Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And tonight we're going to talk about that struggle, that struggle,
that there is a struggle and a god intended struggle.
God did not intend for us to live completely free
from struggle. Think of this when he put at them
and even the garden. He put them in the garden
in a utopia, an environment where all of their needs
were met. They didn't even have to till the soil
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or water the ground. A mist came up every day
and watered the ground. The fruits there were bountiful and plentiful,
and all of their needs were met. They had no
need for clothing. They were free, they were vibrant. They
were moving around in the garden of Eden and what
is almost like heaven on earth environment, except there were
(00:44):
some restrictions. Restrictions are the place that create the friction
in our lives. Restrictions create friction. Okay. So he told
them of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
They were not to eat of the tree of life.
They were not to eat of the Tree of the
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knowledge of good and evil. They were not to come
near it. That that discipline that he puts into their
lives is there for a reason. If if a man
walks up to a woman and she's the only woman
in the world, and he says, I love you. It's
not really a big compliment because she's there's nobody else
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to love you, gotta love me. But when when I
choose you above others, that means I had options. Now
the love has death because I could have went another way,
but I chose to come to you. God wants us
to choose him, and God has chosen us because the
choice is only proven when you have the conflict of
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having options. Think about that. That's good. So God puts
them in a in a situation that allows for a
certain degree of friction. And because that friction is where
faith is fertilized, that friction is where maturity is developed.
That friction is a place where discipline gets involved, where
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we are truly His disciples when we have options and
we choose to commit our way unto the Lord. Now
Paul has told us not to take grace for granted.
He's clear about that. In chapter six. He has taken
us down to the watery grave and immersed our sinful
old man and his deeds underwater, until our past has
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been buried with him by baptism. That the body of
sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should no longer
serve sin. And yet in chapter seven he enters and
engages into a conflict. Now, if you were in the
Bible class last Wednesday, I talked about the container and
the content, and that the container is human, but the
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content is divine. The Bible says, we have this treasure
in earthen vessels. The treasure is of God, but the
vessel is of us. So we have this treasure in
earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of God and
not of us. There's a sharp distinction between the treasure
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on the inside and the trashy human container on the outside.
This difference between the content and the container creates conflict.
It is this conflict that we have to deal with,
like Adam had to deal with the tree, like Eve
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had to deal with the tree. There's a certain amount
of conflict that is necessary to bring legitimacy to your faith.
Think about that, God's not gonna remove every thorn, Paul.
He's not gonna remove every thistle. He's not gonna remove
every problem. He's not gonna remove every temptation. Because there
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is a need for a certain con conflict in our
lives so that we've grown, and so that we wrestle,
and so that we desire, and so that we pray,
and so that we're humble, and so that we're not arrogant,
and so that we're not judgmental. There's going to be
some conflict in your life. That conflict in your life
comes from the content may be really annoyed and gifted
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and team gifted. As my T shirt says, yes got
all my part OF's house T shirt team gifted. Now,
you might be gifted all you want to, but you
have the gift in a container that is contaminated with
your humanity. And that creates a conflict because both the content,
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the holy thing, and the container, the natural thing, are
fighting for control in my life all the time. And
even though I was buried with him by baptism in
chapter six, that the body of sin might be destroyed
the hens forfright that no longer serves in does not
mean that there is not a residue of carnality that
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continues to stick its head up and causes me to
have to wrestle. And Paul is confessing this, this this
conflict in his life, that which I would do I
do not that which I would not do I do.
He begins to talk about I find then a law.
There's a war going on in my members. There's a
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war going on in my members. That war going on
in his members is a wrestling match that we all have,
whether we want to talk about it or not, in
some area at some time, at some stage in your life,
there's some voice in you telling you to go wrong,
when there's another voice telling you to go right, and
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you're listening from shoulder to shoulder. You remember how the
old cartoons would be an angel on one shoulder and
a devil or another, and you listen from shoulder, and
then the devil is saying, tell him this and speak
by giving a piece of mind, and the angel saying,
turn the other cheek. And we're torn between these two polarities,
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trying to balance ourselves. When I would do good, evil
is present with me. So even though I was baptized
in chapter six that the body of seeing might be destroyed,
I did not totally eradicate my capabilities on my potential
to yield to temptation. I didn't totally destroy the fact
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that there is still a presence of evil in the world. Listen. Now,
let's talk about deliverance. Okay, because there's a lot said
about deliverance. Well, I think it's sucking Corinthons. It might
be first I'm not sure. The first chapter where Paul
talks about that God had delivered, he dove deliver and
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he shall deliver. He had delivered. He did that on cavalry.
He delivered me from the all of sin and death.
He delivered me. He delivered me. That's already done. Tell tell,
let's die, it's finished. He delivered, he hath delivered, he
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doth delivered. That's the daily process of continually delivering me
from the habit of sin. So he have delivered me.
Write this down. He have delivered me from the penalty
of sin. He did that on the cross. He dove
delivered me. That's what I'm going through right now with
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this good and this evil. For he does delivered me
from the habit of sin. He shall deliver me from
the presence of sin. To be delivered, to be with
him is to take me out of the very presence
of sin. And until then, I'm going to be uncomfortable
because I'm still in the presence of it. I'm still
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surrounded by it. I'm still wrestling with it. I still
got something on bost shoulders telling me to do right
and to do wrong, to be weakened, to be strong.
And Paul is candid about this. He's candid about it
in a way that sometimes we are not. He's candid
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about it in a way that I wish we were
more candid about that. Your greatest hero in the Kingdom
has temptations and struggles and failures, your strongest hero, no
matter their age, no matter how young, no matter how old.
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And it gets better. Life gets better, you get stronger,
you ma toure, but you never mature to the point
that you can get up and say I'm holy, I'm
completely holy. The Bible said, Now, I know that some
of you are about to cut me off. But the
Bible said, the very thought of foolishness is sin. The
very thought of foolishness is sin. So who amongst us
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can say that we haven't usin the Bible says that
our righteousness is as filthy rags in It's sight. Then,
even when we get really clean and we're really proud
of ourselves, that we remind God of a filthy rag.
A careful study says, that's a minstrel rag, a used rag.
God says, that's what your holiness looks like to me.
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Have you ever thought something was white, just pure white,
because maybe you saw it up against something brown and
you thought, oh, that's a white shirt, or that's a
white blouse, or that's a white jacket, and because up
against brown it looked white in contrast to it. But
then you brought it and put it beside something that
was really white, and all of a sudden you say, oh, no,
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that's not white. That's off white. That's not white at all.
It's got a yellow cast to it. That's not white
at all. It's more vanilla. When you put your holiness
beside God's holiness, you recognize it's not holy at all.
So now Paul gets down to the inner struggle that
he has. Now, listen, if the gentlemen who wrote the
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Bible are transparent about having frailties and struggles, then surely
those of us who read it and preach from it
can be transparent and honest about having struggles and tests.
He said, there's a war going on in my memory. Now,
a war is a messy business. It's one thing to
have a fight. If you have a fight, old street fight.
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I grew up in Charles, West Virginia. Sometimes there'll be
a street fight. If you have a street fight, everything
around gets torn up. If it breaks out of the house,
get it out of the house, because you're gonna tear
up the house. That's just a street fight. If you
got a war, trees are coming down, things are being uprooted,
there's damage stuff. He said. There is a war going
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on inside of me. I want to speak to people
who have had a war going on inside of you,
which is all of us. I'm talking to everybody. Yes, you,
I'm talking to you too. There's a war, an absolute war.
Have you ever been on a war site? Have you
ever been in a war zone where bombs are falling
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and people are maimed in cripple he says, That's what's
going on inside of me. There's a war going on
in my members. This is good stuff, he said, there's
a war. I want you to understand that, even as
I am writing to you and ministering to you and
preaching to you, he said, but I see another law
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Verse twenty three, in my members, in my body, in
my physical parts, warring against the law of my mind
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin
which is in my members. He said, there have been
times I've been captive. I was baptized, I was teaching
on baptism in six and seven. I'm confessing that, in
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right of the fact that I rose up to walk
into newness of life, there have been moments that I
have been drug into captivity. And God doth deliver. He
hath delivered me from the penalty of sin. He doth
deliver from the habit of sin. He shall deliver from
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the presence of sin. And I'm in the death deliver stage.
We're all in the death deliver states. We won't be
into the shall deliver until we are taken out of this.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Flesh, out of this body, transformed by the power of God. Now,
as we dig into this and we begin to understand
that this war going on inside of us creates a
certain angst and a certain anxiety. Now, you don't have
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a war going on if.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
You don't have a mind to do right. There's no
war to them that just purposed to do wrong. There's
no conviction for them, there's no problem for it. They
can do it and have them. But when you have
another nature in you, a divine nature, in order to
go ahead and yield to your flesh. It creates a war,
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a war with guilt, a war with condemnation, a war
with struggle. You can't be comfortable. You like the sheep
that fell into the mud, just like the pig. But
he's wallowing, having a good time because it's in his nature.
The sheep is he's trying to get up because deep
down inside you know you're better than that. You know
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you don't belong in that situation. There's something in you
innately that says I should not be in this food.
That's the war. And we all have added from time
to time. Have you ever said something and left the
room after you say something that got in the car
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and wish you to shut your mouth if you know
what it is to have regret and the war all
the way home because you know you said too much,
You went too far, You went into something that you
shouldn't have went into. You exposed something that you should
have exposed, You participated in something you shouldn't have been in,
and you got a whooping all the way home. That
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only happens to Christians, That doesn't happen to sinners because
you don't have to wrestle with the holy part. This
war is not a war that says you're not sincere.
This war is because you are sincere. The reason that
you've grown and the reason that you wrestle is because
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there is a divine nature that's calling you higher. And
now when you go to do what you used to
be able to do freely, you can still do it.
I'm not lying. You can still do it, but there's
always a conflict going on inside of you because there's
something in you saying you don't have any business in
this mode. You don't belong here. That's what Paul is
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teaching us about tonight. And he said, I find it
a law that there's always a war going on in
my memories. This is a rule. It's always going to
be a war. There's always some gravitational pull to pull
me downward earthwork, human wise, carnality wise, there's always something
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to pull me down. Whether it's depression, whether it's fear,
whether it's anxiety, whether it's lust, whether it's evil, whether
it's dishonesty, whether it's deceitfulness. There's always a gravitational pull,
and I have to wrestle to resist a gravitational pull.
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There's a law of gravity that says whatever comes up
must come down. It just acknowledges that the Earth is
moving in such a way that it is easy to
fall down, because gravitational pull makes it easy for you
to come down. The law of aero dynamics is what
makes planes able to stay in the air because they're
operating in a higher dimension. My prayer is that you
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and I can get into aero dynamics and away from
the law of gravity, that we can operate in a
higher dimension, that we could resist the temptation to give
way to the gravitational pull, to be who we were,
My God, Where would you be if you stop falling down?
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Where would you be if you stop giving way? Where
would you be? How much higher? Where would you go?
Where can the law of aerodynamics take you? That the
law of gravity could never The low of gravity is predictable.
It's just going to pull you down. You know the
destination before the tug ever comes. It's down. It's always down.
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Aero dynamics is out, it's beyond, it's beyond, it's above,
it's into the next dimension. Walking in the spirit is
like aerodynamics. Walking in the spirit frees us from fulfilling
the lust of the flesh. Walking in the spirit causes
us to take flight in areas where we once just
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gravitated down. Walking in the spirit puts us on another level.