Willow Ridge Sermons

Sunday, May 29th • Beau Bradberry

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." — Galatians 5:22-23

–
Podcast: https://pod.link/willowridgechurch
Website: https://willowridgechurch.org
Instagram: https://instagram.com/willowridgechurch
Facebook: https://facebook.com/willowridgechurch
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@willowridgechurch

Show Notes

May 29th, 2022 • "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." — Galatians 5:22-23

–
Podcast: https://pod.link/willowridgechurch
Website: https://willowridgechurch.org
Instagram: https://instagram.com/willowridgechurch
Facebook: https://facebook.com/willowridgechurch
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@willowridgechurch

Creators and Guests

Host

Beau Bradberry

Senior Pastor

What is Willow Ridge Sermons?

Sermon audio from Sunday services at Willow Ridge Church.

Hi, and welcome to the Willow Ridge Church weekly podcast.

This is where you can find audio for our current and past sermons.

We hope that you enjoy this week's installment, and be sure to check back next week to hear the latest message.

Thanks for listening.

Well done, graduates.

I know it's a lot of hard work on behalf of you for all that you've done,

and so congratulations as you're beginning to see some of that fruit of the work that you've invested over the last few years.

To the parents and grandparents and support systems and aunts and uncles and everybody else to you,

I just wanted to also say congratulations.

You got through right along with them.

The older my kids get, the more that I understand the difficulty and the battle of that.

Aaron and I, I was the youth pastor at Cedar Creek Church, and we were there for a small group one night.

We had a staff small group, and so our senior pastor led that for us, and we were there.

And we were in the middle of two-year-old twins that stage of life.

And maybe it was mild to say we were complaining, but we were complaining.

And Terry Lee looked at us.

That was our senior pastor's wife.

She looked at us, and with kindness and compassion and love in her heart, she said,

it just gets harder, right?

And so congratulations, parents.

Everyone, today is a day to celebrate.

If you've got your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Galatians chapter 5.

As you turn there, we are starting our new series, In the Fruit of the Spirit.

I want to reiterate one of our announcements that we had.

We will be doing a family mission trip this September.

And next Sunday, June the 5th, I'm going to be doing an informational meeting about that.

And so if you're interested, intrigued about going and being a part of this,

we'll be going to Black Mountain Children's Home, where our men's ministry has had the opportunity to serve,

as well as our middle school and high schoolers as well.

And so it'll be a wonderful time for families to go and to be a part of that.

And so if you would like some more information, please be with us after the service.

Next Sunday, we'll meet over in Building 2, and I believe in Room 200.

Also, before we get into this, I just want to take a moment.

And this weekend, it's been a busy weekend for us.

It's been a busy weekend for a lot of you.

Erin's family had a family get-together, a family reunion in the big booming town of Waterloo, South Carolina, yesterday.

And we went up to Waterloo off the shores of Lake Greenwood and had a wonderful time with her family.

And I know some of you this weekend and Monday will have barbecues and cookouts and parties planned to go to.

You've got graduation festivities to be a part of and meals to do and things to celebrate.

These graduates and many others who you've been invited to celebrate them as well.

But as we do that, I just want to remind us of the freedom that we have to partake in these things.

It never seeks for the Lord to remind me each morning what a privilege it is that we can gather here in this building without fear of persecution.

That we can journey from wherever we are in life with our faith and come in here and worship and we can carry our faith and go from there.

And that wouldn't happen without the so many of the men and women and families who have served in our armed forces.

And so many of them who went on to the battlefield and did not come off of the battlefield alive.

And so this weekend as we celebrate, as we eat hot dogs and barbecue, as we celebrate graduates and as we get together with family,

may we continually be reminded of the sacrifice that others made so that we could also enjoy this.

And so as we start off our message, I just want to go to the Lord in prayer and thank Him for the blessing that this is.

Lord, we come to you this morning with eager anticipation to open your word.

Lord, how grateful we are that you spoke.

It was recorded.

Lord, and we have the opportunity to open up the pages of our Bible and see the very words of our God.

Lord, I thank you for the wonderful privilege it is that we can gather every time we meet in this location together.

We can gather in homes.

We can gather in different places around our community to study your word.

Lord, I thank you for the graduates and the parties that we will have and that we will partake in.

Lord, we know that while we weren't charged to get anything here today, our gathering together came at a cost for so many for our freedom to have this right.

Lord, I thank you for all the men and women who have served in our armed forces bravely and sacrificially.

But, Lord, also we pause for a moment to reflect on those who gave of their life so we could have this freedom.

Lord, I pray during this weekend that their families would be comforted and feel your peace.

Lord, and it's also close to our hearts, the horrific tragedy that happened this past week to those teachers and those young children at the school in Texas.

Lord, I read a pastor who said it is in these moments where we don't, we feel like we need to say something, but yet we don't know what to say.

And, Lord, I feel like that's been in my heart for several days as we look at those events.

Lord, could it be a reminder of us of the terrible evil that is in this world?

And would it create in us a stronger desire to share the hope and life that comes from Christ and Christ alone?

Lord, as those students who are still living and teachers who are still living and families who are still living are left behind and have to process through all that they've experienced and seen and heard.

Lord, we pray for a miracle to happen in their lives as they walk through that.

Lord, provide them those around them who can care for them.

And, Lord, as we so often do, Lord, we just pray for the protection of our kids.

From the school, to the playground, to their cars, to their college campuses.

And just, Lord, ask for your protection on them.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Well, I want to confess something to you this morning.

I meet with a men's group each Thursday for lunch.

And we've been journeying through various books of the Bible together over two different men's groups over, honestly, the last five years.

And this past series that we went through, we did a study that I think was beneficial for all of us as we walked through each week and looked at a different aspect of the fruit of the Spirit.

And I was trying to think through, you know, where the Lord was leading me into a series for this summer.

And as I began to look at the number of the fruit of the Spirit, and I began to look at the number of weeks this summer, God said, you see?

And so we're going to walk through the fruit of the Spirit.

Now, what we're going to do in order to do that is each week we're going to look at one aspect of the fruit.

And what I hope for us to see, and this is kind of bridging into where we're going this morning, is that these aspects, these characteristics are not necessarily innate characteristics of ourselves.

Instead, they're the reflection of the character of God.

It's the fruit of His Spirit that embodies within us as believers and should be seen in our lives.

And so each week we're going to learn about how God is each of these, and then in response from that to learn how that fruit, that aspect of the fruit should be visible in our lives as believers.

And how when the gospel works in the miraculous way that it does, how it doesn't point people to you and I for them to say, well, look how great they are.

But instead it points them to their Creator so they can say, look how great He is.

And so that's what we're going to do.

But this morning what we're going to look at are the surrounding verses for the fruit of the Spirit so that we can understand the context in which Paul writes to the church at Galatia and gives this to them so that we can understand this as we move forward.

So let's start off, we're going to look at beginning in Galatians chapter 5 starting in verse 16.

Paul 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 are not under the law.

So let's pause here for just a moment.

So Paul writes to the church at Galatia.

We're able to read his words at our church today, and what we see is the battle that we face.

The opponents in the battle from the very beginning are the flesh, which Paul writes about, and the Spirit, which Paul writes about.

Now, we'll kind of explain these words that Paul's going to give.

The flesh is going to be the word that Paul uses to describe the material part of your body.

So we can look down and we can touch in the Greek the word that he's talking about, the flesh.

But Paul in that is not talking specifically about that your material being is corrupted.

That's not at all what he's driving to.

Instead, he's talking about the sinful component of us, of what's there.

So he takes a word that they would have understood in their context, right?

And then he uses that word to create or to bring to them a theological truth so that they will know the depth of the depravity of what's there.

But then he also says that against the Spirit.

Now, when he uses the word Spirit that's there, that word is literally translated, right?

It is referred to as the breath, breath.

And so when we look at that and we see of what Paul is trying to communicate, of understanding the very Spirit of God,

we understand the divine nature of what Paul is implying in there, right?

He's not saying it's by the power of breath, but he's saying it's by the power of God.

When we look back into creation, what did God do?

Did God grab his hands and reach down and grab matter and create?

No, he didn't do that because it didn't exist.

That God spoke and through the power of his word, through the power of his breath, creation was formed.

And so it's what we see in here.

And so Paul says there's this battle that rages on within the life of a believer, the battle of the flesh and the battle of the Spirit.

And again, the flesh, for those of us who are believers, it's still the part of me that I wrestle with.

It's still the part of me that I battle with, and I still have this to work through in my life.

I read an author this week, he said this, and I love his description of the flesh.

He says, flesh is the I who tries to satisfy me with anything but God's mercy.

So that we find our satisfaction, we find our hope, we find in anything else that what we can bring other than the Lord.

And so Paul says there's this thing, there's this battle, there's this flesh that is there, and it is battling with the Spirit, the power of God that dwells in us as believers.

Now what we see is that the Spirit fights this battle for us.

So we don't fight in our own power, we don't fight in our own ability, but instead we fight by the power of the Spirit.

Now this is important for us.

When we see this, the Spirit is the capital S, Spirit, the Spirit of the God, the Holy Trinity, part of God's very Spirit Himself.

And so this is what we see.

And so verse 16, he says, walk by the Spirit.

We walk in the power of the Spirit.

In verse 18, he says that we are led by the Spirit.

And then later in verse 25, we'll see when he says that we live by the power of the Spirit.

It's the Spirit who is doing the work in us, and it's the Spirit who's doing the battle through us.

I was given this illustration to describe this this week.

A preacher said it's the difference between a pace car versus a locomotive.

So let me speak some language to some of us who get this.

Let's talk NASCAR for a moment, all right?

Anybody in your life ever watched a NASCAR race?

Raise your hand, all right?

Most of us, some of us like NASCAR because we understand the aerodynamics and the skills and all that kind of stuff that's there, right?

Some of us, Mike Morgan is that guy.

Mike Morgan knows that.

He loves that, right?

He watched every lap of every race that's there.

And then some of us are like, show me the highlights.

I want to see the wrecks.

You know what I mean?

I hope they walk away, but I want to see 200 miles an hour sliding around right there, right?

We want to see that.

And then after the wreck comes out the pace car.

And the pace car, no one can get in front of the pace car.

But every driver has control of their car behind the pace car.

And if you've never seen this, what happens is the drivers slow down, they speed up.

If they've just gotten new tires put on their car, they'll weave their car back and forth to try to cut in the tires to get them warm so that they can grip the track as they're going around the speedway.

And this pastor said, that's how so many of us view what it means to walk by the spirit.

That the spirit is the pace car and we are the car behind it and we are just going to do whatever we want to do.

Because this pace car is just what we keep our eye on.

But we're doing everything else in our own power and our own ability.

And he said, I don't believe that's how the spirit of the Lord works at all.

He said, the spirit of the Lord is the locomotive engine that pulls the cars.

That when the power of the train from engine to caboose, when it gets going, it's all going.

Not because each individual car is doing what it wants to do, but because the power of that.

And that in the life of the believer, when we walk by the spirit, when we're led by the spirit, when we live by the spirit,

it's because we understand that we're attached and we're not doing this on our own power and our own strength and our own desire.

But we're doing this out of the power of the Lord, by the strength of the Lord, by the desire of the Lord in our life.

And so it's the locomotive.

It's the spirit that leads.

Now Paul here in two verses, verse 16 to verse 18, he gives us two promises.

That when we walk by the spirit, when we are led by the spirit, that there's two promises that will happen.

And the first promise that Paul gives is that we will not gratify the desire of the flesh.

Look back at verse 16.

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

There's not a maybe in there.

This is a direct promise of what Paul gives these believers.

You don't want to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Walk by the spirit.

And this is what this is going to be.

In Romans 8, 7 through 8, it says,

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.

For those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

It's a statement of truth, a statement of fact.

In Scripture, it's not left up for debate or for interpretation.

In the flesh, we can't please God.

But in the spirit, we will not seek to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Look back at verse 17.

He explains this.

He says,

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.

So Paul here writes the battle.

He explains the battle.

The desire of the flesh versus the desire of the spirit.

The war that rages in our lives.

Now, here's the thing with this battle.

For so many of us, if you are a believer, let me start off with this.

If you are a believer, this is a battle that you're going through.

We're going to see and understand that there's different levels of maturity even in these battles.

But that as believers, this is what we are all walking through in our lives that we see.

And what Satan does in these battles, when we want to fight these battles alone in isolation,

is because we've given in to the characteristics of what Satan wants to give us of shame.

They won't understand.

They won't care.

They won't love.

They won't forgive.

They won't do all these things.

And so we hide and we isolate because we think we're worse.

There's no one that can understand.

There's no one that can come alongside.

There's no one that can partner.

There's no one that can hold our hand.

There's no one that can hold us up.

And so we fight these battles in isolation.

But I want to share with you this morning and admit, I'm in the battle.

You're in the battle.

We're in the battle.

But also what we find from Scripture is that the Apostle Paul was in the battle.

I want to read a handful of verses, kind of skipping around to some different letters,

that show the battle that he was going through personally.

In 1 Timothy 1.15, Paul says,

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world

to save sinners of who I am the foremost.

Romans 7.15, Paul writes about himself and says,

For I do not understand my own actions.

For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.

Four verses later in Romans 7.19,

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

And at the end of chapter 7, verse 24, he says,

Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

So Paul says, look,

Even as the greatest church planner that the world will ever know.

The greatest missionary, the one who Jesus himself chose on that road,

who blinded so that he would understand and set him to carry out the gospel,

who wrote more of the New Testament than any other writer.

Paul says, here's the battle that I face.

So the amen that we can agree with as we begin through is,

number one, that you're not isolated alone in the battle.

But that, number two, you haven't been fully set free from the battle yet.

But we can walk in victory.

Because in the battle, what we will see as we go through is the maturity.

It's the maturity.

Because while in this life the flesh will never be fully eliminated,

the flesh does increasingly grow subdued as the Christian walks by

and is led by the Spirit.

And this is what we see in the life of a mature believer,

is men and women of faith who've walked through the battle,

facing the battle, seeing the Spirit of the Lord leading there,

not choosing to gratify the desires of their flesh.

And what comes from that is the maturity of the believer that we see.

Paul writes about this in himself in Philippians 3, verse 12.

And he says,

It's not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect,

but I press on to make it my own,

because Jesus Christ has made me his own.

Brothers, I do not consider that I've made it my own,

but one thing I do,

forgetting what lies behind

and straining forward to what lies ahead,

I press on toward the goal of the prize

of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul says,

I haven't obtained it.

I'm not perfected.

But I'm not staying where I'm at either.

And I'm pressing on.

And I love his reasoning why.

I love it.

It's not so that people will be impressed.

It's not so that a church would grow.

It's not for any accolade.

He says,

I press on to make it my own,

because Christ made me his own.

Right?

Because of what he's done for me.

So we see the first promise here

that we will not gratify the desires of the flesh

if we walk in the spirit.

But then secondly,

when we walk in the spirit,

we are not under the law.

Look at verse 18.

But if you're led by the spirit,

Paul says you're not under the law.

You're not under the law.

When you are led by the spirit,

what comes from you,

what the law commands is love.

And we'll see this as we study through.

But Paul says in Galatians 5,

earlier on in this letter,

in verse 13,

he says,

For you were called to freedom, brothers.

Do not use your freedom

as an opportunity for the flesh,

but through love serve one another.

That when we walk in the freedom that Christ gives us,

it's not the freedom to gratify the desires of the flesh,

but instead the freedom that Christ gives us

leads us to love and to serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word,

Paul says,

you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And so Paul says,

here's what happens in the freedom that we gain through Christ,

been set free from the penalty of sin.

What comes from that is not of our own.

What comes from that is the maturity and the working of the Lord that brings us to love and to serve.

So not to say,

well,

then I've been saved so I can do whatever I want to do.

But it says,

no,

I've been saved.

And so now I can love and I can serve and I can be the embodiment of Christ that people see.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

And so promise number one and promise number two,

we kind of see the same thing.

It's victory.

You see,

the whole part of our life is victory.

The problem of that for us right now in our perspective is we live in the battle.

We're right smack in the middle of the battle.

We're in the battle in our being.

We're in the battle in our relationships.

We're in the battle in this world.

And it's hard for us to see the victory because we're caught in the middle of the battle.

But if you read the book and you know what the gospel points to,

it's all about the fact that right now that we are victorious in Christ.

We don't have to wait until the clock runs down.

We don't have to wait until the buzzer sounds.

That in the midst of the battle, because Christ has fought it for us and he has gained and given us the victory.

Well, Paul continues on in chapter five.

Look at verse 19.

He talks about the works of the flesh.

Now the works of the flesh are evident.

Sexual morality, 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.

So Paul begins, he says, the works of the flesh are evident.

And here's what he means.

For us as believers, like, these aren't hard to see.

When you're a believer, no one's sneaking these by us.

There doesn't need to be a, let me think on that for a moment.

Paul says these are evident and they're clear and then he gives a list and what Paul is doing here is he's giving, Paul's giving a warning.

You see Paul's warning.

He says, this is your, this is your check yourself moment, church.

Is this who you are?

The warning to them and the warning to us.

When you read through these, is this who you are?

And then Paul, what Paul does is Paul gives a list of 15 sins.

Now, in different letters, Paul gives list of sins.

That's a common practice for Paul that Paul uses in his communication for the church.

A lot of times there are sins that overlap, sins that we see repeated.

We also see different sins change out.

Different ones are listed in some letters than they were in others.

And as I read through this week, what, what struck out, what, what stood out to me in this moment is Paul's not giving an all inclusive list.

He's not saying if you avoid these 15 things and these 15 things alone that you're good.

And the reason why I know that is at the end of the list, he gives four words, and things like these.

But what Paul does in every single one of his letter, while the list may be different, the categories in which they fall into are consistently the same.

Four categories of sin, of works of the flesh that manifest themselves amongst people.

We see in the list the sins of sexuality.

Sexually immoral, Paul writes, impurity and sensuality.

And what this means, transcending over every letter that we see of every word in Scripture,

is those who decide for themselves to embrace a lifestyle of sexuality apart from the design and plan of God.

Anything that goes against what he says.

While some things of God can be complicated, this isn't.

One man, one woman, in marriage.

That's it.

What can we do before marriage?

Nothing.

Right?

Nothing.

What can marriage look like?

Well, here's what it should look like.

One man, one woman.

Right?

It's the picture.

And when we decide to step out of that, we begin to see the sins of sexuality.

He also gives a category, the sins of false worship.

In this list, he gives idolatry and sorcery.

And what we see is those who choose to worship anything other than God.

And their rebellion in their heart of what they're committing.

When you go all the way back to the Old Testament, right?

And we see the stories of people even in Israel who decide we're going to make this and worship it.

It's when men and women decide for themselves what they are going to place their worth in and their worship on.

And it's anything in the creation that is not the creator.

It's idolatry.

Right?

And so the sins of sexuality, the sins of false worship.

But then he also gives a list of sins against your neighbor.

Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy.

And so what does this mean?

Why is this falling into this category?

The sins against your neighbor.

What goes right back to what the law, what we've been set free from, right?

To love so that we can serve one another.

But when we fall into these, we choose me over they.

And so I become my audience of service.

It's the manifestation of the heart of ego.

And so Paul says, warns against that.

We warn against sins of sexuality, the sins of false worship, the sins against your neighbor.

But then lastly, what we get are the sins of culture.

Drunkenness and orgies are the list that we find here.

And the reason why these are called sins of culture is because these were two practices in the Galatian culture

that were commonly practiced and commonly accepted within there.

And we've seen through what we've looked at is we've studied different letters

that the church has this problem when they go into the culture of inheriting the practices of the culture

and taking them on and thinking that everything's good when they do that.

Paul says, no.

You begin to accept these things even though they're common.

And in that moment, what you do is you reflect the world and not the kingdom of God.

And not the kingdom of God.

And so Paul says there's these four categories.

The sins of sexuality, the sins of false worship, the sins against your neighbor,

the sins of culture, of embracing those.

And then he gives this third promise.

This is the warning.

And I think this is a warning that those of us who are not saved but who are culturally Christian do not believe.

And here's what I mean.

The third promise, the end of verse 21.

Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Paul doesn't hide from this.

So what's Paul talking about?

Earlier we've talked about the struggle.

We've talked about the battle.

We've talked that we're all facing this.

Paul is not talking about an isolated lapse of judgment.

Paul's not talking about a struggle and a battle that a believer has with sin.

But what Paul is talking about, the verb tense that he uses here is the present tense,

which implies that these are actions of a person who willfully and desires to do them.

Without a sense of conviction.

And what this shows is that in this person, in the continual gratifying of the flesh,

that there is not the spirit of God.

And therefore they're not saved.

So I want to ask you this.

In your life, how reflective is this list?

If you struggle and fight against these,

can I just say, well done.

Well done.

You've got your battle that you face.

You see what's there.

You're depending on the Holy Spirit.

And I say, well done.

Well done.

But have you embraced them?

Is this who you are?

If so, in spite of all that you know,

and all the good that you think you've done,

what God's word says is that you won't inherit the kingdom of God.

Not in my opinion.

Not in my opinion, but God's truth.

Verse 22.

But through 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.

So what you see is this list.

And what I mentioned earlier is each week we're going to look at each one of these starting next week with love

and understanding this agape love that Paul talks to us and shows us about and that we see in who God is.

But I want to ask you the question this morning.

When we see these, walk by the Spirit, led by the Spirit, how?

How do we walk by the Spirit?

What are some tangible ways that we can look at this morning and say that we're led by the Spirit?

What does it practically mean in your life for today, in your life for tomorrow, in your life until God calls you home or Jesus comes back?

What does it mean to live by the Spirit?

And so as I studied through this this week, what continued to come out is consistent in God's Word.

I don't think this is a one, two, three, this is the list, tie a bow around it and we're good.

But I do think as I practically look at how the Lord has used these in my life, how the Lord uses these and calls us to in Scripture,

are things that we can all lean into regardless of where we are in our battle to embrace what it means to live by the Spirit.

And number one, it is this.

Set your mind on things above.

Now, I read a statistic this week that blew my mind, all right?

And scientists, and let me just say this, I don't know how science figures these things out.

They say they figured it out and I'm just going to trust them for a moment in it, all right?

Scientists have figured out that the average person receives and processes, all right, roughly 74 gigabytes of information a day, all right?

Receive it, process it, 74.

That means everything that we miss is excluded from that, all right?

Everything your boss, your spouse, your kids say they told you and you honestly missed it, right?

That's not a part of that.

But what you hear, what you take in, and what you process is roughly 74 gigabytes of information a day,

which is the equivalent, scientists say, of 16 movies in a day, right?

So do that math.

We're taking in more information in a day than we can watch over the course of a day.

That's what we're taking in.

Now, think about what you took in this week.

Every TV show, every news channel, every blog, every Facebook post, every Instagram picture, every tweet, every conversation, every joke, every thought.

Think about all that you took in.

How much of that was from above?

Paul writes in Colossians 3, verse 1.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

When Paul was imprisoned and beaten until he was almost dead and put in the basement of the prison where feces and urine collected all around him,

and his choice in that moment was to sing hymns of praise to the Lord,

I bet it's not because he spent five hours on Facebook that morning, right?

I bet it's because his mind is set on the things above, which means the reality of which he's in doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

Set your mind on things above.

That sounds pretty spiritual, right?

What does that mean?

I think it's pretty simple.

Number one, read God's word.

Read God's word.

Number one argument against why people don't read God's word is they say that I don't understand it.

How many times have we watched news or movies or read things that we don't understand, but yet we watch them anyways?

Read God's word.

It says even if you don't understand it, it's not going to come back void.

Read it.

Read God's word.

Number two, Paul commands us to pray without ceasing.

Talk to God.

This isn't hard.

Read God's word.

Talk to God.

And then the third thing is be quiet and stop and meditate on God.

Meditate on his ways.

Meditate on his promises.

Listen to him.

There's probably other things that we can lay out of what it means to set our minds on things above,

but I find that in my life when these three disciplines ring true in every day of my life,

that my mind is more focused on the things holy than not.

The second thing that we need to do is prepare to fight.

We've got to prepare to fight.

All right?

We've got to prepare to fight.

You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what does this mean?

All right?

We've got to prepare to fight.

The Bible tells us that we're in a spiritual battle.

It lays out in Scripture of the journey of everything that's going on and taking place,

and it's not easy.

And so we've got to prepare to fight.

How do we do that?

We've got to understand our opponent.

Peter writes in 1 Peter 5, 8, and he describes our opponent, the devil,

like a prowling, roaring lion waiting to devour.

Right?

We treat him like a little kitty cat.

Right?

But he's the lion waiting to destroy.

We've got to prepare to fight.

Number two, we've got to be fully equipped.

We've got to be fully equipped.

For time's sake, I don't have time to read them all,

but in Ephesians 6, it talks about the armor of God.

Right?

Every day we need to wake up and put on the armor of God, not the tuxedo of God.

Right?

Tuxedo can't get dirty.

Tuxedo's when you look pretty.

Tuxedo's when you stand there and you nod your head and everything's good

and everything's kind, everything's lovely.

But the armor's for the battle.

The armor's meant to get dirty.

The armor's meant to fight in.

And Paul tells us to every day to put this on.

Number two, we've got to, or number three, we've got to understand that this battle,

this fight is not easy.

It's not easy.

2 Timothy 4, 7, Paul writes this to his son in the faith.

Timothy, he says,

I fought the fight, I finished the race.

The race that he describes is not a hundred meter dash, it's a marathon.

It's a marathon.

We're at the end of it.

You're spent, you're exhausted, and you're done.

No one ever runs a marathon, and at the end of it says, cool, let's do this again right now, right?

It's hard.

It's not easy.

And number four, we've got to understand that every day we have to prepare to fight.

Jesus, in his words to his disciples, let's take up your cross.

Take up your cross.

Do a little research this week.

The average cross weighed 300 pounds.

The average cross beam, the beam that Jesus carried, was 90 pounds.

Now, I don't know which part Jesus means, 300 or 90, but I'll tell you this,

even if we want to go in on the low end of 90, tell you what, tomorrow let's all show up here

and put an extra 90 pounds on us and then go face our day.

Whatever we're going to do that day, let's face the day with 90 more pounds on us.

Jesus says, this is what this is.

It's every day.

It's every moment.

It's a battle.

It's a fight that we're in.

And we've got to prepare to fight.

We've got to set our minds on things above.

We've got to prepare to fight.

And then lastly, I'm going to close in this, we've got to live in God's forgiveness.

I'm going to close with not reading my own words, but reading the words of Billy Graham.

On May 15, 2009, Billy Graham was 90 years old, and he was asked this question.

How often should we ask God to forgive us?

Should we ask him every day?

Today, I know we're supposed to trust Jesus for our forgiveness, and I have, but I'm not perfect.

Can anyone else other than me resonate with that?

And here's Billy Graham's answer.

When we come to Christ, we have a new relationship with him.

Instead of being his enemies, we're now his sons and daughters.

The Bible says, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

This is a very precious truth.

But it also helps us understand what happens when we sin.

Think of your own family for a moment.

Perhaps the family you grew up in or your family right now.

What happens when someone in your family does something wrong?

You know what happens.

The closeness of your family is strained.

And the fellowship between the wrongdoer and the rest of the family is broken.

And only when they ask forgiveness can the relationship be healed.

But when they do wrong, do they cease to be a member of that family?

No, of course not.

The fellowship may be broken, but not the relationship.

No matter what they've done, they will always be a member of that family.

The same is true for us.

If we've truly given our lives to Christ, we are now God's children.

And nothing will ever change that fact.

But when we sin, our fellowship with God is broken.

And that's why we need to confess our sins to him and seek his forgiveness without delay.

The Bible says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

May this be your practice every day.

Every day.

Live in God's forgiveness.

He didn't break the fellowship.

We did.

He's just looking to restore it in every moment.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, we thank you for the words that Paul gave us through the inspiration of your spirit.

Lord, we acknowledge the battle that rages in us that we face.

And we thank you that in the midst of the battle, Lord, you give us your promises.

That your spirit, the Holy Spirit of God is in us and can lead us in his power through this to defeat the sin and to no longer gratify the flesh.

Lord, we thank you for your warning that you gave us.

Lord, I pray for any of us in this room, that if what we've seen and what we're reading about is not the battle that we face,

but instead the reality of what we are choosing.

Lord, not through my words, but through the drawing and the leading of your spirit, will you bring our hearts?

Will you open our eyes to our sin?

Would you open our eyes to the desperate need that we have for a Savior to be saved from that?

Lord, so that we would seek out, Lord, that we would desire you in your way above everything else, Lord, that this world has to offer.

Lord, so that we can live by the Spirit.

Lord, whether our next stage of life is high school graduation, retirement, our firstborn child,

our firstborn great-grandchild.

Lord, may we live by the Spirit.

Lord, may we set our minds on things that are above,

things that are holy and pure and good and righteous.

Lord, may we find them in your Word as we read.

Lord, may we cry out to you in them in our prayer.

Lord, could we meditate and focus in on those

so that when the storms and the situations of our life begin to consume us,

like it did for Paul in that prison,

the only reaction that we know is to not grovel in the situation,

but to praise you in the moment.

Lord, prepare us to fight.

Prepare us to fight.

Lord, our opponent, you know him well.

And he wants to destroy.

As a nation mourned a few days ago, he rejoiced.

And that's who he is.

Lord, can we prepare to fight.

Lord, may we put on the armor of God

in all that you've given us in every single moment.

Lord, can we understand that it's not going to be easy.

We do it every day.

And God, can we live in your forgiveness.

God, can we understand that you're our father who wants to forgive us.

Who wants right relationship with us.

With every head bowed and every eye closed.

We have prayer encouragers on either side of the auditorium.

Maybe you need to go to them

to talk about a relationship with the Lord.

What it means to be saved.

And whether that's standing at your feet in songs of praise.

Or maybe it's coming down front and kneeling.

And crying out to the Lord

in confession and repentance of sin this morning.

And crying out into the Lord

that his spirit would be victorious in you.

And crying out to the Lord

for a son or daughter who's gone wayward.

A husband or wife who's gone wayward.

Just pray that you would respond to the Lord this morning.

And how he's leading you.

God, may we obey you in every moment.

From now as we leave and until we return.

For your name and your glory.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Thanks again for listening

to the Willow Ridge Church weekly podcast.

We hope that you enjoyed listening to this week's message.

If you'd like to learn more about who we are

or explore additional resources,

visit us online at www.willowridgechurch.com

or by searching for Willow Ridge Church

on Facebook and Instagram.

We hope that you enjoyed listening to this week's message.

More episodes

Chapters

Show Notes

Creators and Guests

What is Willow Ridge Sermons?