Nov. 11, 2001

Where Do You Want to Live?

1 John 2:15

When I first got saved, and discovered that it was possible to actually read the Bible and understand it, I was like a kid with a new toy. I loved it. In the space of a couple months I had read the whole thing through once, and read the New Testament a couple times. But there was one part that really made that brand new Christian, -me- uncomfortable.

If you have your Bibles with you today, and I hope you do, turn to 1 John 2:15. Or look on your bulletin. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." That gave me some problems. I loved motorcycles, and I loved racing motorcycles. I loved sports cars. I am one of those people that never got over being a kid, and wanting fast toys. The faster, the better.

And now here I was, a new Christian, fascinated with Jesus, suddenly able to call God my Father, and here He goes telling me that if I love the world and it's stuff, -and I did,- that love would displace, push aside the kind of love that He wants me to have inside of me. His kind of love. Bummer.

So I tried to be good, I tried not to want those worldly things. Didn't work, did it? I still have motorcycles. A nice old boat. A little airplane. Why? Why are we all just eat up with the desire for "stuff?" Why does it have the hold on us that it does? We all know that in the long run none of that "stuff" is worth anything. Meanwhile we are surrounded by a church full of people that are born again, and they have the Spirit of Christ dwelling in them; why are those people not infinitely more interesting and appealing to us that all our "stuff?"

Paul gives us the answer in Galatians 5:17: "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."
The flesh. That worldly way of looking at things, that worldly way of doing things, our whole mental outlook apart from God. Our old natural fallen human nature that is contrary to that new life in the Holy Spirit.

That's what the flesh is. We also need to know what it's not. Something we don't want to do, when we use the word flesh, is to confuse our fleshly nature with our skin. Our earth suit. Our bag of bones. That is not quite right. We don't want to be too simplistic. Sin resides in here, true enough, but the real problem is not our physical body, it is our old fleshly, fallen human nature. So for the rest of today, I am going to also use the terms fleshly nature or old nature sometimes instead of just the flesh. Everybody up with me on this?

The flesh nature is that part of our human nature that wars against our spiritual nature. And it wars pretty successfully. The Bible says that in some cases we cannot live the spiritual life that we would like to.
The Bible says that living a successful Christian life is impossible if- -if- -if- you are living or walking in the flesh nature. Question: Do we have to live in that old, fleshly nature?

For the last couple weeks we have been talking about church unity, and the question was asked: "How can church be a place that is safe?"
Let's read the whole passage in Galatians, and think about that. Let's start out with a situation where it is not safe, verse 15: "But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." Paul is speaking to Christians here, and he is talking to those whose church is not a safe place. Verse 16: "This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
Gal 5:17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
Gal 5:18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law."

Biting and devouring each other. The world is a scary place. The world is full of places where people bite and devour one another. Sometimes one of those places is the family; people get chewed up and devoured there. Sometimes it's a job that devours those that work in it. Sometimes it's the social group we hang out with. Sometimes it's our marriage. And sometimes it's our church. Paul talks about walking in the Spirit, living and moving in the Holy Spirit, in order that this worldly evil, this lust to bite and devour one another won't have power over us.

How do we do that? That would make us safe to be around, and if our church was composed of people like that, it would make church a safe place to be. What would that look like? How would we make it happen? We make it happen by walking in the Spirit instead of the old nature. But what does that mean? How does it apply to you? To me? Here?

Skip down to Galatians 5:24: "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
Gal 5:25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
Gal 5:26 Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another."

I hope that the next few minutes will make a bunch of you uncomfortable. I am not here to chew you out, or stomp on your toes, or anything like that. But I do hope to make you uncomfortable. I want you to listen to me real close and see how what I am about to say applies to you. Because it will apply to every one of us, only in different ways. We have problems in our personal lives, in our Christian family lives, and in our church lives because we don't crucify the old fleshly nature, we manage it.

God created man to have an intimate relation ship between God and man, man and wife, and if sin hadn't trashed things, God, man, and man's children; an extended family. But that's history. Man is now separated from God, man is now dead spiritually because of sin.

Then Jesus Christ comes and makes atonement for sin, and for those who receive that atonement, everything is changed. It is now possible for man to have an intimate relationship with God, and with other people, but generally it doesn't happen. Why? Because we are still in the habit of doing what Adam and Eve did, managing things for ourselves. Managing our world. Managing other people to make our lives simpler. Or less painful. Or to meet our agenda. Managing others to make ourselves feel good. Feel happy. That is something we start doing as little kids, and some of us get real good at it. The better we are at managing our world, the more comfortable we are. Or at least that's what we think, so we keep doing it.

We even try to manage God. Certain heathens do it pretty aggressively, they think that by using certain magic spells and rituals, they can get God to do their bidding, or conform to some agenda. Of course, we know better than that. We know that God is not affected by spells or incantations or charms. So we use His Word on Him to manage Him instead.

We look at certain promises in the Bible, and we think that if we do everything right, if we cross all our t's and dot all our i's, then God is obligated to us. And that would be useful. Maybe something is going wrong in our life, something in our life is falling apart, and we need God to come through for us big time. Some one that we love is falling into gross sin, some one that we love is sick and getting worse, some one we love just told us to stuff it, and walked away. And we are dying inside. So we pray. And we need an answer, we need it bad, and we need it soon. And heaven is silent.

Why? I did everything right. I kept all the rules, I did what I was supposed to, I've been good, I kept my end of the deal God, now how about you keeping yours? What's the hold up? God, what is your problem? We have met all the requirements, we did what God said, our need is great, now where is the blessing?

We want to manage God. We have taken God's Word and made for ourselves, and for Him, a law, not the Law of the Old Testament, but a law of our own choosing, and we try and put both God and ourselves under it, for our advantage. Can we manage God? We want what we want and we want it now, maybe we can get it if we can back God into a corner. Maybe we can use His Word to outmaneuver Him. Obligate Him. It's foolish, but we try it anyway.

Well, maybe we can still outmaneuver, manage, or obligate the people around us? Yeah, maybe. Sometimes our fleshly nature is more clever than their fleshly nature, so maybe we can. But is that the Christlike answer? No.

The answer is to crucify the old fleshly nature, with it's affections and lusts,- but we don't want to do that. We have gotten comfortable with our old nature. Especially now that we are saved, our old nature is much better now. Our old nature is not like it used to be before we got saved, we have cleaned it up quite a bit. Our old fleshly nature used to be pretty bad, it used to stay preoccupied with some variation of faster horses, younger women, older whiskey and more money, but not now. Not any more. It's sanctified. We have sanctified our flesh up real good. It's a lot better than it was. It doesn't even look bad anymore. We even kind of like it. It helps us.

See, now that I no longer do drugs, I can feel good about myself when I exhort and admonish people in my church whose old nature is still struggling with nicotine.
Now that I no longer commit felonies, I can feel good about myself when other members of the church commit nickel and dime stuff.
Now that I am sanctified, I can feel comfortable about myself when ever I see someone struggling, and maybe I can give them some good advice.
Maybe if they will listen to me, (now that I am sanctified) perhaps some day they will even be ----holy----like I am.
Maybe I have a friend who is sanctified -like I am- and we can get together and discuss others in the church that have - problems. And since we are both -sanctified,- it won't really be gossip.

Let me tell you something: That's exactly what the Bible calls the flesh, and that's one of the things that Christ died to deliver us from. Because that is sin, big time. And it bites and devours people. Maybe if you think real hard, you will think of how maybe sometimes you do that in your flesh, and maybe you will even think of some other brother or sister in Christ that you do that sort of thing to. Because that's how your flesh sees your relationship to them.

And if that thought makes you uncomfortable, it's supposed to. That's called biting and devouring your brothers and sisters in Christ. That's the sort of thing that makes church not a very safe place to be. That's not the kind of love that Jesus wants us to have for each other, because that's not love at all.

It's pride, the condemnation of the devil, and the better we get at managing our old flesh nature, the better of a job we do at cleaning the flesh up, getting the stains out, and wiping it off, the easier it is for us to live with that old nature, when we ought to be crucifying it instead.

The admonitions and exhortations that Paul, and James and John and Peter give us in the New Testament, they are not intended to get us to clean up our old nature, they are there to remind us that it is simply an ongoing problem, don't cut it any slack. It's not supposed to be cleaned up, it's supposed to be killed. And every time it looks like it's coming back to life, put a couple more rounds in it, it's not dead yet. And then keep an eye on it, don't trust it. But for heaven's sake, quit managing it. Quit utilizing it.

Something I pointed out last week, is that we don't have a good concept of the holiness of God, we don't have a clear concept of how sinful sin really is. We don't have a good concept of how sinful our old nature really is. We need to get a handle on that.

Does everybody in here today know what it smells like to be around a septic tank when it has been dug up and the cover is off? Pretty bad, huh? Normally you can pick up the stench two or three houses away, right? I have memories of being a little kid in the first grade and someone in the neighborhood had a septic tank with the top completely off, and it was this horrible pit several feet long, several feet wide, down in a hole, and I had never seen or imagined anything like it. It was incredibly nasty and gross to my six year old mind. One of the other kids in the neighborhood came up and made like he was going to push me in, and I can still remember the horror of thinking that I was going to fall into that filth.

That's how God responds to what the Bible calls our old flesh nature. That's what our normal, natural, fleshly nature is like. And it's also what our saved and sanctified fleshly nature is like.

Several years ago, our back yard was getting kind of soggy every winter, we were having problems with our field bad. Paty's sold this stuff you could pour into your toilet, it was supposed to restore your field bed. It was a gallon of healthy bacteria that you added to your system, and those good little bacteria were suppose to make things in your field bed all healthy again. There were big warnings on the container; Wear gloves! Wear goggles! Don't let this stuff splash on you! It didn't look that bad, it was crystal clear, it even had a sort of a lustrous look to it, some kind of clear liquid that was actually very pretty to look at.

Then I started to pour it in and I got a whiff of it. WOW! Essence of concentrated septic tank. Maybe it didn't look bad, but as soon as you got a whiff of it, you knew what it was, you knew what it did, and you knew where it belonged.

That is our flesh after we have cleaned it up and sanctified it. It might look better than it did before we got saved, but it's still that same old fleshly nature. That's why there's no point in trying to clean it up, or try to make it acceptable, just go ahead and crucify it, because it's not fit to be in your presence, in God's presence, or in the presence of anybody else in your church. You crucify something by putting it to death.

That's not always easy. Our flesh is like some sort of obnoxious sacrifice that refuses to die, and keeps trying to crawl off the altar, but God has provided a way. God has given us desires as part of our human makeup, it is natural for us to want certain things. Not all desires are bad. When we get saved, God gives us a new spiritual nature that wants spiritual things, just like our old fleshly nature wants worldly things.

How well we do in crucifying the old nature depends mostly on what it is we want more. Paul tells us in Colossians 3:1: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek" -want, desire, go after- " seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
Col 3:2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
Col 3:3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
Col 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
Col 3:5 Mortify" -kill, execute, put to death- "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth;"
We crucify the flesh by wanting something spiritual even more,
wanting something spiritual bad enough that we are willing to turn loose of what we currently have in order to get it,
to exchange something that we have for something that we desire more fervently.

Hold that thought, and change gears with me, we will come back to it.

Something that I have heard people saying recently, is that they have a desire for Jesus to come soon, there is an increasing desire to give up on this place, just go ahead on to glory and enjoy being with Jesus. OK. You don't have to wait. Paul tells us in Colossians 1:27: "Christ in you, the hope of glory:"
Jesus is in His people. We don't have to wait to get to heaven to see Jesus, we don't have to wait until heaven to enjoy being around Him, He is here now. He is here in His people. He is here in the members of His church.

The problem is that we have trouble seeing Him. We look at the other people in our church, and sometimes we think we get a glimpse of Jesus in them, sometimes here, sometimes there, just for a moment, but then He is gone. And now we can't see Him or hear Him. Why? Because our old sinful nature doesn't want to see Jesus, it wants to see the old sinful nature of our brothers and sisters. It wants to see what agrees with it. It wants to be around what it can manage. And the old nature of our brothers and sisters is doing the same thing.

Our fleshly nature wants us to compare ourselves to others, to be superficial, to manage our relationship with them, to be congenial, to be helpful, to be a little bit distant and aloof so that we don't get hurt.
But my fleshly nature doesn't want the Spirit of Jesus in me to connect with the Spirit of Jesus in you. And your fleshly nature doesn't want the Spirit of Jesus in you to connect with the Spirit of Jesus in me. Or with anybody else in your church. Or any other Christians.

When we have an altar call, we sing; "Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come," and we mean it. For ourselves, and for others. But then what happens? We expect that the poor sinner that comes to Jesus will get cleaned up, fixed up, sanctified up, and meet our expectations, just like we got cleaned up, fixed up, and met somebody else's expectations. And meanwhile we are still in our old nature, and they are still in their old nature, and we are looking at their manifestations of their old nature -which falls short- as it always must- and we are feeling smug, or self righteous, or disgusted, or something else unworthy of Jesus.

And they are feeling guilty and wretched, and inadequate, and unloved. That is not life in the Spirit, that is life in the flesh. That unity of His people as a body of believers breaks down. And church at that moment is not a safe place. We forget that we are all sinners saved by grace, all of us were in the septic tank, all of us were defiled by sin, filthy and stinking, right where our flesh liked to be, and then Jesus saved us by His grace.

We forget that our sin nature, our fleshly nature that is comfortable in the septic tank is still with us, it is still part of us, and unless we crucify it daily, hourly, every minute, it will come back to life, and hide the Christ in us behind the sinful filth of that old nature. It will hide the Christ in others by refusing to see Him. It will see instead, only what it wants to see; their flesh.

What would happen, if, when we look at another member of the body of Christ, if we could picture ourselves standing in the cesspool, and they are standing in the cesspool with us, and Jesus was standing above us pouring clean water over both of us? We could look at them and see that they are clean, and pure, and we could see Jesus right behind them, smiling at them, smiling at us, and pouring clean water over both of us constantly. They could look at us and see that Jesus was smiling at us, smiling at them, pouring that wonderful clean water over both of us, and making us both clean and pure and a joy to be around.

What would happen, if, when we talk to another member of the body of Christ, if we thought about how we are both still in the cesspool, and Jesus is going to use that other person to pour clean water over me, for Him? What if that other person was looking forward to talking to me, and being around me, because they knew that Christ in me is going to pour that wonderful clean water over them? Because that's what ministry is. That's how we minister to each other. That's what true Christian fellowship is.

Sometimes Jesus will use us both to pour that clean water over each other, refreshing us both, cleansing us both, working and speaking through us both at the same time.

Now we can go back to the verse in Colossians 3:2; "Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth."
Can we set our affections on the things of Christ being ministered to us through another Christian? Would you rather have that, than to be in control? Would you rather have that, to see Jesus more often, to hear Him speak words of love, to feel His touch, or would you rather manage your world to suit yourself?

We don't get to see Jesus as much as we would like to. Would you rather sense Jesus Christ in yourself ministering to that other person, or would you rather manage them, make yourself feel good at their expense, or build yourself up by tearing them down? Your old nature is satisfied to watch another saint struggling to get out of the cesspool, having trouble getting rid of all the stuff that defiles them. Maybe Christ in you can bring that bucket of clean water that they need, and then Christ in them can respond by bringing that bucket of clean water that you need.

Can we want the things of Christ more than we want an occasion to manage some other saint? Use some other saint? Abuse some other saint, because it makes our old flesh nature feel comfortable? What is it that you want? What is it that you want out of your Christian life? Why are you here? What do you expect to get out of your church? When you come to church, is your greatest hope that the preacher will quit on time so that the restaurant won't already be full before you get there?

Do you merely want a church where the music agrees with you, the sermon is interesting enough to keep you awake, and the preacher tells you yet again that you need to do a better job of cleaning up and managing your old fleshly nature? Do you leave church really planning to do a better job of cleaning up and sanctifying your flesh so that your conscience will leave you alone, and then maybe you can feel better about yourself?

That doesn't even sound like any kind of a good deal at all, but how many Christians settle for that as a new life, a Spirit filled life, and it's not? Jesus said that if He would make us free, we would be free indeed, but getting good at managing and cleaning up the flesh doesn't sound to me like the freedom that Jesus had in mind.

I really hope that you are here because you feel a holy discontent with the way things are between you and God, and you want them to get better. Maybe somewhere you got a little taste of what it is like to be in God's presence, and now you are unwilling to be satisfied with less.

Maybe somewhere you were with another Christian and the love and presence of Jesus Christ just flowed out of them, and it touched you. And ever since then, the things that used to satisfy you, just won't get it.
You no longer want the old stuff, it isn't good enough any more. The old fleshly nature still has it's attractions, but you have found something that you want a whole lot more. You can let the old nature die a lot easier now, you can get enthusiastic about crucifying the flesh, because you have found something you really, really want. You want to be around Jesus.

If you want to nurture and build up that presence of Jesus Christ in and around you, try doing it in the other believers that you are around. You have a choice. You can walk in the flesh, you can provoke and stimulate, manage your flesh and the flesh of the other believers here, and nothing will change. We will still worship God, we will still teach sound doctrine, we will continue to raise up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, we will continue to be a normal mainstream Bible believing church. And you will still be a normal part of it.

Or you can try something different and a little adventurous. You can start to look for Jesus in the other believers that come here. You can start to listen; expecting to hear His voice in some of the things that they say.

It probably won't happen very often, we all still have feet of clay. We might very well mess up a lot more than we succeed, but when we succeed at all, it will be wonderful, and worth all the stuff that comes along in between. And sometimes there will still be a lot of stuff that comes along in between those moments of glory. The flesh still waits for an opportunity to crawl back up out of the pit and distract us. Get us to forget that we are in Christ, and that Christ is in us, and that we are seated at the right hand of God the Father.

The fleshly nature wants us to forget all those wonderful things, those wonderful truths. Instead it wants us to look at the cesspool, so that we can act like what we are looking at. Then when we look at our fellow believers, our focus will be all wrong, and all we will look for is their cesspool.

Crucify the flesh, let that old nature die, kill it by wanting something wonderfully better. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ in your brothers and sisters, the hope of glory. Look for Jesus in your brothers and sisters. Seek Him out. Expect to find Him. You will be delighted with what happens.

All of us know enough about our Bibles to look for Jesus first of all in the Word of God, that Word that tells us who Jesus is, what He is like, and how to recognize Him. That comes first.

But there is something in our Christian lives and experiences that we have been missing out on, our flesh has been hiding it, and it's time to get the flesh out of the way and start glorifying God in His church the way we are supposed to. I want to praise God for showing me His truth and showing me what to look for in other believers. That is what I have been trying to share today. How God wants to share Himself with us, and show us how to find Him. Show us where to look, and what to look for.

Lately I have been seeing little glimpses of Jesus in several of you. It does wonders for my enthusiasm. It is worth more than anything else. It's why I'm here. It changes my attitude and my want to. And I want all of you to have it too. I hope that you will catch a glimpse of the vision, and make it your vision too. Because it's not just my vision, it's what Jesus prayed for.
John 17:21 "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
Joh 17:22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
Joh 17:23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me."

It's real, it's true, and it's available. The Father has answered the prayer of His beloved Son, and given that answer to us. It's here. It's now. I hope every one of us will get a sense of what it is, and claim it for ourselves. One thing more: this is not a sermon; it is a way to live. Let's pray.