Stop Focusing So Much on Your Sin!

Assurance Comes by Looking to Christ, Not to Self

If you are looking at your life and you can't seem to find rest, you can't seem to find assurance, you can't seem to be like, my soul is just, there's something wrong. My encouragement to you is that you might be trying to do this according to the flesh.

And I think it's very clear that you can't. You can't look at your good works. You can't look at what you have or have not done. Sometimes, you know, Justin, have you ever looked at the drug addict or the porn addict who says, I haven't done this in so many years.

I see that as a setup for a fall. Don't look at how many years you've gone. Look to Christ today. Guess what, Justin? In 21 years, I haven't beat my wife. That's not going to bring you rest at the end of the day.

Like, what are we doing? So for those of you who have the turmoil of the soul, that's called a stronghold. That's called that Satan has gripped you.

Preaching Christ Instead of Moral Discourses

Often what happens is with the best of intentions, sermons become eloquent moral discourses on Christian living. We're sitting under what is supposed to be the preaching of the power of God for us. And we're effectively, like you said, we're being given a motivational speech or we're being given a guilt trip as to all the things that we need to be doing in order to live an upright life.

Peter knows, he says in verse 14, he's about to die. God, Jesus told him he's about to die. And so he writes this little letter to the churches to encourage them and kind of correct them and remind them of what they should be focused on.

He says this, his divine, meaning God's, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. I don't think that's confusing.

No, I mean, it's pretty straightforward.

And then you say, well, how, how does his divine power come to us? It's not just through osmosis, like how? He says through the knowledge of Christ.

If we don't preach Christ, who he is and what he did, then what in the world are we doing? Because our entire message, the entire gospel is wrapped up in who Jesus of Nazareth is and what he came to do for us.

It's not grounded in anything subjective about us. It's about him. If every time we're going to the scriptures, even individually, thinking about them, reading them, praying over them, whatever, like if that is not the lens through which we're viewing them, like I want to see Jesus and his love for me and what he did for me.

If that's not what we're going with, we're missing the power.

Amen.

Stop Focusing So Much on Your Sin

Stop focusing so much on your sin. Stop focusing. I'm not saying don't be mindful or vigilant. Please don't hear what I'm not saying. But when the focus is taken off of my sin or my failure or how long it's been since I did this, and I actually put my gaze on Christ and the love of God for me in Jesus, and I just start to live an honest, transparent life with my brothers and sisters in the church, tons of good can happen.

We tried the wisdom of the flesh thing, and look what it's producing. Unfortunately, the church is a sad place right now. But if we can reclaim it through preaching of Christ, then the power can be put back in, and we can see people finding rest and transformation once again.

How does real change happen? It is not through our willpower. It's not through white-knuckling religion. It's not through our own discipline that we somehow produce and work up what it takes to be sanctified.

If you want to see holy people, you want to see sanctified people in the church, preach Christ, man, because he is the power unto transformation.