The Flesh

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Scattered Moments. These are brief reflections on faith, adversity, and the quiet places where grace appears. And I'm sure you've had this happen to you before. A while back, my elliptical went kaput, and so I started shopping online for an elliptical. I looked at a few models, read a few reviews, compared prices, watched a couple of videos, and apparently, somewhere deep inside the internet, a meeting was immediately called. Suddenly they were everywhere. Facebook had ellipticals, YouTube had ellipticals. Bible Gateway had some ellipticals they wanted me to see. The internet had learned something about me. It knew what I had been looking at, and once it saw what interested me, it knew exactly what advertisements to send. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty good description of the flesh. Because your flesh knows what you've been looking at too. It knows what has worked before, it knows where you hurt, it knows what makes you feel better, it knows what you crave when you are tired, lonely, disappointed, angry, afraid, insecure, or just bored enough to start making really bad decisions. In fact, your flesh has been collecting data on you for your entire life. It knows you. Your flesh has an advertising department, and apparently it has an unlimited marketing budget. Paul talks about it constantly, and when Paul talks about the flesh, he isn't saying that our physical bodies are inherently evil. He's just talking about that fallen inclination that we all have that causes us to live independently away from God. The flesh wants satisfaction without surrender, pleasure without boundaries, comfort without trust, success without humility, relief without healing. And the flesh knows exactly how to advertise. It produces these little private commercials that play inside our heads. Remember how good that felt. You had a hard day. You deserved it. Nobody will not kill you.

unknown 1:59

Why not?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

And like those pharmaceutical commercials on television, they really ought to have a disclaimer running across the bottom of the screen.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

May cause mean regret, bondage, fractured relationships, spiritual numbness, and an overwhelming desire to travel backward in time. Approximately 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

But we've never read the fine print. We just keep watching the commercial. And here's what I've come to realize. Most of the time, the flesh isn't really selling the thing. It's selling what the thing promises. Maybe that's why temptation can be so powerful. Because the flesh knows where we hurt, and it promises this'll make you feel better. It promises relief. It promises escape. It promises comfort, satisfaction, significance, control. It promises that just for a few minutes the ache will go away, kill the pain, fill the void. And sometimes the things being advertised aren't even bad things. Food is good. We need it. Sex is good. Within God's design, medicine can heal. Achievement can be meaningful. Rest is good. Enjoyment is good. Success can be good. But good things can become dangerous when we ask them to do something they were never created to do. Because none of them make a very good savior, and the flesh doesn't understand moderation particularly well either. If something made you feel good once, the flesh has a fairly straightforward strategy. Do it again and again. And perhaps just a little more this time. The flesh is like a toddler who discovered where you keep the cookies. There's no five-year strategic plan. There is no nutritional analysis. There is no consideration of how you're going to feel tomorrow. There is one thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Cookie now.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

And if we're honest, some of our adult temptations aren't much more sophisticated. Yeah, Paul understood this battle. In Romans 7, he writes, For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing. Every time I read that, I think, apparently Paul had commercials too. He knew what it was like to have one part of him saying, I know what is right, and the other part whispering, Yes, but wouldn't this feel good right now? And that conversation can happen anywhere, at lunch, watching television, sitting alone in a hotel room, scrolling through your phone, standing in front of a room full of people, driving down the interstate. Sometimes it happens five minutes after you've prayed. Sometimes it happens five minutes after you've preached. The flesh is remarkably unimpressed with your resume. It remembers. It knows what you've clicked on before. It remembers what brought relief the last time you were hurt. It remembers what made you feel important. It remembers what helped you escape. It remembers the shortcut. And then right on cue, the commercial begins again. This is where Christianity offers something much deeper than try harder. Because if trying harder were enough, Romans 7 wouldn't need Romans 8. Paul finally cries out, What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? I love that question. Paul doesn't ask, what will rescue me? He says, Who? And immediately comes the answer. Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's the difference. The answer to the flesh isn't another technique. It's not another life hack. It's not gritting your teeth and promising God this time that you really, really, really are going to do better. The answer is always Jesus. We have a brother who has walked this road before us. Jesus knows temptation. He knows hunger. He knows exhaustion. He knows loneliness. He knows rejection. He knows suffering. And yet he trusted the Father. And because of Jesus Christ, we have something the flesh desperately wants us to forget. We have a choice. Galatians 5 says, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. That doesn't mean the commercials disappear. Some of them have been playing so long that we can recite them word for word. Maybe yours says you need this. Maybe it says you deserve this. Maybe it says you'll feel better. You'll finally be somebody. Nobody will know. Just this once. Tomorrow you can start over. But somewhere along the crossroad, we begin recognizing the voice. We recognize the commercial. We recognize what it's trying to sell us. And we begin to recognize something else. The promise isn't true. Because underneath so many of our temptations is a legitimate hunger, looking for an illegitimate meal. We're hungry for peace. We're hungry for love. We're hungry for significance, acceptance, rest. We're hungry to know that we're going to be okay. And the flesh keeps offering samples. Here, try this. This'll fix it. This'll fill you. This will make the ache go away. But it never does, not for long. And gradually another voice becomes clearer. The flesh says, You need this. And Jesus says, I am enough. The flesh says, You deserve to feel better. Jesus says, Come to me. The flesh says, keep it hidden. And Jesus says, walk in the light. The flesh says, this will satisfy you. And Jesus says, whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Spiritual maturity isn't reaching the place where the commercials never come on again. It's learning to recognize them when they do. Learning to recognize the lie beneath the promise. Learning to ask, what am I really hungry for right now? What pain am I trying to kill? What void am I trying to fill? And then bringing that hunger, not merely the temptation, to Jesus. Because perhaps the greatest victory isn't simply saying no to the thing. It's discovering that the thing was never what you really needed in the first place. So the commercials may still come on. It may know your history. It may know exactly which buttons to push. And after all these years, it may have your demographic pretty well figured out. The product may still look convincing. The promise may still be appealing. The little voice may still whisper go ahead. So take heart and share the grace.