| | The following message was delivered at Grace Community Church in Panorama
City, California, by John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape,
GC 80-106, titled "Dealing with Habitual Sins." A copy of the tape can be
obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412
or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.
I have made every effort to ensure that an accurate transcription of the
original tape was made. Please note that at times sentence structure may
appear to vary from accepted English conventions. This is due primarily to
the techniques involved in preaching and the obvious choices I had to make
in placing the correct punctuation in the article.
It is my intent and prayer that the Holy Spirit will use this transcription
to strengthen and encourage the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Tony Capoccia
Dealing with Habitual Sins
by
John MacArthur
Take your Bible and turn back to the text which I read earlier in Hebrews,
chapter 12. As you know, this is a great and monumental Scripture; there
is much here to be considered. In the brief time that we have as we
anticipate sharing in the Lord's Table, I want to focus only on one phrase,
just one phrase of great import--and that phrase is found in verse one. It
says, "The sin which so easily entangles us."
I want to see if we can't this morning talk about dealing with entangling
sin. It is the nature of man, even the nature of a believer, to be easily
entangled in sin. It happens so easily, and frankly there are certain sins
which more easily entangle each of us than other ones. Each of us, in our
own lives, have certain propensities for specific kinds of sins. It can be
because we have in the past life cultivated habits of sin which now plague
us even after our salvation. It could be because in our spiritual weakness
even after becoming Christians we continued to develop habits of certain
types of sin; certain specific sins that now we find more easily than
others do entangle us.
It is true of every Christian that we have certain sins that easily capture
us, but it is also true in general that sin easily entangles us. Not all
sins are what we could call our personal entangling sins or our personal
besetting sins: our personal habitual sins; the sins which we commit and
then confess, and then commit again, and then confess, and then commit
again, and then confess, and go on that way in our lives. Some sins fall
under this category, but in general all sin seems to have sway with us.
And maybe it will help you to understand why that is true if I just give
you three very simple points about sin.
1. Sin has great power over our flesh.
The reason it so easily entangles us is because of its power, its strength,
its force. It exerts strong influence on our will, it exerts strong
influence on our emotions, it exerts strong influence on our affections.
It rarely suggests things to us, it almost always commands them. It rarely
leads, it most always pushes from the rear--drives, forces. Galatians 5:17
says, "The flesh sets its desire against the Spirit. They are in
opposition to one another so that you may not do the things you please."
The beach head that sin has with its power is our flesh, and sin exerts
tremendous power, tremendous strength against our flesh. It is a very
powerful force and it finds in our flesh a very willing ally, a very
receptive environment.
2. Sin easily entangles us because it is so close.
More than just forcing its way from the outside powerfully on our flesh, it
forces its way on our flesh, as it were, from within us--from within the
very flesh. It is very close; in fact, it is in our being. You can become
a monk and sit in a cave and you will still deal with sin. Jeremiah 13:23
says, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then
you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil." The point being:
you can no more change the internal sinfulness that is a part of your life
than the leopard can change his spots or the Ethiopian can change the color
of his skin. It is a part of what you are. Sin is very powerful and finds
a willing ally in your flesh because your flesh is fallen and your flesh
itself has propensities towards sin. Sin is very close.
Your heart, says Jeremiah 17:9, "is deceitful." It "is more deceitful than
everything else and is desperately sick."
There is a third component that makes sin easily entangled into our lives
and that is that:
3. Sin does not remain separate but it mingles in all our motives and all
our actions.
Sin is powerful. Sin is near, in that it is in us. And it isn't
categorically separated. You can't draw a line and say "Well, this is
where my righteousness ends and this is where my sinfulness begins." It has
a way of weaving itself into the fabric of all our duties, and all our
motives, and all our thoughts, and all our actions. It entangles itself
with our purposes, and our plans; in fact, even your best deed. Even your
best deed is not unmixed with sin. It is tangled up in our lives. In
Romans 7, Paul cries out, "Oh, wretched man that I am!" Why? Because no
matter how I try, I cannot disentangle myself from sin.
So sin is powerful, and sin is near--even within us, and sin does not
separate itself but is mingled into everything. It is interwoven with
everything in our lives. The best that we do is somehow corrupted in some
way--large or small by a taint of self-will, or self-pleasure, or self-
aggrandizement, or self-righteousness, or self-gain, or whatever. And so
we become easily entangled, and as I said, there are certain sins that more
easily entangle us, each of us, than others do. But if we are going to be
the kind of Christians God would want us to be this verse says, "Let us lay
aside the sin which so easily entangles us." Put it aside; put it away.
Now the question comes, "How do we do that?" It is not the first time we
have been commanded to do that:
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2 Corinthians 7:1 says, "Let us cleanse ourselves of all filthiness of
the flesh."
Ephesians 4:22 says, "Laying aside the old self, which is being
corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit."
Romans 6:12 says, "Don't let sin reign in your mortal body that you
should obey its lusts."
1 Peter 2:1 says, "Lay aside all evil." Verse 11, "Abstain from
fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul."
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So we are very often told to set this aside. The question comes, "How do
we do that?" From a practical standpoint we know, yes, it is the work of
the Spirit and if you walk in the Spirit you will not fulfill the lusts of
the flesh. We give all the credit for this to the divine Holy Spirit and
yet there is a responsibility that is ours as we yield to the Spirit. How
can I lay this aside? Before I answer that question let me suggest to you
that this is an appropriate moment to be discussing this.
I suppose that it would be typical for many Christians, if not most, to
come to the Lord's Table and confess their sins, in order that they might
partake of this table and not bring judgment upon themselves as Paul warned
us. So we tend to come here, perhaps, with our accumulated sin from the
last time that we had communion, or the last time we seriously confessed
our sin, but with really very little change in the pattern of sinning; and
that's because while we want to confess our sins and have the confidence
that He is faithful and just to forgive them, we don't take the steps, the
necessary steps to so live that every time we come there is a decreased
load of sin--the list is a little shorter because we're dealing with it on
a day to day basis. We are laying it aside; we are not just accumulating
it at the same rate, dumping it all, as it were, on Christ, receiving His
forgiveness in those great moments of confession, but seeing no diminishing
pattern of sin in the day to day routine of our life.
So let us then, this day as we come to unburden ourselves of the
accumulated sin and confess it and make our hearts right with God, also
make a covenant, also make steps of commitment to start out a new pattern
of life in which we will take strides, take the necessary strides to lay
sin aside. A preventative act, not simply a remedial act of confession.
Let me give you some principles that will assist you in laying aside sin.
1. Don't underestimate the seriousness of your sin.
I think the major reason we don't deal with sin strongly and firmly is
because we underestimate its seriousness--to God, to God, to us, to those
with whom we fellowship, to the church, to the unbelievers. Our sin steals
joy; our sin ruins fellowship with God; our sin diminishes fruitfulness;
our sin robs us of peace; our sin renders our service useless; our sin
mitigates against our effectiveness in evangelism; our sin hinders our
prayers; our sin brings the discipline of God. We need to understand the
seriousness of our sin. It violates first and foremost our relationship
with the Lord.
One of the most tragic days in the history of England was August 17, 1662.
A tragic day because it was the last day for certain pastors to be able to
preach to their congregations before they were exiled. Some of them lost
their lives, some of them were exiled out of England to other countries.
What precipitated this was something called the Act of Conformity. Through
the years there had been developing in England a group of preachers and a
group of churches that were called Non-conformists because they did not
subscribe to all of the ritual and ceremony of the Church of England, nor
did they confine their worship to the Book of Common Prayer. They were
more concerned about Biblical Christianity; they were more concerned about
teaching proper doctrine; they were more concerned about worshiping God in
Spirit and in Truth and so they were known as Non-conformists. Many of you
would know them as Puritans.
They did not conform to the strictures of the Church of England, which of
course had neglected the Word of God and the gospel for the most part, and
so a law was passed making them illegal. Twenty-five hundred of their
ministers were exiled--forbidden to preach. Three-thousand non-conformists
were killed and 60,000 families were disrupted. It all came to focus on
August 17, 1662 because that was the last Sunday when these Non-conformist
preachers could preach in their churches. For the last two weeks I have
been reading a book called "Farewell Sermons." It is a compilation of 24
of the sermons preached on that day. Sermons from a pastor who would never
see his people again: some of them died in exile; some of them later came
back. But this was the end of their ministry and this terrible, terrible
thing was being done, this terrible act of persecution and they were being
dispossessed. The churches were losing them as their pastors; there was
going to be none to replace them and they were being shipped off to exile.
It is very interesting to see their approach, to hear their sermons, to see
and hear what was really on their hearts. None of the sermons which I have
read so far were self serving. None of them condemned, really, the
government for what it did. None of them were vengeful or retaliatory.
There was a common thread in all of them. All of them sort of were along
this line: "This is the will of God. We accept the will of God. We gladly
suffer with Christ and our greatest concern is what happens to you."
One of the sermons struck me as extremely powerful, preached by a man named
Calamy. He made one statement in this sermon that struck me; he said to
his people, "You have experienced a calamity. This is a calamitous thing;
this is a calamitous event," but then he said this, "There is more evil in
the least sin than in the greatest calamity." "There is more evil in the
least sin than in the greatest calamity." Then he later said, "There is
more evil in the least sin then in the greatest misery." That is profound.
You look at your life and generally speaking you are distressed about your
calamities and you are distressed about your miseries, but you are tolerant
about your sins. You do not understand what that man understood: "There is
more evil in the least sin than the greatest calamity." A calamity, a
certain misery is not necessarily sin. Sin is sin. Treat your sin
seriously--it dishonors God; it abuses mercy; it despises grace; it
presumes on forgiveness; it defiles worship, service, and fellowship. It
stains, and taints, and poisons, and destroys everything good and holy.
Secondly, another principle that is necessarily understood if you are to
lay aside sin:
2. Strongly purpose and promise God not to sin.
Take a solemn vow and say, "God, I do not want to sin. I don't want to
break Your law, I don't want to grieve Your Spirit, I don't want to
dishonor the Name of Your Son which I bear." The Psalmist did that in Psalm
119:106, "I have sworn, and I will confirm it, that I will keep Thy
righteous ordinances." Unless you have that kind of resolution in your
life, you will find it more easy to be entangled by sin. In fact, I
believe that it is that kind of heart purpose, it is that kind of bold
affirmation that is at the root of all holy living, and until you make that
kind of conscious commitment to the Lord, you are going to battle the same
things over and over and be defeated.
There is a great verse, verse 32, in the same Psalm, Psalm 119, "I shall
run the way of Thy commandments, for Thou will enlarge my heart." It is a
very beautiful picture, "I shall run the way of Thy commandments, for Thou
will enlarge my heart." What it means is, I am going to run in the way of
obedience because I have a heart to do that. It starts in the heart. It
is like a runner--very good illustration. A great runner, a long-distance
runner, an endurance runner, a marathoner, very often has an enlarged heart
muscle because of the tremendous development of his running ability and the
strengthening of his heart to keep pumping all that is needed to that body
as it pushes itself beyond normal limits. A great runner can run the way
he runs because his heart is enlarged, and the Psalmist is saying, "I will
run in the way of Your commandments because You have enlarged my heart.
You have given me a heart for obedience." That's the kind of purpose that
is absolutely essential.
There is a great difference, you see, between sin dwelling in us, and sin
entertained by us. There is a great difference between sin remaining, and
sin harbored, or sin preserved. To lay aside sin means to purpose and
promise God to obey--a firm promise. I promise You, I will obey You!
There is a third component in this kind of commitment to lay aside sin, and
it is this:
3. Be suspicious of your own spirituality.
Paul said it this way, "Let the one who stands take heed lest he fall."
Job 31:1, Job says, "I made a covenant with my eyes; how then can I gaze on
a virgin?" He said, I have got to be careful where I look because I don't
trust myself. I got to start with what I see because I don't trust myself.
Proverbs 4:23 says, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for out of
it are the issues of life." There is a certain watchfulness; you have to
be watching for sin's subtle movements within your own supposed
spirituality. Your heart is as I noted--desperately wicked, very
deceitful, and Satan is desperately wicked and very deceitful. The
seducing motions of your own heart can sometimes rise out of the moments of
your most supposed spirituality. Be suspicious of your own
spirituality--don't trust it. Understand that except for the grace of God
you would fall into any and every sin--and you can be deceived so easily.
4. Resist the first risings of the flesh and its pleasures.
Don't try to stop the process near the end; stop it near the beginning.
James notes for us a certain process: people are tempted when they are
carried away and enticed by their own lusts, "Then when lust has conceived,
it gives birth to sin." Well, you want to stop it at the point of
conception--not try to stop it at the point of birth. You want to stop sin
at conception, not after it has been conceived and run through a certain
period of pregnancy (if you will) and now is about to give birth to the
sin. You don't try to stop it at that point. You resist and oppose the
first risings of the flesh and it's pleasures. Sin comes to you promising
pleasure. You remember at the very outset: my goal is not to please
myself, but to please the Lord.
There is a fifth principle in this and that is:
5. Meditate on the Word.
There is a wonderful verse, verse 31 of Psalm 37, you probably should write
this down. Psalm 37:31; it is a bit more obscure than some, but it really
is very, very important. Listen to what it says, "The law of his God is in
his heart; his steps do not slip." When a heart is controlled by the Word,
the steps don't slip. Another more familiar text dealing with this, and a
wonderful one at that, is Psalm 119; and you remember that that Psalm
begins in the very first part of those 176 verses with these words, down in
verse 9 of Psalm 119, "How can a young man keep his way pure?" How can you
lay aside sin? How can you win this battle? "By keeping it according to
Thy word." By guarding it with Scripture.
It is the constant input of the Word of God that begins to fill up the mind
and control the thinking, and that alone becomes the strength and resource
in us that can resist the initial impulses of the flesh. "How can a young
man keep his way pure?" By keeping his heart completely committed and
guarded by the Word of God. Then in verse 10, "With all my heart I have
sought Thee; do not let me wander from Thy commandments. Thy word I have
treasured (or hid, or kept) in my heart that I may not sin against Thee."
It is the Scripture that must be meditated on.
Meditate on the Word of God. You are always studying the Word, studying
the Word, learning the Word, learning the Word, meditating on the Word as
you get the Word--so filling you up so that it, "Dwells in you richly,"
(Colossians 3:16). You will find that it controls you. And as you start
into some kind of attitude of sin or some kind of act of sin, the Word of
God will act as a restraint. When you feel the impulse of the truth you
know, meditate on that, not on the enticings of the flesh and its
pleasures. So watch for sin's subtleties and don't trust your own
spirituality. Resist and oppose the first risings of the flesh and its
desires to please itself, and meditate on the Word--the ingrafted Word,
which is able to save your souls.
6. Be immediately repentant over your lapses.
It says in Matthew 26:75, that Peter, having obviously been aware of his
sin at the crowing of the cock, "Went out and wept bitterly." There is
something very admiral in that. We castigate, and rightly so, Peter for
his defection, but we must also honor and respect him for his
immediate--his immediate remorse. Be immediately repentant over your
lapses and go back to the place of confession. Repentance isn't only
saying, "I'm sorry Lord, forgive me." It is saying, "I'm sorry Lord,
forgive me, and I don't want to ever do that again." That's the stuff of
real repentance. If that third element isn't there then you're not fooling
God about the genuineness or lack of genuineness.
When you confess your sins and when you say, "I'm sorry I did that, please
forgive me--I don't ever want to do it again," name it--name it
specifically. Let your own heart and even your own ears hear the naming of
that sin, so that you develop in your heart a high degree of accountability
with God for having named the very sin for which He is holding you
accountable not to commit again. That's how you develop accountability;
that's how you develop the fear of God. If you hold back from naming your
sin, it's because you want to do that again; and it is bad enough to sin
without having to be responsible for telling God you didn't want to do it
and defying what you told Him. So you would rather sin only once, rather
than twice; that's why you don't want to name your sin. Then you're guilty
not only of sinning again but of being hypocritical before God.
True repentance will name the sin; specifically name the sin. Be
immediately repentant over your lapses.
7. Continually pray for divine help.
Ephesians 6:18, after all the armor is put on and the battle against Satan
and demons, after all of the warfare has been set and the battle is engaged
against Satan and all of his forces, he says, "Praying always, with all
prayer and supplication." Jesus said to His disciples, "Watch and pray for
you know not when you are going to enter into the hour of temptation."
"Devote yourself to prayer," (Colossians 4:2) "being alert in it." Don't
fight the enemy on your own. When you engage the enemy--pray, plead with
help.
But even in a preliminary sense, I really think anticipatory prayer is the
most effective. You need to start your day, "Lord, this is the way you
taught us to pray, 'Lead us not into. . . .'" What? "'temptation and
deliver us from evil.' Lord, please, today lead me away from
temptation--please, today Lord, deliver me from evil." You need to set the
course of your prayers before the tempter arrives, before the flesh begins
to rise and entice.
8. Establish relationships with other believers that hold you accountable.
"Bear you one another's burdens," says Paul in Galatians 6, "and so fulfill
the law of Christ." We are all in the same boat folks. We all struggle
the same way and we need each other. "If a man is caught in a "paraptoma"
(a fall; a sin; a trespass), you who are spiritual restore such a one in a
spirit of gentleness. Each one look into yourself, lest you to be tempted.
Bear one another's burdens." We are all in this together. It might be you
going down this time; it might be me going down next time, but between the
two of us, we are going to hold ourselves accountable for holy living. By
the way, that is in my judgment, the greatest factor in a Christian
marriage--is the intense, and intimate, and spiritual accountability with
regard to sin that exists at that level. That is a very, very important
reason for Christian marriage.
I believe that there ought to be in every single sense a high level of
spiritual accountability between a husband and a wife for every aspect of
their life in that marriage. The most intimate knowledge of my spiritual
life, apart from God Himself, is in the mind and heart of my wife. The
most intimate knowledge of her spiritual life and her struggle as a
Christian, apart from God Himself, is in my mind and heart. We know each
other better than anybody in the world knows us. Therein lies the highest
level of spiritual accountability--for me and for her. No one apart from
God Himself holds me as accountable for what I am before you and before the
Lord as she does, and vice versa, and that is what makes a Christian
marriage really Christian and really distinctive.
That's the highest level of accountability. But beyond that there are
other relationships in which you engage that can be very, very
strengthening for your own spiritual life. You want people around you who
lift you up, not people around you who pull you down. You want people
around, associated with you as friends and close coworkers, who will see
your failures just like you will see theirs, love you in the process and
lift you up and demand of you the highest standards.
How are you going to come to the place where you lay aside the sin that so
easily entangles you, and especially those besetting sins which you tend to
fall into over and over again? First of all, realize sin is powerful. It
is near, even in you and it is intertwined with everything in your being.
And in order to deal with it you must understand its seriousness; you must
promise God not to sin; you must watch carefully for your own spiritual
weaknesses; don't trust your spirituality. You must resist the first
risings of sin in the flesh; you must meditate on the Word; you must be
repentant immediately for the lapses that come; you must continue in prayer
and dependence on God's power and establish intimate relationships of
spiritual accountability.
I would say that there is no better place to start this kind of life
pattern than right here at the Lord's Table. We are here not only to
unload the burden of sin we've accumulated for which we will be forgiven,
but I hope we are here to start afresh in the new course that's going to
bring us back here next time with a lighter load and a shorter list. Maybe
the sum of it all is found here in Hebrews, chapter 12, in those wonderful
and magnificent words, verse 2, "Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and
perfecter of faith." Listen, He is one who in His striving against sin
never fell. "He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet He was
without sin." He never fell, He never succumbed; so, if you are going to
look at somebody as a model--look at Him. He was striving with sin even to
death and never fell. He's our model; He's our example.
So we are here to remember His death; we're here to ask His forgiveness,
and we're here to ask Him again, to be our example as we lay aside our sin
and fix our eyes on Him to follow the path of victory over the sin that
easily entangles us.
Let's bow together in prayer. Father, we thank you again that your Word
speaks so pointedly and powerfully and directly to our hearts. We thank
you that you have given us the resident Holy Spirit who can enable us to be
obedient when we otherwise would not have the strength. Help us this
morning to make the vows that we've learned about as we've considered
entangling sin and how to deal with it. Help us to take these steps so
that we can pursue the path of holiness and not need to be disciplined as
often, so that we cannot miss the joy and the peace that should be ours,
and the usefulness, and the worship, and fellowship, and ministry.
Now, as we come to this table we pray that as we think of the bread and the
cup, we will remember what a price that our Lord paid for our sin. And we
will take it seriously, as you do. We come to confess our sin and to renew
our covenant to lay sin aside and to walk in a holy way. We now confess
our sins, all of them, and ask you to wash us and make us clean. Forgive
us every sin--known and unknown--every sin. Help us Lord not to do them
again, but to walk in obedience. Amen.
Transcribed by Tony Capoccia of
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