Fighting and Killing Sin III: Be More Enamored with God than Sin

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Jeremy Walker from Crawley, England, which is just, for us Americans, we're just going to say London, a South Londoner, a Southerner.

South of London.

South of London. Yeah, I'm not a Londoner. Okay. My dad is a Londoner, but I'm not a Londoner.

South of London, and Jeremy is the pastor at Maiden Bower Baptist Church, and he's been with us for about a week, ministering here, preaching the gospel at the church, and particularly doing a men's retreat where we looked at the theme of one of your books that you've written on how to be a pilgrim, how to be engaged with our culture exactly as Christ was, and yet to be separate in heart, holy, exactly as Christ was.

And so it was a very helpful weekend. Jeremy also has two podcasts that he works on, and that is Word in Season and From the Heart of Spurgeon. So you might have seen them there, and you can see a link to that in our show notes.

Now we're returning to the theme of temptation and mortification of sin using John Owen's books here by Banner of Truth. These are the paperback edition, and what did you say, volume six?

Volume six is the original. These are excerpted, and then they're slightly simplified, slightly abridged to make them a little more accessible.

Yeah, and I think that Banner really does a good job at abridging and adapting without losing it. Whenever we do a book study on Owen, some of our people brave the big green set, the original, and then most of us grab a paperback.

So Owen is a really good friend to walk alongside of us. He talks about the same struggles that we have today and the same provision. Now this is our third podcast, and what we want to look at today is not the danger of temptation, the nature of temptation, those hours of extraordinary, those seasons of maybe sudden assault or slow building pressure where the enemy tells you it's inevitable, you're just going to do it, you might as well do it.

Owen has already given us a lot of help, and we've just hit some of the high points of this, and so you might want to get the books and work through them carefully yourself. But we're coming now to the themes of extra helps.

We already talked about the duties of watching and praying, but there are some things that Owen says that we might just say kind of miscellaneous, where he's saying these things will help you as you watch and pray, and so the provision for holiness, but also we want to finish with the provision for forgiveness, for cleansing, and for restoration.

I mean the full restoration, not the kind of restoration that leaves you in the back of the crowd of the family because everyone's embarrassed of you, but the kind of restoration that kills despair and its lies and moves you instead of hiding like Adam and Eve in the woods in shame to come back to the mercy seat and to be equipped for the happiest obedience.

So Jeremy, why don't you jump in and give us some of the practical helps that.

Owen gives. Yeah, well I'm glad you emphasize the ongoing usefulness of this material because Owen really begins the whole thing with reminding us that God and man and sin and the devil don't change. God is always, eternally, entirely everything that he always is, but man's nature over time, the reality of sin in this world, and the character of the devil, those things are fundamentally fixed, and so what he's giving us in terms of principle is as valuable today as it was when he spoke, and he's deriving it from the scriptures which were as true as ever they could be from the moment Christ gave that exhortation, watch and pray lest you enter into temptation.

We're relying on precisely the same grace from precisely the same God through precisely the same Christ, and Owen, having studied out something of what it means to watch and pray lest you enter into temptation, indulges what we might call a preacher's cheat, and he says now it's not in this text but I want to give you some extra help, I want to turn you elsewhere, and he actually turns to Revelation chapter 3 in verse 10, and he says there's one general direction, and he refers back to what he said about watching and praying, and he said this is comprehensive of all that's gone before, this wraps up the whole deal while also adding to what we've already considered.

It contains an approved antidote against the poison of temptation and is a remedy that Christ himself has marked out with a guarantee of efficacy and success. Now that kind of statement, Owen's too wise to fall into the obvious trap here.

You might read it, there's a silver bullet, there's a golden key here, what's he about to say? What's the trick to holy living? Just give me this and I'm good to go, and he quotes Revelation chapter 3 in verse 10.

Now he's quoting from an older translation, because you have kept my command to persevere, and Owen calls it the word of Christ's patience, and literally it's the word of Christ's patient endurance or steadfastness, so it's the command to persevere, and he's going to try and unpack this, because you've kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which will come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth.

So Owen's saying, right, this is the one thing that you need to grasp, this is going to help you, it comprehends, it includes everything we've said, and it adds some extras, this is how you stand against temptation, and it is this, you keep the word of Christ's patience, at which point you're going, oh, I thought you were just going to say, just do this, or pray these words, or learn this trick, what does this actually mean in practice?

And Owen begins to expound it, he says, the word of Christ is the word of the gospel, and it's called the word of Christ's patience or tolerance or forbearance, because of the patience and long-suffering which he exercises toward us.

So already you're going deep here, this is a gracious word, this is a word that comes to us, first of all, in the depths of our sin and misery, but again and again, as God's people in a fallen world who are battling against sin, Christ does not abandon us, it's such a precious reality, you've already mentioned some of those instincts to despair, that so often we give up on ourselves, and why do you give up on yourself?

You should never have been trusting in yourself in the first place, that's where the despair kicks in, we don't need to despair, we never can despair of Christ, because here is this word of patience, here is this command to persevere, here is the repeated and reiterated exhortation of Jesus Christ, and he says, what does it mean then to keep the word of Christ's patience?

He says there's three elements, you need to know what Jesus Christ has said, you need to value what Jesus Christ has said, and you need to obey what Jesus Christ has said, and what I love about that is he doesn't just say obey, obey what?

Know it, get to grips with the word of God, grasp, enter into, not just memorization may be helpful, but this knowledge, it's experimental knowledge or experiential knowledge, the language that we love to use, I know that this is the truth by which I am saved, I know that this is the reality, it's a word of holiness, it's a word of liberty and power, I have experience of Christ speaking to me by the power of his spirit, so that soul is gripped, my soul is changed, my soul is enlivened, my soul is energized, I am vivified, I have life in me by which I live, and having come to know that word of Christ, I esteem it, it's that beautiful sort of Psalm 119, more precious to me than thousands of pieces of gold and silver, this is the honey that sweetens my soul, I love the fact that the Christ of my salvation speaks to me, and out of that deep and sweet appreciation that God in his mercy by his son has so made himself known, has called me to himself, has by his spirit brought me to live in him, I love this truth that he speaks, this word came to me not in word only, but in power and in the holy spirit and in much assurance, I knew it was God speaking to me and not man, I love his word and God helping me, I therefore will walk in his ways, and Owen says that's the whole package, and then he goes on again, these slightly modernized words, now, when all these are carried out with determination of mind and spirit, care of heart and diligence of the whole person, we are keeping the word of his patience indeed, the sum then of this duty, which is the condition of freedom from the power of temptation, is to have a due or a proper acquaintance with the gospel as a word of mercy, holiness, liberty and consolation, it's a thoroughly, this is not Owen now, but it's a thoroughly evangelical understanding of the word, it's not God said something and I guess I have to do it, no, Christ has spoken, mercy, holiness, liberty and consolation, to value it and everything that relates to it as one's choice and only treasure, and to make it the business of one's life to pursue universal obedience to Christ, especially when opposition and apostasy stretch the patience of Christ to the utmost, whenever we fall short of this, their temptation is sure to enter, so here's this grand preservative, when I know, when the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is shining in the gospel, and when my heart is yearning to know him and more of him, and when my heart's desire and delight is to know and do his truth, Owen says, when you're by God's grace, when you're in that state and condition, that's when you'll be primed to strive against temptation, and I just, just as an aside, worth remembering, Owen, this is the material that Owen preached to young university students, this is for guys in their teenage years, fundamentally, in his context, and this is what he said, I want you to know God in the scriptures, I want you to have such a conception of God's gospel grace in Christ, and what it means to have this God speak to you in the person of his son, that you will delight in his truth, and nothing will give you greater joy and happiness and peace than to walk in his ways, and when you are in that state and condition, you will not enter into temptation, at which point you go, yes, that makes sense, and that's not quite the silver bullet, it's not the little, you know, just one trick, and you're away, no, this one antidote is a wholehearted delight in God and in his truth, it's a whole of life reality, but when this disposition is in us, then we are primed to stand because we are close to God.

When we find ourselves not carefully applying these things, or, you know, perhaps we find ourselves kind of with good intentions, but without the study of the word, our arsenal is, you know, there's not much there, there's not much to defend against the lies of the enemy, because the truths of God have not been brought into the mind, you know, so we just don't have the material, there's not much to answer his accusations against our God when life is difficult, and he says, well, is this Christianity, is this what you thought it would be, and you not knowing the scripture, you have very little to answer him with, you know, you know that's not right to think that way of your God, but what do I say, you know, do I make excuses for him, but well, the scripture would have given you the answer, you know, when he lies to you about temptation, and you're something about that just doesn't sound right, but not knowing the scriptures, so if we neglect the study of the scriptures, it will lead into this, you know, susceptibility to fall again, pray to temptation, if we study, but don't move it into the heart, as Flavio the Puritan said, you know, the distance from concepts grasped in the mind, which is good, it's the starting place, but then bringing them into heart, Flavio said, sometimes it can seem like miles, you know, that by prayer and, you know, wrestling with these things before the face of our God, these things get down into the heart, or as you said, we value them, or as Edward said, he warned that it wasn't enough to appreciate, or to believe, or to know the great truths of scripture, we must glory in them, you know, they, it's not the question of, do you have a grasp on these great doctrines, it's beyond that, do these great doctrines now turn and have a gripple on you?

Yeah, and to marinate our souls in these truths until the savor of them becomes a part of us, so that they're, it's not just a pair of spectacles that I put on from time to time to see the world a different way, that actually I've had eye surgery, and now everything is in proper focus, and I'm seeing with new eyes, I'm feeling with new affections, and that that is, again, Paul's language in 2 Corinthians, the old is gone, and that's absolute, it's gone for good, the new has come, and the sense there is it keeps on coming, when I grasp, it was just delightful to me, and I keep going back to it, the old is dead, but the new, there's this perpetual inflowing, there's a liveliness that keeps coming, there is a growing conformity to Jesus Christ, I mean, fundamentally, we would say that as saved sinners, this is becoming more Christ-like, it's seeing and knowing and feeling as he saw and knew and felt, and the examples of of sinful men who are most like Christ, you think of Joseph in Potiphar's house, when Potiphar's wife is tempting him, this is a young man, and this woman is offering herself to him, and Joseph says, how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God, and that's a man who sees the unseen, that's a man who understands what is at stake, and is so enamored of his God, that this offering holds no, let's be careful, holds no attraction, he is a sinful man, but to use that Thomas Chalmers language, the expulsive power of a new affection, now he is more enamored of his God than he is of this sin, or Daniel in Babylon, you can't pray, well I suppose I've got to because God said I should, Daniel loves to commune with his God, he can't imagine spending a day, it's his holy habit, so what does he do, he goes down, he kneels with his face toward Jerusalem, in his place and time, this is the place where God makes himself known, it's not a hardship for Daniel, now maybe he's got to overcome, yeah this could be it, I might be amongst the lions on account of this, but his friends have been like that before, we don't know where Daniel was on that occasion, oh king, you know our God can spare us, our God can deliver us, but if he doesn't, we're still not going to obey, what carries a heart to that pitch of peaceful, confident, cheerful, sacrificial obedience, there's a Christ-like spirit, there's a man, a woman who has come to see the glory, the goodness and the grace of God and says this is more precious to me than anything that you could offer, I will give up anything, I would be deprived of anything before I would be deprived of this, so Owen's great antidote is a gospel antidote, it's a Christ-centered, it is a God-centered antidote, when he takes up residence in the heart and when we cultivate, this is back to the, it's not just some people have this nice sense of God and others don't, Owen's saying cultivate that, you keep the command to persevere, you hold fast to the.

Word of Christ's patience. When we don't do that, when we fail to apply the things that Owen gives, which are just really just a summary of the scriptural pattern, when the mind and the heart and then the feet and hands, the activities are not being recalibrated by the superior charms of Christ, by the clear principles of scripture, then we can run into two great enemies that follow after sin and that is a kind of a paralyzing sense of pollution and shame, the guilt that a Christian feels in a way that a lost person doesn't feel, it is not that I sinned against a foreign power, I sinned against my king, it's not that I sinned against a neighbor, I sinned against my own family, I sinned against one that I love and so there is the pain now of love, I hate what I have done against my Lord, so there's shame, guilt that can paralyze and alienate us perhaps, but then there's also closely linked with that, maybe overlapping in many ways, is the issue of despair, where I feel that there's no way that a holy God would ever look on me and delight in me again and even in Christ, now I can't even imagine that and a despair that paralyzes, that keeps us from coming to God and being restored and then feet back on the path of obedience, but rather kind of the despair that comes when the enemy comes, we were talking before the podcast, kind of with the part two, so part one is the enemy comes and kind of whispers upon the mind, sin is not that big a deal and whatever reason he needs to give us, other people do worse or maybe you're very religious and he says, well you know you're saved by grace and he gives us all these religious words, oh God will forgive you, yes and so you know he gives us these arguments that all equal this, sin is not a big deal and as we mentioned before, if your primary motivation is what would it do to me, what will it give me, what will it cost me, so if they balance out in a way that makes sin look good, you choose it, then the second round of lies comes, especially as a believer and where the enemy says to us, you know it's in a sense we're looking at some ruined, you know burned over part of life again, some destroyed thing, some stolen thing again and the enemy says, wow you did that to your savior, you know and he loved you and you had all this knowledge and you've even taught other people, you know preached or taught classes and spoken to your friends and your kids.

And you've done it again. How could you do that? Yeah. You don't think and so he says then, sin is such a big deal, I don't think you should go back to God about this, he won't be wanting to see you and of course it makes sense to us humanly, it looks very humble and almost right.

So how do we apply the realities of scripture in a way that not just cleanses us again, the conscience, restores the friendship again, but actually places our feet on a path of obedience?

Yeah, that's what you've described can often be a twisted kind of pride. What we're in danger of saying at times, sometimes before conversion, sometimes afterward, actually I'm too bad. I'm the man or the woman that Christ can't save.

This is the sin that is beyond grace and that's not humility because what it's doing is essentially diminishing God. Now the answer to this is not to diminish sin. That's the first trick again, the first part of that satanic double whammy that sin's not so...

No, we never diminish sin. Sin is as ugly and as awful and as vile as we can possibly imagine it to be, even with our feeble conceptions. What's missing there is so often a correspondingly great perspective upon the Christ who saves and his so great salvation and that's the antidote.

Now I think, I believe it's McChain and I can never remember whether or not the physics of his illustration is correct or not, but he says that sin ought to be like a pendulum of the clock. The heavier it is, the faster it should swing us back to God.

So Satan makes sin our reason to flee from Christ. In effect, God says sin is the reason why you need to flee to Christ. Now that's very hard for us in our creatureliness, in part because that's not what we're like.

If you sin against me and you come to me, because I am not perfectly gracious and perfectly kind and perfectly compassionate, you're unlikely to find the best reception. But you're not dealing with a mere creature.

You're not dealing with another sinner. You are dealing with the gracious creator, with the sovereign saviour. And I think it's Goodwin, I think who... Christ is more ready to forgive than you are to be forgiven.

And it's so hard for us to conceive of the compassionate heart of God in Christ. But that's what we need to grasp. Not that I then say, well, maybe this sin isn't as bad as I thought it was. No, it's every bit as bad and then some.

Actually, your sense of your sin is shallow compared to its reality. But it is precisely this for which God has sent his son Jesus Christ. Here is the fountain open for sin and for uncleanness. When we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ, his blood.

And again, the sense of the original language, cleansing us. Not that it once cleansed us, but that this blood that flowed once for all on Calvary, that blood is cleansing us from all transgression. And what I now need is not to tidy myself up before I go back, but to run as fast as ever I can to the fountain open for sin and for uncleanness that I may be washed afresh.

And so I must set against my own twisted sense of my own worthiness or my need to become worthy in order that I might go to God. I am being reminded of my utter dependence upon him. And this is the essence of repentance.

I can't make this better. I have sinned, but I go to God with grief and hatred of my sin as to God as he makes himself known in Christ. And I'm open. I don't try and hide this. I don't try and butter this up.

I don't try and sweeten this. Lord, you know what I've done. Can't play any games, can't pretend anything different for your own glory's sake. And there are petitions in the Psalms that just, if we think in a carnal way, they don't make sense.

Pardon my iniquity, for it is great. What? No, surely you mean pardon my iniquity because it's not very great. It's only a little one. No, oh God, you are glorified. The greatness of your grace is seen in the great pardon you extend toward my great sin.

And that is, that's gospel reality. What we need is the faith that says God is what God says he is. He is who he's revealed himself to be. Those promises which are yes and amen in Christ Jesus will not fall to the ground.

And so I go again, not to cheapen grace, but because grace is so rich and so free. And in casting myself upon him, I plead not only that he would put away the sins that I've committed, but I ask him for fresh supplies of grace and strength that I might go and sin no more.

And that's not a psychological trick. I mean, you know that as well as I, that's not just playing mind games with ourselves. There is a supply of grace. There is mercy in time of need. And this God will pick me up out of the muck and the filth and he will cleanse me again.

Why? Because he's my father in heaven. My sin has been punished in Christ. My father will chasten me. I think this is important. My forgiven sin may still have consequences. There may be some things that I'm going to suffer.

There may be some challenges I'm going to face. There may be some consequences I need to work through, but my father will not forsake me. He will uphold me. He will restore me. And even that language of backsliding.

How far did you go? How long did you go? How deep did you go? Surely, surely I can't come back. Consider him. Think of who and what he is. Are you? And yes, you might say now, but I've sinned against light.

I knew better. Did Peter know better when he denied Jesus there in the courtyard? Sure he did. And Peter goes out, weeps bitterly when Christ catches his eye. And he sort of does the whole, well, I'll just get on with my normal life now I get.

And then Christ restores him and he brings him low, goes right back to the beginning until Peter, Lord, you know, all things, you know, that I love you, Peter, feed my sheep. And, and then Peter does that.

So what about this guy? Yes. Okay. What about him? Peter, this is this right now. This is about me and you. If I will something other for him. But if you're going to walk in my ways, if you're going to follow my path, yes, there'll be pains and sufferings and sorrows along the way, but that's what I've marked out for you.

And you need to do this independence upon me. And because God is what God always is, who God always is, because I am fundamentally no different to Peter in my humanity, because sin is, is no better or worse than it's ever been.

And because I still have an adversary, it goes about like a roaring lion seeking who may whom he may devour. But I have a savior who has prayed that that this will not be the end. Peter, I have prayed for you.

Satan is going to sift you like wheat, but you're mine, not his. So where do I go when Satan gets a grip upon me? I run back to my savior. Sometimes I have, you know, in wrestling.

With my own despair or the feeling like, where I know I've, I'm misapplying the truths about the seriousness of sin. You know, as you mentioned, it's not that sin, it's not that we come back to Christ because sin is lessened by the cross, you know, far, we feel far greater the shame of it, of sinning against this love, as well as this authority, this sovereignty.

But one of the arguments I've used with my own heart, so it's not to be like Adam and Eve hiding in the edges, you know, of the woods, but is that I would ask myself this. I would say to myself, it looks very humble to hide and to stay away from God, because you think it would dishonor the king for this filthy child, not stranger, but child who's been washed once to come again and again and again.

Doesn't that dishonor him? You know, the enemy whispers and you think, well, it does. But then I look at the scriptures and I ask this question, what will bring most honor to my king? Me hiding, starving, you know, shivering in the cold and saying, I'm not good enough for the king or me coming into the light, as John talks about in his first epistle, dragging it all into the light.

And like you said, no games, no explanations. And looking, meeting God at the mercy seat, seeing the sacrifice of Christ again by faith, you know, that we see the realities of that. And that is, you know, that is applied, you know, the feet are washed.

I don't need a bath again. I'm born again. But the feet are washed, you know, the relationship, the friendship is restored, the harmony is restored, you know. And it's the kind of restoration that doesn't lead to taking sin as a lighter matter.

Wow. If I'd have known I could have been forgiven, I would have known that sin is actually a bit smaller a matter than I thought it was. But rather, you walk out of the throne room, so to speak, into life, and you think, I knew sin was terrible.

I didn't even want to face him. I can't even bear to say with my mouth what he's seeing, what I've done. But when I walk away forgiven, I say, it was so much greater than I ever expected it to be. And yet, what Oswald Chambers said one time in his struggles with sinfulness, I indeed, it's true about me, but Christ, you know, and that, if properly applied, we know we've properly applied it because it leads to a fear of the Lord.

Psalm 130. I take God as a much greater, bigger, more substantial thing. God is a mountain of truth, of reality, not a light matter. But I also happily devote myself to obedience. Before the podcast, I was telling you about an illustration that Amy Carmichael gave that is one of my all-time favorites for this situation.

In a poem, so I'll have to just describe it. In the short poem, she says, she felt after sin, like a soldier that was face down in the mire. So if we think of an ancient battlefield, it's not face down in well-kept grass.

You're in this field of battle, and there's mud, and there's blood from the people around you, and your blood, and you're face down in it. And she has been laid low by an old temptation that has gotten the best of her again, sin.

And so her shield, she says, is riven and dented, her armor. Her blade is snapped, and she is in disgrace. And she describes herself as a soldier looking and seeing the captain, Christ, on the field of battle, of course, never falling, never stumbling, never once suffering the impact of his giving into sin.

And there he is in all his glory. And you know, you might feel as a soldier, he would never even admit he knows me after this disgrace. But in her poem, she describes him as turning and looking at the fallen soldier.

And in the look, the soldier reads the forgiveness and the love. And then the soldier cries out, just give me the stub of a sword,.

And up they get, you know. There's a beautiful old hymn, and there's a little couplet in one of the verses, Lord, strengthen me and I shall stand. When you fight, I prevail. Stunning.

So how do we know that we have rightly applied the cross to sin in us today? And one of the great expressions of that is that wonderful, renewed sense of purpose. I live for him, him alone. For me, it's Christ, Christ to live.

I mean, really nothing, nothing puts sin in its clearest light, like grace. You know, love hates to hurt the one we love. And it's the same for the believer. Well, these are just a few things that John Owen points out in his book on temptation.

And Jeremy, thank you for bringing this to us. And in our next podcast, we're going to look at what Owen says from the scripture about the other side of the duty, not just refusing to enter into sin's seductive grip, but actually getting up and by the constant work of God within us, the believer putting sin to death.