The Spirit and Grace

We have a couple weeks left of our current sermon series “Rooted in Grace.” We are allowing letters from Paul, mainly the Letter to the Galatians help us to look at how the grace given to us by God impacts our lives. You can find any of our previous sermons on our You Tube channel.

This week we are looking at the relationship between the Holy Spirit and grace. Our scripture comes from Galatians 5:1,13-25.

5 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” k 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Please pray with me…

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.”

These are the words concerning the Holy Spirit that we find in the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed was formed after the better-known Apostle’s Creed. One of, if not the main reason that a group was joined together to form this creed was to offer the people a better understanding of the role that the Holy Spirit plays in our faith.

The Holy Spirit is often the hardest part of what we call the Trinity for us to understand. We believe that the Spirit resides within us and is also at work around us. It is the gift Jesus promised to his followers before he left the earth.

We find that promise in our first reading. Jesus points out to us what is said within the Nicene Creed. The Holy Spirit is one part of what we call the Trinity working together to be with us and to help us become the person that God desires for us to be.

The Holy Spirit was left by God as our advocate here on earth. We also have Jesus called an advocate in John chapter 2. He is our advocate to his Father in Heaven. Jesus advocates on our behalf that he has paid the price so that we can be forgiven.

The Holy Spirit was left on the earth as our advocate to help us live our lives. It is through relying on the Holy Spirit that we are able to be the person and as a church, the people, that God desires for us to be.

We need to also remember that this is the same Spirit that helped guide Jesus during his time on earth. He was helped by the Spirit and now we are also able to be helped by that same Spirit. Jesus left us this helper to guide and direct us.

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Paul states in our main scripture that it is through “walking by the Spirit” that we are able to be the best example of what it means for us to follow Jesus. It is when we strive to allow the Spirit to guide us that we can best represent Jesus to the world.

That leads us to an important question, how do we walk in the Spirit? What are steps that we can take that will lead us towards walking with God instead of having our focus be on the world? Today we will look at four focus points to help us answer this question. They are a focus on freedom, reliance, trust, and love.

Paul begins our scripture for today with a focus on freedom. He statesthat Christ has set us free. If you are new to church or to the faith it may lead you to ask the question “what have, we been set free from?”

Grace through faith sets you free. It is through faith in Jesus that we can allow ourselves to be set free from the power of sin and death. We believe that God through his grace is attempting to lead each person who does not yet believe in that direction.

It is when we make the decision that we believe that Jesus is our Savior. It is us believing that Jesus died on a cross to forgive our sins. It is then that we become saved by grace. Our sins are forgiven, and we are given the Holy Spirit.

We no longer have to be concerned if we will have to carry the weight of our sins along with us. They have been forgiven. We no longer have to worry about what happens after death. Our body may die but our soul shall live.

God desires to set you free. We begin to live in the Spirit when we remove the focus on “being gooder” than everyone from our lives and instead worry about doing the best we can in following and serving God. It is through being free from guilt and shame from failure at adhering the law that leads us to being who God wants us to be.

Freedom does not mean that life is going to be perfect. We are all free to make decisions in our lives. These decisions can lead to our own struggles, or they can negatively affect those around us. The opposite is also true; the decisions someone makes can also affect our lives.

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This is where reliance on God becomes important. Part of walking in the Spirit is us being willing to rely on God. Remember that in both the good times and bad times God is with us. God desires to walk with us if we are willing to walk with him.

We also find reliance in our willingness to go to God in prayer. We are telling God that we believe in you, and we trust in you. We are telling God that I am turning my life over to you. God, I am relying on you.

This works for us until that first time that our answer from God is not what we hope for. The saying goes that “if we ask, we will receive.” It doesn’t take long for us to realize that this doesn’t always mean what we hope it means.

Asking is the first step, relying on God to have what happen be what is needed to happen is the hard part. Many times, we find ourselves discovering that we disagree with God after the results of our situation is in.

This is when it becomes hard for us to rely on God. We know whatwe want and sometimes what we desire is not what takes place. I didn’t sayit would be easy, but we must still find enough faith to keep relying on God.

Another aspect of relying on God is a willingness to do what God asks for us to do even if we don’t believe we are good enough. It is at times like these that we have to step out of our comfort zone and believe that God will be with us every step of the way.

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This is where trust becomes important. We have to trust that God will help us overcome the obstacles of life. We have to believe that God will surround us and guide us through the good and the bad times.

Part of that trust is the belief in the promises offered to us by Jesus. The promise that he will never leave us or forsake us. We need to trust that Jesus will remain with us on the journey. We are never alone.

The word “forsake” is God stating that he will not forget about us. We can believe this because of the Holy Spirit promised us. We have God within us available to help us through the decisions we make in our lives.

It is important that we have enough faith that we trust God to help us serve him both individually and as a church. It is through grace and the Holy Spirit that we will be able to be the church that God desires for us to be.

It is through prayer and trust that we will be able to be led to the ways that we are called by God to serve him. It is through trusting God to help us discover the ways that we are to live out our mission statement that allows us to follow God and serve God both individually and as the church.

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The last aspect is for us to love God and to show the love of God to those around us. The Spirit is love and therefore is always attempting to help us understand how to show love to those that we meet.

Paul begins this discussion on love by pointing out traits that we may find ourselves having which do not show love to God or those around us. He wants his audience to know the good and the bad.

Mark Douglas, a seminary professor who focuses on Christian Ethics, explains these negative traits Paul mentions as a person in their humanness having their desires disordered. He says that we can end up wanting “the wrong things or want good things in the wrong way.”

Douglas offers the examples as used by Paul that “Wanting sexual intimacy, but instead we pursue fornication; wanting contact with the Divine, but we pursue idols; wanting joy, instead we carouse.” We end up allowing the good to become corrupted because we are seeking human answers instead of God answers.

God wants us to allow the Spirit to be our guide. He wants us to decide that we are not going to focus on our wants and desires which can cause us to become “disordered.” We need to allow God to be our guide through the Spirit.

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This decision leads us to want what Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit.” A desire to live our lives the way that Jesus lived. We should choose that we want to imitate Jesus instead of allowing other sources to become who we follow.

We first can get confused because even though there are nine fruits listed, they are called the fruit of the Spirit. It is when we are living out these nine traits that we are truly being fruitful. One fruit, nine ingredients.

These nine begin with the one that is really true for each one of these traits. It is through our love for God and our love for those around us that lead us to decide that we are going to live out the fruit of the Spirit.

There are a number of words used for the word “love” within scripture. The word used in this scripture is referring to a God like love. This wouldmean that we are to choose to live our lives in such a way that would best reflect the love that God has for each one of us.

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This should point out to us that our love for God should lead to us to have joy in our relationship with God and those around us. We should as I have pointed out before have a “joy, joy, joy, down in our hearts.”

We find in scripture the concept of giving monetarily back to God and that we should be a cheerful or I would say joyful giver. This would be making the point that we don’t give because we have to, we give because we should want to.

I would argue that this would also be the case in our service to God. When we are doing what God desires for us to do, we should do so joyfully. We should show our love of God with the attitude we show while we are serving.

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The love of God should also lead us to being at peace with those around us. We are called to be peacemakers. We have spoken of this before, we should desire to be at peace with those that are around us.

This of course does not mean that we will always have peace. Jesus lived a life as a peacemaker but that did not mean that those around him did not choose peace. We are doing are part when we are striving to show the love of God by not causing conflict in society.

How should this look in society? It should be us attempting to lead those around us into living together in harmony. The law led to disharmony among the Jewish people. It caused this to in some ways compete with each other attempting to be better than the next person.

Grace removes competition. Grace reminds us that we are not good enough and therefore we need the love of God to be forgiven of our sins. We therefore should forgive those around us and attempt to live at peace with those that God places before us.

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We next have us expressing love through the Spirit by forbearance. We find that other translations have interpreted this word as “patience.” We are not only supposed to seek peace with those around us, but we are also supposed to be patient.

This goes back to a quote that I have used before from Brene’ Brown that has us attempting to live our lives believing that “everyone is doing the best that they can.” We are living in the Spirit when we give people the benefit of the doubt.

When we are not being patient, we will often use a phrase like “This person is getting on my last nerve.” That may be true, but we are to do our best to let the love of God shine through and be patient with those around us.

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The traits we find in the fruit of the Spirit are traits that we desire for others to have when they are around us. The fruit of the Spirit isn’t only peaceful, and patient, but also kind. We are to be people that treat people as we want to be treated.

John Wesley the founder of Methodism has one of his three rules to follow be “do no harm.” God desires for followers of him to be people that will have their actions reflect his love which means that we will focus on acts of kindness.

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We will often find in the world kindness and goodness being linked together. John Wesley also linked them together because another one of his rules was for us to do good. We are to be people that serve those that are around us.

We are to look for ways to see people as they are and ask for ways for us to be there for them and to serve them. The problem we find is that the church often wants to serve people as we want to serve them. We should ask how those around us want served for to truly being good to our neighbors.

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We find ourselves living out the last of Wesley’s rules through our next ingredient that makes up the fruit of the Spirit. We are to be faithful. Wesley worded this as us loving God, we are to be faithful to God by listening to God and faithful to our neighbor by continuing to be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus to those God places before us.

We are to attempt to live our lives the way that Jesus showed us to live. We are to listen to the Spirit and respond to the Spirit in such a way that has us being faithful to how God desires for us to serve those around us.

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The last two I believe can be viewed together. We are to be people of gentleness and self-control. We are to live our lives treating people in a loving caring manner no matter how they treat us.

Jesus tells us in scripture that “we are to love even our enemies.” This is us choosing to live our lives not focused on responding as society would want us to respond but we are to respond as God desires with gentleness.

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Our scripture ends with what should be our goal. We should desire to be people that live by the Spirit and in step with the Spirit. We are to desire to be people that listen to God and desire to follow the will of God.

I acknowledge that this is difficult for us to do. In fact, it is most likely impossible for us to do. But when we are relying on the Spirit and allowing the grace of God to work within and through us, we are able to best live our lives as God desires. Let us choose today to be people that love God and live our lives focused on the Spirit and grace.

Please pray with me…