Romans 8:1–11Scripture
Turn your Bibles to Romans chapter 8 this morning. While you're turning there, I will say to all the men in the house, Happy father's Day. And it is a wonderful day to celebrate. Somebody's car's alarm went off, somebody made their car go off, so that they could celebrate with us for Father's Day. Nice.
Romans chapter 8. It says this. I'm going to read through 11, and then we're just going to look at probably verses 4 through, well, maybe 11. I'm only really supposed to do 4 through 8, so I may touch on 10 and 11.
It's hilarious. Somebody got it. There we go. Whose was that, by the way? No one's going to admit. Yeah.
I can't see very well. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but
Introduction
Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 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.
How many of you are thankful for the Holy Spirit, which empowers us to do what we could not do when we were a slave to sin? Amen. That is good news. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however," speaking to believers specifically, Paul is speaking to believers in Rome.
This is the believers. So notice the two types of people that we see here. We see a type of people who are depraved, who are slaves to sin, who cannot obey the law nor do they want to. That's who we see. "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God." These are depraved people, lost and dead in sin. "It does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot." Notice this. This is not, and we said last week, this is not like you go in half-season and sometimes as a believer you're a slave to the flesh and sometimes as a believer you're a slave to the Spirit, or you have the mind set on flesh or a mind set on Spirit. He defines these. A mind that is set on the flesh is someone who has lost in sin, who is not saved, who can never even obey the law. Why? Because we need the Holy Spirit to even do it at all. We need his power.
"Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Then he goes on and he shows the second type of person. "You, however," you believers, "you're not in the flesh, you're in the Spirit." So we really hammered on that last week. We hammered on some of our conversations that happened in small group, and we said believers are not in the flesh. They're not half in the flesh and half out of the flesh. Believers are not in the flesh, but they are in the Spirit, "if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." So notice here that although the flesh is death, the Spirit, which dwells in you, begins to give life to that which is dead. He's talking about sanctification, or he's talking about transformation in our physical life, that we might be more and more like him, that we might look like him, act like him, talk like him, yada, and so on.
All right, I want to stop here for just a moment, and then we're going to take some time today, and if you were to put anything at the top of your paper here's a really creative title: the Holy Spirit. So I wanted to begin maybe to talk about the Holy Spirit and maybe talk about some of the misconceptions we have regarding the Spirit in the life of a believer, specifically those of you who've been in the church any amount of time, or if you've been a part of any kind of evangelical movement at all, there have been mixed messages regarding the work of the Holy Spirit and God's intention in giving it to you at the point of salvation. You can begin to think of many of them even now, but let me just pause before we get into that and let me
Point 1God's love includes discipline, not just comfort
Let me say something that I think will lay the groundwork. There is a very troubling Scripture in the Bible that says, "Jacob I loved, esau I hated." Now, that bothers us, where it should, because when we begin to proclaim the gospel to people, one of the first things we say is, if you don't hear anything that I say, I want you to at least hear this: God loves you.
Now, I'm going to say this, and this is, listen, what I'm going to do is trigger-inducing. I'm doing it intentionally. I want you to be troubled with what I'm saying, that way you will wrestle with the text afresh and anew, not by picking up preconceived ideas and notions, but I want to, like a wrecking ball, come into your preconceived ideas and I want to just abolish them, that way you just stand in the dust as you walk out on this Father's Day going, what in the world? Right? So some of what I'm saying is to frustrate, but know this: when, at the end of time, when we stand before the Lord and we're judged, he doesn't judge our sin, he judges us. Another way to say that was,
It's not sin he sends to hell, it's the sinner he sends there.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 7:36
So when we think about the Scripture, and by the way, I did a word study on "hate," and it literally means to hate.
So there's no, like, Greek way around this. All right. And although we know that God loves us, ultimately, sin puts us in a very awkward position relationally with God that we should talk about. And if the gospel then is presented first and foremost that God loves you, then why do I ever need to change? And why do I ever need to do anything different? Why do I need to be different? Why do I need them, why do I need a Savior? God loves me just the way that I am, so I'm going to stay just the way that I am and never really be changed, because God's okay with me. See the problem there? And the danger in starting a presentation of the gospel with "God loves you" is that we really need to start with this. I wouldn't really start with "God hates you," but I would actually start with this: you've got a problem, and I know a guy who can solve it.
Here's even better: you are the problem, and I know a God who can help you with you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 9:07
Now, that's the real problem, that we're the problem, but
Until you see yourself as the problem, you will never reach out beyond yourself for a solution to that problem.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 9:20
And the gospel, what the gospel does is it puts us in a place where we begin to see ourself as we are, so that we will reach out to that which can save us. Now, I want to say this. So let's talk about the effects. This is going somewhere. We're talking about sanctification, we're talking about the work of the Holy Spirit. Stay with me. Let's talk about how God dealt with Esau, who the Bible says he hated, and then let's look at how God dealt with Jacob. How many of you know the story of Esau and Jacob? And I don't have a lot of time, so if you don't, go read about it.
Go Google it, read about these two characters in the Bible. They're important characters, and it helps us today as we begin to think about sanctification.
It really does. It helps us when we begin to think about God, how God deals with us, the Holy Spirit, and sanctification. Now, when you think of someone hating someone, you would think that they would be mean to them, they would give them the silent treatment, they would try to avoid them, they would not bless them.
So when you look at the life of Esau, here's some things that you see: Esau is blessed. He does acquire financial wealth, he does acquire land, God never bothers him. God lets him be to his own devices. God allows him to choose his own way. He does not discipline him, he does not correct him, he does not rebuke him, he lets him go where he pleases. But Jacob, who God loved, he would not allow Jacob to get away with being a heel-grabber his whole life. He would not let him get away with stealing things out of his father-in-law's house. He does not let him get away with doing crooked things. He is constantly correcting, he is constantly rebuking, and he is constantly outing Jacob around every turn. And if that is not enough, the culmination of all the events that happen in Jacob's life, he ends up at the top of a mountain, a new precipice, a new opportunity to go into a new way of living. He begins to wrestle with God for a blessing, and he does pretty good, actually, because they do it all night. They wrestle and wrestle until God does what he does, he touches his and it dislocates Jacob's hip. Talk about a touch. That's a touch of all touches, right? Until then he is forever crippled by that touch, keeping him consistently humble, remembering that God is God and God's way is God's way, forever, the rest of his days. Every time he steps with his right foot, he remembers who gave him that. It was not a healing, it was the opposite of healing. It was troubling. He hurt him. He hurt him that Jacob might worship him. And so then the picture is, he limps into the land of promise. He limps there. "Esau I hated." I just don't even do anything with him. Jacob, "I loved." Let me tell you, in a world where we say if God loves you will be healed all the time, you will be wealthy all the time, you will be blessed all the time, no trouble can hit you, that's not the picture we get in the Bible when God says he loves someone. Not in there.
He told the disciples he loved them. How rich and blessed and healed were they in the end? Are you with me? Does that mean that God doesn't heal? Of course not. Of course God heals, there's evidence of that. God heals. The fact that you're saved is the healing of all healings. It's the healing of all healings. But when God loves you, he is a heavenly Father who rebukes and disciplines you, and where there is no rebuke and where there is no discipline, there is no father. That's good. Some of you want to be his sons and his daughters, but you want to do so without ever being disciplined by him.
If God loves you, let me tell you what is guaranteed for your life: trouble.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:52
And the trouble doesn't come outside of God, the trouble comes from God, because
When he troubles the water, true healing happens.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 15:06
Are you with me today? We need to understand that it is the work of God through the Holy Spirit to discipline and correct and lead you in places you necessarily don't want to go.
That's the work of the Holy Spirit. Somehow or another, though, in the church we have said that the work of the Holy Spirit is to give us power for whatever we want to accomplish. In other words, the Holy Spirit, we use the Holy Spirit a lot like we do Bible Scriptures, in other words, incantations to accomplish our will. There is a lot of witchcraft happening inside the church, because we quote Scriptures so out of context and try to empower and use that as a crowbar to get what we want, like "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," but we take out the whole intention of that Paul was saying, I will have strength to endure hardship and beatings and remain in this prison and glorify him and sing hymns, but we use it as an incantation to try to get something we want that possibly God doesn't want you to have, because oftentimes it is the good things in life that rob you from your pursuit of God, and if you make your good your god, you will miss God and replace it with
The good you long for, and the good you want is nowhere near as good as the God you need.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 16:42
Okay.
Point 2The Holy Spirit sanctifies, he does not entertain
If we were to look, honestly, so let's jump to Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is there to train, to disciple, to correct, to do that. That is the means by which God sanctifies our lives. And we think of a lot of things when we think of the Holy Spirit. If you were to look at any Christian media as sort of an ignorant bystander and try to figure out the theology of the Holy Spirit by watching Christian television, this is what you might assume.
First of all, let me do the disclaimer before I talk about what's going on here. You know, you watch those, like, medical advertisements and it's like, this will help your headaches and you're going to have a headache-free life and it's going to be wonderful, but you might bleed out your ears and your nose might fall off and your arm might start punching you in the face and your legs might grow tentacles, you know, like it is, and you might die, but you won't have a headache. That's kind of what happens when you're dead. All right, so I'm going to do a disclaimer first, and please listen to me, please listen to me. There are people in our fellowship today, in this room, who love the Lord, who are saved by the Lord, who appreciate the work of the Holy Spirit. They know what the Holy Spirit does beyond what all these things I'm going to list. Therefore, and also, there are going to be some things that I list on here that you believe that the Holy Spirit empowers you to do.
That's your right, and many people have different perspectives. My goal is not to undermine anything that you believe the Holy Spirit does in your life. My goal is to get the focus where Paul is trying to move the focus. The focus is incantation. No, it's not incantation, my goodness. The focus is sanctification. The "-shuns" at the end threw me off there. That's the goal, that the Holy Spirit was given to sanctify our lives from ever increasing glory to ever-increasing glory. Second Corinthians, from glory to glory, to glorified. Saved, glory, sanctified, glory, glorified in heaven when you receive the new body. That is the point of the Holy Spirit. Matter of fact, it is infused throughout the entire New Testament. We see that the work of the Holy Spirit is leading, teaching, rebuking, and sanctifying, yet we have turned the work of the Holy Spirit into a bunch of, it's a sideshow.
The Holy Spirit is not a sideshow for you to edify the flesh.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 19:59
Matter of fact, the apostle Paul rebukes the church several times, specifically in his epistles, for being idiots with regard to how they use the Holy Spirit, for the way they see the Holy Spirit. So I'm going to come against some things. Here's some things that you see out there. I'm not making a statement about them, don't get triggered and start tweeting before we're out of the service, they need to be said. If we watch Christian television, we would know that the Holy Spirit is power, but further still, the Holy Spirit is power to do what you please.
So we try to make sure we never quench the Holy Spirit so that we can heal people on a touch or walk more anointed than our other brothers and sisters. Here's another one. The Holy Spirit is the kind of power that knocks people down out of the blue, knocks them down on the floor, leaves them lying there shaking, stunned. That's one thing you might gather about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a kind of power that operates, strangely enough, at the swoop of a hand or a jacket, or by pressing somebody's head hard enough with one hand. That's what the Holy Spirit does.
It is a touch that knocks you backwards, makes you faint, makes you exit consciousness and empty the mind from thinking at all.
Why is that? Quiet, man. The Holy Spirit is a powerful force. Here's another thing that causes people to mumble words that no one else could understand, including the person mumbling them. Are you with me? Yes, we have people in this fellowship that pray in tongues, but you should consider, you should consider, is that the work of the Holy Spirit? Is that his purpose for you, to pray in mumbling in your closet? Is that the purpose of the Holy Spirit? You should ask that question. You should be brave enough to do that. If you feel emphatically that's what the Holy Spirit does, that's the main thing the Holy Spirit does for you should then be able to handle the question: do you really think that's what he's here for? I think, I remember when the disciples said to Jesus, "Teach us how to pray,"
He didn't mumble, he taught them how to pray. Are you with me today? Here's what he said: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come." Are you with me? He taught them how to pray, and it required the engagement of thought.
Matter of fact, he spoke it in a language they could understand. So how did we get to a place where our prayer is not the prayer Jesus taught, but rather a simulation of syllables that make no sense at all? How did we get there? I'll tell you how we got there: because we don't understand the Holy Spirit and its purposes. The Holy Spirit also makes people throw their hands in the air, roll their eyes backwards, and try to keep their balance as they wobble to the music. Defensive, right? I told you it's going to be trigger-inducing, so I warned you. There is this new thing today called worship soaking. Have you heard of it, where what I have to do is I have to be in the worship long enough for me to stop thinking that I could actually feel something, or I've got to be in the worship long enough until I feel something, and then I know that I'm ready to encounter God. Well, that's a problem.
I might get it.
I'm not against worship, I'm not against raising your hands, I'm against stirring yourself into a feeling and then calling it God when it's not.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 24:24
That's what I'm against. Matter of fact, if the Holy Spirit's actually doing work in your life during a worship song, it's probably going to be in the form of rebuke, and you ain't going to want to raise your hand at all, because his job is to correct, rebuke, discipline, and teach. And if you're worshiping without learning, your hands being raised don't mean squat. It doesn't mean a thing. There are just a few things that you might include about the Holy Spirit if you've been in the church any amount of time. The Holy Spirit, whatever the Spirit is a force that makes us lose control of our body, lose control of our mouth, lose control of our mind, and fall into some emotional, bizarre, irrational behavior, and then us label it as "God moved."
You say, well then, Shawn, if that's your position, I didn't say that was my position. I said I was going to trigger you on purpose to get you to think.
Well, but you might say, well, Shawn, if that's your position, what do we make of all of these things that happen that people label as the filling of the Holy Spirit?
I don't know. Power of suggestion, the power of group expectation, the power of manipulation, I don't know, could be a lot of things. I do know that these same behaviors happen in witchcraft circles too. So is that God doing that? Are you with me today?
Galatians 5:22–23 says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy," I'm actually going to get this list right, because I'm not pulling in King James and the NIV and ESV, different words, and then saying that there are more fruits than there really are. I'm just basically, I won't be using synonyms to describe the same thing. So here's what it says: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness," and not the loss of it.
Are you with me today? So the fruit of the Spirit, which takes up residence in us, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. "Against such things there is no law." Why is it that in Christendom, particularly in media, we have then said that the evidence of the Spirit in the life of a believer is the loss of control in all of these things? It's a problem, and it's a problem we should talk about, quite honestly, because if we've got the wrong understanding of the Spirit, that matters. How many of you would agree with that? Because the Holy Spirit is God, and to not know him is a problem. Here's a question I wrote: would the Holy Spirit cause such things by showing up in places that dishonor him, that misinterpret the Scripture, and do it intentionally, the Scripture he wrote and that was inspired by the Holy Spirit?
Would he show up and validate bad theology and false teachers and be absent in places where both the Holy Spirit is honored and his word is honored? Would he do that? Would he seal that kind of environment with his presence as a form of validation? So then there's some ideas, and we could pander and talk about all of these things for quite some time.
The question then we come to, we arrive at, is, so what is the true work of the Holy Spirit? What is he really doing? What is his power
Point 3The Spirit's power is God's, not ours
Accomplishing? Well, let me start with a little linguistics. There is a word for the Spirit in the Old Testament, the word for the Holy Spirit in the Old testament is, let me see if you guys know before they put it up there, ruach. They'll put it up there, and it means this: wind, breath, spirit.
Whenever you hear the Spirit talked about in the Old Testament, you will hear, you will read this word, and it's ruach. All right, that's how you say it. It's really like you got a loogie back there. All right, the parallel New Testament word that is used is pneuma. Now, pneuma is something, if you don't have any kind of greek understanding at all, pneuma is a very common word that's used quite often for a multitude of things, even in the secular world, believe it or not.
They are both onomatopoeic words. Both pneuma and ruach are words that have in the very pronunciation air in motion, and that's the intention of the word Spirit. It is motion, it is force. The fundamental meaning of ruach is power, energy, force, life. One-third of the times that the word appears in the Old Testament, and it appears many times, one-third of them refer to God, to the Spirit of God. But the emphasis on the word pneuma in the Greek in the New Testament is not immaterial, it is simply to emphasize the fact that this person in the Trinity is immaterial. Let me say it again: in the Greek, pneuma emphasizes the immaterial. The word means power, energy, or force. It's not a material thing, it's an immaterial thing. The emphasis is on that. So when you say ruach yahweh, the Spirit of God, you're talking about the power of God, the energy of God. It's God's. It ain't yours.
Okay, for those of you that might have been lost on you because you cherry-picked my sermon like you do your Scripture, I want you to understand, you have to listen to the first part we talked about to get that part.
The power and the energy and the force is God's. It's not yours to use and wield as you please.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 31:26
Let me go ahead and break it down for you further. Through the Holy Spirit we have the ruach or the pneuma of God, which is God's. It is his power to do what he pleases in your life. It is not your power to do what you please in your life. And the wrong understanding of this affects how the Holy Spirit is manifested in the life of a believer. Let's read Second Corinthians 3:18. I love that one. "And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed," everybody say transformed, you're still being transformed, "into the same image from one degree of glory to another." Some Bibles say from glory to glory, or from saved to sanctified. "For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."
So the Holy Spirit is this power of a person in the Trinity who regenerates us, sanctifies us, and one day glorifies us.
That's his point, that's his purpose. So when you think of the Holy Spirit, if you go to all of these other things, that is you losing control, when self-control is the fruit of the Spirit. Are you with me? If you go to all those other things when you think about the Holy Spirit and you don't think of being saved, sanctified, and glorified, you don't know him. So the point of this is, Paul is trying to introduce a part of the Trinity, a part of the Godhead, a part of God, to us that we do not yet know. So then it is very important that we get this correct. Right?
We're given then, by the Holy Spirit, an amazing and rich revelation of his gracious, violent, explosive power that basically recreates us and empowers us in righteousness and ultimately empowers us for eternal glory. That's what he's talking about here. This is exactly, listen, look at verse 10. Look at verse 10 again in Romans 8. "But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness." So then if the Spirit gives life to our flesh, which is dead, what is he doing?
He's making it righteous. That's his purpose, that we would look more and more like Christ.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:30
So where the Holy Spirit's power is being manifested, it will not produce foolish, mindless flopping on the ground, out-of-control language, static buzz, or hot flashes of emotion. All those behaviors have absolutely nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, that's for sure, especially here in Romans 8. And it is my opinion that in some ways, and I'm going to say this gently, in some ways and in some places we make a mockery of the Holy Spirit's true work, and that's a problem.
When the Holy Spirit is moving with the ruach of Yahweh, people will be saved, sanctified, united, enabled, gifted, empowered for worship and service and obedience to Holy Scripture. Some words to get that list, everywhere it talks about the work of the Holy Spirit, it talks about those things. Everywhere. I'm going to read them again, because that is summarized a bunch. Many of them are found right here in chapter 8. One that's not in here is prayer.
Here's what the work of the Holy Spirit is: to save, sanctify, unify, enable, gift, empower for worship and service, and obedience to the Holy Scripture.
That's what the Holy Spirit does. Believers will be coherent, rational, they will think. You know why we live in the most biblically illiterate generation? Because there's no critical thinking. You know why there's no critical thinking? Because we call that being close to God.
Notice the groups of people who hate thinking critically the most. The greatest pagans of the world hate thinking critically. They hate it.
Let me tell you why: because they can't even utter that Christ is Lord without the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that people that are far from him, they walk day in and day out in ignorance. So believers will be coherent, rational, they will think orderly, and they will be faithful to the Word, because that's his work. That's what the Holy Spirit does, and if he takes up residence in you, that's what you will do.
Write this down: it is the Holy Spirit that puts us into a saving position, or a saved position.
So as we come to chapter 8, we come to the Holy Spirit chapter. The book of Romans kind of breaks it up, and I guess you could say God's section is the first one. So when we look at, we went through this, I'm going to break this down for you. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 is which the whole human race is left guilty before God. So in other words, chapters 1, 2, and 3, we see God angry and wrathful, coming to kill his kids because they are sinners.
God is unhappy and there's no one safe unless they're in Christ. And then towards the end of chapter 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, we come to see the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, which provides salvation that we need from the wrath of God, from the judgment of God, because our sin laid out, was laid out in the opening chapters of 1, 2, and 3. Now we come to the chapter on the Holy Spirit, which is chapter 8. So then we ask the question, what is the Holy Spirit's work? So we've seen God's very strong section on the whole human race being under divine condemnation and judgment, Christ's wonderful, gracious provision through Jesus Christ, and now activating of the redemption that God initiated and Christ validated comes by the work, it says in Romans 8, of the Holy Spirit.
Paul writes in First Corinthians 12:3, in First Corinthians 12:3 it says nobody could even say "Jesus is Lord" unless they were first empowered by the Holy Spirit to do so. How do you know that you're saved? When you say Jesus is Lord, did you do that on your own will?
No. Did you do that in your own strength? No. Did you do that in your own free will? No. Did you do that in your own power? No.
You were saved because the Holy Spirit empowered you to be saved.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 39:51
Are you with me today? It's there, black and white.
Now, for all of us control freaks, that just really bothers us. It says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you're saved. You can't say it except by the power of the Holy Spirit, because you're unable to do that. And we see, unless he by his violent power overwhelms your corruption and enables you to do so, you will never do so. Notice,
This is not a story about what you do in your free will, this is a story about what God does in spite of your free will.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 40:27
Point 4The Spirit enables us to fulfill God's law
Number two, the Holy Spirit enables us to fulfill God's law. Because of this life, he enables us to fulfill God's law. He enables us to fulfill God's law. This is the heart of what Paul is going to say here. I want you to really get a grip on this. Notice verse 4, look at it real quick, so that we now have life, which is possible because of the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, "in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." And then in verse 3, sin has been condemned in the flesh of Christ, who died as an offering for sin, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Now listen, what will happen when you are regenerated is you will, for the first time in your life, begin fulfilling the requirements of the law. I'm going to say it again.
What will happen when you are regenerated is that you will, for the first time in your life, begin fulfilling the requirements of the law.
So instead of celebrating this gift which comes from Christ, our obedience, we create a place in the church for people to never obey but still be saved. But the evidence that you were saved and that his Spirit is in you is that you begin to obey the law of which you could never do when you were a slave to sin. You couldn't do it, you couldn't do it, and you couldn't please God, and you wouldn't want to.
But when you're saved, something changes, and not only do you want to obey his law, you're empowered to do so, and you will, not perfectly, but at least to some degree. I know people that have come to me, and I ask them about their story, their life, well, I came to the Lord 20 years ago, but they don't live any different than they did when they were a sinner. Not at all. This says there's no change and no obedience to God's law and no desire to do so. The Spirit doesn't dwell in that person. That's a fact.
Why will I, once I've been regenerated, why will I fulfill the law of God? Why will I now obey the law of God in attitude and action? Why? Because verse 4 says we do not walk according to the flesh but we walk according to the Spirit. Can I just stop here for a second? Can you just think about how much you walk during the day, right? Like, when I go for a walk with my wife in the summer, because she likes to do it in the summer, when basically you could melt and die in five seconds and you sweat so much that you wish you were dead, and she calls this joy and she loves it. Now, when I do that walk, I'm going, please say I'm done. Oh, my goodness, another step. Oh, no. I do not feel in love, I do not feel romantic, I do not, none of that, I don't feel any of that, I just feel like I'm in hell. Right? Brook's there, so it makes it a little bit better, but it's just terrible. And so that kind of walking I think about very hard, but most of the walking you do in your day, you don't even know, you don't even consider you're doing it. When the service is over and you walk around and you begin to talk to people, you aren't going, one step, two step, oh, this is terrible, oh, I'm stepping.
The Holy Spirit, and I love this word in chapter 8, helps you walk according to his ways. Notice the ease that he is symbolizing here, the effortlessness of walking. It is not something we have to focus on intently, it is something we do that is so a part of our daily activity and daily lives that we don't even think about walking when we're walking. The Holy Spirit helps you walk according to his ways.
In other words, because the Holy Spirit helps, it is as easy as your walk.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 45:50
It's not a drudgery.
It's not something you have to intently focus on, any more than you have to intently focus on your heartbeat. Beat again. It becomes a natural part of your life. Now, this is good news. We should be celebrating this, amen, that the Holy Spirit empowers us to live godly lives to the degree that we don't even have to think about us doing it, because it's so natural and so part of what we are. There is no such thing, and you write this down, there is no such thing as saying, I'm a Christian, I've been given life from death by the power of the Holy Spirit, but I have no interest in fulfilling God's law. This type of Christian does not exist. It does not exist. Wait a minute.
There is this phrase in here.
It's a purpose clause. It says, so that you've been delivered from death into life so that you've been delivered from death into life, "so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us." That's the point. That's why you've been delivered, so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Who does it? Well, I just do it in my will. That's where burnout happens.
Burnout is not a spiritual principle.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 47:46
It's a carnal one. It is evidence that your dependency is more on the flesh than that which gives you power to do in the flesh what God has purposed for you to do. Burnout is a pagan principle. Some of you are like, well, Shawn, I don't know, I mean, I don't know, I've really helped a lot of people with burnout. Did you counsel them to create margin in their life? That's a biblical principle.
Did you encourage them to rest? That's a biblical principle. Did you encourage them not to be addicted to work? That's a biblical principle.
Point 5Only two kinds of people exist
Look back at verse 4. There are only two kinds of people in the world, only two, that's all there are. There are the people who walk according to the flesh, and there are the people who walk according to the Spirit. There is no in-between. God never divides people by culture, by race, by education, by sex, by social strata, or by money. God only recognizes two types of people. I'm going to say it again: God never divides people by culture, by race, by education, by sex, by social strata, or by money. God only recognizes two kinds of people: those who walk according to the flesh and those who walk according to the Spirit, those who are non-believers and those who are believers, those who are unregenerate and those who are regenerate, the people who are walking dead and the people who are walking living. That's all there are.
There's no such thing as a believer without the Holy Spirit. This is another terrible error, that somehow you can be saved and not have the Holy Spirit yet, and the evidence that you have the Holy Spirit is lack of control, lack of self-control. It's a great error to say that you can be saved and not filled with the Spirit.
That's a great error, but it's a greater error still to say that the evidence that you are is contrary to the fruit that comes from him. That's a greater error still. So why are we talking about this, man? This makes me uncomfortable, and I thought this was a non-denominational church. You're right, it is a non-denominational church, but it will be a biblical one, and the Bible is clear on these things. This is not put here for your confusion.
The Holy Spirit raises us to immortality, to glorification. Romans 8:10, and I'm done: "But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness." That's good news. That's very good news. I want to say this and then I want to pray.
The Bible says, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Notice that the rest that you long for in your life comes from one thing. There is only one way to true rest.
Only one, although I might wonder if Hawaii couldn't do the trick. I wonder. There's only one way to get rest. How many of you have ever gone on a vacation and needed a vacation from your vacation? Because there is only one way to rest, it's a promise: "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
The problem is we're trying to live on yesterday's rest and we didn't come to him today.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 52:37
Or another way to say it is, I'm trying to live on that one time I came to him 20 years ago, but I don't come to him every morning.
That's a problem. It's God then tells us to come. Listen, I went to camp this week, and listen, i'm not trying to pick on anybody or anything that was said, but something was said that made me actually do some reflecting. And we have these sayings that we say in the church, you know what I mean? Like, and we have them, what are some sayings we say in the church? I can't think of them right now, help me out here. What are some sayings that we say in the church? Like, God is good, too blessed to be stressed.
That's a good one. What's another one? Blessed and highly favored. Okay.
Dwight, I love you, man. I, like, literally don't know what I would do without you in my life. It's fantastic. I love it. One more, so we don't end on that one.
That's a good one, though. That's a good one. No. Here's another one we say at the end of services like this, and I'm going to give a call. All right, because we were commended to lift Christ high and to present the gospel and to call people, but my call is not an effectual call.
The Holy Spirit does that. So although I call for response, you can't come unless the Holy Spirit does his work. That's why the burden's off me and I don't have to worry about stirring emotions and make sure that we get people down here, because if the Holy Spirit wants to do it, I'm not going to stop him, and it can happen in your yard, in your home, in your car, on the stage, it can happen in your seat. You don't have to, there's not something you have to repeat when the Holy Spirit captures your heart and renews you and gives you life and empowers you to be able to say, he is my Lord.
You don't need me. I'm not better than the Holy Spirit. But I will say this, I will say this is important: we say things like in calls to respond to the gospel, we say things like, I would like you to consider inviting the Lord into your life. Think about that. Inviting the Lord into your, everybody say it.
What does Paul say about people who are in sin? That they're what? They're dead.
They're dead. You're like, well, Shawn, I mean, we're still alive, though. I mean, like, I'm alive. You want to put your emphasis and hope in that thing which will perish, because true everlasting life happens in the spiritual realm, and in the spiritual realm, if you're dead, what good is it that you're breathing? Because you're eternally dead. And the issue is we have, for generations, created altar calls where we try to get people to invite the Lord into their life when they're actually dead. So here's my call.
If you're dead in your sin and your trespasses, turn to the only one who can save you from them, because he, Jesus Christ, and he alone can save you. All right, it is through Jesus and Jesus alone that you men might be saved. I want to do this. We can close our eyes, you can keep your eyes open, it doesn't matter. I've been in some meetings recently with a lot of deaf people translating the Bible, and they all keep their eyes open. They didn't go to hell. So I was like, hey, you know, I guess I can, I mean, i'm on a rock, this eyes-open thing for a little bit, you know, because I'm always wondering what's happening out there. You just, like, I grew up in a church, you didn't close your eyes, you, I mean, you might, God would send a lightning bolt down from the sky and kill you know what I mean? Like, so it was just so crazy, because all of them are looking around and people were praying. It was beautiful. You can close your eyes, you can open your eyes, I think God is pleased either way. But I want you to just, for a moment, I want you to consider this. All of us, we have all sinned, we have all failed, we have all broken the law, and we need a Savior. Like, it's created distance between us and God. God jacob he loved, and Esau he hated.
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