SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 18, let me read our text.
SPEAKER_01: It's verses seven through nine.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, Woe to the world for temptations to sin.
SPEAKER_01: For it's necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes.
SPEAKER_01: And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
SPEAKER_01: It's better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire.
SPEAKER_01: If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.
SPEAKER_01: It's better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of God, and I pray that He would seal it in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: I recently read a book with a wonderful title, Mistakes Were Made, but not by Me.
SPEAKER_01: The argument of this book is that when people give in to temptation, it creates a lifelong pattern that defines them.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a Christian book, but it definitely overlaps nicely on a Christian worldview.
SPEAKER_01: In the introduction, it describes two college students that are at the end of their undergrad taking a test to intergraduate school.
SPEAKER_01: The test is difficult, and they're both given the opportunity to cheat.
SPEAKER_01: Going into the test, both students would say that cheating is wrong and that good students don't cheat and that they're a good student, of course.
SPEAKER_01: But at the moment where they realize that unless they cheat, they will not do well in the test, the calculus changes in their minds.
SPEAKER_01: This research has been conducted many times, many different countries, and it always produces about the same result.
SPEAKER_01: There's not a lot of difference between the two students, just for the sake of the argument.
SPEAKER_01: Pretend there's not a lot of difference between the two students.
SPEAKER_01: The temptation to cheat at that moment is going to look similarly in both of their minds.
SPEAKER_01: They're both gonna say, uh, this my teacher should have prepared me better.
SPEAKER_01: I paid all this money for an education.
SPEAKER_01: It's not fair if I don't pass this test.
SPEAKER_01: I need to get into graduate school, so much is at stake.
SPEAKER_01: I actually did study hard.
SPEAKER_01: I, you know, it's other people's fault.
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't prepared, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_01: You you, I'm sure you can imagine the justifications they make.
SPEAKER_01: But then for whatever reason, one of the two students cheats and the other doesn't.
SPEAKER_01: It's a hair's breadth between the two.
SPEAKER_01: Either one would have gone either way, but just for whatever reason, one student resists the temptation, the other student doesn't.
SPEAKER_01: You would imagine their lives would go on relatively the same after that.
SPEAKER_01: After all, they were relatively the same going into it.
SPEAKER_01: You might expect them to go on after that relatively the same.
SPEAKER_01: But this research exposes that that's not true.
SPEAKER_01: For the student who didn't cheat, he becomes not only confirming his own desire that he made the right decision, but over the next few years he develops a really hostility towards students that did cheat or that he suspects have cheated.
SPEAKER_01: Even though he was tempted to the very verge of doing it, his resistance to that has solidified his convictions and produces almost a dislike for students that chose differently.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I might even consider that student a positive outcome.
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, this is not a Christian book.
SPEAKER_01: We can set that student aside for a second.
SPEAKER_01: I'm more interested about the student that did cheat.
SPEAKER_01: This research shows that over time, that kind of student begins to excuse his cheating in more and more elaborate ways.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't just get over it the next day.
SPEAKER_01: He wakes up with a new set of justifications.
SPEAKER_01: Of course it was right to cheat.
SPEAKER_01: Of course he wasn't prepared.
SPEAKER_01: Of course he deserves more than he got.
SPEAKER_01: Of course his professors were borderline incompetent.
SPEAKER_01: And after all, they didn't want him to cheat.
SPEAKER_01: They shouldn't have left the answer key out.
SPEAKER_01: And before long, this student is cheating at any opportunity in front of him.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, he has to keep cheating in order to assuage his conscience of the decision he made when it mattered.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the way temptation works.
SPEAKER_01: Temptation presents itself to us.
SPEAKER_01: When we act on it, our conscience condemns us initially, but then has to excuse the very thing that we did.
SPEAKER_01: If you would have backed the car up five minutes and asked the guy, is do good people do this, they would say no.
SPEAKER_01: Are you a good person?
SPEAKER_01: They would say yes.
SPEAKER_01: Now go forward ten minutes, they've chosen to do it.
SPEAKER_01: So now they have to reconcile those two things and they say, I am a good person, and yes, good people do that very thing I just said they wouldn't do.
SPEAKER_01: That excuse spirals their life from one compromise to another.
SPEAKER_01: The reality is that we live in a world filled with temptation.
SPEAKER_01: And that's Jesus' point here.
SPEAKER_01: Temptation is everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And how you engage with it in a real sense defines what kind of person you are.
SPEAKER_01: Temptation, Jesus describes, using a few different concepts.
SPEAKER_01: First, he says, temptation is inevitable.
SPEAKER_01: Woe to the world, for temptation is to sin.
SPEAKER_01: We'll look at that phrase at the end.
SPEAKER_01: For it is necessary that temptations come.
SPEAKER_01: This language of necessity that Jesus uses shows that temptation is not just unavoidable, but it is, in a sense, an ontological necessity.
SPEAKER_01: Just by your being here, the fact that you exist in a fallen world means that temptations by necessity are in front of you.
SPEAKER_01: It can't be otherwise, in other words.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus is saying.
SPEAKER_01: It's defined, living in a fallen world is defined as being around temptation.
SPEAKER_01: And here initially in verse 7, temptation is outside of you.
SPEAKER_01: It's brought to you by a channel, but it is external to you.
SPEAKER_01: You are being tempted by things that are not you and are not inside of you.
SPEAKER_01: They're outside of you.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody's bringing them to you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you can be tempted by all manner of things.
SPEAKER_01: You can be tempted by good things, by morally neutral things, and by bad things.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had fruit on it.
SPEAKER_01: The tree itself was good, the fruit was good, and yet it produced temptation.
SPEAKER_01: Eve looks at it and saw that it was good and acted on it, and the world is plunged into sin.
SPEAKER_01: You can see a sunset that is beautiful, and you can be tempted to think that the sun and the stars and the sky reveal God's will for your life.
SPEAKER_01: You can be tempted to worship God through nature.
SPEAKER_01: The sunset is fine, but the temptation is always there.
SPEAKER_01: You can be tempted to love your family before the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You can be tempted to find your identity in work instead of in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, things that are good and even given to you by God can be a temptation.
SPEAKER_01: Probably the most frequent example in the New Testament of this is eating pork.
SPEAKER_01: It seems like a weird example to us, but for the Jews, they were not allowed to eat pork by their law.
SPEAKER_01: After the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, Jesus declares all food as pure.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, he commands Peter to eat the pork.
SPEAKER_01: And yet it is a sin if you violate your conscience.
SPEAKER_01: And so a very common example in the New Testament of this dilemma is an immature believer meets a mature believer.
SPEAKER_01: The mature believer eats pork in front of the immature believer.
SPEAKER_01: The mature believer in this instance is not sinning by eating pork, but he is sinning by causing the immature believer to sin by violating their conscience.
SPEAKER_01: So something that is good and even commanded by the Lord can become a bad thing and a s if it becomes a source of temptation.
SPEAKER_01: If you then use your liberty and your freedom for something that is fine and even virtuous to cause other people to sin, it is a sin for you as well as them.
SPEAKER_01: This is the external form of temptation.
SPEAKER_01: And like I said, temptation is all around us because even good things can be tempting.
SPEAKER_01: But temptation works from the outside in.
SPEAKER_01: So woe to the person that brings temptation.
SPEAKER_01: God will judge them.
SPEAKER_01: God takes that seriously.
SPEAKER_01: This is the lifeguard who falls asleep while people drown on his watch.
SPEAKER_01: The person who brings sin before an immature believer.
SPEAKER_01: In Matthew 18, the immature believer is called a child.
SPEAKER_01: He's a new convert or a relatively immature person.
SPEAKER_01: And more mature people bring things that are tempting before them.
SPEAKER_01: God judges those people.
SPEAKER_01: He judges them.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the excuse that the person bringing temptation uses, the excuse they use is that, hey, temptation is going to come anyway.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you've heard that excuse.
SPEAKER_01: Temptation is going to come anyway, so I may as well be the one that brings it.
SPEAKER_01: That's the twisted logic that people use.
SPEAKER_01: I was on a flight once with my family, about three rows in front of us.
SPEAKER_01: Some lady had a meltdown.
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, the person behind us, and this was multiple rows in front of us, so it was not me or my kids, but the person behind her was playing backgammon or something on her seat back, and she loses her mind.
SPEAKER_01: She stands up, she throws a drink in the air, starts cussing up and down, you know, threatening to fight this person, just all kinds of language.
SPEAKER_01: I learned new words that day.
SPEAKER_01: The flight attendants like repel off the ceiling, they're there in an instant.
SPEAKER_01: And the first thing the flight attendants do is they point to my kids and say, There's kids here.
SPEAKER_01: Don't talk like that.
SPEAKER_01: Now my kids had their earphones on.
SPEAKER_01: The plane could have crashed, they would not have noticed.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they may be here somewhere right now thinking, I don't even remember this.
SPEAKER_01: No, you were there.
SPEAKER_01: She says right away, nothing I'm saying, they're not gonna learn one day anyway.
SPEAKER_01: That excuse made perfect sense to her.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, there's bad language in the world, so it may as well be me who says it to these kids.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way the sinful mind works.
SPEAKER_01: But the truth is, God judges those who bring temptations before other believers.
SPEAKER_01: God avenges those.
SPEAKER_01: Let each of you know, 1 Thessalonians 4, let each of you know how to acquire your own wife in dignity and honor and not in lust like the Gentiles, for God will avenge those who wrong their brothers or sisters in the Lord in this way.
SPEAKER_01: God is the avenger of people who fall into sin through the temptation of others.
SPEAKER_01: This is why we pray, God lead us not into temptation.
SPEAKER_01: Temptation is all around us.
SPEAKER_01: So God don't lead us into temptation.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, deliver us from temptation.
SPEAKER_01: The best example in the Bible of this is, of this kind of logic, is Judas and the betrayal of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says that it's God's plan from before time that the Son of God would go to the cross and be crucified for sin.
SPEAKER_01: And he will get there through somebody betraying him.
SPEAKER_01: Nevertheless, Jesus says, it would be better for that person if he was never born.
SPEAKER_01: Judas can't justify his act of betraying Christ by saying, God wanted me to do it.
SPEAKER_01: In the Old Testament, God raises up Assyria to punish Israel and then punishes Assyria for punishing Israel.
SPEAKER_01: All temptation happens under the umbrella of the sovereignty of God.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that happens, God is sovereign over, and God will still judge people for tempting others.
SPEAKER_01: Even though it's inevitable.
SPEAKER_01: Justice will always be done in the end.
SPEAKER_01: Temptation is inevitable.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, it's extractable.
SPEAKER_01: You can get yourself out of temptation.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture says it this way no temptation has overcome you except that which is common to everybody else.
SPEAKER_01: And with every temptation, God gives you a way of escape.
SPEAKER_01: Well, nothing's wrong with you.
SPEAKER_01: You live in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_01: Something would be wrong with you if you weren't always tempted with sin.
SPEAKER_01: That's when you know you're broken.
SPEAKER_01: Something's wrong with you when you stop being tempted.
SPEAKER_01: You're always going to be tempted with sin.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is when temptation gets on the inside.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the progression here between verses seven and verse eight.
SPEAKER_01: If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
SPEAKER_01: Temptation is moved from outside in verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: It was somebody outside who brought temptation to you.
SPEAKER_01: Now the temptation is inside.
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I read a few years ago the book by Captain Phillips about his piracy or how he was pirated at sea.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure many of you have read the book yourselves or seen the movie, but in the book he describes the emotion of the pirates swinging their ladders and their grappling hooks on the side of his massive cargo ship and the sound the ladder made when it finally hooked on the boat.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't know if he could really hear the sound or not over the fire hoses and everything blasting, but he felt like he could when he saw the hook latch on.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way temptation works.
SPEAKER_01: It buffets you on the outside, it's all around you on the outside, but at some moment it latches onto the heart.
SPEAKER_01: Something about what's on the outside hooks onto the heart.
SPEAKER_01: And it moves inside.
SPEAKER_01: And it starts with the, you know, the tips of your body, the feet and the hands here.
SPEAKER_01: The feet are what move you to places to sin.
SPEAKER_01: The hands are the members of your body with which you do sin.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why Jesus uses the hands and the feet.
SPEAKER_01: And let me just point out really quickly here that he's not actually saying it would be good for you to cut off your feet or your hands or take out your eye.
SPEAKER_01: And there's some obstinate people that think that's what Jesus is saying as a way to excuse their inaction.
SPEAKER_01: They say, I obviously, Jesus is saying, if I don't want to sin, I should cut off my eye.
SPEAKER_01: Obviously that's not going to fix anything, and there, you know, so I that means I don't have to do anything to fight sin.
SPEAKER_01: This is a pretty easy idiom to navigate here.
SPEAKER_01: If your feet are taking you somewhere to sin, don't go there.
SPEAKER_01: If your hand is grabbing things, you're a thief, and your hand is stealing, stop stealing.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't give every example.
SPEAKER_01: He just simply uses the idiom here of cut off your feet or cut off your hands.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a gambling addict, don't go to the horse races.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't be surprised, like I don't know why this keeps happening to me.
SPEAKER_01: I used to live in Mexico and I would host these short-term mission teams, and I would have to tell these American tourists there, if you don't want to get bit by one of the street dogs, don't pet one of the street dogs.
SPEAKER_01: And if you do pet one of the street dogs, don't act surprised if you get bit by the dog.
SPEAKER_01: If you're the college student and you don't want to act in an ungodly way at the party, then don't go to the party.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to sin with your girlfriends, then don't have her over when it's just the two of you in your apartment at night.
SPEAKER_01: Like it really isn't that hard.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the language he's using here.
SPEAKER_01: Just cut off your foot.
SPEAKER_01: Cut off your head.
SPEAKER_01: If you're looking at sinful things on your phone, if you're wasting your time on your phone even, and you can't get through that sin, tie it to a brick and chuck your phone into the river and be done with it.
SPEAKER_01: And don't send me notes about how the batteries are bad for the fish.
SPEAKER_01: The point is, if you have something that's causing you to sin, deal with it.
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's not cut off your hand or your foot in a literal sense.
SPEAKER_01: All the disciples, Jesus himself was tempted to sin, and he kept all of his feet and all of his hands and all of his eyes.
SPEAKER_01: The point is, your feet is what take you to where you go sin, so don't go there.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, verse 133, don't let sin have dominion over me.
SPEAKER_01: What a wonderful prayer.
SPEAKER_01: That's the Alamo cry of the soul.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let sin win.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter 2.11, abstain from the fleshly lusts that wage war against the soul.
SPEAKER_01: It's your the desires of the flesh as expressed to the feet and the hands.
SPEAKER_01: And not just the feet in the hands, but the eye.
SPEAKER_01: We've had this expression before back in Matthew chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew has a lot to say about the eye, and there's one thing in the Gospel of Matthew that is so true about the eye.
SPEAKER_01: It does not operate independently.
SPEAKER_01: The feet, the hands, and the eyes are not free agents.
SPEAKER_01: The college student can't find himself at the party and go, I don't know how I got here.
SPEAKER_01: Your feet took you there.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how this got into my heart.
SPEAKER_01: I was just looking at it with my eyes.
SPEAKER_01: The eyes are a window into the soul.
SPEAKER_01: The eyes are the lamp to the body.
SPEAKER_01: Where your eyes go, your heart goes.
SPEAKER_01: In a sense, it's like riding a bike.
SPEAKER_01: You teach your kids to ride a bike, and once they get their balance down, the next thing you teach them is where you, what you look at, you will hit.
SPEAKER_01: Teach your kids to ride a bike in a parking lot with one light pole in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna hit the light pole.
SPEAKER_01: Because they're going right at it.
SPEAKER_01: And they look at it, they look at it like, don't hit it, don't hit it, don't hit it, boom.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way temptation works.
SPEAKER_01: You look at it and you hit it.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of the reasons, the kind of counseling that is the constant repetition and review of your sin.
SPEAKER_01: You sit down and you talk about your sin every week.
SPEAKER_01: You're like, I don't see any growth.
SPEAKER_01: Well, because all you're talking about is your sin.
SPEAKER_01: It's all you're looking at.
SPEAKER_01: Look at something else.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the glories of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Look at holiness.
SPEAKER_01: Look at ways of escape.
SPEAKER_01: And there's always a way of escape, as I said earlier.
SPEAKER_01: With every temptation, there's a way of escape.
SPEAKER_01: If the front of the building is on fire, go out the back.
SPEAKER_01: If the back is on fire, go out the side.
SPEAKER_01: There is always a way of escape from temptation.
SPEAKER_01: But where your eyes go, your heart will follow.
SPEAKER_01: And so cutting out your eye or your hand or your foot, of course, isn't truly effective at fighting sin.
SPEAKER_01: It's like weeding your garden by pulling the leaves off of all the weeds.
SPEAKER_01: There's that certain kind of grass, that skinny grass that grows in threes in your yard.
SPEAKER_01: Started growing everywhere in my yard, and I thought, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I've never seen this grass before.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't have this in California, so I'll just pull all of them out.
SPEAKER_01: After a year, that doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01: And I learned that when you pull that kind of grass out, the root ball multiplies.
SPEAKER_01: They come back with a thousand friends.
SPEAKER_01: I have since learned that lesson.
SPEAKER_01: Fighting sin by actually pulling out your eyes or your hands or your feet.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, is like pursuing sanctification by weeding the leaves off of the weeds.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01: Nevertheless, you view temptation as a grappling hook brought to you on the outside, latched to your heart, and you decide I'm going to go to war against it.
SPEAKER_01: Eve saw the fruit first and it was good for her eyes, and she ate, and the world fell into sin.
SPEAKER_01: Potiphar's wife saw Joseph and lusted after him and tried to tempt him into sin.
SPEAKER_01: David saw Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_01: He saw her first and then acted after her.
SPEAKER_01: Samson saw Delilah.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, scripture keeps using that kind of language to show you that something is brought before your eyes.
SPEAKER_01: You decide you want it.
SPEAKER_01: That thing is external.
SPEAKER_01: Once it latches onto the heart, it's internal.
SPEAKER_01: Now the temptation grows, and when it's full grown, it produces death.
SPEAKER_01: In contrast to Eve and Potiphar and Samson and David, think of Job.
SPEAKER_01: Job, who is the most righteous person on the planet, made a covenant with his eyes, Job 31, verse 1 said.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, verse 37 is another prayer turn my eyes away from Evil things.
SPEAKER_01: So obviously, watch what you watch.
SPEAKER_01: If you gaze at adultery, don't be surprised.
SPEAKER_01: You fall into it.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the movement here.
SPEAKER_01: Something is on the outside that finds resonance in the heart.
SPEAKER_01: And then you give in.
SPEAKER_01: You latch on.
SPEAKER_01: And you act on it.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus' point here is that you can extract yourself.
SPEAKER_01: You can not go to those places.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot touch those things.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot look at those things.
SPEAKER_01: You really can fight sin in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Third, temptation is damnable.
SPEAKER_01: Temptation is damnable.
SPEAKER_01: That's the beginning of verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: Woe to the world.
SPEAKER_01: Woe is the language of judgment and remorse, both.
SPEAKER_01: It's the finality of the guilty verdict mixed with the tears of the judge.
SPEAKER_01: Woe to the world.
SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus on the Mount of Olives weeping over Jerusalem, thinking, How often did I want to gather you to myself?
SPEAKER_01: It's Yahweh in the book of Isaiah who constantly gives all the woes through tears.
SPEAKER_01: It's Sodom and Gomorrah.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord does not delight in the destruction of the wicked, but rather he knows how to rescue the righteous from judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Nevertheless, the wicked will be judged.
SPEAKER_01: They will be judged by God.
SPEAKER_01: As temptation latches onto the heart, it grows.
SPEAKER_01: As it grows, it produces actions in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Those actions eventually become patterns, those patterns become habits, those habits become character.
SPEAKER_01: It's not hard to reason out.
SPEAKER_01: You give in a temptation, you start to justify your action.
SPEAKER_01: You justify it repeatedly, so you do the sin repeatedly.
SPEAKER_01: Over time, it defines you.
SPEAKER_01: And over time you give up the fight.
SPEAKER_01: The person who gives up the fight is walking in darkness.
SPEAKER_01: And the scripture says, woe to those who walk in darkness.
SPEAKER_01: The person who walks in darkness but says he walks in the light is a liar, and the truth isn't in him.
SPEAKER_01: That's a statement of judgment.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible uses the language of warfare to talk about your battle against sin.
SPEAKER_01: Sin is going to war against your heart.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to war against your affections.
SPEAKER_01: But its target is not your heart or your affections.
SPEAKER_01: Its target is your soul.
SPEAKER_01: That's sin's desire.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to overly personify sin, but there's a world system in the world that has its eyes on your soul.
SPEAKER_01: The world system behind the world system is the devil, who is the prince of this world.
SPEAKER_01: So it is personified ultimately in the devil.
SPEAKER_01: It's his desire to make shipwreck of your faith and to tank your soul, to cast it into hell.
SPEAKER_01: And so you go to war against the world, you go to war against your own flesh, and you go to war against the devil.
SPEAKER_01: Being a Christian is not easy.
SPEAKER_01: It is warfare.
SPEAKER_01: And we are in it.
SPEAKER_01: And a great disservice to your faith is when you start to view your faith as personal self-help, or the person who says, I'm going to church so that my kids have some kind of moral construct to help them grow up in this world or to be a better person or even political ends or all that kind of stuff from the church is such a diluting of what is actually at stake here.
SPEAKER_01: What's at stake is your soul.
SPEAKER_01: What's at stake is heaven or hell for you.
SPEAKER_01: That's what's at stake.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the justification, again, of the person who gives in to temptation.
SPEAKER_01: The person says, says, This I'm tempted to sin in this way.
SPEAKER_01: The fact that I'm tempted to sin in this way shows that there's something in my heart that wants it.
SPEAKER_01: I know it's wrong.
SPEAKER_01: I know God tells me not to do it, but I would rather disobey God and experience what that sin is like.
SPEAKER_01: That's an elevation of that sin over God.
SPEAKER_01: That kind of action over time puts somebody who's walking in the darkness.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody who's walking in the darkness goes to hell when they die.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus means with it's better to go to heaven with one eye or one foot or one hand than to hell with both.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody says, I'd rather experience that than be obedient to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Just extrapolate that out.
SPEAKER_01: I'd rather experience that and go to hell than not experience that and go to heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is saying your calculus is all wrong.
SPEAKER_01: It's not even calculus.
SPEAKER_01: Elementary level math is wrong here.
SPEAKER_01: It is better to go to heaven without experiencing the sins of this world than it is to experience the sins of this world and go to hell.
SPEAKER_01: And so the Bible presents this as a warfare.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians chapter 10.
SPEAKER_01: Take every thought captive.
SPEAKER_01: That's war language.
SPEAKER_01: Actually go to war in your head.
SPEAKER_01: Take your thoughts captive.
SPEAKER_01: Subdue every attack against the Lordship of Christ given in your mind and your conscience.
SPEAKER_01: Arm yourself for battle.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord gives you the armor of the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, sin was defeated at the cross.
SPEAKER_01: The penalty of sin was paid for all of those who would ever, whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
SPEAKER_01: The penalty for sin is paid at the cross.
SPEAKER_01: The power of sin is broken over those who have their faith placed in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Sin no longer has any power over you.
SPEAKER_01: It's a false leader.
SPEAKER_01: It's a false, it's the discharged officer.
SPEAKER_01: He can no longer command you.
SPEAKER_01: And yet the presence of sin is very real and active in this world.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes Christians fall for its lies.
SPEAKER_01: And so you go to war against it.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to zoom out theologically here a second.
SPEAKER_01: You're saved by your faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Your faith in Christ is given to you by the Spirit of God who plants it in your heart, causes you to open your eyes and behold the truth about Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You then grow spiritually, because the Spirit of God dwells in you, and you grow spiritually throughout your life.
SPEAKER_01: But we are in the wheat fields here of the church.
SPEAKER_01: There are tares that grow up.
SPEAKER_01: There are false converts.
SPEAKER_01: There are those who say that they are followers of Christ that are liars and deceivers, and the truth isn't in them.
SPEAKER_01: And in a snapshot, you can't tell the difference between somebody who's a Christian and somebody who's a false convert or a liar.
SPEAKER_01: So you have to see the progress over time.
SPEAKER_01: A true believer grows in godliness.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a straight line growth.
SPEAKER_01: It's got ups and downs and valleys and failures, and it's the guy who's falling down the escalator.
SPEAKER_01: He keeps gradually going up somehow by the grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's our spiritual life.
SPEAKER_01: One of the means God uses to get you to fight sin is the constant reminder that if you lose this war, you're going to hell.
SPEAKER_01: So Paul says, Romans 8.13, if you live according to the flesh, you will die.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not talking about a physical death.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about going to hell.
SPEAKER_01: If you live ruled by your flesh, you will go to hell.
SPEAKER_01: But if you put to death the deeds of the flesh, by the spirit, you will live.
SPEAKER_01: So he doesn't say if you if you try really hard to be godlier this year than you were last year, you're going to live.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what he says.
SPEAKER_01: He says, if you put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So it is not your own strength only.
SPEAKER_01: It is the grace of God that empowers you.
SPEAKER_01: It is the sanctifying will of God that is at work in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
SPEAKER_01: Then you will live.
SPEAKER_01: This is how John Owen says it.
SPEAKER_01: Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.
SPEAKER_01: That's about as simple as you can get right there.
SPEAKER_01: I love that line from John Owen, because John Owen is about the most complicated author in church history.
SPEAKER_01: So when he says something that succinctly, it resonates.
SPEAKER_01: Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
SPEAKER_01: Either you will win or sin will win.
SPEAKER_01: It is a battle to the death, though.
SPEAKER_01: And you will be in this battle the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_01: You've never permanently defeated sin.
SPEAKER_01: Think of it this way.
SPEAKER_01: It's like shopping for groceries.
SPEAKER_01: Your wife may send you to Costco to get groceries.
SPEAKER_01: Pray, as Jesus said, that it not be on Christmas Eve.
SPEAKER_01: Next month, she might send you to Costco to get groceries.
SPEAKER_01: And at that moment, you cannot say in any meaningful way at all, yes, but I got groceries last month.
SPEAKER_01: You recognize it's an ongoing activity in your household.
SPEAKER_01: This is the way fighting sin is.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot say, but I fought sin last week.
SPEAKER_01: I fought sin last month.
SPEAKER_01: No, it's an ongoing battle.
SPEAKER_01: Now hopefully you grow in that battle.
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully the fight against lust and pride and greed looks differently at 18 than it does at 28, at 38, at 78.
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully you're maturing.
SPEAKER_01: But the fight doesn't go away.
SPEAKER_01: It just looks different.
SPEAKER_01: Because sin haunts us and fights us.
SPEAKER_01: Even this is true even of mature believers.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a mature believer in the Lord, you still have to root out temptation in your life.
SPEAKER_01: It's the soccer team that's up 5-0 at halftime.
SPEAKER_01: They're doing all things well.
SPEAKER_01: But the other team is still going to come out in the second half.
SPEAKER_01: You still have another half to play.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't get on their bus and go home.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way the fight against the flesh is.
SPEAKER_01: You can do well all year.
SPEAKER_01: You can have like five years of tremendous growth.
SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't mean temptation packed its bags and went home.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to worry about it anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And the stakes couldn't be higher.
SPEAKER_01: Because God is holy, he does judge sin.
SPEAKER_01: And because we are sinners, we excuse sin all the time by diluting God's holiness with lies, by saying things like, God wouldn't actually judge this kind of sin.
SPEAKER_01: After all, everybody sins.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says, if your hand or foot causes you to sin, throw it away.
SPEAKER_01: Cut it off and be done with it.
SPEAKER_01: Because your soul is at stake.
SPEAKER_01: You know that you can't fight sin on your own, and so you turn and place your faith in Christ, who died on the cross for your sin.
SPEAKER_01: If you're concerned or confused about how severe sin is, just understand that Jesus died to pay the penalty for it.
SPEAKER_01: The sinless Son of God was killed for your sin.
SPEAKER_01: Not for your sin in the abstract, but like actually for your sin.
SPEAKER_01: The sins that you have done this week.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a believer in Christ, Jesus died for those sins.
SPEAKER_01: That should fuel your desire to fight sin because it slew the one that you loved.
SPEAKER_01: And so you go to war.
SPEAKER_01: It is the end of the year.
SPEAKER_01: So it's helpful for you to take stock of your life, look around your life, and see what areas temptation is growing in.
SPEAKER_01: Where are there new temptations that maybe weren't there last year?
SPEAKER_01: Where is temptation that was weeded before?
SPEAKER_01: Is it growing back somewhere else?
SPEAKER_01: That's often the way temptation works.
SPEAKER_01: You have growth over here, and then it grows up over there.
SPEAKER_01: You weed this part of your backyard, and then next summer they're all growing over there.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way temptation works.
SPEAKER_01: You're mature in the faith, this is halftime of the game.
SPEAKER_01: Look at your life.
SPEAKER_01: If you're immature in the faith, it's time to level up and lock in and actually look at what you're doing with your time and with your life.
SPEAKER_01: Sin does not take a Christmas break.
SPEAKER_01: Pray that you would be circumspect about your own life.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I'm thankful that you have given us the gospel which declares that the record of our wrongs has been written down and nailed to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Cancelled out.
SPEAKER_01: Our wicked deeds have been paid for by Christ when he said to Telestai, it was finished.
SPEAKER_01: Our sinful deeds were buried in that grave at Golgotha.
SPEAKER_01: The stone was rolled in front of them, never to be seen again.
SPEAKER_01: And yet Christ did rise.
SPEAKER_01: The stone was rolled away.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus escaped the grave and ascended to heaven where he reigns even now.
SPEAKER_01: We're thankful that we can have our sins forgiven by trusting Christ.
SPEAKER_01: This is the work of your spirit, and your spirit then also helps us fight sin.
SPEAKER_01: It convicts our consciences when we are being led astray.
SPEAKER_01: Your spirit directs us how we ought to live.
SPEAKER_01: Your spirit applies the word of God to our lives.
SPEAKER_01: It opens our conscience again so we can be sensitive to sin and it transforms our minds and our thoughts into conformity to your word.
SPEAKER_01: I pray your spirit would continue to do that.
SPEAKER_01: Help us see the sin that's in our own life and help us go to war against it.
SPEAKER_01: We know that your mercy has triumphed over law, your grace has defeated the wrath that we deserve.
SPEAKER_01: You set us free in Christ, and now you empower us to lead godly lives.
SPEAKER_01: We're thankful for the great news of the gospel that Jesus died and rose again so that we might live.
SPEAKER_01: We give you thanks in his name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBc.church.
SPEAKER_01: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_01: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_01: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.