The Flesh and The Spirit Part 1

Greetings in the name of Jesus! This is Rob Haymes. This program is called 15 Minutes With Jesus. Let’s turn to Gen 2:15-17, Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. And then, chapter 3, verses 1-6, Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?  And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. So we see here, that God, in the Garden of Eden, in the very beginning, He commanded Adam, even before He made Eve, not to eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and after Eve was created, the Devil came to Eve first. What Satan said to Eve is the main thing I want to talk about. He said to her, in chapter 3, verses 1-5 , Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. God commanded Adam not to eat of that tree, and He told Adam, In the day you eat thereof, you will die, and Satan came and told Eve, Oh, you won’t die. Go ahead. You’ll be wise. You’ll be like God. He tempted Eve, and she fell for it, and she went and ate of the fruit, and then she gave it to Adam, and he ate, and they both fell, and they died. They did not die physically, but they died spiritually; they no longer had eternal life. They died spiritually. Through sin, which is disobedience of God, they disobeyed His commandment and they sinned, and they were cursed because of it; the ground was cursed because of it, but the point I want to talk about is, God commanded not to eat of the tree; Satan came; he tempted Eve, and he told her, Oh, you won’t die, and he lied; that was a lie, because God said, you will die, and , of course, they did not die physically, but they died spiritually; they were cut off from eternal life. As we see in verse 19 of chapter 3, In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

Let’s turn to John 1:1-5 , In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Let’s go to verses 10-14, He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the sons of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. In verse 4 it says, In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. A son of God lives forever. A son of God, a daughter of God, has eternal life through Jesus Christ. John 3:14&15,  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Jesus was lifted up upon the Cross; He was born of the virgin Mary; He became a man; He was conceived in her womb by the Holy Ghost. Jesus became a man. He was the Son of God, but He was also a man, and He was tempted in every way as we are, yet He never sinned. That’s why He’s called the spotless Lamb of God, and He willingly offered Himself, in obedience to the Father, on the Cross of Calvary for our sins; He died for our sins. He literally paid the entire full ransom for our sins on the Cross, not only for you and me, but for every human being that’s ever lived, or ever will live. He bore our sins in His body on the Cross. He also bore our sicknesses and our pains, and He died. The Bible says He loved us, and He washed us from our sins in His own Blood. That’s why Jesus came, and He gave unto us eternal life. When we receive Jesus; when we hear this; when we hear the Gospel; not only did He die for our sins, but He rose from the dead, and He justified all of us when He rose from the dead. The Father justified Him, and He justified all of us that have been baptized into Him. We’ve been baptized into His death, burial, and resurrection. We are crucified with Him; we are raised with Him; justified from all things that the Law of Moses could not justify us from. The Bible says, If any man be in Christ he is one spirit. So when you are born again, Jesus Christ comes to dwell in your heart. Gal 4:4-7, But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father! Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. The Scripture says that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

Let’s turn to Rom 6:3-16 ,Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.   For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!   Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? The grace of God is the gift of His Son. God so loved us, John chapter 3, He so loved us, that He gave His Son, a living sacrifice for our sins. The Bible says that God made Him who knew no sin to become sin, to be made sin; Jesus was made sin; all the sin of the human race was put on Him when He was on the Cross. That’s when He cried out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? The Father had to forsake Him at that moment, when Jesus was made sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God, in Him. We are in Him; He is in us, and in Him is no sin. He bore our sins; He took away our sins. So when we repent of our sins and believe on Jesus Christ and believe in His sacrifice for our sins, we receive the grace of God, we receive the righteousness of God. The Bible says that God has given us a robe of righteousness; we receive His righteousness by faith, and we are justified, just as though we’ve never sinned; that is the grace of God. And then, if you look in the Book of Acts, they received the Holy Spirit after they were baptized in water. But sometimes they received the Holy Spirit before they were baptized in water. They received the Holy Spirit, either through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, or just the outpouring of the Spirit directly on people. Jesus told His disciples, shortly before He left, He said, I’m going to go back to the Father, but I’m not going to leave you alone; I’m going to send the Comforter, that He may be with you forever, and that’s what happened on the Day of Pentecost. But also remember, when Peter was sent by the Holy Spirit to go to Cornelius’ house, who was a Gentile centurion, he came to their house, and he started preaching the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit fell on the whole group of people; Cornelius, his wife and family, and his friends that were gathered there; the Holy Spirit just fell on them as they were hearing the Gospel, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. And when Peter and the other disciples that came with him saw that, they were amazed, and they said, we should get them baptized. So they did; they were baptized in water after they received the Holy Spirit.

Let’s turn to Rom 8:10-14, And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. If we live after the flesh, we shall die, but if we through the Spirit do put to death the deeds of the body we shall live. This is the Christian experience. This is walking with Jesus. This is what we need to do; we need to come to Jesus; take His yoke upon us; learn of Him; walk with Him. How can you possibly walk with Him without the gift of the Holy Spirit? We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit; we need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit so that we can be led by the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will always be leading us to follow Jesus. Jesus only does the will of the Father. Jesus is coming back to this Earth in the very near future, according to the Scriptures, and He’s going to set up His throne in Jerusalem, and the Kingdom of God will be established on the Earth. He’s going to rule and reign on this Earth for a thousand years, and those of us that remain faithful to Him will be with Him. We’ll have our glorified bodies; we’ll be with Him, ruling and reigning in the Earth at that time. 

Thank you very much for listening. This concludes Part 1 of the Flesh and the Spirit; Death and Life