Pt14, Spirit Walkers: What Do You Have to Lose?

May 6, 2018                NOTES NOT EDITED
Spirit Walkers Pt14:  “What Have You Got to Lose?”

Galatians 5:1-12

Sermon-in-a-Sentence: If we do not walk in the Spirit we lose much of great value; and risk losing everything.

During the last presidential campaign, as with all campaigns, political slogans are tossed about with regularity.  One of Trump’s campaign slogans targeted the African American community that has traditionally voted as a block for Democrats.  Trump posed this question in an attempt to gain African American support:  “What have you got to lose?”  Trump pointed to several economic and social markers that he believed indicated the Democratic Party had done very little for the African Community over many decades.  Trump’s question was rhetorical in nature. The answer Trump assumed was, “You have nothing to lose.” 

I want to pose a question to you today.  If you walk in the flesh and not by the Spirit, “What have you got to lose?”  In the best case scenario, if you are truly saved, is “ a great deal.”  The worst case scenario, if you are not truly a Christian would be, “everything.”  In either case, not walking in the Spirit is a great loss.

The remaining two chapters of Galatians deal with the application of the doctrine of justification by grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone to one’s daily life. 

This first sermon in Paul’s series of applications I title, “What Do You Have to Lose?”  Let’s read our text.  Galatians 5:1-12.

“What Have You Got to Lose?”  Our text lists four ways a person loses big if they choose to walk in the flesh and not in the Spirit.

You lose your freedom, your riches, your traction in life, and worst of all, you can lose EVERYTHING FOR ETERNITY!

When Paul addressed the Galatians, he addressed them as people who had received grace but turned back to the old habits of life.  They would be what Paul described in 1Corinthians 3 and elsewhere as, “Carnal, fleshly, or worldly Christians.”  They were letting the false teachers and their own sinful desires to put them in bondage again.  Paul begins this passage with a strong warning:

Do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery (NIV).

Paul goes on to outline four great losses that come from walking according to the flesh and not the Spirit.

1.  Walking in the flesh we lose our FREEDOM (5:1)

Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Then NASB demonstrates the on-going challenge of maintaining one’s freedom with the translation, therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

Freedom in Christ is not like a Ronco Rotisserie Oven.  Do your remember those infomercials by Ron Popeil.  The company he founded produced all kinds of neat gadgets such as, GLH-9 Hair in a Can, the Chop-O-Matic hand food processor, and the Pocket Fisherman. I remember the add for the Rotisserie Oven.  It was so easy to use.  Ron would say, “Just set it,” look briefly to the audience and they would reply in unison, “And forget it!”

That won’t work with our spiritual freedom.  The Devil constantly tries to drag us back into the black hole of bondage through our fleshly desires and near universal propensity for religion.  Both sinfulness and religiosity are like an anchor chain dragging us into the Devil’s pit.   Spiritual freedom is an on-going challenge and fight.

But, what exactly does it mean to be “Free in Christ by grace?”

Paul’s short answer would be, “Free from living under the curse and oppression of the Law.  This means to be “free of religion.”  More accurately, being free of the false notion that we can gain credit with God by our behavior.  This “spiritual” freedom forms the foundation for all freedom.  Grace breaks the chains of religion and ritual that can substitute for, and even obscure true spirituality.  So, in the most significant sense, to be “free” is to be   (1) “Spiritually free.”   This leads to a broader discussion of freedom.  When we realize that we are truly free by the Hand of God and through His mercy, we are (2) “emotionally” free.  If we no longer have the fear of God’s punishment that was the curse under the Law, then what more do we really have to fear.  “Perfect love casts out fear” (1Jn. 4:18).  Perfect love frees us emotionally to embrace God as our Partner in life instead of Our Policeman.  “If God is for us, who or what can be against us” (Rom. 8:31).

Third, there is the matter of (3) political freedom, which is both the most elusive and most insignificant freedom in the eternal scope of things.  As long as this world system exists, there will be tyrants of one degree or another.  The quest for Civil freedom is a godly quest, but it is a continual quest.  Freedom requires constant vigilance. 

Most people are still strapped into the twin yokes of worldliness and religiosity.  These yokes are burdensome and extract a heavy cost.  The cost one “freedom.”  Often, people who attend church every day are as much slaves as those that never attend—maybe more so.

Every Sunday the same process takes place.  The ducks waddle out of their houses and down Main Street to their church.  They waddle into the sanctuary and squat in their preferred pew or chair.  The duck praise team waddles in and begins the service.  Then the duck minister opens the duck Bible.  He enthusiastically proclaims, “God has given you wings.  With wings you can mount up and soar like eagles.  No walls can confine you! No fences can hold you! You have wings.  God has given you wings.  Fly, fly like God intended for you.”  The duck minister sits down and all the ducks shout, “Amen! Hallelujah!”  And, then they all waddle back home.

When we walk in the flesh and not the Spirit, we lose our Freedom.

2.  We lose our RICHES in Christ (5:2-6)

Verse 2 begins, “Take note.”  That is, add up all that you are going to lose by walking in the flesh and not the Spirit.  

Preaching in America suffers from two equal but opposite extremes.  On the one side you have the “Prosperity Preachers” who proclaim that the primary purpose for which God created you is to make you “happy and rich,” usually in reverse order.  Then, on the other side of the theological aisle are preachers who deny any talk about the temporal benefits of walking with Christ.  These are the preachers that seem to serve up sacrifice sandwiches with the relish of persecution.  The only pie for these “self-righteous spiritual scrooges” is “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by.”

The Bible rejects both those extremes.  God indeed does want to bless us and reward us, here and now as well as in the sweet by and by.  Righteous living is its own reward! 

When we walk in the flesh, we not only forfeit future rewards and blessings, we lose many of the rich blessings we have now.

Take giving to God’s work for example.  Many people keep that which they should give to the work of the Lord thinking that the more they keep, the more they have.  The Bible says it works exactly the opposite way.  Haggai 1:6 says, Think carefully about your ways:  6 You have planted much but harvested little. . . . The wage earner puts his wages into a bag with a hole in it.”

The Bible is either true or it is not.  Paul says that living according to the flesh instead of walking in the Spirit robs a person of riches.

(1) In verse 2 Paul declared that going back to one’s old life, (he calls it (getting yourselves circumcised) “will not benefit you at all.”
 We lose BENEFITS and blessings. 

(2) Verse 3 says, Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to keep the entire law.  We incur the GUILT of the Law. Not only do worldliness and old habits not give you any benefits, it actually “increases your DEBT!” 

(3) Verse 4 tells us ⁴ You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace.  One cannot lose one’s salvation, but walking in worldliness will absolutely  cause you to  forfeit sweet FELLOWSHIP with Jesus.

(4) Verse 5, adds this to our list of losses, For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait  for the hope  of righteousness.  For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. When a person is walking in sin! they are not “eager to meet God!” Sin “alienates” (v4) a person from God and this robs one of hope.  Think of Adam and Eve after they sinned.  “They hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (Gen. 3:8).  Sin does more than “break the bank,” it breaks the spirit.  It robs you in ways hard to measure.  Sin robs you of HOPE.

(5) Verse 6 completes the tally of our losses, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.  We miss out on LOVE.   

Make no mistake about it—walking in the flesh and not the Spirit will result in great losses in your life! Sin is a really bad deal!

Any rewards a Christian might have gained by being obedient to the Lord and following His path of grace, is completely “zeroed out” by returning to old habits and ways of life. You can’t lose your salvation, but you forfeit the benefits—material and eternal—that come from grace.  And, not only are rewards and blessings wiped out, but sin causes one to lose any ground that one had gained.  The loss from worldly living is compounded like penalty and interest to the  IRS!

When we walk in the flesh, we incur the Curse of the Law, which confiscates our rewards much more than we could imagine. Bad habits are like a bully that steals your lunch money.  A little boy tells how he dealt with just such a bully.  “Every day this bully would take my lunch money.  Since he was bigger than I, I gave it to him.  Then, I decided to fight back. I started taking karate lessons. The karate teacher charged me 5 bucks a lesson.  I decided it was cheaper just to pay the bully.”  Often people make the sad choice to continue giving into sin rather than learning to fight in the Spirit.  It may seem cheaper in the short term, but it always cost more in the long term.  Returning to your sinful habits is like giving in to a bully—you lose your riches in Christ.

3.  Walking the flesh causes us to lose TRACTION in Life (5:7-10)

7 You were running well. Who prevented you from obeying the truth?

Paul used several metaphors from sporting contests, mostly from the Olympic Games.  Here, he uses the running metaphor.  He pictures the Christian life as “running in the Olympics.”  Paul was running a good race but something caused him to lose his footing.  The word translated, “prevented” (hindered)  can mean to “cut in.”  The word comes originally from military use. The ancient militaries would “cut grooves or ditches into the roadway to slow down a pursuing army.”  This was an ancient version of police “spike strips.”   It came to mean any condition that hindered forward progress. 

Sin slows our progress in Christ down to a crawl, or completely stops it all together.  Paul said, “why are you going to let the Judaizers cut in on you and impede your progress.”  If we walk in the flesh we lose traction in life.  We may maintain a pretense of religion, but our spiritual progress comes to a stop when we let religion substitute for a relationship with Christ.

Notice in Verses 8-9 that even a little sin and rebellion can “cause us to lose traction”:  8 This persuasion did not come from the One who called you.  9 A little yeast leavens the whole lump of dough.

The Galatians began to listen again to the false teachings of the Judaizers, tempting them to give in to the natural desires of the flesh As a result, they completely lost traction in their Christian lives.  They were going nowhere!  It didn’t take much, just a “little yeast” and soon it spread to the “whole loaf.”  This may be the Devil’s most affective lie—“a little sin won’t hurt you!” 

Have you ever really stopped to think of how much evil and suffering was unleashed by simply “one bite of an apple?”

Several ferocious wild beasts roam the savannas and stalk the jungles of Africa--lions, tigers and venomous snakes.    However, the deadliest beast in all Africa (indeed the entire world) is the mosquito.  The World Health Organization estimates that a child dies from malaria every 30 seconds.

There are no small sins.  Every sin causes us to lose traction in our Christian growth.  Just like the deadly mosquito, even seemingly small sins are deadly to our Christian Walk.  A Christian who follows the flesh and not the Spirit loses TRACTION in their Christian life.

4.  You can lose EVERYTHING! (5:11-12)

Paul concludes his message on “What Have You God to Lose?” With both a grave and graphic warning.  11 Now brothers, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross  has been abolished. 12 I wish those who are disturbing you might also get themselves castrated!

Remember, Paul was trying to prevent the Galatians from falling back into the legalistic habits and sinful proclivities of their former life.  The Judaizers (Jewish false teachers) were trying to tempt them away.  They wanted the Gentiles to demonstrate an allegiance to the Jewish religion by being circumcised.  Paul warned this would make grace ineffective.  Paul concludes his sermon with this very graphic pronouncement.  The term “cut off” (CSB, castrate), is a play on words.  The word for circumcision means to “cut around.”  The word for Paul uses in his warning means, “to cut in such a way as to separate; to cut off” (f. koptō, κόπτω). 

This word play to heighten the gravity of the consequences for walking according to the flesh and sin.  Such a person loses freedom, riches in Christ, and traction in one’s Christian growth to be sure.  But, for those who have never been rescued from grace and have not been baptized in the Holy Spirit, they lose EVERYTHING—they lose their soul!  They will be “cut off” or “separated” from God forever, suffering eternally in hell.  This is too much to lose for a few moments of pleasure or for playing the game of religion.

A church was holding a committee meeting.  One elderly gentleman declared, “I see our two primary problems as communication and procrastination.”  The committee chairman replied, “OK. Let’s talk about that later.”

If you are not a blood-bought, Spirit-filled follower of Christ, what you have to lose is much too important to put off until later.  Hell is a horrible place—and it lasts forever.  Your soul is much too valuable to lose in exchange for just a few moments of worldly pleasure.  As Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his very soul?”  (Mk. 8:36, NKJV).

I still hear Trump asking, “What Have You Got to Lose?”  Regardless of how one might answer Trump’s political question, when applied to the spiritual realm, it has “eternal significance.”  What does a person have to lose by walking in the flesh and not the Spirit?  The sobering answer is anything from a great deal, if you are a believer, or EVERYTHING if you re a non-believer.  You will lose your freedom, your riches in Christ, your traction in life, and most seriously, you could lose your soul!  That’s too much to risk losing!

Be a Spirit Walker!