Galatians 5, again, we're talking about Jesus Christ being the only solution to sin and suffering. All of this taking place in a relationship with a real person. The reality is that He's taking care of the penalty of sin, and so by faith we're able to rest in that. He's taking care of the power of sin, and so by faith we're able to walk in that. And then the presence of sin is still here, and so we have to deal with it, which means that we are going to wrestle with the flesh in dwelling sin. We do that as we walk in the Spirit. And as we were breaking that down this morning, we looked at some realities about the flesh, some realities about the Spirit, and then now, we're going to talk for a minute about our walk and then trying to put this all together. So, Galatians 5 v. 16-17, "'For this I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.'" The flesh lusts against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh. These are contrary to one another so that you cannot do the things that you would. It is, well, first off, let's just think about what a walk is if you haven't been here on Wednesday nights. So your walk is just really your manner of life. That's your lifestyle. We've said that your walk is kind of like the scaffolding that holds up your priorities. We live every day. out of a hundred little habits, a hundred little things that we do. So, for example, just thinking about a normal Sunday and all the things that most of you didn't even think about but did today. And when I mean think about, I just mean you didn't have to wonder was this going to happen. Most of you got up knowing it's Sunday, we're going to church. You didn't have to think about that. You didn't have to wonder if that was going to happen. Most of you recognized we need to bring something for lunch. And so again, that wasn't a plan. You didn't wonder, am I going to do that? Am I not going to do that? As you prepared for what you were going to wear, you knew about, I'm not saying you knew the exact outfit, but you knew the kind of clothing you were going to wear today. And then as you just went about your daily routine, you probably did almost every single bit of it without thinking. You got into your car. You did not put the church's address into your GPS. You got here without thinking about it, more than likely. And a hundred other little habitual things we got finished with lunch and lo and behold without us having any sort of a planning committee The lunchroom got cleaned and the dishes got cleaned And I'm not saying that those were mindless in the sense that you were in a trance I'm just saying you didn't wonder if that's what you were going to do Most of everybody here has a habit of what we do getting the food ready breaking the food down coming back in and We knew even that, more than likely, we were going to be singing some of the Do-Re-Mi, some of the soul-fetched stuff, because that's what we've been doing in the afternoon to keep that up. So your walk, again, is just those little commitments, those little habits that you've worked into your life that you probably do very little thinking about in a direct way. In Philippians 2, Philippians 2. We talked about this this morning, wherefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. And so this working out of your salvation, of your own salvation, really it's a decision that we have to either walk in the Spirit or to walk in the flesh as we talked about this morning. And what it means is that we're trying to order our lifestyle or our life habits after the Spirit or what the Spirit is doing in our lives. So for example, as far as the Christian walk goes, Part of your walk ought to be a regular daily intake of the Word. See, this is why what I was talking about earlier this morning about time for time doesn't work. The way that the Word works, the way that Psalm 1 talks about it, like a tree planted by the water, It's soaking up that water constantly, regularly. I mean, it's planted there. And so the Word is giving that tree long-term the nourishment that it needs. The tree really, on any given day, never receives enough nourishment to last a lifetime. It's daily being nourished and soaking up what it needs. And so as we think about a walk, it's the same way. So as we're in the Word, we're daily taking that in. That's affecting the way that we live. That's affecting our mindset. It's affecting the decisions that we're making. Another part of the Christian's walk is, we talked about it as we prayed this morning, a walk of service. Am I going to be intentional about serving in the opportunities that I have? That is, serving those in my family, serving those in the body, or is my life going to be a self-serving, self-focused life? Well, you're either doing one or the other. You can't do both at the same time. And that's a walk. A one-time thing that's a lifestyle that's cultivated Same way with your interaction in the body, all the one another's that we ought to be doing and receiving. That's a lifestyle. That's a walk. The nourishment there is not a one and done. It is an ongoing thing. And so I think it's interesting that when Galatians chapter five is comparing and contrasting, it is not comparing and contrasting isolated choices, but long term lifestyles. The reality is our response to any given temptation simply reveals our current walk. So what I mean by that is God's not surprised. And honestly, if we could roll back the tape a little bit, we wouldn't be surprised. The temptation itself is simply a revelation or is simply exposing where our current walk is. That's why Paul says, walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now, there is a place for getting specific about specific sins and being strategic and all that sort of thing. But by and large, whenever we start to get specific about combating sin, really we're just kind of getting specific about, you need to add this to your walk. This needs to be a normal part of your daily life. This needs to be something that is a part of your lifestyle. So again, in Romans 6, verse 16, when we're told to yield ourselves as servants to righteousness, this is a walk. This is something that is ongoing. So often we just think in steps. We made one bad step. And we don't think about anything that led up to that. Right. But a walk is continuous. It doesn't stop. That's the that's the picture here. It's one step after another, after another, after another. And it's the whole thing. What are we doing? What what's what's happening there? So so the question really, if we think about a passage like Romans six, chapter six, verse 16. Yield yourself servants to obey sin or to obey righteousness. OK, the question is, Who is the one doing the yielding? Well, that would be me. That would be you. We're the ones making that decision. Now, how do we yield? Well, it's really a combination of denying self and obeying God. Both of those are either part of your walk or not. I'm not saying you can't do it isolated, but as a whole, as a lifestyle, if we're going to be successful as it relates to fighting sin, we are not going to wait until we get there. We're going to be fighting and we're going to be adding things to our walk that we need to have in place before the actual, if we want to call it an event, we can. Now, another way to think about this, and I guess it's kind of pertinent since it's either just ended or it's about to, but you think about the Olympics. The athletes that are participating in the Olympics, they have been training for years to get to this one event. And they did a whole lot more than just pay attention to their performance in whatever event they were in. So if someone was doing track and running whatever those meters are that they run, they did a whole lot more than focus on that particular race. I mean, they had somebody tracking how much sleep they got. They had somebody tracking their food intake. They had somebody making sure they had the right amount of protein as opposed to carbs and all those kinds of things. And I quickly lose my knowledge in that area. But the exercise that they were doing to make sure they had the strength to be explosive and all those kinds of things, it's an entire lifestyle. I mean, you don't make it to the Olympics by saying, yeah, I like running 100 meters. I'll do that once a day, every day for two years. You'll never make it. Now, you have to do it about a thousand times a day for two years, along with everything else. Right? I mean, that's one of the reasons why those athletes are so elite. They essentially put themselves over into the hands of a person who manages their life for them. Now, you think about how that relates to you yielding yourself over to righteousness and walking in the Spirit. Okay? So, for the athlete, the coach is making the plan, but the person actually has to do it. actually has to follow it. You could have the best plan in the world, but if you don't actually follow it, it's not going to do anything for you. Well, in the same sense, you could have the best plan in the world, but if you don't do anything with it, it's not going to be effective in your life. And so the walk is where we start to connect the dots in what the Spirit is doing and has called us to just in our day-to-day life. Again, out of Romans 12, we've been here several times on Wednesdays, verses 1 and 2, the reality is, as far as my life and as far as your life, as it relates to our walk, Your life is either being conformed to the world through the flesh, or it is being transformed by Scripture through the Spirit. It's one of two things. You can't do both at the same time. As Brother Daniel said this morning, there is no neutral here. You're either going one way or the other. And so, we have to pay attention to our walk, that is just our daily disciplines, our lifestyle, what it is that we're involved in. We don't want to be, I mean think about trying to walk in the spirit and getting serious about walking in the spirit and then all of a sudden discovering that as far as your daily habits go, you are feeding the flesh for over half the day. That's not going to work. And so it's a total lifestyle restructure for the Christian. I'm not saying that for you it would have to be that, because some of those things have already been changed if you've been walking in Christ. But it's paying attention to the whole picture. So, as we think about that, and as we think about our walk and our response to temptation, then I want to go back to that James 1, thinking about the anatomy of temptation that we were looking at several Wednesday nights ago. And some of this has changed, not in the sense of it's the opposite of what we were saying, but I've kind of refined it a little bit more as far as the the breakdown of it. So James chapter 1. Verse 13 through 15. James chapter 1 verse 13 through 15. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempted he any man, but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed and then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Okay? So, we're living in a world where the presence of sin is still a reality. We're either going to be walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh. And as we face these specific temptations, that's going to expose how we've been walking or where we've been walking in our lives. So the temptation that James talks about, as far as the anatomy of a temptation, is broken down into five parts. First he says, number one, God is not tempting, but every man is tempted when he is drawn away. He's drawn away. That is, he's attracted, he or she, attracted to something. So, as far as temptation goes, there's always an attraction. Matter of fact, if that attraction weren't there, you would never fall to a single temptation. The strongest force of any temptation is your own heart. That's how Jesus could endure, be tempted in all areas, even as we are, yet without sin. because the temptation never provided an attraction for him. His heart was never drawn to those things. So breaking down and thinking through, there's an attraction somewhere. We are attracted to something about the temptation. So drawn away, how? Of your own lust. So the drawing power of this attraction is really your lust or your desires. Something that you want. So it looks good. You want it. And then James says, not only is he drawn away of his own lust, but then he is enticed. He's enticed. That just means the opportunity to fulfill the desire is presented. It was already attractive before it ever came up. There was already a desire for it before it ever came up. But now, all of a sudden, there is an opportunity to pursue this attraction or this desire. And then he says, verse 15, when lust has conceived, that's just the response. The conception of sin is just a response. What are you going to do when those opportunities arise? Well, it says whenever you respond or you seize the desired opportunity, that's when sin is conceived. it ends in death. Now, I've distilled all this down to five words, so I just wanted to let you see where I was getting it from the text. So the five progression levels of temptation, and they do build, the five progression levels of temptation are this out of James 1. You have attraction, desire, opportunity, response, result. Attraction, desire, opportunity, response, and results. So let's think about that as it relates to fighting temptation through the wisdom and power of Christ. Remember, we said the whole point of this message, Christ is the only solution to the problem of sin and suffering. So how do we fight these kinds of temptations through the wisdom and the power of Christ. By the way, it's not always apparent. I mean, all five of these things are not always apparent in the moment of a temptation. But they are all present. If they weren't, you would never fall. It takes at least four. The result is inevitable. But it takes these four things for you to fall to any temptation. So, number one, I'm going to split them up into twos. You have attraction and desire. Attraction and desire. So here's the reality about us. Remember what we said that Christ has already redeemed us from the penalty and the power of sin? And since He's redeemed us from the power of sin, When it comes to the attraction of temptation, you have the ability to resist that. Right? When it comes to your desire for sin in Christ, you have the ability to resist the desires of the flesh by walking in the Spirit. But nevertheless, you have the ability. Now, really, all this is what's leading up to the actual the action. It's what's going on in your heart. It's what's going on in your mind. So, ideally, you want to be fighting sin as it relates to the attraction and the desire. By the time you get to the opportunity and the response, it gets a lot more difficult. So, the battleground of your heart, again, what's attractive to you. Can you help what's attractive? Well, in the moment, no, but long-term, yes. What's deemed attractive varies throughout cultures. There are some cultures that have been attracted to particular things that we would look at and think, what in the world? And that's because it was, honestly, it was taught. Attraction is a product of your thinking. What you think about something will determine whether or not you're attracted to it. So there are some people who are attracted to the abuse of drugs and alcohol. There are some people who are not. What's the difference? Well, the difference is whether or not you're thinking straight about it. The difference is whether or not you're going to believe a lie or you're going to believe the truth about where this is going to end. So your ability to discern truth from lies is so important when it comes to attractions and desires. And I would also say your ability to speak truth to yourself is vital as well. You've heard me say this before. It is not original with me, but The reality is nobody talks to you more than you do. I mean, we're talking to ourselves all the time. Maybe not out loud, but we are almost engaged in a constant mental conversation with ourselves as we're processing things, we're thinking through things. There's always something going on up here. And brothers and sisters, it is a valuable asset to be able to speak to yourself more and listen to yourself less. Everything you've got going on up here is not always right. You need to be speaking the truth of God's Word to yourself on a regular basis. That's where these things are falling. Now, if you're walking in the Spirit, prior to facing a temptation, then your heart should be prepared for the fight. Or at least it should be more prepared for the fight. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy. It's just going to mean that you're ready. That is, your thoughts, your desires, your choices. But get this, if you're not walking in the Spirit, that is, as Brother Daniel mentioned this morning, there's no neutral. You're walking one way or the other. If you're not walking in the Spirit prior to temptation, then it's like a soldier who's on the battlefield who waits until his enemy starts firing before he decides to load his 30-round magazine, get it into his weapon, chamber a cartridge, aim, and start shooting. How successful do you think that soldier is going to be? Not very successful at all. I mean, Satan is firing. He is after us. His fiery darts are being launched at us all the time. Are we going to wait until those things are beginning to hit before we decide we're going to prepare ourselves for battle? If we do, we're dead before we get started. I mean, we're not going to make it as far as being successful as it relates to temptation. And so walking in the spirit, that is where. engaging in the sanctifying work of what the Spirit is doing. We want to make sure that our minds are being renewed, that we are being transformed through the Word, that we have spiritual disciplines in place where we are communing with God in prayer and we are communing with one another. We are regularly fellowshipping with the saints and we're receiving mutual edification and encouragement. All those kinds of things before the heat of the battle comes upon us. And that's the key, before the heat of the battle comes upon us. So that's the attraction and desire. Then you have the opportunity and your own response to that opportunity. So you might have an attraction to something, you might have a desire for something, and the opportunity never presented itself. But more than likely, eventually, As we're being drawn away by our flesh, an opportunity is going to present itself. The reality is, again, we're thinking about being redeemed from the power of sin. In Christ, you and I have the power to resist opportunities to fulfill the lust of the flesh. whether that's mentally, whether that's physically, through the power of... Now, this is a fruit of the Spirit, so we're not just talking about pulling up your bootstraps. Through the power of Spirit-filled self-control, you never have to yield yourself to sin when the opportunity arises. So the opportunity shows up, and then you respond. Once you get to this point, once you get to the opportunity response, you're going to have to do more than think and desire. You're going to have to act. So sometimes people can be very frustrated and be almost deflated because they do not want to fall to a particular temptation. They don't want to think a certain way. They don't want to desire a certain thing, or maybe they desire deliverance from a certain thing, but they just think it's going to happen by magic. That's not the way it works. 2 Peter 1 says that we're called to make every effort to add to our faith, virtue, and so forth and so on. This is something that requires effort. James 1.22 says that we can't just be hearers of the Word. We have to be doers of the Word also. So when the opportunity presents itself and we are forced to respond, that's an action every time. Now, it may be an action in the sense of taking thoughts captive, those kinds of things, but it's something you're actually doing. You're not passive there. Again, Matthew 7 24, when we think about wisdom, Jesus says, whoever hears and does these sayings of mine will be like a wise man who built his house upon a rock. So there is doing. There are things that have to be done. You have to act. And this is going to require discipline and self-control. Discipline and self-control. So, 1 Timothy 4, 7, Paul tells Timothy to exercise his self unto godliness. It just means discipline yourself for godliness. We're really talking again about our walk here. Timothy, you should not be living an aimless life. You should not be hoping that you might fit some of these things in if it's convenient at some point. If your goal is to walk in the Spirit and to resist the flesh, you should not be feeding the flesh and neglecting your spiritual man. Discipline yourself for godliness. And then Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 24 and 25, that those who run a race must be temperate, that is, self-controlled in all things. Now, some of this is you figuring out yourself. And what I mean by that is, There are some areas that you might have to exercise self-control in because you realize, I can't handle this without sliding off into feeding the flesh. So the reality is, as far as our walk, there is no neutral, but as far as things that we face, sometimes there are things that are just neutral. That is, they aren't good or bad. What we do with them turns into good or bad. So sports could be one of those things. Sports aren't good or bad. But if you decide that you're going to play sports every single Sunday to the neglect of assembling with the saints and that's going to have the dominating influence on your life rather than the Lord, then obviously you can't handle that. That's gone from a neutral to a walking in the flesh kind of thing. So maybe sports is your thing like that. I have very little fear that sports will ever have that kind of influence on my life. That's just not my thing. Abby's not afraid of that. I'm not afraid of that. It's just not. Food, maybe. Now we're getting a little warmer. But sports, no. That's not going to do it. So I might not have to be as careful there. I might not have to be as disciplined there, because the attraction and desire for me doesn't go that direction. But you might have to be. You might have to be. I know some folks that just do not like sweets at all. I don't understand them. Okay, but they do exist. They don't have to exercise self-control in that area because there's no attraction and there's no desire. This just does nothing for them. And so as we're thinking about this discipline and self-control, it's important for us to recognize that this 1 Corinthians 9 being temperate in all things, we're going to need to know ourselves in order to know what can I handle and what do I need to really tighten down on. What is it that's going to be my struggle? What is it that's, as it were, a besetting sin? That which I naturally gravitate toward. And I'm going to have to exercise some self-control there. And as I do that, I'm intentionally trying to structure my walk so that I do not indulge in an attraction and desire that leads to walking in the flesh. So you have. As far as temptation, you have your attraction and desire that you've got to fight from your heart level. And then you have the opportunity and your response, which is going to require an action on your part. And then the last part is the result. So we said, in Christ, you have the power to resist the attraction and really transform that. You have the power to resist the desire and transform that. You have the power to resist the opportunity. And you have the power to respond to temptation in a way that's honoring to the Lord. But by the time we get down to the fifth part, you have absolutely no control over the result. In other words, you can choose to sin, but you cannot choose the consequences of your sin. What James tells us in James 1, verse 15, is that when sin is conceived and it is finished, it brings forth death. So as we walk in the flesh, as we meet temptation and as we fall to it, then the result of that is it's out of our hands. We can't control it. Now what we can do is whenever we fall to sin, and let's just be realistic, we're going to, when we fall to sin, we can turn back to Christ. We can own our sin for what it is. You see, so often people stay in this death because they won't see it for what it actually is. Remember we said before, A lot of times we like to make excuses for the flesh. A lot of times we like to justify ourself. We try to reconcile ourselves to the Lord through silly things. We try to atone for our sins in silly things. What God wants us to do in the midst of our faults and our failures is to own our sin, to turn to Christ, ask for forgiveness, At times, we've got to endure the consequences, and then we turn and seek to walk in wisdom moving forward. Now, that might not seem like the most pleasant thing in the world, but that ought to be a normal part of a faithful Christian's life. I mean, you are not going to live a perfect life from here on out. More than likely, You're not going to live a perfect hour whenever we dismiss today. But what are you going to do whenever it's brought to your attention that you've fallen to temptation? You can sulk in it, you can live in self-denial, or you can turn to the only person, remember what we said before, the only solution for sin, and that is Jesus Christ. as we take Him at His Word, as we confess that sin, as we trust that He's faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and then as we seek to walk in wisdom, walking in the Spirit rather than fulfilling the lust of the flesh. And so, as we think about what these realities mean in our day-to-day life as far as Christ being the solution to the problem of sin, It is a fight to the finish. It's a fight to the finish. But it's a fight that you've been equipped to fight. And it is a fight that you've been equipped really even to understand. And so we've still got at least one Wednesday in Galatians 5 to try to unpack the fruit of the Spirit. And I hope that our study on Wednesdays and the study from today, this morning and this afternoon, will prove to be helpful and practical as you think about your own walk in Christ. Let's pray. Again, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that in Your mercy You have blessed us, not only with Your full revelation that You have given, but You've blessed us to be born into a time period where it has been completed, and we can know Your mind on all these different issues. We're thankful for the Gospel. We're thankful for what You've done for us in Christ. We're thankful for the power that You've given us through the Spirit to have discernment, to resist temptation. And so, Father, I pray that in all the complexities of life that we live in, that You would bless us to be able to put these things together, to be able to walk in the Spirit so that we would not fulfill the lust of the flesh, to recognize temptation for what it is, and to lean on and rest in Your Son, Jesus Christ. It's in His name we pray. Amen.