In this sermon, the speaker reflects on the weakness of the flesh and the dangers of relying on one's own achievements. He uses the analogy of a bug climbing a window to illustrate how our flesh can lead us astray. The speaker emphasizes the need to have no confidence in the flesh and instead worship God in the Spirit. He also references passages from Philippians and Galatians to highlight the works of the flesh and the importance of avoiding them.

Third chapter, please. Philippians, the third chapter. My message this afternoon, no confidence in the flesh. No confidence in the flesh. If you've got any confidence in the flesh left in you, we're going to kill it this afternoon. By the power of his word and spirit. Philippians, the third chapter, verses one through four. For finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. Write the same things to you. To me indeed is not grievous, but few it is saved. Beware of dogs. Beware of evil workers. Beware of the concision. Now, the dogs mentioned here were those of the circumcision that were trying to say that you have to be circumcised before you can be saved. You have faith, but you have to be circumcised as well. Verse three, for we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have what? No confidence in the flesh. We're different kind of people, he said. We're not like the circumcision of the flesh. We have no confidence in the flesh whatsoever. Heavenly Father, we suffer and hurt because of our ignorance of your ways and your word. And we pray that you turn the light on this afternoon. Some things that we go through that we don't understand, that if we could simply understand, if you'd just give us the understanding we were able to lay hold of it through the spirit of the living God, we could live in peace, we could live with joy. Lord, we would not bear so many burdens of guilt and fear and condemnation that we place on ourselves that God never intended us to bear. And so we live in misery and many times we're tormented by these things that we don't understand. So I pray, Holy Ghost, that you teach us, teach me in the process of sharing what you put on my heart. Lord, we don't know it all, but we're learning. We're learning how to walk in the light. And when the light comes, the joy follows. And the peace of God that passes all understanding, so that we're not lived in torment for fear has torment. You'd never meant to torment us. You meant to God that we would walk through life with peace and joy in the Holy Ghost and the righteousness of Christ. So help me, Lord, to convey this word that brings peace and rest to our souls. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Paul, the apostle, said he had no flesh, no confidence in flesh. He said, I don't trust it. I've got nothing to do with my flesh. He didn't trust his flesh because he knew God didn't trust it, that God doesn't deal with flesh anymore. You see, flesh is not this human body in itself. It's the nature that's in this body. I inherited a nature, and you inherited a nature from Adam that's prone to sin, full of every evil possible possibility, conniving and striving and lying and stealing, all of these things. You bring a baby into the world, you bring a child into the world, and it won't take you more than a year or two to get to the terrible twos, and you'll see what flesh is. I've gone through four kids and eleven grandkids, and I know what flesh is. In fact, let's go to Galatians and see what it really is. Galatians, the fifth chapter. Turn left to Galatians, the fifth chapter, starting at verse 19. Now, the works of the flesh are manifest, are revealed, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envies, murders, drunkenness, revilings, and such thing, such like, of which I tell you, as I've also told you in the time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, folks, that's quite a list. And do you know that every bit of that is in you and me and our flesh? You say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't murder. Oh, yeah, but you hate, and the Bible calls that murder. You say, I don't commit adultery. Did you ever look the second time? Oh, you're going to tell me, you say, well, I've conquered my flesh. Oh, we'll see that you haven't even started. You see, the law in the Old Testament was given to expose the weakness of our flesh. God gave a revelation of his high holiness, his utter holiness. He made demands on the flesh that he knew the flesh could not fulfill, because the flesh, in its pride, would try to get to heaven on its own merits, and then Christ would have died in vain. What's the use of Christ going to the cross if we can figure this out ourselves and do it on our own power and strength? And so he had to show us what he knew, that there had to be an old covenant that demanded absolute, total, perfect holiness. And God said, if you fail at one point in this, the flesh fails at one point to fulfill all this law of mine, you fail the whole thing. In other words, you failed the test, and your flesh has not achieved what you thought it could achieve. It's an impossible task, because the flesh failed at every point of the law. It failed. And oh, how it tried to be accepted by God. It wanted to be that vehicle of righteousness that could be accepted before God to bring us. And so it dressed itself up in spirituality. Well, there's nothing that stinks more in the sight of God than flesh dressed up in spirituality, dressed up in spiritual drag. That's all it is. God knew all along that the flesh was weak and powerless. He never trusted the flesh to keep his law. He had to prove to us how hopeless it was, and that flesh will always be flesh. Flesh is never going to change. Flesh has a character of its own. That character has been described in Galatians 5, and it will not change as long as you're in the body. As long as you live on this earth, your flesh is not going to change its character. I'm going to show you something. You say, boy, I can't bother. Well, you'll see it from the Scripture here as we go by. At the cross, God, once and for all, did away with all dealings of the flesh. This is where the new covenant, the new arrangement came in, where God says, I am not going to deal with your flesh. Your flesh was given the opportunity, and it failed. You cannot, by your own willpower, your own strength, you cannot do it by your own strivings. That has been tried, and it's been a failure, and at the cross, God says, I recognize only one man now. Not the flesh man, the old man, but the new man, which is Christ Jesus. I'm only going to recognize one man. And the only way I'll ever recognize you, you can't come to me by trying to make me promises. You can't come to me and say, try me one more time, because I've tried you hundreds of times, and you've failed already. This one time more thing doesn't work. He said, there's only one man who is perfect and who has fulfilled the law, and that's my son. He said, I'm not going to deal with you anymore. I'm not going to deal with your flesh. As far as I'm concerned, your flesh is dead. It's dead. The flesh, the Bible said, was crucified with Christ. Crucified. Now, listen closely, because if you get this and ask the Holy Spirit to help you, you're going to discover that most of the misery you and I go through our guilt and our fear and our condemnation is a result of misunderstanding flesh versus the new man, the old man versus the new man. The Lord says, I'm going to gather up in Christ everyone who believes. I'm going to gather up, and that will be one man. That's his body. I'm going to recognize only one man. I see you now only as in Christ. I recognize. I deal only with one man. I don't deal with the ups and downs and the fluctuations of the flesh anymore. I don't do that. I've never done that. He said, I won't deal with you that way, because you'll never be satisfied. You'll never be secure. Every time you feel good or think you've achieved something, you'll feel that you're in relationship with me. But every time your flesh fails you, you'll be condemned. You'll hide from me, and you'll feel filthy and dirty, and just like Adam and Eve, you'll run and hide from me. And you'll not understand my nature. So Jesus took this self-man, this flesh man, to the cross and crucified him, knowing this, that our old man of the flesh is crucified with him. He's saying, you labor and strive as you want. You make promises in the flesh. You try to do better. You try to keep my love commandments in your self-man. It's all going to be in vain, because even if your flesh succeeds in improving your nature, even if you can come to a high moral condition through the efforts of the flesh, I will not receive it, because in my eyes it's dead, it's over. Deal with you with your flesh. By the deeds of the works of the law of the flesh, there shall no man be justified. Through the flesh, from the cross on, no man can be made right before God through efforts of his human flesh. Now, Paul spoke about his own useless struggle by the flesh to please God. Oh, how this Pharisee called Saul wanted to please God. He was jealous for the law, circumcised under the law. He was given to zeal. He was given to the righteousness which is by the flesh, by the keeping of the law. He said, I've tried all of that. I expended all my strength. I abused myself. I did everything to try to please God in my own strength, and God would have nothing with it. He'd have nothing to do with it. He said, I was blameless according to the law, and God would have nothing to do with it. He turned it down. It was all in vain. All of that work, all those promises I made, and all of that striving, and all of the keeping of those various 635 rules and regulations of the Pharisees, I failed. The very fact that he said he was perfectly keeping the law, just in that very statement, he missed the law. Missed the point because the Bible said no man has completely fulfilled the law. But he mentioned the moral commandments, the ten commandments, which we should all be able to fulfill through the grace of God. But in Galatians, Paul says in 524, And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with affections and lusts. All that you read in Galatians 5, all of those, that whole list of things that describe our human flesh. And folks, everything that I read is potentially in you and me. Everything. Including murder, adultery, fornication. Potentially it's there in our flesh. The seeds of it are there. And now Paul comes along and says, All they that are in Christ have crucified the flesh with all that list, all the affections and all the lusts. Folks, I want to tell you something. We cannot crucify our own flesh. That would mean that that was within our power to accomplish. That we could set out to do something about flesh. That we could kill this habit and with a little willpower kill this habit and just keep at it until we work them one by one. I don't know how you do it. You lay down and you get a hammer over here and you nail this hand down. How do you nail the other hand down? You only have one left. You can't crucify yourself. And yet it says, They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh. The Bible says, Our old man, or the flesh, is crucified with Christ. We enter into His victory. We claim His victory as ours. Christ crucified the flesh so I can say that I am in Christ and I have crucified the flesh because I am in Christ. My flesh is crucified because I am in Him. I didn't do it myself. I did good works of my own. He made the sacrifice. And when I enter with faith in His finished work at the cross, then I can say all those lusts have been crucified. Now, here's the problem. You say, well, that doesn't square with my experience, Pastor Dave. I read, yes, that my flesh and its lusts have been crucified with Christ. I hear you say my flesh is dead in the eyes of God. Then why is my flesh still acting up? Why do I still battle with lusts and evil deeds and thoughts? Why depression? Why such temper tantrums? Where do I get that? If that's not flesh, what is it? If my flesh is dead, why does the Bible say the flesh is lusting against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary, the one to the other, so that we can't do the things that we'd like to do? Now, that sounds like a war, doesn't it? You say that lust in me is fighting, and the word here used in the Greek is to seek control and superimpose will upon another. So the flesh is trying to conquer the Spirit of God in us, which is the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of Christ in us is endeavoring to superimpose the will of God upon the flesh. There's a war. You say, well, that's some paradox you just brought us to. You say it's crucified, it's dead, and yet I don't feel like it's dead, and if the Bible says that I'm to make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust, that means that the flesh is still there, and if I make provision for it, it's going to overpower me. Are you getting it? Do you live it? Do you understand it? You quoted those scriptures. You said, I am absolutely dead in Christ. The flesh is dead. It's gone, and you go home and lose your temper with your wife before you get home. You come to Times Square Church, and you hear these wonderful promises, the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and I'm in the Spirit tonight, and the Spirit of God has conquered that flesh, because on my job, there's a guy that's just come on the job, and he's down four desks from me, and Sunday night, I got the victory over looking at that man, because I know he's not a Christian, and I've got victory over that man. Now, that's not some woman I know. That's a made-up woman in my mind, trying to illustrate something, and there's something in the heart that rejoices you up in the morning and says, I have victory in Jesus. I've been singing it all the way, and today, God helping me, I won't even look that way. I will never have a vain imagination about having a date with him, because I know he's not saved. And you go out there saying, I'm going home tonight with victory, because the flesh is dead. Crucified. And you last 15 minutes, sister, because suddenly you are looking there, and you're trying to figure out how you could accidentally meet him. By accident. Uh-huh. And something inside begins to stir. Some sensuality and thoughts of passion and other things that suddenly, and by noon you're condemned, and you go home that night. You say, God, what was that all about? Where is the victory? What happened? I thought it was beyond that. I thought I had more grace than that. I thought I had more power over sin than that. Where did those terrible thoughts come from? Where did that vain imagination come from? Let me give you the key to understanding this seeming paradox. God declares flesh dead in his own eyes. Dead as far as his new covenant dealings with his people. He reckons it dead. Now, there's still indwelling sin in us. Sin still indwells this physical body. But you see, it's not dead in our eyes yet. It's dead and crucified in God's eyes. And God's problem is, he has got to have us see through his eyes. Not what we see through our eyes. Not what we live by feelings alone, but what God has declared. Until you see what God sees. Until you see it from God's eyes. Until you reckon it dead. The Bible said your flesh dead. Until you reckon it as he reckons it dead. And he gave us an allegory, which means an illustrated sermon. He gives in Galatians the fourth chapter. You don't turn there, but he gave the allegory of Abraham and his two sons. Now, God said, I'm going to give you a son, but it's going to be a son by faith. You're going to believe me for this. And he said, it's going to be on my time and my agenda. And it's going to come by faith. Abraham, you believe me for this child and you're going to have a child. That's the faith child. This was going to be Isaac. God had Isaac planned from the foundation of the world. He represents, Isaac represents walking with God by faith alone. Pleasing God by faith alone. Being in the presence of God and pleasing God and doing everything according to the mind of God. Represents the new covenant. Everything by faith in Christ Jesus and his finished work. But you see, Abraham got impatient. And at the urging of his wife, Sarah, he goes into his maid, Agar, and has a child by the name Ishmael. And the Bible calls Ishmael the child of the flesh. The scripture says, he that was born of the bond woman or the slave woman, Agar, was born after the flesh. It was born after the scheming and conniving and planning of human flesh. In other words, not going to wait God's way, I can do this myself. I can achieve this. God, I want you to accept my plan. God comes along and he said, cast out the bond woman and her son. For the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. And at that point, he declares Ishmael dead. As far as any covenant dealings with Abraham from now on, he says, I'm telling you, cast Ishmael out. That's of the flesh. That's of human achievement. I'm not going to deal with you that way anymore. And he was pointing to the new covenant. He was pointing to the time that Christ would come. And that's what the inheritance was all about. This was the lineage of Christ, the son of the living God. This happens to represent every child that would believe in Christ from the cross on. God says, in my eyes, he's dead. Cast him out and cast the womb of that whole system out. Everything born of it, out. And at that moment, it's legally dead. From that time on, Ishmael cannot rob Isaac of his inheritance. He cannot interfere with his father legally. He can't do anything about it. But the Bible says that he's still persecuted. He was still alive. But in the eyes of God, he's dead. He's legally dead. In other words, he can't do anything about anything. He can persecute. He can lie. He can come to Isaac and say, this is not right. He can accuse him. He can persecute him. But in the eyes of God, Ishmael, the flesh, is what? Dead. Now, Isaac, if he's going to have peace of mind, if he's going to enjoy his inheritance, he's going to accept that. He's going to come out of his tent in the morning and there's Ishmael. Ishmael says, you're a liar. You're a cheat. You're no good. That inheritance belongs to me. And one of these days, your father doesn't love you any half. This should be a double deal. I should get half of it. And if he listens to those lies, he's going to have doubts and fears and unbelief. Because he's not accepted the legal view. He's not accepted God's view of the death of Ishmael. Ishmael is still there. But in the eyes of God, he's cast out. He's dead. It's a legal issue. And if Isaac wants peace of mind, he's going to come out and say, I don't care what you say, flesh. I don't care how you accuse me. I don't care how many thoughts you try to inject into my mind. I don't care how you try to interfere with my father Abraham and my relationship. You're dead. Get out. I have nothing to do with you. Nothing. Is anybody getting the picture? When your flesh comes to you with lies and evil thoughts, you say, I am a covenant child. I am under the blood. I've come by faith. I wasn't born a flesh child. I am born a spirit child. I'm in the spirit. I don't live in the flesh. You have no rights here anymore. You have no rights with me. You can't interfere with my relationship to my heavenly father. And the only way you can do that, if you don't believe what God said. I told you, I learned some things about, I was sitting in my office this week. I was just on this place about the flesh trying to please God. Because Abraham said, oh God, that you would accept Ishmael. God, if you just accept my labors. God, if you just accept my promises. God, if you just give me one more chance. Have you ever said that? You thought you could make it and you fell. Oh, did you fall? And sometimes, now God needs nobody to sin, but God sometimes allows his people to fall to see how weak their flesh is. He allows it. Yes, he does. He'll allow it. He'll just step aside and let your flesh take over and bang, down you go. And I was just thinking about that. And Lord said, turn left. Look over there. I said, Holy Spirit, whisper in my heart. And there was a little insect. I've got a big bow window there. What do you call it? Well, at least there are four big panes there. And a bow window. And there was an insect. It wasn't a fly, but it was like a centipede with wings on it. And that thing was crawling right up the glass. And it would fall down. And I kept writing, and it didn't pay much attention. I just kept looking. That thing kept crawling. About the tenth time that thing started crawling up again, I said, I'm going to watch this. And I watched it. It got up to the top of the windowsill, and there was no other place to go, so it would take off the wings. But it was so weak from climbing so often, it would fall right back down. I kept on with my message, and God was speaking to me. And I got so intrigued, I said, I'm going to watch this thing. And it must have been 50 times. I blew on it. It would go down and come back up. I'd put my hand there and crawl around my hand. And that thing would go up. You see, even if you reach the top, there's nothing there to feed your soul. There's nothing there because you achieved it yourself. And you think you've arrived, and you haven't arrived. And you fail so miserably when you reach what you thought was the top. Down you go again. And each time you lose more and more strength. And you become more and more emaciated spiritually and physically and mentally. I said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to get some food. And I got some crackers and sprayed the whole thing full across. I said, I know what I'll do. It's looking for food. I'm going to feed it. You know, that's like the Heavenly Father. You know, you try, and the Lord says, no, just come and eat of me. Come and take of my covenant promises. I give it to you here. Come by faith. That bug crawled right over every crumb. Never tasted a crumb. First it was a cracker I thought was too big, and I broke it up in little pieces. And I thought, and that's what the Lord does. First he gives you the whole book, and then he gives you the crumbs, and you still don't want the crumbs. And so back and forth. When I left, four hours later, that bug's still crying. It goes up, hits the top, tries to fly. Wings fail. Down it goes. Back up again. Try me one more time, Lord. Try me one more time. I'm going to find that bug tonight when I go home. It's going to lay in there dead. It's going to be dead. Of exhaustion. That's where God wants you and me. Dead. With exhaustion. On the flesh. You say, a bug can't teach you. God said, Jake, if you're warm, I'm going to teach you. He called him a worm. He said, I'm going to make you a sharp threshing instrument, having sharp teeth. Cast out the born woman. Hallelujah. He that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit. This is the problem. Just as God reckons our flesh dead in his eyes, we too must take up his position and reckon ourselves dead in the flesh. Ready to go a little deeper? This lady I was talking about that comes, this fictitious woman that comes home that night and falls on her knees. Said, God, what happened? And she's condemned. She feels unclean. She feels guilty because thoughts of lust have been in her heart. There's been some conniving going on because she's conniving how to bump into him accidentally. Just a whole lot of things going on. What would it be like to be married to a man like that? What would it be? Maybe I could get him saved. And all of these conniving thoughts, all of these things. She's going home now and saying, that wasn't God. That wasn't the spirit. That was flesh. And I'm supposed to have victory over the flesh. And she's condemned by it. And you know what I'm saying? You know what the Holy Spirit says? Well, what did you expect from your flesh? That was flesh being flesh. What did you expect? Some good to come out of it? Folks, I've never shocked at my flesh. Never. Some of you say, oh, no. I can't go that far with you, Pastor. You left me just now. Haven't you been shocked sometimes when you felt the holiest and thought you were the holiest? At temper tantrums? At thoughts that you thought? Even marriage problems? What would it be like to be out of this mess? And you're thinking thoughts of escape. Folks, do I have to name it before you claim it? I had one of those experiences in a situation, a business dealing. And it has to do with the men who are trying to build a 50-story tower above us here. I was in the office, in our conference room, and I prayed, you know, before and all that. My intentions were good. And I'm sitting there, and suddenly I'm talking to these men, and suddenly the Holy Spirit is saying, there's a little bit of conniving going on here, David. You're not being straight. I didn't want to be straight with these guys. The Lord said, this is not straight. It wasn't that I was lying. It wasn't telling the whole truth. And I'm going on and on and on, and I'm trying in the flesh to get these men out of here. I threatened to bring 5,000 of you and picket the place. I said, I'm going to call a press conference, and I'm going to make this a racial issue if I have to. Can you imagine that, after preaching no race problems in our church? And finally, I got so angry, I jumped up and said, I don't want to talk to him. Meeting's over. Everybody go. They're looking around, and our attorneys went in the office, and they said, what was that? I said, I lost it. You know, when I'm in a situation like that, I go home, and I sit down on the floor, and I say, God, I must have the blackest heart in New York. Really. I've said that. I must have the blackest heart in New York, capable of those kind of thoughts, and speaking those kind of words out of lips that preach a righteous message. How can that be? Because, Lord, I didn't want that to come out of my heart. Where did that come from? I remember one time, I was so absolutely discouraged because of this impassionate thing, and I got to thinking, God, you must be very disappointed in me. And I am so discouraged, but I'm not going to get up off my, I'm not leaving. I was sitting right in the living room. I'm not getting up until you tell me what happened. Because I know you've got to be absolutely disappointed with me and grieve with me, and it just, I feel so black inside and defeated. And here's what I heard lovingly from the Lord, just as clear as I've ever heard. He said, David, your problem is that you accepted something spiritual from your flesh. Your flesh is always going to be flesh. Why are you shocked? When I have so described the works of the flesh, He said, I'm not angry with you. I'm not judging you for what the flesh did. Your flesh was doing what it always does. It's trying to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit in you. And He said, you're repenting for the wrong reason. You're repenting over a dead issue. In my eyes, this is a dead issue, the flesh. You should be repenting for trusting in your flesh, that anything good can come out of it so you could come back into the spirit realm where I want you. Then I'll show you something. He said, was I not there? Did I not convict you? Did I not speak to you during that time? Did I forsake you? And here's what the Lord said. He wants you to feel dirty. He wants you to feel filthy. The flesh wants you to bring that because the devil doesn't have to do it himself. He's in cahoots with the flesh. He works through flesh. God said, I've allowed this to happen to you, David. I'll never cause you to sin. But I allowed you to see how helpless you are in your flesh. But I'm telling you, there's no guilt. There's no condemnation. I didn't make you feel unclean and unholy. That's your flesh persecuting you. I'm dealing with you by an eternal covenant. Not by your feelings. But by an eternal covenant. Not by fleeting accusations. Because dead flesh has no voice in my court. As long as you're in your human body, your flesh is going to persecute you. Attempt to make life miserable. And make you run with fear and guilt and bondage. Because when you're in the flesh, the motions, the passions of sins, do work in your members to bring forth the fruit unto death. As long as we are giving in to the flesh, the fear of flesh, we are not to trust the flesh, but we're not to fear the flesh. Now, if you get that established in your mind, then we'll go on to understanding the victory of the cross. You can't understand the new covenant and the victory of the cross until you totally, in your mind, come to the position and the viewpoint of God. My flesh is dead. My flesh is always going to be something of this world. It is of filth. It has nothing to do with the eternal purposes of God. God, in His eyes, it's dead. God doesn't have anything to do with our flesh anymore. But at the cross, He crucified all the power and the ability of that to rob us of our eternal standing with the Father, to rob us of eternal salvation, our covenant, eternal life with Jesus Christ. The flesh in me serves the law of sin, Paul says. There's still flesh very much alive, but with the mind, I serve the law of God. I walk in the Spirit so that I'll not so fulfill the lust of the flesh. I walk in the Spirit. Now, folks, living and walking in the Spirit sounds so complicated. Let's move on to this now. But I'm saying you can't see this until you are ready to say, I am finished with my flesh. I'm not going to be afraid of it. I'm not going to be surprised. I'm not going to be shocked. My flesh will always be flesh. Don't try to sanctify your flesh. It's dead. And I have acknowledged my flesh is dead before God. It can act up. It can lie all at once. But in the eyes of God, as far as bringing fear or interfering with my relationship with the Lord, I refuse to accept Ishmael's lies. Ishmael is legally dead. Now, to make him practically dead is coming now to this issue. And listen very closely. It's called living and walking in the Spirit. The Bible said walk in the Spirit. You shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. That those thoughts, evil thoughts, those things put in your mind cannot conceive. Because lust, when it conceives, brings forth sin. It won't move from this realm of temptation. This injection of these thoughts will not move to a realm of being able to be conceived and bring forth sin which is unto death. And he said if you're under the law, he said, you've got all the motions of sin. There's no interruption of sin everywhere you look if you're in the flesh. Sin is going to erupt. Because you're going to keep trying and it's going to keep erupting on you. And he said there's only one way. You're going to walk in the Spirit. Now that sounds so complicated. Folks, there's so many books written on it. So many people misunderstand what it means to live and walk in the Spirit. And I want to show you how simply I see it. Here's how I see it. Here's the point we've reached now. We have renounced all confidence in the flesh. We expect no good thing from it. We no longer fear it. We're not trying to suppress it. We're not shocked by how evil-minded it is. We have reckoned ourselves dead to its power or affected our relationship to the Heavenly Father. And then we learn that the victory over all the flesh and its works is to live and walk in the Spirit. That it's by the Spirit the deeds of the flesh are mortified and crucified. And here's how I see it happen. We've come to that point. Just as God sees my flesh dead by proclamation, He sees me in Christ the moment I repent by proclamation. He speaks it into being as soon as He spoke the world into being. His everlasting Word. He says, if any man be in Christ Jesus, he's a new creature. All things pass and all things become new. That has to be with the workings of the flesh. There's a whole new process at work now. Let me try to make it as simple as I can. Now, follow me before I close this message because I want no confusion in your mind. But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. Romans 8 and 9. You are not in the flesh. You've reckoned it dead. You've seen it as God sees it. You've reckoned it dead. But now you're in the Spirit. If so, be the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he's none of His. If you don't have the Spirit of Christ in you, if you've come to Jesus, confessed your sins, you have made Him Lord of your life by faith, you are in Christ. Do you believe that? Do you understand that what I've just read to you is that God Himself identifies the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ? Read it again. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the what? Spirit. If so, be what? The Spirit of God dwell in you. But if any man have not the Spirit of who? Christ. All right. There's the Holy Spirit, God the Spirit, Christ the Spirit. There is one Spirit, one Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Christ is the Holy Spirit. Distinct, yes, but still one. The Godness of the Holy Ghost. In the moment by faith you are in Christ, you are placed in the Holy Ghost. You are in the Spirit. You don't need some big theology book. You don't have to sit and try to figure this out. Folks, I've got books that thick trying to figure out how to live and walk in the Spirit. By faith and confessing of my sins, I was placed by proclamation at the voice of Almighty God. I am in Christ. I've confessed my sins. I believe I am in the Spirit. I'm in the Spirit. Glory be to God. I'm in the Spirit. God says, no, I put you to walk in it. Believe it. Simply believe it. Folks, it all comes down to faith. It all boils down to whether you're going to believe what God says about you or not. Do you believe what He said, that He's crucified your flesh at the cross? Then why are you afraid of it? If you believe that, why can't you believe then that you are in Christ, that you're in Christ, that you're in the Spirit of the living God? It's not a complicated issue, folks. By faith, the Scripture said God cuts off and circumcises our dead flesh, and He raises up into Christ, into the Holy Spirit. Colossians 2. Folks, time is slipping by here so fast, but I want you to go to Colossians 2, and I'm going to close. Verse 10, you're complete in Him. Folks, when you're in Jesus, you've got it all. It's that simple. Which is the head of all principality and power, in whom also you're circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, and putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Buried with Him in baptism, wherein you yourself are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who has raised Him from the dead. You're risen with Him how? How are you risen? Through faith, by what? By the operation of God. And that word operation is energy of God. It's through the energy of God that He circumcises your flesh. I tell you, it's a very practical thing. If you would just believe that you are in the Spirit, and allow Him, seek Him, seek His face, the Holy Spirit, convict me. Holy Spirit, speak to me. He is that inner voice. He will not condemn you. And you seek Him with all your heart, with all your strength and all your mind. Yes, that's all a part of it. But you don't let your flesh drive you to the point where He says you're not praying enough, you're not seeking God enough, and all of this has happened to you because you have failed God at some point. You're not digging in, and He will try to drive you to some kind of a legal working out of your situation that you're in. And God says, no, I want you to simply lay back and trust Me right now. There are some people who call that passivity. No, faith is not passivity. Faith is the energy of God. I believe with all of my heart, and folks, you can't enter the New Covenant promises, you can't live in victory until you say, I believe what you said, Father. In Christ, I am in the Spirit, I'm going to walk that way without fear, without condemnation, without guilt. And when those things come on me, and I hear all of these things, the enemy will try to inject these thoughts, he will put these things, don't go around condemning yourself. Just tell the flesh, right to its face, you're just being what you'll always be, and you can't hurt me, you can't change me. And call on the Holy Spirit, and He'll be right there. He will be there by His power. It's an operation of God through faith. It's an operation of God. It's the energy of God at work in our hearts. And I have proven Him over the years to be faithful. When I go to Him now, and I feel like my flesh has gotten a victory at some point throughout the day, I go, Lord, I don't condemn myself anymore. I don't give in to the guilt and fear. I say, Lord, that was my flesh, and You know it's my flesh, You know my heart. You know that I believe in the covering of the blood. I believe that I am in the Spirit. And I come to You, Jesus, now for Your embrace. I come for Your forgiveness. I come for Your love. And as I do that, He embraces me, and the peace of God floods my soul. Look at me, please. I didn't mean to preach that long. I usually only preach 45 minutes. We heard a powerful message this morning about the power of tender hands. Those are God's hands, too, the tenderness of God to us. And many of you, I came to this pulpit to unburden my heart at the expense of you saying, well, there must be something wrong with our pastor, that he should confess that he still has to battle in the mind onslaughts of the enemy from all directions. Because I wanted you to understand that as long as you're in this body, until Jesus comes, there's going to be a battle for your mind. The Spirit and the flesh are going to be at struggle all the time. And it says, let the mind of Christ be in you. Yes, it means let the mind of Christ do His work. Let the Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ is the mind of the Holy Spirit. Let Him do His work of superimposing His will over the enemy, over every lust and everything in your life. He superimposes His will. But that's not your work and mine. Our work is just to love Him and trust Him, stay in the Word of God. That's not passivity. No, no, no. If you think faith is easy, you've already been tested in that. He calls it a trial. He talks about it as being fire. No, no, no, no. It's not just passivity. You're not going to come out of it. I feel for many of you that went through what I've gone through for many years, I wish somebody would have how I longed that I wouldn't have had to go through all those years of self-condemnation, feeling unclean, feeling unloved by God or that God was mad at me. I finally wrote a book on it called God's Not Mad at Me. I call it God's Not Mad at You, but I was really talking about me. He's not mad at you. Don't let the devil use the flesh to rob you of your relationship, that loving relationship with the Lord. Father, I come against that lying spirit of flesh. They would try to say, oh, you had an adulterous thought, you're wicked, you're vile. Oh, God, that is flesh of the worst kind, lying and trying to rob us. That's Ishmael. Thank you, Jesus, that we'll stand by faith as Isaac did in the promise. We are children of promise. You said, I'll keep you from falling. I'll present you faultless before the throne of His presence. I believe that, Lord. You'll present us faultless. If you've been going through a battle in the mind, you've been really struggling with some of the things that I've been talking about. I'm going to ask God, I want to pray a prayer of deliverance. I believe in this with all my heart, that if you will agree with me, and you really want to just quit fighting, you want to resign to the power and the ability of the Holy Spirit. Don't you get tired of sin confessed, sin confessed, sin confessed, and condemnation and guilt and fear? God never intended you to live that way. God may have delivered you from a terrible sin, yet once in a while you'll feel that old fleshly lust, and the devil in that flesh will come and say, we're still, but you haven't changed. That's Ishmael. Walk away from him. Don't let him anchor that thought in your mind. Call on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, He says, greater is he that's in us than he that's in the world. But don't look at yourself as unclean. Don't look at yourself as dirty. I'm still under the blood. Yes, I've thought, I've had this thought injected into my mind. I've gone through this, yes, but that's flesh being flesh. I'm a child of God. I'm under the blood, and I'm safe, and I'm secure in Him. Hallelujah. If you want me to pray for you, walk down here, and those in the annex, go to the exits or go to the lobby. They'll show you how to get into this building. Come on right down to the altar here. We'll pray together, and let's believe the Lord. If you're not right with God, if you're backslidden, come on down. We're going to pray with you right now. Let's believe God for total victory here. God sets you free. Let me read you something before I pray for you. Listen to it, please. Hebrews 8, 10. This is the promise of the new covenant. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their mind, and I'll write them in their hearts, and I'll be to them God, and they shall be to me a people. You know, he says, you're going to have my law written in your mind. It's going to be imprinted there, but who's going to put it there? God says, I will put in your mind. Now, that requires simply from you and I believing what he said to be true. I will put into your mind my laws so that you'll obey me. The law will suddenly appear in your mind. It will be written there. And when anything contrary to that law, when the flesh comes to speak or move or do anything or try to get you to do anything, that's contrary to that law of God, you don't have to run to your Bible even. You'll know it. He'll write it. You will have studied your Bible, and you would have heard it be said. I'm going to write it in your mind, and you can compare every thought. You can compare everything to that law. That law will be the standard. Nothing will get by that law. He said, I'm going to write it in your mind. You're going to walk. You talk about walking in the Spirit. That's walking in the Spirit because you have believed God to literally write it right here. Anything the flesh suggests contrary to that law, there'll be conviction, there'll be knowledge, there'll be wisdom. You will know. There'll be an inner knowing. That's how simple it is. There'll be an inner knowing. I find that true in my life now. He wants that to be you. First of all, we're going to come against a lying spirit. That's of the flesh. Father, I come now in Jesus' name against every lying spirit, that spirit that accuses, that spirit that calls us unworthy, filthy, unclean. Lord, our flesh is always filthy and unclean. But you have taken us now, Lord, out of the flesh by confidence in the Spirit, that the Spirit of God lifts us out of the flesh. And we agree with what you said. It's dead. It's crucified. And now I can come by faith into this new man. I am a new creature in Christ Jesus. So that even though Ishmael is still alive, even though he can approach me and accuse me, he can't hurt me. He can't hurt me anymore. Because you said he's dead. Lord Jesus, don't let us fear the flesh anymore. God, take away the fear of the flesh. Lord, put the fear of God. You said you'd put your fear into our hearts. You'd write your law in our minds so that we would obey you out of love. There would be an obedience because the law has been implanted and engraven in our very hearts and our minds. So that we're serving you out of the heart. Not out of fear of judgment or being spanked or sent to hell. But because, Lord, you have in your love written your law in our hearts. Thank you, Jesus, for your love to us. Your mercy and your grace. Forgive us, Lord, for expecting any good thing from our flesh. And we come to you now. And I want everyone who came forward to lift up your hands to the Lord. And I want you to pray this right now. Lord Jesus, I have failed you in my flesh. And by grace and by faith, I claim my spirit to be crucified with Christ. Dead in the eyes of God. And dead in my eyes. By faith now, I ask you, Holy Spirit, to write your law in my mind and in my heart. That I obey and walk in the Spirit to a law written in my heart. And give me the power and the willingness and the love and the thankfulness to obey. Thank you for loving me, Jesus. Thank you for not condemning me. I love you, Lord. Cleanse me. Sanctify me. And give me a new heart by faith alone. Now give him thanks. Lord, I give you thanks. I give you praise. I had hoped to make it simpler. But I'm going to pray now that the Lord, if there's any confusion in your mind about what we're preaching, he will remove it and then help us to, in the days ahead, to understand it much clearer. God's trying, he tried to do it this morning, he's trying to do it, he did it this afternoon, attempting with everything in his power to bring us out of endless condemnation, endless guilt. If you have to walk around feeling less holy than somebody next to you, less clean, less worthy, folks, that's still flesh. You're still trying to do something by your flesh. Don't compare yourself with anybody else. You're a loved individual. God loves you just the way you are. He loves you. He'll change you. You're so unique. Boy, some of you are really unique. Like me, where God has to do so much, work so much harder on me, I think, than anyone else. But that's the uniqueness of his love to us. Holy Lord, I give you thanks. I truly give you thanks. That I know you love us. You're trying to build a church in New York City so full of grace and the love of God that we hate sin more than anybody else because of your love. Because we are walking by promise and faith and not by feelings. And Lord, we're not weakened anymore by our feelings. We're not living and walking in the flesh that fails us constantly. But we have the constancy of the covenant and the promises of God. So I'll be a God to you. And you'll be my son. You'll be my daughter. But isn't that wonderful that God says, I'm going to be God to you? Let him be God to you.