In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the consequences of selling one's soul for worldly desires. He warns against the dangers of straying from God's path and the negative impact it can have on one's life. The speaker shares personal experiences and highlights the importance of repentance and seeking forgiveness from God. The sermon also emphasizes the need to resist the devil and not give him any foothold in our lives.

I'm going to ask you to turn to First John, the Gist of the First John. And I'd like to read a few verses, beginning with verse three. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father, with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard in him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. We've been talking about salvation. So great salvation. So salvation as it's taught in the scripture. We have begun by seeing that sin is a crime. It's the committal of the will, the principle of I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to please me. We also saw that there are some things we do for sinners. We live Christ before them as a sample of his grace. We intercede for them. We witness to them. And we saw some things that God does in bringing that one out of death into life. First, he awakens the sinner, stirs him up, makes him uncomfortable. Secondly, he convicts the sinner of his crime, turning to his own way. And he stirs his heart and brings him to repentance. That's a change of mind. Note it well. I wish to emphasize it in perspective because we're going to see it again in a few moments. He causes us to repent. We didn't lack any ability to repent. The only reason why sinners don't repent is not because they can't repent, but because they won't repent. It's the spirit of God moving upon the heart. It stirs sinners to the place that they're willing to renounce their right to rule, throw down the weapons of their warfare. So for peace on God's terms, unconditional surrender. Lord, I'm going to please you in everything. That's the nature of repentance. And it's a precondition for saving faith. There are other kinds of faith, but saving faith that savingly unites us to the Son of God. Right? Christ said, except you repent, you'll perish. There are some teachers that have tried to say that repentance comes prior of following or subsequent to salvation, but they'd make the Lord not to understand this most important of all subjects when he said, except you repent, you'll perish. And Paul taught repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance is that renunciation of our intent and purpose to rule our own lives. And we committal to him. Now, on the basis of that saving faith and on the exercise of saving faith, the witness of the spirit. God finds himself with our spirit in that renewing work of grace, whereby we are brought out of death into life. And he tells us. I would call your attention again to the words of Job, who said, There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. For the part of a man that knows the things of a man is the spirit of man that's in him. The part of you that knows you wrote in high school on this first Sunday morning of March is not your brain or your hands or your feet or any other part of your body. It's your eyes. All of those things confirm what you know. But it's your spirit that knows that you're here, that you're married or you're unmarried, as the case may be. And it's that same human spirit that's quickened by the Holy Spirit. And as you know you're here and know who you are, you know that you're born of God. If you've known it before you exercised saving faith, you knew you weren't. Now you know you are. And it's that how you know. You know because you know that you know. It doesn't require argument. There are proofs. But the person doesn't need them, others may. Now, what did you carry into the Christian life? You've renounced your right to rule. You've thrown down these weapons you've used in fighting against God. You have sued for peace. You've been forgiven. You've been pardoned. You know you're born of God. What did you carry with you? Into the Christian life? Well, first, you carried all the scars that you had from your unconverted days. They did an apothectomy on you before you were converted. You're still going to have the scar after you're converted. You scratched your hand on barbed wire when you were climbing to the fence and left a scar. It's going to be there. Cut one finger off when you were playing with your dad's bowers off. And you're still going to have the stuff. It's not going to be there. In other words, you don't have a resurrection body yet. One day you're going to have a body like unto his own body of glory. But the day after you're converted, you have the same old model that you had when you first started with such changes as a cop. You've got, you have something else. You have memory. You carried your memory with you into this new life. And you have something else. You've carried all the urges and drives and propensities and appetites that you had before you were converted. Standard equipment they were on the first model. They've never been changed since. Mother, father had a Mother Eve, gave into the world, made by the hand of God. And he gave them an appetite for food because that's how they were sustained for knowledge. That's how they learned. He gave them an appetite for pleasure. That's how they enjoyed his creation. He gave them an appetite for status. That's how they were going to rule over that which he had made. He gave them an appetite for sex. That's how the family were managed to be increased. All of these appetites that when he had given them, he looked at them, at Father Adam, and he said, it is good. Now, you're converted. And you carried into the Christian life all of those appetites, those urges or drives or propensities. You carried them in. They're still with you. You carried something else. You have carried into the Christian life all of the learned habits of response to life situations. You began early. You were in an environment that was conducive to your learning early, all the principles that covered this system, this world system into which you've come. You came in with appetites and urges and drives, and then there were splendid examples, what not to do, set up beside you on every hand. So with natural drives, natural urges, natural propensities, you also acquired a whole structure and system of how to, how to handle the situations that you encountered. So for instance, you probably early learned that the best defense was a strong offense. And so we cultivated how to be as offensive as possible in those early years of our life, and some of us were more successful at it than others. But it was something that we had. Someone said something about us in school. Only way to handle it was to say something about them. Do unto others before they do unto you or after they do unto you, but do became the rule that we followed. Now what's happened? By virtue of habitual use, the synapses of the brain, I know a lot about physiology and about neurology because I read the Reader's Digest regularly, and I get all my sightings there. So I want you to know you're listening to an expert when you say, when I say synapse, I've said more than I know. I don't really know what it is. But I remember reading this article in the Reader's Digest by scientific authority, and it said that as you repeat certain actions, certain responses, it's almost like, well, this sort of making a little road, a path through the yard or through the woods. Easier to go that way than some other way. You carry all of those into this new life. So what's happened? What's the event that took place back there at the point of repentance from the day on God, I'm going to please you, sincere, earnest, genuine, real. And on the basis of that, the Spirit of God put into your heart saving faith and witnessed that you were born again. You said, Lord, I'll never do that again. I'll never think that again. I'll never say that again. And you met it. You reached instant perfection in purpose. Your purpose was to please God. That's the essence of repentance, the perfect purpose to please God. I'm going to please God. That's the purpose of my life, to please Him. And on the basis of that and that alone, that change of attitude, He quickened faith. Now, you're in the Christian life. You've been there two weeks, and something happens. Somebody comes along behind you, beside you, in front of you, confronts you, and they do something unexpected. They will, to illustrate it, they haul off and slap you. Now, maybe it's not physical. Maybe it's in words or in looks or something else. But it's offensive. Now, what's going to happen? Remember, your purpose was to please God. That's three weeks old, two weeks old. But for all these many years, when somebody did something to you, you turned around and gave them as good as that you got. And so what happens? What's going to be the first thing? You're new in the Christian life. You turn around and you give them just what they gave you. Why? Remember, I talked about that little path in the brain that was there, that something that you had carved into your responses, that habituated response, and it takes over. Now, you know it's sin. You know it's wrong. No sooner have you done it, then you're filled with grace. And you said, but God, I promised I'd never do that again. And I've done it. It's going to fill you with remorse. It'll fill you with a sense of guilt, even a sense of questioning. Am I really saved? I told God if he'd forgive me, I wouldn't do that anymore. And now, now I've done it. Now I've done it. What am I going to do? I told God it was just part of my past sins. If he'd just forgive me, I would not think that way anymore. I wouldn't talk that way anymore. I wouldn't do that anymore. And now I've only been a Christian for two weeks. What am I going to do about it? Well, if you're smart, you're going to go to the scripture. And you're going to find that the scripture has anticipated this possibility. In fact, it's anticipated the strong likelihood that this is going to happen. And you're going to discover that all of the warnings in the New Testament, and all of the teachings in the New Testament, and in the epistles especially, and all of the exhortations in the New Testament were given not only to born again, but to spiritual people, because in the New Testament, that's all you're going to have. And it's pretty explicit. And the scripture tells us exactly what to do. Paul, writing to the church in Corinth about the abuses in connection with the Lord's Supper, was very explicit. He said, judge yourself, that you be not judged. For he that is judged is jacent of the Lord, that he should not be condemned with the world. But if you want to avoid this being jacent of the Lord business, you better judge yourself right away. Don't wait. Right now, judge it, judge it, judge it. What's that mean? Well, that means you're the judge. You sit down on the bench, and you get your book out here, the law book, and you get the bailiff, which is you, to bring the defendant, which is you. And you have a court seat. And you confront you. And you look right straight into the eye of you and say, what is this you did? And you, as the one that's judging yourself, says, I did this that God told me not to do. That's what the scripture says, judge yourself. Don't wait for somebody else to do it. You do it. Now, the second thing the scripture tells us is to forsake his sin. That's a principle of the Old Testament in the New as well. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man's thoughts of return to the Lord and that mercy that I got will abundantly pardon. But no pardon and no mercy unless there's a forsaking of the way. So we judge it to be what God said it is, and we forsake it. And then we read here in verse John the third step. And that is, confess it. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin. To confess means to say with God what God said. To say with God what God said, and to call it by its name. That's the word, calling by its name. Now, let's think for a moment. Here we are, children of God. We've come into the Christian life. We have the witness of the Spirit. We've burst through to the Spirit. We've done something that isn't right. It's disobedient to the word of God which said it. What's the consequences? What are the consequences of sin in the life of a Christian? Pretty important. Very important. Number one. First thing that happens when a child of God sins is that fellowship with God is interrupted. The sweet sense of his presence is interrupted. You see, it says God is light and he is no darkness at all. If we walk in darkness, if we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another. So what's the first effect of sin in the life of a Christian? Interrupted fellowship. Sweet sense of his presence. We've grieved the Holy Spirit. That grieving, that hurting of him is reflected in interrupted fellowship with the Lord. Is that very painful? Well, it just depends on whether you've had any or not. Maybe you've been so long since you had any you didn't know whether it's interrupted or not. But if you've had it, it's interrupted and it's painful and it hurts. And then the second thing that happens when a child of God sins. Prayer is unanswered. David said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. And for me to permit in my life that which breeds God means that I have foreclosed the possibility of having prayer answered. Now, maybe if you're in a position where you don't have anything to worry about, full security, perfect health, no possibility of sickness or need, no problems with family or friends, it isn't terribly important that you be on what the old-timers used to call praying ground. I haven't arrived there yet. I'm still living day by day, breath by breath on the basis of prayer. So anything that's going to interfere with answered prayer is awfully costly. I can't afford it. Can you? I just can't afford it. Because David said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord won't hear me. Then that gets out of the line. That's all sensitive it is. God looks in the heart. The third thing that happens when a child of God sins is that God doesn't use him or her. They may go on using God, but God doesn't use them. See, God, I think the best illustration comes from the life of F.B. Meyer. I read this years ago. F.B. Meyer bought a fountain pen, one of the early, back in the late 1900s, and it was going to carry the, you know, up until that time, everybody who traveled had to carry a stick pen, nibs, and a sand, a blot, or a blotter, and he had that little bottle of ink. But they got a fountain pen, where you put the ink in the pen. Only problem with his first fountain pen that F.B. Meyer had, it sure broke. The ink came out of the end of the pen, but it also came out of the sides and out of the top, and every time he broke anything, he got his hands all blue. So as soon as new pens were made that were guaranteed to leak proof, he took that pen and put it in the drawer. He said he'd get him to go on a trip, and he'd feel in the drawer to take some pens with him, and he'd feel that first pen still open, still in his drawer, still belong to it. But when he felt that pen, instead of pulling it out to put it in, he'd push it back further in the drawer to get one of them. And the little pen was supposed to, in this illustration of Meyer's, be able to think and respond. The little pen says, well, I felt his touch. I still belong to him. I'm still in his drawer. He hasn't shown me where it burned me yet. It's still here, but he never uses me. Once I knew his thoughts before any others, once I helped him communicate with all, he would see, but now, why doesn't he use me? And the answer that comes is, oh, little pen, little pen, you still belong to him. But he can't use you, because when he does, you get it dirty. God never uses the life that gets him dirty. They go on using God, but God doesn't use such a life. The fourth thing that happens when a child of God sins is pretty dangerous and very, very threatening. The scripture is so explicit. It says, give no place to the devil. Now, there's a reason for that. Because the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour. Only problem about that is you don't understand much about lions. Lions roar, but only after they caught the prey, not before. So a lion that's hungry and hasn't gotten supper yet, roaring is said to be the lion's way of saying grace. He's got the supper, and he's just telling God, thank you for a good meal. But he never says grace until he's got the meal in front of him. He just never roars until he's got his supper in front of him. Now, what is hunger supper? I tell you, he's a pussycat. He does you never hear him. He walks without cracking the grass. He's sniffing. And he comes around in your life, and you've got a fence there. See, the angel of the Lord, it happens about then to fear him. And the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. But when you become friends to evil, and you don't hate it anymore, but you consent to it. Oh, what happens? It's like having a high board fence. And you go along, and you kick the board loose. Now, the devil, like a roaring lion, comes snooping around, and he finds that board loose, that unconfessed, unforgiven sin. And he just pushes it aside with the paw, and he gets his paws in, pulls another board. First thing you know, he's in. Gotcha. Now, the roar goes off. Gotcha. I gotcha. The gate pleads to the devil. Oh, you can't afford it. You can't afford it. Now, the fifth thing that happens when you're trying to sing his song, well, I just lose my reward, someone said. I try to tell you there's a lot more than losing reward about this sin in the life of Christian people. If I do anything about it, I just sort of like cure our interest in it, lose our appetite, lose our enthusiasm, raise the place the way we do it, let it go. And the fifth thing, there is that on a clincher, the other four are bad enough, but the fifth one, boom, that's bad. You see, the scripture says that he scourges every son and chastens every child, but he never lays a finger on the devil's family. Have you ever heard anybody say, well, I know a Christian who's living in sin, and he's not been chastened or anything happened to him. No, you don't know. That person is not to be identified as a Christian. He's a professing Christian. You see, the Lord knoweth them that are his. He's the only one that does besides us. The Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Here's someone that names the name of Christ and departs from iniquity, scandal in church. And nothing's happening to him. Pray it. That isn't proof of anything other than God says, that's not my child. He scourges every child and chastens every son, but he never lays a finger on the devil's family. You know why? Because this is all the heaven the devil's family's going to have. And when they die, it'll be hell forever. But for the child of God, this is all the hell we're ever going to have. And when they die, it's going to be heaven forever. So he's chastened his own family, but he doesn't throw any grit and sand into the mess of pottage for which the foolish people sell their souls. That's not nice. They sold their souls for it. He isn't going to throw grit in it. It doesn't happen, but it's Judah. Now, I got news for you. If you'd like, I can show you some scars to prove exactly how faithful and loving and tender and gentle and zealous God is about that chastening business. I've had it a time or two here and there. And I'd like to just recommend that if you've got an alternative course, you take it. And the alternative course, judge yourself that you be not judged. For he who is judged is chastened of the Lord. And dear, dear friend, that isn't very pleasant. Years ago, I just got to know the Lord three weeks before. We were living in Anoka County, Minnesota. We had a 360-acre sand pile, latinly called a farm. We had 60 acres of one field that we planted into corn, which gave a little bit of corn if you had a lot of rain. We didn't have any rain. We just tried to save the crop. We were going to cultivate it, cultivate it to death, stir it up. They had an idea that if you cultivated the soil, it would bring the water up. But all it did was let the water evaporate. Well, we should have done is left it there. But we did everything wrong, including that. It was hot. Oh, it was so hot. We had to get up at 230 in the morning. I harnessed my team in the car, got it out to the cultivator. I was in the field waiting for the first ray of light so I could see the little green shriveled clump of the stalks of called corn. And started the team down there. By 6 o'clock we had to feed the horses, nose bag, give them some water, come into the barn, have breakfast, milk six cows, each of us, three of us, and back into the field near seven as possible. By 8 o'clock, my team was so exhausted they weren't walking. They were just sort of falling from one end of the field to the other. I didn't even die when I took the cultivation jar off the back of the old spring sheet we started up to pump it full and let the burlap float around it. When I came around the corner of the house, the door opened, my mother came out. She saw me. And she smiled and she said, oh, call me by family nickname, Sonny. I'm so glad to see you. I've got some errands I need done. Well, right then, I think the thing I needed least in all this whole fat world was errands. And I did something that I'm sure none of you will know anything about. But you just try to imagine. I sassed my mother. You know what sassing is? Well, see, I didn't know you didn't know anything about it. I sassed my mother. And she drew back, so I hit her. She spoke again. And I sassed her a second. And she said something else. And this time, I emotionally hurt her. And she just looked at me as though she'd been stung with a bow and she said, Sonny, I thought you had been born again for a child's wrong. And she turned around and walked to the kitchen. And I walked up and I couldn't pump my jar of water. I couldn't. I just sat it down under the pump. I walked out into the hay mower down between the acres and up the ladder in the wall into the hay. I found a valley in the hay. I threw myself down, sobbing like a baby. I didn't. I remember crying out, Oh, God, I don't know what this has done to me, whether it's unsaved me or what, but I hate it. I hate it. You see, the thing God used to show me that though I was a church member, I was lost. I dishonored my parents. I was disobedient to my parents. I disobeyed my parents. And now I have done it again. And I recall telling God what a sin this was and how I hated it. And I didn't know what it had done to me. And I just stopped sobbing and I just laid there and I began to hear way back in my mind the old cap meeting, you know, they'd sung down there when I had come to know Christ. Peace, perfect peace in this dark world of sin. The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. And I confessed it to him and I knew forgiveness and I knew cleansing and I knew respiration of joy. And I went down the ladder and found my mother and asked her to forgive me. I did her errands and I picked up my jar, filled it with water, went back to my horses and the whole thing was less than 25 minutes. But in that 25 minutes, I discovered something. I carried into the Christian life a traitor that would betray me. If I gave it a chance. And not only did I discover I carried a traitor into the Christian life, but I found out who the traitor was. You know who? Me. That I that I am by nature. That I, that Paul says, I am crucified with Christ. That I, that me. And all those urges and drives and propensities and habits of response, I knew cleansing, I knew forgiveness. But I'd also learned something else about me. That as long as I live, day by day, I was going to have to find a way to have victory and find a way to have cleansing. But God, I promised if you'd forgive me, I'd never do it again. And God knew you were sincere. He's made a provision. It is best that you take that provision because the alternatives are so costly. It behooves us to keep conscience's point of offense toward God and toward man. So we bow in prayer. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, let's ask ourselves a few questions. First, I'd like to have short accounts with God of all the things that I've done in my life that have breathed the Spirit, that I've dealt with. I'd like to judge them and forsake them and confess them to know the cleansing of His blood. If I haven't, the best thing in the world to do since we've been reminded by His Spirit this morning through the Word is to deal with it. Heavenly Father, your purpose, as we read in the Scripture, was that our joy might be full. And we know that if we have consciences that are aware that we grieve Thee, that there's unconfessed, unforsaken, unforgiven sin and heart of life, that the joy is interrupted. Thou has brought our joy to be full. And so, Father, we're asking that for our own sake, as well as for the glory of Christ, each of us here this morning, I invite Thee to deal with us in any and every place that Thou seest where we need to judge and forsake and confess that which grieves Thee, that our joy might be full. Breathe upon us breath of God, that Thou work in our hearts and our lives to the end, that in everything we might bring joy and satisfaction to Thy heart, that He might joy over us as He sees that the lamb that was slain through us is receiving the reward of His suffering. We ask in His name and for His sake, Amen.