Getting To Know The Holy Spirit
Galatians 5:16-25
May 5, 2013
I’m just going to tell you from the outset here
That we are about to enter uncharted waters.
I think it is fairly obvious by now that I am a “book study” kind of guy.
I put tremendous value in context and exhaustive themes and systematic study.
But we’re going to take a break from that on Sunday mornings for a while
Because I have had it impressed upon my spirit
That we need to go another direction for a while.
I have become convinced that it is time we begin to study the Holy Spirit.
And let me tell you why.
The Christian church (and our church)
Cannot fulfill our destiny in any way apart from the Holy Spirit.
• We cannot fulfill our mission of evangelism
• We cannot fulfill our calling to Christ-likeness
• We cannot even obtain our eternal destiny of heaven
There is no way around the fact that
In order to be or do or accomplish or receive anything God intends for us,
We must have the Holy Spirit.
And as I look at your life and my life it reminds me daily that we need Him.
• I’ve had far too many conversations with believers stumbling in sin…
• I’ve had far too many conversations with believers living in fear…
• I’ve had far too many conversations with believers too timid to share their
faith…
Conversations with Christians who want to know why
They don’t experience more victory in their Christian life.
Victory over temptation…
Victory over fear…
Victory over weakness…
And as I have spoken with many, the answer has become clear to me.
We need to better understand the Holy Spirit.
And so that is what we are about to do.
And from the very beginning I want you to understand
Some very important facts.
(and we will elaborate on these as we work through all this)
1) THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GOD
What this means is that you can relate and respond to Him
Just as you do the other persons of the trinity.
It is astounding today the number of people who are literally terrified to let the Holy Spirit do anything in their life.
They love God, they love Jesus…
The trust God, they trust Jesus…
But they are terrified of the Holy Spirit.
I just want to remind you that the Holy Spirit is God too.
He is the third person of the trinity.
• God’s mercy is His mercy
• God’s love is His love
• God’s truth is His truth
• God’s will is His will
• God’s plan for your life is His plan for your life
All of those promises that we love about God:
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”
Romans 8:28 “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”
Those are the same promises that the Holy Spirit makes to you as well. He is not out to ruin your life or your family or your church.
He has great plans for you, and you can trust Him.
Often times today the Holy Spirit is painted as sort of
The “black sheep” of the trinity.
People see Him as the real “loose cannon” of the three.
He is perceived as unpredictable, wild, and overly hyper.
Whereas you can trust God’s will and you can trust Jesus’ will,
You had better not open yourself up to the leading of the Holy Spirit,
Because God only knows what He might do.
That is a perverted view of the Holy Spirit.
He is God, He is part of the trinity, you do not have to fear Him.
Embrace Him as you embrace the Father.
Embrace Him as you embrace the Son.
I also want you to know out the outset
2) THE HOLY SPIRIT IS WILDLY MISREPRESENTED
There are all sorts of misrepresentations about the Holy Spirit.
He gets credit for all sorts of things today
That frankly He had nothing to do with.
It has become normal today to sort of let the Holy Spirit
Be the fall guy for any and every action.
And sadly He has even become the excuse many give for why the defiantly disobey Scripture.
I’ve heard people say, “The Holy Spirit told me to…”
And it was something clearly unbiblical like “leave my wife”
And these radical claims have led many
To literally have a fear of the Holy Spirit.
• On one TV channel we see people flopping in the aisle while the
preacher says they have been “baptized in the Spirit”.
• On another TV channel we have people speaking gibberish while the
preacher says they are “praying in the Spirit”.
• On another TV channel we have people falling down as if dead while
the preacher says they are “slain in the Spirit”.
And then we come back to our church on Sunday morning
Where these types of things do not occur.
Those TV preachers would say, “Those things don’t occur because you don’t have the Holy Spirit.”
And the response of 98% of the people in our church would be,
“If that’s the Holy Spirit, then we don’t want Him.”
And sadly that is where the church often finds itself today.
They have seen some sort of perversion of the Holy Spirit
And then decided they had better stay away from Him.
THE FALLOUT is powerless lives that find
• No strength to witness,
• No victory over temptation,
• No guidance in decisions,
• No true fulfillment in life.
I want you to know that you do not have to fear the Holy Spirit,
Because much of what you have been told was the Holy Spirit
Was not Him at all.
Let me give you a couple of passages here to help you understand this.
TURN TO: 2 Corinthians 11:1-6
The Corinthians had a problem with mystical infatuation.
1 Corinthians 12:1-3 “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols, however you were led. 3 Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed”; and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.”
And that infatuation caused them to be involved in all sorts of wild behavior,
Which we will talk about later.
Mostly I just want you to see that they were allured by this sort of stuff.
They actually listened to “mute idols”
They were mystical
And that is Paul’s problem with them here.
We read this passage a couple of Sunday nights ago,
But actually have here Paul trying to
Preserve the purity of the Corinthian church.
He pictures himself as the one trying to safely transport the bride to the groom.
The problem is that the bride has a wondering eye.
She is easily seduced.
And noticed what she falls for.
“another Jesus” and “a different spirit”
The point being, that there are counterfeit Jesus’s and counterfeit spirits.
Just because a person has a “leading” or just because a person feels something
Does not naturally indicate the leadership or the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Let me show you another one:
TURN TO: 1 John 4:1-6
• Here John is dealing with real Christianity versus fake Christianity.
• He actually opens the letter calling for true fellowship through repentance of sin and faith in Christ.
And here you see his reasoning.
Not every spirit is actually the Holy Spirit.
There are false ones.
And these false ones even lead the false prophets.
John here tells you how to tell the difference.
You examine their theology on Jesus. (verses 2-3)
Do they preach Him to be the Son of God in human form?
If not, that is a lying spirit inside a false prophet.
Next you examine their spiritual life. (verse 4)
Do they possess the life of God or are they still in death?
Then you examine what they preach. (verses 5-6)
Is their preaching filled with worldly reasoning, or is it Scriptural truth?
DO YOU SEE MY POINT?
The Holy Spirit gets credited with a lot of behavior, and leadings, and direction today that is simply not Him.
• Just as God is misconstrued by false gods
• Just as Jesus is misconstrued by false saviors
• So also the Holy Spirit is misconstrued by false spirits
I want you to understand this at the very beginning
Because I want you to open your heart and your mind
To searching the Scriptures to find out who this Holy Spirit is.
And I think when you do, you are going to love Him and desire Him and trust Him every bit as much as you do the Father and the Son.
To that end let me point you to a very important scripture.
John 16:7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”
We’ll spend more time in John 14-16 in the coming weeks, but notice that verse.
Do you see that the Holy Spirit is necessary?
Do you see that the Holy Spirit is good?
Jesus actually said it is better for us
To have the Holy Spirit than Him on the earth.
We need Him, and we need to push through all the garbage published about Him so that we can gain a biblical understanding of who He is.
Now, that being said, I want to give you the THEME verse of our study.
This is where I want us to look this morning, and we will go on from here.
TURN TO: Galatians 5:16-25
That last statement (verse 25) is really the heart and soul
Of what I want you to understand as we study the Holy Spirit.
• I want you to understand who the Holy Spirit is.
• I want you to understand that we live by Him.
• And I want you to understand the need to walk according to His will.
That is really the aim and objective of our study.
We don’t want to walk by the flesh, we want to walk by the Spirit.
Romans 8:12-14 “So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh — for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
By the time we are done with this study it is my prayer
That we all have a better understanding of who the Holy Spirit is,
That we all love and trust Him and are committed to walking according to His leading.
That is really the aim.
So let me just start with this verse as an overview of things to come,
And in the coming weeks we’ll get more detailed about this whole thing.
So here we are in Galatians 5.
It is important that in all the passages we study
That you have a proper view of context
(this makes topical preaching less dangerous).
And the background to the book of Galatians is legalism.
If you wanted to really sort of break it down deeper we would say that
The struggle of the book of Galatians is the battle of
Whether they would walk by the flesh or walk by the Spirit.
That is really the dilemma of the book.
As Paul and Barnabas branched out on the first missionary journey
They found themselves in the regions of Galatia
Preaching the gospel and planting churches.
But it wasn’t long before a Satanic attack broke out.
Acts 15:1 “Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
From our study of Acts many of you will remember that this debate actually motivated “The Jerusalem Council” to meet and debate the issue.
The result of course was that Gentiles did not need to be circumcised.
• To be circumcised was to seek to enter the Old Covenant.
• To be circumcised was to seek to be saved according to the Law.
• To be circumcised was to seek to be saved according to works of the flesh.
And that is precisely what the Judaizers were teaching.
They came in and told these Gentiles that it is all fine and well that they have accepted Jesus, but if they want to be saved, they must first be circumcised.
They were literally telling these Galatians
That pleasing God was a work of the flesh.
Now I don’t have to tell you that this totally infuriated Paul.
You don’t have to read the book of Galatians but once to pick up on Paul’s rage.
• Twice he calls them accursed…
• He calls for them to be cast out…
• And he calls for them to take their circumcision to the max and totally emasculate themselves…
He is angry.
What they were offering as a means of salvation was not salvation at all.
It was works, it was legalism,
And “by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified before God.”
So Paul is writing to save the Galatians from a destructive heresy.
Paul’s goal is to get them to determine not to walk according to the flesh (even in religious areas) and to walk by the Spirit.
And the first 4 ½ chapters is really dedicated to debunking this theory about the necessity of human works as a means of pleasing God.
Where I want us to pick up is in chapter 5, verse 16.
(5:16) “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
The question always remains as to how a human being achieves holiness.
• How does sinful man become righteous?
• How does sinful man begin to practice righteousness?
Well the answer to how we become righteous is through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:21 “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
And the answer as to how we begin to practice righteousness is that we walk according to God’s Spirit.
Many have fallen into the deadly trap
That the Galatians were about to fall into.
And that is the danger of believing that
While salvation is purchased by Christ,
It is both secured and perfected by the believer.
That is a form of what I would call POST-LEGALISM.
The Pharisees were full-blown legalists in the sense that they believed you had to work your way into salvation. You had to do it all.
Post-legalism (and I invented that term) would be someone who starts working after they believe in Christ as a means of keeping their salvation.
They came to Christ in faith, and now they try to keep
And perfect their salvation by their own efforts.
Essentially it is a person who discards the cross after a one-time use.
Sound strange?
That is what the Galatians were doing.
Galatians 3:1-3 “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
In other words, they used Jesus to get saved
And then decided to take over from there.
They in effect said, “Thank you Jesus, I’ll take it from here.”
Paul was so disturbed by this that he wondered
If a person with such a mindset was ever really saved at all.
Galatians 4:9-11 “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.”
Paul’s fear was that maybe their salvation wasn’t actually genuine,
Because they so quickly ran back to human works to find righteousness.
And that is really the age old question.
HOW DOES A SAVED PERSON BEGIN TO PRACTICE RIGHTEOUSNESS?
And that is what Paul answers in verse 16.
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
So how do you keep from carrying out the desire of the flesh?
“walk by the Spirit”
Now we all know what Paul means by “desire of the flesh”
We all have them don’t we?
• For some it is gossip…
• For some it is alcohol…
• For some it is lust…
• For some it is anger…
• For some it is selfishness…
(Have I hit you yet?)
• For some it is laziness…
• For some it is gluttony…
• For some it is meanness…
You know what I mean.
We are people who have a flesh that desires things we hate.
The age old question is how do I keep from doing those things that I hate?
Paul said it like this:
Romans 7:24 “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?”
That is the issue here.
And the answer of how to be set free from the body of this death is,
“walk by the Spirit”
“walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
That is Biblical fact.
If you walk according to the leadership of the Holy Spirit,
At the end of the day, when you take inventory,
You will find that you did not do the desires of the flesh.
Now, let me tell you how people commonly mess this statement up.
(And I’ve seen this mentality in religion my whole life)
People would read it like this:
“don’t walk by the flesh, and you will carry out the desire of the Spirit”
And that is been how churches have operated.
They tell people, “Don’t gossip – don’t cuss – don’t drink – don’t lose your temper – don’t look at pornography – don’t be selfish – don’t be lazy – don’t over eat – don’t be mean…”
And the assumption is that if you can tie yourself up with a whole lot of “Thou shalt not’s…” then you have found the key to holiness.
If just don’t do anything wrong, then at the end of the day,
I will determine that I finally achieved perfection.
HOW DOES THAT WORK FOR YOU?
-it doesn’t.
In fact, I’ve found that the more I focus on not sinning,
The more temptation I have to endure.
Because that is not the command.
The command IS NOT, “don’t walk by the flesh, and you will carry out the desire of the Spirit.”
The command IS “walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
We need someone to help us fight the flesh.
And we have someone.
(17) “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.”
There is a war inside of you.
The flesh is on one side, and the Spirit is on the other side.
They fight
You must determine which one you are going to listen to.
You will either listen to the Spirit, which is victory / righteousness
Or you will listen to the flesh, which is defeat / immorality
That again emphasizes why we need the Holy Spirit.
Without Him, you’ve got nothing in your battle against the flesh.
So in the battle, quit fighting the flesh (that is the Spirit’s job)
And you start submitting to the Spirit.
Because (18) “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.”
When you received the Spirit of God, you no longer were under a
Law / performance – based salvation.
So why would you want to jump back under it now?
No, instead walk by the Spirit.
HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM WALKING BY THE SPIRIT OR THE FLESH?
Look at your life.
(19-24) “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
Which list best describes you?
• Sexual immorality or Love and peace?
• Jealousy or joy and patience?
• Outbursts of anger or kindness and goodness?
• Drunkenness or self-control?
You can tell me right now if you have been
Walking according to the flesh or according to the Spirit.
And the implication here is that we look at our lives
And see areas of defeat and determine that
We don’t want to be defeated anymore.
SO HOW DO I QUIT CARRYING OUT THE DESIRE OF THE FLESH?
(16) “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
See this whole thing is a plea to get you to start walking by the Spirit.
This whole section is a request for you to quit walking by the flesh.
And that gets us to our theme verse.
(25) “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”
Now let’s focus on that for a moment.
“If we live by the Spirit”
And we do.
John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”
Galatians 6:8 “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
Titus 3:5 “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,”
It is the Holy Spirit who gives life.
When you believed in Christ, you were baptized with the Holy Spirit.
He entered your life, and He gave you new life.
Sometimes called “eternal life” or “abundant life” or “newness of life”,
But it is life none the less.
Those without Christ and the Holy Spirit are spiritually dead.
Ephesians 2:1-3 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
Without the Holy Spirit a person is spiritually dead.
And consequently there is no real war internally
Because they don’t have anything that fights the flesh.
They may be a little deterred by consequences, but that is it.
AND WE WERE DEAD, BUT GOD SENT US LIFE.
Titus 3:3-7 “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
Obviously that life came from the indwelling of His Holy Spirit.
That day you became alive to the things of God,
Was because the Holy Spirit moved in.
He made you alive.
And that is not new to you, you realize that.
And so did the Galatians.
The problem was that the Galatians took the new life of the Spirit
And then tried to go the rest of the way by the flesh.
And so many do that today.
Maybe we are afraid of what the Holy Spirit might do if we yield to Him…
Who knows?
But for whatever reason, people in church (Baptists are as bad as any)
Try to accept the life of the Holy Spirit,
And then put Him on the shelf and try to finish the race on their own.
That is why we are so big into 12 step processes, programs and events.
We got saved, but we’ve got it from here.
And then one day we look up and realize that our life,
And our ministry, and our religion in general
Is so full of failure and weakness and we don’t know what to do.
We love God, we love Christ, we love the Bible,
And we want to be righteous.
In fact we hate it when we aren’t righteous.
But it doesn’t change the fact that my life is more characterized by those deeds of the flesh than by those fruit of the Spirit.
And we don’t know what the problem is.
• Why can’t I resist the temptation?
• Why do I keep failing in my attempts?
• Why is there no power in my ministry?
• Why am I so timid when it comes to time to share the gospel?
We hate it, but we acknowledge it none the less.
And that is where Paul comes in with this profound request.
“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”
If the Holy Spirit is gracious and powerful enough to give you life,
Don’t you think it wise that you listen to Him in how to live that life?
If He gives you life, can’t you trust Him to guide your life?
We give that much lead way to doctors.
Some doctor comes in and “saves your life”.
I promise you will be prone to follow his directions from there on out.
So why not the Holy Spirit?
He doesn’t save your life, He gives you life.
Why can’t you let Him guide it?
The very reason you are walking in defeat in failure
Is because you have not let Him do it.
Now I know the fears, I really do.
“Preacher, I’ve seen those ‘Spirit-filled’ people who are being ‘led by the Spirit’. I’ve heard about those churches. If we start being Spirit led we’ll be handling snakes, and drinking poison, and speaking Japanese, and dancing, and rolling down the aisles.”
See, we don’t think we can trust the Spirit
Because we have believed that it was the Holy Spirit
Who was doing all those things.
But that wasn’t the Holy Spirit.
Those were perversions and Satan has used them to convince you to ignore the Holy Spirit so that he can keep you ensnared in sin.
• Paul’s plea is that we quit buying the lie that our righteousness is a matter of our own human efforts.
• Paul’s plea is that we quit buying the lie that the Holy Spirit will only humiliate and embarrass you with wild behavior.
• Paul’s plea is that we come to realize that we can trust the One who gave us life to actually guide the life He has given us.
Now I know we are about out of time,
And we are going to need a lot more time to finish all of this.
But some will want to know:
If walking by the Spirit is the key to Christian victory, then why don’t more people do it?
And there are really two answers:
1) They don’t know Him
2) They don’t know how
Well that is what this study is for.
To introduce you to the Holy Spirit
And to teach you how to walk according to His guidance.
I want to encourage you to stay plugged in during this study,
I am supremely confident that the Holy Spirit
Will delight your soul in a way you may have never imagined.
Galatians 5:25 “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”
