THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST
SPREADING THE SOUL-SAVING MESSAGE OF JESUs
“How to Overcome a Sinful Past”
Introduction by narrator accompanied by a cappella singing:
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. Spreading the soul-saving message of Jesus. And now, Ben Bailey.
The psalmist said, “My iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me” (Ps. 38:4). As we think of the weight of sin, and especially as we think of our own lives, we can remember times when we did things that we knew were not right, how we did things that were sinful, how we had to carry that burden, and how that weight was almost unbearable. Think about your own life. Think about things that you have done that were contrary to God’s Word and contrary to His will. Can you remember the weight and burden of sin, and how difficult it is to bear that sin alone? How does a person overcome a sinful past? What does the Bible teach us about overcoming sin in our lives? I am so thankful to know that the Bible is the original “how-to” book. People have written how-to books on every subject from how to build a bird house to how to grow a garden. But there is only one real how-to book—the Bible, the Word of almighty God. It is the book that tells us how to live the best life and to be a godly person. I know this because 2 Peter 1:3 speaks of how “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.” In the knowledge of the Word of God I can learn two things about how to overcome. I can learn that I can have the best life here and now and be a godly person. And, I know that I can live according to God’s will and do what He wants me to do. Jesus said that He had come so that we might have, “life, and have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10). We can have the best life, not just in the here and now, but “on the other side” in Heaven, too. We can be godly people because God has told us what we need to do to please Him.
But the Bible is not merely a “how-to” book. It also is a “how-to-overcome” book. The Bible does not tell us just “how to survive,” how to get by, or how to barely make it. Rather, the Bible takes us from victim to victor. We can overcome through Jesus and the message that He gives us. In 1 Corinthians 15:54, Paul wrote, “So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’” The Christian does not just learn “how to.” Rather, he or she learns “how to overcome,” and how to be the best in this life through Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches us in 1 John 4:4 why we are able to overcome. John wrote, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” We learn from 2 Corinthians 2:14 that when we allow Christ to lead us, He always leads us in triumph and victory. The victory that we have is found in our faith. The text of 1 John 4:4 provides such an encouraging statement: “This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” We often sing “faith is the victory,” and how true that is! The Book of Revelation tells us that first-century Christians overcame Satan through their desire to follow God’s will. Revelation 12:11 records, “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.” They trusted Jesus and His sacrifice. They were willing to give themselves to Him and to His cause. We today must do the same thing. I am so encouraged by the words of 1 Corinthians 15:57. Paul wrote, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
So yes, the Bible definitely is a “how-to-overcome” book. We must all come to realize that we all have a past with which we must deal. Like the woman in John 8 who was caught in adultery, we, too, have a past—a past with which we must deal and that we me examine according to God’s will. In 2 Peter 2:20-22, Peter spoke of some people who had at one time known the truth, but who had turned from it and then found themselves in a worse state than before. Perhaps that represents your life, too. You once had obeyed the truth, but you then turned back into sin. The Bible says in Ezekiel 18:4, “The soul who sins shall die.” Or, maybe you have never let God help you with your sin problem, and you are trying to carry that burden all by yourself. That burden will eventually crush you. You cannot bear it alone. But here is the encouraging thing. Yes, you and I have a past (in sin) with which we must deal. But the Bible teaches us that we can and must master sin. In Genesis 4:7 we are told that sin “lies at the door.” In the original Hebrew word, the meaning is that sin is “crouching” at the door. It desires to have us. But we must master it instead. The wonderful new for us today is that, through Jesus, we can master sin in our lives. It is so encouraging to think about all that Jesus has done for us so that we can master sin. In 1 Peter 3:18 we learn, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.” In Matthew 1:21, as we learn about the virgin birth of Christ, we are informed that His name would be called Jesus, “for He shall save His people from their sins.” The wonderful news about Christ is that He came into the world so that we do not have to bear our sins alone. In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus urged people to come to Him so that He could help them carry their burdens. Jesus promises each of us that He will help us with the heavy burden of sin. We know from reading the Bible that we cannot deal with sin by ourselves. But what is so encouraging is that Jesus says, “I will help you with that burden—if you will come to Me and let Me.” We must do what Mary, Christ’s mother, told the servants in John 2:5 concerning her son—“Whatever He says to you, do it.”
But what steps can we take to overcome sin? What can we do according to the Word and will of almighty God? The first step is that we must recognize that in order to overcome a sinful past, we must recognize and admit sin in our lives. We will never deal with the sin problem until we recognize its presence in our lives and admit to our sins. A good example of this can be found in Luke 15 in the life of the prodigal son. This young man took his inheritance, went into a far country, and squandered all of it on wasteful living. Eventually, he found himself in a hog pen amidst the muck and mire of sin. What did he do? Luke 15:17 and Luke 15:20 teach us two powerful points. First, the young man “came to himself” regarding his sin problem. Second, then and only then was he able to return to his father. There is a powerful lesson in this story. There are two ways that we must recognize sin. First, we must recognize that we have sinned. Second, we must recognize that God knows we have sinned. The only way that we can return to a right relationship with God is to recognize and admit the sins in our lives. Romans 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” There is something to be learned from that passage. It is this: “if all, then I.” If all have sinned, then I have sinned and have fallen short of the will of God. The text of 1 John 1:7-10 teaches us very clearly that if we say we have no sin, then we make God a liar and the truth is not in us. We must be big enough to recognize and admit that we have sin in our lives. To fail to do so is very troubling and very harmful to our souls. Here’s why. The effects of sin—whether we realize or not—are going to one day be reaped in eternity. According to Isaiah 59:1-2, our sins separate us from a holy and just God. Habakkuk 1:13 says of God, ”You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.” We must be willing to admit our sin to ourselves, and to admit that God knows that we have sinned. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve were moved to admit their own sin. There were horrible consequences to that sin, so they tried to blame each other. But eventually they had to admit the sin that caused them to be cast out of the Garden of Eden. I think of the example of King Saul (1 Samuel 15 and 1 Samuel 26). Saul did not do God’s will. He did not destroy the Amalekites as God had told him to. He and his people had spared some of the people and had held back some of the spoils. Eventually, Saul was forced to admit, “I have sinned” (1 Sam. 15:24), and “I have played the fool” (1 Sam. 26:21). We all need to be big enough to say that we have sinned and that we have fallen short of God’s will.
In 2 Samuel 11 and 12 King David finds himself in a somewhat similar situation. Nathan the prophet comes to him to tell him the story about a man who had a precious ewe lamb and how he was forced to offer it for a meal. David said that the man who had forced the man to give up his ewe lamb was wrong and should not have done what he did. Nathan turned to David and said, “You are the man!” David then said, “I have sinned.” We need to be big enough today to say that we have sinned. We need to say that we have fallen short and that we have failed to do God’s will. Achan said, “I have sinned” (Josh. 7:20). He and his family perished because of that sin. Are you big enough to recognize and admit sin in your life? Until you do both of those things, there is no way for you to get right with God. Thus, the first step we must take is to recognize and admit sin in our lives.
The second step in overcoming a sinful past is that we must be ashamed of sin. Sin is very, very shameful. It is not something that we should discuss in an enticing or alluring manner. That is not at all the idea that the Bible portrays of sin. Paul asked the Christians in Rome, “What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death?” (Rom. 6:21). Paul was saying, “Look at your past lives. Did anything good come from them? Did anything good result from those sins over which you now have shame?” This teaches us that nothing good can come from a sinful life, and that we ought to be ashamed of it because the end result is death. Please think soberly about the principle that is found in Ezekiel 6:9. From that text, we learn that sin breaks God’s heart. We need to know today that sin is shameful not only because of what it can do to us, but also because it breaks God’s heart. We know from 2 Peter 3:9 that God is “is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” God has done everything possible to save us. But we must realize just how horrible and just how condemning sin is. The Proverbs writer said, “Fools mock at sin” (Prov. 14:9). There are a lot of people in the world today who think that sin is fun. Hebrews 11 points out that there is a “passing pleasure” to sin, but that pleasure is temporary and fleeting. Today, young people often think that certain things in the world are “cool,” and that they ought to engage in them. But they need to recognize that, in reality, those things are shameful. It breaks my heart to hear Christian parents tell their son or daughter, “When I was your age, I could drink a dozen cans of beer before I got drunk. Don’t you do that, but that’s what I used to do.” This is not the type of thing about which a person ought to brag. A parent should not say, “I want you to be proud of what I was able to do in a sinful life, but I don’t want you to do that.” Sometimes we speak of a certain type of dessert as being so good that it must be “sinful.” We ought not to use that type of language because there is nothing good about sin. Sin is something that is very, very shameful, and we need to realize just how harmful sin really is. I am reminded of the text of Jeremiah 6:15, which teaches us about sin and its shame. Jeremiah asked, “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed; nor did they know how to blush.” Here is a sad commentary on these people. When they committed sin, did it bring them to shame? Absolutely not! They did not even know how to blush. Sin did not bother them one bit. I am afraid that we may have gotten to that point in our society. But we must not let ourselves get to that point! We need to realize that sin is not fun. Sin is something that will cost us our souls. We should be ashamed of sin. It ought to bring us to tears when we think about the way that we have lived our lives and how we have stabbed our Savior in the back. Do you want to know how shameful sin is? When Jesus went through all the suffering that He endured, He did that because of our sins! When Jesus was beaten, spit upon, and mocked, and when He hung on the cross with nails piercing His hands and His feet, He endured that for our sins. That is how hurtful and shameful our sins are. They are so shameful that they put a perfect, sinless Savior on the cross for us.
So how do we overcome a sinful past? First, we must recognize and admit sin in our lives. Second, we have to recognize how shameful sin is. Third, we have to deal with sin in a God-approved way. We must allow God and His Word to tell us how to deal with our sin problem. Man cannot save himself. Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 10:23, “I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.” In Proverbs 16:25 the Proverbs addressed this same principle when he said, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” We need to realize that the Bible points out some wrong ways in which man has tried to deal with sin. Let me mention a couple of them. Do you remember how Jonah tried to deal with sin and the responsibility he had to God? He was told by God to go preach to the people in Nineveh, yet he got on a boat going the opposite way! Jonah tried to run from his sin problem. We need to know today that we cannot just flippantly dismiss sin. In Acts 24:25, Paul preached to Felix about righteousness, self control, and the judgment to come. Do you remember what Felix said? He told Paul, “Go away for now; when I have a convenient time I will call for you.” Felix was fearful, but how did he try to deal with sin? He, like Jonah, pretty much tried to escape it. His attitude seems to have been, “I’ve heard your message, and it has bothered me somewhat. But you go away, and when I get good and ready I’ll call on you.” He pretty much flippantly dismissed it. We cannot run from sin. We cannot justify ourselves in our sin.
In Luke 10:29 we see a lawyer who has come to Jesus and who wants to justify himself. He asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus taught him exactly who his neighbor was, and he was probably ashamed when he heard the answer. Yet he went on to try to justify himself, even though Jesus knew that he was doing it out of sinful motives. We cannot justify sin. We cannot say, “Everyone else may think that this is wrong, but here is why it is right.” We need to know that God is clear in His teaching on sin, and that we must deal with it in the way God has commanded us. We cannot live in sin and think that we are somehow going to be right. The text of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 speaks of people who were homosexuals, sodomites, adulterers, and others who were living lives of horrible sin. But Paul says, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” We cannot live in sin and expect to be pleasing in God’s sight. We must deal with sin in the way that God teaches us. How, then, does a person deal with sin in a God-approved way? We must let the Bible and Jesus teach us what to do to be saved. The question is asked in Acts 16:30, “What must I do to be saved?” To overcome a sinful past, we have to let God tell us how to get rid of that sin. God promised, “I will remember their sins no more” (Heb. 8:12). What, then, do we have to do so that God will take away our sins? We must hear the Word of God and know that God has spoken on this subject. Romans 10:17 says that faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Once we have heard God’s Word, we then must believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (Jn. 14:6). We must believe that Jesus is the One Who can save us. In John 8:24, Jesus said, “If you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” We therefore must hear God’s Word. And we must believe in Jesus as the Son of God.
Then, that belief motives us to repent. Jesus said in Luke 13:3, “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” We must turn from sin to God, and we must change our way of thinking and our way of life. We then must confess Christ as our Savior. Paul wrote in Romans 10:10, “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Then we must be baptized in water to have our sins washed away. At what point in the process of salvation are our sins no longer remembered? Acts 22:16 answers that question. Let’s take just a moment to look at this text. Saul (who would later become the apostle Paul) was told by Ananias, “Why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” Think about Saul’s former life, and how he had been an accessory to murder in the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7). Or, think about his activities in Acts 8 as he drags Christian men and women to prison. At what point was Saul able to overcome the sinful past that bothered him so much? Once again, Acts 22:16 answers that question. “Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” It is at the point of baptism (in the process of salvation) that our sins are washed away. After we have heard the Word of God, believed in Jesus, repented of our sins, and confessed Christ as our Savior, we then obey God in baptism and have our sins forgiven. There is nothing mystical or magical about the water. Rather, it is our faith in God’s ability to save us (Col. 2:12) through baptism that overcomes a sinful past. We must allow God to deal with sin in the way that He has told us He will. Then our sins can no longer harm us.
But as we think about obeying the Gospel, and as we realize that it is at that point that we overcome a sinful past, we need to know that there are things we can do to help us overcome the guilt and sorrow that we feel as a result of our past sins. If you have obeyed the Gospel, but you are still struggling with the guilt and sorrow associated with your sins, remember that you can learn from your past sins. There is a good example of this in Luke 15. There are two basic lessons to be learned from a life of past sin. In Luke 15 we learn very clearly that we should not ever want to return to a life of sin. Think about how the prodigal son wasted his inheritance and how he found himself in the pig pen amidst the muck and mire of sin. Do you remember how he came to himself and went to his father? What is the lesson we learn here? We learn that we should never want to return to a life of sin. That same principle ought to be something that we remember every single day. We think of the joy of being a Christian, of the blessings that we have, and how horrible our past life of sin was, we should be motivated and encouraged to live for Jesus every day.
There is also another valid principle that we can learn from past sin. It is better to have past sin as a teacher than to have present sin as a master. We realize that our past lives of sin were horrible. But we can use that as a teacher to help us not to want to do such things any more so that present sin does not become a master over us. Paul wrote in Romans 6:17-18, “But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” We need to learn the lessons of past sin. We must never go back to that life of past sin, but instead we must live for Jesus and become a “slave of righteousness.” Here, then, is the key to all of this. Not only must we learn from our past sins, but we also must forget the past. This must have been something very difficult for Paul to do. He had done some horrible things. But there is a key verse which teaches us that Paul was able to forget the past, and how we must do that as well. Let’s turn our attention for just a moment to Philippians 3:12-13. Paul wrote:
“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Paul’s point was that he had to forget the past. At one point in his life, he referred to himself as “the chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). But here is the wonderful thing about being a Christian. We get a second chance! Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” If God is no longer willing to remember our sins because we have obeyed the Gospel, we need to put our past sins behind us. We need to learn from the past and move on to bigger and better things in our Christian lives.
If you have not obeyed the Gospel, we want to plead with you today to become a child of God. If you are bearing the guilt and the burden of sin, why not do what the Bible says to help you release those feelings. Do what Jesus says to do about that sin problem. If you do not, you will never overcome it. If you are a child of God, you have sinned, and you are still carrying around the burden of that sin, you need to repent, make that right, and get back to living the Christian life. Our prayer for you today is that you will overcome sin through the blessed Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Narrator accompanied by a cappella singing:
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1. How did the psalmist portray sin in Psalm 38:4?
2. Jesus said in John 10:10 that He had come to offer us a certain type of life. What type of life is that?
3. What is the message of 1 John 4:4?
4. According to 1 John 4:4, what can provide us with victory over sin?
5. What does Ezekiel 18:4 say will happen to the soul that sins?
6. Explain the meaning of Genesis 4:7.
7. According to Romans 3:23, “all have sinned.” What does that say about each one of us individually?
8. If a person says that he does not sin, what, according to 1 John 1:7-10, does that make him?
9. What is the first step in overcoming a life of sin?
10. What is the second step in overcoming a life of sin?
11. What is the third step in overcoming a life of sin?
12. Peter stated in 2 Peter 3:9 that there is something that God does not want. What is it?
13. According to Proverbs 14:9, what is the fool’s view of sin?
14. What did Jeremiah bemoan in Jeremiah 6:15?
15. What did Jonah do in regard to sin?
16. This lesson uses Luke 15 and the account of the prodigal son to make the point that there are two basic lessons to be learned from a life of past sin. What are those two lessons?
17. What is the key phrase in 1 Corinthians 6:11 that explains how to deal with sin?
18. In Hebrews 8:12, God said, “I will remember their sins no more.” What five steps must a sinner take to correct his life so that God will no longer remember his sins?
19. According to Acts 22:16, at what point in the salvation process are our past sins forgiven?
20. What good advice did Paul provide in Philippians 3:12-13 about dealing with past sins?
21. What encouraging point did Paul make in 2 Corinthians 5:17?
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