The Battle Within
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Good Morning, please turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Peter 2.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.
(Let’s Pray)
The day the Lord saved you, you were introduced into a war. you probably didn’t understand that fully, in fact I will say that you did not understand that at that moment.
Someone may have taken time to explain to you that now you had accepted Christ there was going to be a new battle that you were going to face, and a new struggle that you were going to become aware of. You may have bene told that and so you may have had some intellectual knowledge about that.
I have tried in my preaching to make this truth as clear as possible but until you find yourself in the battle it doesnt seem to make sense.
The earliest moment of being saved you were not thinking about the battle that would ensue.
But it wouldn’t be long until you began to feel this struggle, from inside out.
The salvation war I am talking about is the battle within. The battle with indwelling sin.
Even as I am speaking you know the battle i am speaking about dont you,the battle of internal indwelling sin?
Now we experience this battle at different levels at different times and seasons throughout our lives until we go to be with Christ.
There are times when it almost seems like living the Christian life is easy; its like the wind is at your back its like the sail is up and your headed the right direction.
Seasons of your life when the commandments of God seem extremely sweet to your soul and seem very clear to understand and obey.
What God is commanding is where your already heading it seems, its just easy at times it seems. Then there are times when it feels like you are scratching and clawing for every square inch as you battle your way down the path of sanctification trying to follow the Lord.
You are aware of your struggles in your desires, you are aware of your struggle with sin and your battling to overcome those struggles.
Sometimes it even seems like you are losing ground.
You find yourself losing battles to sin that grieve your heart, its a strange expeirience isnt it?
When something grieves you that you choose...
But we know about this, those things that grieve us and grieve God and we wish we would just stop and we regret. The only person who does not know this struggle is the person who is not saved.
EVERY CHRISTIAN KNOWS THIS STRUGGLE
THE BATTLE WITHIN
there are 4 things I wanna point out from 11-12
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Believers know a real war within
Believers know a real war within
The first thing we have to do is just acknowledge that we do experience a warring power in our souls.
“The gospel means we dont have to lie about these struggles, we dont have to pretend that we dont have struggles.”
There is a fight happening within us and around us that wars against us is’nt there?
1 Peter 2:11 says its a war that involves passions
desires, lusts, and these passions and desires rise up from the flesh.
Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and temporary residents to abstain from fleshly desires that war against you.
When the Bible talks about the flesh what is it talking about?
some scholars call it indwelling sin, sometimes it is called parts of our heart that have not been surrendered to the Lord, a sin principle.
But i think the easiest way to think about it is this way:
It is whatever is left over in you despite salvation, its bits and pieaces of old you that try to rise back up to the surface after you have been redeemed
The Lord has changed you, you are a new creature in Christ Jesus you are a new man but your body has not yet been glorified, your soul has not yet been glorified still left within yuou the remnants of who you were prior to being saved bubble up from time to time.
You cannot make the flesh always obey, the only way to do that is to become closer and closer to Christ and as you learn submission to Him as Lord He will grant power to submit in larger arenas.
These desires of the flesh are living against the desires of the redeemed new soul.
So they war against your soul in that they are not good for you, and they war against your soul because they are against the desires brougth about by the SPirit of God.
The desires that belong to you as a new creation, when you were saved you felt freedom and power and might that came from being accepted by God and loved by God but then all of a sudden the struggle began.
It might have even become so difficult, that you wondered if God was even there, you might have wondered if God had abandoned you.
These desires of the flesh you reside in, now is fighting against the desires of the Spirit of God within you.
This means conflicti within yourself.
There are two types of grief we know as Christians if you think about it.
There is grief over sin around us.
When you see the evil in our world our hearts can become heavy and weary of the wickedness we see in our world.
But no matter where we go we see the desries of the flesh constantly coming at the Christian.
Lot from the OT new about this
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard);
now Lot was the one who chose Sodom and Ghamorrah but you would have never known this about him if it were not for the Holy Spirit revealing it to you in the NT.
That as he lived his life in that lawless place his soul was tormented by what he saw and what he heard.
then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment,
Now if this were the only verse we had we would think that the only battle we have against sin is the sin that is around us but this is not the only verse we have about the believers battle.
James 4 there is a battle going on within us as well.
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?
The reason why we should abstain from the passions of the flesh is bc passions are not just being put on display around us but we know sinful passions within us.
All of this is bc YOU ARE CHANGED YOU ARE DIFFERENT YOU ARE COHEIRS WITH THE KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS, YOU ARE A CHILD OF THE KING!
Since your kingdom is not of this world you need to understand that this battle we fight is fought with weapons not of this world.
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
I want you to notice something this is settled reality, if you are a Christian you have been raised with Christ, from God point of you you have died and your life has been hidden in Christ with God
All these commands are flowing from this reality based on what God has done, now you and I are being called to do something.
You and I are being called to do something.
When the Messiah, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
Therefore, put to death what belongs to your worldly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry.
Notice this is what is Earthly in you. These are the desires you must put to death. These are the battles you must fight and win in.
Put to death that which is evil in you, lust covetoeousness which is idolatry
Because of these, God’s wrath comes on the disobedient, and you once walked in these things when you were living in them. But now you must also put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.
A new self has been brought into being you are a new man, a new woman and God is the one who has made you and you in responding to the gospel, is believing the gospel, and trusting in grace you made a decision about your old self.
You chose to turn away from your old life and embrace a new life in Jesus Christ, and you put off the old self and put on the new self at the moment of salvation.
But even still that these things are written that we are to put to death that which is Earthly in us tells us that even though I am not the old self, I am new in Christ I have to make ongoing daily choices in keeping with that reality.
The reason I have to make those choices is by there is still this sin in me, there is still in dwelling sin in me I have not yet been glorified.
I am a new man living in an old unredeemed body.
In this body its not that this body is evil, but in this body is this in dwelling sin.
Human life has been affected by sin and we still feel the effect. So I have to crucify the flesh on a choice by choice basis.
Knowing I am no longer in the flesh but I am now in the spirit. “In in fact the Spirit of Christ dwells within me, I am no longer a slave to sin, I am no longer a slave to fear.
I am now free, I can say no to in dwelling sin.
Let me show you another passage
Romans 8, There’s a big difference between you having the flesh in you and you being in the flesh.
Before you were saved you were in the f;ESV you lived in these things but now you have been saved from that condition, and now you are not in the f;ESV but in the spirit but the flesh is still in you.
The battle is raging
For those who live according to the flesh think about the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, about the things of the Spirit.
What is he talking about here is he talking about obedient believers and non obedient believers?
No he is talking about lost people and saved people.
People who live in a habitual pattern of fleshly living are lost but people who have a battle with occasional fleshly living are saved.
For the mind-set of the flesh is death, but the mind-set of the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind-set of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit itself to God’s law, for it is unable to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God lives in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Were still experiencing the reality of death in these bodies we still battle against sin, but we also know life by God has made us alive in these bodies through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are new dealing with the leftovers of who we were before we met Jesus
And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through His Spirit who lives in you.
If Gods Holy Spirit lives in you you are still going to have this battle with sin but you are going to see the life of God made evident in these mortal bodies by you are going to be overcoming sin.
Your not a slave of sin, you are a slave of Jesus Christ. You can choose to obey Jesus Christ by of the power of Christs work in you and the enablement of the Holy Spirit which now lives in you.
So then, brothers, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
This is how you do it this is how you overcome sin, by submission to the word of god submission to the Spirit of God living in you
All those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons.
So the fact is I have to go making these choices, day in and day out to put off the old self, and put on the new self, to embrace a new life but the fact that I am being called here by gods word to keep making these choices says that even though there is salvation and this new life within me there are leftovers in my body that I will revert back to if I am not careful.
Did you know muscle has memory?
(Explain)
Just like that muscle which will go back and do what I hasn’t done in a long time like there was nothing to it, there is fleshly memory.
You learn to run to things unpleasant to God and all through out your life you run to these things and now you are new and things are going great until your tired and stressed or don’t agree with someone and then bam you act a fool just as though you never stopped.
The flesh is still in me, and now everyday I have the power to choose day in and day out and I am going to live for me? Or am I going to live my life for Jesus Christ?
But there is this battle with our passions in us
Every Christian has this war.
2. PASTORS WARN ABOUT THE WAR WITHIN
Every Christian know the war within but what do faithful pastors do?
What is Peter doing?
He warns them, He urges them
Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and temporary residents to abstain from fleshly desires that war against you.
Abstain: stay away from, to say no to
The passion of the flesh which wage war against their soul
This is personal this is pastoral, “I urge you” Peter Himself urges them to stay away from the passions of the flesh
This is a loving warning
Notice how he states this, BELOVED they are loved by God and they are loved by him, and what is he concerned about?
THEIR SOUL
This is a war having to do with their soul
This is the concern of every true shepherd not only is he engaged in a self watch, a family watch, but he is engaged in watching over the souls of others That’s what we are called to do.
I’m Called to watch over the souls of those in my charge to the best of my ability and encourage you not to give into to those passion within you by they wage war on your soul.
Nothing is anymore painful to a pastor than to watch someone wounding themselves. Through disobedience to the word of god, nothing more frustrating than to watch people disregard warnings about sin and endulge in sin.
Or to flirt with sin, playing around the edges of disaster
(Pool)
STAY AWAY FROM SIN!
This is not just what pastors are supposed to do, but we are to equip the saints for the work of ministry, this is something we are all to be doing with each other.
Are you faithful pilgrims?
Peter is reminding them of who they are they are strangers this world is not their home and it is not your home.
Are you being faithful traveling partner as you travel this road with your brother/ sister
Are you urging each other to abstain from these passions that will ruin you?
Believers know of a real battle within
Pastors warn of the war within
3. THIS BATTLE IS WON BY FAITH CHOICES
How do we do that?
BY FAITH
This is a faith war
Believing the word of our God
Notice the clear faith elements
FAITH CONCERNING YOUR FUTURE/ IDENTITY
HE IS SAYING LISTEN YOU GOTTA GET IT IN YOUR MIND THAT THIS WORD IS NOT YOUR HOME THIS IS NOT ALL THERE IS
YOU ARE A SOJOURNER
You don’t really belong here and this ain’t your permanent address you are on loan from heaven you are a missionary.
Do you see yourself;f that way?
This si not your city this is not your land
When we sin we are forgetting who we are and where we are headed
What kind of passion?
EARTHLY
They key to fighting sin is looking ahead you have to know the truth about salvation and keep you eyes fixed on Christ
Sin may be nice for a season. Btu it will always ruin you, why would you trade a forever joy for a temporary pleasure.
This is how you must understand this battle God has told you about this battle you cant figh this war with a plastic sword (pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, or will power, mysticism)
You fight this battle as you preach the gospel to yourself.
I have this battle by the Lord saved me, if he had not saved me I wouldn’t have itI have this battle by I ain’t where I need to be yet.. there’s coming a day when I wont have this battle anymore When the Lord glorifies meI have this battle with every other Christian I am not alone
church we have got to be transparent enough to help each other with our struggles (groups)
If you want to pretend you don’t have them then you are saying you are not willing to let the church be the church in your life
If others have to pretend they don’t have a struggle and you have no desire to invest in them and give them a place to work through their struggles then you will never be the church to other people
He doesn’t say the passion of the devil, He says the passions of the flesh.
If you try to blame the devil for all of your sinning you will deceive yourself.
The biggest enemy I have in my walk with Jesus is me
You have to know how to address it bc your not a slave anymore
4. THIS BATTLE IS FOUGHT IN A REAL WORLD.
Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that in a case where they speak against you as those who do what is evil, they will, by observing your good works, glorify God on the day of visitation.
This is not something happening out there it is happening everyday by our choices we are either becoming more like Christ or we are becoming more like the world we are either pushing someone away from Christ or we are leading them toward Christ.
Notice he says when they speak against you as evil, they will it doesn’t matter how much you love them or how well you try to serve them the world will speak evil of those who follow the Lord.
But here he says tey will see you not living by the flesh but instead living by the spirit, they will be able to see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation
How can a Gentile a lost person glorify God on the day he returns?
Because by watching the church he or she came to know the Lord and became a believer… explain.
So he says your actions matter and you display your ability to walk by the spirit by behaving toward others in a way that will lead them towards Jesus.
But He also says our heart of submission is how we display our ability to walk by the Spirit of the living God.
Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the Emperor as the supreme authority
or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good.
For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good.
How do we submit as slaves to the government?
As God’s slaves, live as free people, but don’t use your freedom as a way to conceal evil.
(freedom/responsibility)
Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the Emperor.
Do you understand this?
That by honoring those who God has placed in authority over you you actually honor him? Because in so doing you show that you dont fear the government but God Himself as He has commanded us.
But not just government authority but Spiritual authority Honor the office of pastor, youth pastor, associate pastor, deacon, minister.
in so doing you honor God who placed him there.
LOVE THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Honor everyone