Battling Sin on the Journey

Finding the Smell

You know when you have a really bad order in your house and your not sure where it is coming from.

You search around the whole house trying to narrow down the smell.

But the more you look, or the more you fail to find it, the more comfortable you come to the smell.

You begin to acclimate to the smell to the point it becomes harder to distinguish it.

When you first smell the smell you are impassioned to get rid of it ASAP, but the longer you live with it, the more accepting you become of it.

That is how we often deal with sin.

Ezra uncovers sin in Jerusalem after arriving there. And we learn how we are to battle sin in our lives by how Ezra begins to battle it in the lives of the Jews.

I want to share 5 priorities for battling sin. These aren’t steps because they happen continuously in our lives as we encounter sin.

1) KNOW our Sin

Ezra 9:1–2 ESV

1 After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. 2 For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost.”

After Ezra arrives in Jerusalem he is informed by the officials that the people have not separated themselves from the people of the land.

To understand this we have to go back in time a bit and understand what God has told the Israelites to do when they came to the promise land many years earlier.

He was bringing them into a land that was inhabited by other people groups who had their own culture and their own religious beliefs and gods.

The very first commandment God give the people is “Have no other gods before me,” meaning that God was to be the only god they worshipped.

God knew that if the people intermarried with the people of the land that they would also embrace the gods of the people alongside Him.

Spoiler alert: they didn’t listen, they intermarried, they began to worship the gods of the people, and God judged them by sending them into exile in Babylon.

So Ezra, hearing this as he is now back in Jerusalem, knows it is a big deal.

The issue has never been about race or ethnicity, it is always about idolatry and about being a people set apart by God.

We may ask “Why do the people keep doing the same thing that God has told them not to do and that always ends up screwing things up.”

Let me ask you a question: why is it we keep making the same decisions, living the same sort of ways, looking to the same temporary pleasures, or going for one thing to another to find happiness and still end up frustrated, broken, or dissatisfied?

Because sin is enticing, deceptive, and destructive.

We are lured into sin because it promises us instant gratification, pleasure, and the fulfillment of our desires, but it never delivers.

We are deceived into thinking that what we are pursing is good and right, but it is just a delusion.

To overcome the delusion we must KNOW OUR SIN.

We have to know what our sin is.

We have to know what SIN IS.

Sin is when we are not being who we were created to be or living how we were created to live.

We were created to be GOD’s people and to live to bring GLORY to God.

Tim Chester defines God’s Glory: “The glory of God is the sum of all that he is: his love, goodness, beauty, purity, judgement, splendor, power, wisdom, and majesty.”

We bring glory to God when we live, think, or speak in a way that points to His love, goodness, beauty, purity...

We sin we we live, think, or speak in a way that is against or rebellious to Him and His glory.

We seek to glorify something or someone else over Him.It is more than just not doing or saying bad things.

Sin is not being who we were created to be or living how we were created to live.

You can see how the Israelites had sinned, can you see how your lust, anger, greed, selfishness, and other such attitudes and actions are sin?

Sin is deceptive as we embrace delusions for realities and lies for the truth.

That is why God speaks of salvation as light shining into darkness.

Long before I came to Christ I began feeling like my lifestyle choices were broken or flawed, but I didn’t know why.

When I began to hear, read, and study the Word and the Spirit shined light on my sin, then I was able to understand that I was a sinner in need of God’s grace.

Do you KNOW YOUR SIN?

2) DESPISE our Sin

There are certain things we see, smell or taste that are absolutely revolting to us.

We cannot be in the same room or bear to keep those things in our mouths for too long.

This is how we should be with sin

Ezra 9:3–4 ESV

3 As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. 4 Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice.

We cannot become friends with sin.

We have heard the saying “hate the sin, love the sinner.”

It is so true, but we have the dangerous tendency to become friends with sin, often in effort to be loved by the sinner.

In order to fit in, not be weird, to get ahead, or be accepted we embrace and befriend certain lifestyles, attitudes, or activities that are clearly not who God has created us to be or how He has created us to live.

Ezra tore his clothes, ripped out his hair and beard because he was “appalled” by sin.

Those to “trembled at the words of God” gathered around as they all sat “appalled” because of the sin.

The word “appalled” is understood to mean shocked and disgusted.

It is not about being disgusted and rejecting a person, it is about being disgusted and shocked by the perversion of God’s goodness and righteousness.

If I eat something that is gross I am going to tell others, not just offer it over to them (unless I am playing a trick).

We cannot befriend sin.

We also cannot become callous to sin.

When you do something over and over again with your hands (play a guitar, work with tools…) you develop callouses that allow you to do the work without feeling the pain of continued use.

That is a good thing with playing guitar, but not with sin.

When we allow sin to continue in our lives, we become callous to it.

We push off the conviction, we hide and cover it up so much that we become callous to the Word and the Spirit’s conviction of our sin.

I think of Ezekiel 36 when God speaks to the prophet and says he is going to remove their hearts of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

Flesh receives the word where stone doesn’t,

What kind of heart do you have?

Finally, we cannot become a slave to sin.

Romans 6:16–18 CSB

16 Don’t you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey—either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But thank God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over, 18 and having been set free from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.

When we ourselves to sin we become slaves to sin.

We see it in addiction, habits, and lifestyle choices that become dominate in our lives.

DO you despise your sin.

3) CONFESS our Sin

Ezra 9:5–7 ESV

5 And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God, 6 saying: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. 7 From the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today.

Ezra’s response to his disgust of sin is confession.

He is confessing on behalf of the people, but he shows them, and now us, what a proper response to sin it.

Not hiding our sin.

Not excusing our sin.

Not measuring our sin in relation to others

Not minimizing or downplaying our sin.

1 John 1:9 ESV

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Psalm 32:3 ESV

3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

We must confess our sin in order that the light of Christ might shine in our darkness.

Mark Dever says “If you are truly trusting in Christ, you can’t confess a sin for which God has not provided forgiveness in Jesus. Indeed, if you work at the discipline of confessing your sin, it should not lead to despair at all, but rather to rejoicing over the extent of God’s love to you in Christ.”

Our confession of sin is our opportunity to praise God for His amazing grace yet again.

Have you confessed your sin?

4) REPENT of our Sin

Ezra 10:1–5 ESV

1 While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly. 2 And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: “We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. 3 Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the Law. 4 Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it.” 5 Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel take an oath that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath.

The nature of repentance is not just make a pact with God “I will never do that again God!”

Repentance is changing our minds, changing our attitudes, and changing our activities.

It is choosing the better way rather than continuing down the way of destruction.

Romans 13:12–14 CSB

12 The night is nearly over, and the day is near; so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk with decency, as in the daytime: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

Walking in repentance is a daily, moment by moment thing that we, through the power of the Spirit, do continually.

Are you walking in repentance?

5) RECEIVE Sin’s Ultimate CURE

Ezra ends kind of abruptly.

Ezra 10:44 ESV

44 All these had married foreign women, and some of the women had even borne children.

It is not a “happily ever after” story. It is an incomplete story.

Their repentance didn’t last.

Their story is incomplete because there is a need for a true, ultimate cure.

There is a theme in Ezra of God’s provision for His people.

He is sustaining them, guiding them, protecting them, for some reason.

We wouldn’t find out that reason for more than 400 years.

But all that God was doing in Ezra was preparing for Jesus.

He needed the people back in Jerusalem so that the Savior, who would be born in Bethlehem, could come to the Temple and turn over the tables.

He needed the hill in Golgotha to be ready to receive the cross where all the sins of mankind would be laid upon His Son.

He needed the cave in the hills where Jesus’s body would be laid to be carved by the Jews so that He could use it to overthrow mankind’s greatest enemy and offer true and ultimate salvation from sin.

I could offer you all kinds of strategies to overcome destructive habits in your life. Ways to live a better life that would sound really nice and neat, but it would leave you still broken and still lost.

Sin’s only cure is Jesus

His life, death, and resurrection is our only HOPE.

That is why we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together, so that we might be reminded of just how incredible and powerful the blood of Jesus is to conquer sin in our lives.

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 ESV

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

This is our opportunity to be reminded again of the freedom and salvation we have in Christ.

Let us eat and drink together.