There's No Such Thing as a Victimless Crime
Lessons from 2 Kings & 2 Chronicles - King Manasseh
Video can’t be displayed
This video is not available.
Sermon Transcript
Auto-generated by YouTube
good morning what if nobody said good morning i would just move on if you're new here among us my name is gene and i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor and you can just call me gene that's okay i've been called a lot worse than that trust me so we talked about pride last week so we're gonna pick up where we left off pride never a good thing so there's what the world tells us and then there's what the word tells us we stick with this this is the truth and it's not always the same as it is out there in the world and so that's why it can be kind of confusing when you're hearing biblical preaching because it's like well wait a minute that's not what i've been hearing all week well come to bible study too you can get a break from some of that nonsense so we looked at pride and so it brought to mind a story that i heard about a college professor who was very prideful and he was one of those people that like led with his titles the letters at the beginning and the end of their name and there's nothing wrong with those accomplishments that's totally fine but when you're stuffing it down everybody's throat all the time it's not a good thing especially the students didn't like it and i've found that when you have to constantly remind people about your title perhaps it's because you're not living up to it right so this is generally pretty true so he's reminding everyone there's another thing too he insists that he deserves a raise he needs a raise he should be paid more than everybody else at this school because he's absolutely brilliant right published all through all this stuff so he's constantly complaining his family's sick of it goes home every evening complains about the salary so they found it productive in the relationships that he would go for a walk to get home put his things inside and just talk to the trees about it right just go for a walk we don't want to hear about it so one such day he gets home hangs up his jacket puts his briefcase down right in the hallway puts his sneakers on they're better for walking and goes for a walk as he's on his way out the door he notices that his son hadn't put the garbage cans out garbage truck is coming tomorrow you're supposed to put the cans out now instead of waiting for his son to get home he decides to do it himself right just to kind of show him up instead of just letting him take the cans out or make a mistake so he can learn a good lesson he takes the cans out he goes for his walk he complains to the trees about that too so he's about finished with his walk he's on his way home and it's kind of in the distance you can see the garbage cans there and so he notices a car pulling up right along the garbage can so it's on the wrong side of the road now and he sees a garbage bag get chucked out the window into his garbage cans he's like okay maybe they had a smelly garbage emergency whatever so he doesn't think much of it he approaches the house goes inside takes the sneakers off turns on the tv there's a news story about a bank robbery in his neighborhood and so now his interest peaks up well that you know you don't want the fugitives coming or something like that and hiding your house and robbing you too so they're on the run but then he notices the car they have surveillance footage of the car it's the same car that dropped the garbage in his garbage can so he's a smart guy he's prideful but he's smart so he goes wait a minute i wonder if so he goes out to the garbage can takes the bag out brings it in the garage where no one's going to see closes the garage door he opens up the garbage bag and sure enough it's full of money what do you do here's the big question right well here's what he does he thinks this is from god right seeing christians do this this must be because that's the way he does things this must be from god there's the salary he heard my prayers right so i've seen like again a lot of christians do this theologically they find a way there right he found his scriptures for it and everything he was good right the lord always blesses me done right so i've got plans for you use the jeremiah 29 11. that's the perfect application for this that's it right so here you go verse of the day christian thief on the cross so good now what he does is he puts the garbage bag aside and he goes online immediately he's looking for everything that he's it's spent already so he's looking for everything he's going to get a new car he's going to go on vacation because jeremiah 29 11. god has good plans for me so that's what i'm going to do there's no exile or anything like that but anyway don't get me started he laughed too hard at that joke so so he's looking online in the meantime the son comes home he's riding his bike so he's going to put the bike in the garage he notices the cans he's like oh i'm going to hear it then he looks and he sees the garbage bag and he's like yup you're just sticking it to me give me a hint so the boy takes the garbage bag and he goes to put it out in the garbage just as he does so the bank robbers come up now they don't want to add to their list of crimes right so they try to get it easy and they say hey looks like there's no room in your garbage can just put it in the trunk we'll pop open the trunk for you he's like i think i can fit it no no put it we insist we'll take it away for you don't worry and so he puts it in the trunk and just as he's doing so the cops come up lights go in they come out of the car guns drawn and they arrest everybody including the boy because he's left holding the bag literally the dad can see this and he doesn't immediately go outside right so let somebody get arrested what's going on like as if he doesn't know you know oh well he was just holding the bag of money so they take him to the station the dad follows dad's waiting it seems like hours he's waiting while the boy's being whatever interrogated question time goes by he's sweating the detective comes out with the boy and he says it's fine okay we saw the footage he wasn't there we got the story from him you're okay and he's thinking oh great and just as it always happens right when you watch the movies just as he's turning where the detective goes oh just something else like columbo right are you that old i am so there's something else your son said that the bag was in the garage how did that happen and the father like tries to think really quick well he was supposed to take the cans out he didn't i took them out and i just took one of the bags randomly and i put it in the garage to kind of teach him a lesson that you know there's consequences for your actions today we're going to see our sins kind of had a nice twist i mean you know it was a lot of work getting there but i did it it wasn't as funny as some of the other the joke was in the middle so it probably threw you off but anyway so our sins consequences on other people indeed there are consequences for our sins and sometimes it's not just on us so we're going to talk about that today so we're in the rest of the story if you're new here we are going through the entire word of god it's all of it not literally every single word i leave that up to you sometimes especially in the prophets you go read the rest of that at home but i'm at least covering the major chunks of the story last week we saw hezekiah we put him in two parts because there's a lot about him in the bible he shows up no less than three books of the bible so i had to take a couple weeks and do that we saw the two halves one how he was very faithful and restored all this worship and the other he became proud god took care of 185 000 soldiers for him killed him he didn't have to do anything but what the babylonians or the syrian babylonian envoys come and he says look at what i did instead of boasting in the lord so there's boasting in yourself or the lord one's bad one's good i'll let you figure that out or go back and watch the message so today we're going to take a look at his son manasseh manasseh is said to be one of the most wicked kings of all israel and you're going to notice something his reign is very long so sometimes god allows people to stay in their reigns 55 years for a really long time even if they're wicked so it's interesting right you think oh he's going to kill him dead because he's evil not always so pay attention so 2nd kings 21 1. now if you're following in parallel you got your bible you're a little nerdy it's going to be second kings 21 and second chronicles 33 i believe i'm not there yet so they kind of run in parallel that's what's going on here so it's basically the same story but there's some little details and we'll look at them manasseh was 12 years old when he became king and he reigned in jerusalem 55 years his mother was hefzaba he did what was evil in the lord's sight following the detestable practices of the pagan nations that the lord had driven from the land ahead of the israelites he rebuilt the pagan shrines his father hezekiah had destroyed he constructed altars for baal and set up an asher uphold just as king ahab of israel had done he also bowed before all the powers of the heavens and worshiped them a little explanation here that's not a good thing so the powers of the heavens is not like god's heavens it's just the term they're using to describe you know these evil powers around so not good ashera fertility goddess sometimes it says a detestable asherah pole it's like a phallic symbol use your imagination so this is really really disgusting stuff uh he did horrible horrible things he built an altar to them in the temple so where the worship is supposed to be happening the legit stuff he's replacing it so he's taking everything his dad did that was good and deconstructing it and going right back to the way they used to do things it says it's he sacrificed his son in second kings and second chronicles sons he sacrificed his sons in the fire made him pass through the fire but he's burning his children to death like killing them sacrificing them it's a really bad guy horrible things it says he consults with psychics and mediums it's not good because you don't trust in the lord sorcery divination all these evil things and the lord's very angry with him about it but note he sits in that rain for a little while interesting so it says the people refused to listen and they did so many more detestable things than any of the nations god had cleared out ahead of them re now it's really bad so we're looking at that split kingdom just for the frame of reference it's like that civil war in the north israel samara yeah israel samaria already has fallen now we're dealing with the south and they're on their way as you can tell so this is really the downfall now it's interesting that 55 years sometimes god lets us sit in our sin it seems like there are no immediate consequences so we just keep doing it so that's what's kind of happening here it's kind of like hezekiah said last week do you remember he had bad news this won't happen in my lifetime right so he's like yeah this will happen to your sons he's like good that's great interesting but here's the thing sometimes god chooses to wake us up and here's what we see here so if we hop over to 2nd chronicles 33 someone can say you were right that would make me feel good sometimes but anyway second chronicles 33 10. so we get this inserted in there you don't have to say it it's okay the lord spoke to manasseh and his people but they ignored all his warnings so the lord sent commanders of the assyrian armies and they took manasseh prisoner they put a ring through his nose bound him in bronze chains and led him away to babylon but while in deep distress manasseh sought the lord his god and sincerely humbled himself before the god of his ancestors and when he prayed the lord listened to him and was moved by his request so the lord brought manasseh back to jerusalem and to his kingdom then manasseh finally realized that the lord alone is god so he gets back and he starts doing like what his dad did he rebuilds the outer wall remember his dad built like two walls he starts restoring all the regular worship i'm sorry does the sacrifices tries to do everything right and it says however the people still sacrificed at the pagan altars though so that lets us know he didn't tear all of them down but only to the lord their god so they're still doing it wrong it's insincere no good but the lord heard his prayer and so we ask a question to ourselves how low is your bottom how low do you have to go we saw what happened with minette he needed to be ringing his nose i just can't imagine that like i think of a bowl or something like that they lead him away ringing his nose takes him away in bronze chains and puts him in prison then that was his book oh then he finally realized but that's the question in a pastoral role i see a lot of people and i'm always thinking that sometimes i say it so it depends on which day you get me sometimes how how low do you have to go like how bad does this have to get before you realize that you better turn some things around how low do you have to go we see what it took for manasseh to finally listen brillo so if you're not something to think about as i digress just a little bit it'll seem like that but we'll get there if you're not listening how low will you have to go because it's going there so in this series we took a look at the apocryphal books don't jump out and run away so two protestants these are evil right they'll set you on fire if you read them but i gave you some facts about these books if you're not a protestant believer we're non-denominational church here so we have orthodox believers here catholic believers here if you love jesus and you believe in the basic tenets of the gospel welcome we love you even if you don't we love you and we're just gonna love you until you get it right so non-denominational that's what we don't argue about any of this stuff but even let's say the catholics or the orthodox they don't even regard this as scripture a lot of people don't know that deuterocanonical second to scripture second canon so they even call it that so they're not regarding it as scripture but as even martin luther said they're good to read and it blows a lot of people's minds when i show them this we can put a king james 16 11 king james that's not an original if we can get that picture there it is there's an act there's the apocryphal section or the apocryphal books they were in all english bibles until the mid-1800s even the protestant with the king james before that yes there's an english version before that there's like three of them to 50 and 60 geneva bible it's in that you keep going back matthew's bible it's in that so there's a book called prayer of manasseh in this book most scholars will say that manasseh didn't write it but you have a lot of what's called big word pseudographical books and so they're attributed to someone else so they know everybody knows somebody else wrote it they just attribute it to them if you look in a 1611 king james it probably says the book of hebrews and says by paul they changed that because everybody knows paul probably didn't write it so it was just attributed to him for many many years and they're like let's stop doing that they decided that even in a lot of your bibles if you're a protestant believer they would change song of solomon it might say song of songs because most people don't think that solomon wrote it it was just attributed to him so even in the 66 books of the bible the protestants choose it'll acknowledge that it'll say we have books in here that we don't know who wrote it we have no idea we just attributed it so that's the prayer of manasseh here probably didn't write it but again from the beginning the earliest christian bibles all the way back and you go all the way up to the 1611 king james until about 1850. i can explain why they took it out later it wasn't for theological reasons they acknowledged it it was like a standard model of prayer for early christians so even though we're not thinking of it as scripture we're thinking hey this is a good outline kind of like liturgy right you know that's not scripture to everybody does it everybody has a liturgy you know not just traditional churches in modern church we feel like a worship flow right and so there's certain things we might do or say it's not biblical but it's based on the bible so it's okay so we view it this as tradition it's not scripture so let me read it to you it's not very long uh pereira manasseh here if you're wondering we discussed it this morning this is a ceb common english bible and it reads it's a little tough so bear with me hope i'll get it right lord almighty god of our ancestors god of abraham isaac jacob and their righteous children you made heaven and earth with all their beauty you set limits for the sea by speaking your command you closed the bottomless pit and sealed it by your powerful and glorious name all things fear you and tremble in your presence because no one can endure the brightness of your glory no one can resist the fury of your threat against sinners but your promised mercies are beyond measure and imagination because you are the highest lord kind patient and merciful and you feel sorry over human troubles therefore lord god of those who do what is right you didn't offer abraham isaac and jacob who didn't sin against you a chance to change their hearts and lives but you offer me the sinner the chance to change my heart and life because my sins outnumbered the grains of sand by the sea my sins are many lord they are many i'm not worthy to look up to gaze into heaven because of my many sins i'm held down by iron chains so that i can't lift up my head because of my sins there's no relief for me because i made you angry doing wrong in front of your face setting up false gods and committing offenses now i bow down before you from deep within my heart begging for your kindness i have sinned lord i have sinned and i know the laws i've broken i'm praying begging you forgive me lord forgive me don't destroy me along with my sins don't keep my bad deeds in your memory forever don't sentence me to the earth's depths for you lord are the god of those who turn from their sins in me you'll show how kind you are although i'm not worthy you'll save me according to your great mercy i will praise you continuously all the days of my life because all of heaven's forces praise you and the glory is yours forever and always amen so it's kind of a good model prayer should remind you a lot of the psalms you're acknowledging how great god is you're petitioning to him right so you're reminding yourself him like he needs reminding of your really lowly position begging for forgiveness so much like a lot of the psalms that we see a very good model for a prayer and this was probably an attempt from a later author to give us that prayer so they didn't have it then we'll look at where it's mentioned and so someone's like well this is probably what it was like additionally we get some of these things through tradition so this could very well have been a prayer nobody really copied it down until a little later and they said okay this this is what it is and we remember things most of us here if you've been a christian for a while you can recite the our father prayer correct yeah not as long but think of it that way so it could have been something that just got passed down down down down yeah let's put it in here because we lost it to time some of these books are just gone we see this when you read first and second corinthians first corinthians 5 and that letter i wrote to you well there's a zero corinthians there's just one we don't have we have to deal with it so that's probably what we're looking at just to explain it to you no one caught on fire if you're a protest you're good right everybody's safe it's funny because a lot of they do treat it this way because to read them means you're catholic and if you're catholic you're not saved you know they say things like this and i'm like that was just a crazy way to get there the truth is for 1800 years everybody in the church was looking at this stuff it was okay and actually the fact is the earliest christian bibles do not delineate deuterono or apocryphal they don't they're just in there in the orthodox bible that prayer shows up at the end of second chronicles it's the last chapter of that book and that's where it was for like a thousand something years so we see that manasseh repents now second chronicles is affirming that and god forgives now here's the thing if we stopped here that's it you guys would have an early lunch that would be good so if we stopped here we would get that god if he can forgive manasseh he's horrible he can forgive me he can forgive anyone and this is true so i want to affirm that yes there's no you can't go too far i've had people invite them to church and they're like no pastor if i go to your church i'm going to burn up you know i'm like that's not the way it works right so i gotta explain to it does it matter what you've done you need to hear this right so we're gonna go a different direction it doesn't matter what you've done it does not there's no sin too great and there's not too many of them like the grains of sand on the seashore manassas sins were right you can't do more than that and that's the point the prayer is giving you it's saying no you know he will forgive you so hear that put that inside your heart because you're about to get mad at me if you don't have that in your heart so we're gonna go a different direction all right so most stop here and if we're being honest there are like selfish motives there right well that sounds great like so i can just do whatever i want and if i pray like that i'm good so let me kind of get back to you on when i'm gonna stop doing that right like i'll get back to you on when i'm gonna stop saying like crazy you know it would be impossible for me to die between now and then that that's impossible nobody dies you know so so i'll get i'll get back to you on when i'm going to stop i was like okay you know be careful so there's another point here that is that our sins will have an effect on other people our sins will have an effect on other people they may not have an effect on us or so it may seem right away they are but they're going to have an effect on other people so check this out from the scriptures second kings 21 10. so we'll drop right back in there then the lord said through his servants and prophets king manasseh of judah has done many detestable things he is even more wicked than the amorites who lived in this land before israel he has caused the people of judah to sin with his idols so this is what the lord the god of israel says i will bring such disaster on jerusalem and judah that the ears of those who hear about it will tingle with horror i will judge jerusalem by the same standard i use for samaria and the same measure i used for the family of ahab so that's samara samara that i was talking about earlier i will wipe away the people of jerusalem and as one wipes a dish and turns it upside down interesting image then i will reject even the remnant of my own people who are left and i'll hand them over as plunder for their enemies for they have done great evil in my sight and have angered me ever since their ancestors came out of egypt cause and effect a consequence our sins can also seep deeply into future generations it's not over yet we've got a few kings to go our sins can seep deep by our example one thing you're taught in pastor school is that everyone's always watching you even when you think they're not they're watching you and they can see the cause and effect in you and so we can cause others to sin by our example that's another way we can do this second chronicles 33 18. so manassas he's going to die just want you to pay attention we'll read just a little before my point the rest of the events the second chronicles 33 18 the rest of the events in manassas reign his prayer to god and the words the seer spoke to him in the name of the lord the god of israel recorded in the book of the kings of israel manassas prayer the account of the way god answered him in the account of all his sins and the unfaithfulness are recorded in the record of the sears and it includes a list of locations where he built pagan shrines and set up astro poles so you can find them and idols before he humbled himself and repented it doesn't say so you can find them when manasseh died he was buried in his palace and his son ammon became the next king so we see that prayer was somewhere along the way so maybe prayer manasseh got derived from that now if we go to second king so this is all kind of running in parallel and i'm jumping back and forth to kind of put it back together for you ammon so he dies ammon was 22 years old when he became king and he reigned in jerusalem two years his mother was mushulimeth the daughter of heras from jakba i guess that's how you pronounce it he did what was evil in the lord's sight just as his father manasseh had done he followed the example of his father worshiping the same idols his father had worshiped he abandoned the lord the god of his ancestors and he refused to follow the lord's ways then ammon's own officials conspired against him and assassinated him in his palace later consequences sometimes for other people because of things we've done so they can seep through by tradition because of our example that we leave or they can just be consequences of the stuff we did now we've been looking at the prophets and weaving them through so i've explained this before so i'll do it very very quickly in case there's anyone who hasn't heard it the bible is not chronological it jumps around an awful lot so to get it right you have to go to the prophets and take them a lot of them and put them back into the histories of the kings and so they do tell you where they are what kings they're talking to and so that's how we did it so we did isaiah a lot isaiah was important because 36-39 of isaiah talks about the account of hezekiah so we put that in there and we got the extra little poem that hezekiah writes like a prayer to god in isaiah otherwise it's kind of the same the second kings and second chronicles there's some similarities some little differences so we put the prophets in so we weaved isaiah through here's the thing we're going to come to a close on isaiah now we didn't do every bit of it in church or at bible study because it's laborious it's 66 chapters it's really long and a lot of it is like proclaiming judgments on everybody and it's kind of like over and over and over again it seems that they're saying it so i'll leave it up to you to read that on your own i'm just giving you the bulk of the stories what's happening now it's interesting there's more intersections here it intersects an awful lot if you're looking at tradition especially jewish tradition about isaiah there's apocryphal books that are like they're not scripture but they give history so there's one on isaiah there's all different kinds of books and in there the tradition is that isaiah was sawn in two during the wicked king manasseh's reign so that's how isaiah dies if you want to be a prophet a lot of people come to church i'm a prophet i'm like wow not a good retirement plan bro like are you sure like they die horribly right so sawn into not good i don't want to be a prophet so hebrews it seems like i'm jumping around bear with me it all connects in a very very beautiful way we talk about this as bible study it's so interwoven that when you're in the word a lot it's just constantly beautiful it all makes sense so hebrews here's the point of hebrews i said paul probably didn't write him there are some things about it there are a lot of clues inside it's not quite paul it's some of the logic's there but it doesn't read like paul so the point jewish christians they're tempted they're getting persecuted tempted to go away they're like i'll go back because it's by jewish people they're being persecuted not romans yet and so they're like forget this christianity stuff i'm i'm just done i'm done getting persecuted for this and the author or preacher it's said to be a sermon by some he's saying no jesus is superior to all of the old testament stuff so there's like more old testament references in hebrews than any other new testament book except maybe romans right so a lot i didn't count it yet but now that i said that i'm going to go home and do that and then others like yeah he will so so talks about all these things because he's going to reference things in the old testament quote it and say no jesus is better than that now so hebrews 1 jesus is superior to the prophets the angels too he's the superior son he's like brothers and sisters to us right three you superior to moses four he spirited joshua five through seven he's superior to that old priesthood and even melchizedek who's better than that priesthood eight through ten he's the mediator of a superior covenant everybody's favorite chapter of hebrews it's the only one you read is hebrews 11 and you former pastor and and you only read the beginning of it right that's that's all you read you that that's it you know so it's the definition of faith and then all the people of faith it's like oh goody right and that that must have been fun but you don't keep reading because then you're going to see it's not hebrews 11 36 some were geared at and their backs were cut open with whips others were chained in prison some died by stoning some were sawed in half and others were killed with the sword someone about wearing skins of sheep and goats destitute and oppressed and mistreated they were too good for this world wandering over deserts and mountains hiding in caves and holes in the ground all these people earned a good reputation because of their faith yeah and what they went through yet none of them received all that god had promised for god had something better in mind for us so that they would not reach perfection without us so most scholars will say the guy getting sought in half the author preacher didn't need to explain that everybody knew that that was isaiah that's what he was talking about there the other thing look at this they're looking forward to something their faith what were they looking forward to well if we go to isaiah we see what isaiah 26 19 but those who die in the lord will live their bodies will rise again those who sleep in the earth will rise up and sing for joy for your life-giving light will fall like dew on your people in the place of the dead they're looking forward to a resurrection that's what isaiah predicts or prophesies i'm going to give you a little preview we'll get to jeremiah in a couple weeks so jeremiah's going to be isaiah jeremiah he's going to be next and i want you to notice something a little quick preview jeremiah 15 3. i will send four kinds so it's judah's inevitable doom is what he's talking about here sorry i will send four kinds of destroyers against them says the lord i will send the sword to kill the dogs to drag away the vultures to devour and the wild animals to finish up what is left because of the wicked things that manasseh son of hezekiah king of judah did in jerusalem i will make my people an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth manasseh so a lot of this stuff it's not all manas's fault but do you see how deeply manasseh seeps into the rest of the bible and the reasoning here is because this wicked stuff so here again we see the consequences for future generations if we jump ahead i'll do it really quick ii kings 24 these disasters happen to judah because of the lord's command he decided to banish judah from his presence because of the many sins of manasseh who had filled jerusalem with innocent blood the lord would not forgive this oh we see the other side of the coin there but sadly it's happening to his kin to his ancestors so we see yeah we can get away with some things but it often lands on other people unfairly and that's something to think about when we're in our sin i'm getting close to closing but before we do i'll ask you a quick question have you ever heard the phrase victimless crime now i looked it up i just wanted to look it up and it gave like a list so the world you know google tells me that like there's like a whole bunch of victimless crimes it's pretty amazing like a lot of them and i was like wow that's interesting so that's the way the world sees vic they have victimless crime and here you you can do these things that's basically what i read i was like oh goody wait no no no right because you know they were harmless right you know okay so some will claim there is such a thing well here we see but then you'll say well that's a really extreme example pastor you know there's context there you're big on context yeah but we can look other places so some will say you know what we can apply this to one of them on there sexual sin nothing everyone's like you know so it's okay relax i'm not looking at you intentionally so so you know i know you know but they'll apply it to that right what if it's consensual nothing wrong with that okay let's see what god's word says so we talked about boasting it's that kafkeema so it's like in greek i said it wrong don't worry anyway only one person is going to notice and text me about it later so you can have good this boasting and bad boasting so the rule is if it's about somebody else and you don't have any selfish motives it's good cuff hemo right so good boasting or it's bad so we did first corinthians we've been returning to that a lot and we saw the first four chapters pastor worship paul's really mad at them he's going to come with a stick and beat him up so it's not good if we get to the next issue chapter 5 it's the guy sleeping with his mother step stepmother is that the right stepmother i always get those wrong so anyway i told you how this was possible in bible study ew gross but anyway it's happening now paul says you're boasting kahima about this is not good that's bad why is it boasting well one little bit 11 is going to spread throughout the whole batch so basically in our language one bad apple you're you're keeping that apple there and you think that's not going to spread you're boasting so that's the thought right okay get that out he's like kick that guy out of the church he's done we talked about in the past no you're not supposed to just go right there right there's a whole process and you hope for reconciliation anyway so here's the sexual sin bad boasting i want to point that out we turn the page if you think i digress a lot no paul digresses a lot all of a sudden he's like talking about sexual sin and he's like oh and by the way he's probably pacing around like i do and someone's writing it down for him and he's like oh and by the way these lawsuits what are you crazy don't you can't you just get the pastor to like judge these lawsuits between you christians basically you're embarrassing me you're going before a secular court with these things why don't you do it's like jesus is teaching if someone sues you for you know your your shirt give them your coat too and so that's what it is it would be better if you just let them rob you that's what he says then he's like oh and the sexual sin again here we go so he gets back to that and he's i'm telling you read it you'll see first corinthians 6 12 you say i'm allowed to do anything but not everything is good for you and even though i am allowed to do everything so he's being very sarcastic here i must not become a slave to anything you say food was made for the stomach and stomach for food this is true though someday god will do away with both of them you can't say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality they were made for the lord and the lord cares about our bodies and god will raise us up from the dead by his power just as he raised our lord jesus from the dead don't you realize that your bodies are actually part of christ should a man take a part of his body which is a part of christ and join it to a prostitute never and don't you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute he becomes one body with her for the scriptures say the two are united into one but the person who is joined to the lord is one spirit with him run from sexual sin no other sin so clearly affects the body as this one for sexual immorality is a sin against your own body don't you realize that your body is a temple of the holy spirit who lives in you and was given to you by god hear this you do not belong to yourself you do not belong to yourself for god bought you with a high price so you must honor god with your body what's that high price god put himself up on a cross bled out and died for you he did that so we would be free from sin not so that we could sin and that's what they're getting wrong here and many get wrong today and i'd encourage you to go home and read first corinthians 3 because paul makes a little side point there you all are the temple of god you the by the church that building you us together we're the body of christ he says anyone who destroys god's temple god will destroy them read it for yourself so think about it there is no such thing as a victimless crime that's what the word says doesn't give us a list like the internet does so one final point as long as manasseh was free to sin he put himself in bondage to it so romans talks a lot about sin i'm just going to get there quick here's the thing in romans they're doing this gentile christians jewish christians so yes first chapter the gentiles of sin they should recognize that there was a god two you jews have sinned two you're not so great they're boasting about the laws he's gonna knock that down a bit you should teach yourself if you know so much three we've all sinned e.d at the end pay attention to that and fallen short of the glory of god now abraham's faith chapter four five through seven you have to take that as a chunk i would stretch at eight five through seven you gotta think adam and christ contrasted christ is the new adam right he's better he doesn't have that sin so people get to seven and they're like ooh this means i can struggle with sin wrong because then 6 and 8 don't make any sense at all so do this exercise go home read romans 5 through 8. when you get to 7 there's no way paul could be talking about wrestling with sin it's because it's in greek it's very hard to translate it's called process pc i think something like that to make a face paul is playing the part of adam that's the context there so he's doing like a little atom play because in six and eight he's pretty clear that you should not be a slave to sin crystal and i'm gonna read you a little bit of this today as we close so it begins six two right so should we keep sinning so that god's grace can abound may it never be no 6 15 well then since god grace has set us free from the law does that mean we can go on sinning of course not don't you realize that you become a slave of whatever you choose to obey you can be a slave to sin which leads to death or you can choose to obey god which leads to righteous living thank god once you were slaves of sin but now you wholeheartedly obey his teaching this teaching we have given you now you are free from your slavery to sin and you have become slaves to righteous living because of your weakness of the weakness of your human nature i'm using the illustration of slavery to help you understand this previously you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness which led even deeper into sin now you must give yourselves to be slaves of righteous living so you will become holy when you are slaves to sin you were free from the obligation to do what is right and what was the result you are now ashamed of the things you used to do things that end in a term will doom but now you are free from the power of sin and you become slaves of god now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life for the wages of sin is death but the free gift of god is eternal life through christ jesus our lord we all mess up that's not what this is talking about this is talking about your go-to this is talking about your favorite repeat sin or sins what you go to instead of god yes they're mutually exclusive god wants no part with your sin what you go to instead of god that's what this is talking about and so here's the encouragement when you go to these things you know you think i'm free to do that but what you do when you go to them as you put yourself you enslave yourself to the sin that's what you do it's ironic because in our effort to control because that's what it is control everything the irony is we actually enslave ourselves by trying to control it we then make ourselves the prisoner that's the sad irony and so here's the secret if you keep saying i've got this i've got it you know god sometimes he goes okay but here's the question how's that working for you if you've got this if you've got this how's it working for you good it's great like everything's always great you're experiencing constant joy peace a lot just the fruit of the holy spirit and everything sunshine and rainbows yeah i could tell you no so if you're still doing this how is it working for you god has patience be careful so here's the secret the secret is going the opposite way the secret surrender the secret is saying i don't have this you have to get rid of that control of that issue you know think about it god's just like a little bit better than you are at some things give it to god pray a prayer like manas forgive me lord you know what take lift this burden are you tired are you exhausted my wife and i were talking about pretending people going it's like all a lie i'm fine you know you get dressed up but you're not and so we just we're actors we're fakers we're just constant liars but we can't be like that with god maybe it's like politeness you don't want to dump all your stuff you know right before the pass rush to do a sermon you know that happened former pastor but it's okay you know it doesn't phase me anymore but the thing is you're not a burden we're supposed to share each other's burdens but okay fine fine you can't lie to god you can't lie to god you don't have it and so you got to change your prayer life you got to mean it you got to stop asking for so much stuff and start self-reflecting what do you need to give to god that's making you tired that's weighing you down that's probably killing you give it to just surrender it you can do it now and here's the other thing this needs to be said you don't need it like a mediator there's no mediator between god and man it's just jesus christ that's it jesus is the only one take it to him don't you to him pastors get so in the way pastors get so when the person is breaking when they're about to hit their bottom the pastor picks up the phone in the middle no they need to talk to god let them hit that bottom and surrender finally too many pastors like okay i'll kind of like it's okay no it's not okay no it's not no good father ever says that to his child it's not okay you go to your room and you cry it out we talked about that in the past right that's good parenting they don't do that no you can't let them cry it out yes now what's happening to a whole generation of children croco cried out right and if you're a christian adult don't you pray don't you talk to god you need to talk to god about this give it to him say god some similar prayer can do it right in the seat you can do it at home god i'm tired i'm exhausted help i need your help and that's it just pray it's between you and the lord that's my encouragement to y'all this morning give it to god surrender it he is able let me pray for you lord to everyone in the sound of my voice i just pray just just mold their hearts into your your likeness make it fertile soil so the word they heard today can get in there it can take root and it can just bear fruit 30 60 100 times that fruit of joy patience peace kindness self-control love just let them bear that fruit let them be in that state of joy be with us as we go out this week make us vessels vehicles of your gospel message your grace your kindness your mercy and your love i ask these things in jesus name amen you