Things that I will mention real quick as we get started here, a
few announcements #1 we have the Papa John's cards back in there.
They changed them a little bit. It's not it's.
I mean, it is a card, but it's like a piece of cardboard now
with a code on it. But they free large pizza and I
say free. I mean, you're paying for it,
but 50% off your entire order five times they changed it.
I think they must have lost too much money or something.
So they charged us actually then then they charge us more for it
too. So we're going to, we're going
to charge the same price would be $15.00.
But brother Josh has those in the back.
So if you're interested in getting one of those, it's still
a good deal, however you look at it.
But anyway, we have those in and we're going to try to get those,
try to pass. I mean, try to try to get the
word out to as many people as you know.
All of this is going to be the fundraiser for the, for the
Belize missions trip for our young people.
So, you know, if you can, if you can get it out, get out the word
at work and everything else, then that'd be a a big help.
And then also, it's going to be really cold on Saturday, but
we'll, we'll meet here on Saturday for out the outreach
and everything. And what we'll do is just work
on some of the cards that we've been doing.
One of these days, the weather's going to be good and we're going
to be able to hit the ground running and we want to be able
to do that. So if you can be here on
Saturday, we're still, we have, we had all those cards that we
had to change with the, with the service times and all of that.
So we've been, we've been putting the new stickers on
those cards and then also writing out the cards that we're
going to be sending out here as soon as the weather breaks.
And we're going to use those as a, as a tool to get into some of
these neighborhoods, kind of send them to the neighborhoods
and, and get them there before we start knocking the
neighborhood, knocking doors on that neighborhood.
So we'll plan to be here on, on Saturday for that.
And then men of the Zoom prayer meeting on Saturday night, we'll
we'll meet for that as well. Other than that, I think that's
about it for this week. It's nice that the, you noticed
the parking lot was completely dry.
You know, the, the sun hit that yesterday, not really today, but
yesterday mostly and day before and just melted all the rest of
the ice that was there. So thankful for that.
Go ahead and let's turn to John Chapter 15 if you need.
Does anybody need a copy of it? If you forgot your book,
Charlie's got a few there. Any adults that need a copy of
it? All right, Julie, Charlie, Yep,
Julie, anybody else? Now I'll mention this as we go
through this. There's questions at the end and
obviously you notice that I've asked those questions.
I ask questions from those it's it's literally just take the
questions directly from the end of this lesson.
So might be helpful for you to kind of look at those ahead of
time. They, they pretty much goes
right in order with all those questions right in, in order
that they're in the book. So if you, some of them are just
fill in the blank type thing. So if you're looking at them
ahead of time and you can write an answer next to it, it might
help you for when we, when we go to do that next week.
So we will, we will have some of those questions again next week
like we normally do. Now this is Christian growth and
spiritual victory. And obviously we started on this
last week and kind of gave you, I guess, more of an introduction
to the whole thing about what it is.
What is Christian growth? What is spiritual victory?
And so Part 2, Part 3, part 4 each have 4 things in them.
And I think we could probably call it principles of Christian
growth and spiritual victory, or maybe Steps to Christian growth
and spiritual victory, because that's what all these things
are. He kind of mentions it as keys
to Christian growth. I think that's a perfectly fine
term to use, you know, and I think that's the reason he also
puts keys in quotation marks because we we talked about this
decent amount of of time last week or, or when we did Part 1
is just that, you know, there is no one key to spiritual growth
and Christian growth and spiritual victory.
But four of the ones that we're going to talk about tonight are
are listed there at the top. But abiding in Christ, putting
off the old man, putting on the new, confessing sin, pressing
toward the mark. It's, it's, it's simple.
And we're going to try to just kind of scratch the surface with
these. But, but honestly, I've preached
messages on every one of these topics some recently, you know,
and that's what I'm saying. We could, we could stay on each
one of these topics for a long time.
We're not going to do that necessarily, but we want to, we
want to be thorough with it as much as we can, but really just
kind of talk about these as ideas or principles and steps to
help us with that growth. So the first one then is abiding
in Christ. The keys to Christian growth are
found in the entire New Testament.
But these are some of the major elements abiding in Christ.
John chapter 15, and we'll read the entire passage here and then
we'll we'll kind of break it down a little bit.
I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman.
Husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth
not fruit he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit
He purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
Now you're clean through the word which I've spoken unto you.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself, except that abide in the vine, no more can ye except
ye abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the
branches. He that abideth in Me, and I in
Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.
For without Me ye can do nothing.
If a man Abide not in Me, is cast forth as a branch, and is
withered, and men gather them, cast them into the fire, and
they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words
abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done
unto you. Herein is My Father glorified
that you bear much fruit, so shall ye be My disciples.
As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.
Continue ye in My love. If you keep My commandments, you
shall abide in My love, even as I have kept My Father's
commandments and abide in His love.
So all of that to talk about abiding in Christ.
Now the term abiding in or abiding, I just, I looked up a
definition to kind of give you a formal definition, if you will,
but it means to remain, to stay, to dwell or to continue in a
specific state, place or relationship over a long period.
I think sometimes abiding in Christ gets a little bit of a of
a Pentecostal type feel to it. And maybe it's just because a
lot of the Pentecostals, the ecumenicals, have taken that
term and kind of twisted it in to mean something that it was
never intended to mean in the Bible.
But the true Christian life is not a religion, and that's what
sets it apart. That's what sets the true
Christian life apart from all the other religions or all the
other institutions, if you want to even call them that in the
world. It's not just a bunch of
regulations and rituals. It's not just do this, do this,
do this, do this, and you'll be a good Christian or do this, do
this, do this and you'll go to heaven.
That's what all these other religions have in them, right?
I mean, we, we point out Catholicism a lot because it's
easy to see that they have all of these rituals that you're
supposed to do. But Mormonism is the exact same
way. Mormonism has all of those
elements when it comes to the temple recommend.
You have to do all of these things to keep your temple
recommend. And if you don't, you lose your
temple recommend. You can't go to heaven.
There's all kinds of stuff that that they have to do in order to
keep their temple recommend. And if you're not on good terms
with the Mormon church, when you die, you don't go to heaven,
which their heaven is very different than than what ours
is. The Bible makes it very clear
what heaven is there heaven. And and I don't want to get off
into Mormonism tonight, but you know, the whole idea behind that
is that God was once a human like we are, but he's he'd been
elevated to godhood because of all the things that he did.
And now he's the God of his own planet.
And eventually we can all become gods of our own planets if we
keep going the same way that our God did.
I mean, doesn't it, you know, if, if, if, if people really
understood what Mormonism was, they would not even call a
Mormon a Christian. It's not Christianity at all,
right? But but Mormons get lumped into
the idea of Christians. Same thing with Catholics.
Catholics get lumped into the idea or the term Christian.
They're not that they don't, they don't follow the Bible
because it's all about rituals. It's all about regulations and
doing all of those things. The true Christian religion,
true Christianity is not a religion.
It is a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And I have people tell me all the time when I, I try to give
them the gospel and they say things like, well, I hate
religion. And I say, you know what I do
too? I agree with you.
I hate religion too. What I'm trying to tell you is
not to join a religion. I'm trying to tell you that you
need to have a relationship, a personal relationship with Jesus
Christ. That's what I'm telling you.
I'm not telling you to join a religion.
I'm I'm a Baptist because I believe that Baptist doctrine is
the closest to the word of God, but that being a Baptist is not
a religion. It's about having a relationship
with Jesus Christ. Those who have spiritual victory
are those who know Him personally and walk in
fellowship with Him day by day, serving Him, learning of Him.
That is what abiding in Christ is.
If a believer forgets Christ and starts living his life apart
from conscious fellowship with Christ, he's in very grave
spiritual danger. And that's what John 15 is
talking about. Jesus emphasized that it's, it's
God's will for us to bear fruit. And then he says more fruit.
And then he says much fruit. We should be growing.
And, and the growth is the product of abiding in Christ.
It's exactly like, and, and this is exactly what what Jesus is
doing is giving us an example that we can understand that
makes sense, right? What do you do?
And, and maybe maybe you've never had fruit trees.
I don't know. We have pear trees.
We have apple trees, plum, we have, we have several different
fruit trees in our yard. And especially for my pear
trees, if I just let them grow and, and branches start coming
out of everywhere. What I noticed is that we get
really tiny pears. If you trim those things back
and sometimes way more than you think you should, you feel like
you're killing the thing the most.
But then the next season, the next growing season, you get
really big pears. You don't get as many of them,
but they're actually edible and they're good and they, they're,
they're they, they produce, they produce good fruit and in many
cases a lot more than the last couple years.
Well, it's not that I haven't really pruned it, but I didn't
prune it back enough. I think in the last couple years
we have not gotten a lot of fruit off of the, off of the
pear trees. I mean it, it was, I mean, most,
some of you remember you've been here for a few years and we
bring in five gallon buckets of pears.
Just bucket after bucket after bucket.
In the last couple years, we haven't got that course.
Last year all the buds popped out and then we got that freeze.
Remember that It killed everything.
We got no fruit on any of our trees this year.
But this is exactly what Jesus is talking about, right?
A branch that's laying in the middle of the yard is not going
to produce fruit because it's not tied into anything that's
keeping it alive, that's helping it to bear fruit, right?
So if you're not even on the, the, the vine, of course you're
not going to bear fruit. But if you're on the vine, then
what's your job? Bear fruit, right?
And not just fruit, but more fruit and much fruit.
That's, that's what we should be doing.
That's, that's the way this fruit should be going.
And, and, and that, that it should be being produced in our
lives. And sometimes it takes some
pruning, sometimes it takes some trimming because we, we have to,
we have to be made simpler. I guess I don't know what the
right word is, but but we have to have some of that, that
pruning and all of those things. And all of that is hinging on
the fact that we are part of the vine.
We are the branches, He is the vine.
If we're not in Him and He is not in us, then we're not going
to bear any fruit. The farther we get away from
Him, the less fruit we're going to bear.
So Jesus taught that the key to abiding in Him is obedience to
His Word, obedience to His Word. John chapter 15 and verse #7 If
you abide in me, and My words abide in you, you shall ask what
you will, and it shall be done unto you.
Verse 10, if you keep my commandments, you shall abide in
my love. It's all hinging on obedience.
That is the key to abiding in him.
Abiding in Christ is not mystical in the sense of this
popular contemplative philosophy.
And there's this idea out there and you can look into a
contemplative prayer. It's a lot of these non
denominational ecumenical things that are going around there now,
right? The prayer of Jabez is a perfect
example of that. You know, it's, it's it the
prayer of Jabez is a great prayer in the Bible, but they've
taken and they've turned it into this mystical thing, you know,
that that it was never meant to be.
And there's others. There's other things in the
Bible that are used in the same way, But that's not what we're
talking about. That's what I'm saying.
This, this, this idea of abiding in Christ has been twisted and,
and, and made to be something that it never was actually meant
to be. It's not a feeling, it's not a
sensual experience. It's not being overcome by the
Spirit. It's not speaking in tongues,
falling on the floor, laughing hysterically, being swayed by
powerful music, entering into a meditative state through
contemplation, or being moved by candles and incense.
That's what all, that's what a lot of religion is about.
And they call it abiding in Christ.
But you, you think, go, go look it up.
Look up laughing revival. You ever seen any videos of
that? It was a Pentecostal revival
that was going on. And I use that word revival
very, very loosely. But literally everybody in the
auditorium was rolling on the floor laughing hysterically, and
they were being slain in the spirit.
And they were, you know, this is all part of this whole
experience that they were having.
There was another one. And, and, and you think it's
you, you, you think it's a joke, almost barking like dogs because
the Holy Spirit had come upon them and that everybody in the
auditorium was barking. I mean that that's not, that's
not what the Holy Spirit does. That's, that's not what the
Bible is talking about. They've, they've changed it into
something that it was never meant to be.
And the same thing is true. Speaking in tongues is not a
movement of the Holy Spirit. It's gibberish.
You're just saying something that doesn't make any sense to
you or to anybody else, right? And it's, this is not that.
The whole purpose of this is not to talk about speaking in
tongues, but all of those things go together, you know, overcome
by the spirit. But but then you throw in the
the music aspect of it and it does the exact same thing.
So you might laugh at somebody that's laughing hysterically and
rolling around on the floor and barking like a dog and all of
these other things. You might laugh at somebody
that's doing that, but then you're having the exact same
experience with the music that's doing the same thing to you,
right? Your experience is different,
but it's the same thing. Overcome by the Spirit and all
these other things. And then obviously you have
people that are the contemplate of prayer is is sitting in a
state of meditation until you're overcome by the Holy Spirit and
all of those other things. None of those things describe or
explain what abiding in Christ is.
Abiding in Christ is just walking in fellowship with
Christ by honoring and obeying his word.
That's as simple as what abiding in Christ is.
And every single one of us ought to be abiding in Christ every
single day. And if we're not, then there's a
problem. We're not growing, we're not
going to have spiritual victory, right?
That's what abiding in Christ is, walking in fellowship with
Christ. I, I, I was looking at up some
other things today and I came across an article that was that
somebody wrote about abiding in Christ and they said, well,
abiding in Christ means that you're saved.
So if you're not abiding in Christ, that means you're not
saved. That's not what this is talking
about either right now, obviously, you have to be saved
in order to abide in Christ, but you make a decision if you're
going to abide in Christ or not. And when you'd make that
decision to do that, to walk in fellowship with Him by honoring
and obeying His Word, then you're going to have that
Christian growth. You're going to have that
spiritual victory. The second one, and I'm going to
cover this pretty quickly because we've talked a lot about
this, but putting off the old man and putting on the new man,
let's go over to Ephesians chapter 4.
He describes this in Ephesians, and then he tells us how to take
off the old man and how to put on the new man.
But I want to bring it home a little bit closer to us because
I think everybody would say I understand exactly what putting
off the old man and putting on the new man is, right?
The old person who I used to be. I don't want to be that person
anymore. That that's, that's part of what
repentance is all about, right? I was walking this direction.
That's not who I want to be. I'm turning around and I'm going
a different direction. This is who I want to be now and
with God's help, I will be. But the Christian life is
presented in this passage here in Ephesians chapter 4 as a
matter of growing and we're just real.
We'll read those 3 verses first verse 22 that you put off
concerning the former conversation, the old man, that
word conversation, by the way, we when we say conversation, we
mean talking back and forth. But when we see that word in our
King James Bible, it's an older word.
The conversation means our lifestyle or living, right?
So that you put off concerning the former lifestyle, the former
conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the
deceitful lust and be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you
put on by the way, that that that verse 23 right there is key
to a lot of things. People, people are not walking
in the spirit. People are are are messed up
because they're not renewed in their minds that you put on the
new man verse 24, which after God is created in righteousness
and true holiness. So it's presenting this putting
off the old man putting on the new man as a matter of growing.
It's a process of, of doing those things that that sinful
nature that we inherited from Adam, we put that off the new
man, which is Christ. We put that on.
So Paul explained how to do that.
Verse 4, How do you get sorry, chapter 4, verse 25, How do you
put off the old man? Well, he says this verse 25
Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his
neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon
your wrath, neither give place to the devil.
Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor
working with his hands the things which is the thing which
is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but
that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister
grace unto the hearers. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of
God, whereby you are sealed under the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamber and evil
speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind one
to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as
God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
So there's a contrast here. He's telling you, this is what
the old man was. Put that off.
This is what the new man is. Put that on right, Put away
lying. Speak the truth, be angry, sin
not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
Let him that stole steal no more, but labor instead working
with your hands and things which are good.
So put that off. Put this on.
That's what he's telling you. He's given us.
He's given us all kinds of examples of how to do that.
So the interesting thing about this I think he brings up in the
next paragraph. These are high and holy
standards that go much deeper and are farther reaching than
the Law of Moses ever went. Well, I'm not under the law
anymore. I have grace.
Yes, you do. If you're saved, you're not
under the law. You are under grace.
But that grace is not a license to sin, right?
And he makes that very, very clear in the book of Romans.
God forbid that we should live any longer therein, right?
Is is should I sin because I have grace?
Just because God will forgive me, does that mean I can go live
my life how I want to? Technically, yes.
But no, that's not what the intention of grace is.
Right, It's not so I can go live how I want.
It's I'm under grace. So it, it should change how I
live. And that's exactly what what
we're talking about here. These, these standards are, are
much higher standards than what what was in the law of Moses.
To stop lying involves learning to be honest in every way and
situation. Let's let's, let's think about
that for a second. You know how many times do
people use or do do people lie as an excuse right?
If if, if your mindset is not I'm going to tell the truth 100%
of the time, then you'll find yourself telling lies all day
long every single day you get pulled over.
Oh, I didn't see that. No U-turn sign.
Yes, you did. You just lied.
You saw it. You're just trying to get out of
it, right? He's not here right now.
Can I take a message? But he's sitting right there,
right? It's a lie.
You might not feel like talking to somebody.
I mean, look, there's ways around that.
He's not available right now, right?
But how many times have people said that he's not here right
now? Can I take a message or he can't
come to the phone? He could.
He doesn't want to, right? I mean, say whatever you want
to. There's a, you know.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know. Yes, you did.
You just lied about it because you didn't have an excuse,
right? I mean, how many times?
If you're going to be honest and if you're not going to lie, then
you ought to be honest about every single thing, right?
If you actually think about it throughout the day and, and this
is not something that's on the forefront of your mind, then you
are probably lying all the time and you just don't think about
it because you do it so much. A lot of people do that, right?
We call it an excuse. It's just a lie is what it is,
right? And that's what I'm saying.
That's a very high standard, right?
Don't steal. Well, then what are you taking
from wherever it happens to be, right?
Well, there's leeway on it. And maybe there is, right?
Maybe you work in a place where they're like, hey, we don't
care. Take it.
And if that's fine, then then then that's what they've allowed
you to do, right? But how many times people steal
things from work? How many times people steal
things from other places and just say, well, they got plenty
of it anyway, right? Well, they're a huge company and
they're not going to notice it, right?
You walk out and you realize you didn't pay for something, right?
It's happened before to me. I don't, I don't walk out on on
purpose without stealing some. But I've walked out of the store
before and realized I didn't pay for something and I would go
back in to pay for it. And you know what the workers
do? What?
You came back in to pay for this?
I've never seen that before. Why not, right?
Why not? But but how many times it
happens, right? It's a high standard to put off
the old man and put on the new man and do it consistently every
single day, right? If we actually are holding
ourselves to that standard, then how many of us far fall below,
fall far below that standard, right?
And when you actually start thinking about it and when you
actually start focusing on it and concentrating on I've got to
put off the old man and tell the truth.
Every time I've got to put off the old man and stop stealing,
I've got to put off the old man and stop getting angry.
I've got to put off the old man and start doing all of these
other things. You'll be surprised at how many
things you actually don't do that you think you do that make
you a good Christian, right? It's a high standard for us to
live all so let no corrupt communication proceed out of
your mouth. Put away all bitterness, wrath,
anger, clamor, evil speaking. That's an amazingly high
standard. But most of us give ourselves a
pass because, well, it's just what people do.
Not you shouldn't. Just because that's what people
do doesn't mean that it's OK for you to do it, right?
So you want to, you want to grow in your Christian life, you want
to have spiritual victory. You have to put off all of the
old man and put on all of the new man, right?
You think about what if, what if you know, you found some mummy
wrappings and you decided you were going to wrap only half of
them around you and walk around. You know it's dead.
It's, it's dead person's clothes, right?
Well, it's only a, it's only a couple wrappings, right?
I mean that, I mean, maybe now as we're so far away from it
that, that that wouldn't even be that weird anymore.
Everybody would, you know, be people are dying to buy mummy
clothes, you know, just wear it once and see if you can start a
new trend and everybody will be wearing them, right.
But it's not, it's not normal, right, to be wearing something
that came from a dead person. Well, that's exactly what we do
when we don't put away all of the old men we're walking around
with, with, with something that belongs to a dead person, right?
I'm alive in Christ. I need to put off the old man.
I need to put on the new man, All right?
It's like we talked about on Sunday.
Just do right, right. If you think about that with
every single thing that you are faced in a day, you'll find out
that there's a whole lot of things that you thought you were
OK on that you're not. When you start focusing on that
and you, you make a determination with God's help
that I am going to tell the truth every single time.
You'll find out that you lie a lot.
I'm going to be honest with every single one of my dealings.
You'll find out that you're dishonest a lot.
You know, I'm not going to be bitter about anything.
You'll find out that you're bitter about a lot of things.
I'm not going to get angry. You'll find out that you get
angry a lot, right? It's a very high standard.
But if we are going to grow in our Christian life, and if we
are going to have victory in our spiritual life, then we've got
to put off the old man 100% of the time, and we have to put on
the new man 100% of the time, right?
Easy to say, we've talked about this a lot.
It's easy to say that. It's easy to say, put off the
old man, put on the new. All right, I'm doing that.
But are you really, are you really interested in making sure
that every part of that old man is put away and every part of
the new man is put on? It's a high standard that He
gives us, but if you want to have growth in your Christian
life and you want to have spiritual victory, then we have
to do that. And that involves something that
we just talked about on Sunday. But at first, John chapter 1 and
verse #5 #3 the third thing there is confessing sin.
Confessing sin, which again, if the Bible and not if, because I
should say because the Bible talks about confessing sin as a
Christian, then it's just proof that we can and do sin, right?
But the sin is to walk in darkness rather than light.
That's not the way God intended for us to live.
We can sin unfortunately, and we do sin unfortunately, but that's
not the way God intended it. Verse #5 of first John chapter
one. This then is the message which
we have heard of him. And declare unto you that God is
light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in
darkness, we lie and do not the truth.
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in US.
If we confess our sins, is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and
His word is not in us. So when we sin, God gives us a
way to restore that fellowship, and that's confessing our sins
to Him. Confession of sin keeps me in
the light, keeps me in fellowship with God.
He is light and holiness and He's not going to fellowship
with sin and darkness. So it just makes sense, right?
If I'm walking in sin, I can't expect God to walk with me.
If I'm living in sin, I can't expect that God is living with
me in those things because if I want to have fellowship with
Him, I have to walk with Him in the light.
So a few things about confession of sin then confession of sin
means to agree with God against my actions.
It takes humility to confess the sin because it proves then that
you have sinned, right? I can't confess a sin that I
don't admit to, right? If it's the opposite of making
excuses for my sin, which, again, we're very good at.
We do that all the time. We give ourselves a pass.
If boy, I tell you what if, if, if I'm ever going to stand
before a judge someday, I want it to be me.
Because we are so easy on ourselves, right?
We, we find loopholes, we give ourselves a pass on all kinds of
things. We have all the reasons why it's
OK for me to do what I did right.
But it's the opposite of making that excuse.
Making excuses and blaming others is exactly what Adam did.
Adam blamed his wife, and then she turned around and blame the
serpent. Right.
And so we have a natural tendency to follow in those same
unwise footsteps. We blame our nationality.
Well, that's just what we do in our culture.
Well, I'm I'm young or I'm old. We blame our age.
Well, I I'm just a guy, right? Or I'm just a woman.
Our background, our circumstances.
Well, I didn't. I didn't grow up in church.
Yeah, but you've been in church for 40 years.
You don't have an excuse, right? Well, if you knew how I grew up,
well, you're not there anymore, right?
I grew up with a lot of people who use their, their experience
growing up as an excuse to not live for the Lord at all, right?
You could use any of those as excuses if you're looking for an
excuse. A lot of other things that
people use, but here's an example that he gives, and I
think it's a good one. If I get angry and bitter at my
wife, that's a sin. But it's easy to make excuses
and blame her or blame something else, such as the fact that I'm
having a bad day or she is unreasonable.
Or instead of admitting that I've done wrong in God's eyes, I
have blame whatever other circumstance that I have to to
give myself a pass. Or if I lie, I can make an
excuse and say, well, everyone lies sometimes.
Or if I disobey and dishonor my parents, I can make an excuse
and say that they're too demanding or they're hip
critical. They're telling me to do this
and they don't even do it themselves so I don't have to
obey them. No, you do.
You're just giving yourself an excuse.
You're giving yourself a way out.
You're giving yourself a pass. On the other hand, I can't admit
to God that I have sinned and agree with Him that it's evil.
If I make excuses for my sin. I'm walking in darkness rather
than light, and I do not have fellowship with God.
You want to grow in your spiritual life, You want to.
You want to have victory in your spiritual life.
You've got to get the sin out. I don't know how how I can say
it any more than I did the other day, but God promises that he'll
forgive us and cleanse us if we confess our sins to Him.
He's faithful and just to forgive us because Christ died
for our sins. He can do that because he died
for our sins. He's the only one that has the
ability to do it. And I say this often that we use
that verse for people who are unsaved to say, Hey, God will
forgive you and he will. But this, it was written to us.
It was written to Christians, It was written to those who know
better, who have to get things right and stop walking in
darkness and start walking in the light.
Start having fellowship with him again.
See how many times will God forgive us?
Will he forgive us as often as we confess?
And that's that's why I say we should keep short accounts with
God. We're going to make mistakes.
I don't even want to say it that way.
We're going to sin. It's not a mistake, it's a sin.
We're going to sin and when we sin, we need to get that right
with God right now. Don't let that build up.
And by the way, the shorter accounts you keep with God, you
sin and you get it right. What you'll find out is the
longer in between times it is when you actually have to get
things right with God because you don't want to be on your
knees all day every day confessing, Oh, I messed up
again. God, I'm sorry.
I sinned again, God, I'm sorry, I sinned again, God, I'm sorry,
right? Eventually you're going to get
to the point where he's saying, all right, I need, I need your
help to try a little bit harder with these things.
But doesn't he get tired of us sinning and then confessing?
No, we have the promise that he'll forgive us and cleanse us
every time. And if you look in Matthew 18,
that's the story. When he, Peter asked how many
times we forgive him, seven times.
Jesus said no 70 * 7. That's 490 times.
Jesus said we ought to forgive somebody else.
If we can forgive somebody 490 times, imagine how many times he
can forgive us, right? But at the same time, we
shouldn't presume upon his grace either.
Well, I'll just go ahead and sin.
I'll confess it when I get done, and I'll, I'll ask forgiveness
and he'll forgive me, right? I know I shouldn't go there, but
I'm going to go there anyway and he'll forgive me.
That's presuming upon his grace, right?
That's that, that is I'm not saying that God won't forgive
it. He will forgive that, but but
how genuine is it when you know that you're going to go do it
and then try to ask for it's no different than a Catholic going
to the priest and saying, forgive me, Father, for I have
sinned. There's no different, right?
You're using, you're using God as a Catholic priest to make
yourself feel better right now. If there's genuine repentance
and you genuinely are sorry for it, he will forgive you and
forgive you and forgive you and forgive you all right, because
there is no limit to how many times he'll forgive your sin.
But at the same time, don't presume upon his grace.
Keep those accounts short with God.
So confession makes things right with God.
It puts us in the light. It's, it's, it's the way of
victory. It stops the spiral of sin.
And again, it's hard to get into a spiral of sin if you're
keeping those accounts short with God.
You can't keep spiraling down and down and down and down
deeper and deeper into those things if you're keeping those
accounts short with God. The reason we end up spiraling
into sin and getting away from him and getting out of our
Bibles and getting out of our prayer clothes and getting out
of fellowship with Him is because we sinned and we didn't
get it right. And we sinned and we didn't get
it right. And we got farther and farther
in that darkness and we, we were walking further and farther away
from Him. And the next thing you know,
we're deep into it and we've spiraled all the way down.
We have no desire to pray. We have no desire to read our
Bibles. We have no desire to get right
with God until finally someday God has to slap us in the face
and wake us up a little bit. And then we say, how did I get
here? You didn't keep short accounts
with God. And you let it go and you let it
go, and you let it go and you let it go.
And the next thing you know, you're completely out of
fellowship with him. You have no chance of having
spiritual victory in your life. And you wonder, why am I in the
same rut again? Why can't I get victory over
this thing in my life, right? This is the key to spiritual
victory. You've got to confess your sins.
The wonderful thing is you can
take them all to Him and dump them on Him and he can handle
it, right? He can handle it and he is
faithful and He's just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But you have to come to Him first.
It's not. Well, God, if that was wrong,
forgive me. Oh, I'm sorry again.
I don't know if you, you know, I don't.
I don't know if that was really wrong or not, but if it was
right, no confession. It takes humility because it
takes confession. Is is an admission.
It's an admission of guilt, right?
You can't confess to something that you didn't admit to doing.
It stops the spiral of sin. But when we sin, we have to get,
we must not get discouraged and faint.
We have to confess it honestly claims God, claim God's promise
of forgiveness, and stand on our spiritual birthright.
And then the last one is this. Let's turn over to Philippians
chapter 3. And obviously this is a very
short section, but it has a lot to do with Christian growth and
spiritual victory as well. Philippians chapter 3 verse #13
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one
thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and
reaching forth unto those things which are before I press toward
the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ
Jesus. Now some of the things that Paul
talked about when he's saying forgetting those things which
are behind were spiritual failures.
But there was some things that he said that he was putting
behind that in his mind were spiritual victories, right?
So just because you've accomplished something for God
doesn't mean you can say it. It's all done.
Now I've done everything that I can do.
No, forget those things too. But I think in particular what
Paul is talking about is all of those things that that really
don't count for anything. All the things, all the person
that I used to be at, that thing that I used to consider was such
a badge of honor. 8th day circumcised, the 8th day of the
stock of Israel tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of the Hebrews,
Pharisee persecuting the church. All of those things, those were
all things that I did that I thought were accomplishments.
And I realize now that they did not count for anything.
And you can put whatever you want to in that blank.
I'm I rose up the chain and I made it to the top and I was the
CEO, I was the president, I was this, I did that.
All of those other things that really don't count for anything.
And Paul says, I'm putting all those things in my past.
I'm reaching forth to the things that really matter.
And so after we confess our sin, we need to put it behind and not
fall into the temptation to dwell on it and the fear that
God hasn't forgiven us. Now, I'll say this because I
talk to people often who end up in a situation where they say,
well, I just, I just can't get over it.
I can't believe that I did that. I just can't get over it.
And I, you know, I know that God's forgiven me and I know
that that those sins are under the blood, but I just, I just
can't forgive myself. And to that I say this, God says
that when we confess our sins, he's faithful and just.
He'll forgive us our sins. He'll cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. And the Bible talks about our
sin as being, He puts our sin as far away as the east is from the
West. I don't think that was an
accident because you can go to the North Pole and you can go to
the South Pole. You can find those places on the
map. But there is no E pole and there
is no W pole. He puts our sins as far away
from this as you can possibly. You can go as far as you want to
to the east and you'll never run out.
You can go as far as you want to to the West and you'll never run
out. That's as far away as He puts
our sins from us. The Bible says their sins and
their iniquities will I remember no more.
Once He forgives you for your sins, He purposely forgets them.
He puts them behind you, He puts them behind him, and he will
never He buries them. The Bible says in the deepest
part of the sea, if a God who is absolutely perfect and a God who
is absolutely holy and a God is who is absolutely just can
forgive us for those things, who are we to not forgive ourselves
for those things if he'll do it and we sinned against him?
Don't you think we ought to be at least willing to forgive
ourselves for the same things? And we're not perfect, we're not
holy, and we're not just the way God is.
So when Satan reminds me of the things I regret, I bring up
Calvary lest he forget. High on a mountain of sorrow and
shame. Christ gave me a pardon as he
took my blame. That's what I want to remind
Satan of when he comes and says, well, yeah, but you or yeah,
remember when you hey, that's under the blood, that's under
the blood of Christ. I've asked for forgiveness.
He's faithful. He's just, he's forgiven me.
He's put my sins as far away as the east is from the West.
He's buried them in the deepest part of the sea.
My sins and my iniquities, He are is not going to remember
anymore. Why should I remember them?
Why should I hang those things over my head if the God of the
universe, who has all the authority and all the right to
do that, is not? We need to forgive ourselves and
move on. It's exactly what Paul is
talking about here. Forgetting those things which
are behind, I reach forth into those things which are before I
press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God
in Christ Jesus. What?
What do you think he's talking about when he says forgetting
those things which are behind? It's all the things that he just
listed, right? You think Paul was proud of the
fact that he persecuted the church?
Imagine how many times the the screams of the women that were
being ripped away from their families and the cry of the
husbands that are being pulled away from their wives and their
children. Imagine how many times those
things echoed in Paul's mind after he came to know Christ as
his Savior. And yet he says, I'm forgetting
all of those things. Richard Brand, That's the old
me. That's not who I am anymore.
I'm somebody different in Christ.
He forgave me, I'm forgiving myself.
I'm putting those things behind me, and I'm just going forward
for Christ. That's how you have spiritual
victory. That's how you grow in your
Christian life. Keep looking ahead, not behind.
When God convicts us of sin, he does that in order to lead us to
confession and cleansing and victory.
But when the devil accuses us, he does so in order to
discourage and devour us. So when you allow yourself to
dwell in the things that God's already forgiven, you are
allowing the devil to let you get discouraged about something
that you should never be discouraged about.
You are allowing the devil to devour your spiritual life and
your spiritual victory that you should never allow him into your
life to do in the 1st place. You've been forgiven for those
things. If you've truly come to the
cross and kneeled before Christ, humbled yourself, confess those
things to Him there under the blood, and he's put them away,
you need to do the same thing. You're never going to have
spiritual victory in your life if you keep dwelling on the
past. You're never going to have
spiritual victory in your life if you keep dwelling on who you
used to be and what you did before.
Now doesn't mean that all the consequences automatically go
away. There may be some consequences
for those things, but the sin that's under the blood, let it
go and let it stay there. Stop trying to pull it back out.
He's already forgiven it. Let him do it.
Press toward the mark.
Man, what a, what a, what a concept, what a, what a goal.
And, and I've, I said this at the beginning, but I've preached
messages on every one of these things because every one of them
is so full and so rich that you can preach a message on all of
them. I've tried not to do that
tonight with all of these different things.
That's four. We got eight more, 8 more things
that'll help us to have that Christian growth and that
spiritual victory in our lives. And I hope hopefully as we
continue through these things, especially this week, aim at
some of these things, right? Aim at abiding in Christ.
Purposely focus on abiding in Christ.
Are you walking in fellowship with Him right?
Do you have the fellowship with Him?
Have you put off the old man and put on the new man?
Focus on that this week. Have you confessed your sin to
him? Focus on it this week.
Are you pressing toward the mark?
Focus on it this week. Those are things that are going
to give us that growth in our spiritual life, and they're
going to give us that spiritual victory.
And if you're not going forward, you're going backwards.
So are you going to go forward? Are you going forward?
That's the that's the choice that we have in front of us
tonight. Let's pray.
Father, again, we thank you so much for your goodness to us.
Thank you for the opportunity we have to be here tonight.
And thank you for the the lessons that we have from for
the cloud and the way that we can take them and dissect them
with your word and hopefully be a help to us as we try to make
progress in our spiritual lives and go forward for you.
God, May you help us all to have that victory that only comes
through Christ. May you help us all to grow in
our spiritual lives so that we can continue to be useful in
your service. Thank you again for all you do
for us in Jesus name, Amen.