Victory in the Spirit | Holy Spirit Series

So we're continuing a series called Holy Spirit, Unpacking the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And this week, we're gonna talk about the victory that the Holy Spirit gives us over sin. So if you got your Bibles, Galatians 5 is where we're going to be. As you're turning there, how many college football fans do we have in the house? Anybody here watch college football? So two weeks ago, there was a game played that caught everybody's attention. And it wasn't the way the team won the game that got everybody's attention, it was the way the team lost the game that got everyone's attention. And it's the Miami Hurricanes when they played against Georgia Tech. Anybody watch that debacle moment? And so here's what happened. Miami, who is having the best season they've had in decades, on their way potentially competing for a national championship, they're playing Georgia Tech, they got the game in hand, it's about to be over, they're gonna be victorious, five and oh, and 34 seconds left, the clock stops third down. All they have to do is snap the ball, take a knee, game is over.

But for some reason, one of the coaches decided it would be a great idea to run the ball up the middle. And so they run the ball up the middle, the running back fumbles the football, Georgia Tech recovers, and then Haynes King, Longview guy, then gets the ball back, drives the team down, wins the game, and Miami has the perfect season ended. And then this weekend that apparently carried over, and they got whipped yesterday. But here's the point. The point is the game was over. They had the victory in hand, and because of a foolish decision, a bad move, doing something they shouldn't have done, complete and utter failure. I heard one commentator say it like this. It says that they literally snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory to lose that game. Like it was their game, and they had it, and then a moment of just bad decisions, they lost it all. Now, I share that to say this. How many of you ever feel like that that's the Christian life for you? It's like you know there's victory in Christ, and you know what Christ has for you, and you're walking in that, then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you make a decision, a sin temptation comes up,

and before you know it, man, you have failed once again. Anybody can relate to that at all? Of just like, man, just like sin, at times you think you have it defeated, and then the next thing you know, you're on your face all over again. I don't know about you, but this has been the cycle of my life, my entire Christian life. There's been this sense of sin on repeat, and what I wanna share with you this morning is where I began to have victory in my life is this truth that we're gonna discover this morning. When I began to walk in victory, it was when I discovered this passage of Scripture in Galatians chapter five. I truly believe that this is the most relevant, applicable, and I believe transformative sermon of the entire series, because the truth is all of us in here battle with sin. So let's just play this game. How many of you are tired of struggling with the same old sin over and over again? Raise your hand up high. If that's you, look around the room. I want you to look at everybody that doesn't have their hand up. They're liars, that's their struggle, and they're struggling with lying, so maybe the Lord will deliver them today.

So this is so relative, because all of us in here battle with sin, and what we're gonna look at today, listen, this is one of the reasons that the church of Jesus Christ is not as more, not more powerful than we are to walk in holiness and purity is because we have not taught well historically on the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in the everyday life of a believer. And we don't talk about this enough. In fact, the enemy wars against the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, because he knows that victory is on the other side of us understanding that there is an abundant life that Christ has for us, and that abundant life is found by walking in the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life. A.W. Tozer says it like this. He says, Satan has opposed the doctrine of the spirit-filled life about as bitterly as any other doctrine there is. He has confused it, opposed it, surrounded it with false notions and fears. He has blocked every effort of the church of Christ to receive from the Father her divine and blood-bought patrimony. The church has tragically neglected this great liberating truth that there is now for the child of God

a full and wonderful and completely satisfying anointing with the Holy Ghost. And because of this, because of this neglect of the Holy Spirit and this fight that the enemy has to keep us from understanding it, most Christians live in perpetual defeat. At least that's been the story of most of my Christian life. But I want you to know that there is a victory that is ours. And that's what we're gonna look at this morning. So Galatians chapter five, if you're there, say the Bible is true. Verse 16, it 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 the desires of the flesh.'" These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. But if you were led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the backdrop of this is that Paul is writing this letter to the churches in Galatia, and here's what he's addressing. False teaching had crept into the church, and there were these religious leaders that were teaching these churches that in order for them to truly be saved,

they not only had to place their faith and trust in Jesus, but they also had to follow the practices of Judaism. That Jesus was fine, and that was fine if you wanted to follow him, but in addition to Jesus, you needed to follow the rules and the laws and the ceremonies of the Jewish customs. And so what they were doing is they were adding works of the flesh to the work of the gospel, and Paul basically spends the entire letter telling them if you add works of the flesh to the finished work of Christ, then you nullify the finished work of Christ. And so here's a synopsis of Galatians. Here's what Paul says. You are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, that your salvation is not the byproduct of your effort and your desire to be religious or to do the right things, but rather it is a gift of God by his grace. It is received on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ who died for our sins and resurrected, and in him and him alone do we have eternal life, amen? So this is what Paul has been teaching. So now the Judaizers have an argument. They go, well, listen, if you keep teaching this grace-filled salvation, then you're just gonna give a license for everybody just to live like they wanna live. They're just gonna indulge in sin and live like they wanna live.

But what Paul goes on to share and what we're gonna look at this morning is this, is that the gospel is so beautiful, watch this, that it not only, listen, provides the payment of the penalty of our sin, but it also breaks the power of sin in our life, that the gospel doesn't just pay the price for sin, the gospel breaks the chains that keeps us in bondage to the power of sin because here's what happens. We are given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and because we have the Holy Spirit, sin no longer dominates our life. We now can live victorious, and here's what he says. The gospel does something for us that the law couldn't do. The law can't change behavior, it can only show us our sin. But what the law couldn't do, God now has done in Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit, he's able to make us into a new creation so that now we can live the life that we could never live apart from him. Does that make sense? And so what I wanna do is unpack this idea of the spirit-filled life that leads to a life of victory over sin. There are two things about a struggle with sin that I want us to see. First is this, write this down if you're taking notes, I want you to see that our struggle with sin is an absolute war.

Our struggle with sin is an absolute war. Look what he says in verse 17. He says, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for they are opposed to each other. So what he's saying is, is that each one of us, if you're in Christ, if you're not in Christ, you have one nature. If you're in Christ, you have two natures. So here's what that looks like. When he says, for the desires of the flesh, this is a reference to the sin nature that every one of us are born with. The Bible tells us that we're all born descendants of Adam, and we have the seed of Adam in us, which is a sinful heart. We have a heart that is dispositioned toward rebelling against the things of God. So we, by our very nature, we wanna pursue the things of this world and rebel against God's design and God's order. That's who we are in our flesh. But whenever a person is born again, the Bible says you are given a brand new life with a brand new nature. We preached on this two weeks ago when we talked about Titus three and the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit. He makes us alive and he gives us a new nature.

So here's what that means. Before Christ, you had one nature with one desire, and that was to sin and rebel. That's all we wanted to do. Before Christ, I never felt really guilty over my sin. Now I might, I felt ashamed because I knew my parents wouldn't approve of it, or I might think, you know, morally, that's probably not a good idea, but as far as my relationship goes with God, I didn't feel grief, shame, remorse, or guilt over it because only desire that I had was to feed the flesh and do whatever the flesh wanted to do. But the moment I became a child of God, the moment I was born again, the old nature then was replaced with a new nature and there were new desires and new appetites to pursue the things of God, to please God, because the Spirit of God has made me alive. This is what Paul is saying. There's the flesh that wars against the Spirit, the Holy Spirit that has made me alive. And now there is a dual nature in me, the desire to please God and to walk according to the Spirit and then the old nature that I'm being freed from that still sometimes yearns for the former life. You see, here's the thing, I want you to remember this. Oftentimes, people think when they come to faith in Christ that their battle with sin is over. And here's what I would suggest.

When you come to faith in Christ, your battle with sin actually begins. Because before Christ, it's not a battle at all. You just lived according to the flesh. But once you are made alive in Christ, now all of a sudden, there's an awareness of sin, there's a desire for holiness, and now all of a sudden, there are two natures at war within us. There is the spirit of God, and there is the flesh and the sin of our old nature. And here's what he says, they are at all-out war, for these are opposed to each other. They're fighting. So there is a work that the spirit wants to lead us into, becoming like Christ, and there's the work that the flesh of pleasing self that he wants to do, and they're at odds with one another. This is unbelievable. This explains a lot of the struggles that we have. Why is it that I wanna please God, and yet, I don't please God? Why is it that there are things that I know I should do for him, and everything fights against it, my pride, and all of that, I don't really wanna surrender? Paul talks about this in Romans chapter seven. Remember that? In Romans seven, the apostle Paul, for crying out loud, says that the things that I wanna do,

things that I should do, things that I really want to do to please God, I don't do those things. And then the things that I know I shouldn't do, like, I end up doing those things. And he's like, I feel like there's this tension in my life constantly. In fact, this is how Paul would describe it in Romans chapter seven, verse 21. He says, so I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil is right at hand. You ever feel like that? Like you get up, and you're like, man, I'm gonna go love Jesus today, and then that person cuts you off in traffic, and you're like waving at them with one finger, and it's like, now the game is over, right? Or you're having a good day, and that one person says something to you, and it just sets you off, right? Like, I wanna do good, but evil seems like it's right there. He says this, for I delight in the law of God in my inner being. In other words, the spirit yearns to do the things that God wants me to do, but I see in my members, or my body, another law waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members, or in my body.

In other words, there's this dual nature. My sin is fighting against the work of the Holy Spirit in my life. So listen to me, eyes right here for a second. Sin is not a game. Paul says, I have this reality. There is something in me waging war against the work of Christ. That is my sinful nature and flesh. See, the problem with most of us, the reason we live lives that are dominated by sin is because we think that sin is playtime when it's wartime. We treat it like it's just this thing that is okay, and we can manage it, and we can flirt with it, and we can walk the line, and then if we fall in, then we can just confess, and the reality is is that the enemy wants to destroy the work of Christ in our life. We live daily in an all-out war with the enemy who wants to destroy the abundant life that Christ has died to give us. You can't live with a peacetime mentality when you're at war. We have to understand there is a very real battle. I watched this yesterday. I was at an eighth grade volleyball game, volleyball tournament, rather. Lord, help us, right? I really loved the games, and I love watching

my youngest play, but it drives me crazy because I'm competitive. Some people are born competitive, some people aren't, right? I can't handle people that aren't, right? So, like, if we're playing checkers, I'm gonna try to find a way to win. Like, I just don't like to lose ever. In fact, I hate losing more than I love winning. Anybody relate to that in the room? And so, I'm watching this game, and we have a chance to win the district championship yesterday, and we lose a match that we should have never lost to a team we already beat that is not even close as good as us, and these eighth grade girls. And so, we knew beforehand we were gonna lose because we were just watching our girls beforehand. There was, like, three girls who were, like, focused and ready to roll, and then the rest of them were just kind of, like, playing around, talking to their boyfriends, goofing around, not paying attention, not warming up, and I'm like, okay, here it goes. We're gonna lose this game, and luckily, one of the three was my daughter that was, like, focused. And so, we go out there, and we get smacked around. We lose the game. Most of the girls are like, oh, well,

we'll just kind of move on once for lunch, and one of my proudest moments was my youngest comes over, eighth grader, and she's doing this. She's got tears in her eyes and grit in her teeth, and I'm like, this is a bad combination right here. I'm like, what's up? She goes, I just can't stand the fact that nobody. cares that we lost, like I can't stand losing. We lost the district championship. Of course, in my mind, I'm going, it's just eighth grade volleyball, but then that daddy heart is like, yeah, you're right, you ought to be upset, right? That competitiveness. So here's the thing. Most of us, when it comes to sin, we approach our sin struggle like a lot of these kids approach these games, like it doesn't matter, understand something, you have a very real enemy. And he is making war against the work of Christ in your life. Say, what does this look like? Well, there's something he wants to produce in our life, and Paul is gonna show us this. There's these two natures. What do they wanna do in our life? Here's the first one. Here's what the sin wants to do.

Sin wants to produce the ever-destroying works of the flesh. This is what sin produces, is the ever-destroying works of the flesh. Look what he says in verse 19. He says, now the works of the flesh are evident. In other words, how do I identify my sin nature? Paul says, you don't have to look so hard. Like the works of the flesh, the sin life, it's gonna be very apparent, it's gonna be very evident. He says, now the works of the flesh are evident. Then he goes through a list here. He says, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of rage, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. In other words, Paul is going, I didn't cover everything, but I covered a lot, right? And such things, listen to this. He says, I warn you, as I warned you before, the next phrase is strong, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, I would underline this if I were you in your Bible. Because when he says, those who do such things, you say, what is he talking about? Because I think all of us would say, in that list, we struggle with at least some of them, right? So what does he mean when he says, do such things? This is the idea of way of life, practice. What Paul is saying is, I've gone through the list, this is the works of the flesh, and then he says this,

and for those who live like this, who practice this, like this is your lifestyle, he's saying, I don't care how much you say you love Jesus, I don't care if you walked an aisle and prayed a prayer or been baptized, if this is your lifestyle, then you are living according to the old nature. And if this is the lifestyle and you're living according to the old nature, then you don't have a new nature. Paul is not saying that if you live like this, you lose your salvation, he's saying, if you live like this, you never had salvation. We have too many people in the church today who have a little bit of religion and no relationship with Jesus Christ, and they swear they're going to heaven, but they're living like hell. And there's gonna be a rude awakening one day when you stand before the judgment seat of Christ and he says to you, depart from me, I never knew you. A relationship with Jesus will manifest itself in a difference of lifestyle, and it doesn't make us perfect, but we are being perfected, amen? So those who do such and practice this, so for those in the room who say, man, I got a relationship with God, but there is zero evidence of a relationship with God in your life, of a life being transformed

and your way of life is just living by the flesh, I wanna encourage you, examine yourself like Paul would say and see if you are really in the faith. Don't be deceived. But notice this, Paul is writing this to Christians, and he's going through the list because here's the thing, while we don't practice these like lifestyle, we still struggle with them, amen? He gives four categories of sin here, I'm not gonna unpack this in great detail, but just to kind of give you the idea of how broad of sin tendencies he's covering, when he walks through all of this list, he talks about sin of sexuality, sin of religion, sin of relationships, and then the sin of indulgences, or just overfeeding the flesh with the things of this world, those are the four categories. Now, here's the idea, it's not that the sins that he lists here are an exhaustive list, he's just saying, there are categories of sin and the flesh is constantly trying to bombard us with these desires. And it's important for us, if we're gonna understand that we're living in the middle of a spiritual war where our flesh is fighting against the spirit and the spirit is fighting against the flesh, we gotta understand the tactics of the enemy.

What is he using to draw us away from the work of the spirit? And he just gave us a list of the sins that we struggle with. So here's just gonna help you, listen, this is gonna sound so elementary, but I think it's gonna help you. So watch this, the Holy Spirit will never tempt you to look at pornography. The Holy Spirit will never entice you into an immoral relationship. The Holy Spirit will never. He will never give you same-sex desires. The Holy Spirit, He will never encourage you to have a fit of rage or blow somebody up who made you mad. The Holy Spirit will never encourage you to slander someone behind their back. The Holy Spirit will never encourage you to have division among people. The Holy Spirit will never encourage you to envy what belongs to somebody else. The Holy Spirit will never try to woo you into over-drinking alcohol. The Holy Spirit won't do that, but your flesh will. So what's the point? The point is this, is that the moment we understand we're at war, and the moment those temptations rise up inside of us,

the moment those desires, we gotta acknowledge it's wartime. This is the enemy trying to draw me away from God's plan for my life. This is something that He doesn't want for me, that God doesn't want for me. He wants to destroy me with it. The enemy is after me. And in that moment, we've gotta understand this is not a time to play. This is a time to surrender. We saw the tragedy last Saturday of Israel being attacked, and I wanna encourage you to be praying for the nation of Israel. We had a time of prayer for them Wednesday night at our prayer meeting. We'll do it again this week. But I watched some videos yesterday of the music festival where people were just enjoying a good time, and you can see in the background, all of a sudden, these paragliders coming in armed, and as soon as they landed, they began to just shoot and murder and just slaughter people by the dozens. You see, the moment, I believe, the Israeli army understood what was happening, they understood playtime was over. There is a very real enemy who is invading who wants to destroy us, and therefore, it is one of those kill or be killed moments.

We are either gonna defend and fight against the enemy, or we're gonna be slaughtered by the enemy. And here's what I want you to see. When the works of the flesh rise up, it is the sin of our old nature trying to paraglide into our life, and his purpose is not to come party with us, it's to destroy. He wants to take away what God has good for you in your life, and we gotta be on our guard, but the Spirit wants to do something as well, so we see the ever-destroying works of the flesh, but what we want is the ever-restoring work of Christ. Look what he says here in verse 22. He says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, it's joy, it's peace, it's patience, it's kindness, it's goodness, it's faithfulness, it's gentleness, it's self-control against such things there is no law. Now listen to what Paul is doing here. He's saying, what is the fruit of the Spirit? First of all, I want you to notice something, go back to that, but the fruit of the Spirit. Notice that it's singular, not plural. Now why is that important? People say all the time, the fruits of the Spirit. It's not the fruits of the Spirit. It's like, I got a little love,

I just don't have any patience, right? That's not the way it works. It's the fruit. So if I was describing an apple, I would probably describe it in the fruit of the Spirit. I would describe it in multiple ways, describing the different layers of it, the color and the texture and the way it's made up, but I'm describing the same fruit. So when he goes to this description of the fruit of the Spirit, it's one fruit. So what is the fruit? It is the life of Jesus. I had a professor in college who would say it like this, that the fruit of the Spirit is a word picture describing the character and the nature of Jesus. So when Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit, and he goes to this list, what he's saying is, if you wanna know what this looks like, look to Jesus. He is the embodiment of love, of peace, of patience, of kindness, of gentleness, of self-control. Jesus is the embodiment of this. So what the Spirit wants to produce in our life is the nature and the life of Jesus Christ, the character of Christ. This is why Andrew Murray in his book, Absolute Surrender, if you've never read it, I encourage you to buy it and read it. It is one of those books

that will kick you spiritually in the mouth and then give you a hug afterwards, you know what I'm talking about? I've recommended it, I probably had 100 people read it, and almost every person says, I hate you and love you at the same time. But it's one of those books where he talks about that oftentimes believers ask the Holy Spirit for the Spirit-filled life. We want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But he says, but we don't ask him to give us an unconditional love for our enemy. And he said, the reason that most Christians never receive the Spirit-filled life that they're asking for is because they don't want to love their enemy unconditionally. But to be filled with the Holy Spirit means that you have to receive a love that allows you to love your enemy unconditionally. The point he's making is this, is that oftentimes we want the effect of the Spirit but we still wanna be in control. But the life of victory is not found in us being in control, it's Him being in control, which means the ever-restoring life of the Spirit is the nature and the character of Jesus coming through our life in every part of our life, and this is where the abundant life is found. This is where the life that Jesus has for us is found.

I wanna go back to verse 22, and I wanna show you one more thing. I like the way that Paul does this. When he describes sin, he calls it the works of the flesh. In other words, when we sin, it's our work, we're joining the acts of the flesh, but whenever Christ is being produced in our life, it's the Holy Spirit doing the work. This is the key to the Christian life. It's not you working for Christ, it's Christ working through you. You see, the idea of growing in maturity is not you trying in your own effort to become like Christ, it's you dying to yourself so that Christ can be alive in you and when that happens, He begins to live in you rather than you trying to live for Him. I love this, the fruit of the Spirit, it's the produce of the Spirit, it's the work that He does in us. Think about like this, I've gone to a lot of orchards through the years and I've gone through an apple orchard and in an apple orchard, I'm sorry, the apple orchard, the apple trees grow what kind of fruit, tell me? Are you sure about that? I'm just kidding, yeah, apples, right? So it produces apples, right? Why does an apple tree produce apples? Because it's an apple tree. Not rocket science, all right?

Let me tell you why though. It produces it because the life within the tree has the DNA that is designed by God Himself to produce apples, that make sense? So I've walked through those orchards and as you're walking through, I've never once heard a limb attached to a tree grunting trying to find a way to pop out an apple, never, I've never heard that. Like I've never heard a limb like I almost got it, there it is, there's an apple, right? So what happens, what happens is is that the branches, all they do is stay connected to the tree, why? Because that's where the life is found. So the branch's job is not to produce fruit, the branch's job is to bear fruit. The tree's responsibility is to produce the fruit. So what happens is is the life of the tree then, because the branch is connected, flows into the branch and then all of a sudden, the branch bears fruit because the life within it produces it. This is the Christian life. This is why Jesus says in John chapter 15, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. The Christian life is not you trying to wield yourself to become like Christ, the Christian life is you as the branch abiding in the vine so that the life in you might be produced out of you. God does not want you to produce Christ,

he wants to produce Christ. He just wants you to bear the fruit of Christ. Does that make sense? I think so many times we miss what Christ wants to do in us because we're trying to do the work independently when it's his work, not ours. We say, what does this look like then? How do I walk in victory? Here's truth number two. Truth number two is this. So our struggle with sin is an absolute war, our victory over sin is absolute surrender. Our victory over sin is absolute surrender. Say, what do you mean here? Look what he says in Galatians chapter five, verse 16. Paul says, but I say, walk by the spirit. This phrase walk by the spirit is implying lifestyle. The idea here is to surrender. It's an education term where if there is a student who is following a teacher that in that particular day, a disciple and a discipler, that that disciple is to follow the discipler no matter where he goes, do what he does, obey what he says, act like him in every way. So the idea is that the disciple, his identity is lost in the discipler. There is complete and utter surrender. This is the imagery that we need to get. So walking by the spirit, watch this, means that you have come to a place of absolute surrender.

You have yielded control of your life to the work of the Holy Spirit. So no matter what it is, no matter what impulses you have, desires that rise up in you, you are going to submit to the desires of the Holy Spirit above the flesh. That's the picture here. Now notice the promise that goes with this. He says, when you surrender this way to the spirit. you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Did you hear that? Like there is guaranteed victory. That the desires of the flesh that rise up within us, if we will walk by the Spirit, we will not ever under any circumstance, when we're walking by the Spirit, ever give room to the flesh and fall into sin. This is the guaranteed victory. Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. You say, well, how does that work? I want you to go back, verse 16, look at it. Walk by the Spirit. Let me ask you this question. Can you be actively walking in full submission and under the control of the Holy Spirit and look at pornography simultaneously? What's the answer? No. Can you be walking by the Holy Spirit

and living in complete, absolute control over Him and still be actively having sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend outside of marriage? No. Can you walk by the Holy Spirit and live in a submission, the control of the Holy Spirit and be in the middle of a fit of rage that's out of control? No. You can't walk by the Spirit, live under submission, the control of the Holy Spirit and actively gossip and slander someone. You see, what Paul is showing us here is that when you live in submission to the Holy Spirit under his control, he gives you victory over the impulses of the flesh. That yes, there are desires, yes, there are temptations, but what do we do with those? We submit those, we come before the Holy Spirit, and we say, I need your power, I need your strength, I want your ways, your desires that you're placing in me are greater than the desires of my flesh and I wanna submit, and man, they are strong, but you are stronger, and so I'm gonna submit to you and I'm gonna walk with you and I'm gonna do what you say to do. And he says, when you relinquish control of your life to the work of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will give you victory over the flesh. Now, how is this possible? Look what he says in verse 24.

Verse 24 says this, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Now, I don't have time to fully unpack this, but there's two ideas here, and these are both encouraging. The first is this, if you're in Christ, you belong to Christ, amen? You belong to him, you're his. You're no longer your own, you've been bought with a price. Here's the second, notice what he says. If you belong to Christ, you have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. This is past tense. What Paul is referring to is this, when you trusted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, when you were born again by the Spirit of God and made alive, here's something supernatural that happened in your life. Your old nature was crucified with Christ. It was nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ. And though it once mastered you and you were a slave to sin, the Bible tells us, John chapter eight, Jesus makes this statement, whoever sins is a slave to sin. What Jesus is saying is that because we're born into sin, we are slaves to sin, it's our master. The moment you trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, your sin life, your flesh is crucified. And even though it still remains tempting you into sin, it no longer has power over you. See, this for me is what really opened my eyes up

to a new life in Christ, because up until the moment I learned this truth, that I had been buried with Christ and my old nature has lost its power, see, the enemy had me convinced for years early on in my Christian life that I still had to submit to the sin temptations in my life. I had to click. I had to say that. I had to have the burst of anger. It's just my thing, my struggle. But then I realized, the Bible teaches me that sin no longer reigns in my life. He might try to give me orders, my flesh may try to make demands of me, but his authority in my life has been broken because there is a new sheriff in town. And his name is Jesus Christ. And he has set me free. And the only power the enemy has in my life, the only power, believer, that he has in your life is the power you give him. The problem is most of us don't know how to live in our freedom. It's like the movie Shawshank Redemption. Anybody ever seen Shawshank Redemption? One of my favorite movies ever. Morgan Freeman's character, Red, he's a wise guy. He's telling kind of how the scene is in the prison life that for those who have been there most of their life,

here's what he says, they've been institutionalized. And he said, what do you mean? Summarizing his moment, he says this, his speech, he says this. He says, the walls that held them captive. that they once hated, over time they grow to love. To the point of which, when they are free to go, they don't know how to live as free men. Even though they've been made free, they still want to be under the master and the control of the prison. And I think that describes a lot of Christians. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. But we don't know how to live like free men and women. But Paul is showing us here, you gotta first of all recognize you're no longer a prisoner. You're not bound to your sin. Notice what he says, he says in verse 25, he says, not only have you crucified the flesh, which means you've been freed from the power of sin, verse 25, if we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. In other words, he's saying, not only has there been a death that your old nature was crucified, there's been a resurrection, you have new life in the Spirit. And he says, and if this is the case, if this is what has happened in our life, that our old nature been crucified

and we've been given a brand new life, then let's do this, let us keep in step with the Spirit. This phrase keep in step is a military term. It means to fall into line. It's the idea of a commanding officer commanding the troops to fall in. They fall in an order and they march at his command to the cadence that he demands of them. Wherever he leads, they go, that's the idea. And here's what Paul says, and eyes right here just for a second, don't miss this. Here's what Paul is saying. Your key to spiritual victory over sin is to keep in step with the Spirit. By submitting yourself constantly, this present active, it's constant abiding in, walking in, submitting to, yielding yourself to. See, what does this really look like? Let's go back to the Miami hurricane story. Miami hurricane, 34 seconds left. The game is locked up, third down. Here's what all the commentators have been saying all week. Why in the world did they not go into what is called a victory formation? Say, what is victory formation? It's when the game is in check, quarterback takes the snap. They have two backs that come and stand between the quarterback and the offensive line, and the offensive line stand

between the quarterback and the defenders. And here's what the quarterback does. He takes the snap, two steps back, and he takes a knee. And here's what's crazy about this Christian life. This is the posture. You see, for Miami, all they needed to do was kneel. The victory was theirs before the game was over. But rather than resting in the victory that they had already fought for, that's already been won for them, they tried to do something they shouldn't have done. And because in their own effort, they were trying to do more rather than rest, they failed. But if they would have just took a knee, surrendered the moment to the victory that was already theirs, they would be on their way right now, potentially for fighting for a national championship. And brothers and sisters, this right here, the victory formation, this is your key to being freed from pornography, from sexual addiction, from lying, from the gossip and the need for drama in your life, for the excessive spending, for the abuse of substances in your life. This is the posture. It's the victory formation. What do you mean? Jesus Christ has already secured the victory for us.

He has defeated the enemy once and for all. He has conquered him. And here's what he says, your pathway to live out the victory that I've given you is to rest in what's already been secured. So what do you do? You just take a knee and you submit to the Holy Spirit. So what does this look like in our life? For me, it's this, whenever temptation comes my way, here's what I'm learning to do. I'm not mastered this yet, but I'm learning by the grace of God. When temptation comes, it's a trigger for me. When my flesh rises up and says, do this or say this or look at that, here's what I'm learning. That's a trigger that says, I have got to get on my knees. I've got to surrender to the Holy Spirit. So here's the confession. And sometimes in my life, it's out loud. Sometimes it's Holy Spirit, I need you right now. I have made promise after promise after promise not to do that again, say that again, act in that way again, and I have proven that I cannot do it. So what I'm gonna do

is I'm gonna get in victory formation and I'm gonna. submit to you because I need a strength greater than my own. I need to stop making promises I know that I'm not gonna keep. Stop trying to fight the flesh with the flesh and die to myself and say, Holy Spirit, I need you, I need you to come in. I am poor in spirit, I have nothing to offer, everything to receive. When I am weak, then I am strong because it's your strength. And in that posture, and by the way, this is the posture of the Christian life. You say, will we ever get to a place where we're perfect? Not this side of eternity. But I promise you, if you'll learn to live like this, you'll have more victory than you ever dreamed you would have. Surrender, submission to the Holy Spirit. I love what Jim Simbala says, he says this, this is the crazy part of Christianity. He says, the irony of the spirit-filled living is that we have to give up power in order to gain a greater power. You have to stop trying in and of yourself and get in victory formation and rest in the victory that Christ promises is yours. Rest in the victory that Christ promises is yours. That's where the victory is. I'm gonna ask you to do me a favor. I'm gonna ask you to stand to your feet just for a moment.

And I'm gonna give a time of response just for a few moments. And here's what I want you to do. Now, eyes right here, and here's the temptation. The temptation in this room right now is because we're talking about sin is that let's get out the door as fast as we can because I don't want to respond to this message because people are gonna wonder, what kind of sin do I have? They're gonna know I have sin. So let me just help you in the room. Everybody in your life knows you have sin in your life. And what keeps most of us in spiritual bondage, man, don't miss this. What keeps most of us in spiritual bondage is the fact that we would rather appear to be godly than actually be godly. We would actually rather pretend to be strong than to admit that we're weak where we can actually be made strong. And so here's what we're gonna do. If you need a relationship with Christ, we have decision encouragers here to help you with that. But most of you in this room, listen, if you're tired of your sin, you're tired of being defeated time and time and time again, and you're a follower of Jesus Christ, then let's just make this place an altar where we lay that down before the Lord

and begin to get in victory formation, letting the Holy Spirit of God begin a pattern in our life of just submission to Him so that in Him we might see accomplished what we could never do in ourself. If you need Christ, there are people here that wanna help you with that. And I wanna encourage you, are you tired of sin? Are you tired of the struggle? Let's begin the process of laying it down today. Father, we give this time to you. Ask that your spirit move in this moment. Father, work in this place. Give us freedom. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.