Matthew 18 verse 7 to 9. Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks, for it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to the man through whom the stumbling block comes. And then Christ's words in how we are to deal with sin. If the hand or the fruit of the eye causes us to sin, then we are to cut them off, because it is better to get rid of these things and enter into eternal life than to be lost in the eternal fire. We saw this morning these scandals, offences, assembling blocks, all of these different words that are used to translate this word Christ used, that it's a trap. And it's a trap that we can set for others, sometimes on purpose, But a lot of the time for Christians it's a by-product of actions we take that we believe we must do at the time, or we justify ourselves to do them, and we maybe inadvertently set traps for other people, and we're not even aware that we've done it. And that's why the Lord tells us to be so careful. And we saw three ways, at least from the New Testament, that these traps can be set for young believers even, or for any believer, in doctrine, in obedience to commandments, and then just in our general spiritual condition. The doctrine obviously can entrap people and lead people astray by not telling them the truth about God, or about his means of salvation, about the nature of the Church, or worship, all of these areas that God has revealed in his word, that we must look at his word and base an entire Christian view on these words. We can get these wrong and we can actually have wrong opinions about some of these things and obviously if we tell people what our opinion is, it can pass on to them and they can just accept it. And they can go down a wrong path believing the wrong thing about the Trinity, or about God's fatherhood, or about God's attributes, his holiness, his righteousness, or about any of the things I've mentioned. Their doctrine is important and there are false teachers in the church. Let me just say about false teachers that not every false teacher knows that they're a false teacher. We have this view that when we read the New Testament that they come in suspiciously like shadowy characters as though they know that they're wrong and they want to deceive. Many false teachers genuinely believe the thing they're telling us. And that's what makes discernment so important. They're not even aware of themselves that they're wrong. Most people who have a view of God believe that that view is right. So that's why we all must take all of our views to the scripture because there can be false teaching in the evangelical church and we have to make sure that we're not part of that and spreading false teaching in any way. And there was also obedience to commandments that Christ says the least of these commandments are even important and the great ones and obviously we saw that if we're living against these commandments and we break them If we're relaxed about them and we say these aren't important and we do that in front of other Christians or we tell other Christians that command doesn't matter anymore or that's not an important command, we've obviously told that person to not take that command seriously. If that person accepts what we're saying, then we are responsible for them breaking God's law. They'll go off and any time that comes up in their life they'll say, I remember that minister or that Christian or that elder or whoever it is, they told me that this isn't important so it's fine for me to break this. It doesn't apply anymore or that kind of thing. And we've ensnared them in something that when God looks at it, it is a breaking of his law. And I think what Jesus is saying here is that we're actually more responsible for that than the person, if they do it in ignorance, for example. It's actually our fault if we do that, more so than it is the person who just trusted what we said and then went off on a wrong path. And then the general condition of the heart, that it's important that we walk in the Spirit, that we are soft-hearted, receptive to God's Word, that we are prayerful, that we have a piety in our lives, a godliness, that we think it's important to be near God, to pray to him, to be in his presence, to be students of his word, to cherish that word as gold and honey, that if we are living like that, with all these means of grace, and they're flowing into our soul, we will be near Christ. The new man will be strong, and we will be a good influence on the Christians around us, but if the new man isn't strong, the old man will become bold again, the old man will take up his position again. And however that comes out in our lives, it depends on our personalities, it might come out in a hardness of heart, it might come out in a pride, a censoriousness, there's that kind of personality, that can affect other believers and ensnare them. Or you might have the kind of personality that just says, I don't care right now, I've tried hard in my Christian life, Right now I'm not near God, and I just don't really care about this issue, or this issue, or this issue. I'm not going to be concerned about these other believers. If you've got that kind of more relaxed, blasé attitude, that's just as dangerous as the hard, proud heart. Because both of these conditions are done in front of other Christians who may be young, and they will look at you as an example of what it means to be a Christian. and sin then is contagious. It just spreads and that's what's going on in the Western world right now. The reason that there is such a low ebb in Christian living and spirituality today in the Western world, even with all the books and everything that we have and all the information we have with the Reformed Church, the reason things are the way they are right now is because people took these attitudes three or four generations ago and it just filters down. new Christians come in and they will imitate us in this congregation. We will be one of the main images to them of what a Christian is. So if they copy us, or just live a little below us, if we set the standard so low, then each generation's standard of Christian living will just lower down. So these are all ways that we can entrap or ensnare others and cause them to go on a wrong as Jesus is so urgent about in this passage that they're like little children and both are the one who sets one of these off on the wrong course and ensnares them. Jesus is very severe about what will happen to the person who is the cause of that. What he moves through here after he says this teaches us not only to be aware of how we set traps for others, but he actually tells us, as Christians, how to deal with sin in our own lives. He says in verse 7, Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks, for it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come. Now what he's saying there is, He's told the Christian disciples here to be very aware of setting this for others. But he says in the next breath, there will be traps everywhere. It just is that way. It's inevitable. That is the condition of the world. Every single person in this world is sinful. The ones that are in Christ and the ones that are out of Christ. All of us are sources of sin. You think of pipes that bring water to a city and supply that city with water, that would be a good thing, but you think of that in a bad way. All of us are at least a little fountain, if not a great fountain, of sin that is flowing into this world. We are all sources of it, especially those who are outside of Christ and untouched by the Spirit. There is just sin everywhere. It's in every life, every marriage, every home, every individual, every office. It is there, it's everywhere. It's not always very clear to us, we see the obvious sins sometimes, but it's just always there. Even in everyone's attitude, there is always an element of sin just lurking there, ready to come out and influence a situation. It's just there, and Jesus is telling us, you should accept that it's just there. Accept that it's there, and I'll tell you how to deal with the fact that it's there. There's no point living as though we wouldn't come across snares and stumbling blocks. And it's a picture that if we were all leaving the church tonight and someone had laid snares all around the parking lot, just so there was 50 snares out there, and you saw them on the way in, you would warn us, you would warn the children to be careful when we went out. Well, that's quite what the world is. It's full of these snares, some of them are well concealed, But they are there, and Jesus tells us you have to be on watch in yourself and in those around you for those snares because they can just appear suddenly. in your thoughts, in a conversation, in a situation, they will just be there. Christ warns us here in the fact that they're there, and we have to navigate life based on the fact that they're there. We have to watch our step very carefully. Paul says to Timothy that men have fallen into the snare of the devil and been taken captive to do this will. So he's behind this. I didn't have time to go into that element of it this morning, but The Kingdom of Darkness is very involved in deception and setting snares and using people to set snares and getting people to ensnare themselves. He did it to two unfallen people that had no sinful nature. And he managed to ensnare them through subtlety. And he has studied man for six thousand years and he knows human nature better than we do. Satan is smarter than us. The only one who can outsmart Satan is God himself. Satan is very intelligent, he knows how we behave, he knows what basic womanhood is, and basic manhood is, and he knows what children are like, and he's studied families and people for thousands of years, and he knows how to catch us. you might hunt them, you know how a bear is going to behave, or a deer is going to behave. Because all deer are similar, and all bears are similar. You know the behaviour of these animals. Satan views us that way. We're not necessarily the same. So he is the one that's behind most of these snares. So when Jesus tells us here how to deal with them, we need to bear that in mind. How does Jesus then tell us to deal with snares as they come up? What he says actually helps us understand our own sin. So we're going to see a couple of things about our own sin and then the glory of God forgiving that sin. But take for now understanding what our sin is and how it behaves. He tells us in verse 8, This is how you're to deal with your sin. If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than to have two hands, etc. And in verse 9, if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. So he mentions these parts of the body. And these parts of the body probably represent something different about our sin. And you can see that in this passage, you can see it in some of the psalms where it mentions the hands and the feet and the desires. These represent different parts of us. Take the hand, for example. When he says here, your hand causes you to sin, he's just pointing out a part of our body that we use to sin. And I think in the Bible the hand has to do with what we do, what we touch. Now that's obvious, we normally do that with our hands. In other words, our actions. He's pointing out here the instrument through which sin is expressed in us, things we take, actions we take with our hands, things we touch. We take actions with our hands. If we choose to go somewhere, we'll go to that place. And we've chosen in our heart, because we have a desire, that we're going to go to that place at that time. And when we arrive, we reach out our hand and we open the door with our hand. We're always using parts of our body to carry out our will. And Jesus says that a lot of sin can be seen in the hands. Now there are extreme sins, obviously. that he refers to, he uses all of these comments in the Sermon on the Mount too. You can check that in Matthew 5-7. And he talks about adultery and things like that. Now obviously if you engage in a physical act of adultery, he's telling you here, David's hands caused him to sin, first his eye caused him to sin, but then his hands caused him to sin and so on. When he tells us here that your hand is causing you to sin, there are examples of extreme sin that use our hands. But it goes deeper than that. One of the psalms says that even the ploughing of the wicked is a sin. Even the ploughing of the wicked is a sin. That's an amazing verse in the Psalms. And what God is telling us there is that if someone is outside of Christ, not reconciled to God, they haven't had all of their sins atoned for, they've not been touched by the cleansing water of the Holy Spirit in their souls, they are in a state of cruel sin, of cruel uncleanness, of spiritual leprosy. As Paul says, they are dead in their trespasses and sins and they are unclean. And the psalm actually says that when someone who is outside of Christ ploughs his field, God says that's sinful. Good may come from it, it may give wheat to other people, but the man who doesn't love God and doesn't love Christ and doesn't acknowledge his Creator, who ploughs the Creator's using metal that comes from the Creator to make the tools, and then picks up all the grain that was created by the Creator. and then sells it to other people who were made by the Creator and receives money for it. God says all of that is actually extremely tainted by sin, just because the person is not acknowledging God. So there are extreme sins in which we use our hands, but amazingly, even a normal domestic activity that we do, if it's done outside of Christ, or it's done inside of Christ, with a sinful attitude, the whole thing is tainted. And we're using our hands to do it and our hands are part of that sin. We'll look at this maybe in a month or two, depending on how fast we go through our series, that Mary and Martha was a home that Jesus visited and they had received Christ into their home, they had at least formally accepted him. We know that Mary was born again and she loved Christ because she sat at his feet and hung on his every word. Martha didn't. I mean, we'll deal with that when we actually come to Martha. I don't believe Martha was saved at that point because of her behaviour. Martha was not concerned about what Christ was saying or preaching in her house. All Martha cared about was the hospitality and making her home look good and serving the food at the right time, and it was actually all terminated on herself. So much so that she complained about her sister and rebuked Christ. She said, don't you care my sister has left me to serve? And Jesus rebukes her, though she's doing what we would call a good thing. She's providing for Christ and his disciples. But Jesus doesn't thank her for it. Jesus says, you are troubled about many things, but it's actually your sister that has chosen the one thing that is needful, and you have not chosen it. You are two sisters in the same home, supposedly serving the church, but one sister has made a choice and she chose the one thing that is meaningful. The other sister, Martha, has not yet made that choice. And it's coming out in her unthankfulness, her complaining, and the fact that she's focused only on the physical and not on Jesus' words and these things. Now in that example, Martha was doing a good thing with her hands, but it was sinful. Her right hand caused her And Jesus warned her to make the right choice. And he said, you're troubled and focused on all these things, but they are not equal. There is one thing equal, and your sister Mary has chosen it. So there's an example of someone who's in the church in the New Testament, and she's part of the covenant community, but there she is, she's falling into the kind of thing Jesus is talking about here. Our hands can represent all our actions, things that we choose to do all of the time. And though we might not be overtly sinning, going out and stealing with our hands, or striking people with our hands, although we may not be doing that, Anything we do is an action of ours and can be represented here by Jesus saying, if your hand causes you to sin. Everything we're choosing to do on a day-to-day basis, and for us as believers, if we choose Even in Christ, if we choose things all the time, that means we're not choosing something else, like reading his word, kneeling in prayer for a reasonable amount of time with the Lord, making an effort to be with other believers and to discuss the Word of God with them and to have fellowship. All of these things that God's given to the Church, if we are making choices all of the time for something else, although those things in themselves might be neutral, I hope you can see that it becomes a sin of the hands, a sin of our doing and our actions that we have to be concerned about. The Lord shows us in the Gospels that it's quite surprising, actually, when we discover sins that wouldn't be obvious to us in the New Testament narratives. That there are lots of things that happen. That you and I, because of the lowness of our conception of sin, we would never think of someone sinning with their hands. we would make excuses for the person. But Jesus shows us that someone can be living their life normally and a lot of what they're doing can be sinful, even if we don't think that they're controversial sins. An example of that is the church in Laodicea. They have good will, they have silver and gold, they have eye ointment that's produced in Laodicea, Revelation chapter 3. They have all these luxurious and good things, and they think they're doing well, that church. When Jesus visits them in the spirit, they can't see their actual condition. Now, if you had visited Laodicea, you would have thought it was a good church. We wouldn't have seen a lot of sinful action, but for Jesus it's all, it comes from here. The luxurious things, the building of a home, having nice things, working on our yard, building our business, buying things that we think we need, looking online for things. All of these things, we think they're neutral, but actually they can be sinful. if they're detached and taking life from and taking the place of Jesus Christ. So, whatever it may be that's in our lives, and you have to examine your life as I have to examine mine, Jesus says, if we find something that's causing us to sin, what should we do? He says, cut it. Cut it out. And the force of what he says is clear. We're too good at analysing and waiting and going to and fro in our minds, is this right, is this wrong, am I really neglecting my spiritual life for this, and we discuss it with ourselves. The moment that we have any inclination at all that this thing is causing us to sin, we shouldn't hang around. Jesus uses a very violent and graphic image here of how we're to deal with anything that's causing sin in our lives, whether it's something in our yard, in our home, whether it's the way we speak, the way we think, how we're spending our time. Once we hear from God and He challenges us about what's in our life, if He shows us that there are certain things that should be done very differently, we have to respond like this, just cut it. Cut it. Cut that thing out. Cut that activity out. Cut the amount of time you're on the internet out. Cut the amount of time that you're meeting with people to discuss certain things, if it's creating gossip. You've got to cut certain things out, whether it's how you spend your time, how you think. If you find that if you spend a lot of time in your own daydreaming that it creates sin, cut it out. Cut it in half. You've got a few hours per day when it's like that, then cut it down and then use that for something else. Give that fortune to God. Move it towards the spiritual and just cut it. Jesus is saying if we find something that's overtly sinful, There's something that produces a certain conversation in us, or a certain thing we see on the television, or the internet, or anything like that. If you find that when you watch certain news shows, or certain opinion shows, or if you watch certain entertainment shows, if you find that they make you critical, or they disturb you, or they stir up your anger, then cut them out. It's okay to dip into these things so that you know what's going on in the world, but if you spend all of your time watching Donald Trump, for example, forgive me if any of you support Donald Trump, but you'll probably sin. If you watch people criticizing him and talking 24 hours a day on the news shows all about something so complex and so disturbing and all these things as that, if you're watching that, that isn't good for your soul. It's okay to be aware of it and to have a controlled view of it so that your opinions are in order, but if you give yourself over to any of these things and it causes you to sin, if you find sins arising in your heart, or if you watch certain shows that you think are neutral, that they portray women in a certain way, or they speak about things in life in a certain way that we know that can produce sin, and that are inappropriate, and you think, well I'll just watch it, it only mentions that six times. If you find that these things are causing you to sin, Jesus' answer is clear. Just stop. And why did he say be so severe? Why did he say stop? Because your soul is worth more than that. These things are attractive. We want to enjoy our lives. We want to enjoy things and be out and involved in things. We want to interact with lots of people, be at events. We want to watch things. We want to speak about things. It's good to have a desire to live, but when we find in all of these categories that these things are actually endangering us to sin, Jesus says just cut them out. Why? Because your soul is worth more than that. Can we not give up a few things to keep our souls pure? Can we not cut something out of our life that we may enjoy in the whole, that we may enjoy in the name, but that contain things that may make us sin? And all of this is about our view of salvation and eternity. We don't value our souls as valuable as they are, and we certainly don't see the consequences of sin as stark as they actually are. We just don't. The devil has blinded us from it, the world doesn't tell us about it, the world thinks there are no eternal consequences for anything that happens. And we're in that world and we're covered in it, and we grudge giving things up. We're always telling each other and telling God, I'm allowed to have these things. I want to enjoy these things. But our forefathers didn't view it that way. If anything was there that could have caused them to sin, then they just had it. They pulled it out and they got rid of it so that there was never an opportunity for that to happen. So that's your hands and your actions. He mentions the feet too, which is just the same as that. The feet is really where you go. So that is contained in everything I've just said. The feet, you use your feet to go places and to go on a certain direction. And Jesus is saying if you're going to places that produce sin in you, don't go there. If you keep going to that place and it causes you to sin, stop going there. You may see it in a more general way that the feet represent a direction in life. If you make certain decisions to get a new job or to move or to make certain choices in your marriage or certain choices about how you're going to spend your time as a family, once you make that choice, you're setting a trajectory. a direction for you and your family and your friends or whoever it is. We're all going in a certain direction based on choices we're making. And if you find that you quite legitimately made a choice to go this way and you've gone into it and a couple of months into it you find that it's causing you to sin, it's dampening your spiritual life, it's holding you back from God, then Jesus is saying here, your direction has created a situation where it's not optimum for you to be spiritual. You're actually more prone to sin now, because you've put yourself in this situation. You're more prone to be lethargic and and passionless about God, because you've put yourself in this direction. Like Jesus is saying, if your foot is cut off, you're saying cut it off. In other words, turn back and go back onto the path you were on. If your foot and direction of life is taking you away from God, stop. and reorientate that towards God. Then he mentions the eye. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. And I think this is getting more intimate and personal, because it's very physical that the hand and the feet do things, but we know that the hands and the feet come from within. The hands and the feet do what the soul wants to do, and the eyes are more personal. The eyes are not something we use only to do, but it's how we perceive the whole world. And the eyes are the window of the soul. If you look into someone's eyes, often you can tell a lot about them just by the look in their eyes. And the Bible has a lot to say about the eyes. If your eye causes you to sin, what do you look at? You look at what you desire. The eyes are an indicator in the Bible, physically, of what you desire, but it can be viewed spiritually. Maybe I can put it like this, whatever you're really focused on, whatever you're really looking at in your life, whatever your priorities are, are a revelation of the desires of the soul. They're just an extension from way in here that comes out in what you focus on. The Bible says, I am a lot about the eyes. The Bible says that there are eyes that are full of adultery. Jesus says that there is such a thing as the evil eye. The evil eye. The eye that looks a-horny, but when the eye becomes evil, looks the resentful look. The angry look. The sexually immoral look. The covetous look. the contemptuous look, all of these looks that come from our soul through our eyes. Jesus says, if your eye causes you to sin, carry it out, pluck it out. He would have told David, pluck out your eyes. He was on the roof of his house and it says graphically in the Hebrew, and he looked and he saw Bathsheba and then he took her in. He looked Jesus warns us about our eyes. He tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, if your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light. When he's using these words in the Sermon on the Mount, when he's speaking about adultery and hatred, and what we desire and the things we amass in this life, all the material things, the things we buy, the things we want for our homes, and Jesus says, don't lay up treasures on earth, Don't lay up all these things that were rust and moth destroyed, but lay up the treasure in heaven, the invisible spiritual enduring treasure. If your eye is single, your body will be full of life. And it's strange, we have two eyes, but Jesus says if your eye is single. In other words, he says if you look only at one thing, if you are only focused on one thing, you don't need me to tell you what you must focus on. Your whole body and life will be full of light if you look at the light. If you look at Christ, if you look at God and his word, the more you look at him, the more you will be filled with light. If you look at other things, then your body, he says, will be filled with darkness, and how great is that darkness. Behind the eye might be things like the mind, as I leave this. Things like the mind. You look at things and you think and you perceive and you dwell upon. This is a spiritual thing. And not only do we say it's the hand and foot and eye causes us to sin, but even what we looked at this morning. You can put anything in there. If your thoughts cause you to sin, cut them out. If your sinful nature gravitates to a certain thought category, dwelling upon other people, resenting them, criticizing them, or dwelling upon people to lust after them, or dwelling upon situations and thinking them through, and it's producing a lot of sin. Jesus says it's kind of like doing a brain operation. Literally cut those thoughts out. Don't think about them. in the way you are, even your thoughts. If a doctrine is causing you to sin, if a certain view you have of the Bible has been shown to be wrong, and you're holding on to that view and it's causing you to sin, just cut it out. Just take it out of your system altogether. If a book or author is causing you to sin, cut it out. If a show is causing you to sin, cut it out. A certain conversation that you keep having is causing you to sin. Cut it out and cast it from you. Don't look at that thing, don't entertain those thoughts, don't speak in that way, don't send that email. If isolation causes you to sin, if you feel lonely and despondent and depressed, and you cannot have joy in your life in Christ because of your isolation, then don't allow yourself to be cut off from others. Accept that invitation that someone gives you. put yourself in that situation and allow yourself to grow in that situation. Whatever it is, and you can examine yourself, my brother and sister, whatever it is, it's the Lord Jesus that tells me and tells you, you can be rid of it if you just cut it off from you. And you'll see how graphic it is. He doesn't just say, he doesn't say cut it out, cut off your hand and put it on the table and analyse it. He says cut it off and throw it far from you. Get rid of it. Whatever it is, that is causing this in your life at the moment, whatever that area of sin is, my dear brother and sister, you will have joy and the closeness of Christ if you just cut the thing off and throw it away. So these are the instruments, the members of our body that Jesus mentions here that cause sin and we are to get rid of them. What else is there, apart from those instruments that cause us to sin? Well, there's something about our souls that we must determine in ourselves not to sin. He tells us here, cut it and get rid of it, but there's something in the soul as well. It's not only that you need to move the thing away, but you need to set your soul against sin. And what I mean by that is, think of it this way, Job made a covenant with his eyes not to look with lust upon a woman. He didn't just say, I don't want to do that because I am a righteous man. He told himself, he reinforced it to himself, He promised before God and made a decision, he took action and set himself on an actual position. And he said, I have made a covenant, I have determined that I will not do this. And I need to do that, and so do you. I get caught out by that all the time. I see something that I'm doing, and I think that that is not the way that ought to be done. That's actually sinful. And I say to myself, I don't want to do that again. But then I see myself doing the thing again, or saying the thing again. Why am I doing that? It's because when it's happened, I haven't actually sat down before God and said, I'm making a covenant, I am determined that I will do my absolute utmost not to do this. If you actually do that, it will bind you more. We do that with each other. I mean, if you sell your house, you're not just going to take the person's work, there will be the signing of contracts. And that's true in our work life. Someone offers you a job, and you go work for them, and you ask who the contract is, and the person says, well, but you work here, and I'll always want you to work here. You would say, no, no, I need a contract, and I need a season. There needs to be something there that reminds both parties this is what's agreed and that's the same between us and Christ. We have to go further than just knowing that we have sins and that in some way we want rid of them. We have to make decisions and stick to them. Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself to the king's elegance. Daniel, the one who so liked Christ. the forefather of Christ. He was in prison in Babylon, the king's delicacies were all to do with the reign of Nebuchadnezzar and it was all defiled by that and there were unclean foods that a Jew should not eat and Daniel was supposed to eat them. And he was under a lot of pressure to eat them, even though the Old Testament said he should not eat them. And his life was on the line, but it said he purposed in his heart that he wouldn't. And do you know what happened? When the ruler came in to give them the food, Daniel said, I can't eat this. You can do with me what you will, but I cannot eat this. Why was he able to say no to something that he knew was wrong? Something that we would think was quite frivolous, like food. The reason that Daniel didn't flinch is because he purposed in his heart, he made a commitment, and he determined that he would not do this. And we have to do the same. The New Testament doesn't tell us our Christianity is based on being a good Christian and running with our instincts. If we run with our instincts, we're in big trouble. The New Testament is filled with commands to determine and to set our minds on things that aren't natural to us. Set your mind on things above, and then this will flow from it. So Jesus, sorry, the apostle there He doesn't tell us that we will naturally set our mind on what is right. Even as Christians, we will get that wrong constantly. And Paul says, set your mind on things above. If you don't make that decision, you're not automatically going to set your mind on things above. Even if you love God, because of the other desires you have, you have to set your mind. on things above. That's something you do. You tell yourself, you speak to your own soul, and you say, I am going to focus on God, I am going to pray, I am going to read through this book of the Bible, and I'm going to glean from it what I can, and I'm going to apply it to my life because I want to grow. If you come to prayer in the Word and say, you know, set your sail up like a boat and just say, let the wind blow where it will, you'll get lost You'll lose the desire and you'll end up not praying and not reading the Bible if you just let your instincts control you. You must do what Job did, what Daniel did, and what Paul says. Determine and covenant and set your mind on these things. That is how we are to deal with sin. Whatever of these three causes us to sin, deal with it quickly, severely, decisively, throw the thing away from you, and give your spiritual body a chance to live, even if you lose something important, an activity you have that you think you can't live without. Jesus says it's better to have your life mingled a little bit, to lose an arm, spiritually, and to be filled with his light in following him. Should we do this in a moralistic way, relying on our own strength? Am I preaching to you like a Jewish rabbi and just saying, do this, do this, do this, do this? It seems that way in the passage. Jesus, he often speaks in this way, just do this, do this, do this. And many a legalist has thrived in passages like this. I am going to do this, and do this, and do this, and it will make me righteous. No, this all must flow from Christ. It's not in the passage, but we would be very wrong to take these imperatives from this passage. in isolation from everything else we know about Christ from the Word of God. All of our dealing with sin, and this sermon is really on the mortification of sin, killing sin, mortifying it and getting rid of it, all of our dealing with sin must flow from Christ's death and his resurrection. It's all in light of his death He is the one who gives the strength to do these things. Paul says, He is our sanctification. It flows from his soul and his glory and his body. We are united to Christ And this very gritty action that we take here in this passage must flow from him who is our sanctification. He is our husband and he is holy and pure and he has promised to give us all of sanctifying grace to mortify sin in our lives. Our confession of faith says this about Those who are called, having a new heart and a new spirit in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, and by his word and his spirit dwelling in them. And the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed in all of its lusts. And they are more and more weakened and mortified. And we are more and more quickened in all saving graces to true holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. And this war, although the remaining corruption for a time may prevail, yet through the continual supply of strength from the Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part of us overcomes. And the saints will grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. That's the testament of evangelical Christianity. that tells us the glorious truths of Christianity, that as believers we have a personal connection to Christ spiritually, and that he will mortify these sins. You'll be convicted about sin and you'll take action, but that's because he's moving that in you. Because he wants rid of that sin, and he has shown you that sin, and he wants to cleanse you from that sin. This is not me laying the big black book upon you and saying, you need to take this book and sort out every element of your life. No, you do it on your knees before Christ. Your words, your actions, your thoughts, your choices, your situations. All of them, bow down when you're falling and you're falling into sin, bow down before him and tell him that you know you're sinning, you know this is overcoming you, you know it's creating a mess in your life and cry to him to come and empower and wash you and change you and to help you cut these things out. Because he is the great physician, he's the one that says the words and he's the one that knows where to make the cut. This is about a dynamic relationship with Christ. I don't want to lay on you as my brother and sister this awful imperative that you have to take a knife to your leg and legalistically cut all these things out to try and stay away from sin. You need to do it with Christ believing in faith that he will make you new and he will kill these sins. And if you want to be holy, he will make you holy. He says this in Micah, and I'm bringing things to a close here, he says this in Micah, I will subdue all your iniquities and I will cast your sins into the decks of the sea. One of the greatest verses in the Bible for a practical Christian. I will subdue your iniquities. There's a way in which it's not even you. You need to take your action standing on that verse, on that springboard. Take your action in your life, but based on the verse that says, I will subdue your iniquities. It's God your Father and your Saviour that wants to deal with them. And he doesn't look down on you and say, deal with them. He says, I will subdue these sins in you. I will so work in your soul that I will crush these sins. I will subdue them, press them down, chain them and constrict them. I will knock them out in a boxing match. I will subdue your sins and I will cast them all into the depths of the sea. So as we close, As you do this in light of Christ's death and resurrection and his sanctifying grace, the power of his grace, and knowing that he has willed to subdue all your iniquities, use all of the means that he's given to make that possible. His Spirit will do it, but he's given you means, the means of grace, the word preached, spiritual prayer and communion with him alone. The word read in private by you. The receiving of the Lord's Supper. Meditation upon the nature and work of Jesus Christ for significant periods of time. Dwelling and basking in the glory of that work and watching him. And sitting by yourself and meditating upon what he's done. All of these things will flood your soul with grace. He's promised it. He said that even what we're doing tonight, this preaching is a means of grace. He's attached his promise to it. It changes us. It is good that we are looking at these things and hearing these things. So, he warns us in the chapter how awful it that if we cause another to sin or become ensnared within a permanent trajectory of sin in our lives, we will be cast into the everlasting fire and cast into the sea with the millstone around our neck. That's the warning, but Micah says God wants to cast the sins of his people into the depths of the sea, not his people themselves. What a wonderful thing we have in the salvation of Christ, that God comes to us and gives us this assurance tonight as we leave. As we've looked at this, it's certainly the case for me, it may be for you too, that when you do analyse every aspect of your life, it's not really comfortable. And you think about actions and words and thoughts and unbelief and despondency and or whatever it may be in your life. We look at all of these things and of course it's not nice. You don't jump up with joy when you see these things. But when you see the problem, Christ says, we sang it in the psalm at the beginning, though iniquities prevail against me, you shall purge all of our transgressions and he will forgive and cleanse all of our sin. and he will cast them into the depths of the sea so that they're not seen again. We can leave with that tonight, to know that every interaction, in every thought and word and action that we fall short, and it bothers us. We don't like falling short. When we see it all, it's disturbing and we can lose our peace. But when we come, as David did, and we confess them to the Lord, not so that he can beat us, but so that he can forgive us. He says, I will wash you anew, though your sins be as scarlet, you shall be as white as the snow. That is the glory of Christianity, forgiveness of sin, even daily, that we can rise from with grace and assurance and forgiveness for all that we say and do and all the ways we fall short. Go to that prayer place. Go to the fountain that Jesus has opened. Take your eye and your hand and your foot and your tongue and your heart and your mind and as unclean as they sometimes are, you don't need to say that way. Come to the fountain of Christ that is open for uncleanness and just put it all before him. I'm doing this again. It's prevailing against me. I have failed again. My iniquities are not subdued as you once promised me. I've allowed them to grow like weeds all over me. But take them into that place and you can have them all cut off and you can have your heart cleansed and you can stand up before the Lord, a justified sinner and a son or daughter of God. fully confident that the one who warns us here to be ruthless with sin, he will be tender and gentle and forgiving to us. Well, I can't add anything to that. That is the wonder of the Christian gospel. Take it with you, my dear brother and sister. and may we bask and wash and rejoice in this cleansing power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. May God help us to receive all of these things.