In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of overcoming the setting sin. He emphasizes the importance of realizing that as believers, we are constantly being watched and our actions are being recorded by God. The preacher uses examples from the Bible, such as Joseph and Job, to illustrate the need to maintain our character and resist temptation. He also highlights the significance of finishing well in our faith journey and warns against the consequences of not obeying God's word. The preacher concludes by urging believers to make no provision for the flesh and to actively choose to walk in love and honor God.

Not too long ago, I was looking in a scientific magazine that was sitting on a table, and as I thumbed through it, I was amazed by these beautiful pictures of flowers. These flowers were not just ordinary flowers. They were almost fluorescent in color, and I'd never seen such color. But the amazing thing about them was that these flowers were on the very bottom of the ocean. They'd been taken with a camera on one of these little things, robots, that goes down deep into the inky black waters where nobody has ever been. And the sea life is so amazingly different. And it was total darkness. And there was this light shining like a spotlight on these flowers, and these fluorescently beautiful flowers were just stunning. I was totally amazed. And I remember this thought coming to my mind as I was considering their beauty. I said, now why would there be such beautiful flowers on the bottom of the ocean like that where nobody can see them? What a waste, I seemed to think. And I just began to think about it. And as I began to think about why would there be such beauty, such stunning colors, and where there's no light, and where no man has ever been or would ever see, then it's like the Holy Spirit said to me, because I like them. And suddenly that scripture came to me from the book of Revelation that says all things are created for thy pleasure. And in Daniel, in chapter two, when it says the darkness is just like the light to you, the day and the light are just and the night are just a light to the Lord. And I was amazed as I thought that this beauty was for the Lord. Why do you have beauty when nobody can see it? Because God likes it. Well, why do you have a holy life when nobody perhaps you think sees you? And you're all alone, maybe in the wilderness, living in a cabin or in some unnoticed little part of the world where no one can ever see you. Why do you have to have a holy life and a beautiful life? Well, it's because God loves it. And it's for his eye that he wants it. Listen to the words of the Lord about this holy life. Exodus 15, 11. Who is like unto you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you? Glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders. First Chronicles chapter 16, it says in verse twenty seven to nine, give unto the Lord the glory, do his name, bring an offering and come before him. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Then Psalm 47, verse eight, God reigns over the nations. God sits upon the throne of his holiness. Psalm 48, verse one, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Psalm 60, verse six, he has spoken in his holiness. Psalm 145, verse 17, God is righteous in all of his ways and he is holy in all of his works. Psalm 93, verse five, thy testimonies are very sure holiness is becoming to your house, O Lord God, forever. Then he commands us in Leviticus 20, verse seven, sanctify yourselves and therefore and be ye holy, for I am the Lord your God. In first Peter, he says, become holy, for I am holy. Now, why should I be obedient when no one can see me? Why should I let the Lord have his way when it never gets out to where it affects other people? Because, you see, it's for the eye of God in the beauty of holiness is where worship takes place in the secret place. That's the soul of man, the spirit, the inner sanctuary of the temple. That's where the real worship takes place in the innermost parts. You desire truth in the inward parts, in the hidden part of man. You want to make me have wisdom. Now, I wonder what you think of when you think of that word holiness. Maybe you dread it. Maybe you grew up in some group that you equate. They've equated holiness with a certain mode of speech or maybe carrying a black Bible big like this, or maybe always going around and talking in some kind of funny prose. I mean, nothing wrong with that. But I'm just saying maybe it's kind of a churchy way of relating to people where you kind of have a weird look when you're in the mall and you kind of walk around like this or you wear a certain type of clothing or wear your hair a certain way. Or maybe you don't do certain things and you always do other certain things. And that means you're holy. You think maybe that's what holiness is. Maybe you drop out from society or always have a prune face like you've been baptized in pickle juice or something like that, like a deacon or something. Sorry, a vague otherworldly look or some kind of just kind of far away, hocus pocus, Holy Ghost get about look maybe that we think that maybe what holiness is. Well, there's a lot of misconceptions about holiness, but real holiness is the result of only one thing. It's not just being separated from things. You see, a lot of people have quit certain things and I don't smoke anymore. I don't chew tobacco anymore. I don't drink all this wild stuff anymore. Go with wild women anymore. And we seem to think that being separated from certain things or places or activities will make us holy. Well, it might only make me a Pharisee. Which is what the word separation from to have offense from means, you see, if all you are separated from something, you're not yet holy as the scriptures mean holy. Holiness in scripture means not just separated from it means separated unto. And it's only one thing that can make me holy. And that's being separated unto the Lord Jesus Christ and having the presence of the holy one in my life. That's what makes me holy. Are you holy? The presence of the holy one having his way, having his nature, his given freedom to be his all in me. Now, the trumpet call of scripture is to holiness over and over and over again. In fact, around the throne of God, the angels are crying out as wonderful as his love is. They're not crying out loving, loving, loving or merciful, merciful, merciful. They're crying out holy, holy, holy because it's his holiness that makes his love so glorious and trustworthy. And you can always build your life upon it. It's a wonderful thing. And in Thessalonians, we're called to holiness. It says in First Thessalonians, chapter four, our brother read it this morning in verse three. This is the will of God, even your sanctification. Well, brother, I'm just trying to find God's will for my life. Maybe you're looking for God's will in your life. There it is. This is the will of God, even your sanctification, which means the same word as holiness. In verse seven of First Thessalonians, chapter four, it says God has not called us to uncleanness, but unto holiness. Brother, I just want to know what my calling is in life. There it is right there. You're called unto holiness. Now, a lot of people don't like that. You're talking about sinless perfection. No, no. I'm talking about graceful election. And here it says he therefore that despises means meaning the one who doesn't like this call to holiness, the one who despises this when they hear people say, behold, the one who despises despises not man, but God who has given to us his holy spirit. There are a lot of people who hear the word about being holy, who absolutely hate it for one reason or another. Maybe it's because of repeated failure in their own life. Maybe they've been trying to lay hold of this and been discouraged and failure after failure has made them hate this call to holiness. But God says if you despise that word, you don't despise the preacher that preaches it. You despise God who has made a perfectly logical demand on every saint holy one by placing in him the holy spirit and given you everything pertaining to life and godliness to God's mind. It's perfectly logical and perfectly godly to demand of us that we become holy as he is holy because it's now no longer to be we who live, but Christ who comes to inhabit this temple that's in our life. So we're so that is our body. So we're not called to just an ordinary life when God saves me. He doesn't just call me to be normal. I just want to be normal. No, he calls me not to just be blessed. He calls me to be Christ like. And this means that you won't be normal. This means that you will stand out like a sore thumb in this world's society. So the trumpet call of scripture is the call to holiness. Well, that's kind of heavy. I just I just want to just love Jesus and walk in the grace of God. That's kind of heavy. Well, listen to what Titus says concerning the grace of God. If you really know the grace of God, Titus chapter two says, verse 11, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. And here's what the grace does when it appears. It says, verse 12, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world, not just the sweet by and by, but the nasty now and now God makes his grace come to us, that the goodness and the grace of God would lead us to a deeper humility and a greater repentance and a more conscious dependence on his very presence and nature in our very life. So mark this down, wherever God starts to work, he always first works against unholiness always. You will never see a move of God that bypasses that that confrontation with unholiness. There's a lot of things being called God around today that are supernatural. But I'm going to tell you that the shows that when God comes in, when he has come, he convicts the world. And that's a generic term, meaning all he convicts the world of sin. He never bypasses repentance and conviction in order to bless. He will always come. And wherever he works, it's in holiness. And wherever you see a supernatural work that is not in holiness, I'm telling you, it's another spirit. No matter how good the results feel, it's another spirit. And as a great deception in many parts going on today, the first work of God is conviction of sin and unholiness. It says in the Scripture, the symptom of the last day, one of them in Second Timothy, chapter three, that in the last days, perilous times will come. Men will be lovers of themselves, unholy, unholy. It's a symptom of our day. These last days that there would be unholiness. Well, the normal Christian life in the Scriptures is a holy life. It's what God has called us to. In fact, the very word saint means called out. It's a call out. It means they're called from into the light of God. And they're different. We are different as saints. So how important is this word holiness? We read it last night in Hebrews 12 when it says in verse 14, pursue with all your might peace with all men and holiness without which no man will see God without holiness. No man will see God without holiness. No man will see God. So we have the privilege to be born into the family of God and we have the privilege of trusting him day by day. God will lead no one to heaven that he has not sanctified before they get there. He will sanctify by grace and by the word of faith those. It won't just be where I count on it all happening later. There'll be an inward sanctification. It says in the Scriptures, Jesus says, not everyone that keeps on saying to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he that is doing the will of my father, which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, didn't we preach in your name? Didn't we cast out demons in your name? You've taught in our streets and we've done wonderful works in your name. And then I, says Jesus, will say back to them. I never knew you. It's experiential, deep, inward knowing. Depart from me, you who practice iniquity. It means lawlessness. It means a life on the inside that is not under the control of God to serious thing. So Scripture tells us that the reason he saves us, the reason he's called his church is Ephesians five, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the word of God, that he might present this church to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blame. And in second Corinthians, I'm giving you a lot of Scripture because so many people hate this word. Second Corinthians chapter five, verse 15, he died for us all that those who live would not hear henceforth live to themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. Now, Satan's goal in my life and in your life is to have some kind of grappling hook or some kind of hold in the life of every single believer, especially mature believers. He wants to have some hidden area that we have yielded or given over ground or not dealt with like the children of Israel and the promised land left enemies there. He wants the devil to have some way in my life to seduce part of my life. We must not be ignorant of his devices. We must be sober. We must be vigilant and we must be very scripturally aware in these desperate days. The devil for believers wants to destroy your testimony. He wants to mar your witness. He wants to divide your heart. He wants to sear your conscience or destroy your prayer life or defile your mind. He wants to divide your heart or have you waste your energies on fruitless, temporary things, paralyze your faith, divide your family, crack the foundation that you stand on, stop the power and stifle prayer and smother praise in your life. That's what the devil wants to do to ruin your sense of joy and fellowship. Anybody here like that? Of course, now, we never say it in a group after we've been praising God, but I'm talking about Monday through Saturday. He wants to do that. The devil wants to make you an ineffective believer, turn you into a spiritual dwarf, a mutant from what God's scriptures say that a Christian should be a pygmy when it comes to being used of God. He looks for the devil, some exposed area in your life or mine. He's had 6000 years of walking around Adam and he knows what to look for when we violate scriptures. We do what it says in Ephesians four. It says, beloved, give no place to the devil. And the word means foothold in the Greek or place of occupation. It is possible for me as a believer to make a mistake and to go against what the spirit of God is saying. I can grieve the Holy Spirit. I can quench the Holy Spirit. I can resist the Holy Spirit. I can ignore the word of God. And so the devil comes and he has that dark black sewage covered grappling hook with a rope of slimy green. And he he swings it. He looks for a exposed part of man's soul that he can lodge it up over in a hidden remote area of your castle of man's soul and mount up into your thought life or into your emotions or someplace there. And there he can wreak havoc. The Bible continually warns us about the deceitfulness of sin. We have the deceitfulness of sin and the deceitfulness of the human heart that can trick us and allow us to call evil good and good evil or pretend like we're dumb, loose living and casual Christianity is the best ally in this day that the devil has, perhaps even more powerful than the overt than the direct opposers of the cross. Scripture is full of examples that are meant to warn us of 38 kings in the Old Testament. Only eight of them are even good and only four of them finish well. A lot of people start. Wonderfully, who don't finish well, and I'm going to say to you, brother, that what really matters for you and me is how we finish, how we finish, he that began this good work will perfect it will perform it. But you see, we have to respond to him. How can the devil trick us like this? How can he get away with it? Well, Ecclesiastes chapter eight says the answer, it says in verse eleven, because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily. Therefore, the hearts of the son of men is fully set in these things to keep doing evil. You see, when the word of God gives me a sanction that I'm to appropriate and let the Holy Spirit form in my life, if I don't do that, if I don't choose by faith to walk in love and say yes to the grace of God, then what will happen will be that there will be consequences. But the devil doesn't want to just take a little foothold. He wants a landing strip. And so he doesn't necessarily take the ground you give him. He makes you think you got away with it. Maybe you go into a bookstore on a business trip and look at pornography, or maybe you do some activity that's over the edge and you know it's wrong and there's no consequence. The devil knows better. You see, he knows every man's weakness. He knows that your weakness is different than my weakness. He knows where my Achilles heel is. And so he walks around looking for an exposed area, but he doesn't often take it so that we presumptuously think that we got away with it. And he takes more ground and more ground. The Bible says he who hardens his heart, being often reproved, shall be destroyed. And that's suddenly without remedy. You see, the man that runs off with the secretary, that's a pastor, didn't just in one moment decide he's going to run off with the secretary. Little by little, spiritual erosion took place in his life and in the area that nobody ever sees. And that's what can happen. And the devil wants to happen in my life and in yours. And we think we're getting away with these things and and we don't even know what we've missed. We have we have been robbed by the devil of joys that we don't even know about. Brother, do you want to be holy? A lot of people want to be happy and and enjoy us. A lot of people want to be used by God. A lot of people want to be blessed by God. A lot of people want to have a family in order who don't want to even be holy. But you see, my personal holiness is the very best thing I could give to my family. You want to give your wife something you want to give your children something, then allow God to deal with you and really make you into a holy man of God by the scriptural definition. We think sometimes that the trauma that we have, if we experience sin, we we go out, we say, oh, God, I've let you down again. Hey, brother, you weren't even holding him up. Don't worry about letting him down. But you say, oh, God, I've let you down again. We think sometimes that the way we feel sorry about these things is enough to almost pay God back for having done it. I feel real sorry. And we think somehow that'll make it up to God. But you see, trauma will never make up to God. It's always only confession and the blood that will cleanse sin. We get deceived and we think because we felt sorry that that's enough and we never confess and really deal with it. Well, you say it's a small thing. It's just a little thing. Well, I'm going to tell you something. It's the little things that make the difference between just a regular church member or someone that's sitting in church and a man of God. You see, being a church member won't keep you from sin. Now, it'll take the joy out of sin, but it won't keep you from sin. Only Jesus can keep you from sin. And if the devil can keep you from abiding in him, you will not have victory. So we must not refuse to choose against the outer and the visible and the temporary. This tension between the visible and the invisible is called taking up the cross, this denial of self and no longer I, but in love saying, I love you more than myself in day by day living. That's taking up our cross every day and saying it shall be no longer I, but Christ. So it's usually a little thing that starts to decline. It's like that old story about Gulliver. Remember Gulliver, who went to sleep and while he was asleep, these little tiny, little he's a giant, these little tiny little little plushies or whatever you call them, came and they said, man, look at this awesome Gulliver giant. And they came and they put a little piece of rope over his finger and then over his other finger and then over his feet. And little by little, the ropes tied down with little tiny stakes all over Gulliver. One of them would never have been enough, but they began to put all this little rope like a little spiderweb over Gulliver. When he woke up, he couldn't move. And that's how it is with the devil. You see, it's how he comes to the little thing and makes a thread. He that he that keeps on will be taken with the cords of his own sin. Once they were building a bridge across a big canyon and it was like the Royal Gorge in Colorado. It went way down and they couldn't get the first span across. How do we get across here? I mean, it's like a thousand feet straight down and all the engineers were brought in and they couldn't figure out how to do it. And a little boy was watching them. He says, oh, I'll help you get across. And they all laughed at him. But he went home and got a kite and he flew it up in the air and the kite went way up in the air and he let the kite down and it dropped on the other side. And there was a string across that giant canyon. Then they put a bigger string and pulled it across by that other string, tying it. Then they put a rope, then they put a cable and they put a lot of cables and finally they built a whole bridge across what was impassable. And that's what the enemy does. You see, he comes and says, just read this, just say that, just go there. And we think we've gotten away with it, but you see, it's not at all that way. We've really got to realize we've got to deal with the little things. Well, what I want to do in this session is deal with those things in our life that David called those hidden sins, those things in your life and mine, the things that perhaps you wouldn't even share with the men's group. Perhaps you wouldn't even share them with your closest friend, but, you know, their points of struggle. Maybe you've given up on them and even been content just to kind of coexist and share the land with the enemies of God. Listen to David's words in Psalm 19. After he talks about the word of God in verse 11, talking about the word, he says, by them, the word is your servant warned and in keeping of them, there is great reward. Psalm 19, verse 12, David says, who can understand God's errors? And he means who can understand what looks like a mistake. Cleanse thou me from secret faults, God, cleanse me from secret faults, keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins, sins that say I can do it with immunity. Let them not have dominion over me. Then shall I be upright and I will be innocent from the great transgression. And the great transgression is rebellion and pride in the Old Testament. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. And so David prays for cleansing from secret sin. That's what I want to deal with here this morning. I want to deal with secret sin or what we call besetting sin, the thing that you've been dealing with or have to deal with over and over again. Periodically, I want to give you how to deal with besetting sin, how to take this land for God that belongs to him, how to kick the devil out of your life and take the grappling hooks off. Now, I'm going to tell you, the enemy would love for you to sleep through this. So if you see somebody beside you, tell him to slap you one if you start nodding off or something, I mean, do something vigorous. So they'll say so that so you'll be afraid to to sleep at all, trying to do these things here that we're going to list without Jesus Christ in your life as your love. Lord is like trying to start an aquarium at home with fish without water. It just won't work. They'll suffocate. But if Jesus Christ has begun a good work in you and he's your Lord, you have what it takes to do this and you can have victory. You can possess it. You can lay hold of it. The first thing to deal with besetting sin. The first thing is this. Number one, submit yourself to God consciously come to the Lord and and submit to him and then resist the devil. You see what we're being told in our day and rightly so is that we should resist the devil and he will flee from you. And that's what the Bible says. But the verse before that, the sentence before resist the devil and he will flee from you is submit yourselves, therefore, to God. You must submit to God and be under his control before you can ever resist the devil. I like the way the little old lady said it. You can't say no to the devil until you said yes to God. You can't do it. You cannot do it. Agree with God and call sin by name. Then say no to the devil. There's no point in waging war with Satan. There's a lot of people getting excited about that. And we should be excited about the fact that principalities and powers are subject to us in Jesus name. But a lot of people are being excited about that that kind of adventurous soldier kind of thing of warring with the devil who are not excited about waging war with sin. And I'm going to tell you something, you wage war with the devil without waging war with sin first and you're going to find you have more than you can handle. Well, to this end was Christ sent into the world that he might be lord of both the dead and the living. It says in Romans 14, nine, it's not principles that will overcome sin. It's not self-effort, but it's only Christ given liberty to be who he is. And you see, it's like I remember once I was struggling with the same pattern in my life and I'd struggled and failed and struggled and fail. And I was so discouraged. You can always tell when that thing's coming on you again, you know, if it's some kind of lust or it's some kind of response, you can always tell when you're getting set up for it, you know, like you're getting irritated. And if you have an anger problem, you just kind of can feel it rising. You know, you're just going to hit something. You just get worse. And, you know, it's getting ready to erupt like a volcano. And you see, you can always tell. But you see, I was struggling with trying to say, Lord, here it comes again. Give me the power to overcome sin. And the Lord just said to me, said, Al, when are you going to try to quit overcoming sin? And it shocked me. It's too smart for me. I know it was God. When are you going to quit trying to overcome sin? You can't overcome sin. I'm the only one that can overcome sin. Your problem is that you need to let me overcome you. You see, you don't need to overcome sin. You overcome the world. You die to sin. You let Jesus overcome you. You say, Lord, I'm dead. Here comes that sin again. And if it were me resisting it, you know, I would fail and fall. But, Lord, I just want to praise your name. The little old lady said again, when trouble knocks at the door, you send Jesus to answer. You've been going to the door. Trouble knocks and you open the door and the devil grabs you by the necks. There you are. Just beat your head like a pulp, you know, and you just try and close the door and get back in. Lord, I failed again. This next time you see that thing coming and knocking on your door, say, Lord Jesus, you know, there's no strength in me. If it were up to me, I'd go straight back to the hog trough. But I just want to praise you. I remember that happened to me. And when I began to sense this set up again of evil, I'm telling you, I fell on my face. I said, Lord, this temptation is coming upon me again. But you say it's common to man and I can't overcome it. But I just want to let you overcome me. Praise you. Praise you. Hallelujah. And before I knew it, I forgot what was going on and it was gone. And that'll happen to you to submit yourself to God and then resist the devil and then he will flee from you. You see, when you're in this situation, you can either confess sin and have holiness or you can cover sin and walk in hypocrisy. Praise the Lord, brother. You can sing in the choir. Doctors can sing in the choir. Deacons don't have to be honest with their money and be a deacon in most churches. But I would tell you what, that's the curse of most churches that we allow people that don't live what they say they believe in their life. We ought to do them a favor and dismiss them. I'm serious for the sake of God. Any man with integrity wouldn't want to do that. So I've got to get to Jesus's feet and keep short accounts with God. You see, if the Lord Jesus controls my inside, I'm going to tell you, nobody can control the outside. If he controls you on the inside, nobody can control you on the outside. You've got to have him consciously and continually before your face, like David said in Psalm 16. Listen to what he says in the key to his victory. Psalm 16, verse eight and nine. He says, I have set the Lord always before me because he is my right hand. I shall not be moved. And therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue is rejoicing and my flesh shall rest in hope. You see, he had the Lord always before his mind, always focusing in submitting and loving him always. That's why his his flesh was not at war. It was crucified in a sense, together with Christ. So the first thing is consciously submit yourself to God and then directly and specifically resist the devil. I resist you in Jesus name. You have no authority. You have no power because I belong to God. That's the first thing. Second thing. Second thing to overcome this enemy in your life, this your worst enemy of holiness. Number two, search the scriptures. But more than that, let the scriptures search you. You go to the scriptures and pour over them. You see, most men in the church today do not really study the word of God. We treat the Bible like we treat eating fast food mentality. You know, you look around and fast foods have grown so much and you can't really be nourished on that stuff. But I'm on a trip and come home. I'm famished for vegetables because I tend to eat a lot of fast foods, fast foods. You see, there are foods that you can eat while you're on your own way. You're busy. You want to keep going this way and you want to go in. Somebody else does all the work. They prepare it for you. It's got a lot of artificial additives to it and and you can exist on it, but it'll never make you healthy. That's where we treat the Bible fast food mentality. We rush into the church that makes us feel right at home as we go on our busy schedule and our wonderful preacher does all the work of studying the scripture. He has prepared all this good food. But unfortunately, because of our carnality, this had to be all kinds of artificial additives in the congregation to palatize and please me. So I'll sit there long enough to get some substance at all. And so I come and somebody else does all the work. It's just enough to eke out a Christian existence, but not enough to make me a vigorous man of God. It's milk, somebody else has ate it and digested it and tries to give it to you. But what we need, brothers, is to get beyond taking a little shower in scripture and to get into the soaking in the word of God. Stay in the word of God so much that when you're in life situation, you intuitively think scripture. God will increase his vocabulary through the Holy Spirit in your life as you put the word of God in your heart. Thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Wherewithal shall a young man and I'm sure it means old man to cleanse his way by taking heed, by listening thereto until your word, Lord, by the words of thy lips, I have kept my feet from the paths of the destroyer. Order my steps in thy word and let nothing have dominion over me. You see, 90 percent of Americans have a Bible, but only 15 percent ever read it. We sometimes think that having all these Christian books on your shelf or a Bible, maybe 20 translations will help us. It won't help you a bit unless you get it in your heart. It'll only condemn you. We refuse to read the Bible at a spirit level. We want just enough to put together a message or preach a Sunday school lesson or give input at the deacons meeting. I'm telling you what, you got to get into the word of God, not only to search it, but to let it search you. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Pour over the scriptures. Let the search light of who God is pour over your word. You see, God's truth is the only answer for the devil's lie. I mean, you can study psychology, you can get man's best thoughts, but God's truth is the only answer for the devil's lie. And we're trying all kinds of things to get answers for it. Jesus prayed in John 17, sanctify them through thy truth. Oh, Father, your word is the truth. Your word is the truth. It's the word of God taken into the heart that sanctifies and that clarifies and that puts the Lord Jesus on the throne where he needs to be. Psalm 119 over and over talks about the word of God and its place in a believer's life. I would say that we need to get in the scriptures and like what we did last night with Moses and with Daniel, we need to get in the scriptures and study the lives of those people. If you're having besetting sin in your life, there's somebody in scripture who in type or in principle is having the same struggle. God wrote them down for our example. You go to the book and say, Lord, show me someone who has the same type of struggle and then read that and learn from the word of God. Find scriptural example, maybe Noah, his example and warning of drinking and Saul with his pride or Esau with his cravings or David with his lust for the woman. Whatever you need, it'll be there. These things were written for our warning and our learning. You see, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. You let a little in and it's an evil communications, corrupt good manners. You've got to let the Lord Jesus have his way, simple and sinful habits begin, and then it results in deeper destruction in our life. The first warning of the Holy Spirit say, yes, Lord. So first of all, then submit yourselves to God and resist the devil and he will flee from you. Secondly, search the scriptures. Brother, are you in the word of God or do you just read a book that gives you a list of principles from scripture? That's good. But I'm talking about getting in the Bible alone by yourself when you think it's not practically saying anything to you. You just learn what this book says and hide it in your heart. And when you need it, God will pull it out and he'll bring it back to you and it'll rescue your life from destruction. You'll be on the edge of something and obscure scripture you studied years ago will come as fresh up to your mind as you could ever believe, and God will quicken his word to you, as the Bible says, and by that you will have an enlightenment and you'll have a preservation and he will give you what you need of inner food. But the third thing that you can do to overcome besetting sin is the conscious realization that you as a believer are in the arena. You're being watched. The things in your life are being recorded. God has books. Idle words will be recorded with the books will be open. Look at First Corinthians chapter four. And you see Paul bringing this out about the fact that they were in the arena. First Corinthians chapter four, verse nine. It talks about how that they are in the arena. It says, I think that God has set forth us the apostles last as it were appointed to death for we are made a spectacle. And that word in the Greek language is the word for the Roman Coliseum. We are made a spectacle under the world and unto angels and unto men. In other words, we are very aware that all around us we are being watched. There are watchers all around. Job cried out back in the book of Job. Let me just read you what he said in Job chapter one. It's an amazing thing in Job chapter one. When Job's been having all this trouble, verse eight, the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? There's no one like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one who fears God and hates evil. And from that point on, Job became the focal point of heaven and earth, mostly heaven, as they all focused. And he had the privilege in that moment of standing for God's honor on earth. That's where you are and that's where I am. In amplification of that, we stand in a business or we stand in our family in a place that can honor God and the enemies throwing things at us. And God wants to teach the devil something. Look at Ephesians 310. You see what God wants to teach. He wants to teach the devil something, says in Ephesians chapter three, verse 10. It says God's intention is that now at this moment unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places that there might be made known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus, our Lord. God's intention is that right now, like it says in Peter, angels desire to look into the things of salvation, that as they're looking, as they're watching Brian Hunt, as they're watching Sammy Tippett, as they're watching Chad Hammond, Bill Leonard, as they're watching Lewis or Al or whoever they're watching, Chuck, as they look that the devil can learn something about the power and grace of God by a saint like Job who trusts God and loves God more than he loves his own life. You see, wisdom is knowledge experienced. It's revelation that's been received and transmuted through the human experience. It's it's heavenly wisdom that God wants to exemplify. And so I must realize that I have the privilege of demonstrating not just to men, not just being a testimony on Earth, but of being a glory to all those hosts that are contesting God's honor. This means when I'm alone, you see that I can be a pure soul and bring glory to God like those flowers in the bottom of the ocean. It's kind of like picture this. Here's a man that has a pornographic magazine hidden beneath his dresser that no one knows about, not even his wife or anybody else, or at least he thinks that she doesn't. Maybe she's just humoring him. But underneath that dresser is a pornographic magazine that he goes to for a periodic fix. And he's being tempted in this besetting area. And once he's in his bedroom and he's made all these these overtures to God, the Lord, let us resist evil. And all of a sudden that temptation is there and he feels it rising and he starts to go over to that magazine. At that point in time, he becomes a man in God's showcase. Not you see, there's no human eye on him, but the enemy is there and the enemy, like he was with Job, is saying to all the angels, you see this man, he says he loves Jesus. We're going to show you how much he loves Jesus, who he loves the most. And the angels are sitting there watching the good angels, the heavenly angels. It says they do this. In fact, they watch. It says there's joy in the presence of the holy angels of God over one sinner that repented in Luke 15 three times. The angels see when repentance takes place. So we know that. And here's this devil. And I go over there or whoever this person is, you or me, and we take this sinful magazine and we take it and we look at it. And the devil just we love Jesus. He talks the holiness of God. This is a reality. This takes place in the invisible realm. And because we never see this, it has no power. But I will tell you today, when we don't honor God with our life, we mock God and our inner life. You see, listen to what it says in First Corinthians, chapter six, when it says in verse 15, no, you not that your bodies are the members of Christ. If you are Jesus Christ person, if you're his man of God, that your hands are his hands. Your eyes are his eyes. You are his body, part of him. You are the members of Christ. Then Paul says, shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid. See, it's like taking the hand of Jesus in your hand and putting it over on the unclean thing and saying, Lord, do this, do this. And it says, what? No, you not that he that is joined to a harlot has become one body with her for two. He says shall be one contrast. But he that's joined to the Lord is one spirit. What I do with my hands. I make Jesus do what I look at with my eyes, I make the Lord Jesus do if I belong to him. This is a horrific thing. This is why God says here, God forbid. Let this be an incentive to you, dear friend, in that area of besetting sin, that when you do this thing, you give the devil an occasion to blaspheme and the world an occasion to blaspheme. And you dishonor the Lord himself. Wherefore, seeing we are surrounded round about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so does easily tangle us up and trip us. But let us rather run with endurance the race that is set before us. And so the possibility for failure is real. It's real, the possibility for being a dwarf. But God wants me to know that if I submit myself to him and resist the devil, and if I search the scriptures, let them search me. And if I realize that I have the privilege of standing in the arena and honoring God, then victory is coming. But the fourth way to overcome besetting sin is to make no provision for the flesh, make no provision for the flesh. What do you mean by that? Well, Romans 13, verse 14, tells us a command. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for your flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. This means practically, then, that I need to sit down and identify where my pitfalls are. You know, if you're single, you may have different pitfalls than a married man. If you are working in a certain environment, you may have a different pitfall than another man. You need to evaluate honestly where your failure, what bushes it's been hiding behind. And you need to be aware of those methods and devices that the enemy has used. Temptation patterns, because there are patterns there. The devil has no new tricks. Maybe it's in a time of idleness. You know, when you're at home and alone and you seem to have nothing to do, that you see this is when it usually happens to me, this thing. Or maybe it's after a time of really being tired and you put a hard day in at work and you seem to think, well, I'll just indulge myself or something. Maybe it's when you're under real stress and this is how you release yourself or something. Maybe, maybe it's after you've had a great blessing. Maybe you come to a conference like this and you're so blessed by God and you let your guard down. But there are patterns. And so you must begin to realize these patterns because the devil, he's not omniscient. He's not omnipotent. He has to work in a certain grid, know his grid and recognize it and know your vulnerable areas. Flee youthful lusts, the Bible says. If you're a young man and you have certain youthful lusts that drive you, then flee youthful lusts. Don't go around what feeds youthful lusts. Don't watch what feeds youthful lusts. Joseph was around a situation. He was a handsome young man and he was continually bombarded by Potiphar day by day. The day came when she came upon him and said, lay with me. And Joseph ripped out of his coat and ran out. He lost his coat, but he kept his character. Brother, that's what we need to do. There's 100 opportunities to say no before the last one. It's like the guy on the freeway that sees the sign warning road ends one mile ahead. Oh, that's great. Praise the Lord. Road ends. That's great. The end is coming. And he runs by a roadblock and he sees another bigger sign end half a mile ahead. Slow. And he says, oh, what a beautiful sign. And he goes about, you know, 200 yards. Last chance in freeway ends. Oh, I got plenty of time. And he finally gets to that last point where there's this big drop off. And he sees this big red sign. He goes, oh, no, God save me. You see, let me tell you what, for the young man that takes the lady out parking and the Lord's Holy Spirit says to him, don't go up to the top of the hill up there where all the other people go parking. Don't even go up there. Don't make provision for the flesh. But he says, I can handle it. I'll trust God. I'll be different. And he goes up there. He ran that stop sign and he goes up there and it turns on the radio and the music comes on. She looks beautiful as the twinkly stars glisten in her eyes. He puts his arm around her. Holy Spirit says, back up. But and he doesn't. He runs that stop sign and he goes on. And you see, and then he finally gets to the point to where he's about to fall into a disgrace to God as a Christian man. And he says, Lord, give me the grace and the Lord, the power, you see, has been quenched because he said he's avoided God up to that point. Brother, you've got to make no provision for the flesh. The heart is like tender. It's like a bed of dry grass. And one spark that's not God's can set it off. And we must avoid the spark of temptation. This is why they say in the scripture, I will set no evil thing before my eyes. Job said, I mean, Job said, Job said, I made a covenant with my eyes. Why, therefore, should I think upon a maid and lamentation? It says in three fifty one, my eye affects my heart. What you look at will go into your heart. And that's proof. Think of the movies you've seen. You shouldn't have seen that. You can still remember the scenes that you've seen. And you said, oh, that's terrible. But you can still see them. They're still there. Where are they? Between when you saw them and now they're down in there and your subconscious feeding, feeding, feeding. Let me tell you something. Don't dwell on memories. Don't dwell on memories. Forget memories. I remember once a man that was saved talking about making provision for the flesh. He was saved and he'd been an alcoholic. He says, I'm having such a hard time. New Christian. I'm having such a hard time resisting sin. I tend to ride by these places and I just this on the way home from work and I just pull in and I find myself getting a six pack. God have mercy on me. What do I do, Al? I said, well, why don't you just drive home a different way? He had always stopped by this store every day for years. And so he just said, I'm going home a different way, five miles out of the way. But he didn't pass that store anymore. He didn't stop and get any beer anymore. There's another man who kept having these horrendous nightmares. He'd be laying in bed and he would be he'd be trying to sleep. And he kept dreaming. He couldn't sleep that these terrible monsters were crawling out under his bed over him. And it kept him there like this all night. He hated these nightmares. And so he went to he spent all this money on psychologists and psychiatrists. And they've had all these splendid suggestions. And he was getting no better. Finally, as he was about to come to the end of his physical life, the lack of sleep, one of his uncle, who was a carpenter, said, well, I can fix that for you. A simple old good old boy. He says, well, what can you do? He says, well, cut the legs off your bed. He went over and he got a saw to cut the legs off this guy's bed and set it down the ground. You know, as stupid as it sounds, that guy got in bed. There was nowhere under the bed for those things to get. And he went to sleep and he never had another problem with it because he took away the provision for the temptation. And see, so many of us think we can handle things and we're in situations and around people that we should never be. We need to identify the ground in our life, take it back and give it to Jesus Christ. Don't just take it back, but say this area of my life that I've been under personal management. I give it to you, Lord Jesus. It's no longer mine. It's going to be yours from now on. Wrong friends can corrupt you. I'll tell you, I've had friends in my life and they've been dear friends. And we've said to one another, brother, we're going this way. If one of us goes that way, then we both of us decided now we're going to be going on alone. I love you, but we're going with Jesus. And I've painfully seen some friends get in a side pool of selfishness or an eddy of unbelief and be left behind in this walk of faith. Friends can ruin you if friendship is more important to you than godliness. Yes, that's true. We are our brother's keeper, seek to rescue him, seek to bless him, pay the price, lay down your life for him. But if he refuses, leave him and go on. Romance is one of the greatest killers of discipleship when romance is not in the power and in the will of God, it'll make a man turn into a milk toast. I'm telling you, it'll make a bowstring that's tight and powerful go limp in the kingdom of God. One of the devil's favorite lines is you can handle it or something. One of our most naive statements is I'll just wait till tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. You know what? They waited 40 years in the wilderness in unbelief, waiting for tomorrow and over 100 graves. If you take the number that died every day, everywhere they went in the wilderness for 40 years, they buried 100 people. As a testimony of unbelief, graves and bones in the wilderness saying, watch out for our example, one of one of the stupidest things we ever say is tomorrow, I'll take care of it, God. But for today, I just need some comfort. You can't do that anymore. Well, number five way to deal with besetting sin. This is not an order of importance. Number five is earnestly pray, earnestly pray much time in secret is the key man fall in public because they fail in private. That's why failure begins at the closet door like a fish without fins in the ocean. So is a man of God without prayer in the things of God. You cannot have direction. You cannot move without prayer. Matthew 26, 41, our Lord Jesus said to his own. He said, watch and pray so that you will enter not into temptation. Watch means be sleepless unto prayer, be sleepless unto prayer. Make yourself spend time with God and seek in the scriptures. Matthew 26, 41. Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation. So as you pray, God will identify for you roots. You see, it may be something in your childhood that's causing something. Now, the devil loves to get a hook in an area of the inner man, and he has a long string of invisible devilish monofilament line that's invisible. And so we think the problem is our anger. But to see the problem is really something much deeper that God could show you. If you took time to listen in prayer, he could say, listen, anger is not your problem. Bitterness is. And you deal with that, you deal with the devil's got that hook over here on the bush and he's over here behind another. He's jerking it like this is good. And you're fighting over here, shadowboxing and the real problems there the whole time. And you're just fighting the same battle over and over and over again. You got to learn to pray for the people that you're struggling against. Jesus said, pray for your enemies. Do good to those who use you despitefully. And if you're in the mall and some woman there is not dressed appropriately and walks by instead of muzzling the dog and acting like you're blind and trying to turn your head, pray for that woman. I'm telling you, this is a great tactic from the Holy Ghost. If you will pray for the women that you have been looking at the wrong way, you start praying for the women that you've been struggling over. And I'll tell you what, the devil will quit bothering you quite so much. You pray in the anointing of God for those situations that have been tempting you. And instead of just trying to think about yourself, bring God's will into it and become a man of prayer. And you will find the clouds of the devil evaporating. We'll find someone else. Here's another thing about prayer. Find someone else to pray for the struggling in the same area. The captivity of Job was turned when he prayed for his friends. If you're struggling with dishonesty in certain matters, perhaps on taxes or something, find a good tax attorney who also is struggling in that same way and get him to pray for you and you pray for him and or even pray for someone that doesn't even know you're praying for them in the newspaper. But pray and watch God move and it'll minister to you spiritual warfare. Learn about it after you submit to God. Well, the sixth way to overcome besetting sin relates very closely to that last point. And that is find someone or some group to be accountable to. Don't hide the first thing sin ever does to Adam and anybody else is want us to hide. I heard your voice and I was afraid I hid myself. I don't want you to get to know me real well if I'm living in compromise, because you'll see it eventually. But you see, to those who walk in the light and who are used to walking in the grace, it's safe to know each other warts and all, because if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from sin. And then we have fellowship with each other. So find another brother who, you know, loves Jesus and share your life with him and get him to pray for you and you pray for him. It says in Ephesians five, submit yourselves one to another in fear of God. You say, well, I wouldn't share my private life with anybody. Well, you probably don't have to. They probably already know something's going on. Somebody does. You see, if you're like that, then you're just not willing to be undeceived. And God wants to say to you this morning, you've got to learn to share your life with others. Well, the seventh way to overcome besetting sin is to seventh learn to reckon you're going to have to learn to choose in your life. You're going to have to live in like Romans chapter six and seven and eight and learn what it means to deny yourself in Romans chapter eight. It says in verse 13, if you live after the flesh, you will die. But if you through the Holy Spirit do put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live. Verse 18 says, I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glories that shall be revealed in us. It is hard to stay in a job you hate. When nothing about that job you like, but you know, God's put you there, but you come to that job and you learn to reckon and you say, Lord, you know, in my emotions, I hate this job. I'm tempted to flee. I'm tempted to run. But in the name of the Lord Jesus, I'm not my own and I'm dead. I reckon I choose myself to agree with what you're saying, that I'm dead and I dare to believe that it's that your spirit's going to go to work. You see, we've got to learn to reckon. And when temptation comes, we learn to fight the battle at the threshold of our mind. You don't fight battles in your mind. Don't let those evil thoughts come into your mind. There's a difference between evil thoughts and thoughts of evil. Do you know that? There really is, just like there's a difference between anything else you turn the words around, thoughts of evil. It comes comes from the heart. The thoughts of evil, Jesus says, come from the heart. But but evil thoughts, excuse me, evil thoughts come from the heart. But thoughts of evil are shot in like the devil's fiery darts and tries to get you to think they're yours. You learn to put on the helmet and you fight the battle when some evil thought comes, some thought of evil comes to think evil of someone. You say in Jesus name, I will admit that thought into the mind of Christ. You fight the battle at the threshold of your mind. Once you let it in. You're at a disadvantage in the whole war. So expect to fight. Feelings will rebel. You may suffer in the flesh. You might, but they that have suffered in the flesh have ceased from sin, it says in first Peter, chapter four, love must choose. You cannot grow in the love of God until you learn to grow in the choices God gives you. Hebrews five says that that he that we must be exercised to discern. God will put you in two situations where you can do one of two things and you must choose the good in the right way. Faith, which works by love, must love God and deny self. And you choose what you know God is showing you and God will strengthen you through exercise of the inner man and you will begin to grow strong and go from faith to faith and strength to strength and glory to glory. Someone once asked George Mueller, what's the secret to your great faith? He built orphanages that were awesome, a man of prayer. And George Miller stopped for a moment. He got tears in his eyes and he said, lo, these many years, the great secret is and he stopped and he says there was a day that George Miller died. You see, George Miller came to the place where he realized he couldn't go on letting Jesus just bless his own life. He had to die to his own life and let Jesus reveal the Christ life in him and through him. They that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lust thereof. God's remedy for my flesh is not rededication or consecration. God's remedy for my flesh is not consecration. It's crucifixion. I must come to the cross and reckon myself dead indeed to sin. Well, overcome besetting sin in number eight, in an act of faith, dare to receive his victory. Most of us won't receive victory until we think we deserve it. We say, well, I just don't deserve to be victorious. And we keep trying to be more sincere and do more things like follow this list more exactly and say, well, I just don't think I'm capable yet of having victory. But I'll tell you what, in the kingdom of God, victories are not won. They are received. You'll never win the victory, brother. You got to receive the victory and you receive the victory not by feeling, but by faith. So get these contrasts in the Christian life. Victory is now. It's not later. Now faith is and this is the victory. Even our faith faith is now and victory is now. You don't have to wait till a year from now to have victory in the Lord Jesus. Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory. He'll give you victory. It's it's received from him, not won by fleshly effort. It is now and it's not later. Victory is total. It's not partial. It's not a little bit of victory and a little bit of defeat. It's total victory received right now from the hand of the risen Lord Jesus. And it's always his victory and not mine. It'll always humble me. It'll always be something to get on my face about. And it'll always be a gift, not a growth. You will never grow into victory in this area. You must have a gift. So I would say you must get on your face after these other things have been faced and dare to praise him with the mighty weapon of Scripture and say, Lord, I'm willing to fight in this area. But from now on, I'm going to fight from victory, not just for it. I'm going to stand against the devil from a place of victory in Christ, not trying to get victory. I dare to receive the victory of the Lord Jesus in this matter. I claim it by the blood of the lamb. It's mine. I remember there was a man in St. Louis named Carl, who was the police chief of the Santa Fe Railroad for 40 years. He had smoked like four or five packs of cigarettes a day for all that time. He was gloriously saved. Remember, Carl and Tom remembers him up there. I went to St. Louis and saw Carl in a meeting about a year after he'd been a Christian. And he was just a new man. But he was still struggling with nicotine in his life. And he was so convicted because he knew that for him that God didn't want him to be in that habit pattern for his life. And it didn't glorify God. I asked the question once if you could imagine Jesus with a cigarette in your mouth, in his mouth, and he realized that he couldn't. So he said, I must stop. But he couldn't stop. It was a besetting sin for him. He tried everything. He even tried lighting up in church, hoping it would shame him enough to where he'd quit. It didn't work for him. Finally, after just torment, Carl and I were talking. I said, Carl, are you sick and tired of trying to overcome sin? He said, I am. He said, I've tried everything. It just won't work. I've got to just live with this. I said, why don't you just dare to believe Jesus to do now what you've been trying to do and couldn't do? You want him to give you victory? He'll just give you victory. Can you believe him for victory? And he his eyes got big. It's like I can't believe it's too good to be true. He said, I'll do it. We bowed our head. I put my hand on his shoulder. And it's simple. No big deal. One me is the Lord. I said, Lord Jesus, this man's tried and failed. Now, would you just do a miracle and give him your victory? Show him what it means to be sanctified by grace. You know what? From that day on, that desire for nicotine left Carl and Carl didn't even want a cigarette. In fact, when he even smelled a cigarette, he felt like barfing. He said it was a glorious thing. It's a wonderful thing. And that's what you need to do. You need to quit struggling in your own power and come to the foot of the cross and say, I've tried and I've failed. So now I take out of the cross. Lord Jesus, bring me your victory. I receive by grace your victory, and I'm going to believe you to do right, not just resist wrong, not only victory of resisting, but now make me clear and powerful in this area where once I caused you shame, give me the power to be aggressively holy. Don't make the mistake of identifying struggle with sin. You may struggle and be free from sin. You'll never be free from temptation as long as you're on earth, the most holy man on this earth. If you get to know him, whoever that is, he has areas of temptation in his life that he's learned to deal with and walk in. And he must be pressing on beyond. Well, the last way that I'll cover this morning to deal with besetting sin is to realize God's grace. You've got to realize God's grace. Be strong, it says in Second Timothy, Chapter two. Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And remember that he gives grace to the humble, to the dependent, to those who don't trust themselves. So humble yourselves. Be strong. He has begun that good work. Thank God for that song. It's my last scripture. He that began a good work in you, he will perform it until the day of Christ. He didn't bring you this far to desert you like the song says. He didn't bring us this far to let us down. He that began it is going to finish it. And so if you've committed unto him your precious family, your precious life, then know that he is able to keep it. He can preserve you blameless spirit, soul and body until that coming day. It's not principles that you memorize or lists of how to's. It's the presence of the grace of God through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. And I would say to you that you should meditate upon the goodness of God. You get your Bible and you meditate upon the goodness of God and the goodness of God will dig a trench in your life that will lead you to deeper repentance in these areas. And it's God's character that will rescue you because he is able he is able to keep you from falling. He is able to subdue all things to himself. He is able to present you faultless before your father. He's able. He's not only able, he's yearning and he'll do it. He'll take you to the woodshed. Some of you have been in the woodshed for a long time. Let me tell you something. It's time to get out of the woodshed and get in the closet and walk with God and the beauty of holiness in private alone with no eye can see the beauty of holiness. Lord, I'm yours. And if no human eye ever sees me again, if I'm in the wilderness of Midian, if I'm in the wilderness of Damascus, if I'm in the outermost part of the sea, if no human eye ever sees my testimony or hears my lips, I'm going to glorify you in word, thought and deed. Let the words of my mouth and let the meditations of my heart be acceptable. Not in my sight, not in my wife's sight, not in my brother's sight, but in your sight. And your eyes are looking for a life that's right. Your heart that's perfect toward you. It's perfectly wanting to be yours at all times that you can show yourself strong in and through that person. Realize God's grace. I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed and he is able to keep me from falling and look for God's door of escape. It's a grace door. It's a grace door. It's not a performance door. It's a grace door. And so, brother, we can be pure. Don't believe the lie that you can't live a pure life. How could God command you to be holy if you can't be? How can God command you to have a perfect heart? So even Paul says he wasn't perfect. I know he says that he meant he wasn't resurrected yet. Read on. He says, let us then as many as be perfect. Two verses later, after he says he wasn't perfect, not as though I were perfect or had already apprehended a couple of verses later, he said, let us then as many as be perfect, be thus minded. Keep on laying down your own life. Keep on receiving God's life by the precious blood of Christ. We can draw as near to God as we want. You can be as spiritual as you want to be. Nobody ever had a bigger Bible. The apostle Paul didn't have a bigger Bible. No saintly biography, no person you admire has ever had an opportunity to be more holy than you or I have. They just trusted God. They just responded to the secret part that God knows that nobody sees but him. So I want to challenge you this morning to let the grace of God pervade you at a depth that you've never, ever let his grace come to before down in your habits. Let the words of your mouth and the meditations of your heart come before God and let him deal with you in an inner holiness, because if there's any limitation, it's on your side and not God's. It's on your side and not God's. He wants not sinless perfection, but holiness, holiness, the grace of God revealed in these mortal bodies. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we walk in the light and if we confess our sin, then the blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing us from every sin and we become a band of men whose hearts the Lord has touched and we walk forward together in prayerful obedience to scriptures in undying faith. And that's what he wants in our day. A band of men who've been to the closet and have come out with the sword of God. We are soldiers again in the army of our Lord. The holiest lives on Earth still have brought us. Yes, but don't let that be an excuse to not let the victory of Christ come forth in beautiful triumph in every place. Only the undefiled. Remain undefeated in the days ahead, real days of woe and testing are ahead of us, but days of glory and the presence of God and those who are willing to walk with him in the beauty of the way of holiness, the beauty of holiness. God will clothe with his majesty and righteousness and the world will wonder and they'll stand in awe of how God could use someone like me or you. Why don't you be that man? But you've got to deal with the invisible enemies, with the things that you've let stay. You've got to deal with besetting sin. We preach a sermon to everyone who sees us and even to those who we don't see the enemy. Let it be the word of God, the wisdom of Christ that comes forth from your life in word, thought and deed purpose in your heart not to defile yourself and dare to be a Daniel and move to be a Moses and walk in all he has for you. Lay hold of it. Lay hold of it. It's yours. Why don't you lay hold of it? Dare to believe God. Dare to lay hold of it. Your kids and wife will thank you.