Freedom | In the Spirit

We good? It's spring, it's spring in Kentucky, let's go, let's go. Hey, if you got your Bibles, and I hope you do, go to Galatians chapter five. We're gonna pick up right there here in a minute. Our key word again is freedom. I wanna add my voice to those who have already said this. Happy Mother's Day, all right? Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. Let's give them a hand. Hallmark gave you a holiday. You deserve way more. You deserve way more than that. So, hope we can honor you today. My mom is an amazing, remarkable person. The way I like to describe it is she's very capable. She has more degrees than Fahrenheit. I mean, she just loves to learn and things like that. But one of the things that she is very capable of is growing things. She is an avid gardener. And I would love to tell you that growing up, I really appreciated that. I did not, because what that meant is I was an avid digger of holes. That's what that meant for me, is I had to dig holes. And the thing was, we lived in a lot of apartments, so I'm pretty sure we planted stuff on ground that was not our property. Like, mom, why are we out here?

This doesn't even belong to us. And so, to this day, one of my favorite things to do is to take one of my three sons, or all my three sons, slow down the truck to about five to 10 miles per hour, shove them out the door at her house and make them go do yard work for her, because I have paid my dues. And I am not a gardener, like, that's not my thing, but because I grew up with her, I can at least tell you the difference between these two things, fruit and weeds. One of them you cultivate, the other you kill. Now, for me, this time of year, I start doing a whole bunch of research this time of year on, like, what's the most nuclear weed killer there is, because I'm just so tired of the weeds coming up everywhere. And so, I give a lot of my time and attention towards one of those things, but not the other thing. Like, we have some fruit trees at my house because my mom bought them, of course, which meant I had to plant them, of course. And so, I don't spend as much time as I should cultivating those fruit trees. In other words, they don't look as good as they could, they don't grow as much fruit as they could if I spent time cultivating them, but I'm busy spending time trying to kill all the weeds. Let me ask you two questions right out of the gate today. What are you actively trying to cultivate right now in your life?

Second question, what are you trying to kill? The distinction between those words is really, really important. What you cultivate is the thing that you're gonna nourish, you're gonna feed, you're gonna water, you're gonna give time, attention, and energy toward, affection toward. The thing that you're trying to kill is, what is it you have decisively and aggressively targeted to say, I want to be done with that in my life, because that's where we're going today in Galatians. If you got your Bibles, again, Galatians 5, we're getting to the point where Paul's starting to wrap up some of what he's saying to these churches in this region called Galatia, but there's just a few more things he wants to hammer home. And where we're gonna pick up today is actually in the place that we've left off with every other sermon, because Galatians 5, 1 is really like the CliffsNotes of the whole letter to the Galatians. How many of you are old like me and you know what CliffsNotes are? All right, see, the kids these days, they got AI. We had some random dude named Cliff. You know, it was like, I don't want to read the Great Gatsby, man. You got the CliffsNotes? I don't want to read Shakespeare, man. You got the CliffsNotes and you'd borrow those things.

Somebody would go to Joseph Beth and buy them for you. And then hopefully Cliff knew what he was talking about enough that you studied the CliffsNotes the night before to actually know what it was all about. Where Galatians 5, 1 is the CliffsNotes of the entire letter to the Galatians when it says, and hopefully you're getting this memorized by now, for freedom Christ has set us free. So stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. And what's really interesting about that, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, is that the people of Galatia were primarily not religious Jewish people prior to Paul arriving on the scene and preaching the gospel. They were primarily pagan people. So when he says don't submit again to a yoke of slavery, he's actually not talking about them being in danger of going back to their pagan ways. He's actually talking about them swinging on a pendulum towards another kind of slavery, which would be legalistic, religious, empty religion. It's just another form of slavery. He's saying, I don't want you to go that direction either. And here's the reason that was a temptation for a lot of them. When you come from chaos, order is attractive, isn't it? This is why some cults get leverage. This is why some people convert to rigid things like Islam. But we have to understand something,

just because something is orderly does not make it godly. You tracking? Just because something is orderly does not make it godly. Make no mistake, we worship a God of order. Like he called the chaos into order in the original creation account, and he calls us from chaos into order, but he does that for a purpose so that you and me can have this thing that we've been exploring in this series called freedom. That order is for a purpose. You want maturity and growth and freedom. That's the whole point. I got two adult children. I got a 22-year-old daughter. She's married. I got a 20-year-old son. He's approaching his junior year of college, and the whole point of growing those kids is to get them out. Have you noticed that? Like that's the whole point. You want to grow them in wisdom and maturity and responsibility. so that they can have the freedom to go out and do all the things that they're now gonna be responsible to do as adults. So you grow them to get them out, to launch them out. So I'm glad that my older kids still come to my wife and I for counsel and wisdom and advice

and all those kinds of things. But it'd be super weird if like my wife called them up at night and said, hey, make sure tonight you brush your teeth, you put on your jammies, you go potty and you go to bed at a decent hour, right? It'd be weird if they came over to the house and she would definitely love this. If they still had like a chore list on the refrigerator, like here's the things that you have to do. No, the whole idea is as you grow in wisdom and responsibility, your maturity grows as well. That's why legalistic religion can't accomplish maturity. It actually keeps people really, really childish. Have you ever noticed this? The most legalistic religious people you know act like children. They're like the HOA gotcha person with the clipboard. You know what I'm talking about? They drive around pointing fingers like, oh, your grass is too long, your shrubs are in the wrong place, like you're not supposed to have the basketball go out there, that kind of thing. That's immaturity at its worst. Now, if you're the HOA president, please don't email me. I don't care, all right? Jesus didn't obtain your freedom so you could keep on acting like a child, that's the point, got it? He wants you to grow into that freedom and Paul is just hammering this truth home with a passion and a ferocity so much so

that he will actually resort to name calling. In fact, next week we're gonna wrap up Galatians. After that, we're gonna get in this letter to the Philippians and in the letter to the Philippians, one of the things he does is he refers to these false teachers and he calls them dogs, not a compliment in the ancient world. Dogs were to look down on, they were scavengers. And then in Galatians, look at what he says about these false teachers. He says, I wish those who unsettle you, that's the false teachers, would emasculate themselves. That's some strong language right there. What have these false teachers been doing? They've been preaching circumcision. They've been coming into town saying, hey, if you wanna be God's favorites, you have to embrace the Old Testament law. You have to convert to Judaism. Then you can be a Christian, which by the way, guys, that means you've got to circumcise yourself. And Paul is saying, well, if y'all are gonna teach that, you might as well just go the whole way. Remember when we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, they had people in their context called the Gali, these pagans who worship the goddess Sibyl and they actually did emasculate themselves as an act of worship to her. And so what Paul is saying is these dudes are no better than these people who worship a demon God.

Again, strong words. Paul is going nuclear and here's why. He sowed the seeds of the gospel into the garden of Galatia and weeds are growing up. And so he's going nuclear on these weeds that are being propagated by these false teachers. Now, if I'm being super honest with you today, I feel no compulsion to go nuclear. Really what I feel for you is just gratitude. Like I'm so proud of y'all. You've been leaning into the scriptures. We've seen God do such amazing things around here lately. So all I wanna do today is give a warning because here's the thing. In the Bible Belt in particular, we can be very susceptible to embracing false teaching and that might sound counterintuitive, but here's why. When you grow up in the church, sometimes shiny new teachings become attractive because you get a little bit bored. You've heard all the stories, you've read all the stuff, you've heard the sermons, you've been to church a bunch of times. And so when you hear, oh, there's a new teaching, that can become really, really attractive. And we see things like that taking hold right here in Central Kentucky. I'll give you an example. The New Apostolic Reformation. For short, it's called NAR.

You might know them by Bethel music. Several years ago, we decided around here to stop singing Bethel songs and that turned out to be a very wise decision. Because all of this is being unearthed and unveiled today, this false teaching. Again, it's not a new thing. It leverages the same old thing, saying, hey, in 2,000 years of Christianity, everybody's missed something until we came up with something new in Northern California. Which should make you look at it sideways no matter what, right? Anytime somebody says, hey, we got something new nobody's ever heard of, you should be very careful and very discerning in that moment. There's a great book, and if this is rocking your world right now and you wanna react, I would challenge you to read first. Here's the book I'd challenge you to read. It's called Counterfeit Kingdom. The dangers of, get the words, new revelation, new prophets, and new age practices. This is really just new age practices wrapped in a facade of Christianity, that's what it is. By Holly Pivick and Douglas Guybet. The book is excellent. They've got a podcast where they go even more in depth. I recommend you go read. I've told you guys this before,

I'm not up here to tell you something new. I'm up here to tell you something real old. It's called the gospel. And I'm just trying to point to the scriptures that are really old in a way that people can understand. And this is why I want us to be anchored in the scriptures, serving wholeheartedly and being consistent and cultivating what needs to grow. Because if we'll do that, then we will not give into false teaching. That's where Paul takes us next. Look at this in verse 16. He says, but I say, so here's an alternative to giving way to false teaching. How about this? Walk, how? By the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. He's given a picture to us of what it looks like to live out our faith and it's hand in hand with the Spirit. When you walk hand in hand with somebody, it works really, really well. Like my wife and I, we went on a walk last night and we held hands most of the time. It was awesome. It works really, really great until someone starts wandering off in a different direction and the other person starts wandering off in a different direction.

In our hand in hand walk with the Holy Spirit, it's our job to allow Him, listen to me, to set the direction and the pace. We go where He goes and we go at the pace that He wants us to go. We don't get ahead of Him. We don't get behind Him. We just stay hand in hand with Him. If you've ever been on like a guided hike or an expedition climbing a mountain or maybe a guided hunt or something like that, you know what you don't do? You don't wander away from the guide because the guide knows where they're going and knows what they're doing. You don't. But I've told you this before. I get in these phases where I just wanna read everything about a certain topic. And many years ago, I just read everything about Mount Everest, which is really weird because I have never in my entire life had a single desire to climb Mount Everest. That seems dumb to me. Like people die up there. It's really, really cold. There's no oxygen. I don't know why. Like I like being warm and I like oxygen. That's why I like the beach.

But for whatever reason, I've read all these books where people die on Mount Everest. So imagine that you're one of the people who decides I'm gonna go die on Mount Everest. And you decide to spend, it'll cost you like $100,000 to do this, by the way. You contract with somebody, a guide. They're gonna take you up Mount Everest. And you get all the gear and you do all the things and you fly to Timbuktu and you do all the stuff. And then you get to base camp and then it's two o'clock in the morning and you're supposed to start marching up the side of the North Face or whichever face you're climbing. And you got the guide in front of you. And about 20 steps in, you take your little carabiner thing and unhitch from the line and you just start wandering off in a new direction. And then the guide starts shouting at you, where are you going? And you're like, I think I got it from here. I think I see a better way to the top. What's that called? Dumb, dangerous, deadly. Lots of D words come to mind. Listen, when we step away from the spirit, his direction and his pace, that's exactly what we're doing. I've watched so many lives get shipwrecked

because someone decided to give up hand-in-hand life with the Holy Spirit and go chase their happiness. And they'll sit right in my office and go, I think God wants me to just be happy. That's why I'm leaving her. That's why I'm leaving him. And I know the scriptures say otherwise. And I know when I signed up for this thing called faith, I said I would follow Jesus, I'd follow the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't make me happy anymore. So I'm gonna go do my thing. And then what's left in the wreckage behind the person who wanders from the Holy Spirit is their spouse and their kids. Over and over and over again. The life we're living is hard enough. The journey is long and the path is narrow. And there's only one way to get where we wanna go. And the Holy Spirit is our guide. He's our only helper. And for some of us, we've just given way to this false idea that there's a Holy Spirit code that we have to crack. And that God's hiding the ball. And if you don't do all the right things and stand on one foot and do all the, then you won't know where he wants you to go and what he wants you to do. You wanna know what the Holy Spirit's role is? Jesus referred to him as a helper.

He comes alongside us and he comes alongside us to do one thing, point at Jesus. Jesus said it in John 16, the Holy Spirit's role is to glorify Jesus, to shine light on Jesus, to help me and you know and follow Jesus. And if you think the Holy Spirit is gonna do that apart from his word, man, you got another thing coming. Which is our job then to say, man, I'm gonna stay hand in hand and I'm gonna help the Holy Spirit kill what he wants to kill in my life and I'm gonna help the Holy Spirit cultivate what he wants to cultivate in my life. Because we're all living between those two things. Look at what Paul says next. For the desires of the flesh, they're against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. Anybody ever notice that? Yeah. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. If Galatians 5, one is the cliff notes of Galatians, Galatians is the cliff notes of Romans. And in Romans chapter seven, Paul does this powerful thing. As an inspired author of scripture, he lets us into his own story, the tension he feels in his own life. And I bet you're gonna resonate with that tension when he says this.

For I know, he's talking about himself, I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right. Anybody else? You're like, man, I wanna do what is right, but watch this, but not the ability. to carry it out. I want to do good, but I can't do it. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. He's teaching that all of us as followers of Jesus, we live in this tension of what theologians refer to as the remaining sin in our life, and the objective reality that we have been set free, and we are a new creation. The problem that we have is we're living in this space where we still live in this sin-contaminated world and these sin-contaminated bodies, and we have these conflicting desires. Can anyone resonate with that? And based on that, it looks like Paul's saying this battle is one you can't win. And maybe you came in here today and you're like, yeah, man, I'm only here because it's Mother's Day. I gave up fighting a long time ago. You fought so long and so hard with this addiction

that you have to pornography, and you're just like, I think the battle's over. I think I've just been defeated. You fought so long and so hard to quit sabotaging your marriage, and you're like, we're still married on paper, but I've just given up fighting for it. You've given up fighting for sobriety because it seems like other people can string together like 30 days, but you can't even get three. You've given up fighting against this thing called anger in your life, and you're just left to the devices of going, I guess I'm just gonna have to live in this rhythm of about once every two weeks, I just explode, and everybody around me has to suffer. And so maybe you're right now just going, man, I fought so long and so hard, and it doesn't feel like the battle can be won. Back in the 1900s and the before times, there was a singer-songwriter named Rich Mullins, and he was real different from everybody else, especially in the Christian music scene at the time, namely because he was authentic, and he'd talk about his own struggles and his own sin, and even write songs about it. He wrote one one time called Hold Me, Jesus, which was a reflection on a night that he was in Amsterdam, and he was tempted to go to the red light district.

And the words that he said just resonate with my soul. He said, surrender don't come natural to me. I'd rather fight you for something I don't really want than take what you give that I need. Doesn't that tell our story? Whatever it is, you could probably resonate with it when the apostle Paul himself says, man, the evil I do not wanna do, that's what I keep on doing. But the thing that you need to hear today is Paul didn't put the pen down there, y'all. That's not where Romans 7 stops. Look at what he says next. Wretched man that I am. And here's the question he asks, who will deliver me? Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God. Here's the answer, through Jesus. Who's gonna deliver me? Jesus is. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So here's the message. Rescue is coming, so you keep on fighting. Don't give up. And listen, when Jesus comes back, look right at me, he ain't coming back as a baby in a manger next time. He's coming back, Revelation 19 says, on a white horse, robe dipped in blood, sword coming out of his mouth, fire from his eyes, a tattoo on his thigh, and he is going to wreck shop,

and he is going to settle all accounts, and he's gonna make things right, and every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, so you keep on fighting because rescue is coming. Would you do that? Keep fighting. Listen, don't fight alone. Don't fight alone. Listen to me, this thing that people do where they're like, well, my church is in a deer stand. Yeah, I get what you're saying, but that's just not what the Bible says because the church is the gathered body of believers. Or this thing people do where they're like, hey, I love Jesus, but not his church. Well, that's weird because Jesus loves his church because she's his bride, so I don't know how you hate something he loves. So you can't do this alone is all I'm saying, and you can't do it without the church. That's why we're here. Why do you think we're all here? Because we need each other, and we need to be together, and we need to gather together, and we certainly need his word. We can't do this without his word. That's why we turn in the scriptures. It's not me just getting up here pontificating about my opinions.

This is his word. When we did that reset challenge thing, I've been hearing so many stories from so many of you about how it's changed your life and altered your life in so many ways, and it changed my life. It altered my algorithm too, and I'm not on social media, but I am on YouTube, and early on when we got into this thing, I noticed my algorithm was changing, and this thing kept popping up on my YouTube account called Rhythm in Bible. And it looked weird to me, and it looked AI-generated, and it is, and so I didn't wanna click on it until we got into our Galatians series, and then I noticed there was a Galatians one, and all it is is it's the literal word-for-word scriptures where it takes an entire book of the Bible and just puts it to music. I thought, well, I'll give this a shot, and so what I decided to do was I'm gonna play this when I go to work out in my garage. instead of the usual 90s rap music that I would typically play. Why so judgy? Why? That happened last service too. Like, all right, y'all just hold on. But, so I want you to hear the next few verses that we're about to unpack here. Listen to this.

♪ 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 ♪ Self-control ♪ Against such things there is no law Now look, that may not be your thing, all right? But they got all kinds of different genres. And here's the thing that I just came to realize. I don't need any more of Ice Cube's word in my head and heart. I do need more of his word in my head and heart. I walked past my wife the other day. She was reading Galatians in the chair that she always studies the Bible. And then she goes, I'm rapping the whole thing in my head right now. Cause you're welcome. You're memorizing scripture. Now watch where Paul takes us next in verse 18. But if you're led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now here's the weird thing about the law. We tend to think about the Old Testament laws, rules, regulations, all that stuff as a real high bar. It's the exact opposite. It's a real low bar. My personal study time right now, I just got to Exodus and the 10 commandments. Y'all, that's a low bar. You know, don't steal your neighbor's wife. Don't murder people. Don't bear false witness.

And we can't live up to it. That's the whole point of the law. To be a real low bar that we can't live up to. So we'll come to the realization that we desperately need a savior. That's it. So when we are set free by Jesus, the Holy Spirit indwells us to help us lead the way to get way beyond the low bar of the law. But man, if we don't have the Holy Spirit, watch where we will go. And this is what Paul takes us towards next. He goes, now the works of the flesh, sin, they're evident. And that's that long list that he just rapped about. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and, don't miss it, things like these, he keeps on going. I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. In other words, us, because we do all such things. That's why the old Puritan writer John Owen said, be killing sin or it'll be killing you. And we can't do it on our own. And here's what I love about what Paul does here. He does a few things. Number one, he says, and such things like these. In other words, he knows there's gonna be

some legalistic person out there with a clipboard going, I don't do that one, I don't do that one, I don't do that one, oh, I don't do any of those. And then he goes, okay, and such things like these, and you're a liar, right? The other thing that I love that he does is he blends two lists of kinds of sins. He takes what I'll call pagan sins and he mingles them with church sins. What do you mean church sins? I mean the ones we don't like to talk about in church, that's what I mean. The ones that we see as, I don't know, at worst, respectable, like we'll actually reward each other for. You know, there are those around the Bible Belt, right? We don't like to talk about the things like enmity and strife and jealousy and rivalries and dissensions and divisions. No, we'd rather come to church and have the preacher hammer away at all those people who deal with those other things like sexual immorality and impurity and sensuality and idolatry, sorcery and drunkenness and orgies. Easier to point fingers at the pride parade than to point fingers at the pride parading around in your own heart, ain't it? But here's the thing, all the stuff in the pride parade is on the list too.

So don't flip on the script and do the thing where you're like, yeah, get them church people, get those self-righteous, judgmental people and exclude the fact that when it says sexual immorality, that means anything outside of one man, one woman in the context of marriage for one life. Don't miss the fact that when it talks about drunkenness, right now, maybe you're trying to make your plans to go to the lake. Well, that's all it is all summer. That word orgies that's used there, by the way, is not sexual in reference, that means drinking parties. How many of y'all plan on going to the lake this summer every Sunday? The question comes back to what are you gonna kill and what are you gonna cultivate? Because here's the thing, we're all on a list, did you notice? And what you've gotta hear today is simply this, the Holy Spirit will not help you cultivate what he wants to kill. He won't. He will not come alongside you in that effort. effort, you have a responsibility, I have a responsibility. There's an author named Jerry Bridges who writes a book and in it he says this, there's a fundamental principle of the Christian life that I call the principle, here it is, of dependent responsibility. That is, we are responsible before God to obey his word, to put to death the sins in our lives,

both the so-called acceptable sins, that's the church sins, and the obviously not acceptable ones, that's the pagan sins, at the same time, we don't have the ability within ourselves to carry out this responsibility, we are, in fact, totally dependent on the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, in this sense, we're both responsible and dependent. So we fight, we fight against what the Holy Spirit wants to wage war on. But what do we fight for? That's where the text takes us next. But the fruit, and this is the part that'll be familiar if you grew up going to Sunday school, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such things, there is no law, this is way above the bar of the law. Listen, Christians, we spend way too much time arguing about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, not near enough time talking about cultivating the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Listen, just a little window into my world, I probably get a manifesto a week in the mail from somebody who's accusing us and this church of not doing it right when it comes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that always makes all my bells and whistles go off, because here's the thing, in 30 years of doing ministry, you know what manifesto I've never received, I've never had someone put a finger

in my chest about, preacher, why don't we talk more about cultivating the fruit of the Spirit in people's life? Because someone who's concerned about cultivating the fruit of the Spirit would never divide the church of Jesus, the Holy Spirit's not in for that. And this is where it gets really, really interesting, because a lot of times in growing up, if you went to Sunday school, you felt like the takeaway was, so try hard to be more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and have some self-control, work at it. Okay, go make an apple, can you do it? No, you can take an apple and nail it to a fence post, but that ain't an apple tree, it's called fruit of the what? Spirit, it's not called fruit of your hard work, you can't do it, only the Spirit can. But what we can do is we can join the Spirit in cultivating what only He can do, so how do we do that? And those who belong to Christ Jesus have, past tense, crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. When you decided to step into that watery grave, you were dead and buried and raised to new life. It was over, it was done, it is finished, and you still fight a battle with remaining sin in your life, which means that this crucifixion has happened and has to happen daily, and the Holy Spirit will come alongside you and empower you to do that, and you and I, we get to decide, are we gonna work with Him, keep in step with Him,

or are we going to fight against Him? Tim Keller says it this way, we grow as we battle. We grow as we battle, and the reason some of us aren't growing is because we're not battling. We've surrendered, we've given up, we've waved the light flag. We grow as we battle, so we battle for the things the Spirit battles for, we battle against the things the Spirit battles against, we go nuclear on sin, we seek and destroy our idols, we worship defiantly, and we serve wholeheartedly, and then Paul, he wraps up, he kind of bookends this section with the same thing being said again. He says, if we live by the Spirit, and we should all be going, well, we do, yeah, we do, we live by the Spirit, okay, so if that's true, then let us also keep in step with the Spirit. So let's circle back to those really important questions, and let's put a time stamp on it. What sin do you need to kill this summer? Not like one day off in the future, what do you hope to kill one day? What would be nice if you were done with by the time you got done with college or whatever it is that you're in right now? No, no, no, no, no, what sin do you wanna kill this summer? And help identify that in your life. And then once you've identified that in your life, take the nuclear weed killer to it. And how would you do that?

Well, it gets to the second question. How are you gonna cultivate the fruit of the Spirit this summer? What daily disciplines are you gonna instill in your life? Time in God's Word, prayer, finally serving within the church, maybe it's generosity. How are you gonna come along the Spirit to accomplish what He wants to accomplish in your heart, your mind, and your soul, so that you can become, like the song we sing around here, more like Jesus? Speaking of songs that we sing around here, one of the things I like about the ones that we sing is the best one. is make clear God's intentions towards us. They tell us who he is and what he's done, like that song we sang at the beginning, what he's done. But one of the questions I wanna ask today is, what are our intentions toward him? What are our intentions towards him? Are we gonna ignore him this summer? Are we gonna run from him this summer? Are we gonna lose our discipline this summer? Are we gonna sign up for accumulating more scars, more regret, more shame, or are we gonna cultivate the things the Holy Spirit is cultivating in us? Are we gonna fight for the things he fights for and fight against the things that he fights against? I just wanna dream with you for a minute.

Like, what if you took all your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, your plans and expectations for this summer, and you today, like right now, laid them down at the feet of Jesus and said, Jesus, what do you wanna do? Where do you wanna take me? Where does your Holy Spirit wanna go? And what if you just said, I'll join him, I'll grab his hand and I'll let him set the direction and I'll let him set the pace? Because if you are a follower of Jesus, you're about to sing these words, and that grace owns the ground where the grave did. Do you understand? You were once dead in your trespasses and sins, but now, but God has made you alive, which means that the life that you now live is in him, fully surrendered to him. All my shame remains left for dead in your wake. You, Jesus, you crashed those age-old gates. The gates of hell stood no chance against our Savior. You left no stone unturned. You stepped out of that grave and you shouldered me all the way. I can't speak for you, but I can speak for me. When I reflect on that list of sins that Paul gave us in that passage, I think there's 15 of them. By my count in my life, I've committed 14, and I probably just forgot when I did the 15th one.

And I say all that not so that you'll go, well, I got a thumb back through there. What'd the preacher do? No. Preacher did all of them, just like you. Remember, I stand here before you in the same manner as the apostle Paul who said Jesus Christ came into the world to save who? Sinners, of whom I am the worst. And so I look at my life and all I can say is he shouldered me all the way. And if you want that kind of life, you can have it today. Those prayer team people will be down front across all of our campuses, and our prayer today is to see just one more. Just one more person surrender their life to Jesus so that he can shoulder you all the way. So if that's you, come down front. I'm gonna pray, we're gonna stand, and we're gonna sing our faces off. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for who you are and what you've done. Thank you that you own the ground where the grave did, that you crashed those age-old gates, that you left no stone unturned. You went seeking us. You went looking for us when we were lost, when we were broken, when we were at our worst, Father. You did for us what we could not do for ourselves. And Father, we love to join together as your church

to celebrate who you are and what you've done. And we long to see one more person surrender their life to you. Father, we love you and we thank you for your Holy Spirit who guides us and we wanna walk hand in hand with him from this point on today, in Jesus' name, amen.