Signs of the Spirit-Led Life I

In our Bibles, and definitely get your outline this morning, we're going to take a introductory look at this new series we're launching this morning. While you're turning to Romans 8 in your Bibles, I want to say if you're a cell group leader and you're meeting tonight, and some of your folks you know weren't here, pick up a handful of these little packets that we handed out today and give them to your folks at the Selvingen tonight. That would be a helpful way to serve them. You know, it's a staggering statistic to me, church, but Pastor Scott and I have talked about this many times. Conservatively, 35% and more like 40% of the church is not here on a given Sunday, for whatever reason. And I want to break that. I mean, obviously, there are going to be days you can make it, so when you get sick, or you have to be out of town. There's also days you get up and you just don't feel like it. And we're going to overcome that, because if the church is to move forward, we've got to move forward together. How many believe that's right? We've got to get together and say, I have this, a commitment I have. If you don't show up at work on Monday, does anything happen? No, it didn't feel like it. It was raining out this morning. What happened? You'd be taking a hike, right? Well, do you think what's going to happen in this hour and a half is just as important in your life? In many ways, perhaps more important in your life. I trust that you'll regard it that way. Romans 8, we're just going to read six verses. The whole chapter is going to be the foundation for this series, five weeks. But I want to read, just beginning today, in verse 5 and following. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires. But those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. Friends, you're going to see a very clear correlation between mind and spirit. Very important you get this. The mind of the sinful man is death, not a happy thought. But the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. It's not, hey, they have a hard time doing it. They cannot do it. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you. This past Thursday, Carol and I were heading home from Oakland where we had been in the hospital visiting a person that we're close to. And we were wanting to stop at Allegheny General Hospital to visit one of our elders who had an accident. And going across the Veterans Bridge, and Carol said, well, do you know how to get over to Allegheny General? If you know what I'm thinking about and you have the picture in your mind, you can see the hospital, about 20 stories tall. And you can see it going across. I said, of course I can get there. It's right over there. And those of you who travel a lot know what happens. If you're going across the Veterans Bridge heading north, there's no way to get over there. In fact, I saw Route 28 north. I said, oh, I'll just go on Route 28, and then I'll zip to the left, and I'll go south, and up to that, and I'll get there, boom, like that. Veteran traveler that I am. I get off Route 28, and as you know, there's no, the ramp doesn't even give you an opportunity to go left. You've gotta keep going, and then every five or six feet, there's a sign that says no turns, no turns. And so I'm going out of Pittsburgh, heading toward Aetna, the wrong direction from Allegheny General Hospital. So what do you think I did? I went faster, because I knew I had to get to a place where I had to do a U-turn and get back going the other way. Now, how many of you feel sometimes that's what it's like with God's will in you? You know, you kind of know what God wants you to do, and you see it there, but the ramp takes you the wrong way, and you start drifting, and then you start saying, but I gotta get back this way, and you just don't know how to do it. I'm gonna be talking about knowing the will of God, knowing it's the Spirit of God that's leading you, and then what signs along the road you can look to and say, ah, this is right, I'm making progress, I'm going the right path, I'm heading the right way. This is very important stuff. Some of you are in the midst of life-changing decisions. Some of you are in a relationship with like another guy or gal right now, and you're not sure if this person is someone you're to connect with long-term. You're wondering, is this the will of God? Not a few of you have talked to me in the last months about your job, and I hear this so often, I don't know if I'm in the right job for me, I don't know if this is God's will for me. Some have even said, I don't know if there's maybe a different career, God has, I just don't know. Others of you are wondering about children. Is it God's will for me to have children? Is it God's will that I keep the ones I have? Some of you are wondering about God's will for your growth, your future journey of faith. Should I get committed around here or just keep looking at these signs and ignoring them, or should I just go ahead and do what the pastor and the elders are saying, move forward and get committed? What's the will of God? Being led by the Spirit is incredibly important, friends. It's life versus being led, as we're gonna see in a moment, by our sinful nature, which is death. It's about a daily adventure with God, but it's more than that, it's about your eternal destiny, it's about your life stacking up to mean something when God writes the final evaluation over your name. Now, I wanna begin by stating a couple obvious axioms that far too many Christians misunderstand or ignore. When it comes to getting somewhere with God's will, you have to know two things. First of all, this is the first blank in your overhead. You can't get anywhere when you don't know where you are. Is that obvious or what? All right, and then number two, any road will get you there if you don't know where you're going. I know these are obvious, they're somewhat tongue in cheek, but I can't tell you how many people just don't really know. And so we find ourselves wandering about because we're not sure where we are, we're not sure where we're going, we're not sure how to get there because we're not sure where there is. In life, when we wanna get from one place to another in an unfamiliar area, and we know that there's roads that get us there, what do we have to turn to to get our bearings and get going, what do we need? A map, let's put up a map there. Please, there you go. We'll put that whole map up. A little more screen, please, guys. There's a map of the area. And by the way, we try to get it duplicated on you. It's on the back of your outline right now if you wanna see it. This is a map, and if you look carefully, you can see Mercer there, the upper left-hand portion over here. Let's slide it up some, please. There's Butler. How many Butler North people do we have here? You see Butler, we didn't forget about you. And then here's Pittsburgh, okay? Now, if I ask you, how do I get to Butler, what's the first thing you need to know about me? Where you are, because if you're coming from Youngstown, you don't wanna take I-79 north to Butler. You see, and what's so important about this, friends, is that some of us need to come to grips with the reality that we don't know where we are with God. And there are not a few of us in this service today that need to get established in your relationship with God and quit playing games and realize that you need a relationship with Christ that's no-holds-barred, sold out, I belong to Him, before you can begin to discover what His will is. It's the beginning point. You gotta know where you are if you wanna go where God wants to take you. And the funny thing about maps is this. Put that back up again, please. We have a tendency, you know, people create maps for a purpose. What's the purpose of a map? To go on a journey, right? I mean, the purpose is to get you where you wanna go. Now, when you go down to AAA and say, I wanna trip-tick, what do they give you? Well, they give you a map that they've studied and someone has labored over it, and they take that yellow marker and they say, you go this far, and then you turn the page. How many of you have done that? You know, it's this real fancy kind of thing. Well, maps can be studied, and if you look on this map, you can, how many of you have seen Moraine State Park on a map already? All right, now you can see it there. You can study the topography, and you can study the directions, and you can study the cities, and you can study the little small routes, and you can become a map expert, right? But if you don't get in your car and start on a journey, what good is the map? No good at all. It's really just another piece of paper. Friends, let me make an obvious application I trust. Thank you. This is the map that God has given us for our Christian life. This is the map. This map will take you to any destination you wanna go. Most importantly, for some of us today, this is the map to heaven. This will tell you the route you need to take to end up your life at heaven's gates. This is also the map, though, to a fulfilled life. There's things in here that will teach you how to get to the destination of a happy family. There's things in here that will teach you how to be a good steward of your finances and not get yourself in a mountain of debt. There's stuff in here that will teach you how to be healed. There's things in here that will teach you how to have good relationships with other people. Friends, every destination that you wanna go to, there's instruction in this book. But most of us in this place have erred on one of two sides of this map. We either A, have never paid much attention to the map, and we're told that it's not really ours to understand that much, and so we've looked to somebody else to give us what's on the map. And to be honest with you, you don't even know where your map is today. And you're here kind of fumbling with your fingers because you haven't read your map in the last three or four weeks. I know that hurts, but I don't know how else to say it. There's a lot of us who don't take the map seriously. We don't study it enough. On the other hand, there's some of us that fancy ourselves to be, oh, what should we say, map experts. I mean, they just, look at my map. I've got little tabs here. And I've got my map all marked up with colored pens. And in fact, this is my third binding, and my map almost falls open when I just, I mean, I just, I mean, in fact, there's some people here, you're just a couple steps away from being the map answer man. And you can go on the radio, and you can tell everyone else what they don't know about their maps, because you've got it all down just right. And there's a few of you who know what I'm talking about. Some of you are confused about the map answer man, but let me tell you something. He doesn't know everything he thinks he knows. And some of you need to be very careful. What you listen to on the radio just confuses you. God did not intend for this to be something that we study and jam into our heads and read and, you know, diagnose and dissect and underline and underscore, and then put it on the shelf, and then just kind of go and live life the way we, God gave us the map to go on a journey. What's the journey? It's a journey of life. It's a journey of relationship. We were not born to have a relationship with the book. We were born to have a relationship with the Savior. The book leads us to a relationship with the Savior. In fact, you know, Jesus picked up on this. Look in your outline. He said this, letter B, you diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I like what the message says. If we could put that up, please. The message translation, very powerful. It says it this way. You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you'll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These scriptures are all about me. And here I am standing right before you and you aren't willing to receive from me the life you say you want. Friends, this is about life. It's about a relationship. It's about knowing your Bible as a map to receiving an ongoing living relationship with the Spirit of God. And it's so important. And it's something that many of us have got to get a hold of if we're to make progress in a Christian life. You see, what God wants for us is to hear his voice. Look at the next scripture. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. And if you follow him, letter C, the Spirit-led life will take you to these destinations. The Spirit-led life is a God-pleasing life. The Spirit-led life is a sin-canceling life. We're gonna talk about the power of sin to keep us in bondage. But if you're being led of the Spirit, the Bible says you're gonna have life. You're not gonna fall into death and its traps. The Spirit-led life is a victorious life. You will not be depressed and down and constantly defeated. You will be victorious, the Bible says, through power in Christ Jesus. And number four, the Spirit-led life is a fruitful life. You'll be making a difference. Your life will be bearing fruit to the glory of God. Now, how many of you say those four things? I'd love for that to be said about my life. Well, the key to that is then being Spirit-led. Not Spirit-led, by the way, five years ago or 10 years ago, but Spirit-led today. Look what Andrew Murray writes. This one really got me. Look at this next quote. There is no safe guidance that is not perpetual. The advantage of a year may be lost in an hour. You might wanna underline that. The advantage of a year may be lost in an hour. What's he saying? It means you could be doing your best to follow God for a year, and if you miss the leading of the Spirit in a particularly important moment, it could go down the tubes right then. How many of you know what I mean? You might be growing in God for a year, making progress, obeying the Lord, and in a moment, you just sort of disregard a strong leading of the Spirit, and you get into a relationship with somebody that in one hour brings your whole world down. You don't think it can't happen? It could happen to any one of us, friends. If we act independent of the Spirit in little things, we shall look for Him in vain in great things. Isn't that true? What does that mean? That means if you sort of just lily-gag your way through life and do what you please, and then say, oh God, show me your will, you're wasting your time. It means obey Him in the small things. When you go for wisdom in the big ones, He'll be there. He'll guide you. Some of you aren't getting this, but I want you to know this is good. Some of you would just, your lives, if you could get a hold of this, would really make an enormous difference. Far too many people live the Christian life just sort of by instinct. Oh, well, you know, I don't know if I think I'm a good, I'm gonna go to home group tonight. Wait a minute. What's the Spirit of God leading you to do? Oh, I haven't asked Him. Why not? Well, I didn't know I was supposed to. The Spirit led life. That's what this is about. Listening to God, following His promptings. And it's not difficult or confusing. Lucy in a Charlie Brown cartoon walked up once and said, Charlie Brown, and this is how we think of our Christian life. She says, life is a mystery. Do you know the answer? Charlie Brown starts answering, mystery. Well, be kind, don't smoke, be prompt, smile a lot, eat sensibly, avoid cavities, mark your ballot carefully, avoid too much sun, send overseas packages early, love all creatures above and below, ensure your belongings, try to keep the ball low. And he just goes on and on and on and on. And finally, she interrupts him and says, hold real still, Charlie Brown. I'm about to bop you a very sharp blow to the nose. What's she saying? There's, these lists don't matter. We don't live life by that. It's not a bunch of rules. It's a relationship with the spirit that leads us day to day. And it's not that difficult. Our key verse in this teaching is going to be Romans 8, 14. Let's check out what a couple of commentators say. The blessed spirit of God leads both objectively and subjectively. In other words, as Arthur Pink writes, objectively by pointing us to the direct precepts of the word, the Bible, that our actions may be regulated thereby and subjectively by secret impulses from within the soul. Do you know what that means? Do you know what it means to have a nudge in your spirit that says, do this, call this person, go here, don't do that. Stop here, give that. How many of you know those secret promptings? You see, that's life, friend. That's the life that you're supposed to have. Impressing upon us the course we should follow and the evils to be avoided and the duties to be performed. It is the undoubted character of all true believers that they are led by the spirit of God. They do in their obedience, follow the guidance and are sweetly led into all truth and duty. Matthew Henry wrote that 250 years ago. You see, some of us just don't have this dynamic. We need to be released to trust that. How many of you remember the hymn that goes, I serve a risen savior, he's in the world today. He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way. He lives, he lives. Christ Jesus lives today. And I was taught when I was a little kid, if I went to the garden alone while the dew was still on the roses, there'd be a voice there. And I could hear that voice and he would lead me. We sing these songs and we do all these things, but the question is, are we led in the spirit? Or are we following the impulses of our flesh? I trust today, you'll be committed to go through these next five weeks and know how to follow the spirit. What are eight signs along the way? How can you know once you start out, once you leave the house with map in hand, okay? How do I know I'm on the right path? Couple of, about five years ago, Amy and I were up looking at Houghton College way up in New York. And we had a map, but it wasn't real clear. We made a turn on a road and we were going for ways. I said to Amy, I don't see any signs that say, whatever, I think we were heading toward Jamestown at that point. I said, I hope we see a sign. We went five miles, nothing, 10 miles, nothing. Finally, about 15 minutes later, we saw a sign that said Jamestown and it was a road going that way. We were on the wrong road. So we need signs along the way. What are signs? I want to give you eight signs, just two of them today. Turn your outline over. Two signs today. We'll pick it up. Just two for today. Number one, the first sign is peace. If you're led of the spirit, verse six says, the mind controlled by the spirit is life and peace. You see, our old nature is at enmity with God. That is, we clash with him. That's our old nature. Our old nature wants to do its own thing. When you're led of the spirit, you do something different than your old nature. How many of you have somebody in your life that you just don't get along with? Don't look at your spouse right now. That's bad news, okay? Don't do that. Years ago, we lived over in Shaler and right next to our home in Shaler was an older gentleman. He was old and quite honestly, the only way I can tell you, he was very cranky. And he was a big guy. I mean, he was from Russia. That was his homeland. He had a broken English accent and he used to say, I used to wrestle bears. I believed him. I mean, he was big. And my kids were little then and when the ball would roll over into their yard, they'd look and then they'd run over to see it and make sure Mr. O, I won't use his name, but Mr. O was not looking and they'd run and get their ball with their Frisbee and then run back. And if he'd ever catch him in there, he'd come out with his cane and he'd go like this, oh, go look there. We just clashed. One day, he was out on a step ladder and he was an elderly man. I mean, he was in his 70s at this point. Had a step ladder against a maple tree right on our property line and he was cutting off the limbs where the little leaves were falling on his side of the property line. We clashed. One day, I woke up and there's these trucks were arriving in front of his house and he put up this huge, big cyclone fence all around his house. He'd had it. No, we were going to clash from a distance. And that's just the way it was. That was a law. I mean, he just didn't want to get along. That was, that's the way it was. I don't want you to think God is the old grouch in this analogy, friends. You want to know who's the old grouch? Who's the old grouch? It's us. We're the ones that tell God, we don't want to do it your way. Get out of my yard, God. Let me run my life. Let me keep things the way I want them to be. And we go on and on in our own selfish and prideful and lustful ways. And we add to ourselves all kinds of stuff and things, telling God, just stay clear because I really do kind of know what's best anyhow. See, when you become spirit led, the key thing is you no longer have to follow the promptings of the old nature. Listen, the simple difference between a believer in Christ and a non-believer is this. A non-believer hasn't the power to break out of the cycle of selfishness and pride and indulgence. The believer is still tempted by the same things, still struggles with the same things. But listen, but has the power by the spirit of God to now say no to those things which had pulled him or her back under. That's the difference between the two. I was talking to a man that works downtown in one of the corporate headquarters. And he was saying, hey, it's common practice after work that we all go. And he named this sort of, you know, upscale pub, tavern kind of place where everyone in his office just goes for a few drinks every day. And he said, it's, you know, kind of expected that you'd go because, you know, I mean, you want to be part of the group and so on. He's a young single guy and he was saying, it's just, you know, is there anything wrong with that? And I said, well, it really kind of depends on who's leading who in this thing. It's certainly not wrong to rub shoulders with irreligious people, but it's wrong when they're setting the temper and the tenor that is of the situation. And in fact, if you play it out, I mean, if you let it keep going, in the end, if it influences you more than you influence it, Romans 8, 12 says this, if you keep following it, you will perish. What does that mean? It means you'll lose touch with God. That's what it means. And so you've got to be discerning and draw the line, friend, and know how to say no when the spirit of God leads you. That peace of God, it's such a sweet thing, isn't it? When you're spirit led, that peace of God comes over you and it changes everything about you. And that peace is yours, even when circumstances aren't going very well. I don't know about you, but my last couple of weeks have been pretty difficult and I haven't talked much about it and don't need to today. But I had one thing happen. I think it was almost two, it'll be two weeks ago tomorrow. I had promised Jonathan, I happened with a project down in our basement and I knew it was something I was supposed to do. And so I got on the project and as a result, I injured my eye. And that week, this would be two weeks ago now, from Tuesday to Friday, I had a patch over my right eye, big patch. When I came in to work at the office, people, they said, what happened? I said, well, it offended me. You should have seen her look. They said, you know, he's gone over the edge. I just got a little metal flake in my eye, but unfortunately metal doesn't wash out like a piece of splinter wood might. And so it embedded itself. And because it was in overnight, it was metal. It rusted. You know, this is what the ophthalmologist said. And so she took this little drill and drilled out the rust. Do you have any Rust-Oleum mascara or something to try? I don't know. So anyhow, it was no big deal actually. But, you know, during those couple of days, I couldn't do a whole lot. And I was tended to think, God, did I miss your will? Have you ever done something you thought was God's will? And when you did it, something bad happened. He said, was it really your will? And you start questioning. But I never lost my peace because I knew that I had been doing what God wanted me to do. Friends, there's a big difference. When you're doing something you don't know God wants you to do and the bottom falls out, then you're in trouble because you don't know. But when you're doing something and God allows for some struggles, you can stand in peace because you're doing the will of God. It's a wonderful thing. The elder that I mentioned, Jim Franks, had an accident. He was doing something God had led him to do, helping his son-in-law work on his house. He knew it was God's will. And when I visited him on Thursday night, he said, you know, God must have a strange plan because I know I was supposed to be there helping. But now I'm laid up and now my whole world's gonna be upside down. But I know God's in control because I was in his will and I'm at peace about it. Friends, let me say one last thing about peace. When you lose it, listen, when you lose it, stop. Because if you keep going and without the peace of God, you're heading the wrong way. You're going north on Route 28 when you wanna go south. Stop the car. You lose the peace, you better stop and find out why did I lose God's peace here? Friend told me right after the first service, a couple that's been here a lot of years, they were gonna do a $90,000 addition to their home, big addition and big renovation type thing. And they just kept getting signals to stop and to stop and to stop. And they just didn't have peace about it. And then all of a sudden, the wife and these folks for years, they're in their 40s, for years have been trying to be pregnant. And the wife got pregnant when they stopped because God said, don't do it. They lost their peace, they stopped. She got pregnant. So now rather than her having to work in order to pay the extra mortgage, she was free to give herself to take care of the baby. She had the peace of God. Number two, the second thing is purity. This sign along the road is very much related. The ways of purity. Look at Romans 8, 13b says, if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will surely live. Now the opposite of purity in the world today is our sinful nature, as you know. It's to be not spirit. Spirit life is a selfish life. It's driven by a passion to control things for yourself. And in fact, friends, in the end, impurity, listen. I mean, I try to simplify this as much as I can. Impurity really in the end is just you trying to do God's job for you. We tend to think God can't take care of the deepest needs of our lives. Look at what Dr. Larry Crabb says in his book, Finding God, he said this, sin may be thought of as our effort to supplement what we think are limits to God's goodness. Have you ever thought about that? We wonder if God really is as good as he says he is. So we don't trust in him fully. It's trusting in ourself. So we go ahead and do the things we think we need to do in order to bring about the fulfillment because we can't trust God. Like what, Jay? Well, like for example, we think God really doesn't know what it's about sexually in the book, in the map. So we've got to help God's plan out and we've got to do some different things to make sure our fulfillment is secure because we really can't trust God sexually. We need to do something else. We need to kind of add to the book a little bit. And we do. And it's those kinds of impurities, you see, that bring about a loss of connection to God. The statistics in our high schools these days are unbelievable. By the number of kids that just are basically saying, hey, look, I'm going to kind of do it this way because, well, it's what everybody's doing and if I don't do it, I'm going to be out of it. And by the way, I guess God probably doesn't approve but, you know, what does he know? Impurity, friends, is such a snare. It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. Eve didn't trust that God would take care of her. And so the serpent said, hey, if you eat this food, you'll become like God and you can know all things. Okay. And so she did it and quickly, of course, Adam followed right along. Wouldn't we be better off if we just did what our father told us to do and trust him that he knew better than we did? This is a poor analogy because it's a physical one but I remember years ago when I bought my first car. My dad's here today and, of course, I had to have a sports car for a first car, of course. I couldn't do something practical and I didn't have much money and so we went and found this Sunbeam Alpine. I don't know if you remember what that's like, those of you who are old car buffs, but it's an old British car, which, you know, first of all, you're already in trouble. My dad took one look at this car and he said, don't buy it. I said, but dad, it's in my price range and it's a sports car. He said, it's gonna be trouble. Well, I bought it anyhow. And I don't know how many days I had it before things started to break down, but it never ran right. I mean, you know, lots of times it wouldn't start and then when it started, it wouldn't run right and then the brakes didn't work and the worst thing was it was a convertible but it had a little hardtop roof that you bolted on but it didn't work so the rain would come, you know, gushing in the side windows and through the back and I lasted one summer with it. Didn't even get to go to college with it and I traded it in, lost money and my dad bought me a 1954 Buick sedan, hot car. Way to go, dad. It lasted all through my college years and all through my brother's college years and I don't know how long until it finally died, but I should have listened, but I didn't trust so I did my thing, you see, you see the analogy? And that's what God wants. He wants us to give up our own impure ways of doing things. Friends, this is, I know this is simple, but in a lot of ways, it's extremely important because a lot of things happen because we simply just get hung up on doing it our way and it can be something as profound as getting caught in adultery and fulfilling our own sexual lust to something as apparently innocent as something like gossiping. Sometimes gossip is just our way to sort of influence God's results in someone else's life. Friend of mine told me about a lady in his church. He said every sermon he preached, she would march forward with five places marked in her Bible where, you know, he needed to get it right because she had it right and then she was gonna go out and tell the people for the next service and saw the pastor hadn't gotten it quite right that day. You know, it's the kind of person you pray if you're a pastor, you pray, you know, Lord, can she go on vacation permanently? So one Sunday, he preached a sermon on gossip and he was kind of reaching for an illustration and he said, we ought to just take our tongues and offer them to God. I mean, we ought to take our tongues and lay them on the altar as an offering and he pointed over to the communion table that was over there, good size table. Well, at the end of the service, she came marching up and she said, well, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, pastor. How do you expect me to lay my tongue in that altar? And he said, I don't know, sister, why don't you just put what you can on there and put the rest, let it hang over the edges. Um, she didn't bother him anymore after that, as you might imagine. Well, how do we find the power to break free from that pull of sin, that tug of sin's power? L