Return of Throat Punch | Week 5

so glad you're joining us, People all over the city, probably in other states watching, so we're glad you're joining us. So about two weeks ago, I had just done this video shoot, I was late for this next meeting. It was an important meeting that I was supposed to have, and so I shot the guy a text really quick, and there's two guys actually that said, hey, I'm running late,

and so I was leaving where I'd done the video shoot, I'm going to get in my car in the parking lot, and I'm not paying attention very well, because I'm actually looking down at my phone at the map, to see where I'm supposed to go, and it was a pretty important meeting, so I was already a little flustered that I was running late. So I'm looking at the map, and I start kind of walking,

breaking into a jog,

and I'm not paying attention, and there's one of those lifts, those construction lifts, a big steel beam about head height. So I'm telling you, I'm not just walking or walking fast, I'm gonna jog like this and boom, hit my head, almost knocked myself out. Hurt my neck, hurt my back, in fact the next day, I kinda felt like I was in a small car accident or something. But as soon as I hit it, it's a little embarrassing, the first thing I do is what?

Yeah, I look around to see if anybody's watching, so I'm almost knocked out going, looking around, and sure enough there's a facilities guy standing there, and he's like, woah dude, you okay man? And I'm a little embarrassed, so I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'm not fine, but I'm saying I'm fine. I start walking in my car, and then I feel liquid like running down my face, and realize, man, I did a good number on this thing, so I turn around, and I start walking back in, because I realize I gotta go clean up before I go to this next meeting, and as I'm walking in, I can tell this facilities guy, he doesn't like blood very much either, because he does this, he's like,

oh, woah, woah. So I get in there and I look, and it's it's it's close to needing stitches,

not quite, but but I'll just get a butterfly bandage, I got enough wrinkles and scars on my face now, it'll blend in, but I'll get a butterfly bandage later. So I clean it up the best I can, I put a bandage on it, I go to my meeting? So I'm sitting in this very important meeting for like two hours in this restaurant, and these two guys, a couple of times look at me and say,

you're oozing out of your band aid. So I'd have to like run into the bathroom and like replace the bandage. Well, I get home that day, and I'm explaining to my wife what happened, and it's kind of embarrassing, and she goes, what's all over in your eyebrows? Ended up having like dried blood in my eyebrows. So I sat in this important meeting with my bandage oozing blood and dried blood all over my eyebrows.

But here's the connection to you and I. I think the danger for you and I is that that's how we sometimes go through life.

We're running around with our heads down, not paying attention, and all of a sudden, we run into things, we get into things, we start doing things, we say things, and we're like, wow, how did I get here? We're hurting ourselves, but of course when it comes to sin, we never just hurt ourselves, do we?

We end up hurting those around us as well. In fact, when it comes to sin, we don't just hurt ourselves, we hurt those around us sometimes even more.

So what we're gonna see today is Paul is telling us how to do life differently. If you have your Bibles, open to Galatians chapter five. Galatians is in the middle of the newer testament, but Paul is, you can almost imagine Paul urging you and I saying, don't do life that way.

Quit running around with your head down and running into things and getting yourself into messes and doing things and saying things and looking at things that you shouldn't be looking at. I want you to do life different. So we're in the fifth week of this series

called Throat Punch, where we're going through the book of Galatians, and I love that Rock Point titled it Throat Punch, because if you know anything about the book of Galatians, if you've been watching,

you know that Paul is throat punching left and right. It's like throat punch, throat punch, throat punch. And what we're gonna see today in chapter five, he throws a couple of intense

throat punches. In fact, one of them, it's like he takes his gloves off, and it's a bare knuckle fight now. There's a throat punch in here that's gonna make some of you parents go, kinda cover your kids ears a little bit. Paul says it, I don't say it. We'll get to that in a moment. But here's the throat punch for today or for this weekend. This is what we're looking at, this is the big idea.

You have the Holy Spirit, but does the Holy Spirit have you? You have the Holy Spirit, but does the Holy Spirit have you? If you were here in the summer, Bill did a series on the Holy Spirit and made it very clear that the Bible teaches that if you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, you have the spirit of God.

You never have to go, I'm not really sure if I have the spirit of God. If you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, Romans chapter eight verse nine teaches very clearly, you have the spirit of God. The throat punch, the question, the uncomfortable question for us is, you have the Holy Spirit.

Does the Holy Spirit have you? The whole idea of a throat punch is it's supposed to be a little uncomfortable. And as we're gonna see, this is gonna get a little uncomfortable, should get a little uncomfortable for all of us.

So we're gonna jump into Galatians chapter five, we're gonna try to fly through this chapter. I'm gonna have to skip some verses, but I'll explain some of them, because we have to get to the end, but we have to dig into some theology a little bit.

Bill got the same response last week when he talked about digging into theology, I heard the one that I watched online, at least everybody did what you did, they're like, woo woo. You're not sure if you should be excited. You should be excited.

We have to get this though. We have to dig in, we have to figure out what Paul is saying, and then we have to take this throat punch, and hopefully you and I can leave here again to be encouraged and motivated to do life differently,

to do life better, to do life the way that God has called us to do life. So Galatians chapter five verse one, here we go. So Christ has truly set us

free. Now make sure that you stay free and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law. Paul uses this word free or freedom incessantly all over his letters. He wrote two thirds of the New Testament, and again and again you'll see Paul talk about freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, Galatians more than any other place.

Freedom, and I love that Paul uses his word so much, because it's gonna allow me to go back and somehow once again weave in a movie illustration, and I always somehow, someway try to weave this in at least two or three times a year when I preach, and it's the movie, when you hear the word freedom, what movie? Braveheart.

How can you not hear that? If you've seen the movie, you can't even hear the word freedom or read the word freedom anymore without in your mind hearing William Wallace saying, freedom. Now if you've seen the movie, you know that William Wallace is a Scotsman, and they're under the tyranny of England.

And he raises up this ragamuffin group of warriors, and they start fighting against one of the most powerful militaries in the world at that time, the English army. Now spoiler alert for you, he dies in the end.

William Wallace dies, remember, but I want you for a moment to imagine that William Wallace could come back from the dead, and if you know what I'm talking about, he's got that massive sword, right? And so William Wallace comes back from the dead, and years later he realizes that the Scottish people have actually won their independence.

They are now free. You can imagine William Wallace going, yeah, freedom. But what if those same Scottish people who had won their freedom were now willingly going back to the English and choosing to be slaves again. Can you imagine William Wallace's response to that? That's what Paul is doing in Galatians.

Paul is writing to a group of Jesus followers, or to you and I two thousand years later, and he's saying, Jesus has set you free. Why would you go back to slavery? Why would you do that? Have you ever gotten something that you thought was free and found out it really wasn't free? Right?

Like you get online and it'll say it's free, all you have to do is just pay for shipping, so you have to put in your information, and so you put in all your information and you get that thing, and then a week later or whatever, you're like, wow, $5.95 and I got this, it was basically free.

And then five months later, you're going, what are these recurring charges that I keep getting every month, right? It was free, but it really wasn't free. In a twisted kind of way, that's happening in Galatia two thousand years ago, where Paul went to these people

in Galatia, and he began to preach them the gospel, the good news of Jesus, the truth of the gospel, which says you can be saved, and it's Jesus plus nothing. It's Jesus plus what?

Jesus plus? Nothing. It's Jesus plus nothing. And so Paul teaches that, he says, your salvation is a gift from God, it's completely based on the finished work of Jesus. So it's Jesus plus? That's

the salvation, but what happened is when Paul left, some religious leaders came in and they go, well it's free, but it's kinda not free. There's some things you have to do. Mean, I to get this, you have to do a couple of things. And one of the things that they were telling them that they needed to do doesn't make any sense to us nowadays. I get that. I grew up in church, and I and I read this Bible a number of times, and I remember this. This is the part that always confused me a little bit, Because what they were telling them or saying, well,

mean, yeah, it's kind of free, but you gotta do a few things, and one of them is this thing called circumcision. And we don't really get that today because in in our day and age, where we live today, circumcision is a voluntary medical procedure done to little boys in the hospital. Did you hear that phrase? Voluntary

medical procedure, that's all it is to us. So when we read in the Bible that this was added to salvation, we sit there in our day and age, two thousand years later going, what, that's stupid. But for them, it was not just a voluntary medical procedure,

it was a religious practice, and it was tied to their identity, according to the older testament in here. It identified them as Jewish people. So it was a religious practice, and it was tied to their identity. The problem became when they came along and they started to say, well you have to do this to get saved.

And remember, Paul is a Jew, which means that when he was eight days old, this was a religious practice and it was identifying him as a Jew. So it was important to him, but when they started saying you have to do this to be saved,

Paul was jumping going, woah, woah, woah, time out. No you don't, because our salvation is Jesus plus nothing. Jump down to verse six, and you can see now after Paul talks to them about this a little bit, he gets to verse six and he says, for when we place our faith, how are we saved? By

faith, by faith alone. It's Jesus plus nothing. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love.

He's saying if you put your faith in Jesus, it doesn't matter if you're circumcised or uncircumcised. Now again, this right here, because it's two thousand years later in a completely different culture, we're like, I don't even understand

that this doesn't make that much sense to me. So maybe it'll help you if you change it and you read it this way. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being Jewish or being Gentile. Remember earlier in the book of Galatians,

when Paul is saying, there is now, if you're in faith, there is now no Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free, we are all one in Christ, we are the same in Christ. Now if you were to read the verses that follow verse six, you'd see that he's

so frustrated that if you read them, you can almost feel his frustration lifting off the words of the page as you're reading it. And he's really frustrated about two things. One of the things he's frustrated about I already mentioned. He's saying, why would you go back to slavery?

You're free. It's like William Wallace coming back from the dead and seeing the Scots free saying, freedom, you're free. Don't go back to slavery. So he's frustrated about that, but but oh, he really gets frustrated because there were some of these religious leaders that came in,

and they began to say, well, it's free, but there's a couple of things you gotta do. And by the way, this is actually what Paul teaches too. Like Paul actually believes that you have to be circumcised to be saved too, and Paul is going, he's writing this letter going, woah, woah, no, no,

no. I did not say that. I do not believe that that's not true because it's Jesus plus nothing. So then we get to verse 12, the throat punch of all throat punches.

I'm not even gonna put it on the screen. You can look at it later if you want, but what a throat punch, because Paul's so frustrated, by the time he gets to verse 12, he's going, you know what, those that are preaching that you have to be circumcised to be saved, you know what, I just, I hope you go the whole way and just castrate yourselves. Woah,

Paul said that, I didn't say that. Paul, the Apostle Paul wrote two thirds of the newer testament, he said that. So he's pretty frustrated, But now watch what he does in verse 13. Can we put verse 13 up here? Watch this now. For you have been called to live in

Now count with me how many times he's gonna use the word freedom in just this one verse. For you've been called to live in freedom, one, my brothers and sisters, but don't use your Freedom. Two, freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, instead use your Freedom. Freedom to serve one another in love. Freedom, freedom, freedom.

He's saying this is why Jesus has saved you, so that you can have freedom, not that you become a slave, but that you have freedom. Freedom of what? To love.

In fact, next week, when we finish off this book in Galatians chapter six, we're gonna see that the throat punch is really about this idea of love. And I know you may be going, that doesn't sound like a throat punchy word like love.

That doesn't sound throat punchy, but it is. Come back next week. I mean, he gives us a good throat punch, and remember, punches are supposed to be uncomfortable. It'll be a little uncomfortable

in the level of love that God is calling us to. Come back next week and you'll see this, but watch what Paul does now in verse 14. K, go to the next one. For the whole law, how much of the law?

The whole law can be summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. Paul's a genius. See, here's what he's doing. He's writing to people that are going back to the law and saying in order to be saved, you have to do some of things according to the law or back in the law. And Paul is going, woah, woah, woah, time out. Let me just remind you of something that this guy named Jesus said a few decades before. Paul is writing this letter to the Galatians a few decades later. Remember a few decades before, Jesus was standing there one day and some religious leaders came to him, and they were trying to trick him, and they said, Jesus, tell us what the greatest commandment is. There were six thirteen commands in the Old Testament. So Jesus

goes, well, I'll tell you what the greatest command is. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. So Paul leverages that, and he goes, let me tell you,

those that are law keepers here, what the real law is, is to love. Love, come back next week, we're gonna talk about that throw punch love. Alright, but watch what happens now. We're gonna skip down verse 16. Now this is where we see the culmination of his argument. Look at the first word, so. So,

if Paul is saying, based on what I just said, based on the fact that that our salvation is based on Jesus plus nothing, so I say, let the Holy Spirit guide

your lives. Some translations say this, so walk in the spirit. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives, then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. See, this was a misunderstanding I had as a young man,

and especially young people if you're here, but for all of us, I hope you get this. This was a misunderstanding, I felt so guilty for struggling. I felt so guilty for being tempted. Jesus was tempted. Do you get that? Look what Paul is saying here. The moment you became a Jesus follower,

it doesn't just go away, right? In here, just tell me, the day that you said Jesus, I choose you to be my savior and I wanna live from this moment forward with you, and you made that commitment to be a follower of Jesus. When you woke up the next day, you wake up and go, wow, something feels different, what is it? Oh,

wow, I have no temptations. There's no more sinful cravings, it's gone. Did that happen to you? No,

no one online, no one in this room, it didn't happen to any of us. So what Paul is describing is what actually did happen. Romans eight nine says, when you put your faith and trust in Jesus, the spirit of God is now in you, but now you have the spirit of God in you, and you have these sinful cravings, and they're battling against each other. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?

In fact, in the next seven verses, Paul is gonna describe this battle that's raging between our sinful nature, our sinful cravings, and the Holy Spirit. When I think of it, I can't help but think of those old NFL films.

Some of you that are older like me, do you remember the old NFL films? They used to play them for like weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and my brother and I used to just love them,

because they would they would show like the highlights of these these football games, the NFL football games, and this was pre stadiums and pre playing on carpet. They actually played out on real grass, and there was no stadium, so if it was snowing, it was snowing. If it was raining, it was raining. So in these NFL films, it was so cool. They had this iconic narrator's voice. He had this great voice, and he would be doing the narration,

and maybe the snow was coming down, or maybe it's pouring rain, and there's a bunch of mud, and there's background music, most of it was done in slow motion, so you see these massive, humongous, giant linemen, and they're walking up slow motion though.

They're breathing, like that's the fog of their breath. And

everything's in slow motion and you see them like looking at each other and there's dried blood on their uniforms and the sweat and rain and mud is dripping off of their face mask and then they start getting down like this and everything's in slow motion. Cheering is even try to cheer in slow motion. Do it. Drew it.

Yeah. Yeah, so you can't cheer in slow motion, can you? Alright. So so they get down, and they get down like this, and then all of sudden the ball is hiked, and you see these giant men going That's this battle that's raging.

Paul is trying to get us to understand that every single day that you and I wake up, that's what's happening inside of us. The spirit of God that lives in us, if you're a child of God, and the sinful cravings, and it's like that battle in the trenches of a football game. Battling each other, battling each other. But the question is, how do we know who's winning?

Like in my life, how do I know? Well if you were to read the next verses, Paul said it's easy to know. I can actually look at your life and I can tell you who's winning. If sinful cravings is winning, then you're gonna be living out a bunch of cheap sex. It's gonna be a kiss down and kiss

up and kick down culture that you'll be living in. You're have a bunch of broken relationships, you're gonna have a bad temper flying off the handle all the time, you're be living a frantic lifestyle, never feeling any peace. You're gonna have uncontrolled addictions. Notice I said uncontrolled,

we all have addictions, but uncontrolled addictions, that's what your life is gonna look like.

Now if the spirit of God is winning in those battles in your life, then what is your life gonna look like? He listed in those next verses. You're gonna have love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control. That's what it will look like.

Okay, but watch what he does next. He jumps down, think we're in verse 24 now, he's gonna put a very graphic picture in here now. Those who belong to Christ belong, I love that word. You know what, maybe you should write that word down

and stick it on the mirror this week and every morning you wake up and you go in your bathroom and you look in the mirror, it just says belong. That's such a great word, you belong. Is that a great word? I love that Paul used that word to describe you and I as Jesus followers. You belong

in the family of God. Yeah, but I don't feel like, I don't care if you feel like it, Jesus said it. You belong. Why do you belong? Because Jesus did everything. It's Jesus plus So

because of that, you belong. I love that word. Side note, just write that down, put it on the mirror, and this week, every day when you wake up, just remind yourself, I belong. Not because of me, but because of Jesus.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. What Paul is touching on here is one of the core beliefs

of Jesus' follower. Now if you've fallen asleep, I need you to wake up right now, okay? If you've nodded off, I need you to wake up right now because you cannot miss this, okay? If you're online and you're sitting on the couch and you're slumped over, wake up, pay attention. You can't miss this. This is the core of Christianity.

This is the core of what we believe, and this is what he's touching on in this verse. That if you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, you died with Christ, but you didn't stay dead, now you're alive in Christ. It's what we do in baptism. Bill talked about this last week. In baptism,

we take someone and we put them in the water, and that's representing they died with Christ. Do we leave them in the water? No. We bring them back out, because they didn't stay dead, they come back out as new creations. And that's why we cheer. When people come out of the water after a baptism, we're going, yeah.

Because we just saw representing what happened to their lives spiritually. They died, and now they're alive again. Now you may still be going, what does this exactly mean? Romans six verse six says it this way. It says, when Christ died, I died with him. That's essentially what it means. When Christ died,

I died with him. Romans six six, when Christ died, I died with him. Two thousand years ago, when Jesus was nailed to the cross, Pat McCullough was nailed to the cross with him.

If you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, you could put your name in there. Two thousand years ago, when Jesus was nailed to the cross, you put your name in there, was nailed to the cross with him. You died. The old person is dead. Here's our problem, and this is what Paul's trying to get across.

Our problem is that we go to that graveyard and we start digging up that old stinking corpse, the old Pat McCullough, the one who looked at these things, the one who thought these thoughts, the ones who said these things, that's the old Pat McCullough, he died with Christ. Oh, but I'm gonna go

dig out that old stinking corpse and start living through that. And Paul is saying, why would you do that? You're free now. Don't live that. You know why you shouldn't live that? Because when Christ died, I died with him. That old sinful nature was nailed to the cross with Jesus. Why would you live that out anymore?

In fact, here's the big idea or the throat punch that I really wanted to use today,

and I can't have two throat punches, or I can't have two big ideas, but I really wanted to use this one. The other one made more sense, the one where we're saying, you have the Holy Spirit, but does the Holy Spirit have you? In light of what we're looking at, that's the one that made sense, but I really wanted to use this one because it's so good. You might wanna write this one down. In fact, like I often do, right after I read it, just go, oh, make me feel better about myself, right here. You will never get off your throne until you get on the cross.

You will never get off your throne until you get on the cross. That's what Paul is saying in verse 24. You will continue to sit on the throne of your life. It's about me, it's about what I want, and you will stay on that throne until you put yourself on the cross. What do mean by put yourself on the cross? Just recognize

when Christ died, I died with him. But remember what we do in baptism, it's not just death, what do we do? We bring him back out. Why? Because the truth, the central theme of Christianity is that we died with Christ, but now we're made alive with Christ. Is Jesus alive? Yes, he's alive. The tomb is empty. He is alive,

and that is a picture of what He did with us spiritually. The old Pat McCullough died, now there's a new Pat McCullough. But what does that life look like though?

Again, if you've been in church very long, you've heard some of these before, these things before, and you may be going, okay, get it. I'm a new creation in Christ. I'm a new person in Christ. But what does that mean? What does that look like? How do I live that out? Okay, watch this. Look at the next verse here, verse 25.

Since we are living by the Spirit, remember in verse 16 when he says we should be walking in the Spirit? Since we are living by the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in, how many parts of our lives? Every part. Every part. It's as if

Paul is saying quit running through life with your head down, and running into things, and getting yourselves in messes, and looking at things you shouldn't be looking at, and talking about things you shouldn't be talking about. Quit doing that, because that's not who you are anymore.

Why would you live in slavery like that? That person is dead, you're now alive. What does it mean to be alive? You now have the spirit of God in you. And do you understand my friends what that means? Listen, if you've been bored because you've heard this so many times, I pray Jesus right now help us get this.

Help us get this, because again, some of us in here have heard this kind of thing so many times that we hear it now and we go, I got the spirit of God. What?

In Ephesians chapter one, when Paul was writing these Jesus followers in Ephesus, he's trying to get them to understand the enormity of what it means that you have the spirit of God inside you if you put your faith and trust in Jesus. In Ephesians chapter one, he's writing to them and he says, oh man, I pray that you would would know that. And he starts using different Greek synonyms, that's why in English, he wrote it in Greek. In English, you'll read it, he'll say something like this, he'll say, I pray that you would know the might

and the strength and the power of God's spirit that is within you.

And then Paul is trying to come up with an example of the power of the spirit of God. Like how can I help these people understand that if the spirit of God lives in you, how extraordinary is that? What kind of power is that? So you can imagine Paul sitting there as he's writing. Maybe puts his quill down and he goes, what what's a good what's a good example of the power of God? Oh, creation.

Oh, I mean look around, God made all of that out of nothing. That's, no that's not good enough. I gotta think of, what's another one? What's a good, oh, picks up his quill and he starts writing. I pray that you know the might and the power and the strength of the spirit of God that lives in you. The same power that raised

Jesus from the dead.

That's the power that's in you and me. I didn't say that, Paul did.

The same power that raised Lazarus from the dead, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work within you and me. He actually says this in Ephesians three verse 20, if you're taking notes, write that down and look up this verse later. It's one of my favorite verses and I mean it this time. Ephesians three verse 20 says, now to him, Jesus, now to him who's able to do immeasurably

more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. What? What? So no wonder Paul is writing this letter to the Galatians and saying, why would you go back to slavery? You've been set free and now the spirit of God lives in you. Walk in the spirit, let the spirit lead you.

But again, it begs the question, what does that mean though? Like how do we practically do that? Like tomorrow, when you go to work, when you go to school, what does it mean for you to really walk in the spirit there? What does that look like? How do you really hear the spirit's voice?

Two weeks ago, my wife and I were at dinner with a couple and I was telling a story, and I and in part of the story, I said something like this, I said, yeah, and then I went and I got in my car, and I started driving away, and I so clearly heard God speak to me, and and then she interrupted me. She says, woah, woah, time out. What do you mean you clearly heard God speak to you? And I said, well you know, like I was in the car and I heard like this audible voice

saying, Pat, this is what I want you to do. And her eyes got really big. Said, no, just kidding. I didn't hear that.

But some of us feel left out because that's what we think. Like, it's like I never hear the spirit talk to me. And I'm not belittling that, there are some I know some people who have literally heard an audible voice. I never have, but I hear the spirit talk to me all the time.

In my heart, in my soul, in my mind, in my spirit, God is speaking to me. We have the Holy Spirit, but does the Holy Spirit have us? See, the danger is that I don't think we often know the voice of the Spirit, because we quit listening.

Let me give you four illustrations, really quick illustrations that'll help you maybe understand what Paul means. What does he mean when he's saying, you need to walk in the spirit, you need to stay connected to the spirit, you need

to let the spirit lead. So four quick illustrations. The first one is a guy by the name of Barney Fife, Okay? Remember Barney, some of you older ones?

I came up with this idea because I watched Bill's sermon last week, and he started talking about this old show, Andy Griffith. I remember, I'm older like Bill, and so when I grew up and I would be home from school sick or something, I'd turn on the TV, three TV stations, there was reruns. One of them was Andy Griffith. For you younger ones, it was a story about a sheriff in a little town called Mayberry,

but he had this kind of bumbling idiot deputy named Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts, and Barney Fife couldn't do anything right. In fact, he couldn't do anything right to the point that he had a sidearm, he was a deputy, remember, but Andy wouldn't give him any bullets for his weapon.

So what good is a pistol with no bullets, right? So I can remember one of the, years and years ago watching one of these, Barney and Andy are in the stakeout,

they're sitting there, and all of sudden something kinda scary happens, and Don Knott, if you know who I'm talking about, Don Knott gets those really big eyes and he's like shaking and everything, and then he talks in his really high voice, and he's like, Andy, give me my bullet, give me my bullet.

Because a gun with no bullets is, what are you gonna do? Like, I mean it's powerless. In the same way, Paul is saying, so many of you, as Jesus followers,

are running through life with your head down, and you keep getting yourself hurt because you're not living with the power that's available to you. A power that you cannot begin to fathom or understand, Ephesians three twenty. But again, it begs the question, all right, but how I

connect to this? How do I walk in the spirit? How do I let the spirit lead? How do I do that? Listen and obey. Yay.

Right? Like none of you are sitting there going, yes, this is what I came to church for this weekend. Yes, that's the secret sauce. I didn't know that.

Let me, I'm gonna come back around to that one, k? Let me give you the second illustration of what Paul means when he says walking in the spirit or letting the spirit lead us, k? When he talk about letting the spirit lead us, it's kind of like a locomotive, alright? He's not saying let the spirit lead us, kind of like the Daytona five hundred, right? If you went to a race like that and you had the race cars circling and you know, you're standing there going by and

they're flying by and everything, but each of them, there may be a lead car, but each of them are actually being run by their own power. That's not what Paul is talking about. He's saying let the Spirit lead a little bit more like a locomotive or a train, that you're one of the cars in the train, but guess where all the power is coming from?

It's the locomotive. And Paul is saying, that's where your power is. If you're living a powerless life, if you're living a meaningless life, maybe you're not hooked to the power. So Paul is saying, walk in the spirit, connect to the power of God, let the spirit lead. But then it begs the question, how do we do this? Listen

and obey. Yay. Seriously Pat, that's all I'm gonna get? I'm gonna come to church this weekend and that's the core of it is listen and obey.

There's gotta be more. Okay, I'm gonna circle circle back around to that. Let me give you another illustration though that may help. You'll see a picture on the screen, what are these things? Batteries.

We have all kinds of things to take batteries. Our cell phones don't work without batteries. You can turn on flashlights, it's not gonna work without batteries. Your car's not gonna start without the battery working. And yet how silly it would be if

maybe we had our cell phone and we'd taken the battery out and we're like, stupid thing won't work, come on. The battery's not in it. That's what Paul is saying.

Some of you are going, I don't understand how my life is just, it just seems meaningless, it just seems like powerless, it just seems like, and Paul's going, have you tapped into the power?

Because if you put your faith and trust in Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit, but the question is, does the spirit have you? Are you walking in the spirit? Are you letting the spirit lead? But again, it begs the question, how do we do that? And the answer is,

yay. Listen and obey. Let me give you one more illustration that may help you get this, because we need to get this, we gotta get this you guys. Sailing. So

when I grew up, I actually would go out to Minnesota every year where my grandparents lived, my aunts and uncles, and my uncle would take us out sailing, and so I had learned kind of the basics of sailing. I knew just enough about sailing to be a little dangerous, right? I knew, you know, I'd get the wind in your back, and then when you pull the sail in, it'll catch more wind, let the sail out, it'll catch less wind. I learned a very important term, if you're ever in a sailboat and you hear the word come about, you better duck, okay, because that thing's gonna come over your head. So I learned just enough like that. Well then my wife and I get married, and we go on our honeymoon in Minnesota, we're staying on a lake,

and I see a little two man sailboat down there, and I'm like, oh, is gonna be fun, because she knows nothing about sailing, but I'm borderline expert by now. So I'm like, she's gonna be so impressed.

So we get out to this little two man sailboat and we're going, and the wind picks up out on this lake, and it's so awesome. If you've ever gone sailing, know what I'm talking about. So as the wind picks it up, the boat starts to tip, right, but we're leaning way back, and I'm thinking to myself, my new

bride, we've been married for like four or five days, she's gotta be looking at me right now going, I'm so glad I married him. Because I'm picturing myself, I probably looked something like this. That's

what I imagined myself. Well, what's the next one? This is me, this next, that's me. That's when I pictured myself, and when I'm leaning out there and I'm pretty sure my wife's going, wow, what a stud, I'm glad I married that guy. And then I'm not sure if it was too much wind or too much ego,

but all of a sudden the whole boat goes into the water. We go flying into the water, life jackets go flying in the water, the mast starts to sink. If you know anything about sailboats, once that mast goes underwater,

it's really really hard to get it upright again. So I start swimming out to the mast, and I start yelling back at my wife a bunch of instructions. Now now a couple of lessons here. Number one, if you tip over sailboat because of your own stupidity, do not start yelling instructions to your new bride.

She will never let you forget it. Ever. Ever. Ever. But here's where it connects to the spirit. What does it mean to walk in the Spirit? What does it mean to live by the Spirit? What does it mean to be led by the Spirit? We're the sailor, we're the sailboat, and the Spirit is the wind.

We can't control the wind, the wind will blow where the wind is gonna blow, but that's where the power comes from. Can you imagine how silly it would have been if I would have pushed out into the water a little bit and there was no wind that day and I pull the sail in, I'm trying to impress my wife and I start going, we're

not going anywhere, are we? And Paul is saying, you have powerless lives sometimes because you're not tapping into the power. This same power that raised Lazarus from the dead, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, the power that created this universe. This unimaginable power is at work within us.

You're free, you've been set free and now you have the spirit of God.

But you're just living ordinary lives. You have the Holy Spirit, but does the Holy Spirit have you? But what does it mean practically? What does it mean to let the spirit lead, to walk in the spirit? And it means to,

yay, listen and obey. I know, I know, none of you are gonna leave here today going, wow,

so profound. That's what it comes down to. See here's the, this is gonna make all of us uncomfortable, alright, but here's the throat punch for us today.

See what happens with most of us is all of a sudden when we have to make a huge decision in our life, or we get a job change or something, and we're gonna have to move the whole family to Maine and pull them out of school, we gotta make a decision in two days whether we're gonna do all of this, and so we say a couple of prayers, and then we're going, God, I can't hear you. Are you talking? I mean, won't God talk to me?

He has been for years. It's a bunch of little things and you just kept ignoring his voice. When he got in the car that morning after saying something to your spouse because you had a bad morning, but you said something you shouldn't have said. And then when you're driving away, there's that little voice that says,

you need to call her and say you're sorry. Will you listen and obey? Or do you go

You see the spirit of God is speaking to us constantly. If you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, you have the spirit of God. He's speaking to us constantly with all kinds of little things like that. But I think the danger is we ignore that voice. We don't listen and obey to that voice and then something big happens and we go, God, what should I do? What? I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. And God's going, I've been talking to you for three years and you haven't listened.

No wonder you can't hear my voice anymore. A little uncomfortable in here? It is for me because I'm with you on this one. So I remember pulling into a Circle K parking lot once, I pulled in there and I got out the car and I look over and there's like a he was probably a 15, 16 year old boy, and I could tell he was homeless.

He had just washed a couple of his clothes and he was kinda drying them out on the side of the Circle K and

kinda nodded at him and I went inside and I get some stuff and I come back out, I'm getting in my car and we made eye contact again, I'm like, hey bro, how you doing? He's like, good, good, hey, have a good day. I get in the car and I hear the spirit of God. Wasn't an audible voice, it was in

my mind, in my soul, in my spirit, a little voice that said, help him. And then I did what you did and I went like, that must be the devil. I mean, clearly the devil would tempt me to use my resources to help another human being.

That's the kind of temptation that Satan brings into our lives. Yeah, that's the devil. Yeah, yeah, yeah, put it in reversely. Or, or where you go, I hear you spirit, and I'm gonna do it. Listen and obey. My friends, our lives will be radically different if we tapped into the power of the spirit of God that's available to us.

How do we tap into that? Paul says, walk in the spirit. Let the spirit lead. How do you do that? Listen and obey. I wanna just challenge you Rock Point.

I wanna just challenge you that that starting today for this next week, would you just would you and I I wanna take the same challenge. Would we pay pay special attention to the spirit's voice?

Would we listen closely? When you said something to your kids that you shouldn't have said, we all have bad moments and you said that, but the spirit is saying you need to humble yourself and go get on your knees in front of your children and say, daddy's sorry or mommy's sorry, will you forgive me? Will you do that?

When you when the spirit is telling you to go help this person, when the spirit's telling you to encourage this person, when the spirit's telling you to turn that off, when the spirit's saying, don't look at that, when the spirit's saying, I know you wanna say that in anger, but don't say it. When you said it in anger, now the spirit's saying, now go ask for forgiveness. Well, you do those little things. Because when you and I will start listening to the spirit's voice from all those little things,

then we're gonna start experiencing the power of the spirit of God in our life. A power that raised Lazarus from the dead. A power that raised Jesus from the dead. Let me just wrap up with this really quick story that

I hope we can walk away from and just go, man, I wanna I wanna live life that way. As I've shared before, was a teacher and a coach for ten years up in Montana and I taught happened to be a Christian school. And it's important for this story because at this Christian school for parent teacher conferences,

both the parents and the student had to be there. So if you were a senior in high school, the senior in high school was there, and the parents or the parent were there. They were they were all in the room. And the sad thing for me is in all my almost a decade of teaching that I did at a Christian school,

I realized that in most parent teacher conferences, they were no different than any other conferences.

The parents are basically asking the same questions as everyone else did, like how's my kid doing? How's he is he really smart? Is she gonna is she gonna oh, she could go to Harvard. Oh, yes. You make a lot of money. Oh, that's good. Alright. This oh. And that's how most of the the things went.

But this this was a new kid. We have the the the conference and I go through how he's doing in history and English and all of the stuff he's taking and the dad's just nodding and then the dad takes the report card and goes turns it upside down and he goes, alright. Tell me how my son is really doing. Tell

me about the character of my son. Tell me what really matters. You see, the truth is that when you and I stand before our precious Jesus someday, he's not gonna take our report cards, all the accomplishments

and the titles and the money you've made, none of that will matter. He's gonna take it and turn it over and he's gonna say, tell me how connected you were to my spirit. How'd you live this new life I gave you? We have the Holy Spirit, but does the Holy Spirit have us? My friends, would you commit?

Would you commit to doing that? Just one week, listen, listen, listen, and then whatever he tells you, whatever he tells you, do it. How cool will it be to see what God does in your life and your life line in my life if we did that this week?

Jesus, we love you, and we thank you for loving us first. This was an uncomfortable throat punch moment for all of us. I recognize, Jesus, that I ignore your voice so much, and I apologize for that. I I wanna live in the power of your spirit. I wanna live differently. I wanna live this vibrant,

powerful life, this new life that you called me to. And God, pray that this church, Rock Point Church, would be marked as a group of people who are listening, who are obeying,

who are walking in your spirit, who are letting your spirit lead. And because of that, God, our marriages will be different, our families will be different, our workplaces will be different, our spiritual lives will be different. Everything will be changed because of that, Jesus. And so I pray that we can be the people that would live that way.

Jesus, I just pray a special blessing, a specific request for all of us would somehow in the next few days, God, when we choose to do this, would you somehow show us in a special way what can be possible if we would live this way? God, pray that. I beg you for that. Every one of us, somehow in the next few days, show us

how extraordinary our lives could be if we lived in the power of your spirit. We love you, Jesus. And all God's people said, amen.