How To Get Rid Of Sin

Grace to You Resources

Examine Yourself

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This sermon serial includes the following messages:

The question is, "How do I kill sin in my life? How do I do information technology?" Let me give you lot some little principles — very basic and straightforward.

If you lot live past the Spirit and are headed towards eternal life considering of your conservancy, the Spirit in you gives the ability to be killing the deeds of the flesh.

The question is, "All right, how exercise I practice that? I concord that the power is there, that'south the aptitude of my life, that's the fashion I am going. I want to encounter the Spirit practice more and more of it. How do I go to that point? How practise I gain that victory? How practice I establish that habitual design? What do I do?"

1. Recognize the Presence of Sin in Your Flesh.

Practice you know why most Christians are nigh commonly defeated by sin? I believe it is because their sin has then totally deceived them, that they never actually get to the point where they honestly evaluate its reality. They are not dealing with the issue.

They spend so much of their lives justifying their sin as a personality quirk or a product of their surroundings. They carbohydrate-coat their habitual sins equally merely idiosyncrasies of individuality, or some prenatal predilection that their mother had, or whatever. People can become so skilful at denying the reality of sin that they don't meet it. As a result, they don't deal with it because they don't even recognize it for what information technology is.

Any kind of spiritual victory begins by identifying the enemy. It is the same old story,"If y'all don't know what you are shooting at, how are yous going to hit it?" How am I going to eliminate from my life what I don't even identify equally needing to be eliminated?

Sin is non but wicked, it is deceitful. And information technology's there inside each of the states. Believe me it is there. John Owen was right; he says of sin:

It has no doors to open. It needs no engine past which to work. Information technology lies in the listen and in the understanding. It is found in the will. It is in the inclinations of the affections. It has such intimacy in the soul.

It's at that place! Only inevitably it's covered upward. As the Psalmist prayed, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; and meet if there be whatsoever wicked way in me" (Psalm 139:22). We must inquire God to help us see our sinfulness, if nosotros want to recognize information technology for what it is.

Don't be deceived most how skillful you are. Believe me, your sin is there, and it is wretched and information technology spurts forth between the cracks of your supposed righteousness. It comes out in anger and bitter words, unkind thoughts, criticisms, self-conceit, lack of understanding, impatience, weak prayers, immoral thoughts, and fifty-fifty overt sins. You need to know your weaknesses.

Haggai the prophet, in chapter one of his prophecy, repeats the command, "Consider your ways! Consider your ways!" (Haggai ane:five, 7). In other words, take a practiced deep expect at yourself. First Kings 8:38 says, "Know the plague in your own heart." And Paul in Ephesians 4:22 talks nearly deceitful lusts. From these and many other passages, the Bible makes the point: If you want to impale sin in your life, you must begin by examining your ain eye to encounter the reality of what is at that place.

ii. A Eye Fixed on God.

2d step. In lodge to proceeds this victory, its triumph, and to see the ability of the Spirit of God begin to requite you the power over the unredeemed flesh that you desire—that God desires—you must have a centre fixed on God. A eye fixed on God. The Psalmist said in Psalm 57:vii, "My centre is fixed, O God, my eye is stock-still." What exercise I mean by that? Undivided devotion to God! That's that wholeness in spiritual life where I am given wholly to God. What do I mean by that? What I am really saying in this context is, you tin can't take sin in one surface area. You can't only sort of clean up a lot of it but leave it in one area. You can't starve it out and kill information technology in ane spot and feed information technology and then it lives in some other spot. If it lives anywhere it will crawl all over everywhere. It is the about baneful, fastest growing weed in existence. Information technology volition not confine itself to one bloom bed, information technology'll be everywhere. The psalmist said in Psalm 119, verse six, "Then shall I not exist ashamed." When? When volition y'all not exist ashamed? "When I have respect unto all thy commandments." My life isn't going to be right, my life isn't going to exist without shame until I give proper respect to every control of God. And that is to deal with every effect of sin in my life. The only unashamed life is the life of ane who is totally fixed on God; everything has been dealt with.

3. Meditate on the Give-and-take.

Meditate on the Discussion. The filling of the Spirit is equated in Colossians 3, to letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. When the Word controls you, when it controls your thinking, when information technology is at that place as the psalmist said, "To meditate on day and night," when it is there subconscious that "I might non sin against God," then you take a control cistron in your life. The manner to impale sin in your life is to feed information technology Scripture. It's a poison. It'll poison sin. Simply feed a sinful life Scripture—it volition poison it! Whatsoever actually controls your heed, controls your behavior; so y'all acquire to close out the garbage and you feed the sin—the remaining sin—in your life a steady diet of God'southward glorious truth and it poisons sin. And so you lot must give yourself to the Give-and-take. You must saturate yourself in the Word. Yous must hear the Word preached and taught. You must larn it yourself and you must meditate on it day and dark.

four. District with God in Prayer.

These are and then very basic. Fourthly, and very of import, commune with God in prayer. Commune with God in prayer. This sort of circles back around to the first point that I gave you lot. True prayer gives the heart a sense of its own vile character and renews the hatred of sin. True prayer does that. John Owens said, "He who pleads with God for the remission of sin also pleads with his own heart to detest it." Somewhere along the line, in your own prayer life you need to go honest. You need to get honest. And you need to begin to say to God, "I want you to reveal my sin, I want yous to stir information technology up in me. I want yous to bear witness it to me. I want you to blow away the dust that is roofing it. I desire you to peel off the things that have been hiding it away in my life, so that it becomes manifest and visible to me. I want to see the reality of my sin. I want you to evidence information technology to me just the way it is." That's part of your communion with God.

When you pray to God—that is an honest confession. You can say you confess your sins, but until yous pray, "God prove me all the sins of my life, reveal all of them, uncover every fiddling corner of my life. Bring it upward and may information technology go as detestable to me as it is to you, and may you give me the strength to encounter it get abroad." Those are the kind of prayers that are the true prayers of repentance. I have always believed that when y'all really confess your sins there is a little P.S. that you lot add to the finish of information technology, when you say, "Lord please forgive me for that sin," and you ever add, if your confession is truthful, "and Lord may I never do that again." That's my heart'due south cry. And then prayer exposes secret sins. Prayer weakens prevailing sins. Prayer finds strength in fellowship with the Holy God to kill sin in our lives.

What must I do if I am to know victory over sin? Showtime, I have to recognize the sin in my life. Don't child yourself, don't gloss over yourself, don't underestimate your wretched status as Paul didn't in Romans, chapter 7. So fix your gaze wholly on God and get totally devoted to Him, and so that everything in life, center and circumference, is Him. As the psalmist said in Psalm xvi, "I have set the Lord e'er before me," and that is the simply way to live. And then it is also as essential that you cultivate a knowledge and understanding, and a deep comprehension and application of biblical truth, and that you spend time in honest prayer before God, bringing the truth to life in His presence. And in those kinds of simple spiritual exercises comes the expiry of sin. Then at that place is a fifth and final in this little blueprint of victory.

5. Cultivate Obedience.

At present we go out of that individual place, where yous looked for your sin and where you fixed you gaze on God. And where you meditated on the Give-and-take, and where you lot communed with God in prayer, and we motion into the public place and now the design of your life is attack a course of obedience. Paul said, "I oasis't attained," I dearest this, "but," he said, "I press towards the marking." I haven't reached the goal only I am on the path. What path was he on? The path of obedience. Peter said, "Our lives should exist characterized," 1 Peter 1:22, "by obedience to the truth." And we walk a path of obedience. If you lot desire to engage yourself with a real battle with sin, just set your course, mean solar day-past-day, moment-by-moment, i step at a time, on a path of obedience. At showtime it seems hard, at first the progress seems slow, just yous stay with it and eventually y'all go habitually obedient. Habitually obedient. Information technology becomes a addiction! You stay on the path that God has laid out in His Give-and-take. That path will atomic number 82 you to grow in grace, to perfect holiness, to renew the inward man day-by-twenty-four hours, and yous'll train yourself towards godliness.

Now, it would be fair, I retrieve, to ask a terminal question, and that is, "How am I doing on this?" How can I practice a little inventory and say to myself, "Soul, Soul, how are you doing? How'due south this working out? Are you lot doing these things?" Just ask yourself some simple questions.

A. How's my zeal for God?

Is my heart cold towards God? Has sin made me indifferent to times of communion with Him? Do I have little or no interest in His presence? In the glory of His name? Do I love His Word? Do I love His law? Tin can I understand what the psalmist meant in Psalm 119:136, when he said, "Rivers of h2o run downwards my eyes, because they continue not thy law." Do I have such a love for God's law that I am devastated when His law is disregarded? Practise I earnestly contend for the faith? Do I live to uphold truth? To live it? To proclaim it? What level is my zeal at?

B. Practice I beloved the Word?

Practice I find myself fatigued to the Word? Almost pinned to information technology past some divine wrestler who has me on the canvas and I tin't get up until its truths accept go my own convictions. Do I find myself indulging in the deep things of the Word? Inquire myself this, "Self, practise y'all beloved the time of prayer? Do you love the identify of confession? Do you eagerly rush into the identify where you can confess your sin and ask God to practice the self-examining process by the light of the Holy Spirit, so that every dirty affair can be brought to light. Do you seek that? Do you delight in worship? Is it your great longing to exist here with God's redeemed people? Is it precious to y'all to spend the Lord'south Mean solar day in the church? Is information technology your soul's highest delight to sing His praise and know Him ameliorate, that yous might offer Him honor?" Or exercise you say with the Jews of Malachi's day, "What a weariness worship is!"

Ask yourself this, "Are you sensitive to sin in the church? Are you sensitive to sin in the world? Does it tear your heart up when you see sin around y'all whatsoever where? In your own life?"

Y'all see those are simply the basic principles I gave you lot, but flipped around and turned into self-examining questions. Spiritual victory is there if yous recognize that you lot are not under any obligation to sin. If you recognize that the Spirit of God has already aptitude you towards life, and so He's already killing sin in your life, and the power to kill all of information technology is there. Then all you need to do is tap into the means, and I gave y'all simple principles by which you can begin to do that in your life, and a lilliputian examination by which yous can examine where you are.

I don't know about y'all only I desire to have a life of virtue. I want to have a life of joy. I desire to have a life of peace, and I desire to have a life of usefulness to God—and this is the path to that life. And may God give you the strength to walk information technology; and may—through you lot walking information technology faithfully—God bring glory to His ain name. That's the purpose of everything.