Life In God's Spirit

May 31, 2020
Pastor Clint Ziemer

Audio of the May 31, 2020, sermon preached for Cable Community Church, Sherrard, IL

Episode Notes

Life In God’s Spirit

Romans 8:12-17

    With all that’s going on in the world, lately, at least it looks like we who live in the Midwest will escape this year’s plague of cicadas.  In Blacksburg, Va., near where I used to live, they are soon expecting as many as 1.5 million cicadas emerging per acre.  These cicadas are from what is known as brood IX.  They reappear every 13 to 17 years.  The last time that cicadas emerged around here was six years ago.

    I remember those bugs, we mistakenly called them locust when I was growing up.  During the hot summer days the loud, shrill sound that the males made would fill the air. You would usually see them in the trees. At times you would come across the lifeless shell they had shed. It was just an empty form of the living creature that had once been there. If you put the slightest pressure on that empty form it would crumble. This is what I think Paul was warning Timothy against of when he wrote the phrase "a form of godliness." It bears some resemblance to the real thing. But there’s no life in it.

    There’s a lot of that going on in the church, today.  People are faithfully going through a form of religion that bears resemblance to the real thing; but their reality is that they are dead and lifeless.  They are trying to get by on their own, without God’s Spirit.

    There is a story about Walter P. Chrysler. At the time he was a master mechanic on a railroad. He was 35 years old and he bought his first automobile with borrowed money. It was a $5,000.00, four-door Locomobile. The car was delivered to his hometown in Iowa and then towed to a barn at the Chrysler home.

The story said that Mr. Chrysler studied that car for three months before he ever attempted to drive it. Using the instruction manual, he took the vehicle apart, spread the pieces on newspapers and made sketches; then he put it back together.

His theory was, he had to understand it before he could drive it.


    Today is the day of Pentecost on the church calendar.  A feast in Old Testament times and now the day is noted as the birthday of the church.  It’s the day when, according to Luke’s account in the book of Acts, God’s Spirit came to empower Jesus’ disciples.


    Today's text, from Romans, chapter 8, shows us how God’s Spirit impacts lives today.  Follow along as we read that the Spirit leads us away from the sins of the flesh and toward Jesus, and in so doing, shows us who we are in Christ.  In today’s verses, we discover that we are to  ...  

Live by the Spirit

Led by the Spirit,  and...    

Loved by the Spirit

  1. Body
    1. Live by The Spirit 
        1. The Spirit leads us in the way of life
      1. We are debtors
        1. not to the flesh
        2. the way of the flesh is death
        3. I came across this acrostic for the word F.L.E.S.H. that is helpful to remember: Following Long Established Sinful Habits. 
      2. The Spirit is life
        1. living by the Spirit one puts to death the deeds of the body.
        2. Put disobedience to death. Dr. Charles Ryrie has called Romans 8:13 the most important single verse on the spiritual life. Some translations use the word “mortify” which means “to kill.” We must avoid being passive about sin in our lives. “Putting to death the misdeeds of the body” refers to “slaughtering sin” in your life. This same word is used in Romans 8:36: “…We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” John Owen challenges the believer to “be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
          1. Positionally it has already been done. Galatians 5:24: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 
          2. Experientially we must do it. Colossians 3:5: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”
      3. Paul’s point here agrees with the teaching of our Lord: “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it”  (Matt. 16:25)
      4. The question then becomes not whether the Christian possesses the Spirit, but whether the Spirit possesses the Christian.   The question is "Are YOU walking in the Spirit?"
      5. There is no peaceful co-existence with the flesh. We will either walk according to the Spirit or according to the flesh. If we walk in the Spirit, we will wage war against the deeds of the flesh which seek to dominate and destroy us. We must take this struggle seriously. We must choose sides. We dare not choose the flesh. We are obligated to walk according to the Spirit. Therein is righteousness, life and peace.Led by The Spirit (vv. 14-15)
        1. The Spirit leads us to Jesus
      6. What does it mean to be led by the Spirit? 
        1. In Gal 3:24 Paul pictures the law as leading people to Christ.  
          1. Once this goal is achieved, the law must hand over the guiding role to the Spirit, who guides into the truth (John 16:13) and, as in the present passage, into holiness. 
          2. Unlike sin, which may at first only gently seduce, then deceitfully begin to drive as a hard taskmaster, the Spirit relies on persuasion rather than force.
        2. To be lead means to have the Spirit of Christ alive in you and permeating all of your decisions. We know what it means to be led by someone. It means to follow after them, to listen to their directions, to follow their directions to follow their guidance. And so we are led by the Spirit of Christ in all that we do
        3. Different Biblical authors say the same thing. The Apostle John said that we were to be born of the Spirit. Luke, the physician and author of Luke/Acts, said that we were to be filled with the Spirit. The Apostle Paul said that we are to be led by the Spirit.
      7. The Spirit always leads us to a person - namely, Jesus Christ
      8. When the Spirit of Christ is inside you, you become convinced that you are child in God’s heavenly family. You become convinced that you are not an orphan in a endless universe, not an animal that's fodder for the next generation of plants, not the highest intelligent primate who is part of the evolutionary chain of life. But... when the Spirit comes alive in you and convinces you once again that you ARE a child of God, that you DO have a heavenly father, that you CAN call this heavenly father by name, and that you HAVE this inheritance of a future life... then you  abound in hope for the future.Loved By The Spirit (vv. 16-17)
        1. The Spirit reveals who we are in Christ
      9. As adopted sons
      10. The story is told of a farmhand who had worked for a married couple for several years. As time went on, the couple grew older and older and they couldn't do as much they had and the farm was beginning to look a little shabby. The paint on the barn was peeling. The fences had holes in them and slats were loose. The gravel road had potholes in it. Shingles on top of the farmhouse were beaten and weathered and needed replacing. But as the farmhand made his way to milk the cows each day, he thought: What is that to me? It's not my farm.
      11. Then, one day the farmer and his wife asked him to come for dinner. They told him how much he had meant to them.
      12. They told him that they had no children to inherit the farm, so they wanted to give it to HIM when they died.
      13. The next day, the farmhand was walking to the nursing barn, he noticed the paint on the barn. In a few days he'd painted the barn and fixed the fence, and in the next few weeks he was putting a new roof on the farmhouse and putting new gravel on the road.
      14. Why would he do that? What made the difference in his attitude? He was now an heir. And as a Son he began to treat the old farm different than he ever had before.
      15. And so it is with us. We are heirs to the Kingdom of God. And because we are heirs we have the joy of knowing that what we do, we do because of the fabulous gift of salvation our Father has given us.
      16. In the Romans world from which the letter to the Romans comes from, adoption totally changed a person’s life.
        1. Many times adoptions were done for a sonless father. 
        2. There was a ceremony performed where the adoptive father takes the clothing off his newly adopted son and puts new ones on him. This was to symbolize transference to a new family. 
        3. In the Romans society, the father of the house literally held absolute power over the children, even the power of life and death.
        4. The newly adopted son lost all rights and privileges of his old family, he became an heir to his new family, the old life was completely wiped out and he was a considered a blood son to the new father.
        5. When we give our lives to Jesus the same thing happens. We belong to a new Father! We are a child of the king.
        6. This would be like seeing some of the children we see on television who are close to starving to death. Picture one of those Hollywood stars coming to them and adopting them. They go from the poor house to the penthouse.
      17. In the Spirit, even our suffering has purpose.
        1. We might learn that sharing his sufferings is simply the cost of discipleship. 
        2. Even this has a brighter aspect, because it is the prelude to partaking in the coming glory with him 
        3. Peter tells us to rejoice in this. 1Pe 4:13.
  2. Conclusion 
    1. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, after falling on hard times, the wayward boy had been practicing his speech in the hopes that he could be hired on as a field hand in his father’s business. The father would have nothing to do with this because his boy was not a servant…he was his son. Listen to these wonderful words from Luke 15:21-24: “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.” If you are a son or daughter of God, He celebrates you.
    2. It's a sad fact of this life that many of us, at times, forget where we are going or who we are.  When we stumble and fall into sin, the temptation is to "try harder" at those "Christian things" that we know we should be doing and to "be more spiritual."
    3. The truth is, God doesn't particularly care how much you claim "to be spiritual" or even how many "spiritual things" you are doing as much as God wants you to experience His Spirit.
    4. Are you walking in the Spirit today?
      1. Is He leading you away from sin and toward a more meaningful relationship with Jesus?
      2. In light of who Christ is, does the Spirit help you to see who you really are?
    5. The Father, Abba, is calling out to His children today.
      1. Be led into life
      2. Be led into Jesus
      3. Be led into your eternal inheritance. 
    6. The question now is -- Will you follow?

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