll be a positive. If you have the King James, it's translated as lust. Lust or desire of the flesh. So observations.

So what's he telling us? But I say walk by the Spirit and it's impossible for you to carry out the desire of the flesh. So almost sounds too good to be true. One thing to remember, he's not saying you will have no desire of the flesh. You know, we all, you know, many times we, you know, It's good that people can't see what we think, right? If they did, they could see the desire of the flesh. And we'd all be embarrassed. I'd be embarrassed, you'd be embarrassed. They would see what's going on in our heads. Paul's not saying that desire is going to stop. But what he is promising is, Paul is saying the desire of the flesh will not be brought to completion as we walk by the Spirit.

So as you walk by the Spirit, by faith, you may have this desire whipped through your mind, that's all it's going to do it will just crash and burn the other side hopefully and Many times we don't want people to know what you thought because you know It's not good many times, but he's promising that it will not be brought to completion That's a wonderful promise here that you not that you'll have no desire of the flesh Now in the last part of this the desire of the flesh will be with us until we go home to be with the Lord so just an incredible verse, but I say walk by the Spirit and You will not carry it you can't it's impossible for you to carry out the desire of the flesh So just in final thoughts here for our brother how If we're walking by the spirit of life now what how did here at first I got a little confused I tried to copy verbatim. I tried to not change too many things you know I Feel like it's I'm trying to present what his his house insight, which is great, but here it can be a little bit confusing and It says, if we're walking by the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, that's actually Romans 8 too, if you look in your Bible. So you could just read this, maybe easier to read it. If we walk by the spirit, then it is impossible to fill the evil desire and impulses and passions of the flesh. So that's all true, walking by the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, but it can make it a little bit wordy.

Also, it is impossible because... Why is it impossible? Why is it impossible that it's because of Christ's work on the cross? It's impossible because its power, the flesh, over the believer is broken or cut loose.

And we see that in Romans 6.6. It's been rendered inoperative, taken offline, and we don't need to obey our sinful nature anymore. There's nothing in the flesh worth holding on to.

As we walk by faith, we allow the Holy Spirit to hold down the flesh in this place of death on the cross. And the Holy Spirit, who is our living link with Christ, forms in us and manifests in us the glory of Christ. Then lastly, the Lord's desire for us is to walk by the Spirit, Of life in Christ Jesus that is to be our moment-by-moment experience desire and experience. So just just a marvelous start to this section walking walking by the Spirit and not fulfilling the lust of the flesh and There's much more to say about this and Mike's gonna get into the part where we have there's a battle going on between the flesh and the spirit But the flesh is going to be around with us, but God has this is his this is his freedom for us This is his freedom from the flesh that he has provided for us.

So let's pray We thank you, Father. We thank you for your marvelous word. Thank you for the truths that are there for us to see and contemplate. And we pray that you would show us that we simply need to trust you and rest upon the truths in your word. In Christ's name, amen.