Preacher: Josh White
It’s amazing to see those kids that they’re just getting so fast so big so fast.
Things are different today than when we were kids right it doesn’t matter how old you are and here especially when it comes to watching television you remember how back in the day we didn’t have you couldn’t record everything and you couldn’t just watch things online if you missed it when I was a kid if you want to watch a television show what you have to do and be in front of your T.V. ad that specific time well I prefer things today as opposed to the back when I was a kid but I remember there was something that they televised when I was a kid and I don’t think they do it anymore they probably don’t need to but how many of you remember watching the launching of the space shuttle that was such a big deal that they would televise it and I look out the audience today and I know many of you have probably seen the space shuttle being launched some of you may have not but as a kid and even today as an adult it’s so impressive to see NASA be able to launch such a heavy object and how to go shooting out into outer space I want to I want to share with you how much power and energy is needed to make a successful launch of the space shuttle so I got the software NASA website or or wicked Pedia one of the DO is about the same thing on the space shuttle is launched in a vertical position with Thrust provided by two solid rocket boosters called the first stage and three space shuttle main engines called the second stage of lift off both the boosters and the main engines are operating and the three main engines together provide almost one point two million pounds of thrust and the two solid rocket boosters provide a total of six point six million pounds of thrust the total thrust it launch is about seven point eight million pounds and to achieve orbit the space shuttle must excel or it from zero to a speed of almost eighteen thousand miles an hour which is basically nine times faster than a bullet that comes out of. Rifle I mean just just imagine the space shuttle is huge it has to be going nine times as fast as a speeding bullet all right to travel that fast it must reach an altitude above most of us out of the sphere so that friction with the air will not slow it down or overheat it the journey starts at a relatively slow pace that lift off the shuttle weighs more than four point five million pounds with all the fuel everything and it takes eight seconds for the engines and boosters to accelerate the ship to one hundred miles an hour so zero to one hundred eight seconds faster than most cars but by the time the first minute has passed the shuttle is traveling at more than one thousand miles an hour and it has already consumed more than one and a half million pounds of fuel All right that’s impressive to hear about it if you want to see it yeah it’s on You Tube So let’s watch.
The launching of discovery this is the last time it was launched and we’ll get this up in just a second and I picked this one because this is really cool you can see on the bottom right corner when it’s up there it has thrust speed the mach the elevation so you can watch all of those numbers just Corp really really fast as the space shuttle is launching So three to one has been activated protection discovery and the launch pad from Trans the Boeing if you. Should go for main entrance shows. Start.
One.
And the final liftoff of Discovery but the case of hard work to find the.
List.
Every week.
The present is now probably down in the order passes through the area of maximum pressure reducing the stress on the shuttle as it goes supersonic.
Discovery using your go drop of.
The commander Steve Lindsey acknowledging the copycat comptroller hold baes just cover East three main engine trouble back up.
When he was joined on the flight deck by pilot Eric Boe and Mission Specialist Al true and Nicole Stott.
Mission Specialist Mike Barrett and Steve Bowen.
Discovery’s three main engines are burning fuel at a rate that would drain an average twenty people in about twenty five seconds.
Engines combined with the solid rocket boosters produce more than seven million pounds of thrust.
One minute fifty seconds into the flight we’re standing by for separation of the twenty dollars rocket boosters Discovery now traveling two thousand six hundred ninety five miles an hour it’s up to twenty four miles down reach the Kennedy Space Center twenty nine miles.
Asked for the cool is it doesn’t matter if you’re five or fifty that is really cool and as I watch that and I watch this quite a few times as I was preparing for this every time you get off the launch pad it’s a go go go go and is amazing I don’t you could read the speed but it just kept getting faster and faster and faster eventually gets to eighteen thousand miles an hour well scientists and engineers are able to launch it into space because what they do is they take a massive amount of power and energy and they’re able to control it and have it force through those rocket boosters now. What you think happens when you take a massive amount of power and energy and you’re not able to control it. Well something like this happens.
That was fun watching rockets block to.
Own that no one was in that one but I think someone probably lost their job after that.
You know.
In order for these rockets to get into outer space and to do what they were designed to do it takes a lot of power but specifically takes power under control and I showed you these videos not because they’re cool it actually has something to do with my sermon today and I’d like you to open your Bibles to Glacier after five.
And today we’re going to look at the last quality of the fruit of the Spirit which is self-control so glacial is Chapter five and these two verses that we’ve been looking out for the last two months are verses twenty two and twenty three Galatians five twenty two and twenty three
and this is what we’re taught here says but the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self control against such things there is no law no of these nine qualities this last one is very different than the first eight some of you might be aware of this maybe some of you heard a study on this before but the main difference between self-control and the other eight is self-control is not a quality that God needs for himself it’s the only one that we need all the other qualities or qualities a god has God is Love is patient is doing but God is not a god of self control because self control is what we need to prevent us from sinning and James one vs thirteen and fourteen says Let no one say when he is tempted I am being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself attempts no one but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires and so self-control is not something that God needs and so you look at the fruit of the Spirit and you say well then why is this included in the list of the fruit of the spirit and it’s because one of the things that the Holy Spirit does within us is that he and Abel’s and empowers us to control our energy and our passions we do have the ability to control them with the Holy Spirit Mike’s Sunday school class class this morning to use this verse and I don’t know how far you going to go a self control but second term of the one it’s on your your boat and I believe it says second term of the one seven for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self control and so for us the self control is needed so that we will take all the energy and the passion that we have and we will focus them so that they are being productive. For eternal values rather than taking our energy and passions and just letting them run wild because when we do that and we don’t have self-control they usually leads us off into sinful activities I want you to churn we’re will come back here to Galatians we’re not done with this but go to Second Peter chapter two.
Second Peter chapter two this is a great passage where Peter tells us about all these qualities that we should add to our face or really build on our faith and the purpose is to make sure that we are being affected been productive with our lives you know we want our lives to matter we wanted to mean something and so Peter encourages us to add to our face these things second Peter chapter two. Beginning in verse five
says for this very reason make every effort to supplement your face with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with Godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love in verse eight is kind of the important thing here for of these qualities are yours and our increasing they’d keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ for whoever lacks these qualities is so near sighted that he is blind having forgotten that he is cleanse from his former sins therefore brothers you all the more diligent to confirm your calling an election for you practice these qualities you will never fail for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ but in verse eight did I give you the wrong verse I keep hearing Yeah I hear all these pages ago I don’t know where it is I had second Peter too but in verse eight it says might be five they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and so God wants us and we should all want our selves to be effective in fruitful and so with the Spirits help we have self control which keeps our passions focused towards things that are good rather than sin and selfishness and so what I want to do for this morning is talk about a couple things that we need to depend on the Holy Spirit to exercise self-control and go back to chapter five and I know that’s the correct reference glacial chapter five and as you’re turning back there what I want you to do is I want you to think about something that you lack self control over in your life all right and right now don’t think of anything sinful because we’re going to deal with that in just a minute but is there anything in your life that once you’re around it or you see it you just kind of lack self control I think something that’s universal for all of us is there’s usually some kind of. Food that whenever we get in front of this food we just lack some self-control and I want to do a survey here I have a theory I want to see if I’m right or wrong all right and I’m going to give you two choices Zach’s already raising his hand was that for me being wrong or career. Usually when people have cravings not for healthy food it’s usually something sweet or salty all right like the desserts the Brownies the cookies or the potato chips and stuff like that and if and I want you to raise your hand you’ve got to vote for one which is your bigger weakness sweeter salty OK so if you like the sweet stuff raise your hand.
While I’m OK What about salty. No one came pretty good mixture you know when I moved here eleven years ago I told you all how much I like ice cream and I still like ice cream but something has changed I don’t know if it’s the heat or whatever it is but I don’t really crave ice cream as much the key word is as much right now I don’t know if my taste buds of change but I love salty things like my weakness now is well there’s a couple things Cosco has those big salted gourmet tubs of mixed nuts those are so bad and worse and Swanson it’s once in he he taught me that if you put them in the freezer those mixed salted nuts are actually better and they really are you got to put this to a test and so will put them in the freezer and as long as they are salted although I have five handfuls a day you know just one handful at a time you just can’t stop eating the Brazil nuts the elements the Maquis deigning all the cashews are so good so I have a hard time with that but the worst thing for me is going to a Mexican restaurant and I order my fundy two or whatever it is and one of the waiters do they put in front of you a big basket of chips and salsa and as long as there is chips and salsa in front of me I’m going to just keep eating them when I should do as you say just put the fine detail in the do you go box and I was going to fill up on the chips and salsa you know that’s what I should do so all that’s going to have something like that that we lack self control over. I think there’s other things that we have lack self-control other non sinful things like some of you you might have something that you collect or maybe a hobby of some kind and whenever you get around an item that you know women maybe shoes you know used can’t help but buy them there’s this guy at our crossword gym who literally has over three hundred T. shirts three hundred He’s got issues he needs to go see counseling but for today what I want to do I want to focus on a couple examples and which to some extent I think every single human billing human human being is going to struggle with this and we will need to depend on the Holy Spirit to give us self-control so let’s look at the list that Paul gives us before he gets into the fruit of the spirit in Galatians and so let’s read Galatians chapter five beginning in verse sixteen because in this passage this is where Paul is basically telling us it’s over these things that you need to exhibit self-control glacial chapter five beginning of verse sixteen. It says When I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh for they are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do but if you are led by the Spirit you are not under law now the works of the flesh are evident some your translations might say their obvious sexual immorality impurity sensuality idolatry sorcery immunity strife jealousy fits of anger rivalries dissensions divisions envy drunkenness orgies and things like these I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God Well here in these couple of verses we have fifteen items and then obviously Paul says and things like these and so this is not an exhaustive list and I always wonder you know I look. This is a pastor and as a teacher I always wonder if these are categorized or or maybe we should put them into categories or subcategories but basically this kind of generally speaking all the temptations or examples of the temptations that you and I are going to find and deal with in our lives and so I’m going to for today’s sermon you’ll see on your sermon those I basically lumped all these into two basic categories and I’m going to look at a very specific one for each Basically we need the Holy Spirit to help us exercise self control over X. turn all temptations or the physical temptations and internal temptations meaning the temptations of our mind and our heart well let’s begin by talking about exercising control over X. turtle temptations and we’re going to specifically look at sexual temptations and the reason is because of these fifteen temptations that Paul lists four of them are dealing with sexual sins and as we begin this I want to be very clear that the Bible says that any kind of sexual activity outside of the good context that God created for it to be enjoyed in it is sinful and that good context is between one man and one woman who are married to each other in a loving committed relationship that is the only context and as all of us know we’re going to go through our lives and we’re going to have plenty of opportunities and temptations to explore sexual temptation outside of that context and so I think Paulist sexual temptation four times in the US because when someone fails at this kind of temptation it really can be very destructive and damaging not only to the person who has failed but to a lot of people do you know of anyone in your life that has failed maybe repeatedly in this area of their lives and has brought a great amount of pain to them and the people around them probably all of us to do and some of you might be saying. Yeah I have done that myself or you know a personal family member or a public figure while this happens quite a bit I think with this point instead of talking about the temptation and trying to convince everyone it’s wrong which we know it is maybe an encouraging thing might be look at someone who in the face of sexual temptation exhibited self-control and so I want to do that and maybe the best example is going to be Joseph back in the Old Testament so turn with me to Genesis Chapter thirty nine
Genesis Chapter thirty nine. I’m so grateful that the Bible is full of both good and bad examples or negative examples and here we have a good example of someone who had self-control so Genesis Chapter thirty nine beginning in verse five
Genesis Chapter thirty nine beginning in verse five.
It says this is Joseph he was made the head over part of first house and he experienced temptation by part of his wife Genesis thirty nine five says. From the time that he had made him overseer in his house and over all that he had the Lord bless the Egyptians house for Joseph sake the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in house and field so he left all that he had in Joseph charge and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate there Joseph was handsome in form and appearance and after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said lie with me but he refused and said to his master’s wife behold because of me my master has no concern about anything in his house and he has put everything that he has in my charge he is not greater in this house than I am nor has he kept back anything from me except you because you are as wife how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God. And as she spoke to him Joseph day after day he would not listen to lie beside her or to be with her but one day when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house she caught him by his garments saying lie with me but he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house now some of you are probably familiar with that story before in fact I’ve done a search is on Joseph and you look at that situation and if there was ever a lose lose situation Joseph was in it if he did the right thing he’s going to lose if he does the wrong thing he’s going to lose all the million that situation and God obviously worked it out and as we read this in Genesis we don’t know exactly how tempted Joseph was maybe this was a just a big temptation for him and maybe it wasn’t a temptation at all maybe he was annoyed with we don’t know we can’t really read into that but did you notice the reasons why Joseph gives for. Not giving in they were about relationships first he says my master your husband has put me in charge of everything if I do this if I sin in this way if I give in to my temptations and then it will affect my relationship with him but more importantly Joseph said that he didn’t want to sin against God Joseph viewed his sexual purity as an area in his life that had a relationship with God because I’m not going to sin against God in this area. You know everyone here this morning to some extent is going to understand the power of this kind of temptation and not just sexual temptation but any kind of physical temptation and if anyone here has repeatedly given into this kind of temptation they can tend to feel horrible about themselves and hope in feel defeated but what I want to do is we look at this passage in Genesis and then also our passage in glaciers is see the good news from this God gave all of us a spirit of power to help us have victory and so how then victory in this area of your life it might take more than just reading your Bible and praying and might take accountability you might take other things like that but God just put his spirit within you and it’s a spirit of power and self-control and so there can be victory for anyone but it’s only possible by depending upon the power of the Holy Spirit in your life to give you that self-control Well let’s look at another example of when we need to practice self-control so the first is over X. total temptations the next is over internal temptations and more specifically going to look at the example of the tongue. The words that come out of our mouth Have you ever have you how many people here have ever gotten themselves into trouble because of something that they said all the husbands in here are like yeah every day that’s my life I am always getting into trouble but words are extremely power. Whole with words we can tear people down or we can build them up and the different outcome of our words comes down to self control I want you to turn your Bibles to James Chapter three.
James Chapter three.
And James in this passage you talks about the destructive power of our words when we let our passions and desires control them.
James Chapter Three beginning in verse three. James Chapter Three beginning in verse three he says.
If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us we guide their whole bodies as well look at the ships also though they are so large and are driven by strong winds they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs so also the tongue is a small member yet it boasts of great things how great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire and the tongue is a fire a world of unrighteousness the tongue is set among our members staining the whole body setting on fire the entire course of life and set on fire by… for every for every kind of beast and bird of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind but no human being can tame the tongue it is a restless evil full of deadly poison with it we bless our Lord and Father and with that we curse people who are made in the likeness of God from the same mouth come blessing and cursing my brothers these things ought not to be so. And I’m sure everyone here is probably been hurt very deeply by some words some unkind uncontrolled words that came out of someone else’s mouth and I’m sure everyone here has been built up as well but with this area of our lives what we say it must be at the top of our list of things that we really do need to pay attention to making sure that we are exhibiting some self-control and today you know you’re reading The late in James Chapter three and he’s sharing with us how dangerous the tongue can be and how much more dangerous is it today than it was back then back then if someone wanted to get their ID. Is Out to the world they had just a couple options they could speak them or if they had the material in the education they could write words and they could they could pass it out now today in two thousand and eighteen how many different ways do we have to let the world know our thoughts are right we can tell them we can talk on the telephone we can post it on Facebook on Twitter Instagram whatever it is there are so many ways that we can get words out the thoughts that go through our mind and that’s where we really need to exhibit self-control how many of you have deeply regretted sending an email like you did sending all maybe I should have done or or sending a text or putting a post out there on Facebook we need to exhibit self-control the way that we’re communicating with other people whether it’s a spoken word or or a digital word well with this quote this final quality of the fruit of the spirit I think you can all see I think all of us can see that this is just a little bit different than the first state the first state it’s so wonderful that we can look at all these qualities and see them in God and from that positive perspective we can see how these qualities can be and should be more evident in our lives but this last one this last quality of the fruit the spirit maybe it’s like God is giving us a safety net so here’s the safety net for your humanity I will put you within you my spirit and if you depend on my spirit the power of the Spirit He will help you have self-control you know and even though I have of how to us focus on two examples of things that are negative this morning what I’m taking away from this point and I think from all of the fruit of the spirit is what is positive second Timothy one seven says for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power of love and of self-control and it’s so wonderful to think that God not only put his spirit within us to seal us and to adopt a sin to make sure that we know. So that we have an inheritance that cannot be taken away from us but it’s a spirit that we can use every day and allow ourselves to be controlled by the Spirit so that we will have self-control this is something that we should always be aware of and really depending upon God to lead in our lives.
Well back to the space shuttle I told you I kind of put there in there is in for a reason and hopefully you can kind of see the connection and if not I’ll kind of connect the dots you know when they launch the space shuttle or any rocket there’s something inside there that they need to get to outer space because it’s going to perform scientific tests or it’s going to help generally speaking it’s going to help mankind and as long as whatever is in the cargo hold of the space shuttle or those rockets as long as it’s in the cargo hold in here on Earth it’s not doing anyone any good right it needs to have all that power under control to get it out into space and in a similar way God has called us to a great purpose he has called all of us to help him build up his body the body of Christ and he’s given all of us the message of reconciliation so that the world around us can know that they can be saved but if we can’t control our passions and our energies then they’re probably going to take us off into sinful directions so as we look at the whole fruit of the spirit and as we conclude now with self-control led us to do everything that we can to keep in step with the spirit depending on his power so that we all can practice the self-control that we need because in prayer
Dear Lord I think you have personally for myself and for our entire congregation just going through each of these qualities of the fruit of the spirit these last couple months has been in lightning and I know for me it’s been very encouraging Florida you’ve revealed to us that you are an amazing God you are a God of love joy peace patience kindness you are a God of all of those things and as you have put your Holy Spirit within us you want us to demonstrate to the world and to bear your fruit so that we are a benefit to others but Lord if without this last one without the self-control of the Holy Spirit we’re more liable to just run off and live our lives the way that we want to so Father as we wrap this up and as we go back to the rest of the book of Galatians in these next few weeks help us today to be mindful of just how important it is for us to maintain control over our emotions and to know that you’ve given us the spirit powerful spirit to help us do just that as a father for anyone here today who’s realizing they just let their emotions run wild they give too much control of of their passions and to their life Lord help us to realize today it doesn’t need to be that way we can depend on the spirit that’s within us to help us have self-control and to that end Lord help us to do that for your honor and glory we pray this now in Christ and human.