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Colin Smith: The more your sin has grown, the more difficult your battle will be to kill it, but the more the sin has grown, the more urgent it is that you begin that warfare against it now. Sin is a power. It has a vigor within it. You have to track it down and deal with it or it will destroy you.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. And Colin, we may have someone listening today who says, "Man, that's right where I'm at. I feel like sin does have the best of me. I don't even know how to begin fighting against this."

Colin Smith: Well, I'm so glad that you're listening to the program today because we're going to look at a very simple biblical strategy for fighting sin. Three steps: know it, stalk it, and kill it.

The last part comes directly from Romans chapter eight and verse 13. We are to put to death the misdeeds of the body. We are to be proactive in fighting against sin. And so the first thing, of course, is we have to know what we're up against, and then we need to identify where it is active in our particular lives, and then we are to give it no room. We are to put it to death by the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within every Christian believer. And that's what gives us hope.

Steve Hiller: I want you to talk just a little bit more about that last point because there are probably some who are saying, "Okay, three-step process seems simple, but that last part of putting it to death, I can't seem to get any victory over this thing."

Colin Smith: That's right. And the way that's often said is, "This sin is too powerful for me. It's just too hard. It's bigger than I am. I just can't stop." The answer to that is it may be bigger than you are, not bigger than the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within you.

And that's what it means to be a Christian. I say to folks, if you're not a Christian, you come to Jesus Christ and He will give you not only His forgiveness but the power and presence of His Spirit. And if you are a Christian, you've got to count on the power and presence of the Holy Spirit because He has been given to you in order to fight this battle. So we're going to get into it today. Very, very practical. God has given us His Spirit that we would be able to prevail in the battle against sin.

Steve Hiller: Well, grab a Bible, join us in the book of James. We're in chapter one as we continue the message, "Turning From As Much As You Know of Your Sin." Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: How much do you know of your own sin? How familiar are you with the workings of your own heart? What would you say were the top three sins to which you are most vulnerable at this point in your life?

Now, if you can't answer that question, you need to take some time till you can do it. What would you say are the top three sins to which you are most vulnerable at this point in your life? If you don't know the answer to that question, how can you possibly be on your defenses against them and how can you possibly be launching an assault towards them? You've got to know them. You've got to know where the battle is in your life right now. I find it a very helpful exercise to list them, identify them clearly.

Now I want to encourage you in this to use the Bible as a regular tool for self-examination. Being brought up, I was taught a very simple method of Bible study that included three important questions. Whenever you read the Bible, ask, "Is there a command to obey? Is there a promise to believe? Is there a sin to avoid?"

I find that very helpful. Is there a promise here to believe? Is there a command here to obey? Is there a sin here to avoid? Whenever you read the Bible, ask these questions. So, for example, sometimes it opens up things that are not quite obvious and God speaks to you through them.

I was reading recently the story of the four men who took their paralyzed friend to Jesus and got discouraged at first because they couldn't get anywhere near. And then they got creative and they climbed up onto the roof. You remember the story. They dug a hole through the roof and then lowered their friend on the mat so that he came right down through the roof to the very feet of Jesus. You've got to say brilliant. I mean, it is absolutely brilliant.

What's the sin to avoid? The sin of giving up too quickly. The sin of saying it's too difficult. The sin of saying I can't be bothered. I found that helpful because God spoke to me through that.

Whenever you read the Bible, ask the question, "Is there a sin to avoid?" God's word is light, and if we're going to succeed in our battle against sin, we need to understand where it is going on within us, and it is the scripture that God will use to identify where the struggle is at its most fierce.

Now, it's also useful alongside this regular self-examination to have particular times when we examine ourselves more closely. And again, you can use the scripture to do this. The most obvious way to do it is perhaps the Ten Commandments. Write down on a piece of paper what each command requires in your own words, and then use that to examine yourself and to explore what is going on in your life in relation to the calling that God has given to you.

There are other passages of scripture that you can use. Remember that last Sunday we looked at Job chapter 31 where Job goes through 17 areas of his life and declares to God that he has maintained integrity in all of them. Now, I have to tell you, when I read that last week, I found myself saying, "I'm not sure that I could go through all of these and come up with that conclusion before the Lord."

So what I've done here for us is to turn Job's 17 statements in chapter 31 into 17 questions so that we can read through them, as I have done this week, and use them as questions to examine ourselves. Use these questions as the scripture is God's light to shine into your heart to help you know where the issues are and therefore where the battle has to be fought. The first priority in turning from sin is that you should know it. And if you can't identify what it is from which you need to turn at this point in your life, you will make very little progress.

And it's a vagueness about repentance that causes so many Christians to get stuck so that the path remains hidden to them and very little progress or change is seen. So first strategy: know it. Second strategy: stalk it. Once you have identified where the heat of the battle is, then you need to deal with the area of sin that you have clearly identified by watching for its movements in your life.

So let's take some practical examples. Suppose that you have discerned as you've looked at the scriptures and you've examined your own heart that you really need to deal with some issues of pride, or lust, or laziness, or unbelief, or whatever it is. But you've identified an area or a couple of areas where you say there needs to be significant change in my life here if I'm to move forward as a Christian. What are you going to do next?

As you stalk these things, you'll be asking questions like this: When am I most vulnerable to this? In what ways do I see this being expressed in my life? Now, nobody, at least in my own reading, has proven more helpful on this issue than John Owen. I'm going to put his book there. It has the marvelous title *The Mortification of Sin*. My wife looked at the cover last night and she said, "Wow, looks seriously interesting." I tell you and I promise you, this is pure gold.

John Owen wrote in the 17th century. He was a master physician of the soul. I don't know if there's been any Christian writer throughout history outside of the New Testament who had a deeper and more penetrating understanding of the inner workings of a Christian believer's life. I do apologize, I said wife, I meant life. I let me give you a sample of Owen on stalking sin.

Ask, he says, ask envy what it aims at. Isn't that brilliant? Where are you taking me, envy? Where are you going? Murder and destruction are envy's natural conclusion. So set yourself against it as if it had already got there. That's brilliant. In a similar vein, he says every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could. Every covetous desire would be oppression and every unbelieving thought would be atheism.

So you look at that unbelieving thought that plagues you and you draw it out and you say, "I know where you're going and if I follow you, I'll be an atheist and I'll have no hope for this life or the world to come either. I'm not going there." You draw it out. You ask it where it's going. Sin's expression, he says, is modest in the beginning, but once it has gained a foothold, it continues to take further ground and presses on to greater heights.

Again, he says we need to be intimately acquainted with the ways, wiles, methods, advantages, occasions which give sin its success. This, he says, is how men deal with their enemies. He's thinking warfare now. They search out the plans of the enemy, ponder his goals, and consider how and by what means the enemy has prevailed in the past. Then the enemy can be defeated. Know your enemy.

One of the most important parts of spiritual wisdom, he says, is to find out the subtleties, policies, and depths of any indwelling sin to consider where its greatest strength lies, how it uses occasions, opportunities, and temptations to gain advantage. We need to find out its pleas, its pretenses, its reasonings, and to see what its strategies, disguises, and excuses are. We need to trace this serpent in all its turning and windings and to bring its most secret tricks out into the open. We must learn to say to our sin, "This is your usual method and I know what you are up against."

Now isn't that marvelous when you have the kind of discernment to be able to say to your prevailing sin, "This is your usual method. I know how you work in me. I know what you are up against." And because I've gained a handle on how and when and where the enemy operates, therefore I am put in a position to gain a victory. Stalking sin. You have to know it, know what you're going after. You have to stalk it. And stalking is the way in which you move from knowing your sin to being in a position where you are able to kill it or to mortify it.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "Turning From As Much As You Know of Your Sin." It's part of a larger series called "Repentance: The Hidden Path to a Transformed Life." And if you ever miss a broadcast in the series, you can listen online. Just come to openthebible.org. There you can stream the program or download an MP3 for free.

Again, that's at openthebible.org. Another way to listen is through the Open the Bible app. The app is free. You'll find it at your app store and it's a great way to listen on demand whenever it fits your schedule. So again, simply look for Open the Bible at your app store or come and listen online at openthebible.org. Back to the message. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: I was talking to a Christian counselor recently and he said to me very helpfully, "When we have folks come to us with addictions, one of the first things we try to do is to help them to find the problem in biblical language and call it by its proper name, which is idolatry." You see what that is? That's stalking sin. That's finding out where it is, then identifying how it works so we can get in a position to gain the mastery over it.

Now, don't underestimate the importance of this. If you become aware of a particular area of sin in your own life, you know it, and you do not move forward by stalking it to kill it, then if you simply know it and ignore it, it will end up growing in your life. And if that has happened to you, then you very, very urgently need to deal with that sin decisively. The more your sin has grown, the more difficult your battle will be to kill it, but the more the sin has grown, the more urgent it is that you begin that warfare against it now. Sin is a power. It has a vigor within it. You have to track it down and deal with it or it will destroy you.

Now you see this in a very powerful way in the first reference that we ever have to sin in the Bible and that is in Genesis chapter 4 and verse 7. It comes in the story of Cain and Abel. Abel brought an acceptable sacrifice to God and Cain did not. And afterwards, Cain became angry with God.

This is the very first reference to sin in the Bible. And Cain is angry and God says to him, "Why are you angry? Why are you downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door."

Now, the picture there is of a wild animal outside the door, crouching ready to spring. An attack is ready to be launched by sin, speaking of sin in almost personal terms. And the Lord says to Cain, "Sin is crouching at your door, verse 7. It desires to have you, but you must master it."

So if you imagine that we're all in a primitive jungle and there are many dangers, especially for wild animals. One day we hear that there is a huge leopard and it has come into the village and it has taken the life of a child. And because the leopard now has the taste of blood in its mouth, you know that it will come back for sure. And so there really is only one choice for us at this point in the village, that is that the leopard should be hunted and killed.

And so the chief asks for volunteers and a group of us step forward. We take our spears, we move out of this village, and we go hunt for the leopard. You move through the bush, you're stalking it. You're looking for signs of movement, tracks, a dead carcass, any sounds of the movement of a large animal, but you walk very slowly as you stalk the leopard. Why? Because you know that the leopard is stalking you.

You are the hunter, but you move very carefully because you are also the hunted. That is how it is with sin. You are stalking sin, sin is stalking you. And for that reason, an engagement is inevitable and either you will kill it or it will kill you.

And that takes us to the last part of this strategy. You must know it, you must stalk it, you must kill it. Now if that sounds violent, I want to assure you that it is biblical language and we desperately need to understand it. I need to be devastating towards the movements of sin in my own life. Always be killing sin, says John Owen, or sin will be killing you. Great statement.

Chapter 8 and verse 13 of the book of Romans. Turn to it with me if you would. Paul says, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live." You have to put to death the misdeeds of the body. That's what this word mortify actually means. Owen defines it in this way. It consists, he says, in three parts. Number one: a habitual weakening of sin. In other words, every time you say no to a particular area of temptation, to a particular movement of sin in your life, every time you say no, you weaken its power.

And he says secondly, it is a constant fighting and contending against sin. In other words, don't expect that the temptation will go away just because you've said no to it many times. The root remains and the struggles, though they may change in the course of life and with different circumstances, the struggle with sin remains throughout a Christian's lifetime. But mortification, he says, is marked thirdly by frequent success. Sin's activity and actions become fewer and weaker than before and sin, he says, is not able to hinder man's duty nor to interrupt his peace.

Now notice that this is the work that God calls us to do. If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body. We've to do this. But the good news is that you do not do it alone because as a Christian believer, the Spirit of God lives within you.

And he says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, then you will live." Owen lists beautifully six ways in which the Spirit is at work in putting to death sin in the life of a believer. Let me just mention them quickly.

The Spirit will convince you about the sin that needs to be killed. He'll reveal the provision of Christ for your relief. He'll establish your heart in the expectation of relief from Christ. In other words, he'll arouse faith so that instead of saying, "Oh, I'm going to be defeated," you come to the position of a believer saying, "I can conquer this through Christ."

He brings the cross of Christ into your heart with its sin-killing power, says Owen. I love that phrase. He begins and will complete your sanctification and he supports all your prayers to God. You see what he's saying is that the Holy Spirit is with you to apply the provision that has been made in Jesus Christ for you to move forward on the path of repentance and to have frequent success in your struggles with indwelling sin.

By faith, last quote, he says, ponder this. That though you are in no way able to conquer your disordered state and though you are weary of fighting it, there is enough in Jesus Christ to give you relief.

I love that. Think about this with faith. That though you can't sort out your disordered state and though you are weary from fighting it, there is enough provision in Jesus Christ for your relief and the Holy Spirit will bring that reality into your soul so that you're able to move forward on this path.

He says those who are walking this path, those who are moving on this path, this is the distinguishing mark of a true Christian. This person will live. Because those who are walking this path are those who are led by the Spirit and those who are led by the Spirit are sons of God. Threefold strategy for fighting and prevailing over sin in your life: Know it, stalk it, kill it.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a practical message today of how we deal with sin. Our message "Turning From As Much As You Know of Your Sin" is part of a larger series called "Repentance: The Hidden Path to a Transformed Life."

And if you missed any of the programs in the series, you can come and listen online at openthebible.org. You can stream the broadcast or download an MP3 for free. Again, that's at openthebible.org.

Well, Open the Bible is listener-supported. We're able to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching because of your generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a copy of Pastor Colin's new 30-day devotional book called *Grow in Faith*. And Colin, who is this book for?

Colin Smith: Well, it's for everyone who wants to grow in their faith, and hopefully that's every Christian believer. You know, the disciples at one point said to Jesus, "Lord, increase our faith." And they'd been following Jesus for some time when they said it. They'd left everything in order to follow Him, but they came to a place at one point where they realized we're going to need to grow in faith.

And I think every Christian comes to a place like that. I've been trusting Jesus for some time, but now I'm facing circumstances where I'm really going to have to trust Him. Lord, increase my faith. So this 30-day devotional book is designed to help and encourage growing in faith. I have loved working on this and am very excited about the opportunity of sharing it with you.

Steve Hiller: Well, we'd love to share a copy with you as our thanks for your financial support this month. You can give online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365 or openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: Hi, this is Pastor Colin again and I want you to know about *Watch Your Life*. *Watch Your Life* is a six-session course that is geared for leaders but accessible to every believer. The six sessions will show you how to grow in godliness, how to feed on Christ, how to pray in the Spirit, how to battle temptation, exercise faith, and discern God's will. There are questions at the end of each session and you can use them on your own or you can discuss them with a friend. For more information, visit openthebible.org/courses. That's openthebible.org/courses.