Walking According to the Spirit

, well, let me invite you this morning to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8 for a time of study in the word this morning. We're doing a, verse by verse study through Romans 567 and 8, a journey to the heart of the gospel. And as we continue in our study of these, this section of Romans, we come this morning to Romans chapter 8, verse 4, and my goal this morning is to cover verses 4 through 8 and hopefully not leave any loose ends that we have to come back.

And, and sweep up in the coming weeks. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be Walking According to the Spirit. Walking According to, the Spirit, we're going to encounter the word walk in the second half of Romans chapter 8, verse 4. Up to that point, it's all the things that God has done in saving us, but then we're going to come to a key word, and that is the word walk that identifies what God wants us to do if we want the full fruition of God's saving purposes to be manifested.

in our lives, and we're gonna learn how to walk and what that walk that he has saved us for should look like. Let me start with this. I shared this a number of years ago. I'll share it again, because I've been here a long time and I run out of new illustrations.

but when I was in high school, my mom came to me on a Saturday afternoon and said, Milton, I'm going to go for a walk around the block. You want to go with me? And I thought to myself, that sounds like a lovely idea, and I said, Sure. And so we walked out of the house down the little walkway to the sidewalk that goes around our block, and we commenced our walk around the block.

And as soon as we did so, to my dismay, My mom started doing not just a walk but a power walk. And she had not informed me of that, and she started juking and jiving and as she's walking, and I instantly sought to dissuade her from what she was doing and, and I, I just said, Mom, stop, people can see you. And she just laughed it off and continued. In fact, she started exaggerating her emotions even more, knowing that.

that, that I was distressed by it. And so she continued that way around the block, and I walked about 15 yards behind my mom, looking in every direction other than in her direction, just to indicate that I don't really know who that woman. With hindsight, I was actually the foolish one. Nowadays I would love to walk with my mom around the block, whatever she wants to do, however she wants to walk.

I'd wear a sign saying this is my mom. I am her son. But back then as a self-absorbed, self-conscious teenager, That was something that was distressing. To me, but I learned a valuable lesson, and that is that when someone wants to go for a walk, it's wise to inquire as to what walk they are meaning.

And that brings us to what we're going to be talking about this morning because there is a walk. We, we learned in the New Testament that everybody walks, both saved and unsaved. but there is a particular walk that Christians are to engage in from day to day. We can call this the spirit walk or walking according to the Spirit, walking under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

And look how, let's reset the stage in Romans 8:1-4. I'll show you how Paul leads into this. He says in verse 1, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So we're like, Yeah, that's awesome.

There's no condemnation. Verse 2, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. And we're like, Yeah, that's awesome. We've been liberated, set free from the law of sin and death.

Verse 3, for what the law could not do. weak as it was through the flesh, meaning human flesh, that's another way of saying what we could not do, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. So we're like, Man, this is awesome. We don't do anything.

We haven't done anything. God has delivered us from condemnation. There's not a single condemnation against us. In Christ, the Spirit of God has liberated us from the law of sin and death.

And what we couldn't do, what the law couldn't do, God did sending Christ into the world to fulfill the law for us, and then at the cross to bear the condemnation we deserve to where our sins got condemned in the flesh of Jesus. Why did he do all this verse 4, so that Or in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Now, if we're not careful, we might go, man, this is, this is great. God does everything.

And, and now that I believed in Jesus, and God's done all of this, then I should just start waking up every morning and just living my life and I'll just find the righteous requirements of the law just starting to be manifested in my life. It'll just start happening. Well, not so fast. There is one thing that God is asking of us.

This is not a contribution to our salvation, but it's something we need to do if the fullness of his saving purposes are going to be manifested in our lives. Look what he says in verse 4, so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who are walking not according to the flesh, but are walking according to the Spirit. What we observe just in that affirmation of us as saved people walking in the Spirit, is this just two real quick observations. We observed that when we walk according to the Spirit, whatever that means, and we'll try to identify what that means in this message, whatever it means to walk according to the Spirit, when we do that, we are achieving one of God's key purposes and saving us.

We also observed that when we walk according to the Spirit, whatever that is, the righteousness of the law gets practically fulfilled in us. So if we orient our lives around the law saying I'm going to obey the law, and God, tell me what your commands commandments. I'm going to obey them. The righteousness of the law doesn't get fulfilled in us, but if we come over here and we just start walking according to the spirit, we will find the very requirements of the law becoming manifested and played out in our lives.

And so just that alone ought to make all of us in this room who are believers very interested in walking according to the Spirit. We all ought to be like, Well, what does that mean? I want to do that. If I do that, then I'm doing one of the key things that God has saved me to do.

He saved me in order to change the way I walk. And if I do this one thing, then God God's righteousness gets manifested in my life from day to day. And so what is that? Because whatever it is, I want to do it.

And so we're going to learn this morning about this practice of walking according to the Spirit. We're going to make 7 observations regarding what it means to walk according to the Spirit. We all know that, like we can't see the Holy Spirit. those of us in whom the Spirit dwells, we can't see the Holy Spirit.

No one around us in the world around us can see the Holy Spirit, but they can observe the Spirit's presence by our walking under the influence of the Spirit. I'm sure you guys have seen these. Sometimes I'm driving and, and I'll see someone at an intersection holding these signs, pointing people in a certain direction and And they, they're, they're often moving and dancing in various ways to try to draw attention to themselves and perhaps I don't know, to pass the time. And and they've got earbuds in their ears upon closer inspection, so they're, they're hooked into some iPod and music is playing.

And what's interesting is I'm in my car and I can't hear, I can't see it, what it is they're listening to. I can't even hear what it is that they're listening to, but I can get a pretty good idea of the basic genre of what they're listening to, right? They're not listening to Mozart or to the Battle Hymn of Republic. they're listening to some other genre, and you can get a pretty good idea of what that is by just watching the way that they're moving.

And it's the same with us in walking according to the Spirit. Those who walk according to the Spirit, based on what we're going to learn in this passage, you can pretty much watch somebody's walk, as it were, and observe that yes, the influence of the Holy Spirit is upon them, and they are indeed walking according to the Spirit. What does it mean to walk according to the Spirit? A little bit of this is going to be reviewed.

and we'll tie up a few loose ends with some of this review. Number one, what it means is it means to walk in the freedom that the spirit has accomplished. If we see walking according to the Spirit in Romans 8:4 and we're like, I wonder what that means, logically, we would want to look at the context and just ask, has Paul said anything about the spirit in this section of verses, and indeed he has in verse 2. He says in Romans 8:2, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

And so what this means, at least, is that we've been already liberated by God's Spirit from sin's power, from sin's guilt, we've been liberated from sin's condemnation. And to walk then according to the Spirit is to walk believingly in what the Spirit says that he has already accomplished in liberating us from the law of sin and death. At the very least, in terms of what it means to walk according to the Spirit, it means to believe that we have been liberated. We believe that we hold our chins high, and we begin to walk like the free people that we are who have been liberated from the law of sin and death.

It's amazing though that in our lives basically when God saves us, we just need to understand He didn't just save us. God's agenda upon saving us and liberating us is now to teach us how to walk in that freedom, and that takes time. That doesn't happen necessarily automatically. I remember a number of years ago reading A story about a merchant that was traveling through India and he was walking through a marketplace and he came upon a man with a display, and the display really unsettled this merchant.

And essentially what the display was was a stand that had at the center of it a rotating post, and at the top of the rotating post there were 4 strings that went out in 4 different directions, and then each of those strings on the other end was tied around the neck of a bird. And the, the four birds were basically on this stand marching in a circle around this rotating post, like a, a merry go round. You guys have the visual? Well, this, this merchant was his heart went out to these birds, but upon inquiring, he found out that the birds were not for sale, so he thought, what, I'll try to buy the whole display.

And so he went to the owner of the display and said, Can I buy this? And the guy said, Well, how much do you want to buy it for? And he named this price and the guy who owned it said, Yeah, take the whole display. Well, upon acquiring this, this display, The merchant, he had no use for it.

He just wanted to free the birds. So upon acquiring it, he immediately untied all four of the birds. To where they're no longer bound. to his dismay, however, he noticed that upon being freed, the birds continued to walk in a circle around that post on the stand.

So this merchant then waved his arms to frighten the birds away, and indeed they did fly away, but to his dismay, they landed about 10 yards away, all 4 of them, and began walking in a circle again. And when I read that a number of years ago, I just thought, unfortunately I'm often like that. But God is gracious. God is loving.

He has saved us so that we can walk differently, and He's given us His Holy Spirit so that the Holy Spirit can teach us to walk differently in the freedom that is ours. We all as believers in Jesus have an extreme liberty that has been accomplished for us by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And there's probably not one of us in this room that is fully walking in that freedom to the degree That it has been accomplished for us. What does it mean to walk in the Spirit?

At the very least it means to walk in the freedom that the Spirit has accomplished for us. There's a second thing that it means, and that is it means to walk in the love that the Spirit lavishly imparts to us. Again, if we come across a statement in Romans 8:4 to walk according to the Spirit and we're like, I wonder what that means. What does that look like, we would look at the context, but then we would also ask up to this point of the book of Romans, has Paul said anything about the Holy Spirit that is of any significance that might help us to know what it means to walk according to the Spirit.

And the only other reference where he says anything of significance that can help us in answering this question is back in Romans chapter 5, where Paul in Romans 5 is talking about how that we as justified ones can even rejoice in our tribulations and our trials and our troubles, knowing that tribulation brings about endurance and endurance, proven character, proven character hope. And then he says, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out. This is a word that has the idea of, of not just dispensing a small portion, but lavishly abundantly, effusively pouring out the love of God within our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom God has given.

to us.

We learned that one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is to mediate the love of God into our hearts in a practical way to take love from the very heart of God, and to download that love to lavishly pour that love into the deepest recesses of our beings into our hearts, where healing is needed and deliverance is needed. He pours out the love of God in abundance in our hearts. So based on that, what does it mean to walk according to the Spirit? Well, at least it means to walk in the love that the Spirit lavishly imparts to us.

To walk according to the Spirit means, at least that we need to walk, believing that we are loved. It means that we need to live our lives believing that we are lavishly loved, not barely loved by God. It means that we live our lives allowing God to love us, trusting him to love us, trusting the fact that God can do a better job at loving us than even we ourselves could do at loving us. So you guys, at the root of this whole notion of self love is the arrogant idea that that I can do a better job at loving myself than anyone else can.

But Jesus says greater love has no one than this, that a man laid down his life for his friends. He's telling his disciples and us, no one can love you better than I can. I can love you even better than you can love yourself. And so that's what liberates us from self love is knowing that we are lavishly loved by God and we trust Him to love us and we can even believe this in Romans 5:5, even in the midst of our hardships and our trials, the circumstances that sting us from without and distress us from within, we can believe that even in our trials, even in our hardships, that God loves us so much that He will force those trials, those hardships to pay tribute to us, and to yield up good to us and in us.

We can always believe as justified and saved ones, that God is doing something in everything, even in every hardship that is growing us. His grace is abounding to us, even in the midst of our most heartrending trials. To walk in the love that God lavishly imparts to us through His Spirit also means that we believe. We operate on the belief that the biography of our lives, is something like this lavishly loved by God.

If at the end of your life someone were to write a biography of you and that that writer had full omniscient knowledge of all of God's heart towards you and all of His ways and all of his motives and the whole story of what God is doing and everything that He allowed or did in your life, a fitting title for your biography as a believer in Jesus is lavishly loved by God. Someone who's walking according to the spirit is someone who believes that they get up in the morning and they know basically today the story is that I'm going to be lavishly loved by God and they look for evidence that fits that narrative.

That's my story. That's my biography.

There's some people, even Christians who at times find themselves in seasons where they speak and they respond to circumstances and view life as if they would suggest that the title of their biography is cursed by God, or unloved by God, or perhaps, how's this for a title, barely loved by God. But to walk according to the Spirit is to firmly believe I'm lavishly loved by God, and I'm always being lavishly loved by my God. And they have eyes to see what fits into that narrative and what they see that they can't understand in terms of how that fits, they trust the heart of God, that God is doing something, even through these circumstances that fits this narrative.

What does it mean to walk according to the spirit?

It, it means in part to walk in the love, in the enjoyment of the love that the spirit lavishly imparts. OK. A third thing that it means is this. It means to refuse to walk according to the flesh.

What does it mean to walk according to the spirit? Well, it means to refuse to walk according to the flesh, and that might seem like a no-brainer, but let's linger here for a moment. He says in Romans 8:4 that God has done all the saving things that he's done, verse 4, so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but in contrast to that according to the Spirit. What we observe there is that in order to walk according to the Spirit, you must say no to walking according to the flesh.

You cannot walk according to the Spirit and walk according to. The flesh at the same time, a part, therefore, of what it means to walk according to the spirit is to say no to or to refuse to walk or to behave ourselves according to the flesh. We talked last week about what it means to walk according to the flesh. Basically, our flesh is that part of us.

It is not our physical bodies, but it is affiliated with our physicality, but it goes far deeper than that. It is that rebel part of us in this side of glory and in a fallen world that always wants the opposite of what God wants for us and from us. And in the New Testament, there are various manifestations of the flesh. And to walk according to the flesh would mean in part based on Galatians 5:19 to 21, to walk in sin and in utter selfishness, just like, I don't want to obey God's commands.

I want to do what I want to do. And so those that walk in immorality and drunkenness and envy and hate and anger and bitterness and gossip, they're behaving according to the flesh. But the flesh, or walking according to the flesh and the New Testament is not limited to just doing bad things. To walk according to the flesh also means to be behaving in a way Where you view yourself as your own savior, and you think that you can save yourself by good works, and that you can be righteous enough to commend yourself before God.

And so anything in a person's life that's being energized by an attempt to justify themselves or to be righteous enough, to impress God with their righteousness so that God will let them into heaven. Anything in one's lifestyle that that is energized by that desire to save oneself rather than letting Christ save that person is being energized by the flesh. Paul would look at that and say that's as much flesh as, as those that are plunging headlong into the sin. And also in Philippians 3, I would encourage you guys to read that whole chapter.

Paul talks about the flesh and enlarges our definition of what it would mean to walk according to the flesh. And what we would learn from Philippians 3 is that a part of what it means to walk according to the flesh is to, to walk in the lifestyle where we're concerned about glorifying ourselves. We're boasting in ourselves, he says in Philippians 3:3 and following. We glory, we boast in Christ Jesus, and we put no confidence in the flesh, although I myself might have confidence in the flesh.

If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more, and Paul's now going to talk about what that flesh is in terms of specific. Specs and you might think, oh, he's going to be naming a bunch of bad stuff. Well, look at all the flesh, these aspects of the flesh that he lists in verse 5, circumcise the 8th day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.

Paul would draw a circle around all of that and say that's flesh.

That's flesh. He says, I used to bank on these things to be what commends me before God, but I don't anymore, because something happened to Paul. He was on his way to Damascus and he encountered someone more righteous than himself, and that was Jesus, and it ruined him. It ruined Paul's view of his own righteousness.

After seeing Jesus and being blinded by it, Paul could never look at his own righteousness the same after that. And he looked back at his own righteousness after seeing Christ's righteousness. He's like, I don't want to be caught dead in my righteousness. I want his righteousness.

So he believed in Christ and received Christ's righteousness, and he looked forward to standing before God at the judgment dressed in Jesus' righteousness. But all this other stuff was flesh. It's stuff he used to boast in. In fact, you get a feeling in reading Philippians 3 and this list that you find in verse 5 and 6 and so forth that it so wrote that you can just tell Paul probably said these exact words hundreds of times before he was saved.

Hey Paul, tell me about yourself, and he could just rattle this stuff off, bragging about all the stuff that he had done, and Paul would say that's all flesh. That all was a part of my self salvation project. And so people that walk according to the spirit are people who do not walk according to the flesh. They do not walk according to sin, where they're plunging into the works of the flesh, which They are listed in Galatians 5, and also, they're not putting any energy into trying to save themselves or commend themselves before God or trying to get God to be happy with them or to not be wrathful against them.

That's all been taken care of by Jesus. So they are resting in that. And also they, they are people that don't brag about themselves. They don't brag about their own righteousness.

They're resting in the righteousness of Jesus. And they are people who do boast, they do brag, but what they brag about is Jesus Christ. So to walk according to the spirit involves refusing to walk according to the flesh. What else does it mean to walk according to the spirit?

Number 4, it means to refuse to occupy your mind with the things of the flesh. It means to refuse to occupy your mind even with the things of the flesh. You say, Well, didn't we just make that point? No, but 0.3 is that those who walk according to the Spirit don't walk according to the flesh.

What we're learning now is those who walk according to the Spirit, we're learning something about their mindset and what they do with their minds. And we learn here that people that walk according to the Spirit refuse to even occupy their minds with the things of the flesh. They refuse to occupy their minds with sin. They refuse to occupy their minds with.

This uneasy energy of self salvation, they refuse to occupy their minds with self-glorification. Paul says in Romans 8:5, for those who are according to the flesh. Set their minds on the things of the flesh. People that are walking according to the flesh, do something with their minds, and that is that they set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the spirit, set their minds on the things of the spirit.

Let, let me just make one point about, at the very least what Paul is talking about here. He's indicating here that people that walk according to the spirit do not give, they, they do, they do not allow the flesh to absorb and occupy their attention, which means that in part they do not give the flesh, as it were, a fair and equitable hearing. OK. in other words, they do not allow the flesh to even make its case to them.

It's somebody who is intentionally biased in favor of the Holy Spirit and against the flesh, and as they're living their lives, they come to the Holy Spirit and say, Holy Spirit, make your case and and direct me and tell me anything you want to tell me through your word and just communicate to my Spirit, Lord, through your word and the truths of the gospel, how you want me to live and make your case to me. But then when it comes to the flesh, they don't even give the flesh an opportunity to make its case to them.

One of the problems, and I've been so guilty of this over the years, is that we give the flesh way too much of an opportunity to make its case. And it's almost like in a moment of temptation.

That our attitude is, flesh, make your case, and the flesh makes its case for whatever it is, and we're listening intently, we're taking mental notes, and we're visualizing what it would be like to act upon this impulse of the flesh, and pretty soon our imaginations get wrapped around what we're pondering, and then we turn from that and then say to the spirit, now make your case. But see, people that walk according to the Spirit, they don't behave that way. They let the spirit make his case, and they don't even let the flesh speak and make its case.

Imagine you're in a courtroom and you are the judge and you're judging on a case, and one side presents the evidence and they make their case and then the other side begins to make its case and you as the judge say to that other side, shut up.

I'm not interested in hearing your side. In fact, here's my decision on the matter. That's the way we are and should be according to the flesh if we're truly walking according to the flesh. We have an ear for the spirit and we want to hear what the spirit says, and we don't even want to occupy our minds and our attentions with what the flesh wants to say to us by way of making its case.

You say, wow, that just sounds so hard. what, I'll tell you something harder. What's even harder is to let the flesh make its case. And then say no.

one pastor said, a number of years ago, I heard him say lust is easiest to defeat at the first thought. Anger is easiest to defeat. At the very first thought. Self-pity is easiest to defeat at its first rising.

And we say no and refuse to even give it a fair hearing. What's That might be hard, but what's harder is to let lust come and entertain it and imagine what following that lust might look like or what that anger following that anger might look like, and we've all done this. We just imagine we're angry at someone and we're rehearsing this perfect speech that would just level that person to the ground. And we're just imagining all of that and just letting that thought carry from one thing to the next and then at the end of that to try to shut that thing down and say, oh no, I shouldn't do that.

That's way harder than at the first rising of lust or anger or self-pity or whatever the fleshly impulse to shut it down and not even give it a fair and equitable hearing. People who walk according to the spirit are biased against the flesh. They listen to the spirit, and when the flesh attempts to speak, it's there and it attempts to speak, but they don't even occupy their minds with whatever case the flesh wants to make. There's a 5th thing that it means to walk according to the spirit, and that is it means to occupy your mind with the things of the spirit.

So, we don't occupy ourselves with the things of the flesh, but we do occupy our minds with the things of the Spirit. He says in Romans 8:5, those who are according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. we set our minds on the things of the spirit. We've learned that this means to make something the absorbing object of thought, interest, and affection and purpose.

And so to set our mind on the things of the Spirit means Things like I, I will set my mind on the things that the Spirit has done. I will set my mind on the things that the Spirit says. And by the way, the Spirit speaks to us through his written word, God's written word. And most specifically, it's what we find in the gospel.

I will set my mind and allow my mind to be absorbed by these gospel things that the Spirit of God speaks and points to and has accomplished. I will set my mind on the things that the Spirit chooses to glorify, which is namely the person and the work of Jesus Christ. I will absorb my mind. I will let my mind be set.

And occupied with gospel truth, gospel promises, gospel blessings, and gospel love. I will set my mind. On these things. There are some.

And I think we all find ourselves in this at one time or another. who occupy themselves not with the things of the spirit, but with the things of this world. There are some who occupy their minds not with the things that the Spirit is pointing to and glorifying, which is namely the person and work of Jesus, but their attentions are occupied on themselves and upon their own performance and measuring and assessing their performance. When I was in seminary a number of years ago, I spent the good part of a year rarely actually honestly looking at Christ.

I spent most of my time just consumed with how I was doing spiritually and is there evidence of saving fruit in my life. And on one day it's like, oh, I performed pretty well. I think I'm probably a genuine believer and I'm not under God's condemnation, but the next day. I didn't perform so well, and I'm thinking, man, I'm not seeing the fruit that there ought to be if I'm a true believer.

And so from one day to the next, one day I was convinced that I was a truly born again child of God. And the next day, I wasn't so sure. And on some days, I was absolutely sure that I could not have been a child of God based upon my performance. And my whole absorption, my mind was occupied with me.

Examining me and measuring me and not gazing at the person in the work of Jesus Christ. What I've noticed, guys, is that when I gaze at Jesus, I never want to be holy any more than when I'm just staring at Him. When my eyes are fixed on him. And I know there's a place in scripture for self-examination that's affirmed, but we have to be very careful with that because even the holiest of saints will tell you that for every good thing, Christ-wrought thing that they find in themselves, they will find.

things that are of the flesh. They will find things that will unsettle them and disturb them, and if your orientation is upon yourself and what you're examining in yourself, when are you ever going to reach this site of glory, a place of confidence that you have been delivered from God's condemnation? I love what Charles Spurgeon says. His approach to anyone who came to him with any doubts is he didn't try to look under the hood and figure out, are you elect or non-elect?

And have you been regenerated yet or not? Have you been born again or not? Whoever it was that came to him with any doubts, he gave the same counsel to them. Listen to what he says.

He says, I do not urge you to look within to try and see whether this new birth is there. Instead of looking within thyself, look thou to Him who hangs on yonder cross. Dying the just for the unjust to bring us to God. Fix thou thine eyes on Him and believe in Him.

And when thou seest in thyself much that is evil, look away to him. And when doubts prevail, look to him. And when thy conscience tells thee of thy past sins, look to Him. And if we live our lives just gazing at Jesus, trusting in him to be our Lord and our Savior and our righteousness, and our liberation from condemnation, we will find springing up within us, a love for God.

Again, we do need to examine ourselves at times, but I'll tell you, you cannot go wrong by staring at Jesus. Just stare at Jesus. Just gaze at Him, and I promise you, when you stand before God at the judgment, I promise you God's not going to say to you, You stared at my son too much. You should have looked at yourself more.

You looked at my son too much. He's not going to say that. Look to Jesus, look to Jesus. When you find mess inside of you, look to Jesus, look to Jesus, be occupied.

People who walk according to the Spirit, they, their minds are absorbed with what the Spirit's pointing to, and that is Jesus. They're caught up in him and in the work he has done for them in accomplishing their salvation. There's a 6th thing that it means to walk according to the spirit. And that is it means to view fleshly mindedness as death.

We're now getting inside the minds of those who walk according to the spirit. Those who walk according to the spirit do something with their minds. And one of the things that they do with their minds is they view fleshly mindedness as actually death. They're walking according to the spirit.

What is the spirit's opinion of fleshly mindedness? The spirit says, Well, my opinion of fleshly mindedness is it's death. And so people who walk according to the spirit join the spirit in viewing fleshly mindedness as Actually death. This is one of the most striking statements that I've encountered anywhere in scripture, Romans 8:6.

Paul says for the mindset on the flesh is death. It is death. He doesn't say the mindset on the flesh will lead you one day to death. He does say that a few verses later in this passage, he says the mindset on the flesh is death.

not just something that leads there, but it is death. By its very definition, fleshly mindedness is death. and when he says death here, we know that he's probably not talking about physical death, fleshly mindedness is physical death. that's not what he's saying.

It's spiritual death, separation from God. He's actually going to elaborate in verse 7 and 8 on what he means by, by death, and we'll go there in just a second. but like in the book of Revelation when people are cast into the lake of fire, it says, and this is the second death. If you want to capture in part the essence of what Paul is saying, this might sound harsh to your ears, but let's say it this way, by way of paraphrase, the mindset on the flesh is hell.

It is hell. What is spiritual death? Guys, what is spiritual death? Spiritual death is separation from God.

It's hostility against God, it's insubordination to God, it's utter powerlessness before God. And so if I were to occupy my mind with the things of the flesh, I am now engaging in something that is by its very definition, death. It's death. It is death.

It won't just lead to death. It is the definition of death. It is the essence of hell itself. Look what he says in verses 7 and 8.

He says, For the mind set on the flesh is hostility towards God. This is a striking statement., to, to stop walking according to the Spirit and take a break from that and to let your mind be occupied with and to follow the leadings of the flesh. That's not just taking a break from holiness. In your moment of following the flesh, you are engaging in a hostile act against the God who has saved you.

Your flesh is in constant rebellion against God. And when you follow your flesh, you are joining your flesh in its rebellion against God. It is hostility toward God, literally into God that pierces to the very heart of God, as the Puritans would say, when we sin, we're striking God with our hands, for it does not subject itself to the law of God. It's in.

coordination to the very will of God, and it's not even able to do so. And those who are in the flesh cannot, they don't even have the power to please God. Fleshly mindedness is of its very essence, hostility against God, insubordination to God, utter powerlessness before God. That is the essence of spiritual death.

That is the essence of hell. Hell is full. Of hostility against God, insubordination to God, utter powerlessness before God. And if hell is a place of such hostility and subordination and complete powerlessness before God, All of us would say, I don't want to go there.

I don't want to go to a place like that. If you don't want to go to a place like that in some future day. Why did you go to a place like that this past week? And follow the beckonings of your flesh in its hostility against God, insubordination to God, and utter powerlessness before God.

When we give our minds to the flesh and follow it, we are behaving the way people in hell. Behave It is a taste of how. Our attitude ought to be that when our flesh beckons, we ought to just look at that and say that's, that is death. I'm not afraid that'll lead to, that is death.

Why would I want to do this death thing? This is hell. Why would I want to taste of hell? Hell is a literal place where there is literal fire, literal darkness, literal eternal torment.

In addition to those elements, hell is also a place of simply the continuation of hostility against God, insubordination to God, powerlessness before Him that that is an eternal extension of what already takes place here on Earth. Listen to CS Lewis as he describes. Something of the beginnings and the essence of hell, and he just uses the example of a grumbling mood. He said hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others, but you're still distinct from it.

You may even criticize it in yourself. And wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it.

But all that's left is the grumble itself going on forever like a machine. And each of us, he says, there is something growing, we would call it the flesh, which will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud. And those who walk according to the spirit, they recognize hell when they see it. Hell is insubordination, hostility, powerlessness before God.

And that's the way they view the flesh and fleshly mindedness and they're like, I don't want to. I don't want to do this death thing. I don't want to go to hell on a future day. I also don't want to enter into the very essence of hell and following my flesh.

In this moment, This is a radical way of looking at life. And the flesh and the spirit, but this is the very stark language that the apostle Paul uses. We're out of time, but let me just state the seventh thing that it means to walk according to the spirit. It means to think of spirit-mindedness as life and peace.

We got to end on a positive note here. It means to think of spirit mindedness as life in peace. Someone who walks according to the spirit, what their, their perspective is, is that if I minding the spirit, the things of the spirit, being absorbed and occupied with the truths and the blessings and the glories and the love and the extravagance that is in the gospel, that doesn't just lead to life and lead to peace. It is life.

And it is by its very definition. The essence of peace. He says, the mindset on the flesh is death, but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace. It is right now life and peace.

And so in a moment of temptation, the flesh beckons and, and it's, do I want to go in the way of death? Do I want to taste of hell itself? Or do I want in this moment, life and peace? Life speaks of vitality, energy, resurrection.

Peace speaks of wholeness, health and soundness of being, integrity, the absence of hostility against God and of him towards us, the absence of turmoil. It is the presence, the luxurious presence of relationship and of joy. And just as being fleshly minded is in itself the essence of death and of hell, being occupied with the things of the spirit is a foretaste of heaven. Itself there is more joy in the little finger of the least of the saints of heaven than there is in all of hell combined.

And when we set our minds on Jesus Christ and just get up tomorrow and I'm going to be absorbed with Him, I'm going to love Him, I'm going to walk in His love and this is what I'm going to think about. This is why I'm going to let my mind go. That is a taste of heaven. It is life.

It is, it is peace. And people who walk according to the spirit, this is, this is the way they think. And may God give us the grace to walk this way, and to think this way. And to see the stark contrast.

Between being fleshly minded And being spirit minded. Let's bow our heads together. We're going to take up an offering in just a moment. We encourage you to give as the Lord leads you to give, but Let's just pray together, God, we We don't think the way we ought to think.

We, our thinking is just so shaped by I don't know, the harebrained notions that we manufacture shaped by this world system. So much is fuzzy, so much is gray, where evil is called good and good is called evil. Lord, help us to not walk according to this world, to not walk according to The The prince and the power of the air, we would not walk according to our flesh that we would not even give our flesh a fair hearing, just Yes, When it speaks, we don't even entertain it. Why would we want to entertain death?

Why would we want to entertain hell? The very essence. Of what hell is all about. We choose life, we choose peace.

The vitality and the richness and the luxury and the wholeness, the togetherness, the relationship. comes from just being occupied with you, your love. Oh God, you're so good to us to provide these things for us, and then to give us your word to point these things out to us. Give us the grace to live according to what we have heard, to walk according to what we have heard.

Thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you, Lord. Receive these funds and do much with them for the glory of Jesus, and we commit ourselves to you at the same time, Lord, in Jesus' name. And all God's people said,