In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the destructive nature of sin and its relentless pursuit to ruin individuals from within. He contrasts the responses of Judas and Peter to Jesus, highlighting the importance of godly sorrow and seeking forgiveness at the feet of Jesus. The preacher urges the audience to examine their own lives and reflect on how many times they have resisted God's call to repentance and surrender. He warns against the dangers of pride, using the example of Lucifer's fall from grace, and emphasizes the need to submit to God's lordship and let go of empty promises. The sermon also references Proverbs 24:13-14, where King Solomon encourages his son to seek wisdom, comparing it to the sweetness of honey.

For more messages by Glenn Meldrum and his Presence Ministries, go to www.ihpministry.com. You are welcome to make additional copies of this CD for free distribution. Well, this may sound strange how I'm going to begin here, but really I want to begin with looking at apiculture. What's apiculture? Well, it's honey bees. And so we're going to do actually kind of like a little bit of beeology, we could call it. Kind of strange about honey bees, they are the most studied insect because of the benefit that they have to us as humans from honey, and so we love honey, and actually honey bees and the care of honey bees is an ancient, ancient art that people did, that wealthy emperors did, and so on. I mean, it was just something that people loved, and loved to take care of bees. And so because of that benefit, they've been studied out of more than any other insect. But it's also that honey bees cause evolutionist nightmares because, you know, you can't account for the honey bee and the whole process of evolution. And so when you look at the honey bee, Einstein ended up saying that if bees ceased to exist, that the human race would be extinct within three to five years. And so our life is contingent upon the existence of honey bees. So in the whole process of evolution, where in the world did bees evolve, and mankind or animal or anything that would subsist on anything, that would have flowers of any source, that take insects to take care of the pollen and all the process of it, how could it ever happen? And so they just cause evolutionist nightmares. Besides how those things fly, they can't still figure out why they fly. It just doesn't aerodynamically work and everything. So they're a really interesting little critter. About 2000, there was a problem that started happening with honey bees. They refer to it now as colony collapse disorder, but what would happen is you'd have a beekeeper would go to his bees. You know, one day they'd be fine and happy, and the next day he'd come back and they'd be gone. There'd be none. His hive would be empty. Because it started so soon, around 2000, there was some great concern over some modern type of thing that we were doing to honey bees, and because of the importance of honey bees with even the existence of mankind, it became a major concern among scientists and other people and people in the whole apiculture industry and so on. And so there came all kinds of ideas about it. Maybe it was cell phones, because the increase of cell phones had become so great that cell phone was somehow affecting honey bees and maybe global warming and all the ideas that revolve around that. And there's a host of ideas looking at some diseases that they knew or possibly some disease that they didn't know. So there's all this speculation and nobody able to nail anything down. And there was this one scientist that, by sheer accident, discovered something. And what he discovered is that at least one of the major culprits for colony collapse disorder is a little scuttlefly. And so if you could think of a little fly that is so small that it lands on the back of a honey bee, that's probably one of the biggest culprits with the decline of honey bees. And it's getting so bad in some parts of the world, they are in dire need of bees, if you could think of it like that. I mean, it's serious in some parts of the world. So here you've got this little scuttlefly that lands on the back of a bee, and what it does is it lays its eggs in the abdomen, the back part of the bee, and lays its eggs in the abdomen. And what happens after they lay the eggs, you know, the little scuttlefly goes off and the bee goes and does its things. And a little bit later after the eggs hatch, the larvae go into the bee. And they're actually larvae or maggots. As they enter into the bee, they start eating the bee. And they slowly start eating the bee out from the inside out. Until eventually something happens to the bee that it goes zombie. That it just becomes this zombie bee, and the bee just starts flying around erratic. And then it does something it would never do. It leaves its home at night. And when it leaves its home at night, it looks for some kind of light, where eventually it just dies, not ever knowing how to get back, because it's become zombie-ized, or whatever the technical term would be for that. And so here you have this problem of a parasite coming into the bee, and literally killing the bee. Now, really what I want to look at is parasites, not honeybees. I want to look at parasites. And I want us to understand something about parasites. There's two definitions that come out of the Webster Dictionary, and one that comes out of Glenn Meldrum. So I'll give you the two from Webster first. So the first one from Webster is, a parasite is an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, from which it obtains its nourishment. So some parasites are bad, like the one that would be a nightmare for any bumblebee or honeybee to get would be the scuttlefly. I mean, it's a death sentence for them. There's other parasites that don't necessarily cause death. They may just live there and have a good time eating whatever's on the person, or the animal, or whatever it is, or in the person, or animal, because, you know, parasites are everywhere. You know, it's not a pleasant idea of something living off of you or off of a thing. The other definition that Webster gives of a parasite is a person who receives support from another without giving any useful or proper return. You know what we call that in America? Welfare. It's what it is. It's welfare. It's a parasitic concept of government. You can look historically, whenever welfare takes over a nation, it's one of the things that brought down the Roman Empire. Parasites. It becomes people that are parasites on a culture, and they don't think about it. They say, well, I have the right to take, and so they live off a culture, not understanding that them and the millions of others that are on it are killing a nation. So that's slowly what's happening. The parasites have gotten into the nation of welfare, and it's slowly killing our nation. I'm not going to speak on politics here, but that is a legitimate, a real definition of a parasite. Now, you can have people that are parasites on their parents, parasites on an individual, that they become parasitic from going person to person and always leaving a trail, never helping, never doing anything. You can be a parasite sexually off of individuals. I mean, there's a whole host of ideas on how that parasite can work from that definition from Webster. But let me give you my definition. My definition of a parasite is sin. Because sin literally gets into the individual and begins to eat the spiritual and moral life of that individual out. It literally, in the end, drives them crazy so that they are going just away from home, the wrong direction, and as a result of leaving what they know is right, they end up going somewhere where they're going to die as a result of it. The whole idea of what sin is, you can look at in what the scuttlefly does to a bee, and how it makes that bee zombie and just become oblivious to what's going on. And in its death process, as it's dying because of what sin's doing, it's just heading to this place where it's going to die because it doesn't understand it's being eaten out. And the interesting thing is about the whole process of that scuttlefly and the little maggots that get inside, they don't understand it. It gets in them, and then those larvae grow, and they grow, and they eat more and more of that bee out until eventually it's at that point where they go zombie. And that's exactly what sin does. To help illustrate this, I want to look at two particular men in Scripture. I want to look at Judas Iscariot and Simon Peter. And as we look at these men, we're going to see that both men had parasitic sins in them that were eating them out. Both men had sins on the inside that were not dealt with. Both of those men, as we well know, were apostles and disciples. Even though they were disciples and apostles, they still had that parasitic sin or those sins that were in them that were eating them out. And as a result of not being dealt with, those sins grew, and grew, and grew, and was devouring the men on the inside. Now we've got to understand the seriousness of it. So often when we think of sin, we don't understand what it really is and what it really does. And because we have tame views of sin or we think that it's just cultural things or however we approach it because we don't really understand it. We're not terrified of it. I think that if a bee could really fathom what was going on and from what I've read on this that bees kind of fly away trying to get away from the scuttlefly. And so they have videos of the bee fleeing as the scuttlefly is trying to get to the thing. What's that scuttlefly out to do? Kill the bee. I mean really, that's what it's going to be. I'm going to lay eggs in you and I'm going to put these things in you and they're going to slowly eat you out and they're going to kill you. And the bee's trying to get away. Now I don't know how much a bee understands what it's all about and what it does. But if we could really understand what sin was we would fly from it as if it was a plague. We'd fly from it because we know that if it gets inserted into our hearts inserted into our minds it's going to eat us out and eventually it's going to bring us to the point of the stupidity of wickedness as Solomon referred to it. The stupidity of wickedness that will bring us to a place just to act in such stupid ways where we're zombified by our sin and we practice it and then we don't care who we hurt in the process of it as we continue down the road of our sin. And so here's Peter and Judas and their parasitic sins brought them both to a crisis. Both of them came to a crisis over this but you know what? Jesus loved them enough to help them get to that crisis because it seems like the only way we're going to really deal with these things that begin to eat us out from the inside is we got to have a crisis. And that's a foolish part on our part as human beings. The best thing is to have a tender heart before God that He can whisper to us a thing of air in our life and we run to the foot of the cross and say, God forgive me. But guess what? You didn't come here to pure life because you were really wanting to take care of something in the beginning. You had a parasite eating out your very life, eating out everything about you and finally got so bad that you would come here. You understand what I'm saying by that? It's because you didn't deal with it so long ago. It was little, just little things. You know how you got on the path of your own addictions. You know the little things where it began because it wasn't dealt with in the little areas in the beginning. It grew and it grew and it grew and it grew and it grew until it is eating you out and eating everybody out in your life because you see when we've got a parasite inside of us and it begins to devour us, it begins to devour a family as well. And we'll look at that in just a moment. But the parasitic sins of both men cause them to deny Jesus. You understand their parasitic sins cause them to deny Jesus. It causes us to deny Jesus. We could be good church goers and still deny Christ because we're living a hypocritical life. We're doing things that are absolutely contrary to Christ that the scripture says that the man or woman that practices these things do not know him. And so we can practice those things not even really understand the extent of it, how much we've denied him, how much we've disgraced him just like Judas and Peter. Now the problem is we're going to look at this as you see Judas and Peter had radically different responses to this issue of parasites on the inside. Let's look at Judas and let's look at a couple a few of his parasitic sins. Cause all sin is parasitic. There aren't some that aren't. All sins will eat you out. There's no such thing as a little sin. Think of that little itty bitty scuttle fly so small. I mean itty bitty. But yet it puts those itty bitty eggs inside of that bee and it kills the bee. Just these itty bitty little things. And we think these itty bitty little things will not really be our downfall but we forget to understand when they get in our hearts and they get in our minds they begin to eat us out. And they begin to grow as they feed off of our lust and feed off of our pride and feed off of our rebelliousness and our self will and our refusal to repent and all the other things there. As it feeds on those things it grows and it grows and it begins to allow other things to come in and it grows more and more until it becomes our total complete ruin. And so Judas I think the very biggest of all parasitic sins was his love of self. Judas loved himself more than anything else. More than any person. More than Jesus. More than the disciples and apostles. He loved himself more than his family. More than anything else. And you know what? There's not a person in this room that that is not the biggest problem we have in our life. That love of self. And you know when that love of self has free reign it gets in us and it devours us. It devours the inward life. It devours everything. It will eat up everything good. Everything wholesome. Everything of God in our life. That love of self will bring absolute ruin to us because it will make us to be above everybody else. Our desires. Our wants. Our ambitions. Our dreams. And we don't care then who we hurt or what goes on because now it's all about me and my happiness and my wants and my ambitions and then that's what I live for. Even to the ruin of other people. And so Judas had that foundation of all sins. The love of self. Charles Finney in his book on theology, he brought out that all sin, no matter what sin you can name, is selfish. Pride is selfish. Lust is selfish. Rape is selfish. All the sexual sins are selfish. Every sin you can name is selfish. Every single sin. There's not one sin that is not selfish because it's all about the love of self. All about the love of self. And so if the foundation of all sin is selfish and Judas was a man in love with himself more than anything else, you know what? For the season he did follow Jesus. He followed Jesus for selfish reasons. You know, that's a really sad thing. I know we come to Jesus and we can only come to Jesus for selfish reasons because we have no ability to come any other way. Because in our unsaved condition we are selfish. That's all we can be. I'm glad God will take us in that condition but he's not going to leave us there if we're going to let him do to us what he really wants to do and that is conforming us to his likeness. And he will begin to deal with all the selfish dimensions of it and try and deliver us from the aspect of just wanting to serve Jesus for selfish reasons rather than the aspect of really beginning to fall in love with him. The second parasitic sin that Judas had was greed. I mean that's pretty obvious from the stories of it but let me read one to you in Matthew 26 verse 14. He says in one of the twelve the one called Judas Iscariot went to the chief priest and asked, what are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you? So they counted out for him 30 silver coins. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over. Now you know what's an interesting thing about 30 pieces of silver? You know what's interesting about it? That is the cost of a common slave. It was even degrading what they did in selling Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Even degrading there. Well we'll give you the price of a common slave for him. That's all we'll give you. And so everything about it was degrading. But look at Judas. Look at a man love of self ruling his life and because of love of self ruling his life guess what was there? Greed. And greed overshadowed all kinds of other things in his life. Compassion, mercy, anything else was overshadowed because that love of self bred in him a greediness that defined his life. Then another one that was a big one was unbelief. Tells in John chapter 6 verse 64 Jesus speaking. He says yet there are some of you who do not believe for Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. Now I don't doubt that in the beginning Judas had some kind of a maybe infantile kind of faith in Christ. I mean he had to have enough faith that we went out there with the other apostles when he sent them out two by two that they were used for signs and wonders and so we had to have faith in Jesus enough to see miracles. But somewhere along the line, somewhere the doubt, the unbelief that was in him and the love of self that was in him, those little parasites started growing in the man until three, three and a half years of being with Jesus those parasites grew to such a point that he would betray his master and Lord. Do you understand it wasn't just one day he's in love with Jesus and the next day he betrays him. He allowed those things in his heart and they were there in a very small infantile way and they grew and they grew and they grew until eventually he would go to the priest and he would betray him for thirty pieces of silver. Let's look at Peter though. Let's look at his parasites. Now when we look at Peter's denial of Jesus we can look at three of them for sure. Now I think there's other ones just like there is in our own lives. But I want to look at these three with Peter specifically. The first one was pride. Let me read to you a verse out of Matthew 26 verse 33 and 35 Peter declared to Jesus says even if all fall away on account of you I never will. Even if I have to die with you I will never disown you. Sounded pretty good though on the basics. How many times have we said that? How many times have you made promises to God that you never go back to your sin? Made all the promises of all the things you do and yet you never did them but you could make them both and they sounded real good. When you made promises to loved ones that things would change but you didn't have the ability to because you were still on the throne of your heart of your life you still ruled. Pride is such an evil thing that it's what took an absolutely beautiful archangel named Lucifer and turned him into the devil. Turned him into Satan. You know what pride does to us humans? It takes people that were made in the image of God and makes us little devils. Hell is filled with people that were consumed with pride and had religious pride because they didn't understand how ugly and hostile it is to God. Three and a half years Peter was with Jesus and I'll guarantee you the whole time in wholesome ways Jesus was dealing with the pride of this rough fisherman. Dealing with it again and again. Probably confronting in ways we don't even have recorded here. But you see that pride gets its tentacles so deep inside of us. Tentacles that are tied into so many things. How we worship. How we read. How we study. How we proclaim scripture to one another and fellowship with one another. How we do work and everything. Pride gets its tentacles in every bit of that. And if we are blind and oblivious to what pride really is and we allow it there not understanding that it's inside of us slowly eating us out. Slowly devouring us. Slowly ruining us. The thing that's really obvious which is the same thing with Judas. You see they're the same in so many ways. And so when we try to look at Judas sometimes we try to make him a monster and we don't understand he's like you and I. Another parasitic sin was he loved himself more than Jesus. He made the boast didn't he? I love you so much Jesus I'll even die for you. And we know the fact when the rubber met the road guess what he wasn't. He was scared stiff he didn't want to do it because he loved himself more than Jesus. That's just a fact of it. That's a terrifying thing to come to the conclusion of. How many promises have we made to Christ? How many times we vowed vows to him or said things or we came to altar and said I'll serve you all my life and then what we're back in insanity again. Make the boast the pride that's there that's behind it all but the love of self that is central to it. And so Peter loved himself in John 13 verse 37 and 38. Peter says I will lay my life down for you. Then Jesus answered. Will you really lay your life down for me? What a statement from Jesus. I tell you the truth before the rooster crows you will disown me three times. I'll lay my life down for you. Will you really? Will you really? Easy words to speak. It's a whole nother thing because we got that problem of love of self that eats us literally eats us out from the inside. Another one with Peter was the fear of man but the fear of man is really just the flip side of pride so you have one coin and one side of the coin is the guy that struts the other one is the fear of man that's afraid of what everybody thinks or insecurity that's there. They're both pride. It's just different expressions of it but still he was afraid of man and you know what it did? It caused him to deny Christ. How many times have we been so afraid? How many of you are still afraid to really be a Christian? I mean you'll do it behind closed doors. You'll do it maybe Sunday morning in church. Not any other place. You really don't want it. You want to be just kind of silent. It's not your thing. And so you say well I'm not outgoing. I'm not this or I'm not that. You make the excuses why you're a secret agent. But there are no secret agents in God's kingdom. They don't exist. Whatever Jesus did he did out front and he hasn't called us to do in secret. And so it's fear of man. How often do we fail to obey Christ because we're afraid of what people think. Afraid of what the response of people. What they might think out there in the world if I were to be too Christian. Or if I were to make a choice that I'd rather serve Jesus and lose the promotion instead of getting the promotion so I can have more money. So I just kind of acquiesce and become silent so that I can get the promotion. All the little ways that we deny Jesus because we love ourself more than anything. And that we fear what man says. Imagine the agony of Peter. The rooster crows. And it says in Luke 22 61. Then Peter remembered the words Jesus spoke to him. Before the rooster crows today you will disown me three times. And it says and he went outside and wept bitterly. Hard truth to come home. How many times did Jesus speak to Peter of these things? How many times did these truths come out? Again and again. I mean all you got to do is look at Christ's teaching and you see it again and again about loving him more than anything. Just the very aspect of the greatest command that he gave us is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. You understand in that command. If we lived out that command, that command is so radical. There is no place for the fear of man. There's no place for pride. There's no place for love of self in that. Because to love him with everything means guess what? Everything. Not some of it. Not a portion. Not 90% or 99%. To love him with everything literally means everything. Well we always want to take these radical statements and flour them up and make them a little bit softer so they don't shake our life for cause they have to change. But guess what? They are truths that we can't get away from. Nor could Peter. They confronted the man, though he didn't deal with them all. Let's look at their response now. Because here's the thing. Their sins are so similar. True, Peter didn't go out and sell Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, but he denied the Lord and they both denied the Lord in their own ways. Both of them could be forgiven. But that's really where the situation comes down. The difference between Judas and Peter. Their response to their sin and their response to the Savior. So in 2 Corinthians 7-10, Paul's doing some wonderful teaching. He says Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret. But worldly sorrow brings death. You see, Judas had worldly sorrow. If you would talk to Judas right after his betrayal, right after he realized that Jesus was going to be crucified, I guarantee you, you would have heard remorse in the man, you would have saw tears, you would have had all the expressions of what we would think would be at least repentance, but it wasn't repentance. He had worldly sorrow. Sorry he hurt Jesus. Sorry Jesus was going to die. Sorry he hurt his friends, his apostles and disciples. Sorry he hurt all kinds of people. Sorry he was hurting himself, but not sorry enough to change. How easy it is for us to have worldly sorrow, because we love the parasites that eat us out. Because we love the parasites that are ruining the inward life, destroying us, and then we become agents of destruction in our families, in our communities, because we allow those parasites to flow from us to others. Turn with me to Matthew 27, in the third verse. When Judas, who had betrayed Jesus, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the 30 silver coins to the chief priest and the elders. I have sinned, he said, for I have betrayed innocent blood. What is that to us? They replied. That's your responsibility. So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. Sad story, huh? Do you know the blood that Jesus shed on the cross was powerful enough to forgive the man? Even of selling Jesus, it was powerful enough to forgive the man. The problem wasn't Christ's work on the cross, the problem was Judas. Judas was sorry of what he had done, but not repentant. Sorry that he hurt all kinds of people, but not repentant. He didn't want to change, even at the point of such remorse and such misery, even after getting a little itty-bitty glimpse, just a little glimpse of what damage he was going to do with the death of Jesus. It would affect a whole nation. He didn't understand how it would affect the world, and he didn't understand what Jesus would accomplish out of it. But yet, with all that, he had remorse. But the love of self still ruled the man, even in the place of committing suicide. It was still the love of self that caused him to hang himself. And that disturbing, he was so sorry he hurt other people, so sorry he was hurting himself, so in his selfish act, he thought he would just go and hang himself. It's kind of like those bees. When finally they're being so eaten out by those parasites, they get insane. And they fly crazy. You see, when we start acting strange because we start giving ourselves a sin, we start acting crazy. And then finally we're flying to our very death. And that's what he did. Flew away from home. Isn't that strange how the bees fly away from home? Do you realize that's what the devil wants you to do? Fly away from home. He wants to get those parasites eating you out, so the thing that really happens, you fly away from home, and when you're out of the protection of God, then he'll take you right down to hell in one way or the other. That's what his goal is. He wants to put those things inside of you. He wants those sins to grow so they destroy your life because ultimately he wants to take you to hell. Sin is not a little thing. It brings eternal ruin to whoever practices it. There's no such thing as Christian sins and non-Christian sins. When you look at the arguments of the Apostle John in his first epistle, he said, whoever practices sin does not know God. There's a lot of you men that while you were in your addiction, you thought you were a Christian, but you failed to read the word of God that says that you cannot practice sin and be a believer. And so what do we do? Our parasitic sins cause us to practice the stupidity of wickedness and do it so well that we even think we're Christians in the midst of it. You talk about insanity, you talk about zombie-ism, getting into us where we get dumb in what we're doing and think we can practice the very things that they did in Sodom and Gomorrah and were destroyed over, but we're going to go to heaven? You talk about insanity and how the parasites of sin get into us and make us think more and more and more crazy as we get further and further away from Christ? Now you know what Judas did? He went and hung himself, and that's a pretty quick way to die. But you know what? Sin and backsliding is just expressions of slow-motion suicide. So what's the difference whether you kill yourself in five minutes or you kill yourself in 50 years? If you end up in hell, hell's forever and it's a really, really long time because you chose to love yourself and your sin more than God, more than people, more than anything. And so you allow the parasites of sin to eat you out, to drive you insane, and to practice that until your dying breath, even if you live to be 100 years old. What is that if you end up still in hell? Do you understand what I'm saying? It's a serious issue. But let's look at Peter. You see, Peter had godly sorrow. And godly sorrow is radically different. In one sense, they're very similar. Because worldly sorrow and godly sorrow was both sorry they were hurt, both sorry that they hurt other people, both sorry that they hurt Jesus. But there's a great difference. You see, the one refuses to repent, has remorse but no repentance. The other has repentance. And what is repentance? It is literally the wanting to change what we are doing, to stop it. In that section of Scripture, in King James Version that we looked at about godly sorrow there, Paul brings out this word, it comes out translated in the King James Version, what vehemence it wrought in you. And that word vehemence is a very colorful word. It speaks of this aggressive action to right the wrongs. You see, godly sorrow doesn't go and hang yourself. Godly sorrow rights the wrongs. It goes to the foot of the cross and deals with the issue there. And then it goes with the people that we've harmed and deals with it there. And it does whatever is necessary to get the parasites out. It does whatever is necessary. And that's where the difference is between the two. And so, it's said in the 62nd verse of Luke 22, He went outside and wept bitterly. They both wept but the tears of Peter were different. The tears of Peter were tears of repentance. How many of you men have wept tears of remorse and not of repentance? Remorse because you've hurt people. Remorse because of what's going on in your breakdown of your family or marriage. Remorse over what's happened. But not repentance. Not repentance. Because you still love your sin. Because you still love yourself. Remorse comes out of the love of self. Repentance comes with a cry, God, I've got to have a better love. I need a better love than my love of self and my love of sin. I've got to have a better love, God, because this love of self is ruining me. And it begins to look to this Jesus that He might change us and give us that better love. So, you know what? There's only one exterminator. Only one exterminator that can take care of that parasite. And that's Jesus. You see, He's the only remedy. You can't do it yourself. You can't take care of it yourself. You can't make enough. You can't muster up enough resolve. Inward fortitude. You can't muster it up that you think I'll just overcome this thing. Because you know what you'll do? You might stop one sin, but because love of self is at the core of it, you'll just pick up another. It's still all going to be there. Just whatever expression is, what's the difference? It's still love of self that rules. And so it has to be something that is a revolution. Not a remodeling. You see, God doesn't want to remodel you. And I don't want to say this in a degrading manner, but you and I are not worth remodeling. We're not. You can't remodel pride and make it humility. Pride is absolutely evil. You have to kill it. You cannot remodel lust and turn it into love. Lust is evil to the core. You have to kill it. You see, everything of the work of the flesh is evil. And it cannot become good. It cannot be reformed. It must be crucified. The only answer is new life. The only answer. Not the remodeling of the old. Not putting a band-aid on it and hoping everything will work out okay. But the crucifying of the old. That a new life might rise up. A new love. A new affection. New tears. That are tears of genuine repentance. And so Paul understood this battle. And he made this statement in Romans 7, verse 24. He says, what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Now understand what Paul was saying here. Paul was at one time a very religious man. He was a Jew that strove to fulfill the law. And here he is at the point. What a wretched man I am. And finally see, the law was making him only more guilty. It exposed the truth of his rebellion and lawlessness. Of his love of self and everything that was hostile to God. And when he finally came to the conclusion he says, what a wretched man I am. There is no remedy in this world. There is no good works. There is nothing that can do that. Nothing. And until you are hopeless in self, you'll never want to be delivered of self. Right? As long as you have some hope in self, you think well I'll just have pure life and it'll help me with a little bit of my hopeless self so I can go out and do my own thing now and be a nice good old boy. But self is always self and always do what self does. It's a parasite that eats you out from the inside and will never bring good into your life. Never. Only ruin. And so what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? And then he said Thanks be to God. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God. There is no other remedy. There is no other remedy. You see, Jesus loves us enough to show us our true need. He loved both Judas and both Peter enough to expose the parasites that were on the inside. Both of the men went through great agony as those sins were brought to their minds. Both of them shed tears. Both of them were miserable over. But one went out and hung himself because it was remorse not repentance. The other one fled to the foot of the cross and cried out for mercy. Radically different response before Jesus went to the cross. And in this setting he had just finished reproving the scribes and pharisees, pronouncing woes against them. Woe unto you scribe, pharisees, hypocrites. Right after he pronounces those woes, then he says this. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you were not willing. Look, your house has left you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Imagine this. Try and get a glimpse of this. Jesus walking among the people of Israel. The miracles, the signs and wonders, the blind seeing, the lame walking, the dead being raised. And they still denied him. They still rejected him. After all the expressions of goodness in Jesus with this heart aching and yearning for mankind. How often I long to gather you together as a hen does her chicks. And you were not willing. Think of that in your own lives. How many times has he wanted to gather you together and you resisted and you fought and you said no. That you didn't give up. You still wanted to be the one in control. You still wanted to be the boss. And he's speaking the same type of word to you. Your name could be inserted instead of Jerusalem. But the same type of thing. How he has pled with you. And he showed himself to you. And you resist and you resist and you resist as he has reached out to you again and again. And then what did he say? Look your house is left to you now desolate. The house he was speaking of there, specifically in that situation would have been the temple. And what's interesting, he said your house, up until that time it was always my father's house. He says my presence is leaving the house. Now it's yours. No longer mine. Think of that. We fight against God. Let's move this in our own situation. We fight against God as he reaches out to us again and again. Wanting us. Exposing the parasites. Eating us out. But we still love ourselves more than anything. We are still central. It's still all about us. You're just in pure life trying to take care of yourself rather than really trying to have this God grab hold of you and transform your life. And it's still all about you. And he says if you continue in this as I've called and called, your house will be left to you desolate. I will leave you in your sin until, like Jesus said, until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And you know what that meant? Let me just explain that for a moment. What that meant is that is exactly what the people said in Christ's triumphant entry. When he's riding a donkey, you know what it was? Rich people ride donkeys. Kings ride donkeys. People in our modern culture, we think wrong. The law forbid Israel from using horses. That's what the pagans did. Kings rode donkeys. The king was coming into Jerusalem. They were throwing the palm leaves at him. And they were saying Hosanna. You know what Hosanna is? Hosanna is a cry of political deliverance. It was a statement that they were crying to Jesus to be their deliverer. And they made the statement blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. It was an acknowledgement of Jesus as Messiah. The crowds were hailing him Messiah. The crowds were hailing him. The one who could sit upon the throne of Israel. And he says you'll not see me back in your temple until you acknowledge truly who I am. If we resist and we resist and we resist him, he will leave our house desolate until we are really finally willing to come to the place and bow our life and will to his lordship and to be done with words that have little substance. Proverbs 24 verses 13 and 14. King Solomon is speaking to his son. He said, eat honey, my son, for it is good. Honey from the comb is sweet to your taste. Know also that wisdom is sweet to your soul. If you find it, there is a future hope for you and your hope will not be cut off. Just like honey is sweet to the taste buds. He said to those who become lovers of God, the knowledge of God is sweet to our souls and we long for it, even when it reproves us or corrects us, even when it disciplines us or when it speaks kind things to us. It becomes sweet to us and he says if we will embrace it, he says you will have a future. You see, God wants to bring a hope to you, but the hope is established upon repentance. It's established upon the kingdom of God as he has preached it. Not what is so often preached in the church today that is some watered down compromised version, but the real gospel that brings about the lordship of Christ where he rules in our heart and rules in our lives. He rules our emotions, our ambitions, our appetites where we let him truly govern us and so he has pursued us. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how many times I've longed to gather you together and express my love to you to show you the wonder of who I am, but you fought me every time and so now your house is desolate until you are really willing to come and own me as lord. And so what are your spiritual parasites? Have you really dealt with them? You see, our parasites eat out our spiritual life. It eats us out and when it begins to eat us out, you know what it does? Understand what it does. It eats out your family. So how many of you have ruined your family because the parasite of sin in your life works through you to ruin your family, to ruin loved ones, to ruin friends because that's what happens. When it eats us out, it's going to eat everybody else out in our life. It's going to bring ruin wherever it goes. If you don't really deal with it, imagine that you're here and you just deal with some of the outward sins, but you still got those little eggs of sin just like that scuttle fly. They're just waiting to hatch. Just waiting to hatch. They're there. They've already been laid in your soul, in your spirit, in your way of thinking. They're there. Maybe they're already larva and they're just real small. They've not had a munching frenzy on your way of thinking and way of life, not your spiritual life, but you've just taken care of some outward things here and you've not really dealt with those sins, those parasitic sins that are wanting to eat you out. Guess what? You leave here and those things are still inside of you and they will ruin you as they grow bigger and bigger. The necessity of dealing with sin is something we should do passionately because our relationship with God depends upon it and also our relationship with others. And so, what spiritual parasites are eating you out? You know, those parasites are not your friends. They are not your friends. They are your enemies. They are your avowed enemies. Imagine if you had a guy that had made a vow he was going to kill you and you know he had a big old knife in his back pocket and he's coming over just wanting to spend time with you and he's trying to smooth talk you just into some friendship but the whole time you remember he's vowed to kill me. But then you let him in and you start sitting down, you're watching television, you're getting the junk and the whole time he's just waiting to sink that knife in your heart. He has one agenda. He's just looking for the end until eventually he can do it. Do you understand? Sin is your enemy. There's not one sin that's your friend. It is out for your destruction in every expression. They are parasites that will ruin you from the inside out. And you must become so diligent in wanting to find freedom at the feet of Jesus because there is no other remedy. And so which are you like? Judas or Peter? Is godly sorrow working in your heart that all you want to do is run to the feet of Jesus like that sinner woman in Luke 7 ran to the feet of Jesus and just wept and wept as she was finding sweet cleansing there? Or are you like Judas? Which one are you? Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Father, we come before you now in the precious name of Jesus. Lord, I'm asking that you'd help us have ears to hear. Lord, it's really easy to say amen and never let it get beyond our way of thinking to our heart, Lord. God, we need this to get to our heart. Lord, you want a revolution in men. You're not out to bandage us up. You're out to transform us, oh God. You're not out to give us a nice little life. You're out to give us a brand new life that does not come from this world. That it comes from a whole other world. It comes from you and you alone. God, I'm asking for a radical work in men. I'm asking for a radical work in those that have been playing games that they have not been serious about it. Or men that have gone only so far, 50, 60, 80 percent, that they still know there's some things in their life and they're not willing to let it go. And they're hearing tonight the seriousness of this situation. Because if they don't deal with it, God, it's going to grow and it's going to cause them ruin. Lord, I'm asking for a repentance. Repentance in this chapel tonight that would bring revolutions in the hearts and minds of people. God, help us to stop thinking kindly of sin. And to begin to see what it really is. That it has never been our friend and it will never do us good no matter what name is attached to it. God, it will do nothing but ruin. It will destroy us, God. And Lord, I'm asking that we would get a fresh glimpse of the cross. God, there is no other answer. We cannot conquer this sin ourselves. We can't stop loving ourselves supremely unless you break in our hearts and help us to have a better love. God, we can't do it. There is no strength in the flesh of man. It's not in our abilities. It's not in our wisdom. It's in the place of the cross and learning how to throw ourselves at the cross to weep bitterly like Peter did. And the astounding thing of Peter is when he heard the resurrection of Christ, it says he ran to the tomb. He didn't run away from it like Judas did. He ran home to it. God, I'm asking for men to run home to the cross. To run home. Not to run away. Not to run after self, but to run home, oh God. Because there is no other remedy. In the precious name of Jesus. Thank you, Lord.