Fighting the Battle Against Sin
I am always amazed when God places multiple Scripture verses in my path and allows me to see a connection between them. Even more so, I’m awestruck when He uses extra biblical resources to build a message or drive home a point. Over the past few months, as I pondered what I wanted to focus on for a blog topic, God has used different church gatherings to provide a topic. In reading passages in Luke, Deuteronomy, Judges, and The Mortification of Sin by John Owen, I’ve seen the importance of fighting the battle against sin to draw us closer to God.
Recently, at our weekly Community Group, we read Luke chapter 18 about the rich ruler:
“And a ruler asked him, ‘‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: “Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.”’ And he said, ‘All these I have kept from my youth.’ When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.” (vv. 18-23)
Jesus knew this man’s heart. In our group discussion, we doubted strongly whether this man had truly kept the commandments ”from his youth,” but even so, there was something he clung to. His riches and comforts were keeping him from following Jesus. Jesus laid bare for this man the exact thing that he was not willing to sacrifice. The rich ruler purported that he kept all the commands and was therefore a pristine specimen for eternal life, and yet Jesus immediately calls out an idol from which this man would not part. There was no full surrender here.
“One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
A few weeks ago, in Women’s Bible Study, it was highlighted how in the beginning of the book of Judges, it is written that the Israelites had broken a covenant with God and allowed sin to remain in their midst in the form of neighboring nations within the Promised Land.
Deuteronomy 7:1-6 tell of the covenant God and Israel made:
“When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them…. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods…”
And Judges chapter 1 shows us how repeatedly the Israelites do NOT utterly destroy these nations:
“Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean and its villages, or Taanach and its villages, or the inhabitants of Dor and its villages, or the inhabitants of Ibleam and its villages, or the inhabitants of Megiddo and its villages, for the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in the land.
And Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites who lives in Gezer
Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron, or the inhabitants of Nahalol
Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco, or the inhabitants of Sidon or of Ahlab or of Achzib or of Helbah or of Aphik or of Rehab
Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh, or the inhabitants of Beth-anath.” (vv. 27-33, paraphrased)
Time and again we see the Israelites disobeying God and allowing sinful, idolatrous nations to remain. They allowed these nations a foothold of influence in their lives. The Israelites’ own idolatrous hearts would have been enough to tempt them to sin, but they broke their covenant, despite God warning them of the consequences. The proximity to these nations and Israel’s eventual intermarrying with them resulted in exactly what God had warned against - turning the Israelites away from Him to worship other gods.
“You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them…. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods.”
One final resource which I would like to include is The Mortification of Sin by John Owen. This book was on a friend’s coffee table a few weeks back and chapter 15 makes some useful connections to the Scripture passages we have been viewing:
“…you should act quickly and forcefully against your sin as soon as you find out it is acting against you. Fight fast and fight hard. Don’t let it get any ground… It’s impossible to try to put a boundary around it.”
I might amend it here to say ‘pray fast and pray hard!’, for sin is not defeated by our own strength.
“Are you finding that sin is beginning to worm its way into your thoughts? Rise up and fight with all your strength against it. Do that with no less anger than you’d have if it fully got what it wanted.”
In reading these Scriptures and excerpts, we (hopefully) cannot help but ask ourselves questions like: What area of your life are you not handing over to God (like the rich ruler)? What idols and/or sin are you allowing to remain and slowly infiltrate your habits and ideas (like the nations surrounding the Promised Land)? What sins are you not fighting against or surrendering to an ever-loving and merciful God? We all have an answer to at least one of these questions. It might be sin which you consider small and think won’t impact you. It might be sin which you consider insurmountable and feel is impossible to overcome. God already knows what sin and idols lay on our hearts. He wants us to confide in Him, to run to Him and lay them at His feet. Like the rich ruler, Jesus knows when our hearts are not fully surrendered to Him. We need to fully surrender our hearts to God. If we look again at the passage from Deuteronomy 7, we see why we should surrender our hearts.
“but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations “ (vv. 8-9)
God is steadfast in His love. He wants nothing to stand between us and Him. He wants to redeem us from slavery to sin. When we fully surrender our hearts, he will be true to fight with us. We need to pray for God to reveal our sin to us and pray for His strength to help us utterly destroy the sin which would draw us away from Him. We need to fight against letting our sin get a foothold. It is a battle against sin, but we do not fight alone.
“What is impossible with man is possible with God.”