1. Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our
Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The
message from God’s Word this morning comes from Galatians 5:1, 13-25. It’s entitled, “In Step with the Spirit,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. It’s such a
stunning prospect! To be free to serve
one another in love. To be free from the
crushing demands of our sinful nature.
To be free to experience love, joy, peace, patience and all those things
that Paul said the Holy Spirit produces in the life of all believers in Christ.
3. But, how
disappointed many Christians are as they catch a vision of what can be—and
tremble to realize that as far as they’re concerned, it isn’t. How disappointing to want the kind of life
Paul described here, fail to find it, and never realize why.
4. I suspect
for many of us the reason why is given in the phrase of Galatians 5:25 which says, “25If
we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” If you were in the army, you might hear a
sergeant shouting it at you. “Keep in
step, Recruit! Move it!”
5. Some folks
interpret a legalistic life as a life of trying, and the Spirit filled life as
a life of resting. They wait for the
Holy Spirit to direct them. And, all too
often, if they don’t feel the Spirit moving, they just sit. But, Paul says, “Keep in step with the Spirit, walk by the Spirit.” Don’t sit down. Don’t wait for the Spirit to tap you on the
shoulder and point. Move it!
6. Paul told
the same thing in other ways. We’re to
use our freedom that we have in Christ to serve one another in Christian
love. Paul says in Galatians 5:1, 13-15,
“1For freedom
Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke
of slavery. . . . 13For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only
do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve
one another. 14For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15But if you bite and devour
one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” Right
here we have the Spirit’s marching orders.
We don’t need to wait for further instructions. When the Holy Spirit moves us through God’s
Word and the Sacraments we can’t help, but go out and want to serve our
neighbor in the love that Christ has given to us!
7. The yoke of
slavery that Paul is warning the Galatians was their giving in to the pressure
of the Judaizers to be circumcised and obey ceremonial laws. This involved them in more than just pleasing
men by agreeing to do what they wanted.
It implied that they were agreeing that circumcision was needed to make
them complete Christians, that it was necessary for salvation, as the Judaizers
were teaching, while in truth, this belief was a denial of the free gift of
salvation in Christ who loved us and gave Himself up for us by dying on the
cross to save us from our sins. Any
“Jesus plus” requirement becomes such a yoke of slavery. For example some people might say to be a real Christian, you must believe in
Jesus PLUS be in church every Sunday, or you have to serve as an officer in the
Church Council, or you must give 10% of your income back to God, or speak in
tongues, and so on. Dear friends each of
these in itself may be a helpful aspect of Christian discipleship, but if they
are made a requirement in order to be a “real Christian” it detracts from our
confidence in salvation by grace through faith on account of our Lord Jesus
Christ’s death and resurrection for you and me.
8. Paul is
reminding the Galatian church and us that even the righteous, who walk in the
Spirit, are tempted by the sin in them, and they also stumble and fall. True Christians are often so covered with
weaknesses and defects that faultfinders deny that they can be in a state of
grace. As long as a man lives in sin, having no power to fight against it, the
Holy Spirit is not in him and he walks according to the flesh on the way to
hell. Whoever walks in the Spirit still
has fleshly desires within him, but he’s also empowered to hate sin and fight
against it so it doesn’t gain power over him.
If someone sins because he wants to, he still walks according to the
sinful flesh. If someone walks in the
Spirit, even though he continues to commit sin, he knows that this isn’t what
he wants to do and he is disgusted with what he has done. Paul talks about this in more detail in
Romans chapter 7.
9. Dear
friends if someone has committed a serious sin and is at peace with it, if he
has delayed repentance instead of earnestly seeking God’s grace and
forgiveness, he still is a child of sin and death. He is still walking in the flesh. BUT, if someone is walking in the Spirit, he
can, like the Apostle Peter after he denied our Lord Jesus three times, quickly
gather himself up after a fall and throw himself before God with repentance and
deep shame. The Christian who walks in
the Spirit pleads with the Heavenly Father for forgiveness and grace for
Christ’s sake. He doesn’t rest until his
conscience has been cleansed by God’s forgiving Word. If someone has sinned in such a way that the
Spirit of God has retreated out of his heart, he still lives in the flesh. But, if someone walks in the Spirit, he too
can grieve the Holy Spirit at times, but he never expels Him from His heart by
reckless sins. Sin can rise up in his
heart against the Spirit, but it never takes over the Holy Spirit’s reign in
the life of the true Christian.
10. What Paul is
saying here in Galatians 5 is that when we are led by the Spirit it’s no longer
laws that motivate our Christian behavior.
Instead of service being and obligation, what we’re supposed to do,
serving our neighbor becomes a privilege, a service joyfully offered to Christ. Faith must express itself. Faith is active. In fact the Apostle James says, “Faith without works is dead.” Faith doesn’t sit around waiting. God has work for us to do, and if we really
trust God to work in us, we naturally get up and get at it! It seems so simple and yet so many people
miss it.
11. Dear friends do you believe that the Holy
Spirit lives in you? Do you believe that the Holy Spirit has sanctified you and
set you apart from the sinfulness of this fallen world to be holy and blameless? Do you believe that the Holy Spirit is able
to work through you? Then show your
faith by stepping out to serve others in love, and in the serving you will
experience the Spirit’s power. And in
the serving you will find your own character transformed. In your serving you will find how Christ’s
sacrificial love has changed you and made you His child. Amen.
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