Dealing with Private Sins B

Christian people sitting churches all over the world. All their life and have only a superficial knowledge of Christ takes away powerful powerful's imagine the confusion of entering a battle unprepared without a plan, not even understanding your fighting you don't have to be a four star general to know that is a losing strategy. But sadly, lots of Christians go to war with sin. Just that way about you.

What is your plan for battling sin, especially the secret sin that no one knows about.

Well today on grace to you. John MacArthur is going to show you some practical biblical strategies that will help you uproot and defeat private sin. John originally preached today's message during chapel at the Masters University. It's part of his study titled a course for life to the lesson. Now here's John going to be a holy person. If you're going to be a righteous person. It's going to have to take place in your own heart. That's where the battle has to be fought if you losing the battle on the inside when nobody knows where nobody sees and you know you're not righteous. There it will show up.

Be sure your sins will what find you out.

Nobody on this planet knows what's in my heart. Nobody and nobody can hold me accountable. There. That is where the battle is one or lost. And if you losing it there. You're going to lose it on the outside because you can't keep the lid on that.

James one verse 14. Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by what set his own lust. That's the problem. It's not about what's outside, it's about what's inside five people to see the same image you have five reactions to the five people in the same conversation. I have five different responses.

It's about what's on the inside. Temptation takes place on the inside when you're carried away. No just put a hook in your nose and drags you off like a slave and then verse 15 when the last has conceived, it gives birth to what sin you know you can save it in your mind and it will be borne in your life and in the end it's deadly suffers 50s as it brings forth death.

And that's why verse 16 says so don't be deceived by beloved brother don't be deceived into thinking that you can cultivate in your heart.

Evil thoughts and things like that and not have it affect your life in manifest sin and perhaps even death.

So you have to win the battle inside.

Let me just to get a little more diagnostic. Okay, let's go inside and let's let me just give you some categories think about through the years I've I've tried to reduce this to something that we can kinda manage and see if I can refine it a little bit today. The first thing that's troublesome on the inside is passed. Sin, past sin, we like to think that one of the blessings of God is given us is a good memory, and other many times I thank God for a bad memory Unicenter there so much stuff in fact most of the things that I've heard in my life.

It seems I would like to forget when you know we only want to good memory when somebody says nice things about us when we have these really nice experiences or when were having a test but sins of the past are a big problem because you can sin by remembering the past.

I remember talking to a guy one time who had married a beautiful Christian girl for was appeal of the really wildlife full of immorality and it was it's just soon after his honeymoon.

He married this pure beautiful Christian girl and I saw law. You have a wonderful time on your honeymoon just come off the cuff question make conversation turn out to be pretty profound. He said no no and I said why he said because I just kept thinking of all past sexual experiences and I couldn't I just couldn't keep my mind pure with his own wife on his own honeymoon through recycling past young people at this point in your life are filling up your memory bank and a promise you this, that if you stick stuff in there that sinful Satan is good recycling that isn't just when you did it comes back like the images of those videos you should miss seeing the images on the Internet. You should miss seeing the movie should missing the lyrics to the song. You should've heard the images that were vividly portrayed in your mind when you're reading something you shouldn't read doesn't go away makes vivid vivid memories, particularly for sitting in a theater watching people doing things they ought not to be doing and their 25 feet high in full-color images to forget what happens is you cherish the memory of past sins. I can't tell you how many times I've talked with homosexuals who come to know Christ and I've asked them how they're doing and inevitably, inevitably, we had a lot of unconverted at Grace Church and you wouldn't even notice about them's numbers of them married and gone on with life and inevitably they tell me the same thing they they just can't get rid of those past experiences they keep recycling. That's why David said this to David said to God in some 25 seven do not remember the sins of my youth was he doing Hussein God, would you please forget what I can't. I can't forget it. In Ezekiel 23 the Lord condemned Israel and that the way he did. Why he compared Israel to a harlot prostitute named all whole of and this is what he said about the harlot that was analogous to his room. Quote Ezekiel 2319, she multiplied her harlotries in other words, she was just engaged in multiplied prostitution.

How how did she multiply her harlotries listen to this by remembering the days of her youth when she played the harlot. In other words, he says Israel is like a harlot who gets old, and all she's got is a lifetime of harlotry to remember and that's Israel.

Israel is playing by the memory of all its youth, and all the harlotry Satan will take the garbage of your past and you don't have much of the past year to protect your pass by protecting your present because you're going to always live with that past in the background potentially to be cycling some of you know exactly what I mean use you engage and ascend at some point, you can actually have that sin come to mind. You can accept the temptation move into the last and save her again that lustful simple experience by just recycling it in your mind. Certainly that's what Jesus had in mind. Bartley said if you look on a woman to lust after you committed adultery in your heart and not just once but every time you recycle so that's the past and you need to protect it.

And then there's the future you know your mind only wants to send in the past but wants to send in the future to.

It's really amazing not only wants to reach back and recycle all the garbage of the past, but it wants to invent sin for the future.

Psalm 36 is so insightful is and what it says he plans wickedness in his bed will you thinking about a person that you haven't done something with but your thinking about what would it be like if you get it, you're literally sending on the future level devising the evil plan, you find that if you read through Psalms 64 Proverbs 14 lessee Proverbs 15 Proverbs 24 the section. Proverbs 6 talks about devising evil plans planning to do evil we would call it premeditated sin would so you know, your mind is a mind is a frightening thing so you you gotta grapple with the sins of the past to get recycled and you got all of the plans for the sins in the future that you allow yourself to indulge in those things. Both directions get stimulated by things you read things you see etc. sometimes those thoughts are just about lost. Sometimes the thoughts are about angrier sitting on your bed. Figure how you get back in your teacher they gave you see sit on your bed thinking about how you get back at the guy that that undercut you in a certain situation you're thinking about how you're gonna fulfill your greed or your envy by stealing something how you can elevate yourself in a certain environment. Sin of pride and you haven't really done it, but you plotting it in the plotting itself is sin. So you have to deal with sins that are directed toward past and sins that are directed toward the future. As you devise them in their course in the middle is the presence and in your mind and this is James one. This is the fantasy world of the mind. The Bible calls this the imagination. In Genesis 65 it says that God looked down on the world and all he ever saw was that all the imagination of their heart was only evil continually.

Sin is about the imagination. It's about fantasies. It's about looking and lusting, it's about like Proverbs 24, nine, says the thought of foolishness is sin.

Just the thought of some disobedience of some iniquity. Just the thought is sin.

Just a thought. And that's why when you go back to what I say read you and James one sin is conceived in that fantasizing in that imagining saw me notice still diagnosing the issue here in the battle has to be one inside, in the mind and the conscience and the heart is why David said create immediately what part created me a clean heart or just do the work on the inside and it's not easy to do that because you would think while you guys are older you don't have the same problem. Well, sure, mean there's a certain spiritual maturing. There is a decreasing frequency of sin is an increasing level of righteousness, but the older you get, the more you have a memory bank of sinful things and those can be recycled. That's why Paul said all wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death. That's why Paul said, for to me to live is Christ and the die is what gained was because he wanted to wear a crown. It was because he wanted to be delivered from past, future and present sin. Beleaguered him so makes haven't attracted to me and care about those streets honestly yummy doesn't move me that much. I'm sure I'll appreciate it when I arrive I can't really comprehend what transparent gold looks like, and I've never imagined one pearl being big enough to make a whole gate. Those are sort of interesting and novel things, but what interests me about heaven is the absence of sin and that's where David was created me a clean heart. The work has to go down in side and be done there so I'm just trying to give you the focus young people.

That's where the battle has to be one.

And if you listen at their you know what you need to do. Let me give you some steps confess and forsake any sin that is secret sin on talking practical on your face on your knees explicit say the words to the Lord. If nobody's around say them out loud and confess and forsake any sin or pattern of sin that is in side that nobody knows about Isaiah 55 seven with the wicked forsake his way, the unrighteous man forsake his thoughts forsake those thoughts and you start by confessing hack a gag.

The pieces don't let him live the Old Testament analogy from first Samuel 15 they let the king live. The God said to kill and so he came back and he came back and he came back and every time he came back he was destructive again and God says what it to kill him.

When I told you the killing will when you find the sins that are there pack a gag pieces second. Do not expose yourself to evil attractions. Job 31 one jobs that I made a covenant with my eyes.

I made a covenant with my eyes and he said you know what I kept my covenant guard what you see, I'm not talking about a glimpse or a glance I'm talking about guard what you look at and absorb and another element is some feed on the word of God. David said I were divided in my heart that I might not what sin it's amazing when you're your saturated with the word of God how fast that puts the brakes on things. That's what the Bible means when it says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, which is the same as being filled with the spirit exactly your filled in control of the Holy Spirit. When the word of God dominate your thinking feet on the word feed on the word. I mean like I can tell you this is a simple as this, the output of your life is in direct proportion to the intake of Scripture truth I'm talking about the honest heart felt intake so start on the negative confess and forsake the sin be specific if their patterns of sin in your private secret life that nobody knows about you bring those before the Lord. Confess and forsake us. Then, avoid evil attractions. Anything that incites sin for some people just don't keep getting catalogs of stuff that you don't need but the generates discontent. Ms. admit a million ways you can process feed on the word of God. And then I think Philippians 48. Think on righteous things coming that's about as practical as it gets. Think on righteous things. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good reputation. I mean if there is such a thing as excellent sender is if there is such a thing as being worthy of praise, then let your mind dwell on those things find praiseworthy things spiritually excellent things, things that honor God. One of the practical thing. Cultivate loving the Lord cultivate loving the Lord. I would say from just from my human viewpoint. The single greatest influence on my life.

Through the years has been my study of Jesus Christ.

Whether Matthew Mark Luke John and I've spent I spent nearly 9 years teaching Matthew and then when I did that I went back and wrote commentary on it and then I went back again and wrote the notes in the study Bible on it so I been through Matthew oh I don't know maybe 10 or 11 years of Matthew. I spent several years going to the gospel of John. I'm now going to the gospel of Luke. I went to the book of Hebrews which exalts Jesus Christ an absolutely overwhelming and magnificent ways I've gone through the book of Colossians several times in my life and that too is an exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the most glorious experiences I've had is twice to go to the book of Revelation to teach it twice and complete completely and then to write to volume commentary on the book of Revelation as well. I suppose if you added up the 35 years of ministry, maybe 25 of those years I have been dealing pretty directly with Jesus Christ and in the rest of the epistles. Like the book of Romans are dealing indirectly in Galatians indirectly in the Thessalonian epistles and in the other epistles as well, but I really believe the single greatest contributor to the way my spiritual inner man functions is my love for Jesus Christ. Every passage and I don't know if you detect this if you hear me preach on on the Gospels, I I literally I literally find myself thrilled at the process of learning more about Jesus Christ. Every passage in the Gospels now course in Luke every passage just unfolds his beauty and his majesty and his glory and I mean it's taking me to a point where more than most people by far because I mean who does this, you know, normal people don't spend their whole life studying all week long for decades, so they don't have the opportunity to go as deeply into the things of Christ as I do, but I will tell you this that the most controlling feature of my life is the love that I have for Jesus Christ and it's not some sentimental thing. It's not some schmaltzy kind of weepy thing induced by some emotion. It is this. Since this reality of who he is and the glory and the wonder of his person and what he's done and how you love me enough to give his life for me and how he I was chosen in him before the foundation of the world that I may be made into his image to dwell in his presence forever never reflect that image and all that goes in between all of the characteristics of Christ that the wonder of his meekness and gentleness and yet his strength in the perfect combination of grace and glory, and injustice and tenderness and you see it unfold on every page of the Scriptures and to me that is the single greatest contributor to the victory inside is that I have a hard time with the idea that the Lord Jesus Christ would be disappointed with me. II don't want you to be disappointed with me and kind of control that on the outside.

I want my wife and kids to be disappointed with me.

I could control that on the outside. I don't want Jesus to be disappointed with me and he knows my heart and I'm like Peter, I'm saying, Lord, I love you I'm telling you I love you. I know it looks like, but I still love you. And then Peter finally says you remember, Lord, you know my heart you know I love you John 21 Jesus responded by saying the machine.

I know you love Peter that to me when it's all said and done this. Where the battle is one so get to know your Savior Christian people sit in churches all over the world. All their life and have only a superficial knowledge of Christ which takes away from my standpoint the most powerful powerful motive for holiness.

Father, we are grateful again this morning that the we've been given your word that we might know what it is you one of us but that we might also know our glorious Savior. I pray for these folks are here I been one like them who has to fight all the same battles has through all the years of my life.

Help them. Oh God, to win on the inside.

May there be a real breaking in many hearts send a real honest openness and may they find that secret place where they can unveil to you what you already know, and trade in that deception for a true and pure love for you, so that what they hide in the heart may not break loose like a broken sewer line someday dirty their whole life and all those around him.

May they win the battle now on the inside day by day by day as they confess and forsake sin over and over again as they feed on the word as they think on the things that are holy and pure mostly as they grow in their love for our dear Lord Jesus, who gave himself for us. This is grace to you with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us along with teaching on the radio.

John serves as Chancellor of the Masters University in seminary.

Today's lesson is part of his series titled a course for life John. I know that as a pastor you counsel a lot of people who were dealing with private sins habitual sins. And it's important to note that just resisting the old sinful habits isn't enough, there's a positive side something you have to do if you going to deal with those old habits effectively. Habits are just the response of your thoughts as a man thinks in his heart so he is, but what is it say in Proverbs. Guard your heart because out of it are the issues of life.

Guard your heart. Well what you mean by that. How do I guard my my heart how do I guard my eyes how I guard what I say what I do and the answer to that is you guarded by being controlled by righteous thoughts you guarded by having Christ on your mind. Nice thing about this when I was young. If I can just see Christ in everything and sometimes you see that reduced to what would Jesus do in a bracelet or something. This really truth and that that's a simple thing. What would Jesus do like the psalmist to set I've set the Lord always before me. Therefore my heart is glad another words I'm always looking at life through the lens of the Lord when Christ is your preoccupation when the word of God is ruling in your heart and you know the will of God, because you know the Scripture, and you want to honor Christ and your love for Christ dominates when your affection for him exceeds all other affections when your love of the truth of the Scripture exceeds all other loves then you're going to behave in ways that are righteous and virtuous. So how do you get into a pattern of doing that.

Let me tell you about something the MacArthur daily Bible. No substitute for daily Bible reading MacArthur daily Bible picture. Verse by verse through the entire Bible. One day at a time get you the whole Bible in one year. This be a great time to begin to do that has a portion of the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs for every day with some comments to instruct you as you read through the Bible in a year.

This will change your life. Don't worry that today's the last day of August, you don't have to start on page 1. Or you could start on page 1 and just go from August to August and recalibrate but just do this. The point is start reading the word of God. Whatever day it is when you receive your copy. Just begin their and follow through and when it's time to go back to the beginning.

At the beginning of the next year you'll be well on your way to having established that habit. The MacArthur daily Bible is available. Shipping is free in the United States, and friend.

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It's particularly helpful for a young person or a new believer to pick up a copy. Contact us today.

The daily Bible is available for $16 and as John said, shipping is free to order call toll-free 855 grace or visit our website Jide TY.org again to purchase the MacArthur daily Bible, call 855 grace or go online to Jide TY.org and if John's teaching is benefiting you a few senior families strengthened the ritual he or if someone you know has come to faith in Christ. Because of these broadcasts. We would love to hear about that email is a great way to reach us. Our address letters@jidety.org or you can send us a note addressed to Grace to you. Box 4000 panorama city, CA 91412 and thank you for mentioning the station to hear grace to you on whatever you get in touch that is more important than you may realize our address again. Box 4000 panorama city, CA 91412 in our email address letters@jidety.org now for John MacArthur and the entire staff.

I'm Phil Johnson, thanks for starting your week with us and be here tomorrow when John continues his study titled a course for life with another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on grace to you