1216. Overcoming Sin

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Every day, students are blessed by the preaching and teaching of the Bible from the University Chapel Platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a study series entitled, Seeking Things Above, which is a study of the book of Colossians. Let's listen to today's message from chapter 3, verses 5 through 10, where Paul tells us to mortify therefore your members. Steve will guide us through the passage and show us how we can overcome sin. God never promises strength for 10 years from now.

He always promises strength for today. And I know that we are midway through the semester, and I think most of you are probably like me, somewhat tired. How many of you are tired? Raise your hand. Okay, the whole student body.

And we're halfway through. It'd be great if we had a spring break this week and we can go somewhere and lay on the beach for a week and sun and enjoy ourselves and have no responsibilities and no classwork and no such reality. But we do have this promise that as thy days are, so shall thy strength be. And God will give you the strength for today. He will give you everything that you need for today, but you have to trust him for it.

You have to lean on him for it. And God will give that to you. And you can be encouraged in that. And for some of us, it's just taking one step in it. And then over this weekend, you lost you lost Sunday morning because you sprung forward and you lost an hour. So we were gone on Saturday morning, Sunday morning. We actually left out yesterday at 6 15 in the morning to go to a church in Ohio. And then we got back late last night at 9 30.

And so you can imagine the six o'clock was really five o'clock. And so we were all tired. Everybody's tired.

We're all there, but let's encourage each other and let's let's not mope around. We feel tired, but God will give us strength as that days. So shall that strength be? We're reading this morning in the Book of Colossians. And last week we talked about the theme of understanding sin. And today I'd like to talk to you about actually overcoming sin. It's one thing to understand what it is.

It's another thing to overcome it. And let's look at verse five of Colossians three. I read these last week, but I read them again today and we'll look at it from a different light. Paul writes, mortify, therefore, your members, which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence and covetousness, which is idolatry, for which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience and the which you also walk sometime when you lived in them. But now you also put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, sing that you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created that created him.

A number of years ago, a young pastor sat down with an older pastor after an evening of fellowship and with a sense of serious concern, and he asked him a question. He said, sir, would you simply take me one more time through the steps that will help me to overcome sin? It's almost like for all of us listening how to overcome sin one time is not enough.

Why? Because we have to deal with new fresh realities of it every day. One of the greatest issues of the Christian life is how do I have victory over my sin? How do I overcome the downward pull of my own sinful nature? How do I overcome the alluring temptations that are in the world? And this is why it was so appealing back in Paul's day when one of the major platforms of the false teachers that came to Colossae was centered around how to overcome sin.

Because it obviously appeals to all of us who are believers because we have a conscience and we want to hear the message. How do we overcome? And the problem, of course, is not the question that we're asking. The problem in Paul's day was the answer they were giving, and that is they were giving the answer that the way that you overcome sin is by self-effort apart from Christ, whether it's by keeping laws or whether it's by putting harsh self-imposed discipline on yourself.

Neither one of those really deal with our own nature. We need God's power. And the problem of overcoming sin can only be answered through Jesus Christ, his work on the cross, and our understanding this. And let me say this morning that addressing and answering this issue of overcoming sin is very crucial. Why?

Because it is such a relevant issue. This is not old school preaching. Man, that guy was an old school preacher. He preached on sin. He's not an old school preacher. He's a new school preacher.

Why? Because we never escape the presence of our own sin. What did Paul say in Romans 7 about his struggle?

He says, For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that is good and it is no longer I that's doing it, but it's sin that's dwelling in me. Paul never got away from the reality of the presence of his own sin in his own life. And since sin is always a present reality, then we have to deal with it. We have to deal with our emotions, our desires, and our temptations. So overcoming sin is a super relevant message. Let me also say that overcoming sin is an issue that affects our spiritual maturity. Growing in Christ means putting away or overcoming sin. When we have lingering sins in our life, it stunts our spiritual growth.

It affects our relationship with God. The Jewish people celebrated Passover every year. But if you were to go to Israel today and watch them in the celebration, what you'd really notice is not so much the Passover as it is that they're cleansing their house of anything that has leaven in it. They spend a whole week cleaning house because they were not to worship God with the Passover and at the same time have leavened bread in their house.

And Paul takes that illustration when he deals with sin in the church at Corinth and he says, cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you are really unleavened. Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us celebrate this festival.

How do we celebrate it? Not with the old leaven of malice and evil, but with the new unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. In other words, in order for us to enjoy the Christian life, we really have to deal with sin in our lives. And then there's a third reason why overcoming sin is such an important issue because how is it that you're going to be able to help others overcome sin if you can't overcome your own sin?

Let me just share this personally. When I was in college, I became a Christian my freshman year and I began to grow spiritually, particularly my sophomore year until the time I graduated. And the people that helped me the most in overcoming the sins of my life, the people were my own friends, my own peers in college. It didn't mean that I didn't go to church and have a good pastor or have a good Sunday school teacher, but there was not the relationship with the pastor like it was with my own friends.

And I learned in college the absolute importance of not only having the right kind of friends, but being the right kind of friend. A true friend cares about the spiritual life of their friends. The Bible says in Galatians six, brothers, if anyone is overtaken in a fault, ye that are spiritual, restore them. I think at a school at Bob Jones University, we have a center for student care where our students can go who are struggling with sin. And we should have that and we need to have that.

But actually, the center for student care, it should be the student body. Because if you love others more than you love yourself and you know that they're in sin and they're struggling and they're wanting help, then we should be reaching out to them. It was my friends in college that made the difference in our lives. And you should be that kind of friend.

You should be a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Jesus is the friend to sinners. And to be like Jesus, we need to help each other overcome sin. And this is a part of our ministry.

And this is a part of your maturity as a student body. You are helping one another. You can have 400 discipleship groups that meet twice a week and it does absolutely nothing. If we're not really helping people and encouraging people to overcome the struggles of their life, they can do it. And if you're a believer, you have the desire to do that. So what are the steps that Paul lays out here for us in Colossians at how it is that we actually overcome sin? And we see two basic steps here and they are very simple, but they're very profound.

The first one is this. We have to accept what is true. That is this victory starts with faith or with what we believe. John writes, faith is the victory that overcomes the world. When we speak of faith, we're speaking of what we believe. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

And the real answer to victory is always in this book. Paul declares in Colossians that we have been freed from sin. We have been set free from the work of Jesus on the cross and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We start there not with what we do, but with what he has done.

Christian living experience is always coming out of our faith what we believe. And so what is included in this work? What is it that he has done for us? Number one, he has delivered us from divine wrath. Look at what it says in verse five. Excuse me, verse six, for which sings sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience. In verse five, Paul identifies the sins that characterize the life of unbelievers, the depraved sins of sexual immorality. In verse six, he says it's because of these sins that God's judgment is coming upon the world. Now, Paul tells believers to put to death these sins.

Why? Because if God's wrath is coming on those who do these things, then we should not be doing these things if we no longer are living under God's wrath. So Paul has stated that we have been freed from these sins. Fact is, in Colossians chapter two, he tells us this and he uses an image. Do you remember when Jesus was crucified on the cross? They put a placard above his head.

Why? Because that was the public announcement for which he was dying. And it was written in three languages. And basically it says Jesus, the king of the Jews.

What does that mean? It means he was being put to death because of treason, because he claimed to be the king of the Jews over Caesar. So his death was, it was a capital punishment for treason. But Paul takes that image of that placard and he declares why Jesus was really crucified. Listen to chapter two, verse 14, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. What Paul is saying is that image of Jesus dying on the cross with that placard actually is teaching us that when Jesus died on the cross, he died for our violations of the law. He was suffering for what was recorded against us, because every sin that you've ever written, every sin that you've ever committed has been written against you. God even keeps a record of the idle words that we speak. And when Jesus died on the cross, God nailed your sins to that cross.

Can you imagine the heavy weight that Jesus bore when he died for every one of our sins on the cross? And so what has happened is that the worst of enemies have now become the best of friends, because we have been reconciled to God as his children. We've been delivered from God's wrath for our sin. So what are we to do?

We are to accept this. Secondly, we've been delivered not only from God's wrath, but we've been delivered from our old self. Notice what he tells us in verse eight. He says, but now you put off all these.

Why? He says in verse nine, put off the old man and you have put on the new man. What does he mean by the old man? The old man is everything you are in sin because of Adam. When you were born into this world, you were born a member of a race.

What race were you born a member of? You were born a member of Adam's race. And you have Adam's nature, a sinful, fallen nature. And here's what Paul is saying. Paul is saying that when you get saved, you were delivered from that old state, that old life. And Paul is saying that the power of this old life has been severed. It has been cut off just like a head being cut off. We have been cut off from the old life of sin.

In other words, the power of that old life has been broken. And he uses different symbols to describe this. For example, he talks about circumcision. What does it mean to be circumcised? It was a symbol for a Jew who is under the Abrahamic covenant of his devotion to God. And Paul says that in the New Testament, circumcision is not a physical act, it's a spiritual act where God breaks the power of the old life through the Holy Spirit.

Literally, that power is no longer dominating you in your life. The second symbol he uses is baptism. What does it mean to be baptized? It means to be immersed, and we are immersed into Jesus.

We are united into him so that his death is our death and his resurrection is our resurrection. The old life has been buried and the new life has come forth. And so the old life is dead and gone.

The old Steve Pettit that died when I was saved at 19 years old. That's the old life, but now I'm in a new life. And then the third symbol is a symbol of changing of clothes. That's what he means by putting off the old and putting on the new. Is literally changing your clothes.

And all of these images basically illustrate God severing us from the old life. Back during the Civil War, it was estimated that there were 60,000 amputations. Why? Because when a soldier was shot in a limb, an arm or a leg, there was always the potential infection of gangrene. And in order for it to be stopped, there was only one thing they could do in that day, and that is they had to cut off that leg or that arm. And here's what Paul is saying. Our old life has been amputated.

The power has been broken. We have been delivered from wrath. We have been delivered from our old life. And then we have been delivered from our old identity.

Paul says that we are a new person. Have you ever met anybody who changed their name? My dad did that. My dad's name that I knew growing up was Bill Pettit. William Pettit III, named after his dad. But what I did not realize until I got older is that when my dad turned 18 years old, he actually changed his name. Because the name my grandparents gave him when he was born, his name was Grenville Atchison Pettit. Short, they called him Granny. And my dad hated his name.

And so he changed his name to something simple, Bill. When you go back in the Bible and you think of the identities of some of the famous men, how many of them had their names changed? Abram to Abraham. Jacob to Israel. Saul to Paul.

Simon to Peter. And what does that teach us? That God actually changes your identity. The moment that you become a child of God. You are a new person resurrected. Think about it. If you died and you rose from the dead, you'd be a different person.

Not what you were before. That's what's happened to us. And what Paul is saying is this. That the way to overcome sin starts with faith.

This is what is true. And we must accept it and we must believe it. And then secondly, we must act on what is true.

Do we not do that today with social issues in our world? Let's take the issue of abortion. People act on the subject of abortion based on what they believe. What they believe is true. What is their faith? And we as believers believe that at the very moment of conception a person is a real person, a real being.

And what is the basis of this? It's the basis of the conception of Jesus when he was conceived in the womb of Mary. His name was Jesus.

He was a person. And so therefore, we act on that. That's what Paul is saying when it comes to our sin. And that is the way to overcome it is to act on what we know is true. True faith leads to right actions. And what are the actions?

What are the things that we are to do to overcome sin? And Paul gives us two actions. The first one is found in verse five, the opening word when he says, Mortify therefore your members. The word mortify means to put it to death, to kill it.

John Owen, the 17th century Puritan said it clearly. He said, be killing sin or it will be killing you. If a rattlesnake slithered into your dorm room, what would you do? You would kill it. If a rat came scampering across your floor, what would you do? You would scream. You would kill it. If a scorpion was found on your bed, what would you do?

You would smash it. If Christ was murdered for your sin, what should you do with your sin? You should murder it.

And how do you do this? How do you kill sin? And the simple answer is you stop doing it.

Think about it. What are people doing with sin who are dead? Go out to the graveyard.

Ask them, what are you doing? Hey, what did you guys do on Saturday night? How many of you, how many of you got drunk? How many of you smoked pot?

How many of you were partying late into the night? They weren't doing anything. Why? Because they're dead. Dead people don't sin. And God has given, listen to me very carefully, because some of you don't believe this.

That takes me back to point one. But I want you to know that when you became a believer, God gave you, God gave you the power to overcome sin through the cross of Jesus Christ. And through the combination of faith and obedience, God will give you the power to overcome sin. I got saved at 19 years old. I had all kinds of sins in my life. And it was my friends in college that what I'm teaching you, I was taught by my friends in college. I had a friend of mine, Jim Smith, who said to me one day I was, I was struggling with a particular sin.

I told him what it was. He said, Steve, did you think Jesus died only to get you out of hell and get you into heaven? He said, Jesus died to break the power of your sin. The cross is the key to overcoming your sin. If you would focus on the cross, it would break the power and the desire of sin in your life.

And I kind of looked at him and I thought, you know, sometimes you do mental gyrations, try to figure that out. But you know what I learned? I learned that every time I had the desire to sin and I would begin to focus on the crucifixion.

You know what it did? It killed the desire for sin every single time. Folks, don't sit here and say the power of the cross is not available for you to overcome your sin. It's the matter of your focus.

You have to put it to death. And then notice, secondly, he says you have to put it off verse eight. But now you also put off all these things. And he gives a list of really relational sins or what I would call reactionary sins, things that we all struggle with.

And he tells us here not to kill it, but to put it off. And the idea is changing clothes. You go out and you exercise, you come back, you got sweaty clothes on, you shower. You don't put the sweaty clothes back on, you change your clothes.

He says put off these and put on these. What do we put off? We put off anger. What is anger? Anger is sort of that slow burn.

It's the person who's ticked. But you can't really tell it. But there's some heat there. It's like going out to a Mexican restaurant and they bring the plate out and they say don't touch it because it's... And what do you do? You touch it. And maybe it was hot, maybe it was not so hot, but it's not a cold plate.

It's a hot plate. And there are a lot of people you meet that don't look like they're angry. But when you get close to them, you can feel the bitterness coming out of them. The Bible says you need to put that off.

Put off wrath. What is that? It's the IED explosion in Afghanistan. It's the blowing up. It's the losing your temper. It's becoming a person that's not normal. I mean it'd be like any of us. It'd be like me.

Okay, let's say I'm like normal. And then all of a sudden I lose my temper. And I get mad. I get mad at Dr. Weir and I grab him by the collar and I throw him across my room. And I take that little baseball bat that I got from the baseball team that they gave out of the game.

I call that VP correction. And I start beating him in the head. And then afterwards I go, man, I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have done that.

What do I need to do? I need to put that off. Some of you have bad tempers.

You need to put it off. Malice. What is malice? It means I'm going to get you back.

You're going to pay for it. Hurting people hurt people. And you're going to take them out. Many of you have done that on the soccer field.

Somebody hits you and you say, you're dead dude. Next time I'm going to take you out and I'm going to enjoy it. He says put it off. Blasphemy. What is blasphemy? Blasphemy, slander, gossip. Talking about other people. Talking bad about other people. Filthy communication out of your mouth.

What's that? A dirty mouth. Now what is he saying? He says all of these things need to be put off.

Why? Because that's a part of the old life. And God gives you the grace. The renewal through the power of the Spirit and the power of His word.

Folks, I know it works. Doesn't mean we don't struggle. Doesn't mean we don't battle. And doesn't mean that we don't fail. Because the wonderful thing about failure is that there's forgiveness. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from unrighteousness.

I think one of the difficulties of being in a school like Bob Jones University is that if you do some of these things, there's problems. There's repercussions from it. And that's probably a part of the problem because then you live in the fear factor of getting caught but it doesn't really deal with the real sin of your heart. And what the Lord really wants us to do is to come to Him and He gives us the victory and He will give us the power and He will give us the grace to overcome sin. Don't hide your sin. Bring it to the surface.

Bring it to the Lord. And let Him give you the victory over it. Father, thank you for the promises of your word. Help us to be faithful to you. In Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to a sermon from the study series in the book of Colossians by Dr. Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University. For more information on Dr. Pettit's series, visit the Bob Jones University store website, shop.bju.edu, where you can get a copy of Steve's study booklet entitled, Seeking Things Above. That's s-h-o-p dot b-j-u dot e-d-u. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study in Colossians on The Daily Platform.