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Sun, Sep 01, 2024 10AM• 1:05:57Sermon with Gene SimcoSUMMARY KEYWORDSsin, Jesus, God, holy spirit, talk, live, bible, romans, Paul, people, liar, spirit, anger, Greek, life, john, church, cookie jar, sinful nature, demons
In this sermon, Pastor Gene explores the concept of sin and its consequences, emphasizing that all people are sinners. The speaker clarifies common misconceptions about sin, such as the idea of "venial" versus "mortal" sins, and addresses the false teaching that it is impossible to live a life apart from sin. He also addresses the misuse of certain Bible verses, particularly those related to the unforgivable sin and the existence of demons in Christians. The speaker concludes by urging listeners to embrace the freedom that comes with accepting Jesus Christ and seeking the Holy Spirit's guidance, highlighting the transformative power of God's love and grace in overcoming sin.
Good morning. Welcome if you're new here among us. My name is Gene. I serve here at C3 church as your pastor, and in this series, we talked about the phrase getting your hand caught, or getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar. A little bit. Now, I use this phrase to illustrate the point that we're a bunch of sinners, right from childhood, right? So that's why, right? Kids, nobody's innocent. As kids, we are liars, we are thieves. Now here's the thing you can look at this. It doesn't have to be a cookie jar, but maybe as a kid, you got caught doing something you should not have been doing. What's the normal reaction. Well, you like withdrawal, so if it's a cookie jar, you're going to take your hand out of there real quick and then, like, come up with something else. But parents do this, and you don't know this as a kid, but they're setting you up. They're like cops, right? Because they ask you a rhetorical question, what are you doing? They know what you're doing. They can see what you're doing, right, because they want to get a twofer, right? So they want to get two birds, one stone. They're a little angry because they got caught, so taking it on you, right? So they want to catch you in a lie too. So now you're a thief and a liar all at once. And so this is where our problems begin, probably. But anyway, anyway, so the normal reactions to do that, though, that's what that's how we're wired, right, as human beings. But I heard a story about a little boy who climbed up on top of the refrigerator where there was a cookie jar. It was a clear glass cookie jar. So it's dangerous, right? He's on the chair. He climbs up the chair, and he's reaching. He could barely get it, his hands not really touching the cookie but the jars tilted over the mom comes in.
What are you doing?
But here's the funny thing, doesn't pull his hand out, just freezes, like, just like this, and not answering the question. And so a lot of thoughts start going through a parent's mind, right? Like, I wonder if there's like, this looks hard. I wonder if there's like, a ninja gym nearby. We start training this kid her favorite show, right? Things like that, like, Maybe he thinks the invisible game is real, you know, I don't know, but he's up there and just froze.
I can see you … he’s still not moving, and now it's getting difficult. Jars tilted, and so he's kind of like straining. Let me ask the first question again, what are you doing?
I'm fighting temptation.
Clever kid.
Alright, we find ourselves in our reset series. So this is a really good series. No matter where you at, where you're at, like, even if you've been a Christian for many, many years, it's always good to go back through the basics. Through the process of writing these sermons, I'm looking at old notes going, oh, you know, so that's interesting. So it's good, right? Solid foundation. Just as Jesus ends a sermon on the mount, like everything is built on that solid foundation. So you know that basics are really important. If you're brand new, great time to come in, right? If you want to just start and get it right from the beginning. This is a really great series. We're looking at the basics, but maybe you've been a Christian for a while and you've stumbled in one way, shape or form, because maybe the basics weren't solid.
Reset. So here's your chance. So we can all go back to the beginning, and like I said, it's just been really good for me, even like doing these sermons and trying to make it as basic as possible. So last week talk about hard to make basic the Trinity, right? So we talked about experiencing the Trinity. So really interesting. God is three persons and one essence. That was the essence of that teaching. But we talked about experiencing the Trinity, as opposed to, like, all this theological stuff, right? We got the basic understanding and experiencing. So today we're going to talk about those who reject that experience, but let's just go back. We'll look at the role of the Holy Spirit. First, I want to pick up on this. John 16 five, but now I'm going away. This is Jesus speaking. Now I'm going away to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking where I'm going. Instead, you grieve because of what I've told you, and in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don't, the advocate won't come. She's talking about the Holy Spirit. If I do go away, then I'll send him to you, and when He comes, He will convict the world of its sin and of God's righteousness, and with coming judgment, the world's sin, is it that it refuses to believe me? So today we are going to talk about sin. So a lot of people ask the question, and it sounds kind of funny, but basics, right? Like, let's look at the basics here. What is sin? So if you go back in the series, and you can watch em online, we're only at what part five, I think, today, we talked about the Bible, and I was really trying to summarize the whole Bible. Like, what's the point when we begin reading the Old Testament, you just see the common denominator is, no matter who you're talking about, from Adam and Eve to Abraham, like there are people just constantly rejecting God, right? So what happens pride? They say, you know, they want to be like God, right from the beginning, but they had paradise. It was perfect, right? So, totally perfect. Better than Naples, right?
Right? Total paradise. Hard to believe that, right? Paradise, but they reject it like, no, no, that's not enough, right? Sin. They're rejecting God, right? So when you look at all these stories and you start thinking about it, you're like, Yeah, right. And then we accept God through Jesus, He saves us, right? Going to bring us back to paradise. So that's what's going on here, right? And throughout, we just saw that humankind just constantly chooses sin because we have a sin nature. That's what it's teaching us. Now, despite all of this, you might have heard like people are generally good. You might have heard that it's wrong, right? So theologically, it's just wrong. Otherwise Jesus would not have had to die like so there's nobody good because of Jesus, right? So that's the point here, if you're a Christian, if you're not, well, that's the truth, right? And so otherwise, going back in the series, I wouldn't have brought up that phrase, right? Caught in the cookie jar. We wouldn't do that, you know, it wouldn't be so common if all kids weren't thieves and liars, right? You know. And some people think they'll lawyer it, right? Have you ever stolen anything? They'll be like, No. And they're thinking like Grand Theft Auto, right? Or like a bank robbery, but simple things, right? Have you ever picked up money on the ground
it didn't belong to you? Right? So that's the thing we're wired to do. Those kinds of things. Lied, right? People will say, Oh, yeah. Okay, so usually get people on that one cheated. Now people start thinking, Well, I don't think I don't cheated on my spouse or this and that, but what does Jesus say? Heart issue? If you've even looked at somebody else with lust in your heart, you're a cheater, right? You committed adultery.
Doesn't sound like a good person or a person with a good heart, right? Jesus takes it that step. Even if you're angry with someone else, he'd liken it to murdering them, right? So heart, right? Not a good heart. So we've all sinned and fallen short of godliness.
God gave us free will. But again, what do we what did we do with that? Right? We rejected him. That's the story here, right? So now people will start asking, this is, we're funny, right? So kids, if you're a parent, you get this, right? Kids are lawyers, right? But what if? What if? But what if? Like, you know, you set down a role, and they come up with, like, it's amazing, like, 10,000 ways to break that rule, right? And that's what people do. So when I get asked, as a pastor, well, is this sin? I'm like, if you had to ask, right? Like, you know, you're just trying to get permission to sin from me. So they'll start asking about all these different things. So we looked at Galatians five, and we saw the benchmark for a Christian. We saw the fruit of the Spirit. If, how do you know if somebody's a Christian? Well, they're going to display the fruit of the Spirit. And that connects to Jesus saying, judge a tree by his fruit, right? So they're going to produce that good fruit, and they're probably not going to produce a lot of bad fruit. Or in Galatians, the sin of the flesh. So let's look at them both together. Now I'm trying to kind of weave these things through as we move forward. Galatians, 519, when you follow the desires of your sinful nature. So pay attention to the words, right? Nature. The results are very clear, sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, upwards of anger, self, ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness and wild parties and other sins like these. Don't worry. I'll say them really slow in a minute. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God, but
the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. There's no law against these things. So that's that evidence, right? We have the fruit of the Spirit. And here we see that sin nature, that the Holy Spirit is at war against they're kind of opposed to one another fighting. Now, on this list, some seem really big to certain people, like, Oh yeah, you know, that's the ones like I said in the past. That's the one we pick it, right, you know? But clearly in the same list, without saying, but these are, like, not a big deal, guys. And then goes through these, but you see them, hostility,
quarreling, I told you to make you feel uncomfortable this morning.
It's amazing what silence can do. Jealousy,
outbursts of anger, selfish, ambitious, actually, wrath in the Greek so it's like anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division,
envy, drunkenness. So those two are for like a lot of people enabled wild parties and other sins like these, not making any more comments. So we can clearly see now we have all sinned. We're all sinners, in a way, also look at that more carefully, right? And those who continue, there's a really stern warning in there, those who continue in them will not inherit the kingdom of God. So what is Jesus talking about? You know, the fruit of the Spirit, right? So judge a tree by fruit produces bad fruit. It's not a good tree.
Right? So it's simple. So we see other places, similar list with similar warnings. First, Timothy's one you see like, you know, murders and sexual immorality, homosexuality is in there, kidnapping, liars, promise breakers. If you go to Ephesians, the point of the book of Ephesians is unity, right? So none of this envy, jealousy, strife, divisions, disorder, is trying to get the church to get along right. So in that context, Ephesians four, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, is what you see here. So it starts, oh, wait a minute. So old, sin natures old, put on your new nature right through the Holy Spirit. It'll go through sins, lustful pleasures, practice of every kind of impurity lies. Anger comes up again. If you're a thief, don't let the sun go down. Your anger if you're a thief, quit stealing, right? So foul and abusive language is in there again, brings up the Holy Spirit. Don't basically grieve the Holy Spirit. Don't bring sorrow to the Holy Spirit. By the way you live. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, in another contrast, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God, through Christ, has forgiven you. So we see a lot of different sins there. You see those ones like lying and stealing, like I don't do that. That's not me. And then some that people really don't think are sins like foul language,
okay? And lying, right? You don't have to yell. Pastors not to yell. Just so funny, be quiet. It's worse, right? So anger. Again, anger comes up a lot people don't like choose to notice this in the Bible, over and over and over again. Anger, anger, anger. It's a sin. So again, have you ever been angry with someone
sin, right? So there's no chapter breaks in the original, right? So there's no numbers or anything. So it continues, and we'll read it. Ephesians, five, one, imitate God. Therefore in some of the stuff you do, no everything you do, because on Sundays, imitate God on Sundays for one hour. No, it doesn't say that. Because you are his dear children, live a life, life filled with love, following the example of Christ, of Jesus, he loved us and offered Himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing enrollment of God. Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity or greed among you, such sins have no place among God's people. I've seen stories, foolish talk, coarse jokes. These are not for you. That's not my joke in the beginning. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God. You can be sure that no immoral, impure or greedy person will inherit the kingdom of Christ, of God, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Don't be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey. Don't participate in these things or the things these people do. For once, you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light, for this light within you produces only what is good, right, and true.
So and Paul continue into spirit, guided living, right? So we kind of see a little bit of the picture of the Trinity here, if we apply what we learned about the Trinity, right? Imitate God, right? Who Jesus is, your example. So be like him. And then how the Holy Spirit, right? So you're going to let the Holy Spirit guide your life. So the Holy Spirit gives you the power to follow Jesus's example. And again, there's a list of a lot of things that people do casually
and they don't think it's a big deal, and like Galatians, a very stern warning about not inheriting the kingdom of God if you're living that way.
So
even the ones like people normally excuse, right, greed, foolish talk. So
again, the Bible says when people start excusing these things or making no big deal of them, we should not listen to them, right? No. So it's clear that they have rejected God very
so again, like I said before, like, what is sin? Well, if you have to ask, it's probably sin, right? So you know, and on that topic, we talked about God, like, the existence of God the very beginning of the series, like, Does God even exist? Right? So We answered that question because the first the most basic question that you have to answer before moving forward. And in that, Paul's very clever, a couple clever arguments here. He's got the Holy Spirit and so really good. He'll loop this argument into two different sections that we're going to talk about today. First is just knowing God. We already talked about that, but let's just take a look at it with this in light Romans, 118 but God shows His anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by the wickedness. They know the truth about God because He has made it obvious to them forever. Since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky through everything God made. They can clearly see isn't.
Visible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God, right? So that's what we were talking about there. But here we see they also don't have an excuse for the sin either. So he'll continue. Romans 124 God abandoned them, so God so they're doing all this bad stuff, so God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created, instead of the Creator Himself, who is worthy of eternal praise. Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulge in sex with each other, and the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. I hope no one kept their kids in this room right now I forgot to say, oops. Well, we told you to take him to the kids room. Men did shameful things with each other, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserve. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, He abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior and gossip. Does this sound really repetitive? Yes, and there's a reason for that. There are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. Where's my daughter?
No, she's good. And they refuse to understand, break their promises. Are heartless and have no mercy. They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die. Yet they do them anyway. Worse yet they encourage others to do them too. So we see more sins here, right? Some of them, they're like the no big deal sins, but they keep coming up over and over again, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior and gossip, their backstabbers, hairs of God, insolent, proud, boastful. So again, sins people kind of casually engage in, but the Word of God says they're extremely serious, right? Greed, hate, quarreling like
Christians don't know you're not supposed to do that, alright? And then you have pride, which is always a sin, pride in anything I've talked about this in the past. You've been in this church for a while. You've heard this. There's sometimes like innocent idioms and like an NLT, are easy to understand, like you're my pride and joy. Paul never says that, right? So it's not pride there, alright, so I was in the it's not there in the Greek. It's coffee Ma, like a boast, but not about yourself, alright? So
again, so on both sides of everything, we have to realize, like pride and it's not good that it is a sin,
and that includes homosexuality. And you heard me say it, there it is, right? So the word of God says it, I'm not apologizing for it.
No, buts right. So here's the thing, though, not singling it out, alright? It talked about the casual sins too, and they're all in the same list. And for those of you who have the picture, picket signs or whatever it is, or online or whatever, please take note. Read your Bible and notice it's not singled out. It's not separated, right? Protest This one. Guys No. Protest yourself. Protest your foul language, protest your quarreling, right? So we have to look at this right with clean eyes to the Holy Spirit us too, right? But let's just talk about it for a second, because talking about like, excusing things, right, or giving approval to certain sins, and so we're kind of, we seem like we're in the age, but I'm going to explain this to you for a second before everyone gets too
excited. Um, Paul is first of all, defeating a really popular argument then and now, of all times, which goes something like,
you know, we've evolved, right? I don't know if you heard this like, you know, they start just, how, what are you how are you going to deal with this? Well, you're going to do two things. If you want to continue in that sin. You're going to try to make it about the Greek language, which none of them know. So I've read it. That's what it says. Okay? So it's reiterated. He's reiterating terms from Leviticus. So it's Old Testament, New Testament. It's the same when you're reading it, right? So stop playing with the Greek. That's not it. Paul beats that because he actually describes the act. So now you're done, right? It's a sin. He just takes the time to describe the act. It's a sin. That's all there is to it, right? The other thing,
well, so the whole culturally relevant thing, right? It's not relevant because it's a long time ago, but what you have to understand is it kind of falls apart because, again, he describes the act. Let, let's go back, because we're close to the beginning of the series. What happened when man was created and then needed a helper?
God created another man for him,
right? Created a woman. That's the helper. Now, you know, you figure out a pretty young age those parts.
Go together like they work and they work for a purpose. We're not going to do, like biology class or whatever it is. That's it, as far as I'll go, right? That's we help one another, right? They fit, right. So no jokes, no joke. Okay, so I'm really trying so hard. Like, what's happening in my mind here and coming? I hope they're different.
So
you don't, like recreate God in nature.
It didn't change. Like, nothing about that change. It's the same. You want to change it. I get it, but that's not God changing. It's you and a surgeon, right? So nature hasn't changed. No one has these functions. They just have not changed. So it's not, it's not what he's talking about, right? The other thing too,
you know, think about it as Christians. It should be bothersome in this way, not that we're going to pick that one to protest, because we got to work on our own bad words, gossip, whatever it is, right? But you know, think about it. He made the well, let us make them. What? What would we get to the Trinity like us in our image? Oh, wait a minute, who is the visible image of the invisible God? Jesus, right? He's a man, not claiming to be a woman or anything else. When he's a man. The image of God is male and female,
so it's a distortion of God's creation and God Himself,
not good. Here's the other thing Paul is, you can think about this, yeah, it's old. It's an old writing, but it's pretty impressive, because Paul is writing about round numbers 2000 years ago. A lot of people don't know this. He's talking about things that happened 2000 years before him,
and sounds like he's talking about people today.
Yeah, nothing new under the sun. If you've read your Bible, right? Ecclesiastes, right? It's nothing new here. It's it was going on then it was going on before Paul. And they're making excuses, approval for these things. It's all the same, right? Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever. His nature has not changed, right? If we were made in God's image, that's not going to change,
right? Same yesterday, today and forever. So this is not a cultural problem. It's not a cultural issue. It's a natural issue, alright? So again, this is a rejection of God's image, and he's designed for us. That's what that is, alright? So we came upon it. We talked about it.
Okay? By nature, we should know better, right? So we're going to, we talked a little bit about, like, bad teachings. And you know, if you read your New Testament a lot, it's like, heavy on false teachings, false teachers. So you got to deal with it. So there's some false teachings, like there were on the Trinity I was telling you on, like, sin lawyering, right? And it's really funny, just to share with you, just really
as I went so through this series, a lot of times, I'm like, just going back to my old notes, my stuff from Pastor school, like, just kind of looking at stuff, and before becoming non denominator, this was a non denominational, like, kind of seminary schooling, but it was very Protestant leading. You know, it wasn't really taking everything and say, okay, just, let's just look at Christianity across the board, right? So when I went back, I realized I'm like, Wow, this isn't right either.
So no matter what denomination you come from, like, no, that's just not what the word God says, right? So we'll talk about this.
You know, there's in some denominations, this idea of, like, moral and venial sins, right? So the venial really, kind of, it just means, like, just for, like, make it easy, like, not a big deal, right? So it's not as big of a deal.
That's not what the Bible did you see, what it said, right? So we should know that that's silly by what we wrote. There's no such thing as a sin. That's no big deal, right? So it should be really, really obvious. So
it's dangerous, because on one side of things, this is where you get a lot of these abuses in the church, right, from many years ago, where they abused this confession, which is a very good thing, right? But then you come up with things like indulgences and other things, right? So it's no good in any way, shape or form, like that doesn't work, right? So the other thing it kind of for the, let's just say, congregate it. It lowers the seriousness of the sin. It's all serious, right? He's like, Okay, go say a few prayers, goodbye, and then come back, right?
You know. And now before you're like, wow, that you know Dalmatian. I know you have in your head that does that, alright? But think about it like, okay, Protestants, altar calls.
How many times you going to rededicate yourself to Jesus? You know what I mean? Come on, you know, like, where's the that's why we don't do where's the sincerity in that? Imma, baptize you once, and we're going to make sure you're really serious about it,
because that's what the Bible says. And we'll see more of that, right? So
it's all.
All sin is mortal, like it's all bad, right? The Bible doesn't say anywhere that it's like, these are cool, you know, just do them right? Now, Jesus died for our sins, right? Like, present, past, future, yes, but not so that we could lawyer them, right? That's not sincerity, right? So we do receive forgiveness when we make mistakes, right? So everybody makes mistakes. So some people ask, though, on that vein, like, Are there any unforgivable sins? Like, can you do something and that's like, the mortal side, right? Like, like, you do something that you're never forgiven for?
Well, here's where, where people go. Let's just look at the word of God. So people usually will say blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. That's the unforgivable sin. Why do they say that? Well, Jesus is being approached. He's saying, well, he casts out demons by the prince of demons, but basically he's like demon possessed, and that's why he can do this, right? That's the logic, right? So. Mark 328, he responds, I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences. Mark adds, which is interesting. He told them this because they were saying he's possessed by an evil spirit. So we're looking at this. If you understand the way the Greek language works, the context he could and how Jesus speaks. He could be using some hyperbole here. And even mark kind of says, well, he said this. Because why does he have to give Jesus a disclaimer? Well, because they're saying he has a demon in him, right? So, and Jesus knows about the Holy Spirit in me. There can't be a demon in there too. We'll get to that later.
It can't happen. So he knows this. It's impossible. Is what's going on here, right? So again, it goes like a rejection of God. He's saying, No, I'm with God, and it makes sense if this is the unforgivable sin, because if you've rejected the Holy Spirit, well, you're, what do we talk about? In baptism? You're baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You don't have the Holy Spirit. You're not saved. You're not saved, right? So that's the unforgivable sin. That's the sin of the rejection of God completely no good. Alright, the other place. And we're going to look closely at first John. Today is in First John, so we're just on this topic. Let's just look at it. First John, 516 if you see a fellow believer sinning in a way that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God will give that person life. But there is a sin that leads to death, and I'm not saying you should pray for those who commit it all wicked actions are sin. So, okay, what a lot of times, if you reprise in church, what you'll hear is like something like us, the sin that leads to death. You know, it could be like something like, I don't know, preventing them from getting themselves killed, but it says a sin that leads to death. And if we're being smart, we know that there are a lot of different sins that can get you killed. So, but it's singular here, and the Greek is a good translation, and the Greek, it's singular one sin. So that's not possible. And the Bible will see, like Romans, like the wages of sin is death. They're talking about like eternal death here, right? So there is a sin. So people go, maybe this is that blasphemy, the Holy Spirit in here.
So we could have the same conclusion, right? No spirit, no salvation.
The Holy Spirit, though, will bring a believer to true repentance and then, of course, forgiveness, right? Because if we just keep reading the very next verse says, First John, 518, we know that God's children do not. So this came right after what I just read you a practice of sinning, for God's Son holds them securely, and the evil one cannot touch them. We know that we are God, the children of God, and that the world around us is under control, the evil ones. Remember I was saying that, like Satan's the god of this world, right? It's evil. This world is evil, but do not make a practice of sinning, right? So there's your hand there, so we can see that the sin leading to death is something intentional, right? Which is probably that rejection, see, blasphemy, is a big word, right? You know, the rejection of the Holy Spirit. Let's put it that way, alright? And here's the thing, there are consequences. I'm going to give you a little window in the next week, or talk about some of the consequences, but for this intentional kind of sin or intentionality, and not just
rejecting the Holy Spirit. So Hebrews 1026, dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after you've received knowledge of the truth, there's no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.
There's only the terrible expectation of God's judgment and the raging fire that will consume his enemies. We'll get to that next week for anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses, just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, that is Jesus, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained The Holy, blasphemed the Holy Spirit, who brings God's mercy to us. So did you notice a couple things in there, intentional, like, on purpose, because it fits pretty well with that. What we saw Paul writing like the, you know, in Ephesians, Galatians, like, you know, living that sort of life, right? So it kind of takes more than just, like, Oops, you know, it's, you're doing it. You're setting.
Out to do that intentionally, and that's what the Word of God is talking about here. So if that's something you do, you have to take this seriously. Cannot be dismissed. So there's a difference between like, again, oops, and like, just setting out to do it right. Big difference. So we all make mistakes, but if we have the Holy Spirit, two things are going to happen. He's going to let us know. Hey, you know you're going to feel wrong. Good. You feel wrong doing it. Then right? You're going to listen to him. If you love him, you're not going to do it. Right? That's what the word of God is saying. So the
Bible says it's an interesting thing here. What's going on? Right? Why is it talking about the law of Moses? Well, think about it, right? These people are not necessarily spirit filled people. We talked about that last week, that realization wasn't really there. So if they were put to death for not following the law of Moses, without the tools you guys have, and if Jesus didn't die for their sins, yet, how much worse should the punishment be?
Ooh, right, so it's not this like, no, no, no, Christianity is at a much higher moral standard, right? That's what a lot of Christians fail to understand.
So the Holy Spirit is living on us, giving us the power to not do these things. So speaking of the Holy Spirit and these demons we saw in Mark, I want to address one thing. And honestly, I just unless it's just becoming so prevalent, it seems so ridiculous to me, I wouldn't even address it. But I have to just spend a minute on it another way people excuse him, and you may have heard about it, the deliverance ministry. It's gaining traction popularity with people who don't read their Bibles. Because if you read your Bible, you would have saw the thing in Mark, right? You would have known, well, we just saw it like we'll look at it again in a minute. In first, John the Evil One cannot touch them. Second, Corinthians six, right? Holy Spirit cannot have fellowship with idols, demons, anything like that. If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you can't get demons. And so if you don't know what it is, you know it's all basically, yes, okay, so there's exorcism of demons, right? So we see that all over the Gospels, but they weren't Christians, right? Now,
you have it in the church, and it doesn't make any sense at all, and you don't hear about it at all, right? In Paul's letters to the churches. Why? Because if they're talking to churches, they're assuming they're Christians, and Christians can't get demon possessed. Yet you have people pretending to be demon possessed in the church. And I say pretending because, well, I don't know the devil made me do it, and this is like a double or triple sin here, alright? So you ever see people in life when they do something wrong, they make themselves the victim,
going back to kids, right? So they make themselves a victim. This is called manipulation. You're dealing with, like a serial narcissist. Like, sorry, kids. When people keep doing it through their adult life and they haven't had this trained out of them, it's a serial narcissist, I'm going to do something wrong and then manipulate you, right? And feeling bad for me, I ever hear someone's call their sin, their cross? You know it's like,
that's not your cross, right? So, right, that's what they're doing. It's getting way too quiet in here. So anyway, anyway, that's what's going on. So for the person, it's like, this cycle, and they're like, they're getting redeemed, like the altar call, like, redeem and possess every week I'm like, You're not saved. Like, that's the problem here. You don't have the Holy Spirit in you, right? So that's what's going on here. The devil made me do it. Feel sorry for me. Imma come back next week and do it again.
The Word of God doesn't What did the Word of God just say, No, right? It didn't say, like, you're sent to say, except, if you've got a demon, that's okay,
no, right? Because if you have the Holy Spirit in you, you can't have a demon, right? So manipulation, real bad. And we saw this today, First John 518, we know that God's children do not make a practice of sinning, right? There, for God's Son holds him securely, and the evil one, demons, or the prince of demons, cannot touch them
because you have the Holy Spirit, right? So the devil can't make you do it. If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you wanted to do it right. So now, speaking of First John, we'll get to another one that people twist. First John, one eight. If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that His word has no place in our hearts. Okay, so the misuse here, right? Oh, I can just do whatever I want, otherwise I'm a liar, right? So that's kind of the twisted logic there at Jesus's expense. That's the problem. So if we just look carefully at the verse itself, we see a couple things have alright? So that's the sin nature. Say, No, we have no sin in Greek, achy. So it's to have it we have a sin nature. So if we say we don't have a sin nature, we're lying, right? That's all it's talking about there. So.
Right, sinned with an E and A D at the end of it, and don't make any jokes there.
Okay? So you can laugh at certain inappropriate things. It's okay. I wasn't a trap. You'll look at the trap. That's not a trap. I wasn't trying to trap you. You can just laugh when I say really stupid things like that, and then catch myself. You can laugh at me. It's fine, alright. Anyway, so is that a sin? No. Anyway, sin past tense, right? So Jesus has cleansed us. It says, from those sins and cleanse us from all wickedness. Hello, right. So reading comprehension skills for people who are using this the wrong way. Now the best way to get more clarity is simply turn the page of your Bible, because then it says this first, John, two, one my dear children, I'm writing this to you so that you will not sin,
but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. He himself is a sacrifice that atones for our sins, and not only our sins, but the sins of all the world, right? So why is John writing? He gives you, like his purpose, right, so that you won't sin. That's His purpose, His state of purpose for writing, right? Okay, cool, but Jesus's sacrifice if it happens, like I said, not just acknowledging that if it happens, right? Okay, cool. We're not well, not cool, but still, we good. We'll pray, confess, you're forgiven, right? But check it out, right? Jesus sacrificed himself for us, not though, so that we can sin, right? It's so that we don't.
That's the point, right? If we keep reading second, John, two, three, and we can be sure that we know him if we obey His commands. If someone claims I know God but doesn't obey God's commands, that person is a liar and not living in the truth. But those who obey God's word truly show how completely they love him. That is how we know or this that is how we know we are living in Him. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did?
Are we seeing that theme come up? So it's kind of funny. Now, who's the liar?
The one who says they love God but doesn't obey Him and live like Jesus? Now, we couldn't stop reading right there, but this is so important that you get to the third chapter. First John, 34 everyone who sins is breaking God's law. For all sin is contrary to the law of God. So there it blows away that kind of like venial, mortal, all sin like all sin. So it could have gone to James 210, as well. This is the same type of thing. And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins and that there's no sin in him. Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin,
okay, but anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is. Dear children, don't let anyone deceive you about this. I think the evangelical church needs to like read this again. When people do what is right, it shows that they're righteous, even as Christ is righteous. When people keep on sinning, it shows they belong to the devil who has been sinning since the beginning, but the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil definitely not going to be the verse of the day in your app. Those who have been born into God's family do not make a practice of sinning, because God's life is in them, so they can't
keep on sinning
because they are children of God. So now we can tell who are children of God and
who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously, does not love other believers, does not belong to God. Now here's where I could just drop the mic and leave you guys feeling horrible this morning, right? But that's do we get it right? Does it say this should be enough like it? Don't? You know, this is pretty redundant, right? Jesus came to take away our sins, to die for us so that we wouldn't do those things anymore. We should be filled with His Spirit so that we like can't.
God is so much a part of us. We can't. I don't want to do that. I'll make a mistake, yes, but then I bring it to my attention. Fix it. I don't want to do that. That's bad, right? And we love him. We don't sin at his expense. Jesus didn't die so that you could just do whatever you want, right? So it's a strong statement, if that wasn't enough, it shows twice that they are children of the devil.
That's God's word, right? It's a good translation, too.
So the letter concludes we saw, I didn't tell you, but basically it's couple verses away. We know that God's children do not make a practice of sitting. That was at first John 518 dear children take keep away from anything that can. Take God's place in your hearts, showing us the real issue. That's how he ends the letter, God's children do not make a practice of sinning. So do we still believe what people say about the verse in question that they misuse? It is clarified. Read.
Abundantly like there's no lawyering that, right? So that false teaching, which is not as ridiculous as it is, there are similar verses that people will kind of abuse. Those are the most popular teachings lately, but they're all reconciled the same way, simply by reading your Bible. When you just keep reading, you get to it. So one of them occurs in Romans. And so we looked at Romans. I want to talk about this because it's super popular. And then we'll kind of get to the application here. So Romans, they all know that sin is wrong, not complicated, right? It's obvious. The other one they get to is Romans, 323, for everyone, is sin. We all fall short of God's glorious standards. Kind of good translation there? Same misuse as First John one, right? So the same type of thing. Okay, then I'll just do whatever I want, you know, and they don't keep reading, right? So context, there is unity. Paul is leveling the playing field. So again, like Ephesians, Romans, is very similar in this way, you have the Jewish and the Gentile Christians, and they're going at it, thinking they're better than one another. And he's saying this to say you're all sinners like, basically, shut up. You're all sinners like you just got done telling the Jews, if you know so much, teach yourself, right? So you're all sinners, stop it, right? The next one occurs in chapter seven, and so this is another one people use now in your Bible, at this section,
it may say something like struggling with sin, right? That's not in the original alright. So when you look at your Bible, there are a couple of things. Couple of things that are not in the original text. And we've talked about this as a church, a sermon on the mount, sermon on Mount, Matthew five through seven, one continuous flow of Jesus speaking, right? There's no like chapter six. Okay, guys, come back next week. We'll take care of that part of the sermon, right? So when you stop, you're walking out on Jesus's sermon, Matthew five through seven meant to be read like a sermon in one shot, you're going to miss his point. We saw this as a church like over and over again. It's like, oh gosh, he clarifies so many things in there, right? So this is the same, alright? So we have to understand that. So the numbers are not in the original In fact, in the New Testament, the numbers didn't come till 12 100,000
years later, you're starting to get the numbers right. The other thing is these descriptive headings, and sometimes I hate them, because that's all you look at when you're reading the chapter. There's so much more there. So hey, it's limiting B sometimes it's wrong,
and this is wrong, so calling it struggling with sin. So here's what we'll look at it, Romans, 714, so the trouble is not with the law. So Paul is writing power of the Holy Spirit, for spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I'm all too human, a slave to sin. That's Paul talking. I don't really understand myself. For I want to do what is right, but I don't do it instead. I do what I hate. But if I know that what I'm doing is wrong, this shows that I agree the law is good, so
I am not the one doing wrong. It is sin living in me. It sounds like the deliverance ministry,
right? The argument here is that Paul is struggling with sin.
Now I want you to remember a phrase he's saying that he's a slave to sin.
Paul. Now, to anyone who reads your Bible, this should sound really weird, right? Because in Philippians, we talked about this a little bit back, he describes himself as being blameless. And also, whenever he says he's a slave to something, he says he's a slave of Jesus. He's a slave of God, not of sin. So it should sound wrong, like, so the fact that people, even people translating the Bible, are not picking up on this, and by the way, the argument I'm presenting to you is the scholarly argument. So people understand Greek. It's not something like oddball theory. This is what any actual Greek person reading the Bible in Greek would tell you. So, like, scholars know this.
So it should sound weird, right? We have to understand this. And this is, I know maybe it takes, like, a certain level to understand, I don't know, but when you're learning Greek, and pastor should all take the time to learn Greek, all of them, and they should spend a lot of time actually reading it, not like parsing words they can't read. You know, just reading the Greek and understanding rhetorical devices of this time, like how it works, bless you, how it actually works, right? So it's a literary device, and you can look it up, and it's known among scholars, and people can read Greek prosopopoeia or prosopia, and if you're Greek, I know I said it wrong, but it's two Greek works make a face. That's what's going on here. That's what Paul's doing here. And so if you know the context now, it's another thing, and I'm surprised pastors don't know the context of it's like the sermon on Mount five through seven here. The context of Romans five through seven is Adam and Christ contrasted. And so long story short, what Paul's doing is here, make a face. Paul is going to mock Adam, and he puts on the mask, and he's speaking like Adam. Oh, what a miserable person I am. I'm a slave to say they would do this kind of thing if they were publicly speaking. You see this in the Bible, Paul stretches out his hand and he addresses people. It's rhetoric. It's what he's doing. He's making fun of Adam. We do that today, don't we? You see people.
Giving speeches and stuff, and they'll make fun of other people. I'm not going to no one's I'm not going to mention anybody, but you see very famous people making fun of other famous people, right? And they'll do it in their voice. They'll do it. So we understand how this works, but that's how it's no different in the Greek, right? So that's what he's doing here. He's mocking Adam. Now we proof this by reading our Bibles, because if we'd started from the beginning, I want you to remember something Paul, well, there for the people saying Paul just called himself a slave to sin. So Right? And he just can't control himself, like, that's what's going on here, okay? But if we had, like, not like done like, one verse of a day at a time. We had not done one chapter at a time. If you read it the way it's supposed to be read, we started from the beginning. You would have arrived at six, and you would have seen this Romans six one, and that's before seven. Just in case you didn't know Romans 61 well, then should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not. May it never be in the Greek since we have died to sin. How can we live in it?
Okay, so should we keep on sinning? No, we've died to it. Romans, six, six. We'll just kind of jump down a little. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. How? Pray tell is Paul struggling with it? Then we are no longer slaves to sin.
It can't be Paul saying he is a slave to sin. Otherwise he's a liar. And I don't think so. The Holy Spirit's not making him lie either. For when we died with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin has no control over us, right? Romans, 611, so you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. Do not let sin control the way you live. Do not give in the sinful desire. So here it's a lot like First John, sounding like it's cohesive, right? No power over us, especially if you have the spirit Romans, 617, thank God. Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin. Is he saying this enough? And then you have become slaves to righteous living if we hop down a couple verses, but now you are free from the power of sin and becomes and become slaves of God. So he calls himself like a slave of Jesus Christ. Now you do those things. Let's talk about commitment here. So don't think our through our worldview lens, or that kind of stuff. It's just commitment, right? So we talked about slavery in the Bible. Now, you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. That's eternal death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ, Jesus, our Lord. So this is really redundant, right? We're no longer slaves to sin. So then you get those verses in seven. Now, just in case you forgot chapter six, because, like, the Bible study was too long after that, Paul is going to clarify pretty well for I'm just going to let the word of God speak Romans, eight, one. So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ, Jesus, and because you belong to him, the power of the life giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The Law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own son in a body like the bodies we sinners have, and in that body, God declared an end to sins control over us by giving us his son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law will be fully satisfied for us who no longer follow our sinful nature, but instead follow the Spirit. Those who are dominated by their sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please God. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death, and we saw what kind of death that was, but letting the spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God's laws, and it never will. That is why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God. But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit. If you have the Spirit of God living in you. And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to God at all. Goes back to that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit thing, right? So if you don't have the Holy Spirit and you do not belong to God. So there it is, right? And Christ lives within you. So even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you've been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you, and just as God raised Christ, Jesus from the dead, He will give life to your mortal bodies by the same Spirit living within you. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do, For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if, through the power of the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God,
right? So it's crystal clear, and here's the thing, Jesus died for the forgiveness of sin.
Is, and that's where most, I think, like mainline, like Protestants, stop, but they forget to read this. And also to put an end to sins, control over us. Did you catch that
he died for the forgiveness and says, and also to end sins, control over us? Another reason Jesus died. You don't hear that too much, do you? Alright? So this really just destroys that the Word of God. Leave it up to the Word of God. It's up to destroy that argument about Romans seven, it's foolishness to believe something like that. The Word of God says otherwise. Now, again, there are other places, but they're all reconciled the same way, by reading, just by simply reading the whole thing. So now a question comes to mind, just gets kind of like an application here. Now you feel horrible, but I feel horrible about myself too. So, so the question comes to mind for a lot of people, okay, wait a minute and more lawyering, right? Is it possible, though, to live a life free of sin? I don't think so, right? So that's what comes up, right? Well, yes and no, right?
We're all going to make mistakes. Like you can ask my wife, I make mistakes every day, right? So
we're all going to do that, right? But the Holy Spirit's power, you know, clean it up. I correct. Oh, I did not want to bother you, so I kind of fix it, right? And we see that there are like, if you're a careful reader, you're going to see Paul calls himself blameless according to the law, which, that's crazy, but I don't think he's a liar. You see Zechariah and Elizabeth John, the Baptist parents in the beginning of the gospel of Luke, they're described as people living blamelessly according to the law. So the Bible is telling us it's possible, doesn't say it's not right. It's a yoke that no one could bear. Peter says in Acts. But there also are, you know, it's unbearable to do it, but
people were doing it, it was totally possible. That's what the Bible says. Unless Paul's liar. Again, I'll mix up and again. In First John, we saw we must live as Jesus did.
Peter agrees too. If we go over to First Peter, First Peter, 221, for God called you to do good, even if it means suffering. Just as Christ suffered for you. He is our example, and you must follow his steps. He never sinned, nor deceived anyone what
we must follow Jesus. And so now we're seeing this is redundant, too. He must be like Jesus. He never sinned. So there's a little bit of an expectation right there that's interesting, right? And it's an appropriate response, right, to what he did for us. If we have, like, yeah, like, that's the appropriate reason not to go, Yeah, I think I'm going to dabble in my sin. Like, that's an inappropriate response to what Jesus did. Um, we looked at John eight last week, and Jesus was saying he's God before Abraham was I AM, right? So John 858, I believe. But if we go up and we read from the beginning of John, we'd see a very famous story. It's about the woman caught in adultery, right? And pretty much everybody knows it, right? So, and you know, probably, if you never read the Bible, right, he who was without sin will cast the first stone, right? So then, from the oldest to the youngest, they drop their sins. She's supposed to get the death penalty for it according to the law of Moses, right? And that's it like, that's what you hear.
But keep reading. This is the part that most people leave out. John, 810, then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you, no, Lord, she said, And Jesus said, Neither do I go and sin no more.
We see here that Jesus saves this woman, and then he commands a response.
It's appropriate. So this is a picture of how Jesus expects us to respond.
Clearly, it's possible. Now,
this is really interesting. I put some thought in this, because this is a pretty recent teaching. We're talking about sin in the last series a little bit. And then I kind of touched on this. But I really gave this some full thought, and I shared this with Bible study after that teaching. So just to, as we kind of come to a close here, I just want to kind of share a practical thought that really occurred to me. And so if you've been in the church for a while, you know that we have a heart for people in recovery, so that that's the first thing you have to understand. If you're new, if you're if you're not new here, you know where going. And you know my heart when I say this, and I love all of you, and I'm just, I just want to see everybody in the word and filled with the Holy Spirit. So but if you're not in you might be like, Oh man, this guy just like, raised up some kind of crazy standard. You know, I'm going to get judged if I come here, not by me.
Because if you know my past, you know my wife's past, we have a real heart for people in recovery, those struggling, and we meet every single person, where they are, every person, and we're patient, because the Bible tells us, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, for the spirit, patience, very patient, you know, you know. So I tell the truth. I'm going to give you guys the truth, but I'm not going to hammer you like you know, just whatever you know what I mean. Just keep trying. Keep trying, right? And because God's been in this with the Bible.
Said we read it, but God's been patient with me, and I always remember that. So I just want you to know that that's where my heart is. And because of this, we have meetings for people. Well, we host or allow recovery meetings to happen here, right? So we're always doing stuff like that to the community for those who are struggling with something, those in need. You know, you hear a little bit about, like, eating here after every service, we feed everybody, so we care, we care about people, and we want to create bridges. That's the purpose in doing that, right? So I actually like AA, because it brings more people into the church that might not know Jesus, right? So you can have Christian recovery. There's nothing wrong with that. But when you have aa, now I'm bringing in people are not Christians, into the church. Yes, right. So that's how you reach them, and you create that bridge. So it works really well. Here. We've been doing this for 10 years or more, like we've just been our thing, and it works great. So many and so many people from this church have come in through the meetings, and, you know, like, yes, it works really well. But we're showing those people grace. But on that whole thing history, I kind of like start thinking about this for a second. So if I didn't say it already, or you don't know my wife, everybody here knows my wife. She's got 10 years sober, amazing, right? And so she first started on that journey in AA, yeah, definitely, right. So that's where she got her journey. So this is my higher power. But okay, let me show you who that higher power is, right? So now she knows that that's Jesus, right? So we're testimonies ourselves. So the power,
the program is a power. But how useful that program can be for some people who might never step foot in a church. So you can go, oh, we'll do this kind of Christian recovery, right? But you have, you haven't gotten over that first circle. They're not going to church, because hypocrites, right? So all these people getting everything, the people with the picket signs who gossip and yell and use abusive language, anger, slander, they're sinning like crazy and pointing out one particular sin, right? So I don't blame it, because we didn't go either. I don't want to be a part of those expletive there. I don't want to be one of them, right? Because they're hypocrites. Mm, hmm. So we try to show people we're not okay with all that being said. We're saying in case it belong, we're going to eat, don't worry.
But think about I probably shouldn't be saying that. I'm sorry if I but I'm not in the program, so I didn't
break their rules anyway. So whatever, that's more emails to read Monday, but
great.
So
you really love to see me literally put my foot in my mouth, won't you? You come back again next week.
So, but think about the Recover pointers like so just, just, let's step Stop, stop. And you know, so you've, if you've been in evangelical Christianity for a long time, you've probably heard something like one of these false teachings, right? Like it's impossible to live a sin free life. You might heard that, right? I did too. What do you think about something for a second? What is the premise for these recovery meetings? They pick a sin, their most dominant one, by the way, right? Their favorite sin, the one I'm struggling with my cross. You know, however Christians identify, they pick one of those and they stop it.
10 years.
Stop it.
10 years. If you go to any of these meetings, I highly recommend it.
You'll see 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and then sometimes longer than I'm alive of sobriety. So think for a second sometimes if these people don't know Jesus, if some of them do, some of them don't, let's say they don't.
You have someone without the power of the Holy Spirit,
without the conviction of what Jesus did for them. It's not there. They just picked it sin and stopped doing it.
Now we're going to run around bunch of hypocrites and say, You need the Holy Spirit, and you won't be doing this one particular sin. And the Holy Spirit's so powerful,
but they can't stop their favorite sin. Yeah, that's why we look ridiculous to these people,
Christianity to the outside world, for that reason,
looks incredibly insincere,
incredibly insincere.
So some encouragement, you know, and just practical, you know. And that's all it is, right? Without God, that's all it is. It's just picking something and just not doing it anymore. And you talk to anyone in recovery, if they're doing it without Jesus, there's white knuckling, there's tough times, you know what I mean, and then you find Jesus, and it gets easier. And I'm not going to speak for my wife, but from what I understand of her, she doesn't have that desire anymore. Now, if I use too much, like probably an alcoholic, she's like, Oh no,
but it's not a desire, right? It makes her angry. She doesn't want it anymore, right?
So that's a sin. But
anyway, this is what it's like for her. So just pray for her. Pray for this is, this is what it's like constantly me just talking to myself and depicting her, possible, piecing her, masking her and going back. So it's that's it, the Holy Spirit will help you. So look some of Paul's letters, right? They were written in prison. When you think about the condition, like Philippians, Ephesians, some of the things we were reading, you know, prison is not really a place that you want to go, right? It really helps you to understand that Paul's writing some of this from a jail cell. Worse than anything we have not good, right? And so maybe some of you haven't been to prison, maybe some of you have. That's right, we love you. It's okay, right? Like, but the sin got you there, right? And then some of you have committed sins where you're like, you know, I was lucky I didn't get there. But what people don't realize is whether you've gotten out of a physical prison, whether you have not been thrown in a physical prison. A lot of you are living in one.
A lot of people have created their own prison of sin
because it is.
And I can tell you, I can just testify here, I'm not totally free of sin, like I make mistakes, but wow, a lot less. And I don't think the way I used to think, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and I've achieved levels of joy, and it's so nice like to just not have to wake up the next morning, right? Oh, and you got to start reviewing all the conversations you had and all the stupid stuff you said. And maybe it's not like that, right? Maybe it's not a addiction problem, you know, or a substance abuse problem, you know. And think about it. How many times have you
right? And then you spend it's a prison of comment, checking,
how many of you live in a prison of comment? Checking,
I did. It was terrible.
Prison of comment, checking, I'm like, I let my
daughter Delete.
You delete it. I don't want to argue with you, because arguing is a sin. I don't argue about it a prison of comment. Check it. But you did it to yourself that you created the prison for yourself, you know. So it doesn't have to be if you think these big, dramatic things that really doesn't work, this hamster wheel of insanity. Stop like I meant so much joy that I just don't care. I really just don't care. But that's the Holy Spirit. That's not me, because old, prideful, sin, nature, Gene, cares. I cared about what everybody thought of me. Clearly, if you're new today, I really don't care what any y'all think about me. But it's freeing, and it's freeing. I'm not codependent, right? I'm like, whatever buy. It's the only way you can do this job,
alright, but it's freeing. So if that's you today, right? It's big or small, whether there is wreckage, right? And you're tired of creating the record, you're tired of apologizing, you're tired of the shame, you're tired of the guilt, you're tired of the regret I invite you this morning to be freed from all of that
you can be free in Christ.
So if that's you today,
and you really want to feel that love, that joy that's lacking for you, and you're just kind of getting sick of the hamster wheel of insanity. You're going to be told how you can connect with us, alright? So you can reach out. You can fill out connection cards. If you give me your cell phone number, I personally will text you back, right? And this is the open door. We can talk. We can talk about baptism, whatever it is, you can meet. There's other people in the church too. You can just talk to them, buddy. You up, right? So we don't want to see you living that life alone in that prison. We want to see you experience and that's the freedom of Christ, that's the freedom that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self control, that you desire.
Let me pray for you,
Lord. I thank you for everyone who took the time to come in and hear Your word this morning. And I pray for those,
those who are still really struggling with whatever it is they're struggling with, and Lord, just bring them to whatever point. I pray for high bottoms, Lord, well, there's surrender, and they'll just receive your spirit,
and they'll find that love and that joy and that peace that you want them to have. And then for those who have found it, I pray that you strengthen us, Lord. You make us vehicles of your love, your grace, your mercy,
so the gospel can go out to those who so desperately need it. I ask these things in Jesus's name. Amen,
In this sermon, Pastor Gene explores the concept of sin and its consequences, emphasizing that all people are sinners. The speaker clarifies common misconceptions about sin, such as the idea of "venial" versus "mortal" sins, and addresses the false teaching that it is impossible to live a life apart from sin. He also addresses the misuse of certain Bible verses, particularly those related to the unforgivable sin and the existence of demons in Christians. The speaker concludes by urging listeners to embrace the freedom that comes with accepting Jesus Christ and seeking the Holy Spirit's guidance, highlighting the transformative power of God's love and grace in overcoming sin.
Good morning. Welcome if you're new here among us. My name is Gene. I serve here at C3 church as your pastor, and in this series, we talked about the phrase getting your hand caught, or getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar. A little bit. Now, I use this phrase to illustrate the point that we're a bunch of sinners, right from childhood, right? So that's why, right? Kids, nobody's innocent. As kids, we are liars, we are thieves. Now here's the thing you can look at this. It doesn't have to be a cookie jar, but maybe as a kid, you got caught doing something you should not have been doing. What's the normal reaction. Well, you like withdrawal, so if it's a cookie jar, you're going to take your hand out of there real quick and then, like, come up with something else. But parents do this, and you don't know this as a kid, but they're setting you up. They're like cops, right? Because they ask you a rhetorical question, what are you doing? They know what you're doing. They can see what you're doing, right, because they want to get a twofer, right? So they want to get two birds, one stone. They're a little angry because they got caught, so taking it on you, right? So they want to catch you in a lie too. So now you're a thief and a liar all at once. And so this is where our problems begin, probably. But anyway, anyway, so the normal reactions to do that, though, that's what that's how we're wired, right, as human beings. But I heard a story about a little boy who climbed up on top of the refrigerator where there was a cookie jar. It was a clear glass cookie jar. So it's dangerous, right? He's on the chair. He climbs up the chair, and he's reaching. He could barely get it, his hands not really touching the cookie but the jars tilted over the mom comes in.
What are you doing?
But here's the funny thing, doesn't pull his hand out, just freezes, like, just like this, and not answering the question. And so a lot of thoughts start going through a parent's mind, right? Like, I wonder if there's like, this looks hard. I wonder if there's like, a ninja gym nearby. We start training this kid her favorite show, right? Things like that, like, Maybe he thinks the invisible game is real, you know, I don't know, but he's up there and just froze.
I can see you … he’s still not moving, and now it's getting difficult. Jars tilted, and so he's kind of like straining. Let me ask the first question again, what are you doing?
I'm fighting temptation.
Clever kid.
Alright, we find ourselves in our reset series. So this is a really good series. No matter where you at, where you're at, like, even if you've been a Christian for many, many years, it's always good to go back through the basics. Through the process of writing these sermons, I'm looking at old notes going, oh, you know, so that's interesting. So it's good, right? Solid foundation. Just as Jesus ends a sermon on the mount, like everything is built on that solid foundation. So you know that basics are really important. If you're brand new, great time to come in, right? If you want to just start and get it right from the beginning. This is a really great series. We're looking at the basics, but maybe you've been a Christian for a while and you've stumbled in one way, shape or form, because maybe the basics weren't solid.
Reset. So here's your chance. So we can all go back to the beginning, and like I said, it's just been really good for me, even like doing these sermons and trying to make it as basic as possible. So last week talk about hard to make basic the Trinity, right? So we talked about experiencing the Trinity. So really interesting. God is three persons and one essence. That was the essence of that teaching. But we talked about experiencing the Trinity, as opposed to, like, all this theological stuff, right? We got the basic understanding and experiencing. So today we're going to talk about those who reject that experience, but let's just go back. We'll look at the role of the Holy Spirit. First, I want to pick up on this. John 16 five, but now I'm going away. This is Jesus speaking. Now I'm going away to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking where I'm going. Instead, you grieve because of what I've told you, and in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don't, the advocate won't come. She's talking about the Holy Spirit. If I do go away, then I'll send him to you, and when He comes, He will convict the world of its sin and of God's righteousness, and with coming judgment, the world's sin, is it that it refuses to believe me? So today we are going to talk about sin. So a lot of people ask the question, and it sounds kind of funny, but basics, right? Like, let's look at the basics here. What is sin? So if you go back in the series, and you can watch em online, we're only at what part five, I think, today, we talked about the Bible, and I was really trying to summarize the whole Bible. Like, what's the point when we begin reading the Old Testament, you just see the common denominator is, no matter who you're talking about, from Adam and Eve to Abraham, like there are people just constantly rejecting God, right? So what happens pride? They say, you know, they want to be like God, right from the beginning, but they had paradise. It was perfect, right? So, totally perfect. Better than Naples, right?
Right? Total paradise. Hard to believe that, right? Paradise, but they reject it like, no, no, that's not enough, right? Sin. They're rejecting God, right? So when you look at all these stories and you start thinking about it, you're like, Yeah, right. And then we accept God through Jesus, He saves us, right? Going to bring us back to paradise. So that's what's going on here, right? And throughout, we just saw that humankind just constantly chooses sin because we have a sin nature. That's what it's teaching us. Now, despite all of this, you might have heard like people are generally good. You might have heard that it's wrong, right? So theologically, it's just wrong. Otherwise Jesus would not have had to die like so there's nobody good because of Jesus, right? So that's the point here, if you're a Christian, if you're not, well, that's the truth, right? And so otherwise, going back in the series, I wouldn't have brought up that phrase, right? Caught in the cookie jar. We wouldn't do that, you know, it wouldn't be so common if all kids weren't thieves and liars, right? You know. And some people think they'll lawyer it, right? Have you ever stolen anything? They'll be like, No. And they're thinking like Grand Theft Auto, right? Or like a bank robbery, but simple things, right? Have you ever picked up money on the ground
it didn't belong to you? Right? So that's the thing we're wired to do. Those kinds of things. Lied, right? People will say, Oh, yeah. Okay, so usually get people on that one cheated. Now people start thinking, Well, I don't think I don't cheated on my spouse or this and that, but what does Jesus say? Heart issue? If you've even looked at somebody else with lust in your heart, you're a cheater, right? You committed adultery.
Doesn't sound like a good person or a person with a good heart, right? Jesus takes it that step. Even if you're angry with someone else, he'd liken it to murdering them, right? So heart, right? Not a good heart. So we've all sinned and fallen short of godliness.
God gave us free will. But again, what do we what did we do with that? Right? We rejected him. That's the story here, right? So now people will start asking, this is, we're funny, right? So kids, if you're a parent, you get this, right? Kids are lawyers, right? But what if? What if? But what if? Like, you know, you set down a role, and they come up with, like, it's amazing, like, 10,000 ways to break that rule, right? And that's what people do. So when I get asked, as a pastor, well, is this sin? I'm like, if you had to ask, right? Like, you know, you're just trying to get permission to sin from me. So they'll start asking about all these different things. So we looked at Galatians five, and we saw the benchmark for a Christian. We saw the fruit of the Spirit. If, how do you know if somebody's a Christian? Well, they're going to display the fruit of the Spirit. And that connects to Jesus saying, judge a tree by his fruit, right? So they're going to produce that good fruit, and they're probably not going to produce a lot of bad fruit. Or in Galatians, the sin of the flesh. So let's look at them both together. Now I'm trying to kind of weave these things through as we move forward. Galatians, 519, when you follow the desires of your sinful nature. So pay attention to the words, right? Nature. The results are very clear, sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, upwards of anger, self, ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness and wild parties and other sins like these. Don't worry. I'll say them really slow in a minute. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God, but
the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. There's no law against these things. So that's that evidence, right? We have the fruit of the Spirit. And here we see that sin nature, that the Holy Spirit is at war against they're kind of opposed to one another fighting. Now, on this list, some seem really big to certain people, like, Oh yeah, you know, that's the ones like I said in the past. That's the one we pick it, right, you know? But clearly in the same list, without saying, but these are, like, not a big deal, guys. And then goes through these, but you see them, hostility,
quarreling, I told you to make you feel uncomfortable this morning.
It's amazing what silence can do. Jealousy,
outbursts of anger, selfish, ambitious, actually, wrath in the Greek so it's like anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division,
envy, drunkenness. So those two are for like a lot of people enabled wild parties and other sins like these, not making any more comments. So we can clearly see now we have all sinned. We're all sinners, in a way, also look at that more carefully, right? And those who continue, there's a really stern warning in there, those who continue in them will not inherit the kingdom of God. So what is Jesus talking about? You know, the fruit of the Spirit, right? So judge a tree by fruit produces bad fruit. It's not a good tree.
Right? So it's simple. So we see other places, similar list with similar warnings. First, Timothy's one you see like, you know, murders and sexual immorality, homosexuality is in there, kidnapping, liars, promise breakers. If you go to Ephesians, the point of the book of Ephesians is unity, right? So none of this envy, jealousy, strife, divisions, disorder, is trying to get the church to get along right. So in that context, Ephesians four, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, is what you see here. So it starts, oh, wait a minute. So old, sin natures old, put on your new nature right through the Holy Spirit. It'll go through sins, lustful pleasures, practice of every kind of impurity lies. Anger comes up again. If you're a thief, don't let the sun go down. Your anger if you're a thief, quit stealing, right? So foul and abusive language is in there again, brings up the Holy Spirit. Don't basically grieve the Holy Spirit. Don't bring sorrow to the Holy Spirit. By the way you live. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, in another contrast, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God, through Christ, has forgiven you. So we see a lot of different sins there. You see those ones like lying and stealing, like I don't do that. That's not me. And then some that people really don't think are sins like foul language,
okay? And lying, right? You don't have to yell. Pastors not to yell. Just so funny, be quiet. It's worse, right? So anger. Again, anger comes up a lot people don't like choose to notice this in the Bible, over and over and over again. Anger, anger, anger. It's a sin. So again, have you ever been angry with someone
sin, right? So there's no chapter breaks in the original, right? So there's no numbers or anything. So it continues, and we'll read it. Ephesians, five, one, imitate God. Therefore in some of the stuff you do, no everything you do, because on Sundays, imitate God on Sundays for one hour. No, it doesn't say that. Because you are his dear children, live a life, life filled with love, following the example of Christ, of Jesus, he loved us and offered Himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing enrollment of God. Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity or greed among you, such sins have no place among God's people. I've seen stories, foolish talk, coarse jokes. These are not for you. That's not my joke in the beginning. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God. You can be sure that no immoral, impure or greedy person will inherit the kingdom of Christ, of God, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Don't be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey. Don't participate in these things or the things these people do. For once, you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light, for this light within you produces only what is good, right, and true.
So and Paul continue into spirit, guided living, right? So we kind of see a little bit of the picture of the Trinity here, if we apply what we learned about the Trinity, right? Imitate God, right? Who Jesus is, your example. So be like him. And then how the Holy Spirit, right? So you're going to let the Holy Spirit guide your life. So the Holy Spirit gives you the power to follow Jesus's example. And again, there's a list of a lot of things that people do casually
and they don't think it's a big deal, and like Galatians, a very stern warning about not inheriting the kingdom of God if you're living that way.
So
even the ones like people normally excuse, right, greed, foolish talk. So
again, the Bible says when people start excusing these things or making no big deal of them, we should not listen to them, right? No. So it's clear that they have rejected God very
so again, like I said before, like, what is sin? Well, if you have to ask, it's probably sin, right? So you know, and on that topic, we talked about God, like, the existence of God the very beginning of the series, like, Does God even exist? Right? So We answered that question because the first the most basic question that you have to answer before moving forward. And in that, Paul's very clever, a couple clever arguments here. He's got the Holy Spirit and so really good. He'll loop this argument into two different sections that we're going to talk about today. First is just knowing God. We already talked about that, but let's just take a look at it with this in light Romans, 118 but God shows His anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by the wickedness. They know the truth about God because He has made it obvious to them forever. Since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky through everything God made. They can clearly see isn't.
Visible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God, right? So that's what we were talking about there. But here we see they also don't have an excuse for the sin either. So he'll continue. Romans 124 God abandoned them, so God so they're doing all this bad stuff, so God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created, instead of the Creator Himself, who is worthy of eternal praise. Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulge in sex with each other, and the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. I hope no one kept their kids in this room right now I forgot to say, oops. Well, we told you to take him to the kids room. Men did shameful things with each other, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserve. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, He abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior and gossip. Does this sound really repetitive? Yes, and there's a reason for that. There are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. Where's my daughter?
No, she's good. And they refuse to understand, break their promises. Are heartless and have no mercy. They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die. Yet they do them anyway. Worse yet they encourage others to do them too. So we see more sins here, right? Some of them, they're like the no big deal sins, but they keep coming up over and over again, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior and gossip, their backstabbers, hairs of God, insolent, proud, boastful. So again, sins people kind of casually engage in, but the Word of God says they're extremely serious, right? Greed, hate, quarreling like
Christians don't know you're not supposed to do that, alright? And then you have pride, which is always a sin, pride in anything I've talked about this in the past. You've been in this church for a while. You've heard this. There's sometimes like innocent idioms and like an NLT, are easy to understand, like you're my pride and joy. Paul never says that, right? So it's not pride there, alright, so I was in the it's not there in the Greek. It's coffee Ma, like a boast, but not about yourself, alright? So
again, so on both sides of everything, we have to realize, like pride and it's not good that it is a sin,
and that includes homosexuality. And you heard me say it, there it is, right? So the word of God says it, I'm not apologizing for it.
No, buts right. So here's the thing, though, not singling it out, alright? It talked about the casual sins too, and they're all in the same list. And for those of you who have the picture, picket signs or whatever it is, or online or whatever, please take note. Read your Bible and notice it's not singled out. It's not separated, right? Protest This one. Guys No. Protest yourself. Protest your foul language, protest your quarreling, right? So we have to look at this right with clean eyes to the Holy Spirit us too, right? But let's just talk about it for a second, because talking about like, excusing things, right, or giving approval to certain sins, and so we're kind of, we seem like we're in the age, but I'm going to explain this to you for a second before everyone gets too
excited. Um, Paul is first of all, defeating a really popular argument then and now, of all times, which goes something like,
you know, we've evolved, right? I don't know if you heard this like, you know, they start just, how, what are you how are you going to deal with this? Well, you're going to do two things. If you want to continue in that sin. You're going to try to make it about the Greek language, which none of them know. So I've read it. That's what it says. Okay? So it's reiterated. He's reiterating terms from Leviticus. So it's Old Testament, New Testament. It's the same when you're reading it, right? So stop playing with the Greek. That's not it. Paul beats that because he actually describes the act. So now you're done, right? It's a sin. He just takes the time to describe the act. It's a sin. That's all there is to it, right? The other thing,
well, so the whole culturally relevant thing, right? It's not relevant because it's a long time ago, but what you have to understand is it kind of falls apart because, again, he describes the act. Let, let's go back, because we're close to the beginning of the series. What happened when man was created and then needed a helper?
God created another man for him,
right? Created a woman. That's the helper. Now, you know, you figure out a pretty young age those parts.
Go together like they work and they work for a purpose. We're not going to do, like biology class or whatever it is. That's it, as far as I'll go, right? That's we help one another, right? They fit, right. So no jokes, no joke. Okay, so I'm really trying so hard. Like, what's happening in my mind here and coming? I hope they're different.
So
you don't, like recreate God in nature.
It didn't change. Like, nothing about that change. It's the same. You want to change it. I get it, but that's not God changing. It's you and a surgeon, right? So nature hasn't changed. No one has these functions. They just have not changed. So it's not, it's not what he's talking about, right? The other thing too,
you know, think about it as Christians. It should be bothersome in this way, not that we're going to pick that one to protest, because we got to work on our own bad words, gossip, whatever it is, right? But you know, think about it. He made the well, let us make them. What? What would we get to the Trinity like us in our image? Oh, wait a minute, who is the visible image of the invisible God? Jesus, right? He's a man, not claiming to be a woman or anything else. When he's a man. The image of God is male and female,
so it's a distortion of God's creation and God Himself,
not good. Here's the other thing Paul is, you can think about this, yeah, it's old. It's an old writing, but it's pretty impressive, because Paul is writing about round numbers 2000 years ago. A lot of people don't know this. He's talking about things that happened 2000 years before him,
and sounds like he's talking about people today.
Yeah, nothing new under the sun. If you've read your Bible, right? Ecclesiastes, right? It's nothing new here. It's it was going on then it was going on before Paul. And they're making excuses, approval for these things. It's all the same, right? Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever. His nature has not changed, right? If we were made in God's image, that's not going to change,
right? Same yesterday, today and forever. So this is not a cultural problem. It's not a cultural issue. It's a natural issue, alright? So again, this is a rejection of God's image, and he's designed for us. That's what that is, alright? So we came upon it. We talked about it.
Okay? By nature, we should know better, right? So we're going to, we talked a little bit about, like, bad teachings. And you know, if you read your New Testament a lot, it's like, heavy on false teachings, false teachers. So you got to deal with it. So there's some false teachings, like there were on the Trinity I was telling you on, like, sin lawyering, right? And it's really funny, just to share with you, just really
as I went so through this series, a lot of times, I'm like, just going back to my old notes, my stuff from Pastor school, like, just kind of looking at stuff, and before becoming non denominator, this was a non denominational, like, kind of seminary schooling, but it was very Protestant leading. You know, it wasn't really taking everything and say, okay, just, let's just look at Christianity across the board, right? So when I went back, I realized I'm like, Wow, this isn't right either.
So no matter what denomination you come from, like, no, that's just not what the word God says, right? So we'll talk about this.
You know, there's in some denominations, this idea of, like, moral and venial sins, right? So the venial really, kind of, it just means, like, just for, like, make it easy, like, not a big deal, right? So it's not as big of a deal.
That's not what the Bible did you see, what it said, right? So we should know that that's silly by what we wrote. There's no such thing as a sin. That's no big deal, right? So it should be really, really obvious. So
it's dangerous, because on one side of things, this is where you get a lot of these abuses in the church, right, from many years ago, where they abused this confession, which is a very good thing, right? But then you come up with things like indulgences and other things, right? So it's no good in any way, shape or form, like that doesn't work, right? So the other thing it kind of for the, let's just say, congregate it. It lowers the seriousness of the sin. It's all serious, right? He's like, Okay, go say a few prayers, goodbye, and then come back, right?
You know. And now before you're like, wow, that you know Dalmatian. I know you have in your head that does that, alright? But think about it like, okay, Protestants, altar calls.
How many times you going to rededicate yourself to Jesus? You know what I mean? Come on, you know, like, where's the that's why we don't do where's the sincerity in that? Imma, baptize you once, and we're going to make sure you're really serious about it,
because that's what the Bible says. And we'll see more of that, right? So
it's all.
All sin is mortal, like it's all bad, right? The Bible doesn't say anywhere that it's like, these are cool, you know, just do them right? Now, Jesus died for our sins, right? Like, present, past, future, yes, but not so that we could lawyer them, right? That's not sincerity, right? So we do receive forgiveness when we make mistakes, right? So everybody makes mistakes. So some people ask, though, on that vein, like, Are there any unforgivable sins? Like, can you do something and that's like, the mortal side, right? Like, like, you do something that you're never forgiven for?
Well, here's where, where people go. Let's just look at the word of God. So people usually will say blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. That's the unforgivable sin. Why do they say that? Well, Jesus is being approached. He's saying, well, he casts out demons by the prince of demons, but basically he's like demon possessed, and that's why he can do this, right? That's the logic, right? So. Mark 328, he responds, I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences. Mark adds, which is interesting. He told them this because they were saying he's possessed by an evil spirit. So we're looking at this. If you understand the way the Greek language works, the context he could and how Jesus speaks. He could be using some hyperbole here. And even mark kind of says, well, he said this. Because why does he have to give Jesus a disclaimer? Well, because they're saying he has a demon in him, right? So, and Jesus knows about the Holy Spirit in me. There can't be a demon in there too. We'll get to that later.
It can't happen. So he knows this. It's impossible. Is what's going on here, right? So again, it goes like a rejection of God. He's saying, No, I'm with God, and it makes sense if this is the unforgivable sin, because if you've rejected the Holy Spirit, well, you're, what do we talk about? In baptism? You're baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You don't have the Holy Spirit. You're not saved. You're not saved, right? So that's the unforgivable sin. That's the sin of the rejection of God completely no good. Alright, the other place. And we're going to look closely at first John. Today is in First John, so we're just on this topic. Let's just look at it. First John, 516 if you see a fellow believer sinning in a way that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God will give that person life. But there is a sin that leads to death, and I'm not saying you should pray for those who commit it all wicked actions are sin. So, okay, what a lot of times, if you reprise in church, what you'll hear is like something like us, the sin that leads to death. You know, it could be like something like, I don't know, preventing them from getting themselves killed, but it says a sin that leads to death. And if we're being smart, we know that there are a lot of different sins that can get you killed. So, but it's singular here, and the Greek is a good translation, and the Greek, it's singular one sin. So that's not possible. And the Bible will see, like Romans, like the wages of sin is death. They're talking about like eternal death here, right? So there is a sin. So people go, maybe this is that blasphemy, the Holy Spirit in here.
So we could have the same conclusion, right? No spirit, no salvation.
The Holy Spirit, though, will bring a believer to true repentance and then, of course, forgiveness, right? Because if we just keep reading the very next verse says, First John, 518, we know that God's children do not. So this came right after what I just read you a practice of sinning, for God's Son holds them securely, and the evil one cannot touch them. We know that we are God, the children of God, and that the world around us is under control, the evil ones. Remember I was saying that, like Satan's the god of this world, right? It's evil. This world is evil, but do not make a practice of sinning, right? So there's your hand there, so we can see that the sin leading to death is something intentional, right? Which is probably that rejection, see, blasphemy, is a big word, right? You know, the rejection of the Holy Spirit. Let's put it that way, alright? And here's the thing, there are consequences. I'm going to give you a little window in the next week, or talk about some of the consequences, but for this intentional kind of sin or intentionality, and not just
rejecting the Holy Spirit. So Hebrews 1026, dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after you've received knowledge of the truth, there's no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.
There's only the terrible expectation of God's judgment and the raging fire that will consume his enemies. We'll get to that next week for anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses, just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, that is Jesus, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained The Holy, blasphemed the Holy Spirit, who brings God's mercy to us. So did you notice a couple things in there, intentional, like, on purpose, because it fits pretty well with that. What we saw Paul writing like the, you know, in Ephesians, Galatians, like, you know, living that sort of life, right? So it kind of takes more than just, like, Oops, you know, it's, you're doing it. You're setting.
Out to do that intentionally, and that's what the Word of God is talking about here. So if that's something you do, you have to take this seriously. Cannot be dismissed. So there's a difference between like, again, oops, and like, just setting out to do it right. Big difference. So we all make mistakes, but if we have the Holy Spirit, two things are going to happen. He's going to let us know. Hey, you know you're going to feel wrong. Good. You feel wrong doing it. Then right? You're going to listen to him. If you love him, you're not going to do it. Right? That's what the word of God is saying. So the
Bible says it's an interesting thing here. What's going on? Right? Why is it talking about the law of Moses? Well, think about it, right? These people are not necessarily spirit filled people. We talked about that last week, that realization wasn't really there. So if they were put to death for not following the law of Moses, without the tools you guys have, and if Jesus didn't die for their sins, yet, how much worse should the punishment be?
Ooh, right, so it's not this like, no, no, no, Christianity is at a much higher moral standard, right? That's what a lot of Christians fail to understand.
So the Holy Spirit is living on us, giving us the power to not do these things. So speaking of the Holy Spirit and these demons we saw in Mark, I want to address one thing. And honestly, I just unless it's just becoming so prevalent, it seems so ridiculous to me, I wouldn't even address it. But I have to just spend a minute on it another way people excuse him, and you may have heard about it, the deliverance ministry. It's gaining traction popularity with people who don't read their Bibles. Because if you read your Bible, you would have saw the thing in Mark, right? You would have known, well, we just saw it like we'll look at it again in a minute. In first, John the Evil One cannot touch them. Second, Corinthians six, right? Holy Spirit cannot have fellowship with idols, demons, anything like that. If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you can't get demons. And so if you don't know what it is, you know it's all basically, yes, okay, so there's exorcism of demons, right? So we see that all over the Gospels, but they weren't Christians, right? Now,
you have it in the church, and it doesn't make any sense at all, and you don't hear about it at all, right? In Paul's letters to the churches. Why? Because if they're talking to churches, they're assuming they're Christians, and Christians can't get demon possessed. Yet you have people pretending to be demon possessed in the church. And I say pretending because, well, I don't know the devil made me do it, and this is like a double or triple sin here, alright? So you ever see people in life when they do something wrong, they make themselves the victim,
going back to kids, right? So they make themselves a victim. This is called manipulation. You're dealing with, like a serial narcissist. Like, sorry, kids. When people keep doing it through their adult life and they haven't had this trained out of them, it's a serial narcissist, I'm going to do something wrong and then manipulate you, right? And feeling bad for me, I ever hear someone's call their sin, their cross? You know it's like,
that's not your cross, right? So, right, that's what they're doing. It's getting way too quiet in here. So anyway, anyway, that's what's going on. So for the person, it's like, this cycle, and they're like, they're getting redeemed, like the altar call, like, redeem and possess every week I'm like, You're not saved. Like, that's the problem here. You don't have the Holy Spirit in you, right? So that's what's going on here. The devil made me do it. Feel sorry for me. Imma come back next week and do it again.
The Word of God doesn't What did the Word of God just say, No, right? It didn't say, like, you're sent to say, except, if you've got a demon, that's okay,
no, right? Because if you have the Holy Spirit in you, you can't have a demon, right? So manipulation, real bad. And we saw this today, First John 518, we know that God's children do not make a practice of sinning, right? There, for God's Son holds him securely, and the evil one, demons, or the prince of demons, cannot touch them
because you have the Holy Spirit, right? So the devil can't make you do it. If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you wanted to do it right. So now, speaking of First John, we'll get to another one that people twist. First John, one eight. If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that His word has no place in our hearts. Okay, so the misuse here, right? Oh, I can just do whatever I want, otherwise I'm a liar, right? So that's kind of the twisted logic there at Jesus's expense. That's the problem. So if we just look carefully at the verse itself, we see a couple things have alright? So that's the sin nature. Say, No, we have no sin in Greek, achy. So it's to have it we have a sin nature. So if we say we don't have a sin nature, we're lying, right? That's all it's talking about there. So.
Right, sinned with an E and A D at the end of it, and don't make any jokes there.
Okay? So you can laugh at certain inappropriate things. It's okay. I wasn't a trap. You'll look at the trap. That's not a trap. I wasn't trying to trap you. You can just laugh when I say really stupid things like that, and then catch myself. You can laugh at me. It's fine, alright. Anyway, so is that a sin? No. Anyway, sin past tense, right? So Jesus has cleansed us. It says, from those sins and cleanse us from all wickedness. Hello, right. So reading comprehension skills for people who are using this the wrong way. Now the best way to get more clarity is simply turn the page of your Bible, because then it says this first, John, two, one my dear children, I'm writing this to you so that you will not sin,
but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. He himself is a sacrifice that atones for our sins, and not only our sins, but the sins of all the world, right? So why is John writing? He gives you, like his purpose, right, so that you won't sin. That's His purpose, His state of purpose for writing, right? Okay, cool, but Jesus's sacrifice if it happens, like I said, not just acknowledging that if it happens, right? Okay, cool. We're not well, not cool, but still, we good. We'll pray, confess, you're forgiven, right? But check it out, right? Jesus sacrificed himself for us, not though, so that we can sin, right? It's so that we don't.
That's the point, right? If we keep reading second, John, two, three, and we can be sure that we know him if we obey His commands. If someone claims I know God but doesn't obey God's commands, that person is a liar and not living in the truth. But those who obey God's word truly show how completely they love him. That is how we know or this that is how we know we are living in Him. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did?
Are we seeing that theme come up? So it's kind of funny. Now, who's the liar?
The one who says they love God but doesn't obey Him and live like Jesus? Now, we couldn't stop reading right there, but this is so important that you get to the third chapter. First John, 34 everyone who sins is breaking God's law. For all sin is contrary to the law of God. So there it blows away that kind of like venial, mortal, all sin like all sin. So it could have gone to James 210, as well. This is the same type of thing. And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins and that there's no sin in him. Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin,
okay, but anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is. Dear children, don't let anyone deceive you about this. I think the evangelical church needs to like read this again. When people do what is right, it shows that they're righteous, even as Christ is righteous. When people keep on sinning, it shows they belong to the devil who has been sinning since the beginning, but the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil definitely not going to be the verse of the day in your app. Those who have been born into God's family do not make a practice of sinning, because God's life is in them, so they can't
keep on sinning
because they are children of God. So now we can tell who are children of God and
who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously, does not love other believers, does not belong to God. Now here's where I could just drop the mic and leave you guys feeling horrible this morning, right? But that's do we get it right? Does it say this should be enough like it? Don't? You know, this is pretty redundant, right? Jesus came to take away our sins, to die for us so that we wouldn't do those things anymore. We should be filled with His Spirit so that we like can't.
God is so much a part of us. We can't. I don't want to do that. I'll make a mistake, yes, but then I bring it to my attention. Fix it. I don't want to do that. That's bad, right? And we love him. We don't sin at his expense. Jesus didn't die so that you could just do whatever you want, right? So it's a strong statement, if that wasn't enough, it shows twice that they are children of the devil.
That's God's word, right? It's a good translation, too.
So the letter concludes we saw, I didn't tell you, but basically it's couple verses away. We know that God's children do not make a practice of sitting. That was at first John 518 dear children take keep away from anything that can. Take God's place in your hearts, showing us the real issue. That's how he ends the letter, God's children do not make a practice of sinning. So do we still believe what people say about the verse in question that they misuse? It is clarified. Read.
Abundantly like there's no lawyering that, right? So that false teaching, which is not as ridiculous as it is, there are similar verses that people will kind of abuse. Those are the most popular teachings lately, but they're all reconciled the same way, simply by reading your Bible. When you just keep reading, you get to it. So one of them occurs in Romans. And so we looked at Romans. I want to talk about this because it's super popular. And then we'll kind of get to the application here. So Romans, they all know that sin is wrong, not complicated, right? It's obvious. The other one they get to is Romans, 323, for everyone, is sin. We all fall short of God's glorious standards. Kind of good translation there? Same misuse as First John one, right? So the same type of thing. Okay, then I'll just do whatever I want, you know, and they don't keep reading, right? So context, there is unity. Paul is leveling the playing field. So again, like Ephesians, Romans, is very similar in this way, you have the Jewish and the Gentile Christians, and they're going at it, thinking they're better than one another. And he's saying this to say you're all sinners like, basically, shut up. You're all sinners like you just got done telling the Jews, if you know so much, teach yourself, right? So you're all sinners, stop it, right? The next one occurs in chapter seven, and so this is another one people use now in your Bible, at this section,
it may say something like struggling with sin, right? That's not in the original alright. So when you look at your Bible, there are a couple of things. Couple of things that are not in the original text. And we've talked about this as a church, a sermon on the mount, sermon on Mount, Matthew five through seven, one continuous flow of Jesus speaking, right? There's no like chapter six. Okay, guys, come back next week. We'll take care of that part of the sermon, right? So when you stop, you're walking out on Jesus's sermon, Matthew five through seven meant to be read like a sermon in one shot, you're going to miss his point. We saw this as a church like over and over again. It's like, oh gosh, he clarifies so many things in there, right? So this is the same, alright? So we have to understand that. So the numbers are not in the original In fact, in the New Testament, the numbers didn't come till 12 100,000
years later, you're starting to get the numbers right. The other thing is these descriptive headings, and sometimes I hate them, because that's all you look at when you're reading the chapter. There's so much more there. So hey, it's limiting B sometimes it's wrong,
and this is wrong, so calling it struggling with sin. So here's what we'll look at it, Romans, 714, so the trouble is not with the law. So Paul is writing power of the Holy Spirit, for spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I'm all too human, a slave to sin. That's Paul talking. I don't really understand myself. For I want to do what is right, but I don't do it instead. I do what I hate. But if I know that what I'm doing is wrong, this shows that I agree the law is good, so
I am not the one doing wrong. It is sin living in me. It sounds like the deliverance ministry,
right? The argument here is that Paul is struggling with sin.
Now I want you to remember a phrase he's saying that he's a slave to sin.
Paul. Now, to anyone who reads your Bible, this should sound really weird, right? Because in Philippians, we talked about this a little bit back, he describes himself as being blameless. And also, whenever he says he's a slave to something, he says he's a slave of Jesus. He's a slave of God, not of sin. So it should sound wrong, like, so the fact that people, even people translating the Bible, are not picking up on this, and by the way, the argument I'm presenting to you is the scholarly argument. So people understand Greek. It's not something like oddball theory. This is what any actual Greek person reading the Bible in Greek would tell you. So, like, scholars know this.
So it should sound weird, right? We have to understand this. And this is, I know maybe it takes, like, a certain level to understand, I don't know, but when you're learning Greek, and pastor should all take the time to learn Greek, all of them, and they should spend a lot of time actually reading it, not like parsing words they can't read. You know, just reading the Greek and understanding rhetorical devices of this time, like how it works, bless you, how it actually works, right? So it's a literary device, and you can look it up, and it's known among scholars, and people can read Greek prosopopoeia or prosopia, and if you're Greek, I know I said it wrong, but it's two Greek works make a face. That's what's going on here. That's what Paul's doing here. And so if you know the context now, it's another thing, and I'm surprised pastors don't know the context of it's like the sermon on Mount five through seven here. The context of Romans five through seven is Adam and Christ contrasted. And so long story short, what Paul's doing is here, make a face. Paul is going to mock Adam, and he puts on the mask, and he's speaking like Adam. Oh, what a miserable person I am. I'm a slave to say they would do this kind of thing if they were publicly speaking. You see this in the Bible, Paul stretches out his hand and he addresses people. It's rhetoric. It's what he's doing. He's making fun of Adam. We do that today, don't we? You see people.
Giving speeches and stuff, and they'll make fun of other people. I'm not going to no one's I'm not going to mention anybody, but you see very famous people making fun of other famous people, right? And they'll do it in their voice. They'll do it. So we understand how this works, but that's how it's no different in the Greek, right? So that's what he's doing here. He's mocking Adam. Now we proof this by reading our Bibles, because if we'd started from the beginning, I want you to remember something Paul, well, there for the people saying Paul just called himself a slave to sin. So Right? And he just can't control himself, like, that's what's going on here, okay? But if we had, like, not like done like, one verse of a day at a time. We had not done one chapter at a time. If you read it the way it's supposed to be read, we started from the beginning. You would have arrived at six, and you would have seen this Romans six one, and that's before seven. Just in case you didn't know Romans 61 well, then should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not. May it never be in the Greek since we have died to sin. How can we live in it?
Okay, so should we keep on sinning? No, we've died to it. Romans, six, six. We'll just kind of jump down a little. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. How? Pray tell is Paul struggling with it? Then we are no longer slaves to sin.
It can't be Paul saying he is a slave to sin. Otherwise he's a liar. And I don't think so. The Holy Spirit's not making him lie either. For when we died with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin has no control over us, right? Romans, 611, so you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. Do not let sin control the way you live. Do not give in the sinful desire. So here it's a lot like First John, sounding like it's cohesive, right? No power over us, especially if you have the spirit Romans, 617, thank God. Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin. Is he saying this enough? And then you have become slaves to righteous living if we hop down a couple verses, but now you are free from the power of sin and becomes and become slaves of God. So he calls himself like a slave of Jesus Christ. Now you do those things. Let's talk about commitment here. So don't think our through our worldview lens, or that kind of stuff. It's just commitment, right? So we talked about slavery in the Bible. Now, you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. That's eternal death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ, Jesus, our Lord. So this is really redundant, right? We're no longer slaves to sin. So then you get those verses in seven. Now, just in case you forgot chapter six, because, like, the Bible study was too long after that, Paul is going to clarify pretty well for I'm just going to let the word of God speak Romans, eight, one. So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ, Jesus, and because you belong to him, the power of the life giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The Law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own son in a body like the bodies we sinners have, and in that body, God declared an end to sins control over us by giving us his son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law will be fully satisfied for us who no longer follow our sinful nature, but instead follow the Spirit. Those who are dominated by their sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please God. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death, and we saw what kind of death that was, but letting the spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God's laws, and it never will. That is why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God. But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit. If you have the Spirit of God living in you. And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to God at all. Goes back to that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit thing, right? So if you don't have the Holy Spirit and you do not belong to God. So there it is, right? And Christ lives within you. So even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you've been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you, and just as God raised Christ, Jesus from the dead, He will give life to your mortal bodies by the same Spirit living within you. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do, For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if, through the power of the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God,
right? So it's crystal clear, and here's the thing, Jesus died for the forgiveness of sin.
Is, and that's where most, I think, like mainline, like Protestants, stop, but they forget to read this. And also to put an end to sins, control over us. Did you catch that
he died for the forgiveness and says, and also to end sins, control over us? Another reason Jesus died. You don't hear that too much, do you? Alright? So this really just destroys that the Word of God. Leave it up to the Word of God. It's up to destroy that argument about Romans seven, it's foolishness to believe something like that. The Word of God says otherwise. Now, again, there are other places, but they're all reconciled the same way, by reading, just by simply reading the whole thing. So now a question comes to mind, just gets kind of like an application here. Now you feel horrible, but I feel horrible about myself too. So, so the question comes to mind for a lot of people, okay, wait a minute and more lawyering, right? Is it possible, though, to live a life free of sin? I don't think so, right? So that's what comes up, right? Well, yes and no, right?
We're all going to make mistakes. Like you can ask my wife, I make mistakes every day, right? So
we're all going to do that, right? But the Holy Spirit's power, you know, clean it up. I correct. Oh, I did not want to bother you, so I kind of fix it, right? And we see that there are like, if you're a careful reader, you're going to see Paul calls himself blameless according to the law, which, that's crazy, but I don't think he's a liar. You see Zechariah and Elizabeth John, the Baptist parents in the beginning of the gospel of Luke, they're described as people living blamelessly according to the law. So the Bible is telling us it's possible, doesn't say it's not right. It's a yoke that no one could bear. Peter says in Acts. But there also are, you know, it's unbearable to do it, but
people were doing it, it was totally possible. That's what the Bible says. Unless Paul's liar. Again, I'll mix up and again. In First John, we saw we must live as Jesus did.
Peter agrees too. If we go over to First Peter, First Peter, 221, for God called you to do good, even if it means suffering. Just as Christ suffered for you. He is our example, and you must follow his steps. He never sinned, nor deceived anyone what
we must follow Jesus. And so now we're seeing this is redundant, too. He must be like Jesus. He never sinned. So there's a little bit of an expectation right there that's interesting, right? And it's an appropriate response, right, to what he did for us. If we have, like, yeah, like, that's the appropriate reason not to go, Yeah, I think I'm going to dabble in my sin. Like, that's an inappropriate response to what Jesus did. Um, we looked at John eight last week, and Jesus was saying he's God before Abraham was I AM, right? So John 858, I believe. But if we go up and we read from the beginning of John, we'd see a very famous story. It's about the woman caught in adultery, right? And pretty much everybody knows it, right? So, and you know, probably, if you never read the Bible, right, he who was without sin will cast the first stone, right? So then, from the oldest to the youngest, they drop their sins. She's supposed to get the death penalty for it according to the law of Moses, right? And that's it like, that's what you hear.
But keep reading. This is the part that most people leave out. John, 810, then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you, no, Lord, she said, And Jesus said, Neither do I go and sin no more.
We see here that Jesus saves this woman, and then he commands a response.
It's appropriate. So this is a picture of how Jesus expects us to respond.
Clearly, it's possible. Now,
this is really interesting. I put some thought in this, because this is a pretty recent teaching. We're talking about sin in the last series a little bit. And then I kind of touched on this. But I really gave this some full thought, and I shared this with Bible study after that teaching. So just to, as we kind of come to a close here, I just want to kind of share a practical thought that really occurred to me. And so if you've been in the church for a while, you know that we have a heart for people in recovery, so that that's the first thing you have to understand. If you're new, if you're if you're not new here, you know where going. And you know my heart when I say this, and I love all of you, and I'm just, I just want to see everybody in the word and filled with the Holy Spirit. So but if you're not in you might be like, Oh man, this guy just like, raised up some kind of crazy standard. You know, I'm going to get judged if I come here, not by me.
Because if you know my past, you know my wife's past, we have a real heart for people in recovery, those struggling, and we meet every single person, where they are, every person, and we're patient, because the Bible tells us, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, for the spirit, patience, very patient, you know, you know. So I tell the truth. I'm going to give you guys the truth, but I'm not going to hammer you like you know, just whatever you know what I mean. Just keep trying. Keep trying, right? And because God's been in this with the Bible.
Said we read it, but God's been patient with me, and I always remember that. So I just want you to know that that's where my heart is. And because of this, we have meetings for people. Well, we host or allow recovery meetings to happen here, right? So we're always doing stuff like that to the community for those who are struggling with something, those in need. You know, you hear a little bit about, like, eating here after every service, we feed everybody, so we care, we care about people, and we want to create bridges. That's the purpose in doing that, right? So I actually like AA, because it brings more people into the church that might not know Jesus, right? So you can have Christian recovery. There's nothing wrong with that. But when you have aa, now I'm bringing in people are not Christians, into the church. Yes, right. So that's how you reach them, and you create that bridge. So it works really well. Here. We've been doing this for 10 years or more, like we've just been our thing, and it works great. So many and so many people from this church have come in through the meetings, and, you know, like, yes, it works really well. But we're showing those people grace. But on that whole thing history, I kind of like start thinking about this for a second. So if I didn't say it already, or you don't know my wife, everybody here knows my wife. She's got 10 years sober, amazing, right? And so she first started on that journey in AA, yeah, definitely, right. So that's where she got her journey. So this is my higher power. But okay, let me show you who that higher power is, right? So now she knows that that's Jesus, right? So we're testimonies ourselves. So the power,
the program is a power. But how useful that program can be for some people who might never step foot in a church. So you can go, oh, we'll do this kind of Christian recovery, right? But you have, you haven't gotten over that first circle. They're not going to church, because hypocrites, right? So all these people getting everything, the people with the picket signs who gossip and yell and use abusive language, anger, slander, they're sinning like crazy and pointing out one particular sin, right? So I don't blame it, because we didn't go either. I don't want to be a part of those expletive there. I don't want to be one of them, right? Because they're hypocrites. Mm, hmm. So we try to show people we're not okay with all that being said. We're saying in case it belong, we're going to eat, don't worry.
But think about I probably shouldn't be saying that. I'm sorry if I but I'm not in the program, so I didn't
break their rules anyway. So whatever, that's more emails to read Monday, but
great.
So
you really love to see me literally put my foot in my mouth, won't you? You come back again next week.
So, but think about the Recover pointers like so just, just, let's step Stop, stop. And you know, so you've, if you've been in evangelical Christianity for a long time, you've probably heard something like one of these false teachings, right? Like it's impossible to live a sin free life. You might heard that, right? I did too. What do you think about something for a second? What is the premise for these recovery meetings? They pick a sin, their most dominant one, by the way, right? Their favorite sin, the one I'm struggling with my cross. You know, however Christians identify, they pick one of those and they stop it.
10 years.
Stop it.
10 years. If you go to any of these meetings, I highly recommend it.
You'll see 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and then sometimes longer than I'm alive of sobriety. So think for a second sometimes if these people don't know Jesus, if some of them do, some of them don't, let's say they don't.
You have someone without the power of the Holy Spirit,
without the conviction of what Jesus did for them. It's not there. They just picked it sin and stopped doing it.
Now we're going to run around bunch of hypocrites and say, You need the Holy Spirit, and you won't be doing this one particular sin. And the Holy Spirit's so powerful,
but they can't stop their favorite sin. Yeah, that's why we look ridiculous to these people,
Christianity to the outside world, for that reason,
looks incredibly insincere,
incredibly insincere.
So some encouragement, you know, and just practical, you know. And that's all it is, right? Without God, that's all it is. It's just picking something and just not doing it anymore. And you talk to anyone in recovery, if they're doing it without Jesus, there's white knuckling, there's tough times, you know what I mean, and then you find Jesus, and it gets easier. And I'm not going to speak for my wife, but from what I understand of her, she doesn't have that desire anymore. Now, if I use too much, like probably an alcoholic, she's like, Oh no,
but it's not a desire, right? It makes her angry. She doesn't want it anymore, right?
So that's a sin. But
anyway, this is what it's like for her. So just pray for her. Pray for this is, this is what it's like constantly me just talking to myself and depicting her, possible, piecing her, masking her and going back. So it's that's it, the Holy Spirit will help you. So look some of Paul's letters, right? They were written in prison. When you think about the condition, like Philippians, Ephesians, some of the things we were reading, you know, prison is not really a place that you want to go, right? It really helps you to understand that Paul's writing some of this from a jail cell. Worse than anything we have not good, right? And so maybe some of you haven't been to prison, maybe some of you have. That's right, we love you. It's okay, right? Like, but the sin got you there, right? And then some of you have committed sins where you're like, you know, I was lucky I didn't get there. But what people don't realize is whether you've gotten out of a physical prison, whether you have not been thrown in a physical prison. A lot of you are living in one.
A lot of people have created their own prison of sin
because it is.
And I can tell you, I can just testify here, I'm not totally free of sin, like I make mistakes, but wow, a lot less. And I don't think the way I used to think, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and I've achieved levels of joy, and it's so nice like to just not have to wake up the next morning, right? Oh, and you got to start reviewing all the conversations you had and all the stupid stuff you said. And maybe it's not like that, right? Maybe it's not a addiction problem, you know, or a substance abuse problem, you know. And think about it. How many times have you
right? And then you spend it's a prison of comment, checking,
how many of you live in a prison of comment? Checking,
I did. It was terrible.
Prison of comment, checking, I'm like, I let my
daughter Delete.
You delete it. I don't want to argue with you, because arguing is a sin. I don't argue about it a prison of comment. Check it. But you did it to yourself that you created the prison for yourself, you know. So it doesn't have to be if you think these big, dramatic things that really doesn't work, this hamster wheel of insanity. Stop like I meant so much joy that I just don't care. I really just don't care. But that's the Holy Spirit. That's not me, because old, prideful, sin, nature, Gene, cares. I cared about what everybody thought of me. Clearly, if you're new today, I really don't care what any y'all think about me. But it's freeing, and it's freeing. I'm not codependent, right? I'm like, whatever buy. It's the only way you can do this job,
alright, but it's freeing. So if that's you today, right? It's big or small, whether there is wreckage, right? And you're tired of creating the record, you're tired of apologizing, you're tired of the shame, you're tired of the guilt, you're tired of the regret I invite you this morning to be freed from all of that
you can be free in Christ.
So if that's you today,
and you really want to feel that love, that joy that's lacking for you, and you're just kind of getting sick of the hamster wheel of insanity. You're going to be told how you can connect with us, alright? So you can reach out. You can fill out connection cards. If you give me your cell phone number, I personally will text you back, right? And this is the open door. We can talk. We can talk about baptism, whatever it is, you can meet. There's other people in the church too. You can just talk to them, buddy. You up, right? So we don't want to see you living that life alone in that prison. We want to see you experience and that's the freedom of Christ, that's the freedom that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self control, that you desire.
Let me pray for you,
Lord. I thank you for everyone who took the time to come in and hear Your word this morning. And I pray for those,
those who are still really struggling with whatever it is they're struggling with, and Lord, just bring them to whatever point. I pray for high bottoms, Lord, well, there's surrender, and they'll just receive your spirit,
and they'll find that love and that joy and that peace that you want them to have. And then for those who have found it, I pray that you strengthen us, Lord. You make us vehicles of your love, your grace, your mercy,
so the gospel can go out to those who so desperately need it. I ask these things in Jesus's name. Amen,