The Battle Within

We're in a series of messages in the book of Galatians.

We're actually going to wrap it up next week.

Initially I was going to do seven weeks and got in and decided to do eight.

So next week we'll be in chapter six.

Today we're going to be in chapter five.

So if you have your Bible, you can open to Galatians, chapter five.

I want to give just a little bit of introduction, just so we don't jump in the middle in case you haven't been tracking with us.

You may just be visiting today, and so I don't want to assume anything.

The book of Galatians is written by the Apostle Paul.

In terms of biblical genre, it is considered one of the letters or epistles that Paul writes to the church in Galatia, which is a region, and it's a place that he spent a considerable amount of time.

He built depth of relationship, and you can feel it in the familiarity that he has with his audience.

We've talked about this before, but the epistles were designed to be written, and then the writer would train the person who was delivering the letter.

He would train them to perform the letter.

Because just like any time you read something somebody wrote, you can't always know exactly what sort of tone that they wrote it in.

I've read emails before.

I'm like, I wonder what they meant by that.

Tone of voice goes a long way.

And so Paul had gone to such lengths to write these letters, and these letters are all responses to real-life situations these people are dealing with.

And so the courier would go not only deliver the letter, but would perform it, and would before that would be trained by the writer, perform it back to me.

Nope, do it again, do it again, say it this way, until they had it just right, and then they would go and deliver that letter.

Now the other dynamic is that the letter was always read all the way through, which is not how we tend to handle the Bible.

Most of us will get maybe get the verse of the day.

We might read uh some excerpts from the scriptures, but we don't tend to take a whole book of the Bible.

In fact, I won't ask for a show of hands, but most of us probably can't remember the last time we read a whole book of the Bible straight through.

It's just not normally how we do it.

But when it comes to these letters, um, this is very important because if you do that, like, hey, maybe do that with Galatians.

Go home this week and just it's not that long, it's six chapters, read straight through it.

It's interesting because you'll see a verse you may have heard before or seen before, maybe even quoted yourself.

And when you see it uh, you know, with the previous chapter and then the one that's to come after that, all of a sudden it comes alive a little bit more.

And so uh what you have now is uh when it's being read or presented to the group, um, you have different segments of the group or different issues that are maybe closely related to the people in the group, but they're being addressed in front of the whole group.

So it's like a coach standing in front of his his or her team talking to the offense in front of the defense and then switching and talking to the defense in front of the offense.

Um, but they're they're doing this at the same time and they're making a point.

So you see Paul sort of do that.

He's moving around the letter, he's talking at one point to the Judaizers, and the Judaizers are a group of very strict uh traditional Jewish people who are really uh dealing with a lot of fear at the time.

They're wrestling because in this new covenant movement that was ushered in um through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, you now have the kingdom of God at hand expressed through Jesus, and it's uh Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

So now you have this collision of cultures, which is really unsettling to these people because they feel like they're watching their own culture die or disintegrate before their very eyes.

As much as the idea of bringing diverse unity from all these different cultures together to be one unified people, okay, that sounds good.

But once they start to live it out, they start to realize what they're losing.

We're losing ourselves, we're losing our culture, we're losing things that are important to us.

And so they start, once it starts to feel like it's getting out of hand, they they go and they try to sort of go backwards.

And so we talked about this last week, you know, the uh a traditional approach.

There's some things about tradition um that are soothing and that we like things that stand the test of time.

We don't like things that are fly by night.

I like to know I'm not getting caught up in a trend.

I like to know that this has been around for a while, but at the same time, we all know that progress needs to be made.

Change is inevitable, context changes.

So, how do we uh do that that difficult process of holding on to things that need to be preserved at the same time making the progress that we need to make?

And so this is why Paul writes them the letter to try to help them to navigate through this.

If you've been following for the uh past several weeks, you've probably been asking this question as Paul keeps talking to them about hey, don't, you know, don't draw lines in the sand that you don't need to draw.

Don't hold so tightly to your culture or to your way of doing things that you don't make room for other people in their culture and their way of doing things.

And so he, it's all about grace and it's all about um, you know, finding unity.

And yet you may be asking your question along the way, so then, okay, if we're not supposed to draw the wrong line in the wrong sand, what is the right line in the right sand?

Okay, is there any are there any community standards?

Okay, he writes to them about the ceremonial law, circumcision and food laws and these things.

But we have to understand, this is very important.

When I teach in the church about law or the Torah, the Old Testament, I'll take the 613 laws of the Torah, and I've done this many times, I'll put them in three categories.

You have the ceremonial law, you have the judicial or civil law, and then you have the moral law.

And we say this all the time in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul separates what was cultural in terms of the ceremonial law and says, keep the essence of the law, the spirit of the law, which is to worship God and his holiness.

He says, Hey, you don't have to keep the letter of the civil law while keeping the spirit of the law, which is justice, so you can make new laws, but then the moral law, he affirms it.

Okay?

So when we talk about it, it's clear as day, and we but how are we having it clear as day?

Because we're citing chapters like uh in books like Galatians.

It was in Galatians that that became clear.

To these people at that time, uh, food laws and lying, cheating, and stealing were all the same law.

They didn't make a distinction between ceremonial, you know, eating kosher and lying, cheating, and stealing.

They saw it all as right and wrong in the same bucket.

We're only able to do it because, you know, thanks to Galatians and other books like that.

So at the time they're very disoriented, and Paul is writing to them, trying to help them know how to work this out.

And so today we're gonna look at is okay, so if we're gonna bring all our different cultures together, where what about morality?

What about community standards and conduct and accountability?

How does this work?

Okay, Galatians 5, starting verse 16.

Paul says, So I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh.

They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not free to do whatever you want.

Some of your Bibles say that you are not free uh essentially to do the good that you want to do.

Um what Paul is doing here is he's introducing a tension between your flesh and your spirit.

It kind of rhymes with uh Romans 7, where Paul goes into the whole thing.

He goes, you know, it's kind of tough being me.

He's like, the thing I don't want to do, doggone it, I do it.

And the thing that I try to do, for some reason I can't.

And he's like, so I do what I don't, and I don't do what I want to do, and he goes, What a wretched man I am.

He goes into like self-loathing.

He's like, there's like this internal battle that he goes, forget whether I offended God or not.

I offended me.

He's like, I violated my own conscience.

I'm in here uh arguing with myself and losing.

And so that's kind of what he says here in Galatians.

I've got this internal battle, and it's keeping me from actually doing the thing I actually want to do.

Uh verse 18, but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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

Against such things there is no law.

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

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

Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

And that's the end of chapter 5.

Um, you notice in here, uh, Paul talks about the deeds of the flesh, the fruit of the spirit, and those two words really jump off the page.

He keeps talking about the battle between flesh and spirit, and that's what I want to talk about today.

Um, the word flesh that shows up in English in our Bible is a Greek word, and the word is sarx.

Sarx.

And um it's it's a great word.

It's 151 times it's used in the New Testament, and it has a range of meanings.

So the first meaning that we would get with sarks is just your material body, you know, the soft tissue, your flesh, you're a human being.

So it says in John 1, it uses the word sarks.

It says about Jesus, it says that um the word became sarks, became flesh.

And what it's speaking to is the incarnation of Jesus, that he went fully God as deity, and then came as fully human.

Okay, so it says that he took on uh human flesh.

Uh in Matthew 26, it talks about uh in the Garden of Gethsemane before Jesus goes to the cross.

If you remember, he has his friends with him and he's really stressed out, and he says, Hey, would you guys keep watch with me?

Would you just stay awake and support me?

And they fall asleep.

And he wakes them up and he says, Hey guys, come on now.

He says, Uh I need you to, I need you to lock in.

I need your help.

And he says, the spirit is willing, but the sarks, or and that's use sarks again, the flesh is weak.

And so he's saying, not only do I need your help right now, I need you to fight off uh uh sleep, but but he's he's giving them a life lesson.

There are times where your spirit will want to do something, and your sarks or your flesh uh will get in the way.

And so this is brought up again 151 times.

Now, uh when you look at those 151 instances, uh, especially when you look at it through the lens of uh the first century, okay, this is something that in in that area, the word sarks meant way more than just your physical body.

It was used in in uh rabbinic uh conversation, it was used in philosophical debate in the Greco-Roman world.

The word sarks was a frequently used word and concept that was beyond just your physical body, but your humanity.

What's going on in your internal environment and your mind, your will, and your emotions.

And so what a lot of the conversation was about was ultimately how to be the best human you can be if you're if you're operating simply off of your sarks, or again, some of them would talk about like your animalistic instincts, okay, that's going to take you not into the best version of yourself, that there's a battle going on, okay, with with the the uh instinctive or the uh appetite part of yourself.

So uh there's really three things that again in this and we're trying to reanimate or re-recreate uh the ear and the mind of the the person that was listening to Galatians, so we understand what Paul is saying here.

The the the belief about about Sarks and the concept really uh besides the material body was three things.

It was our tendency toward pride, our tendency toward fear, and our tendency towards appetite.

Pride, fear, and appetite.

Um think of it like this.

Okay, let's say that uh there's a person who grew up in a broken home.

They grew up in a dysfunctional environment and they went through a lot of pain as a child.

They in fact they learned pretty early uh that the world was not a safe place.

They they were afraid.

And not just afraid, like spooked, or that there's a uh somebody in the house.

They they just generally feel a sense of insecurity.

I do not feel safe in the world, and so that insecurity may drive them to try to find um some anesthesia or some sort of coping through their appetites, just to feel better in the moment.

Again, what we know what do we know about our appetites?

They're never completely satisfied, they they kind of tend to reboot, and here we want it again, and we're able to find some acute pleasure through our appetites.

So maybe uh through their insecurity, they start to turn to their appetites, and those appetites eventually turn into bondage.

They're out of control, they're overblown, and because of that, now this person is unhealthy.

So let's say they're physically unhealthy, and now they get to a place where it's just a vicious spiral.

Okay, they become more insecure, they turn to the appetites more, and eventually they get to a place they hate themselves.

I feel trapped in my own body, I don't like being me.

But instead of, you know, spiraling out and crashing and burning, they make a decision.

You know what?

I'm gonna get healthy.

I'm gonna get physically healthy, I'm gonna start eating the right foods, I'm gonna become hyper disciplined, I'm gonna get my appetite so under control, my food appetite, I'm only gonna put good things in my body.

I'm gonna start working out twice a day.

I'm gonna get I'm gonna be bad to the bone.

I'm I'm gonna have a revenge body.

I'm gonna be hotter than you've ever seen, man.

I'm telling you what, I'm I'm gonna be buff, okay, and I'm going for it.

And so they go, they get after it, they do whatever they need to do.

Now, let's just imagine when they start clawing themselves out of this bondage of their sarks, okay, because they're in bondage, they're in sarks bondage.

All right, they're in not just their physical body, but their internal environment driven by their fear.

And when they're in the valley, the low place, and they start fighting their way out, let's just say they never deal with the insecurity that for good reason led them to where they were.

They never dealt with that.

They just tuned up the body.

And when they tuned up the body, they have this body makeover transformation.

Now they're they're looking good, okay?

And so the issue is they never dealt with their fear and insecurity.

And now the tendency, even though they got one appetite under control, and to the naked eye, it seems like the Sarks is nice and healthy, okay, they got one appetite, their food appetite under control, but because I never dealt with the insecurity, I still have something going on in here, and so now uh some other appetites have been awakened.

And so now I'm turning to different appetites, and because I never dealt with the insecurity, and by the way, now uh I have more options, and now even though I don't eat fried foods anymore, I'm running through sexual partners, I'm now getting a lot of attention.

My my my my attention appetite has gone up, and now I'm an insatiable desire to be noticed, and now I'm able to manipulate people because of my attractiveness, and so now we complete the trifecta with now we add pride to the mix.

Okay, we used to just be insecure and you know have one appetite out of whack.

Now we got a bunch of appetites out of whack, we got one under control, so we have a false positive on the Sarks, and now we're actually more out of control than we've ever been, and we've added pride to the mix.

I know that doesn't apply to anybody in this room.

Second service had a bunch of them.

There was a ton of them who had been through this.

I know this is this is good for your friends and everything.

So um, so let's go back, let's go back to the defining moment where we hated ourselves.

I was I hated myself in that place.

I didn't like where I was at.

And let's say that person made a different decision and they said, you know what?

I feel trapped in my own skin, I feel trapped in my own sarks.

I'm coming out, but I'm I'm gonna get healthy and I'm gonna get my appetite under control and I'm going to get strong, but I'm not just gonna do it physically.

I realize, man, I got some insecurity in me.

And you know what?

Here's the reality about insecurity.

We all know this.

Insecurity and pride have a weird relationship.

A lot of the people that look arrogant are actually just so insecure internally.

And they're puffing their chest out to try to overcompensate for the hole that they have inside and the low self-esteem.

I got a bunch of ugly stuff.

I see where this could go.

I'm going to, I'm going to have my physical transformation be mirrored by my internal transformation.

I'm going to get to the root of my insecurity and my fear and what it's doing to me and why I keep turning to that appetite, because I don't want to trade one appetite for another one that's out of control.

So I'm doing the whole deal.

I'm going to do the internal uh overhaul.

I'm doing the external overhaul.

And imagine those two things mirroring each other.

And so when you and this happens, this happens.

I've seen it.

It's amazing.

And here's what happens when that person comes out of that, okay, instead of now just being an insecure person with more manipulative options, they're now actually a more free person who figured out why I was so insecure.

Now they have a stable foundation.

They've gotten multiple appetites, if not all their appetites, under control, because I understand why I keep being uh compulsively driven that way.

And by the way, these are some of the most healthy, confident, but not arrogant people you've ever met.

If you've ever met somebody who was at the place they hated themselves, only to do the full internal and external, I'm talking all the sarks to come all the way, the full sarks makeover.

And they come all the way through.

They now have come to a place, these are some of the most kind, humble, confident, but helpful people you've ever met.

No, no whiff of pride.

I mean, amazing, amazing people, okay, because they did the full work.

So when we're talking about sarks, we're not just talking about the body.

All right.

What Paul is not suggesting here is that you should loathe your body or that you should loathe your humanity.

This is about the idea that the same humanity that if it's unchecked and I don't think through my pride, fear, and appetites and surrender those and are led by the Spirit, those things can lead me into tremendous bondage.

The same sarks that can lead me into bondage can be redeemed by God for good.

Um, you'll see that when he talks about the deeds of the flesh, again, he he has a list in here, starts in verse 19.

And it's kind of interesting when you start looking at this list because it's got some stuff that probably, you know, may be a thing for you, it may not.

Like, I don't know how many of you are into witchcraft or you know that kind of stuff.

But if you are, today's a good day to stop.

All right, we'll just go ahead and go ahead and uh no more sorcery.

Um, some of you may be into orgies.

I don't know.

I would just say, go ahead, let's just be done with that.

All right, starting today would be a good day to just, you know, yep, no, don't do that anymore.

Um, but you know, you look in here like fits of rage, like anger.

It's interesting you see things like uh, all jokes aside, like things like orgies and witchcraft in the same category uh with things, things like hatred or things like jealousy.

Like those don't feel like they'd be in the same category.

Like, yeah, how are you gonna jump from orgies to jealousy, right?

Or envy.

But what he's saying is, when you look at this, when you look at again how they would have heard sarks, think about how often if we were to say, hey, so-and-so is immoral, and we would say they are caught up in their flesh or their flesh is out of control, we would go right to their appetites and probably look at some specific appetites.

Uh, you know, like it says that it says that the the the deeds of the flesh and the works of the flesh are obvious.

When he says obvious, he doesn't mean that it's a no-brainer.

He's saying that they are apparent.

In other words, you can see them.

They're in front of you.

They're because pride, fear, and appetites eventually bubble to the surface.

And so he's he says some of these things, like again, sexual immorality, um, uh drunkenness, um, orgies, these type of things where that would have been some of the more obvious, like uh sexual appetites, um, and some of the appetites that you would see.

But then he goes, but then there's others that might spawn out of fear or pride, uh, things like jealousy, things like envy.

Uh, a person who is so insecure that they they don't want anybody to have something they don't have.

Whenever they see somebody else, they can't just be happy for somebody who's succeeding.

They can't just be happy for somebody that has a gift they don't have.

Everybody's success and gift makes them feel envious or uncomfortable.

It just does nothing but wake up this fear, and and so then it puffs up as pride.

So what he's doing here is he's taking some of the things that show up externally, and some of them are more obvious than others, but he's saying your your pride or your fear or your appetites, if they run your life, eventually uh it's going to turn into a behavior that's wrong.

That envy or or dissention.

Offends God as much as orgies.

According to Paul.

I was hoping for one amen, but that's alright.

I totally get it.

I totally understand.

I totally understand.

We would rather just be offended by the debauchery than to think about the fact that jealousy or factions, he says, apparently are just equally offensive to God.

So interesting.

I was this week I was uh doing leadership development with our interns.

We have uh high school and college interns, and one of them asked me a question.

We did some QA, and they said, They said, Hey, I maybe you can help me with this.

They were like, I don't know in my head sometimes if what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling deeply is me or if it's God.

Like I might be praying about something or thinking about something or asking God for help, and I got something in my head that I'm feeling, and I really don't know the difference.

Like I'm not sure if it's just something I came up with or if this is like God nudging me or whatever.

I how do I how do I discern that?

You know, I was like, anybody else experience that?

You know, if you've never experienced it, come talk to me.

I want to learn from you because I I I've always I find myself all the time going, okay, Lord, is this you?

And obviously you go, well, you're running through the scripture.

Well, there's a lot of things that's not quite that simple, so you're working your way through it.

And so I thought it was a marvelous question.

I was so so glad she asked it.

And so we had a discussion kind of about this.

And so we were talking about how pride, fear, and appetites, um, they're there it's like volume, it's like a voice with volume in our heads.

And the more those things are unchecked and out of control, the louder they are.

So you think about your appetites.

If you just over-indulge an appetite, whether it's uh again, food, um, sexual appetites, it could be again for attention or success or respect or whatever you have an appetite for, if you don't have that thing in in terms of discipline around that thing, it gets so loud, nobody can get a word in edgewise.

It takes over your life.

I mean, you can't think about anything.

It's like it's like we say, hey, it's so loud I can't hear myself think.

And it's like these these appetites or these even our fears, our fears.

You know, he talks about uh violence, he he brings up in in the deeds of the flesh, acts of violence.

I I mean, I think if your fear is loud enough, it could, it could make you believe, okay, that that maybe an unjustified violence is totally justified because it's coming from this intense fear that you have that's running your life.

Okay, and yeah, there, I mean, sometimes you you you can't help but you gotta defend yourself or you gotta, you know, whatever.

But I'm I'm talking about often people's fear running them so much that they don't know the difference between their own voice.

And I think, you know, when you think back on what we talked about a few weeks ago with Elijah, where he is uh he comes off of Mount Carmel, he goes to the wilderness where it's quiet, and and ultimately ends up at Mount Sinai, and there are these three loud things that go by.

It's like the this fire, it's like a wind, an earthquake, and it's like God wasn't in any of that.

And when it got like really quiet, he says that the that God spoke to him in a whisper.

And I wonder sometimes if if we if the voice of our fear, our pride, and our appetites are turned up so loud that they that they it's hard for us to distinguish between is that God or is it just something, a very strong feeling I have tied to these things.

So I think the best way to handle the deeds of the flesh, I would say it's a good place to start.

Go ahead and go through and and the list that Paul gave you to start with, but I would not stop at the end.

I would not stop at the end.

I would continue to go.

And I think the best way to handle these verses is to look at pride, fear, and appetites and to ask the Lord to speak to you.

Is there anywhere that the volume of your pride, the volume of your fear, or the volume of your appetites is drowning out the voice of the Spirit?

Probably my favorite verse in all of Galatians is Galatians 5, 6.

He says, For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.

He says, the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

He says, Don't get lost in the sauce.

I have no idea what happened there, I swear.

I didn't plan that, but sometimes God shows off.

Um don't get lost in the sauce.

In in the complexity of uh the Bible, in the complexity of life.

He says, you know what?

Circumcision, uh, uncircumcision doesn't matter.

He goes, what matters is faith expressing itself through love.

Think about this.

We're looking at this list, we're like, man, how do I deal with my fear?

First John 4.

It says perfect love cast out fear.

It doesn't mean that there are no bona fide threats, it doesn't mean that there are not rational fear.

Like there are things that we have to face up and we have to deal with, but to to build my life on a foundation of the love of God, regardless of how threatened I might be.

And when those things well up, what do I do with them?

I come back to the firm foundation and build my life on the love of Christ.

And so he says, Don't don't don't miss it.

Uh and then he goes into the fruit of the spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Um, when I was thinking about this and I was just imagining, you know, Paul and what he was trying to do, I actually had a in my mind's eye, I'm I imagine a young couple and they fall in love, and you know, they decide they want to spend the rest of their lives together, and and and he drops down on one knee and he proposes and she says yes.

And so now they're gonna get married and they have to plan a wedding.

And so I imagine this couple, kind of like the Galatian church, it's like you have these uh uh they're from two different cultures, they're bringing two cultures together, not just in a marriage, but in the wedding.

And and so you got these two very different cultures together, and so now we have to plan a wedding, and both sides come to the wedding planning defensive for their own culture.

And so pretty soon it begins to spiral out of control, and the the mothers are mad at each other, and the the brothers and sisters and the cousins, and everybody's fighting for their tradition, and they're fighting for their, and it's gotta be like this, and we got to do this because all everybody who's come down the line, we've had generations, and we all did it this way, and and but they all did it this way, and we got to figure out how we are going to bring this whole thing together, and it's like turning into mayhem, and it gets to the day of the wedding, and you would just hope that everybody would be able to put their issues aside and put their preferences aside and just focus on this two, this couple that love each other, and why we're all here at all, and yet everybody loses the plot, everybody's fighting, and it's just like this couple doesn't know what to do, they're overwhelmed.

What's the right thing to do?

And I just imagine like this whole preacher going, like, come here a second, you know, pulls them out of the chaos for just a second.

He says, Listen, none of that matters, it does not matter.

It's a symbol, these things are symbols, and everybody means well, but your your family, God bless them, they've lost the plot.

It's not what matters.

Friends, it doesn't matter if you ride in on an elephant or if you ride out on a horse, it doesn't matter if you jump over a broom, if you break the glass, if we stand under a canopy, it doesn't matter if if if we do sand or if we do a candle, uh, it doesn't matter what uh color the the outfits are, it doesn't matter how many bridesmaids and groomsmen there are, it doesn't matter what language we say the vows in, it doesn't matter if we release doves, if we release the hounds, it doesn't matter if they throw rice on you, if they blow bubbles on you.

It just doesn't matter who the DJ is, it doesn't matter whether we have a DJ, it doesn't matter, none of that matters.

That's all that's all symbols, and everybody got lost the plot.

And that wise preacher, he has the two of them, he says, what matters is faith expressing itself in love.

What matters is that you both understand what love is based on who Jesus is, that the two of you put Christ at the center of your relationship.

And that when you're faithful to her, you're being faithful to him.

And when you're faithful to him, you're being faithful to him.

And that when you leave here and they sweep up all the stuff, all the confetti and all the rice, and the bills are all paid, and the ceremony's done, and the whatever, that when you go home and you build a life, that you build it on love and joy and peace.

Doesn't mean you don't fight, because you're gonna fight.

That's just part of life.

You're going to have arguments, you're gonna have conflict, you're gonna have that.

No, I'm talking about the ability to make peace.

I'm talking about the ability to give grace, I'm talking about the ability to forgive.

I'm talking about the power to say I'm sorry, to be able to work your way to peace.

So it doesn't matter whether we jump a broom or don't jump a broom, all this stuff is tradition.

It's it, yeah, it means something, and that's fine, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Just don't lose the doggone plot.

Love, joy, peace, being patient with each other matters a whole lot more.

Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

And uh when I imagine Paul writing this letter, and when I imagine him prepping his courier, I imagine him going, make sure they don't lose the plot.

Circumcision, uncircumcision, doesn't matter.

What matters is faith expressing itself in love.

And when you do that and you walk by the pneuma, you walk by the spirit and not by the flesh.

The sarks will not take you there.

Your fear, pride, and appetites will not take you there.

They will not take you there.

They'll become selfish, they often get inflamed, and they often drown out the voice of the spirit that's helping you to keep the main thing the main thing.

I end with this.

Just to get us a little momentum going into next week.

We're gonna do Galatians 6 next week, but let's just flip the page real quick because we're we're thinking of this through the lens of what we just talked about.

He just talked about the deeds of the flesh, he just talked about the fruit of the spirit, he just talked about uh sarks and and and got everybody thinking about this.

And essentially, uh what he says here in Galatians 6, 1 and 2, he says, brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.

So what he's saying is, yeah, we have code of conduct, yeah, we have standards, and yes, we have accountability.

But but he said, you're gonna expect, we expect in a healthy community who is safe and full of grace, we are gonna expect that there's times that people's pride, fear, and appetites are gonna get the best of them.

And it's gonna happen to you and it's gonna happen to me.

And in a healthy body or a healthy family in a healthy community, we help keep one another accountable.

But he said, make sure that you don't do it uh uh the wrong way.

He says that you do it, those who are led live by the spirit, those who are not governed by their fear, pride, or or appetite, should restore that person gently.

He just said, one of the fruit of the spirit is gentleness, but watch yourselves, or you yourself may be tempted, carry each other's burdens, and in this way fulfill the law, he says, of Christ, which is their favorite, you know, the Judaizers' favorite word.

He's like the law of Christ, to bear one another's burdens, to restore one another gently.

So I think, guys, as a church, as we're growing, and of course we're all uh we're all a work in progress, all right.

We all have our challenges.

I got my issues of pride, fear, and appetite, just like you do.

But within this humanity, right, we don't loathe ourselves.

What we do is we see our humanity, our sarks, as an opportunity for redemption.

The same person, the same humanity that is capable of violence and division is capable of God using you in healing and bringing people together.

And so it's not that we're gonna sit here and loathe our flesh.

What we're going to do is ask the Holy Spirit to fill our flesh and to redeem our flesh, to take the thing that could have caused bondage and cause us to live in freedom and unity.

And that means that we will be maturing as a body, as a church, as a community, as we walk out accountability with one another.

Not, not, not, not, not in attacking.

He says, do it gently and be careful.

Be careful that you don't slide into fear and anger.

Be careful that you don't start becoming falling into deeds of the flesh as you're trying to help somebody through theirs.

So, so part of this, the maturation process, it's not an absence of accountability, but it's an addition of gentleness as we help each other to walk it out.

As we give and receive this.

Let's do it graciously, let's do it kindly, let's do it patiently.

Lord, we thank you.

We thank you for this portion of scripture that that really serves as a guide, not just for uh our church, but really uh all of our community and relationships and our homes, our families.

Lord, in uh anywhere that we're in relationship.

God, I pray that you would help each one of us, Lord, as we are seeking to walk in the spirit, not in the flesh.

Lord, I pray that with no condemnation, but with healthy conviction, you would make visible to us any area that we've turned up the pride, we've turned up the fear, we've turned up our appetites to a place that's contrary to the spirit of God living within us.

Help us to see that, and then Lord, as we repent, help us to turn from that in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.

Amen.

Before you leave, I just want to put this question up on the screen and give you something to pray about, maybe something to discuss with people that you you trust to pray through and wrestle through.

Is there anywhere in you is there anywhere that your pride, fear, or appetites have led you into places that are contrary to the Spirit of God inside of you?

Amen.