We started a new series last week that
I've entitled The Dispensation of the Gospel, Rediscovering
the Workings of the Holy Ghost.
We talked about what it means to be
genuinely born again of the Spirit.
Sort of an introduction to being born again
it was.
It wasn't exhaustive, but I wanted to at
least look at the three types of sinners.
Of course, being the careless sinner, the awakened
sinner, and the convicted sinner.
I wanted to also talk about some of
the reasons why people never make the transition
from being a convicted sinner to being a
born again child of the living God.
A lot of people never make that step
to serve the Lord and to give Him
everything in their life.
There's a controversy the Holy Spirit has with
them, and they are not seeking after the
Lord in a serious way.
And they're hoping that maybe whatever it is
that's between them and God will just go
away, I suppose.
But when God has a controversy with us,
we need to lay whatever it is down
at the altar.
Because we will never get any closer to
God.
We will never grow any closer to Him
until we deal with that thing that He
wants us to deal with.
We'll be perpetually locked in that place.
But I want to add a little addendum
to last week's lesson today.
And I've entitled this lesson to, Crucified with
Christ.
Our text is, I am crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live.
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
And the life which I now live in
the flesh, I live by the faith of
the Son of God, who loved me and
gave Himself for me.
You see, the natural state of man apart
from being born again is purely selfishness.
It is selfishness without mixture.
Charles Finney defines selfishness as regarding one's own
happiness supremely and seeking one's own good because
it is his own.
I seem to recall years ago that I
believe it was Sister Dorothy had listed a
number of sins that were, if I could
recall exactly how it was put, the greatest
sins or something to that effect that we
deal with.
And the first one was selfishness.
And the second one was selfishness.
And the third one was selfishness.
And on down the list.
Because at the very core, I believe of
sin is pride and selfishness, where we want
just for ourselves.
The selfish places his or her own happiness
above all other interests, especially the glory of
God.
This selfishness is at the core of sin
and must be crucified with Christ.
Being crucified with Christ renders one free from
sin and dead to sin.
How many of you understand that this morning?
When we are crucified with Christ, when we
genuinely come to the Lord and we are
in Him, we are dead to sin and
alive unto God.
This truth is summed up in one verse.
How shall we that are dead to sin
live any longer therein?
In this particular lesson, I just want to
look at two basic things.
Number one, I want to examine those who
are dead in sin.
And secondly, to examine those who are dead
to sin.
You know, there are really only two types
of people.
We are either dead to sin or we
are dead in trespasses and sins.
Those who are dead in sin are without
Christ.
They are strangers to the covenants of promise
and are without God and hope in this
world.
That's Ephesians 2 verse 12.
They live their life self-willed, fulfilling the
desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and are by nature the children of wrath.
They love the world and the things of
this world.
Therefore, the love of the Father is not
in them.
Love for God manifests itself in selfless abandonment.
That's a word that we really ought to
look at.
Selfless abandonment.
Just abandoning ourselves to our own desire and
taking up the will of God for our
life.
But the love for the world manifests itself
in three specific ways.
First, in the lust of the flesh.
Second, in the lust of the eye.
And thirdly, in the pride of life.
The lust of the flesh is simply covetousness.
It is an inordinate desire for things.
In our day, how many of you know
that many times you turn on the television,
you watch TV, and even when an altar
call is given, there are oftentimes selfish motives
that are being appealed to to draw that
person to Christ.
If you'll come to the Lord, the Lord
will make you happy.
If you'll just come to the Lord, He'll
get you out of your crisis.
If you'll just come to the Lord, He
will meet your needs.
If you'll just come to the Lord, and
we're feeding jaded appetites.
You see, we do not come to the
Lord out of selfish motivation.
Sometimes God may get our attention in that
way.
But ultimately, when we come to the Lord,
we are to set apart our selfish desires.
Inordinate affection for things can range from desiring
your neighbor's house to your neighbor's wife.
Generally, it is a lust for material possession.
Paris Readhead described them as things that soon
break, things that rust, things that get old,
things that have to be hauled off to
the garbage dump.
This lust for things is the opposite of
the personality of a giving God.
You realize that when we become covetous, then
we don't have a heart to give, to
give to the needy.
We become very self-centered, and that is
the opposite of Christlikeness.
Jesus came to give Himself as a ransom
for many.
Secondly, the lust of the eye is the
desire for illicit or illegal experience.
It is the desire to trespass against a
boundary that God has set up.
For example, fornication is illegal experience.
Taking drugs, drinking alcohol, getting drunk is illegal
experience.
Any type of desire to do something that
is forbidden of God can fall into this
category.
The finality of these things is ultimately idolatry.
Did you know that sin is progressive?
The devil is not content that you would
just start doing something little.
Pretty soon you've got to have something bigger
to meet that need.
And this progression gets greater and greater until
you move out of the realm of doing
fleshly things, or even worldly things, until you
can actually move into the realm of idolatry,
and that's very dangerous.
We've seen this story with Solomon.
Solomon had everything.
He literally maxed out all of the lust
of the flesh.
He had everything his eyes ever desired to
have.
He had everything that any of us could
have ever imagined.
He had illicit experience.
He had illegal experience.
He had all of these different types of
things.
But what we find out about Solomon is
none of it was ever enough to satisfy
him.
When he got to the end of his
life, read the book of Ecclesiastes, the scripture
said, Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.
It's almost as if he was looking in
the mirror and saying, Solomon, are you satisfied
now that you've got everything, now that you're
the most powerful man in this region of
the world?
Are you satisfied?
He said, Vanity.
He looked out and he saw all of
his houses, his lands.
He saw all of his gardens and places
to walk in.
He looked up and saw his some 500
to 900 wives and concubines, and he said,
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, saith the preacher.
See, the devil has never had any other
new devices to work on man with.
It's always been these three things.
Let's look at the third one.
The pride of life is the desire for
ascendancy.
It's the desire to glorify yourself, to make
a name for yourself or to move up
the chain of command, to be popular or
rule and reign over a people.
It's the desire to exalt yourself against your
neighbor in any way that you can.
See, a lot of times when we buy
things or when we move here or we
do that, it's a very selfish motivation.
It's a desire to exalt yourself and move
up the ladder, and we need to be
careful with that because that's a worldly mindset.
Any desire to promote oneself above others is
rooted in the pride of life.
Let's look at that in contrast to what
Paul said in Galatians 6.14. But God
forbid, he says, that I should glory, save
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom the world is crucified unto me
and I unto the world.
You see, Paul was crucified to the world
and the world to him.
He had no use for the world and
the world had no use for him.
Paul had no use for the world.
He wasn't like Demas who forsook him, having
loved this present evil world.
He had no desire for the world.
The world had no use for him either.
As we know, of course, he was martyred
later in his life.
The nature of a born-again believer is
totally incompatible with the world.
How many of you remember Lot?
The Bible talked about how him seeing all
the things of Sodom and Gomorrah vexed his
righteous soul from day to day.
There's two Greek words there.
One of the words for vexed means it
wore him down.
The other one said it tormented him.
And when you're a true born-again believer,
when you have truly been crucified with Christ,
born again to the Spirit, you're not at
home nor comfortable in the world.
You're not comfortable.
You can't make your bed in the world
and feel comfortable.
There's just something about it in your spirit
that it doesn't sit right.
You're troubled, you're tormented, you're worn down.
And the more you're worn down, you feel
in your heart you need to get alone
with God and be built back up in
the Spirit so you can continue to walk
and to serve Him.
The world wears down a genuine believer.
Paul had no use for the world.
It had no use for him.
And the nature of a born-again believer
is totally incompatible with the world.
The world represents everything that a born-again
believer despises.
You know, if you were to take several
weeks off from just watching television and just
get alone with God, get into the Word
of God and begin to seek the Lord
and allow your spiritual man to get strong
again and then just walk into your house,
flip on the TV, you'd be shocked at
how you feel about it as compared to
if you continually subject yourself to it.
If you're not careful, we can sit around
in the world and the things of this
world and suddenly they're no longer shocking to
us.
They no longer disturb us.
I feel the Lord would have us do
that.
The greatest miracle is to watch God take
an unholy person from an unholy world, give
them a clean heart, put them back in
that unholy world and keep them holy.
See, we can't live like the monastics that
moved away and got farther and farther away
from society thinking that they're being more holy.
You notice there's something that happens.
You get farther and farther out and you
begin to pull out and think, well, I'm
going to separate myself.
You can do that in your life from
the world, but when you get alone, you
also do something else.
You open up the door for lots of
other things to happen.
See, Jesus didn't go out to the city
to be tested of the devil.
He went out to a remote place.
And when we get away from and we
begin to separate ourselves, we become vulnerable to
the devil as well.
But I believe God can take a person
that is unholy, give them a clean heart,
put them in an unholy world and keep
them holy.
I believe he can do that, but it
takes the Holy Ghost to do it.
Secondly, those who are dead to sin.
Those who are dead to sin are those
who have genuinely turned their life over to
Jesus Christ.
They have been crucified with him and they
are now walking in the newness of life.
They have been buried with Christ in baptism
unto death to sin and the world.
Death in Christ to set them free from
the slavery of sin.
Hence, dead servants are no use to their
masters.
Once we have truly been born again to
the Spirit, we signify that by water baptism.
We go down into the water.
What are we saying?
We're saying, I am dead.
I am dead to the old man.
I'm dead to the old ways.
I have died.
You're not doing this in order to achieve
death.
You're doing this because you are dead.
You see that?
We do not believe in baptismal regeneration.
We don't believe you go down in the
water and you die.
We believe that when you go down in
the water, you're signifying the fact that you're
already dead.
You're dead to the world and you come
forth walking in the newness of life.
How many of you realize, it's a very
basic concept, but how many of you realize
there can be no resurrection until there's death?
There can be no resurrection until there's death.
So oftentimes, we want to know the Lord
and the power of His resurrection.
We want to know resurrection power.
We want to see the moving of the
Holy Ghost.
But to see that, there has to be
a perpetual death.
You have to die to yourself.
Die to your own desire.
Die to your own will and be willing
to completely submit your life over to God.
And at that point, He can pour His
Spirit out upon you and use you for
His will.
That's the key.
Death in Christ has set us free from
the slavery of sin.
Hence, dead servants are of no use to
their masters.
Therefore, no man can serve to masters.
You are either dead to the former slave
master of sin or you are dead to
God.
You cannot be a servant of both.
You know, when we try to live that
life, it's the most miserable thing.
Did you know that?
Brother Birch talks so often about the joy
of the Lord.
He talks about joy.
You want to know what a real key
to joy is?
You know, the Bible says that the kingdom
of God is not in meat and drink,
but it is in righteousness, peace, and joy
in the Holy Ghost.
In that order, in that progression, righteousness, then
peace, then joy.
We can't have peace without righteousness.
We can't have joy without peace.
You see that?
We can't skip from just over the top.
Well, I want the joy of the Lord,
but I don't want these other things.
We have to have peace with God or
there will be no joy.
We have to walk and live in righteousness
or there will be no peace with God.
There are a lot of fake substitutes for
joy, an awful lot of them, but the
true joy of the Lord will come in
that progression.
Righteousness, peace, then joy in the Holy Ghost.
You're either dead to the former slave master
of sin or you're dead to God.
You cannot serve both.
You cannot be a friend of the world
and yet be in a right standing with
God.
Secondly, those who are dead to sin have
crucified the flesh with its affections and its
lusts.
Paul writes, knowing this, that our old man
is crucified with him, that the body of
sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should
not serve sin.
You know, I believe, and I've told others
this, and I believe it is as true
this morning as it's ever been, that the
condition that we see in our lives and
in the body of Christ today is that
God wants to draw us out of our
besetting sins.
Did you know that?
You know, you can only sit so long
in a pew, wrestling with God, knowing that
you've got besetting sins in your life.
There's nothing that gets older than stumbling over
the same old thing, church.
And the Holy Ghost deals with us and
deals with us and deals with us.
And it makes us more and more miserable.
We have to crucify the flesh with its
affections and its lusts.
Paul said the old man is crucified, the
body of sin is destroyed.
We should not serve sin.
Those who are dead to sin and are
alive to God have a completely different appetite
than those who crave worldly things.
Again, if you feed your flesh, if you
feed your carnality with carnal things, you will
grow an appetite for that.
Did you know that?
And the weird thing is, is that the
more that grows, it's a bottomless pit that
can never be fulfilled.
And the worst thing about it is it
robs you of your appetite for God.
In the streets of South America, in these
big cities, there are kids that go around
and they don't have food to eat, so
they'll break into the store or they'll run
in the store and they'll steal baggies and
they'll steal little bottles of fingernail polish.
And they will pour that into the baggie.
They will mix it up like this, hold
it over their mouth, and they will begin
to breathe in and out really quick.
It gives them a high yes, but it
also does something else.
It takes away their appetite for food, and
hunger is one of the most grueling things
to suffer.
But they would put that over their mouth
and it takes away their appetite.
When you partake of sin, it's like putting
that baggie over your mouth.
And your spirit man loses his appetite for
God.
It's a true thing.
When you submit to things that you know
God is saying, don't touch that, leave that
alone, don't mess with that, what you're doing
is you're quenching your appetite for God.
You're quenching your desire to pray.
You're quenching your desire to read the Word.
You're quenching your desire to get closer to
God.
You say, why are you saying that this
morning?
Because to be honest with you, I can
teach till doomsday, but until we get past
secret sin, we're not going anywhere with God.
We're not going anywhere, church.
We're not going anyplace.
We can make pretense.
We can pretend.
We can keep coming.
We can do a lot of things.
But until we submit that to God, we're
not getting anywhere.
I believe it's why we're seeing a holdup
of revival in this nation because people just
simply won't lay that thing down.
God's saying, lay down, put that down, quit
doing that.
I noticed that when God started moving in
the early 90s by His Spirit, that it
wasn't long and that thing just seemed to,
the air just went right out of it.
And two things, I believe, caused it.
Number one, the advent of the Internet.
Yeah, the Internet.
So much stuff on the Internet just literally
destroying people of God.
The second thing was a covetousness set into
people.
And you see it even in the body
of Christ when people are ministering.
It's money, money.
It's sow this seed.
It's give this and God will bless.
It's covetousness.
And those two things have robbed us of
the move of God.
They've robbed us of the move of God.
And until we come to that place where
we say, God, I'm going to submit this
thing to you, we're not going to have
a desire for God.
We're not going to have a desire to
pray.
We're not going to have a desire to
come to church and meet with God.
What we'll do is we'll just keep holding
out.
We'll just keep holding out.
I hope I'm strong enough to make it
to church next week, but, boy, I'm really
getting weak.
Let go of that thing.
I did a lesson over at New Life.
I spoke for a few minutes on a
subject that I entitled kryptonite.
And I talked about how kryptonite would cause
Superman to lose his strength.
But as soon as he would let it
go and get away from it, he would
get his strength back automatically.
I promise you, I promise you, child of
God, you lay that thing down and just
give it some time, and you're going to
start getting your strength back.
You're going to start getting your desire for
God back.
Your talk is going to change.
Your feelings are going to change.
Your appetites are going to change.
And the next thing you know, you're going
to be like, I can't wait to get
to church.
I can't wait to get to the prayer
meeting.
But so long as you keep holding on
to that thing, it's weakening you, weakening you.
You know, kryptonite, that means hidden, secret, secret
sins, things that maybe only you know about.
But it's killing you.
It's weakening you.
We have to die to these things.
Finally, in Section 3, in Colossians 1 through
3, rather, if you be risen with Christ,
seek those things which are above, where Christ
sits on the right hand of God.
Set your affection on things above and not
on the things of this world, for you
are dead, and your life is hid with
Christ in God.
The key word here is if.
If you be risen with Christ, it is
because you have died.
You died to the old man.
You died to your own self-will.
You died to the child of disobedience that
you once were.
And because you are dead, your life is
hid with Christ in God.
Your affection is in heaven and not on
this earth.
You are not your own.
You are bought with the price.
Therefore, you glorify God in your body and
your life that now belongs to Him.
For the truly born again of the Spirit,
the only reason for living, church, is to
give glory to God.
Nothing matters.
Nothing satisfies.
Solomon said that it's all vanity.
What if he would have taken all of
his energies and done something for God and
pursued the Lord?
What if he would have done that?
Finally, in Luke 9, 23, Jesus said, If
any man will come after me, let him
deny himself, take up his cross daily, and
follow me.
Again, we are faced with the word if.
Do you desire to be a genuine disciple
of Christ?
That's the question.
Deny yourself daily by taking up your cross
and following Him.
The cross is like an altar.
It is the place and the means of
death.
Dr. Tozer is frequently quoted as saying these
words, You knew one thing about a man
that was carrying a cross out of the
city.
You knew he wasn't coming back.
When you truly die to yourself, when you
die, when you're crucified with Christ, you won't
come toting that cross back into the city.
You're going out once and for all.
You've burned the bridges behind you.
You said, I'm serving God, and this is
it.
Those who have wrestled with God in their
own personal garden of Gethsemane have declared, Not
my will, but thine be done.
Listen, they're already dead.
You know, Jesus determined in the garden that
He was giving His life.
Oh, He had determined it before the foundation
of the world, but it was in the
garden of Gethsemane, the garden of crushing, where
He said, Not my will, but thine be
done.
They are perpetual martyrs, the word is in
the Greek, witnesses for the cause of Christ,
which leads us to some questions.
We have to ask ourselves, Are we dead
to sin?
Are we dead to the allurements of the
world?
Let me ask you, Are you dead to
criticism and praise?
If you're ever going to teach, if you're
ever going to minister, if you're ever going
to do anything for God, that's one thing
you've got to die to.
You've got to die to the praise of
men, and you've got to die to the
criticism of men.
You cannot serve the Lord because somebody pats
you on the back or criticizes you.
You have to speak what says the word
of the Lord and let the chips fall
where they will.
Are you dead to competition with your friends,
with your family?
Are you dead to climbing the corporate ladder
or the management chain at your job?
Are you dead to competition in ministry?
Paul said, Let a man examine himself, whether
he be in the faith.
This is a good means of examination.
Do we have an affection for God, or
is our affection set on the things of
this world?
What governs our appetites?
Finally, nothing is more miserable than trying to
live both for God and for this world.
And let me just say something to you
because last year was the best year of
my life.
I turned everything to God, and you know
God did more in my life last year
than He's ever done.
He's done more in ministry than He's ever
done before.
He's changed more lives.
He's moved more people's lives by being able
to be used as a vessel for Him.
When you go into the cupboard and you
pull out a glass and you see a
stain on it, what do you do?
Do you pour your glass a pop?
Do you?
Of course you don't.
What do you do?
You either put it in the sink or
you wash it out, don't you?
That's where I was, church.
That's where I was.
God could use me to a degree, but
He was like, you know, I've got to
get this stain off the glass so I
can use this vessel.
I hope you take that seriously this morning
because there's nothing more important than what I'm
saying right now.
We are never going to get where we
need to be with God until we lay
down those things that He's been asking us
for years to lay down, until we set
them aside.
Jesus said, no man can serve two masters.
So then what is the attraction?
Why even attempt it?
Simply stated, listen, many do not want God
at the level God requires them.
I talked about it last Sunday night.
Many just simply don't want God at that
level.
They don't want to be that close to
God.
But you know what?
It's going to be one or the other
in our life.
Why?
Because if we don't have the Lord in
our life, sin is waiting at the door.
Do you know that?
It took me a long time to conclude
that, and I won't finish today, but I'll
finish with this.
It took me a long time to come
to that conclusion.
Many, many years, I would say, God, what
is the solution to my problem?
Why do I keep going back to this?
Why do I keep tripping over this?
Why, why, why?
And the whole time, He was telling me,
get closer to me.
I need you to walk closer to me.
I need you to live full of the
Holy Ghost.
But I was saying, God, that's not on
the table.
I'm not going to be full of the
Holy Ghost.
I'm not going to walk at that, I'm
not going to surrender at that level.
I'm not giving my life to you like
that.
I want a solution to the problem that
I can still be me and be without
that.
And take it from me.
I looked in every place.
The only hope is to get so close
to God that the fire of God just
consumes everything around you, that your whole desire
is given over to God, and then you're
protected from these things.
You can go out into an evil world,
an unholy world, and God will keep you
holy.