Know Your Enemy: The Flesh Defined (2) | Romans 8:12-13

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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All right, so last week I've been preaching on the flesh, defining what the flesh is and the related doctrines centered around man and what and who man is.

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And as you can see from the sermon title I'm going to continue to preach on that, on defining the flesh and understanding what it is.

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I'm really excited to cover this material as well and look forward to sharing it and discussing it as well.

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But first I wanted to make a correction regarding something

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I said last Sunday when I said that the Greek word for might in the

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Gospel of Luke 10, verse 27, I said that it was dunamis or dunameos, dynamite.

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That actually was not correct, it was a different word, but that Greek word for dunameos or dynamite actually does come from the

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Septuagint, from the Greek translation of the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 6 .5. So it does come from there, which is what

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Luke was, that's the passage that Luke was alluding to when he was quoting that in the

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Gospel. And I also wanted to clarify that I don't mean that,

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I didn't mean that those who believe that man is trichotomous or three parts are necessarily heretical.

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I don't mean to say that, but it is nevertheless wrong.

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It is inconsistent with Scripture, with the overwhelming testimony of Scripture, and has been used to defend heresy historically in the past, and that's why

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I kind of fell by the wayside because the heretic Apollinaris. And speaking of heretics,

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I also mispronounced the heretic's name, which is Apollinaris, not

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Apollinarios. So just wanted to clarify that as well. And so I wanted to, oh yeah, and he by the way taught that,

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I think he denied the full humanity of Christ, that Jesus was not fully human. And but I want us to buckle up again today for today's sermon, because we're going to take another deep dive and continue to define man and the flesh, and how the two relate to each other, okay?

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And I've also been challenging myself to study Scripture and the views of other sound men in the church in order to test and confirm my own understanding of these doctrines.

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So it's been very challenging and edifying to do that, and that's why

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I'm also excited to preach this today. I want us to remember this very important maxim that I've mentioned several times throughout a bunch of my sermons.

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Very important maxim, theology has consequences, good or bad, good or bad.

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And the way we interpret the Bible also has serious consequences, good or bad, depending on whether you interpret it rightly or wrongly, correctly or incorrectly, consistently or inconsistently.

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And we therefore must understand when and how the

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Bible uses literary devices and figures of speech like synecdoche, parallelism, all of those different figures that I've covered before, so we can interpret the

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Bible correctly and to derive sound doctrine from it. Very important, this is critical, and this is how a lot of other false views of Christianity in the

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Bible, like lordship salvation, they tend to mess things up because they misinterpret passages of Scripture, they overemphasize or they tug too much in one area at the expense of another, so it becomes imbalanced, superficially imbalanced.

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And so the Bible, we must understand that the Bible frequently uses different words or terms to refer to the same thing, sometimes even in the same sentence to intensify the rhythm of language or to draw a comparison, to emphasize or elaborate on an idea.

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So having a proper understanding of the flesh requires us to have a right understanding of man in general, which is why

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I talked about the dichotomous nature of man. And these doctrines also affect many other crucial doctrines, and they can even lead to heresy if we are not careful.

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And in order to deal with the flesh properly, we also first needed to know what physical or spiritual parts is man made of, and how do they relate to the flesh, and how many parts does man have?

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And we found the biblical answer to be that man has only two basic parts, right?

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Spirit and body, two parts, that man is therefore dichotomous.

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He has two parts, not three or four or five. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

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That's from James 2 .26. That's also a parallelism, one of those Hebrew parallelisms that are very common throughout the scriptures.

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But we also need to take this a step further, however, because it begs another question for us.

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If man is composed of two parts, body and spirit, then we need to think about this.

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Then which one is primary? Which one of those parts is primary? The body, is the body primary, is the spirit primary, or are both primary?

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And what function do they serve? What function do those parts serve? So what is it?

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Is man fundamentally his spirit, his body, or both?

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And by man, of course, I'm referring to mankind in general, to both men and women, not just men.

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Now, this too, however, begs yet another question. What about the imago

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Dei, the image of God? What about that?

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What is the image of God in man? Is it the body, is it the spirit, or is it both?

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And it's really important to understand these things and how they relate to each other, their relations, because they also affect several doctrines, including our understanding of the flesh.

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So stay buckled with me here, because you can see that we're starting to do some serious theology.

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We've been doing some serious theology, and attempting to make proper definitions and distinctions, without which you cannot have sound doctrine, or a proper understanding of scripture.

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We must have sound definitions, proper definitions, and distinctions.

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That is what theology is all about, sound doctrine. Now, and I hope that you see now, how some things in scripture are not so simple, which as Peter warns us, the untaught and the unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the scriptures.

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That's from 2 Peter 3 .16. So we need to take heed to that warning, but with a little patience, scripture searching and sound doctrine, and God's means of grace, particularly the preaching of God's word, we can find out the truth of these matters.

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So let's drive right in here. Now what is the right view here?

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Should we agree with the early church apologist, Justin Martyr, who said that the image of God in man is primarily the physical body?

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Or should we rather agree with Augustine, that the image of God is knowledge of the truth, which is in the mind and spirit of man, his rationality, knowledge and rationality, or the body, spirit or body?

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Now, I think we can safely dispose of Justin Martyr's view that the physical body is the image of God, right?

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Because we recently read in our confession that God is without body, parts or passions, right?

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And even the children's catechism teaches the basic truth that God is a spirit and has not a body like men.

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So how can the image of God be something that God himself does not have, right?

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He doesn't have a body, a physical body. Now we need to make a careful distinction here because even though Jesus himself is

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God and has a physical body, he does so because he became flesh, according to John 1 .14,

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right? Because he became a man, not because he is God. For the triumphant God does not have and never had a body.

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Only Jesus has a human body by virtue of becoming a man, okay? So Justin Martyr really should have, he should have anachronistically jumped into the future and read the children's catechism because that would have helped him out a little bit.

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And even Jesus himself likewise says in John 4 .23

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-24, if you turn with me there, we'll see an important part of Christ's teaching on the nature of God.

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In the Gospel of John 4 .23, where our

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Lord says, But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the

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Father in spirit and truth. For such people the

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Father seeks to be his worshippers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

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So this is a very important passage that Christ teaches us on the nature of God and on the relationship that God desires to have with us.

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To worship in spirit and truth because God is the spirit, is the spirit of truth.

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And therefore we must worship God in spirit and in the truth with our minds.

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And this more clearly points then to the image of God in the spirit of man rather than his body.

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So it looks like Augustine is getting much, much warmer here, right? And remember that Augustine said that, he said that the image of God is knowledge of the truth which resides in the mind and spirit of man.

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It's his rationality. Now turn with me to another important text here in Proverbs 23, verse 6.

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In Proverbs 23, verse 6, an important passage about the nature of man now.

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And you see how we keep jumping around from doctrinal heading to doctrinal heading to subject to, from subject to subject and doctrine to doctrine because all of these doctrines interlock like Gordon Clark says and they interrelate to each other and we need to properly understand one in itself, in and of itself and in its relation to the rest of these doctrines.

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So in Proverbs 23, verse 6, God's word says,

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Do not eat the bread of a selfish man and do not desire his delicacies. For as he calculates, as he thinks in his soul, so he is, so he is.

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Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart, his heart is not with you.

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So what does this teach us? This teaches us something important, that we are what we think.

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We are what we think. As a man thinks in his soul, so he is.

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And the word soul there, remember, comes from, is a word, the Hebrew word nefesh, like when

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Genesis 2, 7, where it says the man became a living soul. So nefesh, as a man thinks in his soul, so he is.

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We are what we think. We are our minds, our thoughts, in a very fundamental sense.

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Who we really are is who we are on the inside. It's our inner man, our heart, which the

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Bible also describes, uses in this passage to describe the inner man, the heart.

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The heart is, his heart is not with you. So he will superficially on the surface say one thing, but his heart is not with you.

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Just like when Jesus called out the Pharisees and he said, these people honor me with their lips, with their mouth, but their hearts, their leb, their lebab, is far from me, because they're hypocrites.

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They don't truly believe me or agree with me on the inside.

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Very critically important for us to understand. Now, turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4 in verse 21, as we start tying this together now.

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So in the letter to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 21, here we see

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God's word says, just as truth is in Jesus, take note of that phrase.

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To lay aside, in reference to your former conduct, the old man, remember the old man, the flesh, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, the lusts of the flesh, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, the spirit of your mind.

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Take note of that phrase, important phrase, and to put on the new man, the new man, which in the likeness of or in the image of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

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Amen. So note here in verse 23, even though the phrase the likeness of God is italicized, it's not in the original text, but nevertheless, the meaning is clearly implied.

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And the word, the likeness and image are also generally synonymous in scripture.

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There's no, they're generally synonymous. And so likeness of God, that's showing us something important about the new man as well.

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And notice too, how the spirit and mind of man are directly connected to each other.

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Verse 23, and to the new man and the likeness of God, all of these are connected, right?

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And notice also how the new man has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

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So now we're getting in, we're really starting to get into other areas. Now, what is truth?

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What is truth? Like pilot said, staring right at truth incarnate. And he was asking the question, what is true?

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We need to, we need to know what truth is. Amen. We need to know what truth is.

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If you don't know the truth, you're not saved, right? We are saved by knowledge of coming to the knowledge of the truth, like the word says.

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So the truth is fundamentally intellectual. It is knowledge, which is grasped by the spirit of the mind.

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Like the, like the verse says, the spirit of your mind. That is how we grasp the truth.

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Now, does this sound familiar from another passage in Romans? But be ye transformed by the renewing of your, what?

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Your mind, right? Your mind. It's Romans 12 too.

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For who among men knows the depths of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?

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The spirit which is in him. Knows. Even so, the depths of God, no one knows except the spirit of God.

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That's from 1 Corinthians 2 .11, right? So, in other words, the spirit or the mind of man knows.

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It has knowledge. It learns knowledge and is taught the truth by the spirit combining spiritual depths with spiritual words or wisdom.

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That's 1 Corinthians 2 again, verse 13. Now, let's turn to Colossians chapter 3 and verse 9, where we will see this become even more explicit.

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God will make this even more explicit for us. To dispel any doubts about how to make proper sense of this.

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Okay, Colossians chapter 3, verse 9. So there, in Paul's letter to the

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Colossians, chapter 3, verse 9, we read. Do not lie to one another, since you put off the old man.

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There we go again. The old man, the flesh, with its evil practices. And have put on the new man, who is, listen to this, who is being renewed to a what?

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To a full knowledge. According to what? According to the image of the one who created him.

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All of this is coming together now. All of these things are coming together from this very passage.

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And our very good friend here, Reformed philosopher and theologian, Gordon Clark, answers a very important question about this verse.

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In his most excellent book, The Biblical Doctrine of Man, which

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I highly commend to you all for your reading. Very good book, and I'm highly indebted to it as well, in preparing these past few messages.

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Now, in that book he says, regarding this verse, In what consists the renewal that makes the old man the new man?

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What is it? The verse says, he is renewed to knowledge.

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To full knowledge. He is renewed to knowledge according to the image of the creator.

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The image of God. That is to say, okay, here's the kicker.

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Listen to this. The image of God in which man was created is knowledge.

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Okay? It is knowledge. That sounds just like what

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Augustine said, right? The image of God then, as we're seeing from these passages, and very clearly and explicitly in this passage in Colossians 3,

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The image of God is fundamentally rational knowledge of the truth.

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Rational knowledge of the truth. It is knowledge of the truth grasped by a rational mind.

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A human rational mind. That is why the

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Bible also says that we have the mind of Christ.

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Right? In 1 Corinthians 2 .16. Because the truth is in Jesus.

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Which is from the passage we just read in Ephesians 4 .21. The truth is in Jesus.

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In his mind. Christ said he is the way, the truth, and the life. Now, but the truth is not in his body.

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Your body is not the truth. His body is not the truth. The truth is in his mind.

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That's where the truth is. And so, why else?

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Because Gospel of John 1 .1 says that Christ is the

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Logos. It gets translated into word. But that's really not an adequate translation.

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The word is Logos. Because Christ is the logic.

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That's from where we get the word logic from. The logic, the wisdom, the reason of God.

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The reason of God. The wisdom of God. And I really appreciate how

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Clark summarizes this matter and puts it all together for us here. I want to read from his same book again.

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The image of God and man must be reason.

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Because God is truth. He's the spirit of truth.

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And fellowship with him, a most important purpose in our creation, requires thinking and understanding.

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Without reason, man would doubtless glorify God. As do the stars, the stones, the animals.

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But he could not enjoy him forever. And he's alluding to the question 1 of the

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Westminster Shorter Catechism. What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify

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God and to enjoy him forever. Right? Even if in God's providence, animals survive death and adorn the future heavenly realm, they cannot have what the scriptures calls eternal life.

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Why? Because eternal life consists in knowing the only true

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God. That is what Jesus said. This is eternal life.

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Knowing the only true God. And knowledge is an exercise of the mind or reason.

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Without reason, there can be no morality or righteousness.

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In other words, reason, mind, thought, logic, all of those are more fundamental than morality or righteousness.

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These two require thought. And lacking these, animals are neither righteous nor sinful.

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Right? So amen. That's a really excellent way to summarize the biblical teaching on these matters.

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You cannot have morality without logic, without reason. Because you cannot say that it's right to steal and that it's not right to steal.

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It's either one or the other. That's the law of contradiction, right? You have to have rational consistency in order to have sound morality.

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Let your yes be yes and your no, no. Very important to understand.

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So then, is man primarily his spirit or his body?

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Or both? What do you all think now? Drum roll. Come on. Drum roll, please.

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The biblical answer, I think, is clear now.

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That since the image of God in man is primarily his mind or his spirit or reason, though not exclusively.

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I'm not saying it doesn't include other things like righteousness and other things. But it's primarily his mind or his spirit.

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Man himself, therefore, is primarily his spirit. Not his body.

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OK? We are primarily our spirit, our minds. Not our bodies.

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OK? Remember also, back when

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I preached on the fallen watcher angels, who abandoned their heavenly bodies in order to commit sexual sin with women by taking them off and putting on earthly bodies like ours in order to commit that sexual sin in Jude and 2

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Peter 2. But whereas, on the contrary, we as believers long and desire to put on our eternal heavenly bodies.

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Since 2 Corinthians 5 describes our current physical bodies as fallen, unredeemed, earthly tents.

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For our souls that will eventually be torn down. Torn down.

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And the Baptist Catechism likewise explains in question 40. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at their death?

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At their death. The souls or spirits of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness.

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They are glorified and do immediately pass into glory. And their bodies, which are distinct obviously, their bodies being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves until the resurrection.

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OK? Until the resurrection. So it is the spirit of man which defines who he really is.

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The physical body is not a fundamental part of man. At least not until we receive our final resurrection bodies.

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When they will become a more permanent part of our being. Very important to make these distinctions.

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Do you see now how these doctrines relate so closely and logically to each other?

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And form a very intricate web. A system. A comprehensive world view of the whole counsel of God.

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All of this is clearly interrelated. And we have to understand all of these doctrines both individually and interconnectedly.

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In relation to each other. In order to have sound doctrine properly established.

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So look at all of these different things that we've already had to jump into.

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To make proper sense of this. Just to get to the flesh. We're going from man's inner and outer components.

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Body and soul. Mind and spirit. To the old man and the new man.

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To the image of God. To God himself. And to Christ, the God man.

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And even to animals and to other created matter. And how we differ from those things. All of this has very important implications or consequences.

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On the flesh. On how to properly understand it and deal with it.

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And now that we better understand what man is.

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We can ask more probing questions about the flesh itself. Does the flesh affect the body?

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I think I asked these questions last week, last sermon. When I closed out the message.

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Does the flesh affect the body? Does the flesh affect the spirit? Or does it affect both?

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The whole man? What is the flesh? Is the flesh the body?

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Is the flesh the spirit? Is it both? Or is it neither? Is it something else altogether?

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How would you define the flesh? How do we define it? So think carefully with me here.

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The flesh has different meanings in scripture. And there are different views of what the flesh itself is.

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So I like how... So Gerhard is was a reformed theologian.

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He has some helpful... He gives us a helpful breakdown of the flesh. And how it means at least three different things in scripture.

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Okay? So the first definition of the flesh is used in the purely physical sense.

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As in the expression flesh and blood. In this sense, flesh is a certain part of the human body.

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Or it is the human body itself. The second definition refers to man and his human weakness.

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As for example in the verse, all flesh is as grass. And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.

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That's from Isaiah 40 verse 6. So human weakness. It can also refer to human weakness and frailty.

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Now the third meaning. The third sense of the word flesh is used to mean the sinful nature of fallen man.

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Which remains even in the Christian. As in the verse, in me, that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing.

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It's Romans 7 21. Which is the key text that we need to rightly understand here. We're going to have to dig into that text later on.

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And he continues. We should guard against the extremely common error that the word flesh means a part of our human nature.

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It does not refer to a lower nature. It refers to our whole nature as corrupted by sin, by the fall.

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So this third definition refers to the flesh as our mortal enemy. The flesh.

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And now Voss also argues that the most common error in dealing with these passages is to regard the flesh as meaning simply the human body.

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Primarily sin is not a matter of the body, but of the soul or spirit.

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OK. So we shall see about that. All right. Kind of challenging a little bit of what

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I said last time in the last message. Because I did mention that the flesh is primarily the body.

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The physical body. And notice how he emphasizes that the flesh refers to our whole nature as corrupted by sin.

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And remains even in the Christian. OK. This is very important to understand. How the flesh affects unbelievers and believers.

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Before and after conversion. Our conversion and our regeneration. So this brings us to another key question to consider throughout this series.

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And I like the phrase that Calvin uses in his Institutes. What exactly is the source and the seat of corruption?

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The seat of corruption in man. What is it? And the extent of the flesh.

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Especially in unregenerate and regenerated believers. I mean,

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I'm sorry. There's no such thing as an unregenerate believer, right? Unbelievers are unregenerate. But also in regenerate believers.

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So keep this question in mind. Think on it and dwell on it as we go through this series on the flesh.

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Because we need to be careful to not overemphasize the power and extent of the flesh.

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Especially in our Calvinist reformed tradition. Which tends to heavily emphasize how vile and wicked.

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And the flesh and the heart and all this stuff is. In the life of believers.

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Because there are counterpoint book and doctrines that balance our understanding.

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And warn us when we overstress one end over the other.

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We'll lose our balance theologically and doctrinally if we're not careful. Now, the

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Bible clearly teaches that the flesh completely and overwhelmingly affects, infiltrates, corrupts, consumes, and enslaves unbelievers.

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Totally, completely. Completely enslaves and masters unbelievers.

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Without any reservation. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.

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But those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death.

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But the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God.

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It is hostile toward God. For it does not subject itself to the law of God.

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For it is not even able to do so. Completely unable to do so.

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And those who are in the flesh, in the sarks. That's the Greek word, the sarks.

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Are not able to please God. Are simply unable in any sense to please

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God. Amen? This is very clear in scripture.

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Unbelievers, none who does good. Not even one. Any good whatsoever.

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Not even one. Because they are overrun by worldly desires, worldly flesh, fleshly appetites, all of those things.

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They are mastered by sin. But is this still the case, however, when it comes to believers?

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Are believers also completely mastered by sin in this way? Now, we better not be, right?

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This better not be the case with us. And it is obviously not the case with us.

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For this same passage contrasts. I'm sorry,

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I forgot to quote it. I believe that's in Romans 8. Romans chapter 8. This very same passage contrasts believers who set their minds on the spirit of God, right?

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As opposed to unbelievers who set their minds on the flesh. So these are diametrically opposed paths.

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One peripateo, one lifestyle sets their mind on the things of God, the things of the spirit of God.

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The other one sets its mind on the things of the flesh, the things of the world, the things of the devil.

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So those are diametrically opposed to each other. You can't be, it's one or the other.

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You can't be both. You're either in one or in the other. Now, we need to understand also the changes that God makes in us.

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And that we subsequently make after God changes us.

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And we are regenerated by God's spirit. And what impact these changes, some of which are ongoing, have on the flesh.

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Okay? We need to understand these things properly. Now, I want us to recall, turn with me here to Romans chapter 8, verse 12.

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Romans chapter 8, verse 12. I've read this passage before, previously in this series.

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It's going to be extremely relevant to what our subject matter is, obviously, regarding the flesh.

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Romans 8, verse 12 says, So then, brothers, this is Paul speaking or writing. We are under obligation, not to the flesh, the sarks, to live according to the flesh.

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For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. You will die.

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But if by the spirit you are putting to death, you are mortifying the practices of the flesh,

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I'm sorry, of the body, the soma, remember the soma, you will live.

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There you see again, the mutually exclusive paths. Either the flesh, according to the flesh, or according to the spirit of God.

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Now, let's see.

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Let's turn to our good friend, the Puritan John Owen, and what he has to say about this verse and the flesh from his masterful treatise on the mortification of sin.

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This is such good stuff. Highly recommend. He based the book on this verse.

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And I want us to see what he says about this very passage here. So, our friend and brother

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John Owen here, he says, The body, in the close of the verse, is the same with the flesh in the beginning.

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If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die. But if ye mortify the deeds of the body, that is the flesh.

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So what he's explaining is that there's a parallelism here. The flesh is being paralleled with the body.

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Flesh and body, synonymous here. They mean the same thing. Okay? And he continues.

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It is that which the apostle has all along meant by the flesh, which is evident from his focus on the contrast between the spirit and the flesh, before and after.

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The body, then, is taken here for that corruption and depravity of our natures, whereof the body, the physical body, in a great part, is the seat and instrument, the seat and instrument, the very members of the body, being made servants unto unrighteousness by such corruption.

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Romans 6 .19. Okay? So important to understand.

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I'll repeat that again. The body, then, is taken here for that corruption and depravity of our natures, whereof the body itself, the physical body, in a great part, is the seat and instrument.

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Okay? The seat of corruption in us. The very members of the body, our physical members, like Paul says in Romans 7, in my members, my physical members, the very members of the body being made servants unto unrighteousness by such corruption.

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It is this indwelling sin, the corrupted flesh or lust that is intended.

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The body here is also the same as the old man and the body of sin, back in what

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Romans 6 refers to. Or it may express the whole person considered as corrupted and the seat of lust and distempered or disordered affections.

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Okay? So, wow, this is such good stuff. This is why I'm telling y 'all need to read

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John Owen. He is just a masterful theologian.

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And he has some very insightful and important things for us to consider here. We see how

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Owen digs a little deeper and more carefully explaining the nuances of the flesh and the body.

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Right? And he is expressing what I've been trying to articulate and make proper sense of in my own mind, in my own understanding, that the flesh is primarily seated in the body, the physical body.

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And it's the instrument of the flesh. The body itself, the members of the body are physical members.

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Very important. It's not exclusively the body. Okay? Like Vas said, it's not exclusively the body.

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But I am seeing, we're seeing how I think, how it is primarily residing in the body as its primary instrument and its primary seat of corruption, where it resides.

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Right? And so, you know, regarding going back again to understanding the changes that God makes in us and how to make sense of that in light of the flesh.

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I want to read, I mean, I want to quote from the question 78 of the

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Westminster Larger Catechism because it explains where the imperfection of sanctification in believers comes from.

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Okay? It says, the imperfection of sanctification in believers arises from the remnants of sin abiding in every part of them and every part of believers.

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Mind and spirit, every part. And the perpetual lustings of the flesh.

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Okay? Those two things against the spirit, whereby they are often foiled with temptations and fall into many sins and are hindered in all their spiritual exercises.

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Okay? So notice how the catechism emphasizes that the remnants of sin and the perpetual, meaning ongoing, ongoing, non -stop, it's always there.

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Lustings of the flesh that still affect every part of us believers.

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Okay? But we need to be careful to make proper sense of this and not overstep or become imbalanced in overemphasizing what scripture actually teaches.

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Okay? So, as we get ready to bring everything to a close here now, while Gerhardus Voss and the

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Reform Standards and John Owen all acknowledge that the flesh does include and affect every single part of man, including the physical body, both before and after being regenerated by God's spirit, so that the flesh continues to affect every part of believers even after their conversion, others claim that the flesh has nothing to do with the physical body at all.

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Okay? So there's different views here and that's why there's a lot of confusion surrounding the flesh and how to make proper sense of that.

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So I want to tackle that a little bit more detail, more depth, next

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Lord's Day, but I want to close out with something that I really think will help us.

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I've been meaning to address as a church and I think this will really help us to fight and wrestle against not just the flesh, but all of our enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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And that is something that I want to put forth for us to challenge us to do, for all of us to do, and that is to make a list, to write down a list, a list of basically your favorite passages in scripture, the promises of God, of the assurances of God, of the

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Word, that you find in scripture. To take those passages that you treasure and highly value, that mean a lot to you in your life, in what you've gone through, in your personal struggles and everything, to put those down on a piece of paper.

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Put them down on a piece of paper and always carry them with you. Okay? And the reason

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I'm saying this is because oftentimes when temptation hits us, it assaults us, and we may not always be expecting it or be prepared to handle it.

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But this is a powerful means that God has given us through His Word that can help us to equip us through the armor of God.

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It's a way of putting on the shield of faith, right? And the sword of the Spirit. It's a way of putting it on.

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We're writing it down in a list. Those most relevant passages that describe our assurances that we have in Christ, that we have put to death the body of sin, we have put to death and crucified the old man, all of those things, those assurances, we can pull up immediately when we struggle with the flesh, when our flesh starts tempting us to sin and to do something that we shouldn't.

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When we start to struggle against worldly desires and the temptation to stumble, we can have that list always with us to fight against these mortal enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, because this is serious spiritual warfare.

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This can kill us if we're not careful. Amen? This can lead to our death.

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Like the Word says in 1 John, there is sin that leads to death, and all sin leads to death if we continue in it.

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And as believers, we cannot continue in sin. And it's like John Owen also famously said, be killing sin in your life, or it will be killing you.

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Just like Romans says, right? Those who live according to the flesh must and will die.

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All right? So let us go home and dwell on these things and meditate on these things and seek to deepen our understanding of the flesh, of how it resides in us, and how to make sense of that so that we can apply the proper remedies, including this promise list that I'm inviting and encouraging for all of us to do, including myself.

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I want to do this myself. Okay? And we can discuss that more and talk about it as well.

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And with that said, let us go ahead and close out with a word of prayer. Our gracious Lord, Heavenly Father, we thank you for this beautiful Lord's Day once again.

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We thank you so much for the blessing of the preaching of your Word, of the amazing truth of your

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Word, and of the sound doctrine that is contained therein. Father, we ask that you help us to grow and to mature in the full knowledge,

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Father God, like your Word says, to come to a full knowledge of Him, of Christ, your

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Son, by which you have given all things for our life and our godliness, the truth and holiness that we so need, to grow and to both grow actively in righteousness and to mortify, to put to death, the flesh in us and the sin in our life, to be actively killing it,

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Lord, and to put it to death and to have the confidence, Lord, that in Christ we have everything that we need to put those things to death, to put sin to death in our life and to strive to grow in the grace and knowledge of our

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Lord and Savior, Father, through your means of grace, through the six S's and those means of deliverance that you have given us,

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Father, as well. We ask, Lord, that you help us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and the armor of God and of light and all of these things, to absorb them in our minds, to digest them and to meditate on these things,

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Lord, to really make deep sense of this, to come to this full knowledge, which is that systematic knowledge,

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Father, this comprehensive, mature knowledge of your whole counsel so that we may live a mature

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Christian life and walk and be sought in life properly before our friends, family, neighbors, co -workers, and enemies,

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Father. We thank you, Father, and we ask these things of Jesus, precious, almighty name. Amen.

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Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the Bible alone and the

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Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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