Life in the Spirit: The Holy Spirit Reorders Us

Well, happy New Year.

How are we doing on resolutions?

Yeah.

That's how resolutions tend to go.

Uh, I did some research on resolutions this week.

A Ugov survey says this.

Uh, the most common New Year's resolutions, 25% of us want to exercise more.

23% of us want to be happier.

So I'm not sure what the other 77% of us want.

My real goal, unhappy.

All right, 22% want to eat healthier, 21% want to save more money, which means, hey, we're gonna be fit, we're gonna be happy, we're gonna be rich.

This is gonna be really good for us.

So uh last week I added one more to your list, and I said, hey, let's begin this year.

Let's begin, and in January, let's study, let's learn about what it means to walk in the Holy Spirit.

What does it mean to walk with the Spirit?

Last week we learned that the Holy Spirit lives in us as Christians and bonds us to Jesus.

So it is not our commitment to Christ, our passion, our religious resume that keeps us with Jesus or pleasing to God.

It is the Holy Spirit's commitment and bond to us.

And then this week I read this sentence: the Holy Spirit reorders us as the Holy Spirit lives in us.

I love that word reorders.

My girls love the TV show, The Home Edit on Netflix.

You don't know the show.

Two ladies come into messy, disorganized, chaotic places, and they they reorganize these rooms at very beautifully organized, color-coded, right?

Lots of containers and stuff in containers.

One of my favorites is they go to Drew Barrymore's studio kitchen, which was just a mess.

Stuff was everywhere.

There's no system, the room is chaos, there's no order, it's overrun.

And then the home edit happens.

The two ladies come in and they purge and they organize and they color code.

And we get this ordered room.

They reorder the room, right?

They take chaos and then they turn it to order.

This is what the Holy Spirit does in us over time.

The Holy Spirit takes the chaos of our minds and our hearts and begins a process of making order, revealing wrong values, motives, thoughts, and reordering them to right and good thoughts, motives, behaviors.

Let's look at this incredible passage, Romans 8.

Begin in verse 5.

For 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.

For to set the mind on the flesh is death.

But to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Point number one is this we have two mindsets at work in us, flesh and spirit.

Perhaps you have felt the tension.

The word flesh means more than muscle and bone.

The word flesh is this Greek word sarx, meaning the sin-dominated inner self.

The inner self of you that is self-oriented, self-bent.

Yes, we're created image in the image of God, we're created worthy, but that worthy self is struggling.

Always self-bent.

What can I get?

How can I get pleasure without regard to God's ways?

Now the word spirit is the Greek word pneuma, and this is speaking of the Holy Spirit who now lives in you, right now, present moment.

Like breath, that word, like breath, the spirit lives in us.

So there's a tension, the flesh, which is dominated by that self-orientation, independence from God, my way, my things, the thing I want, or the spirit, which is working to make us whole, already deems forgiven and righteous, bonded to Jesus by the Spirit, that's already secure.

In that security, the process of God helping us discover the wealth of our identity as sons and daughters.

And Paul says that your nature, my nature, what is true about us in our inner core determines our mindset.

The phrase set your mind in this passage, it means your thoughts, your interests, your affections, your purpose.

Are we setting those in the way of the Spirit?

The commentary words it this way: it is a question of what preoccupies us, of the ambitions which drive us, and the concerns which engross us, of how we spend our time and our energies, of what we concentrate on and give ourselves up to.

And Paul says that we play a role in that, an active role to set our minds on the things of the Spirit, but even in that role of ours that is empowered by the Spirit in us, as we continue to remember who we are as sons and daughters.

Verse 9.

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

If in fact the spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him, but if Christ is in you.

Although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.

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.

Point number two is this the Spirit who is in you witnesses to our hearts, you belong to Christ.

Verse 10, sin leads to death, but the spirit leads to life.

So as Christians, we're more than the sin that's in us.

We have the spirit in us.

Verse 9, to be reordered by the Spirit, we begin with our identity.

Who am I really?

What defines me?

What governs me?

And Paul says, you're not of the flesh.

You're spirit.

There's more to you than that flesh.

Yes, sin lives in us, but God also in the Holy Spirit lives in us.

Verse 12.

So then, brothers, and say, brothers and sisters, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Point number three is this as Christians, we can live toward destruction, or we can live toward life.

Years ago, a church person, a guy in our church, he took me out to lunch.

We sat down at a sandwich shop not far from here.

And as soon as we sat down, he said, I want to tell you why I'm divorced.

Young family, he was divorced, no longer with his wife, his children.

We sat down and he begins to say, he says, I needed to text my wife's friend for a very practical thing.

So I texted her for that.

And then we kept texting.

And at first it was just kind of playful.

And then we got flirty, and then an emotional connection.

And he says, quicker than I could have imagined, we were in a hotel room.

And he lost his marriage.

He lost getting that day to day with his children.

Destruction.

Now listen to that verse again.

Verse 13.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

There's a tension at play in us, and one way will lead toward destruction, even if you're still alive, but destruction.

Even if you're still forgiven and righteous in Jesus, there could be destruction waiting for you that you're going to have to process and go through.

I've been a pastor for 23 years.

I've pastored this church for 13 years.

The first few years of this church, nobody had a problem.

It was unbelievable how everybody's life was, we were in great shape.

And I told my mentor that I said, I said, it's just a great group of people.

You know, there's no problems.

Then he said, ah, he said, he said, um, they just don't trust you yet.

And sure enough, sure enough, about year four, year four is when it began.

And the truth just started to come out.

We all have problems.

We're all a mess in some way.

We're all capable of making significant mistakes that lead to destruction.

Some of us are, some of us have.

Significant life trajectory, family destruction.

And there's redemption, there's restoration, you are forgiven in Jesus, you are righteous in Jesus.

God is pleased and cherishes you, and there can still be destruction that you have to process through.

And nine times out of ten, when I talk to that person, they say, Oh, if I can only do it over again.

So we should be begging the Holy Spirit.

To walk in the Spirit, we should be begging the Holy Spirit to help me see evil as evil.

Here's how the commentary stated it.

A clear-sided recognition of evil as evil, leading to such a decisive and radical rejection of it that no imagery can do it justice except putting to death.

That should be our prayer.

I'm gonna walk with you today, Jesus.

Holy Spirit, reveal to me clear-sighted recognition of evil as evil.

Alright, so what is that process?

What is the process of being aware and seeing and putting to death destructive motives and thoughts and behaviors?

Well, let's not rule out therapy.

Very possible.

But in a general day-to-day Christian life.

First, we live in what we talked about last week, that we are held and secured and loved by God because of Jesus alone as a gift.

So we have that security, not my resume, not my goodness, but Jesus's.

Okay, that's our beginning, the Holy Spirit's commitment and bond of us.

That's where I begin.

Because I'm so secure, God is so kind toward me, I can begin to be aware and repent of my sin.

And that's the negative side, which is repentance.

There's a negativity to there, right?

Like you're seeing a negative thing and you're repenting.

So we see and discover our sin and our idolatries.

We confess them, we reveal them over to the Lord, uproot them at a motivational level, the negative side of repentance.

And then we pair that with the positive side of faith.

If all you have is the negative side of repentance, you're exhausted, you're condemned.

But with the positive side of faith, we're reminding ourselves that we are righteous in Jesus alone.

We are his sons and daughters by his grace to us.

And this is that dynamic of the spiritual walk that we have.

We uproot the idols in our hearts, evil as evil, and then we live out our identity as sons and daughters.

Let's see how Paul roots us into our identity, verse 14.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons, say sons and daughters of God.

For if you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba Father.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Last point, point number four, we don't have to live as orphans in the world when we are beloved children of the Heavenly Father.

If you remember back at Thanksgiving, my dog brother, our labradoodle, he passed away.

It took about a month before I started to look at puppy pictures online.

At first, you know, you Google something, and then you know, Instagram reel something.

Before long, every reel, everything on my Instagram be, it's all puppies.

Didn't see it happening.

I love a puppy with a baby.

Like you put a puppy and a baby together.

I can watch that stuff endlessly.

So those reels started to work on me, and then I said I was gonna wait a year or so for another dog.

You know, give me some time to regroup.

But the reels were working, and then my girl started working on me.

And so we started looking at burnadoodle puppies.

When I was growing up, we bought a puppy.

You went and bought a dog, you don't buy a dog anymore.

What do we do?

We adopt a dog.

That's right, which means they can charge us twice as much, is what I've learned it means.

It's adopting a dog.

You're not buying a dog.

No, no, no, no.

You're adopting a dog.

And so this week we adopted a puppy.

He arrives February 4th.

Here is Puppy Masterson coming February 4th.

He's so cute.

You should see the videos.

He's the smartest in the litter, I can tell.

He's the toughest, fastest, best one.

All right, so imagine puppy, imagine Puppy Masterson comes into our family.

He is adopted.

He's ours.

He is puppy master.

We provide him with love and food and a bed.

We snuggle puppy.

We play with puppy.

We wake up with puppy in the middle of the night to take him out to potty.

We walk, puppy.

Imagine puppy gets everything he needs to flourish.

Because he's adopted into our family.

And that's what our family does.

And then imagine that the puppy keeps trying to run from our family to just live homeless on the street.

Well, first off, a doodle won't make it at all.

I mean, no chance.

But imagine he just is like, I'm going for it.

I don't want anything.

I mean, that made no sense.

That made no sense.

Why would you live as an orphan when you have the status as a child?

And Paul says, we don't have to live according to the sinful nature anymore.

The Holy Spirit's in us.

Why?

Because verse 15.

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.

But you have received the spirit of adoption of sons to whom we cry Abba Father.

That word Abba is a tender papa.

That God could be like a tender Papa to you who wants you to flourish, setting your minds not on evil that leads to destruction, but setting your minds on the things of the Spirit that leads to goodness and flourishing.

I close with two quotes by Sinclair Ferguson from his book, Children of the Living God, his theologian, pastor, incredible, incredible biblical scholar.

Here's what he writes Adoption is not a change in nature, but a change in status.

If we fail to see this truth, we will reject the power of our adoption.

Adoption is a declaration God makes about us.

It is irreversible, dependent entirely upon his gracious choice, in which he says, You are my son.

Today I have brought you into my family.

He goes on to explain, Paul is referring to the Holy Spirit, which brings us into deep-seated persuasion that we really are the sons of God.

If, in fact, that God has adopted us into his family, then the Spirit assures us that this is true and enables us to live in the enjoyment of such a rich spiritual blessing.

He sends his spirit into our hearts, bringing us the deep spiritual and psychological security that rests on the objective fact that our sins are forgiven and we belong to the Lord.

I love the phrase in there, the rich spiritual blessing.

So God has gifted you this status as children, secured by the Holy Spirit who has pursued you, wooed you, committed to you, bonded you to Jesus.

And in that security, church, why would we live as orphans?

When we can live as sons and daughters of the Papa.

Help us to repent more and help us to rejoice more in the security we have as your sons and as your daughters.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.