Untitled Sermon (6)

The pursuit of holiness is not uncommon to Christians, especially for us here at KMBC. From the first week we’ve started attending, sanctification has been emphasized as vital to pursue in our lives in order to be holy as God has called us to be. I know I’m not the only one who didn’t know what sanctification was, nor had I heard of it before I came to KMBC, right? Finding out that there is more to our walk with Christ, and that being a follower of Christ isn’t just about accepting Christ into our hearts, and then living life as if nothing has changed is a shocker to some people. Jesus isn’t a “get out of jail free” card we use to have assurance of not going to hell. Being a follower of Christ means we’ve given permission to God to allow His Spirit to live and work within us. The change He creates within His people leads us to desire Him more, living a life that glorifies Him, and becoming less of our sinful selves and more like Christ. That change is moving out of the old life and into the new—a holy life. Holiness means to be set apart; this kind of set apart is standing out from the world by the way we act, talk, live, and love. As Peter puts it in 1 Peter 1:14-16, “So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”” Peter is referring to living the new life we are called to in holiness by stepping out of the old life. But with the old life comes the traps satan uses to decimate our pursuit of holiness, which is why Peter warns us not to slip back into our old ways. Later in the same letter, 1 Peter 5:8-9, he goes on to say, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are.”

Transition: For us that attend KMBC, we know this because it is so emphasized, and praise God for that! But at the same time, it can be so emphasized that we become bland to the cruciality of it. This is how satan makes way of throwing his traps from the old life into our walk in the new life. What we must examine here is we must watch out for the traps of the old life as we walk in the new. But what are these traps from the old life? There are many that we could look over, but today, I want to bring light to 2 traps from the old life we must watch out for. My hope for this message is that God can rekindle the aspiration we need for Him in our pursuit of the holy lives He has called us to by being aware of the traps set before us.. The first trap we’ll examine is…

The Trap of Control

The thing about the old life is everyone lives it. A life without relationship with Jesus, a life driven by a sinful nature that takes part in the ways of the world. That’s why to be holy is to be set apart, because being holy is being separated from the world. When Peter talks about not slipping back into your old ways to satisfy your own desires, he’s talking about this life that was driven by our desires to please ourselves and seeking after our own wants. The point he makes is that in the old life, we didn’t know any better. Without a relationship with Jesus, we don’t understand the freedom that comes to living a life with His Spirit fulfilling us. We even could be pursuing religion and its regulations in order to “work” our way to salvation, and that is where Peter says we didn’t know any better. In the old life, we have many factors that pull and tug at us even when it comes pursuing Jesus; things we need to surrender often because of the constant desire to slip back into our old ways as Peter talks about. One of these would be our desire for control. In our old lives, we would constantly be seeking after ways to be in control. Being in control is a means for us to feel secure in our lives. Now, control isn’t all bad. Scripture calls for us to exercise self-control, especially in our tongues with how we speak, for out of the mouth comes the motives of the heart. Jesus says in Matthew 15:18, “But the words you speak come from the heart–that’s what defiles you.” when He was referring to inner purity. Self-control is necessary for a holy life, because with self-control comes discipline that combats the temptations of the old life. But the control we’re referring to is to take our lives into our hands. We prefer for everything to go our way, and that we can control the change of outcomes in our lives, but God calls for us to give Him control. When we try to maintain control over our lives, we don’t entrust the things that matter to us in God’s hands, that He has the best plans, as Proverbs 16:1 puts it, “We can make our own plans, but the Lord gives the right answer.” And in verse 3, “Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.” In our old lives, we lived for ourselves. But stepping into the new life means we have to give control over to God, committing our actions and plans to Him, and submitting to His will. That’s part of our surrender that draws us closer to holiness, by no longer living for ourselves, but rather for Christ. In 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, Paul says, “Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.” The old life was fixated on us maintaining control and living for ourselves, but living in Christ as we do when we step into the new life means surrendering control over to Him, being obedient children, and living for Christ!

Transition: As we have been made aware of the desire we have for control, and how this trap can be destructive in our walk with Christ because of the lack of trust we have in Christ and the struggle to submit to His will and plans, we come across our second trap we must watch out for, which is…

The Trap of Pride

Pride is a trap that can easily drive us to elements of the old life in our pursuit of holiness. In the old life, pridefulness would be built up on a view that we are better than others, that we have achieved goals and rewards that allow us to stand out from others. A fall sense of entitlement that we become more valuable than others and thus we created a mindset that we should be treated better and act better. But 1 John 2:16 says, “For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.” The pride we held in our old lives derived from our own achievements, but when we step into the new life we found through Christ, we realize that all the blessings and achievements in our lives wouldn’t be possible without Christ. In the new life, we are to exercise humility, as Jesus did. Jesus would be the only man to ever walk this worth and be justified in pridefulness if He were to be, yet He not only humbled Himself from His deity and divinity on His throne in the heavens, but He humbled Himself to the position of a servant to wash His disciple’s feet. Humility is recognizing that We are not responsible for the blessings and greatness in our life, but rather we get to enjoy what God has given us, and not to keep the blessings to ourselves, but to pay it forward. In our pursuit for holiness, pride can easily become a factor from our old life that will try to hang onto us. Holiness calls for a constantly growing, deeper relationship with Christ, and in the process of becoming less like ourselves and more like Christ, the temptation to let our “holiness” and “spirituality” get to our heads becomes evident. We could fall into the temptation of comparing ourselves to others who may not be where we are spiritually, or that God has given us better roles than others when we ourselves were once in those places, and the roles we have are not of more value than others. God is working on all of our lives at a pace He knows will challenge and grow the individual how they need to grow, and that will not look like the same walk as ours, nor the same pace. We need to be careful as brothers and sisters in Christ to exercise humility and recognize that our walk requires intentionality from us, but ultimately our strength in our walk comes from God’s Spirit pouring into us in order that we do grow to become holy as Christ calls us to be. In our walks as believers, we need to encourage and lift others up in their walks with Christ, and that wherever God has them is the best place to be, even if it doesn’t seem significant compared to others. Paul affirms this in Romans 12:3: “Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.” The faith we have, and the place we are, has all been given by God, so therefore, we don’t have much to boast about apart from God’s goodness and faithfulness to His people. In your pursuit of holiness, be careful to watch for pridefulness, so that it doesn’t catch you in a trap as you walk the new life in Christ; as Paul says in Philippians 2:3-8, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.”

Conclusion: So we’ve examined the trap of control, and the trap of pride. Both of these have found their way into sneaking back into many Christian’s lives as they pursue holiness in Christ. They become major hurdles if not made known to the believer and not surrendered to God. The thing about these traps is they branch and correlate with many other traps in one’s life. If not handled properly, the desire for control stems into the lack of trust in God, which dwindles one’s faith; it also stems to doubt, which does the same through not believing God will keep His promises or remain faithful to us. Control needs to be handed to God because the longer we try to maintain control, the more we push God away because we believe our life in our hands is better. God calls for us to trust Him with our lives because He has seen our path in life. In Psalm 37:23-24, it says, “The Lord directs the steps of the godly; He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand.” God has directed our paths for us, and He delights in our lives, so we can trust that His will is best because He has already marked everything out, and thus we can be assured that giving Him control is more in our favor than taking matters into our own hands, and in return, our faith is strengthened. The trap of Pride can stem into envyness when we believe that the matter of roles God gives us is often better than some, and less than others. If we aren’t satisfied with where God has us, we will see Him working in others' lives and become envious of the blessings He has given them, and the position God has entrusted to them. This envyness can cause us to not act Christ-like in the place God has us, which will turn others away from Jesus as a whole, and can even stem into hatred for others when we don’t have what they have. In my walk with Christ, I have stumbled into both of these traps in my pursuit for holiness. When it came to control, I have had desires that weren’t sinful, but actually stemmed from godly desires, the desire for a relationship being one. But in these circumstances, I had found myself growing anxiety because I became doubtful that this was not the person God had for me. I had to learn in those places that the more I’d pursue these potential relationships without God’s will, I would find myself in a worse place than I was originally. I learned to trust the situations over to God and accept that whether that was the person for me or not would ultimately be up to God. And I can say that my anxiety did prove right, but in the end I found peace because I at some point would see what God was protecting me from in that potential relationship. I wouldn’t be able to pursue holiness as God called me to because I would put that relationship before Him. In another circumstance, I’ve realized that pride would often sneak its way into my mind and convince me that my knowledge of Scripture and my relationship with God had made me compare myself to others' faith. This would create in me a closed mind because I’d assume myself to be spiritually better than they were. I’ve had to learn time and time again that humility is vital in these places because I would miss out on a lesson God could teach me through others that He had been working for all because I thought myself to be more righteous, which sounds an awful lot like the Pharisees in the Gospels. To conclude, I want to encourage you to walk with me in the pursuit of holiness with an awareness of these traps satan sets out before us. We need to acknowledge that pridefulness and the desire to control our own lives don’t go away permanently, but rather show when we may not expect it. It’s vital that as we seek holiness, we continuously humble ourselves before God and consider ourselves lower than others, and that we entrust our lives and circumstances into God’s hands. In these ways, God will empower us to become set apart as His people and carve us more into the likeness of Christ.