"Rise & Shine" Romans 13:11-14 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, if you have your copy of God's Word, I invite you to turn to the book of Romans, chapter 13.

Romans 13 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 13.

Romans 13 · chapter mention

Recently I had the, I don't know if the word privilege is right, but I saw a viral video that's been making the rounds lately.

In this video, there's a young lady, and she was trying to apply, it turns out, to a school program.

She was trying to get into a program at a school, and she was doing like a Zoom interview with, I don't know if it was an admissions counselor or a professor or something like that.

And the young lady asks, would the school be willing to accommodate her disability?

Well, the natural question you would ask is, what disability?

And the young lady replied like this I have time blindness.

Time blindness is a result of my ADHD.

Now, I, like all of you, have never heard of time blindness.

So I then immediately paused this video and did thorough research with Google.

And so I typed time blindness disability into Google, and lo and behold, Google told me such a thing exists.

It's out there.

And with my copious research, this is what I've learned.

The time blindness is an affliction that affects everybody.

And it is the condition whereby you have a difficult time keeping track of the time.

Okay?

In particular, time blindness affects you when you are enjoying something and you lose track of how long you've been doing it, or when you're not enjoying something and you're hyper-aware of how long you've been doing it.

And so with that, I confess to you, I'm a sufferer of time blindness.

And if I go way too long, I'm gonna ask you to accommodate me.

Because I lose track when I enjoy what I'm doing.

So, having said that, this young lady is asking to have this accommodated.

And when she got done with her Zoom call, her mother apparently was next to her and gave her what we would probably presume is not the most unreasonable of conversations.

Basically, she told her, you can't go through life unaware of the time.

If you are blind to the time that you are existing in, there are all kinds of repercussions that will happen.

Every doctor's appointment you have, every professor that you are taking classes with, every boss who schedules you for a shift, every dinner reservation you decide to make has a repercussion if you lose track of the time.

Now that's just true, like as a general axiom of life.

Somewhere my old Marine Corps staff sergeants are like, amen.

But it's so much more true for us as Christians.

We cannot afford to be blind to the time.

And Paul is writing this letter to the Romans, and he desperately wants them to understand and be aware of exactly what time it is.

So Paul is writing at the end of Romans 13, let's begin reading with verse 11.

Paul writes, Besides this, know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep.

So for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

The night is gone, the day is at hand, so let us cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.

Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

So reads the Word of God.

Paul is telling them that you need to do something because of the time.

In fact, in the New American Standard, it even translates the first verse this way: do this knowing the time.

And the this that Paul is referring to is everything he has already been explaining to these Romans, beginning in chapter 12 and all the way through Romans 13.

You should live your lives in light of the mercies of God as a holy and living sacrifice totally transformed.

You should no longer be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

You should live your life in service to the church, employing all of the spiritual gifts that God in his graciousness has given to you to employ.

You should live in a manner that is loving to all people, not only to your neighbors, but also to your enemies.

You should no longer repay evil for evil.

You should no longer afflict those who are afflicting you, but rather you should bless them and you should pray for them.

You should obey the government and pay your taxes.

You should owe nobody anything as long as you can, except that you owe all people love, give them honor, give them respect, give them what is due to them.

And Paul is saying, do all these things in light of the time.

Because of when it is, there is something profound that happens to us as Christians when we begin to grasp how we are living and when we are living.

There's something about realizing where today is in relation to the day that knocks off all of our spiritual cobwebs and gets us some pep in our step, some urgency back into our Christian lives.

And so Paul says, do all these things knowing the time.

And for Paul, that word time is a recognition that we are living just on the edge of eternity.

There's two different words in Greek for time.

One is chronos, that we get words like chronology from and chronological, and it has to do with hours and minutes and seconds and you know, fancy, actually, Shepchon watches, right?

Kronos.

But that's the word that Paul uses here.

Paul uses a different Greek word.

He uses the Greek word kairos.

And that has to do with seasons or eras or epochs.

Paul is saying you should live your lives aware of the epoch in which you live, the season in which you've been planted, the era of existence in which God has sovereignly placed you.

And when Paul uses that word kairos, when Paul says time, he's using it as an eschatological term.

He wants every one of us here in this room to realize that God has given us the blessing of living in that brief window of human history between the first advent of Christ and the second advent of Christ.

In God's redemptive timeline that stretches all the way back to creation, we live in a unique window.

God has been working out his salvation, beginning in the very beginning of Genesis.

And from Genesis 3, after the fall and sin has corrupted the world, the promise of salvation and redemption and the coming seed of the woman who will undo the curse begins to manifest and begins to grow and it expands into Abraham.

And we get the Abrahamic covenant.

We begin to learn more about what this seed is going to look like and who this offspring is going to be and how he's going to bring the undoing of the curse and the salvation that's been promised.

And the promise continues to grow into the nation of Israel, where Moses is given the Sinatic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, and God begins to say to his people, I am your God, you are my people, and this is what it looks like to live with me.

You will be holy, for I am holy.

And redemption begins to, it continues to play out this story, leading up to the first coming of Jesus Christ.

When he was born from the womb of the Virgin Mary in the manger in Bethlehem.

The seed has been born, and salvation has dawned in human history.

And he lived the sinless life that you and I could never live.

And he paid the penalty for the sin that you and I could never pay.

And he was buried.

Three days later he was resurrected.

And he's ascended into heaven.

Where he waits, seated at the right hand of the Father, until the day he comes to take his bride, the church, out of the world to be with him forever.

And you and I live right here.

Right on the cusp of eternity.

We have broken into the end times.

By which I don't mean tinfoil hat wearing, headline kind of eschatology.

I mean we are in the last epoch of human existence before God takes his church out of the world, pours out his wrath, and comes back in glory.

And so this brief 40 or 60 or 80 or 100 years that God gives you is lived in this particular season of human existence, where you have known who the Christ is because he's come, and you know what the Christ is going to do because he's coming back, and you've been blessed to live right in that window.

And your short little existence is headed directly for his return.

And yet the reality is we lose sight of that.

I lose sight of that.

I get wrapped around the axle of all the daily grind of living my 40 or 60 or 80 years of life, whatever God chooses to give me.

And I become, in effect, blind to the times.

I become blind to the epoch of human history that God has blessed us to live in.

And Paul says that just won't do.

I need to have my eyes opened.

I need to realize the time and to make the most out of it.

Because when Christians realize when they're living, it allows us to become urgent about how we're living.

When you begin to grasp in a profound way that you are right on the cusp of eternity, it puts the urgency back into the way you're living your life.

What I would say to summarize the point of this sermon, don't snooze button your sanctification.

And so, in order to help us be aware of the time, Paul gives us three eschatological alarm clocks here in our passage.

And the first is very simple.

Besides this, you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep.

Paul is using sleep as a metaphor here to describe a lack of readiness or a general feeling of complacency, and that's a metaphor the Bible uses for that exact phenomena.

Jesus uses that metaphor in Matthew 25.

You remember the parable of the ten virgins, and they're waiting for the bridegroom, and it's a long delay, and so they get sleepy and they fall asleep, and they're not ready when he shows up.

And when he does show up, only half of them have oil, half of them don't.

But the idea is that sleep has become a metaphor for losing track of the time, losing their readiness.

Jesus uses that exact same metaphor in Mark 13, the metaphor of sleep for complacency.

When the master goes on a long journey and he tells all of his servants to stay awake and watch for him, and he tells, in particular, the doorkeeper, don't go to sleep.

Stay awake, I am coming back, and you need to be ready for me.

And sleep is a perfect metaphor for a lack of attention.

I quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica, John MacArthur tipped me this direction.

What is sleep?

Sleep is a state of inactivity with a loss of consciousness and a decrease in responsiveness.

I don't know how much you're paying for the Encyclopedia Britannica, but like I didn't need them to figure that much out.

But it's a really beautiful metaphor for what Paul is trying to describe.

Because when I sleep, I'm not, you know, dead.

I might look dead, but I'm not dead.

I'm interacting dead to the world, but I'm still alive.

Technically, there's a pulse, but I'm not doing anything.

And I know that, at least for me, it's a helpful metaphor to be reminded of, because I'm a very heavy sleeper.

Now everybody says they're a heavy sleeper.

Every person you've ever talked to is like, well, I'm a heavy sleeper.

And I'm like, okay, I'm sure that you are.

But I have proof.

Because one day in Iraq, I was asleep, as one is wont to do, and our building got bombed with mortars.

And I slept through it.

So listen, I'm a heavy sleeper.

Almost every night of the week, at least 5.

you know, nine days out of the week, one of my three daughters crawls into our room and into our bed.

I am completely oblivious to this fact until I get a knee to the face.

Then I wake up.

But some of us, some people live their entire Christian lives like that.

Just zonked out.

Heavy sleepers, dead to the world, oblivious to everything that is happening around them, oblivious to everything that's going on, unaware of the things that might need attention, unaware of, I don't know, mortars hitting the building.

And technically they're alive.

Technically, there's a pulse in their Christian life, but for all intents and purposes, they're just not doing anything.

They're just laying there.

They're so lethargic and lazy they can barely respond to the world around them.

Paul is saying, don't be like that.

There are all kinds of things that we should be doing in the Christian life.

We need to get up and get at it.

There are people that need to be loved, there are gifts that need to be used, there's grace that needs to be enjoyed, there is gospel that needs to be shared.

So Paul's saying, wake up, get in the game.

So first of all, realize it's time to wake up.

You're not asleep anymore, and you're not dead anymore.

God's woken you up.

So Paul says, first of all, it is time to wake up.

Secondly, he says, it's time to get ready.

Picking up again in verse 11.

The hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

Paul says, it's time to get ready because the hour of salvation is at hand.

Now, salvation is a complex term in the scripture.

It gets used to describe a kind of manifold different events related to how Jesus Christ has been at work in us.

There's a sense in which we're saved in the past, saved in the present, and saved in the future.

We have been saved.

We are being saved.

We will be saved, the scripture says.

Because if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you already have been saved from the penalty of sin.

Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross, took all of the penalty that your sin and my sin owed to a holy and just God and paid 100% of that wrath.

You have been saved.

And there's a sense in which, if you're a Christian, you are being saved now from the power of sin.

That because you now live in the justified state of a Christian, there is no condemnation on you, and you have the Holy Spirit of God at work in you, freeing you to live by the Spirit and not according to the flesh.

So you have been saved.

You are being saved right now, but Paul also says there's a sense in which you will be saved in the future.

Because not only will you be saved from the penalty of sin and the power of sin, there's a day coming, praise God, when you will be saved from the presence of sin.

There will no longer be any sin or temptation that overtakes you.

You will no longer be so easily encumbered by the sin that entangles.

We look forward to that day.

And it is that day that Paul is talking about here.

Wake up, he says, recognize the time, because right now, where you're living, salvation, that future salvation when Jesus comes, is already closer than it has ever been before.

The final culmination of your salvation.

The God who saved you from your sins and is at work now sanctifying you out of your sins will come one day to bring you to be with him and complete his good work in you.

There's an eschatological salvation.

And Paul is saying it is nearer now than it has ever been in human history.

You know, I remember reading, ever since I was a kid, I remember being told about the doomsday clock.

It was first started in 1957 by the Atomic Scientist Energies Commission, or whoever it is that's in charge of it.

And this clock supposedly is a metaphor for how close humanity is to its utter and complete destruction.

The clock was started in 1957, they said, seven minutes to go.

And then, as different world events would transpire, these atomic energy scientists would move it closer to destruction or further away from destruction.

It's ebbed and it's flowed, it's gone back and it's forth.

Do you know where it is right now?

I looked it up.

It is closer than it's ever been before.

We are only 90 seconds away from total annihilation as of January 2023.

Because of the war in Ukraine and COVID and climate change.

Closer than it's ever been.

Well, you know, I don't actually believe them, but they're right.

The end of the world is closer than it has ever been.

Whenever you got saved, however long it's been, Jesus' return for you is closer than it's ever been.

It is right around the corner.

And today, where we're living, it's 2,000 years closer than it was for Paul when he wrote this letter.

And tomorrow, when you wake up, if you wake up, it'll be closer than it is today.

Every moment of your life is spent inching towards the day when you will see Jesus face to face.

When he will come either to rescue you or to rebuke you in condemnation.

And in those parables that I mentioned earlier, Jesus keeps pointing out that the long delay tends to lead them towards complacency.

The bridegroom has not come for a long time, they get sleepy, and they're no longer paying attention.

The master's gone away, the servants get sleepy, they're no longer paying attention.

It should be the exact opposite.

Every day that he doesn't come is a day you should become growing in your anticipation for when he will.

All of us at some point in our life have had an experience where we circled a day on a calendar, right?

Maybe it was your wedding day, maybe it was your graduation day, maybe it was your retirement day, who knows?

You've circled a day in your calendar.

I asked my wife to marry me in January, I think, the 3rd, 2006.

I got on a ship, I deployed three days later, I came back after six months.

But we had both circled that day on our calendar, the day of our reunion, when we're going to be reconnected.

We looked forward to it in anticipation.

Well, here's the deal.

Every one of us has a day circled on our calendar.

When we will meet Jesus face to face, the day of salvation.

The problem is you just don't know which day has been circled for you.

You don't know if it's today or tomorrow or next week or next month.

But it's coming.

And so you should live in anticipation for that day because one day.

You're going to wake up, and it'll be the last time you ever wake up.

One day you are going to wake up and never go back to sleep.

And the question is, are you going to be ready for that day when it comes?

So Paul says, know the time.

Wake up.

Rouse yourself out of your lethargy and your slumber and your lackadaisical approach to life.

Get ready because the day of your salvation is closer now than it's ever been before.

And thirdly, he says, it is time for a change, verse 12.

You should know the times because, he writes, the night is far gone, the day is at hand.

Finally, Paul wants to wake us up as Christians because we should realize that the time is about to change.

The night is disappearing and the day is coming.

Night is the common metaphor in the New Testament for this era of spiritual darkness that overwhelms the earth in which mankind is trapped.

And ever since Genesis 3, there has been darkness on the land.

We see this imagery show up all over the New Testament.

Matthew 24 and Mark 13, Luke 18, John 16, 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Thessalonians 5, Hebrews 10, James 5, 1 Peter 4, 1 John 2.

All I'm saying is it's a pretty common metaphor.

There is darkness in the land.

There is night.

But Paul says the time of the darkness is on its way out.

Ever since Calvary, the days have been getting brighter.

The darkness has been defeated permanently, and its time of enveloping the world has continued to wane.

And now Paul says the day is at hand.

Have you ever been camping or maybe you're just an early riser?

And you've woken up in those, you know, few hours right before the dawn breaks, and you can tell it's still night, it's still technically night.

You know, if if Tom Joyce had called you, you'd say, Why are you calling me in the middle of the night kind of hours?

And yet you look out over the window or over the horizon, and you can see that the light is just about to break.

The sun is just about to creep up over the horizon, and when it does, it is going to bathe everything in its radiance.

It's going to bathe everything in its glory.

Well, how foolish it is to go back to bed then.

The day is just about to dawn.

It's already getting brighter everywhere you look.

Why on earth would you go back to sleep?

That's where we are right now, as Christians living in this eschatological era.

Noah and Abraham and David and Moses and Isaiah and Elijah, they all lived in the darkness.

And it was just getting darker, even though they were children of light.

But you, dear Christian, have been blessed by God to live in the era where the dawn is about to break.

You're in the Advent of Gory.

So don't live like you belong to the darkness.

Don't live like it's still the middle of the night.

Don't stay under the spiritual covers all day doing nothing.

Don't waste your time failing to prepare to meet Jesus and don't act like nothing has changed.

If I have a besetting sin, and I do, among them must certainly be my snooze button.

Because I, like many people, use my cell phone for my alarm clock.

Right?

And I have trained this hand, this one right here, that when the alarm goes off, it reaches out and grabs the phone and pushes that little button on the side.

And then it drags the phone under the pillow to smother it.

Now, it doesn't bother telling the rest of us that's happened.

It just does it.

Paul says, don't snooze button your sanctification.

Listen, over and over and over again, the scriptures are telling you it's time to get up, it's time to get moving.

Look around you.

Don't you see what's happening?

Don't you see where you are?

Do you see the blessing it is to know that Christ is on his way back and you get to tell people?

Don't snooze button your sanctification.

So if I know the time, how do I live according to the time?

How do I live in a way that Paul would say is knowing the time?

Paul offers three exhortations to us, but that's kind of a misnomer.

He actually offers six exhortations because they're doubles.

There's a positive and a negative.

So Paul says, okay, you know the time, that it's time for you to wake up, it's time for you to get ready, it's time for a change to happen.

And so live according to the times by getting dressed for the times.

This is the metaphor Paul picks up in verse 12.

The night is far gone, the day is at hand, so then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Paul uses the metaphor of clothing.

What do you do when your alarm goes off in the morning?

If you're me, you snooze it for like the next 26 minutes, but that's not the point.

The point is, what do you actually do when you get up?

You get out of bed and you get dressed.

That's what you do.

All right.

I, like many of you, have been cursed, let's use the word cursed, to work from home more than I ever have before.

All right, thank you, COVID.

Thank you, Zoom.

I work from home more than I ever have before.

And I can tell you, as you already know, there is a world of difference between my productivity, if I get up out of bed and roll downstairs in my pajama pants and my sweatshirt and drink my coffee, as opposed to if I get up and take a shower and get dressed.

My productivity shifts.

I'm sure yours does too.

Well, Paul's saying the same thing here.

It doesn't make any sense to continue to dress like you're in bed if you've already woken up.

Take off your night clothes and put on the clothes that are appropriate to the day.

He uses the word lay aside, put it off.

Literally, it means discard them.

He's saying, not just take off your jamies, but throw them in the trash, you're not going to need them anymore.

And what are these night clothes that you're supposed to take off?

He calls them the deeds of darkness, the works of darkness.

And that's just his way of describing sin.

All of us were clothed in sin.

We were dead in our transgressions and sins in which we once walked, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind.

We were by nature children of wrath, just like the rest of mankind.

When you were dead, you were dressed in your burial clothes.

That's how it worked.

And we wore our depravity like dirty rags.

We clothed ourselves.

We wrapped ourselves up in anger and wrath and malice and slander and gossip and lust.

That's just how we went about life.

And Paul says, take them off.

Get rid of those things.

They don't belong to you anymore.

Those are burial clothes.

But it's just as tempting for the Christian to kind of leave those rags hanging around and to continue to wear these bedtime clothes, this deed of darkness.

Paul says, get rid of them, toss them, trash them.

And in their place you should put on, he says, the armor of light.

That's Paul's very common metaphor for Christian living.

Christian, get dressed by putting on armor.

Last week Sean told us that there is a war going on.

Well, that is absolutely and 100% true.

And you have now been risen from the rack to go into the battlefield.

How do you want to be dressed for that?

Paul tells us in Ephesians and in 2 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians to put on this armor, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, or sometimes he calls the breastprate of love.

He mixes and maxes the pieces in his metaphor, but the point is always the same.

You should put on the character and the attitude of a Christian who is ready for action.

Listen, fuzzy slippers and flannel pants are fine if all you're planning to do today is lay on the couch.

But if you're going into battle, you're probably going to want to be dressed for it.

Being dressed in sin makes sense for people of the darkness.

It makes sense to dress yourself that way if you belong to the night.

But Christian, that's not you anymore.

You dress for the day.

You dress for battle.

So first, if you're going to live in light of the time, you want to get dressed.

Secondly, you want to walk for the times.

Paul moves his metaphor from clothes to conduct in verse 13.

The night is far gone, the day is at hand, so cast off the works of darkness, put on the armor of light, verse 13.

Let us walk properly, as in the daytime.

Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.

Paul shifted his metaphor to conduct.

That's what walking always means.

And here he's describing the positive aspect preceding the negative, that we should walk properly, like it's daytime.

Right?

Christians should conduct themselves the way they would if Christ had already returned.

That is the way you should live.

Properly just means decently or appropriately, and in the Greek it meant in accordance with the publicly accepted standards.

In other words, you should dress and you should walk in a way that's not shameful.

That you wouldn't have to hang your head.

You shouldn't be acting in such a way that if you bumped into Jesse in the parking lot, you'd be embarrassed about the words that were coming out of your mouth.

That you shouldn't be embarrassed or ashamed of the way you have been living your life if someone borrowed your phone.

Conduct yourselves in a way that is proper.

Behave in a way that would be appropriate for when Christ has already returned.

But then Paul switches to the negative so that we can understand more clearly what he's talking about.

Hey, this is the kind of conduct you shouldn't have.

This is how you shouldn't live.

Right?

Then he rattles off six quick examples.

Don't engage in carousing or drunkenness or sexual promiscuity or sensuality or strife or jealousy.

These six things kind of work in pairs.

This is the kind of shameful behavior that no longer makes sense if you live in the day.

Carousing.

By which he just means debaucherous celebrations.

To bring that into our modern terms, stop going to frat parties?

Stop hanging out and getting blitzed.

That's what he means by drunkenness.

This intentional and habitual intoxication.

Don't those things often go hand in hand?

Wild late-night parties with drinking?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense for people who don't belong to the day.

Paul says, you should not clothe yourselves, you should not continue to walk in sexual promiscuity or sensuality, which is actually a fascinating phrase in the text.

When he uses the word sexual promiscuity, it's not the normal word for sexual immorality.

That's the word pornea.

That's what you would expect him to say, but that's not the word he uses.

The word he actually uses is koite.

It means bedroom.

So don't go to parties, don't get drunk, and don't live your life in the bedroom.

Kind of that hook-up culture that is so pervasive today.

And with that he says, don't live your lives in sensuality.

As selgeia, which is like a shameless excess, a lack of restraint, which you might call a lewd sexuality or a flagrant promiscuity.

You know, the world says if you've got it, flaunt it.

And Paul says, no, you should probably put that under a blush plate of righteousness like right away.

You don't want to conduct yourselves with strife and jealousy, bickering and arguing and constant disagreements.

You don't want to conduct yourselves with a preoccupation with other people's material possessions.

All of those things are shameful behaviors that are unbecoming of a believer, but they are made all the more egregious when that believer is aware of the time.

If you're a Christian, you've been set free from the penalty of sin.

And you've been set free from the power of sin by the Spirit.

And you are right on the cusp of being set free from the presence of sin.

So what are you doing walking along the path of sin?

Why do you want to even be associated with that kind of behavior?

You know, the day is dawning.

Christ's coming is closer than ever.

Do you really want to waste your days in drunken parties instead of preparing to meet Christ?

Do you really want to waste your days shamefully slinking from bedroom to bedroom celebrating sexual sin instead of pursuing holiness?

Do you really want to waste your days constantly waiting through insignificant arguments that won't be remembered in two weeks' time?

Or constantly chasing after temporary treasures that will never satisfy you?

Instead of promoting peace and storing up heavenly treasure, is that really how you want to waste these short few days you have left?

If you're aware of the time, you should get dressed, then you should walk, and then thirdly, you should live.

Verse 14, Paul abandons the metaphors mostly, and he just gets straight to the point.

Because you know the time, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, it's a clothing idea, but now Paul is simply saying, clothe yourself in Christ.

He's just saying, if you're a Christian and you're aware of the time and you realize in which you live, just put on Christ's likeness.

Aim to be conformed to the image of Christ.

We want to wear as Christians not only his righteousness, which he gives to us as a gift by grace, through faith, forgiving us of our sins when we repent and trust in him, but we also want to wear his likeness.

We want to wear Christ's character.

We want to wear his compassion.

We want to wear his practical holiness.

We want to wear his devotion to the Lord.

That's what I want to put on.

I want to take off all the old Alex that used to stumble through this life blind and stupid and half asleep.

And I want to put on Christ.

I want to look like him.

I want my speech to sound like Jesus' speech.

I want my actions to look like the kinds of actions Jesus would do.

This morning, Pastor Charles was talking to us and he was referring to Jesus' actions in his earthly ministry.

What did Jesus do?

He said, He fed the hungry, he took care of the needy, he welcomed children, he planted a church.

Those are the actions I want to put on.

I want his devotion to take the place of my devotion.

I want to go off in quiet places and spend time with the Lord.

I want to wake up early in the morning and pray to my Father.

I want to devour God's word so that it's in my heart like Jesus did.

I want the things that I desire to align with the things that God desires.

Long and short, when people look at me, I want them to see Jesus.

And that's appropriate because I belong to the day.

Now, in a very practical way, that's gonna require taking something off and then leaving off anything that doesn't look like Jesus.

If I'm gonna put on Jesus Christ, I need to take off anything that doesn't look like Jesus Christ.

And so Paul says this make no provision for the flesh in regard to gratify its desires.

Literally, it's the word for planning or preparation.

Don't make any preparations, don't leave any opportunity for the flesh to gratify its lusts.

Which is, in a very profound way, more than saying don't do them.

He's saying don't even leave any room for them anymore.

Because here's the deal: if you leave the door cracked open for sin, it's going to get in.

That's what sin does every time.

So let me get real practical for a second.

If you know that lust climbs in the window at night through the websites that you look at late at night when you are all alone, then you need to slam that window shut.

You need to make no provision for lust to creep in.

I don't know what that's gonna look like for you.

Maybe it looks like downloading covenant-eyed software and finding an accountability partner that'll hold you honest.

Maybe it looks like you gotta move your laptop away from that place that you tend to look at it.

Maybe it means you need to lock up your cell phone at night.

I don't know what it looks like for you, but don't make any provision for lust to climb back in.

And if you found out over the years that it just does, it creeps in, it slides in, and quit leaving the door cracked.

Let me get real practical for a second.

If you know that looking at your social media accounts will stir up in you strife and jealousy.

If it will create in your heart anger and agitation and animosity or envy about the lifestyles that other people are living, if you know that's what it's going to do, then deactivate your account today.

Just do it.

Before you get into the parking lot tonight.

I promise you, you will not miss anything off your timeline.

You do not need to figure out which Harry Potter house you would have been sorted into.

And you know what?

In God's providential kindness to us, all of your friendships are going to be more rich and full for spending actual time with them than clicking a like button anyway.

But if you know that's the way that sin creeps in, if you know that's the provision, then don't leave it open anymore.

Shut it down.

Let me get real practical with you for a second.

If you know that every time you go hang out with a particular group of friends, you will inevitably end up partying and drinking and doing things that you're ashamed of.

If you know that's where it's going to go, then stop hanging out with them.

Psalm 1 begins: How blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.

Don't make a provision for the flesh.

If there is any provision that you are making for sin, if you know that there is a path sin likes to travel into your heart, if there is a door that you are leaving cracked open just enough for temptation to slip through, then you need to shut it down.

Because sin is ruthless in its attempts to destroy you.

And you therefore must be ruthless in your attempts to destroy it.

And you might think, Alex, this feels a bit extreme.

You're saying I've got to get rid of my Facebook account and my Insta and my Snap and I don't know what they all do anymore, my TikTok.

TikToks, I'm I'm the like not in.

You're saying, Alex, I need to I need to cut off friends I've known.

I I need to like get rid of my iPhone and switch to like a cricket T mobile thing.

You're saying that's what I need to do?

Absolutely.

If that's the provision that you're leaving for sin to get in the door and you know that's what's going on, then yeah, absolutely.

It would be better for you to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye than go into hell with both of them.

It would be better for you to enter the kingdom of heaven with one hand than go into hell with both of them.

Now, let me be super clear.

None of those things are actually going to sanctify you.

Covenant eyes is fantastic software.

It will not make you more holy.

Right?

Getting rid of your old party friends may be a good idea for you, but it's not going to automatically make you more holy.

Only the Spirit sanctifies you.

That's his work.

But he works through means, and one of the means that he uses is waking you up and getting your attention and then getting you to make a provision not for the flesh, but for him.

Instead of providing for sin, make provisions for the spirit.

You know what?

If your phone tempts you to sin, put it in a drawer and pull your Bible out instead.

Just do it and make a commitment.

Okay, I know that I am tempted to go to my phone and look at things that I shouldn't look at.

You know what?

I will read my Bible instead.

Make a provision for the Spirit.

If your old friends are dragging you to sin, then draw closer to the brothers and sisters you have in Christ.

If Instagram makes you jealous and Twitter makes you angry, then listen to sermons instead.

Make a provision for the spirit.

Recognize the time.

If you've been just kind of lethargically limping through the Christian life, if you've been uh laying under the covers as long as you can to avoid getting into the game, if you're squandering your time instead of preparing to meet Jesus face to face, wake up.

And don't snooze your sanctification.

Let's pray.

Father, we do love and trust you.

We want to be wise and we want to obey your word.

Father, I ask that you would wake us up, wake me up.

Cause me to take off the deeds of darkness, laziness, and lethargy.

Clothe me instead in the armor of light and in the likeness of your son.

I pray that you do the same for Emmanuel Bible Church.

I pray, God, that you would get us in the game, cause us to carry the gospel to the world.

It's in Christ's name that we pray.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with all of us.