The Struggle Within

11/12/11

Scripture:

Good morning.  You know, as long as we live in this flesh we’re going to have a struggle within ourselves.  The struggle is between the passions and desires of our sinful nature and our desire to live for God.  We must follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives to experience the fruit of the Spirit, and we’ll see a little more of what this is about as we get into the scripture.  We continue the Getting Our Gospel Right sermon series this morning with a sermon that I've entitled “The Struggle Within.”  This is a follow-up to Pastor John’s sermon last Sunday, “Struggles Without and Within,” and our text this morning is from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, chapter 5, verses 16-25.  I'm going to be reading from the New Living Translation of the Bible, and in this text we’ll hear Paul writing about the struggle we all have within ourselves between the passions and desires of our sinful nature and the desire to live for God.  So hear this word of the Lord from Galatians 5:16-25:

¹⁶ So I say to you, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives.  Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. ¹⁷ The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants.  And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires.  These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions.  ¹⁸ But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.  ¹⁹ When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear:  sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, ²¹ envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these.  Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God.  ²² But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control.  There is no law against these things.  ²⁴ Those who belong to Jesus Christ have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.  ²⁵ Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.  

This ends the reading of God's word.  May the Lord bless us as we listen with spiritual ears, as we hear His word in our hearts and as we apply it to our lives.  

The Apostle Paul really struggled with how to live a Spirit-led life.  You think well he’s an apostle...he had been proclaiming the gospel.  How is it that he would have this kind of struggle?  Well he tells us in Romans.  He said:  I have discovered this principle of life--that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.  I love God's law with all my heart.  But there is another power at work within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.  Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?  Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God's law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin. (Romans 7:21-25)

Can anybody here relate to that struggle?  Do you ever find that though you have the best of intentions you find that something about your sinful nature just leads you into doing things and thinking things that just are not right?  Are we, like Paul, struggling with how to deal with our sinful nature and with how to live for God?  This passage is a passage of very sharp contrasts.  I want to just ask you which is more descriptive of your life?  First, you don’t have to be doing all of these things, but is there anything at all on this list that you could relate to in your life--sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility?  Those are kind of out there, but what about quarreling or jealousy or outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties?  And then just to make sure everything’s covered, it says all “other sins like these.”  Is there anything here that's descriptive of you?   In contrast, let’s look at the spiritual nature, the fruit of the Spirit:  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.    Okay, which one’s you—spiritual nature, sinful nature?  Chances are the answer would be yes, both.  

Would you pray with me?  Father, we need your Holy Spirit to enable us to understand your word.  May your Holy Spirit open our eyes and our hearts to see how your word to the people of the Galatian churches affects the way we live our lives today.  God, I pray for you to show us the eternal life-changing truths in your word.  May our lives be changed this morning.  Conform us to the image of Jesus Christ by your Holy Spirit at work in our lives.  In Jesus’ name. Amen.  

I have a confession to make to you this morning.  I'm a glove.  Most of the time I just kind of lay around, don’t do anything, and without a hand in me, that’s it, pretty useless.  Corrie ten Boom, author of The Hiding Place wrote, “I have a glove here in my hand.  The glove cannot do anything by itself.  But when my hand is in it, it can do many things. True, it is not the glove, but my hand in the glove that acts.  We are His gloves.  It is the Holy Spirit in us,” she writes, “who is the hand, who does the job.  We have to make room for the hand so that every finger is filled.”  

Imagine if just one finger is filled, okay...just one.  If only one finger is filled, how much can the hand do, and what good are the other three?  They just flop around and they’re not much good, are they?  All of the fingers have to be filled in order for the hand, in order for the glove, to be useful, in order for it to do some good work.  So, what does the Bible tell us about this powerful Holy Spirit who can fill and empower us?  

Let’s first look at the model for our spiritual lives, Jesus Christ.  Did Jesus have the Holy Spirit at work in his life?  You know, the reality is that Jesus was totally dependent upon the Holy Spirit.  Scripture tells us:  Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River.  He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness (Luke 4:1).  Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power (Luke 4:14a).  Jesus was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit and said, "O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike (Luke 10:21).   Acts tells us that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.  Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil, for God was with him (Acts 10:38).  And he was shown to be the Son of God when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 1:4).  Jesus said:  And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven (Luke 24:49).  He has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us (2 Corinthians 1:22).  God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 5:5).  And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you.  And when you believed in Christ he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit whom he promised long ago (Ephesians 1:13).  

Now there are a few cautions, there are a few warnings in scripture for us to consider in relation to the Holy Spirit, some things that we should not do.  The Holy Spirit (for example) tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons (1 Timothy 4:1).  You stubborn people! Scripture says:  You are heathen at heart and deaf to the truth.  Must you resist the Holy Spirit?  That’s what you ancestors did and so do you (Acts 7:51).  So we’re cautioned not to resist the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives.   And do not bring sorrow to God's Holy Spirit by the way you live (Ephesians 4:30).  Don’t be drunk with wine because that will ruin your life.  Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), and do not put out the Holy Spirit’s fire.  These are some pretty significant warnings for us in the Bible in relation to the Holy Spirit.  But what about the plus side, what should we do in relation to God's Holy Spirit?  If Jesus needed the Holy Spirit to empower his life, don’t we as well?  

Here are some things that scripture tells us:  Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).  And so we’re told to repent.  To ‘repent’ means to turn away from and to go in a different direction.  If our lives are characterized more by this list (sinful practices) and there are some things in that list that we say okay, yeah, that’s kind of me, then we are called upon to repent, to turn away from those things, and to turn toward God.  And if there’s anyone here who has a desire to follow God and you’ve never been baptized, we are commanded to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.  Then we’re told we will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Scripture says that as soon as they arrived they prayed for these new believers to receive the Holy Spirit, and so it’s the responsibility of the church, of those who have the Spirit, to pray for those who do not, to pray for new believers, to pray and to instruct and to help them and lead them to receive the Spirit.  It says the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, for they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Then Peter and John laid their hands upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:16-17).  Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things (Romans 8:5), and so what’s in our minds?  What do we occupy our minds with?  Is it these kinds of things?  Scripture goes on to say but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit (Romans 8:5). 

Now some of you were once caught up in all of this.  You were caught up in the sinful nature and you needed to have a change in your lives and maybe some of you still need to have that change, but you were cleansed.  You were made holy.  You were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.  You see, we prove ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, by the Holy Spirit within us and by our sincere love.  We’re cautioned that through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us we are to carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to us.  And so what God has entrusted to us...His word, His scripture, that knowledge of God...we’re to guard that and consider that to be very precious.  You, dear friends, must build up each other by your most holy faith, praying in the power of the Holy Spirit.  And so we have a responsibility to each other.  We have a responsibility praying in the Spirit to build up, to strengthen and to encourage one another.  

So the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church encompasses a number of things.  The Bible says humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.  You will receive power, scripture says, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses telling people, Jesus said, about me everywhere, in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.  The church then had peace and it became stronger as the believers lived in the fear of the Lord, and with the encouragement of the Holy Spirit it also grew in numbers.  And so if we want our church...if we want Eden Church to be filled with the peace of the Lord and if we want our church to grow in numbers, we need to seek and to receive that encouragement of the Holy Spirit.  Acts says and the believers were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:52).   I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him—then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.  And now this good news has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.  It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen (1 Peter 1:12).  Our text from Galatians said let the Holy Spirit guide your lives.  My prayer is that Eden Church and all of us will learn more of how to do that as we study God's word together.  

We are going to struggle with living our lives for God just as the Apostle Paul did.  We will struggle within ourselves between the passions and the desires of our sinful nature and the desire to live for God.  If we belong to Jesus Christ, we are told that we must nail the passions and desires of our sinful nature to His cross and crucify them there.  We must follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives to experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  But the Bible tells us that we do have God's help available to us, for it says so if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Matthew 7:11).  And so we have to ask.  Remember the glove?  It’s kind of useless unless it’s filled, and filling that glove is possible if we will pray and if we will ask the Holy Spirit...and I think this is on a daily basis...saying, come Holy Spirit, come into my life.  Help me, strengthen me, empower me, enable me to do what I cannot do on my own.  Would you pray with me please?

God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we need your spiritual strength and guidance so that we can grow in our obedience to you.  We pray that our hearts will be flooded with light so that we can understand the wonderful power you have promised to those you have called.  We struggle with our own sinful nature.  We need your power every day to lead us, your Spirit to empower us to bear the fruit of the Spirit in our daily lives.  Come Holy Spirit, fill us with your grace.  Give us your power to live lives of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  I pray in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.