Session 24 – Romans; Romans 8: Mark Lanier, 02/01/26

ROM 024_Romans P24_PODCAST_020126
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[00:00:00] I was thinking back about an event we had in our chapel and in this event in our chapel, we had John Piper come in and John Piper is someone who's well known in a lot of Christian evangelical circles, but I was never, um, part of the. Paparazzi or whatever you would call people who are devotees, uh, to his teaching.

Not that, not that I had anything negative about it. It just wasn't where I was spending a bulk of my time. And so I didn't know certain buzzwords for him. And I met him when he came to our library and we started a panel discussion on a Friday. And in that panel discussion with John Piper there, um, I told the people as I welcomed them, I said, I'm so glad you're here.

I think this is gonna be fun. And he interrupted me and he said, no, it's not [00:01:00] fun. That's not the right word to use. That's too bland a word to ever use for the glory of God and the kingdom of God. And, and I was a bit stunned at my guest and, um, but I, I understood, I think ultimately where he was coming from and I was able to say, well, you know, he may not be having fun today, but I will be.

Um, uh, and some of us will. But, but in some circles, the word fun. Doesn't mean what it means in other circles. And so in my circle, fun is a great compliment that things are going quite well. Uh, in his circle. It, it seems to be a little more bland. And, and I think I actually did a, a paper on that afterwards.

'cause I was really perplexed by it. And I found a Greek word in the Bible that I think could be translated fun today. And, and, uh, uh, I never published the paper, but I did share it with Tom Wright and [00:02:00] he said I should publish it. But anyway, it, it, it's just a recognition that words change, meaning over time.

And, and we know these words change meaning over time. Let me give you some example. In the 18 hundreds, the word awful meant full of awe. But now, today, awful means very bad. So something that you know to say, God, you know, uh, it is just awful the way that church sees God in the 18 hundreds. That would be the ultimate compliment.

But today it would be the ultimate, uh uh. Negative. How else do words change? Meaning over time? Literally used to mean actually. In fact, now literally means not literally. So I remember when our governor, Rick Perry was talking about, uh, uh, uh, people crossing the border [00:03:00] illegally. And he said they're crossing the border at literally the speed of light.

And I thought, wow, 136,000 miles an hour. No wonder we can't get 'em. Literally used to mean actually, in fact, now people use literally just to mean. Well, I don't mean this literally, but literal, you know, and, and it's just interesting. Words change just across the ocean. The difference between American English and British English is quite profound.

If you go to lunch and you say, I'd like some chips, please, with my lunch, you order a sandwich with chips in America, you're gonna get chips in England. That's what they call french fries. They'll bring you french fries. If you want real chips, you have to ask for crisps. In England, [00:04:00] here in America, if you say something is quite good, that means it's quite good.

In England, it means, eh, it's not the compli. Well, somebody told me one time when I was over there, um, that looks quite good. I thought, well, thank you very much, and only later did I realize that meant, eh,

there are two words in Romans eight that we need to get right. We need to read them the right way, and those words are words that are very, very important. Let me give them to you at the outset. One of the words in Romans eight is the word flesh. It's sarks in the Greek. And some people might think it means your body.

Some people might think it means physical desires. It's neither of those. By the way, [00:05:00] there's another word that's used spirit PMA in the Greek, and some people think that PMA spirit means part of your soul or some non-physical part of your body. Now these are very, very important terms for us to talk about because if we get these wrong, then we get off into belief systems that are not biblical.

Plato, Plato taught that your body is bad, but your spirit is good. And Platonism, that teaching of Plato didn't die with him. It resurrects periodically as Neo or new Platonism, but if we get these wrong, we might think when we read Romans eight that your body is bad, but your spirit is [00:06:00] good. If we get these wrong, we might think that physical things are evil.

And spiritual things are righteous. Well, that's gnostic heresy of the church that existed for two or 300 years, but still crops up periodically. If we get these wrong, we might think reading Romans eight, that we need to escape the body to be holy. Well, that's Greek or Eastern mysticism, depending upon which branches you study.

But that's not biblical teaching. None of those ideas are what Paul means at all. So I want us to approach Romans eight today, but we're gonna do three things. The first thing we're gonna do is look again at the foundation passage of Romans eight, one through four. And then we're going to look at a very clear [00:07:00] section of class on the definitions of flesh and spirit, and then we'll introduce and give you some homework for next week, a chiasm in Romans eight, five through eight.

So let's start with the foundational passage. Here it is. There is therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation. Karea is the Greek word condemnation, as I discussed two weeks ago when we started this passage. It teaches the idea that when you, uh, it, it's, it's a concept condemnation that comes from the old Roman court system.

And so it included, uh, the accusation made against you. It included the verdict that was announced after the trial. And it included the sentence that was pronounced. So when Paul says there's no [00:08:00] condemnation, Paul is talking about this understanding that you, you don't have to worry about the charges that have been brought.

You don't have to worry about the verdict that's been delivered, and you don't need to worry about the sentence because all of that has been taken care of. There is, therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Now, Tom Wright a good friend, uh, and a friend of the class, he's been here countless times in t Wright is his publishing name, but, but Nicholas Tom, Tom Wright, Tom Wright would be in the back of my brain telling me right now, don't miss out on the life giving aspect.

Of no condemnation because frequently the Protestant church has been to use upon guilty of not adequately [00:09:00] explaining the ramifications of what it means for there to be no accusation that can be sustained, no trial verdict that can be sustained, no sentence that can be imposed if we go back to the criminal system.

It is not only the fact that there's no condemnation at that trial in that sense, but it also has an implication for how we now live, and that's the thrust of what Paul's driving at in Romans chapter eight. And so Paul says, the law of the spirit of life has set us free in Christ Jesus. From the law of sin and death, and what Paul's done here is he's contrasting an old way from a new way.

The old way was the law of sin and death. The atomic system, the system that's that inherent since [00:10:00] Adam in the world scene, that there is law, there is, uh, ultimately. Law is an expression of God's character and behavior in, in the world. Uh, the way he would act and behave, his values, his priorities, that's, that's what law should be.

And as humanity from Adam rebelled against God, we left the life of his law and went into the fact that that same law, disobedience immorality, brings death. And so Paul's saying that the life, uh, that, that the law of the spirit of life in Christ has set me free from the law of sin and death. That's what was there until the Messiah came.

But with the Messiah, we have the law of the spirit of life. And so the law of the spirit of life has set you free. [00:11:00] Um, now the Greek word here has set you free ein is in what's called an heist form. Um, we don't think much in those. I mean, when we study English in school, we say, well, this is present tense.

That was past tense. That will be future tense. We don't say, well, what about the heist tense? But in Greek you'll learn the, hes tense. It's one used most frequently, and, and the hes in this verb form. What this does, this aspect of the verb, when they take the verb set free and put it into this aspect, it stresses that this action is completed, it's done, and the stress is on the completed action.

Now, we've got some people in here taking Greek. And so if you're in our Greek class, you know [00:12:00] that the perfect tense is a completed action with a present consequence being stressed. He didn't use that. He's not stressing the present consequence. He's stressing what has happened historically. It's done.

The law of the spirit of life has already set you free. It's finished. It's done. It's a completed action. You have been set free. You may not realize it. You may still be living like you're shackled, but you've been set free. And Paul wants everyone who reads or hears his letter to understand the truth.

The reality is that you are set free from that law of sin and death. You have a law of the spirit of life. This ties back into Paul's overwhelming theme that he gave us, uh, in, in, uh, [00:13:00] old rhetoric terms, the proprio, where he said in Romans one, 16 and 17. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Paul's buzzword for the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus with all of its implications and permutations.

I'm not ashamed of Jesus'. Death, burial, and resurrection because it's God's power to save everyone who believes the Jew first. Chronologically also to the Greek. Because in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, that's the it here in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, we see God's righteousness from faith to faith.

And that's the, the, the, the, the principle that drives this whole letter. And so when we get to [00:14:00] this Romans two, when he says, the law of the spirit of life completed action has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death, he's referencing back the gospel. When Christ died, you were set free.

Now that doesn't mean that we don't experience it sometimes in our life. I go back to one of my Greek professors, I tell this story often. Uh, I always get someone who will email me over it and say, well, I don't quite agree with that, but I don't care. I still think he drives a very good point. We wanted to hear the story of his conversion experience.

One student, we were talking about it before class, and one of my buddies said to him, Dr. Floyd, can you tell us about the day you were saved? And he pulled off his glasses and he sucked in the wind. Ooh, the day I was saved, what a glorious day. It was about [00:15:00] 2000 years ago on a hill outside Jerusalem. And he speaks of the gospel because that is the completed action.

That's what set us free. From the law of sin and death, and then Paul goes on to say that God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. Paul doesn't say that the law is defective. The law is a good thing. If we think of the law as an expression of God's morality, then of course it's good.

But even the perfect moral God with his good law is weakened by the flesh. Now the Greek word here, aton, is, is interesting because it's the word of being able to do something with the not put in [00:16:00] front. The law's not able it, it doesn't have the power. As good as the law is. He's not saying the law's bad.

He's not saying the law's weak. He's saying that the law has been weakened by the flesh, and we get that word flesh. Weakened by the SARS Sarcos in that form, but sars the flesh. That's one of the words we need to talk about. Here's the image. I don't know if you saw this or not, and we didn't have time to test sound, but see if you, this news clip means anything to you.

American climber has successfully scaled one of the world's tallest buildings without ropes. Alex Hanal reached the top of the Taipei Tower in Taiwan in just over 90 minutes. The skyscraper is 508 meters high and contains 101 floors. The attempt streamed live with a ten second delay in case anything went wrong without fear [00:17:00] and without ropes.

Alex Honnold takes on a challenge 10 years in the making with hundreds watching from the safety of the ground, and tens of thousands watching a live stream from the edge of their seats. The world's greatest free climber takes on his latest challenge. You must have put in a tremendous amount of preparation before taking this on.

Yeah, you could Say that again. They put that live on Netflix with a ten second delay in case anything went wrong. This guy's climbing, whoa up there. Now I gotta tell you, I climbed these stairs,

but this to me. Strikes me as a good illustration of what Paul's saying here about the law weakened by the flesh. You can give me perfect instructions on how to climb that building. You just give it to me. You [00:18:00] say to me, put some sticky on your hands. Get the right kind of shoes. Don't wear a parachute or wear a parachute.

Don't wear something the wind's gonna get. You can give me clear instructions, just like God gives in the law. You can give it to me and I can even understand it. Okay? I got that. I understand how to climb that building without any ropes while everybody's watching. I got it, but I got news for you. I still can't do it.

And I'm not fool enough to try because I know I can't do it. I don't have it within me. And that's what Paul's saying. You can have a perfect law given by a perfect God. You can even understand it, [00:19:00] but you can't do it. Your flesh, you are weakened by the flesh. Martin Luther had a great illustration for this, but I, I wanna bring it up to date.

So I'm gonna use it my own illustration, but I need to at least give credit to Brother Martin Neosporin can really help you. So I'm told if you've got a cut and you don't want it infected and you don't want to leave a scar, but you can take all the neosporin you want and it's not gonna do anything for your fever If you've got a fever.

That Neosporin on your hand is not gonna help your fever. It's just something different. The law is useful, and the law had multiple purposes. It helped society be civil. It helped people get along. It served as [00:20:00] guardrails for behavior. It gave insight into the character of God. But the law, when it's been weakened by the flesh, can't do things like make you right before God.

It doesn't have it, but God has done by sending his own son what the law could not do. And, and, and, uh, the, the Greek is interesting here. I think I've, I've changed it here in a moment, but God has done through his son that he sent pimps us is the Greek verb. It's from pimp. And Pimpo in Greek, it's um, it's kind of like a sister word to a post ose, an apostle, someone who's sent, [00:21:00] but it's someone who's sent us usually for the purposes of communicating.

And Paul and John are the ones who've used this word in the New Testament the most. John loves it, but Paul used this word a few times and used it here because what God did by sending his son God dispatched Jesus. Communicate part of the gospel is God not just paying the price, but letting the world know.

So the law is powerless to do this. It's weakened by the flesh, but God's done something by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Now, this is a very, very important word here. Homeboy, OMA is the word for likeness. Paul uses it also in Philippians, um, when, where in Philippians two, where he talks [00:22:00] about Jesus, who was made, uh, uh, in, in the form of man.

Um, but, but this, this is in the likeness. Jesus was not sinful flesh. Jesus was not sinful at all. And so Paul can't just say, Jesus came. In, in the flesh or in the sinful flesh, lest we get the wrong idea. He can't just say, Jesus came and leave flesh out because he wants us to know Jesus was incarnate, a physical being, but it's the likeness of sinful flesh.

He was like us, but without sin, and so. For sin. Jesus condemned sin in the flesh. Now condemned is again that same word. There's no [00:23:00] condemnation that we had in verse eight, one catrino. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ because he's condemned the sin in the flesh. We, the law of the spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin.

And death. He condemned it. That's the gospel. That's the good news. Jesus Christ died and condemned sin for us so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. I love the way this reads. Jesus did this in order that it's a hena purpose clause in the Greek in order that the righteous requirement of the law, what the law rightly requires, it might be fulfilled in US Pleo in the Greek is the word that's translated fulfill, and it means to fill.

Um, but it, it's like. This is, this is filled. [00:24:00] Okay, it's now it's not totally. Hold on. We can fix that.

And there we have it. It's totally filled. Jesus totally filled the requirement of the law and he did it in us for us. His fulfillment is one that's accorded to us, and that's huge because look at what it says about what God's goal was with Jesus, God's goal with Jesus. It was not, well, I'm just gonna lower the standard so that people can be in a right relationship with me.

No. Well, I'm just gonna excuse their failure. No, I'm just gonna [00:25:00] pretend that righteousness doesn't matter. No, God's goal. Paul's saying God's goal was to fulfill what the law required, period, and that's what Christ did. It and the ramifications for you and for me are profound. That foundation is there. Now you'll see Paul's using these words, flesh and spirit, and we need to talk about them.

Look at this last verse again in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk according to the, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Now the word flesh is this Greek word. It takes the farm here of [00:26:00] S-A-R-K-A Sarka, but it's actually in its root form.

Oops, hold on. Sorry about that. In its root form, it's just SAR in English, X sarks. Sarks means flesh. Now at the start of class, I urged you to realize that that can, that means some things for Paul, and it doesn't mean some things for Paul. And here in Romans eight, he's not using the word flesh to indicate that your body, he's not talking about your body, your physical body, as if your body is bad and your spirit is good.

We set that aside. That's a no. He's not saying physical things. We set that aside. That's a no. He's not saying escape the body to be holy. I mean, what we know scripturally is that God created bodies. Good. [00:27:00] That's Genesis 1 31. There. Our bodies were created. Good. It's part of who we are when we are at our best.

Before the fall, we know that Jesus was resurrected bodily. Don't tell me the body's bad. Jesus was resurrected bodily. Don't tell me physical is bad. Jesus was resurrected Physically.

We know that we will have a bodily resurrection. That's first Corinthians 15.

When I first started, uh, actually I was several years into my Greek degree, but I had gotten to a point where I was, um,

we were, I, I took a class that was called First [00:28:00] Corinthians, um, and it is in Greek, so we're just translating First Corinthians and um, we got to First Corinthians chapter 15, and I had grown up thinking. That we have this body, but inside the body is the real us, and that when we're dead, we lose the body, but the real us just keeps going.

And my professor, when I mentioned that to him as I was trying to explain and justify my translation in one Corinthians 15, he looked at me and he said, wow. I haven't met a Platonist in a long time. I said, what do you mean? He says, well, that's Plato, but it's not the Bible. And he said, Mr. Lanier, please, let's translate the Bible.

The way Paul wrote it, not the way you wish he wrote it.[00:29:00]

I said, okay, because Paul writes it. We, we don't know what the body will be, but it's a bodily resurrection. The body's not something that, that we're going to escape from. The biblical goal isn't escape the body. It's redeem the body. Christ is physically resurrected. We get a redeemed body upon death, we get a body that's that's a glorified body.

If we wrongly think that Paul means physical desires or needs, then we're making a big mistake. Paul's not saying that the flesh or physical desires or needs, physical desires and needs are part of what God made us. [00:30:00] Adam and Eve are eating in the garden that's a physical desire or need food. They should have kept on the pasta and kept away from the tree, but they're eating.

It's not good for man to be alone. Eve is made. Relationships, intimacy between a husband and a wife, that that, that is not a bad thing. Now, everything that God made for good can be used for bad. It can be abused, it can be. Treated with disregard, but that's our mistake. You know, the all, all of your desires and needs, all of those [00:31:00] can be used by the flesh, but they're not inherently sinful in themselves, and we should not think so.

We should not be in the business of dividing what is physical from what is spiritual. So that's not what Paul means. If that's not what he means, then what does he mean? Let me give it to you this way. Flesh in Romans eight, Sarks means a life oriented away from God. Lived in reliance on human physical ability and a mental ability, which we know to be physical as well.

Lived in reliance on human ability apart from God's spirit. It is existence characterized by self-sufficiency and rebellion against God. [00:32:00] That's what Paul means by flesh. Paul is saying that your flesh, it's not what you are. I'm not using it as your body. It's how you live. It is your per it it it is your compass, your drive, your motor.

It's that mindset of you looking to yourself instead of God. That's flesh in Romans eight. It's that disposition of wanting to be independent from God. That's flesh in Romans eight. It's that operating system where you're running on human power instead of divine power. That's flesh in Romans eight. Now, here's the funky part.[00:33:00]

Flesh

can at times seem very religious.

We can seem pious and religious and devout while living out of our flesh,

but that's not what we're called to do. We have the spirit of God. You go back and, and, well, I don't have time, uh, extra credit. Go back and read John 14, 15 and 16 and see what Jesus says would happen to his followers when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in them. And among that, you'll see that he will come and convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

And it's all related to Jesus Christ and what he's done. John, um, I believe [00:34:00] wrote the Gospel of John in history. Teaches though not all agree with this and. You can't prove it, um, that John wrote his gospel out of the MEU or the area of Ephesus around 90 or so AD Now Ephesus is a church that was started by Paul Ephesus is a church that was, um,

heavily influenced by Paul's writings. It seems that Paul's letters were first accumulated as a corpus, a group in the Ephesus area, and of course the Ephesian letter was a letter for the churches of that area. So the Apostle John who went to live in Ephesus and lived there for, for years and years and years.

Would've been part of a church that Paul had started that honored Paul as their founder, that honored Paul's teachings that kept [00:35:00] them readily available. It's not surprising to me that the Gospel of John uniquely shares so much vocabulary that Paul uses more so than the other gospel writers by far. And so we, we see in the gospel of John, this whole idea.

That the Holy Spirit will come and the Holy Spirit will convict people of these very things Paul's talking about, and that conviction of the spirit is part of the law of the spirit of life in Christ that convicts us. That's why even Christians, when we do wrong, we're convicted of our sin. It can be so frustrating.

It can seem like the Gooeys stickiest syrup. We can't get off our skin because the Holy Spirits it work within us, but we need to understand what that [00:36:00] means. Now if we're going to live out of the flesh and by flesh, not our body, but our orientation of how we're living. If we're gonna live out of the flesh, we're gonna see certain works.

The works of the flesh. Paul wrote about in Galatians five and, and these works just permeate out when we try to live our life oriented to our power, to our mindset, what we want and how we want it. Do you know what the works of the flesh are as Paul detailed them in Galatians five sexual immorality.

Sexual immorality. There are physical ways that that living out of our power, out of our mind, out of our strength, we will produce things [00:37:00] physically that aren't right. Paul says, idolatry, religious. We can have, look, the, the, the Pharisees and the scribes were pretty religious people, but they had a heart that was far from God.

I cringe over people who claim under a Christian banner to be representatives of Christ. Yet you look at their behavior and it is so far removed from what I want this world to understand the behavior of Christ is and was. I want people who walk under the banner of Christ not to be walking by works of the flesh.

I want them to be walking by the spirit of God. I want the world that doesn't believe in Jesus to look at people who carry the [00:38:00] banner of Christ and see Jesus.

Enmity, strife, jealousy. Those are works of the flesh that's relational. If you are living by your flesh, it's going to affect every part of your life. It will affect your body, what you do with your body. It'll affect your, affect your religion. It will affect your relationships, it will affect your emotions with anger fits.

And it's not all on the outside. It'll even affect your totally internal stuff, your envy, your heart, your frame of mind. And that's why if we're trying to live right based on our power, the law, as good as it is, will be weakened by our effort to do it ourselves. We can't, we do not have it within [00:39:00] us. But God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do, and he did it so that that righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Now spirit is pah. Whoops. That's sars. That's flesh. Spirit is. There we go. Panum. And, you know, it's, it's, it's hard sometimes in translating the Bible to tell in some of these passages where Paul means the Holy Spirit or the human spirit, um, spirit pma, uh, they didn't capitalize one and lowercase the other like we do in English.

And so it, you, you, you gotta figure that out. But the translators here. Are pretty consistent that Paul's talking about us walking according to the Holy Spirit here. That's why they capitalize it. So that's the spirit [00:40:00] here. Now, what is the spirit as Paul's using it, I'd like us to consider the following.

Think of Spirit PAH as a life empowered by God's Holy Spirit. As an existence that's characterized by dependence on God, by living in the new reality of resurrection power. Now, if we do that, we have something very different than life by the flesh.

Do not think of spirit as what you are. It I, it's not your disembodied soul. It's how you live. Led and empowered by God most of the time. Paul uses it in Romans eight. Not always, but he's talking about God's holy Spirit. But sometimes [00:41:00] he's referencing our human spirit. It. He's just doing it in, in, uh, the relationship of our human spirit with God's spirit.

Jesus talked about this also in that same three chapters of John, that God's spirit would dwell within our spirit, but never, ever, ever does Paul use spirit to talk about some non-physical part of you.

Now, how do we tell the difference? How do you know whether it's a capital S spirit or a lowercase spirit? You just gotta look at the context of the passage, and that's what the translators try and do for you. But how are we doing time wise? Eh? We're all right. We have 16 slides to go. We have nine minutes, 16, nine, eh.

Eh, you can look, eh, throw it up there. It's the Bible. We always have time for the Bible, don't [00:42:00] we hope? Alright. Look at some of these. I'm in Romans eight, verse five. Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on things of the spirit.

Now if you look carefully at the Greek as provided here in this wonderful Baylor study Bible, I've got a little be, and that's not for Baylor. Be that's a footnote and you're to go down here and you're to find the bee in the footnote and you'll see spirit. See the difference. The footnote is a lowercase s.

The translation is an uppercase S. The translators think it [00:43:00] means the Holy Spirit, but they debate about it enough to give you the choice. 'cause it might be talking about the human spirit, but regardless, those who live according to the flesh. Live according to, uh, set their minds on the flesh. But those who live according to the spirit, set their minds on the things of the spirit.

You are not in the flesh. You are in the spirit be. But you know what that footnote still says since the spirit of God dwells in you now there, they don't give you the be. Because it's the spirit of God. It's gotta be the Holy Spirit. Anyone who doesn't have the Spirit capital S no little be of Christ doesn't belong to him.

But if Christ is in you, though the body is [00:44:00] dead because of sin. The spirit is life because of righteousness. Now they've got you turn the page so their footnotes start all over again. A why? Because they just want you to know that could be a lowercase spirit could be talking of the human spirit. So you just gotta tell by context.

But I will say this,

why does any of this matter? Why does it matter? The difference between flesh and spirit? What difference does that make if you read flesh to equal body and spirit to equal non body? If that's the way you read Romans, you'll read Romans eight as Suppress Your Body, suppress those desires, cultivate Your Soul.[00:45:00]

Well, that's Paganism. But if you'll read this and understand that flesh means self-reliant orientation, while spirit means a God dependent life, if you'll see that, you'll stop. You'll read Romans eight as stop relying on yourself and start depending upon God. Yeah, you can take a preacher who's preaching a sermon and thank God we don't have this problem in this church.

But if that preacher is preaching for his own pride, his own arrogance, his own fame, he's preaching out of the flesh. And that doesn't mean God can't do something good with it, but oh, don't we? Thank God we've got a preacher who's preaching out of the spirit of God. You ask Pastor Jerry, you watch him, just watch him sometime before he gets up to preach.

He's got this prayer he does, and he's got even a hand gesture he does with it because he's just su supplicating [00:46:00] himself to the Lord. He wants God in it. He wants God doing it. He wants all the glory to God. But if we understand this, then we quit worrying about this and we start living this and we'll learn that.

The question on something isn't, is this activity physical or spiritual? The question is, am I relying on myself or on God? So we can be up here, we can be teaching the Bible, but if I'm doing this, relying on myself, heaven, help me,

God, have mercy on me.

Does our daughter, Rebecca, our granddaughter, aria Jane. Fresh picture from the snow in Knoxville, Tennessee last week, and I'm telling you, a mother taking care of a [00:47:00] daughter, a father, taking care of a daughter, relying on God is every bit as holy and every bit as spiritual as knocking on a door and sharing the gospel.

The question is, are you relying on yourself or on God? That's the question of whether or not it's spiritual. That's the difference these definitions make. Now, the chiasm look, we have four minutes and I gotta get to points for home. So the bottom line is homework. We'll pick up with this next week. I got an email from Larry Burgess.

He sent me a a Tom Wright. Translation of sorts of Romans eight, five through eight, and Tom's one of the big proponents of the idea that there's a chiasm in these passages. I think he's right. You can read about it, you can get ready for it. I don't have time to read the passage with you, but I will warn you what a chiasm is if you've been here for much.

You've heard me teach [00:48:00] on it before. It comes from the Greek letter Kai. It's a ancient literary device where ideas are presented in one order. And then repeated in reverse order. So it's like A, B, C, and then we don't end, we go back to B and go back to A, that's a chiasm. And in a chiasm it's, it's called that because that's kind of the shape of A, B, C, B, A.

And in a chiasm, the emphasis is always on the C. Everything's important, but it, it draws attention to the c. So you can explore that. We'll talk about it next week. But here's your, well, sorry. Yeah, no, sorry. We gotta do points for home or Dale Horner will email me. Here's your points for home. Please don't ask, is this [00:49:00] physical or spiritual?

Ask, am I relying on myself or God?

Paul said it this way to the church in Colossi, Colossians three 17. Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Relying upon him, giving thanks to God the Father, through him. Everything you do, everything. No exception, everything. And if you do, it's spiritual.

Point for home. Number two, check your mindset. Remember, those who live according to the spirit, set their minds on things of the spirit. One of the my favorite passages, uh, in the Psalms that I put in my brain, let the words of my mouth. And the meditation [00:50:00] of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh God.

I'm training for a marathon. I'm out there running,

I, I, I'm tired. I see the biscuit place right there strategically located where I can just kind of run right in. And decide not to train for a marathon. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in my in thy side. Oh, Lord, I'm jogging. There's some woman who's out there jogging, coming towards me, dressed in skimpy to nothing.

Clothes. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable. Oh lord, I'm going to court. I've got adversaries that make Goliath look like a midget. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy cyto God. Check your mindset. We wanna [00:51:00] live according to the spirit by God's power, by God's focus.

And then last, let's stop serving God in flesh mode out of our own power. Flesh mode can never submit to God's law. It can never please God. We don't have it. So here's your prayer. Take a picture of this. Write this down in your Bible, engrave this in your brain. Holy Spirit, empower me to do what I cannot do in my own strength.

And you will see the fits of anger going away, and you will see when you have that difficult problem. Lord, empower me to do what I can't do in my own strength. Maybe you need extra resources. [00:52:00] If you're struggling with alcoholism, AA is a pretty good place to go. Go to your meetings, get your support system.

I am not saying you, you, God gives you all these tools. Use them, but use them by his strength and his power, or you'll never succeed and you'll chase yourself to an early grave with ulcers and high blood pressure.

Got it. Yes. All right. Let me bless you and thank you guys for being here. John and Laura, thank you. You honor us by being here. Stan, all you guys that run for office, thank you for putting yourselves out there. We appreciate it very much. Lord, would you please bless the hearers of this word, father, with your spirit empowering us to focus on the freedom we have in Christ that, that we're not bound to Satan and his system.[00:53:00]

We have liberation, Lord, but we'll find it only in your strength and only in your spirit. We will not find it in ourselves. And so we desperately ask you, empower us, give us focus. Give us a mindset, renew a right spirit within us. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.