Spirit of God vs Spirit of the Age

And as they're heading out, grab your Bibles, open them up to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. And uh before we jump into that, I don't always uh use AI or um things of that matter. But uh I did ask Chat GBT a few questions this week uh that I found were interesting just to see what it would compile. Now, usually if I ask weird questions, I ask Microsoft Copilot. Um, but it didn't have the backbone to give me an answer.

So, but Chat GPT was ready to go off the rails. And so, it uh it did provide the answers to these questions that I asked. And so, here's one of the first questions that I asked Chat GBT. If you were the devil, which is why Microsoft Copilot would not answer the question, but if you were the devil, how would you deceive women? How would you deceive women? And here's what by quote.

This is its response. If I were to approach this question in a more reflective or philosophical way, I could say that from a traditional perspective, the devil is often seen as a symbol of deception, manipulation, and temptation. You you think like I mean at least he kind of got that correct. To deceive anyone, regardless of gender, the approach might focus on distorting truths, feeding insecurities, and offering false promises of happiness or fulfillment. In modern times, this might manifest in ways like, and it gave me examples, number one, exploiting insecurities, encouraging unrealistic beauty standards or perfect lifestyles that make people feel inadequate unless they conform. Number two, creating false choices, presenting people with seemingly empowering choices that ultimately lead to dissatisfaction or self-doubt.

Number three, manipulating desires, promoting materialism, status, or fleeting pleasures as the ultimate goals, leading individuals away from deeper, more meaningful pursuits. Number four, feeding on division, fostering comparisons between women, encouraging competition over collaboration or unity. And then it finished off with this little statement. The idea is that deception works best when it targets vulnerabilities and twists what people believe will make them happy, whole, or successful. That's chat GPT. All right.

And what it's doing is it's compiling information through all of the web basically to pull in what does the world say in regards to answering these questions. Now I asked the same question. If you were the devil, how would you deceive men? Thinking that it might give just a similar answer, but it actually changed a little bit. It then started off with this. Well, that's a deep and dangerous question.

the kind people ask when they're thinking about the nature of evil, manipulation, and how easily humans can be led astray. At that point, I was like, "Are you gaslighting me? Are are you thinking that I'm asking the question because I want to go and deceive other men?" But then it were to go, it then goes on to say, "If I were the devil and my goal was to deceive men, I wouldn't come with horns and fire." Why? Because if you come at me with horns and fire, I'm going to buck up against it.

I want to fight. I want to defend. I'd come as everything they wanted. Think about that. Beautiful, desirable, logical, even good. Deception works best when it looks like truth.

Here's how that might look. And then it gave me some examples. Redefine good and evil. Twist morality just slightly. Make people believe what's wrong is actually compassionate and what's right is intolerant. Confuse the definitions until truth is just your truth.

Number two, appeal to pride. Convince men they're wise enough to be their own gods. feed the idea that they're entitled to anything that they want, that they deserve it, no matter the cost. Number three, normalize distraction. Keep all of them busy, addicted to stimulation, endlessly scrolling. If they never have silence, they won't ever reflect or seek true meaning.

Number four, use partial truths. Mix lies with enough truth to make them palatable. A half-truth is more dangerous than a blatant or whole lie. Number five, make pleasure their highest good. If it feels good, they'll do it. If it's hard, they'll avoid it.

Convince men that discomfort or suffering has no purpose. Number six, destroy all identity. Confuse men about who they are. Make them forget they're made for something great, for love, truth, and meaning. And then it finishes with this statement. This is the kind of subtle warfare literature, philosophy, and theology have wrestled with for centuries.

Even ancient religious texts like the Bible. Chat GBT doing a phenomenal job answering to us how the world thinks. the spirit of the age. I titled this sermon the spirit of God versus the spirit of age because here's what's true. There is a spirit of the age and there is the spirit of God. And both are preaching a message to you in order to draw you into their way of living.

Don't believe me? Ephesians 2, looking at verses 1 through three. Listen to it. and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this air. Other translations use that as the age of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. What that is saying is that we were sinners and we were following the course of the world.

We were following the patterns. We were following the path. We were following the teachings. We were following the preachings of this age that is contrary to the truth that God has ultimately given to us. In other words, Satan preached a message of deception to our first parents, Adam and Eve, and they believed it. And therefore they began walking in step with Satan and the spirit of this age.

Jesus came and preached a different message, the true message to both Jews and Gentiles. And it is inviting us to believe it so that we might walk in step with the spirit of God and live a life of peace, hope, and love. And I want to show you those two different things today in order for us to do as we did in the call to worship to live lives that are wise and not foolish. Because we can't just go with the message of Easter and then live life as if it never happened because that's the issue. I mean, man, we are celebrating what happened last week. We're celebrating what happened.

Amazing, glorious, wonderful. It's not for one day a year. It's not the message we're preaching. I mean, that's the the springboard into a life that is lived every single day. believing and trusting in that message of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that has implications for how we live our life so that we're making the most of every opportunity, most of every relationship that we're in, most opportunity in every career path that we are taking, most opportunity in every endeavor that we are finding ourselves in because God has a way for us to live it out that brings glory to him and that does not lead us into a way that is robbing him of glory. And that's what I want to show you today is is the difference between the two because at the end of the day, what I don't want you to do is I don't want you to waste your life.

I don't want you to waste your life. Let me ask you a question. Where were you on March 20th, 2000? Not not 2020. March 20th, 2020. We know where everyone was.

They were in their living rooms. March 20th, 2000. Go back 25 years. I don't know exactly where I was, but I know that I was at the end of seventh grade. I think if I did my math correctly, I was at the end of seventh grade. But I do know where one person specifically was.

I know where Dr. John Piper was on March 20th in the year 2000. He was on a farm outside of Memphis, Tennessee at a conference called Passion One Day. And it was a one-day conference where what if you and if you know anything about Passion, John Piper's probably the last person you would have expected to walk out on stage and deliver a message because he wasn't cool enough. When you usually see passion conferences, which they're amazing conferences, but when you usually see them, they're looking for the pastors and preachers and speakers who are like the coolest of the cool. All right?

Like they know where to shop. They're wearing the right stuff. Like they they they know how to speak the language of the current cultural moment. Like they they are the trendsetters and the influencers in the Christian world. Um, John Piper was an opposite of that in 2000 when he got up on stage looking like he found whatever the closest like dadlike store was to buy their clothes, get up on stage and deliver a message. And what I believe happened in that 40inute message called um I think he titled it boasting in the cross alone changed the trajectory of thousands of not only college students that were present in the moment but thousands of churches over the next three decades primarily because of the men who called were called into ministry and were shaped by this message that he delivered that had this one little tagline in the middle of it that said don't waste your life.

He hadn't even read the book or or wrote the book yet called don't waste your life. It was based on this 40inut sermon. But two things he did in delivering that third that 40-minute sermon was he gave two stories. He gave one story about two women that are a part of his church that were missionaries. And as they were taking the gospel and some relief to an unreached village, as they were heading there, the brakes on their car went out and they ended up careening. And these are like two, when I say two women, they were in their 80s.

The brakes went out on their car and they ended up careening over a cliff and literally fell to the like to to their death. And John Piper asked the question in this again to all these college students. He asked them a question. He he yelled the question. I'm not going to yell it, but he said, "Is that a tragedy? Is that a tragedy?"

He then held up a reader's digest, which if you don't know what a Reader's Digest is, you'll have to Google it. All right? But he held up a Reader's Digest and he ended up reading from it an article about two people who had retired at a young age and they were traveling the East Coast playing softball and picking up seashells. And he responded, "That's a tragedy. That's a tragedy because of how they're making the most of the opportunity of the life that has been given to them. I first heard that sermon in 2007.

And the only reason why I remember that was because a friend of mine that was working at the church that I was working at gave me a CD with the sermon on it. If you don't know what a CD is, you're the same people that don't know what a Reader's Digest is. Um, it's basically a Spotify uh playlist on a Frisbee. Okay. Um, and so I drove a 1995 Chevy uh Silverado at the time and and I remember my CD player would literally only play two CDs. It played this CD that had John Piper Sermon on it and it played an Aval Lavine album.

Um but this yes and and so anyways I listened to this sermon I mean hundreds of times. One because by default it was the only thing I could play but two because I mean it just it changed the trajectory of my life. changed the trajectory of my life to where from that moment on and the same thing that John Piper was preaching in that sermon, the same thing that I'm wanting to preach today and next Sunday and the Sunday after that is don't waste your life. Don't waste your life. Every breath you take, every day you wake up, every time you open the scriptures, God is wanting to inform you, instruct you, transform you to become more like his son, Jesus. So that as you go out and you interact with those around you, you're able to show them the greatest hope, peace, and prosperity that they will ever have in this life is found in Jesus Christ alone.

And not in the spirit of this age that is preaching a contrary message to them, that is promising false hope to them, that is promising false happiness to them that they are never going to find. Never. And so the thing that separates them from being able to know the truth is whether or not we are making the most of our opportunity, whether or not we are taking the gospel that has been entrusted to us and giving it to them, living wisely instead of foolishly. And so my aim today is to show you how to walk in step with the spirit of God, not the spirit of this age. And so buckle up because we have a lot to go through here. In Ephesians 2, drop down to verse 13.

He says this, "In Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." That's what we talked about last week, right? The only way I mean the only way that you get to the father is John 14:6. I am the way, the truth, and life. And no one comes to the father except through me. All right?

No other world religion is going to get you to the father. No other world religion is going to reconcile you in a relationship with God. And and the reason why we know that is because Jesus tells us, here's the sign in which you can trust and believe this message is the fact that he resurrected me on the third day. Go to any other world religion, you can visit their tombs. You can pay $6. 50 and go see Confucious's tooth that is rotting away.

You know where Gandhi's buried. You can visit Muhammad's tomb. Jesus's tomb is the only one that you can visit and there's nothing there. brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law and the commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man, one new people, one new group, one new church in place of the two, so making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross. thereby killing the hostility.

And he came, again, speaking of Jesus, he came and preached peace to you. I want you to underline that. Jesus came and preached peace to us. Why? Because it's a message. It's good news that we have to hear, that we have to receive.

All right? Jesus isn't showing up on the scene and like coming up to us and like activating something inside of us that was not there that was already there and just dormant. No, he's not saying find within yourself the inner peace that you need. That's what the world's telling us to do and it ain't going to work. What you only find inside yourself is hostility, sinfulness, everything that is contrary to the goodness and pleasures of the Lord. And so what he has to do is he has to come and enter into the scene and tell us something we don't know.

He has to preach a message and he has to say you need to know this. You need to believe this. You need to trust this. This is what God has done for you. And this message that he's preaching to those who are far off and peace to those who are near. For through him we both have access in one spirit to the father.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. Now he's just talking about this new people, this new community, this new church that he is building and constructing. Why? because of the message that he came and proclaimed and because of the life, death and resurrection, the work that he came and did and finished on the cross. In whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God. And underline these last three words, by the spirit. We're not being built into a church by the pastors. We're not being built into a church by the members. We're not being built into a church by the statement of faith. We're not being built into into the church by the budget.

We're being built into a dwelling place for the house of God by the spirit. And that's important because in order to walk in step with the spirit, you can never leave the spirit behind. If we start living like if we accept what he has done on the cross for us and we say, "I believe it." But then we enter back into living life how we always lived it and making choices how we've always made choices and discerning what we should do in life based on how we always discerned it without a new way of doing it. in a new way of listening and learning. If we do it separated from the spirit of God, all we're doing is entering back into the spirit of the age.

Here's the thing. You are not God. And you are not a God. You are always and will always be a created individual that is receiving instruction on what to do with your life. And so we are either going to listen to the enemy and follow them or we will listen to the one true God and follow him. We will walk in step with the spirit of the age or we will walk in step with the spirit of God.

We don't create anything. We We're not creating any new ways. Even if you look at all of the world religions that have been created by man, they're all informed by pagan idolatry, demonic warfare. It's just Satan continuing to run the exact same play of the first religion that he created in Genesis 1 and 2 when he deceived or in Genesis 3 when he entered in and deceived Eve and said, "Did God really say?" He presented to her a different doctrine and said, "Believe this and follow it. Walk in step with me, not the true God."

And so then I asked Chad GBT another thing. If you were the devil, how would you deceive the church? How would you deceive the church? Once again, it responded, "That's a heavy and interesting question. If I were to answer it in that vein from a literary or philosophical perspective, not endorsing evil, obviously, the most effective way the devil might deceive a church would be subtly, not overtly. Here's how that deception could look.

Shift focus from Christ to charisma. Encourage worship of personalities instead of God, pastors, influencers, musicians. Twist truth into almost truth. Use scripture selectively to justify selfishness, pride, or control. Promote comfort over conviction. Make faith about convenience, success, and feelings, not sacrifice and truth.

Encourage division over doctrine. So stir up fights over minor issues while ignoring major spiritual decay. Replace holiness with hype. Let performance and production become more important than prayer and purity. Make sin look like freedom and obedience look like bondage. Rebrand rebellion as authent authenticity and surrender as weakness.

man, make sin look like freedom. That one got me. And obedience look like bondage. Hold on to that for what Paul's going to say to us in Galatians in just a moment. But here's what the enemy is doing. They're trying to get Christians out of step with the spirit of God and in step with the spirit of the age.

It's what Satan did with Adam and Eve. As I already said, did God really say? and then goes on to tell them, "Well, actually, if you just bend it a little bit, just bend a little bit of what God said, you'll actually be like God." Let me give you some examples of lies we believe that sound right. God is love. Therefore, you can love whoever you want.

That's a false freedom that the spirit of the age is preaching. escapism, relief, freedom, get rid of the worry in your life. And so what does the world tell us to do? Get drunk. Escape the troubles. That's a false freedom.

Financial independence. How do we get it? The world tells us greed. Get as much as you can to become financially independent. But once again, a false freedom. physical beauty turns into vanity, a false freedom.

Emotional health, the growest ind the fastest growing industry right now is therapy. Therapy. And I'm not against therapy. I'm going to talk about it a little bit more in here here in a moment. But it's still a false freedom when it's not tied to biblical wisdom. Pro progressivism is a means of enlightenment.

But enlightened to what? Enlightened to what? Another form of false freedom. Here's what you need to know. The Bible is binary. What I mean by that is there's good and there's evil.

There's right and there's wrong. There's holy and there's sinful. There's wise and there's foolish. There's righteous and there's unrighteous. And the goal of the spirit of the age is to blur the lines between them. and instead of being white and black, cause us to live in a gray world, no longer knowing what is right or wrong, good and evil.

And the tactic, the tactic, watch this. The tactic is to attack anyone who speaks against the spirit of the age and label them as evil, standing against progress, when in actuality. Christianity is the only one promoting the truest form of progress, maturity. Like when he tells us to be conformed to the image of Jesus, he's saying, "I'm making you into the truest form of humanity that I ever created and intended it to look like." What the spirit of the age is doing is erasing our humanity so that we actually no longer reflect rightly the image of God. Look at this.

Where God is the father of truth, the Bible tells us Satan is the father of lies. Where God is the Holy Spirit, Satan is an unholy spirit. If you do a quick look at Hebrews 11:12, you'll see that the primary way in which God grows and expands the kingdom of God is by way of passing the baton. When you look at Hebrews 11, and there's all this list of all these giants in scripture that were um that that lived by faith. And then you get to Hebrews 12 and it says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that entangles us." It's saying, "Look at what they trusted in and believe it so that you can actually live a life that is throwing off everything that entangles you and living a life of worship in Jesus."

Passing of the baton from one generation to the next. And so one of the things that the spirit of the age is doing right now is it's trying to flip the passing of the baton. It's trying to make the younger generation believe that they are smarter than the older generation. It's trying to make children believe that they are smarter than their parents. Because again, we don't want to listen to the ones who have the truth and who have walked with the truth, who have walked with the spirit of God for the majority of their life. We don't want to know what they know anymore.

We think we know what is right. And I'm going to show you more of that in just a moment. But if they fail to pass the baton of the gospel, then what it does is it eventually oppresses a generation and brings upon them judgment instead of worshiping the one true God. And that's exactly where Satan wants us. He doesn't want the passing of the baton from the generation that knows the gospel to come to us. And so he's trueing everything he can to blur the lines so that the actual true gospel is no longer being spread but instead being muddied.

Being muddied. Remember what I told you to hold on to. Galatians 5. This is what Paul says. You can turn there with me. Galatians 5 verse one.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Again. Spirit of this age wants you in bondage. The gospel wants you free. For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

So essentially what he's doing there right out of the gate, Paul is stating his desire for the Galatians. I want you to find true freedom in Christ and not be enslaved to the ideology of this world. Now, why does he say that? because they were abandoning the truth of the gospel for a false truth of the devil. Paul explains the situation in the next few verses. Look at verses 2 through 12.

This is what he says. Look, I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ. You who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace. Now, what he's saying there is not that you've lost your salvation, but what he is doing is he is separating the two different components that are going on here.

There are those who believe the true message of the gospel, and there are those who are believing that they still need to live by what the what the the current cultural age is telling them. This is how you get to God. And he's saying, "If you believe that, you're not in Jesus. If you believe this, you're in Jesus. For through the spirit by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcis uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love."

We got to remember that. Only faith. only faith by the spirit only faith. And then Paul like it's it's almost like kind of side notes here and just I just really want he's like my god you were running so well you were doing so great who hindered you from obeying the truth. This persuasion is not from him who calls you. What he's saying is you are being persuaded by somebody to believe something that's not the true gospel.

Who's hindering you? He goes on to say, if you let a little bit of that into the doctrine of the church, it ruins the whole thing. A little leaven leavenvens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view. So now he's speaking directly at those who believe the true gospel. is I've got confidence in you that you're going to weed this out and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty whoever he is.

But if I brothers and this is where he kind of gives an explanation of of the difference between and I'll step into our current cultural moment here in a moment but the difference between preaching the true gospel that has power and preaching a false gospel that does not have any power. If I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? Essentially, he's saying by them preaching persecution, they're not ruffling any feathers. Nobody's getting upset about that because that's what in their c current cultural moment, everybody's accepting. They're okay with that. We can get to God if we practice circumcision.

So he's saying, "If I was preaching circumcision, why are they killing me for it or trying to kill me for it?" Instead, what he's saying is, "I'm proclaiming something else that actually has power, but it offends them. It offends them." And unfortunately, in our current day, what we are doing as churches is we are trying to do everything we can to not offend And so we water down the gospel and we let other garbage come into it in hopes that it breaks down the dividing walls of hostility. And he told us already that's not what breaks down the dividing walls of hostility. The power of the gospel, Jesus Christ, is the one who makes a people from all peoples.

That's what we got to get back to the verse 12. Man, Paul, this is where again, I don't know if this is him unsanctified saying this or him sanctified and has the opportunity to say this. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. I mean, that's bold. But you want to know what the actual truth is behind that? According to Jewish customs, if you were emasculated, you were not allowed into the worship of the congregation.

He's saying, "I wish that they would not even enter into the worship of the congregation in order to continue deceiving others. I wish they'd cut it off." Here's what's going down. Paul had brought the true gospel to the region of Galatia and planted churches there during his first missionary journey around 47 to 48 AD. It's only been a couple of years from when he planted the churches there to now he's writing these letters to them. Only a couple of years for the true gospel to radically transform a region make a people a church and then for trickling into it the spirit of the age to begin deceiving people.

And here's what I want to say in regards to that. Yes, the Bible tells us to be patient, but it also tells us to be urgent and vigilant. Yes, we want to be patient with our society and with our culture and so forth. Like, we want to be patient with our evangelism and so forth, but we also need to be urgent because I'll tell you who's not being patient. Satan and the enemy. where Jesus is patient, he's impatient.

Maybe there needs to be a bit of holy impatience on our part when it comes to what we do in walking in step with the spirit of God. Now, think about that through the Bible. Though the Bible calls us to be patient, that does not mean we can't be urgent. It had only been a couple of years, and they're experiencing this theological and biblical drift, compromising truth, and giving up ground to the enemy. Now remember what I said. God is a Holy Spirit that wants to pass down wisdom and righteousness from one generation to the next.

Satan is an unholy spirit that wants to distort that wisdom and righteousness to make it foolish and unrighteous completely unbeknownst to the recipients. What God creates, Satan counterfeits. Whatever God creates, Satan corrupts. Whatever God builds, Satan breaks. Whatever God inaugurates, Satan comes to oppose. And so, listen to this.

where God is the Holy Spirit. His goal is to turn the hearts of the children to their father's instruction to turn the younger generation to the older generation so that they might receive from them the truth of the gospel. This is according to Malachi. And so what Satan is doing, and you can just watch this, watch any media channel out there, look at the current um educational movements going on throughout public schools and especially at the collegiate level. Look at what they're doing. They're not going after the boomers and the Gen Xers.

They're going after the children. Because if we can get to the children, we will shape the next generation. And we will not only shape the next generation, but then we'll shape their next generation. Because then we will want them to pass down the baton. In Galatians, the ideology was circumcision in the law. In our current cultural moment, Josh Howardson, a pastor in Dallas, says that Satan's tactic is technology and ideology.

And here's what he means by that. In our generation, or let's just say the last hundred years, there's been more technological advance than previously before in human history combined. Combined. What that means is that it's creating the illusion that the younger generation is smarter, wiser, and more advanced than the older generation. And by the way, that's not working out well for us. It's not.

Functionally speaking, all it means is that the younger generation knows how to take selfies, convert PDF files, and write code. That's all it means. But they don't know how to love a woman for an entire lifetime or how to build a family or how to build a business or how to be a loyal how to be loyal to a friend or how to plant roots and stay or how to walk through life pain and suffering and become a person of maturity, joy, integrity, and character. They don't know how to do any of those things, but they sure do know how to turn on a laptop. How about the younger generation? And I put myself in that category.

I think I'm like right on the cusp. We're I call us the lost generation because there was a time when I was called Gen Y. And most of you are like, never heard of that before. Exactly. Because at some point they thought, "Let's just lump them in with the millennials." And we did not like the millennials.

We were blaming everything on them because it was boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, then millennials. And millennials were just doing all the dumb stuff. And then all of a sudden, I woke up one day and they're like, "Oh, by the way, you're a millennial." I was like, "No, I'm not. I'm Gen Y." But here's what I think.

Gen Y, I think we're the we're the we're the cusp between the older and younger generation. And the reason why I say that is because I feel like, at least in my own experience, I can sit down with a 70-year-old on a porch and shoot the breeze. And I can also talk to a 17-year-old and feel like to a degree I'm relevant except for like the whole current lingo that they use of like Skibb Ohio and RZ and I don't even I don't understand that stuff. I need translators for that. But I I can't and also can't get behind it. So I'm not going to go there and start speaking that way either.

But here's what I can say. For those who are my age and younger, so if you're under 40, you will be so much smarter, wiser, and happier if you will go against the grain of our generation and have the humility and wisdom to look to godly people older than you and say, "Please teach me so that I can inherit what you've earned. They exist. Find them. Find them. I've left meetings with 25 year olds who want to tell me how they have life figured out and it's nauseating.

I've left meetings with 75 year olds who tell me how much they've fumbled through life but share the lessons they've learned and I have I walk away feeling refreshed, seen, and renewed. Here's the three primary ideologies in culture right now that I believe Satan is using to turn the younger generation against the older. And the reason why I'm going to bring these up because this is getting very specific and this is this might get some emails and that's fine. Um, these are controversial topics, but I believe this is a strategy that the spirit of the age is using right now in order to turn the younger generation against the older generation. Number one, it's called critical theory. And if you've never heard of critical theory, good.

Good. But you also need to know what the enemy strategy is. Critical theory. And and let me give a caveat to this real quick. I'm not saying that all accusations of racism are wrong or silly. I believe this stuff matters, but I believe it also needs to be filtered through a biblical lens, not a man-made lens.

But here's what critical theory as an ideology states. This is according to their statement of faith. All institutions are inherently racist because racism is embedded in the institutions and that everyone who either founded or participated in the institution is by default guilty or implicit of that racism. End quote. So what that teaches you, by the way, is that all of your parents and all of your grandparents are racist. That's what it teaches.

The false truth or belief then for the younger generation is that my parents are racist and I have to oppose them for justice. Where theory becomes practice is when it's then and this is the irony behind it is when you take a critical race theory that says institutions are inherently racist and then they institutionalize it into organizations like BLM in 2020. This was the Black Lives Matter vision statement. We want to deconstruct the western prescribed nuclear family. That's a straight quote from their vision statement. What does that have to do with race?

It's coming after the children. Why would they do that? So they can take the seat of influence and nurturing for the next generation. Everyone needs a parent. Everyone needs a teacher. Everyone is being discipled by someone or something.

And they want to be it. They want to be it. Number two, I think this is going on in our culture. Queer theory. Told you I was going there. Queer theory.

LGBTQ plus community. Queer theory is the belief that all of your parents and grandparents beliefs about gender, marriage, and sexuality are outdated, primitive, oppressive, and repressive. straight from their vision statement. Here's the false truth or belief that comes with that. My parents are bigots and I have to rebel against them to truly be myself. Number three, and this one I have to do a little bit of work on humanistic therapeutic worldview.

Here's what I mean by that. People no longer have pastors, they have therapists. People no longer have parents, they have shrinks. Therapy will solve everything. When a therapeutic worldview becomes the lens by which you filter all of life's problems, the landing zone is that my family of origin was the origin point for all of the pain and trauma in my life. And what the false truth or belief there is, my parents are problems and I have to separate from them in order to be happy.

You can see in all three of those categories, the whole goal is to create separation from the younger generation and the older generation so that there is no passing of the baton. I mean, do you not see what Satan is doing here? He's turning the hearts of children, Malachi language, he's turning the hearts of children against their parents. He's turning the younger generation against the older because it's the only strategy he has to stop the passing of the gospel. Period. But here's where Satan in his own sinful identity is too stupid and rebellious to see.

Jesus has the power to change everything. Right? Jesus has the power to change everything. Similar to the idiots in Galatia who were trying to enslave the church in a former way of living, Paul encourages them. Hey, do you remember Jesus? You remember just a couple of years ago that guy that I came and preached and told you about?

Do you remember him? Do you remember that it was the power to set you free from the ideology of this world and instead to walk in wisdom by walking in step with the spirit of God and not the spirit of this age? Look at Galatians 5:13. This is what he encourages them. For you were called to freedom, brothers. Drop down to verse 16.

Therefore, walk by the spirit. Walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. They've met Jesus. They believe in Jesus.

They believe in the gospel. They were given these new desires to walk with the spirit of God. And what he's showing them here is that the spirit of the age is coming back in to entice their flesh to say, "Don't do that anymore. Do this. Walk this way. Believe this."

So that it actually keeps them from doing the thing they want to do. If you're a Christian in this room, ask yourself the question right now. If you believe Jesus lived the perfect life, died the death that you deserved in your place, rose three days later because the wrath of God toward your sin was paid for and the punishment was taken on your behalf, and God was satisfied in all that. And so, he brought him back to life as the first fruits of the new church, the new people, the new age. Ask yourself this question if you believe that to be true. What do you want in this life?

What do you want most? Because I guarantee the answer, if you know what Jesus has done for you, I guarantee the answer is not going to be something that has to do with bigger and larger houses or financial independence. It's going to be figuring out how you can do anything and everything possible in your life to gain more joy in Jesus Christ alone by faith in the spirit of God that is guiding you and instructing you that this is where you find your ultimate satisfaction. And as you are satisfied in him and don't need anything else from this world, you are then looking for every possible opportunity to make use of every opportunity that you have to leverage your life to literally exhaust and spend your life in such a way that everyone around you gets to know and meet this Jesus who has changed and transformed everything about you. That's what we want. And what the spirit of this age is doing is trying to tell us that we want something different.

I say walk by the spirit and you will not desire or gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit. I want you to just listen to these. If you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Now, what what what what you're going to see in this list is everything that I actually just listed out in the critical theory and the sexual revolution and uh looking into your own self in order to find your own therapy and so forth.

All of that is wrapped up in this right here. The works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and if I missed any things like these, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. What's crazy is when you actually look at that that that list, there's a cyclical culture to the works of the flesh. When a culture experiences moral decay, it gives way to immorality impurity and sensuality. It gives way to it.

Read Romans 1. You no longer want to worship the creator. You want to worship creation instead. I'm going to give you over to it. And so now the men are going to start lying with the men and the women start lying with the women and so forth. I immorality impurity and sensuality replace which then replacing truth with idolatry, pagan practices, sorcery, worship falseening gods.

That's the idolatry and sorcery part which then creates wars. That's why there's enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions and and envy. Why? Because everyone is is believing their own idolatry, their own ideology, their own sorcery. Whatever truth they want to believe, they believe. And they want everyone else to believe the same thing.

And if you don't believe it, well then we're coming after your territory. And because we're not satisfied with God, all we want is more. And so because I don't have enough, I'm going to come and take from you. So we have this war between genders, between generations, between nations. And once they win their cultural wars, it gives way to the celebration time in forms of drunkenness, orgies, and whatever else seems right in their own eyes. Rinse and repeat.

That has been the world since Genesis 3 until Jesus shows up on the scene. Truth is reintroduced and you see a resurgence, redemption and renewal of a society and culture so that it is no longer decaying towards death but instead is being revived towards life. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus, they have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So, how do we take the hill? How do we gain ground?

How do we turn the tide in our culture? Crucify. Crucify. Not Jesus anymore. Crucify the flesh with its passions and desires. Put it to death.

And that's why he says in verse 25, if we live by the spirit again, by the spirit, not if we live by whatever I think is good, whatever I think is moral, whatever I think is right, whatever I think is the best way. If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, or envying one another. If you were on your own time to loop back or to loop back to Galatians 3, you'd see that the key to walking in step with the spirit of God is again going to be by faith. And even as I mentioned Hebrews 11 and 12 and the chapters there that have to talk with these giants of scripture, well, what made them giants in scripture? It wasn't anything that they did.

The whole list is full of murderers, idolattors, liars, thieves. I mean, just people like Abraham. We look at Abraham and we're like, dude, Abraham's awesome, man. Favored by God, like considered righteous, believed him, like left everything in order to go and create literally a people. He walked into a place because his wife was attractive and didn't want them to kill him in order to have opportunity for his wife. He walked into a place and said, "Ah, she's my sister.

She's my sister." Hey, Abraham, I'm going to make a people like as many as much sand as you can see, as many stars as you can see. That's how many offspring you're going to have. I'm going to give you a son, and through that lineage, you're eventually going to have a ton of people. All right, man. It's been 24 years, Lord.

You think you're ever going to do that? All right. Well, maybe he's wanting me to do it instead of living by the spirit. And so, he has Ishmael and he commits adultery. Like, what are we doing if it's not by the spirit? What are we doing?

What makes that list of such a great cloud of witnesses that helps us is that they live by faith. Period. They live by faith in the son of God. The only way we walk in step with the spirit of God is if we live by faith. By faith. And if you're like, "What does that mean?

How do I do that?" Again, that's why we teach it in every single week. That's why we exist as a church is to help you treasure Jesus and help others follow him. Faith is is is a working out of your life where you are receiving the truth from the word of God. that you are communicating back to God through prayer and that you are in this abiding relationship with Jesus where you're saying essentially, I don't have a clue how to live this life for your glory. You do.

Would you please inform me and give me the strength and ability to live it out every single day of my life? I believe you. I trust you. Do it, Lord. Do it. That's why I want to close once again reading with the same thing that I read in the open.

Look carefully then how you walk. Not as unwise but as wise. Look carefully how you walk. That takes intentionality on our parts. That takes the same thing that I do every Sunday morning is I have two things that I'm trying to do. I'm trying to keep one foot in the text and one foot in our context.

That's the goal of preaching is to show you what the text says and to also show you how to live it out in our world and our current cultural moment. You have the same job to know the text and to know your context. To be able to know the strategy of the evil ones and to be able to know the strategy of the Lord so that you can walk wisely and not foolishly, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. That's obvious. That's obvious. Turn the news on and you'll see it.

Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the L will of the Lord is. And then he contrasts this here. Do not get drunk with wine. Again, in their day and age, that was a way in which you could actually not just escape from the stress and and and um pressures of life, but that you could actually enter into some form of nirvana in which you could be able to receive truth from. Guess what? Not Jesus.

I am a firm believer that the majority of the world religions that were created were from guys who were high or drunk or on something that rhymes with acid. It's just true. Do not be drunk with wine. Do not be drunk with this world and what you're being enticed by. Do not be drunk with scrolling. Instead, be filled with the spirit.

Be filled with the spirit. Which then this is more of just a cascading of this what this is what happens when you're filled with the spirit. addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. I ask you that question, what do you want? What do you want? And I believe when you see things like singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, I believe you want that.

I believe you want that. And I believe the world is telling you to sing a different song. I believe you want to give thanks always and for everything to God the Father. Why? because you want a life that is so filled up and satisfied that you're overflowing with gratitude that all you can do is give thanks. Give thanks.

I believe you want that. And I believe you want more than anything to not create hostility, but to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. I believe you want to view others like Jesus views you. Willing to die for them. Willing to die for them. Not kill them.

That's what the world's telling you to do. But to lay your life down for them. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much this morning. God, may we not leave Resurrection Sunday and enter back into whatever way of life we believe is going to bring us happiness and fulfillment. But may we by your spirit, by faith, believing in the work of your son Jesus and all that he accomplished for us, may we walk in step with your spirit and not the spirit of this age.

May we live lives that are marked by wisdom and not folly. May we know the difference. May we know the difference. May we be people of your word. Do the work, Lord. Do the work.

Sanctify us. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. You go and stand with me.