Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. I think for some of us, we're never going to experience the abundant life that Christ spoke of, the faith promised life or the life in the promised land that we've been looking at. And we're never going to experience it. And the reason we're not going to experience it is because of sin. That's how serious sin is.
It will rob you of this opportunity. You'll never experience what God has for you if you don't learn how to deal with sin in your life. That's why it's so important to us. So many of us never really become all that we can be because we allow sin to reign in our own lives. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.
Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. Today, I want to talk about a subject that many of the churches in our country are very reluctant to talk about. In fact, some of America's most numerically successful churches will never talk about this subject at all. Our culture stopped talking about this subject probably in the last 25 or 30 years. They don't talk about it ever from a cultural point of view. And yet every day you and I are reminded of it on the national and local and personal level. The subject that I want to talk about today is sin.
S-I-N. It's become a dirty word within our culture. It's a word you don't mention. And now it's a word that's very rarely mentioned in our churches.
We don't really want to talk about that. And yet it has an enormous effect on us. Sin is defiling to the individual. It's rebelling against God.
Apart from Jesus Christ, it's incurable and it always brings death, either separation from life or separation from God. The question might be, why do we do it? Many years ago, Flip Wilson said, the devil made me do it. Today, the prevailing idea is that society makes you do it. Or you have the great teenage argument that the peers made you do it.
Teenagers have been using that with their parents for a long time. I'm really a good kid, but the peers made me sin. But none of those are true. We sin because of us. In Jeremiah 17, 9, Jeremiah says, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.
Who can possibly understand it? We sin. What arouses sin inside of us? I'd like you to open your Bibles to 1 John chapter 2 and verse 16, right near the end of the Bible. 1 John chapter 2 and verse 16. In verse 15, the apostle John tries to give us a warning here. This is difficult for us. He said, do not love the world.
He means the system that's out there. Do not love the world, he said, or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, he said, the love of the Father is not in them. It's an amazing statement when you think about it.
And then he says this as he explains it with the word for or an explanatory gar. He said, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. It's not from the Father.
But it's from the world. Notice those three things, the lust. Of the flesh.
It's epithymia is the Greek word. It means a really strong desire, the lust of the flesh. It doesn't mean that the desire is wrong.
It just means when it converts itself in the lust of your flesh, it becomes wrong. You see, there's nothing wrong with eating. That's a strong desire we have of our flesh. But there's something wrong with gluttony. There's nothing wrong with a husband having desire for his wife. But there's something very wrong if he has desire for somebody else's wife. You see, if you take something like this, there's nothing wrong with a desire. But he said it becomes lustful and it becomes sinful. Paul wrote to the Galatians in Chapter five, verse 19 of Galatians. He said the deeds of the flesh are immorality and impurity and sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and things like these.
The list is endless, is what he says. The lust of the flesh. Then he says the other is the lust of the eyes. We get in a lot of trouble with our eyes. Things that we look at. Think of David.
How'd that work out? He sees Bathsheba. Think of Samson and the problems that Samson had with lust.
But think of you and I. Our culture, by the way, understands that. The lust of the eyes.
We call it differently in the culture. We call it advertising. OK, and what's the point of advertising? The lust of the eyes is to get you to watch something and all of a sudden you go, I might want that. You see, I might need that. The lust of the eyes. And then the last one, he said, is the pride of life.
And that's allos ania is the Greek word. And it means literally it means to be a braggart, the pride of life. It's to see you as number one in your life.
We do a lot of that in our culture. You got to look out for number one. It's the idea that you want to be better than the others.
I want to be the captain of my own ship. It's ultimately it's just me-ism. That's the pride of life.
This life's about me. And so many of us fall for that. The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life.
That's the cardiology of a fallen heart. And how you respond with a fallen heart makes all the difference in the world. Let me give you two examples. The first was in Genesis three. And you know the famous story of Adam and Eve and how the serpent tempted Eve. And remember, the very first question ever asked apparently was asked by the serpent. And he said, has God said?
That's the first question ever asked. Has God said? And he wants Eve to doubt the character of God. He wants also he wants Eve as a human being to subject what God said to her judgment.
And so you know how the story went. He said, as God said that you shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden. Well, God never said that fact. God did say you can eat from all the trees in the garden except for one.
But you can eat from all of them. Eve got even confused on that. And she said, even if we eat it or touch it, something like that's going to happen to us and we're going to die. And the serpent immediately says to her, you're not going to die. You see, because God's not telling you the truth about that. And you get to verse five and he gives her puts out the hook and he says, look, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will be like God.
There's the pride of life. You see, you will be like God. That was really enticing to her.
I will be like God. Yes, if you eat of it. And so then the scripture goes on there and it says this. The woman saw that the tree was good. Lust of the eyes.
Oh, that is a beautiful tree for food. Lust of the flesh. So you have the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And you know the story.
She fell and we all did with them from that point of view. Now, take Luke, chapter four, and you have the temptation of Jesus Christ. And he's in the wilderness and he's fasting and he's fasting for 40 days. So the question might be, do you think he's hungry?
I mean, how about you? You go four days. Four hours.
I mean, 40 days. So remember, the first temptation that occurs is Satan says to him, look, here's what I want you to think about the lust of the flesh. He said, turn these stones into bread. You're hungry.
You have a need. All you have to do is take the stones. You're the son of God.
Turn them into bread and eat. But Jesus doesn't fall for that. And he quotes the book of Deuteronomy. And he says, look, the spirit of God led me here for this very temptation. And he said, man shall not live by bread alone.
You see, it's not essential to me, but by every word that comes out of the father's mouth. That's so he resists. So the second thing that Lucifer does to him is he shows him all the kingdoms of the world. He's the prince of this world. He says, look at all the kingdoms. I'll give them to you. You know, I give you all the kingdoms of the world. He said, and you won't have to go to the cross. That's all you have to have. You don't have to go to the cross.
I'll just give them to you all. Notice it's the lust of the eyes. And Jesus, when he responds to him, says, look, I'll never worship you. I worship God only. And he quotes Deuteronomy again. Then the last time he appeals to the pride of life. He says that Jesus, he takes him up in a high spot and he says, just throw yourself down. And he paraphrases Psalm 91. The angels have come and catch you because you're the son of God.
They won't let any harm come to you. So just throw yourself down. And once again, Jesus responds by saying, you shall not. He said, put the Lord your God to the test.
I would not tempt him. So in one case, you fail. Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and pride of life.
In the other case, he succeeds. Now, the question might be, why? Why all this? What are we talking about here?
Well, I think it's this. I think for some of us, we're never going to experience the abundant life that Christ spoke of. The faith promised life or the life in the promised land that we've been looking at. And we're never going to experience it. And the reason we're not going to experience it is because of sin. That's how serious sin is. It'll rob you of this opportunity. You'll never experience what God has for you if you don't learn how to deal with sin in your life.
That's why it's so important to us. So many of us never really become all that we can be because we allow sin to reign in our own lives. So now I want to go to Joshua Chapter seven. Joshua Chapter seven. We're in our fifth week of lessons we can learn from the Book of Joshua.
The very first week I talked about you need to take what is yours. And what I meant by that is the promised land is promised to you and I. We are joint heirs with Christ. We need to actually take what God has promised to us.
We don't want to live our whole lives as a whole generation did in the wilderness. Secondly, we looked at Rahab and I said it's OK to not be OK. Rahab was a harlot and she was used mightily by God. She not only made the Hall of Fame of faith in Hebrews 11, but she's part of the genealogy of Jesus Christ himself. And so it's OK to not be OK. The third week I said we have to remember things we can't forget. We can't forget that God always goes before us always. We can't forget all the things that he's done for us in the past and we can't forget whose we are. We're children of God.
If we're ever going to get into the promised land and then last week we're dealing with Jericho. I said about bringing down strongholds in your life and you have to realize who really fights these battles. It's the Lord. And secondly, you have to follow his instructions or his principles completely.
You can't do partial obedience and never take down the strongholds in your life. So this week we get to the end of six and you'll notice how six ends in verse twenty seven. It's a great verse. It says so it says, So the Lord was with Joshua and his fame was in all the land. What do we call that?
Those are good days. So the Lord was with Joshua. Jericho fell down.
They've got the stronghold across the Jordan. God supernaturally stopped it. Everything is going great until you hit the first word of Chapter seven. But.
Soon as you see the but you got trouble. But the sons of Israel acted unfaithfully in regard to the things under the ban. Wow. The sons of Israel. Notice he includes all them because they're a nation now going in as a nation and he gave them all the command. They all don't violate that ban.
One man does. But he says, but that has ramifications to everybody because of this idea of going into the land. Let me read to you again in six, 18 and 19. There's the ban. He said, But as for you, only keep yourselves from the things under the ban so that you do not covet them and take some of the things under the ban and make the camp of Israel accursed and bring trouble on it. But all the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord and they should go into the treasury of the Lord.
He said, Look, don't you take anything that's under the ban? If you do, you're going to bring a curse on everyone. If you do that now, that verse, verse one of Chapter seven is just the context. We don't even have the story yet, but we pick up the story now in verse two.
And something is going to seem wrong here in these from two to five. It says, Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Bethaaben, east of Bethel. And he said to them, Go up, spy out the land.
So the men went up and spied out Ai. And they returned to Joshua and they said to him, Do not let all the people go up. Only about two or three thousand men need to go up to Ai. He said, Do not make all the people toil up there. They're just a few.
It's a small town. Don't make two million people go up to Ai. Two or three thousand men will do the job. This will be easy. We just took down Jericho.
This is going to be easy. So about three thousand men from the people went up to Ai. The next words say, And they fled from the men of Ai. They're running.
Ai turns out to be a small town of pit bulls. You know, they're after them. Now they went up.
This is going to be easy. And all of a sudden they've taken down Jericho. They crossed the Jordan.
They destroyed two kings on the eastern side of the Jordan. And now they're running for it. Here's what amazes me is how we respond to it. So it says. The men of Ai struck down about thirty six of their men out of three thousand. That's not terrible for war.
It's bad for those thirty six, of course. And it says, And they pursued them from the gate as far as Shebarim and struck them down on the descent. Now, what's the response of the people? So the hearts of the people melted and became his water.
Don't miss this. Now, these are people, many of them were born in the wilderness. They heard all the stories of Egypt and the plagues and coming through the Red Sea and all those things that happened. But in the wilderness, they had quite an interesting life. Their clothes never wore out. Forty years, clothes never wore out. Their shoes never wore out.
No one had a blister in 40 years. Walking in the wilderness. They were supernaturally fed by God, Manna. And there was a big rock that went around after them and gave him fresh water for two million people for 40 years.
I don't know about you, but that's pretty impressive, right? Then they destroyed two kings on the eastern side of the Jordan. Then God shuts up the Jordan at flood stage and allows all two million people to cross. Then they marched around Jericho for seven days and seven times on the last day and the walls fell down.
Now, 3000 men go to A.I., they get routed and 36 of them are dead and the people fall to pieces. Does that sound like you? You ever notice that how things when they're going well for you or just it's going well, you know? Praise the Lord. You praise the Lord. And then something small happened. It's like, oh, I think he's forgotten me.
What am I going to do now? Oh, this is terrible. I don't even know if he hears my prayers. That's what they did. And by the way, don't be pious, because this kind of thinking happens to all of us, even the best of us. Notice what happens. Verse six, then Joshua tore his clothes and he fell to the earth on the face before the ark of the Lord until evening. And both he and the elders of Israel and they put dust on their heads. Thirty six men died. And now Joshua says, oh, this is awful.
So he gets all the elders of the whole nation and they get on the ground and then they go into a mourning stage and they throw dust on their cells. This is so bad. This is bad.
This is really, really bad. Notice what Joshua says. Alas, oh, Lord God. Why did you ever bring the people over the Jordan only to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites and destroy us? If only we had been willing to dwell on the other side of the Jordan. What?
That's what he said. Isn't that exactly what Israel said to Moses? Why did you bring us out of Egypt and take us to the Red Sea to drown us all? When they get into the wilderness, they say, wouldn't it be better to go back to Egypt and die than to be out here in this wilderness? They had it clear in numbers. They have no faith at all. Here's their leader. He said, you know, it had been better never to leave the wilderness.
It had been better just to be the way I was. He says this to God. You couldn't fail more than Joshua was failing right now. He doesn't stop. He said, oh, Lord, what can I say since Israel has turned their back before their enemies?
Don't miss that. He just threw the army under the bus. Bunch of cowards. We sent 3000 men up there and a bunch of guys come out of A.I.
and they turned and ran. I don't even have a good army. Then he says this for the Canaanites and the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and they will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you do for your great name? This is really bad publicity. This is really bad. I mean, the Canaanites are going to hear about it. And then I mean, it's going to be hard on us. But how about your great name?
Now they're going to drag your great name in about. Well, look how bad this is. Pity parties are.
Pretty obvious to almost all God's people. I don't know about you, but when I catch myself in one, I just I know I know better and I still do it anyway. Woe is me.
This is terrible. If you only knew the people, Lord, that I pastor. It's so hard. Watch how the Lord responds. Here it says, and the Lord said to Joshua, comb, that's it, one Hebrew word comb. Stand up, get up, rise up, whatever way you put it, comb, get up. What are you doing laying in the dirt?
You're the leader. What kind of faith are you evidencing here? He said, why is it you have fallen on your face?
What are you mourning about? Didn't I tell you I was going to give you the land? See, what you're really saying here is you don't trust me.
And worse, you don't believe me. Because thirty six men died. He said, let me explain this to you. Israel has sinned.
No, he didn't say one guy. It's representative. They're going into the land as a nation. He said Israel was sinned and they have also transgressed my covenant, which I commanded them. And they have even taken some of the things under the ban and both stolen and deceived.
Moreover, they also put them among their own things. He says, therefore, the sons of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. He says they turn their backs before their enemies, for they have become accursed. And I, he said, will not be with you anymore unless you destroy the things under the ban from your midst. You want to know what happened and nothing to do with it had everything to do with you sin. I told you specifically nothing under the ban and you took it.
They took it anyway. He said that puts him under the accursed thing. And also, he says, I won't be with you. You realize if you want to talk about how you walk with God and you sin and you don't deal with it, you're not walking with God. You're just walking by yourself and you can delude yourself into thinking I'm walking right with God, but you're not.
He said, I won't walk with you. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.
At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.
That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.
