Know Your Enemy: Remedies Against the Flesh—Self-Denial | Luke 9:23-25

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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It's good to be back with you all today on this beautiful Lord's Day. Let's go ahead and dive right in here.

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So I wanted to begin by taking note of something that's become very prominent in the news and in the media today.

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You probably have heard of such things as vaccine deniers, climate change deniers, holocaust deniers, all sorts of deniers.

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And they all tend to be branded as crazy conspiracy theorists who, you know, by the mainstream media, mainstream news.

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And, you know, it's funny because so many of these conspiracy theories that were labeled as crazy theories have actually turned out to be quite true.

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And so I pretty much sympathize with all of these things except for the holocaust deniers.

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That's pretty clear that it actually happened historically. But the

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Bible actually, in a similar way, calls on us as believers to deny many things.

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Not in the sense of denying the existence of something or that something happened, but denying something as not having any fellowship or partaking of it in that regard.

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It tells us to abstain from every form of evil, for example, in 1

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Thessalonians 5 22. And Proverbs 3 7 also says, do not be wise in your own eyes.

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Fear Yahweh and turn away from evil. Turn away from evil.

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And even the first part, I kind of realized as I was studying this, do not be wise in your own eyes.

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That itself is a form of self -denial. Because you're not trusting in yourself or your judgment or what you think is right.

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It's based on what the Lord says is right or what the Lord says you should do.

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So it's not being wise in your own eyes. That is a form of self -denial. But there is actually one thing in particular that God calls us to deny that I'm going to be focusing on today.

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And I did make a slight adjustment to the title. The sermon title is actually,

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Know Your Enemy, Remedies Against the Flesh. Remedies Against the

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Flesh, Self -Denial. Self -Denial. That is the most fundamental remedy against the flesh.

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That's a play on, if you recall from when I was preaching the series on the devil, Thomas Brooks's book,

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Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices. And so, this is along the same vein.

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But, so we are all called to be self -deniers.

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Or more specifically, flesh deniers. Take note of this. Okay, there's a distinction here.

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That's important. And in the words of Christ himself, like Pastor David read today, if we turn with me to Luke chapter 9, as we go ahead and read through that text and work through it.

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Christ said in chapter 9 verse 23, And he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

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For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one that will save it.

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For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

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Loses himself. Now, one thing

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I want us to get into the habit of doing, whether it's a sermon, preaching, whether you're listening to something, or whether you're reading the

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Bible. You always want to ask yourselves, whenever we read and interpret scripture, it should always be our custom to ask,

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Is this passage pointing me to the law or to the gospel?

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To the law or to the gospel? Or perhaps both? Or maybe none?

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Very important question that is foundational to having a right understanding. It is the most foundational distinction that has to be made in scripture.

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As we've been seeing throughout the whole counsel of God that we've been preaching through.

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So, and I also wanted to recommend the sermon series on the law and the gospel, if you haven't yet listened to that, to get more information on that as well.

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The importance of that. So, now, contrary to what

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Lordship Salvation teachers like John MacArthur claim, this passage is not a gospel invitation.

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Okay, we have to rightly understand what Jesus is saying, what the Bible is teaching us, revealing to us, or commanding us.

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This is not a gospel invitation. It is primarily law.

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It is primarily commands and consequences. Okay, that is law.

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It does not describe how we should get right with God, but rather it describes the marks of one who has already been made right with God.

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How do I know that? Well, recall last Sunday that I also mentioned one of the most important distinctions of law and gospel in the entire

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Bible is the distinction between justification and sanctification.

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Okay, this is critical. In verse 23, if you see there in Luke 9,

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Christ is describing a lifestyle. It is a lifestyle, a daily occurrence.

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He says, take up his cross daily and follow me.

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Daily. Okay, which is reflective. It's reflective of the characteristics of his followers, his sheep.

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Those who follow him will look and do these things, look like and do these things. Those who follow him to the very end.

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This is describing a life of sanctification. Okay.

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Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. All of those things we are supposed to be doing daily and every single day.

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We should always deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow after Christ.

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That is the life, the Christian life, the marks of the Christian. So, and whereas the

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Bible describes justification as something that God gives to us freely by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, his perfect life and wrath satisfying death, which is credited to us simply by understanding and agreeing with the truth of his word, the gospel.

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It is this gospel precisely. We understand and believe and are thereby saved.

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Justified. Once for all. There's no daily process in justification.

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That's a heresy. Justification is not a daily process. That's what false teachers and false religions teach like the

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Church of Rome. Justification is a one -time act whereby

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God fully pardons us of all our sin, like we read in the hymn. My sin not in part, but the whole is forgiven.

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Amen? So, this passage then is directly applicable to us as believers.

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Though it also describes the consequences of those who refuse to follow

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Christ. That is also the case. You try to save your own life by your own way, by your own works and you know, by doing what is right in your own eyes, then yeah, you're gonna be lost, damned to hell, because it's not by your own way or your own works.

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It's by Christ's way and works alone that we are saved. We are called to a life, a life, daily life of cross -embracing,

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Christ -following, self -denial. Self -denial.

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Now, in order to do, however, this, we must first understand and define what is self -denial exactly?

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What does it mean to deny ourselves? You know, the question might seem obvious, but the reality is it may not be that obvious because there are distinctions that we have to make depending on what state we are in, that I mentioned before from Augustine, the fourfold state.

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We have to really make sure that we're tying these things together biblically and consistently. Well, okay, so once again,

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I keep repeating this over and over because this is what Scripture is all about. This requires us to go on a scriptural path of the whole counsel of God to relate this question systematically, consistently, logically, to several other doctrines in Scripture, many of which

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I've already laid out before in this series. Okay, so I'm not going to go back and cover all of that stuff.

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You can go back and listen to those again if you like. But we need balance.

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We need balance. We need a proper biblical understanding of self -denial, of exactly what it is, especially in light of the many extremes and imbalances that we see in certain movements and churches, especially like Lordship Salvation.

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It's very common and popular today. And especially when it comes to the hard sayings of Jesus, what is commonly known as the hard sayings of Jesus, which are often misunderstood, misapplied, and twisted.

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Okay? This verse is one of them in Luke 9 23. This is one of those hard sayings of Jesus.

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So self -denial does not mean, okay, it does not mean that we can never do anything we want or desire to do.

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Okay? Or that we're not allowed to have any fun. That's not what self -denial means.

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Contrary, once again, to what many will tell you. Like Lordship Salvation, there's a tendency there to make people just become slaves to ministry or to doing things that they don't want to do.

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Okay? So to put burdens, legalistic burdens on us, on the people that don't correspond to them, that are not biblically warranted.

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Okay? Self -denial does not mean, it also does not mean that we can,

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I'm sorry, so biblical self -denial is not a self deprivation of all our desires and possessions.

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It is not a self deprivation of all our desires and possessions. Contrary to many will say, and they'll take certain passages out of context, like the rich young ruler.

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But this is, however, what Buddhism, Hinduism, and asceticism teaches, including

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Roman Catholicism. Many Romanist religious orders take vows of poverty and even for penance of sins, a form of self -denial.

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Much like in Mardi Gras, where you fast from sin. It's like, how do you fast from sin? You're not supposed to sin.

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How? It's just so worldly. So, and they also, they also take vows, they take vows of renunciations of superfluities, according to Rome.

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Superfluities are things that, according to them, are not necessary for you to live. So, anything that you don't need is a superfluity.

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Okay, and many of these religious orders take those types of vows. The world, the world is one of our mortal enemies, if you remember, if you recall.

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The world is quite drawn to and even admires these false pieties because they appear so holy and spiritual, holding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power.

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Keep away from such men as these. That is straight from 2nd Timothy 3 .5.

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Keep away from these practices, these teachings.

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But really, just think about this for a second here. Everyone loves and celebrates

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Mother Teresa. You know, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who dedicated her life to helping the poor over there in, you know, in India and all those places.

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But the reality was that she denied Christ as, she denied the gospel. She would pray to Mary and offer people up to Mother Mary.

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And I mean, she did things that were not, they were not good works. She was not in walking in the truth.

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No matter how pious or holy or, you know, mendicant and self -denial she seems, it doesn't matter.

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It's like I mentioned last week. Just because you're doing abortion ministry doesn't mean you're right with God. Doesn't mean, just because you're doing good works does not mean that you are right with God.

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If you're not right with God, then none of what, nothing that you do is going to be good. So, we on the other hand instead would rather love

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Martin Luther. Amen. His better moments anyway, not his worst moments.

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We like early Luther, not later Luther when he went kind of off the rails there. But all that monkery, all that self -denial, quote -unquote, that asceticism that Luther put himself through and lived when he submitted himself to an

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Augustinian monastery. He ironically renounced to the point of marrying a nun after he actually became a

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Christian by faith alone. When he realized what the Bible actually teaches. So, there's nuns, there's monks, there's hermits, there's mendicants, mendicant or beggarly orders of friars,

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Franciscan, Dominican, all this stuff. Jesuits, even priests, even your your average local priest takes these types of vows of asceticism, of self -denial.

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And this is very interesting because Buddhism similarly teaches two basic forms of meditation.

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In the Theravada tradition, which is closely related to a

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Hindu tradition of yoga. Now yoga, by the way, is the practice of emptying your mind of all thought, desire, everything.

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So that you can become an empty vessel to yoke yourself with false gods, with demons.

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That is the purpose of yoga. Okay, so there's no such thing as Christian yoga.

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That is just idolatry. We cannot just take things and say, oh, well, we want to make it this now.

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No. The Bible says very clear, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

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Amen. So, the first of these Buddhist meditations involves a process of moral and intellectual purification.

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Initially, the Theravadan meditator seeks to achieve detachment. Detachment from sensual desires and impure states of mind through reflection and to enter a state of satisfaction and joy.

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It's like, okay, well that on the face of it doesn't sound that bad. Right? But obviously there's a goal here.

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It doesn't stop there. There's assumptions here that are being operated on.

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In the second stage, intellectual activity gives way to complete inner serenity.

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The mind is in a state of one -pointedness, concentration, joy, and pleasantness.

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In the third stage, every emotion, including joy, has disappeared.

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Vanished. And the meditator is left indifferent to everything.

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In the fourth stage, it gets worse. Satisfaction, any inclination to a good or bad state of mind, pain, and serenity are left behind.

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Completely left behind. And the meditator enters a state of supreme purity, indifference, and pure consciousness.

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Basically, it's to become apathetic. Completely apathetic and indifferent to everything that's going on.

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Doesn't matter if your loved one gets shot and killed or murdered.

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Doesn't matter. The goal here is to not care. This is a form of self -denial.

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A perverted form of self -denial, obviously. All of this is pure doctrines of devils, which scripture explicitly condemns.

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These attitudes and practices. Right? Back in 1st Timothy chapter 4. But the

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Spirit explicitly says that in later times, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

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By the hypocrisy of liars, who have been seared in their own conscience, who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which

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God created to be shared in with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

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For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the

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Word of God and prayer. So this passage is very, very clear. We are not to deprive ourselves unnecessarily of the good things that God has created and given to us for our benefit and enjoyment.

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That is a denial of God's gifts. It's an undermining of God's love and his character.

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Self -denial does not mean that we are forbidden from doing anything we want to do.

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Even as believers who are now indwelled by the Spirit of God and are aligned with God's Word and will.

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Right? This is the distinction that we have to make very carefully. The law and gospel distinction is crucial here.

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While we do acknowledge the reality of indwelling sin and of the flesh in the life of believers, our hearts however, our soul, our spirit, also known in Scripture as the inner man, if you recall, have nevertheless been truly regenerated by God.

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So that the heart, our inner man, is no longer evil, but good.

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Okay, so if our hearts, our inner man, are now good, then if the heart wants something, is it something good?

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Or is it something bad? Is it always bad? Is it always good? How do we make sense of that?

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See, but if we can't ever have what we want because our desires are all corrupt or always evil, then there are passages in the

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Bible that would make absolutely no sense at all. Such as Psalm 37 verse 4.

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In Psalm 37 verse 4, the Word says, the

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Word of God says, delight yourself in Yahweh, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

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Okay, so how does that make it? How would that make any sense if you're never supposed to desire to want the things that you want as a believer?

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Good things. Good things. There's a condition here, right?

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It doesn't mean that just because you're a believer, now you can fornicate with whoever you want, commit adultery, you know, kill whoever you want.

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That doesn't, that's not what this means, obviously. How can we who die to sin still live in it?

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Amen? What it means is that those who delight themselves in Yahweh, in His Word, in His truth, in His law,

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God will give the desires of their heart, because their hearts are rightly in line with His will.

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It's very, very clear. God, and God will not give us a stone in the place of bread.

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Amen? He is a good Father that gives us good things.

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Because God regenerates and raises believers by His work and His Spirit to a new life.

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New thoughts. New desires. New words. Actions.

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At the very moment when He gives them the gift of faith in Christ.

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This is why believers have renewed desire, that have, they have renewed desires and can therefore rejoice and sing

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Psalm 42. That's an amazing psalm. I really encourage everybody to read it.

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Today. Psalm 42. Really powerful stuff.

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Notice the eager anticipation to be with God, to fellowship with God.

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So if you desire God, how is that a bad thing? That makes no sense, right?

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Of course, as believers, we have good desires now. Does that mean that we always have good desires?

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No, because when we sin, we acted on a desire that was not good. That was sinful.

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That was bad. But we now have new desires, because God has implanted in us regeneration through the power of His Spirit and faith.

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He has made us a new creation. Behold, all things are new and the old has passed.

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So, take hold of these words with joy and own them.

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Own them for yourself. Name them and claim it. They are yours. Not in the heretical prosperity gospel sense, okay?

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I'm not... I'm talking about these words. Now, to be clear, okay?

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I am NOT referring to unbelievers here. Because as Romans 8, 7 through 9 has shown us very clearly, the mind set on the flesh, which is unbelievers, is at enmity toward God, in opposition against God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God.

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It is not even able to do so. And those who are in the flesh are not able to please

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God. The emphasis there is unequivocal. Because unbelievers must first and foremost repent and believe the gospel before they can ever hope to please

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God. Remember Romans 3 as well. There is none who does good, not even one.

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None who does good apart from Christ. However, Paul continues, you believers are not in the flesh, but in the

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Spirit. If indeed, the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the

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Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. It's all conditional based on whether you have the

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Spirit of God. It's not based on anything you do, say, nothing. It's all based on the work of God.

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The Triune God, our Savior and Lord. Now, self -denial also does not mean that you literally have to sell all that you have and give up all your possessions.

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Right? There's a context to what Jesus is saying there. We cannot take things out of context and overgeneralize particular instances that Jesus was addressing to specific people or specific circumstances.

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Okay? There are also differences in calling. Not everybody has the same calling.

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Some may be called to do more, more extreme things, in a sense.

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But most of us are not. Most of us are not called to these extreme missionary thing, excursions and journeys and becoming full -time ministry officers and things like that.

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Most of us are not called to that. Most of us are called to live quiet and peaceable lives in humble obedience to God.

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There are differences in calling. Remember too, Jesus told certain people to go home.

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Don't follow me. Go home and tell everybody what God has done for you. There we have to, we cannot superficially smear the

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Bible with one understanding that then ends up butchering the whole counsel of God and creates a false system of imbalances and legalism, which is exactly what

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Lordship Salvation does, sadly. But now it's also because you can sell everything that you have and still be found guilty in wanting before God.

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But that doesn't make a difference in that sense. Matthew 7, turn with me to Matthew 7 and verse 21.

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Very important passage to have a proper understanding of. In Matthew chapter 7, verse 21,

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Jesus says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my

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Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to me on that day of judgment,

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Lord, Lord, in your name, did we not prophesy? And in your name, did we not cast out demons?

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And in your name, did we not do many miracles? And then

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I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

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Lawlessness. Lawlessness. Because none of those things that these people presented to God on Judgment Day can possibly earn your forgiveness or a right standing or justification before God.

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That's not what justifies us. Only Christ does. Amen.

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Amen. Only by believing his gospel, his life, his work, his death for us.

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But let's not misunderstand, brothers and sisters. Don't get it twisted here. Okay, what does

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Christ mean in verse 21? That only those who do the will of the Father will enter.

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Well, turn with me to Matthew 6 39. Which is exactly where Jesus answers this question for us.

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The Gospel of John chapter 6 verse 39. We will find here a very clear understanding of Christ.

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This is why the analogy of Scripture is so important. Because we need to take the

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Scriptures and make sure that we are rightly interpreting them and harmonizing with the rest of Scripture, with the whole counsel of God.

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We cannot impose our own understanding into Scripture.

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We must extract from Scripture this, the meaning of what the

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Bible says, and to properly, consistently interpret it in light of the whole counsel of God.

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That is why we are now turning to John chapter 6 verse 39. Which says, Now this is the will of Him who sent me.

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That all that He has given me, I lose nothing.

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I lose nothing. But raise it up on the last day. For this again is the will of my

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Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life.

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And I myself will raise Him up on that last day. And all

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God's people said, Amen. Now that is

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Gospel promise. That is what God does for us. It is by believing in Him that we are made right with God.

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And we shall not undergo judgment. There is no longer any condemnation for those of us who are in Christ.

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Because He has done it all. That is doing the will of the Father. It is an idiom for believing in Him, and in Christ, and His Gospel.

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Powerful stuff. Amen. So what then does self, so okay, what does self -denial actually mean then?

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What it actually means is that we as believers must deny not ourselves in general, nor ourselves completely.

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Like these false religions that we saw of ascetic practices teach.

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But more specifically, it means that we deny our flesh and its lusts, or the unredeemed remaining corruption that resides in our physical bodies.

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Primarily our senses, even our brain, right? Because that still tempts our inner man, our mind, to sin.

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And wars against our spirit, like Galatians 5 says, like Romans 7 says, the law of mind, which goes against the law of my members, my physical members.

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It goes against our spirit to submit us back into the bondage of the law of sin.

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It's trying to take us captive again to that slavery that Christ has broken us free from.

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But we still have to deny every day, because we are not fully glorified yet and redeemed.

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Our bodies are still waiting for that anticipation of when

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Christ comes back and resurrects us. To fully resurrects us in a new body.

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So we are enabled. We are then enabled in our sanctification by God's means and spirit to more and more die to sin and live unto righteousness.

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That positive and negative aspect. It's a two sides of the same coin. More and more dying to sin and more and more live unto righteousness.

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That's question 38 of the Baptist Catechism. Awesome stuff. We must deny, in other words, anything and everything that opposes

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God, that opposes His Word and His will or His call for our lives, for our specific situation and circumstance.

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OK, we must deny again anything and everything that opposes

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God, His Word, His will and His call for our lives,

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His particular call for our lives. For our specific situation and circumstance.

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OK, what I mean by that, in part, is obviously if you're a man, you're not called to be a woman or to be a wife, a godly wife.

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That does not correspond to you as a man. OK. That's not

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I'm sorry, but we have we are stuck in a in this perverse society that has no sense of basic nature.

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Doth not even nature teach us some things, like Paul says, that it is a shame for a woman to have long hair.

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How much more? To try to claim that you are the opposite gender when you are not denying reality.

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So. Now. I must warn you, then.

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Like I have before, out of all our mortal enemies, the world, the flesh, the devil, all of those three.

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The flesh is frequently the most threatening, the most dangerous and is our greatest personal weakness.

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OK. This is a weakness that we all have and that we all have to wrestle against.

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It is our greatest weakness. It is our kryptonite. It is our Achilles heel.

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And there is even a sense in which the world and the devil cannot really take advantage of you when your flesh is subdued under control.

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But your flesh can still enslave you to obey its passions, just like we saw in Romans seven.

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And those of the world and those of the world and of the devil, like 1

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John 2, 15 through 17 says. It's all it's all through the flesh, primarily the world and the devil seek to gain a foothold into your life, primarily through your flesh, through those sense gates that John Bunyan talks about in his holy war.

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Now, that's why we must put on, then, the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lust.

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In regard to its lust. Romans 13, 14, that is that is self -denial.

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That is the definition of biblical self -denial. It is not anything else.

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It is not asceticism. It is not any of those perverted practices. It's no wonder, too, that John Calvin says that self -denial is extensive.

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It is comprehensive, calling us to give up our natural inclinations.

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I would rather say our fleshly inclinations and part and part with all the affections, meaning to separate from all the affections of the flesh.

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So he's he's making a synonymous statement, a parallel statement, and thus give our consent to be reduced to nothing.

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Which I would I would rather say to be humble. It means to humble ourselves,

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OK? Provided that God, in fact, lives and reigns in us. Amen.

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From sound words from Calvin. But to humble ourselves does not mean to abase ourselves or to or to, you know, have a feeling of self, have no self -worth.

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Are you not much more worth than sparrows?

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God, you mean the world to God. That he traded his own son, died and gave his own son.

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So that we could be forgiven and adopted into his family as sons and daughters, amen.

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We are worth everything to God. So do not ever think that you're not worth anything.

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That is a lie of the devil. That is a lie. This is that is a lie that comes from a lot of these aesthetic practices, too, that you have to count yourself as as worthless as as nothing.

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No. That's not true. We must humble ourselves.

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And that is what I read earlier in the in the proverb three, seven. Do not be wise and you are in your own eyes.

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That that is what it means to humble yourself, to recognize when you are wrong, when you don't know and that you need

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God to save you and to teach you and to show you the truth. Right.

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That's what it means. And. You know.

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I've I've preached through many of these passages already. And especially one like.

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Romans 6, 12 through 14. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, your physical body so that you obey its lusts, its lusts, the lust of the mortal body.

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Notice how Paul is separate. He's distinguishing the lust of the flesh, which are distinct from who we are in our inner man.

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These lusts come from somewhere else now, not from our hearts, which have been renewed.

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They've been renewed so that they are good now. And do not go on presenting your physical members, your mellows to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead.

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And your members as instruments of righteousness unto God, for sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law any longer, but under grace, under grace.

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Self -denial really means then to live according to the spirit of God.

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It is to lead with our inner man, which desires and wants and follows the truth.

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As opposed to living according to the flesh, which follows its own sinful lusts.

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And desires and the law of sin that it tries to entangle us with all over again to ensnare us and enslave us.

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And the very first now, the very first prerequisite, the very first prerequisite to self -denial, which to be more, it would be more specific to say flesh denial.

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Flesh denial is self -awareness. OK, that is key.

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That is fundamental to denying your flesh, to denying yourself. It is to know thyself, know

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God and know thyself. Like Calvin tells us. I also, you know, and the very first prerequisite.

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OK, that is the very first prerequisite, self -awareness. There are two things that are suited to humble the souls of men, explains our good friend, the

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Puritan John Owen. They are first a due consideration of God and then of themselves.

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Of God in his greatness, glory, holiness, power, majesty and authority.

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And of ourselves in our low, degraded and sinful condition.

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That is the condition of our flesh that we must consider carefully. You must know, have an awareness of your own, your own potential.

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In a particular spiritual condition, OK, because the flesh does not operate the same in every one of us.

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We all have different kinks in our armor with particular weaknesses that we are, that we are, that we can succumb to, that we are more tempted to.

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OK, remember Augustine's fourfold state of man. OK, state two versus state three, state two is the state of the unbeliever.

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Who everything does is evil, everything he does is sin because he is completely submitted to the world, the flesh and the devil.

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But in state three, we are new creations in Christ now. But we must not forget the pernicious danger, ever present danger of our flesh, of that physical unredeemed component of our being.

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Or I like how the Reformed catechisms also put it. You must know the spiritual estate that you are in and what you must do to improve it.

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If anything, right, what would God have us to do to improve it?

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Self -denial, flesh denial. We teach our kids this stuff as well with the

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Baptist catechism for young children. I love to hear our little ones recite this.

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In what condition did God make Adam and Eve? He made them holy and happy, holy and happy, amen, plain and simple.

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But what befell our first parents when they sinned? Instead of being holy and happy, they became sinful and miserable.

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You can't say amen, you ought to say ouch, right? That's a big ouch.

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But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Savior, who has translated us from the kingdom of darkness to his marvelous kingdom of light, amen.

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Now, in order to know and subdue your enemy, the flesh, you must know your own personal weaknesses and deal with them biblically, okay?

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This is critical. You cannot do this. You cannot deny yourself without doing this properly.

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We all have, like I said, our particular weaknesses that we are susceptible to, certain things that we are drawn to or susceptible to, are more tempted by and are more tempted by than others, okay?

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Especially those of us who were saved later on in life as we were older and have accumulated a baggage or a burden of sinful habits and behaviors.

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That are embedded in our flesh from our old life, which we need to crucify and mortify and put to death, how often?

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Daily, amen. Daily put to death, putting to death daily.

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For example, right, I've never struggled with alcohol.

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I don't have a desire for alcohol. I don't never really had a temptation to drink alcohol. It's just not a problem for me.

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It's not a problem for my flesh. However, I do struggle with other things.

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Like there's, like I gave an example with the video game, that zombie video game that I got sucked right into.

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Now these things, well, now don't get me, don't misunderstand me, okay?

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We can all fall prey to any kind of sin if we're not careful. But we are definitely more prone to certain sins based on our lifestyle, our upbringing, how we were raised, where we come from.

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All of those things have influenced us and have developed how we are as individuals, our issues, our flesh and how it operates in us.

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So we have to know these things, our weaknesses. What are the weaknesses in your armor?

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Some of us may struggle more with depression. Some of us may struggle more with, you know, being overreactive to everything.

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You know, we all have, being overly emotional, right? We all have things that we have to, we have to know ourselves.

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We need to know our temperament because we cannot address it if we don't know what it is, if we don't understand ourselves.

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Know thyself, amen? So, this means that you may also be further required to guard against your flesh by abstaining from doing other things that are not necessarily sinful in and of themselves, but which may nevertheless tempt you to sin and cause you to stumble back into sins from your old life, okay?

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Just as the dog returns to his own vomit and the sow, the fat pig, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire of its filth.

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2 Peter 2 .22, that's a very graphic, disgusting illustration of what happens when we don't know ourselves to deny ourselves specifically with those temptations and fall into the desires of the flesh.

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That is what happens. It's like a dog returning to its own vomit, like a sow returning to its filthy mire.

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That is a miserable, that is, that's miserable. And that means you may not be able to do certain things that others can do.

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You may, you know, drinking is not a sin in and of itself. Drunkenness, of course, is. But if you were a drunkard, you don't, don't drink.

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You don't tempt yourself with that, okay? Don't tempt yourself.

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That's foolish, right? So even though it may not be sin, be wise, have some wisdom, have some discretion, and exercise self -denial.

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That is a major component of what's up. And a lot of this is particular to your situation. But we must exercise that kind of self -denial when it's needed, right?

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Now, let's turn with me to our final passage here in Hebrews chapter 11. I'm really, in a really powerful example in the life of Moses that we will see.

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Hebrews chapter 11, verse 24. This chapter is known as the hall of faith.

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You know, the secular version is the hall of fame where there's a hall with pictures of people who are prominent, who are recognized for doing amazing things or whatever.

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This is the hall of faith because it highlights men of old of faith that did amazing things by the power and spirit of God.

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It wasn't that they did it themselves. They did do them, but it was through the spirit of God working in them by faith.

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And that is how this passage in verse 24 starts. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.

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Regarding the reproach of Christ, greater riches than even the treasures of Egypt, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world at the time.

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For he was looking to the reward, the heavenly reward by faith.

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He left Egypt, not fearing the rage of the king, for he endured.

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He endured. Moses endured as seeing him who is unseen.

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Wow, that is powerful stuff that we can really glean from in our lives.

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Seeing him who is unseen, seeing Christ and his word and his spirit who is unseen, working through the works of providence through his life, how he brought him out of Egypt and gave him faith and empowered him and emboldened him to do his work.

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Powerful and amazing stuff. This is a powerful example for us to model and learn from.

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Now, this does not necessarily mean that we will have to make such drastic changes and measures as Moses had to do because he had a special particular call to lead

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God's people out of Egypt. Okay, so we can't say, oh, well, everybody's called to do this.

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No, I'm not saying that. All right, let's not commit that error. There are differences in calling, right?

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And most of us are not called to these kinds of extremes, but we are all nevertheless tempted by our own

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Egypt and its sinful pleasures. That is a reality we all must battle against because of our fallen flesh, our mortal sinful bodies.

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We all have an Egypt that we came out of. Okay, that is that is very much a reality in our lives.

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And some of us to varying degrees, some of us had the blessing of being raised in a

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Christian home. So there's a blessing in that because you're not encumbered, you're not weighed down by living a life of sin and having to be delivered from that and to work extra hard for that, to try to seek deliverance and freedom from that bondage that you had enslaved yourself to in your own life.

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But some of us literally had to leave our own hometowns because of the sinful trappings of Egypt, of where we came from.

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It's just too much. It can be too much. And that is why we have to understand what

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God is speaking to us and our own context. We may have to move.

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We may not be able to stay where we are. We may have to take certain measures to not fall into the lust and enslavery of the law of sin through the flesh.

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Okay, very important to understand this, brothers and sisters. I want to end this with John Owen's amazing commentary on this verse, on this passage.

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It is such good stuff. Owen is just outstanding, as you've heard me say repeatedly.

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But he says, Self -denial is not just saying no to outward actions, but it is a mortification of the desires and affections of the mind that wants to place a value on things in life, especially the things of this world that oppose spiritual things.

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Okay, notice he said things of this life. He makes an excellent point here because Jesus said you cannot love both

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God and mammon. You cannot love both God and possessions. Okay, even though possessions are not a bad thing.

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It's not a bad thing to have a car or a house or things. That's not a bad thing. But if you love them and are enslaved to them, rather than to God, you have another master.

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And your master is not God. And that is sin. And you must renounce it. Amen. So, Moses, Owen continues, crucified his heart, rather his flesh, right?

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His flesh, more specifically. To his outward enjoyments, thinking of them as rubbish in comparison with Christ.

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He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.

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Moses had to choose between the people of God in their afflicted state and enjoying the pleasures of sin.

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Moses' determination is seen in the words, he chose. He chose to be mistreated.

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Amen. He chose the narrow way that Jesus also talks about.

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The narrow way. That narrow way of sanctification, which means death to self, which specifically now we understand means death to our flesh.

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Right? That is the path that we must take. That is the road less traveled.

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That is the narrow way, rather than the broad way that leads to destruction.

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It's so much easier to take the broad way. It's so much easier to delight in the pleasures of sin.

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You know, it's like John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Vanity Fair. Who wouldn't want to have fun in Vanity Fair and do whatever you want with all the pleasures that sin offers?

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But of course, ultimately, sin is deceitful and it leads to death. Sin is death.

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All that will come of it is death and bondage. It's a lie.

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It's a lie. So this is amazing.

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Such amazing teaching from God's Word on the importance of self -denial that I hope we have a better understanding of now.

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I want us to remember and to take away from this, not to despair, brothers and sisters.

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Do not fall in despair. Remember who your

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God is, who your Savior is, who your Deliverer is, who your cross -bearing substitute is, your sanctifying

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God is. He is our everything and He is the one who brings us out of our

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Egypt. Amen. Amen. Just like He did the

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Israelites and Moses out of the wicked land of Egypt and the false gods and the

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Pharaoh, that still happens to every single one of us when

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God takes us out from among them, from the world, from our old ways in our old life.

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Praise God for that. Let's rejoice and close out with prayer. And thank

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God. Our precious Heavenly Father, we thank You so much, Lord, for the amazing truth of Your Word, the power of Your Word, Father God.

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Help us, Lord, to deny ourselves. Help us to delight in denying ourselves,

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Father, and in the evil, sinful passions and desires of our flesh, Lord. Help us to recognize those things, those areas that we struggle with,

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Lord, those besetting sins that are a problem for us, Father, and to crucify them and to put it to death, to be intentional,

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Lord, about mortifying our members, Lord, to really seeking help and that wisdom and guidance to denying those desires,

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Lord, to abstaining from them, like Your Word says, and not participating in them, not to tempt ourselves either,

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Lord, even if those things may not be sin in themselves, Father, we understand that we must stay away from certain things because of our past, because of our flesh and what has enslaved us into in our past,

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Father, help us, Lord, to trust in You, Father, for all things, that it is not by our might or by our power or by our strength that we do these things, but by Your Spirit, because You who began a good work in us will bring it to completion until the very end,

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Father. We thank You so much for that, Lord, knowing that in our weakness,

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You make us strong because strength is perfected. Your strength is perfected in our weakness,

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Father. We thank You, our precious Father, Almighty God and Savior, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

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