Here’s the final section of my sermon on the 7th commandment preached last Sunday.
Section D: Keeping the 7th commandment
Perhaps the greatest danger to us at the end of a sermon on sexual sin is that my preaching leaves you feeling simply guilty and hopeless. Many Christians have given up the fight because they have lost hope. Matt Chandler pastor of the Village church in Texas described his own experience when he said;
I found myself running from God. I ran because if there was shame to begin with, there was double shame at the moment when I said I wasn’t going to do it anymore but then I did it. I was caught..I was stuck in shame …
Maybe the appropriate question to ask yourself when you fall into sin, as a Christian and you are truly repentant, is this one ‘How do you think God thinks of you?’ Thomas Goodwin the great puritan preacher said this:
Your very sin moves Christ to pity & compassion more than anger.
Why? Because he loves you and he never loved you because you were good. Our greatest danger is to think when you sin you think God can’t love me any more and so even as you flee your sin you don’t think you can flee to Christ.
When you struggle with sin there is only one thing and one thing alone that you need to know because of the cross God treats you as a son and not a sinner. God accepts you as a son…loves you as a son…because he has never accepted you on the basis of your behaviour but on Christ’s perfect life and his sacrificial death.
Matt Chandler says:
The marker of those who understand the gospel of Jesus Christ is that, when they stumble and fall, when they screw up, they run to God and not from him.
The power to keep the 7th commandment comes not from your faithfulness to God but God’s faithfulness to you.
1. God’s faithfulness – Read 1 John 1:8-9
We very much want to end the study by reminding ourselves that God has dealt with our past failures and promised to write the commandments on our hearts by his Spirit.
Whatever your sin there is full forgiveness because of Jesus. Whatever your struggle with your sin there is a final victory because of Jesus
Our hope comes from the knowledge that God forgives and that God will change us. Even when we are unfaithful to him.
If our danger is not that we feel like giving up the flip-side, the other danger, is that we think this sermon is a call to pull yourself by your shoe laces…
You probably can control yourself not to sleep with your boyfriend, you could put the software on your computer…but what God wants to do is not give you a few practical tips but drive you to Jesus as your only hope…
2. Jesus’ faithfulness - Read Hebrews 4:14-16
The battle with sexual sin is won through a closer walk with Christ.
You might think that Jesus is the last person who can help you now and yet we are reminded in the Bible that he was made like us in every way and in Hebrews 4 we learn that he experienced every temptation common to man. Stuart Olyott writes ‘Do not think of him as unfeeling; everything you are facing, he has already faced.’
So the writer to the Hebrews urges us to go to him and ask for help and because it is Christ’s Spirit that is at work in us he is able to show mercy and offer grace to strengthen us in the battle against sin and for purity.