Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker is discussing the conflict within believers described by the Apostle Paul in the Book of Romans. He talks about the constant battle between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the spirit. This battle lasts a lifetime and is experienced by all believers. The speaker references the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to illustrate the internal struggle between good and evil. The key message is that victory over this internal conflict can be found in Jesus Christ. The speaker emphasizes the importance of being led by the Spirit and submitting oneself to God in order to overcome the enemy within. The war within is described as something that exceeds human understanding, and believers may be bewildered by their own actions and mistakes. The Apostle Paul himself expresses his confusion and inability to understand his own actions. Overall, the message is one of reality and hope found in Jesus Christ. Well, thank you all. Good to see you this morning. We're going to dive into the last half of Chapter 7 of the Book of Romans. This may be the most important lesson that we will have in this entire book. It's a lesson that if it wasn't in the Bible, you wouldn't believe it. It describes one of the most striking passages of Scripture that you can find anywhere. And it describes the experience of the Apostle Paul. Now, I want you to remember, and I'm going to read this passage because I think it's important for us to see all of it. And the Apostle Paul, we're not talking about some spiritual midget. We're not talking about some guy just having to get saved. We're talking about the Apostle Paul, who under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, wrote at least 13 of the books of the New Testament. The missionary pioneer. Church planner. That's who's penning these words. And like I said, if it wasn't in the Bible, you wouldn't believe it. This is the Paul that said, we're more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. This is an incredible man that is speaking. Now, listen to what he says, beginning in verse 14 of Chapter 7. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave to sin. For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, and I do what I hate. Now, if I do not do what I want to do, I agree that the law is good. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me, for I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. I do not do the good I want to do, but I practice the evil I do not want to do. Now, if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one who does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this law, when I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. Now, here is the key thought now in the last verse, a little undergirded. For in my inner self, down in the real me, I delight in God's law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am who will rescue me from the body of this death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin. Paul describes a constant battle that is waging within believers. It is not a battle like what battling is done, it is a campaign. It lasts the entire life of the believer. It is the adversary within. You might remember Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a famous book called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It speaks about the war in life's emotional, moral, and spiritual dimensions, and Dr. Jekyll was the good guy. He was in a great dilemma. He had a great sense of right and wrong, and he found himself with such dark impulses that drove him to do what he didn't want to do. He did not enjoy the good man because of all the evil side of Mr. Hyde, and he could never enjoy being Mr. Hyde because he had too much good from Dr. Jekyll. He was in a dilemma. In fact, this is what he said, there is a perennial war among my members. Do you remember the plot of that story? Dr. Jekyll invented a chemical potion which, when he drank, would turn him into the good Victorian gentleman Dr. Jekyll, and then he would turn back into the evil man Mr. Hyde. By drinking that potion, he could separate himself from those two personalities for a short period of time and at least end the conflict for a while. Dr. Stephen Shoemaker wrote a book some time ago called The Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome. In that book, he wrote, he said, wouldn't it be easy if we could simply take a chemical or push a button and do away with every temptation for evil impulse on one hand, and always do good, the higher, the better, instead of the bad? Well, what happened to Dr. Jekyll, the moral of the story is that he ultimately couldn't control which one he was. The battle continued to rage on. Now, the truth is that every one of us who believe in the Lord have a similar war taking place in our bodies every day. Here the Apostle Paul wrote about a conflict raging within him. It's like he took his heart out and laid it on the table and said, well, here it is. This is what it's like. This is the conflict that is within me. And it was so severely stated that some scholars feel like that he must be talking about before he got saved. And others say, well, no, he was describing the frustration that every Jew had under the law. And still others said, well, he's talking about the inadequacy of any religion that doesn't have Jesus Christ. Well, those may be interesting observations or accusations, but that's not what it says here. Paul says, I'm in the middle of a civil war in my body. In my inner being, I delight to do God's law. Now, here was a man who did not resent, reject, or retaliate against the rule of God. He rejoiced in it. But here is the Apostle presenting to us a lifetime of conflict within every serious and growing believer. Now, if you never had this passage, you could go to Galatians 5, 17 and 18. That's what this passage says. For the flesh desires what is against the spirit, and the spirit desires what is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so that you don't do what you want, but you're led by the spirit. If you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law. That's a big if. If you're led by the spirit. Being led by the spirit is what gives us victory. Now, hang on, because it's going to be really dark and gloomy until we get to the end of this chapter. When you finally get down to verse 25, you realize there is victory. There is a way to get past this. There is a way to overcome the enemy within. There is a way to win the civil war that's in your body, but it's wrapped up in Jesus Christ. The spirit and the flesh always are in conflict. That's why we sometimes do things that we don't want to do. I think I said this probably earlier, but let me just back up and make an observation. I do not believe, and I think I've told you before, I don't believe we have strengths and weaknesses. Our strengths are our weaknesses. Because what we're strong in, we have confidence in, and we get careless about, and we're more likely to stumble over what we are strong in than we are what we're weak in. And you ask any believer who has fallen into any kind of disgraceful sin, and they will tell you, I never thought I would do it. But they did. What happened? The battle on that day was lost. The struggle. The flesh is not strong enough to do what God tells us to do. We've said many times that Christian life is not difficult. It's impossible. You cannot do what God demands you to do. You couldn't save yourself, so God had to send Jesus to provide salvation for us. And you can't live the Christian life by yourself. He goes on later to say, there is not enough strength in my flesh to win this battle. So the only way to win it will kind of start where we were a couple weeks ago, back in the 6th chapter, where he said that we ought to submit ourselves, present ourselves unto God as our bodies, as vessels of righteousness and not evil. That's kind of where we started in this whole passage of these two chapters. And that's the way for victory. We'll end up with that. Thank God for that. This is not a message of gloom and doom and no hope. It's a message of reality and plenty of hope that's found in Jesus Christ. Just let me say several things about that. First of all, the war within exceeds human understanding. We will never understand it. You'll never be able to understand the war within you. It's an enigma wrapped up in a mystery. You'll never understand it. It will bewilder you. It will puzzle you. That's why the psalmist in Psalm 19 says, who can understand his errors? Who can understand what we do? Paul says, in essence, I've become a new creature in Christ. I've been to the cross. I've turned my back on the old way of life in repentance. I've put my faith in Christ. I've known the surging life of the Holy Spirit. I've walked in the light with him. Then suddenly, suddenly, the war within asserts itself. And I'm bewildered by all this. I'm puzzled by it. Why is this happening? Do you understand that? Do you have a sense of reality about this? Who of us doesn't know what it's like to make mistakes that we had no business making and rather than mistakes, I'll say then sin. Do what we know should not be done. We'll never understand it. Now, if you've had thoughts about this and you've had the same experience, you're in good company. Here's the Apostle Paul, and he's telling us what he has to say. Peter, in 1 Peter 111, said, Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against my soul. Paul's complaint in verse 15, I don't understand what I do. The word in the Greek language, when he talks about what I do, is a simple little word that just means to do something, to do anything. He said, I don't understand myself. I don't know how I'm doing this. What he's done bewilders him. It's as if he has done something and he stands back and looks at it and says, this is incomprehensible. It's contrary to everything I believe. When he says I do not understand what I do, he doesn't mean I don't know what I do. He knows exactly what he's done. He was as versed in the Jewish law as anybody that ever lived. He wasn't saying I don't know what I do. He means I don't understand this. This is a riddle to me. Now, remember who's talking. I told you last week that back in the 70s there was a big furor that some folks got into, whether we had one nature or two natures when we got saved. Now, let me be very specific. It doesn't matter. But you can't read what Paul says without realizing that you may be pure as gold in your heart, like Paul said he was, that he delighted in the law of God, but you're still in your flesh. Pinch yourself and see. You're still there. Flesh is flesh and it's never going to be anything but flesh. When we get saved, our fleshly desires don't go away. They come under the control of the Holy Spirit or under the control of Satan. Continue that, what we had before. That is an incomprehensible thing to me. I don't understand what I just told you. I just know it's real because the Bible says it's real. This is the Christian Paul speaking. He's not speaking of the frustration of his pre-Christian life. He's not saying I always fail. But on the other hand, we can't keep him from saying that he often fails. Now, I just paused long enough to say nobody I know except the Nazarenes, who by the way are wonderful people, wonderful people, but they believe in sinless perfection. They believe that you can get to where you don't sin. Well, Paul would have a problem with that. He said, look, here I am. I've done all these things. I've been saved. I've got the Holy Spirit living in me, and still there's a civil war that is tearing me apart. Now, it's not just a matter of sins, as much as it is the whole pull and appeal of sin itself. He's talking about no believing person, no pure Christian, genuine Christian, can habitually continue in doing the same sins. Now, that's different from stumbling and falling. In fact, Galatians 6 talks about if any one of you is overcome by some evil force and you commit something, now it tells us how to restore that person. It's something that just overcame him. It wasn't a lifestyle. And so don't feel like that Paul here is talking about necessarily sexual and sexual and ethical and moral things. It may be something as simple as he preached one day and someone came up and said, wow, you just knocked our socks off today. And he had a little pride, a little ego. Maybe that's what it was. Or maybe he lost his temper with a new believer and just kind of said some things he shouldn't have said. Maybe something like that. Probably what the Apostle Paul is talking about is something that nobody else saw. But he saw it. He knew what kind of person he was. And though he was a true believer, though he was filled with the Holy Spirit, there still was a war that went on inside of him. Now, if we don't understand that, we are going to be susceptible to the darts and fiery darts of the devil all of our lives. That is a true fact. We have within us, within our flesh, we have that which does not want God to be involved in our lives. And so when he said, what I do is not the good I want to do, nor the evil I do not want to do. I keep on doing. He's talking about a habit. He's not talking about an isolated sin. It pops up here and there. He says, I do not have a habitual habit of sinning. But he says, I do fail. He's speaking about minute deviations from the will and the way of God in his life. Over and over again, to dog his steps and darken his days. And he just says, I can't get away from the pull from the adversary that is within me and fights me every day. He himself, he says, there is a battle within me. Now you say, wait a minute. Didn't Paul know anything about the cruder deviations and temptations that people experience? Well, in 1 Corinthians 9, 16, and 17, he made an incredibly intense statement about this. He said, I do not run like one who runs aimlessly or box like one beating the air. Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control so that when preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified. They may have been invisible to most people, but they were very real to the Apostle Paul. Now, let me make a simple statement. The greatest conflicts in our city, in our nation, in the world are not the conflicts without us. They're the conflicts within us. Within us. The conflicts that are tearing us apart are not in the office where you work. They're not in the jungle of the business world. They are not in the conflicts that arise in athletic arenas. They're not intellectual political arenas where men and women debate the great ideals that drive history. Not in the slums and ghettos where life is at risk daily. The conflicts in this city, in this state, in this nation, in this world are the conflicts going on inside the people who have given their lives to Jesus Christ. Believers who know the kind of conflict that the Apostle Paul is talking about. There is a civil war going on within us. And we need to recognize it. He does make a strong concession to it in verse 16. He says, if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law, God's law, is good. In other words, what he's saying is the very fact that there's conflict indicates that there is light and life in the word of God. There's no conflict in a cemetery. There's no waging war in a mausoleum. There is no conflict where there's death. The very fact that there's conflict means there must be life and light. So within us we have life, but there is this battle that takes place. Now here's what he says. I agree that the law is good. Now the word agree there is a Greek word, symphony. What does this sound like? Symphony. We get our English word symphony from it. So Paul is saying I am in symphonic harmony with the law of God. What the law loves, I love. What the law hates, I hate. Paul is saying when you get down to the very center of my being, to the innermost me, to the better man that I am that is within me, I am in symphony with the law of God. Now no unregenerate, unsaved lost person would ever make that kind of statement. I do not resent. Paul is saying I don't resent, resist, or retaliate against the law of God and my best self. I'm in symphony with it. In my inner being I rejoice with God's law. It is as if Paul and the law sat down together and rejoiced in the highest and holiest of things. That's the same attitude you find in Psalm 119. Psalm 119 you find in verse 16, I delight in your decrees. I will not neglect your words. In verse 24, your statutes are my delight. They are my counselor. Verse 35, direct me in the path of your commandments. There I find delight. Verse 77, your law is my delight. Verse 92, if your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. Paul is saying, in other words, I agree with that. The law of God is that which delights me. But he's still in a conflict. Now let me stir up a snake or two that you'll have to kill. My daddy always said, don't stir up more snakes than you can kill. Well, we'll see. How you view the law of God, which is the law of grace for us, really determines whether or not you're saved. If you do evil and you don't like, don't want, don't agree with God's grace, then there's doubt about whether you've ever been saved. But if you've been saved, and you're involved in that civil war, however many times you may fall, that's how many times you get up. You may have stumbled. The war wages within you. The believer says, essentially, I delight in the law of God. I rejoice in it. I don't resent it or reject it. I delight in it. Paul could say that. Can we say that? You may say, well, why is he in this condition? On the one hand, he said, essentially, I delight in the law of God. On the other hand, he says, I'm in this battle. What I want to do, I don't do. And what I don't want to do, I keep on doing. And that which I ought to do, I'm not doing. Why the battle? Well, verse 17 tells us, so now I am no longer the one doing it. It is sin living in me. Paul disassociates the new man that he is in Christ from the interloper, the hijacker, the usurper. Something has taken over his life. He said, I stand back and I see it's the residual impact of sin in my flesh. It sometimes takes over me. He does not belong. Sin has hijacked me. As long as you live in your physical body, you're going to deal with that hijacker. And he is going to fight you to your last breath. Paul says, I don't understand it. You're not going to understand it either. The war exceeds human understanding. Second thing is that the war exceeds human will. Even if you did understand it, even if you could grasp it rationally, Paul says you don't have the will, you don't have the volational resources to do anything about it. You could recognize it and maybe even understand it. If you could, you still wouldn't be able to do anything about it. It's kind of like when we were lost and needed to get saved. We couldn't save ourselves. God stepped in, sent Christ, and we were saved. Not because of any goodness in us, not because of any merit, not because we earned anything or accomplished anything, but in pure grace, God gave us the free gift of eternal life. And he does the same thing in this battle that rages within us. You're not going to win that battle any more than you would win any other battle you might face with Satan. He is strong. Satan's not omnipotent, but he's stronger than you are. He's not omniscient, but he knows more than you know. He is a real adversary. And it exceeds our understanding, and it also, even if we did understand, it exceeds our ability to do anything about it. He comes down in verse 18 to say, I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. Now, Paul is not saying that he never is victorious. This is the same man who wrote, We're more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. He's not saying I'm always defeated. He's saying, though, listen, in my highest and best moments, I still fall short of everything God wants me to be. We can never, ever please God in our strength. Never. The highest we fly, the best we are, all spiritual achievement under the grace of Christ still has about it that which falls short. That's why Paul wrote in verse 18, I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. He finds himself in this dilemma. He looks within himself and he sees a volitional shortfall, a takeover, and a civil war. And he says it's going to always be there. I know that nothing good lives in my flesh, that is in my sinful nature. Notice that Paul didn't say there wasn't anything good about his life. He wasn't denigrating himself. He was simply saying, and we must say the same thing, in everything I am, apart from everything he is, I am unable to be redeemed in my flesh what I am in the race of Adam. Everything from my flesh from the time before I came to know Jesus Christ is incapable of pleasing God. We never get to the place where God owes us anything. Everything God does for us is by grace. We do not deserve even the slightest attention from Him. That's why David could write the 23rd Psalm, The Lord is my shepherd. And then through his tears, write Psalm 51, repenting over his committing adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Bathsheba's husband. Everything about David, other than what the Spirit of God was in his life and what the Spirit of God had done in his life, was short of what God wanted him to be. That's what he means when he says, this missionary veteran, I know nothing lives in me that is in my sinful nature. The flesh is flesh. You can baptize it. You can sing hymns to it. You can preach to it. You can disciple it. It will still be the same until the day and glory when you leave this old body and receive a new body. It is what it is, and it's a fight to the finish, so don't consider the flesh ever Christianized. Each of us is fully capable of committing every known sin. I shared with you on several occasions what was probably the pivotal experience in my life as a minister. When God opened the door to my heart and let me one day look into my heart to see what He saw, what I saw broke my heart and devastated me. It was as dark as a thousand midnights. This preacher's kid who had never been arrested, never smoked cigarettes, never drank beer, never had sex outside of marriage, always been a goody-goody, quite mischievous, but goody-goody. I said, I'll never do some things. God showed me that day, there's nothing you won't do. Now that was shattering to me, because I've been preaching to people and telling people what they ought to do and what the Bible said and realized that I can still do that, but now I know that it's not them, it's me. The great hymn that the Negro people brought to us, not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. The greatest miracle is not that Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler could be saved. The greatest miracle is that you could be saved. When we realize that, it's shattering. But Paul tells us, listen, here I am, and I'm going to be honest with you, you're in a battle and you're going to be in the battle. It's a lifelong campaign between the members of your body and the renewed mind in Jesus Christ. He said, if my flesh wants to make me a prisoner, they want to seize me, that's what's working in my members. Oh, by the way, the temptation that Satan may use may vary from age to age. What tempted me when I was 19 years old basically doesn't tempt me now that I'm 88 years old. Things change. At one point in life, it may be a strong sensual desire. It may be a pride or something. It may change from place to place, but the battle is still there. And Peter said that there is a war that is being waged against your soul. We looked at that a moment ago. And Paul, again, strictly disciplined his body because he knew he was in a battle for his life. Now, let me just tell you something. The bigger the target, the harder the fall, the harder the fight. Maximum usefulness means maximum conflict. You say, I want to mature for my faith. I want to grow in Christ. I want to do something good for God. I want to do something in the kingdom of God. Well, that's good. But get ready. Get ready because you're in the very center of the battle if that's the way you're going to go. And there is that battle within you. I know I told you this, but my dear friend Charles Stanley told me one day that he was flying on an airplane and when it came time for the meal, the man next to him did not get a meal. And Charles said, I noticed that you didn't eat. He said, are you a believer? Do you believe in the Lord? He said, no, I'm an atheist. And I'm fasting in support of the destruction of the families of Christian leaders. You want to be serious with God? The battle is going to get intense. And if that battle hadn't bothered you, then you need to go back to Romans 6.13 and present yourself every day to God as an instrument of righteousness in His hands. We're living in a world of conflict. Glenn talked about what happened in Israel yesterday. Devastating. Now you think about this. Israel today is smaller than Vermont. They're surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who hate them and want to destroy them. How have they survived? Well, you talk about tactics and everything. I'm pretty naive, I guess. I just believe God has let them survive. I've been to Israel many times. Number one, I'd be happy if I died in Israel. I felt like I was home, but never been afraid. Even though we had hand grenades thrown within 100 yards of us in the old city by Arabs to kill Jews, we stood at the Sea of Galilee and watched fighter jets engage in combat between Syrian and Israeli jets. When I first went in 1969, we passed the ruins of tanks and equipment beside the road from the Six-Day War. I never felt unsafe. That conflict is typical of the conflict in the world. I told you last week, there are 65 civil wars taking place in the world right now. 65. Now you put that beside the fact that there are less than 200 nations in the world today, about 195 or so. And you have 65 civil wars going on. There is a larger conflict that is embedded in the whole universe. When you look at the biggest things of the universe to the smallest things in the universe, you find conflict. In 1985, six astronomers found in the heart of the Milky Way, our galaxy, a black hole. A black hole. It had never been noticed before. It is 1 billion miles by 2 billion miles. A black hole. It is anti-matter. It is sucking up light, energy, and matter itself. It is literally destroying the universe chunk by chunk. There at the very center of the universe is a conflict between light and darkness, between matter and anti-matter. So the conflict is throughout the whole universe. You can go to the other end of the spectrum. This is something that ought to interest all of us. For decades now, infectious diseases in our bodies that we thought had been conquered have reappeared. I mean, I remember smallpox vaccinations. Some of you probably do too. Well, smallpox, no big deal now. My mother had polio. We didn't make much concern about that. Measles and mumps, and yet all of these things, there are 15 of 22 organisms at one time were thought were completely conquered that now are coming back and increasingly affecting the human race. Inside the physical organism of the human body, we're baffled and bewildered by the resilient power of the things we thought we'd conquered. And now they are reasserting themselves in different ways. Look at the world in which we live, and you've got things like what happened in Israel yesterday, the civil wars taking place. From the biggest things in the universe to the smallest things in our bodies to the culture around us in the world, from the body within, the physical, or without, the obvious truth is that we're living in a world of conflict. Conflict. And the conflict that really matters is not all of those. It's the conflict within us, fighting against the enemy within us, even as believers. Now, in anguish, the Apostle Paul cried out, verse 24 is a... If you don't think this battle... Just listen to this. What a wretched man I am. He didn't say what a wretched man I was. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Now, just reading that doesn't really make a lot of sense to us. But let me tell you why it made sense in Paul's day. In the Roman Empire, in ancient cultures, one of the punishments for murder was that the one who murdered someone would be chained to that body. And they had to drag that body around everywhere they went, whether they were eating, whether they were drinking, whether they were... Whatever they were doing as an individual, they had that body of death, which as it decayed, the disease would spread from the decaying body to the victim who was the murderer, and now he was being punished with a body of death that's attached to him. Paul says, that's me. If you think this battle's not real, that's what it means. He says, I am chained to a body of death. I am chained to a body of death. It's a cry of someone who knows intense distress, but he's not hopeless. He's not hopeless because immediately he says, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin. He answers his own question. There is no answer except Jesus Christ, but thank God he is there. Thank God that Jesus is with us. You know, as we get older, I find myself kind of writing... I've always written notes, but I find myself kind of finishing up whatever note I'm writing by saying, Thank God that he is with us all the way home, every step of the way. He's with us. It doesn't matter what we encounter. He's with us in it. There's not a pain we feel that he doesn't feel. There's not a burden we carry that he doesn't help carry the load. And Paul knew that there was hope. And there's an ultimate hope and there was a present hope. The ultimate hope would be in the life to come in Romans 8.23, which Brother Jack will talk about next week. He said, We wait eagerly for the adoption of sons for the redemption of our bodies. Same thing in Philippians 3.21. He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself. That phrase, the body of our humble condition, literally means the body of humiliation. That body that bewilders us. Our bodies that are a puzzle to us. He's going to deliver us from that and we'll have a glorious body. That's the ultimate Adam. Now follow me real close just a second. When God created Adam and Eve, they were able not to sin. They were able not to sin. But after the fall, after they did choose to sin, and it's true of the human race, we're not able not to sin. Now that's not just a tongue twister. That is divine truth. Adam was able not to sin. He made the wrong choice and we live under the overhang of that, not able to sin. But thank God, the promise of God's Word is coming and we're finally going to be rescued by our Lord Jesus Christ and we have the glorious body, which we don't know according to 1 John 3 what it's going to be like, but we know we'll be like Him because we'll see Him as He is. That's the ultimate rescue. When we see Him, we'll be made like Him. Listen, He'll give us a physical nature that we'll be able not to sin. Never again will we have to say, oh Lord, my anger was out of control today. Never again, oh Lord, I looked at something I shouldn't have seen. I heard something I shouldn't have heard. I retaliated when I should have been forgiving. Never again! For the day is coming when our body of humiliation will be made like His body and we'll be beyond the capacity to ever again, by omission or commission, disobey Him. That's the longing of our hearts. That's our victory. But, we say that's all good but we're still here. Looks like we're going to be here. So what now? When I was a boy, I'm glad I grew up in a church that loved young people. And there were no music wars. And we sang contemporary songs. Bo and Dick Baker were writing songs back then as well as a lot of others. And so we sang choruses. My parents didn't grow up singing choruses, but we did. The church loved us enough to sing our choruses. One of them was one Dick and Bo wrote called Longing for Jesus. Longing for Jesus. I have a longing in my heart for Him. That ought to be in every one of us. We have a longing for Him. Every day we ought to say, God, please don't let me embarrass You or do something stupid today. Take care of me today. So what do we do? Well, Romans 6.13, Do not offer any parts of your body to sin as weapons for righteousness, but as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. The victory is His. We're waiting for the ultimate victory. And all we can do every day is to present ourselves to the Lord. Lord, my eyes for You, my tongue for You, my ears for You, my hands for You, my feet to walk for You, my heart to beat for You, my feet to go where You want me to go. I present myself. And we wait for the ultimate victory when we make that daily presentation to God. You're never going to make it in your strength. The flesh is flesh. It is what it is. You can't change it. The Spirit is Spirit. And unless the Spirit controls our flesh, we are victimized by our own body. That's what he's talking about. Never yield our bodies as instruments of sin. Now, we're all struggling in this. Let's be honest. I struggle with this every day. We ought to pray daily for each other and for ourselves that we'll never yield to the flesh that day. We're all struggling because we all want to be better than we are. None of us wants to be as bad as we could be. But some of us are struggling only to lose. And factually and actually, some of us are always going to lose because it is possible, follow me, it is possible that some of us in this room have never once actually come to know Jesus Christ. I preached revival in Overland Park, Kansas back in the 60's. And on the night during that revival, a deacon, the Sunday school board director for the church, came down the aisle and told me, he said, I've been teaching and talking about a man I don't know all these years. He got on his knees. A deacon, faithful servant, lost, invited Christ into his heart. I'm not saying that any of us here have done that, but some of us may have done that. It's not just a matter of saying I believe in God. Scripture says even the devils believe. And they tremble, which is more than most of us ever do. And they're still lost. So it's possible that today, knowing you're in a civil war and you better be sure you've got the Holy Spirit, then that Jesus is going to see you through because you're not going to make it otherwise. I don't say that accusingly. I say it lovingly because just be sure. Peter came down to a point in his epistle where he said, make sure of your calling. Don't take that for granted. I can go back to that night on Saturday night as a not quite six-year-old child on the back porch of a parsonage in Central Arkansas when after my dad preached a sermon that night, I told my folks that I knew I needed to be saved and I was lost and I knelt and prayed and invited Jesus into my heart. And it's as real to me today as it was 81 or 82 years ago. When I surrendered to preach Saturday night of revival back in 1950, I'd been praying for some of my classmates. One that lived just a block from me named Daryl Mayfield. I'd been praying for Daryl. Went with the evangelist about a visit with him that week and had been sharing with him. He was in the service that night. And I was praying for Daryl. And as clear as I ever heard a voice, your voice or God's, as clear as any voice I've ever heard, God said, how do you expect Daryl to be saved when you're not willing to do what I want you to do? Immediately, I knew what He was talking about. And I surrendered to preach that night. We have the Holy Spirit in us and He speaks to us. And without His presence and without His speaking to us and empowering us, we haven't got a chance. Most of you are old enough. Could you have imagined 60 years ago the kind of stuff we see in advertisements today? They can't sell automobiles, washing machines, donuts, or hamburgers without some sexy woman being provocatively dressed. That would never have happened in the 50's and 60's. It just was unthinkable. But it shows us the progression of sin. What was unacceptable, which would not possibly happen 70 years ago, is happening every day now. If we don't walk in the Spirit, there is nothing in us that is going to protect us from being victimized by the adversary within and with the culture we're living in, and there's plenty outside of it that is going to suck us into it. So the battle is real. But we have an adversary within. And the least we ought to do today is thank God that He has saved us and say what Paul told us to say in Romans 6.13, that we present our bodies to You. We present our life to You. Our minds to You. And we love Your law. And we want to please You. But the only way we'll ever do it is through the Holy Spirit's presence within us and us allowing Him to direct our paths and shelter us. I can think back on my life. Had it not been for the Holy Spirit at key points in my life, there is no question the disaster that would have come to my life. But thank God for the Holy Spirit who like a comforter, pressed His hand upon my shoulder and said, watch out. Be careful. The Holy Spirit is within, but so is Satan. So is sin. It's in the flesh. That's not hopeless unless you try to do it by yourself. You can't do it by yourself. And that's what Paul's saying. Thank be unto God. This body of death that is chained to me, thank be unto God who gives me the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, it starts out pretty somber. It's not a pleasant thing to consider. But it ends up good because we know Jesus Christ is the only one who's ever conquered death and conquered Satan. He's still alive and well in the same resurrection power that brought Him out of the tomb. It's available to us to live the life God wants us to live. So present yourselves to Him every day. Let Him lead you. The battle is real. Often very painful. But you'll get through. We don't settle down in the valley of the shadow of death that Psalm 23 talks about. We go through the valley of the shadow of death. We will go through. Christ is our assurance. He is the pioneer. Hebrews says He's the captain of our faith and pioneer of our faith. He's the trailblazer. And we're in His train. And we're in His power. We must remain committed to say it to Him every day. My life is Yours. Use me today and don't let me mess it up today. Father, thank You that things You ask us to do are just impossible, and yet You make it possible for us not in our flesh, not in our spirit, not in our understanding, not in anything we can do because we stand perplexed and bewildered in front of it. But Lord, You're in us. Your Holy Spirit will direct us and we yield ourselves to You. So protect us from ourselves. Protect us from the flesh that is prone to disobey You. Let us walk under the leadership of Your Holy Spirit. And we thank You that Your victory is ours in Jesus' name. Amen.
