Opening illustration: Play a video on ‘SIN’ and what people today perceive it to be …
Introduction: Jesus’ instruction to “sin no more” was a command to end her adulterous activities and adulterous relationship. Being a member of the body of Christ does not give us excuse to continue a sinful lifestyle, including the sins of sexual immorality, unless we repent (Revelation 2: 21-22) and resolve to “sin no more” (John 8: 11).
We cannot stand self-righteously and condemn the lives of others, when God is calling them tenderly to conversion. We cannot cling to the past, which may be so comfortable and even socially acceptable, when God is doing something new.
We live in a world that desperately needs something new. This wondrous newness of God will be born out of conversion, not coercion; it will spring from repentance, not reprisal. It will take shape in the councils of the world, in the boardrooms of the workplace, at the tables of families. We are all called to “sin no more.”
So … Why should we ‘SIN NO MORE?’
1. Transformation: You are a NEW CREATION (2 Corinthians 5: 16-17):
The idea evidently is, not that he ought to be a new creature, but that he is in fact; not that he ought to live as becomes a new creature - which is true enough - but that he will in fact live in that way, and manifest the characteristics of the new creation.
Here it means a new creation in a moral sense; and the phrase "new creature" is equivalent to the expression in Ephesians 4: 24: "The new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." It means, evidently, that there is a change produced in the renewed heart of man that is equivalent to the act of creation, and that bears a strong resemblance to it - a change, so to speak, as if the man was made over again, and had become new. We are not reformed, rehabilitated or reeducated – we are recreated living in vital union with Christ. At conversion we are not merely turning a new leaf but beginning a new life under a new Master. This recreation is not by hands but by the Spirit of God. This is not our work but the work of God through His Holy Spirit. The mode or manner in which it is done is not described; nor should the words be pressed, to the quick, as if the process were the same in both cases - for the words are here evidently figurative. But the phrase implies evidently the following things:
(a) That there is an exertion of Divine power in the conversion of the sinner as really as in the act of creating the world out of nothing …
(b) That a change is produced so great as to make it proper to say that he is a new man. He has new views, new motives, new principles, new objects and plans of life. He seeks new purposes, and he lives for new ends. If a drunkard becomes reformed, there is no impropriety in saying that he is a new man, so does a person speaking lies, a deceiver, uses obscenities or practices any form of sinfulness … There is no other moral change that takes place on earth so deep, and radical, and thorough, as the change at conversion. And there is no other where there is so much propriety in ascribing it to the mighty power of God.
2. Assurance: You are BORN OF GOD (1 John 3: 9; 1 John 5: 18):
The practice of sin is the evidence and confirmation that one is not born of God. Doing confirms being. Not practicing sin is the evidence and confirmation of being born again.
And the reason the new birth inevitably changes the life of sinning, John says, is that when we are born again, “God’s seed” abides in us, and we “cannot keep on sinning.” That’s how real the connection between the new birth and daily physical life is. The seed may be the Spirit of God or the Word of God or the nature of God - or all three. Whatever it is specifically, God himself is at work in the new birth so powerfully that they cannot keep on practicing sin. God’s seed cannot make peace with a pattern of sinful behavior.
The new birth alters irrevocably our view of sin and our capacity to accommodate it happily in our hearts. For this we should be profoundly grateful to the Lord. The chief reason why unbelievers do not forsake the sins which will eventually destroy them is because they do not see their sins as the evil we now know them to be and feel them to be.
Every time we leave our Father’s house in order to taste the pleasures of the world, every time we set off to squander our inheritance, we soon come to ourselves, find ourselves not amidst the world’s pleasures as we had stupidly and forgetfully thought we would be but groveling with the pigs, and as soon as all of that comes home to us again - as it must and will if we are born again - home we come to our Father’s house, saying once again, ’Father, I have sinned’ and having the Father say, for the umpteenth time: ’Bring forth the best robe and put it on him.’
We may continue to commit sins; but that sin is always followed by conviction, by the recognition of the evil of our sin, the danger of it, the ugliness of it, and by the repudiation of it and our hastening to the mercy seat to get rid of its corruption and stain. We who are Christians may very well lust and kill as David did, if only in our hearts, but, like David, that sin will always come home to our reborn hearts and pierce them to the quick and bring us again to this anguished cry.
A father’s seed produces a child in his likeness. The question is are we born of the devil to continue in a sinful lifestyle or are we born of God to put a full stop to sin and pursue a lifestyle of righteousness?
As believers we now have Gods nature or seed inside us. It is this nature that doesn’t sin and cannot sin because it is born of God. When John wrote this he was trying to build us up in trusting our identity as children of God and guarding against deception that says we can somehow produce a sin free lifestyle without Christ. The term commit can literally mean to produce. So it could literally say the new nature doesn’t produce sin because it is born of God’s sin free nature. The nature that is born of Satan can do nothing but produce sin. The answer lies in abiding in Christ, the one who never sins. [Ref: 1 John 1: 8-10]
Do I seek to stop sinning or have I stopped sinning? To be born of God means that I have the supernatural power of God to stop sinning. In the Bible it is never - Should a Christian sin? The Bible puts it emphatically - A Christian must not sin. The effective working of the new birth life in us is that we do not commit sin, not merely that we have the power not to sin, but that we have stopped sinning. 1 John 3: 9 does not mean that we cannot sin; it means that if we obey the life of God in us, we need not sin. The believer has to make a choice! The right choice leads to good consequences and poor choices lead to bad consequences. A believer’s normal condition (lifestyle) is in contradiction to evil and Satan. It doesn’t compromise with the world or look like it is of the world.
3. Exhortation: You are CALLED TO BE HOLY (Leviticus 20: 7; 1 Peter 1: 16; 1 Peter 2: 9):
So stop seeing yourself as someone who has to sin. Stop choosing to sin. Stop obeying sin. “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14). Sin is a harsh tyrant in your life. But Christ not only died for our sins, He died to sin. He has conquered sin and the devil and gives His people who are united with Him a victorious life of grace. Freedom is found in being a slave of our Lord Jesus (Romans 6: 15-23)!
The Greek work here for Holy is hagios meaning that which is different from ordinary things. God is different, so is His temple and so must His people be. The Christian is God’s man by God’s choice. He is chosen for a task in the world and for a destiny in eternity. In the world he must obey the law of God and reproduce the life of God. The Christian has been chosen by God, and, therefore in his life there must be something of the purity of God and in his action there must be something of the love of God. There is laid on the Christian the track of being different.
So how are we different? We don’t live for ourselves or the world. We live for Christ and reflect Him through our lives by fruit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit being manifested through our lives. We live in the fear of God and love the Lord God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves. Everything hangs on this …
We are set apart (separated) from sin, the world and its influences not blending in with the crowd. What makes us different are God’s qualities in our lives. Our focus and priorities must be His. All this is in contrast to our old ways. We cannot become holy on our own, but God gives us the Holy Spirit to help us obey and to empower us to overcome sin. Don’t use the excuse that you can’t help slipping into sin. Call on God’s power to free you from sin’s grip. Don’t run to sin but run away from it. Do not deliberately put yourself in a situation where you become vulnerable to sin. Tactic: ‘Submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from thee.’ (James 4: 7)
In all this we must remember that we are called to be a royal priesthood and this value is not because of who we are or what we have achieved, but because of what God does not what we have done.
4. Consequences of Sin:
(a) *Building Family Curses: (2 Samuel 12: 10) - unknowingly
(b) *Accumulating Generational Curses: (2 Samuel 12: 10) - unknowingly
(c) Bringing Curses upon our Land (nation): (2 Chronicles 7: 14) - unknowingly
(d) Putting Christ on the Cross: (Hebrews 6: 6) – sadistic pleasure we take …
* The curses could fall into these categories – demonic possession or attacks, murders, mysterious deaths, suicidal tendencies, outbursts of anger, reoccur-ant diseases and illnesses, family history of ungodly events and happenings, drug/drinking/smoking and sexual (porn) addictions to name a few.
We must also not forget that God’s Word discloses to us that when we continue in a lifestyle of sin, we promote unrighteousness in the land and sin multiplies (magnifies) by 7 fold in every generation that follows if we do not chose to stop it in our generation.
Paul asks a question in Romans 6: 1-2 “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?”
Application:
• GOD IS NOT AGAINST YOU. HE IS FOR YOU.
• GOD SENT HIS SON INTO THE WORLD TO PAY FOR ALL OF YOUR SINS.
• YOU ARE DEAD WRONG, I LOVE YOU, I DIED AND PAID FOR YOUR SINS, MY BURDENS ARE LIGHT ... FOLLOW ME!"
God says in His Word, "I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins" (Isaiah 43: 25 Hebrews 8: 12; 10: 17).
God chooses not to remember our sins. He chooses never to bring them up again. He doesn’t forget because He cannot. But, He doesn’t remember them either; that is, He will never bring them up again. Why? Because they have been forgiven through His Son Jesus Christ.
Retrospection: If you have never made that decision for Christ, probably He is beckoning you to come today …
Many who profess to be Christians and continue to advocate and justify their sinful lifestyle, think about this … you received and experienced the best, why did you chose the worst? God is still waiting for you with open arms like the prodigals father to embrace and take you in … the Word of God tells us that there is a banquet in heaven when one who was a sinner is saved and comes to the knowledge of God and the need of Him in His life … when he repents, he is forgiven and saved. Hereafter he voluntarily choses to ‘sin no more.’ Will you be that person(s) tonight? This is our challenge to you as we wind up the ‘Elim Tour.’ God is slow to anger and all abounding in love and mercy. He patiently waits on those who will respond to Him faithfully …
