Heavenly Father, we come before Thee. Again, it is vain for me to preach. It is vain for us to meet unless You bless, unless Your Spirit is among us. We do cry out for Your presence. We do cry out for the wonderful correction Your presence brings, balance and symmetry to our lives in terms of the whole counsel of God and concerning how we are to behave as saints. Enable us, Lord, to behave as saints amidst the various irritants, the various problems of living, the various challenges, so that we might reach the point even when, if it comes, if persecution comes, we can be as Christ was and say they know not what they do. Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do. So, Lord, as we deal with these and bring to mind others, perhaps the brethren here can share. Help us to edify one another and build up one another in our most holy faith in Christ Jesus. This we pray, pleading his blood, his merits, his worthiness. Amen. My text this afternoon is a different text. I thought, you know, maybe I should switch it over to the one of cleansing ourselves from all filthiness of the mind and spirit. That is one that I have been praying about and praying over. in my life in the past year or so. As again, we progress onward, we see the filthiness of sin and how persistent it is in our lives, in our thinking. But I went with this text in Romans 12. Since we're reading from Romans 11, you just continue on. Romans 12, verse 1 and 2. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may approve what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Now, Tozer writes about this, but and I very much have been at times troubled by this. How do I know what is the perfect and pleasing will of God? And well, what we're dealing with today is part of that perfect and pleasing will. You want to know what the perfect and pleasing will is with God each day, pray and deal with and repent of and ask God for strength and ability over these dispositional sins. If we are to present our bodies a living sacrifice, these sins must be sacrificed to the Lord. They must be dealt with daily. Again, if I attempted to preach on more than a few of these dispositional sins, we'd be talking for a long time. What I mentioned here brings back memories of sins I've witnessed in the past with people in my life and in periods of my own life. Our tendency with dispositional sins, and this is the mistake of many in so many churches, is to not take them seriously. We can pass them off as, quote, Well, that's how people are. And after a particularly ugly demonstration of those things, when I was fishing in Florida, in the Florida Keys, between my guide and another guy, and I'll tell you that later. One of the other guys from one of the other boats, this was in Isla Morada, said he was a big, tough guy. He said, well, people are that way. And he was right, they are that way. At times, such things displayed can, especially in retrospect, be amusing. It does take all kinds to make up this world. But more often than not, these are not funny. While they can be amusing and advertisers use them, they are not funny. Now again, about the angry confrontation here in Florida. I was fishing, we were between, it was a full day trip, I was between the first half, which was in the Everglades for shark, and the second part for tarpon. And we get back to the slip and there's a boat parked in my guide's slip. And I could just see it coming, my guide was just getting angrier and angrier. He was a local bad boy, who just was so selfish through the drugs and other things apparently, that he was going to do what he was going to do. Well, my guide was a guy who doesn't mess with people. But an honest, moral man in many respects. And when he got into this ugly, he got into it. And I tried to get him to calm down because I was afraid that someone was going to go for a gun. And at one point, it seemed like that's the way it was going to happen. And I later joked about it as local color. Well, that is a dispositional sin of anger and of obstinance. All he had to do was take the guy's boat, and it was easy enough to do, it wasn't a big boat, put it around and move it around. But he was going to do what he was going to do. And that's the situation with dispositional sins. We are going to do what we're going to do, or people think they are. Now, with the Orthodox, the Orthodox can avoid dealing with these In other ways, they can become religiously increasingly knowledgeable, lose themselves in the readings and writings of men, and just become more and more knowledgeable, and more and more, as I found, puffed up in extensive learning of doctrines, and taking positions, particular positions on those doctrines. Now the Christian faith is about doctrine, we have to know certain doctrines, but what I'm talking about is sectarianism. Think about the Pharisees and the scribes and the Sadducees of the Judaism in Christ's day. They had all the knowledge, they had it all divided up into all the precepts, everything. These are no lightweights intellectually. But they missed about judgment and mercy and the weightier matters, which they ought not to have excused. And With us, I believe these are the way to your matters. Doctrine is unto a purpose, like I said, unto being Christlike, unto the likeness of Christ. And Christ never was irritated or showed forth these sins in any way. At the treatment he received, he did not complain in any way about the fact that he was not receiving fair treatment. Disobedience and sanctification will not be excused at the judgment seat of Christ, nor will it be blessed during our days here on this earth. Sowing and reaping apply. We'll read that later. God demands that we change. Now he does it very gently through those love letters called the epistles, the letters of the apostles. However, we have reached a point in the history of Christianity in this nation And it's been going on for decades that unsaintly saints have become the tragedy of Christianity decade after decade. We must so to the spirit. Obedience is a mark of a saint. God gives the grace and the means and we are to avail ourselves of his grace, his spirit and his means to move on. I will just say more about this later than the application and the conclusion. But let's just deal with the list here. A few more of these. How many do I have? I think I have five families here. Five or six. Now, Pastor Jordan has sermon notes on this from Pastor James Kirby at the Sovereign Grace Church down in Rio Rico, south of Tucson, in case you folks want to pursue a greater depth and study. By way of introduction again, a paragraph by Tozer, and again, this applies to where we are in Christianity, where we are, why we are in the condition where we are, in terms of the moral aspects of Christianity no longer having a hold over the society as it used to. Tosa writes, dispositional sins are fully as injurious to the Christian cause as the more overt acts of wickedness. These sins are as many as the various facets of human nature. Just so there would be no understanding, let us list a few of them. Sensitivity, the sensitiveness, irritability, cheerlessness, fault finding, peevishness, temper, restlessness, resentfulness, cruelly, Uncharitable attitudes. And of course, there are many more. These kill the spirit of the church and slow down any progress which the gospel may be making in the community. Many persons who have been secretly longing to find Christ have been turned away and embittered by manifestations of ugly dispositional flaws in the lives of the very persons who are trying to win them. So. The first one here on my list or one of the on the list this afternoon is bitterness. Hebrews 12, 15. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble and by this many become defiled. The Greek word describes a bitter root producing a bitter fruit. The. Greek word is Tegria. It means a bitter root and so producing a bitter fruit and then extreme wickedness or bitter gall. The dictionary definition, angry, hurt or resentful because of one's bad experience or bad experiences or a sense of unjust treatment. And the quote is the people say the phrase, I don't feel jealous or bitter. Bitterness of soul must be removed in order to progress spiritually. People who do not allow the Lord to root this sin out get nowhere spiritually. And I remember a man when I was a younger Christian, and he died shortly after. He was a man who could have been my grandfather, actually. People who are bitter are constantly talking and fretting about what people or circumstances have done to them. And even in society, we have a phrase, a bitter old man. Oh, you're just becoming a bitter old man. And Tozer had did right. This is not in my sermon, but I'll share this. I remember one of the writings about A man is sitting in the back of the church building in the sanctuary and everyone else has outlived him who are contemporaries. And he can say nothing nice about the people who are much younger than him working in the church and doing things. And he's just bitter in the back. And what can you say? Prolonged illness also can bring this about. And we have to guard against this whenever we get sick of being bitter and as maybe the illness that leads on to death. Do not be bitter. This perhaps is the greater danger for us. We can get bitter about our situation that the Lord has allowed. I remember someone saying when my sleep disorder was really, really bad and someone said, well, at least you're not getting bitter about it. I've seen Christians get bitter. when they were sick. This sin is often spoken of in the scriptures as murmurings. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 10. So complaining now is a part of bitterness. Nor complain as some of them also complained or were destroyed by the destroyer. Now he's talking about the Old Testament Jews. Why were these things written for us? For our learning, for our warning. Tozer writes, a complaining spirit has the same effect in the church as a set of spoiled, fretful quadruplets would have in a home. It makes things all but unbearable. Little wonder that the Lord destroyed the murmurs from among the Israelites. One commentator writes that it is talk, especially, excuse me, expressing dissatisfaction, especially clandestine talk, as grumbling often is. It is most easily understood here of dissatisfaction with the rough lot, dissatisfaction with the rough lot referred to in Exodus 16 and 17. Such dissatisfaction is really murmuring against God, against the God who has allowed our earthly position, surroundings and circumstances. Doubtings or quote reasonings are about which we reason. being naturally open to doubt while the reasoning continues. Same word in Romans 121, 14-1, 1 Corinthians 3-20, and so on. Dissatisfaction with our circumstances, with our, quote, lot in life, arises necessarily from a lack of faith in Him who with infinite wisdom and love has chosen for us our path and who will soon cover us with the splendor of heaven and fill us with eternal joy. Hence, all murmurings are an outward expression of inward doubtings, and both these are utterly unworthy of children of God. God through the apostle Paul commands in the letter of joy, Philippians do all things without murmurings and disputing the antidote. The antidote to this sin is confession before God in prayer, counting your blessings. Now granted, it's a simple song. It's a children's song, basically. Count your blessings one by one. And we have such incredible prosperity and abundance compared to other peoples in history. And as people have been to the Philippines, know all this. And this has been a help to me as well, to appreciate what I have here. This antidote also involves looking at what people do right and what they are doing right and what they are, how they are treating us decently. Shutting off as much as possible exposure to advertising, which breeds discontentment and being content with what you have. Alleviation of this with church people occurs also when Christians use their gifts in the church. Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote those who complain first in our churches or those complain first in our churches who have the least to do. The gift of grumbling is largely dispensed among those who have no other talents or keep what they have wrapped up in a napkin. So complaining, discontentment and gratitude. This is now a whole other family now we're into. of dispositional sins. In some instances, there may be a legitimate issue, and Christians need to bring the issue directly to the leadership of a church property. That's going to be church properly with gentleness. There are going to be legitimate issues. If a church is going anywhere, there's going to be movement, and with movement comes friction. What's the oil that needs to be used? I just gave it away. All that needs to be used on those gears is love. So the question is asked, will the complainer do this? Will they bring forth gentleness? And will they do it before the leadership, their complaint? And we know in the early book of Acts, right? There was a problem with the serving of food and there was an issue there that had to be dealt with. And that's how we have deacons. There are many benefits to contentment, including peace. Practically one has to benefit, or practically one benefit is, when you save money because you aren't discontent until you need to buy more and more and more. A contented person has no need to spend money, and I've learned about this from the police in Tucson from a friend's son, No need to spend money on a vehicle, for instance, they do not need. So what's going on is one of the policemen there, some of them are spending money, or we're spending, he's now with the US Marshals Service, on year after year or every other year they're buying new vehicles they don't need and then they're complaining about they don't have the money to really save and to do other things. Well, the advertiser has got them in a way. A lot of money spent on car advertisements. A lot of effort, a lot of intellectual work done. 1 Timothy 6, verses 6 through 12. Now, godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life, to which you also were called and have confessed a good confession in the presence of many witnesses. So again, Complaining, discontentment, and gratitude. Discontentment, what is that? It is related to a lack of thankfulness and gratitude. And it is ingratitude. It's related to ingratitude. The particular command against it positively, positively meaning that is what we need to do and be, is Hebrews 13.5. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have. For he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. But what do we have? When we think about worldliness, which is also dispositional and related to this, advertising breeds all this. It breeds, it feeds on discontentment. And again, I'll repeat it, as Tozer said, who can escape the advertiser? And the funny thing is, I used to get really irritated with advertising. Paul, through the Spirit, says about the unbelieving in Romans 1.21. Now this is in gratitude now. They glorified him not as God, neither were thankful. In gratitude has been said to be the daughter of pride. We have a plain and obvious obligation to be thankful to God for His mercies, for the goodness which we experience. His mercies fill the earth, and His mercies are new every morning. And we have so incredibly much to be thankful for. Again, to repeat myself, especially when you look at history. Now moving on to dispositional sins related to self-control. Or in this case, it would be lack of self-control. And maybe I might be meddling some here, I don't know. The advertiser preys on this dispositional weakness again. One of the jobs I had before I was 20 was as security guard at the Modell's Sporting Goods in Long Island, and my place was right by the video games at an entrance. As soon as the children came in with their parents, the first thing they saw was the video games. This was 1983, I think, when they didn't have them at home. They would beg and plead and carry on and just make all kinds of trouble to be allowed to play those games. And to the parents' credit then, they basically denied them, most of them. It got to be so common that I hated that aspect of human nature. And listening to it as well. Advertisers have been appealing to children to get their parents to lose self-control for years. They want the parents to spend money, of course, on things that the kids do not in any way really need. Now, I have at home a VHS tape of this. It was kind of a expose from public television, a special documentary on this evil practice. And I remember particularly the advertising conference footage that they had. It was really evil when you watched it because it breeds covetousness at an early age. That is, having a great desire to have what others have. Covetousness is having a great desire to have what others have. But let's get closer to home. Let me meddle some more here. As Joel Jordan stated so clearly yesterday, the refrigerator slash freezer enables us to load up ourselves with food and eat and spend far more than we need. Now, I'm not talking about here having an emergency food supply in case of a disaster. as one who went through Hurricane Sandy on a vacation trip, and that's a whole story. I learned, because all my emergency camping gear was here in Arizona, but I learned that you have to have this in your house, especially stored water and an expensive system to purify that water. And I can tell you afterwards, there's actually a Texas Baptist men's ministry here that sells one of these cheap ceramic filters they use for third world countries. I think I emailed you on that. It's incredible, but for most of human history, most people had trouble getting enough food to eat. Many were malnourished. But now we have a national epidemic due to too much food and too little self-control. And on the flight over here, again, you can't escape this, it's everywhere. I'm sitting and the guy next to me seemed to be a very important person with some reasonably sized company and he was on the phone talking about a negotiation. And there was a paper and after it was done, it was this woman who's a celebrity going. She had lost 50 or 60 pounds and then showing before after shots. And she had diabetes and everything that she didn't even need her pills anymore. Now she's lost its weight. And I talked to him about that. It's incredible, isn't it? You look at history. People were starving enough. And now we have this epidemic of people having too much food and too little self-control. On one reality TV show about obesity, where the expert is in the person's home and confronting the person, there was a scene where the expert was confronting this woman and she, of course, the first place she's going to go is to the kitchen into the refrigerator. And this is not an exact figure, but the expert discovers what's in there and goes, you have five gallons of ice cream. And shortly after this, the woman being forced to admit it, and being stripped of her coping defenses, broke down crying. And they were using that as an ad for the show, right? The point here is that gluttony is a sin, and it is a self-destructive sin. It is a sin against the body, which is the temple of God. So many of us will feel much better also if we lose weight, and I speak from experience. And by the way, I need to lose 15 pounds myself, and I mean that. Also, television and computers, video, enables us to watch things that we don't need to watch, or are positively harmful for us. And this has been getting worse and worse. I remember a man at one of the resorts where I consult at, and he doesn't have a TV, but he was away with the military, he was an army ranger, and he comes back after a few years, and he couldn't believe, he's saying to me, Mike, I said to my family, I said, they allow that now? And they allow that now? Well, we know what's happened. Censorship's a bad word. But the churches and Christians, especially in California, used to be involved in censorship. And this has become increasingly cast to the wind. Now, I know for several of us, this is not a problem, but you're human beings and you'll be in contact with human beings. And more often than not, we need grace for divine ability in this area. And I could even quote a famous Christian leader at one of the conferences I was at was talking about this many years ago. If we don't yield to the grace we have, then we need to get honest with God in prayer. And even if necessary, take those things out of the house, at least temporarily, or just disconnect them. OK, next one, impatience and irritability. The book Respectable Sins is very helpful here, so I'll just quote and adopt from these two sins. But let me just start out by saying, and meddle some now. Let's just say you have a house. The house has renters. You need the renters have not treated the household that well. You have to clean out the house. And there's all this junk that you've cleaned out inside the house. You've been working hard all day, doing the right thing. And what happens? A neighbor does it nicely, comes in and complains about that. Isn't that very easy to be irritated about with that neighbor? Sorry, I had to. I was going to do that at the beginning. But seriously, I mean, when I don't get enough sleep, I just like myself. I was telling a pastor in Long Island and Arizona, I said, Patrick, I don't get enough sleep. I start being irritable. And he said, Mike, we all do. Let me give you the book from the book Respectable Sins here. Here's the situation that happened. A pastor friend was visiting in the home of a couple who were founding members of his church, a couple who were greatly respected and loved and who had consistently invested their lives in other people. At the time of this particular visit, the husband had terminal cancer and did in fact die a few months later. In the course of his visit, the pastor asked the couple, How are you doing spiritually? With tears in his eyes, his wife responded. We're doing well as far as the cancer is concerned. But what I can't handle is our sin. After all these years, and especially in this situation with the cancer, you would think that we wouldn't still hurt and wound each other. But we do. And this is what I can't handle. I can handle the cancer, but I can't handle my sinful flesh. This sad but true story illustrates a reality that is all too common about our, quote, respectable sins. We tend to exhibit many of these most freely in the context of our own families. So, how does it happen? Well, parents can become impatient and irritated over the slow response to the training of children and teenagers, or behavior of children and teenagers, especially, you know, teenagers in this day and age. Wives and husbands can be impatient with each other, Brothers and sisters are often impatient and irritated with one another, constantly fighting. What a grief it is to parents when children fight with one another. It is a great challenge for parents to train their children, both by teaching an example, to be patient with one another, to be patient with others. With any human relationship in our day, these appear to me to be most common and most on display. Ever see these shopping? Every now and then in Costco, back in Arizona, I'll see these shopping. I remember one man just exploding at his wife, right in the eye. These were people over 70 years old, I would say. And ugly. The key to understanding this type of impatience is that it is a response to the usually unintentional actions of others. Response to that which is unintentional. I can easily get inpatient, for instance, at the post office. I could tell you a story here about myself. And now at the post office, I bring things to read and I give myself more time if possible. Traffic and driving is a particular test here. We have inpatient drivers and I have Received the ticket once again in New Jersey. New Jersey and me don't get along driving due to this impatience. But I also was concerned of me running out of gas. And this can go on and on and on. If we sit down with a piece of paper before God and write what we know. In opposed to this aspect of the same nature, the apostle Paul, in several of his letters, exhorts us to be patient. In 1 Corinthians 13, the great love chapter, he leads off his description of love by saying, quote, Love is patient. In Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23, patience is one of the nine expressions of the fruit of the Spirit. In Ephesians 4, 1 and 2, which we've read, Paul urges us to live our lives with patience. And in Colossians 3, verse 12, we are to put on patience. All right, our next sin. Discouragement. This will be short, but this is one that few people realize is a sin or is used by the evil one. It appears to be one used against pastors and other church leaders. John Noble had to wrestle with this in the Soviet gulag. And again, the book is I Found God. I Found God in Soviet Russia from 1959. which we'll be talking about later. And, you know, you are in that situation. How could you not wrestle with discouragement? I mean, brutality and suffering. That is just incredible. The prime example of discouragement is of the people of Israel who were discouraged to cross the Jordan by the tribes of Reuben and Gad and inherit the lands promised by the Lord. God specifically addresses this sin in Deuteronomy 1, verses 21-30 and following. The New Testament verse about this sin which tells us to meditate on Christ is Hebrews 12, verse 13. For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest ye become weary and discouraged in your souls. This sin comes from unbelief and an unwillingness to suffer. It can be overcome by the prayer of faith, asking for encouragement from the Lord and putting oneself in the path of blessing through obedience and not walking by sight, but rather by faith, trusting in the promises of God. Hebrews 13 5. I will never leave you nor forsake you. And our last one for today, materialism, selfishness, self-centeredness, anxiety and worry. In 1992, Discipleship Journal, this is a modern evangelical publication in 1992. Readers ranked areas of greatest spiritual challenge to them. Areas of greatest spiritual challenge. One, materialism. Two, pride. Three, self-centeredness. Four, laziness tied with anger and bitterness. No, four is laziness. The tie was between anger and bitterness and sexual lust. Seven was envy, eight was gluttony, nine was lying. Survey respondents noted temptations were much more potent when they had neglected their time with God, 81%, and when they were physically tired, 57%. Resisting temptation, resisting temptation was accomplished by prayer, 84%. Avoiding compromise in situations, 76%. Bible studies, 66%. and being accountable to someone, 52%. John Blanchard, the reformed Christian author of such works as, Does God Believe in Atheists?, stated, In the world in which we live today, it takes a miracle for a man not to be a materialist. Now, Joel mentioned this yesterday, words of the effect, all the gadgets that we need or think we need, all the gadgets that occupy our time, all the technology we use, have become a burden. And there was a freedom in the Philippines, he said, when I was away in the Philippines from all the gadgets and the media and the television. Didn't feel like I needed to watch television at all. With materialism, two questions often are asked, how much do we really need? And how much is enough? Someone asked a billionaire, and I've given a program that took me for a billionaire, believe it or not. Someone asked a billionaire how much was enough, and he said, more. Very briefly, materialism is a daughter of selfishness and self-centeredness. It is concerned with possessions for me. Worldliness enters in here as well, as well as the values of our society, often through advertising. Advertising tells us we need this or that to be happy, or buying this or that will make us happy. Now, one of the shows I like to watch is American Greed. It's on one of the financial channels. And invariably, most of the time, these crooks, these people who steal money from people, they may have investment schemes. They're using their investment monies from the people they're supposed to be investing the money properly, and they use it as their own personal piggy bank. What do you think they're doing with that money? They're spending it on all this materialistic stuff. And it is ridiculous what they buy. This one guy in particular was absolutely ridiculous. The junk overpriced junk. Self-centeredness is all about me first. Our text here is Luke 12, verses 13 through 13. One, we three won't read. excuse me, Luke 12 through 13, the entire chapter of Luke, which we won't read. Christ starts out by explaining that the rich farmer was a fool for not being rich before God. Later in the passages, an extensive teaching about worry and anxiety, significant dispositional sins of the believer in our day. That night, the rich farmer's soul was required of him. The bottom line is that the measure of true wealth is not in material possessions, but in heavenly riches. We won't read the whole passage for the sake of time, but I do recommend strongly believers listen to the Bible on your CD player or you have an iPod. These have been invaluable to me in listening to the scriptures. Let's just read a few verses here, verses 18 through 23 and 29 to 31. Christ is speaking, of course, so he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build greater. And there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink and be married. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul be required of you. Then whose will those things be which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. Then he said to his disciples, therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life. What will you eat? Nor about the body. What will you put on? Life is more than food and the body is more than clothing. And do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink, nor have an anxious mind. For all these things, the nations of the world seek after. And your father knows that you need these things, but seek the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added to you. Why must they be conquered? Why must dispositional sins be conquered? Well, they must be conquered every day because we all have them and are vulnerable to them. We all have them because we're human. Romans chapter 7. There is not a single Christian. I don't care how gifted with graces they might be. They will have dispositional sins. Consider James here. James 1 verse 14. But each one. is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. And later in chapter three, verse two, for we all stumble in many things. We stumble in these because of our reaction to the way life is to our bodies and the varied problems of living. Again, A. W. Tozer writes that if we could retreat from life and all its cares and worries to a cave, even the floor of the cave itself would irritate us. I've been told recently that in retirement, a man who has done well financially but doesn't do much at all with his time but watches money on his computer, watches money on the financial media and websites, he's been crawling the walls of his own fine house. It is my considered opinion, and I've thought about this for some time, that the incredible prosperity and luxuries of our nation and the West that we have enjoyed for decades has increased our vulnerability to these sins. Consider that the church historically has always been weakest when it has been most maturely wealthy. The increasing immorality and ignorance in our society, immorality and ignorance, The decay of manners, civility, work ethic and common sense that all of us see and talk about as we did at lunch, in one form or another, are all due to the inner spiritual decay of people in Western countries. Inner spiritual decay. Now, I hear about this in one form or another. I turn on the radio a while back. A year or two ago, I have two recordings of a nationally broadcast interview. You can give them to if you want. He's not a Christian, but he's a longtime Olympic and college water polo, water polo coach. And it was talking about the loss of work ethic due to a variety of factors, including laziness and watching television. So this man's getting students in University of California. One of the I think it was Santa Cruz. I can't remember Santa Barbara. He says, I don't even watch television, so it's a waste of time. Not a saved man. Now, just looking at books that might help me with this message, I came across, again, this book, I Found God in Soviet Russia, on the bookshelf behind me. In this eye-opening 1959 book are the results of spiritual decay over decades due to atheism. One of those results is young, or was, young people who believe in nothing. Sound familiar? And the other is the utter brutality by people who believe in nothing. And you read this book and you just... you have to say, how can people be so brutal and cruel to one another? Well, spiritual decay inevitably results in man's inhumanity to man due to dispositional sins. Man's inhumanity to man A theme, if I remember correctly, of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels in the early 1800s, or in the 1800s. Man's inhumanity to man in the gulags, in Stalin's purges, in all the torture we read about today. Now, I believe we are in the early stages in the West of moving in that direction. I mean the West in terms of the Western world. And this is due to giving human nature what it wants. Human nature wants immorality, materialism, consumerism, and entertainment. Of course, there are major differences in the history of Russia and how decay is working out for the West. But moral decay is still decay. And Christians are being affected by it because they are not discerning in the values they are getting from all forms of entertainment. From television, from the media, from music, from video in all its forms. Anyone raising children in this day needs to think very carefully about what entertainment, television and video you're allowing your kids to watch and be influenced by. There are tremendous values being transmitted there. Television is a value transmission device. These are exceptionally deceptive times. John Noble writes the following in I Found God in Soviet Russia. This is about the unsaved Soviet Russians. People cannot with impunity violate the Golden Rule or defy the Ten Commandments. I cannot begin to detail the personal tragedies among these Russian men and their families, which resulted largely from their lowered standards of personal morality." End quote. He then gives stories about what happens when a man has an affect to two wives, and one wife is at the mine where the gulag is, and the other wife shows up to kick out the other wife and their child out. And he also gives stories or talks about the terrible drunkenness that he witnessed. Now, our second reason for these sins being conquered, why they must be conquered is if we do not crucify them, we will reap an evil harvest from our dispositional sins. As these Russian people found out. These sins, as we are finding out in our society, have been for some time. These sins wreck marriages, wreck friendships and work relationships. They ruin churches. Sowing and reaping are not only scriptural principles, but realities that cannot be escaped. They cannot be escaped. We must sow to the Spirit by the Spirit of God. Galatians 6 verse 7. Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. As sin may must be crucified if we are to be holy, a vital and central command in the New Testament, part of the meaning of the cross. The Roman cross on which Christ our Lord was crucified and died was not optional for us. We may not have a Roman cross, but we have to put to death our sin nature. Christ tells us to take up our cross and follow him. Again, the Christ means put our sin natures to death on the cross of Christ. Our cross, not someone else's. We are not to live, but Christ is to live through us. Galatians 2 verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The challenge is these sins and It's almost somewhat humorous when you think about it. The challenge is these sins get up and live every day. You may crucify him every day, but they get up and live every day. So Paul says to our sinning Corinthian brethren, I die daily. First Corinthians 1531. I affirm by the boasting in you, which I have in Christ Jesus, our Lord, I die daily. Third, dispositional sins must be conquered if we are to be fit witnesses for Christ and not for sin. They must be conquered if we are to spread a pure and unified form of Christianity and not a corrupted form. A pure form will be one that has real spiritual unity, the opposite of pride, contention, strife. You can't be a fit witness for Christ and not deal daily with dispositional sins. Now granted, the process of regression, that is, regression in these sins, is gradual, but they will be exposed in short order. When we don't die daily to these sins, we witness to something else than New Testament Christianity, and what we witness to is hypocrisy. Unsaintly saints, Tozer writes, are the tragedy of Christianity. People of the world usually pass through the circle of disciples to reach Christ. And if they find those disciples severe and sharp-tongued, they can hardly be blamed if they sigh and turn away from him. The low state of religion in our day is largely due to the lack of public confidence in religious people. We are looking for here, of course, a pleasant disposition with all these sins that people would not be attracted to us, but that through us they may be irresistibly drawn to Christ. What we ought to be displaying is godliness. In the Siberian Gulag, this is one thing John Noble and his fellow Christians did day in and day out. After a period of time, I think it was two years, due to their faithful witness, Even the N.V.D. Soviet security men were reading Bibles secretly in the locker room there. To quote A.W. Tozer again, the task of the church is twofold, to spread Christianity throughout the world and to make sure that the Christianity she spreads is the pure New Testament kind. Theoretically, the seed, being the word of God, should produce the same kind of fruit regardless of the spiritual condition of those who scatter it. But it does not work out that way. It does not work out that way. The identical message preached to the heathen by men of differing degrees of godliness will produce different kinds of converts and result in a quality of Christianity varying according to the purity and power of those who preach it. Christianity will always reproduce itself after its kind. A worldly-minded, unspiritual church, when she crosses the ocean to give her witness to peoples of other tongues and other cultures, is sure to bring forth on other shores a Christianity much like her own. Finally, my application and conclusion. Obedience in all of this has to do with love and freedom. Love for God and neighbor, and then freedom from self and sin. What is the hymn, Rock of Ages, about sin? Free me from its guilt and power. Christ said, John 14, 15, If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me. Love for God involves self-denial and sacrifice. part of each cross that God would have for us. It involves our cross, not someone else's. Putting to death by His Spirit daily these indwelling sins of disposition. Apart from Christ and His Spirit, we can do nothing. The result is progression unto the likeness of Christ and increasing spiritual life and health and peace in our lives. Life and health and peace, and we talked also about happiness, didn't we? Christ said you shall know the truth, and the truth shall what? Make you free. Self-knowledge is one of the most important aspects of life. And a great man wrote that once to his son. To be free, we need to understand and forsake daily those sins which we are prone to. And of course, besetting sins. We need to understand and forsake not only sins we are prone to, but besetting sins we are likely to excuse as aspects of our personality. Yes, we are that way, but we need to come out from being that way. Recognition and humble confession before the Lord in humility is the first step with dispositional sins. Also, we can and should help one another in the sanctifying process regarding our dispositional sins. I've received help and information, for instance, from this book, Respectable Sins. I don't agree with absolutely everything in the book, but it's very informative and helpful. I've also received help over the years from a few dear friends, including Pastor Jordan. As needed, we can and should ask for honest, confidential evaluation and feedback from a spouse or trusted friends or family members. Depending on how proud we are, this can be hard. Those helping need to be gentle and to do so with humility, lest what? Lest they also be tempted. Our help to one another should be, as J.C. Ryle said, with, quote, the object to give friendly warnings, to desire our mutual peace and comfort, that we may all be happy in the Lord as well as safe, joyful, as well as safe. Let me read that again, that we may all be happy in the Lord as well as safe, joyful as well as justified. And finally, to quote one experienced brother, the putting off of sin and putting on Christ's likeness rests on two foundation stones, the righteousness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. We are to always look to Christ and his perfect righteousness for our standing, for how we are acceptable to God. If we are united to Christ, God sees us clothed in his perfect righteousness. We are also always to look to the Holy Spirit to enable us to deal with sin in our lives and to produce in us the fruit of the Spirit. For in ourselves, we have no power over these sins. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, again, we come to thee. Many of us know this, what we have preached today, Lord, but each day our sin gets up and lives every day. Keep us, Lord, from spending time in ways that keep us from thee, from spending times and even wasting time on things that are vanity or things that are not important, so that we might spend more time with thee, might spend the right kind of time with thee, that we might deal with ourselves unsparingly as your spirit prompts us, as conscious reminds us, Move us, I pray, into greater conformity in this area that we might truly show our love to Thee. And Lord, we ask we might be able to love Thee with a first love and to be able to show that love to people around us. Again, we pray for the glory of God the Father, for the magnification of Christ, the spread of the gospel of Christ and the edification of the people of God. Amen.