Romans 8:5-9

I invite you to turn to Romans 8. I'm really grateful to be with you this morning. It's such a blessing to be with the people of God.

Romans 8. I'm going to read from verse 5 to 9.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.

For those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life.

And peace.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile towards God.

For it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot.

And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.

If, in fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you.

Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.

Just pray really fast for me again.

And, Father, we entrust this to you.

This is your word.

And I pray that for your name's sake and for the sake of ministering to your people, you would make it plain to us.

Lord, we praise you for your grace.

And we ask that you would move among us.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

Throughout Romans, we've been, from chapters 5 to chapters 8, we've been discussing how believers that are in Christ have a confidence and they have a hope of a future glory.

And we're now moving into chapter 8.

And John kind of started us off with that and made them before that.

I'm not going to revisit everything he said.

It was really, really, really great.

I encourage you to go back and listen to that if you missed it last week about the previous verses up to verse 5.

And Paul begins now to celebrate the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer as a result of what Christ has done.

And so, I'm going to just revisit what John said just so we can kind of continue from last week just really fast.

We couldn't deliver ourselves from the power of the law.

The law in itself was a good, righteous, and holy thing.

But we, the problem was with us.

We could not keep the law.

We failed to keep the law.

And in every sense of the way, in action as well as in motive, we failed to keep the law of God.

And so, what John spoke on last week was that Christ came and lived the life and died the death on our behalf.

He suffered the penalty of our sin and we were clothed in His righteousness.

So, in Christ now, there is now no condemnation.

No condemnation from God.

No judgment from God on behalf of those who are in Christ.

Christ was our substitute.

He took our place.

He died the death that we deserved and lived a life that we could not live.

And so, that is the awesome story of the atoning work of Christ.

So, moving into the next verses now, we begin to kind of move back to the work of the Holy Spirit.

And a lot of people in our churches today are pretty ignorant when it comes to the Holy Spirit.

You need to be aware that your salvation was a Trinitarian thing.

The Father acted, the Son acted, and the Holy Spirit acted to bring you salvation.

It wasn't just the Father, not just the Son, but it was also the Holy Spirit.

And they all had different roles that they acted together.

And it is from the Holy Spirit that all the blessings of salvation are brought to us and applied to us.

The Holy Spirit is the agent of the new birth.

All throughout Romans 8, you'll read these different things about the Spirit.

The Spirit is the one who raises us from spiritual death to life.

He's the agent of the new birth.

He brings us no condemnation status with God.

He applies the gospel to us.

Christ achieved it, but the Holy Spirit applies the blood and applies the righteousness of Christ to us.

He's our guarantee of eternal glory later.

And also, He aids us in our prayers.

We'll see these things just coming up in chapter 8.

So, I want you to look really fast at verse 9 that we just read.

Wes is going to speak on this next week, so I'm not going to really go after this long.

But, it says,

You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.

If, in fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.

So, from this text, we can assume a safe thing.

Our text says that there is only two kinds of people in the world and only two kinds of people in this room today.

There are those who are controlled by the flesh, those who are without Christ, unbelievers.

And there are those who are controlled by the Spirit, those who have been saved by Christ, believers.

So, there's only two options there.

So, we're going to kind of examine that today.

Scripture teaches us that we're supposed to step back and examine ourselves to see whether or not we are in the faith or not.

Because there's a lot of people who think they are, but they are not.

But, once someone is in Christ, they can't lose that.

But, the Scripture is also clear that many people deceive themselves.

Jesus Himself said that a lot of people will come to Him on the Judgment Day and expect to be rewarded by Christ.

But, they won't be.

They'll be turned away.

And He will say, I never knew you.

It's in Matthew 7.

So, I want you to look back up to verse 4 just a little bit there in Romans that John spoke on last week.

And the last part of it says,

Who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

And this idea, this Greek word for live or walk,

It means like your lifestyle, your behavior, your outward daily conduct, the way you think.

That's what this implies.

So, if we were to kind of observe your life for a week,

and your actions and all the things that go on,

what would we be able to tell?

That person is born again.

That person has the Spirit of Christ based on the way you behave throughout the week.

With some degree of certainty, we could, but not totally.

There's a lot of people who know the theology,

and who can be really clean on the outside, but be completely dead inside.

But, to some degree of certainty, we can know.

We see, in verse 4, we see that our behavior is based on what?

The way we walk is based on what?

And you see it connected to the way we think, our minds.

Like, the way we act is a product of the way we think.

And so, we're going to kind of look at that today.

I mean, we know that in Proverbs 23, I believe,

it says, as the old version says,

As a man thinks, so he is.

And so, we have to have proper, correct knowledge about God and who he is and about who we are.

Here, where it talks about the mind in our text.

It talks about the way we think, the mind.

It's used for all the mental affections and mental activity, including emotions, your will, your intellect, all these things.

Those who have their minds set on the flesh and the Spirit.

And there was a great guy by the name of John Owen, a Puritan pastor a long time ago.

And he said something pretty profound.

He said, in relation to how spiritually minded are you, how much do you think about eternal things?

And God's truth, this was like a good way to ask that question.

Or how carnally minded are you, how fleshly minded are you?

He said, what do you think about when you are not thinking about anything particular?

Where does your mind go?

When you're not deliberately trying to set your mind on something, where does your mind go?

Does it go to worldly things and fleshly things, sinful things?

Or does it go to the spiritual like Christ and His truth?

So, I have like four things for us to look at today.

The first one, the first point is, how does one become a true believer?

How does one become a true believer?

We're going to look at verse 7 or 8 first for this one.

It says, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile towards God.

For it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot.

And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Okay, now all of us in here, even those who are born again, who are saved at one point in our lives.

You might not even remember when that was.

I definitely do.

But some people may not.

This was all true for us.

We all once lived in the flesh.

We all once lived according to the world.

This was us at one point.

And a lot of us can recall at the same time when we heard the gospel and God brought us salvation and we were changed.

Many of us can't.

And that's okay.

That's not really the point.

But one time or another, we who all love Christ, like did not love Christ.

We did not follow Him.

Something happened to us.

Some of us might remember having Jesus really early in our lives and wanting to follow Him and obey Him.

But there was a time when our hearts did not belong to Him.

So what happened?

How did people like rebels become loyal servants of the King?

How did those who once opposed Christ now stand with Christ?

What happened?

They didn't just wake up one day and decide to do this.

It was something that happened to us.

And that is the mystery of what we call in Scripture regeneration or being born again.

This is a scriptural word that we read throughout many places.

But two points under this one, under number one, is before Christ we were utterly helpless.

Utterly helpless before Christ.

Turn to Ephesians 2.

Keep your hand in Romans, but turn to Ephesians 2.

I only have a few places for you to turn this morning.

Ephesians 2.

Ephesians 2.

And in this text we're going to see how that before Christ we were desperate, helpless.

And this is Paul writing.

And he's talking to Ephesians who are now Christians, but now saying there was a time when we all once lived this way.

Verse 1.

Verse 1.

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air,

the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we once lived in the passions of our flesh,

carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

So, I encourage you to go back and study this.

I'm more in death.

But a few things to point out is that a lot of people have this idea that we were kind of sick spiritually.

That we had some kind of, you know, we were sick and we were in our bed and Jesus came and gave us some medicine and we got better.

But the reality is that's just not true at all.

We were dead in our trespasses.

And the word used here is corpse.

It's like someone sitting in a casket.

And that's the picture of us spiritually.

And we cannot do anything to help ourselves.

A corpse cannot do anything.

Also from this text, we see that under the control of Satan.

You see that in verse 2.

And he's speaking in the past tense.

You were, because he's talking to Christians now.

We were controlled by Satan.

And we followed the way this world thought rather than what God thought.

So, we also see that we were controlled by our flesh.

And as a result of the fall, men are blind in death to spiritual truth.

They can't understand it in and of themselves.

They might be able to intellectually grasp it, but it can't go from their head to their heart.

The saving faith.

And this word that we're using throughout our text of Romans is like fleshly, natural.

It means that the term used for unbelievers to define the way lost people walk.

They're controlled by their flesh.

Like things like eating, sleeping, sex, comfort.

Those are things that your flesh really, really wants.

And those are things that your flesh needs.

We need those to live.

But this is talking in a way that this is what governs your life.

It controls your life.

It steers your life.

And that's all you live for.

You don't live for anything else.

It's blowing all those things out of proportion.

So we were blind to God's beauty, to God's majesty, to God's glory.

And that we were at war with him.

And it says right here that we were by nature children of wrath as the rest of mankind.

So we weren't just having a little bit of an issue and Jesus helped us out.

We were dead in our trespasses.

And we could not understand the things of the Spirit of God.

And 1 Corinthians 2.14 says this,

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him.

And he is not able to understand them, because he is spiritually discerned.

So this was a desperate, desperate condition that we were in before Christ.

Which leads us to part B underneath number 1, which is what happened to us.

And we're going to see the Holy Spirit regenerated our hearts.

Turn to John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

This is a pretty amazing text where Jesus is talking to a Pharisee named Nicodemus.

John 3.

We'll start in verse 3.

Jesus answered him,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him,

How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he not enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound.

But you do not know where it goes, or where it comes, or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

And Nicodemus definitely is thinking like physical, like this can't happen.

And Jesus is trying to say, No, no, this is not a spiritual thing.

This is a supernatural thing that happens.

And this phrase, born again, or regeneration, it means like a new birth, a renewal, a recreation, if you want to put it that way.

And it is the act of God alone where he imparts to us new life through the Holy Spirit.

Being born again and regeneration is not the work of the Father.

It is not the work of Christ.

It is the work of the Holy Spirit.

He brings the gospel to us and applies it to us.

So this is what we see.

The Holy Spirit enlightens our minds to believe the gospel.

And he develops a love for us, a love for God in us that we did not have before.

So I'm going to throw out two terms out here to you.

And I don't really care if you remember or not.

It's just to kind of illustrate a point.

But in theological circles, there's kind of two ways we think about regeneration and being born again or salvation in general.

One of them is synergism.

It means like two things working together to achieve a goal.

And many people think that being born again is that way.

Someone comes to God and they use their intellect, their willpower, their strength.

And they say, Hey, I want this.

And God says, That's wonderful.

Now I'm going to reward you with being born again.

That's back in our text in Romans.

It says that we can do nothing to please God.

We cannot submit to the law of God.

There's nothing that we can do in and of ourselves.

But the biblical view of this is what we refer to as monergism.

It means that the problem of fallen man is we can't do anything to help ourselves.

So what we can't do for ourselves, God does for us.

It's all the work of God alone.

God the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and changes us from the inside out.

We play no role in the new birth.

We don't cooperate with God.

He invades us.

And He changes our hearts.

He gives us a new birth.

And it indicates God's initiative.

This phrase, being born again, it really means, it says literally, to be born from above.

Which means that God came and God worked and that we didn't go and meet Him halfway or anything.

Since you're in John, flip over just to chapter 1 really fast.

This is chapter 1.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

This is something above our natural life and our physical hearts and our physical brains.

This is a spiritual work.

It's what Jesus just said.

John 1, go to verse 12.

It says this,

But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.

And listen to what He said right here in verse 13.

Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

See that?

It's this idea that God acted.

God took initiative and He changed us.

We didn't cooperate with Him.

He did this.

And, like just as you chose not to be born physically, you didn't choose to be born spiritually either.

That's exactly what Jesus just said.

And the Holy Spirit is the one who acts.

And keep your hands still in Romans, but turn to Ezekiel 36.

This is one of the last places I think I told you to turn.

So, I'm not going to give you the...

Ezekiel 36.

God promised long ago before Christ that He would send His Spirit and that He would create a new covenant.

And He promises a new birth spiritually to man.

Ezekiel 36.

Go to verse 25.

This is the promise of the Holy Spirit.

He says,

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness.

And from all your idols I will cleanse you.

And here it is.

And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

So, sinners like us through regeneration are brought into God's kingdom.

We have a...

The Holy Spirit does like a spiritual surgery on our hearts.

He completely makes us over from the inside out.

And it's all His doing.

He conducted it on us.

He went into us and He changed us.

A result of being born again is that we are resurrected from spiritual death to life.

You get these connections.

We were dead in sin.

And that's why you need to be born again.

You need to be regenerated, recreated almost spiritually.

So, the Holy Spirit comes and He takes a dead sinner and He raises him to spiritual life.

I have an illustration for you.

Think about the story of Lazarus.

He was in the grave and he was dead.

You know, completely dead.

His sisters are grieving and Jesus comes there.

And here's what Jesus did not say.

He didn't say, Lazarus, if you want me to make you alive, come out of the tomb first and then I'll make you alive.

Like, that's a picture of us spiritually.

He said the opposite.

He said, come out.

He commanded him to come out.

And by His power, Lazarus was risen from physical death to life.

It's the same thing with us spiritually.

We didn't just cowboy up one day and say, I'm going to change my life and I'm going to do better and I'm going to follow God.

God came and raised you from spiritual death.

In Ephesians 2, 4, it says this,

God being rich in mercy because of the great love for which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved.

So when Christ died, we died.

When Christ raised, we were raised.

We're reunited with Christ.

So that was all under number one.

That was the longest one.

But that was how we become a believer.

We hear the gospel and God's supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

He changes us from the inside out.

Number two.

Go back to Romans again.

If you're not there.

Number two is, what are the characteristics of an unbeliever?

What are the characteristics of an unbeliever?

So, we should examine ourselves with this.

We see this in verse 5.

Romans 8, verse 5.

Romans 8:5

For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh.

See that?

So, people live according to and have their minds set on the flesh.

These are marks of people who are not born again.

People who are not of God.

And again, the word flesh refers to a fallen nature of man apart from God.

Unbelievers' whole mind, emotion, and will are affected by sin.

It means you allow all your desires to govern you and control you and to rule your daily actions.

And this is the last place.

I'm pretty sure you've got to turn.

But keep your hand on Romans, but go to Galatians.

Galatians 5.

We follow our fleshly desires almost immodestly.

This is a picture of someone who's not born again.

Galatians 5, verse 19.

Galatians 5:19

We'll read the first part of this now and the second part a little later.

It says,

Now, the works of the flesh are evident.

Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies.

And things like these, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

All right.

All right.

Now, don't don't take this the other way.

Like in one sense, even those of us who know Christ and who are born again, we still can commit sin.

But as John spoke on last week, we can't remain in sin.

We have to.

The spirit breaks us and convicts us.

We have to come to repentance and we hate our sin when we sin.

That's all of Romans seven before that.

But this is talking about someone whose life is absolutely dominated and controlled by these things.

These are your goals in life.

This is your purpose in life are these things.

That's what this implies.

And there's there's many people among us.

And I talk to them, talk to people like this frequently.

And I think I used to be one a long time ago.

So I used to think this way and I'm so thankful that God has changed me.

But those of us who are born of God, we cannot walk up to Christ as he hangs on the cross and say to him, I know you're suffering this terrible death for my sin.

And that you're dying wishes that I go and sin no more.

But I have this one fleshly desire that I can only satisfy by sin.

So I hope you understand that as I shove this sword into your side.

And I'm happy that it's good to know that your blood that comes out is going to cover my rebellion against what you're doing.

If you think that way, advance at your own peril.

Because there may be no forgiveness of sin for you or repentance.

Because it says in Hebrews 6 that you're crucifying Christ anew, afresh.

Every time you do that, you're hardening your heart more and more into sin and more and more to the only thing that can save you, which is the gospel.

You're hardening your heart against it.

In Romans 3.8 it says, if you think that way, that why not do evil that good may come, it says that your condemnation is just.

It doesn't say you're covered and you're good to go and you can just keep sinning to your heart's content.

Repent.

So, repent.

And come to Christ and He can change you.

Point three.

What are the characteristics of the true believer?

What are the characteristics of the true believer?

The genuine believer.

And we see this in verse, the second part of verse five.

It says, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

You know, in Ephesians it says, do no longer be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.

He's making a connection there.

He's not just saying, like, don't get drunk.

He is saying that.

But he's also saying alcohol has a tendency to control somebody.

Control their actions.

Control the way they think.

They're kind of absent-minded.

They're not sober.

He's saying, don't be that way.

Be filled with the Spirit and controlled by the Spirit and the Spirit's actions.

Spirit's promptings and leadings.

So, by the Holy Spirit, our life is united with Christ.

The Holy Spirit keeps us pursuing the things of God and making our ultimate purpose God's glory.

And so, when the Holy Spirit works in someone, when he worked in me and he worked in a lot of you, you should know this.

Like, think about what Jesus said a minute ago in John 3.

He talked about the wind.

He related being born again to the wind.

It's a mysterious work.

The wind can't be physically seen or controlled by humans.

We just see it.

We see what it does.

We see the results of what it does.

We see how it affects things around us.

We can't see the wind or control it ourselves.

So, in the same way, it's the same way people that are born again.

We see some guy who is rebelling against God and loving the things of the world.

Then, a little later, he's completely different.

I had a friend of mine who went into the Marine Corps after high school.

And he was a crazy buddy of mine.

And a few years ago, he called me.

He'd been to Afghanistan and all that.

And he was out of the Marines.

He was going to UGA.

And I met up with him.

And I was hopefully just going to be able to share the gospel with him.

And I asked him, you know, like, so how's life going, man?

And what do you do in Athens?

I think he probably went and partied a lot in Athens.

And he said, man, I'm done with that stuff.

I'm, like, never going back that way again.

And I asked him, what happened?

Like, do tell, you know.

And he said, man, I became a Christian a year ago.

Like, I'm done with that.

Like, I have no desire for that stuff again.

I love Christ and I want to follow Christ.

And it just blew me away.

Like, you see a guy who completely was one way.

And then what happened?

Like, the wind blew.

And he was born again.

Like, after hearing the gospel, he was changed.

So the evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in our life, though we can't see the Spirit,

it's clear, like, something happened to that guy.

Something's different about that guy.

He still has sin, but he is different.

And some of us don't have this crazy idea that the Holy Spirit is, to believers,

is like a lot of things you see on TV, people getting, you know, like the Holy Spirit is some kind of emotional thing.

This kind of comes on you.

Not true.

The Holy Spirit is what he's referred to as the shy spirit.

He doesn't draw attention to himself.

He draws attention to Christ over and over.

He points to Christ.

Read the Scripture carefully and you'll see that.

He's never trying to draw attention to himself.

He's always pointing to Christ.

His operations are mysterious and secret.

So, also a characteristic of a true believer,

and also this is probably a number one or one of the major characteristics,

is that they are a new creation.

And they have new and holy affections for God that they did not have before.

So, the Holy Spirit came and he changed our nature.

We know in 2 Corinthians 5 it says,

Therefore, if we have Christ, we are a new creation.

The old is gone, the new has come.

We are new creations all over.

The old is gone, the new has come.

And it leads us into the next part of Galatians 5 right there,

that you're already in, verse 25.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law.

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

These are the effects of what the Holy Spirit has in a believer's life.

They're characterized by these things.

Again, not perfectly, but these are the things that they're driving towards and moving more and more into.

And this idea of fruit is singular, not plural.

It's not the fruits of the Spirit.

It's not like today I want to work on my goodness and tomorrow I'll work on my faithfulness.

They're all interconnected.

It's not like a spiritual menu for you to choose from every day.

All these qualities constitute the fruit of a new Christian's life.

And made only possible by the Spirit's power.

It's not the fruit of clay.

It's not the fruit of Andy.

It's not the fruit of anybody in here.

It's the fruit of the Spirit.

He does this inside of you.

So ask yourself, is there evidence of the Spirit's work in my life?

Do I see some kind of desire and love for God that I didn't have before?

No matter what God does to me, I will not turn from Him, like Job said.

Are you trusting Christ alone for salvation?

Do you have a desire to follow Him, live for Him, and die for Him, no matter what?

Do you have a desire to follow Him, live for Him, no matter what?

These are the works of the Holy Spirit in a new believer's life.

Jonathan Edwards wrote a book called Religious Affections.

And it has this idea that new believers, people that are truly born again, are characterized by holy desires.

They have the desire for the things of God that they didn't have before.

And this is what he said.

He said, true saints have in their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious nature of the things of God.

And this is the spring of all their delights and the cream of all their pleasures.

So, we want Christ.

Like, a lot of us are just saying, give me Christ or else I die.

I hope that's true when you say that.

Because if you're just not, you don't need to sing.

You'd be praying that God makes that right in your life.

Give me Christ or else I die.

Christ is the goal of the gospel.

And then lastly, last point, back in Romans 8,

the last point is, what is the result of the two lives?

What is the result of the Spirit?

And what is the result of those who live in the flesh?

Back in Romans 8, verse 6, it says,

Romans 8:6

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

So, here we have the equals, the outcome of what we've been talking about.

First of all, those of the flesh, those of us who do not know Christ,

and those of us who can remember what it was like to be like without Christ,

in this present life you will have no lasting joy, no lasting peace.

All the sinful pleasures you pursue will be fleeting.

Hebrews says, calls them the fleeting pleasures of sin.

Meaning that they don't last.

You have to constantly rekindle them and go back to them for them to give you any joy.

Just frustration, misery, and fear.

Like, that's going to be the result of your present life.

In the future, those who are without Christ and are not walking in the Spirit, they will face judgment.

We just read that in Ephesians 2.

And right here it says, the mind set on the flesh is death.

And this is, again, talking about a spiritual death.

So I plead with you, if that's you, like, don't remain there.

Like, come and talk to somebody and go to Christ.

He's powerful to save you.

And then lastly, what is the result of those who are walking in the Spirit?

It says, life and peace.

So in this life, you can have peace.

You can have joy that is not circumstantial.

You can have everything taken away from you.

But Christ remains, and He won't, even though you might feel like you're letting go of Him, He won't let go of you.

He is yours forever.

And the result is that the Holy Spirit ministers this reality that you belong to God, and that God is for you and not against you.

Then the future will be eternal life.

It will be life in the presence of the living God forever.

And where no sin, death, or suffering remain.

It will be with God in His presence forever.

As a result of those who walk in the Spirit.

So, in closing, I just want to tell you that, like, personally, it says in Acts 7, Paul says, like, do not resist the Holy Spirit.

Stop being hard-headed.

Don't resist the Holy Spirit.

And some of you might be thinking, well, that sounds like the opposite of what we just talked about.

Because if the Holy Spirit's going to work, He's going to work.

Right?

Well, there was a time in my life, and the lives of many of you in here who are born again, where you did resist the Holy Spirit.

You're like, I don't want this.

I want to live for myself.

I want to live for my own glory.

I like my sin a lot.

But, you know, when we heard of the gospel, we heard about Christ, we were just like, no.

Like, and we picture my life and your life as like this fortified castle.

We're just like shutting up all the doors and building up the walls.

You know, and the Holy Spirit kind of comes and like knocks on the door and we're like, get lost.

We don't want you here.

And that was me.

Like, I was resisting.

But here's where grace comes in.

And God did not have to do this.

He could have just been like, all right, perish in your sin.

He could have said that.

He would have been just.

But here's what he did.

He got tired of knocking.

He just went, bam.

And he kicked the door down.

Then he like scaled my walls, took down my flag of clay that was waiting for my glory.

And put up his and like completely made over everything.

And I'm glad he did.

Because left to myself, I would still be in sin.

I still would be perishing.

And so if that's you this morning, you feel yourself like, I don't want that.

Like, know that God will have his way in you.

And that we want to administer the gospel and his truth to you.

Christ is enough.

And I pray that you would examine your heart this morning.

Amen.