Things to Remember in a Fight | Nine

Hey, what up?

It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.

Welcome to our podcast.

I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.

I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.

Enjoy the message.

First.

Last weekend was Pastor Appreciation Day, and so many of you said encouraging things.

Or you left stuff in that big basket for myself and the other pastors, or you sent me a car during the week.

I just want to say thank you Like that is such a big deal.

That meant a lot to myself and my family.

It is a privilege, it is an honor to serve you, and so thanks, thanks for the privilege we're starting this weekend and, if you're listening, in the future, it's a rough weekend.

This has been a rough week with the war in the Middle East, israel and Hamas, and it's just, it's gut-wrenching man.

And so, before we start the sermon, I thought that we could pray and I wanted to give you just.

I wanted to just give you the opportunity to express yourself in prayer.

It's the job of whether you're a Christian or not.

Just so you know it's the job of the people, of God to pray, especially when stuff is going bananas.

And so some things we want to pray is number one, that people would, in the midst of their suffering and difficulty, they'd reach out to the God of suffering, that they'd know Jesus Christ and they'd be, they'd somehow be able to hear his message or sense him or reach out to him for relief.

We want to pray that the innocent, the hiding, the ones that are kidnapped, the ones that are in trouble there's some that only God knows where they are, and we need God to go to them, to rescue them, to help them, to release them.

We need justice to be done on our planet, and humans aren't always even great at discerning what justice is, but there's a God who always knows what the right move is, and we want to ask God to restrain evil, to shut this stuff down on every level, in every way that can possibly happen, as fast as possible.

That's what we want to pray.

So I'm going to pray for that.

I would ask you to join me in your heart.

Go ahead and pray, and then I'm going to pray for the message I want to.

This is another chance for you to pray for me.

Pray that this would be helpful to us today.

Let's bow our heads, jesus, I thank you that you're so close and it doesn't feel like it all the time when we look around the world, but I know that it's true.

And, god, we're calling out to you again, like so many have in generations past, and we're saying Lord, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

There are so many innocent suffering right now.

There are so many innocent potentially in harm's way.

We're praying that you would get them out of harm's way.

We're praying that you would reveal Jesus, open every heart, cause people to place their faith whenever they can, wherever they can, with whomever they can, to place their faith completely in Jesus Christ for a kingdom that is unshakable.

God, we pray for all those, maybe, who have been kidnapped, maybe those who are hidden somewhere, maybe some of those who have been kept.

Maybe they're in danger, maybe they don't know how this is going to end.

God is the God of all comfort.

We pray that you would go to them right now.

We pray that you'd provide release and rescue.

We pray that you'd give them hope to carry on.

We pray that they would do what is courageous and brave.

God, we pray for justice to happen, for you to use humans and other circumstances to bring about justice, to drive back evil and to shut down evil in every heart, in every way.

And God, we pray for peace on our planet.

Lord, we pray for humbling.

We pray for a desperate people to look to God and not to men to solve the problems of earth.

Father, I pray for this message.

I pray that it would be super helpful.

I pray that it would give us stuff to chew on and stuff to remember.

I pray that Christ would be exalted in it and everybody said amen.

Hey, we're starting a new series this weekend called Nine.

It's on the fruit of the spirit.

I don't know if you know this, so I'm sure you do.

Anytime you get good at something, anytime you develop a skill.

One danger if you get too good at it is you might get overconfidence, and overconfidence can lead to mistakes, as I'm sure you've found out.

If you have been driving a long time and you get too confident in your driving, you might start to drive recklessly and that might cause damage because you were overconfident.

If you may be at work, you're really confident in what you do, but the people around you start to think man.

They're so confident they can't hear any feedback, so they start going around you rather than bringing stuff to you and they really begin to leave you out.

If you're in sales and you're so confident that you know what's right for every customer that you stop listening to what the customers are telling you and you just try to sell them what you have rather than what they need.

Or maybe you're an athlete, maybe you've been on a team and you were so sure like, hey man, we're gonna mop the floor with these guys.

They got no hope and you were so overconfident that you didn't adequately train, you didn't adequately prepare and you got to smack down because of overconfidence.

Sometimes even medical professionals can be overconfident.

Or we can be overconfident about our own medical acumen.

We think we know what we need.

Or maybe we bring our problem to somebody.

They don't even listen, they just shut it down.

They tell us what they need and it's overconfidence that produces additional pain and difficulty.

The apostle Paul is talking to this group called the Galatians and they're dealing with additional pain and difficulty.

Some of it is because of overconfidence.

You see, at some point they said well, we're gonna be so confident that we are doing exactly what the Bible teaches, we're doing the law.

So precisely when they got to that point, their hearts began to get puffed up.

As happens when people get super excited about how perfectly they're being religious, they get hurtful to one another, they get judgmental to one another, they become a sourpuss.

Slap your neighbor on the knee, say sourpuss.

That doesn't mean you're a sourpuss, it just means they're just saying sourpuss in response to the preacher.

It creates a culture, whether it's a family, whether it is a church, whether it's the business, it creates a culture, even if it's not like Bible rules, it's just the rules.

Whenever we begin to think we're the experts, there can be this dynamic that happens like and everybody else isn't, and I'm wonderful, or we're wonderful, or our team is wonderful, and it becomes a culture of legalism.

It becomes a culture of no grace and that's what's beginning to eat and tear away at these Galatians.

It can eat and tear away at us and it comes from overconfidence and the apostle Paul he's coaching them, he sees them and he's like guys, guys, guys, you're getting this all wrong.

First, you're too focused.

Can you imagine this?

You're too focused on obeying this exactly and not enough.

Focused on the love of God that is in Christ and the God who just forgave you, not because you did all this right, but just because you trusted him.

And if you learn just to mimic him instead of become almost distracted by meticulous obedience, that makes you compare yourself to everybody else and makes you either feel depressed or makes you feel like you're awesome.

If you just focus on displaying the personality of Jesus, jesus would break forth out of your life and you would end up doing most of what's written in that book anyway, almost on accident.

So we're just gonna start with the text and then we're gonna dive in.

This is the beginning of the series on the fruit of the spirit.

Okay, so we're not even gonna really get into the specific aspects of the fruit of the spirit, we're just gonna tee up the whole conversation.

I wanna give you some theological undergirding.

I want us to understand the world that we're in, the universe that we're in.

Okay, so verse 13.

For you've been called to live in freedom.

My brothers and sisters, very, very important this word freedom.

He's been talking to the whole book.

He's on chapter five now.

He's been talking to the whole book about.

You need to get free from your legalistic tendency to think that you're only right with God because you do the right things.

That's not why you're right with God.

He spends this whole chapter.

He calls them are you guys insane?

Are you guys wicked?

Are you crazy?

Chapter three he's like you're so dumb dude, what are you crazy?

That's not how you got right with God.

It's not how you stay right with God.

So he says, hey, man, you're being sucked into non-freedom, my brothers and sisters, but then again, don't use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature.

Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love, for the whole law can be summed up in this one command Love your neighbor as yourself, but if you're always biting and devouring one another, watch out, beware of destroying one another.

These verbs to bite and to eat up these were words that would have been used about wild animals, carnivores, trying to tear each other apart.

He's, like you guys, remind me of animals and I'm afraid you're gonna tear each other apart.

So I say let the Holy Spirit guide your lives, then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves.

The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the spirit wants.

And the spirit gives us desires that are opposite to what the sinful nature desires.

These two factors are constantly fighting each other.

So you're not free to carry out your good intentions.

But when you're directed by the spirit, you're not under obligation to the law of Moses.

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility.

I'm not talking about like wearing a wizard hat and having an abracadabra wand.

Okay, sorcery means it's secret tampering with the powers of evil.

It's trying to convince the powers of evil to do stuff for you rather than going to God to do stuff for you.

Hostility, you might say.

Well, I don't think I'm doing much.

Sorcery, carter, okay, yeah, okay, probably you're not.

But what about these Hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, road rage, much selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties and other sins like these?

Now, in this universe, in the world of the New Testament it's really our universe too there's certain realities that are just happening.

There's certain things that go without saying and we need to understand what those things are.

If we're talking about, maybe like a movie universe, say the MCU, there's just certain things that go without saying that you just have to accept.

Okay, one of the things you have to accept if you're thinking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is people just have superpowers.

Now, here we would be like no, they don't.

But there they'd be like no, no, no, just accept it, just let's move on.

That's a thing now.

Let's just move on.

Okay, so here's a rule of the kingdom, the kingdoms of this earth.

People have what's called a sinful nature.

There's this thing inside of us that when we come alive in Christ, by faith in him, it begins to be antagonistic with the good things God wants to do without us.

It's a secret power of evil that's in operation and here's what it does it releases death into the world, all those things we just read about and the like lustful pleasures, impurity, idolatry, hostility, quarreling, jealousy.

It releases all kinds of difficulty.

It explodes out of our lives and it hurts people.

That's what Paul's saying.

He's saying you're hurting each other with all this stuff.

It hurts people.

And Jesus Christ?

What he does?

What he does is he comes.

He came to not only forgive you're my sin, he came to overthrow the power of the sinful nature, or many translations it's called the power of the flesh.

It doesn't mean your skin, it just means the system that is in opposition to God himself.

Jesus came to overthrow it, but not just the power in the world, the power of sin in me.

He's overthrowing it and he wants to overthrow it in everybody.

And Paul's saying this is how we're gonna talk about how you cooperate with this, because it's gonna totally tear apart your community if you don't cooperate with God.

So let's just list a few Okay, he brought up.

Okay, you get sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, those kinds of things.

Think about how much emotional trauma comes from hookup culture.

Think about how much trauma, how much negative is sewn into the world because of affairs.

Yeah, like it's bursting forth into our world.

It's hurting everybody.

Think about sometimes, when someone's this you've got a family member and they're just so, so, needing to get in relationship with somebody, that they're really hasty and they get hitched to somebody, that everybody else is like, oh my gosh, what are you doing?

But they're just lonely and they're hasty and they're going for it, but it produces the fruits of death perhaps.

Or what about idolatries?

Okay, materialism, I mean, this is a ginormous idol.

We think it's gonna solve all of our problems, but it causes debt.

What about?

Even just like retirement idols?

I see this more and more People have this idol, this ultimate of well, when I can just retire, I'm gonna spend all my days living for retirement and when I get there, man, oh, it's gonna be beautiful.

But when they finally get there, the problem is, their whole purpose has been retirement and now they get to the end of that.

Oh my gosh, I have no purpose anymore.

I spent all my life living for something that now I'm here and there's nothing for me to do to give my life to.

What about anger, hostilities, quarrels?

I mean, how much trauma is in our world right now Because of anger, because of trauma, because of quarreling, because of hostilities?

Even if we're not talking about a global scale, which we could look at the global scale and we could see how much death is spewing out of this sinful nature.

But even just in our schools, what about bullying?

What about online bullying?

What about toxic environments at work and in churches and in families?

Like you walk out of the house and you're like ugh and you're like ha, may I not come back till next Thanksgiving because that was so difficult.

Families, feuding and then, of course, drunkenness, wild parties.

There is a desire to just get to escape, to turn my brain off, to get into another drug-induced or alcohol-induced world just to get away from the pain.

But the problem is that causes all kinds of other pain and people's life, not the least of which is addiction, sometimes hurting others much worse than that.

Or even just envy, man, even just the difficulty of your divorce.

Now you've like envy of your ex-spouses, new life, and every night you go home and you're just like you're crushed inside and it's sad.

Everyone has compassion for it, but it causes you perhaps to stew and to plot revenge and to hate, and that festers in the heart and grows and grows.

And he says let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now he's not going back on what he just said.

He's not saying so you better make sure you get all this right or you're not gonna be with Jesus at the end of the deal.

He's saying the people that not just have instances of this, not just have flashes of this, but the people that say, yeah, this is my world, this is what I want, this is what I'm after, he says you're proving that you probably didn't really encounter Jesus to begin with.

So let's go back, let's revisit that.

Let's go back to what that would be On your computer.

On my computer, if you got a desktop or a laptop, there's the hard drive.

You heard of this, right, you know what the hard drive is.

It's kind of like a brain.

It does functions of a brain.

We can take your hard drive and you can create a partition.

So now it's kind of like you split it in half.

You have two brains now, so I put a partition in my hard drive.

I got two brains Now with that hard drive though it's only in one computer, so I've got two brains.

I can flip over, I can do one partition over here and run this stuff.

I can go back to the other one and run this stuff.

Two brains, one body.

It's one set of hardware, it's one laptop, it's one desktop.

Two brains, one body, and I can switch back and forth which one I do.

That's similar to the way that we interact with the realm of the spirit and the realm of the sinful nature.

I keep flipping it back and forth.

I can operate out of the spirit and I'm just pulling the fruit of the spirit.

Oh, I can just click right on back over without even noticing it and be operating by the flesh or the sinful nature.

Both are using my body and Paul is saying hey, man, you gotta even notice that this is happening.

Fruit of the spirit let's just define what they are and then we'll try to do a little exercise.

The fruit of the spirit they're the Jesus, the Jesus filled personality, virtues that he wants to pour through a human being.

Just like the sinful nature breaks out into the world and causes death, jesus says I want to break out my personality out of you now and cause life and bring life to the full to everybody.

Okay, so let's try this experiment.

No idea if this is gonna work, okay, but let's try it.

This see this nasty poison filled water.

This is.

Let's pretend this is you're in my sinful nature, okay.

And it builds and builds and we get tempted and tempted until finally it just comes out and it spills all over the people around us, us and nasty.

Look, it's still having negative effects on the world.

Or now there's a little bit more of this, because there's more Jesus than there is sin.

The fruit of the spirit.

Jesus wants to build and build and build the fruit of the spirit, and so every context that we're in becomes the personality of Jesus flooding into the world, filling everything with life and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control.

How many think we need more of this stuff in the world?

That's what the series is about.

We're gonna click over to this part of the hard drive and mix the metaphors and we're gonna try to cooperate.

It's not that we get it to do, it's not that we do it.

We cooperate with Jesus to break out through us into the world.

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

There's no law against these things.

Those who belong to Jesus Christ have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to the cross and crucified them there.

Since we're living by the spirit, let us follow the spirit's leading.

Somebody say leading In every part of our lives.

Let us not become conceited or provoke one another or be jealous of one another.

Wet hands don't work well on an iPad.

So because of that's true, we're in a fight the red and the blue, the two parts of the hard drive, the sinful nature and the spirit of God.

We're in a fight and that fight is continuous and giving over to the sinful nature is deadly, it's poisonous, it hurts the world.

So we've got to learn how to allow the fruit of the spirit of Jesus to break forth into the world through us.

And we're going to go to one of the best boxing coaches of all time that doesn't really exist and that's Mickey.

Rocky's Mickey.

You know about Rocky's Mickey.

Okay, mickey man, remember, in a fight he's going to give us some principles about things to remember.

In a fight he's the one who would tell Rocky he'd be like Rock.

It's keep your guard up, rock.

I've never done a Mickey impersonation in my life.

I don't even know if that's good or not, who knows.

But to us he says it's you versus you.

Maybe he would say it like that, I don't know.

These two forces are constantly fighting each other.

It's you against you.

So you're not free to carry out your own good intentions.

What is Paul saying?

He's saying you're never not in a position where the sinful nature is trying to take over, is trying to work something, whether it's saving it up and planning for an outburst or just little trickles out through life, it's always trying to happen.

You are in a fight and that fight is between if you've come to trust Christ.

What happens is he comes to live inside you through the Holy Spirit and he starts to give you new desires, like you want to do certain things you didn't want to use to do that are good, and now there's things that used to do that you're like, ah, I think maybe that's bad, and there's something in you that says I don't think I want to do that anymore, even though part of me does want to do it, another part of me doesn't want to do it.

And, guys, it's two worlds colliding.

It's the world of the flesh, or the sinful nature, and it's the world of the spirit, colliding within us.

Let me introduce you to two of my friends.

This is Cobra and Mungus.

Take a look at these guys.

Do you know about Cobra and Mungus?

These are natural enemies in nature.

They're both kind of like built to fight each other.

All right, so the Cobra, he's fast and he's got some venom, but the Mungus, he's even faster.

He's faster than the Cobra, can you believe that?

And he's resistant to a degree to the venom.

If you want five minutes of fun, look up Mungus taunting Cobra online.

You'll see sometimes entire packs of Mungus.

They're so calm, like if I'm around a snake.

I'm like, ah, I'm freaking out.

The whole time.

Mungus like they're super relaxed, they're chill and they just like poke at the thing.

And then they back up and it tries to strike them and they're like nope, poke.

It's super fun.

But in some ways the Cobra is like the sinful nature and the Mungus is the life of the spirit in us and the Cobra strikes and the spirit is like nope, not gonna work.

Slap.

That's what the spirit does.

If, like the Mungus, if we're paying attention See the mongoose the thing he can't be is not paying attention.

If he's not paying attention, he's gonna get smoked.

Man, cause that is still a pretty fast cobra.

When our heads aren't in the game, when we don't know that it's us against us on some level it's the life of the spirit in us versus the life of the sinful nature in us, and we don't know that then we might get smoked, we might get the beat down.

So and Paul even tells us hey, man, here's how not to fight.

He tells us right from the echo Remember he said verse 13, for you've been called to live in freedom.

He's rebuking them the whole previous part of the letter.

You're not living in freedom anymore because you're trying to be perfect.

You're trying to be, you're trying to get it all done perfectly so you can say you're better than them.

The way to battle you against you is not to try to be perfect.

Paul says it's not gonna work.

You're gonna find that that is a horrible strategy.

It doesn't lead to freedom.

It just gives you more and more of the law to meticulously focus on.

But, as we're gonna see, there's really no power in the law.

It can only tell you you're wrong.

It can't empower you to do right Now.

You can live by the law, you can live by perfectionism or you can live by impulse to the sinful nature.

See, some of us were like, okay, well, I'm not gonna do it anyway.

So just, I'm just gonna forget it, I'm just gonna give up, I'm just gonna give in to the sinful nature, I'll give in to the cobra.

That is going to lead to all the destructive results, though, that we saw when the red nasty stuff was spilling out over everybody.

So it's not just that we remember.

It's you versus you.

Here's number two.

Remember in a fight rock.

Remember in a fight number two I know that's not it in time.

Like that can't be how Mickey sounds.

That can't be it.

Pay attention to your corner man.

Okay, corner man, corner man is the guy in the corner right, like when you're watching a boxing movie.

He's the guy that's like all right, come on, are you ready?

You know he's wiping them down.

You know he might.

He's trying to pep them up.

He might give a mild bandage or something.

That's what corner men do.

They give you a little bit of motivation, they pump you up.

They might assist with some bandaging or something like that, but mostly they just get you ready to go back in the fight.

But they're also gonna give you some coaching, some tips, cause they can see outside of you, they can see you battling this cobra.

You're like let me give you some tips.

Here's what you gotta do, here's what you gotta keep your mind on.

And Mickey and Paul and Jesus tell us keep your mind on the corner man.

They're gonna give you some valuable advice.

And one of the things our corner man, the Holy Spirit of Jesus that's who it really is, it's Mickey, the Holy Spirit of Jesus, our corner man, is saying to us hey guys, remember, only through the power of the spirit can you beat the flesh, only not through your perfection, not through your moral law, abiding through the power of the spirit.

That's the only way you're gonna win over this cobra, as you are walking and being led by and directed by the spirit.

He says it multiple times in this passage, verse 18,.

But when you're directed by the Holy Spirit, you're not under obligation to the law of Moses.

Here's something really trippy, and people get uncomfortable in churches when we talk about this.

You're like are you just giving people permission to just do whatever?

I don't think Paul's doing that, but he's making a point here.

One of the points he's making is a life empowered and led and directed by the spirit obeys the intention of the law better than the actual law.

Those who are empowered by the Holy Spirit and seeking to put to death sin by the power of the Holy Spirit are obeying the intention of the law better than just focusing on the law.

Here's the law.

I'm just staring at this, just staring, staring, staring, staring again, trying harder when I say okay, this is good, I'm learning from this, I'm understanding from this what love is.

That's what the Bible teaches you.

So I wanna challenge some of you.

Instead of looking at this as your rule book, this is your love book, baby.

God tells you how he loves you and how he wants you to love others.

This is your coaching book.

This tells you here's how you do it right.

But you're only right with God because of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Come on, somebody.

That's the purpose of the resurrection.

So it doesn't mean we get rid of this.

It just means oh, he's commanding me to love by the power of the Spirit, so I better study to know how to love by the power of the Spirit.

That's how we'll communicate.

That's how we'll correct sometimes when I'm wrong about how to love by the power of the Spirit.

But what does it do?

It brings us back to focus us back on instead of my facing, just focused in the book.

I'm not saying we don't have a focus on the Bible, but it brings me back to focusing on relationship, relationship with Jesus.

That's what it's about.

Somebody say that's what it's about.

It's about relationship with Jesus.

And here's how you know.

Any time you get check this out I believe you'll find this to be true Anytime you get frustrated in your walk with God, anytime you're just like I'm feeling like frustrated with the whole thing.

I'll bet you $100, you're probably, on some level, walking in legalism.

You're feeling frustrated because you're trying to fulfill some law.

You're being like I feel bad and I didn't do this right yet and I didn't get that and I didn't pull that off, and you're already walking in legalism.

By that point, see, there's no reason to be frustrated when you just rely on and remember and fall on grace Because, baby, no, you don't have to do anything.

Just come back to Jesus.

His arms are open.

He'll forgive you, he'll restore you and, by the power of the Spirit, he will help you fulfill the intention of the law.

Better than just staring at the law and waiting until you're finally good enough, because, check it out, you'll never be good enough.

But what did Jesus do?

He gave you his good enough.

He's like oh man, I got this great, good enough right here.

Live the whole life, my whole 33 years.

It was all right, perfect yours.

That's what he does.

He says that's for you.

And when you're doing it, here's what you do.

You serve one another in love.

Instead of focusing on just meticulously getting it right, which is gonna produce all kinds of pride and jealousy and anger, why don't you just focus on serving one another?

Find the people to love.

Because what am I teaching you in this?

Teaching you how to love.

That's what we're doing, teaching you how to love.

But you're gonna need some people to love.

So go and practice this on people.

Don't just beat yourself up because you're not doing it perfectly, because Jesus already did it perfectly and we keep going in circles.

But we need to keep circling this and what the Spirit is gonna do from time to time.

And in it we said he's gonna give us new desires and he's gonna convict us when we're loving wrong or under loving, or not loving him the right way.

But that convicting, what is it?

It's a gentle pressure.

It's not a matter to you.

It's not like, oh man, I had some grace, but now you're gonna get it.

That's not what it is.

It's a gentle pressure.

It says you're loving wrong, you're not loving me the way I've asked you to, or you're loving you more than you're loving the person I've sent you to to love.

And so when we realize that, when we feel that we do two things Well, it's one thing, but it's two things we repent.

And the first part of repentance is emotional.

It's like oh my gosh, you are right.

Jesus, no more arguing, more excuses.

You're right.

I apologize, I ask for forgiveness, I am sorry.

I did not want to hurt you or, even though I kind of do want this other thing more of me, wants to not want to do that thing and I'm sorry that it hurts you.

So we apologize and then we do number two.

This is the second part.

This is the second part of repentance and it's right there in the text and you're gonna love it.

We kill sin when we see it.

So you don't have to kill it permanently or perfectly, you just have to kill it when you see it, when you see that sinful nature, when you see that nasty red poison spilling out of you oh there it is, there it is Kill it.

That's what you do.

You kill it For those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to the cross and crucified them there.

Now I imagine I wasn't there.

But when crucifixions would happen, when wrong would do their crucifixions, they wouldn't be indecisive about it.

They wouldn't get the guy halfway nailed to the cross and be like, oh, I'm wondering if we really should do this.

They weren't indecisive, they were decisive about it.

They were like we're gonna kill this guy.

That sounds bad, but in a good way we're saying I see the sin, jesus died for it, so I'm not paying for it, I'm just getting rid of it so it can cause no more damage.

I'm going to kill it.

Now.

If you're gonna kill it like that, you gotta be prepared for a couple things.

First, you gotta be pitiless.

It's really an attitude, not just an action.

It's an attitude about your sin of like no, we're not having the conversation.

No, I'm not going through this again.

No, you're dying today.

That's what we're doing.

And if you come back tomorrow, I'm gonna kill you tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day.

I am gonna keep nailing you to this cross because that's what I've been told to do.

That's what they do those who belong to Jesus Christ.

They nail the passions and desires of sinful nature to the cross and crucify them there.

But you also gotta be ready because it's probably gonna be painful.

It's painful because we love our sin and when we put it on the cross, ow like it's hurting us on some level to put that sin on the cross.

See, my friends, here's a wonderful, if we just get this, and I wish I could just, oh, hose this into your heart for the rest of your life.

Christians, they're not the ones who have permanently beaten sin.

Jesus permanently beat sin already.

He already beat it for you, on your behalf.

What you have to do is keep crucifying the sinful nature until you expire.

Right, we crucify a guy until he's dead and you're gonna keep crucifying you until you go to be with Jesus in heaven.

That's the whole thing.

Some of you are like cool, I'm close.

Yeah, I mean, that is part of it, right.

Like there's hope, like this isn't forever.

I just have to survive another year, decade, whatever it is.

I don't have to indefinitely kill this.

I just have to kill it every day until my body expires and then it will be gone from my experience.

It's already gone from me, legally gone from my experience forever.

Now here's what we do.

We see our sin there.

I killed it yesterday and I see it there the next morning.

I'm like man, it's on the cross there.

Wow, hey, you Miss.

You Miss you sin.

Remember all the times we had, remember all the good things we did and all the great, awesome, wonderful experiences we have.

And then we start to get over to it and then we're just caressing it.

I know you're on the cross, but I'm just.

I just like you.

I just like you a lot sin.

And here's the nasty part as you begin to touch that dead, cold body of sin, it begins to warm because you're fondling it and it's turning into a zombie.

And everybody should know this.

What do zombies want to do?

They want to eat your brain, and that's what sin wants to do.

As you touch it and stroke it and try to resist it while also holding it no, I know the fight Nail it to the cross again.

Get that attitude that is pitiless.

Nail it to the cross again, because the fruit of the Spirit Jesus planned for the fruit of the Spirit is for it to enter life through us.

He's got a lot of great things that he wants to grow through, that blue, oozy, holy spirit spirit that comes through us.

The spirit of God wants to come through us as we will crucify the flesh.

He will bring the kingdom of God.

Remember in a fight, try to remember Mickey's voice, if you can.

When you hear it, it's you versus you.

You pay attention to your corner man, who's Jesus.

So today we're starting this journey.

We're gonna go on this little journey.

We're gonna learn about the fruit of the spirit and how to cooperate with Jesus to break forth out of our lives into the world.

And I'm praying and believing I hope that you'll pray and believe and pray for me and pray for you and pray for all of us that we will see something change, something, transform something, grab and quicken our hearts and we will walk out of this series with more brightness and more beauty flowing out of us than we've ever had before.

How's that sound?

I like it.

Let's pray, god, it is.

It's tripping us out that you would live inside of us and want to pour your goodness through us when we've already had so much of that red gunk come through us.

But we thank you for the blood of Jesus Christ, we thank you for your forgiveness, we thank you that you still put our eyes on your law, but not to be right with you, to learn how to love, and I pray today that any legalism that's existing anywhere, any frustration with anybody in their heart because they're trying to still live up to some expectation, father, I pray in Jesus' name you'd give them the grace to see just their need for grace, not their need for perfection.

If today, maybe you've never really understood that before.

Maybe as your head's bowed in your eyes closed.

If you've never trusted Jesus for that, maybe you've been trying to bring him your religious stuff.

I want to invite you today forget all that.

Just bring him all your failures.

Just bring him all your sin, because that's what he wants.

And as you bring those to him, he's gonna forgive you, like he always will.

He'll throw his arms around you.

He'll put a robe on your back and a ring on your finger, figuratively speaking, and he'll fill you with his spirit.

And as you complete the rest of your days on this life, he will help you.

You want to do it perfect, but he'll help you put to death the things of the sinful nature on that cross, and then you will expire and he will take you to live with him forever in a perfect kingdom where there is no war.

If that's you, I want to invite you to pray this prayer with me.

Father, in Jesus' name, I want to recognize that I've been trying to live according to either someone's rules for perfection or mine or what I thought were yours, and it just doesn't work and it's not what you want, and I ask just for your forgiveness.

I bring you my failures and all my imperfections and all my broken laws, and I ask, in Jesus' name, for your forgiveness, and I trust that you're giving it to me.

I trust that Jesus Christ's blood really was enough and that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, proving it was true.

Father, I pray for the rest of our church today.

I pray that you'd fill us with a fresh anointing, a fresh spirit, a fresh second wind to take hold of that for which we were taken hold of four to be your people and to live your life here on earth in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In Christ's name, amen.

Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.

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