God With Us

Engage

Question: Have you ever encountered a tunnel you want nothing to do with?

Illustration: I couldn’t ever get very far into the tunnel in the wash. Even with my friends, we would chicken out pretty quickly.

We’ve all seen tunnels we don’t want anything to do with! Here are some tunnels I want nothing to do with:

Illustration: This is Joel Miggler (gross!)

Tension

We use the idea of a tunnel to illustrate a bunch of stuff!

Maybe it’s your struggle in life.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe it represents a feeling that you’re in the middle of some process, and there are only two ways to go: forward or backward.

Illustration: I stayed up all night building a 3D printer.

Maybe it represents your journey of life. You’ve got this starting point, and you’re moving along. Maybe you see a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe you don’t.

For just a minute, let’s use a tunnel to imagine your relationship with Jesus. You have this starting point. You have a process you’re going through. You have this light at the end.

And if you were going to think about that, you might be aywhere along that tunnel. Maybe you’re just at the entrance, thinking about whether or not you want to take the first steps. Or you could be inside the tunnel somewhere, trying to make some progress, without getting pulled too far back. Or you could be so far away from this whole Jesus thing, you don’t even see any tunnel. No matter where you are, in relation to this tunnel, listen up, because the things we’re looking at today, the promises God has made, are available to all of us.

That tunnel could be scary for some of us. We think about this dark tunnel that we have to go through, but we might feel like we have to brave the dark, scary, probly smelly tunnel all by ourselves. But, what we see in the Bible tells us something pretty awesome: We don’t have to go it alone!

Last week, we talked about how we need the influence of other people in our lives, if we want to make any headway in our walk with Jesus. If we want to take steps down the tunnel, we need the help of other Christians. But, even that isn’t totally enough. When I was heading down that tunnel with my friends, we still got to some point where we got too scared, and turned back. We need something more than just other people. We need someone more. We need God with us.

Really, that’s what this whole series is all about. There are areas of our lives, our faith lives, that we can’t do on our own. We need to ask, invite, God to take part with us. He tells us that when we take a step, he’ll take a step. When we draw close to him, he’ll draw close to us. God promises that if we show up for him, and if we invite him to show up, he’ll meet us where we are.

Today, we’re looking at

Truth/Application

Get your Bibles, open to

Today, we’re looking at that idea. That God is with us, living with us. Not just with us, but in us. This idea goes far back into

God Lives With Us

Today, we’re looking at that idea. That God is with us, living with us. Not just with us, but in us. This idea is so important in the Bible that it’s present in the very beginning.

God was living in the garden with his creation. With Adam and Eve. He set up Israel, this country in the middle east, to show the surrounding nations what it looked like to have the presence of God in their midst. They blew it, over and over again. God finally said, this isn’t working out. I’m going to send someone who’s going to make everything right.

That was Jesus. He was promised to be “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.” In Jesus, God stepped into human form, and set up camp here among humanity. (From his perspective, that’s gotta be like the worst campground ever.) So, Jesus comes, lives, dies, raises from the dead, and he returns to heaven. Before he goes, he tells his followers to keep bringing other people into this story. To keep sharing the message that Jesus brought, and teach the new Jesus followers everything he did and everything he taught.

During early church, Paul’s missionary journeys

First missionary journey; there’s this “Galatian Pattern”

Acts 13:50–52 NLT

Then the Jews stirred up the influential religious women and the leaders of the city, and they incited a mob against Paul and Barnabas and ran them out of town. So they shook the dust from their feet as a sign of rejection and went to the town of Iconium. And the believers were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

The disciples and other believers were filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is one of those phrases you may have heard, depending on how long you’ve been around churches. But, it stilll might confuse you a little bit. Let’s dive into that for a couple minutes. I love the way The Bible Project put a video together that sums up really well what the Bible tells us about the Holy Spirit.

Video: The Bible Project - Holy Spirit

John 14:15–17 NLT

“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.

Illustration: Courtroom picture this word paints for us

The Holy Spirit leads us towards Christ, and away from sin.

The Holy Spirit is God living with us. Living in us. We have to ask ourselves: Will we live with God? Live for him? Or live for ourselves?

Transition Needed

God Frees Us

So, Paul is living with the Holy Spirit, the presence of God, with him. He teaches the people in Galatia to live the same way. Then, after a little while, he hears about people spreading these false teachings in the groups of Jesus followers he had just set up. So, he writes a letter to those groups of Jesus followers. He’s trying to bring them back to the things he taught them.

In this letter to them, he shows us the results we’ll see, depending on how we answer that question: Will we live with God? We’re all faced with that question, and we have to make a choice about how we respond.

Galatians 5:13–26 The Message

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then? My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence? It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom. But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified. Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

Something

Freedom From Law

Galatians 5:13–18 NLT

For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. 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. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.

Galatians 5:

We are free from the Law, we don’t have to depend on ourselves to make ourselves right with God.

There are two ways to respond to that: a diving board to selfish, sinfulness; or to serve others through love

These are incompatible ways to respond. You can’t live your life in a way that focuses on both of those things.

Illustration: Coke/Pepsi; iPhone/Android; etc.

Veggies Of Flesh

Galatians 5:19–21 NLT

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 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.

Galatians

All these are obvious if you’re living in a self-centered way. Obvious to you. Usually obvious to others, too.

More than half of these are related to conflict with others

This is not a complete list, and you could probably add some of your own to the list

They don’t inherit the kingdom because they’ve already built their own kingdom

Fruit Of Spirit

Galatians 5:22–26 NLT

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.

Something

The Holy Spirit produces this fruit in our lives. Not us. It’s not something we can make happen on our own.

We can’t just talk the talk, we have to walk the walk, too.

Paul says we’ve crucified our sinful natures to the cross. Jesus took that old self away. It’s dead and gone.

The Holy Spirit produces this fruit in our lives. Not us. It’s not something we can make happen on our own.

We have to be careful we’re not just making a “new law” out of these things.

God Transforms Us

Illustration: Head transplant guy (Dr. Sergio Canavero & Dr. Xiaoping Ren)

We have to be careful we’re not just making a “new law” out of these things.

We can’t change our hearts. But, God wants to transform us. He’s wanted to since the beginning of time. From the first time we messed up. When Adam and Eve at the fruit in the garden he told them not to. When you (or I) first made a choice to put our own desires and wants above what God desires and wants.

Ezekiel 36:25–27 NLT

“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

Ezekiel

We can’t transform our own hearts. Somebody else can’t transform our heart. We have to let God do that. Are we trying to produce a transformed heart? Or, are we letting the Holy Spirit guide our steps, and seeing God’s transformation through that?

The Holy Spirit invites us to stop focusing on building our own kingdom. To stop living self-centered lives, and to join in the work of bringing God’s kingdom to earth. Whos kingdom are you building? Where are you living?

Inspiration

Where are you living? What is your life full of? Do you see these things Paul associates with the flesh? Or, do you see the fruits that the Spirit produces? Who’s kingdom are you building?

Bottom Line: When we live with God, we can expect God to transform our lives.

Will you allow God to walk beside you through your tunnels?

Action

How do we live with God?

Ask God to help you: God, I invite you to transform my heart.

Remain in the vine ()

Ask God to help you: God, I invite you to transform my heart.

We’re going to take a moment to put ourselves in the vine. Together.

Take communion together