You can experience spiritual victory in the place of spiritual failure. Join Pastor John Bradshaw for “Five Steps to Spiritual Victory” and learn how sin can be defeated in your life.

<p>You can experience spiritual victory in the place of spiritual failure. Join Pastor John Bradshaw for “Five Steps to Spiritual Victory” and learn how sin can be defeated in your life.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written

Special Edition

John Bradshaw

Three Important Steps

The Coronavirus Conspirator

Pressure

The River

Great Expectations

Five Steps to Spiritual Victory

We're going to pray together and ask God that as we open the Bible, His Holy Spirit works in a way that speaks to our hearts in a way that we'd never forget.

You know when you open up the Bible it's an opportunity for transformation to take place, for God to work miracles of divine grace.

Our Father in heaven we're grateful that we can be with you at this time.

We thank you for your presence, for your very real goodness.

And so we ask you, Lord, to speak through your Word.

Don't Let us be the same at the conclusion of this time together.

Any grown man who'd pick a fight with a teenager is a bully.

Now you could call the teenager in question naive.

You might call him an idealist, a dreamer.

With the exception of maybe 2 or 3 people on the entire planet, no 1 would step into a boxing ring with the heavyweight champion of the world, for example, and think that he has a chance.

He'd been put in his place minutes before he walked out to face the bully.

His own brothers had remonstrated with him.

It seems he might have got a bad deal from his brothers with some frequency, based on how he replied to them.

1 little stone went up in the air and the giant came tumbling down.

It was an unlikely victory, except of course for 1 thing.

David's victory over a 9 feet tall giant in the Valley of Elah shows us that God is the God of victory and that when he gets into a situation, when he is ALLOWED into a situation, victory follows.

We could think together about Gideon and his 300 soldiers and the victory they won over a Midianite army, described as being, "...as numerous as locusts." and given what's going on in some parts of the world right now, that is a very graphic statement.

The Bible says that the Midianites' camels were without number, as the sand by the seashore in multitude.

Only a fool would enter into a battle with odds like that, someone delusional or someone guided by God and under the aegis of the Holy Spirit, empowered by God, Gideon was victorious.

And so today I want to talk with you about victory.

Not victory over an army, not victory on the sports field, spiritual victory, victory over the ultimate enemy, victory over sin.

The Bible is very clear about the deadly nature of sin.

Isaiah wrote that sin separates from God.

Paul wrote that the wages of sin is death.

Let me tell you how these viruses function.

These things that are so small that if bacteria had eyes, bacteria wouldn't be able to see most viruses.

They're that small, like sin, which often goes undetected, people failing to recognize it for what it really is.

Viruses are a collection of organic matter that are able to self-replicate.

They are a piece or a strand of genetic information, usually DNA or RNA.

In order to replicate, they infect cells and hijack those cells to produce viruses.

Reproducing as it were themselves, they bind to cells and integrate into the cell's own DNA.

Doesn't that sound like what sin is like?

Sin came here to this world and attached itself to the human family.

It infected people who became carriers and transmitters of the virus of sin, perpetuating it.

We were infected, weakened, forever changed, and there was only ever going to be 1 successful treatment against that virus.

The Bible tells us plainly in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 that Christ died for our sins, and it says that He did so according to the scriptures, according to the prophecies, according to Genesis 3 and verse 15, According to Isaiah 53, Jesus died for our sins.

Sin causes death and Jesus said, Let me die that death, so that anyone who believes in me can receive eternal life.

Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Matthew wrote in his Gospel that Jesus would save His people from their sins.

So I want to look at a Bible passage with you.

This is Paul writing to a group of believers who had their problems.

And I need to turn here so I can read it with you.

He was writing to a group of believers who had come out of an old life, and he shows us what that life was like.

This is 1 Corinthians 6 and we start in verse 9.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?

Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, That is pretty clear.

Abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." That is pretty clear.

Moral impurity, idolatry, people fooling around on their spouses, and do you think there's some of that going on today?

You know there's plenty of it and Paul says, plainly, People practicing that will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now to be honest with you, adulterers are still a fairly easy target.

However, in truth, that 7th commandment reveals our hypocrisy as human beings, because that sin happens everywhere and goes unnoticed, unchecked, unrebuked often.

But As soon as the governor of the state does it, it's the crime of the century.

Of course the standard ought to be that sin is sin and therefore wrong all the time, irrespective of who it is carrying it out.

But before we look down our proboscises at the morally challenged, that list Paul gave even includes covetousness.

Now that's getting a little close to home for some of us now.

And while that's definitely the person who bows down to an image, it might also be the person who idolizes a sports team.

So let's not think that this is only about the other guy here.

But notice what Paul writes to these folks.

He mentions thieves, and the immoral, and drunks, and extortionists.

Some translators use the word swindlers here.

He reads them this list of sins and then he says to them in verse 11, And such were some of you, but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." Did you catch that?

You were like that, but you are NOT like that now.

And Paul isn't just calling them new, he is saying that they ARE new!

In other words, those promises in the Bible aren't merely platitudes or best intentions.

The Bible means what it says when it speaks to us about sin and its remedy.

The plan of redemption contemplates our complete recovery from the power of Satan.

So now let's look at 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 13.

You might be able to recite this by heart.

If you cannot, then make sure you can by the end of this day.

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Series

Special Edition

Five Steps to Spiritual Victory

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

SWYC 2008 Plenary Sessions

All or Nothing

42m

Three Strikes

40m

Everything Depends On

1h

In Defense of our Sanctuary Message

42m

Sanctuary, Salvation & Our Savior

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Glorified in the Most Holy Place

33m

Giving to Get? The Inside Scoop on Offerings

49m

Sabbath Morning Worship Services

Overcoming, Victory, and the Brain

45m

Overcoming Addictions (Evening Meetings)

Gaining the Victory

50m

The Sign of Jonah

1h

The Big Questions (Evening Meetings)

9. A Poisoned Lottery Ticket Winner

1h 38m

The Close of Probation

The Close of Probation- Part 1

28m

Nothing Undone

34m

Sound Doctrine