All right, well, hey, a few weeks ago we started a series called Free. And what we're doing is we're studying this section of a letter in the New Testament called Romans. And we're looking at uh what is Romans chapter 6, almost all the way through Romans chapter 8. And if you had to find a theme, it would be freedom. Romans 8.2, toward the end of what we'll be studying, says this. Because you belong to him, because you belong to Jesus, the power of the life-giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. Now, if you're someone who's here or you're watching from home and you're kind of new to the whole Jesus thing, you're not even sure where you stand, a statement like that might make no sense to you at all. It just sounds like religious babble. And I understand that. But stick with it because it's really powerful, and I think you'll understand it very soon for a few major reasons. Number one, you're smart. And number two, even more important than your intelligence, is you are created by God to have a capacity to understand deeply spiritual things. Every single one of us is created by God with a capacity to understand the spiritual stuff. Because at our core, at our deepest level, we are spiritual people. And so even if you're new to the whole Jesus thing, like you will be amazed at how fast God and the Holy Spirit can connect those dots. And all of a sudden, things that seemed like nonsensical to you weeks ago can become as true as anything you've ever experienced in your life. So don't be hesitant, don't be discouraged, because we're covering something right now in this series that's actually pretty nuanced, pretty crazy. In fact, I really can't think of a section of scripture I'd just rather not teach on for simplicity's sake. You know, sometimes there's sections of scripture and they just have these like, I don't know, they have these lines that you just want to put on a poster, and it's like, yeah, let's do that. Let's, it's like a pep talk, you know? And I can give a message and at the end of it, we can all just like put our fists in the air and be like, charge, let's go, let's do it. And this is not one of those sections. This is like really nuanced stuff. But but nuance is really important. Because the broad strokes will only get you so far in life. And we live in a world right now, culturally, where everything's about broad strokes. It's all just hot takes and really, really oversimplified headlines of things that are happening that are actually pretty nuanced. And we all recognize that the real truth is always more layered than we might imagine. And those broad strokes, if that's the only place we live, we miss out on the real truth. Those of you who have followed Jesus for a while, I'm so glad that we're in this section of Scripture. Because complex as it might be and difficult to approach from a teaching perspective as it might be, this is where you get to fine-tune your faith. Never ever miss out on an opportunity to fine-tune your faith a little bit. That's what it's been like for me to study this, to prepare for this. It's like, oh yeah, God's been reminding me of these slight details, these little shifts in thinking that really fine-tune the way I see him, the way I see myself, and how we relate to one another. This is really important. So we're we're looking at freedom, and I've shown this up every week. This is a painstakingly creative uh diagram of freedom. This is I I've worked very hard on this. Took me many hours. Um, it's not to scale, but you know, it gets the job done. Uh, this is no, this is a diagram of freedom because freedom is messy. Freedom is messy. Point in case, the United States of America. We are one of the first free countries in the world. We're really one of the only truly free countries. And if you study our history, you find that it is it is not neat and tidy. Because turns out it's one thing to be handed freedom, it's another thing to learn what to do with it. And if you look at this and say, hey, that's me, that's also a self-portrait, which it is in my life. Uh, I have daily moments where I sit and go, what? Like, what is wrong with me? Why do I do this? Why do I, why do I think these thoughts? Like, I'm so often in my mind a jerk. Like I am, I can be the most rude, the most biting. Like, I all this stuff can happen in me, and I'm a mess. And if that's the way you feel sometimes, do not be discouraged for a few reasons. Number one, number one, God is okay with your mess. Now he wants to change it, he wants to help you grow, but he's not scared away by your mess. We've mentioned that every week. Number two, the fact that you have this going on inside of you does not mean that the God stuff isn't working. It's complicated. It is working. It's just, it's messy in its application. You have been freed of things that will forever hold you back by Jesus. He has freed you from the power of sin and from the power of death. Now you're learning how to live out that freedom, and it is, it is messy. It's okay. It's gonna take time. You're a work in progress. Now, every week we've looked at this little chart. This has been kind of our framework to understand all these concepts. Here in a second, I'm gonna jump into Romans 6. We're gonna read a lot of this stuff is in here. It's very interconnected, very interwoven. So, this has been sort of a framework to help us understand what we're looking at. And so here's the way it works: everybody in this room, everybody watching from home, you were all born. No one has refuted that, no one's challenged that yet. I always look at the audience just to make sure that we're all on the same page, right? Show of hands, who was born? Good. Okay. Anyone not? I would love to talk to you afterwards, but uh in private, and we'll have a long no, okay. Uh, you were all born. When you were born, you received uh a nature. And scripture often uses the term flesh to describe our nature. It doesn't just mean our physical bodies, it means sort of who we are naturally, apart from God, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This is us, this is this is flesh, and it leads to death. It leads to death. And we see that in our world. When people behave in their most natural basic self instincts, very often that is self-preservation, self-prioritization, causes a lot of pain. Sometimes it's self-destructive, it's destructive to others, and it leads to death. It may not be physical death, it might be the death of trust, the death of a relationship, the death of self-respect, but it leads to death. And what's really interesting is almost all of the suffering that we see in the world, the suffering that people get mad at God about, almost none of it is like God doing it. It's all people doing the things that lead to death, and we get mad at God because we think that he should step in and intervene and keep those things from happening. It's like we don't want freedom. Hey, God, you should step in and take control, take it away from us because we're not good at life, and that'll keep the bad stuff from happening. But then at the end of the day, we don't really want God to take the reins. We want to have some freedom, right? And so we're just kind of a mess. But the point is that we're born, we have this nature, flesh, and it leads to death. But then something really cool happens. When we put our faith in Jesus, we become born again. Jesus says this in John chapter 3. He's talking to a dude named Nicodemus. It's a famous conversation. If you've ever heard the verse, for God so loved the world, he gave his one and only son, that comes from that conversation. I believe it's the most important conversation that's ever happened in human history. And in that, Jesus says, You must be born again. And Nicodemus is confused, and that makes sense. He's the first person that ever heard that, right? Got to give him some credit. And he's thinking in these terms, he's like, You mean I have to step back into my mother's womb, and that doesn't make sense. Like, no one wants to do that. And uh, and Jesus is like, No, no, that is not at all what I'm talking about. He says, actually, flesh gives birth to flesh. He says, But the spirit, the Holy Spirit gives birth to spirit. And so when we're born again, when we put our trust in Jesus, Romans 8:16 puts it really simply, uh, that God's spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, joins with our spirit. This is deeply mysterious stuff. But again, you have a capacity for this. His spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are his children. So God literally makes your heart, your spirit, his home. And there's a union that happens, and you become a new creation. That's a language used in Scripture as well.

Right?

2 Corinthians 5.17 is a classic example. Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new creation. The old life is gone, and behold, a new life has begun. You're born again, it's spirit, and this leads to life. Now, here's the challenge, and this is the framework we've been in this whole series, and you're gonna see it today as we study and we read. We want to live here because we're free to. We don't have to live this way. We used to have to live this way because it was our only option. But the Holy Spirit, Jesus, by his death and resurrection and our faith in that, we have we have this as an option now. We can live here, but what's what's tough for us, even those of us who have followed Jesus maybe our whole lives, is we always tend to think in this category. And you find that out when someone says something like, This is just the way I was born, which birth are they almost always 99.9% of the time, even if they're a Jesus follower, referring to, and they say, I was just born this way, it's this one. And just as a if you ever say that to me, like I I'm an I'm annoying sometimes, uh, very often actually, uh especially in in relationship, because I'm complicated. You'll you'll figure it out. Uh but like if someone ever says, I was just born this way, I always say, Which birth are you talking about? And they'll kind of look at me, right? Like, uh the main one, uh, you know? But see, this is the main one. Like, like this is temporary. You know, we we celebrate this one every single year, and I think it would be really good if if maybe we we made a tradition in our lives to start celebrating these birthdays. Because this is the real birth. It truly is. This will all die. That's what it does. In fact, last week we talked about that. How actually, when Christ died on the cross, it's a deeply spiritual thing. It was like we died with him. This one died. We have a funny way of keeping it on life support, but it died. And now we have the freedom to live here. But we have to learn to think in these terms. We have to learn to see ourselves. This is you, this is who you are, this is the one that you should talk about when you say, This is just how I'm wired. This is just how I was born, this is how I am. You have so much joy and so much love and so much passion for life and so much grace and the ability to forgive people, and people are like, Man, how do you do that? And you say, I was just born this way. You're talking about this birth, because this is who you are. But we struggle to see ourselves that way. We naturally feel like this is the real me, and this is like, you know, like something that's kind of happening. No, no, no. This is an imposter with an expiration date. This is an eternal being who is created when the Holy Spirit joins with your spirit, who will never die, who will spend forever in relationship with God. That is who you are. But you have to think in those terms. All right. So, with that said, and I know again that we're talking about very complicated spiritual type things, but with this framework in mind, let's let's go to Romans chapter 6, verses 12 through 23. By the way, if you have the His Hands mobile app, uh, that's what I always read from, and so you can always follow along. And we are in the process, exciting stuff, of actually having Wi-Fi good enough that you can do that. Okay, so um, or watch YouTube videos while I teach. It's either war, whichever you want. Okay. Romans 6, 12 through 23. Do not let sin control the way you live. Do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. And next week we'll talk specifically about what that means. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace. Well then, since God's grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not. Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. Thank God. Once you were slaves of sin, in other words, slaves to this first nature here. But now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin. You've become slaves to righteous living. Because of the weakness of your human nature, I'm using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led even deeper into sin, and now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. And what was the result? You were now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. You see that language, it leads to death. But now you're free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do the things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And so you can see in that language, there's a lot of this stuff going on. Now I want to address something really quickly. A lot of language in that scripture about slavery. And this is actually something sometimes that people who are like opponents to scripture or have this something against the movement of Jesus will try to grab a hold of and use to weaponize and say that, oh, okay, the Bible somehow condones or supports slavery. Couldn't be the furthest thing from the truth. Uh in fact, when I was in college, it was interesting. I went to a school in Kansas City, Missouri, really great school. Glad that I went there. I studied communication. I also took a lot of religion classes and just a whole lot of stuff. I love history. So I did a lot of, took a lot of classes. Uh took Latin for three years because the book cost $17. Uh and used the same book for all three years. And I was like, seven, that I'll do that. Worst mistake of my life. That language died for a reason. And so uh, you know, but I had a good experience. But what was interesting is that when I was in college, it was like the number of professors that I had who were teaching in in studies that had nothing to do with faith, were so focused on tearing down anyone who had their faith in Jesus. Not any other faith. But if you were a student who it was known that you were a Christian and were vocal about it, and shocker, I was, uh, like there would be a like a constant challenge. I'd be sitting in communication class, and I had this one professor one day, and she literally did this. She said, Do you believe the Bible, Justin? And I was like, Yeah, I do. I mean, what do you mean by that? Because again, broad strokes, right? And I'm like, Yeah, I think I know where you're going with this. And she said, Well, that means you believe in slavery. And, you know, and honestly, like, people will do that, and it's incredibly shallow and intellectually dishonest for a few reasons, but I think it's important for us to understand this because we don't want to become tripped up by scripture. Number one, scripture does not condone everything it records. That's one of the beautiful things about the Bible is that it records the ugly stuff. Uh, you go find an autobiography of any person in culture today, that's something that they've written or had someone write for them, and it's it's gonna it's gonna be a heavily edited version of their life. And it's gonna gloss over all their ugly stuff or excuse it away or blame it on their circumstances, and it's gonna highlight all the best stuff, right? But you read scripture, and it's like how not to write something to get people to follow you. It's almost like like someone said, hey, what if we just record all the worst stuff that these people did? And there's actually a lot of stuff that's not very redeeming. Like when you talk about Bible heroes, some of them it's like heroes how? And we say this from time to time, it's important to remember that's because the Bible is not the story of amazing people doing great things for God. It's the story of an amazing God who can use broken people to do his work in this world. And that's good because we're all kind of broken. Okay, so just because the Bible records something does not mean it condones it. What's happening here is that Paul is, he's trying to use an analogy that everyone in his culture will understand. In fact, he even says that. He says so much, Romans 6.19, he says, Because of the weakness of your human nature, I'm using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. In other words, he's saying sometimes the really spiritual stuff, it's hard to engage with. It's hard to wrap our minds around it. So he's trying to find something in his culture that everybody's gonna understand. And slavery just happened to be that thing. Slavery worked very differently in the Roman Empire than what we think of because of our nation's history with slavery. About 30% of the population were slaves. And slavery was something that was typically temporary, it was very often opted into. If you had a large debt, you would actually become an indentured servant. They called it a bondservant. We often translate it as slave. You would you would make yourself a bondservant to someone, and working for them would then cover your debt, and when you were done, you would be free. You could actually become a citizen of the Roman Empire through slavery. If you became the slave of a citizen, being a citizen of the Roman Empire was a big deal. If you could become a slave of a citizen and work off for a certain period of time, they would release you from that, and now you were a citizen as well. And so it wasn't what we typically think of as slavery. It wasn't a good thing, but it was something everyone in Paul's day would understand. The main thing to realize here is that he's talking really about two concepts that we need to understand. He's talking about the authority and control. Authority and control. And if he were alive today, he would use a different illustration. He might use the illustration of like handing someone the keys. You know, that's a phrase that means giving them what? Authority and control. If you give someone the keys. The way it's supposed to work is that whoever is driving the car gets to control the radio and the air conditioning. That's how it's supposed to work. Megan McTear, my beautiful wife. That's how it's supposed to work. So if you want to keep turning the air conditioner all the way cold when it's 47 degrees outside, you need to start driving. Because whoever's driving, I'm just teasing. But sort of. Okay, right? But whoever has the keys, that's the person who has authority and control. They're the ones making the decisions and actually doing the things that lead the car, whatever you're talking about, in the direction that it's supposed to go. It's a matter of authority and control. And he's using this illustration of slavery to talk about authority and control. So I want to look at a different scripture. Paul, the author of Romans, also wrote this. You can tell that he's really weaving the same language, these same ideas together. Galatians chapter 5, verses 16 through 25. He says, So I say, and again, as we read this, think about authority and control. Let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. Now, uh, some of you maybe have different translations you read from. Maybe uh this is the the New Living Translation. Maybe you read the NIV. NIV will say flesh. NLT will say sin nature. They're synonymous. Okay, so flesh, sin nature, same thing. He says the sinful nature or the flesh 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. It's that mess that we looked at earlier. Welcome to freedom. But when you are directed by the Spirit, see that language of control. When you're directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses, in other words, to religion. When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear. This is where the sin nature will lead you, inevitably. Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery. That's an interesting word. Because what we picture with sorcery is like, I don't know, like a witch with a hat and a broom. But the actual Greek word there is pharmacia. That's where we get the word pharmacy. And in their culture, that would basically be substance abuse because their idea of sorcery was always tied to tonics and things like that. So substances, 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. That is not a threat. He's not saying if you struggle with these things. And let's be honest, you read a list like that, how many of us can say, none of those things on that list do I ever struggle with or have ever struggled with? None of them. Anybody? You're good on all those? You're a good church. This is a good church. I love it. Because if anyone would have raised their hand, I again, just like the person who doesn't realize they were born, I would say, let's talk afterwards privately. He's not saying that if you struggle with these things, that you're not really a Christian. Not at all. He's saying that if you if you live this way wholesale, if you give yourself to this, you will not experience the kingdom of God. You will not experience what God has in store for you. Because those things lead to death. They will take you away from the life that God wants for you. And we've all experienced that. We've all, quote unquote, followed our hearts to disaster. Like most of my biggest regrets in life, I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I was doing exactly what I felt like doing. I was following my flesh. Okay, but then it goes on. And it says, But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in your life: 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. That's what we talked about last week. And since we're living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. It's a matter of control. And so the question we have to be thinking through is really simple. Who's in control? Who have we given control and authority to? We'll go back to our little chart. And I replaced flesh with sin nature because that's the language that was used in what we just read. Every decision I make, every time I make a decision, I am I am handing the keys, so to speak, to one of these natures. Now this one I'm I'm used to. This one is heavily reinforced. It's like an old hat. You know, it's you just you love it. You love it. It's just it's like a pair of shoes that you've had for a really long time. And I think I'm speaking to men right now. You know how men like we don't let go of clothing that we should have let go of like a really long time ago? Like men over 40, how many of you still have a t-shirt that you had in college? And it is basically disintegrated. Okay? It's like when guys buy new underwear, it's when it doesn't even exist anymore. It's like it just sort of fell apart like paper, and we're like, I guess I need new underwear, you know? That's how we are. We like things that are comfortable. Okay, so so it's like a pair of shoes that you've broken in, that you're used to this one. And guys, if you struggle with those things, like anytime you you read a list of like from Galatians of the works of the flesh, and you go through this list of things that are not good, everyone in church is like, ah, that's mine, you know? Or or you have the opposite, the first few that are read, you're like, I don't struggle with those. I'm good. You feel that way, and then the list is long enough where eventually you're like, dang it, that's me. And the temptation is to feel really bad about yourself, to feel guilt and shame. But guilt and shame does not come from God the Father, that comes from our enemy, because the reality is God knows that you're used to this one. It's been here longer. And the world we live in heavily reinforces us to believe that this is the right way to live. That is why our culture is constantly telling us dumb stuff, like just be yourself. You just be you, just be the unfiltered version of you. And the world doesn't really believe that, because if you go to a job interview and you're just yourself, you're not gonna get the job. And you know that, right? If you go on date number one and you're just yourself, you're not gonna go on date number two. It's never gonna happen. We know that. And so our culture is like, be yourself, also change everything about yourself in order to be yourself. Like that is really what our culture says, because this is dumb, but we're used to it. We're used to it. And so when you struggle with stuff, have grace for yourself because this is heavily reinforced by experience and by the culture we're part of. But it leads to death. It leads to death. But the fruit of the spirit, the fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control. That's what the spirit produces in us. When we make decisions, we have a choice every single day, every single decision, who am I handing the keys to? This one, this sin-dominated, self-defeating nature, or this one, the spirit-empowered, life-fulfilling nature that God put inside of me when I put my trust in Jesus. We have to learn to think in these terms. Which one am I am I handing the keys to? Every day I have situations where I have that choice. And sometimes it's as simple as what comes out of my mouth. You know, I I I often feel this uh this pain when I act in this way and I catch it pretty early. Thankfully, the older I get, the better I am at catching it. I don't know if I'm I'm always better at not living out of it, but I'm at least catching it faster than I used to. You know, I love my children so much. But sometimes when they knock on the door, what they hear is this. What? And you know, if if I approached God the Father, he would never respond to me that way. Never. If I go to God in prayer like Father, he would never be like, what now? What? Just can you please give me a minute, you know? But I do that. And I and I honestly, I did it yesterday. I did it yesterday to my son Judah, and it hit me like, man, what does that feel like on his side of the door? Hey, what does it mean that the door is locked in the first place? You know, because it wasn't, I mean, we just I just wanted a break. But the the he knocks on the door gently, and I go, What? Because I love him. He's hard, but I love him. And I have these moments as a dad where I choose to react out of this as selfish and tired and just self-focused, all these other things. And you know, sometimes, those of you who have kids, you know this, sometimes your kids will push you to a point where I mean, it is an act of God, it is a miracle that you don't just explode. You know, like a few years ago, I bought this uh couch and it's such a man thing. It like the feature that sold me on it was that the cup holders, there was a button and you clicked it, and they had LED lights that came on around the cup holders. And Megan was like, why? And I'm like, that's the wrong question. The right question is, why not? You know, why not? Men love useless technology. Why does it do that? Because it does. Okay. And so this couch was in our basement at our previous home, and uh, and that's where I would go to watch games. And Judah had this uh this when he's about two, three, he had this weird fascination with filling things up with water for just whatever reason. He would go get cups of water, and he'd go put the water in things. And one day I'm sitting, I'm watching my game, and I have a drink, and I put it in the cup holder, and just water just it was like totally full of water, but I I didn't notice it, you know? And it just is everywhere. And I just scream like, Judah! You know, at the top of my lungs. And he does that thing where like, you know, when kids lie to you and they're really bad at it, and you're like, Did you do? I don't know why I asked him. Like, who else filled water in my cup holder? But I asked him, Did you do this? And he's like, you know. But it wasn't a big deal. The lights still worked, even like it was just water. It was just water. But I I reacted in that moment as if he had committed some grave sin. Because I reacted out of this. And honestly, like, even though I need to teach him not, you know, don't don't put water on people's couches. Don't do that. Uh, but like, it's funny. Like the spirit in me would just laugh. Like, oh my god, what in the world? This kid's hysterical. Like, who knows what he's gonna pull off one day? This is gonna be awesome. I can't wait to see the pranks he pulls on his older siblings. It's gonna be fun to watch, you know, but but all jokes aside, this one is just so easy to react out of it. And so I want to encourage us, I want to challenge us to do everything we can. Everything we can to think in these terms. In some ways, we're just reinforcing the same thing every Sunday right now. We have to stop thinking this way and living this way. Why? It leads to death, it leads to hurt, it leads to brokenness, it does not fulfill you, it does not fill you up, it is self-destructive, and it destroys relationship. This is the way to live. Now, the challenge is actually discerning sometimes which is which. And that's what I love about this scripture in Galatians. I want to read it one more time because you know, in actuality, this is nice and and neat, but this is how it feels, right? Like this is the way we feel. And so, which which one is my sin nature, which one is the spirit? You know, sometimes, especially if you're newer in your faith, it can be hard to figure out which is which. Because that that that old voice is familiar and sometimes even automatic. But but let's go back to Galatians 5. I'm gonna go to verses 19 through 23. 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. It's a pretty exhaustive list. And so sometimes if I have a decision to make, I can I can ask myself, hopefully on the front end, but sometimes it's good even when you when you do something and you can look back and go, wait, which one was that? Which one did I hand the keys to in that moment? And even if you handed the keys to the wrong one, if you recognize that five minutes later, you can go take the keys back and say, no more, give them back. And the the sin nature has no power over you, so it has to it has to obey. Because you've been set free from the power of sin and death by Jesus, right? So you can use that list, it's helpful. And to be like, hey, is what I'm wanting to do? Does it line up with those things? Will the result be division? If I say this thing that comes to my mind, because you know, like I'm married, and sometimes things come to my mind that I could say. And and maybe it's even accurate. But what's the result gonna be? Division, hurt, anger, me feeling right, but at the expense of someone else feeling wrong. That's that's the old nature. And I've seen what that does. It breaks hearts, it ruins trust. But then you have that other list, and this is so beautiful, right? I said it a minute ago. The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Like you can use that as a wonderful filter. Take that verse, write it down, post it somewhere you can see it. Because when you have a decision to make, and you probably do have a decision that's even on your mind right now, maybe something you've got to figure out in the next few weeks, the next day, the next month, you can ask yourself, hey, is this decision I can go this way or that way? Which one is me practicing self-control? Which one is me just doing whatever I feel like doing? Now, sometimes your spirit will desire to do really good things, and so it's okay to ask that question. Self-control does not mean you never get to do what you want to do, it's just which you wants to do it? Is it that old you or the new you? But I have times where I want to go do something, and I'm like, well, that's that's not self-control at all. Well, that's a good indication that that's my flesh. You know, it it is the way that I want to go about this conversation I need to have, is it gentle? Is it loving? Is it kind? If the answer is yes, that's a great indication that that's the spirit. And you're hearing that correctly, so follow that. You know, is the results of this decision that I'm going to make? Is it faithfulness? Man, I think that's such a huge one for our culture. Jesus put it so simply: let your yes be yes and your no be no. So often we say yes to something, we make a commitment, and then it's harder than we thought it would be. It's less convenient than we thought, and we're like, ah, maybe not. And we find sometimes we even find spiritual language to get out of those types of commitments that we make. And man, the spirit is faithful. God will never say yes to you, and then a few months later be like, hey, you know what? It's not, it's not you, it's me. You know, I know I said yes to making your heart my home, but it's just it's not working. Like, that's not how it works. He's faithful. When he says yes to you, he will finish what he starts because he's faithful. And maybe you have a decision to make right now in your life, and it's a matter of following through on a commitment that you've made or backing out because it's hard. Which one is your sin nature, which one is the spirit? Well, which one is faithful? You know, God gives us his word to help us figure this stuff out. Because this is me. So much of the time. But but when I when I look at my life through the lens of scripture, it has this way of sifting out the flesh from the spirit. And I can say, Oh, that's aha flesh. You jerk, not this time, you know, or or like I said, you make the wrong choice, but hey, you realize it. And what do you do? You respond with humility, and you go to someone and say, Hey, I'm so sorry that I said what I said, I'm so sorry that I did what I did. That that was the wrong me. Please forgive me. And and in doing that, that is you walking up to that sin nature and say, Hey, keys. And the sin nature has no power over you. Has no power because Jesus has set you free. But we've got to start thinking in these terms. And so, again, this week, same kind of thing we said last week, but it's it's hopefully becoming a little bit more layered, a little bit more easy to understand. Which one are you gonna give the keys to today? Which one are you gonna give the keys to tomorrow? And when you go to work, when you go home, when you're tired, when you're tempted, because we all face temptation. Which one gets the keys? I would strongly recommend this one. Because this one loves you. Holy Spirit loves you, cares for you. Scripture says that God has plans for you, that before you were even created, before he even laid the foundations of the earth, he loved you, he chose you, and he has planned good things for you, things that he planned long ago. Make a choice. That's what freedom's about, right? You've been set free, you've been given a choice. Which one gets the keys? Give everything to the Spirit. And the more you do that, the more you think in those terms, the more quickly you're gonna recognize this one. And this one's sneaky. He'll try to, he'll try or she'll try to like trick you to think it's this one. You know, there's all kinds of tactics, but the more you you spend time with God, honestly, the more time you spend in scripture with an open heart, saying, Lord, teach me, guide me, you you get better and better at recognizing this one. Like I at the very least know when I'm being the wrong Justin. But I didn't used to. I used to say things like, This is just how I'm wired. No.

No.

Or this is just the way I was born. Which birth? Who gets the keys? Who gets the control? Who gets the authority? Who's in control? That's your choice. So, with that said, I'd like to pray. Father, I want to thank you so much for everyone who's here, everyone who's watching, God. I love being part of this church. God, personally, selfishly, maybe even, I'm just grateful that I get to be part of a church where it's okay to admit that you have struggles and problems. But also, God, a church that isn't throwing in the towel and saying that that's just the way that it is. No, Lord, you have freed us from the power of sin. You have freed us from the power of death. We are under no obligation to do what our sin nature desires. We have zero, absolutely zero obligation to do what it says because we used to be slaves, but now we're free. And we're free to follow you. And we're free to serve you, and we're free to experience all the goodness of your kingdom because you're the one who has set us free, Lord. So I pray that you help us think in those terms. I pray that you help us untangle the mess that is happening inside of us, Lord. I pray that we would really surrender and do what you wrote in Scripture in Galatians, that we would let, that we would allow, that we would choose to give your spirit the reins. Guide us, teach us, mold us, shape us, lead us. Help us be the people that we were born again to be. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Amen.