Advent Post Script
Notes
Transcript
Would you stand for the reading of God’s word? Today we read from Galatians 5:13-18
For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Let me pray for us. You can have a seat.
When is the proper time to clean up and put away Christmas Decorations? Is it by the new year? End of January? End of February? That feels like it’s pushing it, right?
I know some with real trees that just keep it up till it’s fully dead and ready to spontaneously combust.
Whether we like it or not, most of us finish Christmas holiday, and the stuff collects dust, the toys we got get a little less special quick, and then they are packed up, put into the garage, and we wait till next year.
It many ways, our own faith life can feel like this. We can have a special moment, a mountain top experience so to speak, but then we have to come down off the mountain, and get back to real life, and often times, the magic of Christmas wears off, and if we are not careful, we can find ourselves swimming in the same dark pools that we swam in before the mountain.
Today I want to look over all of advent and what we’ve gone over the last month, and ask the question we always ask: so what? Or So now what?
If Jesus is our Emmanuel, God with us, to ransom us from the captivity of sin, So What?
If Jesus is our dayspring from on high, shining in his warmth and grace, exposing the dark and bringing glory to all, So what?
If Christ is our True Prophet, speaking and embodying the very words and presence of God to us, teaching us how to live in a dark age, So What?
If Christ is our Great High Priest, who intercedes before the throne forever more for those who are redeemed, and there is no more sin to atone for, So What?
If Jesus is our King of Nations, who has won the right to inherit all of the cosmos and to right all wrongs both now and forever more, so what?
I mean seriously, if God is who the Bible says he is, if this is all true - that God created the world, that in sin we messed it up and sin and eternal death entered into the world, but that out of his great love for us, and for his Glory, he sent his son jesus to redeem us and to reconcile us to the father forever, if all that is true, and we believe it - how then shall we live?
Because often times we live dis-integrated lives. Hypocritical lives. Lives where we have Christian days, holidays, and then the rest of the week we just do whatever we want.
And therefore, we start becoming Christian in name only, thus taking God’s name in vain, and leading lives where Christ appears to not be our Emmanuel, dayspring, prophet, priest, of king. He’s just a dusty baby from our nativity set, tucked away in a box till next year.
But is that the way it’s supposed to be? Like I don’t think we are supposed to treat kings in disregarding them, and putting them away. Especially a good king who would die on our behalf - like I think the very least we can do is listen to him.
We humans are fickle. Prone to wander, lord I feel it, prone to leave the God i love.
The Apostle Paul has an infamous letter, perhaps the first letter he wrote that we have in our Bibles, and thats the book of Galatians. If you have your Bibles, why don’t you turn to Galatians 1.
The Galatians struggled with the same things we do today, they hear the Gospel, seem to receive it, but then… things get dusty.
Paul starts the letter like he usually does, with just a super kind and thoughtful opening, but then look at verses 6-9 of Galatians 1.
I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!
What a scathing few verses. Later on, Paul will even call the foolish!
You see, they heard the Gospel, then started mixing in keeping the law as required to be a Jesus follower. They started adding tot he gospel. They started living in sin, and word got back to Paul, and so he writes this letter to them to help remind them what the Gospel is, and what our response should be to Jesus victory.
He writes in Galatians 4:3-7
In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world. When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.
when we encapsulate the Gospel message, and what Christmas means, what JEsus as God with us, Dayspring, Prophet, Priest, and King, and we count what the means for us, what benefits there are - I mean theyre immense. From freedom from eternal death, closeness to the father, power over satan and demons, the indwelling of the holy spirit, the church, and relationship to the father as his children. But we are free from the yoke of sin.
For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Christ has given us freedom - by grace through faith - from sin!
But how crazy is it to pray, Oh thank you Jesus for saving me from sin, and then walk straight back into the strip club.
That’s where Galatians 5:13 picks up.
For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.
We celebrate Jesus as king, we receive his gifts, and Paul is exhorting us to not use the gifts for evil. We aren’t supposed to gratify the flesh any long. We are supposed to serve one antoher. To love each other!
For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
The logic here is so basic. Like the whole Law is simplified as this - Love those by you just like youd love yourself. But when we bit and be rude to each other, we get bitten back and devour each other.
He now continues with comparing and contrasting living by the Spirit and the Flesh. Galatians 5:16-18
I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
So there is conflict here - right, there is a gravitational pull in our flesh, our old self, to do the desires of the flesh and it’s contrary to the ways of the Spirit. The wyas are opposed to each other. You can walk east and west at the same time.
Christ came to free us from the slavery to sin, so the flesh that is perishing will not win the day, and to lead us into the new life of the Spirit. And when we walk by the spirit, we WILL not carry out he desires of the flesh. Paul now lists some of the works of the flesh.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
I think Pauls right, intuitively the works of the flesh, things that are opposed to God’s way and life in the Spirit tend to be obvious.
Sexual immorality - this would include any kind of sexual activity outside of the Biblical marriage of a man and woman. Any kind of sexual deviancy is in this category - it’s vast, from porn use, to emotional affairs, to straight up adultery, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality.
He continues into impurity. playing with stuff that corrupts us. Lots of content falls into impurity. So many television shows are filled with impurity.
Promiscuity, or in old fashioned language licentiousness or sensuality. Tempting and teasing. Living loose with morals. indulging in sensual pleasure.
Idolatry, following and worshiping other gods and spirits. In america paganism is on the rise. Astrology has been around forever. Don’t play with that stuff.
Sorcery, those who seek to use magic to control others and bring power. In our western world we don’t always buy into this stuff, well go visit some other countries and cultures and you’ll quickly learn the reality of witches, witch doctors, shamaans and sorcerors. That is not the way of the Spirit,
Hatreds, harboring resentment and unforgiveness.
Strife, or being quarrelsome and enjoying contention. Like people who just like to cause a ruckus and a fight then watch it burn in chaos.
Jealousy, passion for stuff.
outbursts of anger, not being in control
Selfish ambition, which a lot of people call the American dream.
Dissention, factions, or causing division and tribalism,
Envy, wanting what others have
Drunkeness and carousing - just wanting to drink and take the edge off. Functional alcholism and full alcholism are so blatant in our culture.
And ANYTHING similar.
We could add so much to this list.
Does said action make me look MORE like JEsus, or Less like JEsus. If it’s LESS like JEsus, put in on this list - it’s a work of the flesh.
And Paul says he’s warned, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Those who live lives that are marked by the flesh and not The Spirit are not those who inherit the Kingdom! We will expand on this thought in a minute.
Paul now contrasts with what the Spirit life looks like:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.
Whatever action - is it abounding in these? Then thats a good thing. Now paul gets to the heart of things. Verse 24-25
Now 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.
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
So if Jesus is our king - if we are his, if we belong to hiim as his people, have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
So are we to climb on a tree and die? Not exactly, but I think of Romans 6:1-11, where Paul talks about how we are to die to sin, for when we are baptized we are baptized into his death. Our old self is., in faith, crucified with Christ, so that the body ruled by sin might be powerless so we may no longer be enslaved to sin. Therefore, we can consider ourselves dead to sin, alive to God in JEsus Christ.
This is about freedom, repentance, and faith.
God brings us back to life, and we ought to run out the grave, into new life. But many are tempted to stay in the grave and play in the dirt.
I think our culture teaches us and prompts us that sin just isn’t a big deal. In fact, it’s a joke. We are trained by comedians to laugh at fowl language. And immoral shows and movies become the most popular. We become so desensitized to the evil around us that if we aren’t careful and looking at JEsus, we are bound to fall into the dirt.
Don’t give sin an inch, it will take a mile.
We need to SLAY our sin. We need to confess it and murder it at the cross. Then we ought to avoid places of temptation like the plague.
No hiding and playing with little pet sins. The more you feed that little sin the more it will grow, and it will keep growing into a monster that will devour you, and those around you.
And don’t buy into the lie that you can’t say no to sin. Like it’s just something you will always have. No - that’s not what God does. He has won for you FREEDOM for sin. YOU CAN SAY NO TO SIN! 1 Corinthians 10:13
No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.
So we say NO to the sin when the temptation comes.
And Instead, we live by the spirit and keep in step with the spirit. What leads to life, do that! What is God up to. Do that! And that doesn’t mean like just singing stodgy hymns in a dusty sanctuary.
The Kingdom Life is campfire songs and joyous feasts. It’s quiet nights with loved ones and hiking in the hills. It’s games and celebrations and dancing. It is worship and holy. I think of Philippians 4:8
Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy—dwell on these things.
Like following jesus isn’t just crucifying the sin cause Jesus wants you to be unhappy.
Jesus wants you to be happy. Joyful. He wants to give you life and life abundant and life eternal. And he wants you to stop playing with stuff thats killing you!
Paul wraps up his thinking in Galatians 6:7-10
Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.
You reap what you sow. Feed the flesh monster, be eaten by the flesh. Follow the Spirit, life and life abundant and eternal.
So don’t give up doing good. Work for the good of ALL. Especially, Paul says, for those in the Church.
So What does this have to do with Advent?
So What?
Friends - would we live in the light of Christmas. Would Jesus as King mean something. Don’t enjoy the holy day then pack it away, but keep in step with the Spirit. Practice Godliness.
How can we do that?
First, join in with the rhythms of the Church.
Be fully focused on God and his Word. Come on Sudnays, as many as you can. For our own good - we focus on God, we worship, and over time he transforms us and tunes us into his frequency. A simple time like this can help expell sin and darkness form us. But not just for you adults.
Bring your kids to kids church. That time for them to learn the Word is so important.
Bring your students to youth group - allow them to be nourished by the faith community.
Focus on God.
And be fully formed by The Spirit in Community,! as we start groups up, join one, and actually commit to going! It may even mean you ahve to say no to things. But these groups, the Church focusing on relationship and actually obeying God will change your life. And you’ll have a ton of fun.
And be fully engaged with Christ on mission. How can you love your neighbor? How can you work for the good of someone in the church? How can you tangibly show love to others?
So I invite you not to pack away the Advent season. But to live in the light of our King and coming King Jesus Christ. To keep in step with the Spirit.
I’d encourage each of us to take one serious step of faith closer to God.
Maybe it’s just as simple as coming every week - praise God.
Maybe a communithy group.
Maybe you need to find a mentor or coach to help you in faith. I’m always happy to coach you in the faith, or help you find a mentor.
Maybe you need to throw out some sinful habits. Maybe delete a few apps that cause you to stumble.
Maybe you need to pray with your spouse and kids every day.
Would you take one step with me?
Would we live in the light of JEsus reign and rule, until he comes again and makes our faith sight.
Would you stand with me?