Untitled Sermon (3)

Romans 8:5-11

Please stand…

English Standard Version Chapter 8

5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 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. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

9 You, however, are not in the flesh but 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. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 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.

The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

Have you ever set your mind to something?

Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by music. I like how it sounds, how it’s made, the people who make them, the guitars played on them, the amplifiers, the songwriting, everything that goes into music I like. I had a lady that watched me when I was a child while my parents were at work and she would only let me watch Country Music Television. You could say that my mind was set for me.

I always remember singing songs, listening to music and memorizing words. I remember the first song I memorized from the radio and I sang it to my brother in a parking lot of the place we used to get our hair cut.

It was just recently that I realized that not everyone wakes up with a song in their head. I learned it standing right there when I told someone that I had woken up with a certain song in my head and she said, “Do you always wake up with a song in your head?” And my response was, “Doesn’t everybody?” Sincerely, it blew my mind to realize that not everyone was just singing all the time.

I don’t remember a day when there wasn’t a song in my head. Maybe you are, or were like that at some point in your life. You set your mind to something and that was just your life from then on. I’m seeing it now with my son and his athletic endeavors. The fascinating thing about it is once a mind is set, all other things take a back seat almost as if there is only so much thought space and lesser things start getting dumped out.

This is a good thing because when you find something that is good, you want to put the blinders on and chase after it. When we find the true Good, that is how we ought to live as well. When we see Jesus in all His glory rescuing us from a problem we could never free ourselves from and we see the goodness that He is offering us, we should say, “That sounds sweet to me.” As King David says,

Psalm 19:7–11 ESV

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

This is the law of the Spirit. It is a guide post to the blind and once the Holy Spirit changes your heart and you see that God’s ways are better and that He has released you from the bondage of the slavery of sin that you could not be freed of on your own…

Romans 8:3–4 ESV

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.

Paul explains this in great detail at the end of chapter 7. With our minds we, who belong to Christ, want to follow Him, but our bodies do the things that we do not want them to do. The cravings of the flesh are strong and if you have lived any time at all you know this. I feel for drug addicts and alcoholics because what the chemical does to there system is the same thing that I have seen in my own mind when it comes to sin. Praise God that He has delivered me from most of what I used to struggle with and I pray that is your story too, but the daily battles still exist.

When we start following Christ, we set our minds on Jesus and what He has called us to do and we practice those things. There is a difference in listening to music and being a part of the band. You may only be separated from the band physically by a few feet but the difference between the seats and the stage is years and miles. The only way that those people on the stage moved from the listening to playing is by devoting their lives to the craft. In order to be like Jesus, we must set our minds to the walk.

If you want to learn the bible, learn to be humble, learn to love your neighbor as yourself, it requires us to set our minds to those things. They are not always easy or fun and sometimes you won’t feel like it, but after a while you start playing the music and not just listening.

English Standard Version Chapter 8

5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

So many of us are hindered in our walk with the Lord because we have far too much of our minds and our lives set on the flesh. We aren’t growing because we aren’t leaving the flesh behind. Obedience is the outcropping of a true faith. In the great commission, Jesus says to go out and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit and teach them to obey all that I have commanded. All three must work together. You must become a disciple of Jesus, you must be baptized and you must obey. That obedience shows that you are serious in growing in the wisdom and truth of Jesus Christ.

Some of us just want to buy guitars and call ourselves guitar players, or to hit closer to home, buy bibles and say that we are Christians. Just owning a guitar doesn’t make you a player and just having a bible doesn’t make you a Christian. Where are you setting your mind?

If I wanted to get fit and I read all the books on exercise and diet and had a gym membership, but I never once practiced any of what I had learned you would say that my goal was never really to get fit. My goal was just to have the knowledge of getting fit so that I could show others how smart I was. There are a lot of people that know a lot about the bible and have never practiced what they learned.

When we set our minds on the things of God should changes us. It should make us desire the things of God. It won’t be easy all the time. There will be times when you don’t feel like reading the bible. When you are trying to get fit, there will be times when you don’t want to go to the gym and you really have to fight the temptation of grabbing ice cream at 9pm, but you have set your mind on something better for you. Something that has longer lasting fruit that fulfilling a desire that will pop up again as soon as it is satiated.

Paul warns us about setting our mind on the cravings of the flesh…

English Standard Version Chapter 8

6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

If we set our mind on the approval of others, we will never be content. If we set our minds on money and how that makes us look to others or the things that we can buy, it will never be enough and we will miss the joys of this life because we have been focused on the next thing instead of enjoying the main things that God has given us. If we set our minds on sex, we could literally die from disease, but more importantly we could, like an addict consumed with getting another fix, we could waste this life scheming on when we get to satisfy that craving again. I can sympathize because I understand the power of sin, but that life leads to death.

Giving those things to the Lord and having the discipline to choose Christ in the temptation is the discipline that we should continue to practice. That life that is set on the Spirit leads to life and peace.

I have been struggling with my phone. I have this incessant yearning to get information into my brain. It is probably a dopamine addiction, so I am on my phone more than I care to admit. I hate it. Even though I am watching something theological most of the time, it takes away moments that I need to be present with family or friends. I was talking with a friend the other day in his front yard and there were baby deer all around and I just took the time to talk with him and look at the wildlife. God showed me that these moments are beautiful and that I was missing them by letting my flesh control my actions.

English Standard Version Chapter 8

7 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.

If all you think about is yourself and how to get more and how to satisfy your desires, your focus will be taken off of Jesus. Paul tells us in Romans 7:22-23

Romans 7:22–23 ESV

For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Your flesh does not want to please God. It can’t. That battle that is raging in your mind must be fought. You can’t just let it win, you must fight it with the power of the Holy Spirit.

English Standard Version Chapter 8

8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Think about what your flesh wants to do. Your flesh wants to be selfish. It wants to give you desires to serve. It wants to be your God. If we are living in our flesh, by the very nature of it we are at war with God. We cannot please Him because we are doing exactly the opposite of what He desires us to do.

From Adam’s first sin in the garden it was a desire from the flesh to have more. “You will be like God if you eat the fruit.” The lust of the eyes and the pride of the flesh distorted Adam’s ability to see the truth. The truth is God gave us these bodies to enjoy, but the power of sin corrupted our members so that instead of being content in the experiences that He allows us to have in these bodies, all we want is to magnify and work toward the pleasures. If we devote our lives to just our own pleasure, we become our own god and there is no room for two thrones on your heart. That is why Paul says that if you set your mind on the flesh, you cannot please God.

Some of you might say, “Are you saying that i have to work at this?” Yes. That is what I am saying. If you go back to the Garden, God tells Adam to work to make the rest of the earth look like the garden. Discipline is from the beginning. It is not a result of the fall. You have to walk this thing out, not to earn it, but to get better at it.

Luke 2:52 ESV

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

If, as Jesus grew from a boy into a man, He had to increase in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man in His life, how do you think that you will escape it. It didn’t mean that He became the Son of God. He always was the Son, but He grew as a human being in that way to show us how we ought to live. There are guitar players that only know a few chords and few songs, but they are playing in the band, you may not get great at this walk, but we should continue to be walking toward the goal of looking like Jesus and we can do this because…

English Standard Version Chapter 8

9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.

You aren’t walking on your own. The beauty of the Spirit is He will always give you another option when the flesh starts knocking. He will have someone call you, or put on your mind to call someone. He will remind you of something that you should be doing. He will remind you that you were called to a higher good than the sin you are about to commit. He will raise the alarm bells and say, “Something isn’t right here.” He will do everything He can to stop you from following the desires of the flesh and your job is the head the nudge.

The indwelling Spirit should give us great hope. The fact that He loves us enough to warn us and to correct us is God’s loving way of parenting us. It is how we can know that we are in Him. If we are running toward desires that, as the Scripture says, “Lead to death.” and we feel nothing but excitement, encouraging others to do the same, we do not have the Spirit.

English Standard Version Chapter 8

Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

If you live only for yourself and you are claiming Christianity, this should concern you. If you don’t have the Spirit you do not belong to Him. The sin and joy that you get from this earth is the closest thing to heaven that you will ever receive if you remain there.

English Standard Version Chapter 8

10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

If we have this Spirit, though we still sin and this earthly body will die, we are alive in Him. We have been given the Spirit which is life because of righteousness. Not our own righteousness. We didn’t bring that to the table, Christ did. We are able to receive the Spirit because of the redeeming work of the one that paid for it.

Jesus tells the disciples that it is better for Him to go away so that they can receive the Helper. That is the Holy Spirit. It is the guide and our own personal prayer warrior that we will see as we get deeper into chapter 8. He helps us walk this path that Jesus has laid before us and with His help we can do it.

Maybe some of you have struggled with your walk, but there is a Helper that can overcome all your objections. He can overcome all your weaknesses. Look at this…

English Standard Version Chapter 8

11 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.

It is the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. You have that Spirit. Even though your mortal bodies will die, He can make it to where your body wants to do what God is calling you to. There is a time when you get proficient in the instrument where it is enjoyable to sit and play. There is a time after you have exercised for a while where it is enjoyable. There is a time in your walk where you will look at what you do on a daily basis and say, “I really used to not like this, but now I love it.” That could be reading you bible, walking away from discussions that used to draw you in, turning away from things that used to draw you in.

Not only in this life will the Spirit help you bring your body into submission, but in the life to come, these dead bodies will be planted in the ground while our Spirit goes to be with the Father and then one day He will make these bodies new, sin-free and we will be reunited with them to enjoy them forever in glory.

There is a joy unspeakable in this life with Christ. Don’t let your flesh lie to you. Don’t let it keep you from becoming more and more like Jesus. Don’t believe the lie that if you do that you are missing out on something. I am telling you that there is more joy and more blessings following Jesus than anything you could get from this world. Let’s walk in a manner worthy of our calling for our own good and His glory.