KILL OR BE KILLED
Part 4-Caging and Killing the Beast
October 28, 2007
Pastor Brian Matherlee
Did you hear about this one? National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern announced this week that an internal investigation into the gambling of NBA referees found that all 56 officials had violated their contractual agreement regarding gambling and over half had gambled in casinos. The investigation came on the heels of a scandal involving a referee that had been involved in gambling on games he was involved with.
What discipline did the commissioner take? Fire all the refs for violating their contract? Fine each of them as punishment? No! The commissioner decided to change the rules instead of discipline the refs. I suppose he was thinking the way the world thinks...if everybody is doing it so it must not be an acceptable standard to try to keep.
It is the human tendency to overlook and relax standards. That is not God’s way. Why not?
God doesn’t change the standards—because they are always there for our benefit. As we talk about dealing with sin today I want us to understand that God’s motivation in communicating what is sinful & its consequences is not to harm us but rather to point us to the best life possible which is found in Jesus Christ.
The Scripture states in John 3:17, “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” God wants us to live!
We conclude our 4 week series on sin today. In studying we have looked at the 7 deadly sins. Four of those sins feed the beast of sin (Anger, Pride, Envy, Greed) and three (lust, sloth, gluttony) allow the beast full blown reign over our lives. Today, I want to talk about how God helps us in caging and killing the beast.
If you are going to deal with sin then you must first:
A. Choose
1. Choosing change
2. There are 4 elements to this change according to Steve Harper in “John Wesley’s Message for Today” (pgs. 51-56):
i. Knowledge of self—Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Here we see our desperate condition.
ii. Conviction—the understanding that apart from Jesus Christ we are destined for destruction. Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Conviction is a positive experience. Think about it like a warning light on your dashboard. It signals something bad is going on but we would agree it is good to know there’s a problem so it can be fixed.
iii. Change of mind—it is illustrated so well in the life of the prodigal son of Luke 15. The son left home and quickly saw his life dive into destitution. Through self-knowledge he became aware of himself and how different he was living from the life at home. Conviction brought the realization that he had messed up, done wrong…he had sinned! “But if he had stopped there he would have stayed in the pigpen forever.” He had another step to take. He had to choose to leave the pigpen and go home. These are three steps of repentance. But one more thing is necessary, according to Harper.
iv. Belief—repentance is not simply turning away from something. It involves turning to someone! The prodigal had to have the faith that he would be accepted when he went back home. The 3 elements of belief:
1. I can trust God’s mercy and forgiveness
2. I understand and accept that Jesus is the only way of salvation
3. I quit relying on myself and begin relying upon God.
Some need to make that choice today. Until you make that choice for Jesus, your life is being eaten up by the beast.
B. Fuse
As Christians we recognize that temptation and sin do not cease after we come to Jesus Christ. Some have the mistaken notion that being a Christian means we are perfect! John Wesley taught the concept of Christian perfection but it didn’t mean that anyone was without sin following conversion. We struggle as Christians and yet there is a deeper grace that will enable us deal with the temptations we face. Beyond the justifying work of Christ there is the sanctifying work of Christ that deepens our Christian life and fuses us with God. What does this mean?
A panel of women debated on what they thought was a perfect man, a guy who was ‘with it’. You would have thought they would have decided upon some actor or athlete even a wealthy tycoon. They decided that the perfect man was MR POTATO HEAD. 4 Reasons: ‘He’s tan, he’s cute, he knows the importance of accessorizing, and if he looks at another girl you can rearrange his face. This might seem like perfection but I mean something different by Christian perfection.
1. Singleness of intention
i. Illustration of moms receiving flowers (or weeds) from a small child because of the intention to communicate love…they may have been taken from a prize rose bush or from the neighbors bed but they aren’t thrown away…they are put in a vase and place where everyone can see. (Harper, Pg. 95)
ii. Power over sin—God did not send Jesus to atone for our sin and make no provision for us to have victory over sin. The power comes from walking with God. I John 1:6-7, “If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
iii. Radical Dependence is the third aspect of sanctification—John 15 gives us the image of the vine and the branches. A missionary describes this dependence as allowing Christ to move from “resident to president”. I believe this comes over time. A crisis moment of choice can be made to fully surrender. That’s the intention…but seeing it developed takes time. God deals with the choice in a moment but the details over a lifetime. That is why our Christian living cannot be stationary at any point. It must be ever deepening.
iv. The final aspect of sanctification is equipping for ministry. God saves us to use us. We cannot divorce the saving grace of God from the saved to serve grace of God. Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
C. Excuse
1. No matter where you are spiritually this is the bottom line…we must excuse ourselves from sin by the grace and power of God.
2. We must stop making excuses why we don’t need to respond to God’s call.
3. Isaiah 55:6, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 55:7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.”
“In 1992, a Los Angeles County parking control officer came upon a brown El Dorado Cadillac illegally parked next to the curb on street-sweeping day.
The officer dutifully wrote out a ticket. Ignoring the man seated at the driver’s wheel, the officer reached inside the open car window and placed the $30 citation on the dashboard.
The driver of the car made no excuses. No argument ensued-and with good reason. The driver of the car had been shot in the head ten to twelve hours before but was sitting up, stiff as a board, slumped slightly forward, with blood on his face. He was dead.
The officer, preoccupied with ticket-writing, was unaware of anything out of the ordinary. He got back in his car and drove away.
Many people around us are ‘dead in transgressions and sins.’ What should catch our attention most is their need, not their offenses. They don’t need a citation; they need a Savior.” (Rowell)
