Lent: Setting Our Minds on the Spirit | Guest Speaker: Brad O'Kelley

I think I've probably preached enough times at this church for everyone to understand that I don't handle change very well.

And so this for me is just different.

I long for the days for us to be back in the same room together and for us to be together and for us to worship together and be a church together.

And I just absolutely cannot wait for that.

And that's just one thing I want you to keep in mind today as we kind of go forward.

I also want you, the other thing I want you to keep in mind is that the camera adds 10 pounds.

So please keep that in mind as we uh move along in our worship this morning.

Uh it's the fifth Sunday in Lent, and uh we are looking at Romans chapter 8 this morning.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Um as Russ said earlier, my name's Brad O'Kelly, I'm one of the elders here at Christ the Redeemer.

I love this church, I love the people of this church, and I am uh just longing for us to be back together, but I'm so excited that I get to speak to you today and preach you today.

And Romans chapter 8 is part of that feast day that Russ talks about earlier with Lent, and uh I want us to take a look at it now, and we're gonna read verses 6 through 11.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

So Romans chapter 8, verses 6 through 11, and the Bible says, For the mindset on the flesh is death, but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace.

Romans 8:6–11

Because the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it's not even able to do so.

And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

However, you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

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

If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.

But 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.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer this morning.

Father, I'm so thankful that we get to open your word, that we get to worship today, that we get to come together and spend time dwelling on you.

So, Lord, I pray that as we go forward uh in this message, as we go forward in your word, Father, that your word would speak loud and clear, that you would just penetrate each of our hearts, that we would understand how much you love us, how much you care for us, and how sovereign you truly are.

Lord, we love you, and we ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You know, I said at the beginning, I'm I'm not uh really handling this whole thing well, and and uh I'm trying to uh kind of get my bearings on how life works now and and uh how this change has kind of taken place and all of that stuff.

And when this whole thing first started, um, you know, I I have to admit to you that I don't think that my mindset was in the right place.

Um I really don't think my mind was in the right place because for so many of you, you uh did the things that you needed to do.

You prepared in a way that you needed to prepare that made you feel good and that made your family, you know, better off in a certain way or whatever it may be.

And and in my case, um I'll just freely admit to you today, I did not do that.

Um when this whole thing first started to happen and things started to close and and uh stuff started to change, and and all of this kind of change came about.

Um my first thought was oh no, they're gonna close Home Depot.

Um and I was in the process of trying to build a workbench at the time, and I could not think of anything worse than not being able to get the material that I needed to finish this workbench.

Luckily, many of you are a whole lot smarter than I am, and you focused your time on things like feeding your family and making sure that you had food in your house and toilet paper.

For some of you, you have more than others, and if you do, I'd like to have a conversation with you.

But your mindset went probably to the right place.

Thank God for a great wife in my case, because her mindset went to things like actually feeding our children, um, which was great.

And when she came to me and said, Here's what we need to do, and my response was, Lady, I do not have time for this right now.

I'm trying to figure out how many two by fours I need.

Um that did not go over well.

Let's just put it that way.

That was not a good conversation.

It would have led to what some would call maybe a marital spat.

But um I was quickly reminded by my wife that I needed to get my mind right.

And so I did.

Now, have I continued to keep my mind right?

That's questionable.

Um, I can't promise you that I have or that I haven't.

The good news about all that is that this is nothing new.

We're not in some new age of the way things are happening, that this has never been done before, because I want you to see today in Romans 8, I want you to see what Paul is writing to believers.

This is to believers, and I want you to see what he says to these believers in Romans chapter 8, because it is literally the power of how quickly our minds can take us to a place that in some cases is completely unnecessary, and in other cases leads us to death and destruction, but in one way can also lead us to life and peace.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And so there's a couple of things that I want you to see today, and it's it's real simple.

Um, I'm not gonna overwhelm you with how smart I am, I'm sure, but I want us to take just a good look at Romans chapter 8 first, and the first thing I want you to see is I want you to see Paul kind of direct us down two paths, and he constantly puts these two paths in front of us in this portion of Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention Romans 8 · chapter mention

And the the first thing that I want you to see is that on one path we're talking about life, and on the other path, we're talking about death.

Look at Romans chapter 8, verse 6.

Romans 8:6

Paul says, For the mindset on the flesh is death, but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace.

Verse 7, because the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it's not even able to do so.

And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Now that's that's pretty hefty right there.

That's some stuff that you really have to dig into because Paul's going through life and peace, and he's using words to describe the spirit.

Some of the words that he uses, look in verse 6, he to describe the mind set on the spirit, he uses words like life and peace, the things that we long for, right?

But when he describes the mind set on the flesh, what kind of words is he using?

Look at this, he's saying, but the mind set on the flesh is hostile, doesn't subject itself to the law, it's not even able to do so, and he uses the word death.

When Paul contrasts these two things and he puts these two paths out in front of us, and one of them leads to life and peace, and the other one leads to death and hostility and all of these things, man, that that gets heavy.

That starts to weigh heavy on us, and the reason is because we do the very same thing in our world today.

We we love to sell life and death.

We love it.

In the case of the situation that we're in right now, it's it's if we're being honest, it's easy to sell death, right?

It's easy to sell fear, it's easy to sell those things that lead us down a path that maybe we don't need to go down.

Hey, the good news is we're also trying to sell life, too.

If you don't believe that, you've probably watched a lot more TV than you're watching on a normal basis right now.

And if you look at a commercial on television right now, man, there's stuff that leads you to all kinds of life.

You know, take this pill and your life will be uh this wonderful RV trip in the mountains somewhere, you know, or or or you know, buy this Lincoln, and you can be as weird as Matthew McConaughey.

Whatever the situation may be, we sell it.

We sell this particular view of life, or we sell this particular view of death.

And what Paul's doing here is he's not selling one or the other.

He's laying out in front of us literally the two paths of life and death, and he's saying, for those whose mind is set on the things of the spirit, in verse 6, for the mindset on the flesh is death, but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace.

And doesn't just the words and the situation that we're in right now, don't the words life and peace just do something to you?

It does for me because we're just not getting a lot of that, right?

We're not getting a lot of life and peace right now.

Second thing I want you to see is I want you to see Paul as he lays out these two paths.

One leads to salvation, the other one leads to separation.

Look at Romans 8, verse 9.

Romans 8:9

It says, However, you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you, but if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.

Now this gets heavy too, but there's two incredible words in this one verse that, man, that just hit me like a ton of bricks as I'm reading through Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And I love it.

And the first word is going to seem a little weird, but it's the truth.

The first word is however, and then there's a comma.

That first word, however, because Paul just got done hitting us with the mindset on the flesh of it being death and destruction and hostile towards God and separation, all those things.

And you start to hear those things, and there's something in us that kind of wells up going, oh no, this doesn't sound good.

And then I love it that the very first thing that he does in verse 9 is he hits you with the word, however, however.

And he looks at believers, and his very first words are, however, you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

I can't think of anything, anything in this world today that believers need to hear more than however.

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

But if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.

That word dwell, we literally take the definition of dwelling.

Do you know what it means?

And let me just go ahead and preface this.

You're probably not gonna like this right now, but it literally means to come in and stay in one's house.

I told you.

Probably not the best definition that you want to hear right now, right?

To dwell in one's house, to stay in one's house, to make life in that house.

Do you understand what Paul is saying here?

He's saying, if the Spirit is in you indeed, the Spirit of God dwells in you through salvation, by grace, through faith.

God has literally, his Holy Spirit has made his home in us as believers.

He dwells in us.

Paul hits us with those those two incredible words of however you are not in the flesh, you're in the spirit.

And then he says, because the Spirit of God dwells in us.

Do you realize how awesome that dwelling is?

The reason it's so great, and the reason those two words just kind of hit me so hard this week is because there's no separation.

Do you understand that when Paul's saying that the Spirit dwells in us, there's no degrees of separation then between us and God.

Christ is taking care of all of that on the cross, but the best part of it is this is that there's no separation because let me tell you what's easy, especially in the time that we're living in right now, we're constantly adding layers of separation, aren't we?

We practice separation on purpose because it's necessary right now.

We have to.

That portion could literally be saving lives, us separating from each other.

But there's no separation between us and the Holy Spirit, and even better, there's no degrees of separation that we have to walk through.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of degrees of separation.

Not social separation.

I'm talking about getting on blessed social media and seeing people say, Well, my husband's cousin's daughter works with somebody who knew a girl one time that went to school with somebody that cleans the toilets at the Capitol, and the governor's gonna say this today.

There's no separation.

Do you see how many layers of separation there is between that?

So when Paul literally in verse 9 writes, the Spirit of God dwells in you, there's no separation between us and an Almighty God.

When it comes to salvation by grace through faith, we're no longer separated from Christ.

We're no longer separated from an Almighty God.

I love that.

The last thing that I want you to see today on this path is that one path leads to righteousness and glorification, and the other one leads to nothing.

Look at verse 10 and 11.

If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.

But 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.

I love that Paul still makes kind of this the distinction right here in verses 10 and 11 that he's not saying that our that our flesh goes away completely when Christ dwells in us.

That flesh is still at war.

If you don't believe that, read Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

He goes way deep into that in Romans chapter 7 about the war between the flesh and the spirit and doing the things that we ought to do and not doing the things that we should do, or all those things go back and forth.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

But Paul goes way deep into that in Romans chapter 7, and here he's reminding believers, your flesh isn't going anywhere.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

That flesh is constantly going to want to be fed, it's constantly going to want to have something going on, even though the spirit is alive in you.

And I love the fact that he doesn't separate those two out.

He doesn't look at believers and say, you know, Christ dwells in us and everything becomes easy.

If that were the case, we probably would have a completely different mindset already without having to be reminded to dwell on Christ and his spirit in us.

What he's saying is you have to remember that no matter what, the flesh and the spirit will always be at odds in us.

And then look at what he says in verse 11.

It says, But the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.

Do you understand what Paul's doing here?

He's hanging weight on the spirit that dwells in us, that dwelling that we just talked about, the Holy Spirit being alive and active in us, Paul begins to really hang weight on that because what he's telling the Romans in this portion, what he's telling the Romans in this verse right here, is he's looking at them because right outside their door is the world of anything they could desire.

Right outside their door, anything that their flesh could desire could have been had.

Does that sound familiar?

Probably sounds a lot like our world, right?

Anything the flesh desires, we can go out and find.

We have that ability.

But what Paul is doing is he's saying, but the Spirit, the Spirit that is in us, the Holy Spirit of Christ, is of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead, dwells in you.

Folks, do you understand that we are not talking about some minuscule fleshly desire that leads us to a path of separation and destruction and death?

We are talking about the Holy Spirit of an Almighty God, not a virus, not a president, not a governor, not a doctor, not any other thing that you can imagine.

We are talking about literally the spirit of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead is the spirit that dwells in us.

And it goes on in verse 11, and he says, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit, who, and there's that word again, dwells in you.

Church, I wish there was a way for me to stand here today and to look at you and go, take your mind off the things of the flesh and focus on the spirit.

I can say that to you right now.

But how?

How do we do that in literally an unprecedented time in our world?

How do we do that?

And unfortunately, I don't know.

The only thing I can tell you is this is that we are not, we are not looking at anything that the flesh can give us, we're not taking anything that the flesh can throw at us, we're not taking anything that the world can throw at us, we're not living by the flesh.

What I can tell you is somehow, some way, you've got to realize that if we would change our mindset to focus on the Spirit of God that lives in us.

Imagine how that path changes.

Not from death and destruction and falling apart and all the things that I'm sure we hear about every single day in this time in our lives, but changing our mindset to that path that the Spirit literally gives us in life, and peace, and love, and dwelling.

My brothers and sisters, the dwelling may not be the one thing that you want to do today.

But I beg of you to set your mind on the things of the Spirit.

Not any Spirit, but the Holy Spirit of an Almighty God that raised Christ Jesus from the dead.

Set our minds on Him today.

Father, we love you.

We thank you that you are with us.

We thank you that no matter what we try in our fleshly desires to place our faith in, no matter what we uh take as as gospel truth, no matter what we look at outside in this world and and desire for, Lord, what any of those things, we thank you that those things fall away compared to your Holy Spirit.

Father, I don't know how.

I have no magic button to push.

I wish I could, but Lord, change our minds to be focused on the life and peace and righteousness and glorification that only your spirit can bring.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.