Self-Control (Galatians 5:22-23) | Pastor Mike Fabarez

[Music] i had a dog when i was a kid that was crazy i mean i think he was literally crazy this dog ran around the yard like a maniac savagely chewed things up barked like a four-legged lunatic he was a crazy dog and i tried at some points to try to get him to sit and stay and roll over and those kinds of things but i i never got very far with that dog and i i'm okay to admit that it's because i didn't persist in working very hard with the dog there was always that kid at school that had the dog that was completely trained and could sit and stay and walk calmly beside him and all of that was uh you know a bit of a rebuke to my life because i realized that i could probably do better if i just worked a little harder with this dog you know but that guy was the guy who would uh speaking of barking he would bark out commands in german at his dog you know and and i could imagine this guy taking a a pack of dogs i'm walking 15 dogs at one time he's kind of like the dog whisperer and i'm sure he could have all of them walking just calmly and you know things could happen around him and those dogs would just keep on going i get i can see all of that which by the way is not a bad way for you to view the options in your christian life matter of fact that's not a bad way to view your christian life i'd like you to view your christian life as you being that human being with 5 10 15 leashes let's put it that way and 15 dogs of all kinds and it is your job to hold those leashes and to train those dogs to walk down this path of righteousness as it says in psalm 19 to walk in the way of his commands and you've got these dogs and that makes it a challenge but you've got an advantage you've got the you got the human brain and um the dogs have the dog brains and so you would hope that with some work and some discipline you could get those dogs to walk that path and you could make progress in the right time in the right sequence without taking any left turns and and if it's not time you could walk by endless fire hydrants and they would never stop and there could be rabbits across the road and they're not going to go after them you are going to be in charge of these dogs that is the picture of the battle between what we've seen in galatians 5 between the flesh that surrounds us what we're encased in we're enmeshed in it and our spirit our spirit that the bible teaches is made new that we have a new heart the bible would teach us in jeremiah ezekiel the promise of looking forward to the new testament age was that we would have a new heart and that god would in that relationship with us so transform us as paul said that we'd be a new creation that old things would pass away in particular as paul unpacks this to the romans our flesh would respond differently to the desires and impulses and appetites that it has because you would learn to reign those things in as a matter of fact that's a passage we should start with as we wrap up our series on the fruit of the spirit the last one in this list we've covered love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness now here's the last one the last one that really ties them all together because you're not going to see any of those in your life without this last one the last one is self-control and i want to show you that it's the relationship between you supposing supposed to be the master of the things that surround you that have a brain of their own right this the impulses of our humanity our fallen flesh but you're supposed to get those things in control and you were supposed to be the master here of these impulses take a look at it with me in romans chapter six grab this uh in your bibles look it up on your devices make sure you get your eyeballs on this text of scripture in romans chapter six i want you to look at verses 12 and 13. the problem is our flesh sometimes referred to as our body and we're not just talking about our eyelashes and our fingernails and our you know our kneecaps we're not just talking about the biology of it we're talking about the problem of what happened in the fall in genesis 3. let's go back as just before we read this remember what happened in genesis chapter 2. it is an explanation of what is described in summary in chapter one chapter one god creates adam and eve chapter two he starts to give detail as to how that worked and he says this that god created adam out of the out of the dust of the ground the dirt the biology that you find in the planet that god made the periodic table he creates from that as a designer this designed organized body and that is made from the ground and then he animates it by giving it a spirit he says he breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living soul so he's a living soul that's the word we use like a captain would if a boat goes down you know how many souls on board captain you would say oh 220 there's a number of all the people now the people are defined as people that are in bodies and they have a spirit that's the word breath in hebrew and in greek in the new testament translated both ways there is a immaterial part i like to call it your software and then there's the material part the hardware that's the description in genesis chapter 2 in genesis 3 you remember they rebelled against god god said don't eat from the tree they ate from the tree then god comes and gives the consequences and part of the consequences is that the dirt the dust of the ground the periodic table everything in biology and physics and geology and everything else weather systems he says this cursed is the ground because of you so the elements that i've created and everything in the order of what i've made in in all of the scope of what i've made all of that's going to be messed up because of you now here's the problem the dust to the ground is what you're made of so you're going to be messed up and it's going to be to whatever extent the complexities or the or or the the capacities of those things that are based in biology uh all of that is going to be skewed and just like weather patterns now are going to bring destruction and just like we're going to have issues out there in the animal kingdom or in the world that are going to be messed up in your body it's going to be messed up and one of the problems is it is going to express things in terms of appetites and desires that i don't want you to do i'm going to make it hard i'm going to mess up even your relationships he talks about marriage there in that passage and there's going to be impulses and desires and it's going to mess this all up and that is a just consequence to what you've done here as a matter of fact he goes on to say in that passage you were made from the dust of the ground into dust you're going to return i'm going to take your spirit from your body and that's called death when those two separate and we're going to have a whole new creation matter of fact we're going to start over we're going to bar you from the tree of life we're going to have a whole nother thing coming down in redemption and the story of redemption unfolds from genesis chapter 3 on but here's the problem the body that we're in is unredeemed until we get out of this life and get this next body so it's always going to be a problem even after god puts in our hearts a new heart the heart of stone gets changed to a heart of flesh we now have the impulses and desires at the core of our being i like to say that now want to please god problem is everything in our flesh anything in our body our fallenness our humanity our appetites and impulses and desires and proclivities and patterns and habits of our heart our lives i should say all of those are that they're all still messed up and so in romans 8 we get to the crescendo of his story and he says we can't wait for the redemption of the body that'll be great when everything's the way it's supposed to be in the meantime we've got a battle chapter six romans chapter six verse number 12. do not let sin we know what that is the rebellion right we don't want that to happen rain look at this the avenue in your mortal bodies your fallen bodies we're gonna have a resurrected glorified body but until then you've got this mortal body this fallen body to make you obey its passions now you know why this illustration that i'm trying to get in your mind clearly for this week in your christian life is you're surrounded by 15 dogs walking those 15 dogs and you've got this thing you live in you're in the middle of it you've got this redeemed brain you've got dog brains all around you and all they want to do is what they want to do and you don't have them right you don't have them there as the boss you don't obey them you're supposed to make them obey you don't let them be in charge right and it says in verse 13 don't present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness there's things they could do they could bite the ladies you know ankle heroes were walking by the cafe they can uh you know can dig a hole in someone's front lawn don't let them do that don't let them be interest instruments of things that i've told you you shouldn't do instead present yourselves to god as a whole living sacrifice he's going to say in chapter 12. your whole person you're going to say okay god i want to serve you as those who have been brought from death to life i was dead the interior core desires of my heart were not what they were supposed to be but now i'm a christian now i have desires to please god and therefore i got a battle going on in the members of my body and your members the parts of your body present them to god also as instruments of righteousness well that isn't going to be easy that's like telling me with my maniac dog running around the yard and chewing up everything he sees to say okay i got to make sure he gets under control and i don't just have one dog in my life i want you to picture 15 dogs surrounded they're fanned out all around me and i'm walking through life and god says get from here to there and don't chew up you know the lady's purse don't bite the guy's ankle don't dig holes in the in the yard here you walk on this path and you keep those dogs in check as you walk from here to there you're the master they are going to be your slaves and you make that clear in the arrangement you have with your own flesh and we get from here to there now when i use the phrase self-control the fruit of the spirit is number nine self-control a sermon like that is hard to preach because i i've got i got a problem in addressing a group that i have varied people in and i'm not sure where you stand there's an old adage about preaching that you're supposed to uh comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable have you heard that before and and that's the problem when you talk about things like self-control because some of you say got it done i'm all about it and if i were to ask you for instance this morning as you drove into the parking lot and i knocked on your window when you got into the parking space and i said hey i want to talk to you about the sins you've committed this morning yesterday last night friday talk to me about your sin this week i know some people and i've met him at church who've said to me i don't sin anymore had a guy literally say that to me he was probably 60 70 years old said i don't sin anymore i used to sin when i was young back in college i don't sin anymore okay well lying is clearly a sin of yours i can i can point out at this juncture but uh he doesn't see the problem so what i need to do in his life if i'm preaching about self-control is i need to afflict the comfortable he's very comfortable in his sanctification and then they say wait a minute you got a problem then i got another group of people that come in i say self-control it's much like a sermon about prayer you go oh i don't pray like i should and so you feel the guilt and i'm really here to try and comfort you because the whole point of us moving into a greater level of self-control in your life is not living in the defeat of your past and sensing that you just can't do this i can't do this i can't do this i'm a failure i keep stumbling and falling and i just i can't i can't do it so i've got to try to do both so let me do that real quick let's start with james chapter three turn to james chapter three when we're talking about this battle that we're gonna face and if you're taking notes let's start with that heading and then we'll unpack this okay and i know this is a textual topical sermon and i apologize for that we're gonna get back to verse by verse consecutive texts and unpacking and expositing those but in in our last installment of this series i want you to indulge me in this looking at these passages trying to logically homiletically put together something that will be helpful for you in your spiritual life and the first thing i'd like you to put as a heading here this morning number one is i want you to re-engage in the battle re-engage in the battle there is a battle between you taking the pack of dogs through this week you've got seven days till we get back here together lord willing and i want you to walk through this path from here to next week to where you've kept that pack of dogs called your flesh in control and so first of all to reengage in the battle i need you to know there is a battle and maybe the helpful thing is to remember that if you think there wasn't a battle we need to look back and see all the holes that were dug and all the purses that were chewed up and all the mailmen that were bitten and i want you to recognize we got a problem and so we're going to start with one member of your pack okay and that one i know it's a little chihuahua and it's just it's vicious and and i don't care what you think about the control of your life all of us should be if you're comfortable in your sanctification you should be afflicted right now by thinking clearly about this so james chapter three verse number two let's look at this get your eyeballs on this passage with me please and let's understand what the bible has to say about our lives number two verse two james three two for we all stumble in many ways that would have been a good verse to quote to my elderly friend who says hey i haven't sinned no we all stumble stumbles the analogy of falling into sin we fall into it all of us fall into sin in many ways be good for you to recognize that this morning that's the first step in fixing the problem of our sanctification and if anyone does not stumble and now he picks one of the dogs in the pack in what he says right well then he's a perfect man now i hope even if i said to this guy hey are you a perfect man i hope you would say no i'm not a perfect man well okay you're not a perfect man let's make that super clear right first john chapter one if you say you're without sin you're lying in the truth sending you so you are a sinner i am a sinner and we have problems we have problems really if we're gonna talk about sin in my managing the dogs of my flesh and i have a problem with that and you have a problem with that and he says let's just talk about that one little dog there that causes so much trouble drop down to verse five he talks about how a small thing can make a big damage that's the intervening verses here and now verse 5 says so also the tongue is a small member it's a small part of your body but it boasts of great things how great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire this thing can lash out like a dragon and it can hit things and light them in fire and the words that you have can have these huge domino effects and consequences like this gal i read about in south dakota who lit a cigarette through her match on the ground started a fire it was one of the biggest in south dakota history brought to court she was charged and convicted of arson and she was ordered to pay 42 million dollars in restitution all for just tossing a a a match on the ground carelessly and she lit this thing off i think okay our words if you think about the problem some of the biggest issues in your past a lot of them start with what comes out of your mouth comes out of your mouth in the heat of the moment in an argument in frustration in in gossip in lying or deception or whatever some small thing it just comes so easily out of your mouth and you've got to look at that and look how it describes this member this one little dog in your pack he's a small dog causes big trouble verse six the tongue is a fire a world of unrighteousness the things that this little dog can do the tongue is set among our members and it's staining the whole body i mean it really causes problems just in the other parts of our our lives our appetites setting on fire the entire course of life and then i just need you to know this here's one of the problems with our flesh and it is set on fire by hell there's a spiritual battle that goes on in that sermon but i want you to think about the way satan loves to capitalize on our fallen impulses and he's always trying to whip those dogs into a fury and there's this one dog your tongue that that instrument within your mouth that is used for sinful purposes all the time and god says you need to get serious about that and know that that's the problem and recognize that it goes on to talk about all kinds of beasts they're tamed but you can't seem to tame this we could go further but i hope all of us are going to sit here this morning and say you're right i'm a sinner great now the other side of this and i can quote a passage here because you already know it first john 1 8-9 once you recognize that there are issues of self-control and maybe you're dealing with some things pornography or it maybe has to do with your gluttony or maybe it has to do with whatever your outburst of anger and you know you have it and if not we've tried to show you just at least think about your words clearly we have sin problems you cannot control yourself the way that you know as a christian you you want to your heart desires to so once you have that here's the first step in us getting this right it's called confession confession it's a great greek word it's a compound word which means i'm agreeing with god and we're agreeing that it's a problem and most of us don't do that as much as we ought to just stop and say okay god what i just did was wrong i agree with you that it's wrong and here's how the verse goes and you know it if you confess your sins and here's the good news he is faithful every time all the time always consistently this week next week 10 years from now he is faithful and righteous or just in other words he has the mechanism in place to solve the problem you're no longer going to be guilty because of the cross of christ the plan of redemption started in genesis 3 god knows exactly how to solve your sin problem judicially in other words that 42 million dollar debt right can be forgiven whatever sin has been caused by your lack of self-control here it is it's he's faithful and just two here it is a great word a femi to forgive your sins all that released at a moment as it says in colossians 2 14 it's the canceled debt is or the debt against you that was hostile toward you is completely canceled to forgive your sins and two here's a good word too just compounding the image and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness you see a hillside that was burned by fire you think that's a mess i want it to be green again well there may be consequences to you flipping matches or having your dogs bite the mailman and i understand that's gonna there's gonna be lasting consequences but here's the good thing between you and god you being responsible for walking that pack of dogs from sunday to sunday you can be completely exonerated before god forgiven god can look at you as though you didn't have those problems and you need to confess it and the bible's very clear you have to simply be clear and honest and sincere in your agreement with god that you've done wrong so i want us to get into a discussion about self-control by starting by leveling the playing field for all of us you've sinned i've sinned self-control is a problem we all need to admit it before god and right now honestly and sincerely agree with god god you're right i can identify this i can never identify that i can see these things and i just want to confess it and start fresh to quote isaiah 1 as though your sins are like scarlet they'll be white as snow bam fresh slate so you and i sit here this morning and we can say okay god regardless of how bad it's been as it says in in proverbs a righteous man can stumble seven times that's a number to show that just like it feels like it's complete every week and yet he rises again i want you to get up right now in your heart in your mind and don't say well i can have no self-control because i don't have any self-control i can see it talk about affliction i've been afflicted by my sin i walk in feeling like a defeated christian then i'm going to say to you hey get up because god is going to right now if you sincerely confess your sins unless he's a liar and i don't think you want to call him that he wipes away your sin he forgives you a female lets it go done between you and god there may be some laws you got to go back and pay for but here's the deal you are right with god and now we can move forward to re-engage in the battle i think you start that way and once we confess there's another component to this and maybe we should think in these terms as long as we're going to call it a fight and a battle you need to repent to confess it is to agree with god that it's wrong now here's another biblical word we repent which means we're resolving and turning to say i had the dogs of my life chew on a few people's ankles this week it is time for me to resolve to not let that happen this week i'm going to resolve to say god i'm turning from what i did and i am now going to exercise self-control i'm going to re-engage the battle first peter chapter 1 says it is a battle that wages war the flesh is waging war against the soul here's another passage for hebrews chapter 12 just to have you write it down in hebrews chapter 12 to give you the exact verse if i can find it verses four through six here is this section of scripture and he reminds us i'll just quote it for you when he's talking to people that he looks at their sanctification he's about to talk about discipline and he says in your struggle against sin you've struggled with this pack of dogs he says you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood in other words okay tough guys and gals walking this pack of dogs and i've tried i've tried to make him sit i've tried to make him heal i tried not to get him to bite anybody he goes i don't know i don't think you've tried as hard as you can and should try to re-engage in the battle confession repentance and repentance is okay next week i'm gonna i'm gonna deal with this self-control thing differently to the point of saying the no holds barred i am completely ready to go as far as i can go some of us don't want calluses on our hands because we're pulling the leashes back oh inherits i i don't know i just can't control the chihuahua listen you have all these dogs on a leash you are tied to your body and its appetites and desires and impulses and all i'm saying is get ready to have some bloody calluses on your hands and say i'm going for blood this week i'm going to fight i'm going to here's the words of of of paul when he speaks to the colossians in colossians chapter 3 he says put to death whatever is earthly in you put it to death are you ready to fight to the death between you and your pack of dogs called your flesh now you got to have them in this life you got to have this body right we're not getting rid we're not going to commit mass suicide we're going to walk from this sunday lord willing to next sunday we've got to control these but i'm ready to have some bloody calloused hands as i fight the dogs in my life now we're gonna get some strategies from scripture but i'm ready to fight and re-engage the battle to say i in my struggle against sin i can't i have struggled i have my arms are sore but i really haven't yet resisted to the point of shedding blood that's what i call re-engaging in the battle and i don't care where you at whether it's pornography whether it's gluttony whether it's some issue in your life that you don't even want to speak of publicly and you are failing in your self-control i'm saying today is the day for you to start fresh clean slate confession repentance and now a resolve to do what you have to do even if it costs you more this week than it's ever cost you to say i'm gonna fight this thing i'm gonna re-engage in the battle that's the first step second step is understanding what the goal is so let me give you the second point number two and then we'll unpack it the goal in this is to get the physical number two get the physical to yield to the spiritual get the physical to yield to the spiritual get the physical of my life my flesh to yield to the spiritual the software is going to control this and the problem is the motherboard has all these chips soldered to it with firmware on it and i know it's got dog brains down there all around me but i'm going to have the human brain that has been renewed in christ i'm going to have that dominate and as peter james and john learned when they went to go pray with jesus in the garden of gethsemane remember that passage and he says come pray with me and they fell asleep and jesus gives us that line that i hope you all can identify with and he says this he says the spirit is willing hey peter james i know you want to pray with me for an hour he says but the flesh is weak and he's he's saying oh so i guess you can't pray for an hour that's not what he says he chides them for it he rebukes them for it you couldn't watch and pray with me for an hour and even he gives us the battle he says because there and it's an interesting greek idiom their eyelids were heavy right it's like they had weights on their eyelids i understand you're tired and i understand it's hard to stay awake when you don't want to stay awake and your body's saying bed sleep pillow snoring dreams i want to sleep and he says no it's time to pray you're gonna have to fight your physical impulses to do what you know the spirit says you ought to do and the whole goal of sanctification whether it's love joy peace patience kindness whatever it is is to have the spiritual dominate the physical turn with me to first corinthians chapter 9. first corinthians chapter 9 i want to get your your eyes looking at this text and and i have to have you understand and i love our esv right um and it but but no translation is perfect and i'm just going to tell you i i don't mean to undermine your integrity in the esv good translation but in this passage right they had a stark stark phrase that would just really get us to go whoa and they put sunglasses on it so that you know it kind of mellowed it out but i gotta have you see what the footnote says in this passage because it says it so well that it's the militant mindset you need if my if my flesh my physical is going to submit to the spirit that god has made me to be more on more more on that in a minute i know that may sound like it's a half you know heresy to you but i'll get to solving that in complete orthodoxy in just a minute first corinthians chapter 9 verse 24. do you not know that all that run an array i'm sorry do you not know that in a race all the runners run well of course yeah but only one receives the prize in other words there's a lot of people that aren't going to get across the finish line and get the wreath and he's writing to the corinthians they had their own version of the olympic games and they had platforms and they put on the laurel wreath around their head and they got the applause and everyone thought you're a great athlete and he says yes we want to run to to obtain the prize right this is not a physical prize obviously but the eternal prize of god saying well done good and faithful servant here are the rewards enter into your rest we want to have god's approval on living the christian life with gold silver precious stones not just wood hay and straw and he says this every athlete exercises here's our word self-control in all things they do it to receive a perishable wreath but we an imperishable ours is so much more important so i do not run aimlessly i'm just running around you know in my training no and i don't box as one beating the air like no no i'm not shadow boxing no no i discipline my body and here's the phrase i want you to underscore keep it under control do you see that do you see a number two next to it if you have an esv and a footnote go to that footnote would you take a look at that find that or hover over it on your on your tablet you see it says greek and then it has an italicized phrase here here's the literal rendering of this phrase i pummel my body and make it my slave okay now that's pretty serious right and i understand why you'd want to put sunglasses on that phrase and kind of dampen the sharp you know bam of that of that phrase i get it because there is an entire season of church history that fell into something we call asceticism and it is warned against in the book of colossians and that is inflicting pain on myself and thinking that the act of putting pain on myself is somehow a godly action and it's not that's not the point matter of fact he's he's made clear it's about getting the prize it's about obedience it's about self-control so i understand why you might put some sunglasses on that but i'm thinking compass bible church can take it right so we're going to look at that passage and we're going to say what is he saying and we're going to get this analogy that he's using and and understand this hey you are going to take your body and teach your body who's in charge and the body and its impulses and the fallen humanity of it i'm going to say wait a minute my spirit is calling the shots here i am making you my slave i'm not going to talk that way about dogs anymore let alone your own body but the idea of that dog pack that you're walking through life with you need to say wait a minute i am call me master i'm the man i have the human brain here you have the dog brains you're gonna listen to me you dogs are my slave right that's the idea here he says i pummel my body i as some translations i buffet my body i'm ready to tell my body and teach my body every day who is in charge right and this is not just so that you can get chiseled at the gym this is not just about exercise here this is about the fact that i know my body's gonna want some things and the things that it wants are not going to be godly and those instruments that are so used to doing unrighteous things those members of my body i'm going to teach my body that it has to obey my spirit and my spirit being renewed wants to please god so i'm going to i'm going to make sure my body knows the physical has to yield to the spiritual i have to have that perspective it needs to become my slave as long as we're nearby go to first corinthians chapter six here's the problem there are things you're going to have to do beyond what you have to avoid you're going to have to teach your body and its impulses to be subjected as slaves to the disposition and the volitional choices of your spirit and you're gonna do that training sometimes with things that um would be lawful to do you can do it but you're gonna change the rules on your life so that when push comes to shove and the rabbit runs across the trail your dogs your flesh they're going to stay right there focused on the path it's like those youtube videos where they put like the you know sausage on the nose of the dog and he sits there until the master says okay and then he you know he eats it you've seen those right so how can you sit there with that temptation and say i am going to make it through this well sometimes you have to say well this is something i could do it's lawful for me to do but i'm not going to do it because i know if i do it i'm just going to teach my flesh that it's in charge i'm going to teach my physical impulses that they get whatever they want and i don't want to do that he quotes the saying that was going around here in corinth look at verse 12. all things are lawful for me this is first corinthians 6 12 are you with me here all things are lawful for me quote unquote paul says well let me respond to that not all things are helpful there are some things i know you could do they're not they're not disallowed in scripture they're not prohibited in scripture but wouldn't be good for your spiritual life he says all things are lawful for me he quotes that again quote unquote but he says here's his insight i will not be dominated by anything there are things that i could do and they're not going to be helpful because as he's taught so often in his epistles i can become enslaved to those instruments and appetites and impulses of my fallenness and i'm not going to do that therefore as he goes says later in the book i will pummel my body and make it my slave i will teach my flesh who is in charge that's the strength of the christian life that god wants to grant you and you have to make this your mindset that the physical yields to the spiritual and that's going to happen by you saying even if something is allowable you're not going to do it now that should take your mind if you know the bible into the the realm and the category of something the bible calls fasting you're familiar with that right abstaining from food food that by the way god created that you could eat and enjoy and it would nourish your body food food is just a daily impulse we want it i mean if you're me you want to eat it every 30 minutes right i need another meal that is our impulse of our body and and the bible introduces us to this concept of saying no to those impulses is it good for us to eat breakfast well sure it's good for us good for us to have lunch yeah it's good how about a mid-afternoon snack well sure that would be fine how about dinner you should eat dinner tonight that's a good thing but here's something in the bible now introduced called fasting where people have those impulses and they say i know it's a good thing it's lawful for me to eat lunch but i am going to fast now god required that on one day of the jewish calendar you know what day that was yom kippur yom kippur that's translated yam day kapoor atonement the day of atonement it was the one day in the fall calendar where israel was supposed to fast they had to afflict themselves you have to purposely voluntarily put yourself through pain the pain of not eating it was a fast day the rest of the bible helps explain that phrase afflict yourself on that day now what was that day all about today was all about sin and remembering the price of sin and the animal that was slain by not just the priests not the daily sacrifice but the high priest the highest ranking priest would kill this goat and the the animal would die and here would be this bloody sacrifice and that blood would be sprinkled on the sacred places in the temple and then that other goat he would lay his hand on that and it was called the scapegoat and it would be led out into the wilderness and let go to go away and here was the picture the death and the substitution of innocent life for guilty people and their sin being carried away like psalm 103 says it's metaphorically as far as the east is from the west it's removed from me so the picture is man we're sinners we deserve death god is going to be gracious he's going to provide a substitute and my sin can be relieved for me and then he says everyone when you're thinking about that the atonement that god provides i need you to fast i want you to say no to your physical impulses what connection would there be to that well because the sin that causes the need of a holy god to have a substitutionary atonement is the fact that we can't control the pack of dogs that i live in called my flesh so can you on that day at least and there's other days that they got into the habit and tradition and personally people chose to do it but can you deny yourself something that's lawful so that you make sure you're not dominated by anything that's the idea make sure your physical submits to your spiritual and in that sense you exercise your physician and as my old pastor used to say and you deny yourself something good and you say that's a good thing a lawful thing but i'm saying no to it maybe some of you haven't even engaged in in fasting there's a kind of fasting you don't even think about it's a fasting in the bible it's a reaction to a crisis or a trauma and you know i mean it's happened in your life i'm sure when you've missed a meal or two meals or three meals because you're in the middle of the most traumatic day you've had in months or years and and i mean if you ate you'd throw up well that is the kind of fasting and the bible calls that fasting but that's a reactionary fast it's the purposeful volitional fast when i wake up my stomach is grumbling for breakfast and i say oh no it's a fast day i'm not gonna eat and then it's lunch time and now i get a headache and i want to eat but no i'm not going to eat then in the afternoon i want to have like three meals to make up for for the day and it's like no i'm not going to have anything to snack on and then it's evening and it's like no i'm just dying now i got a massive headache and you say i'm not going to eat and you deny yourself those things in one reason just to make sure the dogs know who's in charge and you're going to say no should you feed your dog yes you should feed your dog but there are times you say i am going to deny myself these things even in marriage let me think about first corinthians chapter seven sexual relationships in in a in a marriage and it says even that there should be times of fasting where you say no we're going to commit ourselves to prayer saying no to things that are lawful so that you can say i just want to make sure my body knows and all of its appetites and impulses who is in charge that's a practice that i think though it's fraught with a lot of dangers and a lot of warnings and scriptures about fasting it is one example of saying no to things that i could do so that i can make clear and i can create the practice so the dogs have to look to me and say master is this okay that's the relationship you need to have with your flesh i came up with this illustration because i often hear about people talking about my sanctification like i got a dog on this shoulder and a dog on that shoulder and this is the angel dog and this is the demon dog and i'm kind of stuck between that's not it at all you are made new in christ you have the human brain and you're living enmeshed in a pack of dogs those are the dog brains and you need to be in charge and just like my dog that never learned to obey me because i never worked or trained him it's time for us to train ourselves for godliness matter of fact we get the word gymnasium from the word where paul says to me train yourself for godliness train yourself be like you're going to go to the gym and train yourself well here's the good news and i've left this part out and you think wow it sounds like heresy because i know that you started this with this is the fruit of the spirit and if it's the fruit of the spirit then this is god this is god that's at work in you this is god paul said god's strength works in him this god you've quoted isaiah 40 before god gives us strength it's about god matter of fact if it's a fruit of the spirit we're passive you can put it on cruise control put your feet up on the desk because god is going to do this hey give that a try for a year and see how that works i understand this is a fruit of the spirit but even notice how it's translated because that's the word leads us to it's called god control right love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness god control is that what it's called no interactive 10 o'clock crowd it's not what it's called it's called what kind of troll control self-control matter of fact let's turn to isaiah 40 because i just quoted it and so often we think oh yeah yeah god gives strength god skips there i want to show you a shift from the subject to the object okay the verb is giving right he's going to give strength but let's watch that subtle change in this passage you may have missed in the subject here and that's helpful and we know whose strength we're talking about let's go to isaiah chapter 40. familiar passage look at verse 29 it starts with a pronoun personal pronoun he well there's our subject gives power who's the he we'll look back at the previous verse it's the god the god has all the power he's got all the smarts all the understanding he's strong he never gets tired he gives there it is power to the faint i may be struggling but he can give power to him who has no might he there is again increases strength oh good good good because that's what i need even though young people man they faint they grow weird nothing really in in their lives that is their own and autonomy they can't do it right young men will fall exhausted but they who wait for the lord shall renew his strength no wait a minute the pronoun now shifts to their strength their strength wait a minute if you wait for the lord which is a idiom for praying and persevering in prayer and consistently asking god and begging god well they're going to renew their strength they're going to mount up on wings like eagles and run and not grow weary and walk and not faint they're walking they're running they're flying and it's their strength that god increases this is what we call in theology here's the word synergism there's a synergism in our sanctification if you're a good theologian you will affirm monergism in our justification god is the one who is saving us as fallen dead sinners in our trespasses but now in new in christ we have a new heart as it says in jeremiah and ezekiel we get a new heart and the new heart is not by itself we're not walking the pack of dogs alone it says not only will i make a new spirit in them but i will give them my spirit and as we've quoted many times from this platform we've got the smallest spirit me i get a new heart i get now a new christian brain and i'm still surrounded by dog brains my flesh but he now the god brain walks with me in this i'm going to give them my spirit and i'm going to move them to keep my commandments keep that pack of dogs in line that is the picture in this text if we see the synergism then we know as paul said i worked harder than all the other apostles and yet it was god working in me all the strength is derivative god works in us but well let's go back to paul talking to the philippians work out your salvation with fear and trembling that's going to feel like work you're going to have the callouses you might have the bloody hands you're going to work really hard to manage your flesh that's true but god is a god who's going to empower you he's going to give you strength he's going to move you through this do you feel like it's a passive practice never never ever will it feel passive you're going to work harder than you ever worked if you're going to get serious about self-control if we don't want to sin this week we're going to have to work hard but here's the element i want to add i want to end with this number three you need to beg god for strength he'll renew your strength and your strength will be a godly strength but he's going to fuel that strength but it is going to be as that phrase says when you wait upon the lord which is an expression of that ongoing persevering consistent praying where you're saying god i'm begging you for this and i like that word beg because in scripture um prose escoma it's a the word for prayer it's a normal word for prayer then there's a word every now and then in in the greek new testament de omai and de omai used a few times well a handful of times mostly most you have mostly you have the common word for prayer but then you have the word for prayer day oh my and when you have that usually in the greek new testament it's translated into english as praying earnestly or to pray earnestly they add that extra word because deoma is really strong and in luke when god says we ought to be praying for strength to get through a trial strength getting through a trial or a temptation he says you need to deal my for it you need to beg god for it so i'm asking you to start to beg god for strength you have walking with you in this life the holy spirit in the fruit of the spirit as you say god i need this it is that ongoing persistent begging kind of prayer in the midst of the trial that jesus was experiencing come and watch and pray with me for an hour an hour even that should be convicting for us right when was the last time you prayed for a solid hour a solid hour well i don't have time for that well we have time to feed our face i bet you fed your face for more than an hour in one day right and all i'm saying is it's interesting to see all these things i'm absolutely yielding to my impulses to eat every day which i'm suggesting you do all right most days right of course but i really need to recognize what i need sometimes is to say i need more focused times of death of begging god to give me that strength that he says he can give me god gives strength which by the way there's a multi-faceted approach to this in terms of begging god if you're going to pray for an hour about self-control there's lots of aspects to it think back to the lord's prayer in matthew 6. when he tells us things to pray for daily bread worship all that forgiving those who've sinned against us there's that one statement where he says this and lead us not into temptation you got to walk between here and next sunday there's going to be a lot of fire hydrants a lot of you know things scurrying across the path that want to get your flesh the dog's the dog pack of your life off the track there's a lot of attractive things for it to get into a lot of of of ankles to bite and you need to say this god i just i pray that you will not lead us into temptation god please mitigate those temptations god get that down to where you you i'm not asking for this to be you know it's so easy but god please help me in this and the more you pray about that the more you're going to see their situations as it says you should not make no provision for the flesh there's situations i hope there's apps you've deleted i hope there's meetings you choose not to go to i hope there's alliances you're not willing to make i hope there's things in your life where you say there's channels i'm going to block i'm not going to be a part of those things because my self-control is not aided by my participation in those arenas if your hand calls you saying cut it off throw it from you i mean the idea of dealing seriously with temptation i think it starts by us begging god for the strength of self-control and praying about things like don't lead us into temptation and the next phrase in that prayer in matthew 6 and deliver us from evil and if you look at that particular phrase even the footnotes there help us recognize that that phrase may actually mean the evil one the way it's worded there and and i know this satan would love to get the dogs of my life off the track he loves to make a make a mess of christians lives he's a roaring lion seeking someone to devour and so i know this god i need to pray more often about my temptations i need to pray more often about the strength i need to pray more often about the spiritual battle and all this and i need to pray specifically can i turn you one last passage psalm 141 psalm 141 here's david praying and he prays specifically for aspects of his life that he knows are really hard to control and he goes back in his mind here to what we talked about in james three i mean this one member of the body this this yapping chihuahua that just won't stop and he says this god i need your strength you need to get specific about praying about areas when i talk about self-control the things that you're thinking about that lack in your life i need you to pray for those pray specifically for those look what he does talking about prayer in the first two verses right i'm calling out to you hear my voice let my prayer be a good thing to you like incense like when i lift up my hands in prayer like the evening sacrifice please hear my prayer and then here's his prayer specifically verse three set a guard o yahweh set a guard over my mouth god please just muzzle my mouth keep watch over the doors of my lips please god focus on the things that help me do not let my heart incline the evil to busy myself with wicked deeds i mean i'm just saying here is the problem we don't often ask and we don't ask specifically for the self-control we know we need and just to quote the next chapter from james 3 go to james 4 in your mind he says this he says you do not have because you do not ask some of you have terrible self-control because you're really not praying much for it and if you do it's one minute here or two minutes there i think we need to beg god for strength to control the passions of our lives and to say god i'm going to control this i don't have sometimes the self-control i need or anything else because i don't ask but if you know your bibles do you know the next phrase sometimes you ask and you don't receive why because you ask with what does james 4 say you ask with wrong motives you might be sitting here yeah you know what i have a problem with food i'm talking about self-control i really want to be better with the food you know this sermon i'm going to be more consistent with the food i'm going to be disciplined with the food because you know i just really i need to get get down i need to drop 25 pounds i'm gonna i'm gonna do it and you know i look so good and people people would say how good i'm looking and i just like to get into smaller clothes like she's so much skinnier than me i'm gonna look like her and i just man god if i could only just look better oh you can ask for self-control for all the wrong reasons you understand that right so you need to check your motives if you have a problem with food if you're a glutton yeah you should deal with that but it didn't so that everyone would say oh you look so great if you lost some weight that's not the reason the reason is nothing should dominate you you should be able to say to yourself i'm not going to eat that i'm not going to go there i'm not going to think that i'm not going to look at that i'm not going to say those things that's the control your spirit ought to have over your flesh and you've got to be willing to say i am going to pray specifically and i'm going to pray for the right motives because the path that you've laid out for me and the good works you have for me between this sunday and next sunday i want to walk in that path to your glory i want you to look at me as the christian brain controlling the dog brains of my flesh and saying god i'm going to get from here to there i want to glorify you with my body with this pack of dogs because i've been bought with a price sometimes we don't have is we don't ask and we need to ask we need to beg god for that strength i hope that if nothing else comes out of this sermon that you would begin to pray in a way that you've never prayed about the self-control in your life at the points of conviction you might have had when you confessed your sin early in this sermon and said god yes i want a fresh start that you say to god god i need to pray about these things and it's amazing when we pray and linger in prayer and wait on the lord which is an idiom for praying right praying for the lord praying for his answers asking him to do things specifically in our lives like putting a guard over our mouth if the mouth is the issue on the table then saying god i know that you can grant strength and even though i was faint even though i was weary even though my self-control stunk and i stumbled seven times last week i'm gonna rise again i'm gonna get up because i don't walk this alone in the ancient world they built cities and because of the ancient tools of warfare one of the best ways to secure your population was to build a wall around your city a big stone tall high thick wall that a battering ram couldn't take down and that's the thing that would protect you proverbs has a little verse about self-control in ancient cities and it says the one who lacks self-control is like a city whose walls have been breached walls have fallen down so you picture an old city with the walls down and you say well that's the person with no self-control because the walls are there to keep things out oh you might have gates but the gates are open at particular times and they let things through and they're people there checking what goes in and out but when you have no walls i mean the gates are nothing the gates don't matter the portals into the city are everywhere because you have no walls he says that's what it's like that a man who has no self-control their lives are a mess those dogs are like they don't even have leashes it's terrible when jeremiah after the babylonian exile found out that the city was torn down and he was grieving and praying over that he asked the king if he could go back the king said yes gave him money miraculously god opened up the way for them to go and repair the walls in chapter six of nehemiah they complete the thing but in the early chapters we have the story of him repairing the walls and of course it's not just him it's a whole team of people and it says in chapter four of nehemiah that as they went to go repair those walls there were so many enemies that did not want the walls rebuilt there were two guys sam ballet and tobiah in particular that were adversaries and not only that you had a bunch of people that did all they could to make sure those walls did not get built but nehemiah knew and so did that generation of israelites if we could just build this wall we can have security in the city we can reinhabit it and we can have the kind of city and life that god would expect us to have we need those walls up so they built and they built and it's interesting in chapter 4 he says i'm going to take the israelite people and i'm going to turn them into two groups because i need a group that's going to put the trowel and the mortar and stack those stones and build that wall and then i need a whole group of people that are going to have spears and swords and bows and i'm going to put them in coats of armor and they're going to stand and defend as we build this wall not only that the guys that were actually building the wall they had a trowel in one hand and it says three or four verses later that as they built they had their swords strapped to their hip that was a vigilant urgent critically important step in their minds to say we got to work as a team to make this happen i've said that a a lot on our courtyard sermons but if you're not in a small group and you're trying to do the christian life on your own trying to build the walls by yourself i mean it's it's a losing proposition and we're about to meet with our small group leaders and recast the vision for the importance of small groups in our church you let me just say this with all the authority of christ you need to be in a small group you have to be in a small group you got to get chairs side by side face to face because in that we start to do the things that the bible says we can do there's accountability there's confessing sin there's us encouraging one another and building each other up and all of that is about putting these breaches in the walls putting them back together so that we can live this christian life the way that god designed and we're gonna need people that have our back i mean that's what was going on in nehemiah chapter four you're not in a small group i exhort you to get in a small group and make sure you have that team where people aren't just sitting here observing sermons with their chairs side by side but you're in relationships where chairs are face to face and you're sharing your struggles and you're keeping each other accountable and you're praying for each other and while one person's working to put another brick in the wall the other person is there defending and protecting and saying i got your back we've got to have more of that because if we don't have self-control we got nothing you're not going to see love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness none of that's going to work without self-control because the whole context of galatians 5 is the battle between the spirit and the flesh and thankfully it's not just your spirit god's spirit is going to empower you but i just call you to prayer to beg the lord for the kind of strength he promises to give for those who linger in prayer and take this battle seriously may god give us more self-control in our christian life this week let's pray god we need this we need it now it seems more than ever in a world that's filled with temptations for us to walk off the path god give us the kind of resolute commitment to work out our salvation with fear and trembling to excel in our mastery over our impulses and desires to be able to say with the apostle paul that our body knows who's in charge our human impulses know who the master is and who the slave is so god give us more of a commitment to pursuing and attaining the kind of self-control that we know is all derivative all comes from your gracious hand but it certainly callouses our hands and sometimes leads them to bleed as we fight as peter said against these passions that wage war against our soul so that's not going to happen just by hearing a sermon actually the good of this sermon isn't seen until we have some time to put into practice we turn some things off so we can pray more we cancel a couple of things maybe our kids are in there we're in so that we can be in a small group we work together to confess our sins and encourage each other and build each other up i hope each other walk through this world that's fraught with not only temptations and dangers but an enemy that wants to destroy us so give us self-control god to your glory and your honor not for our pleasures not so we can spend any of the answers to our prayers on our own reputation our own good so that we can please you we can serve an audience of one hearing from you one day i trust well done good and faithful servant make that true of us god i pray as we take this seriously in jesus name [Music] amen

Channel: Compass Bible Church

Views: 2,422

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Keywords: compass bible church, compass church, compass aliso viejo, aliso viejo church, compass bible church aliso, expository preaching, expository preaching church, biblical christianity, evangelical christianity, compass church hill country, compass church Tustin, compass church Huntington Beach, compass church treasure valley, Mike Fabarez, Mike Fabarez sermon, Pastor Mike Fabarez

Id: KMy_FXmU-rs

Length: 55min 20sec (3320 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020