Amen. People of God, let us hear now God's will for our lives, God's perfect will, beginning with a word about the salvation which he gives to his people. and then continuing on with the law that God gives to his people in a particular way, even as this is the law of all the earth, Exodus chapter 20. And God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. And surely that last commandment, the commandment of coveting, the commandments that touches on our hearts and our desires, is a commandment that relates to all of the Ten Commandments. Even as Jesus would summarize in his Sermon on the Mount, telling us that we must not only not murder, we must also not have anger, we must not only not commit sexual immorality, we also must not lust. And furthermore, in then giving in his ministry a summary of the positive side of the law, what we must therefore do, the Lord our Savior said this, the first and greatest commandment is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. quoting from the Old Testament as our Savior so often did, in so doing, summarizing what the law calls us, calls everyone to do. And people of God, this is the perfect will of God. May we, as sinful people, come before Him in a prayer of confession this morning. Let us pray. Lord, our Lord, We are all of us sinners, conceived in sin, constantly taking our desires of sin and allowing them to give birth to sinful actions and attitudes. Lord God, surely there is much sin that we must battle against. Keep your people. Keep us from presumptuous sins, from intentional sins, from living in sin. Lord God, you are holy. Make us your holy people, even as we pray that you would forgive us of the sins we continue to commit against you. Surely, Lord God, you are gracious. and abounding in mercy when we come before you with a desire to put away our sin and to follow you as your new creations. For all that you have done upon us and in us, we give thanks and pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. Surely, people of God, There is salvation. There is the forgiveness of sins in God and his work and his love. And so we read, as we continue to work through the scriptures, take one more passage from the book of Micah, the last verses of the prophecy of Micah. Micah chapter seven, 18 to 20. Who is a God like you? pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance. He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old. Of course, that trampling is no longer a present, a future thing that is looked forward to. It is now what we look back and see, the very trampling of sin, the very bearing of sin by Jesus Christ, our Savior on the cross. People of God, this is our God who forgives sins. This is our God before whom we come confidently in prayer. Let us come in prayer this morning. Lord God Almighty, our Father, our Shepherd, You lead us, You carry us, You provide for us. And Lord God, we pray that we would know Your greatness and our dependence upon You every single day. Lord, that we would in times of blessing know that every good gift comes from you. That we stand in constant need of you for the very breath that we breathe. Lord, for those in the valleys in the times of suffering, that they would know your hand of comfort and peace. That those also would know that every breath, every step is only sustained by your power and your grace. Lord, oh Lord, we pray that we would see the great gulf between man and God, between creature and creator, that we would know that we are not at all like you, that we are not triune and from eternity past and the very one who created time, that we are not able to forgive sins. Lord, there is no way that we are like you. only in the way that you would make us to be formed into your image and true righteousness and holiness. Lord, then we can begin to be the image of God as we ought to be instead of kicking against the very image in which you made Adam and Eve in the beginning. Lord, that image of God which gives all persons value as a person, but Lord, which we would all kick against in staying in our sins and failure to give glory to you. And surely all glory is due to you. You rule over all. You stand in majesty. You do nothing wrong. You are completely just and full of mercy and slow to anger. You are good. Worthy of all praise, Lord, make us to glorify you as we ought to do. And Lord, we pray that you would be with be with your church, the family of faith, and Lord God with the families within the family of faith. We think of the psalmist speaking of all the families of the nations coming to you, and Lord God how that prophecy is fulfilled even here. We are the families of the nations. We are the far reaches of the earth from Jerusalem and from your chosen people of old, from which our Savior came. And Lord, now as the gospel goes forth, we are those families in the nations. And we pray that we would serve you as a whole family of faith, as brothers and sisters in Christ together, and as family units. Lord, that you would strengthen the marriages of this church. Lord, that you would make the children to be obedient in the Lord to their parents. And Lord, that there would be within the family unit households that say this is a house that serves the Lord and so Lord we we give thanks for within the family units for within the families of this church precious children which you have given even healthy children in just the last months we think of of James Carsten and then of Evelyn Freswick and Lord that we can also celebrate the administration of baptism upon her covenant forehead this morning. The covenant sign upon her forehead, be marked as one of your own, one who belongs to your family. And Lord, we think also of one more yet coming. We pray that we would hear soon of a healthy baby in the house of Clay and Bree, and that mother and father would hold their child soon and safely. And Lord, we pray again for all of the families and that you would strengthen the younger children and the older children. that you would bring those who are entering times of maturity into a desire to profess the faith, to claim you as their Savior, to claim the promises, to embrace the promises of the covenant, and Lord, to do so personally, to do so from the heart, and we pray that you would then provide for those who are entering new phases of life. We pray that you would be with our young persons, make them to be mature and godly, brothers and sisters serving you. Lord, ensure that in all ages We would be those who would desire to serve and honor you from our youngest to our oldest, to even our son-ins such as Cal, more than nine decades upon this earth. Lord, be with him, be with the youngest and be with everyone in between, even as we all stand in complete need of you. And so, Lord, our Lord, we pray this, knowing that you have said, children are a heritage from you. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Knowing that you are the one who must bless and build the home, that you must bless and build the home of individual families, that you must bless and build the house, which is the family of faith. Lord God, it is all dependent upon your your leadership, you being the great shepherd of the sheep. And so we pray this all in Jesus name. Amen. Brothers and sisters in Christ, it's a great privilege for me to be here. I invite you to turn with me in the Forms and Prayers book to page 13. Page 13. Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ. As we celebrate holy baptism, let us first hear our Lord Jesus Christ's institution of this sacrament. After he had risen victoriously from the grave, Jesus said to his disciples, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." In obedience to this command, the church has always baptized believers and their children. Let us hear the promises of God that are confirmed in baptism. The Lord made this great promise to Abraham, I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your offspring after you. Generations later, though Israel was unfaithful to God's covenant with them, God renewed his promise through the prophet. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to give pardon and peace through the blood of the cross, the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. After Jesus had risen from the dead, the apostles proclaimed, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. Anticipating the fulfillment of God's promise, Paul assures us, if we have died with him, we also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. These are the unfailing promises of our Lord to those who are baptized. Here also the teaching of scripture concerning the sacrament of baptism. The water of baptism signifies the washing away of our sin by the blood of Christ and the renewal of our lives by the Holy Spirit. It also signifies that we are buried with Christ. From this we learn that our sin has been condemned by God, that we are to hate it, that we must consider ourselves as having died to it. Moreover, the water of baptism signifies that we are raised with Christ. For this we learn that we are to walk with Christ in newness of life. All this tells us that God has adopted us as his children, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Thus, in baptism, God seals the promise he gave when he made his covenant of grace with us, calling us and our children to put our trust for life and death in Christ our Savior, to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, and to follow him in obedience and love. God also graciously includes our children in his covenant, and all his promises are for them as well as us. Jesus demonstrated this when he embraced little children and blessed them. The Apostle Paul said that the children of believers are holy. So just as the children of the old covenant received the sign of circumcision, our children in the new covenant are given the sign of baptism. We are therefore always to teach our little ones that they have been set apart by baptism as God's own children, and because of that, They are to repent of their sins and embrace God's promise of forgiveness in Christ by faith. People of God, let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we pray that you will never destroy us in our sin, as you once did with the flood upon the world, but save us as you saved believing Noah and his family, and spare us as you spared the Israelites who walked safely through the Red Sea. We pray that Jesus Christ, who went down into the Jordan and came up to receive the Holy Spirit, who sank deep into death and was raised up as Lord of life, will always keep us and our little ones in the grip of his hand. We pray, O Holy Father, that your Spirit will separate us from sin and openly mark us with a faith that can stand the light of day and endure the dark of night. Prepare us now, O Lord, to respond with glad hope to your promise, so that we and all entrusted to our care may drink deeply from the well of living water. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. And now, since you Paul and Vicki Freswick have resented this child for holy baptism. You are asked to answer the following questions sincerely before God and his people. First, do you acknowledge that our children who are conceived and born in sin and are subject to the misery that sin brings, even the condemnation of God, are sanctified in Christ and so as members of his church ought to be baptized? Second, do you acknowledge that the teaching of the Old and New Testament summarized in the Apostles' Creed and taught in the Christian Church is the true and complete doctrine of salvation? Third, do you sincerely promise to do all that you can to teach this child and to have her taught this doctrine of salvation? Paul and Vicki, what is your answer? Our Lord said, let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belong the kingdom of God. Evelyn Rose Kreswick, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Congregation, do you, the people of the Lord, promise to receive this child in love, pray for Evelyn, help to care for her instruction in the faith, and to encourage and sustain her in the fellowship of believers? We do, God help us. Let us pray before we come to the Lord in song. O Lord, our gracious God, forever faithful to your promises, we thank you for assuring us again in the sacrament of baptism that you forgive us and receive us as your children in Christ. Grant wisdom and love to the parents and to all of us as we carry out the vows we just made. We pray that you will guide our little ones throughout their lives, enable all of them to respond in faith to the gospel, Fill them with your spirit and make their lives fruitful. Uphold them in their hour of trial. And when Christ returns, let them celebrate with all the people of God, your greatness. Amen. People of God, let us now turn to our text for this morning, Galatians chapter five. Galatians chapter five. Reading verses 16 through 21. Before coming to the fruits of the spirit, in the coming weeks, we look this morning at the works of the flesh. Galatians chapter five, page 1,239, most of the pew Bibles, verses 16 through 21. Let us hear the word of the Lord our God. 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. so far the reading of God's Holy Word. Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, scouting has always been an important part of military action. We see reference to scouting in various ways, even in the Old Testament battles. We see it throughout the history of warfare, throughout all of the centuries, from the ancient battles up to this day. Today, the scouting may take a more digital or satellite approach. It's no longer necessary to send out the human scouts on foot or by horseback. But the principle remains that you want to have knowledge of the enemy. You want to have knowledge of the enemy. You want to have eyes on them. You want to know your enemy as well as possible before you engage in any kind of combat. You want to know where they are, how many they are, the strength of their weapons. Now, people of God, what about our spiritual enemies, including the enemy of our own flesh? Do we see this enemy? Do we see what it looks like and how it manifests itself? Scripture speaks of three primary enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. The flesh there being used as it is here in Galatians 5, as it is used often throughout the scriptures to refer to what? Our sinful nature. Our very sinful old man that would war against the new man of believers. the flesh, the nature we all have, the nature we are all born into, the sinful nature which believers will still have as long as they are on this earth, which will still be the enemy to be battled against. Our sinful nature, our flesh, is our enemy. It will never leave us. It will never surrender until we die or until Christ comes again in glory. So, people of God, it's good for us to zoom in. to take out the spyglass, to use an older image of scouting, to position the satellite, to use a newer image of scouting, and to focus in, to zoom in upon our flesh, upon our desires, our sinful desires, our sinful self, to understand our enemy by understanding ourself. Surely, to understand our enemies, we must understand ourselves. And so we'll look this morning, people of God, at our fleshly desires defined, then our fleshly desires denied, and then our fleshly desires, as they work themselves out, detailed. So first, that the fleshly desires would be defined. Our problem is inside of us. We do not want these things to be bubbled out, to be practiced, to be expressed, to come to fruition, as the works of the flesh are detailed in our third point. But before we get to our third point, we've already got a severe problem, the desires themselves. It is not only sinful actions that are wrong, it is also the desires. of sin, that are wrong. It is not only the works of the flesh that are wrong, but it is also the desires of the flesh that are wrong. It's not only the fruits, the outworking of our sinful natures that is bad, it is also the very root, our sinful nature itself, which is bad. This is the problem. It is that which is opposed to the Holy Spirit. Verse 17 makes this clear. It says it in three different ways. The desires of the flesh are against the spirit. The desires of the spirit are against the flesh. They are opposed to each other. They are in conflict with each other. They are at war with each other. This is our enemy, our own sinful flesh. Now, there are many who would attempt to define sin and desire as two separate things. So sin is basically defined in terms of actions alone. The way a person is wired, or a common buzzword for this nowadays is the way a person is orientated. That's not a problem, many people claim. Sadly, this false claim is becoming increasingly common, and so today we hear things like this, homosexual acts, homosexual marriage are wrong, but homosexual desire or homosexual orientation are okay. And then that can take its form in all different kinds, for all kinds of different sins. There's an example of this just this last week, on this past Tuesday. There were some students at Calvin University, formerly called Calvin College, and they put up a sign and it said this, quote, LGBTQ is sin, the Bible says, change my mind. So they wanted to have a discussion about this, change my mind, let's discuss this. And then they had a board up with a number of passages from Scripture detailing the sinfulness of homosexuality. And this should not be controversial on a Christian campus, right? Scripture says it's not only the outworking of the flesh, which is sinful. It's the very desires of the flesh which are opposed to the spirit. That which is opposed to the spirit is evil, is wrong, is sin itself already. But this was controversial. One well-known professor, Jamie Smith, he tweeted out this. At Calvin University, all, capital A, capital L, capital L, students are welcomed, affirmed, and loved. to our LGBTQ students always, but today especially. Hashtag you are loved. Of course, the word there which is the most problematic is the word affirmed. Affirmed is one thing to welcome a sinner. It's another thing to affirm sin itself. And many students also responded in the negative, shocked that someone would even want to have such a conversation. So when the local NBC news crew showed up, again, this was all this past week, they chose to interview only students who opposed this idea that someone would stand up and say LGBTQ is sin. Of course, that's in accordance with the modern standard for journalism. And so among those students interviewed, one said this about the sign in the Bible versus, quote, I would say this is a hate speech, end of quote. Another student said the display table had, quote, gone too far, end of quote. Yet another student said this, quote, it is not our place to judge people like that, end of quote. People of God, these are the kinds of things that people, professors and students alike, would say when they claim to hold the authority of the Word of God, but they refuse to call both the action of sin and the desires of sin, sin, the sinful opposition to the Holy Spirit. But the Bible says that our sin, our opposition against God, our opposition against the Spirit begins where? At the desire level. It begins at the desire level. We must not say anything more or anything less than what the Word of God would direct us to say. to be really changed by the Spirit, we must be constantly at war, at the desire level. If we wait until sin becomes a lifestyle, if we wait to oppose it until we see the actual fruits of sin, then we've already been overrun. It's like, so we'll change the image just a little bit, instead of actively going out and scouting the enemy, the enemy's right there at the gates, and it's an old castle, and you're standing at the gates, And you say, oh, that army there with all those weapons and all those war cries, they're not my enemy. They're actually my ally. I'm just going to open up the gates and let them in. Because desires aren't, there's nothing wrong with desires. It would only be the actions, those other battalions back there. That's the only thing I should be worried about. Of course, that's foolish, that's allowing the enemy in, that's calling the enemy an ally. No, we must recognize who the enemy is, what the enemy is, that the enemy is the very desires of the flesh that would be inside us that would oppose the Holy Spirit. The problem is inside of ourselves. Now, this does make us ask the questions. If my problem is not only the actions of sin that I may or may not be committing, the lifestyle of sin that I may or may not be living, if the problem is at the very level of my nature, how could I ever then be saved? Well, that's what we've been working through in Galatians. Christ. Christ. He is perfectly good. His very nature is good because He is God and man. He is perfect in every way. He is without sin at any level. We stand in complete need of Christ. He is the key to our freedom, as it says throughout Galatians. And then summarizing Galatians 5 verse 1, we have freedom because of what Christ has done. Now, people of God, as those who have freedom in Christ, who are able to fight this battle, there can be not only a recognition of the enemy, but a level, a real measure of victory. that takes us to our second point. A real measure of victory. Our fleshly desires denied. Now in this life we'll never be completely free of sin. This war will always rage. The old man, our fallen state, will always be opposed to the new man. But we really are a new creation, a new person in Christ. And so Galatians 2 said it this way. Galatians 2 verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Now there is one of the times flesh is actually being used just to talk about the body in general. Usually it's being used to talk about our sinful nature. The point is that in Christ, we are no longer our old selves. It's a new person living. It's the new man. It's the new nature. We really have this, even as we as believers really have the Holy Spirit within us. The Holy Spirit who is opposing all of those desires of the flesh. The Holy Spirit who would dwell in believers and influence us. toward sanctification, toward becoming holy, even at, again, the very level of our desires themselves. And so, people of God, there is a measure of victory here. Verse 16 says it this way, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Verse 18 speaks of it in a little bit different way. If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. And that reminds us of the penalty of the law, which we're under because we're sinful. But now Christ has set us free. He died, he took that penalty of the law. And so now the law is no longer a rod over us, telling us that we are condemned. The law now, since we are in the Spirit, is the road underneath us. giving us the way to go, the way to live in this life. There is a real difference, there is a real change worked in believers. We will not now gratify the desires of the flesh, but instead, again, to go back to the language of verse 16, we will now walk by the Spirit on the road, which the law shows us how to go, and the Holy Spirit will make us to walk on that road. They are opposed to each other, Verse 17, and this will keep you from doing the things you want to do. End of verse 17. Well, what does the believer want to do? The believer who is a new creation in Christ, who does have the Holy Spirit in his or her heart, really does want to be holy, really does want to battle, to fight against all those desires of the flesh. Now, we're not going to be able to do this perfectly, right? We're not going to be able to do this perfectly. So, if we go back to the image of the castle, and you're standing there, and you're looking down. Now, in the first point, there are those who deny that desires are sin, and so they're calling the enemy their ally and inviting them in. Well, what happens if you pretend that this opposition is not still there? If in pride you say, well, I completely conquered sin. I don't have any desires still worn against me. I am just righteous now, completely righteous now. Well, that would be like looking over the rampart and saying, oh, there's no enemy there at all, right? So in one hand, you're saying, oh, the enemy's my ally. On the other hand, you're saying, oh, there's no enemy at all. But in either case, what do you do? You open up the gates because there's no problem. And in either case, it leads to what? Being conquered, being overrun. There are different ways to go about being destroyed. And the way to not be destroyed is to know this opposition is there, to know there really is a battle being waged, but by the Spirit, to fight, to deny, and to truly want to fight that battle, to want to grow in righteousness and holiness, We will not always be able to do what we want to do, but as new creatures in Christ, we will want to be holy. The Apostle speaks of this with a little more detail in Romans 7, and especially verses 15 to 17 help to clarify this. And there we read Romans 7 verses 15 to 17. For I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. In other words, when I'm doing what I hate, it's because that sin is still there, that desire of the flesh is still in me. even as, by the Holy Spirit, I want to battle against sin. I want to grow in holiness. So, people of God, if we say, I am a true believer, but I'm struggling against these sins, well, we can have an assurance in at least these two ways. First, to remember that our righteousness itself, the foundation of our righteousness itself, always comes back to Christ and what He has done. It's His work on the cross that saved us. And second, if you are struggling against sin, if you are wanting to not sin, well, that's a sign that the Spirit is in you. that you are in opposition to that sin. You're still falling into it, but you're saying, I don't want to. I don't want to fall into those desires of the flesh. That would be a sign that the Holy Spirit is changing us at the desire level, is helping us to bring the battle to where it really is. and He will be our aid. He will help us to walk by the Spirit, that the very walk of our life, that our very lifestyle will not be dominated by sin, but it will be one that is led by the Spirit. Now, people of God, let's come into our third point, knowing the enemy further, knowing not only the desires of the flesh, but the fleshly desires detailed in how they work themselves out. Verse 16 says, do not gratify the desires of the flesh. The word gratify there could be translated bring to fruition, do not bring to fruition the desires of the flesh. In other words, the language of our chapter is now the works of the flesh contrasted with the fruits of the spirit, but But we could talk about the fruits of the flesh against the fruits of the spirit. So the desires are the roots. Sometimes that's hidden, right? Sometimes we have sinful desires that no one knows about except for God and us. It's under the ground. It's that which must be confessed to God directly. It's that which we must personally know and fight against. But now we're not talking about that. The focus has shifted to how the roots, the desires of the flesh, what fruit that bears, how that comes to fruition, how that works itself out, the works of the flesh. And so these are things that are evident, it says in verse 19. These are things that can be seen. And these visible sins, they're listed here in a way that falls into four broad categories. First, the category of sensuality in verse 19, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. This speaks to any relations outside of marriage, any relation outside of the marriage of one man and one woman because that's how scripture consistently defines marriage from Genesis to Revelation. This would all be sexual immorality, but not only the acts of immorality, but also the impurity that can go with that. And so again, this is focused on how things are working themselves out, but impurity would speak to impure thoughts as well. And then the third word there is sensuality, or we might just say lewdness. This is commonly seen just in the way people speak, just in the way what jokes have become common nowadays. It's almost impossible to find a comedian or a comedy TV show or a comedy movie that's not making some kind of lewd joke, either directly or indirectly, every 10 to 15 minutes, if not more than that. This is just the way of the world, to joke about these things, to make light of these things outside of marriage. And to laugh along with such lewdness, that's a fleshly way of thinking. That's not a holy way of thinking. This is all works of the flesh in the area of sensual things. Second, the apostle speaks about things in the realm of worship. That one's a little bit harder to spot because it says idolatry and sorcery. You think, sorcery, how's that? How's that the realm of worship? Well, commonly, at the time of the Apostle and through to today, false worship has taken the form of sorcery, of what we might call dark magic. of even in the extreme, open worship of the devil. This has been a common way to replace true worship of God with an outward form of false worship, sorcery. So if the list was today, again, other things are more common in our nation. We might say idolatry and materialism, the specific worship of material things, relationships, items, ideas. Sorcery, though, would have been common then and is still common today in many parts of the world as a way of replacing the worship of the one true God alone. And of course, idolatry is the broader term. Any failure to worship God alone, this is a working out of the desires of the flesh, that we would fail to give glory to God. And third, there's a list of sins in the realm of our relationships. This is a lengthy list here. He works through all kinds of words, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions. It may be that there's a longer list here because this is part of the direct issues going on in Galatia. They are going at each other. And so the Apostle speaks of this also. We saw last week in verses 13 to 15. And the Apostle will return to this again in verse 26. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. There are all different ways that human relationships can break down within the church and within any social realm that we are in. We might say that the apostle has moved out of idolatry, false relationships with God and false gods being replaced, replacing the one true God into the realm of our relationship with others. And there's this long list of ways that human relationships can break down. And then fourth, the apostle speaks to the area of drinking. He does this with the word drunkenness. And then a fitting last word, origes, because that really brings it all together. Because that was a big drinking party that had all kinds of other sins attached to it. And they did it often at the pagan temples. So it was associated with false worship too. To say origes in this cultural context is really to bring it all together. But this is not an exhaustive list. There are many works of the flesh. And so the Apostle says, and all things like these, all things like these, these are all ways in our relationship with God and our relationship with others, in the realm of drink, in the realm of sensuality, that we would fall into the ways of the desires of the flesh being worked out. And people of God, if any of these things would dominate our lives, if any of these things would come to be our very way of life, if this would be what we practice, if this would be what we want instead of what we battle against, because it's not only desires of the flesh that the Christians struggle with. We sometimes even let the desires of the flesh come to fruition, don't we? But if we would allow these things not only to occasionally come to fruition, though we would be battling against them and not desiring that to happen, if they would come to dominate, if they would come to be our lifestyle, then we would be showing, we would be evidencing that we are not of the people of God. We would be demonstrating that we do not have a place in the kingdom of God. Kingdom of God is for those whom God has called. And those whom God has called will battle against sin. They will not be dominated by it. They will never desire it. They will always be wanting the ways of the Spirit, even as we'll continue to fall into sins in this life. So people of God, certainly it's necessary to examine to repent of our sins, to be sure that this is never our lifestyle, that these are always things we're battling against. We must do this before we can come to the table. Now, here below on this earth, it is a place of sin. where our own flesh is one of our enemies that we must know, understand, that our own desires are what we must repent of, trusting in Jesus Christ alone. Now, when the kingdom comes eternally, then we'll no longer need to read the examination section. We'll no longer have to ask the question. We'll be in perfect harmony. God will totally wipe the sins away from us at that time. Then we can just come to the marriage feast of the Lamb and eat and celebrate. But now, we have to examine ourselves before we would partake. But in that examination, people of God, if we do desire If we do want to put away the works of the flesh, to put away the very desires of the flesh, if we are battling against them, as those who are new creations in Christ, as those who are influenced by the Spirit, then we say, Lord God, I know I am a sinner, even by my very nature, but I come to your table, and I am nourished by you, even as your Spirit is the one who will lead me to not gratify the sinful desires of my own flesh. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, we think of the coming marriage feast of the Lamb, of the time when we won't even need to examine because our Old man, our sinful nature will be completely gone. But Lord God, we are not there yet. As we tarry here below, show us our own sins. Help us to examine our own hearts. But Lord God, wanting to serve you, let us delight to come to you to partake of the meal which you have given us here on this earth. to eat and drink in remembrance of what Christ has done. For you are the one who is without sin in any way. You are the one who has delivered us from the penalties of sin. This we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Page 50. To all of you who have with godly sorrow confessed your sins and who have affirmed the true faith in Christ, the promise of Jesus is sure. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. for the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me While remaining bread and wine, these sacred elements, nevertheless, become so united with the reality that they signify that we do not doubt, but joyfully believe that we receive in this meal by the Spirit, through faith, nothing less than the crucified body and shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. For all who live in rebellion against God and in unbelief, this holy food and drink will bring you only further condemnation. If you do not yet confess Jesus Christ and seek to live under His gracious reign, we admonish you to abstain. But all who repent and believe are invited to this sacred meal, not because you are worthy in yourself, but because you are clothed in Christ's perfect righteousness. Do not allow the weakness of your faith or your failures in the Christian life to keep you from this table, for it is given to us because of our weakness and because of our failures in order to increase our faith by feeding us with the body and blood of Jesus Christ As the Word has promised us God's favor, so also our Heavenly Father has added this confirmation of His unchangeable promise. So come, believing sinners, for the table is ready. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Let us, people of God, pray. Almighty and everlasting God, who by the blood of your only begotten Son has secured for us a new and living way into the Holy of Holies. Cleanse our minds and hearts by your word and spirit that we, your redeemed people, drawing close to you through this holy sacrament, may enjoy fellowship with the Holy Trinity through the body and blood of Christ our Savior, We know that our Ascended Savior does not live in temples made by hands, but is in heaven, where he continues to intercede on our behalf. Through this sacrament, by your own word and spirit, may these common elements now be set apart from ordinary use and consecrated by you. so that, just as truly as we eat and drink these elements by which our bodily life is sustained, so truly we receive into our souls for our spiritual life the true body and true blood of Christ. We receive these gifts by faith, which is the hand and mouth of our souls. Amen. As we draw near, to the table of our Lord. Let us confess our Christian faith. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Let us now go to our heavenly table and receive the gift of God for our souls. By the promise of God, this bread and wine are for us the holy blood of Christ. Yeah. The bread which we break is a communion of the body of our Lord. Take, eat, remember and believe that the body of Christ was broken for the forgiveness of our sins. The cup of blessing which we bless is of the communion of the blood of Christ. Yeah. Take, drink, remember and believe that the precious blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was shed for the complete remission of all our sins.