Angels & Demons: flesh wounds
Romans 7:18-25
“It’s just a flesh wound!” Isn’t that way it is with all of the struggles, failures or wounds we incur at our own hand or by our own decisions? We always try to minimize it, making it much smaller and less serious than it really is. Jim Collins has written a book called "How the Mighty Fall" about businesses who at one time were strong and effective and yet went from hero to zero during the last decade. Motorola was number one in cell phones in the world in 2004 and today they are on the edge of bankruptcy. Rubbermaid in 2000 was a vital company and now is no more. Circuit City was a leader in electronics and now is closed. From these examples, Collins see five stages of demise when a company fails. The first is growth and success. Stage 2 is the undisciplined pursuit of more where ‘what becomes more important than ‘why’. Stage three is the denial of risk and peril. Stage four is grasping for salvation and Stage 5 is capitulation to irrelevance and death. Do you see the parallel of these five stages of demise and the company's failure to the pattern of our own spiritual and moral failures in life? The worst thing that can happen to us is to fail to be who God needs us to be.
The Bible, history and the church today are filled with people who have failed: Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggert and many more. King Solomon was a man who was anointed by God and had all of the potential in the world. He reigned over the most prosperous time in Israel’s history and built the city of Jerusalem into a world class city. He wrote 3 books of the Bible, including Proverbs where he wrote about wisdom and lust and men guarding their hearts. But the very thing Solomon professed, he didn't practice. His father David failed morally with Bathsheba and Solomon did the same thing in his life. But here’s the difference: while David failed, he repented and had a comeback so that he eventually was called by God to be a “man after God’s own heart.” Solomon never repented and continued a downward spiral. At the end of his life, Solomon was worshipping other gods and building pagan temples. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. These stories remind us that there is some dysfunction in all of us and that any one of us can fail. The worst thing is to fail spiritually and morally and lose the trust of God and those who depend upon you the most.
In our Scripture today, Paul confesses rather bluntly and honestly to his struggle with sin. “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing…. Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me…..” Recovery begins when you realize there is a destructive force at work in you that you are powerless to overcome it in your own strength. The real problem is not external circumstances, not the economy, not my boss, not my spouse – but the real problem is the sin in me.
The Bible names two sources of our struggle with failure and sin. The first is our heart. Jesus says that the heart is the center of sin. "For from within, out of your hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness. envy, slander. arrogance and folly. All of these evils come from inside and defile you." Mark 7:21-23 How is your heart the center of these these things? Selfishness. Your heart determines your life choices. It all comes from your heart. Solomon wrote this: "Guard your heart in all you do." (Proverbs 4:23) but couldn't follow it. We can't get casual with this heart thing because the second part of what the word says is "the heart is deceitful above all things." In other words, your heart lies to you. It rationalizes, excuses and justifies your decisions and actions.
Here’s the other thing: we are much more likely to extend grace and forgiveness to ourselves than we are to others. We do something bad and think, “That's okay. I’ll just confess and God will forgive me.” I call this Tony Soprano spirituality. He would commit adultery, murder, lie and cheat and then just go to confession without any intent to repent, that is to turn from His ways. That cheapens God’s grace. Have you ever done that? We even try to back it up with Scripture. So we take verses like 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” and get into this repetitive cycle of sin and we leave out the second part of that verse: "And will cleanse us from all unrighteousness." God calls us to pursue holiness which is Godly integrity for apart from holiness, no one will see the Lord. So not only does your heart come up with this counterfeit faith by cheapening grace, it demeans the meaning of faith. You can’t just believe in the Lord of heaven and still live like hell. Even the demons in hell believe in the Lord in heaven. You can believe in the word of God without obeying the word of God. That's why the word says, "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." Your heart lies to you by justifying your actions which cheapens grace, demeans faith and damages your witness. Instead, listen to the word of God and live it.
The second part of struggle with sin is the flesh. Look at verse 18 again, "I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh." The flesh is that part of you that seeks to live for you rather than God. The Bible uses the word ‘carnal’ to describe being in the flesh. So any time, any moment, in any day when you are depending upon yourself or making a decision for yourself rather than God, that's walking in the flesh. You see, you are either in the spirit or in the flesh. There is nothing in between. And we can go to both places. They are not mutually exclusive. It's when I know what the Bible says, but I'm just going to make an exception this one time. That's walking in the flesh. What's so dangerous about walking in the flesh is that you can be religious and be in the flesh. You can preach a sermon and be in the flesh. Your can sing on the praise team and be in the flesh. You can tithe and be in the flesh. You can serve in mission and be in the flesh. You can do all types of spiritual things but still living under the control of the flesh. And what that does is spoil the fruit of your faith and service.
Here’s the thing: we’re controlled by our appetites. When you live by your appetite, you have total disregard of the consequences. The shame, the guilt, the loss of respect or losing everything or everyone of importance in your life. From presidents to priests, this affects us all. There is this struggle within all of us.
The Bible names four stages of the addictive cycle of sin. I want to look at those four stages. Next week we are going to talk about breaking the addictive cycle of sin in our life. This struggle does not come from God or angels but from Satan and demons and sin itself. James 1:13 says, "When tempted, no one should say, 'God is tempting me.' For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone but each of you is tempted when you are dragged away by your own evil desires and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, it gives birth to death."
The first stage is Enticement. The word James uses in the Greek word is a fishing word and it means bait or lure. How do you lure a fish out of its hiding place? With bait. And there’s different bait for different fish. You're going to get into trouble when you contemplate the bait. That’s where anticipation comes in. VIDEO In this enticement stage, the most important thing you can do is recognize the bait, be proactive and end the threat at the enticement stage. The longer you allow yourself to contemplate the lure, your heart will deceive you until you convince yourself that there is no danger, that doing it only one time won’t hurt anyone or anything. So you have to nip it in the bud! In Mathew 4, Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Notice that Jesus didn't contemplate the bait. There was no lag time between Satan's temptation and Jesus' response. That's critical. The longer you take to contemplate the bait, the more you’ll persuade yourself you won't get caught and that you can take the bait, but avoid the hook.
So be proactive. You have to decide who you are and whose you are before you ever are tempted. You shouldn’t go into a restaurant without deciding how much you’re going to spend and how much you’re going to eat calorie-wise. The same is true when you go into the grocery store. Never shop hungry. Or in a department decide what you are going to buy and how much you’re gong to spend before you go in. In other words, be proactive and end the threat even before you’re faced with it. If not, you will convince yourself that you can take the bait and avoid the hook.
The second stage of the addictive cycle of sin is conception. It's when you commit the act. We've all been there. There’s thrill leading up to it and maybe even in committing it and then first thing that happens after is guilt. You feel guilty and make all kinds of promises, "I'm never going to do that again." But then you start listening to your heart which cheapens grace by saying, "That's okay. God will forgive you." And it gives you permission to do it again. It doesn't matter how many times you sin, it says God is going to keep forgiving you. And in the process we forget to pursue holiness even though we are called to lead a holy life. And so you get in this pattern of sinning, asking for forgiveness and then some time goes by and another temptation arises which you try to fight on your own but fail. And you rationalize “It’s okay and because you believe in Jesus, you’ll be forgiven” without taking any correction action or preventative measures. In other words, you confess but you don’t repent, that is change your ways or move away or as John Wesley said, you flee sin and temptation. And so you end up cheapening grace and demeaning faith. You can believe in Jesus and still live like hell.
The third stage of the addictive cycle is the birth of a habit. The conception of an act becomes a habit because of our deceptive heart and once you are into a habit, you become a prisoner. The habit has you.
The fourth stage is death. When you have become a casualty of war, this war between light and darkness, good and evil, angels and demons, you are no longer useful for God's purpose. Have any of you noticed how few commercials Tiger Woods is in? AT&T, Accenture, Gatorade, Buick (General Motors), Titleist, American Express, Gillette (Proctor & Gamble), General Mills and Tag Heuer all dropped Woods because of his scandal. His image was no longer useful to them. Death is that you no longer are useful for God's purpose for apart from holiness, no one will see the Lord. Some people will only see God through you and the life you lead which is why the life you lead is so important.
And so in our Scripture today, Paul is crying out? He is continually struggling with sin and cries out, "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" But then he says, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord." Please hear me: Real deliverance comes when we not only identify and name our sin or area of weakness, that is, the source of this disconnect between our faith and our life practice but also when we identify and turn to the source of our salvation, the power for us to change, and that is Jesus Christ! In him we have forgiveness. And in Him we have the power to overcome.
Not only does God forgive you, God chooses to forget, to remember your sin no more. Sister Faustina who started receiving visions of Jesus, did the very sensible Catholic thing and told her priest. The Priest believing private revelation didn’t happen assumed that the visions were from the devil. So he gave her a series of questions to ask the giver of the visions, in order to prove He was. Jesus revealed to Sister Faustina all the correct answers but the Priest was not convinced. He told Sister Faustina to go back and ask, “What sins did I confess yesterday?” Sister Faustina did, and returned to him confused. “What did he say?” the Priest asked. “He told me he did not know.” The Priest thinking had been right all along smiled until Sister Faustina responded simply. “He said he forgot.” And from that point on the Priest believed her, for only God forgets our sins – the devil uses them against us. But here's the best part: he also delivers us from its power. The accuser will tell you that when you failed this past week, you are still under his power. But last week, we learned that, on the cross, Jesus said, "It is finished" meaning, sin has been defeated. Sin no longer controls me or defines me. We need to say that out loud. “Sin no longer controls me or defines me!” You are no longer trapped by sin. In Jesus' name, you've been crucified, dead and buried. You’ve been raised to new life. It is Christ now who now lives in me. Hear it. Believe it. And claim it. Amen!
Next week, we are going to talk about breaking sin's addictive cycle in our life, including living in your new identity. Many of us are still dealing with our old identities. We are going to talk about our household of origins because some of us are still living out of those roles rather than our new role in Jesus Christ. And about not leaving any lag time. We're going to see how Jesus combated evil.
