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Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

The Science of Overcoming Sin

David Shin

The Science of Overcoming Sin - Part 1

On the screen I have a screenshot from the website Net Nanny that provides a resource for parents with young children and this is the day and age that we live in right now.

It cites a statistic that 1 in 10 kids under the age of 10 have seen porn.

Small children typically view pornography accidentally at home by clicking a link or mistyping a Google search.

Most parents would be shocked on how pornography is just 2 clicks away on some of the most popular sites and apps your child may be visiting.

This is our society in which researchers are witnessing a phenomenon of a generation of young people whose minds are literally marinated in pornography.

It's a phenomena, a culture, and quite honestly the researchers don't know the effects long term of what this exposure will do.

1 organization has reported children under the age of 10 now account for 22% of online porn consumption under 18 years of age.

This is from the website Fight the New Drug.

Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, Twitter combined each month.

And another statistic, in 2018 alone, more than 5, 517, 000, 000 hours of porn were consumed on the world's largest porn site.

The world's largest free porn site also received 33, 500, 000, 000 site visits during 2018 alone.

And this is from 1 researcher who says that porn consumption follows a very predictable pattern that eerily similar to drug use over time, excessive levels of pleasure chemicals cause the porn consumer's brain to develop tolerance, just like the brain of a drug user.

And once the porn habit is established, quitting can even lead to withdraw symptoms similar to drugs.

Gary Wilson, the author of the book called Your Brain on Porn, indicates that researchers are now finding that there are cognitive limitations as well as mental health concerns from long-term pornography use.

And I wish that I could stand up here and say that the Church of God on earth was immune to this epidemic, but we are not.

And so we begin a new series of messages that will extend through this winter into the spring, where we look at the science of overcoming sin.

What does the Bible have to say about this?

And we'll be looking at key passages that encourage us that Jesus has the ability to give us the victory over every habit.

Every sin in our lives that so easily besets us.

And we're not just talking about pornography.

There's all types of addictions that our society and our church family is dealing with, whether privately or publicly.

We all have different things that pull and tug at us, and we want to look at this biblical concept throughout Scripture about victory over sin, and I pray that you're encouraged through this process because there is a science to how God works, to will and to do of His good pleasure.

And so I invite you this morning, I put my Bible up here, to turn with me, if you have not already, to our scripture reading.

It's the second to last book of the Bible, Jude 24 and 25.

There's only 1 chapter in Jude, so it's very easy to find, and it's right before the book of Revelation.

And this will be the main theme of our study here today before we transition to another text.

But I want to spend a few moments and look at the doxology of the author of Jude.

Now doxology is liturgical word that refers to a praise statement and here after talking about some challenges in the church, Jude 24 ends with a beautiful doxology and we're familiar with it.

It says, Now unto him that is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever, amen.

I wanna make 4 simple implications of this verse before moving on.

Implication number 1, God has power to give you victory over every habit.

The Bible says, now unto him that is able to keep you from falling.

It didn't say God is maybe able to keep you from falling.

So we want to settle that from the beginning that There is no deficiency on God's part for the addiction, for the habit, for the sin that so easily besets us.

Jude says, now unto him that is able to keep you from falling.

Now there's a popular teaching that's being disseminated today and has been for a number of years that we will be sinning until Jesus comes.

The implication of that statement is that sin is more powerful than God and that we will just live with our addictions without any power to conquer them.

And I want to tell you friends very plainly that is not in the Bible.

Jesus is able to give us the victory over every temptation, every habit, the power is there.

We're talking about a God that can speak things into existence.

So Jude 24 declares God is able to keep you from falling.

The capability of God is not in question.

So implication number 2, God has power to make you holy.

The second part of this verse says, now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless, that's holy, before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

God is able to take us from the depths of sin and degradation and to create in us a clean heart and make us holy.

Now it's not our holiness, it's the holiness of Jesus.

But when we look at this verse, it says, in the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

And if you look on the screen here, where was the presence of God, the Shekinah glory?

This is where Adam and Eve were prior to the fall.

They were created holy in the image of God.

Adam and Eve were here and after sin the entire human race was placed out here.

And so the sanctuary reveals God's plan to bring us into here, into here, and Jude 24 says, into the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

Now, the book of Hebrews indicates that the criteria for seeing God is holiness.

Hebrews says, without holiness, no 1 will see the Lord.

Now the high priest on his forehead, he wore a gold plate that had holiness to the Lord on it, and the high priest was the only 1 allowed in here once a year, So the criteria for seeing God face to face is holiness.

Matthew chapter 5 says, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

The criteria for being in the presence of God is holiness.

And that's where we're going to stand 1 day, according to the book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation says, and they shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads.

Now God brings us here into the courtyard experience and that's where he pardons us.

He brings us into the holy place experience and that is where he empowers us to keep us from falling.

So the issue is sin And the plan of salvation is how God removes sin out of our lives.

He pardons us and then he gives us power.

Let's say I have an addiction in my life that I'm struggling with.

God pardons us for our past and then he gives us power in the present to give us victory over that addiction in our lives.

Now, you'll notice that in the holy place, there are 3 articles of furniture.

You have a table of showbread, the altar of incense, and the golden candlestick.

The table of showbread, there was bread there.

And the Bible says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And in this series, we'll be looking through practical ways of using the word of God to battle temptation.

You notice every time that Jesus was given a temptation by Satan, he always responded with, it is written.

Psalms 119 says, where whither shall a young man cleanse his way?

By taking heed thereto according to thy word.

Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee." When the word comes in, sin goes out.

So these are very practical things that God has given us.

We must feast on the word for power, for victory.

The other thing is the altar of incense, and that represents the prayers of God's people.

And I believe foundationally, 1 of the most powerful prayers that you can pray is you go to God and say, Lord, I'm struggling with this area in my life, and I need help.

When you go to the doctor, you have to sign a consent form.

Doctor won't touch you without that consent form.

The Science of Overcoming Sin - Part 2

On the screen I have an artist's depiction of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, and he lived in the third century into the fourth century.

According to 1 scholar, he states this bold statement about the impact of Augustine.

He says, after Jesus and Paul, Augustine of Hippo is the most influential figure in the history of Christianity.

Augustine is responsible for framing the theological structure of not only Catholicism, but also Protestantism to this day, and the impact of Augustinian theology can be a topic of reflection for a lifetime.

Now, when Augustine was doing theology in the very beginning, he imported from Greek philosophy an understanding of human nature that is prevalent today in, I would say, 99% of Christian theology and beliefs.

And it was this concept of the soul and the body-soul dichotomy.

He adopted this from Plato, and Plato came up with this idea of Greek ontology, of this dichotomy between the body and the soul.

In other words, you have this exterior husk, and then you have the soul that is within, and this soul is timeless in a philosophical sense, not having a past, present, or future continuum.

And Augustine, rather than going to the Bible to come to an understanding of human nature, he said, you know what?

Plato has described ontology and epistemology and metaphysics.

And so he said, why do all the hard work and go to the Bible to come up with an understanding of human nature?

And so he imported this from Greek philosophy.

And as 1 of my professors says in his groundbreaking dissertation, A Criticism of Theological Reason, he indicated that all of modern philosophy today is a series of footnotes to Plato.

And he contends in his dissertation that theology from the very beginning adopted not a biblical ontology, but rather a philosophical ontology built on platonic metaphysics.

So here we have it, the body-soul dichotomy.

Now you may be wondering, Pastor David, like, why are we talking about this?

Well, let me give you 1 implication that this has, and it has to do with the idea of what happens after you die.

Let's see how a belief of human nature impacts this.

Okay, so the majority of Protestants today, I would say classical or conservative Protestants and Catholics believe in the existence of a soul not because of biblical understanding, but because of platonic understanding of human nature.

So what happens when you die according to our Protestant Catholic friends?

And so after you go to heaven, you're looking down here on earth and I've been to funerals and bless their hearts, okay.

They don't know that they're coming from a Greek philosophy, a Greek ontology and they say our dear sister is looking down on us right now.

And this is based on this concept of the immortal soul that goes to heaven.

So you can see how this understanding of human nature impacts the practice of how we think and how we act and how we relate to those that are deceased.

I remember having a Bible study with an individual with a Catholic background and he told me that his grandmother had died and it affected his existence day to day because he would talk to his grandmother, okay, believing that her soul was in heaven looking down.

So this had very practical implications to day-to-day life.

Now, we're in our series entitled The Science of Overcoming Sin.

Let's look at sin based on this type of understanding of human nature.

When you look at Lutheran theology and Protestant theology, they had a very pessimistic understanding of human nature and the notion and the idea of total depravity.

In other words, human nature was totally depraved.

So sin, by its very definition, is not a thought or an action or something that you decide.

Sin was ontological, meaning that it had to do with your very soul.

So sin is not something that you do or that you act on, sin is something that you are.

Now this has huge implications as to whether you can ever have victory over sin.

If sin is something that you are, can you have victory over it ultimately?

With this idea of sin being not only affecting the body but also affecting the soul, it is something that you are.

And so the idea of victory, of overcoming, is foreign from a theological sense to the Protestant mind and the Catholic mind, so much so that in the Catholic systematic theology, Jesus could not come with the same nature that we did.

Because if he did, he would be a sinner by birth.

And so they had to come up with this idea of the immaculate conception and so forth.

And so this thing gets systematized, all right?

So when we talk about sin and overcoming sin, we need to go to the Bible to understand human nature first rather than Greek philosophy because from the very beginning a mistake of Augustine has been incorporated into Christian theology and here we are.

And the revolution of Adventism was, look, Let's go to the Bible and see what the Bible has to say about human nature.

In the beginning, in the book of Genesis, in the King James Version, it says that God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul.

So the biblical understanding of the soul is not a Greek understanding like we see here on the screen.

The biblical understanding of a soul is look at the person next to you, that's a soul.

The whole entity of the human being is the soul.

Look, you don't open the hood of a car and say, where's the car?

And so the Bible presents a historical view of human nature, meaning a past, present, future flow of history, and sin also follows the past, present, and future implications of sin.

For instance, when Adam and Eve ate of that fruit, this had implications, historical implications for where we are today.

Meaning, when they ate of that fruit, whatever it was, all of the human race would be affected.

Are there physical implications and consequences of that act on us?

You know, I come up here and tongue in cheek and I say, look, I'm 5 foot 6.

I'm thankful for whatever height I am, but look, we were never meant to be this short.

This is not, this is the result of sin, okay.

Our physical nature, the breaking down of our physical nature was impacted by the historical act of Adam and Eve.

We are here genetically affected by the nature of sin.

People say that if you have an IQ of 130 or 140 that you're bright.

Well, that was not Adam and Eve's IQ in the very beginning.

Do you think our psychological mental health was impacted by sin?

Our emotional health, every dynamic of it.

Our spiritual nature was impacted by sin.

We are born into this world with the cultivated and inherited tendencies to sin.

We cultivate some of our own, and I inherited some from my father and my grandfather, going back to the third and fourth generation, according to scripture.

And we, to our poor kids, we pass them on as well.

And so there are these implications and these results of sin that we pass on.

But the beauty of what God does and even how He defines sin, sin is not something that you are in an ontological Greek sense.

Sin ultimately comes down to our decision and our choice, which has an impact on our posterity and the people around us.

Now Jesus expands sin from the pharisaical model of just the action to the thoughts in the gospels, in Matthew chapter 5 he says, look if you lust after a woman in your heart, okay, you have committed adultery with her.

The Science of Overcoming Sin - Part 3

When I used to sell books door-to-door, there were moments that got very discouraging.

Some people that are filled with the spirit and others that are filled with a different spirit.

And sometimes people can be so toxic, if you know what I'm talking about.

And I found that early on I would meet someone at a door and they would just be spewing venom.

I mean, you know what I'm talking about, just toxic, filled with anger and vengeance, narcissistic personalities that will not listen to reason.

Anyway, they come out the door just scream at me and I would get discouraged.

And it would affect the entire interactions going down the street after that.

And come to find out, 1 of my canvassing leaders told me, look, we're in a great controversy here and the devil knows that a few doors down, there's someone that is really seeking for truth and for light.

And so what the devil's many times going to do is try to get you discouraged before you meet that person that is searching for truth.

And I found this to be a reality in my canvassing experience and it got to the place where an individual would come out and scream and curse at me and say all types of belligerent things, racist comments, all types of things under the sun.

I got to the place where I had to hold myself from cracking a smile because I didn't want it to be misinterpreted by that individual.

And I'd just be like, thank you sir, thank you ma'am, and I would run to the next door, because I said, I know there's someone on this street that is searching for you.

And so many times, I'd meet that soul at the door that would open the door and say, David, I was praying.

I just lost a loved 1 and I need this book.

Can you pray with me?" And I would pray with the individual and I would go away from that door and say, thank you Jesus for that experience.

And I want to tell you that we are in a great controversy.

We don't wrestle against flesh and blood.

There's an invisible reality that we cannot see.

And I want to tell you that in my years of pastoral ministry, I have never experienced such a vengeance of relentless attacks as we have prepared for this series that is going to take place tonight.

I can't even share this morning about my week.

I never thought in my years of pastoral ministry, I was thinking this week on engaged in a circumstance and situation, I said they didn't teach this at the seminary.

But I want to tell you that we have a God in heaven, amen, that is faithful and that is in control.

We have 200 individuals that are registered.

Brian McMahon has indicated in all his years of evangelism he has never seen anything like this before.

Jesus is getting ready to come and the devil is upset.

Don't let anyone keep you from bringing a soul to these meetings.

I want to share a couple things before we get into our message here tonight.

If You were there Wednesday night for the organizational meeting for the Evangelistic Series.

Angelo got up, you remember that, the son of Angelco.

2 years ago we felt, a group of people felt impressed to get together and pray, have an upper room experience here at the Hillside O'Malley Church.

We began praying for the Holy Spirit and revival here at 7 a.m.

Now if you're familiar with Adventist culture, it's difficult to get souls here at 9.30 on Sabbath morning.

And so we stepped down in faith and said 7 a.m.

We're going to begin praying for the Holy Spirit and revival.

So on a given Sunday morning, 15 to 25 people are here praying for the Holy Spirit and revival and they come voluntarily, believe it or not.

They show up early to pray for the Holy Spirit and 1 of the attendees said, hey, we should start making a list of people that we want to invite to this prophecy seminar.

And so emerged a list that grew to 4 different, those huge post-it boards, 4 of them, over 200 names, almost 300 names that accumulated during this two-hour, two-year period that we were praying for the Holy Spirit and revival.

And last Sunday morning, I was out of town, but Angelo, thank you, Angelo, felt impressed Saturday night to go to that Sunday morning prayer meeting.

He comes to Sunday morning prayer meeting at 7 a.m.

And Craig Hamilton, who's leading out, decided to divide the individuals up into groups, each 1 having a board to go over the names to invite to have the Holy Spirit touch their hearts so they can come to this series.

So they're going through the names and Angelo is a part of a group And this wasn't planned.

He's given, you know, they're going through the names on the board, and he's praying, and he sees his name on the board, and he just breaks down.

And he was on the first board, meaning that we began praying for him early on.

And he got up Wednesday night in that organizational meeting and said, Look, I am here because of prayer.

I want to tell you, friends, something is happening.

Something is happening in this city here in Anchorage.

Series

The Science of Overcoming Sin

The Science of Overcoming Sin - Part 3

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

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