The Effects of Sin

This morning we're actually going to be reading from Genesis

25. If you do not have a Bible,

there's a Bible under your chair, so I invite you to grab

that now. And our reading will actually be

on page 18 and on page 20, page 18 and page 20 in Genesis

Genesis 25:27

chapter 25 verse 27, it reads, When the boys grew up, Esau was

a skilled hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet

man dwelling in tents. Isaac loved Esau because he ate

of his game, but Rebecca loved Jacob.

When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not

see, he called Esau his older son, and said to him, My son,

and he answered, Here I am. He said, Behold, I am old, I do

not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons,

your quiver in your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game

for me, and prepare for me delicious food such as I love,

and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you

before I die. This is the word of the Lord.

What's going on Port City family and friends.

How are we doing good. Well, my name is Tanner and

y'all Port City is the type church where we just want

everybody to say I got your back to somebody else, you know like

you were not made to do life alone.

And we're the we're the type church.

We just want to have each other's back.

You know life is hard, sends the enemy God is good and we just

want to have each other's back. Nobody's perfect here.

We're just stumbling for it. But if you're looking for a

place where somebody is going to look not just for their own

back, but watch your back, we got a place for you here.

So what I want to do is I want to pray one more time for a time

and God's word. And then we're going to see some

of why we need to have each other's back here today.

OK, so let's, let's pray our our Father, we are so grateful that

you are so good and that you, God, chase us down when we don't

want you. We chase you chase us down when

we think we don't need you. And then you bring us in the

community together and you teach us how to care for one another.

Before all we cared about was ourselves and getting what we

wanted. And now you've opened our eyes

to care for others. So God help us have each other's

back. And if there are people here who

who need that type of community, God, would you lead them to see

your goodness and and take that step.

We love you. Pray in Jesus name, Amen.

Y'all have y'all seen these these videos of the dads that

show up to their adult kids house like inspecting

everything. Y'all seen this like looking at

the just just looking around. They get out the car and they're

like gutters look full, you know, like and it's I love these

videos a because they're so true.

Like everybody's got that that parental figure, older person.

There's something in the dad mode that activates where you

just see what things could be if you don't deal with them, you

know, they're just, they're just pointing out everything.

I turned the faucet off after I went to the bathroom in there.

It took 2 seconds to stop dripping.

And like behind that look and that usually it's the oldest kid

is just like dad, please stop. Like please just just sit down.

Just just enjoy your time here. But y'all, there is a vigilance

that experience brings, is there not?

That dad knows if you don't handle that drip, that's going

to be $400.00 more a year in water.

You know, I have been under the crawl space because I didn't

clean my gutters and I've had to redo everything down there.

So there's something about that dad mode vigilance that knows in

the home ownership game is not just a drip on a dress that's

going to ruin your house. That's what homeowners know,

right? And y'all in a, in a, in a more

serious way, what we're going to see in today's text is like

there is no sin. That is just a small in

isolation. Don't impact nothing Sin.

Y'all sin is the leaking, dripping thing hitting your

floor that you're ignoring that is going to burn your house down

like it's all connected and it's all going to fall apart.

OK? That's the reality of what the

Bible teaches. That's what we're going to see

in Isaac's story, who is every bit a scoundrel as his dad was,

but in a different way. So we're going to look at sin,

then we're going to look at Grace, and then we're going to

have two resolutions of fighting sin.

That is our plan. If you are ready, let me hear

you say I'm ready, OK? I want to make sure we

understand the story first of where we're, we're jumping in on

Isaac's story first. OK, So Isaac marries Rebecca at

the age of 40. OK, Genesis chapter 24, the

Genesis 24 · chapter mention

Bible says that she is barren, OK?

And then he prays for her to get pregnant.

And at the age of 60, they they have kids.

OK, Now it's a pretty rough pregnancy.

And, and basically Rebecca cries out to the Lord and says, what

is going on here? And God says 2 nations are in

you like you're having twins, OK.

And it's a it's a wrestling match.

And this statement gets made that the older will serve the

younger. And in a couple of weeks we'll

we'll dive into what that means. And that's not today's sermon,

OK? But this statement gets made

that unconventionally it for that time period, the older who

is the first born going to get everything.

That will not be the case. The older will serve the

younger. So God is doing something

different here. OK, Now the twins get born, all

right, The the next thing that we read about them after the

birth is one of the things we read today, so I'm going to read

it again. OK, so it's in chapter 25,

verses 27 and 28. That's what the Bible said.

When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter.

And Esau's the older, OK? So remember, the older will

serve the younger. God himself told his family

that. OK, a man of the field.

While Jacob was a quiet man dwelling in tents, Isaac loved

Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebecca loved Jacob.

Let's just be clear, this is preferential treatment baked

into the marriage over their two kids from the junk.

Are y'all with me? OK, that's just a passing

statement describing reality. All right now, the next scene in

their life, which we're not going to talk about right now,

will return to in our future series.

Here with Saints and Scoundrels is the the selling of the

Birthright story where basically Esau is hungry, comes in from

work and says I need some food. And Jacob, what you'll notice is

he's a bit of a trickster and Esau's an idiot.

And so those two seem to go together that Esau was like

being the oldest, the covenant promises of Yahweh mean nothing

to me. And then Jacob is ready to take

advantage of his weakness. So there's this trickster

dynamic at play. But we also have to that Esau

was a fool, right? So both are true.

So Esau says, what good is the birthright to me?

I'm about to die of starvation, let me get some food.

And he goes, here's my birthright and gives it to him.

OK, now the next scene that you need to know about in this Esau,

Jacob, mom, dad dynamic comes at the end of chapter 26.

Again, I'm not going to read it, but this is just what the Bible

or I'm not. I'm not going to have you go

there, but this is what the Bible says.

When Esau was 40 years old, he took Judith, the daughter of

Birai the Hittite to be his wife and base Math the daughter of

Eli the Hittite and they made life bitter for Isaac and

Rebecca. What that means is Isaac, who is

the son of Abraham, who Abraham took his son, having the right

wife from his familial background so seriously that

it's like a whole chapter of the Long Bite.

We just did a whole sermon on that.

The oldest of Isaac so views God's covenant is not that

serious and I don't care about it and I'm not going to take it

that serious. I'm gonna I'm a marry not one

foreign wife, but two. OK, so now you're Jacob.

You prefer this son. You've allowed that to fester in

your marriage. That son has sold his birthright

and now marry 2 foreign women. OK, now go to chapter 27 verses

one through 4. When Isaac was old and his eyes

were dimmed so that he could not see, he called Esau his older

son, And he said to him, My son. And he answered, Here I am.

He said, Behold, I am old, I do not know the day of my death.

Now then take your weapons, your quiver and your bow and go out

to the field and hunt game for me and prepare for me delicious

foods such as I love and bring it to me so that I may eat, so

that my soul may bless you before I die.

Y'all. We will return to this story.

It's a massive story in the Bible.

We'll return to it from Jacob's perspective in the future.

And, and there's a lot of dynamics here, but I think what

gets missed a lot when we talk about Esau being a fool and

Jacob being a trickster is that Isaac was a passive terrible

leader, yo. He festered an environment in

his family after being told by God himself how it should go.

He didn't connect any dots when his son saw the birthright.

He doesn't connect any dots when he takes 2 foreign wives he

doesn't like have a family meeting of hey we should stop

preferring one son over the other wife.

Like this is not what Yahweh would want.

And then on his deathbed he's ready to make a blessing, not

based upon what God had said, but based on his stomach.

And not only that, scholars tell us that in this time period, the

way that a blessing was supposed to go is get the whole crew

together, all the kids think Genesis 49 when Jacob does it,

he brings everybody together and puts hands on all of them.

So what Isaac does is he calls a secret meeting and he says, let

me get Esau and let me get the blessing that I want to give you

based on the food I want to eat from you and doesn't let Rebecca

and Jacob be present. Now, simultaneously, Jacob and

Rebecca know what they doing, OK?

And we can talk about the trickster dynamic and God is

using everybody's weakness to weave his own story, and we can

get to how redemptive God is. But before we do that, we just

have to recognize that Isaac blew it.

He just blew it. He was passive.

He was not a leader. He was afraid.

He was driven by preference. And you know, what this shows us

is that sin comes in many forms, but it always leads to

destruction. The Bible says that Esau's

marrying of those two women made life bitter for Isaac and

Rebecca. Isn't it ironic?

He preferred him, and then he made his life bitter through who

he married, right? Eventually, after the Jacob and

Esau story in chapter 27, Rebecca never gets to see Jacob

again because of this. He has this.

They have to send him away because Esau is going to kill

him. There's such strife and tension,

right? So y'all, sin comes in many

forms, but it always leads to destruction.

Passivity can lead to just as much destruction as outright

control and anger. And some of the sins that get a

little more Showtime, if you will, of the the rage and

alcoholism and some of these things which are awful sins.

But so is passivity. So is a lack of leadership,

fear, not trusting God and letting your preferences drive

thing, not God's promises. OK, so now that we understand

what's at play, I want to talk about sin and then let's talk

about grace. Y'all ready?

Hey, number one, sin has deep roots.

Yeah. What exactly is sin?

Sin is anything we say, think or do that is it not in alignment

with who God is and what he says?

It's anything that is not in alignment with who God is and

what he says. And before you ever sin, we have

been born into having a sin nature.

We are falling into sin. We have a sinful nature.

So a lot of times we think an action is sinful, which it is.

But before you sin, you are a Sinner sinners sin.

Does that make sense? Like you sin because you are

sinful. And that's, that's kind of what

it means to have a sin nature at its core in the, the, the

original sin of Adam and Eve, what they did is Eve heard from

the deceptive serpent. So there's a deceptive nature

baked into what sin is, which we'll talk about a lot.

But she thought, if I eat this, I will be made like God.

The Bible says when she saw that it was good to the eyes that it

would taste good, it would make her like God, She took of it and

she ate it and she gave some to Adam and he ate it.

So at its core, sin is saying, I can run my life.

I got it do not need God is to turn our back on God and to say

I got this it's to say I'm in charge and we'll even let this

is what's so ironic is the sinners in the Bible from the

first page. If you go read if you've never

read the story of Cain and Abel. We talk about it a lot here

because it's kind of like, if you're wondering what this whole

Sin Project is going to look like after Adam and Eve, the

first story should give you a good clue.

It's got murder. OK, lying and murder.

But the great irony is that the the first person to talk to God

after the garden isn't able. It's Cain.

So it shows that we can keep God in the car, but we're driving

it. Does that make sense?

Do y'all remember your driver's Ed days?

Anybody. Oh my goodness.

You remember they had the brake pedal but they have no control.

Like every time I see those drivers Ed cars now, I feel for

those people. I'm like they got in a car with

me, they weren't getting paid. It took money to get somebody to

get in the car with me when I was 1516 years old.

Like in the reality is they know how vulnerable they are.

That's why we're paying them. OK y'all sin is driving the car

you are born where sins driving it.

So even if you think I want to be a good person and I want to

follow rules, you're born into sin.

Means you're driving the car, you're in charge.

So is liking food a sin? Isaac liked his son's food.

Is that a sin? No, but a sinful web was born in

his life where his preference drove his life.

So at what moment did it become the sin?

I don't know when it led him to make decisions based on what his

stomach wanted and not what God said.

That's the reality. His stomach and preferences

drove his life, not what God said.

Which shows that sin is deceptive.

It wants you to think whatever you need to think to keep you

driving. Does that make sense?

Like God, God told Cain, be careful, Sin's desire is to

destroy you, to rule over you. Genesis chapter 4.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

So sin isn't going to like sin wants you to play stupid.

Y'all know what playing stupid is right?

It's where you act like something isn't rooted in a real

motive. You're like, oh, just like the

food more, right? Isaac could have just said

what's the big deal? I just like it's food more.

That's not a sin. You can even leverage by Belize

to justify what you doing. You playing stupid.

And you know who's really good at calling adults I'm playing

stupid kids y'all? I was a teacher.

They know when you got favorites.

I called that dude my guy day 2 and I've never called anybody

else my guy. Guess what?

They going to tell you that's your favorite student?

What you mean you called him my guy?

And I'm like in my head, I'm like his show is his show is I

love that dude. You're right, my girl.

And also my kids like they know I love coffee and they know the

routes that are fastest to get home and they know when I go a

different way and one of them will say, why are you going that

way, daddy? And another one will go because

he want coffee. And they're right.

They're right. Our stomachs Dr. our lives a lot

more than we want to admit. Y'all just the bank account

shows it. It ain't a trick, it ain't a

secret. But the point is, we can play

stupid. But we know I drove that way

because I want some coffee. They know don't play stupid.

But what Sin wants to do is make you think.

That's an isolated decision, not rooted in depths of preference

and desire, y'all? Sin is never just a trivial

thing, it's always deeply rooted decision based.

You're driving the car. So poor city church.

Where are we justifying, minimizing and downplaying the

effect that the role that sin is playing in our life?

Where are we playing stupid #2 Sin has wide effects.

So Isaac prefers Esau and it has devastating consequences in

their family functionality, right?

You would think that it just ends there, but it doesn't.

In Genesis chapter 37. You could turn there if you

Genesis 37 · chapter mention

want. Somebody else in this family

does some preferring. OK, we're going to start in

verse 2. These are the generations of

Jacob. Who is the one that was not

preferred? Joseph, being 17 years old, was

pastoring the flock with his brothers.

He was a boy with the sons of Bilhal and Zilpha, his father's

wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.

Now Israel, that is, Jacob, loved Joseph more than any of

his other sons because he was the son of his old age and he

made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that

their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him

and could not speak peacefully to him.

Wouldn't you think the sun, not preferred, would never do some

preferring? Wouldn't you think he would know

the devastating consequences preferring can have in

somebody's heart? But y'all, as is so often the

case, patterns repeat themselves, right?

How many of us have devastating legacies?

And many times we think we are stopping generations of things,

and even our vows of how it won't play out plays a role in

some other things that are going to play out.

That's what sin does. So yes, God is Redeemer.

By the way, God uses the brothers hatred of Joseph to

bring about the salvation of Egypt.

He he uses Esau and Jacob's dynamic to do some amazing

things. That's a great sermon.

We're going to talk about it, but just think about the

consequences of our sin. Y'all y'all Joseph's brothers

wanted to kill him, lie about it to their dad and hit it for

years and God had to do a radical intervention to get them

to confess it to anybody. The Hittite wives make it life

miserable on Rebecca and Isaac Esau hating his brother Jacob

running for years. Rebecca never gets to see her

son again, y'all? Sin is never in isolation and it

always has more of an impact than we want to admit it does.

And when you think you're driving the car, you think you

impact what it does, but you don't.

It's a lie that you're in charge.

That's part of the deal with sin.

It wants us to think we control its impact, but we don't.

There is no low cost sin. There is no thought that doesn't

impact other things. That lustful thought has

implications. It does that gossip is corroding

trust in your workplace. It is.

You think it's just between you and that person.

It's it's it's having layers of consequences.

Y'all sin wants us to think it comes at no cost with no long

term effect. It wants us to think we get

immediate pleasure with no long term consequences.

It's kind of like when I was in college, I went to NC State and

they did this Krispy Kreme challenge.

This is the craziest thing I've ever heard some of y'all gonna

do it one day. It's.

You go run a mile, eat 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and then run

back. So they had a high Krispy Kreme

culture. They make these at the State

Fair in North Carolina. They make these Krispy Kreme

burgers. So it's a glazed doughnut,

cheeseburger, glazed doughnut. And I ate Amen.

And I ate one in college and it was incredible for about 90

seconds. And then your body is like, what

did you just do? Like, are you an idiot?

Y'all? That's kind of how sin works.

It's like the Krispy Kreme burger.

It's promising you nothing but bliss.

But y'all, the the payoff is coming.

And it's it's worth saying sometimes this white port city,

we say we're wicked and weak. Our responses to being sinned

against are understandable, right?

So we need, we need to decipher this a little bit.

Like it's understandable that he had a special love for Joseph

because it was the son of the wife who died, right?

So Rachel dies, this is her son, this is my son.

This is the son of my old age. And he makes in the robe of many

colors, right? It's understandable that he

preferred him, right? And then it's understandable

that the other brothers struggled with the preference.

But others sin against us does not justify our sinful

responses. But it's also true that sinners

tend to respond sinfully to being sinned against.

That's what we do. You sin against being sin.

I'm sinning in response. OK.

It doesn't excuse sin. Our stories never excuse sin.

What your daddy did does not make you a like, not responsible

for your sin. But it does inform what the path

in your fight against sin is going to look like.

Does that make sense? So our stories inform worship

and they inform the fight against sin.

We don't do story work to excuse sinful choices.

We do story work to understand how weakness is leveraging that

to create wickedness. Are you with me?

And the more you are aware where that weakness creeps in, you can

have people come around you and help you.

So y'all, do we see the damage our sin has?

Do we see that sin is powerful and deceptive and relentless?

It does not stop. It's kind of like the leaky

again. The leak in the house does some

serious damage. You let it keep hitting that

wood, it's going to rot it. That's how it works.

Imagine if you had a neighbor who knocked on your door every

day at 8:00 AM and said, hey neighbor, I'm going to try to

kill you today and all of your kids and your family.

I'm coming for you. You wouldn't be like, hey

sweetie, just keep an eye on Fred.

Fred's a little weird. Like I think it would create a

little vigilance in you. Y'all, Let me tell you

something. Sin is trying to kill you.

Do you know that? Trying to layers of impact in

your life for generations. It's playing a high stakes game.

Sin never sleeps and it always plays for keeps.

Facts. OK, OK, let's talk about Grace

yo. Once we understand what sin

really is, we could talk about grace.

Yo. Grace is so costly.

It's such a high cost. When we look at how Jesus was

killed on the cross, it should communicate to us what the

situation was he stepped into that make sense?

Sin is a big deal. It took the death of Jesus to

undo it. Y'all?

Jesus was never driven by his stomach for one second.

You ever heard that expression? Give him an inch, they'll take a

mile. Jesus never gave sin an inch.

There was no mile to take. There was no layers of impact of

negative decisions he made. He was perfect.

And at the end of his life he was rewarded with a violent,

naked, publicly shaming, brutal death.

It was brutal and the brutality of his death should show us the

seriousness of what sin is and its consequences and the layers

of it. Y'all lest we think I just like

his food more, Lest lest we be like Isaac and play stupid, we

should look at the cross to see the seriousness of sin.

It is so costly. Sin cost the Son of God his

life. The eternal Son of God had to

die for sin, y'all, before the cross was ever done for you.

You have to understand it was done by you.

Your sin put him there and then the effect of God's grace.

Y'all. What sin is and what it's doing

in our lives is part of what Jesus came to undo.

He didn't just come to to wipe away the record of sin, but to

actually redeem the damage it was doing right.

So if we just think sin is that I made a mistake, we think that

Jesus's blood gives us like a a pass out of a mistake.

But if our sin is doing damage, what Jesus does redeems damage.

Does that make sense? So like where there is curse,

he's going to undo it. The old Christmas song says far

as the curse is found, he comes to make his blessings known far

as the curse is found far as the curse is found far as far as the

curse is found. The point is he's undoing like

everything sin touches. Jesus wants to redeem every

layer of generational sin in your family.

He wants to undo it. Everything that think about it

like this, when the water drips and rots the wood, forgiveness.

If you think of forgiveness like the wood that didn't happen, you

still can't walk there, right? Like if, like even if you

removed all the rotted wood, it's still like unwalkable,

unusable space. What redemption is, is it's it's

redoing, it's rebuilding, it's remaking and usually using what

was rotted to build something new.

And now we can use that space. It's actually better, more

usable than you could ever imagine space.

But if we just view the cross is like some sort of I love you.

And let's act like that didn't happen.

We're not getting it. It's like we need to look in the

face what it is so we can understand the depths of God's

redemption for us. We're sin increase grace

abounded all the more. Some of y'all are new to the

Bible and you're like this sounds like a Jerry Springer

episode preference and lies and twisted things.

And those of us who've been around the Bible for a while

want to say we tried to tell you that you know, we tried to tell

you that the Bible is not for a bunch of good people.

God is using Isaac isn't that crazy?

God is using Esau. He's using Jacob, he's using

Joseph, he's using these people even though they're sinners.

That's what the Bible's all about.

That's the gospel. It's not that once you're good,

God can use you. You are dead, you are in

trouble, you need mercy, and God comes and he saves you.

So before we move on, because we're going to talk about

fighting sin, I want to be abundantly clear to the

unbelievers in the room. You can't fight sin when you're

dead in sin. OK, so some of us are still dead

in sin. You are born driving the car.

You're running your life. You are dead in your sin.

You need to get out the car. You need to get in the trunk.

You need to like get out, OK. That is salvation.

That is throwing yourself upon the mercies of God.

That is saying I need a Savior that is crying out to God, that

is begging him for mercy, that is going to God in faith,

turning from your sin, breaking up with it.

Because dead people don't need coaching.

Dead people don't need a little help, Dead people don't need new

clothes. Dead people need resurrection.

That's the story of the Bible. The Bible isn't here to coach

you to sinless. OK, so it is those who are alive

in Christ that can fight sin as those who the Spirit of God in

dwells that have been born again into a new reality.

OK, but some of you that's not you and it's time to throw

yourself upon the mercies of God and say I agree with you that my

sin is that bad because right now if we really pushed you,

part of you doesn't think it is and that's the problem.

Part of you driving the car is like I'll put God in the car.

He could sit right here. You know, he can even have the

brake pedal, but that's not it. Like salvation comes when we

totally let go of our our, even our defining what this is.

You have to agree with Him. OK, For those of us who are in

Christ, 2 resolutions for this week and your fight against sin.

Are you ready? OK #1 resolve not to be hardened

by the deceitfulness of sin. Hebrews 3.

You could turn there with me. Hebrews 312 and 13.

It says this. Take care, brothers, lest there

be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart leading you to

fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every

day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be

hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Y'all sin is so deceitful. Deceitful means it's tricking

you. You know, I heard it.

I heard this little one liner on April Fool.

April Fool's it's easier to fool somebody than to convince them

they've been fooled. Thought that was a dope line.

Mark Twain is easier to fool people than to convince them

they've been fooled. That's what send us, right?

So then that's what it's doing at all times.

So it again, it leverages things like what's the big deal?

It's just an isolated desire to isolated decision, an isolated

thing over here. It's not connected to a deeper

heart posture and who's driving the car and all this relax.

That's too serious. That's what sin wants to do.

And I'm concerned so many Christians, y'all don't realize

the war that they're in. Like they just don't.

They don't realize that when you're born again, this ain't

heaven yet. People like the I heard it said

recently like we live in a love story, but we live in a savage

land. Like we live in a place like if

we saw the spiritual reality like manifested physically, it

would be like a war-torn country.

That's what we live in, in terms of what your soul is up against

and the powers that work to deceive you to leverage comfort,

to leverage whatever it needs to suffering.

I will use whatever in my power will squeeze the faith out of

you. That's what sin the world and

the devil want to do to you is absolutely destroy you.

And they know you and they are working hard around the clock.

And I think particularly these are the three words that came to

my mind this week that I think the enemy wants to get us to say

you ready. These are the three words.

I got this. I think he wants to get pastors

to get there. I think he'll wait till you're

50. He'll wait till it don't matter.

Age don't matter. It don't matter how long you've

been walking with God, how many sermons you heard, how many

elevation songs you listen on the way to work.

OK. What matters is getting your

heart posture just creep into I got this.

And once you're there, he's got you because that posture, you

can dress it up. You can sit in groups, you can

go to things, but it represents can nobody tell me nothing?

I got this. And once you're there, you are

in a dangerous spot. Listen to me.

You don't got this. You don't.

And apart from the grace of God, the Spirit of God, absolute

miracle holding you, you will never got this.

Y'all. One of the things I love about

the addiction community. I love the 12 steps.

I'm getting more and more familiar with them all the steps

work if you work them, even if you've been going for 30 years,

you never miss a meeting. Talk to these people.

They don't trust themselves at all.

They open every meeting with my name is Dwight and I'm an

alcoholic. After 30 years, there is no I've

been doing this long enough. I used to be an alcoholic.

No, the steps work if you work them because they no longer give

themselves the benefit of the doubt.

And y'all think the Christian community which the addiction

community was born out of the church, Hello.

I think we need back from them this way of thinking about

identity. Saying that is not to me that

that Trump's how much grace I've received.

We so quickly be like what about grace?

What about grace? Yes, but it's because we are

still actively in that much danger that we need to remind

ourselves of that. My name is Tanner and I am a

great Sinner. I have a great savior, but I am

a great Sinner. OK.

And I, I think that even this week y'all, I'll put something

for two brothers in this church. Just a situation in my life

where I said, hey, here's the situation, give me some

thoughts. I already knew what I wanted to

do. I already knew what I thought,

but I did the right Christian pastor thing.

What do you think? And both of them kind of just

just rub, just just not even nudge just a got near an angle.

And I was like in my heart, you know what 3 words about there, I

got this. If only you knew my story.

If only you knew. And we leverage that person.

Don't know me that person this that that sermon don't apply to

me this don't apply that word don't apply.

And I had this posture of backup.

And y'all listen, sin is not your friend.

It's not it's never your friend. It never stops.

It wants you to drift. It wants you to take a day off.

One guy a few 100 years ago said this.

When the waters of sin appear to be calm, when it looks calm,

it's only because they're really deep.

When the waters of sin appear very calm, it's usually only

because they are very deep. You need to resolve deep in you

that you don't get the benefit of the doubt.

God's word does. God's people do.

The Spirit does. Your flesh does not your

instincts do not trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not

on your own understanding. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel

it. Prone to leave the God I love.

Do you believe that? Where in your life, believer, is

there an I got this posture? OK #2 Resolve to help others in

their fight against sin. John Hebrews 3 has said This is

said exhort one another every day as long as it is called

today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of

sin. By definition, that means you

can't be sober about your own sin.

It requires other people to be sober minded about your own sin.

It's impossible to not be deceived unless you have others

as a part of that conversation. Left to yourself you will be

deceived. It is others exhortation that

helps me not be deceived. Y'all see that we think again.

I got it. So part of the I got this is I

know how bad sin is and I'm managing it.

Wrong answer like part of it is it is unmanageable.

Are you with me? Sin is not manageable on your

own. It's just not.

You need the exhortation of others to help you.

And so I just want to call some of us to consider other people

in your fight against sin. You love the Lord, you listen to

music, you read your word, you do your things, but the category

of others still just it's a little murky in your mind.

I just want to help you flush it out, which is we have to have

each other's back. And it's it's it's I got to have

yours. You got to have theirs.

I got, you know, there's this holistic sobriety we have that

we can't have alone. So it takes a village to stay

sober. I mean, that really is kind of

the the mindset because sin will trick all of us.

That's just how it works. So consider others in their

fight against sin. I want this to become a church

where we got each other's back, where this where, where sin is

the enemy, not other people. Or even when I'm sinned against,

I know I'm a Sinner first. And I know like man, it's not

really that person. It's sin, man, like it's sin

like sin leveraging weakness, leveraging wickedness,

leveraging this moment. And let's just be patient here.

Sin is the enemy, not each other.

I want us to become a church where we have each other's back.

Y'all. Where we are praying for our

victory over sin, Where the times we pray for each other

isn't just I got a potential job promotion or grandma's about to

die. But it's actually I need help

against sin. And that's a normal thing to say

where we say I need your help and we're not just like praying

for you. It's like we go to war that

others will win against sin. And if we don't have that

mindset or if people are weird when they sin, you ain't wearing

when you like. Are we reading this like that's

the normal, that's the drift. We need this level of vigilance.

We need dad mode, home ownership level vigilance and then some

against sin. Every motive and a little bit

you're like, what does that mean?

Y'all the Saints of old? I mean, every night, every

decision they're making, every motive is getting inspected.

Everything, men and women, they were, they were not trusting

themselves that much. They did not give themselves the

benefit of the doubt. Yeah, I'm about to say something

I never thought I would say. I've been watching a lot of

golf. Listen, I grew up in a let me

not go there. I I was not a huge golf guy.

I'll put it like that. You could ask me about it

offline. But what I'm starting to, this

is the subtle thing about golf as you get into it, there is no

Realplayer beef. You watch NBA and it's like that

guy hates that guy in like 5 seconds.

And I love NBA. I'm watching some games today,

OK, but it I was like, why is that?

And I didn't really have words for it yet.

Like why in golf? And there's little subtle beef.

But I was like, what is it about golf that makes them not hate

each other? And you know what the answer is?

The game's too hard for me to worry about you.

This game is so impossible. You can go from the best player

in the world to not even making the cut, which means you getting

kicked out the tournament. Top five players in the world

got kicked out yesterday. This game is so hard.

I ain't going to hate you. It takes too much energy to

worry about y'all. This game is too hard.

So I want to bring that mindset in, but then be like, use it for

one another as well. You get what I'm saying?

Like sin is so much the enemy that I got no energy to be

hating on other people, OK? I got to leverage all of my

energy for my church family, for my family, for me to win against

sin. I ain't got no time to be

building a brand for myself and a name for myself.

The amount of energy we leverage towards self exaltation is part

of why we're losing the war against sin.

Because part of what's happening in this cultural moment is we

leverage all of our energy towards self advancement and we

have none for sin killing. Are you with me?

And so we think we exist to build our name, build our brand,

all these things and we have no energy to fight sin.

Y'all let's flip that where? How much energy does it take to

be sober? Start with that, OK?

And then your extra energy can go towards the good works God

designed for you to live out, right?

We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

Amen. But you got to be sober minded

to be ready to do those good works, OK?

Make war my friends. If you have tasted of His grace,

make war my friends. We can't earn His love, but

effort has its place. Make war, my friends, because

sin is making war on you. Make war, my friends, because

cruise control simply will not do.

Make war, my friends. Strive together with your sister

and brother. Make war, my friends.

In this fight we fight for one another.

Let's pray. Almighty God our Father, we love

you. God, I want my friends to win

against sin in big ways and little ways.

God, protect this church, protect our souls, protect us

that our preferences don't drive our life, but your Word, your

promises. Help us to care for one another

more than just job promotions and and good gifts.

But God, help us to fight for one another's victory over sin.

Got to protect the marriages in this church, protect families.

Would you change generations? Would you change things?

God, because of our fight against sin, would future

blessings flow to our kids and our neighborhoods, to our great

city? Lord, because we take this fight

seriously, we love you. We pray this in Christ's name,

Amen.