January 11, 2026 | The War Within

The War Within | Galatians Part 16

Galatians 5:16–25

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do 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. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. (ESV)

In “The War Within” from Galatians 5:16–25, Jed Gillis explains that the Christian life includes a real, ongoing conflict between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit. Paul’s call to “walk by the Spirit” is pictured as steady, intentional steps of faith, resting in God’s gospel promises and crying out to the Father in weakness, rather than turning inward to self-reliance. Jed stresses that walking by the Spirit does not remove sinful desires, but it does keep believers from carrying those desires to their destructive end. He frames “the flesh” as the self-reliant self that tries to secure safety, approval, and satisfaction apart from God, and he shows how that inner posture produces visible works like sexual sin, idolatry, substance-driven escape, and relational breakdown in jealousy, anger, factions, and envy. Paul’s warning about those who “practice” such things is not a call to earn God’s favor, but a sober reminder that habitual self-trust is incompatible with saving faith. The path forward is to be led by what the Spirit loves, living in gospel freedom that expresses itself through love and service within the church.

Transcript of The War Within | Galatians Part 16

God Delights in You

Jed Gillis: We just sang those he saves are his delight. If you're a believer in Jesus today, do you believe you're God's delight? Precious in his holy sight. We sang for my Savior loves Me so. That's why he keeps us. If your trust is in Jesus, God delights in you, and that's why he keeps you. That's grace.

That's what we've been talking about in Galatians. It's the grace, the unmerited favor of God towards his people. That's what we'll continue talking about today.

What To Do If You Have Questions About the Teaching

Jed Gillis: Before we dive into the text though, I wanna say one big picture thought about our teaching times here at Berean. Obviously when we come to a passage of scripture like Galatians five, and there's things like the fruit of the spirit in there, and many of you have been in church for decades, some of you much longer than I've been alive, and you've heard a lot of different interpretations, a lot of different things, and, and perhaps you'll hear things in a teaching time at Berean and you say, that's not the way I've heard that before. I'm curious about that.

Well, just a thought about what, what we do here. I don't try to give you every possible interpretation. That would take way too long, and it would be fairly confusing for people who haven't heard those before. So if you hear me or another one of our elders here speaking and you hear something you say, that's not what I've thought that passage meant, that is a great opportunity to have further conversations because we might be missing something. Always good to have that conversation. You might have misunderstood it before, you might have misunderstood what we're saying here. If something like that comes up and you say, I'd like to hear more about that, I always thought it meant something different.

That's a great chance, one, to talk to the people around you to further conversation about God's word, or to engage, like John mentioned, we have a, a podcast that really is basically a, a sermon review. It's going deeper. A lot of times that's answering a question like, I thought this passage meant this. We go deeper into it to say, okay, what's what's right about that? What's maybe not right about that? We try to go deeper in those conversations.

The whole point of that, it's the reason it's titled Reverberate, is that we want the truth of God's word to go into the body and not just die, but bounce around and accomplish all of its purposes. So if there's something that comes up like that and you have a question or something you've heard before, that doesn't sound like what someone here teaches, come and talk to us, bring us the question. We'll be glad to talk to you. And if you have the question, probably somebody else has the same question and we wanna make sure we have a chance to address that in other contexts.

So that's part of what we are doing as we go through the fruit of the spirit, which won't be this week, but it'll be next week, there'll be things you might say, I've heard something a little bit different. Let's continue that conversation and allow God's word to accomplish its purpose in transforming us.

Reading Galatians 5:16-25

Jed Gillis: So this morning, as we look at Galatians five, we're gonna begin in verse 16. Paul says, but I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

Now, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do 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, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Don't Use Freedom as an Opportunity for the Flesh

Jed Gillis: This morning we're gonna focus our attention on verses 16 down through verse 21. But I wanted to read the whole context. Actually, my original plan was to go through all of that that I just read. And the more I looked at it, the more I realized there was no way, unless we were gonna stay here until two o'clock in the afternoon, which we're not.

So this is in some ways part one of next week's message as well. It's good for us to stop and look at the first section and consider the battle that we feel within ourselves. Paul is expanding the point he made that we talked about last week. He said, Christ saved you for freedom, but don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh to attack. Instead through love serve one another. So now he's gonna take that and expand it and say, how do we do that? How do we live in such a way that we're avoiding opportunities for the flesh to attack and we're through love serving one another.

Now he uses some phrases which may feel like cliches to us. Maybe we've heard it frequently, and we have to pause and say, what does this really mean?

Walk By the Spirit

Jed Gillis: So the first one is we walk by the spirit. From verse 16, I want you to think about that picture. Think about the picture of walking. Paul uses that picture on purpose. It's used throughout the New Testament. Think about what it means to walk. It's not usually exceptionally difficult. He doesn't say sprint by the Spirit. He doesn't say run a marathon by the Spirit, although it can feel hard and endurance can be difficult. He says, walk. A simple thing that since you were probably one or two, you've been able to do it.

Walking is not incredibly difficult, but it does take intentional consistency. You don't accidentally walk right? I accidentally sit on the couch and do nothing, or maybe not so accidentally. But I don't walk accidentally. Walking takes intentional consistency. It does take effort, but it's not incredibly difficult. That's the picture he uses.

Walking is not complacent. You think since, since we have smart watches that exist in our world, now you, you see people, and maybe you've done this where you say, I'm gonna try to get this number of steps in a day. Now, if you pick a number, that's not incredibly easy. If you go for a hundred, you'll get it all the time. Sure. But if you pick, say, 10,000 or 15,000, you don't get it by being complacent. You don't get it by remembering it at eight in the morning and remembering it again at nine at night, unless you happen to have a very active lifestyle in some other way.

Right? You have to intentionally say, I am going to walk over and over and over again. I'm not going to be complacent. I'm going to walk. That's the picture Paul uses. Walk by the Spirit.

So that draws us to say, what does he mean by the Spirit? How does he use that in Galatians? And he uses it several different ways, but I wanna draw your attention to two specific places.

If you flip back to Galatians chapter three, Paul talks at the beginning of the chapter in verse two, he says, the way when you received salvation, you received the Spirit. Says, well, how did that happen? Verse two says, let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by 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?

So he says, God gave the spirit at conversion and here's how he did it. You heard the truth of the gospel. You trusted in it. You had faith. You rested in the truth of God's favor towards you, and that's how you received the spirit in the first place.

Now, there's a few other references and it's a good study if you want to go back and say, where all does Paul use the word spirit in Galatians? You'll find more than what we have time to talk about here, but if you go to chapter four and verse six. Paul says, because you are sons, because you are God's children, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba Father. So the spirit coming into your soul and the spirit working through you is how your cry in distress when life is difficult, isn't to cry to your yourself to solve all your problems, but to cry Abba, Father.

So if we take those two pictures and go back to chapter five, he says, walk by the spirit from the beginning of your salvation, hearing the truth of the gospel and resting or trusting in it. And then as you continue in your life, in your life with God, when there is distress, when there's difficulties, instead of looking to yourself, you cry out to God because of the power of the Spirit. When he says walk by the Spirit, he's saying continually step forward with consistency in your life, in a way that hears God's promise and rests in it, and cries out to God as your only sufficient refuge in distress. Walk by the Spirit.

And You Will Not Gratify the Desires of the Flesh

Jed Gillis: And he continues to say, what happens if you walk by the Spirit? You will not gratify the desires of the flesh. I want you to notice one thing right off that is going to be really important in just a minute. He does not say, walk by the Spirit and you will not experience the desires of the flesh. He does not say, walk by the Spirit and you will not have the desires of the flesh.

We'd love that right? We wouldn't be able to sing some of the songs we sang today though. 'cause we sing, prone to Wander. Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. We're acknowledging when we sing that we're saying I feel some desires of the flesh, but I don't wanna follow them.

That's why I love the last verse we sang of that song. Oh, that day when freed from sinning. Because the battle he describes here is not true forever for the believer in Jesus, but it is true now.

He says, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. So we have to say, wait, if it doesn't mean you won't have them, if it doesn't mean you won't experience them.

What does it mean to gratify? Literally, you, you could translate this as translated to other places you will not fulfill, or you will not complete the desires of the flesh.

I, I wanna read from James chapter one because a similar word is used there. I think this gives us a hint at what he's talking about. In James one, he says, everyone is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. That sounds similar, right? Desires of the flesh. Then desire, when it has conceived, give his birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death. So that word that's translated there, fully grown is very similar, slight form difference, but very similar to the word here that says you will not gratify the desires.

Notice in James, he says, you feel a desire. That desire, when it's conceived, you reach out for it. It gives birth to sin, but then there's sin already. But there's a next step sin when it is fully grown. When it is completed or fulfilled, brings forth death.

So when Paul says, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, he's not saying you will never sin. Thank God for that.

He's saying there's a kind of fulfilling or gratifying or of bringing sin all the way to its ugly end. That will not happen for believers as we walk by the spirit. Or we could use his language from other places as we are led by the spirit or as we are connected to the spirit so that we bear fruit.

Now, I, I imagine you have a question like I would have then, which is. Wait, so how do I know if I am gratifying the desires of the flesh? Like if I've already fulfilled that or if I'm just like on the way there. And here's the point. Paul doesn't actually address that specifically. In fact, notice the back half of verse 16 isn't even a command. The commands in the first part, walk by the Spirit, and you won't gratify the desires of the flesh like this.

In other words, Paul is not trying to get you to have a really clear, I know exactly where the line is when I've gratified this desire, I've gone too far. I know exactly where that line is. He's not trying to give you that line. What he's trying to do is tell you there is a danger and this battle exists if you walk by the Spirit, you will not gratify all the way to its ugly end, the desires of the flesh.

There is a Battle Between the Flesh and the Spirit

Jed Gillis: Now we'll come back to that in a minute, but let's keep going and see what he says in the next verse. So if we put one line over verse 16, it's walk by the spirit. If we put one line under over verse 17, we need to feel the battle. He says, the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.

That means as a believer in Jesus, and maybe that doesn't refer to everybody in this room, we'll come back to that in a minute. But if you're here saying, my trust, my faith is in the undeserved favor of God through Jesus Christ. As a believer in Jesus, you experience two types of desires. Paul describes them here as desires of the flesh and desires of the Spirit, and they're both experienced at least at times as internal desires.

In other words, you have things you say, I want that, and it's a desire of God's Holy Spirit working within you. You'll have other things that come up that say, I want that, and it's a desire of the flesh working within you. That's what it feels like. Paul doesn't give us this pie in the sky idea that once you're saved, you'll never have any impulse that feels like I want to do the wrong thing. In fact, he says the exact opposite. There will be a battle between two kinds of desires.

So we should say, wait, what exactly do you mean by the flesh, Paul? And we could probably do a few months working through text on that. But let's say it this way. When Paul talks about the flesh in Galatians, he's talking about the self that feels emptiness and tries to solve it through self-reliance. If I were just to put one phrase, it'd be that the flesh is the self-reliant self.

Say, where do you get that from? Flip back, chapter two. If you're familiar with this text, we get to verse 15. Paul says, we ourselves are Jews by birth and not gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So not by relying on me in any way in my performance, but relying faith on Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. Because by works of the law, no one will be justified. Literally, that says no flesh will be justified.

When Paul is making his point to Peter, and the first real statement of justification through trust in God's grace and not myself. He says, Peter, we don't trust in ourselves. We trust in Jesus because by works of the law, no flesh, no self-reliant trust will ever be justified or go to chapter four. This is the last time before what we read in chapter five, that Paul used the phrase, according to the flesh and contrasted it with both promise and spirit. Verse 23. He says, the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise, and he does it again in verse 29. Just as at that time, he who was born according to the flesh, persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit.

Now, when we went through that text, we recognized the person he is referring to born according to the flesh was Abraham and Sarah trying to rely on themselves to bring about God's promise of blessing. That's why it was according to the flesh, because it was self-reliant. They were resting in their abilities as opposed to the one that was according to the promise, which said, God has said this, and I rest a trust in what he has said.

So when Paul says in chapter five, the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, he's saying, believers experience desires that come from our reliance on ourselves, our trust in ourselves to fill the emptiness that we feel in our souls.

So desires of the flesh then are desires built on our self-reliance to do things like control our own safety or reputation or our own pleasure. They're all the self-reliant desires built on proving myself to be good enough or measuring up so that I can have approval.

Now, notice I didn't say that a desire of the flesh was a desire for safety. I said it was a desire to control your own safety. I want safety and you want safety and nothing will ever change that, but there's only one place to find it, and that's in God. I can't rely on myself for that.

I didn't say it was the desire to, for reputation. Scripture literally says it's good to be blameless. It's good to be well thought of, but the desire of the flesh is the desire to rely on myself to justify myself by my performance.

I didn't say a desire of the flesh is a desire for pleasure. Actually, God presents in scripture you should want the greatest, deepest pleasure you can possibly have, and that's only found in Jesus Christ. It is relying on myself to guarantee or control these things. That's a desire of the flesh.

And the contrast here is the desires of the spirit. Now, he doesn't list these here, but we can pull them from other passages. The spirit praises the son. That's one desire the spirit has is to lift up Jesus Christ. The spirit fills us with a desire for the Father, Abba Father. The Spirit fills us with love for one another. He desires that. James four tells us the spirit is jealous for us. One of the spirit's desires is for you.

The desires of the spirit aren't built on self-reliance. They're built on total reliance on God or complete rest in your soul for what God has done.

Now, we'll talk more about the fruit of the Spirit next week, but right now notice where Paul starts, these desires battle within you. Now, if you're not a believer in Jesus, you experience an internal battle too, but it's a different kind of battle.

The difference might be subtle, but it is different because apart from God's spirit, the battle we feel is between different ways that we can be self-reliant. We might battle and say, I'm going to be really kind and good to everybody around me so that they think well of me, so that my soul is safe because I did it.

And we might say, forget that people are hard. I'm just gonna get whatever I want. And you might feel tension between those two things, but they're both ways to rely on myself.

You might feel a tension between your conscience that says, I know this is wrong and I keep doing it. And the part of you that says, but I really want to, that's not exactly the battle he's talking about here. Apart from the spirit, that's where we are before the believer. There's something else. There's not just a battle between different ways to be self-reliant.

There's a battle between relying on myself for my safety and approval and reputation and pleasure, or saying I trust fully in the promise of God. For all of those things, that battle is within the believer.

So Paul says, these two desires battle and notice the way ends for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Now, he's not saying you can never do something you want. He says we have desires of the flesh. Obviously, there are times that we sin, so we manage to do something according to that desire. We have desires of the spirit working within us, and there are times when you genuinely as a believer, please God, so you do something you want to do. But his point is that this side of heaven, whether as a believer in Jesus, whether you pursue sin or whether you pursue godliness, you will always find resistance.

When you say, I wanna be godly, the desires of the flesh pull at you, it'd be really nice to rely on myself. If you say, forget it, I'm gonna go sin. There's this nagging sensation as a believer that you say, but I don't want to just chase my own way. I really do want what God wants, this side of heaven. You will find resistance.

Be Led by the Desires of the Spirit

Jed Gillis: So Paul says, verse 16, walk by the spirit, verse 17. There's a real battle. Feel that battle inside of you. Verse 18. If you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

If I put one short phrase over this, I'd say follow his joy. Follow the things the spirit loves in the context. When he says, if you are led by the spirit, that's what it means. It means you're guided in your walk, your daily decisions, your thoughts, your actions, you're guided by the desires of the spirit, by what he loves. By what he enjoys.

It doesn't mean that you pursue the things that you do godliness in order to gain favor. That would undermine everything we've said through Galatians.

It does mean you pursue the kind of things that give God and give the spirit joy, and you want to participate in that joy.

When this phrase, sometimes this phrase gets used weird, and people talk about being led by the Spirit, and it can almost sound like the crazier something is, the more likely it is to come from God. Like I just felt led by the spirit to do this absolutely insane thing and it worked out well. That's not his point here at all.

His point is when you come to decide what am I going to do with my life? When you take your walk and you say, I walk this way, or I walk this way, what makes that decision? And he drives you to say, look to what gives the spirit joy. Look to what the Spirit desires and be led by that walk that way.

Same kind of language happens in Second Corinthians chapter four. See here, if we, if we drew back, we could say from verse 13, Paul says, through love serve one another. And then he says, so walk according to the leading of the Spirit. That's how through love, we serve one another. In second Corinthians four, Paul says this, what we proclaim is not us, but Jesus and ourselves as your servants, for Jesus' sake.

Well, why does Paul do that? Why does he serve them? Verse for the God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. In second Corinthians four, Paul says, the spirit has so opened my eyes to the beauty of the gospel in Jesus Christ. That's what drives me. I want that. I want the pleasure that he has in the gospel. I want to enjoy Jesus and the grace of God. I want to rest in it. And because he rests in it, he serves the Corinthians.

He's doing the same thing here in Galatians, but directed at them. He says, you need to serve. How does that happen? The Spirit opened your eyes miraculously to see the beauty and the worth of the gospel in Jesus Christ of the grace that God has given you. And when you see it and you say, that is wonderful. I want more of that joy. I want more of that peace. I want more of that love and patience and faithfulness, and we'll get to that next week. I want more of that. And as you pursue that, as you're led by the Spirit, you are serving others. And he says, here, you are not under the law.

If the desires and the joys of the Holy Spirit of God are drawing you and guiding you, then you're not under the law in several important ways. One, you're not under the law. You're not under the curse of the law as judgment. Praise God for that.

Praise God that you look at the law and you don't have to fear God's judgment if you are resting in his grace through Jesus. If you're led by the spirit, if you say, I want that. I want the joys that the Spirit has. You're not under the law as judgment. You're not under the curse of the law as as futile as never enough. You don't have to look at scripture and say, well, I never measure up to that. I'm never good enough. God might tolerate me, but that's all I've got. If you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law like that.

You're not under the law as chains. Like I'm stuck and I have to follow God, but I really want to do something else. Well, if you're led by the Spirit, you're not under the law like that. You say He delights in this and I delight in what he has Joy in. You're led by the spirit. If you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

So when Paul says, how do you through love serve one another? He says, you walk by the spirit. It's just a day by day thing consistent, but it's not really that difficult. It's just consistent effort. You walk by the spirit knowing there's a real battle within you between desires to be self-reliant and desires to trust and rest in the grace of God. And if you follow the desires, the joys, the Spirit has, you are led by the Spirit and therefore not under the law.

The Works of the Flesh Are Evident

Jed Gillis: So then Paul turns and says, well, it's really hard to see desires, right? You notice that when you look into yourself, you go, I'm not even really sure what motivated me to do that thing. And that's within you. It's a lot harder when it's. A friend or a spouse or a child, you say they did this thing and I don't know what on earth motivated them. Actually, that's not the problem. Usually we think we do know, and we might be wrong.

But it's awfully hard to see the battles and it can be subtle. And you say, am I being self-reliant or not? I'm not really sure. I don't think so. I think, I don't know. So Paul takes us to something that's more clear. Notice how he starts in verse 19. Now, the works of the flesh are evident. He's like the desires of the flesh. They may be hard to spot. It may be hard to know, did you struggle and fall? Did you really gratify the desire of the flesh? It's hard to know exactly how that works.

But Paul says, let me tell you some things that are obvious, some results that come from these self-reliant desires. Notice this is not a list of things to avoid in order to gain God's favor. If you go out today thinking this list, these are the things you've gotta stop doing so that God will be pleased with you so that he'll have favor on you and delight in you, you missed Paul's point.

But he goes to this list and we can divide 'em up into certain categories. You have three that basically refer to sexuality, okay? Says immorality. This is the broadest term for any kind of immorality, anything outside of God's design for sexuality. He uses the word impurity, refers to unnatural sensual actions. He uses the term sensuality. This is used as like out of control, just I do whatever I want. I'm not worried about what anybody thinks. He takes these three and he starts there. And there's much we could say here because the Bible has a rich and deep understanding of human bodies and sexuality as designed by our loving creator.

But to trace Paul's main point, I want you to think on where these sins come from, and I would argue they're built on self-reliance. You say, I feel emptiness and I can't seem to fill it, so I'm gonna go outside of God's plan to fill the needs I have. I don't feel enough pleasure, so I'm gonna go outside of God's plan to rely on myself to get the pleasure I think I have to have.

Or immorality is often just a numbing agent. We say, I don't feel good about something in my life, and I'm not running to God for that. So what do I do? I run to something that makes me feel better.

Paul points the readers to say the works of the flesh come from the self-reliant desires of the flesh.

Same thing can be said for the last two in his list. ESV translates them drunkenness and orgies. The last word, that's probably the wrong connotation for us, think wild partying lifestyle. That can mean you're getting sloppy drunk downtown with a whole bunch of people. That can mean a lot of different things, but he points us to substance abuse essentially, and says, well, why do you, why do people do that?

One reason is because instead of finding rest in a God who can truly give rest for your souls, you want to forget it all. Just want to escape to rely on something you can do.

But those aren't the only categories. He has a section in there, idolatry and sorcery. These refer to like pagan occult practices, which if you don't know, are on the rise again in our culture today.

Idolatry is worship directed toward the wrong thing. Sorcery the word here. It's actually where we get pharmaceutical from. The idea was an attempt to create some kind of spiritual experience, which could be through drugs or any number of other things. Tim Keller said, the first of these idolatry is providing an inadequate substitute for God, and the second is faking the work of the spirit. To get a spiritual experience without actually having the Spirit give it to you.

So Paul points them to another kind of work of the flesh and says, if you are dependent on yourself, if you're self-reliant, you follow the desires of the flesh to solve the need you feel in your soul. You'll turn to all these different kinds of things. As humans, we feel our limits. We feel how weak our self-reliance actually is. So we look to manipulate the supernatural realm through things like superstition, through things like pagan worship.

Now, interestingly, probably we, many of us, not all of us, many of us would say. Yes, all that about immorality. Good. I don't wanna do that Pretty good on pagan witchcraft. I don't do do that. Not usually sloppy drunk. So we're okay.

But there's eight other words used here, all of which describe the opposite of serving one another through love. Enmity, strife, jealousy. Anger rivalries, dissensions divisions, envy.

Briefly, we'll go through them. As we do notice, all of these come from a desire built on self-reliant, grasping. How can I get what I want? How can I get what I have to have?

Enmity is an attitude. It's an attitude of being an opponent with someone. You ever around somebody who always feels like they fight you, they're always against you. Maybe it's not like a real strong fight. It's just no matter what it is you're trying to do, like they're against it. That's enmity.

And the result of that is the next word, strife. You have a lack of peace. Nobody likes to be in a, a community, in a group of people where everybody's always kind of posturing against each other. But that comes from I'm going to rely on myself and I have to be comfortable, safe, approved no matter what. I don't give of myself to someone else. I grasp.

Jealousy is the attitude of a a hungry ego. People don't praise me enough. Why do we need that? Because we're so reliant on the praise of others to give our soul safety that if others don't give it to us, we have to beg for it.

Or the next one result, we get angry. He uses rivalries when we're reliant on ourself and we're so competitive against other believers instead of through love serving one another. It's how do I make sure I get what I deserve? How do I make sure my team wins? Rivalries.

Dissensions and divisions basically just say we split up into permanent teams against one another. We have factions. These are all the results of following the desires of the flesh of self-reliance instead of what he's been saying throughout the whole book: total rest in the grace of God to you.

And he goes on to say and things like these. That's a significant phrase. 'cause he tells you this is not a checklist. I didn't do any of those things. I guess I'm good. No, he says there's something in common with all of those. And you have to avoid everything that's things like that.

What's in common? Instead of resting in the grace of God, it's self-reliance. To control my own life, to make sure my soul is okay, I will depend on me.

Those Who Practice Such Things Will Not Inherit the Kingdom of God

Jed Gillis: And he concludes with this warning, those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. It says, those who do such things in the, in the ESV, that's an okay translation as well. The tense there implies those who practice, those who habitually follow these sins.

Please don't miss the truth of God's word. You'll hear stuff in our world all around us. Sometimes people will say things like, well, we'll all get to heaven. We just take our own paths. That's not what scripture says. Scripture teaches that there are some who will inherit the kingdom of God and some who will not inherit the kingdom of God. It's a warning.

Now, maybe you think, Paul, you've said all this about grace. How on earth can you say that? We're a whole book into talking about grace and now you're gonna say those who practice such things don't get the kingdom? Like Paul, what happened to your grace?

I would say it's exactly his teaching about grace that actually lets him say it because his teaching about grace is this. There's no good work you can do that can earn the kingdom of God. You rest, you trust in the favor of God demonstrated on the cross. These are all works though that flow from relying on yourself, from not trusting in grace, but trusting in you.

So what he's really saying is he's pointed you to the fruit, he's pointed you to the works that come from self-reliance, and he's saying if you rely on yourself, then you are not resting in grace.

Paul is not condemning. Please hear me carefully. He is not condemning people who experience a battle and struggle. How do I know that? Verse 17, he already said it. The desires of the flesh are against the desires of the spirit. He already said, you're going to feel this battle inside you. He is not condemning those who are in the battle, who struggle and who sometimes fall.

He is not calling the Galatians to perfect performance in order to be justified or approved or loved by God. That would undermine everything he said in the book.

What he is doing is saying that if you don't truly rest in the grace of God, then you will see this kind of result in your life, the list he just gave and other things like these, and that trust in yourself will never save you. It will never be enough.

We like to think I can just do a little better and it'll be enough. That's not Paul's message. Paul's message is, if you don't rest in the grace of God, you will find these kinds of self-reliant works and you will if you don't rest in God's grace, not inherit the kingdom of God.

Without rest in God's grace, we will be a community that does not experience joy, that doesn't have the joy of the Spirit. Without rest In the grace of God, we'll be a community of people that devolve into fighting one another on separate sides and separate teams, that bite and devour one another. That's verse 15. And not a community of people who, through love serve one another.

But as we rest in God's grace, and when I say we, I really mean all of us individually. So as you rest in God's grace, you will feel the battle. You will.

Some of you maybe be, are discouraged, because you have desires for things you know aren't right and you can't seem to beat it. Because what you think beating it means is to never feel it again. I wish that were true. I do. And one day it will be true. But what God calls you to is to recognize that as you rest in God's grace, you will feel the battle. Brothers and sisters, that means there are people around you who really rest in God's grace and you will see them fighting sin. You will see them sometimes wanting to sin. That doesn't mean they're not a believer. That means the battle's real.

How do you help them? How do you help them to rest in the grace of God instead of trusting in themselves? As we rest in God's grace, we will feel the battle, but we will not be ruled by a dull legalism. We won't be ruled by numbing pleasure, whether it's immorality or drunkenness or entertainment, all of which can numb us.

Instead, we will love one another out of the true freedom of our souls in Christ. And we say, my soul is safe because I rest in the grace of God through Jesus. So I can love this brother or sister even if because they are in a battle, they hurt me.

We live in a culture where so many people would say, I've been hurt by church. And they have. And if you look to God's people, even that. To say, I will manage my relationships well so that my soul is safe because nobody will hurt me. You'll find out, one, you'll be hurt and it will not satisfy you. Many times people who say, I've been hurt so bad, I can't really love God, I can't really love his people, they need to come back to say, no, my soul is safe In the grace of God, no matter what people did to me. That is where we find strength to walk by the Spirit, to bear the fruit of the spirit, love and joy and peace no matter what happened.

So I ask you as we close, do you walk day after day, resting in God's grace and led by the joys of the spirit? That's the command found in this passage. Walk by the Spirit.

Follow the joys he has and if your soul has tasted that rest, pursue God for more of it. He has more to give. Trying to find rest through self-reliance tastes bitter and will never work. The rest of God's totally undeserved favor for you is sweet.

I'll invite you just to take a moment, respond to God in prayer. Maybe you say, I've never trusted in the grace of God to me through Jesus. I've never rested in him. I've only relied on myself. This is a great time to handle that with God or to talk with some of us afterwards. We would love to talk with you. Just take a moment and respond to the truth of God's word, and then we'll sing.