HOW TO OVERCOME SIN
Psalms 19:12-14
INTRO: All of us have a problem with sin. The question is, “How do I overcome sin in my life?” Let me give you some little principles—very basic, very straightforward.
If you live by the Spirit, He gives the power to overcome the deeds of the flesh. The question is, “All right, how do I do that? I agree that the power is there. I want to see the Spirit do more and more and more. How do I get to that point? How do I get that victory? How do I get that pattern established? What do I do?”
I. RECOGNIZE THE PRESENCE OF SIN IN YOUR FLESH.
Do you know why most Christians are defeated by sin? It is because sin has so totally deceived us, that we never really get to the point where we honestly evaluate its reality.
We are not dealing with the issue. We spend so much of our lives justifying our sin as a quirk of our personality or a product of our environment. We have become so good at coating over the reality of our sin that we don’t see it, so we don’t deal with it because we “flat out,” number one, don’t even recognize it for what it is.
Any kind of spiritual victory begins when we identify the enemy. It’s the same old story, “If you don’t know what you are shooting at, how are you going to hit it?” How am I going to eliminate from my life what I don’t even identify as needing to be eliminated?
It’s there! But inevitably it’s covered up. David said, “Protect me from secret sins, hidden sins?” And to kill it you have to recognize it, you have got to search it out. Psalm 139:23 says: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be . . . “ what? “. . . any wicked way in me.”
Help me see my sinfulness. I want to recognize it for what it is. I want to get to the root of it. That’s what is so absurd about contemporary psychotherapy. Instead of having to deal with the reality of our present spiritual condition, it wants to drag us in the past and find somebody else who is responsible for our problem. We must deal with whatever is the problem in our life—that is us.
Don’t be deceived about how good you are. Believe me, your sin is there, and it is wretched and it spurts forth between the cracks of your supposed righteousness. It comes out in anger and bitter words, unkind thoughts, criticisms, self-conceit, lack of understanding, impatience, weak prayers, immoral thoughts, and even overt sins. We have got to know our weaknesses.
II. A HEART FIXED ON GOD.
In order to gain this victory and to see the power of the Spirit of God begin to give us the power over the unredeemed flesh, we must have a heart fixed on God. The Psalmist said in Psalm 57:7, NIV: “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast.” What does he mean by that? Undivided devotion to God!
That’s wholeness in spiritual life where I am given wholly to God. We can’t have sin in one area. We can’t just sort of clean up a lot of it but leave it in one area. We can’t starve it out and kill it in one spot and feed it so it lives in another spot. If it lives anywhere it will crawl all over everywhere. It will not confine itself to one area, it’ll be everywhere.
III. MEDITATE ON THE WORD.
The filling of the Spirit is equated in Colossians 3 to letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. When the Word controls us, when it controls our thinking, when it is there as the Psalmist said, “To meditate on day and night,” when it is there hidden that “I might not sin against God,” then we have a control factor in our life. The way to overcome sin in our life is to feed it Scripture.
Whatever really controls our mind, controls our behavior. We must saturate ourselves in the Word. We must hear the Word preached and taught. We must learn it ourselves and we must meditate on it day and night.
IV. COMMUNE WITH GOD IN PRAYER.
True prayer gives the heart a sense of its own vile character and renews the hatred of sin. John Owens said, “He who pleads with God for the remission of sin also pleads with his own heart to detest it.”
When we pray to God—that is an honest confession. We can say we confess our sins, but until we pray, “God show me all the sins of my life, reveal all of them, uncover every little corner of my life. Bring it up and may it become as detestable to me as it is to you, and may you give me the strength to see it go away.” Those are the kind of prayers that are the true prayers of repentance.
And then prayer exposes secret sins. Prayer weakens prevailing sins. Prayer finds strength in fellowship with God to overcome sin in our lives.
What must I do if I am to know victory over sin? 1. I have to recognize the sin in my life. Don’t kid yourself. Don’t underestimate your wretched condition as Paul did in Romans 7:11. 2. Fix your gaze wholly on God and become totally devoted to Him, so that everything in life is Him. 3. Cultivate a knowledge and understanding, and a deep comprehension and application of Biblical truth.
V. CULTIVATE OBEDIENCE.
Now we move to the place of obedience. Paul said, “I haven’t attained but I press towards the mark.” I haven’t reached the goal but I am on the path. What path was he on? The path of obedience. Peter said, “Our lives should be characterized by obedience to the truth” (1 Peter 1:22).
At first it seems hard, at first the progress seems slow, but we stay with it and eventually obedience becomes a habit!
Obedience will lead us to grow in grace, to perfect holiness, to renew the inward man daily and we’ll train ourselves towards godliness.
Now, it would be fair, I think, to ask a final question. How can I do a little inventory and say to myself, “Soul, how are you doing? How’s this working out? Are we doing these things?” We need to ask ourselves some simple questions.
1. How’s my zeal for God? Is my heart cold towards God? Has sin made me indifferent to times of communion with Him? Do I have little or no interest in His presence? In the glory of His name?
2. Do I love the Word? Do I find myself drawn to the Word? Do I find myself indulging in the deep things of the Word?
3. Do I love the place of confession? Do I eagerly rush into the place where I can confess my sin and ask God to do the self-examining process by the light of the Holy Spirit, so that every dirty thing can be brought to light.
4. Do I delight in worship? Is it my great longing to be here with God’s redeemed people? Is it precious to me to spend the Lord’s Day in the church? Or do I say with the Jews of Malachi’s day, “What a weariness worship is!”
5. Ask yourself this. “Are we sensitive to sin in the church? Are we sensitive to sin in the world? Does it tear our heart up when we see sin around us any where? In our own life?”
CONC: You see those are just the basic principles I gave you, just flipped around and turned into self-examining questions. Spiritual victory is there if we recognize that we are not under any obligation to sin. If we recognize that the Spirit of God has already bent us towards life, and so He’s already overcoming sin in our life, and the power to overcome all of it is there.
Then all you need to do is tap into the means, and I gave you simple principles by which you can begin to do that in our life, and a little test by which you can examine where you are. I don’t know about you but I want to have a life of virtue. I want to have a life of joy. I want to have a life of peace, and I want to have a life of usefulness to God, and this is the path to that life.
