How to Overcome Sin

There are many lessons from the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread that are still alive in our minds. It's a week that is not only full of hearing, but also a certain amount of doing, of actually getting on our knees and washing someone's feet, to prepare us for the humble example that our Lord and Savior set for us in giving His life, just as we are to really sacrifice and put ourselves second to God and our fellow man.

That release from the bondage to slavery that we receive through His sacrifice and through the receiving of this covenant and the forgiveness and the Holy Spirit sets us free to begin to journey. Journey in the direction of what He is, He and our Father, of becoming like them, of striving to put away our old man and put in the new.

That enables us to head for the destination of a Promised Land that God wants to give us, that we are to reach out and embrace and strive for and work towards. We are given this example of Jesus Christ as the first of the first fruits and high expectations of you and me following as the first fruits, to join Him as the bride in the resurrection. There are two harvest festivals that are coming up. We read of them in Exodus. We can see in Exodus 23 and verse 16, for example. Exodus 23 and verse 16, where a name of one of the festivals coming up is given.

Exodus 23 verse 16 says, And the feast of harvest. See, it's one thing to have the first fruits, and that is our example. And then the Feast of Weeks, seven weeks, or seven times seven, follows that. And it's called the Feast of Harvest. The first fruits of your labors. We are to be laboring. We are to be striving, going down the difficult road towards the narrow door of the kingdom, which you have sown in the field.

Our fruit is to come up. God wants us to have a lot of fruit and for that fruit to remain. So here is something that is ahead. Now, going on, it talks also, and the Feast of In-Gathering at the end of the year, another great harvest. The first fruits will assist Jesus Christ and ultimately help bring in a greater harvest of the family of God, as far as numbers are concerned. So these flow one end to the other, and we become helpers in bringing in the main family of God in the future. We are now into the weeks, into the seven weeks, seven times seven, the forty-nine days ending on the fiftieth, which we often call Pentecost.

Now, what we do in our lives, essentially, between our calling and our conversion, our baptism, and the end of our seven weeks, determines what happens at that harvest with you and me. It determines when the great shepherd, the farmer comes and he receives the precious fruit of the earth, you know what Jesus said. He's going to have the winnowing fan in his hand, the chaff is going to be blown away and burned, and you keep the wheat, you keep the barley.

Now, it's up to you and me what we do during this time, and our lives are all about this interval period between the Passover and seeing the days of Unleavened Bread and actually preparing fruit for the harvest. God is judging you, he's judging me, to see whether we live or burn, and that's the simple reality. It's not to scare us, but it is to help us be respectful of the real bottom line to our existence. God is judging us. Christ, remember, gave us a commission, and that commission boils down to observe all things I have commanded you. That's what the commission is. Often we get lost in the first part.

It's kind of like a funnel, okay? Preach the gospel to everyone and then make disciples from all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things I command you. God has the fruit then, the first fruits of his kingdom right there.

That's what he's looking for. It's almost like saying, go into the mountains and grind up all the hills and put them in the water chute and down through the sifting chambers and the shakers, and eventually it'll come down into this little pot, and you'll have the gold here that we're looking for. See? Now, what's the operation about? Is it about tearing up mountains with machinery? Well, that's what we can all be busy about. Or is it about the gold at the end?

See, for God, this is the precious fruit of the earth, and we need to be busy about our Father's business, which is the development of that. Observing all things I have commanded you. You know, the word observe is interesting. In the Greek, the word observe doesn't mean keep, doesn't mean, oh, let's go observe, observe the Sabbath or observe this.

When he says there in Matthew 28, about verse 20, to observe, teaching them to observe all things I command you, the Greek word for observe is teriyo, and it means to guard from loss, to prevent from escaping, as in having lines of military arsenals lined up to preserve and keep something from escaping. So here we have this order from God to do what he tells us, and then he says, I want you to create circumstances to prevent from losing that, prevent you from losing that, from any of that obedience escaping. Almost line up military arsenals to defend and protect against that escaping, because you know what?

Satan and society wants to leech that away. Everything you and I have just learned from the Passover and the holidays, he wants that to escape. He wants it to blow by. He wants us to chill out, cool it, man, take it easy. No sweat. Don't sweat the details. Just sort of get the overview and let the rest sort of blow on by.

Jesus wants us to teach everyone to guard and entrust and make sure that these things are not lost, but they're actually done. So when it comes to sin in our lives, it's something we have to resist. Temptation, there's something we have to block. We have to pull out the armies with all the armaments and protect that which we stand for and what we're trying to do.

Otherwise, believe me, every imaginable individual or thought or concept or teaching of this society will seep in and start thinking, Well, I don't need to push so hard. I don't need to be so dogmatic. I don't need to be trying to earn my salvation or trying to obey God. I just really need to be all about something in a general way. The goal is living and being like Jesus Christ, and that's a tough goal.

You don't get to that goal just sort of kicking back and being lazy. You ever see somebody who has really accomplished it something? I mean, just amazing, say on a violin or on a piece of machinery, just incredibly skilled. And you think, wow, that is so inspiring to see. And then you compare that to yourself. Are you like that virtuoso violinist? No. That's why we pay them big money to go watch them perform. Well, Jesus Christ, in a sense, is the virtuoso. He is the perfect one. He came, He set us the example.

He wants us to be disciples, which means carbon copies of the Master. Virtuos is ourselves, as it were. And we don't get that by sitting back and saying, well, I just really don't want to pick up the bow. I'll just, you know, be awed by Him. That's not exactly at all. In Hebrews 4, verse 14, He also had the temptation to chill out, do something else, not sweat it so much. People are always trying to get Him to cool it a bit.

In Hebrews 4, verse 14, just like you and I have temptations that roll into our minds all the time and say, oh, do some things for yourself before you go loving all those other people, love yourself first, you know. Hebrews 4, 14 says this, Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, and now passing through the heavens, we have the Kingdom of Heaven, which you and I are to seek with all our heart, soul, and might as first, along with His righteousness.

All right? We're supposed to do that. We're supposed to essentially go there, too. We're supposed to show up where He does. We're supposed to sit at His right hand like He sits at the Father's right hand. We're supposed to be perfect and clean. We're supposed to be family members in the real sense.

Let us hold fast our confession, or I like to say, profession, that which we profess, for we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. He set us the perfect example. He had all the temptations. He had all the desires show up in His mind, in the circumstances in His life, and yet He rejected every one of them. So let us, therefore, come boldly to the throne of graciousness, which is what the word cherise means, of graciousness, that we may obtain mercy and find graciousness to help in time of need.

He is there with us. He's battling for us. He's our Helper. He's going to give us the strength. But we have to rise to the occasion and want to march and perform. He is the way, the truth, and the life for those who really want to become like Him. Our challenge is to be supremely blessed with God's graciousness, eternal life, and the future. But how do we do that? Well, it's real simple. Let me just turn over to James 1 and verse 12.

Let's just see how real easy and simple it is. James 1 and verse 12. It is this way. It begins with the word blessed. Oh, how supremely blessed is the man who endures temptation. There it is. That's how you do it. Just like Jesus Christ. Remember, He was tempted in all things, but He didn't sin. That's the key. When you're tempted, don't sin.

Got it? End of sermon. We all go home. We're all perfect now, right? Or is that the end of it? It says, if you do that, when He has been approved or tested, He will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. There it is. It's clear as a bell, all in one word. I'm saying one verse. One verse.

Pretty clear. The problem is, it's just a little bit difficult to do. To actually perform that can be a challenge. If we go down to verse 14 of this same chapter, James 1, verse 14, it says, But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Not someone else's desires. It's our own desires. We have an internal, personal desire, and we get enticed by our desires.

And when desire has conceived, which we kind of let it, we sit on the eggs and start letting them head towards being chickens, and it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it's full grown, brings forth death. All of us tend to be more in that way, in those actions, than we do in what Jesus did, was simply resist temptation and perform righteousness.

So it's a simple concept that's very, very difficult for us to do. In fact, I would say it's impossible for us to do. Now God loves impossible. And so that's where he partners with us and he mentors with us, and he can perform the impossible. But impossible is very, very difficult. Let me give you an example. I forget which composer, but one of the composers of, let's say, the 17th century, wrote a score. He's a very famous composer. He wrote a score of violin concerto. And he thought, now, to roll out this violin concerto, I will get one of the most accomplished violinists of our age, a very, very profound individual, I mean, very well known.

And he brought him in and he said, I would like you to perform my violin concerto. And the individual was very honored, two very honored individuals. And he went through the concerto and looked at it and he said, I would love to perform this. There's just one problem. It is humanly impossible to play this concerto on a violin. You have written something that is too complex for the human body to actually perform.

And so, it was not. It was not performed. We are presented with becoming Christ-like. It is humanly impossible to do something that is Christ-like, unless you have Christ in you, who has done it already and is willing to mentor you and partner with you all the way to the end and then give you the gift, the reward, the prize of being in the God family.

Why are some more skilled in spiritual things than others? Why do we say, well, I probably won't do it in this life, but he will. She can. Now, that person is just gifted. They have spiritual talent somehow. I don't. And so, I just can't seem to resist, overcome. That person is knowledgeable about the Bible. I'm not. I'm just not gifted in that way.

We can start thinking that, well, I can't really do it, and therefore, why try? Isn't that exactly what the man told Jesus Christ is? What you're asking for is impossible. You've given me this mina. You expect me to do things with it that can't be done. You're asking for profits where you've never invested, and I've wrapped this thing in a handkerchief, and I've stored it. You ever feel like that? Well, let's consider something here. I bumped into a book called, Talent is Overrated, and many studies indicate that there is no connection between intelligence, IQ, or what's called natural talent, and performance.

We all use these words, oh, he or she is so talented, or they're gifted, or they have this natural ability, or whatever it is. What we're doing is we're saying, I'm cutting yourself. I'm cutting me some slack here, because I don't do that. I'm cutting me some slack and saying, that is something that I would be unable to do, and therefore, I'm justifying that I'm not doing it by saying they're talented. And so, many, many, many studies have been done about what creates genius and amazing talent, etc., etc. Turns out there aren't any excuses for anybody. There aren't.

And so, when you and I look and say, well, God wants me to do this impossible thing, others are more talented, or, you know, all we're saying is, I don't want to march out of Egypt. I want to stay in bed. I want to be magically transported. I just want to receive it as a gift. I don't want to work for it. Don't tell me about works. It's not religion by works, etc., etc. Finds that there's no such thing as inherited talent from your parents or grandparents. It's not something you're born with.

We can look and say, oh yes, I can prove it because this is this is this. Turns out it's not so. Exhaustive studies. Of course, not everybody agrees fully on all of this, but exhaustive studies are made to totally disprove all of that. The reality is that what we call talented or gifted people or spiritually mature people or people who are growing, sometimes the spiritually mature can be very young. And those who aren't growing, cutting themselves slack, have been in the church their whole life.

How do you equate the two? According to Jeff Colvin, the author of this book, gifted or talented people simply perform more deliberate practice, is the term. It's not practice. It's deliberate practice. Deliberate practice. So anybody who has ever been good at whatever it is, mechanics, electronics, music, whatever, you name it, sports, industry, mathematics, they've gone back and analyzed and found that that individual has engaged in something called deliberate practice and done quite a bit of it. Now, deliberate practice is something that you and I should be well aware of. If you think back to anybody here to when you were younger, whenever that was, the world had certain products.

Let's take one, for instance. Let's take the car in the year that you were born. If you could recreate the car from the year that you were born, would it sell today? Would anybody buy that car? The answer is no. Performance and technology and accomplishments have moved on. The same with everything. The reason is because of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice has upgraded everybody and everything. I mentioned a while ago about the individual who was given the violin concerto to play and said it was not possible to play.

Violin students today routinely perform that piece in their competitions. The difference isn't that the human body is somehow evolved to be able to play it. The difference is that we have people who will be engaged in more and more deliberate practice and are quite able to perform it. Another example. An Olympic gold medalist in the marathon got a gold medal at the Olympics in the marathon. He recently had his time beaten. This person was in his late teens, early twenties. He got the gold medal. He recently had his marathon time beaten by a 70-year-old man.

That's what we have come to expect in sports. Sports gets better and better. Everything gets better and better. What you can do gets better and better. People become more and more accomplished. The mathematicians of all that used to spend a lifetime working out certain formulas, those formulas today are taught in high school. High school students process them and move on.

Now, if we take this to the spiritual level, what about you and me? What about you and me? Deliberate practice turns out to be highly demanding. Not all of us want to be involved in deliberate practice. There are many examples I'm sure you could share from your life and I can from mine. But incredible success comes from actually increasing the amount of deliberate practice that we do. I'll give you an example. An individual starting out on the violin may be able to play for half an hour until his or her arms get too tired. But through deliberate practice, that individual at some point will be playing five hours a day, not in just practice, but deliberate practice, pushing the envelope, doing more and more, and so on and so forth. And the skills just ratchet up, and suddenly somebody calls the individual a child prodigy, or some innate talent, or discovered something that was in the family genes. But what about you and me? When we come to overcoming, when we come to actually applying what we heard in the Days of Unleavened Bread, what we hear of in the Bible, and what we read, and what God's Holy Spirit is prompting us to do, do we actually perform deliberate practice, and do we increase the deliberate practice? Deliberate practice in another book, called The Tipping Point, indicates that it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice for a person to break through and become highly successful at something. But who wants to put ten thousand hours into something? I've seen in my own life, and you probably can't. If you've ever put ten thousand hours into something, you pass this tipping point. It's just an amazing thing. Until then, you're in the deliberate practice, you're learning, you're pushing, whatever, whatever, but after ten thousand hours, wow, you reach a threshold, you reach a place to where suddenly things change. And there is a proficiency that goes beyond anything that you've accomplished in your life before. Who wants to spend the ten thousand hours?

When it comes to overcoming, we can practice at overcoming. You know, we're all overcomers, right? We got baptized, and we see some sins, we're going to overcome that. I'm all about overcoming that. I don't like sin, I like righteousness. When I see sin, I hate it. We all do. We all want to overcome that sin. What do we do about that, though? Do we hope? Do we wish? Do we get on the boxing gloves and go after it? What do we do about that sin? So today I want to talk to you a little bit about how to overcome sin, which is the title of the sermon. How to actually overcome sin. Rather than just talk about the need to overcome sin, I think we can see that clearly. The need to put on righteousness, but how do we do it?

How do we actually do it? Your life is nearing an end point, whoever you are. Number one, this life is short to begin with. Number two, it's a lot shorter than when it started. Number three, Jesus Christ's return is imminent. The Great Tribulation is coming. Most of human life will be wiped out. So there's some issues there. We also know that only the overcomers, those who are successful in overcoming, and do a really good job at it, will be in the kingdom of God, will be counted worthy to inherit the kingdom. So it's important that you, every one of you and me, are overcomers, successful overcomers. Let's say virtuosos at overcoming, not just sort of wannabes. So my point today is to show some ways where we can avoid being one of the five virgins in the parable, one of the goats, one of the group associated with the chaff, and actually be part of that harvest group. We can do it. You can do it. But there are some things that we have to really get busy at and understand and apply.

We're going to see six steps to overcoming. They come from the Bible. First, I want to tell you about one more aspect of being truly successful. The one who really is the performer, the one who is just the incredible, it's not just only deliberate practice, but it's deliberate practice with the multiplier effect. Wouldn't it be great to do all the deliberate practice, but then have it multiplied? Multiply. That'd be really good, wouldn't it? Well, that's what happens largely to people who are largely successful, is they do the deliberate practice and then they go through what's called the multiplier effect.

The opposite of the multiplier effect would be being really good with a baseball and a bat, but living in a country where there's no baseball your whole life. You're not really going to go too far in baseball, are you? The multiplier effect works really well to the individual who happens to live where they do spring training and winter training and gets to go in, let's say, and have a job collecting the balls and sometimes pitching to the guys when they're warming up.

See? You're in the game, you're around the game, and being in the little league, etc., etc., etc. That's the multiplier effect. And having maybe parents that love baseball and that buy you the outfits and get you into summer camps. See? You're in an environment that's multiplying what you're trying to do. It's exactly why God tells you and me to come out of this world and into the body of Christ, because it's here that we get the multiplying effect.

We're within the culture that is the overcomers. We're overcoming is encouraged, it's stressed, it's done, we have examples of it. We're motivated to do it. We not only have God living in us, but we, us, are joining together as the body. So there's no real excuse for any of us not to be virtuosies at overcoming, right? Because we're surrounded by, as the Bible says, so great a cloud of witnesses or individuals who are professing the same thing.

So we're in a really good situation. Don't take any cop-outs and say, well, I'm not sure that I can actually do this. Before you can overcome, I think the first step would be knowing what your sins are.

Wouldn't it? It's hard to work on something that you can't see or you don't know about. And so, the bottom line is, our sins camouflage themselves. They hide. It says in Jeremiah 17.9, the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it?

We've got to have help right there even to know what the goal is, our individual daily goals of finding sin, targeting it, obliterating it. So we've got to understand some things about sin.

First of all, we've got to understand the source of sin, Satan the devil. He's the one we're really fighting. In Ephesians 6, verse 10, you'll find the armor of God. We've got to fight him. We're fighting a cerebral war. And it's all about temptation and resisting temptation and a different mindset. We've got to understand what the thing is. We also have to understand the environment that we're in. The environment that you and I are in when we step outside this building is Satan's evil society.

It's an evil age. We have to recognize it for what it is and quit seeing it as, well, it's pretty nice. And people are trying. I hear them say, Jesus, once in a while. They always call, and the salesman calls on the phone and says, How are you today? How's your day going? How's the weather there? It sounds like a nice world. We've got to see it for what it is.

Look over in 2 Timothy 3, verses 1-5. 2 Timothy 3, verses 1-5. We read this passage a lot, but it really defines for us the environment that we're in. This is not an environment that helps us with any multiplier effect. It's kind of a multiplier defect, if anything. It's not going to help us propel the work that we do. It says here in 2 Timothy 3, verse 1, But know this, that in the last days dangerous times will come.

It's not going to multiply anything good. It will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient. Let's end right there. The very things that Christ tells us not to be is what surrounds us. Disobedient, not guarding and keeping those commands and things he's told us to do. All about the self, not about agape love, etc. etc. We've got to understand that we live in a hostile area. We need to come out of it mentally. We need to come into the body of Christ. We need to be one with God and one with each other and help one another.

Within that coming out of Egypt mindset, coming out of society mindset, we need to have a repentant mindset. We need to want to put those things behind us, find them and put them out of us. And now we come to overcoming. Yes, that's what we want to do. I want to get rid of what the society puts into me in television and radio and just my own thoughts and what Satan wants to sow out there. But how do I do that?

I think most of us struggle and we ask, why do I sometimes repeat the same thing? You'd think after all these years, I wouldn't have that temptation anymore. I wouldn't do that deed anymore. Why do I still fight this? Other people seem to be gifted and talented at overcoming their problems.

What's wrong with me? Well, it does come back to a dedication of deliberate practice, doesn't it? We have to have that in our mind when we think of repentance. We can say, look, I'm going to be dedicated to this repentance, but I've got to figure out how to do it. The Bible says it's a war. It sounds like a lot of work. A battle. A fight. A wrestling match. Those are terms used in the Bible about this thing, so it's going to take some effort. Right there, a lot of people say, I'm so tired already.

My life has got me tired. I don't have time to wrestle and fight in war. Well, therein lies the rub. Because that's what we're called to do. We're actually called to get involved in doing the difficult thing. And it takes effort. It takes time. It takes desire. It takes initiative. It takes endurance. You can't begin this and then back off from it and say, oh, I got tired of that.

Or I've done enough of that. It really is a struggle. However, when was the last time you didn't like a good struggle? Do you ever go walk a mile or two? Did you ever say, well, I don't feel like walking any day. Well, I'll go a little further. Ah, one mile. I'll just go a second mile. Well, today I think I'll go further than I've ever gone before. Do you ever say, well, today I want to shoot more baskets than I've ever shot before.

I want to climb a higher mountain than I've climbed before. I want to read more of the Bible and understand more of it than I have before. The human mind and body loves to be challenged. Our whole structure is made for challenge. The more challenged it is, the more challenged we want. The more weights you lift, the more weight you want to put on what you lift. And the body adapts really well to that. And so Paul calls it a good fight. Fight the good fight. It's not a bad fight.

It's a great fight. It's fantastic. And you get all kinds of cool toys to play with. You know how they were in Star Wars. They just had to go fight the stormtroopers, but they had these cool lightsabers. Well, we're kind of like that. If you look at the armaments of God, the whole army of God, the armaments of God, armor, it's pretty cool stuff if you just read through there. Wow, I got to put on this and that vest and this other thing.

I got this sword and I got this helmet. It's like most sports. They get outfitted with some pretty cool stuff, and then you go do the sports. There's nothing at all negative about striving to become like God. In Romans 7, verses 15 and 16, Paul talks about his struggle against human nature, against temptation. Romans 7 and 15. He shows that it is a real struggle. For what I am doing, I do not understand. Have you ever been there? I don't know what's going on.

I'm paying some penalties. I don't know where they're coming from. Or sometimes I'm doing things that I know are wrong, but I don't know why I'm doing it. I have no idea. Am I really baptized, even? I just wonder sometimes if I'm even in the faith. Sometimes I'm doing it, and I don't even understand it. I don't get this. It's a good place to be at times, because the Apostle Paul is sharing with us that that's where he was. It's not unusual. For what I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do. So if you ever find yourself in this situation, good.

Welcome to the family of God. This is what we all do. This is the battle. This is the fight. This is the wrestle. This is the war. If you're not in this battle, you need to get on your knees and ask God to enjoin you to the battle. Wake you up to the sins and the thoughts that are prevalent that you're ignoring, that somehow you're accepting and not realizing. But this is the battle. This is the struggle. And it's a good one. Now we will tend to think of ourselves as overcomers. Or converted. I got baptized, therefore I'm converted. Well, that is true. The Bible uses that term. But then there's another version of converted as well, and that's when you actually have changed from one thing and been converted into something else.

And it doesn't just happen by fiat. You don't just get baptized, washed clean, and suddenly you're perfect, just like God, and ready for the resurrection. We actually have to convert, sacrificing and putting away that old man for the rest of our life, and changes come. We do a lot of practice involving putting things out of our lives. We practice at that. It's like me and a piano. Now, I want to tell you, I should be over here playing hymns, special music, just, you should say, this guy was a child prodigy.

When I was a young boy, I think it was even preschool age, my parents had a grand piano in the living room, and they decided that I should learn to play piano. Now, we happen to have a man at the college who had been knighted by the Queen of England for his music skills, and they hired him to teach me piano.

Wow! This sir, a man whose title began with the word, sir, came and sat with me on the bench, and he had me put my little fingers on there, and he taught me EGBDF, every good boy does fine. And I thought that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. You know? I had a backyard full of lumber and stuff from the construction of the college that I could go out and hammer on and build stuff with and make EGBDF, and ding, ding, ding, and be sure and curve your fingers.

And one week, the next week he came back, and how did you do this week? Well, I didn't really do much. I'm still working on the EGBDF here. Next week, how did you do? Well, I don't really like practicing. It's a lot of work, and I haven't really practiced much. Well, you practiced more this week.

You practiced more this week. After four weeks, he gave up, and I was thrilled! Okay? Now, I've got a four-year-old grandson, my wife and I do, who has a piano, and he has a teacher, and the teacher thinks he's a child prodigy.

What's the difference? The little boy sits there and plays hours a day, and he's now playing some piano concerto thing that's pretty famous, that you heard before, and I wouldn't even know where to put my fingers. See the difference, though? He is doing this dedicated practice, and he's doing it long, and he's pushing himself. And the teacher just comes back and is amazed at how this... but he is there practicing. Dropped by the house, two hands, double-handed playing, trumpet volunteer.

Like, whoa! It's no big wonder why he's doing well. He is pushing himself to do that which I never wanted to do. Just a little example.

Now, when I got to be a teenager... maybe you can relate to this... When I got to be a teenager, however, and I loved rock and roll music, drumming was it. Drums, oh, just the sound of the drums. And I'd go to the... Ambassador College had this band that played for the basketball games, a big, live brass band that played for the games. I'd sit right up behind them, and the drummer, big array of drums and tom-toms and cymbals, zildjins, he had a Ludwig set of drums. He was just...

It was the best thing in the world. Oh, just love that. My parents surprised me. They hired him to be my drum teacher. I got my world's greatest drummer. And he's in my bedroom with my little snare drum, teaching me going, one, two, one, two... Here's your notes. One, two, one, two. I don't want one, two, one, two. I want to be like you. I want to go... All those tom-toms and the bass drums, the snares, the hi-hats and the cry-shunnels. I got this little... I think my parent bought it for me.

Snare drum. Can't do anything on a snare drum. I'm saying, when do I get to play real drums? When you learn, you're paradiddles, you can do the big drums. What's a paradiddle? A paradiddle is a one-ee-ana-two-ee-ana, one-ee-ana-two-ee-ana. Like, eh, eh, eh. You count it out. One-ee-ana-two. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. One-ee-ana. I'd turn on the radio. He'd leave. I'd turn on the radio some good music and just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. He'd come back the next week. How's your paradiddles coming? Oh, yeah. I was going to get to those paradiddles. Yeah, yeah. One-ee-ana-two-ee-ana. You know, he quit after two months. And I was kind of glad to see him go, because I never had the Tom Toms. I eventually got a bass drum. It wasn't much fun. But I loved drumming. Went to see Buddy Rich. Buddy Rich was one of the big band. He had a big band from the 30s, 40s, 50s era. Buddy Rich gave me this pair of sticks. This is Buddy Rich's own sticks. He's even got his names on the side. And he said, I'll go out to the drumstick and get you some more. The drumstick. He had a big old barrel of them while he was playing. He would play, he would play, wow, he could play. He just played like there's no tomorrow. And you know what he was doing? He was going, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzct. He was doing paradiddles the whole time. Like, I should have learned those paradiddles. Laughter The night before last, we went to a local performance here. A couple of you and my wife. We enjoyed a local band. It was a big family band. They were very talented people. And, oh, there were horn players of every imagine and guitar players. And these are geniuses. One of them was a very famous big band in the 1960s, you know, rock and roll band. It's so cool to see them and stuff. But to me, this whole thing that's going on, we got to sit up really close, front and center, was just wonderful, was the drummer. Ugh, I counted! Eight Tom Toms that drummer had. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Ah! Not like me, though. That drummer was gifted, talented, you know. Had some sort of innate family talent, obviously, because the drummer came from a musical family. But I couldn't help noticing she was doing paradiddles. And they came out. Her drumming... Oh, yeah, that's right. She was a girl, too.

And she was a pretty girl that just sat there like this, and went, Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Shutt'll learn paradiddles, I'm telling myself. Got a drum set in the house. Guess what's on the wall, right in front of the drum set? Paradiddles. One ee-anna, two ee-anna. I'm trying to learn them. That's what it comes down to with doing God's Word, putting sin out of your life. Other people can do it because they've spent the time. They've done the deliberate practice and they've been in an environment that really supports it. Now I'm going to tell you something here. A personal battle that I'm trying to overcome. I've been trying to overcome it for two years. I'm going to share it with you. It's not too bad. It's embarrassing, is what it is. So here's the video. Real life. I try to overcome it and I practice overcoming it several times a day, every day for two years. And I'm embarrassed to tell you I've not overcome it yet. Now, this has really taught me something, really has taught me something about overcoming and the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread and the upcoming Harvest Festivals. We can get into this, oh, I'm trying every day, I'm trying to put this away every day, but are we actually succeeding? Are we successful? Do we even know what we're doing? Well, here's the deal. When I was a teenager, I had a motorbike and a little later on I got a car and both those vehicles required a key. And that key I kept in my right pocket being right handed. All right? Now, that's been 50 years, almost, not quite 50 years. Key goes in the right pocket. Got that? Key goes in right pocket. Okay, no big deal. It's like you're in my habits in life, we've acquired them over time. Okay, now I had a second habit. A little later in life, I got a wallet. Okay, another wallet, that goes in the back left pocket for some reason. Don't ask me why. That goes in the back left pocket until you're in Paris and it gets stolen. Okay, so no wallet. Next wallet comes along. I'm going to be a little brighter. It's going in the front pocket because a man's wallet in his front left pocket cannot be stolen, right? Especially when you're sitting. It really can't be stolen. And it's up front where you can bump it once in a while. You can say, oh look, keys, right pocket, wallet, left pocket. Haha, you can't get either one. Okay, that was in 1985. That's been a while ago. It's been a while ago. Good habits. Now these habits have served me well. No problem.

Became the old man, as it were. That which I'm accustomed to. That which I do. That which I've always done. Now I got a new calling. Okay, oh, wait a minute. It's a smartphone. It's a real calling. Hello. What do you do with this? Okay, now for years we've had these other phones, clam shell phones, things that go on your here and there and I don't know. But suddenly it was over in Africa. Two years ago this month, it's been two years, probably this very week, two years ago. And we were out in the middle of nowhere and I couldn't get internet access on my laptop. And one of the elders there, our office manager, pulled out his smartphone and he said, well, you can get them on these. I've been resisting those. I just wanted a phone. Well, I've got the phone, I've got the internet, I've got apps, I've got the Bible, I've got, I've got, I've got. So I bought me one right there in Africa. Now what am I going to do with this thing? Where am I going to keep this thing? Well, obviously I'm right-handed, so we'll stick that in the right pocket with the keys. And now I've got a scratch screen.

All right. I've got a repent of putting this with my keys so I don't have a scratch screen. Easy. I'm smart. I'm an intelligent human being. No matter what I did, all right, I'm going to change things around. I'm going to work this out. This will never go in with the keys. Next thing I want, it's in with the keys. More scratches. How did I get in with the keys? That which I don't want to do. I'm doing. I'm doing with regularity. Okay, we're going to change this up a little bit. Okay. Smartphone is now going in the left pocket with the keys. I've been too many years with these in the right pocket, so that and the wallet, these are going in the right pocket. Okay, we're all set. Repentance done. Okay. Only problem is, the next time I go for the smartphone, it's in the right pocket with the keys.

How did that happen? I don't understand that which I do. See, this is very real. Now, this can get aggravating, because the more scratches you get on the phone, the dumber you feel. And so you get a screen protector, and you slap on there, and it's ugly. And it's got bubbles on it, because you can't get all the dirt out before you stick it on. And your nice phone looks real dorky, and it reminds you what a klutz you are, that you can't keep your phone in the left pocket, the keys in the wallet in the right pocket. So you decide, I'm going to do better. You jump in the car, you go to the store, at the store, you go to your credit card. No, where is my credit card? Oh, my credit card is in the left pocket where the phone's supposed to go.

Keys in the phone are in the right pocket. How did that happen? This goes to the fees this last year, and I started getting a little better. But we went to a fee site where I didn't have keys. See, I wasn't driving at the fee site. And when I got home, guess what? This was back in the right pocket because it hadn't mattered for a week and a half. This was back in the left pocket where it had been since 1985, and I mysteriously found car keys with the phone again, conveniently back into an old habit. Now, this is not unlike issues that we fight with. And we don't make progress on it. We say, why do I still repeat the same old things? Why am I still working on these things? Well, believe me today, in the next few minutes, I want to give you some ways from the Bible that we can accomplish this. In Romans 7, verse 18, remember, I know that in me nothing good dwells, but to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. This is common to all of us, including the Apostle Paul.

We need to get serious here and start overcoming like Jesus Christ wants us to and is willing to. Oftentimes, we just have a strategic desire, a strong want. I don't want this thing to be scratched, but you notice I never meditated on why I have the problem. I never sat down and analyzed certain things. I never really got serious about it. I just said, I want to play drums. I didn't sit down and figure out, well, if you go through this and you really put your mind into that and you do this other thing and you build in certain things, you can accomplish that. I just still don't want scratches on my phone and, as you can see, I still embarrassingly have a screen protector on my phone. Now, what are we going to do about this? Well, when you find a sin, first of all, concentrate on it and evaluate it. For instance, why is this or what pocket would this be best in? Well, the answer is not in the right pocket because you don't hold a smartphone, if you're right-handed, with your right hand. You hold it in your left hand and you type on it with your right hand. Well, that's a... I just figured this out last week because last week I finally, on an airplane, sat and thought about what is the problem here. I began to think about it strategically. You know, I've never even analyzed this before. I've just wanted it to go away. I've just sort of thrown will at it and hope and, oh, I'm not going to do that anymore. This... hello, hello... goes in the left pocket. Well, we've established that. When you use a key, left-handed or right-handed, where does it normally go? It goes in the right side of a steering column or the right side of the steering column in this part of the world. See the left side over in other countries. But the right side, naturally, that goes where it's always gone in the right pocket. Okay? Where does this go? Well, it doesn't really matter, but it's not going to go with the phone. May as well go over here and you get an extra... if you think about it, you could put the key into the wallet like that, save your pocket from getting holes in it from the end of the key. Wow! One week and I've never mixed the phone and the keys. All right? And I'm going to do something right here, right now, and that is peel off this ugly screen protector. Yeah, look at that. Nice new phone, no scratches. Now, if we can do that with something so simple just by working out in our mind and understanding the issues and coming to terms with them, what can we do about these sins? Let's look at six quick points to overcoming sin successfully. They actually spring from the model prayer outline. It's funny, I was inspired to produce this message and come up with all six points and never figured out until last week that they are all in the model prayer outline, which we're to pray every day. It's right there. Jesus Christ is teaching them to us. Let's go over to Matthew 6 and verse 9. Matthew 6 and verse 9. Again, once again, you talk about something that multiplies a multiplier effect. Overcoming sin is multiplied by the fact that this is part of what we should be praying about every day, let alone having God's Spirit and Jesus Christ, the successful one, as our mentor.

Matthew 6 and verse 19 says this.

Verse 9, I should say. Matthew 6 and verse 9. In this manner, therefore, pray. Point number one is pray. Pray at least daily. David prayed many times a day. Some prayed six times a day. Some take three times a day. It doesn't matter. We should be, as Paul says, people who pray without ceasing. We should be in contact with God, with our mentor, with our teacher, with our Lord and Master. So we pray to maintain a relationship. It says here, in this manner, therefore, pray, our Father in heaven, holy is your name. So we link ourselves with God every day, the source of righteousness and the one who can show us our sins. Okay. Going on, it says, your kingdom come, your will be done. It lays out very carefully what the goal here is. Our goal is to become God-like. Now, verse 11. Point two, give us this day our daily bread. The second point is study your Bible. Study your Bible. Draw from the Word of God.

This will help you overcome and resist sin. These two points vary effectively. And without them, trust me, you are just in the world. You are open targets, open season. Your brain is just wide open and empty, in a sense, without doing this. You don't want to go out the door without this armor of God on. You just don't even want to get up and turn on the computer or the TV or anything without first going to God and praying, hallowing His name, thinking about His kingdom, and doing His will. And then asking to be ingested with the food of life, the bread of life, the Word of God. And we then have that in our mind, you see, and that is a huge resistance. We are now filled with doing what is good, and we're bumping into temptations to do what is evil.

Next, we see in verse 12, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Repentance. We have to repent. We have to have a mindset of repentance, of a distaste and hate for anything sin and evil, wanting that to be put away. And we'll see it all day long. I don't care how it masquerades. It can come in very slick and deceitful. It can come in obvious and enticing. However it comes, we need to repent of that.

We are to give us this day our daily bread. We are also to go through life and live it in a way that we would love others.

Point four is to be zealous to do good works. Think about your brothers and sisters, about what their needs are today. Starting with your spouse, if you have one, and your children, those things, well, I should say starting with God first, but then your family, those are your two covenants in life. And then working out to anyone any opportunity you have to do good to.

Be zealous to do good works. That is the fruit of God's Holy Spirit, the fruit of God's mindset in us. It's the actual doing. As it says in Titus chapter 2 and verse 14.

Titus chapter 2 and verse 14.

It's talking about Jesus Christ, our Savior, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed. He's going to cleanse us from our pasties, but he's going to redeem us. He's going to buy back or keep us from lawless deeds and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. So we have to have a zeal that eats us up to do good works. Look for opportunities to do good works here, there, everywhere. And when you're doing good works, you are filling in the void left from removing sin. It's a very effective response to sin. The fifth point is to meditate. Take a think about, take time to meditate.

You have to focus your thoughts, just as I showed you with the cell phone and the keys.

I would never have come to that if I hadn't finally stopped and just, look, I've got to think about this. Why is this happening? What are the mechanics? What should actually be done? What's the reality here? And suddenly lights go on, you get a plan, and you can move ahead. You have to meditate. Otherwise, we're just flailing about, oh, I did that. I don't want to do that anymore. Forgive me, God, for that. I'll never do that again. What are you doing? That again. See, we've got to meditate. We've got to think about.

Picture yourself doing better and how you will go about doing better.

Then we go back to the model prayer outline. Matthew 6. What did we find? Sixth point.

Verse 13. Do not lead us or do not let us be led into temptation.

When you see a temptation coming, you pray, God, don't let me be led into this temptation. Help me resist this temptation. Help me resist that thought. Help me resist saying that. God, I'm in over my head here. I want to react. Help me to do this properly and resist that which my own human nature wants to do. God will be right there to help you. You've set up that relationship in the morning. You filled your mind with what you intend to do. You've worked through the concept that you're going to repent of anything that's wrong. Now you see something. You know it's wrong. You cry out to God and you ask, Help me. Don't let me be led into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Deliver us from the influence of Satan. Whenever a temptation comes, then you flee. You reject it. You pray about it before actually sinning. And then you haven't sinned, just like Jesus, who was tempted in all things, yet without sin. You can be like the master. We can do that. The United Church of God has a booklet called Transforming Your Life, The Process of Conversion. It's an interesting title because it's a process. If we're in the process, we are converting.

But if we're just wannabes, if we're just wishing, if we just would like to have a change of things so that the screen on the smartphone doesn't get scratched, we're not in the process, are we?

In conclusion, none of us can overcome our deficiencies. None of us can take away our sins or our shortcomings without God's help or without process. It is a process. And the processes are laid out for us right there in the model prayer. They're reinforced every day. We've got a great helper. We're in an environment that multiplies our efforts if we truly are involved. But we have to do our dedicated practice. And the result is a new creation. Let's conclude by reading 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verses 17 through 21. 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17.

That would be 2 Corinthians 5, 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passing away. Behold, all things are becoming new. That's how I believe that should be translated.

We are moving forward towards the Red Sea. We are moving along in converting. We are becoming proficient in being godly because we are engaging ourselves in what the author was calling this deliberate practice. We're actually involved in the hard stuff.

And we're engaged in an environment that is highly multiplying of our efforts.

So it says here in verse 19, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them. He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. We are now to be the proficient ones. We are to be the examples, the lights, the salt. We are to be representatives, little clones of the master that are actually virtuosos in our own sense because the great master is working through us. Verse 20, now then we are ambassadors for Christ.

As though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf to be reconciled to God.

For he has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. So, brethren, as we work to put out the sin of wickedness, the leaven of wickedness from our lives, all through this coming year, remember to pray. Remember to study, drink in that word, to repent, to have that fervent agape love for others, to meditate, and to reject temptation, just like he did. If we do that daily, if we do that with God's help, we will be successful, and we will all progress down the difficult path and enter through the narrow door.