According to Jesus, hell is real. According to Jesus, hell is real. And by what He says, you should understand that you really do not want to go there. Jesus does not want you to go there. But also, you can read this passage and understand that there is a reality taking place in hell at this very moment. You see in hell, this is a weird thing to think about, I understand, but in hell, all the souls that are there, all the souls that are perishing in hell, none of them, none of them are thinking. You know what? When I lived on earth, I wish I had sinned a lot more. None of them are thinking, I wish I had worshipped many more gods than I did. I wish I had been more lustful. I wish I had seen more porn. I wish I had cheated more. I wish I had gambled more. I wish I had gone to church even less. I wish I read the Bible less. I wish I sought the Lord less. I'm telling you, no one is thinking that in hell right now. And you go to heaven right now. Think about it in heaven. And these people who are in the good land of the King. These souls. None of them are thinking, you know, when I became a Christian, it cost me some things. And I really wish I still had those things. None of them are thinking, you know, when I turned to Christ and He made me a new creation, I couldn't do those same things that I always did. I couldn't love those same things. I couldn't hang around those same people. I couldn't be part of those old dying activities. None of them are thinking, ah, you know what? I wish my Christianity cost me a lot less. What are they thinking? They're thinking whatever it cost me, it was all what worth it. No one is thinking in heaven. Oh. You know what? I really regret. Diving into the word and seeking after the things of God. No one is thinking that no one is thinking, I really regret serving and bringing people to the Lord. No one is thinking that. They're all thinking, Whatever I whatever was taken from me and in the world of earth. In that world of sin, hey, it was all worth. You see, Jesus wants his disciples to have this perspective and this special perspective on what it means to be in the church. what it means to be living in the Kingdom of God while walking upon this earth. And the best way, the most visible way this happens is in the church. And in the church, Jesus has a great concern for those who make up the body of Christ to be holy. Not holier than thou, not super prideful, not super legalistic, that's not what He means. But He means people who are not slaves to sin. It's people who are living free in the spirit. He wants people who who take up that urgent and daily task. He wants you to be. He wants you to be earnest in fighting against sin and doing that that singular spiritual duty, which is this making progress in your walk with Jesus. And to do that, to make progress in your walk with Jesus, to make to go anywhere, And to grow in the Lord. You have to be leaving sin behind more and more and becoming more and more like Jesus, you could say this. God wants his church to be characterized by Christ likeness. And Christ was pure. He was innocent. There was no sin or stain on Him. There was no mark of iniquity, no mark of unrighteousness. It was spotless. And more and more, as you walk towards heaven, as you walk towards the end of your life, more and more that walk gets harder. It goes up and down, and in and out, and all of this. But as you walk on this life, as you are making progress to the eternal city, the final Jerusalem, as you are making progress there, more and more, the image of Christ is being born in you. Paul told the Galatian church, I'm like a woman in childbirth, in anguish, praying and laboring that Christ would be born in you. It's a weird metaphor, but Paul is praying for the people with that kind of anguish that they would leave, that less and less the marks of the world would be on them, and more and more the mark of Christ would be on them. But there's only one way, though, to become otherworldly, or there's only one way to become holy. There's only one way. After you become a Christian, after you've been saved by God's grace, there's only one way. And it's this, it's the main thing. In order to grow in holiness, you must declare and wage war on sin. In order for you to grow in holiness, you must declare and wage war on sin. This is a daily fight, a daily battle. And you could take it this way. you could stop dealing with your sins, or you could stop bothering with your sins, when your sins stop bothering you. That's when you can give up the fight against sin, when you have none. When you have none to worry about. Which means, what? Never, right? Never. You have to be vigilant. Always. That's a thing That's one of the things that the Bible teaches you, is that you are declared holy, you're declared just, you're declared righteous. At the moment you are saved, right, there is now no condemnation, no charge can be brought against you, yet you are being made holy throughout the rest of your life. That's the way it goes. I liken this, you've heard me use the example. On the day that I got married, I became a husband. I was a full-on husband the day I became married. You know, I pronounce you husband and wife, I was a husband, boom. But you know what, for the rest of my life, I get to become a husband, right? I became a father the day Levi was born. For the rest of my life, I become a father. I became a Christian the day Jesus saved my soul, and He entered into my life, and the glory of God came upon me, and I was saved by His grace, and my eyes were opened to new life. I became a Christian then, and now, look, I'm becoming a Christian for the rest of my life. That's how it works. But this process of becoming what you are is quite dangerous. The devil wants to ruin you. He doesn't want you to make progress. Everything that Christ loves, the devil hates. The flesh, right? You still have that, I consider it like bad gas in the tank that gets worked out. There's poison that comes up through the tree. You know, you've been rerouted, restructured to grow up in Christ, but you still have some of that bad soil in the trunk. And that, over time, you know, God working in you makes these characteristics, this sinful nature, smaller and smaller. This is God's promise to you. We should take heart in it. So this is where we're going today. We're going to talk about the war against sin, but I don't want to leave off these verses from last week. I think they're very crucial to helping us understand understand the war on sin. So God's holy people, he wants his people to be holy. And I have three things here for us to consider when it comes to the holiness of God's people. God's people are holy people, and he wants these three marks on them as we draw these thoughts out of these verses here. So the first thing is that God's holy people are great receivers, receivers, not like great football receivers, right? Great receivers. And I'll tell you what I mean by this receivers of souls. Verse five, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fast around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. So verse five, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. Now, remember, Jesus is taking a child and put a child in the midst of the disciples to draw forth some object lessons about what it means to be a follower in the church of Christ. You've got to be childlike, not childish, but childlike. You've got to be small and humble. You've got to be simply resting in the love of God. You've got to be trusting in God's word. Just be those things. And by the way, almost all the New Testament writers, when they talk about the followers of God, they talk about them in terms of being children. Paul talks about us being sons and daughters of the living God. Peter calls the church spiritual babes. John calls the church little children. And so this idea, this mark, this instance where Jesus draws a child out and puts him in the midst of the disciples had a profound impact on the way that the pastors viewed the people of God. We are to be like children. And Jesus says, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. What does he mean by this such child? It's a child. Just go to the next verse. Whoever calls one of these little ones who believe in me, it's a Christian, a child. He's talking about a Christian now. There is there is the sense that this passage is talking about receiving little children, right? We're not supposed to push children outside the church or despise them. But Jesus, for the most part, is alluding to the nature of a Christian, a little one, a believer, a child of God. We will actually talk about the physical child when we come to Matthew 19. There's a certain thing that happens there. But in this passage, Jesus is using a child to help disciples see what we need to be like and how we need to receive one another. We are to receive other believers. This is part of our holiness. What does it mean that we are to be receivers? Well, when I was a I think it was during an anniversary season for me and Hillary and I was reading a pastor whom I respect and who's dear to me, talk about celebrating his anniversaries. And this pastor had a certain anniversary that he was celebrating with his wife, like 40 years. It was something like that, or 50 years. It was one of those great mile marker anniversaries. And he said that one of the things that people always ask when you've been married for so long, he says, people always ask, how did you what? Do it. How do you do it? How have you done it? How have you been married for this long? Right. And he says, you know, just thinking about it, he says marriage is not so much doing. His marriage is much more receiving. Says, let me explain. Right. Day to day, you wake up and you're next to the person that God has given you. There's nothing doing about it. You have to be receiving this person. And by receiving, this pastor was talking about giving thanks. God, this is the one you have given me. I give you thanks for this person. And he said that marriage, the way it lasts and the way it's successful over that many years is by receiving. And I thought this principle applies to so much of the Christian life. In the church, How are we to be holy? We don't have to do the church, but we do receive the church. When you come in through the doors on Sunday morning, when you come to your Bible study, when you come to serve with one another, one of the things, the first thing you are doing, the first thing you must do is receive one another. The apostles were so focused on this that they would tell people, there's a manner in which you have to receive each other. When you see one another, greet each other with what? A holy kiss. We're going to start doing that. I'm just kidding. Greet each other with a holy kiss. Be affectionate. Receive one another. This is how you display the holiness of God in the church because people, it doesn't matter what kind of issues they're bringing in. It doesn't matter what kind of person they are. If they are in Christ, if they're a new believer, you receive them and you receive them with thanksgiving. The writer of Hebrews says, when you entertain strangers, guess what? When you're showing hospitality to strangers, talking about new people coming into the church, you are entertaining angels unaware. Jesus says, look, there's coming a day when the Son of God, or the Son of Man, is gonna come riding on the clouds, and at the end of the age, he's gonna separate the sheep from the goats. And people, you wanna be a sheep, you don't wanna be a goat. And he will say, the sheep will be the ones who looked after me when I was hungry. They fed me when I was hungry. They gave me water to drink when I was thirsty. They clothed me. They visited me in prison. And the sheep are going to say, well, Lord, when did we do any of those things? And what's Jesus going to say? Do you remember? In as much as you did for the least of these, the smallest of these, my brothers, you did it for me. Jesus always identifies his people with identifies himself with his sheep. So when we receive one another. We are receiving Christ. We don't have the option to say to a believer, look. I don't want you. I have no need of you. First Corinthians chapter 12 says the one member of the body cannot say to the other member of the body, I have no need of you. Right. That's not right. That's think about that in your body. The hand doesn't say to the foot, I don't have any need of you or the eye. I don't have any need of you. We don't do that because why we are receiving one another as we are receiving Christ. So we have to be great receivers. If we're going to be holy, we've got to be great receivers. We receive the children, we receive the older people, we receive the singles, we receive the widows, we receive the strugglers, we receive the new Christians, the old Christians, right? We receive one another. We are to be good receivers. Part of life in the church. Second part. We are to be great helpers, great helpers. Now, I've chosen to give a positive instruction here because this is a very, very dangerous thing you have to listen out for. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Those are Jesus's words, y'all. Think about that. You cause a little one to sin, it's better for you. You know what a millstone is. In the days in which Jesus lived, a millstone was this giant, like 2,000 pound stone. It was rolled around by a beast of burden like a donkey. and it had a hole in the middle that an axle went through. And Jesus is like, it's better, it would be better if your head got stuck through that hole and you got dropped into the sea. And he's not talking about the Jordan River or the Sea of Galilee. He's talking about just the sea, the ocean. The Greek is the palago of the seas. Or you could say the heart of the sea. In other words, you cause people to sin, you cause a little one to sin, it's better for you to have a great millstone fastened around your neck and thrown and drowned in the sea. Now, again, we know this is how the world works. The world is after children. The world wants to deceive children, wants to lead them astray. I've been to the Salisbury Gay Pride Parade, and one of the strangest and surprising things about it is how many children are present there. You go into college, right, and you have, seriously, you have even Christian colleges, you have professors trying to rope children and take young men and women out of the mindset that God is God and the Bible is his word. You have people trying to undermine these things. We know the world operates this way. But Jesus is dealing with the church. Remember, he's dealing with things happening in the church. He's saying, don't cause, don't injure one another spiritually. Don't be a cause for stumbling for other believers in the church. This word is one of Jesus' favorite words. Cause is one of these little ones to sin. It's the same word that means scandal. Don't be a snare. Don't be a trap. Don't be something that Christians have to trip over. in order to grow in Christ. Be, don't be a hindrance, be a help, be helping people grow in Christ. You could think of, I don't have to list it out, but you can think of all the ways that you might be injurious to another believer. Whether that's gossip, whether that's criticism, whether that's just permissiveness towards sin, whether that's not giving encouragement. People, you gotta encourage one another, right? If you don't come to church to encourage one another, then what are we doing? You gotta encourage one another. But the big question here, the big question here that we have to take to our hearts, that you have to take to your heart is, am I helping my fellow believers in their walks with Jesus? Is the way I live helping other believers in their walks with Jesus? Think about it. Who's the closest believer to you? Husbands, it's your wives. Wives, it's your husbands, right? Just ask yourself this question. And is the way I'm acting, is the way that I'm speaking, is it helping my husband, my wife grow towards God? Or is my attitude, my comments, is it causing them to have to really put their patience to the test? Is it causing them to put, is it putting their love to the test? For parents, it's your children. Are you helping your parents grow towards Christ? For friends, it's to friends. Are you helping each other grow towards Christ? Don't be a stumbling block to them. Don't be a discouragement to them. It's better. It'd be better if you were removed completely from the picture than to be It would be better for you to be removed from the picture than for you to be in a Christian's life and causing them hardship and stumbling and injury as they move towards God. Be great helpers, be great encouragers, be great lovers of God's people. Be great teachers of God's people. When people are down and alone, what do we do? We come by them and we pick them up. When people are wallowing in self-pity, we say, hey, listen, God has you. Come back into the fold. Come back and be encouraged. We've gotta be great helpers. Not hindrances, not stumbling blocks, helpers. Yeah, that almost might be the definition of a disciple of Jesus Christ. Someone who follows Christ and someone who helps other people follow Christ. That's it right there, right? You do not want to injure God's little ones. The fury of God will come upon your head. So help them. What though, what happens though, when you are a hindrance to yourself in your progress towards God, right? This is where we get into the mortification of sin. Jesus says, look, what are the world for temptations of sin? Temptations are gonna come because this is the world you're in, right? It's gonna come. But what about yourself? What about if it's your right hand or your foot or your eye, all these things cause you to sin? What do you have to do? It's not someone else who's tripping you up. It's not someone else who's being a discouragement to you. What about when it's you who's the offense? It's you who's the stumbling block. What do you got to do? And Jesus says, what you got to do is get serious, get decisive, make war on your sin. Take no quarter with it. You get rid of it. You search it out. You find it out. You Throw it out. You throw it out. So number three is great warriors. God's holy people are, number one, great receivers. Number two, great helpers. And number three, great warriors, great fighters. Four things to think about in the war on sin. How do we fight sin? How do we do it? Flee temptation, number one. Flee temptation. Jesus brings up temptation here. Whoa, it's bad. Stay away from temptation. Now, temptation can come in a lot of different ways. Temptation can come from situations. Temptation can come from, you name it, technology. It can come from your own heart. It's just temptation is everywhere. That's the way it works. We pray that God would lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And he will. And one of the ways he does lead us out of temptation is by when we make war on sin. How do we flee temptation? So this is an interesting question because sometimes people say, oh, I can flee temptation by just changing my environment, right? So here I am. Well, I'll give you an example. So back in the day, and I think I may have shared this with you before. By the way, this is the second time Jesus gives this instruction. The first time is in the Sermon on the Mount. But back in the day, as the early Christians were trying to apply the words of the scripture, there was a group of Christians, there was a group of Christian men who said, I cannot fight my lust. I can't do it. And Jesus says, like, if your eyes cause you to sin, cut them out. If your hands cause you to sin, cut them off. And men were maiming themselves, cutting off their hands, casting themselves down beyond their eyes. And some were even going and leaving the cities and going to live in caves in the desert. They were becoming early monks. And we have these journals of these monks, right? And they're in the cave. getting stung by scorpions, and you know what's happening? Their lust is overcoming them. They can't stop thinking about women. And it's just like, wait a second, how does this work? You can't just take, you know, what they say, you can take the man out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the man or whatever it is, you've heard it. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl or whatever. All that. But that's the thing. You could take the man out of the sinful environment, but you can't take the sinful environment out of the man. So you change environments, OK. Well, now the physical thing isn't there. But guess what? That nature, that indwelling sin is still raging and alive within you. And that's why I've called this sermon Mortify, which means to kill something living. What do you do? What do you do? Is it just a replacement of environment? Well, this is why I think the Bible is so great for us. How do we flee temptation? We flee temptation by pursuing godly things. So it's not just that you leave an environment, but it's actually that you replace that environment, you replace that sin, that lust, that appetite with godly things. Here we are. Colossians chapter 3 right put to death therefore what is earthly in you sexual immorality impurity passion evil desire Covetousness, which is idolatry on account of these things the wrath of God is coming. So you put them to death So what's the alternative? Here it is Put on then, verse 12, Colossians 3, 12. Put on then as God's chosen one, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you must also forget, right? So you flee. That's Colossians 3, 5 and 3, 12. And Second Timothy 2, 22 says, flee earthly passions, young man, and pursue righteousness and purity. You flee the temptation, and you pursue the godly thing. Second thing is, you starve the flesh. This is where Jesus is talking about cutting off your hands, cutting out your eyes. These are hyperbolic statements. They're meant to instruct us on how serious He is about taking your sins seriously. If you've got to get rid of something that's leading you into sin, get rid of it. This is, for us, it'd be like the same thing as saying to the man who is addicted to pornography, get rid of your internet, get rid of your computers, get rid of your phone. Oh, but I need my phone. Right? And Jesus is saying, how much do you want heaven? Right? How much do you want heaven? Do you want to be over this? Do whatever it takes. to the one who's obsessed with, you're just obsessed with popular opinion and validation. Like, get rid of social media. If you are struggling with laziness or sloth, get rid of Facebook. All these things, because what do they do? They just, you know, Jesus is saying, be radical. Get rid of it. Take it to task. Romans 8, 12 through 13 says it. It says, I got all these bookmarks here. Romans 8, 12-13, So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh who live according to flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who live, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. We're not to be led by the flesh. So we starve the flesh. If you starve something, it will die, right? That's the whole nature of starvation. But if you keep feeding it, it's going to live. It's going to rage. Number three, so we have flee temptation, starve the flesh, please God. Please God. One of the things you might be tempted to think when you read these words of Jesus is like the big motivation for not sinning or for running away from sin is the big motivation is you get to avoid destruction in hell. Like You get to avoid a punishment. You get to avoid a spanking, right? I'll tell you, you know, as a dad, and I think all of you would say, the point that when you have to discipline your kids and they start doing right and conforming to what you want, you're not doing it so that they would just avoid a spanking, right? Because what do they learn after all that? They just learn how to deflect and avoid spanking and punishment. The point is you want their hearts to be turned towards the positive thing, which is whatever instruction you're wanting that your son or your daughter to follow. You see what I'm saying? You don't just want people to avoid punishment. Jesus is using this language here, but I want to show you an instance where someone in the Bible Someone in the Bible viewed sin as something that would ruin his relationship with God and he didn't want anything to come between him and God. It's Galatians chapter 39 verse 9. In Galatians chapter 39 verse 9, Joseph, who was a young Hebrew, was sold into slavery and he was in the house of Pharaoh and in the house of Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's assistants. And Potiphar gave Joseph charge of everything, and Joseph was handsome. Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. Genesis 39 verse 6. And after a time, his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, lie with me. But he refused and said to his master's wife, behold, because of me, my master is no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you because you are his wife. Joseph is saying, look, I have freedom to do anything. And she is saying, lie with me. And he is saying, no. Joseph is saying, no. And then he says this, how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Do you see what Joseph's heart was? It wasn't, oh man, I'm going to lose my head if I do this. Oh man, I'm going to go to prison if I do this. He went to prison no matter. You know, his his goal in fighting this sin was he wanted to please God. That is the aim when we fight in the war against sin. We want to please God above all else. Please, God. Lastly, the last way to fight sin is to fly to the cross, to fly to the cross. We, you can, people can change habits. Like I've mentioned about the environment, people can change habits, quit drinking, quit gambling, quit whatever it is, you name the sin. We can all, people have ways of changing habits. There's all sorts of life coaching that goes on that helps people move past these things. But the issue is, when it comes to sin is, there's a spiritual condition. It's the condition of your heart. And Jesus wants his disciples to know that when you fight sin, the greatest weapon you have is his very own cross of victory. Galatians 6.14, I'll read it to you. Galatians 6.14 says this, Far be it from me to boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. When we look at the cross of Christ, what we're seeing is, hey, this is where Jesus made an end of your sin. This isn't where Jesus died so that you can go on and keep on sinning against him and keep on bringing up those sins that he shed his blood for. No, Jesus died here on the cross. It is your victory. It is where you were crucified to the world. And the world was crucified to you. Hebrews 2.18 says this. What a wonderful passage. Hebrews 2.18, we know this, when we need help for the fight against sin, it says this, Hebrews 2.18, for because He Himself suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted. You see, the cross of Christ, this is where suffering is. This is where temptation reached the end right here. Jesus was tempted on the cross. He was tempted his whole life. He was tempted on the cross. Come down for that cross. You don't need to be there. You're the son of God. Why don't you call down your angels? Temptation, temptation, temptation, temptation. But you know what? He suffered. He went all the way through to die on the cross for your sins. And when we remember the cross of Jesus, what do we remember? We remember there Jesus shed his blood for our sins. And we say, God, I'm struggling with this sin. I'm struggling with this anger, this appetite, this lust, this bitterness, this unforgiveness, this greediness, this worry, this slavery to money, whatever it is. God, I'm going to take it to your cross. I'm going to lay it at your feet. And I need, Lord, you to apply your forgiving, atoning, all sufficient sacrifice to my sins. And what we find there is we find that Jesus does in fact receive and forgive and renew your strength to you. That's exactly what it is. And so He creates in you a clean heart, restores the right spirit within you, so that now you can go and follow God in freedom and in life, walking by the Spirit. This is the very power. The gospel is the power of salvation from first to last to save you, to get you on the path, and the gospel is the way that keeps you on the path. We look back to Jesus, the one who suffered and died in our place to conquer our sins and forgive us in all unrighteousness. Forgive us of everything. So now you have the tools to keep on fighting against sin. We confess sin and we receive God's forgiveness with thanksgiving, knowing that all has been paid for, knowing that we keep on fighting the good fight and knowing that there is a great reward for those who press on and press on and press on, striving, daily making it their duty to find that spiritual progress. No matter how hard it is, you keep on fighting. You keep on moving forward. You keep on calling upon God. You keep on going into the church. You keep on starving out the flesh. You keep on fleeing temptations. You keep on making it your aim to please God. And more and more and more, the holiness of Jesus Christ will be what characterizes your life. Amen.