Walking in the Spirit like Jesus | Spirit of Jesus | 3.22.26

Welcome to the Journey Christian Church Podcast.

This week's episode is the final entry in the Spirit of Jesus Sermon Series.

It's called Walking in the Spirit Like Jesus.

Lord is our peace.

Praise God.

It's amazing when you consider what the Holy Spirit wants to do for us, what the Holy Spirit wants to offer us.

It really is incredible.

The joy, the peace, the love, the patience that He wants to give us and transforming our lives that we might be like Jesus and experience life as Jesus did.

It is incredible.

The Bible says that we are given the opportunity to participate in the divine nature, in the nature of God.

What a wonderful opportunity that is.

As I've been going through this series on the Spirit of Jesus and how Jesus interacted with the Spirit, the whole point of this series is to ask, am I walking in the Spirit as Jesus did?

And the way that the Holy Spirit was reflected in Christ's life, is that reflected in my life as well?

We have the opportunity to live as Jesus, and what a wonderful thing that is.

But we are called to emulate Jesus, and in emulating Jesus, we need to make sure that we are representing him as he would want to be represented.

So in 1988, George Bush Sr.

chose Dan Quayle as running mate and received quite a bit of criticism for that.

And in, you know, things really didn't go viral back then, but a viral moment in the Dan Quayle Lloyd Benson vice presidential campaign was when Dan Quayle compared himself to John F.

Kennedy.

And watch watch what happens here.

I have far more experience than many others that sought the office of vice president of this country.

I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency.

I will be prepared to deal with the people in the Bush administration if that unfortunate event would ever occur.

Senator Benson.

Senator, I serve with Jack Kennedy.

I knew Jack Kennedy.

Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.

Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.

The crowd just erupting over that.

Man, if you're comparing yourself with someone, uh you better have the goods to back it up.

Uh it reminds me of a proverb.

In Proverb, let's see, verse 20, or chapter 27, verse 2, it says, let another praise you and not your own mouth, someone else and not your own lips.

That's an important lesson for us to learn.

You know, in the era of self-promotion, in the era of getting on social media and and uh you know showing how how great we are, um self-promotion and praising ourselves almost always backfires.

So if we are to emulate Jesus, then again, we better have the goods to back it up.

If we're saying we're representing Christ, the good news for Christians is we don't have to do this on our own.

We have the spirit of Jesus, the spirit that lived in Jesus, that empowered Jesus, that spoke through Jesus.

We have his spirit living in us.

And so the challenge is to walk by the spirit, not in the flesh, to speak by the spirit, not in the flesh.

Now, there are a lot of people that are claiming to be doing certain things by the Spirit in our world.

That are saying, you know, this is of the Spirit, or somebody might say that God has laid on my heart to share this message to you.

The Holy Spirit wants to share this with you.

And the challenge can be knowing what really is of the Spirit and what is not.

To complicate matters, the Bible says that there are lying spirits.

When King Ahab was coming to the end of his life, his downfall was right at hand, and Micaiah the prophet was given a really interesting viewpoint as to what is happening in the kingdom of God, how God is arranging events in this world.

And Micaiah sees that God's on his throne, and all these spirits, and it seems like good and bad spirits are around the throne.

And God says, How will we bring about wicked King Ahab's downfall, who had shed the blood of many innocent people?

And one spirit said this, and one spirit said that.

And finally, a spirit came up with a plan that God agreed to.

And this is in 1 Kings chapter 22, verse 23.

1 Kings 22:23

It says, So now the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours.

The Lord has decreed disaster for you.

And so there are lying spirits.

The Bible says we are to test the spirits to know what is really of God and know what is not.

The Bible also says that some people who claim to be speaking for God have delusions of grandeur.

They are self-deluded.

They've convinced themselves in their own mind that something is from God when it's not.

And this is what God says about the self-deluded prophets in the days of Jeremiah.

In Jeremiah 23, verse 25 says, I've heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name.

Jeremiah 23:25

They say, I had a dream, I had a dream.

How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?

Now, if they are self-deluded, then they probably actually believe that what they're saying is from God.

But not everything that is claimed to be from God is actually from God.

So how do we know?

How do we know when something is actually from the Spirit and when it's not, when it's when it's really of the flesh, or or you know, how do we know if somebody's speaking by the Spirit or if it's just their own opinion?

And the answer is very simple.

Does it sound like and does it look like Jesus?

Jesus is the standard.

Jesus walked by and lived by the Holy Spirit better than anybody before or since.

Jesus perfectly followed the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit every time he spoke.

Jesus is the standard for how we know is somebody actually operating by the Spirit?

And a good question to ask is always this.

When somebody says, okay, this is of the Spirit, ask, does it look like something Jesus would do?

And does it look like something Jesus would say?

Because he is our example.

So the test is this.

The test, Jesus said, we will know them by their fruit.

The fruit of the Spirit is the evidence to determine if it is of the Spirit or if it is not.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, thank you, Lord, for the example that we have of Jesus.

It's just, it's so wonderful that we have account after account after account of interaction he had with people, times that he faced great pressure, times that he faced great opposition, and the way he operated in the spirit in every single one of those situations, this is the roadmap for us.

I pray, Father, that you would help us to walk in the Spirit like Jesus did.

And the way that Jesus so perfectly exhibited the fruit of the Spirit, that Lord, you would help us to exhibit your fruit of the Spirit as well.

As Galatians 5 says, that comes from crucifying ourselves, crucifying our desires, crucifying our plans, and allowing you to make plans for us.

You put your desires in our heart that we might not live by the flesh that should have been crucified, but by the Spirit through which we have been born again.

We love you, Father.

Guide us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And so, what are the fruit of the Spirit?

What are the evidences?

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.

So in the next two weeks, we're going to look at the way Jesus exhibited the fruit of the Spirit, showing evidence that the Spirit of God was what was working through him.

Number one, Jesus loved those who hated him.

Have you ever noticed as you're reading through scripture that Jesus never stopped reaching out to the religious leaders?

He never wrote them off.

They would oppose him and then he would heal someone and say, Go show yourself to the priests.

And they would send a delegation to see the kinds of things that he was doing.

Spoke to them often, trying to draw them to repentance again and again and again.

And in fact, as he is dying on the cross of the religious leaders who are mocking his suffering, he says, Father forgive them, they know not what they do.

It's incredible.

And it worked.

In the book of Acts, chapter 6, it says, a ton of priests were coming to the faith after the resurrection.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

And a lot of Pharisees became Christians.

Now they became the Judaizers and the circumcision group, and they caused a lot of problems in the church.

But they had at least crossed over from unbelief to belief.

And they believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

And it was mostly due to the fact that Jesus never gave up on him.

When you consider the love of Jesus that he had for his enemies, as he is going into Jerusalem for the final week of his ministry here, and he knows that this city is going to kill him.

And this city is the same city that killed Jeremiah, the same city that killed Isaiah, same city that killed all of the prophets who were dear and near to the Lord, that he loved so, so much.

And they just made this city, made the lives of the prophets, just a living hell, just constantly.

And as Jesus approaches this city and he knows that he's about to be tortured by the same city and crucified in the same city, what do you think his attitude is towards that city?

Do you think he is ready just to write them off?

And he's irritated with them and he's angry with them, he's furious, frustrated with him.

Well, we know what his attitude is because the Bible describes exactly what happened when he entered Jerusalem on this final holy week.

In Luke chapter 19, verse 41, it says, as he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it.

Luke 19:41

And said, If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes.

All through history, Jesus is saying, I have been pursuing my holy city, city of Jerusalem, to bring her peace.

And this city has been resisting me and peace the entire time.

And still all I want is to bring peace to this city, and this city is still resisting peace, and this broke Jesus' heart.

Jesus loved those who hated him.

But our attitude in war, and especially our attitude in victory, it matters.

It matters to the Lord.

In Ezekiel, it says, the Lord takes no delight in the death of the wicked.

In the book of Proverbs, it says this.

And this is something that concerns me about some of the attitude that I see.

Proverbs chapter 24.

Proverbs 24 · chapter mention

An attitude of arrogance can actually lead to a nation's downfall.

An attitude of arrogance and victory.

Proverbs 24, 17, it says, Do not gloat when your enemy falls.

When he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice.

Or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him.

So a lot of times the Lord's wrath needs to fall on someone.

But when it falls on someone, if we are celebrating this, the Lord might cut short the wrath that actually needed to be meted out.

And again, it all goes back to the Lord.

The Lord continued to love his enemies.

And those that are filled by the Holy Spirit, they do the same.

Number two, Jesus was filled with joy when the disciples made other disciples.

So think about like what are what are some major joyful moments in your life where you just felt like everything was right with the world?

Maybe when you're a kid, it's you won a game, and maybe you found out that somebody you liked liked you.

Probably an accepted proposal just made you feel like everything is right in the world.

Or the birth of that first child.

The birth of that first grandchild.

Where it's just like this is it.

It's all okay.

Now, you know, I'm I'm a music nerd, and uh I've been doing a deep dive on Christian music from the 70s and 80s.

Now don't get too excited, I know.

A lot of you are probably doing the same thing right now.

But I was filled with joy to discover that there are actually new wave and progressive bands in the Christian genre.

After the fire, one of the most amazing Christian bands ever.

Again, please contain your excitement.

Certain things that fill us with joy.

I was I was also especially filled with joy.

A couple weeks ago, my son Liam preached his first sermon in the youth group, and oh man, that just wonderful.

It was wonderful.

You know, there's only one time that the Bible says Jesus was filled with joy in the Holy Spirit.

Only one time where the Holy Spirit and Jesus were in complete agreement in their joy.

And that was right after Jesus sent the 72 out on a mission trip and they came back and they were describing all of their successes to Jesus, all the ways that God used them, all of the disciples that they had made.

And as they're describing it, the Bible says Jesus was filled with joy in the Holy Spirit.

Now, those of us who have crucified ourselves and crucified our flesh and crucified our plans and crucified our desires, God puts his desires in us.

And a person that is filled with the Holy Spirit starts becoming joyful about the things that make God joyful.

And a person that's filled with the Holy Spirit, anytime they hear somebody confessing Jesus Christ as Lord for the first time, they are overwhelmed with joy.

Anytime they see somebody baptized in Christ, they are filled with joy.

Anytime they hear that a missionary is coming into town to describe all that God is doing around the world, going to people groups that have never heard the gospel, that are accepting for the first time, a person filled with the Holy Spirit is filled with joy because we serve a joyful spirit.

And again, I mean, how do we know if somebody is walking in the spirit or somebody is not?

How do I know if I'm walking in the spirit or I am not?

How do I know if something is of the Spirit or it is not?

It will be accompanied by the joy of the Spirit and joy over things that the Spirit is joyful about.

It's the test.

The fruit, these are the tests.

Number three, Jesus exuded peace when faced with great pressure.

Now, a lot of times people just come to a point where it is their breaking point.

They just cannot take anymore.

A lot of soldiers come home and the PTSD is is awful.

There are a lot of police officers.

I I saw a documentary on, it was a crime documentary, another thing that brings me great joy.

And uh one of the detectives said that um almost all police officers eventually have their last case.

And it's just like all that they have seen and all that they've experienced, and every one pressure situation after another, they just realize I can't do this anymore.

I'm done.

And we see that a lot with people that that live their lives in the spotlight, too.

One after another, we see celebrities that just reach their breaking point.

It's just like, you know, too much.

Um John Candy, he always seemed like the life of the party and always seemed just just happy and uh yet he really struggled.

And by the time of uh his death, his in in his young life, he was only forty forty-four years old, forty-three years old when he passed away, um he started to realize that he had not really dealt with the grief of losing his father at a young age.

And all the things that once became easy started becoming difficult, and it all just got too much for him, and he broke.

What is so incredible about Jesus is that there is no one who has been more in the spotlight and had pressure like the Lord faced every single day, and he never broke.

He kept going with the will that God had placed on his life.

And I think one of the reasons he never broke is because he had fully surrendered himself to God's will, and also he understood that his times were in God's hands.

The time of his birth, the time of his death, the time of the major events in his life.

He just he just accepted that all of my times are in God's hands.

And he lived each day with this understanding.

There was one time his brothers were telling him, You need to you need to go and show yourself at this major feast, but people were trying to arrest him.

They already wanted to kill him, and and uh his brothers didn't believe in him at that point, and so they, you know, they they saw Jesus as a disgrace to the family.

He'd brought shame to the family, and uh they wouldn't have minded if his ministry ended.

And so they say, you know, you saw some big shot, why don't you go show yourself at the feast?

And what Jesus says is telling in John chapter 7, verse 8, he says to them, You go to the feast.

John 7:8

I am not yet going up to this feast because For me, the right time has not come.

It was about God's timing.

And when it came to the time that his life would end, it would be in God's timing.

And so he goes up to the feast secretly at first, but then he begins to teach, and people realize he's there, and they try to arrest him.

But this happens in John 7, verse 30.

John 7:30

It says, At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him because his time had not yet come.

Fast forward to the night of his arrest.

And he's in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And he realizes there has been a shift.

And in John 17, verse 1, it says, after Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed, Father, the time has come.

John 17:1

The time has come for his glorification, being raised up on the cross.

The time has come for his departure.

But isn't that just Jesus?

I mean, you know, Jesus' life is different from our life, and he had a very set plan for everything that he's supposed to do.

But what about us?

Is that true of us as well?

King David lived a thousand years before Jesus, and he understood that it was true of him.

And he talks about it in Psalm 31, verse 13.

Psalms 31:13

For I hear the slander of many.

But I trust in you, O Lord.

I say, You are my God.

My times are in your hands.

Deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me.

What was true of Jesus, what was true of David, is true of us as well.

Trusting in His good and pleasing and perfect will, trusting in His leading, trusting in His timing will lead to peace.

Author E.

Paxton Hood wrote about a man who was in an asylum back many, many years ago.

And this man loved watches, had a collection of watches.

But then one day he just took all of his watches and smashed them against the concrete.

And he was asked, why did you do that?

And he said, I could not bear the tick-tick ticking, so I dashed it on the pavement.

We can probably relate.

And we can't stop that tick-tick-ticking.

We can't stop our life continuing to pass.

I'm sure there are some times that we wish that we could just smash that clock, you know, that's that's keeping time.

Hold things where they are.

But it's impossible we can't do it.

And as long as we think that maybe there's something we can do to control this.

Well, the stress of you trying to be the author of your own life story, it's not, it's more than you were intended to bear.

Hood concluded from this.

He said, but when the watch is able to surrender itself to the Maker, to the hand holding the watch and measuring out its moments.

Love that idea that God is holding us and measuring out our moments.

When we can do that, it becomes a sight affecting indeed, but very beautiful, very sublime.

The peace that comes from trusting in God's perfect plan.

Even when it doesn't seem very perfect to us.

This last week.

I was on a walk and I thought, man, I would really like to preach this sermon about um the ways that our story often does not feel like a good, perfect, and pleasing will of God.

And you know, I I know most of you here, and I know most of your stories, and I know the times in your life that it has not felt good, pleasing, and perfect.

And you know the times in my life where it has not felt good, pleasing, and perfect.

But I believe with all my heart, and this is this is a step of faith, I believe with all my heart that one day I'm gonna see the big picture.

And you will too.

And the promise that his will is good, pleasing, and perfect.

I'll say I see it now.

I see how you have worked all things together for my good.

Peace comes in trusting that before we see it.

We've got to trust it before we see it.

Number four, Jesus was patient with his disciples who were very slow to understand.

And you see this over and over again in his ministry, and I think the moment that defines it perfectly is in Luke chapter 24, right after his resurrection.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

And it strikes me, this scene in Luke chapter 24, it strikes me of, you know, kind of a slapstick comedy where somebody presents somebody with really good news and they just kind of look dumbfounded, like I don't get it, you know, and they explain why is this good news?

Luke 24 · chapter mention

I don't get it again and again, have to explain why this is good news, and finally, ah, you know, I understand.

And and this is the disciples, they were devastated when Jesus was in the grave.

He rises from the grave, stands before him, and they just kind of look at him, scratching their heads like, what, you know, what's this?

In Luke chapter 24, verse 36, it says, While they while the disciples were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you.

Luke 24:36

So first evidence that he's alive, he stands among them.

They were startled and frightened, thinking they had seen a ghost.

He said to them, Why are you troubled?

And why do doubts rise in your mind?

Look at my hands and my feet.

Second evidence, look at the scars.

And see, look at my hands and look at my feet, he says.

It is I myself, touch me, third evidence, physical touch, touch me and see, ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see, I have.

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet, and while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, Have you anything to eat?

So they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.

I'm really alive, I'm really alive, I'm really alive.

They still don't get it.

He said to them, This is what I told you while I was still with you.

Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me and the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms.

He's saying, all of the scripture says the Messiah is going to die and he's gonna rise again.

And it says it over and over again.

Remember, I talked to you about this, I shared the scripture, you've been reading the scripture since you were very little, and still they did not get it.

And so finally, what Jesus has to do is he has to get inside their minds and break down the barriers of unbelief so that they can understand.

And that's what happened in verse 45.

It says, Then he opened their minds so they could understand scripture.

And how patiently he took them through that process.

And I think one of the reasons that that is written for us like that in the scripture is to remind us that you are never going to convince anybody else to believe in Jesus by being clever, by having all the right answers, by having all the right evidences.

That the Spirit of God has to get in their minds and break down the barriers of unbelief.

Because Paul wrote in Corinthians, the God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers so that they cannot see the truth.

You can talk to somebody about Jesus until you're blue in the face and you can say all the right things, but if your activity is not accompanied by prayer, it it's just going to be fruitless.

We need the Spirit to be working.

Jesus was so patient as he walked the disciples through this, and you think, how do they not see it?

How do they not get it?

We are not much different.

Those who are led by the Holy Spirit when someone disagrees with them, it won't feel like a personal attack.

You know, there are some people that you can disagree with and it's fine.

There are other people you disagree with immediately, they get angry, you know.

And uh it's a lack of patience.

A person that is led by the Holy Spirit, when they are criticized, they answer kindly.

A person who is filled with the Holy Spirit, when they are opposed, they gently instruct.

The point of all of this is, again, there is no one else that has ever lived that is more perfectly walked by the Spirit and showed us what that looks like.

What does it look like for somebody to completely be dependent on the Spirit of God and walk in Him?

Nobody else has done it as well as Jesus.

There are a lot of things that are happening in our world, and people are saying, well, this is the Spirit, and this is the Spirit, and this is a spirit.

How do you know?

How do you know what's real and what's not?

And the test is: does it look like Jesus?

Does it sound like Jesus?

He's the standard.