When the Word fills you, and the Word overpowers your thinking and your life, and you're saturated by the Word, that is what leads you to a Christ-centered focus. As you gaze into the glory of the Lord revealed in the Word, you're transformed into the image of Christ. As you're transformed into the image of Christ, you will make no provision for the lust of the flesh. You will abstain from fleshly lusts. You'll kill sin.
Welcome to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's heartbreaking to hear about a pastor who confessed to an immoral relationship or who was caught stealing from his church. the pain that causes to his family and to his congregation, really to everyone around him, is profound, and sadly we probably all know of a church or two that has endured a scandal of that magnitude. There is no shortage of reminders about the damaging nature of sin.
Every day you face a threat that you can't be complacent about. Sin can and will destroy you if you let it take root.
So how do you keep that from happening?
Well, it starts with understanding that every sin, from the relatively small to the most destructive, begins in the same place in your mind. That's where you need to cut sin off. Today on Grace to You, John MacArthur is going to help you see the consequences of sinful thinking and the joys of rooting out sin and keeping your thoughts pure. The title of our current study, John MacArthur's Most Memorable Sermon. It's a collection of John's sermons that members of the Grace T U staff have chosen as their all-time favorites.
Now with today's lesson, here's John MacArthur. When you were saved and I was saved, there was at that moment a crushing defeat of sin. A crushing defeat. From one end to the other, east to west, north to south. Our sin was crushed.
But We still have remaining sins. And though there was a great and glorious and triumphant defeat, At the time of our salvation, there is the necessity that the remaining sins be hacked to pieces. Or they will revive. They will plunder our hearts and sap our spiritual strength. Things like immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
Kill them. Put them to death. You can't do it partially. You can't do it half-heartedly. You can't just have a remaining egg egg and just sort of leave him in your life somewhere.
He'll lead an insurrection. You've got to keep going until the task is complete. Sins like Amalekites have a way of escaping the slaughter, breeding, reviving, and launching new and unexpected assaults on our most vulnerable areas. If you want to kill sin in your life, and that's the only way to clear conscience, if you want to deal with sin in your life, here's how. Step one.
Abstain from fleshly lusts. You say, but. How do you How do you stop lusting?
Well, let's go to Romans 13, 14. And here's another very simple command. The end of the verse: make no provision. for the flesh in regard to its lusts. If you want to stop lusting, then don't provide anything for lust to feed on.
There's a third step in the flow here. We're backing up. Fix your heart on Christ. This same verse, verse 14, put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pursue Christ's likeness. Don't be satisfied. Don't be content until you awake in His likeness, as the psalmist said, or to borrow the words of Paul, he said, I am. I am. In travail or bearing birth pains until Christ is fully formed in you.
Pursue being like Christ. 1 John 3:3. He that has this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. Backing up one more step to a fourth command. Psalm one nineteen.
Verse 11, very familiar. You know it well. Psalm 119.11. Thy word have I treasured. In my heart.
That I may not sin. Against thee, meditate on God's word. Joshua 1.8 says the same thing. That we should Take the book of the law. Not let it depart from us.
Meditate on it day and night. Observe to do all things that are written in it, and we'll make our way prosperous and have success. Jesus prayed to the Father sanctify them. Bye. Thy truth Thy word is truth.
Paul said, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. And when the word fills you, And the word dominates you. And the word overpowers your thinking and your life, and you're saturated by the word. That is what leads you to a Christ-centered focus. As you gaze into the glory of the Lord revealed in the Word, you're transformed into the image of Christ.
As you're transformed into the image of Christ, you will make no provision for the lust of the flesh. You will abstain from fleshly lusts. You'll kill sin. In fact, You will discover the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and that's the sword with which you hack up sin. It's the most effective weapon we have.
There's a fifth spiritual means that must be noted. Meditating on God's Word leads to focus on Christ, which leads to making no provision for the flesh, which leads to abstaining from lust. But there's something else that is absolutely essential, and that is to pray. Be constantly in prayer. You remember that when Jesus' disciples said, How shall we pray?
Jesus, among the things that he taught them, said this. When you pray, pray like this. Lead us not into what? Temptation, but deliver us from Evil. It's a matter of prayer.
It's a matter of asking the Lord. You remember in Both Matthew 26, 41, and I think it's Luke 22, 40. We have a note there. Jesus said, watch and pray, lest you enter into what? Temptation.
Prayer is an absolutely crucial component. As we ask the Lord. For strength. The psalmist in Psalm 19 said this: Lord, keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins. Stop me from sinning.
Very direct prayer. It's really that that I think is in the heart of the writer of Hebrews when he writes in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 16 and says, Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy. And may find grace to help in time of need. I think the time of need there is the time of temptation. The battle of The believer against sin.
That's when we need grace. That's when we need mercy. That's when He provides it. All of this, beloved. Prayer?
Time in the Word, focus on Christ. not feeding lust. and abstaining from its impulses. All of this is a part of developing self-control. in your life.
In First Corinthians chapter nine, I would just draw your attention to. This text. In First Corinthians chapter nine, and you know the text well. Paul says, everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. You've got to harness your prayer life, get it under control, your time in the Word, your focus on Christ.
Saying no to the things that feed your lust. if you're going to be a winner. And Paul says, the people who compete in the games exercise self-control in all things, they control their diet. They control their exercise plan, their training program, their sleep. I mean, you know that a great athlete is somebody who's got his life under control.
And they do it, he says, to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
So Paul in verse 27 says, I buffet my body. Hupo Piazzo, literally to strike under the eye. I punch my body. I discipline it. to bring it into control.
to make it submit. That's why Paul had a clear conscience. He had a clear conscience because he dealt with sin. He got his body under control. A watchful self.
Discipline. A self-discipline that is a child of constant prayer and constant meditation on the Word. It's that kind of thing of which Luke 21:34 speaks when it says, Be on guard. That your hearts may not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life. Paul disciplined himself to lift himself above that.
It's just self-discipline. It's Philippians 2. Really? Workout your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is at work in you to will and to do.
of his own good pleasure. You've got to be committed to it, work hard at it, self-discipline. But on the other hand, It's God. Who's doing it? And that's right back to Romans 8:13, isn't it?
By. The Spirit. It is the Spirit's power working in us that slays sin, but not without our involvement. You can't just sit back. As I said earlier, and expect that the Amalekites and the Agags of your life.
are just going to go away. You can't coexist. You've got to be aggressive and active. In prayer? Meditating on the word.
Fixing your heart on Jesus Christ and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. Avoiding everything that feeds your lust and abstaining from lust in that way. You know, the New Testament has some other Duties.
Some other duties that will kill sin. Like clothing oneself with humility, 1 Peter 5:5, like having the mind of Christ, Philippians 2:5, like putting away. Vengeful feelings toward others, Ephesians 4:31 and 32, like putting on the armor of God, Ephesians 6, like laying aside sinful attitudes, Colossians 3, 8, and 9, adding the graces of spiritual growth, 2 Peter 1, 5 to 7. But basically, the sum of it is prayer, the word. Christ-likeness.
Avoiding The kinds of things that feed lust. And therefore we stop lusting. We stop sinning. Summing it all up. 2 Corinthians 7.1.
Paul says Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. That is to say, it's our responsibility to do this. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the mysterious part. But my part, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement.
Get rid of it. Kill it. Lest it come back. In devastating fashion, as did the Amalekites. The flesh is subtle.
Flesh is deceptive. It may leave you alone for a little while, make you think you're rid of it, then it'll come back with a hellish fury. Sin, you see, is a stalker. And you can never rest. It's always lurking.
One egg egg. Comes to you cheerfully and says, Surely the bitterness of death is past. Which is another way of saying, well, the war is over. You're saved. You're on your way.
I'm defeated. Don't worry about me. When Agag and his Amalekite friends want to make friends with you and declare an end to hostilities, That's when you grab your sword and hack them to pieces. We are not ignorant of Satan's devices. We better not be ignorant of our weapons.
Let me just give you some final little reminders as you engage to apply all of those principles in your life. There are some things you need to know. Number one. Sin is not killed. when it is merely covered up.
Sin is not killed when it is merely covered up. You may be very successful at covering your sin. As far as others can tell, you may be very successful at hiding it from everybody around you. That is not killing it. If a sin has simply been covered over with some veneer.
If it has been papered over like some bad paint job on a wall, That is hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is just another sin. If conscience has somehow been sugar-coated, You're in a much more dangerous state than you were before. Successfully covering your sin doesn't kill your sin. It makes it even more alive. Because it's not exposed, it's hiding.
And in Proverbs 28, 13, we read this: He who conceals His transgressions. will not Prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. You have not done your duty with regard to killing sin until you have confessed it and forsaken it, covering it. only makes it worse.
Secondly, in helping you to apply This necessary duty of killing sin, you need to be reminded that sin is not killed when it is only internalized. Sin is not killed when it is only internalized.
Someone might think. That there was a certain sin which they practiced in some way. Sins of their mouth, their tongue. sins committed with their Body there. Hands, their eyes.
their ears, whatever. And then when they stop doing it, Forsaking the outward practice of that evil. They imagine that they have therefore killed it. When the fact of the matter is, they are ruminating. on the pleasures of that sin in their own mind.
You may find yourself coming to the place in your Christian experience where you say, I'm not going to. Entertain myself. By going to movies which parade immorality.
So you stop. But the vivid imagery of those experiences of seeing those movies you allow to come back into your mind and you entertain them again and again. You have not killed the sin at all. Sin is not killed when it is only It isn't dead if you can still ruminate on the pleasures of it. You may have moved it.
From the outside to the inside, And you may have moved it into the privacy of your imagination where it is known only to you and to God. But that sin is not dead. If anything, it has become more deadly. Because now It is married. to pretended righteousness.
If anything, it is uglier than ever to God. Was that very kind of thing for which Jesus rebuke the Pharisees They avoided murder, but they tolerated hate. They avoided fornication and adultery. But they tolerated looking after a woman to lust. And Jesus declared them worthy of eternal hell.
Sin is not killed when it is merely covered with hypocrisy. It is not killed. when it is internalized. In both those cases, it may even be more dangerous. Thirdly.
And this too is a very practical thing to consider. Sin is not killed when it is exchanged for a different sin.
Some people imagine that because they have forsaken one sin and replaced it with another. They have really done some mortifying work in their life. What good is it to trade the lust of the flesh for the lust of the eyes? or the lust of the eyes for the pride of life. The last is just Changed.
Forms. Replacing fornication with covetousness. get you no place. That kind of tactic endangers you because it Puts you in a position of being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. You forsake some sin and Choose some other and Imagine because you are deceived that that is spiritual progress.
It is not. Since Fourthly, is not killed. When it is Repressed. Say, how do people repress sin? I'll tell you how.
Some people do it with alcohol. They just drink themselves into oblivion. They would rather experience Pink elephants than guilt.
Some people drown their guilt with entertainment and Other distractions, some people. Go to other counselors and other folks who will elevate their self-esteem and thus they Imagine But they're Guilt is gone when it is only repressed under the deception of Unwise counsel. Martin Lloyd-Jones once wrote, If you merely repress a temptation or this first motion of sin within you, it will probably come up again more strongly. To that extent, I agree with the modern psychologists. Repression is always bad.
Well, what do you do? asks someone. I answer: when you feel that first motion of sin, Just pull yourself up and say, of course. I am not having any dealings with this. At all.
Expose the thing and say, this is evil, this is vileness, this is the thing that drove the first man out of paradise. Pull it out, look at it, denounce it, hate it for what it is. Then you've really dealt with it. You must not merely push it back in a spirit of fear or in a timorous manner, he says. Bring it out, expose it, analyze it, and then denounce it for what it is until you hate it.
End quote. It's good advice. We deal with our sin courageously when we strike it at the head. Subduing it a little bit isn't enough. We need to exterminate it as we learned about the.
case of agag by hacking it to pieces. That lifelong task. Just kind of covering it every way we can Cover it. Sin is not. killed when it is merely covered up it is not killed when it is only Internalized.
Sin is not killed when it is simply exchanged for a different sin. And sin is not killed. When it is merely Repressed. And one final thought: sin is not killed until the conscience is quiet. Sin is not killed until the conscience has been appeased.
The goal In all of our warfare against sin is identified in 1 Timothy 1.5, the goal is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. As long as conscience is still plaguing us, As long as conscience remains defiled. Sin is not killed. In 1 Peter 3, listen to verses 15 and 16. Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.
And Keep a good conscience. Have an answer for what you believe. That's the first polemic. The second one is a pure life that yields a good conscience. You want to have an impact on the world?
You want to silence the critics, the people who slander the faith? You want to make a difference? You want to see people come to Christ? Do two things. Have an answer?
And have a good conscience. The first polemic is to be able to defend the faith. The second polemic is to be able to defend your devotion to the faith. It's one thing to stand up and say, I believe in Christianity. I believe in the Christian faith.
I'm committed to the Christian faith. I'm committed to the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm committed to the fact that He is God in human flesh, died on the cross, rose again for me. I'm committed to the Bible, and then have somebody ask you, well, why are you living in sin? What level of commitment are you committed to?
So there is a double polemic there in that text. The first one is to know the answer for the reason of the hope that is in you, and the second is to maintain a pure life which yields a good conscience.
So that they not only cannot slander what you believe, but they can't slander how deeply and devotedly you believe it. Part of the process of true mortification or the killing of sin is working through the issue of guilt. If you want to know where in your life sin hasn't been dealt with, just listen to your conscience. That's very contrary, by the way, to the Popular wisdom of our day. The popular wisdom of our day is uh Very different.
Listen to what John Owen wrote. If you want to kill sin, Load your conscience with the guilt of it. Yeah. Most people today would tell you to run from guilt. John Owens said, load your conscience with guilt.
He believed the pangs of guilt were a natural and a healthy consequence of wrongdoing. Be ashamed, he wrote. Be greatly ashamed. for he saw shame as an advantage. Listen to your shamed and guilty conscience.
You see, he correctly, that is John Owen, understood what we should understand, what Paul understood when he wrote in 2 Corinthians 7.10, the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret. True godly sorrow will produce repentance. And what produces godly sorrow? A guilty what? Conscience.
Those people who just give a nod of the head to their guilt. Claim Trivially, the promise of forgiveness quickly reassure themselves. And then think no more of their sin. are subjecting themselves to the heart-hardening deceit of sin. Let sorrow do its full work.
to produce a deep and honest repentance. Those sins will be severely weakened. Thus we can Kill the Amalekites in our life. Thus we can hack to pieces the egg egg, and we can deal with remaining sin.
So lifelong Task. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, Paul said in Philippians 2:12, and then in the next verse said, For it is God who is at work in you to will and to do of his own good pleasure. Sinus It's a serious thing. It is the serious thing. That steals our joy.
I don't know about you, but I would like to come to the place in my Christian experience where it would be routine. it would be routine for me to be able to say, The words of Paul back in that first chapter of 2 Corinthians. Our proud confidence is this the testimony of our conscience. That in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you. To be able to all the time say, my conscience is clear.
As he said to the Corinthians, Nothing accusing. Here was a man who was really dealing with sin. He wasn't just covering it up. He wasn't just internalizing it, he wasn't repressing it, he wasn't swapping it for another sin. He was really dealing with it.
and his conscience was appeased. Listen to your conscience. It is the soul's warning system. It sends you messages. that God wants you to hear.
You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. Our current study is called John MacArthur's Most Memorable Sermon, and it's a collection of messages by John that were chosen by our staff members as their all-time favorites.
Now friend, December 25th is coming fast, and perhaps you're still trying to come up with ideas for gifts that will have value long after Christmas. let me suggest some resources from Grace to You. The first is the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series. These commentaries are the fruit of John MacArthur's decades-long preaching ministry, thirty-three volumes that take you in depth, verse by verse, through the entire New Testament. Also a couple of daily devotionals, Strength for Today and Drawing Near.
Each gives a brief but substantial lesson from God's Word for each day of the year, and these are great for personal and family devotions in 2026 and every year. To place your Christmas order for the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series or for Strength for Today or Drawing Near, contact us today. You can call us during regular business hours. That's Monday through Friday, 7.30 to 4 o'clock Pacific Time. Call us at 800-55 GRACE.
That's our toll-free number, 800-55GRACE. or order online when you visit gty.org. Again, the books I mentioned, all of them are excellent Christmas gifts, the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series, and the two devotional books, Drawing Near and Strength for Today. And remember, tomorrow, December 5th, Is the last day we recommend using our free shipping option to receive your order before Christmas.
So take advantage of our free shipping and order today. Call our customer service line between 7:30 and 4 o'clock Pacific Time at 855 Grace. or use our website, just go to gty.org. And thanks for remembering that Grace to You is supported by friends like you. And now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson.
Make sure you're here for John MacArthur's lesson tomorrow to see why the great preacher Charles Spurgeon called the sovereignty of God. Quote. the pillow upon which you lay your head at night. It's another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time. on Grace to You.
