Turning From Sin Part 3

Introduction

Well, good morning. Great to see everyone. Great to have all of our visitors with us today. I want to today wrap up the three lesson series that Greg and I have done. We did the first two last Sunday, and today is lesson three on turning from sin. By the way, it has been a real joy to work with Greg and the time that I’ve been here. He is as genuine of a person as I’ve ever known. And we’re blessed to have such a capable young man and a godly young man to be working here. And I get to be kind of the older preacher for a change. We’ve been basing this series, of course, on James 1, 14 and 15. And you’ve heard it many times by now if you’ve been listening to the lessons, and even if you were here earlier at the nine hour today in the singing, Greg used this passage, or it was read at the beginning of services, which says, But each man is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own lust.

Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is accomplished, brings forth death. So in that passage, really, we see this pattern, this the stages of the development of sin. And as I mentioned in my sermon last week, this is the spiritual LSD lust, sin, death. That’s the pattern that we see in those two verses. One thing that Greg and I emphasized last week was this mathematical formula that sin equals desire plus opportunity plus action. And so what we must do in order to sort of dismantle sin is we must defeat sin at every stage of its development. Okay, beginning with desire. So we want to learn to eliminate the desire for wicked, sinful things. Once we’ve done that, we we need to limit the opportunities of sin around us, of ourselves committing sin.

Don’t place ourselves in harm’s way. And then once we’ve done all we can do there, there still will be some desire for sin and opportunity for sin. And when those two two things combine and temptation is present, then when the rubber meets the road, we just must have the self-control not to act on that temptation. In 2 Peter 1, Peter said, But add to your faith virtue to virtue, knowledge to knowledge, self-control. You know, it’s not enough to have knowledge. You’ve got to add to your knowledge self-control. Most of the problem of sin is not a lack of knowledge among us. It would be a lack of self-control. We know what’s right. But do we have the self-control to do what we know is right and to not do what we know is wrong?

Self-control is crucial. It is key. An illustration of this is I was doing a gospel meeting and staying with this family. They had these two large, beautiful yellow Labrador retrievers. And so I wanted to do an experiment. And these dogs were on the shock collars, and they had the invisible fence. And so I went out there with two pieces of biscuit. And I stood right up close to the edge, and you could see where the line was. And they were charged with excitement. And it was, they were, their tails were wagging and their bodies were almost shaking with excitement. They were just ready to gobble these two pieces of biscuit down. But being very cruel, I was just standing just a foot or two away where they just couldn’t quite get to me.

But they would have loved to have just hopped all over me and gobbled those biscuits down in about a nanosecond. And so it struck me that you know what? These dogs are not stepping over the line. They’ve got the desire, tremendous desire. They have the opportunity even. I mean, they could have endured the pain if they wanted, but they were unwilling to step over the line. Why? Because of the consequences. They didn’t want to suffer the pain and the consequences that would come from stepping over that line. And then it struck me that that’s a good illustration for self-control when it comes to being tempted. You know, if dogs can do that. If an animal can have something presented before him that he wants very much, but he knows that it will be painful to get it, then he’s not willing to endure the certain to suffer the consequences, and he will stand back.

1. The Root of the Problem Is Desire

Then we can certainly do that when we are faced with temptation. When we are filled with a desire for this or that thing, and here it is presented before us, we must, when the rubber meets the road, have the self-control to not step beyond that line. And what would prevent us from doing that? Because we know the consequences of doing so. And we’re going to emphasize that a little bit more later, but what I really want to emphasize from from here on, mainly, is that we need to go really to the root of the problem. The root of the problem actually isn’t a lack of self-control. That is part of the problem.

The root of the problem is the desire for what is evil. But each man is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own desire. It starts with the desire. If you want to weed your garden, you don’t just trim the weeds. You don’t trim them at ground level. What do you do? You uproot them. So what I’m interested in doing is uprooting this problem and getting to what really is the root of the problem, which is the desire for sin. If those dogs didn’t want those biscuits, then the self-control wouldn’t have had to even been exercised. Because they wouldn’t have moved a muscle, perhaps, when I presented the food before them. And you and I have experienced this sort of thing. There are some things that for you are not really tempting because you don’t really have a temptation for it.

For me, for example, it would be one example would be profanity. I don’t find it appealing whatsoever. There’s nothing in me that says, ooh, I want to talk like that. So there is, therefore, no temptation in my heart for profanity. Now you can think of things like that in your own life. Wouldn’t it be great if all of the temptations that are out there were not really appealing to you because you had no desire for them? You see, then you wouldn’t have to exercise the self-control when you’re standing here at that line and you have the choice to step over or not. So it would make it a lot easier on us if we could simply eliminate desire. And so that’s what we’re going to get at today.

2. Get Thee Hence: Learning to Hate Sin

And we’re going to go even further than that, really, this connected idea. We’re going to talk about learning to hate sin. If you hate sin, you definitely don’t desire it. We need to have an attitude toward sin and towards Satan of get thee hints. Now, I want to invite you to turn in your Bible to Matthew the fourth chapter. Get thee hints is not the way that we talk today, but it was the way they talked when, like the King James Bible was written. And I like that terminology, get thee hints.

And so that’s why I want to use the King James for a couple of passages here. After the third temptation in the wilderness in verse 10, then saith Jesus unto him, get thee hence, Satan. For it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Get thee hence, Satan. I’m not mildly interested in what you have to offer. I don’t want you anywhere near me. Get out of here. That’s the idea. Pretty strong language, might you say. Now, we find those exact same three words, that exact phrase, get thee hints, in Isaiah 30 and in verse 22. So if you will turn, please to Isaiah 30 and verse 22. That verse says, You shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of silver, and the ornament of thy molten images of gold.

Thou shalt cast them away as a minstruous cloth, thou shalt say unto it, get thee hence. Interesting that in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is originally in Hebrew, but the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew text. That the Greek is exactly the same when it says get thee hence here as it is in Matthew 4. It’s the same exact phrase. Now let me set the context up, and then I want to dig into this verse a little bit. Here in Isaiah 30, the Israelites were really being threatened by Assyria. And so their response to that was not to turn to the Holy One of Israel.

And so they did. And they sent great amounts of good and goods and wealth to be able to bribe Egypt for so that Egypt would help them.

But then he says there’s going to be some very positive times to come. There’s going to be a time of turning away from wickedness. And in verse 20, beginning, and though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner anymore. But thine eyes shall see thy teachers, and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way. Walk ye in it when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left. So there’s going to be a time, uh though yes, you’re going to endure affliction and distress, you are going to listen to your teachers. You’re going to, as it were, hear their voices behind you, and you’re going to do what your teachers told you, and you’re going to end up doing what is right.

And in verse 22, this is the verse, ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of silver and the ornament of thy molten images of gold. Now God’s in that day, the idols were made from some sort of metal, some sort, some sort of inferior metal, and then covered in silver or covered in gold, or made out of wood and covered in silver or gold. And so here, ye shall defile that. Ye shall treat the these idols that are covered with gold or silver as something common, as something unclean. In fact, we’re going to see in Deuteronomy 7, they were to burn these idols with fire, was the command of Moses. Thou shalt cast them away as a menstruous cloth, as something repulsive and unclean.

And what do you do with it? You cast it away from you. Thou shalt say unto it, get the hence. Now, a few things that we learn from this one verse, we need to repudiate the practice of sin. Now that’s not a word maybe we use every day, and children, you might be saying, What does repudiate mean? Some of us adults might be wondering the same thing. Repudiate basically means to have no association with. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them, as Paul says in Ephesians 5 and in verse 11. And we need to also be disgusted with sin. It needs to be something that is repulsive to us, to cast it away from us as a menstrual cloth.

So imagine you go to a nice restaurant. It’s a special occasion, a rare occasion, and you’re going to eat something you rarely get to have, and so you order a filet mignon. And here the server comes with the platter and sets it before you and uncovers it, and your mouth is watering with anticipation. So you take your fork and your knife and you cut into this hopefully delicious steak. And as the meat falls open, to your dismay, you look down and you see that inside it is crawling with maggots. Now, what are you going to do at that moment? Well, well, people around the world eat maggots somewhere, I’m sure. So just dip in the steak sauce and move on. Maybe we’ll cut around the maggots and we’ll just get the pieces of meat that aren’t maggot infested.

I tell you, that’s not what you’re going to do. Probably what’s going to happen, there will be some audible noise to come out of your mouth rather loudly, and that food might find its way flying across the room, or you might find your way flying out the door. It’s one way or the other going to be a strong reaction you have in that situation. Strong reaction, why? Because it’s disgusting, it’s repulsive. What we are to do with sin is to cast it away from us as a menstrual cloth. It’s to be something that is disgusting to us. The reaction to sin should be strong. Are you disgusted by sin? Are you disgusted when you go into the grocery stores and the magazine racks have these women dressed not very well?

Are you disgusted when you hear the Lord’s name used in vain? Are you disgusted when you hear on the news about all of these homosexual marriages? Are these things that shock you or that bother you? Or take it or leave it, no big deal to you. You see, we should be disgusted with sin. And we really should learn not to even want to sin. We should lose interest in it. I think sometimes we might make excuses that, hey, you know, it’s okay to want to sin as long as I don’t sin. So we work out a way in our mind that we can have it but not have it. That we can sort of, you know, almost fantasize about it, and that’s okay. That’s not okay.

3. From Don’t Do to Don’t Desire to Detest

It’s not okay to long to sin. Because James says each man is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own what? Lust or desire. And so what we’ve got to learn to do is we’ve got to learn how to not want to sin. You know, sin is fun. If it weren’t fun, we wouldn’t be tempted. That can be a cop out. It needs to get to the point in your mind that it’s not fun. Why? Because it’s sin and because you know the consequences. So we’ve got to learn how to hate sin. I want you to turn now, if you will, to Deuteronomy chapter 7. Deuteronomy chapter 7. I’m going to switch now to the New American standard. My good old trustee. Now, the words of verses 25 and 26 are really where Isaiah 30 and verse 22 is drawn from.

It’s the same idea. But I want to set this up first. Moses had led the children of Israel out of Egypt. And they wandered in the wilderness. They didn’t go into the land right away. They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. That older generation died out. And their children that grew up in the wilderness were now going to be the soldiers that would enter into the promised land. So now the 40 years are pretty much over. And Moses has gathered the children of Israel in the plains of Moab on the east side of the Jordan River, and the land flowing with milk and honey is over there on the west side. And he is giving to them these speeches that are in the book of Deuteronomy, these sermons, before they go over and enter the land to remind them of the law and to motivate them not to do wrong.

And I want you to just be an Israelite for a minute. Just imagine that you have been a desert dweller your entire life. You were born and raised out there in the wilderness, you know, and you never had the chance to trade the stocks or to strike gold. You never had that much when it comes to money, but now you’re looking across the Jordan and you’re seeing that land flowing with milk and honey. And those people over there have got money. And those people over there have got gods that are covered with gold and covered with silver. And boy, if I could just get some of that gold and some of that silver, it wouldn’t take much, and I’d be set for life. It’s with really this sort of a fear that Moses is going to address this very issue.

And so we have there in verses 25 and 26 of Deuteronomy 7. Moses says, the graven images of their gods, you are to burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be snared by it, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. You shall not bring an abomination into your house and like it come under the band. You shall utterly detest it, and you shall utterly abhor it, for it is something banned. Now, what they needed to learn to do, and what we must learn to do is to move from don’t do, or in this case, don’t take, to don’t desire, or in this case, do not covet to detest.

That’s a progression. Each one of those I want to suggest to you is a layer further removed from sin. Let me put it in chart form. So over here we have sin. And so here you stand on the precipice, and you have the choice to step over that line. You’re filled with desire, and here that forbidden fruit hangs before you.

Oh, but I’m exercising self-control. You’re in a dangerous spot right there on the line, filled with desire, with that opportunity right before you. Very dangerous. Very dangerous indeed. One reason why we find ourselves falling into sin so much is because we like to stand right on that line. And sometimes we have self-control, but a lot of times we just keep reaching over that line and grabbing that forbidden fruit. Okay? So what we need to do is we need to get further away from that line, away from this idea of don’t do to don’t desire. So now you don’t want what’s over that line. You don’t care about that forbidden fruit. You don’t desire it. Now, you’re not necessarily disgusted by it. You’re not necessarily bothered that it’s maybe somewhere in your presence, but you don’t really want it.

So now we’re safer. But we need to learn to get even further away from sin than that. And we need to get so far away from sin that now we detest it. Now we’re we’re offended by its presence. We’re disgusted by it. We don’t want it anywhere near us. We don’t want to be anywhere near it. And that’s our attitude towards sin. Notice I’m not saying to hate sinners. I’m saying to hate sin. And to be really in a state of abhorrence for the practice of sin. This is the safest place to be. And actually, we could keep going back and back because the more you grow to love God, then also the greater your hatred for sin grows, and that is a process in itself.

Romans 12 and verse 9 is a verse that Greg and I have quoted to you often. I make no apologies for that, as you’ve heard me say, repetition is the mother of learning. I want you to hear it over and over because it’s an important verse. In fact, I encourage you to memorize it. Romans 12 and verse 9 says, Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good. Now, one thing I want you to see from that verse, besides simply that we need to abhor evil, is that to not abhor evil is hypocritical love. I love God. I love his ways, but I don’t hate sin. Then you know what you are? A hypocrite. That’s hypocritical. It’s two-faced love to say, I love God, but I don’t really abhor evil, and I don’t cling to what is good.

4. Take the Consequences of Sin Seriously

That’s just kind of a watered down Christian. We don’t need to be that. We need to learn to hate sin. Now you might say, how do you learn to abhor sin? I mean, the desire for sinful things is something natural, right? I mean, how would the Israelites learn to hate something like silver and gold? In another sort of a context, silver and gold wouldn’t necessarily need to be hated, but in this other context, hated. So how can you learn to hate something that is so natural for us as humans to want? Well, I want to suggest to you three ways to begin to do this. Number one, take the consequences of sin seriously. Do we think about do we keep in our mind on a regular basis that sin leads to hell?

It leads to an eternity of the fiery pits of hell, of separation from God, a second death. If we really hated sin, or if we hated hell, then that would help us to learn to hate sin itself, to hate sin like we hate hell. One of the problems is that we don’t think about the future. We don’t think about anything further than what’s right in front of our face, than what’s dangling before us at the moment. And we want to reach up and take it. But we have to think about the future and where this path is headed. If you’re a smoker, you know, one way to learn to hate smoking is to think about lung cancer a lot. Well, I know it’ll lead to lung cancer, but I keep doing it.

Then you’re not taking it seriously. So you need to realize it that hell is where sin leads and take that very seriously. Don’t forget about it. But what about right now? I mean, I’m not struck down by God, so you know, I can just live this way. Maybe I’ll just repent right towards the end and then just slide right into heaven. That’s my plan. Well, that’s pretty foolish. Because there is spiritual death right now. You don’t want to die in that state. Sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death, that spiritual separation. Well, you know, you don’t look any different when you’re spiritually dead. You don’t maybe feel any different. You still feel very much alive. So what we need to do is realize that spiritual death is real, and that when we have given ourselves over to sin, that we are no longer alive spiritually.

5. Learn to Crave God’s Ways

Well, what about the consequences that we can sort of see right now? These physical consequences. Since lives. It divides and destroys families. It corrupts, you know, your own conscience. It destroys your reputation. It cripples men in depression and despair and leads many to suicide. It ruins lives. I’ve seen it over and over, and I’ve only been here on this earth a pretty short time. You’ve seen it too. I think that the consequences of sin, the physical consequences, are one of the most basic ways to learn to hate sin. Well, a second way to learn to hate sin and not desire it, it’s to learn to crave God’s ways. When I think of certain men and women that I know that have served the Lord their entire lives, that have learned his word, taught it to others, lived it, been married to the same spouse for decades without being unfaithful, who treat others selflessly and with great love, who serve the Lord and who reject evil.

That to me is a beautiful thing. And I see someone that I want to be like. I say, I want to be like that person. I desire, I crave that more than anything. When we see that, we are seeing people who are reflecting the light of Jesus Christ. When you think of Jesus, a human being who had no sin. And it wasn’t just that he lived a life with the absence of doing wrong. He actively did what is right and pure. That is a beautiful thing. And you learn to crave that more and more.

6. Pray for Help

And you know the interesting thing is the more and more you acquire that taste, the more you crave what is good and pure and holy, the less you desire what is evil and what is sinful and what is bad. My third suggestion on learning how to hate sin is simply pray for help. Pray for God to give you the strength to do it. In the model prayer, Jesus taught to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Notice he didn’t say to pray, lead us not into sin, which is certainly a good thing to pray, but he taught specifically to pray, lead us not into what? Temptation. And James said, but each man is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own lust.

So part and parcel of what Jesus wants us to pray is to pray that God would remove from us, help us to remove from our lives the desire for sin. And tied into all that would also have to be to learn to hate sin. Do you pray that God would help you to do that? Help you not to desire sin, not to want it, for it to have no appeal to you, no attraction to you, and for you actually to learn to hate it. Sometimes, you know, we just don’t hate sin because we really haven’t tried. We haven’t set our mind to do it and prayed about it. So I want you to know that’s something you need to set your mind on. If you didn’t know that before.

It’s hard, brethren, but it can be done. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Galatians 5 and verse 24. I don’t think it’s any accident that Paul said crucified. When we think of crucifixion, we think of Jesus Christ who died on the cross. And he had those nails through his hands and through his feet, and he hung up there for six hours with a crown of thorns pressed into his scalp, bleeding and suffering, and struggling just to breathe, as he was being spit upon and mocked by others. And he died. A slow, painful, agonizing death. We are to crucify the flesh with its passions and desires. Does that sound pleasant to you? Crucifixion is painful. Doing away with fleshly desires is not going to be natural, and it is sure not going to be easy.

Conclusion

It might be a long death, but you die that death. You put the flesh to death. You crucify it with its passions and with its desires. Can it be done? It can be done. Will it be easy? But it can be done. In fact, it must be done, because those who belong to Christ Jesus are those who have done that very thing. In conclusion, I believe the more we hate sin, the more pleasing we are to God. At the very end of 2 Peter, the very last verse, it says, But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The meaning of grace is favor, unmerited favor. But the word itself means favor. We are to grow in God’s favor. I believe one way we do that is to learn to hate sin more and more and cling more and more to what is right.

Jesus came and died on the cross to solve this problem of sin. To rid us of, first of all, the guilt of sin, but also another aspect of sin that he came to free us of is the practice of sin, the guilt of sin and the practice of sin. He did not come to deliver us from sin, so that we might keep sinning.

Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. That new life is a life that is not committed to sin. That’s what it means here in the context. Are you committed to that life? A life of learning to progress from don’t do to don’t desire to detest and abhor what is evil. I hope that you take this very seriously.

And I hope that we are all striving for the same goals, and I trust that we are. Would you bow your head with me in a word of prayer? Our Father, our Lord, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you for the way that Jesus has paved and the plan that you have conceived in your mind from before the foundation of the world. And that you have beautifully put into action through the history of mankind and the history of the Bible itself as we see that plan unfold. We pray for your forgiveness. Because we’re not perfect, and that’s no excuse. But we sin. We’re sorry when we repeatedly do this, and especially when we make excuses for it. Forgive us of making those excuses and teach us never to do that again.

Teach us, Father, not to stand right on the edge, but to move ourselves several layers away from temptation and sin. And help us, Father, to overcome the temptation so that we will receive the crown of life. It is through your Son that we pray. Amen. If you’re not a Christian, we invite you this morning to think about becoming one.

All it takes is believing in the Lord, repenting of your sins, confessing his name, and being immersed, being buried, and rising to walk in a new life, and continuing to obey the gospel till the day you die. If you do that, God is going to save you through his grace and through his mercy. If you would like to become a Christian, or if you’d like our prayers at this time, we would be glad for you to come as we stand and sing the song of invitation.