I'm going to continue our study this morning
in a lesson series that I have titled,
The Distanciation of the Gospel, Rediscovering the Workings
of the Holy Ghost.
We've talked a lot over the last year
or so about getting back to God, getting
back to basics.
We've talked a lot about repentance, and a
lot of times I get very tempted to
point out the wrong that I see, to
point out the negative, and to say, this
is wrong, and that is wrong, or this
is wrong here, and that's wrong there.
And that is very easy to do.
But this year I feel the Lord has
set it in my heart to take the
plumb line, or the measuring stick as it
were, and just lay it out so everyone
can see what the genuine is, and then
come to their own conclusions.
And I want to continue on in this
series this morning.
The first lesson was titled, The Born Again
Experience.
And we talked in that lesson about the
three basic types of sinners being careless sinners,
awakened sinners, and convicted sinners.
And we added an addendum to that lesson
last week, and I talked about being crucified
with Christ, and the importance of being dead
to the old man.
And this week we're going to continue on
in our study, and I've entitled this lesson,
Saved from Sin.
Our text this morning, and she shall bring
forth a son, and thou shall call his
name Jesus, for he shall save his people
from their sins.
You see, there is a change of heart
that accompanies the genuine born again experience in
which sin is no longer viewed as a
means to gratification or happiness.
Sin is seen as a means of death
that is the source of all evil, pain,
and suffering.
See, there is a change of mind and
heart that takes place when we are genuinely
born again, where we don't view sin as
something attractive like we do before.
We are repulsed by sin.
We see sin as the destructive force that
it is.
Our heart has been changed.
Our desires have changed.
Unrepentant sinners are proficient in sin through their
own vain imaginations coupled with the various inventions
of our times.
See, the world has made it very easy
to sin nowadays.
You know, the scripture teaches that God made
man upright, but he has made many inventions,
and those inventions have been used to further
their sin and evil.
In contrast, the born again understand that they
cannot be saved from hell until they are
first saved from sin.
Sin is not their friend, Satan is not
their friend, and the world is not their
friend.
They realize that sin is forgiven when it
is repented of and not while persisted in.
The purpose of God in saving man was
not to abolish the law and allow man
to sin with impunity.
That would be antinomianism or lawlessness.
See, God didn't send Jesus to save us
from our sin so that we can continue
on being unrighteous and everything like that.
He sent him to take away our sin
and to save us from sin.
The purpose was to establish the absolute lordship
of Jesus Christ as we walk in the
spirit in harmony with the personality of God.
In this lesson, I propose briefly to examine
two things.
First, salvation from the penalty of sin, and
secondly, salvation from the power of sin.
Salvation from the penalty of sin.
Justification is an act on the part of
God in which he pardons man from the
penalty of sins that are passed by faith
in Christ's shed blood and declares them to
be righteous.
Unless you have been pardoned of your sin,
the process of regeneration cannot take place.
You have to be cleansed of sin.
You have to be pardoned of your sin
so that the Holy Spirit can come in
and dwell in your temple or in you,
as it were.
The sin that once separated the sinner from
God is pardoned, and the sinner is sanctified
unto God.
Sanctified means sent apart for the Lord's service.
If you were to get married, we attended
a marriage ceremony just last week.
When two people get up to get married,
they're not saying, I'm going to give you
50% of myself, and I'm going to
give you 40% of myself.
It's 100% commitment, right?
It's a 100% setting apart of one
another to each other for the purpose of
being in covenant marriage.
The same thing takes place when we are
saved.
God sets us apart 100% for his
glory and purpose.
We don't hold back a little bit.
We don't do any of that.
It's one of the things we have to
understand about the rich young ruler.
Jesus was saying, I want 100%, but the
rich young ruler was saying, no, I want
to hold back part of the price.
Jesus, but with his infinite understanding and knowledge
by the power of the Holy Spirit, put
his finger right on that 10% or
whatever that he was going to hold back
and say, I want that also.
The young man went away sorrowful.
God wants 100% of us, not just
a little bit.
He wants all of us.
This is sanctification unto God.
To understand justification, we must first realize that
we are speaking primarily of a legal process
in which God meets out justice for the
sins that were committed against him and his
law.
In this case, we want to examine five
things here.
First of all, the law of God.
Secondly, charges of sin committed against that law.
Third, the evidence of sins committed.
Fourth, the verdict, which is, of course, against
us or the condemnation.
And then finally, the pardon, the law of
God, the first biblical principle we must understand.
Now, keep in mind, as I'm speaking, that
the things that I'm talking about aren't things
that you just can say, well, I can
take this or leave this.
This is information that you can use to
win sinners to the Lord.
See, most of us here, I'm sure, are
saved.
But when you're winning people to the Lord,
there's things that I'm going to talk about
this next paragraph that you can use and
really need to know if you're trying to
win somebody to God, win them over to
salvation.
The first biblical principle we must understand is
that man is responsible for everything they know
or should know about God's will.
Men are made to know right from wrong
first by the law of God that is
written upon their hearts from birth.
I've talked to people and people that didn't
even know the Lord and never were raised
in church.
And I would ask them, when you would
commit this certain sin, did you or did
you not know it was wrong?
They'd say, oh sure, I knew it was
wrong.
Did anyone ever tell you that it was
wrong?
Not that I know of.
Why is that?
Because God has placed his law upon the
hearts of man to be used by their
conscience to judge right from wrong on a
very, very basic level.
This is true for somebody who lives in
the deepest jungles of Africa all the way
to the largest cities in the United States.
People have been born with the law of
God written upon their heart in a very
basic sense, and they need to know that.
There's a whole study you could do on
natural law that shows that this is true.
The conscience uses these laws as the measuring
rod with which to judge our actions.
The conscience is either condemning or excusing our
behavior.
Additional knowledge of God's will is added to
these laws that are written upon our hearts.
Say, for example, you were able to come
into possession of a Bible.
You then begin to have a greater awareness
of the will of God.
Or you sit and hear some sort of
preaching.
Or you're maybe listening on the radio.
Whatever source, however it comes to you, it
is adding to your knowledge of the will
of God.
Some have greater access to the knowledge of
God's will than others, and all are judged
based upon the extent of their privilege.
See, everyone has at least the law of
God written on their heart.
They have the light of conscience.
They have the light of creation with which
to be able to understand God's will.
The Bible says that you can look at
the creation and know that there's a God,
and you can have a certain level of
understanding of the fact that there is a
God.
The Word of God further teaches that if
we will walk in the understanding that we
know God will give you more light.
Okay?
We're talking about knowledge being light.
He will give you more light, and then
you will walk in more light, and so
on and so forth.
So many times people say, well, what about
people who have never heard the gospel?
Those people are accountable for what they know.
Do you understand that?
They're accountable for the fact that they refuse
to walk in the light that they have
got.
Here we meet a second principle, and it's
that of God supplying more revelation where the
first revelation, when it is rightly responded to,
rather.
For those who walk in the light they
possess, God will supply more light, so on
and so forth.
Excuses are void once a means of knowing
God's will is readily available.
See, we're not just accountable for what we
know.
We're accountable for what we should know.
We're accountable what we could know.
See, there is churches on every corner in
America, and it's not enough just to say,
I don't know.
If I'm driving, say for example, if I'm
driving 50 miles an hour and I run
a stop sign because I turned my head
and I tell the officer I never saw
it, do you think that's going to fly
with him?
I never saw it, officer.
No, sure you didn't, sir, because you turned
your head.
And that's what I'm talking about.
I should have saw it, but I intentionally
made it an effort to not know what
God's will was.
And we need to realize that the Bible
said these things they are willingly ignorant of,
and there is a willful ignorance that God
is also going to judge.
Failure to know God's will when the means
are available does not diminish a person's accountability
before God, but rather aggravates their crimes as
they have rejected the opportunity to know God's
will.
Hosea 4, 6, because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you.
That's what God is saying.
These factors are assessed in God's perfect justice
and charged to sinners accordingly.
You just sit and play that out in
your mind.
It would stagger you.
It would really stagger you.
I did a lesson last year where I
talked about so many different sources of light
here in America and especially in Kansas City
that we're subjected to that we're accountable for,
and it's unbelievable the amount of light that
we have that we're accountable for.
Moreover, any doubtful act is sin.
You need to realize that.
That is, if a person believes something might
be sin, it is certainly sin to them.
It is certainly sin.
The Bible said whatsoever is not of faith
is sin.
If you cannot do it in a clear
conscience, it is sin to you because you're
doing it believing you are sinning against God.
Therefore, it is sin to you.
Read Romans chapter 14, verse 23.
And true acknowledgement of God would be to
refrain from any doubtful act that the possibility
could be that it would offend God.
Refrain from any doubtful act.
We should do that.
So I don't know if that's sin or
not.
Well, why just go ahead and do it?
In contrast to this is presumptuous sin.
Presumptuous sin is a reckless, willful sin against
light and conscience in blatant and high-handed
disregard of God.
David calls it the great transgression.
It's a dangerous thing to sin with much
light, really knowing better, and just high-handedly
sinning, especially if we're born-again believers.
Very dangerous thing.
Sinning, Brother Westlake calls it, with a high
hand.
All of these and many other aspects of
God's law ought to forever humble every human
being as all are convicted in their own
conscience of their guilt.
So we've established the law that God has
set.
Someone could say, well, I was never under
the Old Testament law.
That's true.
But how much of God's will did you
have knowledge of?
That's what you're accountable for.
Secondly, charges of sins committed against that law.
God himself has declared all to be under
sin, Galatians 3.22. As it is written,
there is none righteous.
No, not one.
There is none that understands.
There is none that seeks after God.
They have all gone out of the way.
They are together become unprofitable.
There is none that doeth good.
No, not one.
Their throat is an open sepulcher with their
tongues they have used to see.
The poison of asps is under their lips,
whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Destruction and misery are in their ways and
the way of peace they have not known.
There is no fear of God before their
eyes.
That is an indictment, friend.
Have you ever read that passage and thought
of the charges that God has leveled against
mankind that are unrepentant?
Thirdly, the evidence of sins committed.
Man's own conscience testifies against him that he
or she is a sinner.
See, our own conscience testifies against us and
concurs with the law of God.
This is something that you have to realize.
There is a message that I taught last
year that was titled, God cannot please sinners.
We need to realize that any time that
someone is speaking something, the conscience, especially like
if I'm teaching, your conscience is judging based
upon what you know from God's word, everything
that I say, whether it be true or
false.
Your conscience is judging.
Now, if you're impenitent, your heart may hate
everything that I say.
You may want to rise up and say,
you know, I'd really like to tell him
a thing or two.
But your conscience is a meaning every time
your conscience is saying, you know, he's right.
You know, that's God's word.
You know, he's right.
See, it's impossible to please an unrepentant sinner.
Because what the unrepentant heart loves, the conscience
condemns.
And what the conscience will agree with, the
heart hates.
You see that?
It's impossible to please them.
Say, for example, I was to water this
message totally down, water it down.
The heart would say, you know, I really
like that teacher.
I really like him.
He's good.
But the conscience would say, he is a
fraud.
Don't trust the word he says.
You see that?
You see the conscience in that role.
The conscience has made known through the pricking
of the inward parts for every unlawful deed
done and is reminded everyone faithfully of their
neglect of known duties.
The Holy Spirit also uses your conscience in
this role, constantly telling you, you need to
do this.
You ought to do that.
You ought to help them.
You ought to love them.
You shouldn't do that.
Why do you do that?
See, your conscience is constantly working, whether you're
saved or not, to lead and direct you
in your behavior.
Moreover, every transgression and disobedience is recorded individually
by God in the eternal record of remembrance
to ensure that God's justice is fully meted
out.
Hebrews tells us if every transgression and disobedience
receives a just recompensive reward, how shall we
escape?
How shall we escape?
That's something to think about.
Fourth, the verdict.
The condemnation is brought to bear upon the
mind by the power of the Holy Ghost
who convinces men of their sin.
In this life, it is made known to
man that they are sinners awaiting sentencing and
the execution of that sentence.
If they meet not God, watch this, at
the place of propitiation, they will meet him
at the great white throne judgment.
The place of propitiation is the mercy seat.
Back in the late 1800s, when, say, for
example, the Salvation Army or some of these
old-timey preachers would preach, when they would
give an altar call, they would say, come
to the mercy seat.
Come to the mercy seat.
Be saved from your sin.
That's how they gave an altar call, because
the mercy seat is the place of propitiation.
It is the place where God has decided,
because he has paid the price through Christ's
shed blood for our sin, that he can
reconcile with us.
It's like a meeting place.
Think of it as a place where we
can come and reason together.
And though your sin be as scarlet as
it be white as snow, this is the
place of propitiation.
We will either meet God in that place
of propitiation in this life, or we will
meet our sin at the great white throne
judgment.
Men are convinced of their guilt and are
admonished to accept by faith the free pardon
of their sin, that they may have a
transformation in their whole person that will allow
them to walk in conformity to the will
of God that they have heretofore shunned.
That's what happens.
When you come to the mercy seat, when
God forgives you of all your sins, pardons
you of all of your sins, prepares you,
as it were, for the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit, regeneration as we would call it.
That is what we need in this life,
because if the Holy Spirit does not come
in, and this is where we're going to
change gears in this lesson, if the Holy
Spirit does not come in to live inside
of you and walk and live this Christian
life in through you, you will never walk
with God.
I don't care how many rules you set
up.
I don't care if you lay down just
a few bad habits.
You will never walk with God.
It takes the power of the Holy Spirit
to do it.
And until this temple is cleansed, until sin
is purged, the Holy Spirit cannot come in.
There are many people that come to the
mercy seat, and they would say, Lord, I
want my sins forgiven.
God forgive me of all of my sins.
And they go through the process of being
cleansed and being delivered.
But at that time when they need to
invite God in and say, God, I want
to be full of the Holy Ghost.
I want to be full of your spirit.
They kind of say, no, God, you know,
I want to be forgiven of my sin,
but I want you to stay at arm's
length.
It's a message that I taught this two
weeks ago.
Listen, the devil's coming back and he's bringing
his friends.
Do you realize that if we're not full
of the Holy Spirit so that God can
work out our Christian life through us, then
we're left to stand in the power of
the flesh?
This is summed up in this one saying,
agree with your adversary quickly while you are
in the way with him.
Let your adversary deliver you to the judge.
The judge hands you over to the officer
and you'll be thrown into prison.
Assuredly, I say unto you, you will by
no means get out till you have paid
the last penny.
What does that mean?
While we are walking in this life, we
need to receive the pardon that God has
granted.
We need to look at the charges that
are against us.
We need to look at the amount of
time, as it were, and penalty that we're
facing.
Come to ourself and say, God, let us
reason together.
I want my sins to be pardoned.
I don't want to continue in that life.
I want to be changed and transformed by
your Holy Spirit.
Finally, the pardon.
Justification is an act of God's grace in
which he pardons us for our sin by
means of the death of Christ upon the
cross.
This justification comes about after us having been
placed in Christ, as it were, by faith.
We've been baptized into Jesus Christ by the
Holy Spirit.
Christ is the propitiation for our sin.
His blood expiates our sins.
In other words, it lets them go.
It lets them pass.
Propitiation is the price paid for bringing reconciliation
between enemies.
You remember in our, I have a dear
brother, Ron Bailey, who tells the story about
how Jacob and Esau in the Bible were
about to meet up again.
And Jacob was very concerned that when his
brother Esau saw him, it's going to do
harm to him.
So he sent a big, huge gift before
him in order to, as it were, placate
the wrath that his brother Esau would have
had against him.
This is the same type of thought, same
type of thinking here.
When we rightly respond to the drawing of
the Holy Spirit and exercise genuine faith in
the blood of Jesus Christ, we are pardoned
of all of our past sins.
This act of faith towards God is total
and not partial.
It's 100 percent, just like in marriage.
You're giving yourself 100 percent to the person
you marry.
It is a complete turning to God with
all bridges burned behind.
This justification brings with it the blessedness of
having one's sins forgiven, transgressions blotted out, once
pardoned, listen, no matter how great the sin
or no matter how many the sin, the
sinner is reconciled to God.
Amen.
Think about that.
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall
be white as snow.
It makes no difference how great the sin,
how many the sin or any of that.
Then finally, section two here, save from the
power of sin.
Evidence of freedom from sin.
First, we supremely love whom we supremely desire
to please.
This axiom either proves our love for self
or for Christ based solely upon the evidence
freedom from sin is expressed by our loving
the Lord our God with all of our
heart, our soul, our mind and our strength
and our neighbor as ourself.
That's the question.
Secondly, habitual sin is un-Christian and is
ultimately fatal to the soul.
Remember what I said in the beginning, when
you're transformed and born again to the spirit,
you do not view sin the same way.
If you've gotten to a place where you
find sin attractive and you're allured by sin,
what's happened is, is that you've subjected yourself
to sin until it's begin to take and
slant and skew your view of sin.
A true born again believer does not look
at sin like someone else does who's never
been saved.
Real obedience to God involves and implies supreme
regard for his authority.
We honor that authority by our obedience to
him.
Disobedience for a Christian is not normal and
must not be habitual.
Amen?
Christians do not live in known sin.
They are to live their lives with the
conscience void of offense towards God and man
as it is written.
Now this is the end of the commandment.
It is charity out of a pure heart
and of a good conscience and a faith
unfamed.
This is to walk before God without any
known sin between man and God and man
and their fellow man.
Any controversy that you have with the Holy
Spirit, whether it's between you and God or
between you and a fellow man, God wants
you dealing with it.
The Bible said when you come to the
altar and you remember that someone has ought
against you, first go be reconciled with them,
then come back and bring your gift.
But what's happened to us in this generation
is that we have forgotten that we need
to do that.
And we think that we can just continue
on allowing these things to build up and
build up and build up and God rejects
that.
This is a truth of scripture that cannot
be bypassed.
We have to make things right with God.
We have to make things right with man
before God accepts any of our service.
This is to walk before God without any
known sin between man and God and man
and his fellow man.
In the epistle of John, we read, for
if our heart condemn us, God is greater
than our heart and he knoweth all things.
Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then
have we confidence toward God.
You could stop and preach a sermon right
there.
What is it that robs us of the
boldness that we should have as Christians, whether
it be to witness or whether it be
to stand up for righteousness?
What is it that saps our zeal?
Very clearly, this verse tells us, if our
heart condemn us not, then have we confidence
toward God.
If my heart does not condemn me, then
I know that whatever I do, God is
going to be with me.
When I get up here and teach, God's
going to be with me.
If I get up and preach, God's going
to be with me.
If I get up and sing, God is
going to be with me.
If I go out and witness on the
street, God is going to be with me.
Why?
Because my heart does not condemn me.
If my heart is condemning me, I'm going
to be very timid, very timid.
You know why?
Because you're going to think, you know, I
don't think me and God, we're not really
where we need to be.
And there's a question mark there.
And you do not have confidence toward God
because there's known sin in your life and
your conscience is bringing it to the surface.
Trying to live the Christian life and known
sin is to shatter our confidence toward God.
Those who live in known sin have no
confidence that God will answer their prayers or
that he will anoint them for service.
Finally, God has set men free from the
power of sin through the born again experience.
This liberty also renders us justified before God
and under no condemnation so long as we
walk in the spirit.
Occasionally, under the great force of temptation, a
person may commit a sin or displease God,
but this is in no wise normal for
a genuine Christian.
It's not normal.
Those who are justified and are born again
do not continue in sin.
They are dead to sin and cannot live
any longer.
They're in Romans 6, 1.
Their old man is crucified with him that
the body of sin being destroyed so that
henceforth they do not serve sin being dead
with Christ.
They are free from sin.
Romans 6, 6 and 7.
The born again are dead to sin and
alive to God.
Romans 6, 11 sin have no more dominion
over them who are not not under the
law, but under grace, but that these being
free from sin are become the servants of
righteousness.
Romans 6, 14 and 18.
This does not mean, however, that we do
not suffer temptations because we do.
Finally, the solution to temptation.
And if you miss everything I say today,
don't miss this.
Don't miss this, because this is the crux
of everything I want to say.
The solution to temptation is found primarily in
Romans 8, 13 and 14.
For if we live after the flesh, you
shall die.
Underline this.
But if you through the spirit do mortify
the deeds of the body, you shall live.
For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God.
You remember the story.
Jesus is being baptized.
John said, you know, you need to be
baptizing me.
Why am I baptizing you?
To paraphrase, he said, it must be so
that I would fulfill all righteousness.
John baptizes him.
We hear a voice from heaven, as the
Jews would say, this is my beloved son
in whom I am well pleased.
You hear that?
Hear ye him, or whatever he says at
that point.
The Spirit of God descends upon him, and
he begins to be led of the Spirit
at that point on out into a desert
place to be tested of the devil.
Do you see what it is to be
a true son of God, a child of
God?
God says, this is my child.
The Spirit of God has come upon them,
and then they are led of the Spirit.
That's what it is to be a true
child of God.
It's not to take and get a bunch
of laws for yourself and say, I'm going
to keep these laws and call it Christian.
That's not Christianity.
Christianity is being full of the Holy Spirit,
being led of the Spirit, and that's what
authenticates you as a child of God.
The Spirit of God calls out from within
you, Abba Father.
He's saying, this is my son.
You are my Father.
You see that?
You're led of the Holy Ghost.
And through the Spirit of God, you mortify
the deeds of the flesh.
The Spirit of God does the work in
you as you're full of the Holy Ghost.
Brother Birch has talked about it for years,
and I would always be searching the scripture,
what is the key to victory over sin?
And it seemed like that week he would
say it again, you just need to be
full of the Holy Ghost.
And I would just cringe and say, that's
not acceptable.
That is not the answer I want to
hear.
There's got to be another way, but there
is no other way.
There is no other way.
But what ultimately happens to us is we
get just like Lot.
We think, you know, I don't want to
be on the mountain.
I don't want to be full of the
Holy Ghost.
I want to be over here and then
still expect to have victory.
And so are.
You can't do it.
Listen, you'll search the scriptures till doom's day,
and you are not going to find any
other means of mortifying the deeds of the
flesh than by the Holy Ghost.
There is no other means.
This passage is parallel to Colossians 3, 5,
and 6.
Mortify therefore your members which are upon the
earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and
covetousness which is idolatry, for which things say
the wrath of God comes upon the children
of disobedience.
Notice the contrast in these passages.
The difference between the sons of God and
the children of disobedience.
Notice this, that they mortify the deeds of
the body by the Holy Spirit while the
children of disobedience do not.
That's the difference.
The one has the Holy Spirit living with
them, mortifying or sucking the life out.
Think of that, pulling the life out of
the flesh, of the body, to want to
sin against God because the Holy Spirit is
there in charge of all of the desires
that are natural and good by the way.
But see what the devil does is he
offers you a bad means to fulfill a
good desire.
See we have a desire to eat.
We have a desire to procreate.
We have a desire for knowledge.
We even have a desire because God gave
Adam dominion over the earth to have authority.
But what the enemy does is he steps
in and offers us a bad means to
exercise a good desire.
And when the Holy Ghost is there, the
Holy Ghost shuts that down, says that's not
happening, and suppresses that and keeps our all
of our natural desires and affections in accordance
with his spirit.
This is what's taking place.
The Holy Spirit is the means of mortifying
the deeds of the flesh.
You must remain filled with the Holy Ghost
or there will be no victory over the
flesh.
Period.
This axiom is simple.
When the deeds of the flesh live, our
relationship with God dies.
When the spirit mortifies the flesh, we live.
Very simple.
We are saved from the power of sin
by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit does a work that puts
the deeds of the flesh to death in
us.
The flesh is only as dead as you
are full of the Holy Ghost.
This fullness comes as a result of a
different picture of justification of sin, and it
is that of the cleansing of the temple.
The sacrifice is made.
The blood is sprinkled both to expiate the
sin and purge the defilement that is caused
by the sin.
You know the scripture said, when the unclean
spirit has gone out of a man, it
walks through dry places, seeks rest, finding none,
comes back, founds the house, swept, garnished, put
in order, it's cleaned up, all of that.
Okay?
This is the picture.
The spirit, the Holy Spirit, then fills the
believers once purged and they become the habitation
of God.
All of the various means of invitation to
the Holy Spirit can now be employed to
bring us to fullness.
Say what's that?
Prayer, reading your Bible, asking God to baptize
you in the Holy Ghost so that you're
full of the Holy Ghost, spending time in
worship, worshiping God, anything that God will inhabit
or it draws God near to you as
it were.
And one last thing I want to say
along these lines, it's a vicious cycle.
Church, it's a vicious cycle.
I'm going to tell you, as we all
know it from experience, it's a vicious cycle
that when we sin, we grieve away the
Holy Ghost.
Did you know that?
The Bible says, submit yourself therefore unto God,
resist the devil, he will flee.
Does that same principle hold true if we
submit ourselves to sin and the devil, resist
the Holy Ghost?
Hmm?
He doesn't flee from us.
He's grieved.
And the problem with that is when you
grieve the Holy Ghost and he starts to
lift and starts to pull off, he is
the very source of you mortifying the flesh.
So unless you deal with that thing, right
at that moment, you are left virtually helpless
for the next encounter when the devil comes
around.
You see that?
You see why it's like, man, when I
stumble, I don't just stumble, I seem to
just crash and burn.
I don't understand that why I stumble.
The next thing that happens, I'm just wound
up in that sin again.
The reason you're wound up in it again
is because you grieve the Holy Ghost away.
And instead of dealing with it, boom, right
then, seeking the Lord in prayer until you're
back to a place to where you can
handle the next event.
If you put it off, the devil's coming
and he's bringing his friends.