This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to day four of our look together through Galatians chapter 5. We're
going to be looking at verses 16 to 18 today. In many ways this last part of
Galatians 5 are some of the most exciting verses in all of scripture.

They show you how to live the life that Jesus has given you to live. How do you
do it? Listen to verses 16 to 18.

Paul says, "So I advise you to live according to your new life in the Holy
Spirit. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. For the old
sinful nature loves to do evil, which is just opposite from what the Holy Spirit
wants.

And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite from what the sinful nature
desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, and your choices
are never free from this conflict. But when you are directed by the Holy Spirit,
you are no longer subject to the law.

" Now as we look at these verses, there's sort of a turn in Paul's thinking at
this moment. Up until now, the struggle that Paul has been talking about has
been an outer struggle between Judaizer and Christian, false teacher and
Galatians. Now he challenges the Galatians and he challenges you, challenges me,
to look in the mirror and see a whole new kind of struggle, the inner struggle,
the battle within.

If you've ever felt like you're a walking war zone, battling with decisions and
habits and directions and temptations, then you know exactly what Paul's going
to be talking about in these next verses. And I've never met a person who
doesn't feel that way at times. What Paul has to say in these verses is for you.

At the beginning of this chapter, we learned how to stand, how to be firm in the
freedom that Jesus has given us. Now at the end of this chapter, he's going to
show us how to walk. How do you walk in the Spirit?

And it's almost as if in your mind's eye, you're picking up this mirror and
you're looking in it spiritually to see yourself, maybe as you've never seen
yourself before. And as you look into that mirror, there are four things Paul
talks about that you see. Two today we're going to look at and two tomorrow.

You look into that mirror and the first thing that you see spiritually, Paul
says, is you see a crisis. You take a long hard look at yourself in that mirror
and you see you're face to face with a problem. Now you think, I know I have
problems.

I mean, my bank account is too low, my rent is too high, my car payments are too
steep, my headache is too big, my memory is too short, my responsibilities are
too long, and my neighbors are too much. I know. I know I've got problems.

But Paul's not talking about those outer problems. He's saying, look in the
mirror, take it all away. You still have a crisis.

It's a crisis on the inside. And it is the most important problem that you have
that I have. It's the crisis of spirit and flesh or sinful nature.

Paul uses the word flesh here. It's not talking about the body, talking about
this propensity, this habit, this desire that we have to sin to do the wrong
thing. It's what temptation ties into and makes you feel like doing the wrong
thing somehow is the right thing for you.

What makes you feel that way when you know it's the wrong thing? It is this
flesh, this sinful nature that Paul is talking about here. And there's not one
of us that doesn't have it.

We're born with it. We're born with a sinful nature. And we grow up with it.

You can see a sinful nature in the selfishness even of a child, and you can
certainly see it in the selfishness that I deal with, that you deal with on a
daily basis in my own life. It's a crisis. It's the crisis of spirit, God's Holy
Spirit in my life, and my sinful nature.

This sinful nature is the desire, the tendency to follow the directions of evil.
Why do we do it? Why do we follow Satan?

Why do we follow the world? Why do we follow our lusts? In the end, it's because
we want to.

It's our flesh. It's this tendency to rebel against God's direction. Don't be
confused.

We're not talking about your body here. We're talking about this spiritual part
of you that wants to do the wrong thing. And whether you've ever admitted it or
not, we all have it.

And against that, the crisis is there's the spirit. God's Holy Spirit, when you
become a believer, comes in to empower your human spirit to bring it alive. He
literally comes into your life to give you power, to give you guidance, to help
you walk.

And God's Spirit is in your life leading you in a certain direction, but you're
still tempted to go in the wrong direction. Both of these involve all of you.
This is not a crisis between your body on the outside wanting to do the right
thing and some spirit on the inside wanting to do the wrong thing.

It's all about the outside and inside of all of you and who you are. No wonder
you sometimes feel like there's a crisis. There's a split personality.

When you look into the mirror, you're face to face with a problem. But Paul says
you're also face to face with an answer. This problem has been solved by Jesus
Christ.

This crisis has been overcome. You walk by the Spirit. God's Spirit has come
into our lives.

He's not outside of our lives. He's in our lives where the problem is so that he
can give us an answer. And Paul is saying here that my consistent daily attitude
in following God's Spirit, God's leadership, God's person in my life, when that
directs my life, that's walking in the Spirit.

If I follow the flesh, I do what I want to do, I'm going to be in crisis. I'm
going to be asking, "Who am I? " But if I walk by the Spirit, I'm going to be in
comfort.

I'm going to realize I am his. In the mirror, I look and there is a crisis.
That's the first thing that Paul talks about.

I look in that mirror, there's a second thing. He says this crisis creates
something that I have to deal with on a daily basis. It creates a civil war.

And it's not between two nations, it's right inside of me. Walking in the
Spirit, maybe you've tried to do this. Is it easy?

No, it is not always easy. That which we so desire to do, we want to walk in the
Spirit, we want to please God, we want to live the kind of life that he wants us
to live. Sometimes we find ourselves doing the exact opposite.

There is this sinful nature within me that wants to do the opposite and this
sets up this conflict, this civil war of the worst kind. And you're right in the
middle of this civil war. And as you're in that civil war, you have to remember
some things.

You have to remember, you have to remember there's no compromise. There's no
compromise between flesh and Spirit. They are going in opposite directions.

You can't do some of what I want and some of what the Spirit wants. Following
the Spirit isn't a sometimes thing, it's an all or nothing thing. You don't say,
"I'll follow the Spirit on Sunday and then I'll do what I want the rest of the
week.

" You don't say, "I'll follow the Spirit most of the day, then I'll do what I
want at night. " No, it's an all or nothing. Because once you let the sinful
nature begin to control your life, this civil war, it takes back territory.

It takes you back in wrong directions in life. The idea that somehow you can
live a partly Christian life and a partly carnal, the word carnal means fleshly
or living the kind of life I want to live, it doesn't work. Jesus Christ, the
moment you were saved, forgave you of all your sins.

He gave you a new life and He put His Spirit into your life. And He wants you to
live that new life. We're not talking about whether you're forgiven here.

We're talking about how you're living. Are you going to live out the new life
that Jesus Christ has given you? Depend on yourself, either in doing good things
or allowing bad things into your life, and obviously you're not going to live
His life.

The only way to live His life, the only way, is to depend on Him. And the only
way to depend on Him is all or nothing. How do I live that on a daily basis,
this all or nothing life?

I find myself tempted by sin, and I find myself following sin. And when I do
that, when I have sinned, and I come back to Christ and I ask for forgiveness, I
say, "Jesus, I am sorry that I let that selfishness into my life. I'm sorry that
I let anger control me in that situation.

I am sorry for letting that thought into my mind, letting it begin to control
me. I'm sorry for that self-pity that I allowed into my life. " I say, "I'm
sorry, but then I don't pray, so I'm giving part of myself back to you, but I'm
reserving, maybe I'll do that again when I feel bad again.

" No, I give it all to Him again. Now, I may sin again down the road. I will sin
again.

And when I do, I'm going to give it all to Him again. The way to win the Civil
War is to keep surrendering all of it to Him again and again and again. There is
no compromise between flesh and spirit.

And the other thing to remember about this battle, this war, is don't be
surprised. Do not be surprised at the conflict within. Some believers are, they
think, "Oh, I had a temptation.

What's wrong with me? " Well, Jesus was tempted. The difference is He never
followed that temptation.

He didn't have a sinful nature like you and I do. He had a perfect nature. But
you and I, when we're tempted, we have a choice, because the Spirit's come into
our lives now.

We're going to talk about that tomorrow, a new power that's come into our lives.
So don't be surprised at the conflict within. Don't let Satan make you feel
guilty that you have a conflict within.

Realize that you can, because of the power of Jesus Christ, you can be alert for
the conflict, and you can choose the Spirit's direction in the midst of that
conflict. When you face this conflict, there is a moment in your life of
God-pleasing despair that can happen, that can change everything. What do I mean
by that?

God-pleasing despair. The moment you despair of you solving this problem by
yourself, in yourself, by your willpower, by your strength, by your energy, the
moment you realize, "I can't do that," the moment you give up on that, that's
the moment of freedom. That's the moment that you realize the Spirit can.

"God can do in me what I cannot do for myself. " And if you're like me, you keep
coming back to trying to trust yourself, and you keep falling down, realizing,
"I can't trust myself. " You keep despairing of trusting yourself.

You keep coming back to the place of realizing, "I can only trust Christ. " And
the minute you do that, the despair is gone, and a new freedom is coming to your
life, because you are walking, you're walking in the Spirit. So we pray today,
and I invite you to pray, Holy Spirit, strengthen my life today, and instead of
me trusting in me, I choose to trust in you.

There is a crisis when I look in the mirror sometimes. I'm shocked at the ways
I'm tempted. There is a civil war.

I battle to do the right thing, and I'm even tempted to trust myself to do the
right thing. That's the most prideful temptation of all. Spirit, I pray you
would do in my life what I cannot do for myself.

Bring about a new way of living, a spiritual way of living, a Christ-like way of
living. Do this in me, Jesus, I pray, through your power. Amen.

And join us tomorrow. We're going to look together at two more things that you
and I see when we look in that mirror, that spiritual mirror of our lives.