How to Murder Sin (part 2)

Colossians 3.1. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.

Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived, but now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these.

Anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator.

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Tonight is going to be a bloody mess, but that is okay, because the victim is sin.

A few weeks ago, we started talking about how to murder sin, and we're going to come back to that topic. We're coming back to that topic tonight. And remember, murdering sin is first degree murder.

It's malicious. It has forethought. We aren't talking about accidentally killing sin or on the whim killing sin. Our Lord God is holy.

And He's pristine. And He is light. And He tells us to walk in the light. He tells us to be holy just as I am holy.

But we still have this indwelling sin, this power within us that wants to rebel against God. You remember when Joshua brought the people, the Israelites, into the land of Canaan.

After Joshua died, the book of Judges says that there were still people, there were still enemies in the land that they needed to conquer. And that's what it's like for us.

God has done a great work in saving us and bringing us to faith in Him. But now there's still enemies within the land, within our own hearts. And we are called to holy, violent action against that sin.

God says, put to death. We read that in Colossians 3. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature. And so, that's what we're talking about tonight.

And I don't think I need to, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on motivating you to this. It should be enough to remember that Jesus died to make us holy.

He loved holiness so much that He paid for it with His own blood. He's called us to be His own special treasured possession that's holy and blameless in His sight.

I just want you to realize He didn't have to choose us. He didn't have to choose you for this wonderful thing. But He did. He saved us to be holy.

And so, we should be eager after that. We should be eager out for holiness. Well, I have a total of eight directions for killing sin.

We covered three a number of weeks ago. And the first one we saw was that in order to mortify sin, we have to live in the goodness of the gospel.

And the first three are in way of review, but it's going to be a rather extensive review because it was so long ago. So, we kill sin by first living in the goodness of the gospel.

The killing of sin, you mortify sin not because you need to be right with God. You are right with God. And because you are right with God, because God has done such a wonderful thing for you, the aim now is to be holy.

So, as sinful as you are right now, the good news is that you're accepted in His sight because of His Son. All your sins were laid on Jesus. And He paid for all of your sins, past, present, and future.

So, every single one of them are gone or washed away. And brothers and sisters, that means that you're at peace with God. There's no more war left. You've been adopted into His family.

You've been called into His household. And so, you live under His smile every day. You live in the goodness of the gospel. And so, the question that I want to ask, are you seeing that?

Are you feeling that? Are you cognizant of that? Psalm 149 says, The Lord takes delight in His people. Right now, God is smiling upon you.

He takes delight in His people. And so, are you consciously relishing in God's smile? I'm right with God. My sins are not a problem with God anymore.

He loves me for His Son's sake. He's chosen me. He's elected me. He's given me this promising love that He's going to provide for me. He's going to be a strong tower.

He's going to work everything out for my good. And so, if you want to murder sin, this is where you have to begin. You have to live in the goodness of the gospel.

You're not killing sin to be right with God. You're killing sin because you are right with God. The joy of the Lord is our strength. And the joy of the Lord is our strength when it comes to killing sin.

Now, second, I said we need to understand, you need to understand your responsibility. Whose job is it? Whose task is it to kill sin? Well, it's ours.

We read it in Colossians. Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature. And that's a command. And inside of a command is this implication that it's you. You put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature.

Or Romans 6. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. You do not let sin reign in your mortal body.

This is your job, your task. Romans 8. If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. If you by the Spirit put to death the misdeeds of the body, then you will live.

And so, friends, do you feel the weight of this? It's our responsibility. It's your responsibility to pursue this.

We can't wait around and hope that we're just going to somehow magically become holy. Or that just in due time, God will do it for us.

He's given it to you. It's your job. It's your task. But the Lord hasn't left us alone. And there's always good news with all of these responsibilities.

He hasn't left us alone. Remember Philippians 2. We talked about this. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. It's your job. It's our job to work out salvation.

Work out our salvation from impatience and from lust and from greed and from jealousy, from gluttony, from whatever sin besets us. Work that out. And as you're working it out, work it out with fear and trembling.

And the reason is not, if you don't, you're going to go to hell. The reason is, is because for, it's God who works in you both to will and to do according to his good purpose.

Work because God is working in you. Work because God is working in you. It's your responsibility, but it's his power. And so the Holy Spirit was given for this specific purpose.

He has invaded your soul for this very specific purpose to work in you. And so as we're putting sin to death, we should do it with some fear and some trembling because the spirit that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation is inside of you.

And he is working. He's so close that our willingness is his willing and our acting is his acting. And so when you kill sin, you act a miracle.

And I don't say you do the miracle, but you act it. So Jesus tells the slave man, you take up your mat and walk. And the lame man takes up his mat and walks.

He does it, but it's Jesus' power. And when we put to death sin, it's not us acting in our own strength. It's Jesus. It's the Holy Spirit working in us.

And so God says to do it. You do it. But look at this promise that comes attached to it. That as you do it, I am working with you. Now third, and those two things should be building your confidence and your expectation that this is something that I can do because of what Jesus has done, because of who God is and what he has done for me and what he has promised.

So third, the third direction is what was feed the fires of hate. Feed the fires of hate. Remember, this is first degree murder. The only way you're going to cut off your right hand and gouge out your right eye is if you are full of hatred.

If you hate sin. And so the thing here to do is to feed the fires of your hate. And just think, sin wants to ruin you.

Sin paints itself to look so nice only to stab you in the back. Sin wants to hurt your children. Sin wants to hurt your wife.

Sin wants to ruin everything. And it does ruin everything it touches. Sin looks at the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross and says, so what?

So what? Big deal. And sin looks at the glory of God and it looks into that glory that makes righteous men fall down on their faces and says, so what?

There's no glory there. Just think about sin. How evil it is. It made the father turn his face away from his son. Some people say that, you know, the father couldn't stand to see his son suffering like that.

And so he looked away or he went away. But that's just not true at all. The father couldn't bear the sight of his son.

And he couldn't bear the sight of what he had become. Because you remember, he who knew no sin became sin.

And he became my sin. And he became your sin. And the father looks away. Pours out his wrath on his son. And so all that was in the father that used to be love for his son, now it heaved and disgust at what his son had become.

He had become our sin. And so that should make you want to kill it. If sin can separate the father and the son so that the father is pouring out his wrath on his son now, we should hate something so evil and so wicked.

Well, in the book Murder on the Orient Express, a man is murdered on a train. And he's murdered in revenge for killing a little girl.

I hope I'm not spoiling this for anyone. It turns out that everyone in the household of that little girl, somehow or other, was from the chauffeur to the grandmother.

They were all on this train car. And they were all going on the same way. And they had it all planned out. They boarded the train. They wore disguises. They made up names. They made up alibis. And then they each took a turn stabbing this man.

So what will make normal people take up the knife and kill? Well, it's hate. And so what is going to make you murder sin with some anger and some passion and some violence?

It's going to be this hatred that you see how ugly sin is and how heinous it is. And when you get that fire within you, no violence is too little against sin.

And so until you're feeding the fires of your hatred, you're just playing with sin. You're just playing with it.

And you'll never kill it. But when you turn the furnace up seven times, then you're ready to do what it takes in order to murder sin.

Murder. Murdering sin takes violent emotional energy. And so you have to meditate until you are on fire, ready to do what needs to be done.

Until you are ready. Well, that brings us up to where we are today. There's going to be six more directions for killing sin. And like I said, it's going to be a bloody mess, but that's okay.

The victim is sin. So here's number four. Suffocate sin with the truth. Suffocate sin with the truth.

Turn over in your Bibles to James chapter 1. James chapter 1. And we're going to look at just a couple of verses here.

James chapter 1 and beginning in verse 13. Look at the verses with me as I read it. When tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me.

For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when by his own evil desire, he's dragged away and enticed.

Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death. So in this verse, in these verses, we see the conception of sin.

How is sin conceived? Well, you can look at it. It's when desire and enticement come together. When a desire drags you away and entices you, then it gives birth to sin.

And it's this enticing, this enticement that I want to talk about. And that is the point of our fourth point here of suffocating sin with the truth. What does it mean to be dragged away and enticed?

Well, it means to be dragged off the truth. It's to be dragged away from something that you know to be true or something that you know to be valuable, that's truly valuable.

It's to be dragged off of those things. It's to hear and to believe a lie. So sin or Satan enticed Eve in the garden with a lie.

Why? And so think with me, why did Peter deny Jesus? Remember, they're around the fire and Peter says, I don't know the man. I don't know the man. I don't know him.

Well, why did he do that? Because at that time, Peter was believing a lie. He thought his safety was up to him. He thought his safety was up to him and he didn't think God could protect him in that situation.

So he believed a lie. We saw it in Sunday school. We worry and we're anxious because we believe a lie. We don't think God is able to take care of us. So lies, this is so important.

Lies are the grotesque mothers of sin. Behind every sin, there is this ugly, nasty lie that we are believing. So why do your children lie when they're getting in trouble and they say, well, I didn't do it.

And you know that they did. Why do they lie? Well, because they don't want to be punished. Well, what lie are they believing at that moment? Why would they tell a lie?

Well, they're telling a lie because they think it's worse to be in trouble with you than it is to be in trouble with God. So they make this value judgment.

Mom and dad are more important than God. And so I'll tell a lie and get out of it or try to get out of it. Why do men go back to porn again and again?

Well, it's because they believe a lie. This is no big deal. God will forgive me. These women love me. They think I'm great. Something. It's all a lie.

So how do you murder sin? You suffocate the lies with the truth. You find the lie that you're falling for.

And trust me, there's always something, there's always a lie behind every sin. So you find the lie that you're falling for and you smother it with the truth. I won't feel better after I do this.

These women don't love me. My anger doesn't bring about the righteousness that God desires, the righteousness of God. My worry doesn't really accomplish anything.

You get what I'm saying? You meet the lie head on with the truth. And so you suffocate the lie with the truth when you're not being tempted.

Romans 12.2 Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So there are times when you're not tempted and you have some space to think about things.

About what you've done and what your tendencies are. Well, when you have that space, go over the truth again and again in your mind. Say this, this is the lie that I believe. When I am tempted, this is the lie that I'm believing.

Or I'm tempted to believe. Now, this is the truth. Here it is. I have to hold on to this. And so be very specific when you're coming to this, doing this.

If your anger is the problem, say, you know, the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. And when I'm angry, I think I'm doing something good.

I think I'm doing something useful, but I'm not. And here's why. And so we suffocate the sin. Not only when we have some space, but then we suffocate the lie with the truth when we're being tempted.

So here comes the temptation now. And it's coming on strong and we're seeing it and we're hearing the lie going through our minds. Or we're seeing the lie played out before us. Well, what do you do? At that point, you barrage the sin with the lie.

You barrage the lie with the truth. You fling the truth at it and you grab a hold of the truth and you don't let go. And you keep on saying it to yourself over and over again, the thing that you know to be true.

And isn't that what Jesus did? Three times. It is written. It is written. It is written. And we have to do the same thing. When that temptation comes, the truth has to be ready.

And we have to give it and push out the truth and suffocate the lie with the truth. If you want to kill sin, look for the lie. Suffocate it with the truth.

Here's the fifth direction. Drown sin in God's delights. Drown sin in God's delights. So now we're back in James.

How is sin born? Well, we've talked about enticement. And then there's something else that has to be there and that's desire. There's the desire side.

So how do we get rid of an ungodly desire? Really, this is one of the key things because it's that desire that leads to the enticement. It's the desire that makes the enticement seem so real.

So how do we get rid of the ungodly desires? The only way, and I mean the only way, that you can get rid of ungodly desires is to replace them with godly desires.

You can't hope not to desire something. To desire is to live.

The Buddhists, you know, they say the highest good is not to desire anything, not to want anything. But that's inhuman.

That's subhuman. To live is to desire. To desire is to live. And so the only way that we can kill ungodly desires is to replace them with godly desires.

So the only way to stop desiring sin is to desire and delight in god more. To delight in god more.

Thomas Chalmers was the Scottish preacher in the early 19th century. We sing one of his songs, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise. He preached a sermon called The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.

The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. And the whole point of his sermon was to say the only way that we get rid of sinful desires is if we give ourselves to something greater.

A greater desire. A greater delight. A greater affection. Now, Chalmers' sermon was all about loving this world. And how can someone stop loving and craving this world, this world's things, this world's esteem, desiring the world?

Well, the answer is, and Chalmers' answer was, it's impossible. It's impossible. It's impossible for the natural man to do that. And it's impossible until a greater desire, something better, comes along.

And his answer was, until someone experiences the love of God, they're going to always go to the world. But when they've experienced the love of God, then who has room for the world?

The love of God is so much better. And it's so much more wonderful to love God and to be loved by God. And so, what happens is that man gets a new heart.

And his heart has new taste buds. And now he's desiring God. He's saying, oh, give me Jesus. Let all this world go. I want Jesus. And so, what happens is the old desires for this world, I have these cravings.

I want this world. I want the things of this world. I want the esteem of this world. It dies. And not consciously, like I'm going to stop desiring those things. It dies because something better has come along.

God has come along. And Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Romeo starts out, not head over heels in love with Juliet.

You know that? He starts head over heels in love with Rosaline. And he's writing sweet poems to her. And he's carving her name and heart on the pillars. But then, he sees Juliet.

Rosaline's gone. Rosaline is a thorn compared to Juliet the rose. And so, the new desire expels the old desire.

And so, what I'm saying is if you want to kill sin, you have to satisfy yourself and God. You have to satisfy yourself and God's delights. You have to be enjoying God so much that sin isn't something you want anymore.

Remember Jeremiah 2. My people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me, the spring of living water.

And they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Why did Israel dig their own broken cisterns that cannot hold water?

Well, it's because they had forsaken God, the spring of living water. And so, do you see what we do every time we sin? Every time you sin. You walk away from the spring of living water.

And you try to dig a muddy hole in the ground and drink the water at the bottom. John Piper says, sin is what you do when you're not satisfied with God. It's just that simple.

Sin is what you do when you're not satisfied with God. And that's us. So, here's God. This delicious fountain of living water. And we, for some inexplicable reason, turn away from it to dig our own cisterns.

We sin because we aren't happy enough in God. We sin because we aren't happy enough in God. And so, you sin when you're not satisfied with God.

And the opposite is true as well. And here's, this is the positive part of this. You don't sin when you are satisfied with God. So, what we want to do is drown our sin and basically drown ourself in the glory and the goodness of God.

And so, we want to make it our wholehearted goal and effort we want to do to be completely delighted in God. So, this whole business of mortification.

Mortification of sin. Mortification isn't dying to joy. It's not dying to happiness. It's actually finding a better happiness. It's finding real joy.

So, mortification is not walking totally away from pleasure. It's walking away from the pathetic water, the pathetic toilet water of sin. And it's drinking from the living water, God.

And so, you don't kill sin by saying no to pleasure. You kill sin by saying yes to a superior pleasure. You kill sin by saying yes to God.

I want God. Give me Him. And so, the new pleasure powerfully expels the old pleasure. Just like Juliet expelled Rosaline.

So, when you read your Bible, you should make it your goal to make yourself as happy as you can in God.

Why? Because that is the way that you become holy. That's the way you say no to sin and walk away from sin. And why should you pray?

Well, we pray for many reasons. But one of them should just be to love, to enjoy the love and communion of God. To have real fellowship with Him. And when you do, that's how you drink in the living water.

That's how you fill up your heart with so much pleasure and delight in God. That now there's no more room left for sin. So, do you want to murder sin?

Delight yourself in God. Delight yourself in God. That's direction number five. Here's direction number six. Choke out sin with the opposite virtue.

Choke out sin with the opposite virtue. So, our heart, it's a rainforest. It's really thick with plants.

And we're born and our heart is thick with sinful desires, sinful attitudes. We value the wrong things. There's just no room for God in our heart.

Our heart's totally overgrown with all this sin. And so, there's no way any sunlight can get to the bottom to make any sort of godly plant grow. Because our lives are just choked, chock full of sin.

But then God comes and saves us. And He basically flies over our rainforest heart. And He drops a bomb, blows a huge hole in it.

Now there's this huge gaping hole. And He plants His seed in our heart. And then He poisons the ground with His spirit so that now our sinful heart is starting to die and to decay.

But there's still all these plants. There are fewer now. But they have to go. We have to pull them out. And so now what we want to do is we want to pull out that sin, the sin in our lives, that sinful habits, those sinful things that we love.

And we want to replace them with the exact opposite. So is it anger? We're going to replace it with compassion. Is it sexual immorality? We're going to replace it with purity. And that's what you saw as we were reading through Colossians 3.

He says, rid yourselves of all such things as these. Anger, rage, malice, and so on. And then in verse 12, He says, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

So get rid of anger, rage, malice, and put on compassion, gentleness, kindness, humility.

He says, we've taken off the old self. We've put on the new self. And so now we should live completely opposite lives as before.

We should do what we did except do the opposite. And so that's mortification. It's taking off and it's putting on. And so, well, what does this look like? I guess, what does that look like in real life?

Well, men, if you're struggling with sexual purity, instead of just saying no to your evil desires, give yourself to godly desires. If you're married, give yourself to pure sexual relations with your wife.

And so you want to fill up your life with pure things, with purity. And then if your life is full of purity, then there'll be no room for impurity.

If you struggle with anger, well, you want to fill up your life with compassion and kindness and gentleness and humility. And then, so when you're put in the situation where you used to naturally just produce anger, well, now your life is so full of gentleness, compassion, there's no room for anger to grow.

And so it's just not good enough to just try not to sin. Because if we look at sin and killing sin that way, it just won't work.

We have to actually root up the dandelion and plant a rose in its place. And if the rose is there, the dandelion won't be there anymore. Well, that's direction number six.

Here's direction number seven. Direction number seven. Burn sin in the light. Burn sin in the light.

Right now I'm reading The Hobbit with my daughters. And of course, the most interesting character in The Hobbit is not any of the dwarves or Gandalf even.

The most interesting character is that nasty old wretch, Gollum. Now, Gollum lives in the roots of the Misty Mountains where, you know, he eats orc babies and gnaws on old fish bones and he plots and he plans and he schemes and he's in the dark all the time.

Now, sin is like that. Your sin is like that. Your sin, like all foul things, loves to live in the dark.

And so it crawls around in secret places in your heart. Far from the light. Far from the fresh breeze of the Word of God.

It's down there. And it's, you know, it lives in secret. It's strongest in secret. And there it is. It's gnawing on these old bones of what it wants and its desires.

But, you know, everything like that, every foul thing like that, it hates the sunlight. That's just true. So Gollum, in the book, he hates the sun and the moon.

He hates them because they shine upon him. And your sin hates the light too. It hates it because the light dispels the darkness. And sin withers in the light.

It loses all its strength when it's out in the fresh air. It loses all of its fearsome power when God's Word is blowing over it and the light is shining on it.

And so brothers and sisters, one of the best things that you can do if you want to kill sin, there's just nothing like confession.

Confession to God. Just totally laying it out before God. And confession to your spouse, to a friend, to your pastor.

See, when we sin, we crawl around in the darkness. And like Gollum, we're in there and we're plotting.

And we're living in our cave. And we lie to ourselves. And we lie to other people. And we crave. And as it sits in the darkness, it grows.

It grows in strength. But what confession does is it grabs sin and it pulls it out into the light. So now, the sun is shining on it and it withers and dies. And confession has a way of killing that last bit of pride that sin holds on to.

Confession has a way of killing that last bit of self-sufficiency, that God complex that we all have that says, you know what, when it comes to this sin, you know, I've fallen many times, but I really can do this.

I really can do this on my own. I can do this. I can take care of myself. I can save myself. But when we confess to a friend, when we confess to our spouse, and when we confess to God, what we're saying is, I can't.

This sin is too strong for me. I can't do it. I'm not strong enough. I need help. And when that last bit of pride finally dies, sin often goes with it.

Confession breaks pride and it destroys sin. Some of you are afraid of the light. Afraid of the light.

You're afraid of what might happen. But brothers and sisters, God has made a promise for that. That if we confess our sin, He'll be faithful and just and He will forgive us.

He'll purify us from all unrighteousness. How many times has the Lord said, I am with the humble. I take the light in the humble. Now, I can't say, well, your spouse or your friend are going to just be completely sympathetic.

Most of the time, they will be. Most of the time, they will be. They know what it is to have sin to struggle with. And so most of the time, you're going to find a sympathetic spouse, a sympathetic friend waiting for you.

But whether you have a human sympathizer or not, if you are open with your confession, God will be there. He's ready to walk with you.

Because our God is light. And He calls His people to live in the light. And He says, if you come with Me in the light, we'll have fellowship one with another.

And so it's so good. Confession is so good. And how can... What is it like to walk in the light?

When you're not walking in secret anymore. Or to seat anymore. It's kind of like living... It's kind of like coming out of a smoggy city and walking in the fresh mountain air.

I've seen a photograph of Pittsburgh. I can't remember. I think it's in the 30s or the 40s. And it's pitch dark in this picture.

Cars have their headlights on. And the streetlights the street lamps are all on. And it looks like the dead of night. I mean, all the... You know, it just looks like pitch black.

But then you read the confession... Or the caption. And at the... On the caption, it says this. Taken at noon at such and such a date. And that was Pittsburgh in the days before pollution control.

Before pollution laws. The steel mills and the pollution was so great that at noon it was pitch dark. And so, can you imagine living in that?

Just how like every breath you took was painful. It was oppressive. It was dreary. It was dark day and night. But then, living in the light is like leaving Pittsburgh and going up into the Allegheny Mountains and walking around in the fresh air.

And so, you're in fellowship with God. And His Word is coming to you and it's blowing. It's fresh breezes are coming to you. And you're in fellowship with your friends because, you know what, you're not hiding anymore.

And your spouse and you, yeah, there might be some problems or there might not be, but, you know, at least things are open. There's no more lies. There's no more secrets. There's no more charades.

There's just the cool air of God's grace blowing through your life. And that is death to sin. That kills sin.

Because who wants to go back to Pittsburgh after you've been walking out in the mountains? Sin can't live in the light. Sin can't live out in the open.

So if you want to kill sin, then confess. Drag it out into the light and watch it burn up and wither away. That's direction seven. Here's the final one.

In direction eight. Run away. Run away. Paul writes to Timothy and he says, flee the evil desires of youth.

And then he writes to the Corinthians, flee from sexual immorality. And this is so important to understand. I think there's a principle here.

We don't kill sin by having a big knockout, drag out battle royale, one time, big, giant battle against it. I think so often that's what we want to try to do.

I have this sin and so I'm going to have a big one time battle and when we have this one victory and either we're defeated or we win, and then sin comes back.

Or we actually fall. And so what we do is we get into this hand-to-hand combat with sin when it's at its strongest and more often than not we go down.

We lose. So this is a slippery game that we are playing. This is a... We kick sin when it's down. We stab sin in the back.

But when sin comes at full force in its greatest temptation, we run away. We fling the truth at it and we run away. There's no hope in an all-out brawl against sin.

Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther's best friend, he was a young man when he said, the old Philip, old Philip is too strong for young Philip. The old man is too strong when it comes in its power and its temptation.

That is not a time that you want to be dealing with sin. The only thing to do then in the way that you defeat it is by running away, by getting out of the situation.

To stay is to fall. And so, too often I think we think fighting sin is like how they used to fight in the 18th century.

You've maybe seen the movies or the pictures and this is just like, it must have been like madness. So here's all the British soldiers, right? They're all lined up.

And here's all the French soldiers. They're all lined up right across from each other. And what do they do? They just shoot at each other. No movement. They're just shooting each other. And the last group with the most people standing, they win.

It's crazy, but we don't fight sin like that. We don't have, we're more like commandos going behind enemy lines and we strike sin when it's not expecting.

We sneak up on it and we pour the truth on it. And when it isn't ready, that's when we hit it and we hit it and we hit it and we hit it with the gospel and we try to bleed it dry.

This isn't one big knockout war. Mortification isn't that. One big knockout battle. It's a long process where you're striking and you're hitting and you're cutting.

But there are hours when darkness reigns and the only thing to do then is to get out of the situation, to flee.

And there are times when they even think about that sin. The temptation, the desire is so powerful that we fall into it. Do you know what I'm talking about? Where you're thinking about and you're dealing with, let's say, worry or lust.

And you're thinking about how I can kill this sin, but all of a sudden our minds are so deceitful. What started as me thinking about how I can attack sin has now become me participating in that sin.

Thinking about it and all of a sudden it has you. What do you do then? The thing to do is to get out of there. To flee. Wait until things cool down and then you go back to the attack.

And so there's something like you just divert your attention. You distract yourself. You get out of that situation. And so brothers and sisters, that's the goal.

We want to weaken sin. We want to keep killing evil desires. We want to make it bleed every day. If you want to mortify a sin, then put its target, its picture on your target and every day you shoot at it and you shoot at it and you shoot at it.

You want to keep replacing the lies with the truth. Keep meditating. Keep memorizing. And then stay in the light. Anytime that you start to feel this compulsion to kind of crawl back into the mountains, you come all out.

You want to live in the goodness of the gospel and you want to keep after sin every day to keep killing it. And if we do, Paul says in Romans 8, if we hang sin on the cross and we watch it and we bleed it dry, Romans 8 says, then you will live.

When sin dies, you live. When sin dies, you live spiritually. When you're walking on the belly of your lust, then you are alive. And so joy and peace flourish, comfort in the gospel grows.

And you're having this fellowship and this communion with God. And your life is finally there. And you start to enjoy heaven on our earth. Where you're feeling His smile and you know things are right when you're walking on the belly of your lust.

And that's the promise. If you, by the Spirit, put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. Not just in the future. In the future. Even now.

Well, what about if you still love your sin? Well, if you love your sin, then you're already a slave to sin. You're already beginning to experience hell on earth.

You're separated from God. And you're alone. And you're crawling around in the darkness. You're gnawing on those evil old desires.

And when you die, God will add torment to your health. And so the question that I have for you if you're an unbeliever is, don't you want to live?

Don't you want to live? Do you want water? Do you want air? Do you want life? Then come to Jesus. Jesus is life. Jesus is the light of the world.

And he's come to save us from our sins because it's our sins that make us live in darkness and it's our sin that makes life this living death. And so he's come to save.

And so if you run to him, you run away from your sin, he'll save you from your misery. Jesus, on that last week, he stood up, it wasn't the last week, on one of the times that he was at a festival, on the greatest last day when everyone was there, he stood up in a high place and he said, if anyone is thirsty, come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow from within him. Jesus was saying that then and Jesus is still saying that now.

You don't have to die. You don't have to stay going the same way. You don't have to still live in the darkness. You can come out of the light. And so do you want life?

Do you want to be satisfied? Then leave your sins and come to Jesus. That's what many of us have done and to a man we know that that old way we are never going back.

We can't, we won't, it's nasty, we're not going back there. We found the streams, the fountains of living water and this is where we're staying. And so I would invite any of you, you can come and Jesus is receiving.

You were made for him and him your heart will find rest. Well this week, brothers and sisters, let's take time to be holy. Let's take time to kill our sin.

It's not something that we can unconsciously do. We have to consciously be killing our sin and that means time and effort and thought. If you're serious about killing sin, then you'll be taking time to be holy.

Our Heavenly Father, we ask that you would seal your word to our own hearts. pray that you would nail it into our hearts deep so that we could remember it and live on it.

Pray that we would take time to be holy this week, every single one of us. For those who need to be right with you, will you arrest them? For those who need to confess, will you give them grace?

For those who are standing, give them grace to be careful lest they fall. And I pray, Lord, that we, each and every one of us, would be giving daily blows to our sin, that we would be striking it and hitting it again and again, that we would be walking in holiness because you are holy and you are with us.

Pray that the gospel would be sweet to us and then the joy of the Lord would be our strength. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.