Fruit of the Spirit: Self-Control (pt2)

Summary

This sermon by Tim Keller discusses the topic of self-control from a Christian perspective. Keller begins by explaining that self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and that it is a gradual process of becoming more like Jesus. He delves into the biblical concept of the ‘flesh’, which he defines as the bent of the whole person to want to be the center of the universe and make their own decisions about right and wrong. Keller argues that the flesh creates compulsive behaviors and addictions by telling us that we must have certain things in order to be in control of our lives. He contrasts this with the gospel, which frees us from the dominion of sin and allows us to experience true self-control by submitting to God’s righteousness. Keller also warns against the counterfeit solution of mere moral reformation or willpower, which can actually lead to deeper bondage to the flesh. Instead, he advocates envisioning the important thing of pleasing God and choosing that vision over the urgent desires of the flesh in moments of temptation. This requires discipline in studying God’s Word, accountability with other believers, and identifying the specific ways the flesh drives us. Throughout the sermon, Keller provides practical examples and biblical references to support his points.

Introduction

Keller introduces the topic of self-control as one of the fruits of the Spirit, and explains that it is a gradual process of becoming more like Jesus, likening it to an acorn growing into an oak tree.

The Problem of Self-Control

Keller discusses the biblical concept of the ‘flesh’, which he defines as the bent of the whole person to want to be the center of the universe and make their own decisions about right and wrong. He explains that the flesh creates compulsive behaviors and addictions by telling us that we must have certain things in order to be in control of our lives. Keller also notes that while non-believers are under the dominion of sin, Christians are no longer under its total control, though they still struggle with the flesh’s influence.

The Counterfeit Solution

Keller warns against the counterfeit solution of mere moral reformation or willpower, which can actually lead to deeper bondage to the flesh. He uses the example of Jesus’ parable about the demon returning with seven more wicked spirits to illustrate how moral reformation without Jesus can make one’s condition worse.

The Real Solution: Self-Control through the Gospel

Keller presents the gospel as the real solution to the problem of self-control. He explains that self-control is not something we can do for ourselves, but rather it comes from envisioning the important thing of pleasing God and choosing that vision over the urgent desires of the flesh in moments of temptation. This requires discipline in studying God’s Word, accountability with other believers, and identifying the specific ways the flesh drives us.

Action Items

• Envision the important thing of pleasing God and bringing Him joy, rather than seeking joy apart from God
• In moments of temptation, choose the vision of pleasing God over the urgent desires of the flesh
• Discipline yourself in studying and knowing God’s Word so that it can guide you in moments of temptation
• Make yourself accountable to other believers who can exhort you and bring God’s Word to bear on your areas of struggle
• Identify the specific ways in which the flesh drives you and let others in on those areas

Well, now why? Why preach on self -control on Easter? It’s kind of silly, isn’t it? Talking about resurrection power. In fact, it makes you feel a little bit, perhaps when you were listening to some of the little testimonies and the sharing, you might have felt, yeah, resurrection power, and I can’t even control my, fill in the blank. Resurrection power sounds great when you say, I want to make sure I can transform my community, transform my world, transform my neighborhood, transform my family, transform my friends, when you’re looking at parts of your life that just don’t seem to be moving at all, changing at all. And we started last week looking at the subject of self -control, the last of the spiritual fruit, and we joke last week that a lot of people say, that’s right, the last of the spiritual fruit, the very last one that’s working in my life. We looked at the definition, we looked at the overview, and what I have decided the best thing to do is while it was still fresh in some of our minds, not all of you were here last week, I’m sure, what I wanted to do is tonight, say, tonight deal with the nitty -gritty of self -control, talking about it because on Easter when we discuss this whole idea of power, what’s the use of power if you have no power over yourself? What’s the use of that? Jesus Christ as we will see, when Jesus Christ comes into your life and gets power over you and puts his power into you, the result is self -control.

When he came into the demoniac’s life in Mark chapter 5, we’re told that after he had dealt with that demoniac, the demon -possessed man, the people who had only known this man to be an absolute wild person, a crazy person, a homeless person, someone running around crazed, that’s all they’d ever known about him for years and years, they came and they saw what had happened and it says there was the demoniac sitting at Jesus’ feet clothed and in his right mind. So that’s the result of Jesus’ resurrection power. It’s not maybe as spectacular as some other of the fruits. But the result of Jesus’ resurrection power, when it comes into our lives, is control, self -control, sitting at his feet, clothed and in our right minds, instead of the way we often are, which is running around, you know, half clothed, tearing the garments off our back, crazed, air up in the air, you see. And all of us who look fairly polished on the outside realize in many of our cases, that’s what our spirits are like. They’re completely out of control. We look so in control on the outside, we look pretty well manicured on the outside, but on the inside, we’re like he was. And we desperately need to have his power, Christ’s power come into our lives, so we consider his feet clothed in our right minds.

Now, last week, if you were here, gave us an overview, and at the very end, the last, say, seven minutes, I kind of quickly went through a number of things that were really, that need to be unpacked. Every one of them is a little suitcase that I need to unpack. And we’re gonna continue what I called last week a Bible buffet, in that we’re going to look at four passages, we’re gonna move from passage to passage. If you’ve got a Bible, I mean, actually, you don’t have to move along. Some of you may just say, look, I have enough problem with traffic in New York, I don’t wanna sit here and go careening all around the Bible, then just stay put and listen. But if you want to follow along, let’s start this way. We’re going to be looking, first of all, at the problem of self -control in Ephesians two, verses one to three. If you’ve got your hand out, I think there’s, it’s very important to follow along because I have a number of quotes in there this week that I need to be working off of.

So first of all, turn to Ephesians two. And I will read where it says, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, which you used to live, in which you used to live, when you followed the ways of this world, and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among the world. them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” Let’s end right there.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Now, you take a look at your hand out and you’ll see that Ephesians 2 .3 is up there. Last week we mentioned that one of these words, it’s the word here that is translated desires. That word desires is the little Greek word kalemata, which really means the commands of the flesh. And what we learn from the passage, you will not be able to learn self -control if you don’t first of all get a good biblical overview of what the Bible means by the word flesh. It seems like every four or five months, especially in the evening service, I’ll try to get into this a little bit because it’s so absolutely important.

The flesh… I say it’s the bent of the whole person to wanna be the center of the universe. When you decide you want to make your own decisions about what’s right and wrong, when you decide that you want to be your own boss, when you decide you want to live for your own happiness, what you’re doing is you’re taking center seat in your life and you’re living as God. Because you see, the Bible says God is the only one whose glory we should live for. We should live for his glory. You should submit to his will. You should let him decide what is right and wrong for you. And you can either do that or you can put yourself there and live for yourself. The bent of the whole person is an important little phrase. The whole person, the word flesh in the Bible does not usually mean the body, at least not when it’s talking about flesh versus spirit. The flesh is the bent of the whole person to be God rather than to be under God. And the bent happened in Genesis three. It was the place where the serpent comes to Adam and Eve and says, listen, if you eat of this fruit, you will be as God, being able to decide right and wrong. That’s what the serpent said. That was the first temptation. We’re gonna get back to that later. The first temptation was you should be in a position to decide what’s right and wrong. And if you eat this fruit, if you disobey, you reach out and grab this fruit, you will be as God. And that’s the place where our spirits got bent. Bent into that particular configuration and they’ve never been bent back. In fact, you know, only slowly through the work of the spirit are you slowly being, if you can think of yourself as this bent rod, the spirit of God is like a little flame torch that goes right at that bent section of your spirit so that slowly it softens, slowly it softens and slowly the bar of your nature can be put back. straight. In fact, one of the ways to think about Christianity is a kind of cosmic orthodontics, you see. It’s ortho meaning straight, right? Straighten things out. That’s the bent of the, that’s where the bent came from and that’s what we mean by that.

Now secondly, what the flesh does is it teaches us to stay in control of our lives by worshipping other things. See, for example, we did talk about this last week, but boy, we’ve got to draw this out a bit. I thought about this in this last week, we’ve got to draw this out a bit. What the flesh does is it says in order for you to stay in control of your life, in order for you to be a self -actualized person, the flesh, every one of us has a particular shape to our flesh. All of our flesh has a different shape and everybody’s flesh has chosen certain things that it tells you must have. And the flesh says, you see that, if you have that, then you’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror. Then you will have made it. Then you’ll be a self -actualized person. And so the flesh actually creates drivenness. The flesh creates compulsive behavior. The flesh says, if you have that, then you’ll be okay. Because, you see, Becky Pippar put it in the way that, in her book, Out of the Salt Shaker, which is just about as great a way as I have ever found, and I’ve read a lot of stuff on this subject, in her book, Out of the Salt Shaker, she says this, and it’s down here in print, so you can take it and you can cut this out and stick it in your Bibles or whatever. She says, whatever controls us is our Lord. Now look, the person who seeks power, she means the person who says, I don’t need God, because I know how to get power. And I know how to get ahead in life. And I know how to get influence. If you’re a Christian, that’s a crutch for you, but I know what I’m doing. So you live for power. If you seek power, you’re controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. If the basic way in which, if your flesh is saying, you need love, you need acceptance, you need approval of people, you need to have people love you and think you’re great, and then you go after that, and your biggest goal in life is to develop relationships. She says then, the person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the Lord of our life. If Jesus is the Lord, he is the one who controls, he is the ultimate power, there are no bargains. What she’s saying is so profound. The flesh will try to say, in order to be in control of your life, you can make it without God. And so it says, go after this, go after this, go after this, in the name of self -control, you lose your self -control. In order to stay in control of your life, you become an addict to something. In fact, what she is saying here is everybody is addicted to something. It’s either addicted that is controlled, mastered by the Lord, and if you have the Lord as your master, then you are in control of yourself. But if you have something else as a master, then you are out of control of yourself, and you are addicted to that. You may be addicted to a certain emotion, addicted to a certain person, addicted to a certain career. What makes a person driven? What makes a person either too in love with their work or too afraid of work? What makes a person need physical pleasure? What makes a person be driven by sex or driven by drugs or driven by time or driven by work or driven by career? What makes you driven? The flesh. The flesh locates these things and says, you must have it. You’ve got to have it. And we are all addicted to something unless we are under his mastery. Nobody, in other words, is actually master of yourself. Either he’s your master or something else is your master. Whoever controls us is our Lord. And we said, Paul says it a different way. Paul says, since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. And what Paul’s talking about is that everybody goes around to try to establish a righteousness of their own. Why, because we live, the flesh makes us want to be our own God, right? And because we want to be our own God, we say, I don’t need the bleeding charity. I don’t need somebody on the cross. I don’t need religion, I don’t need that. I can go out and I can make something of my life. And whatever you decide is the way to do that, you’re going about seeking your own righteousness. You’re building your own righteousness. And you’re addicted to whatever that path is. That’s why the flesh creates compulsive behavior. And that’s the reason why the only way out from under the flesh is the gospel. And the gospel is there in Romans 10, verse four. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. See, the flesh comes to you and says, you cannot fail at this. You cannot lose this woman. You cannot lose this man. You cannot lose this job. You cannot lose this opportunity. You must have it. Why? Because the flesh is saying, it’s your righteousness. The flesh is saying, your life isn’t worth anything. And you have to turn around and you have to say, flesh, shut up. I’m already in. I’m already across the finish line. I’m already, I already belong. I already am accepted. I’m already there. Do you know when to tell your flesh to take a hike? You do it by saying, Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. That is to say, Christ has abolished all of these standards, all of these treadmills, all of these, all of these. driven tracks on which I am seeking my own righteousness. Instead, Christ is the end of the law, so there might be righteousness for everyone who believes.

Now, yeah, just before moving on, it’s interesting. The clock stopped, isn’t it interesting? I better watch this watch, you’re all in a lot of trouble. Okay, okay, I just noticed that before moving on, this is something that we all know about. I recently was on the phone with a friend of mine who is a full -time Christian worker, all right? Full -time Christian worker. And this person is in a lot of trouble, emotionally in a lot of trouble, has admitted, has suicide thoughts, has admitted, is full of smooth, cheerful, you know, Christian. jargon and friendliness on the outside when at work, but at home is full of anger and full of frustration and says, I feel worthless, I feel like a failure. And the whole thing is this person’s particular ministry is not going very well. And after many years of work, he’s not seeing a whole lot of fruit. And what’s happened is, as I talk to him, I mean, I know exactly what’s going on, I know exactly what’s going on. It’s the same thing we all are dealing with, it’s just that you don’t think it could happen when it comes to religion. You don’t think the flesh could actually turn religion into a compulsion, oh yeah. What the flesh does is it says success in your career, whether it’s a religious career or not, is the flesh gets you into a covenant relationship with this particular idol. And idols always in the Bible, every God, whether the true God or a false God, always issues blessings and curses. You ever notice at the end of Deuteronomy, after the people entered into a covenant with God, God, the great God of Mount Sinai, he says, if you obey my covenant, these blessings will come to you. And there’s like a whole chapter of blessings. And then he says, if you disobey, here are the curses. And there’s this entire pile of curses. When you disobey the real God in heaven, you do sense his curse on you. It’s called guilt. You know you’re alienated from God if you’re honest about it. But you see, the flesh gets you into a covenant with all these little kinds of gods, and they curse you when you fail. And see, this particular brother was in a relationship with the God of religious success, and he was being cursed. In fact, as he was talking on the phone, I could hear the God cursing him through his own words. And what do I know? I know all about that. And all I could do is say to him, you know what’s going on, and talk to him about that. And I realize it’s not the sort of thing you get out of very quickly and very easily. It’s awful when God, when the flesh turns Christianity. Into the idol. And when your entire faith and your entire ministry career. is an idol. It’s tough. It can happen to you. It can happen to me. The flesh. The flesh is that compulsive behavior. And that’s where your problems with self -control come from. You wonder where they come from. They say, oh, it’s because I have low self -esteem. Well, I’ll show you in a minute. Yeah, that’s true. But that’s just a superficial result of the flesh. It’s not the root that so many people seem to think it is now. And, oh, a couple other things quickly. In non -believers, the flesh has dominion. It says in Romans 6, For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body of sin might not be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. For sin has no dominion over you, because you are not under law, but under grace. Now, this is hopeful, friends. This is going to encourage you. So listen. Are you going to get very discouraged? Don’t miss this point. The Bible says the difference between a Christian and a non -Christian. Is it a Christian? is no longer under dominion of sin. It doesn’t mean the sin’s not there. It doesn’t mean a Christian is no longer under the influence of sin. But what it does mean is you’re no longer under dominion. And dominion means total absolute rule. Well, how can you know if you’re under total absolute rule? You’re under the total absolute rule of sin when you don’t know you’re under the total absolute rule of sin. See, if I really, really, really wanted to bring one of you under my dominion, I could come to you and I could handcuff you. And you’d be kind of under my dominion, right? Because it’d be hard for you to move and I could pull you along. Or maybe I would put a rope around your handcuffs and I’d pull you along. You’d be kind of under my dominion. But there’s a lot of ways in which I could bring you under total dominion. One of them is I could knock you out. And then you don’t even know you’re under dominion. You don’t know anything. And I could just drag you around, put you. Another thing, maybe I could drug you. So I could say, do you realize that I’m your friend and I’m taking you to the Miami Beach and you say, yes, thank you. And then, you know, along you go. You see, if you don’t know you’re under dominion, if you’re brainwashed or drugged or knocked out, you’re under total dominion. Because you don’t even know enough to rebel. And the way you can tell whether you’re under the dominion of sin is you don’t know you’re under it. As soon as you begin to say, oh my gosh, sin is really controlling me. My pride is controlling me. My self -centeredness is controlling me. As soon as you realize that, it’s no longer controlling you. It’s no longer absolutely controlling you. You can resist because you know what’s going on. David would often say in the Psalms, my sins have overtaken me, but he never says my sins have taken me over because your sins can overtake you. They can knock you down. They can handcuff you. You can be in a lot of trouble. But as long as you know you’re in trouble, you’re not under dominion. That’s the reason that C .S. Lewis can say, if you think you’re not conceited, you’re very conceited indeed. He says, is Lewis in his famous chapter in Mary Christianity on prom? says, only Christians know they’re proud, and that’s true. Because if you say, I am not proud, you are totally under the dominion of pride. If you say, I’m not conceited, you are absolutely conceited, and as soon as you say I’m conceited, you’ve lost some of it. As soon as you say, I’m tremendously proud, you’re on your way out, and it’s no longer controlling everything, right? So it would be of good cheer, on the other hand. Here’s the scary thing. When you become a believer, though sin no longer has dominion over you, and 1 Corinthians 10 .13 says, you no longer have to sin. Do you know what that means? It means you are never in a condition where you are absolutely under the mastery of sin. It’s no longer your king. Jesus is your king. It’s there, it’s powerful, but it’s no longer your king.

1 Corinthians 10 .13 says, there’s no temptation that’s overtaking you except that which is common to man. God is faithful. He will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you’re able, but. Along with the temptation, he will give you a way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

He’s saying, there’s always a way out. And yet, keep this in mind, what is more dangerous? You tell me, a mother bear, perfectly healthy, perfectly intact, or a mother bear who’s been mortally wounded by a shotgun blast from you. Which of those two kinds of people are more dangerous? Well, when I say mortally wounded, I mean a bear who has been shot and is bleeding to death and will die, but has also still got some life in her. You have to remember that the bear who’s been mortally wounded in the long run is going to die. The other one is not. In the long run, you’re going to win. But in the short run, the wounded bear can be a lot more nasty and a lot more spiteful. And actually, in some ways, a lot stronger feeling than the bear whose health is intact. When you become a Christian, your flesh has been given a mortal wound. The Holy Spirit is shot right through the heart, and it turns to you, and it says, I don’t believe you did that to me. And it comes after you with all of its fangs bared. And it’s not unusual for a Christian to find that after you become a Christian, your particular sins, whether it’s your pride, whether it’s an addiction, whether it’s a fear, whether it’s an anger, that even after you’ve become converted, you find that there’s an initial influx of God’s spirit, and there’s a freedom you start to feel in your life over the sin and a beginning to change. And you sense the change. You sense the transformation. But very often, after a while, back comes the old problem seemingly with more power than before. It’s not unusual at all. I don’t know why people don’t tell you that. I don’t know why the people who disciple you and the teachers and the preachers, I don’t know why they don’t tell you that. Why do you think Romans 7 is there? In Romans 7, you hear Paul saying, very often when I most want to do the right thing, evil lies close at hand. In my inmost self, he says, I delight in the law of God, but there’s another principle, he says, out here in my members, in my soul, making war against the law of my mind, bringing me captive, and sometimes I do the very thing I hate. What is he talking about? He says, in my downtown, in my inmost self, in my heart, I love the law of God. Only a Christian can say that. But he says there’s still, you know, there’s a lot of guerrilla warfare going on. I drove the enemy out of the headquarters, but they’re out there in the jungles, and they’re constantly taking pot shops, and they’re angry as all get out, because they know they’ve lost the battle. And as a result, there’s a desperation that they’ve got, and in many ways they’re doing more damage than they’re doing more damage. And they’re more vituperative, and they’re more angry, and they’re more lethal than they were before I threw them out of power. That is the situation, that’s the condition that the Christian has with the flesh. And that’s another reason why a lot of times Christians struggle with self -control, because their flesh is stirred up, and it pushes you back to say, you’ve got to have these things, you’ve got to have these things. The thing that a Christian has to understand is that in the long run the flesh can’t win, but in the short run it can certainly make you feel that you’re back under its dominion. Just keep this in mind, if you know you’re under dominion, or if you feel like you’re under dominion, you’re not. If you’re upset about what’s happening to you, then it hasn’t really knocked you cold. You still can resist, you do resist.

Actually, John Owen, one of the greatest writers in history, is a Puritan wrote about 300 years ago. John Owen says in a book for pastors, you might not be interested in this, but I’ll tell you anyway, he says there’s only two pastoral problems. There’s only two things pastors spend all of their time doing. Only two things. He says, oh, what are they? Surely it wouldn’t take you seven days a week to do this, would it, to do two things? Yeah, it is. It does. The two pastoral problems his pastors spend all their time… trying to convince people who are under the dominion of sin who think they’re not that they really are, and talking to people who are not under the dominion of sin who think they are that they’re really not. And that’s the only two things that there are to do. That’s the only two things there are to do.

Okay, now take a look at Luke 11. That’s the problem of self -control.  Now let me show you the counterfeit. The counterfeit solution. What do we do with the flesh? What do we do with the compulsion? What do we do with the drivenness? And the counterfeit solution is right here. It’s the wrong one, but sometimes by looking at the wrong one we can understand the right one better.

Luke 11, and in Luke 11 we have, we’re looking at verse 14. This is an interesting controversy between Jesus and the religious leaders who are accusing Him of having satanic power. Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed, but some of them said, by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons. Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven. Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebub. Now, if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then they will be your judges, but I will drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you. When a strong man fully armed guards his own house, his possessions are safe, but when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places, seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, I will return to the house I left, and when it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits, more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there, and the final condition of that man is worse than the first.

Isn’t that an interesting passage? What does it mean? Well, this is talking, Jesus is talking about the counterfeit solution to the problem of self -control. The counterfeit solution is willpower, and willpower works temporarily, Jesus says, but in the end, your condition will make you worse off than it was before. Do you see how he says that? He goes like this. The passage, I read you the whole passage, just to show you. you that Jesus is claiming that anywhere that he comes into power over somebody, demonic influences are gone. The argument was, Jesus, you throw out demons, but you do it by Satan’s power. And Jesus says, now, wait a minute, wait a minute, does that sound logical? Why would Satan, whose job it is to increase his power over people, why would he cast out demonic power over individuals? That would mean Satan was warring against himself. He says, don’t be ridiculous, Satan doesn’t act like that. A kingdom divided cannot stand. He doesn’t do that. And then Jesus turns around and says, I, whenever I come in with the finger of the kingdom of God, whenever I am there, I get rid of demonic power. A word here. When you look at the Bible, you’ll see that almost all the time, the demonic influence happens through our flesh. So you see again and again places like this. In Ephesians 4, Paul says, don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Remember that passage? Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Don’t be bitter. Don’t be resentful. And then he says, don’t give the devil that kind of foothold. Or there’s a place in 1 Timothy where it says, do not elect a man into office. Don’t make him an elder or a deacon who’s a neophyte, who’s a rookie, who’s a young man in the faith. Otherwise, pride might come in and he’d fall into the snare of the devil. Think of it like this. The devil has no foothold in you. Think of the devil as a mountain climber, you see. The devil’s trying to get up into your soul, you see. And it’s anger. It’s pride. It’s your flesh, which is the only footholds he’s got. And so the way in which you deal with demonic possession is to find out what the footholds are. What are the footholds? You see, instead, I was, in general, you see, the answer is the gospel.

The gospel is the only thing that can shrink the flesh. The flesh, when you forget God’s grace, when you forget that you’re saved, surely by grace, the flesh begins to develop your compulsive behavior again. When you forget that you belong to him, surely by God’s grace, you can feel the compulsiveness of the flesh developing. And along with the compulsiveness of the flesh, you give demons footholds, and they get in there and they just sort of mess it up. They stir it up. You know, they’re like my kids, who, when they see a mess, go in there to make it messier. You know, they see a mess. They say, this is fantastic. We can go in here and spread it around a little bit more. And that’s the idea of how demons operate with the flesh. Jesus Christ comes in with the gospel and gets rid of those footholds, and that’s how you deal with demonic possession. Now, after giving all this little bit of teaching, then Jesus turns around and tells a strange little story. When a spirit goes out of a man, he goes around in the arid places, looking for a place to live, and says, I can’t really find anything. place. So he comes on back and finds the man where he used to live. His house, his heart swept and tidy, isn’t that what it says? Swept and clean and ready for a party. And so he says, hey this is terrific, this place looks better than ever and he goes and gets seven of his friends and things are worse. What is Jesus talking about? He is saying that the deliverance that he gives from evil powers is not mere moral reformation. Moral reformation means you clean up your life, you tidy it up, you make yourself decent, but you don’t put Jesus in there. You see the demon is thrown out. We don’t know how he was thrown out. He leaves. Maybe he left because the man who was trying to tidy things up threw him out saying I don’t want you in here, I want to tidy things up. But the man does not put any supernatural being in place. He doesn’t put Jesus in there. And so when back comes the spirit, he says hey. This is a great place for a party and he comes in. And what Jesus is pointing out is actually, moral reformation can be actually a way for you to fall deeper into the flesh.

See, for example, I put an interesting little quote in here from Flannery O ‘Connor. Flannery O ‘Connor talks about a guy named Hayes Moats in her short story, Wise Blood, a great short story. And in it, she says this about Hayes Moats, There was a deep, black, wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin. That’s a tremendously insightful thing. Don’t you know why so many people avoid sin so they can avoid Jesus? They are moral. They’re clean, living people. So they can look down their nose at other people and they don’t have to throw themselves on Jesus’ mercy every single day. You know, you can tidy up your life in such a way that you get more and more in the grips of the flesh. One of the things that worries me the most about typical counseling is, whenever I read a book on why people are drug addicts or alcoholics, they always say, those people are full of self -loathing because they don’t have self -esteem. All right, that’s true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. Because of course, when a person is driven because we’re not living up to the standards that the flesh is set for us and the flesh is cursing us because of it, of course we experience lack of self -esteem. But what is the answer? The answer is, and I’ve gotten it when I’ve gone to counseling, the answer is, well, what do you do that you are good at? What do you do that you’re good at that you can feel good about yourself? And people will say, do you like running? Then what you need to do is you need to train for three years and go and run the Boston Marathon. You don’t have to win it, just finish it. And then you’ll know you’ve done something for yourself and something you feel good about. And temporarily, that kind of thing does make you feel good. you feel a bit better. If you finish the Boston Marathon, you know, I mean, if you accidentally set a standard that you can temporarily meet, then of course you feel a little bit better, then maybe you won’t hit the bottle for a while. But you know, in the long run, what you’ve done is you’ve actually given in more to the pride and more to the flesh. You’ve really given in more into it than ever. And right now, the flesh is blessing you because you set a standard that it, for some reason, you know, you’ve met, but it’s inevitable. Some people avoid sin in order to avoid Jesus. And some people, actually, their religion and their religiosity is not a proud one. There are some people I know who are constantly flagellating themselves, constantly whipping themselves about their sin and saying, oh, I’m so bad, and I don’t know why Jesus would ever love me, and they do this and they do this, and actually what they’re doing at that point is again. They’re actually giving in to the flesh. They’re getting in deeper.

John Newton, for example, I have another quote here. John Newton wrote a letter to a man, a minister, who wrote him. John Newton was an Anglican priest. And this minister wrote John Newton and said, I am so sinful and every day I get down on my knees and pray for two or three hours and confess my sins and I don’t know how God could ever deal with such a monster as me. Why would he work with me? Why would he accept me? And John Newton did not see this as spiritual. He saw this man as casting out the demon, certain demons, but opening himself to far worse ones. And he writes back and he says, Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. He sometimes offers to teach us humility, but I wish to be humble. Though I wish to be humble, I desire not to learn in this school. His premises, perhaps, are true. Now listen, namely, we are vile, wretched creatures. He doesn’t say we’re not. Of course, Newton knows that’s what the Bible says. We’re vile, wretched creatures. Do you think that’s psychologically unhealthy? Now look carefully. That’s not what the gospel says. Yes, we are vile, wretched creatures. Premises are true. But Satan then draws abominable conclusions from them and would teach us that therefore we ought to question either the power or the willingness or the faithfulness of Christ. Indeed, our complaints about our unworthiness are good so far as they spring from a dislike of sin. Yet when we come to examine them closely, there is often so much self -will, self -righteousness, unbelief, pride and impatience mingled with them that they are a little better than the worst evils we can complain of. You express not only a low opinion of yourself, which is right, but too low an opinion of the person, work and promises of the Redeemer, which is certainly wrong. Don’t you see there’s an awful lot of moral reformation which does not have Jesus at the heart. It’s willpower, but it’s a kind of willpower that actually keeps Jesus away and puts you more deeply locked into the… into the grip of the flesh. Self -control is not something you can do for yourself. Running the Boston Marathon in order to overcome your low self -esteem so that you can get control over your substance abuse, that’s self -control for yourself and in the end, you’re giving yourself a new master, your pride. You got rid of one little bondage to move into a far worse bondage, a more spiritual one, a more subtle one. Self -control is not something you do for yourself. Indeed, self -control only comes when we want something more than the self.

Now thirdly, 1 Corinthians 9, 23 to 27. The last thing we won’t get to, but that’s okay, that’s temptation and we’ll have to get to that next week and I got certainly a whole sermon on that one anyway because let’s take a look at 1 Corinthians 9. On temptation, you don’t think I know about it? You come back and you watch.

1 Corinthians 9, 23 to 27. Paul says, I do all this for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training, see, self -control. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, I do not run like a man running aimlessly. I do not fight like a man beating the air. I beat my body and I make it my sleigh so that after I preach to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

What is the real self -control if it’s not willpower? Here it is. We mentioned it last week. Just elaborate a little bit on it now. Self -control is choosing the important thing over the urgent thing. That’s self -control. The important thing is always to please God and to bring Him joy. The urgent thing is to please yourself or to seek joy apart from God. Therefore, there are two parts to self -control. One, A, the first part, envisioning the important thing to please God. Notice how Paul’s constantly saying, he’s always thinking about his crown. He’s thinking about his prize. Paul is terrific at this. And last week, let me just elaborate here. Last week we said what gives you self -control is your vision. We said there’s a difference between audio and video. Video means you’re taking a truth and you’re putting it into your imagination. Imagination is that faculty that enables you to take an abstract truth and make it vivid and turn it into pictures. Look, for example, something I need to think about right now is dieting. I do it every March, April, and May. Every year. 20 pounds off, and then 20 pounds on during the fall, and it always goes that way. Now here’s how dieting works for me. It depends when I’m in front of something I wanna eat. It depends on what I see. If I have just looked in a mirror, if I’ve just happened to walk through one of these terrible apartments or places that have full -length mirrors, I hate them. I hate them with a passion. And what happens is when you look at yourself in a mirror, or worse than that, somebody sends you a photograph they’ve just done of you and say, oh, here’s the photographs of when you were back home and here you are holding your little niece and all that, and you look at your little nieces here, and then there’s all this. And you know, there’s this picture, and you say, do I really look like that now? What happens is you knew what you look like, but now it’s sort of vivid. You just, it’s gotten on your imagination. And then there’s the ice cream soda. And then there’s a big poster of the ice cream soda. You know, when you go by the Dairy Queen, there’s these huge posters of these things. You see, and what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to say they know that you know that if you eat this, you’ll get fat. But they’re hoping that their image will be more powerful than your knowledge. See, do you have the knowledge I am fat on audio and you have the picture of the ice cream soda on video? Or if you’re lucky enough, you just happen to see a picture of yourself with your little niece on your big tummy and it doesn’t matter. You see the ice cream soda but you’ve got this very vivid, the ice cream soda is on audio but your fat is on video. You will do whatever is on video. You will do whatever you are envisioning. Now let’s be more serious about this. The next time you are tempted to have sex with somebody, you shouldn’t. Well, you know, you will have sex with them if you have on video how lonely you are, how good this is gonna feel, how great this person looks, how much like your paradigm of a good looking person this person looks like. And on audio you’ve got something like thou shalt not commit adultery. But, and what Paul does all the way through the Bible is he says if you want sexual self control, put on video things like this.

Like 1 Corinthians 6, you are not your own. You are bought with a price. Think about Jesus Christ in John chapter two. He comes into the temple which is God’s house, his father’s house, his father’s dwelling place and he looks at all the money changers and he throws them out, why? It’s a zeal for the purity of the courts of his father’s house consumes him and now where does Jesus Christ live? In you. And now zeal for the purity of your lives consumes him. And look at the things that, you know, Jesus is sitting inside there, right? If you’re a Christian and he’s in there and he sees everything you’re thinking and doing up on the wall, you know, it’s up there in 3D, Panavision and he’s sitting in there and you know he’s of pure eyes and can behold iniquity and what are you showing him? You’re not your own, you’re bought with a price. Now what am I doing? What am I doing? I’m preaching to myself, I’m preaching to you but you have to preach to yourself. You’ve gotta put it. on video. You have to envision the prize. You have to envision the crown. You have to envision what you’re after.

And then the second step to self -control and the last thing. And it’s the hard thing. The last thing is you have to draw on the vision and choose it at the moment the urgent thing presents itself. At the moment. See, it’s one thing to sit down. Listen. Some of you, this is New York, I know enough people, I know just from talking to you, I know some of you, the sexual thing is a big problem. The sexual temptation is a major issue. And right now you may be feeling, gosh, you know, it’s on video here. And you’re thinking, oh yeah, I’m not my own. I’m bought with a prize. What is he looking at? What am I making him look at? Here’s Jesus Christ dying on the cross so I wouldn’t do this. And I’m just throwing his blood back in his face when I do this. And, you know, I’m being vivid, am I not? Somebody might say I’m being lurid. I’m being vivid. I’m being biblical. But can you draw on the vision you have right now, tomorrow night or next Saturday night? See, that’s where self -control comes in. Do you know how to turn it on at the moment when the urge comes? And the way to do that is discipline.

Number one, you have to know the Word of God like Paul did. We mentioned this last week. Paul was up before the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter 23. And he was slapped by the high priest, or was ordered to be slapped by the high priest. He turns around and the goal is to glorify God, but the urge right now is to tell this guy off. And he says, God, it should slap you, you whitewashed wall. And immediately somebody says, you talk to the high priest like that, and Paul whirled around, and he suddenly thought of Exodus 22, verse 28, that says, you shall not revile a ruler of your people. And he says, I’m sorry. The Word of God says, no matter how dishonorable that person is, he has an honorable office, and I will not revile a ruler of my people. He knew the Word of God so well that, you see, it switched on right in the middle of his anger. Suddenly, his vision was filled with the Word of God and he snapped out of his anger. The reason that you and I can’t snap out of our anger like that is because we don’t know the Word of God very well. Most of you, including me, until I was studying this, had never read Exodus 22, 28, let alone had it on the tip of your tongue so you could deal with your anger, you see. The ability to have the Word of God like that means discipline, it means study, it means writing things down on a piece of paper so you can carry it with you, and it means having friends who can help you. Do you know when Caesars, when the Caesars used to ride into Rome at the end of a great conquest and they would come in with all of their slaves and they’d come in with all of their triumph, do you know what they used to do? They used to hire us. a slave who would sit on his chariot and he would stand at the Caesar’s ear. And as the Caesar was coming on in and everybody was saying, hail Caesar, hail Caesar, the slave’s job was to whisper, remember your mortal. You’re going to die. Remember your mortal. You’re going to die.

Do any of you have anybody like that? Exhort one another daily lest you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Are you willing to let people in that far? Are you willing to have good Christian friends who you allow to come in close enough to see your sin, where your flesh is operating? Are they able to bring the word of God to bear on you? Are they able to pray about it? You see, the ability to have self -control is under your control. And that’s why Paul can conclude. by saying, therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly. I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself might not be disqualified. He knew, I know, that you know. No matter how good it looks on the outside, self -control on the inside, it’s something you do have control over.

Number one, you have to give control to God.

Number two, you have to know the word of God.

Number three, you have to make yourself accountable to other people. You have to identify the way in which the flesh particularly drives you. Identify it and let some other people in on it.

• ← Fruit of the Spirit: Goodness, Faithfulness
• Fruit of the Spirit: Self-Control (pt3) →