Don't Let the Old Man In | Victory Over Temptation

You're listening to A New Beginning with Greg Laurie, a podcast made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God.

Visit our website and learn more about Harvest Partners at harvest.org You're a liar, and you're the father of lies. Pastor Greg Laurie points out the folly of listening to the devil's deception and reminds us we're free from his influence. I'm no longer a slave to sin. I am a child of God. Sometimes believers give the devil more credit than he deserves. I couldn't help myself. The devil made me do it.

Not really. Sin requires our cooperation. We don't fall into sin, we jump. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points out how our adversary and our sinful nature may conspire to lure us, but we can stand in the Lord's victory over temptation.

How? That's what today's study is about. Pastor Greg helps us chart a path toward spiritual success.

Well let's grab our Bibles and turn to Romans chapter 6. The title of my message is, Don't Let the Old Man In. I was invited a while ago to a film premiere. Actually it was an opportunity to see the film before it went nationwide. It was directed by acting and directing legend Clint Eastwood. And the film was called The 1517 to Paris. It's a true story of three men who stopped a terrorist attack on a train bound for Paris. And there was a faith element because all three of these young men met in a Christian school.

So there was that element of faith to it. So after the film was over, standing there in the lobby with a crowd of people around him was none other than Mr. Clint Eastwood. And of course I have always liked Clint Eastwood in his movies you know. And so I thought I am going to say hello to him. And so I waited for a moment and I walked up and I thanked him for making a film with a faith element. And he said to me, well you know these young men could not have done what they did without help from above.

And I said that was very true. And I have to tell you Clint Eastwood, he was 87 when I met him. He is 88 now.

He looked great. You know he just looks like Clint Eastwood, just an older version. And then he squinted his eyes and looked at me and said, feeling lucky punk? And then I heard this song. Okay these are really dated references. Some of you understand what I am talking about.

Some of you don't. That is a theme song from one of his films and a line from one of his films as well. Well speaking of Clint Eastwood, he was having a conversation with country star Toby Keith.

They were out golfing. I read this in a magazine article. And so Toby commented on how active Clint still was at his age and still making movies. And he asked Clint Eastwood, what is your secret?

Eastwood simply replied, I don't let the old man in. I thought that is a good line. I thought that will preach.

In fact that is my sermon title, Don't Let the Old Man In. You know it is kind of hard to do because as you get older you start doing old person stuff. You don't plan on it but you just do. You know what I am talking about. Like wearing your pants too high. Where does that start? When did it seem like a good idea to no longer wear your pants down where your hips are but I am going to bring them up to where my chest starts.

I think this is a good place. Or you know when you are a man you start missing patches when you shave of course. And another thing old people do is they drive way too slow right. And you get behind them and it is like seriously. And then you go around them. And I don't know about you but if you go around somebody that is going too slow do you ever look at them.

Who is this person. And they are like lean really forward like this in the car. You know the windshield is right here. It is like do you have to be that way. You know things you say you will never do you start doing these things. Another thing about older people is the filter sort of disappears and they say whatever they think. And they are often cranky about something and they will just complain about something.

There is actually a lot of traits of getting older. I think for one thing older people like routine. They like to know what is coming. They eat in the same restaurants. They order the same meal. And they like everything to be predictable. When they come to church they sit in the same seat. You know who I am talking to.

And if anyone dares take your seat you are not happy about it either. I actually read that is why as you get older it seems like time goes by more quickly. Of course time does not speed up or slow down. But our perception of time can change. When you are younger time seems to go very slowly. Especially when you are in elementary school. I felt like I spent ten years in like the fourth grade right.

Like how long will it take until it is 12 o'clock and we break for lunch. But as you get older things start morphing together. It is almost like decades start going together. And that is because you don't have as many new experiences. So because there is such a familiarity in the things that you do it seems like time is going by quickly.

They say the way to counter this is to go out and do new things and have new experiences. But there are tell tale signs that you are getting old. You know you are getting old when you don't care where your spouse goes as long as you don't have to go along.

Right. You know you are getting old when your idea of happy hour is a nap. You know you are getting old when you actually look forward to a dull evening at home. You know you are getting old when you have a party and your neighbors don't even know. You know you are getting old when you sink your teeth into a steak and they stay there. You know you are getting old when your tie does not come anywhere near the top of your pants.

That is another thing. They start tying their ties too short. Maybe that is why they hike their pants up. I see a connection here as well. You know you are getting old when you bend over to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do when you are down there.

Is that not true? I am going to tie my shoe and if there is anything I need to do, anything I need to pick up, I want to do it now. Right. Tell tale signs of getting old. So today I want to talk to you about not letting the old man in. But actually I am not speaking about age. I am talking about that sinful nature that we all have. And that is what Paul is talking about here in Romans 6.

In fact he calls that nature the old man. So let's read Romans 6 verses 6 to 11. Knowing this that our old man was crucified with him that we should no longer be slaves to sin for he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ we believe that we shall live with him knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him for the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise you also reckon yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So Paul now is showing us how to not let the old man in. That old sinful nature. Really in Romans 6 he sort of shifts gears. In Romans 1 to 5 he talks about the sinfulness of man and just really makes a case for the fact that everyone is sin. The moral people sin. Immoral people sin. Religious people sin.

We all fall miserably short. But Christ died for our sin. And if we will turn from our sin he will forgive us. Ok but now in chapter 6 we are dealing with a new theme and it is really sanctification. What is sanctification? Sanctification is something that takes place over a period of time. For instance salvation or regeneration happens in a moment bringing a sinner from spiritual life to death. But sanctification in contrast is an ongoing process. Salvation is where we are forgiven of past sin. Sanctification is where we break free from the power of sin. So Paul is showing us now how this works out in our life. When you are baptized, how many of you have been baptized in water?

Raise your hand up. Well every one of us should be baptized. When we are baptized and we go into the water and come out it is a symbol of dying to the old nature.

The old life. In fact in Romans 6-4 he says, We died and we were buried with Christ by baptism and as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father now we may live new lives. But what does that mean practically?

Ok if you are taking notes here is point number one. The Christian no longer has to be under the power of sin. Let me say that again. The Christian no longer has to be under the power of sin. Verse 7, For he who has died has been freed from sin. But some might say, Well I still sin.

So what is wrong with me? Let me ask you a question. How many of you committed a sin this week? Raise your hand. How many of you committed a sin? How many of you committed a sin today? Raise your hand. Really?

It is kind of early. What did you do? Let's share. Here I will hand the mic. How many of you are committing a sin right now?

Don't raise your hand. This is a problem. We know we are freed from the power of sin but we still sin.

And we don't like it. But maybe we say well there is just really no way to overcome it. I am always going to be this way. As Oscar Wilde once said, I can resist anything but temptation. See I am fine in between temptations. But man as soon as it comes I have no will power.

I just cave in. There is no way I can change. Or maybe you look at your own life and you say, Well this is a pattern that runs on my family. My father always had a temper. So I am always going to have a temper and I am going to scream and yell and throw things too. Or my mother was an alcoholic and so I am going to end up as an alcoholic too. There is just no getting around it.

Or my parents divorced and that means that I am going to end up divorced as well. Listen. Stop talking that way. That is stinking thinking. That is not how a Christian should think.

Because Christ can break the cycle of sin in your life. I know this from experience. Conceived out of wedlock. Alcoholic mother.

Married and divorced seven times. My life could have so easily gone the wrong direction. But I believed in Jesus Christ and He changed the course of my life. And if He can do it for me He can do it for anybody. And so this is what God can do.

But you know I think we can go, No this is the way it is always going to be and that is the direction I am going to go. Not necessarily. Because Jesus Christ has freed you from the power of sin. Now look. Before you were a Christian you really had no ability to resist sin. In fact the Bible even tells us that before we are believers in Jesus we are held by the power of the devil. 2 Timothy 2.28 says, We should pray that nonbelievers come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap for they have been held captive by him to do whatever he wants. But this is no longer true. I am no longer a slave to sin.

I am a child of God. Listen to this. The power of God over sin in your life right now is more powerful than Satan's power ever was.

Let me say that again. The power of God over sin in your life is more powerful than Satan's power was. I heard one kid say to an older sibling, You are not the boss of me.

I don't have to do what you tell me to do. Well you can say to the devil, You are not the boss of me. You can say to sin, You are not the boss of me anymore. I am no longer a slave to sin.

I am a child of God. But some people will understand that God has forgiven them and they will use it as sort of a license to sin. Thinking, Oh I can just keep doing this because God will forgive me. And actually in 1 John 3.8 it says, If people live that way, if they keep on sinning, it shows they belong to the devil.

In other words, if you deliberately, willfully, continually sin without any remorse or any desire to change, I have to wonder, are you a child of God? Now if you will admit, yes I do give in. I do have these thoughts. I do struggle with it.

I don't want to do these things. That is something every believer deals with in one way, shape, or form. Every one of us still sins. The Bible says if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

But here is what Paul is saying. You don't have to be controlled by sin any longer. Verse 2, How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer in it? And by the way that phrase live in it means to swim in it.

Or to breathe its air. Or let it be the main tenor of your life. Listen, whoever continues to sin without remorse is not in danger of losing their salvation. Rather by their choices they reveal they may have never had salvation to begin with. So we have been freed by sin. Point number 2, You are no longer a slave so stop acting like one.

Verse 6, Knowing that our old man was crucified with him that the body of sin might be done away with, we should no longer be slaves to sin. One of the worst national sins of America was slavery. And after the Civil War ended President Lincoln signed what is known as the Emancipation Proclamation.

All slaves young and old were finally given their freedom. But history tells us that many of the older slaves who had endured years of servitude did not fully understand their new status. And in fact many slaves stayed on the plantation. Fast forward now to the 20th century and there is still a lot of prejudice and bigotry shown to African American people in states like South Carolina and Alabama and Georgia. They were still treated like second class citizens.

Segregation was the rule. African American people had to stay in separate hotels and eat in separate restaurants and use separate restrooms and see degrading signs over a drinking fountain with words like for colored people only. So along came Martin Luther King who stood up for the rights of black people. And he gave that great speech there in Washington D.C. And I quote from it, Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree is a great beacon of light and hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. But a hundred years later said Dr. King, the Negro is still not free end quote.

He was right. And there were various people that stood up for their rights because they said we are no longer slaves and we are not going to live like slaves. And one of those people was Rosa Parks. They called her the first lady of civil rights. And it was my privilege a number of years ago to actually meet Rosa Parks. Now if you know her story she was on a bus in Alabama and the rule was you had to give up your seat to a white man if you were a black person on a bus. And she refused. And so she became legendary for that. So I ended up on a bus with Rosa Parks. I am not making this up. I know it sounds like fiction.

This is true. And here is how it happened. I had written a book and there were a bunch of other authors who had written books at the same time.

Josh McDowell had written a book. Ravi Zacharias and Ralph Reed and Rosa Parks. And so they said we want to put you on a bus like you are on a tour and we are going to have you go from sort of the headquarters over to a bookstore. So it was just a little kind of press thing for fun. And so I get on this bus and there is Rosa Parks.

And all the other guys are talking and having fun. And I said wait is that Rosa Parks? And they said yes. And I sat down with her and all I wanted to do was just talk to her. I wanted to hear her story. And she was an amazing woman. And she had written a book about her faith in Jesus Christ.

And she said it was that faith in Christ that motivated her and influenced her and informed her to make that principled stand. She basically said I am not a slave and I am not going to live like a slave. And we need to say the same thing to sin today. We are not slaves anymore. And we are going to be free people. Because Jesus issued His own emancipation proclamation from the cross of Calvary when He cried out the words, It is finished. The power of sin is broken in your life so you can start living like a free person.

Now listen. Jesus paid the penalty for your sin. He freed you from the power of sin. And soon in heaven He is going to remove you from the presence of sin. Now most believers know He took our penalty when He died in our place. But they feel to realize that He also frees us from the power of sin. Not just from the guilt but the grip of sin. But the devil whispers in your ear, You will never change.

You will always be this way. I will always have a hold of you. And we can just say to the devil, You are a liar and you are the father of lies. Pastor Greg Laurie with great encouragement today about our standing before God and how we don't have to subject ourselves to the devil's deception.

And there's more to come as this study continues here on A New Beginning. You know Pastor Greg, I did a search for movies that people had watched over and over and over again. And there were a lot of surprises on the list. Some of the movies are just so bad. They're either just silly movies or they're movies that are so offensive I wouldn't sit through them once. But there's a recent movie that people have seen in theaters repeatedly four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times.

And I know they'd like to be able to see it in their own homes. And we're talking about? We're talking about the Jesus Revolution film.

Absolutely. You know it exceeded everyone's expectations. I read an article just the other day with a headline, Why are so many people going to see Jesus Revolution? And the person writes and just asks this question, What is it about this film? And I think the reason it's connecting is it's not a big budget film like Top Gun or Avatar or something like that. It's a powerful story, beautifully told, amazing performances. But I think the reason it connects and resonates is because it's a true story of real people.

It shows the flaws of the people in the movie. And I think that people connect because there's so many storylines woven together. There's a story of a young Greg with his alcoholic mother and the struggles they had. There's a story of Pastor Chuck and Lonnie Frisbee, the hippie evangelist that came together opposite to Tracting, Nitro meeting Glycerin, Lennon meeting McCartney, Jobs meeting Wozniak, an explosive reaction and something amazing happened. It's also the story of Greg and Kathy, and it's a love story.

This is what people may not know. This is a beautiful love story of two teenagers that fell in love. In fact, I want to play a scene.

Now, unfortunately, you can't see it, so use your imaginations. This is one of my favorite scenes in the film. So Greg and Kathy have conflicts, which is true in real life. It shows us arguing with each other, and so they've broken up at this point. So Greg had gone to Kathy's father at this point in the story and asked for permission to marry his daughter, and Kathy's father said no, and Greg's discouraged, and then him and Kathy break up. But then Greg comes to his senses, and he realizes he loves Kathy, and he wants to marry her. So he goes to her house. Now, he had just baptized some people down at Pirate's Cove in Newport Beach, so he was wet when he walked into the house. He had friction with Kathy's dad up to this point, but now Kathy's dad has had a change of heart.

I'm giving away plot details of the movie here, folks. But Kathy's father has had a change of heart toward Greg because Kathy's father went and sat outside one of the services at Calvary Chapel and was moved by it. So Greg comes to the front door, and he knocks. Kathy's father answers, and now Greg has his encounter with Kathy where he's trying to put this relationship back together again.

Listen to this. Hey, hi. Hi, Greg. Hi, good evening.

Sorry to barge in so late. I did not know how wet I was until just right now, and your hard-work floor is, oh, I'm so sorry. And you're not wearing any shoes. Yeah, yeah, I'm not. You're right about that. But I just, I gotta tell you something. I've been really stupid lately. Obviously, you know that.

I'm sure you've heard. I'm so sorry that I pushed you away, and I hurt you. It was so dumb. It was really dumb. Really dumb. It really was.

The dumbest. Yeah, but I wanted to ask you if you still mean what you said the other day about what you want with us. Because I got really big plans, Kathy.

Hopes and dreams have got goals, and I want to do it with you. Together, you and I. Because I get you. I need you. I want you. And I love you.

Yeah, like a lot. So what is this? Is this your way of proposing to me? Oh, um, um. What would you say if it was? I would say that if you ever get in the way of me and God, it's over between us. So is that your way of saying yes? Yes.

Ah, that's true in real life. She said yes. Thank God for that.

Guess what? Kathy and I in real life are going into our 50th year of marriage. Wow. Congratulations. Well, thank you very much. And so listen, it's a beautiful love story, among other things. It's a beautiful salvation story. It's a story of conflicts and resolution. It's a story of Jesus at work in the lives of so many people.

It's probably your story as well. So many people connect with different characters, different aspects of this film. And I want you to have your own copy of it so you can see that scene I just described as well as hear it. I'm offering to you for the first time the Jesus Revolution film on DVD. Now, I know it's out there on streaming platforms and maybe some of you have already seen it in a theater or maybe you've watched it at home. But listen, the reason you want this DVD is so you can now watch it when you want to watch it and show it to who you want to show it to. And it has special bonus content including a presentation of the gospel I did complete with a prayer where a person can accept Christ into their life. You can use this movie as an evangelistic outreach. And listen, kids love it. Young people love it.

Especially the love story of Kathy and Greg. So get your own copy of the Jesus Revolution film. I'll send it to you for your gift of any size. Now, let me add that we had to pay more for this particular film than we normally would pay for a resource that we would offer you. So I'm gonna ask you to be extra generous in what you send to us here at Harvest so we can continue to teach the word of God and preach the gospel. So order your own copy of the Jesus Revolution film on DVD right now.

Yeah, that's right. And we can send it your way as soon as we hear from you. And we'll include the DVD along with a free streaming code. And thank you so much for your partnership that allows these daily studies to come your way each day.

This film is a keeper, and we want to make sure you get one of the first copies on DVD. So call us today at 1-800-821-3300. That's a 24-7 phone number, 1-800-821-3300. Or write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California, 92514.

Or go online to harvest.org. Well, next time, Pastor Greg has more encouragement about letting our new nature rule in our hearts. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher Greg Lord.

This is the day, the day when life begins. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this podcast. To learn more about Harvest Ministries, follow this show and consider supporting it. Just go to harvest.org. And to find out how to know God personally, go to harvest.org and click on Know God.