Changed into his Likeness 15

By Pastor Samuel Chess

Grace Emmanuel Church

Port St. Lucie, Florida

I. The Principle of Divine Exchange

II. The Principle of Deliverance

1) Deliverance from this present evil age

2) Deliverance from the bondage of the Law

3) Deliverance from self and selfishness

4) Deliverance from the flesh

5) Deliverance from the world

Just before Christmas we looked at:

Deliverance from Self and Selfishness

(Galatians 2:20) …… I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (NIV)

Either get a C/D in the back or you can download the complete written sermon at GraceEmmanuelChurch.com.

Now the last Sunday of the 2003; as you are seriously beginning to think about changes that need to happen in you for the year ahead let me talk to us all about a very appropriate subject:

Deliverance from the flesh!

All of these sermons come out of the book of Galatians in the New Testament:

1) Galatians 1:4 - God has delivered us from this present evil age

2) Galatians 2:9 - God has delivered us from the law

3) Galatians 2:20 - We can be delivered form self and selfishness

4) Galatians 5:24 -

(Galatians 5:24) Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. (NIV)

(Galatians 5:24) And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (NKJV)

Leaves us all at year’s end with an obvious question: Have you crucified the flesh with it’s passions and desires: it’s a tell-tale sign of belonging to Christ Jesus!

I. Identifying the Flesh

We often call our skin, our flesh. This is obviously not talking about being delivered from our skin. Sometimes we use the term flesh to mean the mass of the body. About this time of the year many people are wanting to be delivered from that kind of flesh…..When the New Testament talks about our flesh at the same time it is referring to our spiritual lives it always means our old sinful life,

The “flesh” refers to how our old sinful life expresses itself inside of us and through us often affecting other people and things on the outside.

Whether you particularly like it or not, every one of us has a flesh side, the left-over effects of what sin and the fall left in your life and character. To the non-Christian it just defines who they are. As long as they are not breaking the law…or getting caught breaking the law…they are free to indulge whatever inner urge they feel. There is no right or wrong actions; whatever you do “in your private life”, as long as those with you are consenting to your actions, and the actions feel right at the time, who can condemn you?

Well….God condemns certain types of actions! He doesn’t worry a lot about who may be disenfranchised by his condemnation. He doesn’t give much thought to political correctness.

He simply says; These actions are right….and these actions are wrong. If you’re going to be a follower of me…the wrong actions have to go!

The wrong actions have to be replaced by right actions….that’s what it means to be a follower of Christ. It doesn’t matter if the majority in your society say the wrong action is no longer wrong, it doesn’t matter if part of the church itself redefines what Scripture says is wrong as now being right:

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:24)

In case you would feel better if you had a list of what kind of things God is referring to as “the sinful nature with it’s desires and passions” I have good news for you. God gives just such a list in this same Galatians 5 passage:

(Galatians 5:19-21) Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (NKJV)

This isn’t just a random list of sins…..there are actually four distinct categories:

1) Sexual immorality:

Adultery (outside marriage covenant) , fornication (all sex without a license), uncleanness, lewdness ( both inside the mind and outside the body)

Idolatry (putting anything on a level with God) , sorcery (focus on satan)

3) Divisiveness:

hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders… (every broken personal relationship, everything that divides homes and families, everything that divides churches and Christian fellowship is a product of the flesh!)

(1 Corinthians 3:3-4) Because you are still in the flesh: for when there is envy and division among you, are you not still walking after the way of the flesh, even as natural men? (Very few churches ever break apart because of differences in theology, most all division comes as a result of people walking in the flesh)

4) Self Indulgence:

drunkenness, revelries, and the like (unrestrained fleshly appetites and desires)

(1 Corinthians 9:27) But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

( That’s definitely not the American way!)

Now here’s where the rubber meets the road!… Regardless of what your peers in society tell you…regardless of what the laws of your country say are acceptable or unacceptable, regardless of what any church council declares to be right or wrong…..God says:

.. that those who practice (present tense.. continuous action) such things will not inherit the kingdom of God!

II. Reckoning or flesh to be dead!

If you are struggling with any of the works of the flesh you need not feel alone. Look to your right and to your left and you will discover others who have spent a lifetime struggling with the flesh.

(Ephesians 2:3) among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. (NKJV)

However; God is very clear in giving a solution to “living in the flesh”.

In Romans 7 Paul talked about his battle with the flesh:

(Romans 7:18) For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. (NKJV)

(Romans 8:1) There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (NKJV)

Notice the condition for not feeling condemnation for walking according to the flesh is to walk according to the Spirit. You need to also know that there is a very clear distinction between the old way of simply giving into the desires of the flesh and the new way of walking according to the Spirit. The believer isn’t given the option of choosing which path he would like to follow. Each of us have the responsibility to leave the path of the flesh behind and walk squarely in the path of the Spirit.

(Romans 8:6-8) For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace: Because the mind of the flesh is opposite to God; it is not under the law of God, and is not able to be: So that those who are in the flesh are not pleasing to God.

If you are anything like me at this point of the year you are shifting into introspective mode. It’s wonderful to look back on the last year and see progress on the inside of you…not necessarily what you allow people to see on the outside, but what you know is really on the inside. That’s real victory to know you entered the year with certain sinful characteristics that you are not dragging into the new year.

But in everyone of us, there are still those fleshly things that God so want us to put under the control of the Holy Spirit. These aren’t things we advertise to others. We hide them deep inside ourselves. In fact we often live under the illusion that the people around us are completely blind to them.

I’ve seen people get so used to living with sin’s of the flesh in their attitudes and actions that they finally just accept them as part of their personality. They stick their head in the sand and profess that God has done all for them he is able to do. If someone doesn’t like their attitudes or action; then obviously, that someone has the problem.

If you are approaching ‘04 and you know you are bound by some sin of the flesh….I challenge you on the truth of the God‘s Word; don’t let the sin’s of 03,02,01 become the standard for ‘04. Whatever that something is that has repeatedly interrupted your fellowship with God…..don’t you think it’s time to stop dragging it around?

The only solution for sin from God’s perspective is to execute it. That what Jesus did to erase the guilt of our sins. His crucifixion took the place of our death for our sins.

Remember: the process of crucifixion started with Jesus but it continues to reverberate through our lives:

(Romans 6:6) For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- (NIV)

(Romans 6:11) In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (NIV)

(Galatians 5:24) Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.

How do we go about crucifying the flesh?

III. Crucifying the Flesh?

(Galatians 5:16-25) So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (NIV)

There are two complete opposites in this whole passage:

1) Walking in the flesh-gratifying the desires of the sinful nature

2) Walking in the Spirit; living by the Spirit; keeping in step with the Spirit

These are mutually exclusive… you can’t do both at the same time. You have to stop walking in the flesh to be able to walk in the Spirit. If you stop walking by the Spirit you are back to walking by the flesh.

For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other…

The only solution to the sinful nature is to “wack” it. Execution….specifically crucifixion is the only permanent solution to the flesh. Crucifixion is not a Sunday School picnic…

Nobody said it was going to be fun. Peter said this:

(1 Peter 4:1-2) Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. (NKJV)

Crucifixion is not painless. Deliverance from the flesh will not come in a “suffering free”

bottle.

Let’s just imagine that your sin of the flesh is the fleshly sin of category one….

Sexual immorality. Whether it be an affair outside your marriage, fornication, any sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage, or mental immorality through a computer screen or a printed page. How do you go about “crucifying” the sinful behavior?

Next time the temptation comes, you have an option: Give in to it…that’s the easy path, the wimpy path, the path away from the leadership of the Spirit, the path to personal destruction.

Or you can figuratively drive a nail in your hand, a second stronger temptation: another nail, a nail in your foot…. Won’t that hurt???? Of course it will hurt. Nobody said saying no to temptation was easy. But the pain of crucifying the sin now will far outweigh the pain of continuing on in it. An the initial pain now in saying no to your sin will bring the future victory of being delivered from it’s bondage.

And the more you more away from walking in the flesh the more you are energized by; lead by, and in-filled with the Spirit replacing that bent to sin with a bent toward righteousness.

Conclusion:

What do you say we end the year with a good, old, fashioned crucifixion?