How to Live the Christian Life Correctly - Genesis Part 16

You know, a few weeks ago I open my email one day and I had an email from my wife, Brenda, and so I clicked on it and opened it and inside there was just a link. So without even thinking, I clicked on the link and up came this site and all I could say was good cougar mocha. I mean, I know my wife after 37 years of marriage, and I knew my wife did not send that site to me. And so it got worse because within a little while. We began getting emails and phone calls from all of her friends who are in her email list who would also gotten the site from Brenda and Brenda my wife to tell you how embarrassed she was. But we all know what happened right. Somebody hacked her email and use it to send this thing out later on.

Brenda and I were talking that evening and I said you know I said what possesses people to do this I mean what possesses people to sit around and just do mean nasty stuff like this. It's like my assistant, Craig said. He said if you're smart enough to do stuff like this you should be smart enough to get a job where they pay you to be that smart. So I agree with gray now we are studying the book of Genesis together here at McLean Bible church and I want us to look at a comment that God made about the human race in Genesis chapter 8, right after Noah's flood that answers the question we ask. Remember, our question is what possesses people to do wrong stuff and folks what possesses you and me to do wrong stuff. Well, we can answer that question from the word of God and then winter bring it all forward from Genesis 8 to today and were going to talk about what difference does that make in your life in my life. So here we go. Genesis ate a tiny bit of review. Remember we saw how Noah escaped the great flood by writing it out on the ark and how after the water had receded. Noah came out of the ark and he gave animal sacrifice of Thanksgiving to the Lord and that's where we pick up the story.

Genesis chapter 8 verse 21.

The Bible says and the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma that is of the sacrifice and the Lord said to himself. He said I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the inclination of man's heart is evil from his you. This is why people hack other people's email but you know this is not the first time God is ever said this about man. In fact, if we go back to chapters to Genesis chapter 6 this is the exact same reason that God gives why he sent Noah's flood in the first place. Genesis 6 verse five then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time so the Lord said, I will wipe mankind from the face of the earth is a long way to me.

When women there seems to be an inconsistency here. I mean it if if man's evil inclination is the reason God gives why he sent the flood, then how can it also be the reason why God says that he'll never send another flood.

Well, that's a really good question and the answer my friends, is that after the flood, God decides that he's going to take pity on creatures like us who can't help ourselves. God resigns himself to the fact that man is hopelessly corrupt and that left to himself man is due tomorrow early decline from what ever height God might ever lift man up to and you know it's interesting. This is exactly what happened after the flood. After the flood there only eight people in the world. There was Noah, his wife, his three sons and their three wives, and they were all godly people not started over with a godly people. And yet, within a few years, is working to see next week. One of Noah's three sons have polluted himself with lewd behavior and within a few generations.

Genesis 11 Noah's descendents were once again rebelling against God at the Tower of Babel and his God said the worst part about it all is that man can't help himself what God say Genesis 821. The inclination of man's heart is evil from his you. Genesis 65 the thoughts of man's heart are evil all the time. Sin is such a part of the warp and the wolf of human nature that no matter what judgment God sends on man, even a catastrophic worldwide life ending flood. Nothing can nothing ever has and nothing ever will change man's inclination to evil. In fact, if you remember when we were looking a couple weeks ago with the covenant that God made with Noah after the flood. One of the things that God instituted after the flood, civil government. There was no civil government before the flood and the reason God instituted civil government was to try to put a lid on man's evil behavior by civil government passing laws against that evil behavior by civil government punishing that evil behavior, but hey friends, all of us who watch Law and order we know it done were.

And God knows this to God knows that trying to change people from the outside in, with floods and punishments and laws and judgments that this is a losing battle. God understands that he had to make a way to change man from the inside out in this is what the plan of salvation in Jesus Christ is all about friends if the new covenant. It's an inside out plan of salvation. Listen Jeremiah 31 verse 31 for the time is coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with people.

I will put my law in their minds inside of the and I will write it on their hearts inside of them. Ezekiel 1119 and I will put a new spirit within him within people and I will remove from them their heart of stone and I will give them a heart of flesh.

Now, when God talks about writing the law on our heart and putting it in our mind what he's referring to is putting the Holy Spirit inside of us. As part of this plan of salvation in Jesus Christ. And when he talks about removing our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh he's talking about the internal working of the Holy Spirit inside of us. Overcoming sin from the inside out and changing us into new creatures in Christ. Second Corinthians 517 from the inside out, God offers us an inside out salvation, which is what we need. I'll never forget one the most significant days of my life. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I was a student at UNC.

One of the most significant days in my life was the day that I realized that I needed something to change me on the inside that I was here repairable. He broken on the inside that another course in school wasn't going to fix me and another book wasn't going to fix me and another beer wasn't going to fix me and another party wasn't going to fix me the nothing from the outside was going to fix me that I needed and radical in Col. transformation major day in my life and folks, this is exactly what Jesus Christ did for me when I gave my life to him. He put the new covenant into effect inside of me and this is the great news of the Bible that the new covenant goes to into effect inside of each one of us. The instant that we trust Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. So let's summarize going and what we seen so far what we've seen, the God said, Genesis 821 that the inclination of man's heart is evil from his you. The God said, Genesis 65 the inclination of man's heart is only evil all the time that committing sin comes natural to all of us and that's why God made an inside out salvation for the human rights praise Lord yeah that's good news. Now Jesus compared the salvation plan in Christ.

The God offers us to yeast which once you stick it inside a lump ago.

Jesus said it completely transforms that lump of dough from the why inside out and friends. If you're here and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way as your Savior. I don't know what it is you been trying to use to change yourself from the outside in.

Whether it's good works religious activity going to church try to be a good person. Keep integument that matter, none of it's going to work. It can't because the inclination of our heart is evil all the time and nothing from the outside is changing that folks we need yeast supernatural yeast.

We need God's plan of salvation in Christ. The changes us from the inside out. So if you're here and you've never trusted Christ. I want to urge you give up all that outside install not to do your bit a good and traded in for the one thing that will make a difference. The plan of salvation in Jesus Christ. Now that the stars were going to go in our passage today because it's time for us to ask our most important question in all of your Loudoun and all of your Prince William and a process done down and edge community and around the world in a campus near Tysons we know our question, yes, yes, okay, you're not inspiring me with huge confidence here, but I you're going to redeem yourselves. I know you are so are you ready to go now come on, every body want to go through a salon so Watts what differs is any of this make to my life today.

I will want you to listen to a few verses with me but for some together. Here we go. Jeremiah 17 verse nine the heart of man, God says is deceitful above all things, and desperately. Some translations translate this word incurably wicked.

Ecclesiastes 9 verse three the hearts of men are full of evil. Ecclesiastes 8 verse 11 the hearts of men are fully given to do evil and finally Mark chapter 7 here in this passage, the rabbis are criticizing Jesus because he and his disciples don't go through the elaborate. Hand washing ritual that the rabbis had set up in the Rabbi said if you don't do this and you eat you're going to defile yourself on the inside. Listen to what Jesus said.

He said do you not see that whatever goes into a man from the outside cannot defile him because it doesn't go into his heart only as Starbuck, Jesus said, it's what comes out of man that the files you for from within, out of the hearts of man, Jesus says, come evil thoughts, sexual impurity theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, NV slander, arrogance and foolishness. Not a pretty picture. Jesus said all these things come from inside man's heart.

And this is what the files you sent along. I'm a Christian now I'm born again now with friends. That doesn't mean your sinful heart went away didn't go away. Folks, even as followers of Christ our sinful hearts are alive and well on planet Earth, and they are just as rebellious and they are just as unruly as they have ever been. Listen, even as born-again followers of Christ our hearts are still capable of doing the most despicable behavior imaginable. They are still Genesis 821 inclined to evil.

They are still Jeremiah 17 nine desperately wicked. If you don't believe it.

Listen to what the apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 7 and he's writing this as a believer about himself was what he said.

He said verse 18 for I know that nothing good lives in me.

That is, in my sinful flesh for Paul says I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carried out for what I keep doing is not the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do for I joyfully concur.

Paul says with God's law in my interbeing. Now that I'm a follower of Christ. I want to do what God wants me to do. Paul says, but I see another Lord work in my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of sin. Now is the apostle Paul struggle between wanting to do what's right and so often being overpowered by his own sinful nature that sound familiar with John because it's a fight every single one of us as a follower of Christ has every single day and this explains why we eat too much. While we drink too much while we spend too much why we gossiped too much.

Why we criticize other people too much, why we live too much in scheme too much, why we act selfishly too much while we lust over women too much and go to places on the Internet. We shouldn't go too much and why we speed on the Beltway too much and we read a verse like John 1010 were Jesus said, I have come that you might have life and you might have it abundantly. And we say to ourselves, and I don't know Jesus must be talking to somebody else other than me because I'm not live an abundant Christian life. If anything, I'm living a defeated Christian life. I mean if I'm a Christian, then how come I can't live the Christian life me maybe maybe something's wrong with me. Maybe I'm not even really a Christian space along this why you brought us here today to depress us swell you brought us here today to discourage us in Beavis up no I brought you here today to teach you how to live the Christian life correctly but friends we will never be able to live the Christian life correctly until we begin at the right place and the place we must begin is with the acknowledgment just like the apostle Paul in Romans seven that even as Christians we cannot live the Christian life. As Paul said in Romans 718. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot in my own energy carried out now let's stop and say can you accept that assessment you so and of your heart. I mean it's true whether you accept it or not, but we honest enough with ourselves that we can say yes this is true, my heart, it is everything you say and more. You don't know what lives in my and yes I can't, you know, I go down every day in flames trying to live the Christian life.

I can't do it Kim, can we accept that because if we can than friends I can teach you how to live the Christian life right if we can start their so how do we live the Christian life correctly because don't forget most of us were taught to live the Christian life incorrectly. Galatians 2 516 says if we live by the Spirit. Let me explain what I mean we will not gratify the desires of our sinful nature. The Bible says we have to live the Christian life by the spirit. But most of us were taught to live the Christian life by the energy of the flesh.

Let me explain what I came to Christ. 40 years ago some well-meaning person handed me the wheel.

The navigators wheel many many of you seen this and if you see therefore spokes coming out on this wielders, Bible study, prayer, witnessing and fellowship, and I was told as a young Christian laundress what you do you know you do Bible study you do prayer you do witnessing you to fellowship in you deal with everything you've got and you stay faithful to them, and the result will be that you will live a vibrant victorious Christian life.

So I tried it and I tried it and I tried it and it didn't work. And you know why because it can't work. Now don't get me wrong, Bible study, prayer, witnessing and fellowship. These are all great things to do. These are important things to do, but friend if you don't get a single thing else I said the day you get this next sentence you ready you walk out of here with this sentence. Don correctly, Bible study, prayer, witnessing and fellowship are the overflow of the Spirit filled life, not because of one because of a spirit filled life is the Holy Spirit himself. Bible study is not the source of power in the Christian life.

The Holy Spirit is prayer witnessing and fellowship are not the source of power in the Christian life. The Holy Spirit is just listen to so many Christians talk when their Christian life is struggling. Listen to what they say they say will I not going so well for me spiritually got to read my Bible more got to pray more. I got to fellowship more and friends, whether they realize what they're saying or not. These people are saying I gotta go try to live the Christian life by human effort more, it may be religious human effort maybe go to human effort, it still human effort. Folks, there are millions of Christians around the world doing this every day waiting for some kind of spiritual wiffle dust of fallen from heaven, and all of a sudden give them the victorious Christian life. But that wiffle dust never falls and is never going to fall.

You know why because the Christian life is a supernatural life.

It's a life that is marked by supernatural love. Supernatural joy, supernatural peace and patience and gentleness, and goodness, the supernatural fruits of the spirit that the supernatural Holy Spirit produces in us when we are living by his power, and we can have this from day one that we come to Christ you know when I first came to Christ I let so many people to Christ. The first year I was a Christian, I mean I had such a vibrant Christian life.

The first year I was a Christian and then at the end of that year I went to seminary and they said to me in seminary. They said you can't possibly have that, Christian life, yet you mature, you need great you need Hebrew. You need theology you you you need church history before you have a Christian life like that. So after I listen to what I know I'm-year-old in the Lord. I figured I knew what they were talking about and it ruined me for 10 years.

10 years. Don't tell me that you can have a vibrant spirit filled life from day one of walking with Christ because that doesn't depend on Bible knowledge, Greek, Hebrew, theology, or anything. It depends on the spirit of God being allowed to fill and empower your life and you can do that from day one that your Christian and up to date. 650,000 disabled on publisher Peterman but how you do this I mean this is all wonderful theory.

How do you do this to me practically every day. How do we do this well let me tell you. Galatians 220 year ago and then were done.

I have been crucified with Christ. Paul says, and it is no longer in my own human energy who live, but Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit inside of me, lives in me and the lies that I now live in this body is a Christian watch. I live by faith I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Paul says I live the Christian life by faith.

What is that me this is how we do it wasn't me. Well, follow my logic from it. Okay.

All right, we began our Christian lives. If you truly are born again by faith we all agree with that right right we trusted the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross to do for us when we could not do for ourselves by faith to pay for our sin and to reconcile us to God things we could never do with human effort or energy is about agree with that. Yes.

Okay, now let's call it in to the end of our Christian life right we die hereunder will getting to heaven is also going to be by faith.

You don't know where heaven is. I don't know where heaven is. I don't have to get myself there. You will not get yourself there were going to have to at the end of our Christian life by faith, trust the Lord Jesus to come get us and take us to heaven and do for us what we can do for ourselves. Yes, right. Okay, say means trusting God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves now. We started the Christian life that way.

Agreed in the Christian life that way. Agreed folks. Why in the world would God change systems in the middle to a system of human effort in human works to live the Christian life. Why would he do that when the answer is he doesn't. Paul said what he say I live the Christian life by faith. It's by faith at the beginning if by faith in the middle and if by faith. At the end. Paul said I walk out of my house every day. I faith depending on the Holy Spirit to do for me that day. What I cannot do for myself and that is to give me the power I need moment by moment to subdue my sinful human nature so that I can do what I want to do and that's obeyed God that day. Your my wife Brenda was telling me of this is couple weeks ago that she woke up one morning at 4 AM like wine or would you do that just the well had an awful lot that day that that that I had to do. She said, was overwhelmed and she said, and so I lay there in bed at 4 o'clock and I said you know, Lord Jesus, I can do this is too much for me today. I'm overwhelmed I don't think I got the energy the strength the stamina to make it through the day and so Lord you know what I'm running them try.

I'm just going to depend on you today. You give me the strength you give me the wisdom you give me the stamina you you live this day through me, Lord, just carry and she was telling me later in the evening. You know what the day actually went really well.

I asked her about it she said it was like I was being carried along by another power like effortlessly.

It wasn't like I even had to work hard to make the day work. Why because power the spirit of God as Brenda had asked him and yielded the power the spirit of God was carrying her along all day.

She wasn't living that day the Holy Spirit was living that day through were just a passenger in the car that day understand what I'm saying in the spirit was living that day in his power use a lawn can't be that simple. Why not why would God want to make living the Christian life hard. It's not hard is not complicated as most of us have been taught to do it wrong, so let me conclude and say this is not just for new believers. You know folks.

Those of us who been Christians a long long time we could get this all the time because working in our own energy and flesh comes so naturally to us so many times at least.

I will all turn around and find myself going working and is not working well and God have to go hello hello what are you doing I don't know lawn you trying to do all this yourself in your own energy that's not how you supposed to live the Christian life with you. You supposed to let me live through you, come on. I don't know about you, I forget all the time and I've been a Christian 40 years. Look, we all need to be reminded of this and so I have an assignment that I'd like to suggest to you this week. Here's my assignment, take one area of your Christian life where you been struggling to obey God one area and this week decide that you're not going out of your house every morning and try to beat this thing in your own energy in your own flesh you know how we sometimes leave the house. I'm not going to lose my temper will not go to Garnet on Buckler none none none on none of them instead do what Paul did similar Jesus left to myself I will go out here and I'm in to get absolutely murdered today in this area my life but I'm going to turn it over to you. Let the Holy Spirit give me the power today not to look at that woman. When she walks by, not to eat too much today not to spend too much Lord you control my sinful nature today in this area and I'm going to depend on you to do and then as the day goes along. Every time you feel yourself getting weak just say Lord Jesus, I'm going down to help me, help me what even if you do it 50 times a day errors. Who cares. Listen to this kind of moment by moment reliance on the Holy Spirit requires a moment by moment, conversation between us and the Holy Spirit all day long. You don't a lot of us think the only time where were supposed to talk to God when we have our quiet time. Who told you that is not what the Bible says we should be talking to God all day long every moment of the day and then if while you're talking to them about something else.

You hit this area where you start to sink to say Scooby will come back to that hell will come back. This is how were to live our Christian experience friends you say will modify live it this way will I be able to live a Christian life is perfect. No. No, Jesus my friends as the son of God is the only person ever to live who could depend on the Holy Spirit 100% of the time.

100% of every situation like you can't do that I can't do that were human but I'll tell you what living like this will give us a much more consistent Christian life and a much more enjoyable Christian life and a much more satisfying Christian life because were living it right and I'll tell you some else to your Bible study will get better in your praying will get better and your fellowship will get better and you're witnessing will get better. You know why because suddenly you're not doing all that in your human effort to try to earn God's approval. Now you're doing it is an overflow of the Holy Spirit, fill in your life because you're excited just to know the Lord and he's motivating this in your trial. I promise you you'll see what I mean once you tried one area of life, then applied to another one and then another one and then another one until it becomes the habitual way you live the Christian life. Folks, let me close by saying the Christian life lived up correctly works it works. We just gotta live it correctly and may God help us do that is for heavenly father. Thanks for talking to us today about real practicality, so many of us were taught to live the Christian experience incorrectly by well-meaning people. They were trying to harm us Lord. They didn't know how to live it correctly either. Somebody told him how to live it wrong. Father I pray that you would take us here today and you would correct all that and teach us to do what Paul said that we are to live it in the spirit we are to live by faith, depending on the spirit to do for us what we can't do for ourselves and squash our sinful passions every day so we can do what we want and that is obey God. Lord help us with that and help us not to forget it in the battles of life. When the bullets are flying help us remember this is how or change our lives because we were here today because we sat under the teaching of the Word of God. We pray these things in Jesus name.

What are God's people say amen