Bobby Bosler: Please turn in your Bible with me to Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5. I’m very excited about the closing service here today for a number of different reasons.

One of the reasons is because I recognize that many of you here in the room, you’ve made significant decisions this week. A lot of the focus here today has been presenting the need in front of you and asking you the question, are you willing to volunteer? Are you willing to surrender your life to follow Jesus?

And many, most of you said that you were. If I could summarize a lot of what we’ve been talking about here today, today has largely been about total surrender. It’s actually kind of unusual for the second day to focus on that point, and yet I really do strongly believe that’s the direction that God has given us here for this Youth Summit here today.

Very burdened, especially with everything that’s happening in our world. As you saw in the video, and if you heard my session the other day, as was my burden, As far as what we see out there, it’s so easy to think, well, game over. Our ability to do what we normally do is canceled.

Our potential is canceled. God’s plan for my life is canceled. World missions is canceled.

But that’s not true, and you know that. I think we understand that God is far more powerful than a virus. God is far more powerful than public perception.

Actually, it’s kind of funny. Somebody talked to me during the senior supper up there and said when they were going down Northfield Drive over there, they took a picture that kind of illustrates the remarkable difference between the way we ought to be thinking and the way that is kind of the popular way to be thinking nowadays. I don’t know if you noticed, but right across from the field where we were doing most of our competitions,

there are COVID tests, right? And there was a line of cars going into the COVID test. And right on the other side of the field, we had a giant flock of teenagers bumping shoulders and everything like that.

And I thought, you know what? While everybody around the world is worried about their health and is worried about their safety and is worried about offending other people and all of those other things, we ought to be pressing forward, attempting great things for God and expecting great things from God. And our desire here in this youth summit has been to inspire you young people that God has a plan for your life.

It’s perhaps even bigger now than it ever has been before. And so as we talk to you and put in front of you the opportunities of the variety, the various different people groups and mission fields, we put in front of you the Muslim world, we put in front of you the young people and the people of Uganda, we put in front of you the statistics of the unreached people groups and the mission field of India,

New Delhi, one of the places with so many of the world’s unreached people groups. And we had Brother Prettyman earlier today present the cages that will hold you back from accomplishing what God wants you to accomplish. We asked you at the conclusion of that time, are you willing?

And many

of you said you were. But being surrendered to God is only a half of the equation. You know, If I was to send all of you out of here this week, if we were to send you on your way with total surrender down, but not understanding how total surrender relates to total dependence, we would be doing you a disservice.

Total surrender without total dependence results in abject failure. speaking of abject failure a couple days ago I had committed probably one of the biggest failures in my marriage I refused to listen to my wife about something that that’s happened to you men who are married and this this failure really stunk actually and what I mean by that is this I live in an RV and one of the natural parts of living in an RV is you have a tank in your RV it’s called a

black tank. How many of you know what I’m talking about? A black tank.

You say, what are you talking

about? A black tank. Let’s just say it’s where certain things go that most of you don’t have to revisit.

But in trailer life, and Dr. Jim understands that, any of you who’ve owned a trailer, you

understand that while most people flush the toilet and don’t have to think about it again, we evangelists, sometimes your trailer’s got to go. And again, I don’t want to go into too much grotesque detail, but in our trailer we have this built-in mechanism. I don’t mean the little sensor because those never work, right, Dr.

Jim?

But I’m talking about it’s got kind of this physics-based sensor in the trailer. We call it, in our home at least, we call it the bloop. Okay, and in a trailer it’s gravity-fed.

Again, I can’t believe I’m talking about this from the pulpit of Falls Baptist Church. But when you flush, it goes, yes, right, bloop. All right.

And when the tank is full, or at least when it’s within like a day or two, it gives a bloop.

OK, so about two and a half weeks ago or so, I had dumped the black tank. And, you know, we’re free and clear. I forgot to write down when I did it.

And about, let’s see, right after I dumped it, it started blooping. And there are reasons for that. And I thought, OK, I know it’s empty because I just dumped it.

So whatever, whatever the bloop is, it’s fine. So, you know, we’re going throughout two weeks and it’s bloop, bloop, blooping in the morning, blooping in the evening, blooping at supper time. I mean, it’s blooping whenever.

Anyway, and so it got around to the beginning of this week. Now, again, for those of you that are just coming and visiting, this is not only Youth Summit Week for Falls Baptist Church, it’s also Missions Conference Week. In other words, this is probably the busiest week of the entire year, maybe other than Victory Conference, but it’s a very, very busy week of the year.

And, you know, we have a lot of guests that are here and a lot of people all around the property. And so coming into Saturday night, my wife told me, she says, it’s blooping. You might want to dump the black tank.

And I was thinking, it hasn’t been that long ago. I mean, it’s been blooping ever since I dumped it. I think we’ll be fine.

We’ll get through the Youth Summit. I should have listened to my wife. And, you know, bloop, bloop, and the next thing you know, again, I’m trying not to be too gross here, but something comes all the way up into the toilet.

And I’m thinking, oh, this is not good. So, again, this is just trailer life. I’m sorry, this is gross.

Like I said, I can’t believe I’m talking about this. I do have a reason for talking about this. Well, I thought, okay, well, something’s got to happen.

So, that evening, I went out and I did what I normally do. With this new trailer that we’ve got, we got this a year ago, a little over a year ago. It’s got a really neat feature.

It’s called a black tank flush. And what this is, is you pull the lever and, you know, the stuff comes out and it goes where it’s supposed to go. And what you can do is you can stick a regular garden hose coming from a faucet where the water comes from.

You can stick it into this black tank flush, turn it on, and it will actually spray the inside of your tank. I’m giving you more of an education than you ever wanted to get coming to this service. So anyway, I’m doing what I’m doing.

I pull that thing on, and I’m just going around checking all kinds of other things, making everything flowing the way it’s supposed to, and everything’s draining the way it’s supposed to. And I forgot I had the black tank flush on, spraying water into the black tank, which normally that’s not an issue if it’s going somewhere. But it wasn’t going anywhere.

And I didn’t realize that it wasn’t draining. it was filling and there was a whole lot still left in there unbeknownst to me and I uh I stepped inside and my wife was in uh doing her hair in the bathroom and she says to me Bobby I see a little bit of water coming out from underneath the sink and I’m thinking from under the sink I had actually had the regular water disconnected from the trailer I’m like that’s impossible and she’s like

no it’s not it’s right there like okay there’s water why is it leaking from under the sink I don’t have anything plugged into that. And I said, all right, well, let’s just wipe it up. And I turned around because I thought I had drained things enough that I could just flush the bowl and everything would go down.

It’s got a little foot lever that flushes it. I hit the foot lever and

unbeknownst to me, the black tank flush didn’t just fill the tank, it had pressurized the tank. By the way, my son Jude, my little two-year-old, he was standing right next to the toilet. My wife you know doing her hair I hit the flusher and it literally exploded all over the bathroom all over the walls all over my two-year-old all over the floor and it wasn’t clean water let me tell you that much

And I remember looking at my wife saying, I should have listened to you, dear, when you told me to dump it. Again, biggest mistake in my marriage. That’s my biggest mistake.

I’ll be doing well. But, you know, I remember the very first thought that I had as I saw my son giggling in delight saying, that was fun. I remember thinking, why, Lord?

Why? I was under pressure as it was. I try to do these kinds of things when people aren’t around.

There are people driving back and forth outside. And then the second thought that I had was, I’m preaching on Friday. There must be a reason why.

This is a perfect sermon illustration of a point that I want to bring up. When you understand only total surrender, when you yield yourself to the expectation of God and you do not understand total dependence. It might work for a little while.

It might appear to work for a little while. The work is not getting done. Pressure will build up inside.

And I’m telling you, there will come a point when you’re going to blow. And a bunch of raw, disgusting sewage is going to pour out of your life. I really do believe that some of the most miserable people on planet earth are people who are surrendered to God but do not understand the power source of total dependence.

You know, I’m sure that some of you young people, as you made the decision to surrender to God, there was probably a little bit of fear and trepidation perhaps in your life. You were thinking back to some periods of time in your life where you said, I want to do what God wants me to do. Maybe it’s, you know, I want to serve God and hand out tracts, or I want to give the gospel,

or I want to read my Bible every day, or I want to pray for an hour, and maybe in the past you’ve decided, I am going to do these things, and you tried, and you tried, and you tried in your own strength, and it’s not just that things didn’t work. It’s that the pressure built up so much, and there was no joy, no fulfillment, no peace, no rest, that you ended up diving into even worse sin afterwards

than you had been before you surrendered. It’s because you did not understand a key truth that I want to speak to you about here this evening. Galatians chapter 5.

I want you to look down at verse number 16. The key to reaching the world for Christ is contained in this verse. This I say then, Paul says, walk in the Spirit.

Today I want to preach a very simple message to you tonight that is entitled, walk in the Spirit. Lord Jesus, I do ask that you would attend this time. I know this is a core passion, not only of the book of Galatians, but of your own heart.

Lord God, I pray that you’d help me explain this truth in such a way that it will make sense to all that are here. But I don’t want to just stand up here and explain context and try to take a stab at theology. Lord, I need you to illumine hearts to the truth of the scripture.

Would you, God, be our hope? Would you give that glimmer of hope to every young person here in this room, every adult for that matter? And I pray, God, you would show us how we can live in a revival relationship with the Holy Spirit of God.

Would you teach us how to walk in the Spirit tonight? And I pray that we wouldn’t just learn it. I pray, God, that we would live it.

In Jesus’ name, amen. For those of you that have been following some different things that I’ve been saying online, you’re probably aware that I’ve been studying through the book of Galatians in my own personal Bible study. To be honest with you, I, for years, have been very familiar with the first two chapters of the book of Galatians.

I’ve had a few other verses here and there that I really enjoyed in the book. But frankly, after chapter 2, really getting up to maybe the middle of chapter 5, the book of Galatians was a mystery to me. I understood that according to those chapters, there was something bad about the law, something that we shouldn’t have, some way that we weren’t supposed to interact to the law.

I knew that somehow Jesus was the answer. But as far as just the flow of thought and the argument of the book of Galatians, frankly, was a mystery to me. And as I began to study through this book, I was really asking God, God, I know that the general gist of where you are going in this book.

and yet I really don’t understand how the guts fit into the overall progression of everything. And I really don’t want to do what I can do sometimes and preach through too much of a book here today, except to say this. In the book of Galatians, Paul was very burdened that the Galatians had a clear and accurate understanding of the good news.

In chapter 1, again, don’t turn there, but in his basically giving the reason for the book, He said, I marvel that you Galatians have so soon departed from the truth to an error. I’m paraphrasing here. I just can’t believe.

It hasn’t even been so long since I’ve been with you. When I was there, you trusted Christ as your Savior. He says that in other places in the book.

And yet so soon after you found the good news, you’ve gone. I messed it all up with human thinking. I’m telling you, if anybody comes and says anything different than what you received or what we preach to you, those people are accursed.

He goes in for about a chapter and a half after that and essentially explains that his purpose is not to please men. It’s not to convince God, but rather it is to persuade the Galatians to get back to a proper understanding of the good news. Now, when I say good news, probably what most of you are thinking of is the good news that sinners can be rescued because of the blood atonement of Jesus Christ.

And that is a good news we all must understand with absolute clarity. In fact, I’ll bet there are probably some people here in this room, you don’t understand the beginning of the good news. In fact, there’s probably some here in this room, you might understand that you sin from time to time, but you may not understand that your sin earns you eternal conscious torment in the lake of fire.

You don’t understand that your sin has earned for you a severe sentence. The Bible says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. When you look at the scripture, the Bible tells us, He that believeth on him, speaking of Jesus, is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

And if you’re here this evening and there’s never been a time when you’ve recognized that your sin truly does earn you eternity in hell, that it really is bad enough to send you to hell for all of eternity, and if there’s never been a point in your life when you’ve realized, come to the realization, that Jesus took your place on the cross, and that if you would stop depending on your own righteousness, your own goodness,

your own futile attempts at pleasing God, and if you will instead choose to depend on Christ and Christ alone to wash your sins away and to give you everlasting life, if you’ve never come to that realization and made the decision to trust Jesus Christ alone as your Savior friend, I want you to know you’re accursed and you’re on your way to hell. And if you’re here today and you’ve never made that decision,

if you’re relying on your baptism or on your church attendance or you’re relying on trying to be good and to try to obey the Ten Commandments, then, friend, you need to see one of the college students or any adult that you see immediately after the service. We want to open the Bible and show you how you can know for sure you’re on your way to heaven. But, friends, I want you to know the good news to the sinner

is only the beginning of the good news because the good news starts with the fact that Jesus can rescue us from the consequences of our sin. the good news to the believer the good news to most of us here in this room is that Jesus doesn’t just want to deliver us from the consequences of sin he wants us to deliver us from our own selves I said it that way on purpose

as you go throughout the book of Galatians again I don’t have time to go through it at the end of chapter 2 he actually comes as close as he does to encapsulating the point of this letter. There are these conflicting viewpoints about what it takes to please God. And in chapter 2 in verse 20, he says, I am crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live,

yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live, I live by the what? Faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Now, I personally believe that

2, verse 20, and verse 21 are all a part of the dialogue that he’d had, really the monologue that he’d had against Peter because of some of the things Peter did in verse 11. Again, don’t get into all of that here today. But in chapter 3 and verse 1, he turns back his attention back to the Galatian believers and he says this.

You can look at it. Galatians

chapter 3 and verse 1. He says, O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently sent forth crucified among you this only what I learn of you received ye the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith now let me pause for just a second right there in that verse he’s presenting a dichotomy he’s presenting two pathways that he’s going to revisit many times throughout this letter

And the dichotomy, the pathway is this. You can pursue salvation one of two ways. You can pursue salvation by the works of the law.

And if I could put it that way, that is you trying to fulfill God’s intentions for your life. Or you can pursue pleasing God by the hearing of faith that is depending on Christ to live through you. Now, that being said, as we go throughout, Again, I do not have time to trace the argument throughout here.

He starts talking about Abraham. He starts talking about the law. What is the purpose of the law?

Was the law involved in Abraham being counted righteous? When did the law happen? Oh, that happened later.

So that doesn’t change God’s promise to Abraham. And again, I’m not going to go into all of that here today, except to say when you get all the way down to chapter 5 and verse 1, he has proved his point that no one gets in with God. no one pleases God by the works of the law.

When you try to please God by doing it on your own, you know what this letter calls that? Bondage. Slavery.

And I want you to know, young people, if you try to live out your surrender in your own strength, what you will experience is bondage and slavery. we get to chapter 5 in verse 1 he says stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage there’s a few things he has to say concerning his opponents i’m not going to get into those things but if you jump down to verse 13

of chapter 5, he says this, for brethren, ye have been called unto liberty. You know what, young people, you, God’s intention for you is for you to be able to yield to his will, to yield to his intentions for your life in a way where you are truly free, in a way that you’re enjoying the ride. God wants you to be able to yield to God’s plan and God’s will in such a way

where you can say like Dr. Jim Heson said many times, it’s the greatest thing, right? The greatest thing about being in the center of the will of God is that it’s the greatest thing.

And you know what,

as I’ve traveled even this year with all the challenges of COVID, I loved getting back on the road. I love doing what God wants me to do. And frankly, even in the midst of COVID, as much as there were challenges and there were times when I felt horrible for one reason or another.

And as much as there were times during that time

where I was so afraid, oh no, is somebody going to come and blah, blah, blah. I wasn’t worried they were going to come. I was worried they were going to come and bring company, if you know what I mean.

When I was able to stand up and preach the gospel, I was having the time of my life. When I was able to see young people come back in the invitation, tears in their eyes and trusting Jesus Christ as their Savior, that’s real freedom. God’s intention for you is for you to serve him with true liberty, true freedom.

But if you continue looking in this verse, he says this, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. You know, what can happen sometimes is we can throw off God’s intention and we just choose to do what we want to do. That is not the right way to approach this.

But really, that’s not what I want to focus on, at least at this point in the message here. I want to focus on the last part of that verse. He says here, but by love, serve one another.

There’s something interesting Brother Prettyman mentioned earlier when he was talking about the land of Uganda and how he had love lasers in his eyes. Something like that. Those of you who weren’t there, you may not know what I’m talking about.

But he talked about the fact that those people that he was ministering to, these young people, if you just look at them, and if they see love in your eyes, you’ve won some of those people. They’re just craving love. They’re craving to be valued, to be appreciated.

They’re craving someone to come in their lives that’s not just using them, but somebody who truly has their best interests in mind. And I believe what he’s saying here in this verse, verse 13, is he’s saying, listen, if you live your life trying to do what you want to do, that’s not freedom, that’s bondage. But what I actually want you to experience, what the liberty that I’m envisioning in your life is by love, serving one another.

Again, I know this may not all make sense quite yet. I’m going to try and tie all of these things together. But I wanted to say this.

Walking in the Spirit is absolutely essential because of what God is calling us to do. What God is calling us to do, yes, it’s to preach the gospel to every creature. Absolutely.

Yes, it’s to go to find people who have never heard. Absolutely. Yes, it’s to figure out unreached people groups and go share the good news.

Yes, it is to go and train nationals to reach their people. But if I can kind of work all of those things back to the core intention of God for every one of us coming out of this youth summit, it would be that phrase right there. By love, serve one another.

What do I mean by that, though? It’s interesting, the word serve is the word that we get the word slave from. He’s saying, you’re free, so be a slave.

That’s kind of interesting. In other words, freedom isn’t freedom to do what you want. Freedom isn’t freedom for you to choose.

The freedom that God intends for you is for you to enslave yourself to loving others. In other words, what do I mean by love? See, love seeks the best interests of the one loved.

In other words, love prefers someone else over yourself. Love doesn’t choose the best for me. Love chooses the best for others.

I really believe that if we would understand this concept, I really do believe that we would have five times as many missionaries on the mission field. Because here’s the thing, if you live your life for what’s best for you, you’ll stay back here in the States. You’ll earn a lot of money.

You’ll have a comfortable lifestyle.

You’ll have the American dream. And the world will die and go to hell. Oh, you may warm a pew now and then to feel good about yourself.

You might go to church and clink a few coins in the offering plate.

But the fact of the matter is, is your life is focused on yourself. And let me tell you this, Self-love is not the kind of love he’s talking about right here. It was the love of Jesus that caused Jesus to come down from heaven’s throne room.

It was what caused him to give up his God-given prerogative to exercise his attributes. It was love that caused him to become in the form of a servant and to be made in the likeness of man. It was love that caused him to obey God, not partially, not three quarters of the way, but all the way to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

See, really, what we need is love. In fact, if you look at the very next verse right here, verse 14, it says, for all the law. In other words, all of God’s intention, all that God wants out of us, all that God wants out of our lives, for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

College students, love is sacrificing your grade for your disciple. Love is you sacrificing a high-paying career maybe to go to Bible college and go to some mission field somewhere. Because it’s not about you like your shirt said on the back here today.

Love is an orientation of one’s life that is not just partially, but fully consumed with the good of other people around you. God expects you, every last one of you, to love. And God expects every last one of you to serve.

But here’s the thing. Here’s the thing as I was studying this through. In fact, it was interesting when you go throughout chapter 3 and 4, it’s almost like he’s negative, negative, negative, down, down, down on the law.

The law’s bad. Bad law. Bad, bad law.

And then when you get here to chapter 5, and then particularly to verse 14, He’s telling us we’re supposed to love and the whole law is fulfilled in this one commandment, thou shalt love thy neighbor for thyself. And it’s as if God’s saying, listen, to not be under the law, let me put it to you this way. He doesn’t want us to live according to the law.

But that does not mean that we throw God’s expectations out the window. It just means that we don’t pursue God’s intentions the law way. Remember earlier I said there are two approaches, there are two pathways.

You can either go down the pathway that says, I just need to do it. I’m just going to do it. I’m going to do it.

I’m going to do it. On the other side, it’s the hearing of faith. And see, here’s the thing.

If we try to obey God and fulfill His intentions and even obey His commandments in our own strength, it won’t work. It’ll never work. And when you get to verse 14 and you realize God isn’t just expecting you, God isn’t expecting you to keep a list of rules, because here’s the thing, you can check off all the boxes on a list of rules, right?

I think I heard somebody earlier today, I don’t remember who it was, but the Christian life is not ticking a bunch of boxes. It’s not just saying, okay, if I do this, do this, and do this, we’re all good. Because if all you’re doing is doing this, doing this and doing this and saying you’re all good, here’s the reason why you tick those boxes so I can get back to doing what I want to do.

So that I can get back to focusing on my own thing. And what he’s saying, he’s actually not diminishing God’s expectations here in this letter. He’s raising it.

Because here’s the thing, love will consume every spare moment of your life. Love will consume every time in your bank account. Love will consume the time between your classes.

Love will consume your vacation. Love will consume every nook and cranny of your life, not living for you, but living for others. And I think when we really understand what God means by that, it’s easy to think, Well, I don’t know that I can do that.

And you know what? You’re right. See, here’s the thing.

Walking in the Spirit, it’s absolutely essential. You cannot do what God has called you to do unless you understand what it means to walk in the Spirit. We’re getting there here because God has a very high expectation.

He expects you to love. He expects you to serve. But here’s another reason why walking in the Spirit is so essential and understanding what that means is because of the scary alternative.

Look at verse number 19. We’re going to come back to 16 through 18 in just a second. He says this, Now the…

What’s the next word? Let’s try that again. Now the…

Yep. See, so many times we focus on of the flesh. That certainly is valid.

but I think the point of this is showing the outcome of this pathway see here’s the thing young person you can determine to surrender your life to Jesus and to do all that he’s called you to do but if it is works if it is the works of your flesh you might look good on the outside but you’ll be rotten on the inside. Listen, the works of the flesh live for the weekend.

The works of the flesh live for the downtime when I don’t need to obey Jesus anymore. The works of the flesh live to get the check boxes checked off so they can get back to living their life, fulfilling their dreams, and doing what they want to do. and if you look through the works of the flesh, it’s pretty disgusting, to be frank, with you here today.

In fact, let’s look at them now. The works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness. You know, young people, I want to tell you what will happen in your life if you walk out of here surrendered to God but not understanding what it means to walk in the Spirit.

You might do a few good things. You might be all right for a while, but the pressure will build up. The pressure will build up.

You will sense the fact that you’re not truly accomplishing what God wants you to accomplish because the flesh can never accomplish what God wants you to accomplish. You’ll sense the fact that you’re constantly falling short of truly loving and truly serving, and you will go throughout your days feeling like there’s something not right. Maybe you’ll kind of feel good about yourself because you checked off a few more boxes than you did before the youth summit,

but because you know deep down inside that you’re actually failing when you were expecting to succeed, you’ll look for an outlet for that sense of failure somewhere. And you’ll cope with your failure. Some of you will cope with your failure through moral impurity.

He uses the word adultery. Jesus said, if a man looks on a woman to lust after her, he hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Mark my words.

you walk out of this place saying I’m surrendered to God but not understanding what it means to walk in the Spirit, you’ll go right back to your pornography. In fact, it might get worse. He says fornication.

Listen, you might surrender your girlfriend to Jesus, but if you don’t learn how to walk in the Spirit, you’ll end up back in bed with her again later on. Mark my words. He uses the word uncleanness.

Uncleanness is all of the dabbling with moral impurity that happens all the way up to a home run, if I can say it that way. And listen, you’ll dabble in uncleanness. You’ll do things I can’t even mention in front of a mixed audience here, but some of you men, you young men, know what happens in the shower.

And you’ll go right back to that stuff. You go right back to your habit. You’ll go right back.

He uses the word lasciviousness. Lasciviousness is the idea of an unbridled indulgence. Listen, you can be surrendered here today and go home and not understand what it means to walk in the Spirit, and there will come a point, maybe you dabble in a little bit of pornography, maybe you dabble, mess around a little bit with your boyfriend, but there will come a point when you’ll just cut loose.

I know people who surrender their lives to Jesus, who are currently living absolutely wicked, debauched, ungodly, unclean lifestyles. I’m convinced this because they really didn’t understand what it meant to walk in the Spirit. In verse 20 he says that one of the other works of the flesh is idolatry.

If you don’t understand what it walks in the Spirit, you will seek something to be the God of your life. Whether that’s your smartphone, whether that’s your sports team, whether that’s your car, whether that’s your occupation, your profession, your job, whether that’s your business, whether that’s that girl or guy, you will seek something to take the place of God in your life. He uses the word witchcraft, the next in the list.

Again, there’s a number of different ideas of this. this could have the idea of dabbling in the occult. It could also have the idea included in it, drug use.

In fact, I found one commentator that said that this even had an idea of drugs that were abortifacient. In other words, someone so selfish they’d take a pill to kill their baby. These are things sitting in this room you might think, I would never do that.

I would never go there. But I’m telling you, if you don’t learn how to walk in the Spirit, and all you try to do is obey in the strength of your flesh? Oh, you might.

He says the next couple items in the list, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings. Kind of sounds like Congress, right? Listen, you will live in anger towards other people.

You will be constantly in conflict with other people, constantly trying to compare yourselves to other people. You’ve got outbursts of anger. You’ve got contention and strife.

You’ve got playing politics, trying to get people to join your side against other people. You’ve got this whole envious looking at others, hating others, this conflicted lifestyle. And listen, that’ll happen between you and your siblings, you and your friends at school, you and your parents.

He says here, murders, drunkenness, revelings. You’d say, I’d never kill someone. Oh, but you’ll hate them.

You don’t know how to walk in the spirit. You’ll never process being treated wrongly. You’ll get so angry at people.

people don’t always appreciate you in the ministry. People won’t always give you what you think you ought to get. People will not always, sometimes people will genuinely take advantage of you in the ministry.

And if you don’t know how to walk in the Spirit, you’ll get angry. Jesus said essentially in 1 John, it tells us that he that hateth his brother is a murderer. He says drunkenness.

And you’d think that a crowd of young people like this would never struggle with that. but I’d be so wrong. Listen, you might never think that you’d struggle with that either.

You might think, I’d never go there. I would never go to alcohol. Never would I do that.

Listen, if you find yourself in a state of life where you had these great dreams and aspirations for your life and they all came crumbling down because the flesh couldn’t get them done and you find yourself at 40, 50 years old looking back over wasted decades of your life not having accomplished what you believe God wanted you to accomplish, what he told you you should accomplish at the Thee Generation Youth Summit,

it’s amazing what people resort to to drown away their sorrows. Revelings. It’s the idea of unbridled sexual sin.

Some of the worst kind. You know, young people, I want you to understand here, that’s what the world looks like. That’s how the world lives.

And I’m not going to stand here and tell you, if you’re really saved, you’ll never do any of those things. I don’t think that’s the point of the passage. I think the point of the passage is, is if you live according to this path, trying to live up to God’s intentions in your own strength, I think the idea is that the pressure is going to build, the pressure’s going to build, the sense of unwell, the sense of failure, that sense of not living up

to all that you know you ought to live up to will grow and it will become more and more painful, it will hurt more and more to the point that you have to cope, and this list is a great list to cope. These things will tempt you, they will say that they’ll medicate your pain, but they’ll only increase it. See, if you simply try to obey in your own strength, it’s going to be absolutely pathetic.

It’s going to be absolutely miserable. You’ll actually be worse off than if you had never surrendered in the first place. This is encouraging, isn’t it?

Walking in the Spirit is essential because God’s expectations are so high we can never measure up to them. And because if we do not understand what it means to walk in the Spirit, well, let’s just say it’s going to get scary. That’s not my outline.

But I want to take a look at what it actually means to walk in the Spirit. If you look down at verse 16, back up at verse 16, again, I’m trying to tie this together here. He said, in fact, go up to verse 13 again.

I just want to get the context again. For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty. Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.

For all the laws fulfilled in one word, even this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then.

Walk in the Spirit, and you’ll not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. He says, For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

I want you to know that walking in the Spirit is not only essential, it’s very simple. If you look at these verses here, you see a couple of words that are used to communicate this concept. In fact, in verse 16, he uses the word walk in the Spirit.

If you look down at verse 18, he says, but if ye be led of the Spirit. If you jump down to verse number 22, he talks about the fruit of the Spirit. If you look down at verse 25, he says, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

That word walk is actually different than the other walk in the Spirit a little bit earlier, at least in the Greek. What I want to do is I want to tie these together here for just a minute and I want to help you understand. To be honest with you, walking in the Spirit to me was kind of this nebulous thing.

I want to try and help take the ambiguity out of this and help you clearly understand what it means to walk in the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit has, in my opinion, three factors, three dynamics, three, I don’t want to say steps. You’ll see why in just a second.

The first part of walking in the Spirit is total surrender. I know we’ve already talked about that here, some today. But I want to cast this concept in a little bit of a different light.

It’s not just surrender to do something. It is, but it’s not just that. It’s not just surrender to a list of rules.

It’s not just surrender even to a cause, to a missionary philosophy or strategy. It’s not just surrender to a the generation movement. It’s not about surrender to a church or even a Christian leader.

If you look at verse 18, it says, but if ye be led of the what? It’s total surrender to the Holy Spirit. I know sometimes we talk about the Holy Spirit, we can get a little bit uncomfortable here.

But I want you to know, God really does want to manifest his presence to you. As we heard earlier, the Holy Spirit is how Jesus manifests himself to us. He is the Lord of the harvest.

He’s the one who’s in charge of sending missionaries where he wants them to go. You look at Acts 13, the Holy Spirit’s the one that told Barnabas and those group of people to go. The Holy Spirit is the one who has the mission plan for you.

He’s the one who has a custom-organized itinerary, not just for your life, but for your day. And it’s like this. Walking in the Spirit is walking.

Young people, we’ve done a lot of walking this week, haven’t we? You know, think about it. You know, we were in the fellowship halls, and then it’s like, all right, let’s head up to the field.

Guess what? We wanted you to go somewhere. We’ve kind of used that phrase this week.

We wanted you to go to a place, right? And so you know what you did? You junior hires went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

is in your day from the moment you wake up till the moment you pill your head on the pillow. It’s step by step by step. Listening.

Yielding to. Listening. Being willing to change your course as the Holy Spirit speaks to your heart.

God can lead His children. I do not believe that the Christian life is merely principal. There are some that would say that all you need to know is what the Bible says.

I am not in any way diminishing what the

Bible says. Please do not misunderstand me. But I believe that God has given us the Holy Spirit as the one who comes alongside and helps us.

And one of the ways that he helps us is he guides our steps. Day by day and moment by moment. Just a little example of this.

This morning

I woke up and got my coffee so I would be awake and partially conscious at least. And I was spending time with God. I was meditating on the day.

I was meditating on this sermon actually

and just thinking about kind of how the Lord wanted me to deliver some things and reading a few other verses and just kind of doing a little bit of study in him, preparing my own heart. And I remember I looked to the Lord. I thought, you know, I’m preaching on walking in the Spirit tonight.

I’d better try doing it today. Kind of a novel thought. And I remember this morning saying, is there anything you want me to change out of my day that I’m planning on doing?

And I remember very clearly God impressed on me that a lot of times I’ll run around and I’ll do logistical things during the hour of prayer, during the Thee Generation Youth Summit. There’s a lot of stuff that needs to get done. There are a lot of logistics.

And I remember

Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and said, I want you to be in that session. And I thought, okay. Sounds good.

That’s walking in the Spirit. You know, there may be times in your day and in your life where you think, you know what, I wonder if I ought to send a text of encouragement to so-and-so. You know what walking in the Spirit is?

It’s as you take every step of your day. You’re listening and your heart is ready to obey. You’re yielding step by step, willing to do whatever the Holy Spirit wants you to do, whatever God wants you to do.

It’s listening. And actually, this is an important part of it. It’s saying yes.

See, we think of total surrender like a stand-up invitation at the second afternoon session, right? On Fridays at the D-Generation Youth Summit. That’s not total surrender.

Total surrender is every step of your day totally surrendering to whatever God wants. Not just in principle, but as God speaks. As God tells you, hey, I want you to go give a word of encouragement to that person.

As God tells you, hey, listen, I want you to stop and take a little bit more time with this person. As God tells you, fill out that application. As God tells you, don’t do that.

That’s not what I want you to do right now. It’s an actual relationship. Somebody said it earlier, I don’t remember who did, but the Christian life is a relationship, and I’m learning that probably more than I’ve ever learned it in my life.

It’s so easy just to view even concepts like 0100 as purely access to some kind of superhero power. But it is yielding to a person. It’s a relationship with God.

It’s not a relationship with God where you just kind of pop in in the morning and maybe once or twice throughout the day. It’s all day long. That’s what I think the idea of walking is talking about.

Listen, you walk all day long. I mean, I know you might sit sometimes, but really throughout most of our day, if we’re going somewhere, we’re walking step after step after step. And I think every step of our life ought to replicate.

What do you want? I’m willing. I’m willing to yield.

I’m willing to say yes. And when he says yes, I do what he wants me to do. There’s one other point that I want to make here about this first step.

If you jump down to verse 25, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. I mentioned that word is a little different. The idea of that word walk, it’s actually kind of a military word turned into a verb.

The military word would have the idea of being in a line or in a military formation. And the idea of the verb here is actually to stay in formation. In other words, you’re supposed to keep in step with what the Holy Spirit is saying.

The Holy Spirit is leading you on a military campaign. And he might be leading you faster than you want to go. He might be leading you into areas that might be a little bit uncomfortable.

When I think about it from the military perspective, I think this. Every step of my day, I don’t want to go AWOL on the Holy Spirit. I want to keep up with what he’s doing.

He might be leading me into something that’s far beyond where I feel like I am in my spiritual walk. But you know what? He’s my commander.

And I’m going to keep up with what he’s saying. Listen, young people, you may be surprised if you go home and endeavor to walk in the spirit. You might end up leading somebody to Christ before next Sunday.

That’d be pretty cool. So somebody said earlier today that God’s plans for you are probably a whole lot bigger than your own plans for yourself. And I think the Holy Spirit’s pace of growth for you is probably a whole lot quicker than what you would think it would be.

And I think part of the idea of keep in step is keep up. Walking in the Spirit, it’s every step of the day listening. It’s saying yes, it’s yielding and doing what He wants you to do.

It’s keeping up with His pace, staying up with where He wants you to go, not lagging behind, but pressing forward as He leads. that’s not all there is to this I’ve been again building up to this here for much of the message here it’s not just total surrender it is total dependence I want to remind you that when you go back to verses 13 and 14 when you understand God’s intention for you

it’s to love it is to serve it is to give every step of your day not fulfilling what you want but fulfilling what other people’s needs we look at that and we say that’s impossible and part of the points, one of the big points of this book is yes, it is impossible. The promise that God gave to Abraham wasn’t just that he would generally bless like you bless the food before a meal. Chapter three, he actually tells us that the blessing that

he promised to Abraham was the Holy Spirit. And the only way that you can ever fulfill God’s intention is not just by yielding. Yielding step by step is absolutely essential.

But step by step, you also need to depend. You know, when you look at verse 22, it says, but the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love.

It’s not the fruit of your best efforts. It’s not the fruit of years’ worth of growth. It’s not the fruit of you trying really hard in your own strength to love people.

That always comes across as fake. But it’s actually depending on the Holy Spirit as you yield to him to bear not your love, but God’s love in your own heart. Like I said earlier, Jesus, he exemplified what it means to buy love, serve one another.

And according to chapter 2 and verse 20, Jesus can live in us and he can live

through our lives. You see, the fruit of the Spirit is the life of Jesus being born in the Holy Spirit every step of your day as you depend upon Jesus. See, it’s saying in essence, I can’t.

I can’t love. I had a conversation with somebody not too long ago. And I remember as we were talking, he said to me, he says, Brother Bosler, I don’t really feel like you love me.

In fact, I don’t even really feel like you love anybody. And I said, you know what? You’re right.

I’m no good at faking love, friends. You might be. you might have that real winsome personality that makes everybody feel accepted all around you I don’t have that I don’t have that at all but to be honest with you over the last couple weeks as I’ve been studying this I’ve been realizing that it’s not just dependence it is that yielding step by step to what the Holy Spirit wants and I really do believe that there

is a cumulative effect throughout your day I really do believe that as we yield in the morning as we yield in the 8 o’clock hour and the break between the 8 and the 9 o’clock hour and as we yield to him independence upon him to bear his fruit in our lives all day long, I really do believe that the cumulative effect is supernatural. It’s more than it would have been had you just at lunch

decided, oh that’s right I need to yield to the Holy Spirit right now. I need to depend on him. You see, it’s saying every step of your day, I can’t.

I can’t do what God’s called me to do. I can’t love that person like I ought to. I don’t have what it takes.

I do not have what it takes. But Spirit of God, you’re telling me to do this right now. You’re calling me to do this.

You’re calling me to say a word of encouragement even though I feel like I’m the one who needs to be encouraged right now. So, okay, I’m going to say yes to you. but you gotta help and you take a step in dependence on the one who’s telling you, who’s speaking to you who’s talking to you and guess what happens when you take a step of surrender and a step of dependence the Holy Spirit in that moment bears

the fruit of the Spirit in your life again I remind you what God’s intention is for you, it’s for you to love and it’s for you to serve and if you will yield step by step and moment by moment to the Holy Spirit. And if you will depend on the Holy Spirit step by step and moment by moment, this list of fruit will be born in your life. It won’t be you working on each fruit.

I think a lot of times we look at the fruit of the Spirit and we think, all right, today I’ll focus on love. Well, that didn’t go so well. All right, today, since that didn’t go so well, I’m going to focus on joy.

So you paste a smile on your face all day long. I’m joyful. How you doing?

rejoicing brother and you know the end of the day you’re thinking that didn’t work too well and you know have you ever noticed you can only focus on so many flesh virtues at a time you ever notice that when you’re doing it in the flesh you can focus on love and joy today but you’ll be harsh and terrible towards your siblings in those days oh you might kind of work at love you kind of might

kind of mock something that looks like a three-year-old’s painting of his mom’s face but you No, the fact of the matter is it will not fulfill God’s intention. But if you will surrender to the Holy Spirit every step of your day, and if you will depend on Him to do what He’s leading you to do, you won’t have to work on all of these. God will.

Amen. When I was going through the fruits of the Spirit, there were a couple of them that just smacked me right between the eyes. long-suffering, goodness, gentleness.

I told you I’m not very good at faking love. If you see me and I’m loving, that’s a miracle. That’s God.

But you know, I’m not a patient person. I want stuff done and I want it done now. I’m not somebody who’s naturally gentle.

You know, kind of the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God is a constant conviction to me. Goodness, that generosity. Sometimes I think, you know, man, I’m sure glad God doesn’t answer prayer the way I answer some of my kids’ requests.

Just being honest with you. It might be how you are in your flesh too. Probably not, but maybe it is.

And I’m certainly not saying that I’ve been perfect or even always consistent at this. But since I’ve discovered this truth, my home has changed. God is changing my heart towards my kids.

I love my kids. I love them so much, but they can be absolutely irritating sometimes. As you are to your parents too.

And as I was to my parents. I did get the mother’s curse you know where the mother says you’re going to have kids just like you one day and I did when foolish things happen in the house it’d be easy for me to get upset when kids are just being kids you know and it wrecks something or they make a mistake or spill something it’s easy for me to get upset and not to be patient

and not to be gentle to be generous. But as I’ve been learning what it means to yield every step, to listen and to say yes. Listen, I’ve understood.

Listen, I know how to depend on Jesus to preach the gospel. I know how to take God’s anointing and power to see dozens of teens come to Jesus Christ. I’m not saying that boasting about me.

That’s not

me at all. That’s God. and I can sometimes, I’m just being testifying here a little bit because I figure if I struggle with it, maybe you do too.

Some of you preachers might struggle with this too. I know how to find God’s hand in the pulpit and I know how to be filled with the Spirit in the pulpit and before I go into the pulpit many times, I’m listening. I’m saying yes.

I’m yielding. I’m depending. But honestly, sometimes when I go home, it’s all about me.

and when it’s all about you, when you just canít wait and I want to say this, it’s total surrender, it’s total dependence, and it is continuous obedience. Again, I mentioned this earlier, I’m just sharing some of my own journey here. If I would wait, if I’d be just kind of doing my own thing all day long, and then this situation would come up, some situation where I would tend to react in frustration or whatever,

if I waited until that moment, I wasn’t listening. I wouldn’t be listening. I wouldn’t be yielding.

I wouldn’t be depending.

But when I’ve been all day long doing what the Holy Spirit wants me to do, send in that text. Again, I’m just telling you some things that God’s been talking to me about. There are times God tells me in the morning, just call this person.

Hey, invite this person to go out to coffee. Hey, you need to give this guy a text right here. As I’m just listening all day long and not just trying to get absorbed back into my own thing and my own world and my little list in the back of my head of all those things I’m just wanting to get back to.

When I am consumed with what the Holy Spirit wants all day long and that thing comes up, the fruit manifests itself, the fruit of the Spirit. And it’s a miracle. what happens when you walk in the spirit verse 16 tells us we overcome the flesh i won’t go into verse 17 but essentially i believe the idea of that verse is if you will yield to the spirit you will not do what your flesh wants you to do you won’t succumb to

the desires of your flesh because they’re complete opposites if you’ll walk in the spirit you’ll also access God’s love. That’s what verse 22 is all about. And if you walk in the Spirit you will fulfill God’s intentions.

In fact, if you look at the end of verse 23 he says against such, this whole list there is no law. In other words, the general gist of that is guess what? If you’re walking in the Spirit there isn’t a law that will condemn you.

You are fully fulfilling what God wants you to do. Young people, if all you do is surrender, and if you do not learn the secret of accessing the fruit of the Spirit by depending on God, by depending on the Christ who lives inside of you by means of the Holy Spirit, if you don’t learn how to do that, you will epically, epically fail. Can I have every head bowed and every eye closed here this evening?

Every head bowed and every eye closed.