Spiritual, Not Religious (Romans 8:5-11) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: Romans eight, verses five through 11.

And we're gonna be talking a lot about the Holy Spirit.

I don't know if you ever heard anyone say, um, that they're

spiritual but not religious.

Um, that's, I don't know what exactly what that means, but in the Bible, when.

When it talks about a spiritual person, we're talking about someone

who has the Holy Spirit in them.

And that's what we're gonna be talking all about this evening.

All right.

But Romans eight's where we're gonna be, um, I don't know if you know this, but

Pastor Mark has a Tesla, um, pastor Mark has a Tesla, and when I was looking at

his, uh, you know, the, the giant screen they have in the Tesla, it says there's

a trunk, but it also says there's a fra.

And I was like, what is a fr And basically it's a trunk, but in the front, right?

Because, and I realized in a normal car, if you lift up the hood, this is

what a normal car looks like, right?

There's a whole bunch of stuff in there.

There's, there's all sorts of things that, you know, your dad would

probably know what to do with, right?

There's all this, this important stuff that makes the car run, right?

There's the, there's.

Battery stuff, and there's all these pipes and there's coolant, and

there's all these things in there.

In a Tesla, if you look up, if you lift up the hood, you've got this right.

Um, you've got a trunk, but in the front, right?

It's a, it's a trunk.

Um, this is not Pastor Mark's Tesla.

Um, I wouldn't be surprised if he did keep this in his Tesla, but it's not.

But the whole point is that the reason that there's this empty space in the front

of a Tesla is 'cause it's not powered by an engine, it's powered by electricity.

Right?

Um, now the thing with the Tesla is without electricity, pastor Mark

and I are having this debate about if the government cuts off all the.

Power and all the resources and we're in, you know, we're running for our lives.

Is it better to have a full electric car or a full gas car to, to survive, right?

Would you rather have, if you, you know, rig up your own solar panels or buy

your own gasoline, what would you, so anyway, it was fun, fun conversation.

But the whole point is Tesla is useless without electricity, right?

You can sit in the car, you can do all the things, but if there's no

electricity in it, it's not gonna work.

That's how it's, um, that's how it runs, is completely electric.

I want you to see that as a Christian, the Christian life is completely

dependent on the Holy Spirit.

Everything that Christians do is completely 100%

reliant on the Holy Spirit.

In fact, you could say something like this, being a

Christian is supernatural work.

You can't just do it on your own.

You can't be a Christian just doing regular things without God's intervention.

God has to.

Be the one powering what you do, and that comes through the Holy Spirit.

So being a Christian has to be done supernaturally.

You can't do it on your own.

And that's what we're talking about in Romans when we talk about the

difference between spirit and flesh, and we talked about this a lot

with Romans seven and Romans eight.

The big difference is in Romans seven, there's a lot of talk about the

flesh, and that just kind of means.

Uh, separated from God.

You could say flesh means natural, right?

Everything that's in the box, everything that is just what you do and effort

you put into it, and the works that you contribute, whereas Spirit is

with God's help, what God does in you and through you and for you, right?

That's.

What we're looking at, the difference between spirit and

flesh, and what we're gonna see is Christians, they live by the Spirit.

You cannot be a Christian without the Holy Spirit, and you cannot do any

Christian things without the Holy Spirit.

If you're a Christian and you say, well, sometimes I have the Holy

Spirit's help, you can't say that.

That's not true.

You always need the Holy Spirit as a Christian.

And so what we're gonna do in Romans eight is we're gonna see

the difference between someone who is living with the Holy Spirit.

Someone who's living on their own, right?

A supernaturally helped person and a natural person.

Okay?

Someone, right?

You can think about it as someone who's Tesla has electricity and

a Tesla with no electricity.

That's kinda what we're talking about here.

So you've only got one point on your worksheet, and that's because

it is all I want you to focus on.

I want you to see the difference between spirit and flesh, or supernatural and

natural, if you wanna put it that way.

You could write that instead if you wanted to, but I want you

to see the difference between.

What God does and God's power and the difference between when

it's just you, apart from God, independent from God, someone who's

in the flesh, well, you could say that they're independent from God.

They're not connected to anything that God is or does or says.

Okay.

And so as you're looking at at this passage, and we're, we're

talking about this sermon.

I want you to think about, do I see evidence of the Holy Spirit in my life?

Is there any electricity in my life?

Is there any evidence that God is doing stuff in my life?

Or am I someone who is just living on my own without God?

I'm independent from God.

So I want you to, one thing to do at the sermon is to use it like a mirror.

I want you to look in the mirror of, of what we're gonna look at, Romans eight,

five through 11, and see, is this me?

Am I in?

Am I someone who's.

Living with God's power, or I am someone who's living on my own.

That's what I, that's the first thing I want you to do.

The second thing I want you to do is maybe you, you say you are a Christian.

I want you to ask yourself, when I do Christian things, right, when I pray, when

I read the Bible, when I love people, when I serve at church, do I do those by my own

effort or do I do those with God's power?

Do I depend on God to do those things?

It's kind of like, um, speaking of old we games, like we talked about

last week, it's kind of like, you know this thing on Mario Kart, right?

This is a Coupa cape, this is the Mario Kart we version, right?

Coupa cape.

The difference between being in the water and being out of the water, right?

If you're in the water, you're going real fast 'cause the water

is pushing you along, right?

If you're out of the water, you can, you can go, you can, you can drive, right?

You can move forward.

But.

You go a lot slower, right?

You, you can't keep up with the people in the water.

The secret to winning at Cuppa Cape is being in the water, right?

You wanna be in the water and that if you're a Christian, sometimes what you do

is, as a Christian, you live on your own.

You, you try to drive outside of the water.

You try to, to do things by your own strength, your own effort,

your own smartness, your own Bible knowledge, your own goodness.

Living with the Holy Spirit's help, you know, you're driving in the water, right?

It, it, it, you're going faster.

It makes sense, right?

That's kind of what we want for Christians.

We wanna say, am I doing things on my own effort, my own driving?

Or am I depending on God to, to help me do what I'm trying to do for him?

So what we're gonna see in the sermon is four differences the Holy

Spirit makes in someone's life.

Okay?

So the first one we're gonna see is that the Holy Spirit changes your.

Identity.

Okay.

The Holy Spirit changes your identity.

So look with me, Romans eight, we're actually gonna start in verse nine, okay?

Romans eight, verse nine.

So the Holy Spirit changes your identity.

So here's what he says in verse nine.

Okay.

He says, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit if, 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 what Paul, our author of Romans is saying here is, if you don't have the

Holy Spirit, you're not a Christian.

You cannot be a Christian if the Holy Spirit's not in you.

You have no association with Jesus.

If you don't have the Holy Spirit, if, if the Holy Spirit is not present

in your life, then you have no right and no reason to say I'm a Christian.

You might go to church, you might like church, you might like Christian things.

You might have good morals, you might be a nice person, but if

the Holy Spirit is not present in your life, you're not a Christian.

That's what we're looking at here.

The spirit of God, the Holy Spirit dwelling in someone,

but it changes who you are.

He's saying you hover are not in the flesh.

It's this is a, a state of being.

This isn't just stuff you do, right.

Being in the flesh isn't just, oh, you're sinning a lot.

Being in the flesh is a, a state of being.

It's a type of person.

The biggest difference between a Christian and a not and a unbeliever, right, is

not whether they go to church or not.

It's not their search history.

It's not who they hang out with.

It's not how much they know about God.

The biggest difference between a Christian and someone who's not a

Christian is the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit changes who you are.

That's what changes what you do, right?

But the biggest difference is not, you know, oh, well, you know, you can name all

the books of the Old Testament in order.

Great.

You don't need the Holy Spirit to do that, right?

The biggest difference is the Holy Spirit.

It changes who you are, and that's because when the Holy Spirit's in you, he says,

if the Spirit of Christ is in you, right?

If Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit

is life because of righteousness.

The Holy Spirit gives you eternal life starting the

moment you become a Christian.

Eternal life doesn't start when you die and go to heaven.

Eternal life starts now.

It's kind of like, you know, you, maybe you're familiar with Ephesians two, Paul,

same author says, you were dead before you're Christian and now you're alive.

You're, you're totally different now.

You used to be dead.

Now you're alive.

It's not that you were, oh, you were kind of a good person and you were mostly

Christian, and then the Holy Spirit came into you and then you became like

a, like a varsity Christian, right?

That's not how this happens.

That's not how this works.

The Holy Spirit doesn't just kind of change some of your life.

The Holy Spirit comes into your life and takes you from dead to alive.

Big difference.

Huge difference.

Biggest difference possible, right?

You, you weren't just sick, you weren't just asleep, you weren't just lazy

or groggy or on the bench, right?

You went from dead to alive.

That's the difference The Holy Spirit makes.

It changes who you are.

It doesn't just change some stuff about you, right?

The Holy Spirit doesn't just change.

Oh, well now they, they started being nice to their siblings.

It changes fundamentally who you are.

You.

You are a different person than you were before when the Holy Spirit comes

and lives in you, and that's really encouraging when you think about it.

Remember in Romans six, the first command in the whole book of Romans

was for you to believe something about yourself if you're a Christian, the first

command in the whole book of Romans, the whole letter didn't come until chapter

six, and he said, consider yourself.

Think about yourself.

As though you're dead to sin.

Think about yourself as though you're different than you were before.

You were one way.

Now you're another way, which hopefully if you're a Christian, and that

hopefully that's encouraging to you.

Maybe you're a Christian and you're saying, man, I

really struggle with anxiety.

I'm just an anxious person.

Or saying, oh, I'm a Christian.

I really struggle with anger.

I'm just an angry person.

I'm just not a patient person.

I'm just not a loving person.

It just doesn't, that's just not what I, that's not how I operate.

It's not what I do.

If you're a real Christian, you have the Holy Spirit.

You can say, that's not who I am anymore.

Right?

I'm not an anxious person.

I'm a new creation.

God has made me alive.

I'm different than I used to be.

I used to be anxious.

Now I'm alive.

I used to be angry.

Now I'm not.

That sin, like we talked about, doesn't have control over you, that sin isn't

on the throne of your life anymore.

You can say to that sin.

You can say, that's not who I am.

Right?

When you're tempted to be anxious, when you're tempted to be upset,

when you're tempted to lust, when you're tempted to be, to be envying

those people or be discontent, you can say, that's not me anymore.

I don't do that anymore.

I don't live like that anymore because I'm different.

Not just I do different things.

I am different.

Fundamentally changed by the Holy Spirit, and that's why

Christians live differently.

It's not because they wanna impress God, it's not because they wanna

get into heaven, so they have to start doing all these good things.

It's because they just became a different person.

That's why we talk about when you become a Christian, you start seeing

all these changes in your life.

You start seeing new desires and, and new priorities and, and new habits

and all these different things happen because you became a different person.

My parents, they weren't married or they weren't saved when they got married.

And my mom became a Christian.

My dad's still not a Christian.

And I remember my dad a few years ago, he told me something.

He said, um, your mom's a really different person than she was when we got married.

He said, she's basically like not the same person anymore.

And I thought, that's such a compliment to my mom.

That's such an encouraging thing to hear if you're a Christian, if

someone says, man, you're not the person you used to be, that means, oh

God actually did do something to me.

I hope if you're a, if you're a Christian, and maybe you became

a Christian recently, right?

Maybe you became a Christian a year ago, or maybe you became a Christian

two or three years ago, I hope you can.

You can say, man, I'm a different person than I was in fifth grade.

I'm a different person than I was two years ago.

I'm a different person than I was before I became a Christian.

And maybe the outside didn't change much.

'cause maybe you were a good church kid and you listened to your parents and you

liked God, but the inside is different.

The Holy Spirit's there now, and you have new motives for the things that you do.

So the big difference, one of the big differences is the spirit.

Holy Spirit changes your identity, changes who you are.

Second thing the Holy Spirit does is he changes your destiny.

The Holy Spirit changes your.

Destiny.

I notice I said he right?

'cause the Holy Spirit is a, a person in the sense that he makes decisions and he

knows things and he feels things right.

You can lie to the Holy Spirit, like in Acts five, you can.

Make the Holy Spirit sad when you sin.

Like Ephesians four talks about that.

So the Holy Spirit's a person, so let's use the Holy Spirit's preferred pronouns.

Okay, let's, let's, let's say he and not it.

Okay?

Um, anyway, spirit changes your destiny, right?

In Romans eight 11, it says this, it says, if the spirit of him who raised

Jesus from the dead dwells in you.

He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies

through his spirit who dwells in you?

Emphasis here is on mortal, right?

Your body's gonna die.

Even if you become a Christian, you're still, your body's still gonna die,

even if you trust Jesus and you get his righteousness credited to you,

so you become good enough to go to heaven because you're relying on him,

not yourself, you are still gonna die.

And that's kind of confusing because I thought Jesus said that,

oh, if anyone believes in me, even if he dies, he's gonna live.

Didn't he say it's a Lazarus and Mary in John 11?

Didn't he say that?

Well, what's gonna happen is even though you, your, your body, right, your,

your outer mortal body is gonna die.

The spirit will raise them from the dead.

The Holy Spirit is gonna raise Christians from the dead.

You are going to live.

Forever in a real body, right?

When Jesus was away from the dead, he had a real body.

He ate things.

He could give people hugs, right?

Jesus could have played baseball in his resurrected body if he want to, right?

Yeah.

I mean, right in the, in the big inning.

Um, that's where Jesus was.

Anyway.

'cause Adam Eve stole first.

Adam stole second.

Anyway.

I got you.

Uh, anyway, so all I have to say is God is a baseball fan.

Um, but second of all, um, the Holy Spirit will raise Christians from the dead.

And this is, I know it's easy.

You're young, you're like, oh, I don't have to worry

about dying yet and whatever.

But I want you to think about when you die.

You are going to one day have a real body that's just as real, in fact, even

more real than your body right now.

You're gonna be able to, to touch things and smell things

and taste things and see things

even more real than you are right now.

Like your hand, you're gonna look at your hand and your fingers are gonna move and

you're gonna be able to, to feel your.

Your body moving, you're gonna be able to feel like everything.

It's gonna be crazy, right?

When you're in heaven, you're not just floating around on a cloud,

you're not just, you know, in a church service that lasts eight hours, right?

You're gonna do things, you're gonna touch things, you're gonna talk to

people, you're gonna hear music, you're gonna see things, right?

You're gonna have a real body in heaven.

You it.

It's gonna really be a real place.

There's gonna be a real ground you're gonna walk on.

There's gonna be.

Real things and buildings and people that you're gonna talk to and,

and, and you're not gonna talk to buildings, but you know what I mean.

Right.

You're gonna, you're going to do real things.

Right.

Heaven is a real place.

That's what I'm trying to get you to, to think about.

You're gonna have a, a real body that's gonna be really raised and dead, and I

don't know if the last time you, you went to a funeral or if you've ever been to

a funeral, um, but if you're going to a Christian's funeral right, you, you can.

Or maybe you've seen a dead body, right?

You can look at that dead person, and if they're a Christian, you're

gonna look them in the eye again, if you're a Christian and they're

gonna look right back at you, right?

One day you're gonna, you're gonna talk to that person if both of you are in heaven,

and you're gonna have a real conversation.

And I know it seems far away and it seems like, oh, that, that's just so

far in advance and I'm in middle school.

I don't care about that.

Right?

Do my thing and not worry about that, but that's gonna last forever, right?

This life is gonna last a a few decades, right?

And then it's gonna be you living forever, either in heaven or in hell.

And even in hell, you're gonna have a real body and you're gonna feel real things.

You're really gonna feel pain.

So

the spirit changes your destiny in the sense of he's

gonna raise you from the dead.

But also, we see this earlier, we're gonna.

Jump up here to verses six and the next verse.

So we're gonna see that, see that the destiny language here for,

to set the mind on the flesh.

So someone who's giving their allegiance to the flesh, that's death, right?

That's like choosing not just to die, like, oh, I'm gonna, my soul

is gonna be separated from my body, but it's like death as in

like, I'm, I'm going the wrong way.

I'm living out.

What's bad for me, but to set the mind on the spirit, right?

If I'm gonna give myself to the Spirit, I'm gonna follow what

the Holy Spirit wants me to do.

That's life and peace, right?

It's good.

It's awesome.

It's great.

It's happy for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for

it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed it cannot.

If you aren't a Christian, you don't have the Holy Spirit, you have no

hope of living a truly happy life.

You cannot obey God, so you cannot walk the path of life.

You cannot walk the path of true joy, of true happiness, of real satisfaction.

You can't do it.

You can try to, to grab things to make you happy.

You can try to chase those things down.

You can try to get a lot of money or make a lot of people like you or,

or find things that make you happy and try to follow those things and

get rid of all the toxic people in your life and do all this stuff.

And it's not gonna last, right?

That is death.

You're gonna be unsatisfied and empty, and.

Hopeless.

But if you are living by the spirit, if the Holy Spirit is in you, if

you're, if you're with Jesus right, you are going to walk the path of life.

Your destiny is going to change.

God promises his people the most amount of joy for the longest amount of time.

Psalm 16, that's our theme verse.

True north, right?

Um, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

God promises to make his people happy.

He also promises that if you reject him, you're choosing the life of death.

Not because he hates you, but because you're rejecting the best thing for you.

You're saying, I don't want that.

I want these worst things.

I want money.

I want approval.

I want pleasure.

That's what you're, you're saying, I want that.

I don't want God, but God will is what really is gonna make you

happy, so the spirit changes your.

Destiny and before you're a Christian.

I hope you see that this is you, right?

If, if you aren't a Christian or before you're a Christian,

you are hostile to God.

Someone who doesn't have the Holy Spirit isn't just, well, I'm gonna, you know, me

and God, we're, we're not on bad terms.

We're just not on the best terms right now, but one day we'll figure it out.

If you aren't a Christian, you are hostile to God, you are opposing God.

You are actively working against God, rebelling God and hating God.

If you're not a Christian, that's you right Now.

If you are a Christian, this was you At some point in your life before

the Holy Spirit changed you, you weren't just kind of a bad person.

You were hostile to God, you were opposing God.

You were God's enemy.

You were hating God.

And if you think about this, even as a Christian, your sin is still your, your.

You're still doing these acts that are hostile to God, right?

You as a person, no longer are hostile to God, but you're living like someone.

You're doing the things that people who are hostile to God do.

People who hate God do.

When you sin, that's what you're saying.

You're saying, I'm gonna do the things that people who hate God do.

That's kind of crazy, and I want you to think of your sin that way.

I know that's so helpful for me when I think of my sin, rather

than just, oh, I messed up.

But think of your sin as, oh, this is me hating God, right?

When I'm sinning, I'm telling God I hate you.

When I'm sitting, I'm telling God, you're not good enough.

I don't trust you.

I don't want you.

This is better than you.

Right?

Think of your sin that way.

Make it personal, right?

And that will help you fight it.

If you love God, you're gonna be like, man, I hate that.

I don't want to do that thing to God.

I don't wanna tell God that.

I don't wanna show that to God.

I wanna show God how awesome he is and how great he is,

so the Holy Spirit changes your destiny.

A third thing, the Holy Spirit changes is your mentality.

Your mentality.

We're looking at this phrase where it says that you're setting

your mind on something, right?

So the Holy Spirit, he changes what you, who you are, he

changes where you're going.

He changes now what you want and what you think about what you're,

what's important to you, right?

So in verse five, those who live according to the flesh.

Set their minds on the things of the flesh.

But those who live according to the spirit, set their minds

on the things of the spirit.

So this word live here, um, it really just means who are, there's really just

not a good way to put that in English.

Like for those who are according to the flesh, doesn't sound good.

So that's why they say live.

But really it's just the people who are of the flesh, right?

The identity that we talked about.

If, if your identity is, I'm independent from God.

You're gonna set your mind on things.

You're gonna give your allegiance to things that are opposed to God.

But if you're of the spirit, if your identity is, oh, the Holy Spirit

changed me, I'm a new person, you're going to give your allegiance to

the things the Holy Spirit likes, things that God wants for you.

So what we're talking about here is the Holy Spirit gives you new.

Priorities, right?

New values, new sense of importance.

You're like, oh, that's important.

I used to think it was kind of lame to do that, but now I think it's important.

I used to think memorizing the Bible was boring, and I would only do it if

people bribed me with candy, right?

And then, then I became a Christian.

This Holy Spirit showed me, oh man, God's word is so good.

It's like a, it's like a really awesome meal, right?

It's like a three by three from in and out with a milkshake, right?

That's what God's word's like right.

And so what that does, right, is it changes the Holy Spirit,

changes your priorities, it changes what you think is important.

Or maybe you used to think that, oh, I, I just hate loving hard.

Like when people are, are annoying, I hate loving them.

It's, it bothers me so much.

I, I don't like it.

And then the Holy Spirit changes your life and you're like, oh, you know what?

I, I love how patient God was with me, and I wanna show that to other people.

Your priorities change.

Your values change, right?

Your mindset is different.

It changes what you want, changes what's important to you.

When the Holy Spirit lives in you, it even changes what you think you need, right?

Maybe right now you're like, uh, here's what I really need.

I really need a million dollars and I really need to be this talented

or this smart, or whatever, and the Holy Spirit changes your life.

You start to think, well, what do I really need?

What I need most?

I just need more of God.

He's the best and I want him.

What I really need is I really just need to be with Jesus.

That's what I really need.

'cause that's the best place for me to be.

It changes what you think you need.

It changes why you do things right?

Because some of you probably were, you know, you grew up doing

the right things and you didn't mind listening to your parents.

You didn't mind reading the Bible or or doing Christian things, right?

But the Holy Spirit changes your motives right now.

You're not just doing it because your parents said so now you're doing it

because you're like, this is awesome.

I love God.

I love his word.

I love his people.

I love serving, I love doing these things 'cause I love God.

God is awesome and I wanna do these things.

Changes your mentality.

It's not like, oh, I have to do this.

I guess I gotta do it now it's, oh, I wanna do this.

This is great.

I get to do this.

So the Holy Spirit changes your mentality.

And what's interesting about this, right, is it, it comes from who you

are, not other things around you, right?

The.

That's where that those who are according to the flesh or who are according to

the spirit, have this mindset, right?

Who you are is the basis for what you do.

Or you could say it like this, being a Christian, right, following

Jesus is more about being than doing the being changes the doing.

A lot of times people do that backward, oh, if I do all the right things,

then that makes me a Christian.

If I do the Christian things, I'll become a Christian.

That's not how this works.

You are a Christian and then you do the Christian things.

Don't get that backward, okay?

The things you do come from the person you are, you're either, and

there's only two kinds of people.

You're either a Holy Spirit person or a flesh person, right?

You're either a on God's team person or an independent from God person.

There's no middle ground here.

There's no, sometimes I'm on one team, sometimes on the other.

There's no free agency, there's no trades.

There's no nothing, right?

You either are one type of person or you are the other type of person.

You're not 70% a Holy Spirit person and 30% a natural person.

You're one or the other, a hundred percent and 0%.

So that comes from.

The inside, not from the outside.

So I wanna ask you, are the Christian things you do coming from your

surroundings or coming from your heart because the holy spirit's in you?

Do you just do the things because your parents tell you to?

Or do you do the things 'cause you want to because God's given you a new identity?

I was watching this comedian recently and he was talking about different accents

and he was saying that there's, um.

Learned accents, you know, so there's like the newscaster accent, you know,

like 30 people were shot outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, right?

And like, there's like the newscaster accent, you know, or there's like the

server accent like, hi, welcome to Chick-fil-A, what can I get for you today?

Right.

There's that like, just the server accent, right?

There's that person.

Um, there's some other accents too.

I dunno, there's a lot of different ones, right?

But they're, they're all learned.

And really when you think about it.

Every accent is a learned accent, right?

A British accent learned accent because you grew up in it.

Some people lose their accent when they move away from somewhere.

Some people regain their accent when they come back, right?

Like my wife, her family is from Alabama.

Her grandma talks with a southern accent, and when she talks to like her, um,

southern, Southern people, she knows, or like at work, she'll talk to clients

from the south and over the course of like the 30 minute phone call, she'll

slowly start sounding like a southerner.

It's hilarious.

Or like my dad, he's from Japan.

Same thing when he goes to Japan.

If he's there for long enough, he'll like slowly pick up

more and more of the accent.

Right?

Accents are learned.

They come from outside in, right?

The, the people you live with, the people you surround yourself with, change

your voice from the outside, right?

They impact you, but your tone of voice, right?

What you sound like, just like your natural voice sound

that comes from you, right?

You were born with that.

That's the difference between going to church and actually

being a Christian, right?

A lot of you, your Christianity may be.

Is more like an accent that you learned.

You learned the Christian things.

You, you learn the Christian phrases from your parents or from your friends,

or because you grew up going to church, you, you learn the accent and so you

sound like a Christian because you just learn the stuff from the outside in.

If that's you, you're really one of these people.

You're, you're a flesh person.

You're not a spirit person.

Because that came from the outside, right?

Real Christianity comes from the inside.

It comes from the Holy Spirit being in you because of who you are.

It doesn't come outside in.

And so the Holy Spirit changes you from the inside, not from the outside, but

those changes show up on the outside, and that's our, our last point here is

that Holy Spirit changes your activity.

So he changes who you are.

He changes where you're going.

He changes what you think's important, and he changes what you do, how you live,

and that's how this works, right?

The Holy Spirit changes who you are, and then of course that will naturally change

how you rather supernaturally, right?

Change how you live.

Look at verse seven here.

The mind that is set on the flesh.

So remember the mind that's set on the flesh.

Where did that come from?

It's the type of person you are.

Flesh person mind is set on the flesh that makes them act and feel hostile to God

because they don't submit to God's law.

These are actions, right?

Actions, attitudes, beliefs.

They can't actually, so a flesh person can't obey God.

They're unable to because of who they are unable to do it, but, and again,

verse eight, those who are in the flesh cannot please God, but you, if

you're a Christian, you're different.

You're not a flesh person, you're a spirit person.

If the spirit of God dwells in you, if he lives in you, then

who you are is different, which changes how you live, right?

Because God lives in you.

You should have different thoughts.

You should think about different things.

You should have different priorities, right?

Different dreams.

You should have a different schedule, maybe, right?

I used to never read the Bible.

I went to church my whole life, never read the Bible and became a

Christian, and I was like, oh, I, I, I want God, I want to be in his word.

I wanna know what he says.

I need his wisdom to live my life.

And so I started waking up earlier so I could read my Bible.

My schedule changed, not because someone told me to, but because I

was like, oh, I, I wanna do this.

Maybe you're the way, you just try changes.

Maybe before you, you just hated school.

You didn't like school and you came a Christian, and it's like, oh,

well, you know, God loves when I work hard and I wanna do that for him.

And so your effort changes.

Or maybe your habits change, right?

Maybe you, you delete certain apps, or maybe you don't go to

certain websites, or maybe you don't talk to those people anymore.

Maybe you have different friends, right?

These are all things that change, not because you know you have to follow the

rules to be good enough, but because you say, I want more of God and I

love God, and I'm a different person.

I don't do that anymore.

That's just not who I am.

I'm different now.

That's what happens to Christians, and the whole reason is because of this part.

The spirit of God dwells in you.

When someone lives in you, when God lives in you, it should make a difference.

It should be.

Your life should, should look different than before it did, right?

Even today, if someone lives even in the same house as you, it's clear.

It's pretty clear, right?

So this isn't my room when I lived on my own, but typical guy room, right?

You can tell who lives in this room based on how it looks, right?

There's literally nothing on the walls except maybe this, right?

I don't even know if this is a cabinet or what.

You can tell this is a dude's room.

Right.

You know, instantly.

No decor.

Nothing's really cute.

No plants, right?

This is a dude's room.

Probably smells like a dude's room too, right?

My room, when I, I lived on my own.

When I went to school, I didn't buy any decor, like zero.

Nothing on the walls, no plants, no anything.

I just was like, look, I'm just here to sleep.

And do homework.

Like I don't need a painting.

Right.

I don't need a flower.

I don't need anything.

Right.

That's right.

When someone lives with you, right, your, your dwelling place changes, right?

You can tell, you can tell that there's a girl that lives in this place, right?

You can tell that, that this is not just a dude's apartment, right?

I live here, but it looks way different because there's

a girl that lives here too.

It's cute, it's trendy.

The person from our apartment complex that like at the front desk that we

had to call 'em up to fix something and they walked in and they just

totally forgot what they were doing.

They're like, this apartment is so cute.

They're like, I, and oh yeah.

It was like they were just, they literally forgot what they came for and

they like took like a minute to just be like, wow, I love this, whatever.

And then like the person who used to live in this apartment, they moved

down the hall and they came by and they were like, I love the way it looks.

Whatever.

It was hilarious.

But um, all to say right is.

When Shea and I started living together, there was a big difference right in

what my living place looked like.

You could tell, oh, it's obvious that someone else lives here now, right?

If you're a Christian, it should be obvious that God lives in you.

It should be obvious.

God lives in you, God, not just someone you met, right?

Not just a roommate, not just.

You know, your, your college buddy who you decided to, to save money with and, and

sleep on, on the floor together, right?

Like you decided you didn't just say, oh yeah, whatever.

Right?

God lives in you.

Right?

There should be a big difference there.

So I hope you see the difference, right?

The spirit changes who you are.

It changes where you're going.

It changes what you think is important and it, the Holy Spirit will change.

How you live, what you do, what you want, what you think about.

And again, all of that is because being a Christian is powered by God.

It's supernatural work.

If you're a Christian, you cannot do this on your own.

God has to do something to you.

And so in small groups, I want you to think about again, do I see evidence

of the Holy Spirit in my life?

And if I am a Christian, am I trying to do all this on my own?

Let's pray and we'll go to small groups.

God, we are grateful that we don't have to work really hard

to get you to change our life.

We don't have to clean ourselves up for you to save us, but we can come

to you and if we confess our sin and trust Jesus to pay for it, then

we can have all of our sin gone.

We can be perfectly righteous before you and we can live a truly.

Happy life the way we were made to live.

So I pray right now as we think about this sermon.

I pray that you protect us from misconceptions about the Holy Spirit.

I pray that you protect us from distracting each other and, and

undermining what you're trying to do.

I pray that you would help us to help each other and help ourselves to learn how to

follow you and follow your spirit better.

We pray this in Jesus name.

Amen.