"Walking or Working?" Galatians 5:16-24

The Fourteenth Sunday After Trinity                   1-September-2024

Sermon Text: Galatians 5:16-24

Sermon Theme: Walking or Working? I. You Cannot Serve Two Masters.(vs.16-18) II. Fleshly Works Pay Hellish Wages! (Vs.19-21) III. The Spirit Grafts You Into The Living Vine! (Vs.22-24). by Rev. Nathan J. Rusert

I.N.R.I. Ten dead men working their way towards the grave. A slow decaying death from an incurable disease. Leprosy tore them away from family, friends, community, and their congregation. Unclean, unwanted, shunned, despairing without hope. Dreadful disease knit them together. Caring for one another as their bodies slowly were gnawed away, swallowed by death, and their decay laid in the grave.

      Hopeless dead men working their way towards the grave, until the Holy Spirit calls them with Good News. Jesus of Nazareth draws near! The Creator humbled Himself to be our Brother. He restores sins wasteland of disease, death, and corruption. The Truth comes destroying the fallen angel Satan’s lie that God hates His creation. God is mercy - One with us in His only begotten Son born of the Virgin.

      Ten dead men breathed alive by God the Holy Spirit through the Gospel - pray. Gurgling forth, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” He hears! He speaks! His Word is Life! “Go!” He commands! “Show yourselves to the priests.” He hides His promise in priests who will declare them - ‘Clean’ - ‘Restored’ - ‘Healed.’

      Walking in His Word - the Lord and Giver of Life restores them to the land of the living! No longer working their way towards death - they walk in His Word of Life!

      St. Paul’s congregations in Galatia were like the ten lepers healed by Jesus’ Word. They heard Jesus’ Mercy preached by Paul and by the power of the Holy Spirit they believed. They walked - they ran - in Life! Paul asks, Gal 5:7 You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? False teachers, Satan’s spiritual agents, told them that Holy Spirit given and sustained faith in Jesus wasn’t enough to save them. They needed faith “plus”. “Plus” their own works - keeping O.T. ceremonial laws - only them would they inherit the Kingdom of God.

       Last week we learned from the Holy Spirit through Paul’s pen of the distinction between the Gospel and the Law in Galatians 3. Today we learn saving justifying Faith pulsates forth Christ’s love as the Holy Spirit bears fruit in our life. Today He asks, are you: Walking or Working? I. You Cannot Serve Two Masters.(vs.16-18) II. Fleshly Works Pay Hellish Wages! (Vs.19-21) III. The Spirit Grafts You Into The Living Vine! (Vs.22-24).

I. Fallen sinful human reason is like a drunken cowboy falling off his horse into the ditch of thinking that Faith in Jesus isn’t enough to save us. The white devil says we must have faith plus love, plus experiences, plus feelings, plus our self chosen holy works. We fall into the ditch of despair. Put back in the saddle by God’s grace in Jesus by the Holy Spirit. We fall off on the other side into the ditch of fleshly desires and lusts. Fallen reason blurts out, ‘God loves to forgive, I love to sin! Let me sin all the more that grace may abound!”“God loves me just the way I am, I continue in and proudly boast of my sin - to glorify forgiveness.”

     Against falling into the ditch of fleshly deceptive lusts God the Holy Spirit warns us (vs.16-18) Jesus teaches you, Mat 6:24 "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” You cannot walk by the Holy Spirit and work with the world to fulfill your fleshly lusts at the same time!

       Leprosy starts out as an innocent white scab, generating some pain at first, but it soon attacks and destroys nerve endings - feeling is lost as it wrecks havoc destroying the body. Sin works the same way. Fleshly lusts deaden the conscience. Those outside of Christ don’t feel their fleshly lusts sucking life from them.

       Made alive by God the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ Word and works - the Christian struggles in battle. The flesh lusts against the life of Christ Jesus implanted in us by the Holy Spirit. Dear Christian don’t allow Satan, the world, or your sin blinded thinking to accuse you that since you struggle with sin you aren’t a Christian. Made alive in Christ you feel the war waging within your heart. Often your conscience is troubled by your fleshly lusts. Take heart! This is because you have been made alive in Jesus as you walk in the Spirit!

       When fleshly lusts and conscience assail you - let God the Holy Spirit lead and comfort you! How? Hear Him in Proverbs, Pro 4:10 Hear, my son, and receive my sayings, And the years of your life will be many.” Flee from fleshly lusts, turn off the screens, open your Holy Bible - divide Law and Gospel - let the Holy Spirit fill you with Christ’s forgiveness and life as you walk in His Word. God the Holy Spirit isn’t a fleeting feeling of ecstasy reviving you through the latest spiritual pop tunes. Looking for the Holy Spirit apart from God’s Word is the fleshly lust called enthusiasm in our confessions. We don’t find Him. He finds us! He is the Lord and Giver of Life working through the Word of the prophets, apostles, and evangelists. As we believe, teach, and clearly confess: “In a word, enthusiasm inheres in Adam and his children from the beginning [from the first fall] to the end of the world, [its poison] having been implanted and infused into them by the old dragon, and is the origin, power [life], and strength of all heresy, especially of that of the Papacy and Mahomet. 10 Therefore we ought and must constantly maintain this point, that God does not wish to deal with us otherwise than through the spoken Word and the Sacraments. 11 It is the devil himself whatsoever is extolled as Spirit without the Word and Sacraments.” (S.A. Art. VII Of Confession)

II. Beware of the old adam, the enthusiast within you, who wants you to work your way into paradise of your own imagination! Fleshly works pay hellish wages!

     Let God the Holy Spirit expose these works of darkness! (Vs.19-21). Fleshly lusts promoted and celebrated by the world lead only to hell. They are evident serving only our own selfish feelings and desires - not caring that others are destroyed by want the idol of “ME” wants for the moment!

    Fleshly works of the Old Adam - promote taking God’s good gift of sex outside of the protection of marriage. The lifelong union of one man and one woman. All forms of sexual perversion are promoted as freeing works by the flesh - adulterating God’s gift of maleness and femaleness outside of the marital bed. Selling sex as free fornication - aborting babies that result from abuse. Promoting impurity and indecency as works to free - only to enslave them in the hellish lonely lie.

   Fleshly Adam works to worship God without Christ Jesus and His Word. Any worship without Christ crucified at the center is idolatry and sorcery. Sorcery - in Greek is “pharmacia” drugs - deadening conscience to evil works.

   The next eight works of the flesh fracture families, communities, congregations, and nations! “Hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy” These fleshly lusts are promoted by media leading up to our fall elections! Social media uses them to get you to stay glued to your screens! Beware - fleshly works fracture, imprison you in self, despair, hate, and doom! Don’t fall victim to fleshly politics for self power division - especially within Christ’s Church! Don’t fall victim to fleshly envy of what the Lord God has entrusted to another person’s brief stewardship during this life.

    The final two fleshly desires are sins of excess: “drunkenness, carousing,” Far from freeing you these fleshly works imprison you and rob you of the inheritance won for you by the Crucified!

    Be warned! “Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God!” Repent! Today! Repent! Tomorrow! Repent! Every day! Flee to Jesus - He has promised to be present within His congregation as two or three gather in His Name! Here in this Christian Church lay your fleshly works on Jesus! As God the Holy Spirit daily and richly forgives you, and all believers in Jesus - all their sins!

III. On the night all our sins would be laid on Jesus - the Lamb of God - to become the One and Only Sacrifice for the sins of the world - He preaches to you, “Joh 15:4-5 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. (5) "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”

    Hear of the Fruit the Holy Spirit brings forth in your life through Christ Jesus living in you by faith! (Vs.22-24) Earlier in this letter Paul instructed, Gal 2:19-21 For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. (20) I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (21) I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."  God the Holy Spirit has grafted you into the Living Vine - Jesus in baptism! The age of grace and renewal has begun for “Christ is risen!” Now the Holy Spirit brings forth fruit - daily renewing you with Jesus’ life! “Love, joy, peace!” Freed from self - we pour our life out to serve our neighbors and enemies. We have joy - Jesus lives! Jesus rules! We have peace - God the Father is for us - even if the world is against us! Jesus’ heart beats within us - “longsuffering, kindness, goodness” We are patient with fellow sinners as He is patient with us. We show kindness and goodness to all human beings - for they are created by our Father, redeemed by our Savior, and given life by the Spirit. Our life is Jesus - “faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’ He is at work in us bearing fruit daily and richly by His Holy Spirit through the Gospel!

    Crucified with Christ - daily we rise to new life - walking with Jesus. This is our birthright - clothed with Christ in baptism - beloved sons of God the Father by Holy Spirit given and sustained faith. Daily we die. Daily we rise in cross won, empty tomb certified forgiveness - walking in the land of the living - Christ’s Church! We confess: What does such baptizing with water indicate? It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

     Ten living men walking in Jesus Word! Return every day to fall at Jesus’ feet to give Him thanks as the Holy Spirit bears fruit in you by grace through faith alone! Amen.