Galatians 5:23
You can be seated. Please turn
in your copy of God’s word to Galatians chapter five. We’ll
read verses 22 and 23 in the pew Bible. It’s on page 975.
Today we finished the last of the individual features of the
fruit of the spirit. We’ve looked at love, which is
the overarching, dynamic or piece of the fruit of the spirit. We
look at the fruit as a whole, but love and joy and peace and
patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, now self-control. I think I got them all. We want
to think about self-control really in light of ourselves. We’ve
looked at many of these features of the fruit of the spirit in
light of how they reflect God and his character. And perhaps
today we won’t look so much at God’s character, though it did
strike me when we were reading Psalm 135 as our call to worship,
it said something to this effect, the Lord does all that he pleases. Now, if we were to apply that
to ourselves, if we did all that we please, we would be sinners.
Because we have sins that please us, but God only does what is
right. And so all that he does is perfect. It pleases him. And so I guess
he’s completely under self-control, so to speak. Let’s consider now
the fruit of the spirit as we read Galatians 5, 22 and 23. But the fruit of the spirit is
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
and self-control against such things there is no law. And those
who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
passions and desires. The word of the living God for
us. Let’s do pray together. Lord, we’ve come today into your
house, a house of instruction. And so we pray that your spirit
would give testimony to the word as it is read and preached. that
you would glorify it in all the hearts of those who hear, and
we pray that it would do the work, the errand you send it
to do, that it would enlighten the ignorant, awaken the careless,
that it would reclaim the wandering, that your word would establish
the weak and comfort the feeble-minded, but most of all, make ready a
people for the coming of our Lord. So bless us, we pray in
Jesus’ name, amen. When the apostle Paul was writing
his final letters, he wrote them to Timothy and Titus. Timothy
and Titus were young men entrusted with the gospel. They, in a sense,
were the first men, at least the named men, who were not apostles,
those sent directly by God who were eyewitnesses to the resurrection,
but they were really the first called pastors of New Testament
churches. There were many others and would
be many more on down through the ages, but Timothy and Titus
were, uh, you might say his proteges. He took a great interest in them. And Titus, you remember was on
the island of Crete and Paul wrote him a letter that said,
I left you there to put things in order. And so he leaves instructions
to do a couple things. One is preach the word. Two is
to tell people to live self-controlled, sober-minded and upright lives
in the present evil age. And then he says, put the church
in order by giving ministers, elders, and deacons charge over
the congregation. He does a similar thing to Timothy,
but remember, Timothy’s a little timid. Timothy’s a young, shy
fellow. And so Paul has to fortify him
through two letters. But he gives him a similar set
of marching orders, put the church in order by bringing godly officers
into the life of the church. But he also says, command and
teach the word of God so that people will be self-controlled
and upright in this present evil age. And in his ministry or his
letter to Timothy, Paul writes these words. He says to Timothy,
now hear this or understand this. And he goes on to say that in
the last days, there will be times of difficulty. People will be lovers of self. People will be lovers of money.
People will be proud. They’ll be arrogant. They’ll
be abusive. They’ll be disobedient to their
parents. They’ll be ungrateful, unholy, and heartless. They’ll
be unappeasable. They will be slanderous. They
will be without self control. They’ll be brutal. They will
not love what is good. They will be treacherous and
reckless. They’ll be swollen with conceit.
They’ll be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. And they will have the appearance
of godliness, but they will deny its power. Well, it’s a good
thing Paul is telling Timothy about the world, isn’t it? Actually,
he’s speaking of the church. He’s telling Timothy, as you
pastor at Ephesus in the last days, it’s going to be difficult.
As you pastor at Ephesus, people will be that long list of stuff. Now we know that people outside
the church will be those things, but what a shock, what a jolt
to Timothy. It must have been as a young
man being sent onto the field, at the church at Ephesus. What a thing it must have been
for him to hear these things and to be, I guess you could
say, encouraged or challenged to deal with these people in
this way. Tonight, when we get to Isaiah 6, God is going to
say this question, who will go for me? Who will go and preach
the gospel? And you know, the words of Isaiah,
here I am, send me. So he signs up. How exciting.
Holy God calls him to a holy calling. And what does God quickly
tell him? You’re going to go to a people and you’re going
to speak, but they won’t hear. You’re going to say things, but
they won’t perceive it. You’re going to, you’re going
to say things and they won’t see it. Their hearts are going
to be dull. They’re going to be difficult
people to minister to. And, and that same discouragement
given to Isaiah in a sense is given to Timothy. And that’s
the calling, isn’t it? Of, of, of the gospel ministry. It’s to remind those who are
not in Christ that they are not in Christ and need Christ, but
to remind those who are in Christ that they daily and continually
need him. And if they take their eyes off
Jesus, if they put their eyes on the world, if they seek their
own pleasures rather than loving God, they will make a shipwreck
of their faith. They will make a travesty of
their Christian witness. And so if we were reading this
list that Paul gives Timothy and said, oh, that’s the world,
we would understand that, wouldn’t we? But he’s speaking of the
church. He’s speaking of people who lack
self-control and are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of
God. So what’s the church to do? Well, the church has to continue
to preach and teach what it is, what God is, who God is, what
he’s done and how we should learn his will and his ways and his
word. Now, I want you to run back in
your minds about a year Last year, somewhere about this time,
we were finishing the book of Acts. And you’ll remember that
Paul was preaching the gospel. He went on his first missionary
journey to Thessalonica and Galatia. All these books we’re going to
get through early on. And then he comes back to, He
comes back to Antioch, tells them all about it. They send
him out again and he goes a little farther west, comes back again,
goes a lot farther west. And they make their way through
Ephesus and Corinth and Thessalonica. They make their way through all
these places, missionary journeys. Well, Paul decides it’s time
to go back into Jerusalem and pay a vow and keep an oath. And
so he goes into the temple and the people there incite a riot. Remember, they followed him from
Ephesus. Got to do away with this guy. So he gets accused
of bringing a Gentile into the court. He gets accused of speaking
against or teaching against the place, Jerusalem, and the temple.
He gets accused of speaking against the law, the customs, because
he says Jesus came and fulfilled it. And he gets accused of all
this stuff and incites a really big riot. Well, the Roman guards
rescue him, bring him out to the barracks. kind of hold him
in custody. And Paul says, let me go talk
to him. And so they do. And he goes out there and gives
his testimony and more and more, they’re crying out away with
this man. He’s horrible, needs to die. So they take him back
in. They’re about to flog him. And Paul says, Hey, I’m a Roman
citizen. You can’t beat it out of me as it were. So they, they
take him to jail. They find out through Paul’s
sister’s son, there’s a plot to kill him. So they sneak him
out by horseback up to Caesarea. Well, eventually Felix comes
to Caesarea. And so Paul gives him his testimony. Paul gives him the gospel. Paul
gives him the message of Jesus Christ. And Felix is interested.
He understands the way for some reason, but he’s not a Christian,
not a believer. Well, Paul speaks to him and
he’s telling him, he’s telling him about righteousness and he’s
telling him about self-control and he’s telling him about the
coming judgment. Now remember old Felix, Felix has a teenage
wife, and he’s had a whole handful or two of others, and some he’s
killed, some he’s run off, but he’s not a good guy, and he’s
not doing good things, yet he’s the governor. And so when Paul
preaches to him and speaks to him about faith in Jesus, righteousness,
self-control, and the coming judgment, it alarmed Felix. He knew exactly who he was and
how he lived. He knew exactly what Paul was
saying. And he says to Paul, go away
for the present. And over the course of about
two years, Paul comes back and chit chats with him. And Felix
listens to him. And we understand Felix from
the scripture. He’s a sinner. He’s left in his
sins and trespasses. All he can do is sin. And so
when we look at Felix lifestyle, we say, makes perfect sense. But what do we do with this list
from Timothy? Paul’s written this list of Timothy.
How do we make sense of Christians in the last day being lovers
of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance
of godliness, but denying its power. These are people called
by God before the foundation of the world. These are people
marked out of the world to live in holiness. These are those
who live in the merits of Jesus Christ and the blessings of the
Holy Spirit. These are those who the Holy
Spirit has been poured out on. They’re set apart for holiness.
They’re saved for holiness. They’re destined for holiness. Yet what do we do with this great
incongruity, this great Difference between a Christian who is living
a holy life and a Christian who is swollen with deceit or treacherous
or reckless or unappeasable and slanderous and heartless, unholy,
ungrateful, disobedient, proud, arrogant, abusive, lovers of
self, money, and that’s just even half the list. What do we
do with this great incongruity? When those of us who have been
called out of the world to live for God and make our way to the
heavenly city, what do we do when the people of God, when
Christians are worldly? Well, we got to assess it. They’ve
forgotten who they are. They’ve become ignorant of all
that God has done for them in Jesus Christ. Their joy is now
on earth and not in heaven. They’ve come unraveled. from
their former way of living. They have been lured and enticed
by Satan away from holiness and towards worldliness. And so these Christians, Paul
is teaching Timothy, need to renounce ungodliness. They need
to be taught to live upright, godly, self-controlled lives
in this present evil age. You know, we live in a time where
We like to say, and I think it’s true, the gospel has been wed
to the American dream. We’ve said Jesus saves you so
you can have your best life now. Jesus saves you so you can be
healthy and wealthy. Jesus saves you and nothing bad
is ever going to happen to you. Now I wonder if perhaps when
you came to faith in Jesus, you were sort of given the used car
sales thing, you know, Hey buddy, Come to Jesus and all your problems
will go away. Come to Jesus and all these wonderful
things will happen in your life. And then you begin to follow
Jesus and you start to realize there’s something about dying
daily, something about taking up your cross and following him,
something about all the sufferings that are meant for Jesus come
to us because we bear his name and he’s up in glory. The sufferings
of this life, the struggles like Job, Or the inner struggles like
Peter, when he denied Jesus, come our way. What are we to
make of this incongruity? Well, a couple things, three
things in fact. We need to remember that the
world is our enemy. And the world puts before us
this buffet, this smorgasbord of things that are contra scripture,
contra God, against holiness. And we are bombarded with them.
And I think more and more in our day, in our culture, perhaps
we have it worse than other generations, though we can’t really say that
because God and his providence, you know, the world was as it
was back in those days, they had it rough too. But I think
we are really under the heavy downpour. of hearing things,
of seeing things, of experiencing things. We have more pleasures,
more instant pleasures come our way, and so our thoughts, our
hearts, and our motives are beaten by the world. You know, you’ve
got this gadget in your purse or in your pocket, the phone,
right, the iPhone, the digital thing, and it’s a black hole.
It’s a black hole in our pockets, or some said it’s infinity in
our purse. And we are offered daily in our
ears and in our eyes and in our hearts and to our hands and to
our feelings and to our pleasures, all kinds of things that are
contrary to the solid joys and the lasting pleasures that none
but Zion’s children know. Yet God has called us out of
the world to live for him, but he’s put us in the world to serve
him. And Jesus, you’ll remember in
his high priestly prayer says, I’m not praying that you’ll take
them out of the world. I’m just praying that you’ll guide them
through it, protect them through it, and that you’ll land them
safely home. All that the father has given
me, none can snatch from the father’s hand, but we’re living
in this world. And I think it’s why John Bunyan’s
pilgrims progress and all the, the names of the people in the
places are so important to our understanding of what the Christian
pilgrimage is like. We live in Vanity Fair. We live
in Babylon, but we’re marching to the heavenly city. And so
why the incongruity for Christians who are called out of the world,
but to live separate and holy lives? Well, the world is, it’s
upon us, it’s around us and it makes us great offerings. And
sadly we take it up. We’ve wed the gospel with the
American dream and the American dream has won out over the gospel
in many ways. Well, the second thing that comes
our way that really harms us and leads us to be, well, the
people that Paul speaks of to Timothy is the devil. The devil. seeks to satisfy every one of
our cravings. You think about self-control.
Self-control is really inner life management. Self-control
is the inner strength. It’s the inner strength of the
Holy Spirit to govern ourselves in a godly biblical, glorifying
way. And it’s to say no to many impulses,
impulses that aren’t God glorifying and good for our souls. But the
devil just bombards us. Suggestion, suggestion, suggestion,
suggestion. And the world’s over there in
the other ear. And Satan’s really good at lies. He’s really good
at half truths. He’s able to appeal to weak and
unguarded people. who are self-centered sinners,
who perhaps are away from the means of grace, away from the
word, away from the sacraments, away from prayer, away from daily
discipleship, personal holiness and all the thing. And we get
lured by Satan. If any of you are fishermen or
fisher women, um you buy one of those fish baits and it has
a nasty looking treble hook on it right a couple hooks with
a nasty barb if you were taking a hook out of a fish’s mouth
it’s not easy it looks painful but what do they put on those
lures over the hook they put a little spoon And as you pull
the bait through, and maybe you watch a fishing show on Saturday
or something, and you see how they tug the line a little, it
makes, as they reel and tug, reel and tug, that shiny spoon
attractive. And what does a fish do? They
strike it. And what happens before they
know it? The fisherman has set the hook. They’ve been lured,
they’ve been enticed, and now they’ve been caught. And that
is the way Satan works. That’s sort of the anatomy, isn’t
it, from the book of James. A person has desires, a person
gets lured, a person gets enticed, and before we know it, we’re
hooked, and hooked in a bad way, one of those nasty treble hooks. I think of The Lion, the Witch,
and the Wardrobes by C.S. Lewis, and how the kids went
through the wardrobe in the house in World War II Europe. They went in the wardrobe, and
through the wardrobe, they got into Narnia, and there’s Lucy
and Edmund, All the rest of them, well, Edmund bumps into the white
witch, who’s a very beguiling character representing the devil.
And she says to Edmund, what is it you like? And he says,
oh, I love Turkish delight. And so she gives him a beautiful
box with Turkish delight in it. And as soon as he takes, as soon
as he eats, he has an insatiable desire for more. And that craving
is never satisfied. But he falls under the spell
of the devil. He falls under the craving for those things.
And the devil is waiting to meet those desires and those cravings
that we have. You remember though Christ, Christ
in the wilderness, as he began his earthly ministry, 40 days
and 40 nights without food, it says the angels were tending
to him. But Satan came to him in his
weakest moment and said, hey, hear your tummy growling. It’s
been 40 days. Why don’t you turn these stones
into bread? And Jesus doesn’t think about
it. He simply understands the word,
the ways and the will of God and says, no man shall live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth
of God, there’s self control in Christ. His highest joy is
what glorifies his father. His greatest desire is to do
the will of God. And when Satan comes and offers
him all kinds of things, he says, no, it gets me off course. It
gets me off mission. It keeps me from doing that which
the father sent me to do. And so what a great example we
have in Jesus. Well, the world comes at us.
The devil comes at us. But here’s our worst problem.
It’s ourselves. It’s our flesh. It’s our remnant
sin. And when we come to this idea
of self-control, it’s controlling our desires. It’s controlling
our yearnings. The King James had a fancy word,
concupiscence. It’s our lust. It’s our burning
within for this or that. Maybe it’s a person, maybe it’s
a place, maybe it’s a thing, it’s an idea. It’s what we eat. It’s what we look at. It’s what
we go after. It’s the thing that burns within
us. It’s the thing that ignites our
lives, what we will pursue, what we will seek after, what we think
about when we’re not thinking about anything else. And I love
how the Puritans said of the Christian life, the perfect storm
for the Christian comes when in our flesh we desire something.
And when our flesh desires something, the temptation of the devil comes
and then the world presents the opportunity. And you have this
trifecta, this perfect storm, and it’s really hard to resist.
And so self-control says, make sure your desires are godly ones. Do you know God’s word, his ways
and his will? Are you seeking first his kingdom? Are you making sure you say no
to ungodliness, yes to godliness? That’s really hard to do because
the world is offering that buffet and Satan is whispering in our
ears. And we’ve got these endless opportunities
that present ourselves through what the world and technology
gives us. And so the perfect storm says,
okay, if the storm is there, get rid of the desire. Remove the opportunity. Be careful
where you go. Be careful what you see. Be careful
what you’re looking at. We spend our money on things.
We spend our time on things. Wherever our desires lead, we
will sometimes go, and Paul is saying, under the fruit of the
Spirit, we’ve got to govern these things. And so desire, opportunity,
and temptation come our way, and it’s like an alien takeover.
And isn’t that what Paul explains so well in Romans 7? Paul the
apostle, Paul the great learned man, Paul who met the risen Christ
on the road to Damascus, was taught by him in the Arabian
desert, says, I know the thing I ought to do. Of course you
do, you’re smart. Of course you do, you’re an Old
Testament scholar. Of course you do, Paul, you’ve got the
equivalent of two modern day PhDs in religion. And he says,
I know the thing I ought to do. You say, good, well go do it.
And he says, that’s the thing I don’t do. And he says, then
I know what I ought to do and I don’t do it. And he pronounces
a curse on himself. Oh, wretched man that I am. How
many of us feel that way? When we get lured, we get enticed.
We get suckered. Our desires aren’t godly. They’re
this worldly. And we just go headlong into
it. The alien takeover comes. Or to quote Proverbs 25 that
says a person with self-control is like a city with walls. Nothing’s getting in. When you
lose self-control, your walls are broken down and the enemy
can come in and take over. Paul is saying, he’s challenging
us, get rid of the gaps in your wall. Get rid of the unlocked
gates. Get rid of the vulnerable places. But thinking about the flesh,
the remaining sin in us, you gotta ask the question, why in
the world does God do this to us? If he forgives us of all
our past, present, and future sins, if in Christ we are justified,
we’re given his perfect obedience and his perfect righteousness,
why then does he leave remnant sin? Why does he leave this plague
within us? Some of you in the men’s and
the ladies’ confession of faith studies, remember in the last
year, we’ve looked at Thomas Boston’s seven reasons for remaining
corruption in the life of the believer. And God leaves this
corruption in us to remind us how much we need Jesus. He does
it to humble us. He does it to teach us how sinful,
exceedingly sinful is sin. He does it to show us our need
of Christ. He does it to keep our eyes on
him. One of the things Thomas Boston
says that’s so interesting and wonderful is he said, just as
God left some of the ites in the promised land, And if you
read Judges chapter three, he tells you exactly which ite he
leaves in the promised land. And he says, I’m doing this to
test you Israelites. I’m doing it to see if you’ll
love me and follow me. And so in a sense, God is saying,
I’m training you with all the temptations around you. to have
self-restraint, to have godly goals and to live a godly life. And so when we look at remaining
sin in our lives and we understand God has great purposes for it,
we also understand it wreaks havoc. And this remaining sin, remaining
corruption in our lives is exactly why Paul can say to Timothy,
you’re going to have some rotten church members. They’re gonna
be lovers of self, lovers of money. They’re gonna be haters.
They’re gonna be disobedient. They’re gonna be hard people
to deal with. But what you’re dealing with,
Timothy, is people with the flesh, people with remnant sin, remnant
corruption. That’s what Paul says later, be patient, Timothy. Be patient with people and perhaps
God will bring them to a place of repentance and growth in him. But one of the things I think
is very encouraging in the Christian life, though we are plagued with
the world and the devil and the flesh, just as God cannot, I’m
sorry, just as Satan cannot dethrone God, he cannot remove Christ
from the throne of glory, nor can he snatch one of God’s beloved
ones from Jesus’ hands. And so you may go through hell
on earth. You may go through Job’s experience. You may go through Peter’s experience. You may go through King David’s
experience. You may go through and you fill
in the blank, but none can snatch you from the father’s hands.
None that Jesus prays for will fall away. And it is by God’s
design that he puts us in the world It’s by God’s design that
Satan bugs us. But remember, he’s God’s devil.
He’s on a chain and can only go so far as God allows him.
But God in his wisdom and providence has left the flesh and you will
never fall away. You may fall down. You may scrape
your knees. You may bust your head. And Satan
will give it his best. The fires of hell will rain down
on you. All of hell’s worst. may come
at you. But God calls us to be people
of self-control. And I want you to hear and understand
this. Self-control does not come by putting a sticky note on your
bathroom mirror that says, don’t blow it today. Self-control doesn’t
come by tying a ribbon around your finger saying, don’t yell
at anybody, don’t cuss at anybody, don’t lust after anybody, don’t
spend money on things you shouldn’t, don’t overeat today, stick to
your diet, do your exercise, or whatever the area of self-control
you’re dealing with, it’s not gonna come through the Bob Newhart
method. Have you ever seen Bob Newhart,
the counselor? He just yells, stop it. Somebody’s
struggling with something and he says, stop it. It’s not gonna
come through asceticism. You can’t go live the simple
life on top of a pole in the ancient Roman world like Pliny
or whoever that person was that sat on the top of a stick. Hoping
never to deal with sin anymore. Sin is inside too. I mean, the
world’s awful, the devil’s awful, but what’s in here has a hard
reality for us as we think about the flesh. Well, the scriptures
call Christians not to be sticky note people or ascetic separatist
people or the just say no, like Nancy Reagan, you know, just
say no to drugs or the Bob Newhart stop it method. No, God calls
us to work out our salvation with fear and with trembling. And I know in the reformed camp,
we beat our drum that says salvation is of the Lord. You know whom
he calls. brings to faith in him through
the gospel. He gives them faith. He gives them regeneration, all
the rest. And it’s a hundred percent God. And yes, that is
true. But when it comes to our lifelong need for growth and
holiness or sanctification, God calls us to work. He throws his
shoulder in at a hundred percent and we’re to throw our shoulder
to the plow at 100%. Work out your salvation with
fear and trembling. Paul speaks of the Christian
life as an athletic competition. And he says, just as an athlete
trains and disciplines his body to win an earthly wreath, so
the Christian disciplines his body and strives after holiness
to receive an imperishable wreath. And so what does it look like
to discipline our lives, to discipline our bodies, to get it under control
so that we will not live out the desires of the flesh and
the pleasures of this world and the ways of Satan instead of
the ways of Jesus? Well, it’s simple. We submit
ourselves to Jesus Christ, we sit under the word. when it’s
read, when it’s preached, when it’s taught, maybe in our own
devotions, we pick up a table talk, we listen to some podcasts,
and we begin to get to know who God is, what God has done for
us, and what he requires of us. And that begins to push out of
us the unhealthy desires, the unhealthy lifestyles, the unhealthy
ways. As we seek first his kingdom,
we cease seeking first our own kingdom, Puritans called this
the expulsive power of greater affections. You know, from time
to time we talk about church life, as we’ve been doing the
last few weeks, and we talk about, do we aim high in our church? Do we have the highest common
denominator or do we aim low so we can reach everybody? And
what’s God’s way? He says, live in Christ, out
of Christ and for Christ. We don’t want to have this crummy
worldly life that we shake a little Jesus on. That seems to be the
way, you know, the gospel with the American dream. But we should
have greater and highest and eternal and heavenly affections. Again, that wonderful hymn phrase,
solid joys and lasting pleasures, none but Zion’s children know. And so we must walk by the spirit.
We must keep in step with the spirit. And what does the spirit
say? The spirit says everything that
God says. Where does God say it? He says
it in his word. What more can he say? What more
can he tell us? He’s given us plenty to keep
us busy. And so there’s this need for
the Christian to understand the world, the devil in the flesh,
to walk in step with the spirit, to be under the word. Seeking
the Lord’s will and seeking the Lord’s ways. But there is also
a sense where we need to starve those desires that well up in
us, the alien takeovers. We starve our sin. We kill our
sin. You know, nobody in their right
mind today goes over to the garden shop and says, have you got any
kudzu? for sale. We’re still getting rid of the
kudzu that we imported back in the 60s. Oh, this would be great
for erosion control. Now we can’t get rid of it. Nobody
goes to the nursery and says, have you got any kudzu? And it’s
almost the same with English ivy, isn’t it? Nobody says, I’ll
put a little English ivy out. It won’t spread. Or wisteria,
that stuff’s a mess as well. We’ve got to get to the root
of our sin. We’ve got to get to the root
of our kudzu. We’ve got to get to the root of the ivory. Just
plucking it up or spraying a little something doesn’t help. But we’ve
got to starve it and kill it and say no. Self-control is self-mastery. It’s not done in our strength,
but it’s done in the strength of the Holy Spirit, his power
given to us at our conversion. And when we become new creatures
in the Lord Jesus Christ, we must learn to do all that we
do. Whatever we eat, whatever we
drink, whatever we seek after, whatever we work for, all to
the glory of God. You remember King Ahab? Ahab,
a couple of kings down after Solomon, was a bad king. In fact,
if you read Chronicles, I think it is, it says there wasn’t anybody
as bad as he was. He was worse. I mean, he was
the worst. And he went after other gods. I mean, if it was
bad, he did it. And then he married old Jezebel.
And if it was bad, she did it better than he did. And remember,
she told him to do bad things. And you remember Naboth’s vineyard.
He pined away for Naboth’s vineyard. Naboth, give me your vineyard.
I’ll pay you for it. Naboth, give me your vineyard. I’ll buy
you a new one down the street that’ll be better. And Naboth
said, no, it’s my inheritance in the promised land. No, godly
answer. And so he gets Naboth killed. But you know what he
does before he gets killed? He sulks. It says of the king
of Israel, Ahab, he goes off and sulks because he didn’t have
what God didn’t mean to give him. I’ll steal this person’s
inheritance from God in order to get what I want. Well, he
kills Naboth, he gets the vineyard and on and on it goes. And Ahab
one day is out at war. He’s out at war and the Bible
says something rather interesting. It says a man, a soldier lifted
up his bow and he shot it. And it went between two gaps
in the armor and it pierced Ahab and it killed him. And I think
of what God tells us in Ephesians chapter six about living by the
Holy Spirit, living in the strength of Almighty God. We’ve seen from
time to time, the hymn, soldiers of Christ arise, put your armor
on, strong in the strength which God supplies through his eternal
son. We’re strong in the Lord of hosts
and in his mighty power who in the strength of Jesus trust,
we can be more than conqueror. And the second stanza says this,
stand then in his great might with all his strength and dude,
but take to arm for you fight the panoply or the instruments
of war of God. Listen to this, leave no unguarded
place, leave no weakness of the soul. Can’t you begin to picture
here Ahab’s armor? Can’t you picture here the Proverbs,
a city without laws, It’s like a person without self-control.
Take every virtue, take every grace and fortify the whole. Brothers and sisters, we are
called to live lives of self-control and perhaps it’s impossible.
It is with sticky notes, isn’t it? It is with just say no campaigns. It is with asceticism or the
Bob Newhart stop it method. But do you believe in the power
of the Holy Spirit? who brought you from death to
life and who can get you through the onslaught of the world, who
can get you through the shiny spinning lures of Satan? Do you
believe in your high priest who ever lives above to intercede
for you, who endured every hardship in this world and he lives to
bring you safely home to heaven? And do you believe that the spirit
can overcome the flesh? and that we can win this perpetual
and irreconcilable war through the power of Jesus. If you do,
you will experience victory. Oh, you’ll have some fall flat
on your face moments. Jesus is reminding you, you need
him. Don’t do this in your own strength, but you can live the
Christian life very powerfully and very wonderfully if you stand
firm in the strength of Jesus and his might. If you don’t,
If you’ve got gaps in your armor, the arrows will get through.
And so we pray for God’s help and strength. Let’s go to him
now and ask for it. Lord, we thank you for the grace
that you give us that we can deny ourselves, take up our cross
daily and follow Jesus. We ask that you would help us
maintain constant restraint over the desires of our body and bring
them into subjection. Keep us from being lovers of
our own selves. Keep us from being wise in our
own eyes. Keep us from leaning on our own understanding. Keep
us from always seeking our own advantage. But instead, let us
focus on our brother’s welfare. Let none of us live for ourselves
or even die for ourselves. For whether we live or die, let
us be the Lord’s so that we can live and die for him. Only by
your strength can we do this, and we pray for it and believe
in it now. It’s in Jesus’ mighty name, amen.