The Flesh

Weekly Reading

Monday: Exodus 31, Matthew 26
Tuesday: Exodus 32
Wednesday: Exodus 33, Matthew 27
Thursday: Exodus 34, Matthew 28
Friday: Mark 1
Saturday: Psalm 19-23
Sunday: 1 Samuel 26-31, 2 Samuel 1-7

Discussion Questions

  1. Define what it means for your freedoms to be constrained by love (think about it in terms of marriage, parenting, friendship, church family, care for the least and the lost).
  2. Take inventory of your life: What areas are you most prone to  “sow into the flesh”? What is one small action step you can take to replace that with sowing into the Spirit?

3DQ - 3 Discipleship questions to ask each other: What is God saying to you? What are you going to do about it? How can I help?

Sermon Notes

Key Passage: Galatians 5:16-25
Matthew 5:29-30
Galatians 6:7-9

"Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites [read: flesh]…. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." - John Mark Comer, Live No Lies

“We see … that freedom is not what the culture tells us. Real freedom comes from a strategic loss of some freedoms in order to gain others. It is not the absence of constraints but it is choosing the right constraints and the right freedoms to lose.” - Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God

HALT
Hungry
Angry (fits of rage)
Lonely (sexual temptation)
Tired

Resources

Cartoon about "Starving the Flesh"
https://www.therebelution.com/blog/2007/02/joshua-harris-dont-feed-the-flesh/

Live No Lies, by John Mark Comer
An overview of the subject matter in this sermon series

Renovation of the Heart, by Dallas Willard  
(available for free on Hoopla App through the library)

Especially chapters 6 and 7 on Transforming the Mind

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