The Helper – Galations 5:16-26

Galatians chapter five, verse sixteen says, But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

But if you are led by the spirit, you're not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are evident.

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

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

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

Against such things there is no law.

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

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

And so reads God's word.

Please take a seat, everybody.

Welcome to you.

My name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church, and you're very welcome to see it this morning as we continue a sermon series on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, thinking about who he is and what he does.

That's why the sermon series is called the Helper.

That's what we're saying, our help.

Jesus describes him in John 14, 15, and 16 as a helper like himself, another helper who comes alongside the believer to shape and transform our lives.

And I am sure that each one of us at various points has tried to launch a self-improvement project, an attempt to self-reform.

Maybe you've gone to Enzo and he's done for you a diet plan and a workout regime.

If you haven't, you can go to him after the service and engage him in his services.

Perhaps you've wanted to change something else in your life, a pattern of thinking or feeling or acting.

There's been something that's just been when you die, you thought, I need to make improvements in this area of my life.

And so you say to yourself, never again, or I am always going to.

Or I'm going to lock my phone in a drawer.

I'm going to throw it in a cement mixer because it's just consuming so much of my attention.

I'm going to not put myself in that situation again.

I'm not going to be with those people again.

I'm going to start doing X or Y or Z.

Well, I'm never going to do this.

How does it go?

It goes all alright, maybe, for the first few attempts.

And then what you discover is that willpower alone tends not to work.

And what's worse, that even if we change and reform our actions, it's much harder to change our desires.

Have you noticed that?

It's much harder to change what we want.

And it's our desires that fuel our actions.

Why do I do something?

Because our hearts motivate us to do something.

Even things that are irrational.

You know, those cartoons of the of the brain and the heart kind of having an argument.

And the uh the the brain is you're trying to reason with the heart and the heart skipping after a butterfly.

You that those cartoons, that's that's us.

We can't kind of reason ourselves into improved actions.

Our hearts need to change.

We're a bit like trees, human beings.

Uh trees who have unhealthy roots, the very core of our being, our hearts.

We have unhealthy roots, and what ends up happening is that we produce bad fruit, like uh like addictions, uh, like uh using people, uh craving things that end up being destructive for us.

Why did those things happen?

Well, because there's a problem down here.

And the whole kind of willpar thing, what it essentially can become is well, I can see that there's some rotten fruit on the tree of my life, and so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna try and pluck off that rotten fruit and I'm gonna throw that away, and I'm gonna get a uh a nice new apple, good actions, and I'm gonna staple it to the to the branches of my life.

You're just sticking on these good actions when actually what needs to be healed, what needs to be transformed, what needs to be redeemed are the are the roots.

And this is exactly where the helper comes in.

This is exactly where the Holy Spirit steps in in a person's life.

This is how he helps us.

One of the ways, anyway.

Because the Spirit doesn't begin with the fruit, he doesn't begin with behavior.

No, he begins at the level of desire.

He begins with our hearts, and he wants to transform and heal that, because transforming and healing that level of us will inevitably lead to us bearing good fruit.

The fruit of the Spirit.

This is something that only the Holy Spirit can do, only He can get in beneath the surface, into the tangled roots of our desires, and begin to slowly, also slowly, glacially slowly, it feels like sometimes.

That beautiful work of reordering what we love, reordering what captivates our hearts and beginning to bring about new fruit in our lives.

This is what Paul is talking about in the passage that Anna read for us.

This is what the letter to the Colatians he's been making the case that we can never just transform ourselves by more willpower or by a kind of fear-based morality.

A lot of religion is fear-based morality.

Do this or you will face judgment.

God is an angry dad and he's miffed at you, and if you don't do the things that make him happy, then he's going to judge you and he's gonna send you to hell.

And people think, ah, that's that's what Christianity is about.

That is not what Christianity is about.

That is not the message of the gospel.

The message of the gospel is not, well, I if I if I reform my actions, if I just kind of I'm so scared of being judged, I'm so scared of upsetting this sky father that I'm going to um uh that I'm going to act differently and then maybe he'll love me.

That's not what Christianity teaches.

Do you realize that?

No, no, the message of Christianity is uh not that you need to change in order to receive blessing, but that you have been blessed by God.

God has acted in such a way to set you free from that sin that holds you captive, that he no longer uh sees you as somebody who is his enemy, but has welcomed you into his family as a son, as a daughter.

That's Paul's whole contrast through the letter of Galatians.

He's like, if you live under fear-based uh law-keeping, rule keeping, willpower exerting, you're essentially living as a servant.

You're trying to earn God's favor or trying to uh appease him so that he doesn't judge you too much.

But Paul says, no, no, what Jesus has done is he's made you a son.

You're not a slave, you're a son or a daughter.

You're adopted into the family.

And that completely transforms the whole rationale for Christian obedience and why it is we might follow God.

He is our father.

Change, therefore, is a response to God's loving action, not an effort to earn his favor.

And what's more, God does not leave us to our own devices, he empowers change in us.

He has changed us already by sending Jesus to die for us, to forgive us our sins, to forgive our sins, and to give us his goodness, and then he calls us to grow every day and gifts us his Holy Spirit in order to empower that change.

And when the Father gives to a human being the Holy Spirit, something happens.

A war is declared.

There's a tension, there's a battle going on in the heart of every follower of Jesus.

And so this is our first point.

The Spirit comes to renew our hearts.

Let's pick it up in verse 16 of Galatians 5.

Have it open in front of you or up on your phone.

Uh but I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.

For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.

But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

What's Paul saying here?

He is saying that inside every Christian heart, between now and when Jesus comes back, there's a war going on.

There's a battle for your desires, for your affections.

Do you feel that tension?

There's a tension between what you, as Paul says, what you want to do, you want to follow Jesus, you want to grow in him more.

And yet there's a there's an old man, there's an old woman, there's an old mark that has his own desires and the things that he wants and the things that he craves, and the weaknesses that he has, and the temptations and temperaments.

And that causes a tension between the two.

The desires of the flesh, Paul says, are against the desires of the spirit.

The flesh is not simply uh our body here, but our our sinful nature, our natural disposition to want things our way, to want things more than we want God.

Human beings are our appetite machines.

We yearn for stuff.

We yearn and long for things.

The word desire here in these verses is literally over over wanting, over-desire.

Wanting something too much, like Gollum with the ring.

Or if you've been in that relationship with that, with that boyfriend or that girlfriend who has become obsessive and possessive, and it feels like you are responsible for giving them their sense of place and identity in the world.

And how do you find that?

We find that stifling, crushing.

Because it's an over-desire.

They want something from you that only Jesus can give them, right?

Maybe you've been that person.

This over-desiring that our natural disposition has takes good things and twists them, distorts them, and makes them a little mini-god, an idol that we follow, that we crave for?

Is it wrong to desire good for yourself?

No.

But to over-desire good at the expense of others will lead us to some of the things that Paul lists out, like envy, anger, strife, bitterness, resentment.

Is it wrong to desire pleasure?

Well, no.

But to over-desire it twists it and distorts it and turns it into what Paul lists here, sexual immorality, drunkenness.

We'll look at it more in just a moment.

But when we become a follower of Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to us, he's given to us supernaturally, and he begins to shake things up.

He wrestles with those old desires.

How?

Well, Paul tells us that the Spirit has desires of his own.

See that in verse 17?

For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.

The spirit has certain desires, and that's how he wages war against your old desires.

Now, what are the desires of the spirit?

What is it that the spirit wants more than anything else?

Well, if you remember two weeks ago, and if you weren't there, I'll remind you.

The Spirit, Jesus says in John 14, is all about glorifying Jesus.

That's what he wants more than anything.

Remember the illustration that we had of uh the great statue of uh of Christ the Redeemer, Christo Redentor, in uh in Rio, that great Arc Deco statue of Jesus standing with his arms uh wide looking over Rio de Janeiro.

Imagine yourself kind of walking up uh to uh to that great statue, and around the base there are these huge spotlights.

And these huge spotlights illuminate Jesus so that you can see him better.

And those spotlights around the base of the statue are what the Holy Spirit does.

The Holy Spirit wants to glorify Jesus in your life, he wants to make more of Jesus, he wants you to see him better, to know him better, to be more deeply assured of his love.

That's his desire.

And in glorifying Jesus, he wants to make you more like him.

That's what the Spirit wants.

And so we feel this pull, don't we?

We want to pray, we want to grow in faith, we want to love more, we want to depend on our Heavenly Father more, we want to cling to his goodness in hard times more, we want to become more peaceable, we want to be more filled with more joy.

But the old self, like this, like this dying lion that we're attached to, he competes with us.

But when we are born again, the Spirit of God goes to war with the sinful desires.

And so Paul says that our flesh keeps us from doing the things that we want to do.

The Christian has new, deepest desires.

Our deepest desire is to follow Jesus, more, to become more like him, to see him magnified in our lives.

And yet there is a tension going on.

But this is how the Spirit renews our hearts.

He gives us new desires, desires to be more like Jesus.

To desire less the things that we did before.

And Paul says to walk in those desires.

Continual, habitual, forward momentum, paying attention to those deeper affections, indulging and feeding our desire to follow Jesus more.

That's how we wage that war.

That's how we fight the battle, that tension that we feel on the inside.

Because the more we turn our hearts to Jesus, the more we align it with the Spirit's illuminating of Christ, the more that we will want what the Spirit wants.

The Spirit's work, therefore, is not first and foremost about moral improvement, just making you, quote unquote, good.

The Spirit's work is first and foremost about heart renewal.

And you know that the Spirit is working in you when following Jesus becomes increasingly desirable.

Not just dutiful, but a joy.

This is the change that the law, rule keeping, willpower, could never bring, could never empower.

And so our second point is the spirit empowers a change that the law could not.

Let me pick it up again, verse 18.

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

Now the works of the flesh are evident in sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

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

Rule keeping will not change your heart.

Human beings by nature over-desire things.

And we turn them into idols, we turn them into little functional saviors, little miniature gods that promise life and deliver death.

Little gods that we gave all of our time and attention and money to.

They possess our hearts.

And this is not accidental because this is what we were made for.

We were made to have our hearts possessed by another.

We were made to pour ourselves out in worship to another.

But we have turned from the one who can actually satisfy.

We've turned from the one who gives us life.

We've turned the one who truly loves us and isn't going to use and take from us the way idols do.

But our problem is that we hate God's claim on us by nature.

We want to be our own saviors.

We want to be our own lords.

And so one of the consequences of that is that we will always prefer law over grace.

The very idea that God's salvation would be a free gift actually rubs us up the wrong way.

Because we think, well, what do you mean I can't earn it?

It makes us feel beholden.

It makes us feel small by nature.

Rather than being captivated by the beauty of his overwhelming love for us.

God offers us a free gift.

And people don't accept it.

Why?

Because by nature we see it as the bait on the hook.

So we reject it and we prefer to strive after our own way.

So when God's law comes to us, when God's law comes to a heart like this, that is hostile to him, all it can do is expose how bad we are.

The law becomes a myrrh that shows up our ugliness.

It diagnoses our problem but cannot fix it.

It can show us how dirty we are, but it cannot cleanse us.

And what's worse, the law actually, when it comes in contact with a heart that is hard, with a heart that's hostile to God, it actually provokes us to more sin.

It gives us ideas.

Like the do not walk on the grass sign and the Trinity Quad or the Speed Limit sign or the Don't Touch Hot.

What's the immediate thing?

As soon as you say don't touch, it's hot.

Well, just how hot is it?

Ah, see, touched it.

It gives us ideas of how we might break more rules.

That was what it is to be under law.

Not accepting the free gift of grace.

And if that is us, then our flesh is in charge.

Our sinful desires are our master.

They are ruling.

And verses 19 to 21, Paul shows us what it looks like when our flesh is in command.

And notice from this list of you know sexual immorality and all of these things, not all of them are actions.

Did you notice that?

They're not all behaviors.

Often they are destructive attitudes.

They are rotten roots, distorted and twisted emotions.

Let's work through them very, very briefly.

Paul begins in the uh in the list here with the realm of sex.

Why is it?

It's because you know Christians are obsessed with sex.

Is that why he starts there?

No, I think it's because a sexual sin is perhaps the most obvious and vivid and most universally understood picture of desire that has gone wrong.

Sexual desire is good, it is God-given.

But here it has become sexual immorality, that is, sex between unmarried persons, impurity, unnatural sexual pairings, sensuality, all translations say debauchery, which is uncontrolled sexual appetite.

Starting this way, Paul is saying, let me show you what disordered look like, what disordered desires look like when they run unchecked.

They'll often express themselves in your sex life.

He goes on to talk about idolatry and sorcery.

Idolatry is something that we all do, running after a substitute God, a little mini God, a functional savior.

That's money, sex, power, comfort, family, whatever it is.

Sorcery.

I'm assuming that there aren't any witches in this morning.

I was gonna say come and talk to me afterwards, but please don't.

What is sorcery?

Sorcery is seeking to fake, to counterfeit the work of God in the world.

A way of controlling the world rather than yielding to the sovereign God.

But then there's a shift in focus to our internal life, to the realm of our emotions, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger.

These are proud, self-seeking motives.

Bitterness towards another, unable to share in their joy at their good.

It is the ego that is hungry for more.

It is the person who is always adversarial when you talk to them.

It's never a pleasant conversation.

They're always picking up on something that you've said wrong, or they need to be seen to be right.

They're the last worders.

That uncharitable, ungracious attitude.

These attitudes and emotions, they create something.

They bear a fruit.

So enity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, that broods away at the root.

And what does it give rise to?

It gives rise to rivalry, dissensions, divisions, envy.

People who are always argumentative.

People who fly off the handle.

The one who is always seeking to create divisions.

Just hive people off to be on their side.

A little bit of well poisoning.

Can you believe that this person did that?

Can you believe him over there or her?

Let me tell you what she did to me.

Just always, ever so subtly pulling people onto their side.

You don't even realize that the division is coming until it's too late, and there's this chasm that's opened up, and you realize, hold on a second.

I have been pulled into something that I didn't even realize by somebody who is intent upon division.

Why?

Because there's something going on that is wrong at the root.

And then finally he talks about drunkenness and orgies.

Orgies, uh orgies here are not him finishing with sex again.

Orgies is like a um a drinking party.

Uh it is a drunken orgy.

One of the ways that our world sees people who are trapped, who are enslaved to the flesh, is sadly through addiction, addiction to substance abuse.

People who are committed to walking these paths, Paul says, cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

No, let me be clear.

All of us will fall back into some of these things.

The Christian will fall back into envy.

The Christian will fall back into sexual sin.

The Christian will fall back into losing their cool.

The Christian will fall back into needing people to see that they're right and the other person is wrong.

Part of the Spirit's ongoing work is to wean ourselves from those desires.

But what Paul is talking about is the person who is committed to unrepentantly pursuing these paths.

They cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

They will not get into God's heaven.

But then the Spirit enters.

And the Spirit goes where the law cannot.

He doesn't just restrain our flesh, he crucifies it.

He doesn't just warn us about our idols, he displaces them.

He doesn't just modify our behavior, he renews what we love.

Which is why Paul doesn't end with the works of the flesh.

He lifts our eyes to something more beautiful, to the fruit of the Spirit.

And so, thirdly, the Spirit comes and he reforms our affections and our actions.

Verse 21 to 23.

Sorry, 22 and 23.

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

Against such things there is no law.

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

Why does Paul use the image of fruit?

You ever thought about that?

Why is he talking about fruit as an image?

Let me give you a couple of ideas.

Just to encourage you in your walk, if you're a follower of Jesus, because I think that this is really important and I think that it is really beautiful.

Here's the first thing fruit takes time to grow.

Have you noticed that?

Fruit takes time to grow.

You don't plant the tree in the ground and then you know wake up the next morning, apples.

No.

You see the little flower, and then the flower dies, and you see a little bud, and this tiny little sour crab apple.

And it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until around September time.

You harvest and you make yourself an apple crumble.

But it's been growing all year.

Why does that matter?

Folks, your pursuit of holiness is going to take time.

Your pursuit of holiness, the growth of fruit in your life, is going to feel in some areas of your life like a desperately slow process.

Sometimes you will seek to pay attention to a particular area of growth and godliness in your life.

And you'll fast forward maybe a year.

And you'll look back and you think, I haven't made any progress at all.

This absolutely sucks.

Why haven't I gotten better?

Why is this still such a thing?

But then actually you'll fast forward maybe half a decade, maybe a decade, and you'll look back at that thing and you go, Oh, I'm a completely different person.

We overestimate what can be achieved in our hearts in a year, and we underestimate what can be achieved in our hearts in five years.

Fruit takes time to grow.

One way of understanding Christianity is under is Christianity is long obedience in the same direction.

As I have said before, the first 70 years of being a Christian are the hardest.

It gets way easier after that.

It takes time to grow.

So take heart, have the right time frame.

But secondly, the reason why Paul uses the fruit image is because fruit is inevitable.

Apple trees grow apples.

A heart that is rooted in Jesus, transformed by the Spirit, will bear fruit that looks more like him.

And this fruit will be evidence of the Spirit's work in your life.

I know that there is probably a sense in which people are kind of wondering in this series when's Mark going to get to the gifts?

Like get to the good stuff, Mark.

Like just hurry up and let's talk about tongues and prophecy and healing and all the crazy stuff that the spirit does.

I need to impress upon this for all of you right now.

Do not prioritize the gifts of the spirit more than the fruit of the spirit.

If you do it, you'll actually you'll you will have a distorted view of what the spirit is primarily about.

You'll have a primary distorted view of the spirit's work.

Let me tell you why.

Jesus sent out the twelve to two by two.

Remember this in the gospels?

He sends them out two by two, and they go out to do what?

To heal people and to cast out demons in the power of the spirit.

All twelve of them.

Who does that include?

Judas.

Judas had the gifts of the Spirit.

He had the gift of healing.

He had the gift of deliverance.

And he didn't have a changed heart.

He didn't have a heart that was rooted in Christ, that was bearing good fruit.

If you just want me to hurry up and get to the gifts, you're missing something.

The fruit matters more.

You can have the gifts and not really be rooted in Jesus.

The third reason why he talks about fruit is because roots matter.

This again is not about behavioral modification.

The Holy Spirit needs to work at the level of my loves.

He needs to work at the level of our emotions.

That's right, we actually want the Holy Spirit to make us feel things for God.

At City Church, we want the Holy Spirit to come and to work on how we feel.

We want him to thrill and energize and inform and enthuse and stir our emotions, our affections, our desires.

Because if he does that, he'll be working at the roots that will change our lives.

So what is his fruit?

Love.

Well, this is a love that is pointed and orientated towards the other.

It is a love that seeks to serve the other.

It is not selfish self-protection, nor is it using people.

Lots of love can actually masquerade at actually using folk.

We can attempt to do or project forward loving acts.

Why don't I come and do this for you?

And it seems really loving, but actually it's quite self-serving.

No, no, to love is to pour ourselves out genuinely for the good of another.

Joy.

This is increased delight in who God is, enjoyment of who God is, wonder at what He has done.

Not simply happiness.

Happiness is a candy floss emotion.

It tastes good on the tongue.

It's great to be happy.

You're happy right now, God bless you.

Come and tell me what it's like.

But it's fleeting, isn't it?

It visits you one day and it's gone the next, and then maybe it comes back for another little while and then it feels like it has gone on a long journey.

Joy is different.

Joy is not simply happiness when things are going well, but an enjoyment of God, no matter the circumstance that you find yourself in.

It is a knowledge that whatever befalls you, he remains good.

He is still your father, he still calls you a son, he still calls you a daughter, he is still your richest treasure, like the pearl of great price of the treasure found in a field.

And that's what fuels and swells your joy.

Peace.

Peace is a rest and a reliance on God's care of you that begins to push out and displace anxiety or that overdesire for control.

It's not about being indifferent to the things that are going on, but a settled confidence in who God is in the midst of circumstances.

Patience.

Patience, kindness, goodness.

Patience is the ability to face people in situations without anger, without lashing out.

It is a stability that knows that God hasn't got things wrong in your life.

Kindness is the opposite of envy or resentment.

Sometimes we can fake kindness towards others as a way of manipulating them.

This kindness is the ability to serve another for their own sake.

And knowing that doing so doesn't diminish you in any way.

One of the greatest pieces of uh of marital advice I have ever heard, and I have said it in wedding sermons before.

It's not my own, I heard it from another pastor.

He said the kindness, this is for married couples, for people who are dating and considering marriage, right?

So the kindness is the greatest aphrodisiac.

That's where couples lose the ability to be kind to one another, to seek the other's good, to speak words of kindness, to regard them with kindness.

That puts a relationship in a really difficult spot.

Goodness.

Goodness is actually not just being good, it's in its integrity.

It's a kind of it's a it's a deep moral goodness, it's a moral coherence, it's an integrity of heart, being the same person in every situation.

Are you the same person here on a Sunday morning as you are behind closed doors?

Obviously, we all in a sense have different different faces, different temperaments.

People see us in different ways.

Um, Philippa will uh will see me in different ways than you'll see me.

Uh she'll see me when I'm first thing in the morning, I'm grumpy, and I'm an undercaffeinated.

But is there a general thread of you are the same person?

Or actually, when the door closes, do you become a monster?

Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Faithfulness is the opposite of faithfulness, is the fair weather friend, or the opportunist who preys on people.

To be faithful is to show loyalty, reliability, dependability, even when things are hard, even when it means that you might actually need to say difficult things to someone and risk hurting their feelings or harming a friendship.

Gentleness, I suppose, connected with that, that's the way that somebody speaks.

To speak or act with care and humility, to be self-forgetting rather than having an air of superiority.

And let me give you 14 reasons why you're wrong.

Self-control.

Self-control is self-mastery, not to be swept away by fleshly passions, impulses, but to have a measured, deliberate temperament, to move forward wisely, not impulsively.

And do you see in this list the connection here between fruit and root?

That if the Spirit is growing a heart of greater love for God and others, a richer delight in him over the fleeting things of this world, a deeper peace in his fatherly care of you, then that is going to be expressed in patience, kindness, gentleness, day by day.

People often ask, well, how does how does God grow these things in me?

How does God grow patience in your life?

Don't mean to tell you how.

It's not like the matrix, you know, that kind of thing you get plugged in, you wake up the next morning and you think, ah, I know kung fu, right?

It's not like that.

How does God grow patience in your life?

He puts people in situations in front of you that try your patience.

Have you realized that?

He sticks you in places that are going to force you to be more loving.

He's going to force you to be more gentle.

There's a great hymn, and I uh it's an old hymn.

I have never actually even sung it in a church before, and so it's not one that we sing.

But there's an old hymn written by John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace.

I think we're singing that later, actually.

John Newton wrote a hymn called I Ask the Lord That I Might Grow.

And the whole hymn is a conversation with God.

I encourage you to read it.

It's about kind of six or so verses long.

And it's a conversation between him and God, where he prays this initial prayer, he says, I ask the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace.

The more of his salvation know and seek more earnestly his face.

He's saying, God, I want to love you more.

I want more of the fruit of the spirit, I want more love, I want more joy, I want more peace, I want more kindness, I want more gentleness, I want more self-control, I want more of you.

What a great prayer! Careful what you pray for.

Because The response in the rest of the hymn from God is John Newton going, Why are you killing me?

He said, You thwarted every plan that I had.

You made me feel all the hidden depths of my own sin.

You've made my life harder.

So the penultimate verse, he goes, uh, why, O Lord, I trembling, cried, Will thou pursue the worm to death?

Like, are you just gonna kill me?

Are you just gonna finish me off?

How is this an answer to the prayer?

And God replies, it is in this way that I answer prayers for grace and faith.

That these trials I employ to wean your heart from those fleshy desires to show you that they don't satisfy, and so in order that you might find your all in me.

And so do not be surprised.

Dear brother, dear sister, if in your pursuit of holiness God lays you in a valley, do not think that that is Him forgetting you, for that is how He grows.

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

And he does this as we walk by Him.

As we keep in step with the Spirit day by day, and this is our final point as we conclude, that the Spirit reorients our daily walk.

Verse 24 to 26.

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

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Let us not become conceited, provoking another, envying one another.

Paul concludes by showing us that the way of daily growth is by our continuing, continual walking with the Spirit.

He begins with this image of crucifying the flesh.

That is, the Spirit has united you mystically, supernaturally, but eternally and truly to the crucified risen Lord Jesus.

That means that your old self is dead.

That's why I said it's like being attached to a wounded lion.

This old person, the old Mark, has this mortal wound.

And he will one day die.

But while he's gasping his last, he's lashing out.

But he has been crucified with Christ.

His power is broken over me, his power is broken over you, her power is broken over you.

And yet, crucifying the flesh is also something that we continue to do daily.

As we apply the gospel not just to our actions, not just to the level of our of what we do, but at our motivations.

So if you're struggling with something, the key is not just thinking, well, I need to, I need to just I need to just stop it.

Take off that rotten fruit and staple off something else.

Like, okay, what is what is driving me to do this?

So you're struggling with uh with sexual sin and temptation.

The key is not simply throwing your phone into the cement mixer, it is asking yourself the question: what am I believing about myself?

What am I believing about God?

What are his promises?

How does the gospel speak truth to the lies that I tell myself?

About why I need to do this, or why God is withholding something from me?

If you're struggling with anger, the answer is not simply to say, okay, well, I need to be, I need to be aware of my triggers, as helpful as that might be, or I need to do breathing techniques and count myself calm.

It's an examination of why do I blow my top?

What's actually motivating me?

What's going on inside me?

There's my expectations of myself or other people or a desire for control and the way that I want the world to be.

Maybe it's actually coming from a place of I actually feel helpless a lot of the time.

And so I lash out.

When I puff my chest out and it looks like I'm being proud, actually what's happening is at the root there's a very insecure person here.

You can't just go, well, I need to stop acting arrogantly.

No, no.

You need to apply the gospel to that insecure person who's lying behind the surface, who wants to be reassured that they are valuable, who wants to really know that they are loved, and that they don't need to conduct themselves with bravado and just annoy everybody.

That actually they can be accepted into a greater, deeper relationship if they know the truth of who they are at the core of their being.

That's what it is to crucify the flesh every day, and it is a lifelong communal walk that we do together.

So Paul says to keep in step with the Spirit, walk along the paths that he is leading you, follow his desires, listen to his leading, listen to his prompting.

As he makes your conscience more sensitive, don't ignore it.

We need to retrain our hearts in those small daily obediences, to listen to his convicting voice and responding to him quickly in repentance of faith, to place ourselves in environments of grace and encouragement, to worship together, pray together, speak words of life and joy and encouragement to one another, to view others with kindness and humility, to read others with generosity and compassion.

This is the life that the Spirit creates.

This is how the Spirit transforms.

And this, all of this, every bit of this, is only possible because of Jesus.

He is the one who loved us while we were still in the flesh.

He is the one who kept the law that we could not keep perfectly for us, who bore the curse that we should have borne.

He is the one who broke the power of the flesh by being crucified in our place.

He is the one who rose again in victory and who gives us new life.

Now, through the Spirit, He enters deeper than our habits, deeper than our emotions, deeper than our desires, deeper than your addictions, deeper than your wounds.

Right into the core of who you are, and he begins to work and to make in you.

Trust him, he will do it.

He does not simply command change, he creates it.

He does not demand fruit, he grows it.

And so if you belong to Christ today, take heart.

The one who began that good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus.

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, come, wind of the Spirit, blow afresh, bring change, lasting, deep heart transformation.

That we might love Jesus more and look like Him more and more.

Holy Spirit, blow through our Sunday gatherings, blow through our community groups, blow through our friendships as we seek to show grace and love and compassion to one another.

Spirit, come and stir our affections individually and corporately, communally for the Lord Jesus.

And then stirring our affections, grow more fruit.

There might be evidence of your grace in our lives, evidence to those around us that we are changed and that we are yours forevermore.

Amen.

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