Richard Ellis Talks

Richard Ellis: Everybody in this room and listening somewhere beyond here has got issues. Your deal may be alcohol. It may be drugs. It may be anger. You have this raging anger, and so you have said, "Oh, this is my list. Oh, God, help me today not be angry." You're praying about the sin, not to the Savior.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. Richard's style is unlike anyone else's, where he shares the life-changing message of the gospel in a way that's real, refreshing, focused, and fun. We know that life is pretty challenging these days, but these talks will help you meet those challenges head-on with biblical truth, encouragement, and direction.

Now, if you're not able to stick around with us for all of today's talk, you can always listen to, download, and even share this entire message with a friend right from our website, richardellistalks.com. So let's jump right in with today's talk. Here is Richard Ellis.

Richard Ellis: The title of today's message is Elicit Illicit. Let me read you some definitions for two words. The first word is elicit, and the second word is illicit. The first word, elicit, means to draw or bring out or forth, induce, evoke. It actually has its origins traceable back to some Latin words that mean to entice or lure or deceive.

The other illicit is anything not legally permitted or authorized, unlicensed, unlawful, disapproved of, or not permitted for moral or ethical reasons. So how do you elicit, draw out, illicit, forbidden, prohibited? What is it about whatever it is that causes us to go there, to go where we're not supposed to go?

Why is it almost impossible, and literally impossible, to do the right things sometimes on our own? Eventually, we give up. Go to Genesis chapter two. I'm not going to read all of Genesis chapter two, but if you go back and read, there's a ton of stuff that happens at the first that affects us all along the way and contributes to the challenges that we have.

Something happens in Genesis chapter two that is a first. God has given Adam instructions about stuff, but in verse 15, "Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it." Then in verse 16, maybe you've noticed this, maybe you haven't, and he said, "And the Lord God commanded the man."

So what happens to us when we get a command? Little kids, just human beings. Somebody says, "You can have the whole garden, do what you want to do. Here are your instructions, but here's the command: don't do this." And what do we tend to do? We lean in that direction. What are they trying to keep from me? What is it about that?

So you say, "Well, there's no sin yet. There's perfection, innocence, nothing's happened." But God created Adam and Eve, human beings, with what? A will. And even in their innocence before sin, before any of this entered the human race, they have the possibility of saying yes to something they're commanded not to do. And literally all hell breaks loose after that.

So what did he say? "The Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.'" So death would come into the equation. You say, "Well, Adam didn't drop dead," but you can be physically alive and spiritually dead. Something was broken. Something happened when they sinned.

Go to Romans seven. Now, I'm going to read you, we're going to jump in here at Romans chapter seven and see what happens. "Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?" What is he about to talk about? Simple things like law.

If a person is supposed to live by and abide by laws and they're dead, those laws don't apply to the dead person anymore. Keep reading. What is his example? "That the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband."

In other words, she's not married anymore because he's dead. Okay? You say, "Well, duh." Well, sometimes duh doesn't really make sense to people. "So then if, while her husband lives," so let's say he's not dead yet, "she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man."

So what has to happen first? In this scenario, the guy's got to die first before you can remarry another guy. Now, if you remarry another guy and your first husband's dead, you're not an adulteress. But if you're married to somebody and then you go out and find some judge or don't tell anybody and you marry someone else, now you've committed adultery.

"Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death."

Now, what is that about? What does the law incite? It arouses our passions to do the wrong thing because that's just who we are. So God says, "Don't commit adultery." And what do we think about? Committing adultery. "Well, He can't tell me that. It must be something about that He's trying to keep from me."

I found a story about a hotel in Galveston on the shore, right on the Gulf of Mexico, that put this notice in each room: "No fishing from the balcony." Yet every day, hotel guests threw in their lines to the waters below. Then the management decided to take down the signs, and the fishing stopped. Because if you tell me I can't.

So I've given some thought to this, and I give driving analogies along the way. I thought to myself, "If I could find a freeway," and I'm close to finding it, but I haven't actually found it yet, "where there were no speed limit signs." The question then is how fast would I really go? Do I have a boundary?

And there is a point where I've gone, and I don't recommend this, I have a motorcycle license, you couldn't even get me on one now. That's just my personal deal. Too much responsibility, can't afford to go down. But I've been on a what's referred to as a crotch rocket before doing a hundred-something miles an hour, and that's not wise.

You say, "Well, it's exhilarating." Just because it's exhilarating doesn't mean it's okay. I was on a back road. It didn't matter. If I'm in the desert, if I go down, I could die. So even if you could go whatever speed you wanted to go, there is no law, where would you stop? Now, you would hope that we have some type of governor inside of us that would say, "This is too fast. The car is rattling. The wheels are going to come off. This is not fun anymore. I'm going as fast as I want to go. I don't want to go this fast anymore or any faster."

So that'd be great. The second they put up a sign, and it does not matter what number is on the sign, because if the sign said 150, somebody would be doing 170 because the sign said there's a limit. We'd find a car some way to say, "I can go faster than they tell me I can."

Now you say, "Well, who are these people that think this way?" Get your little mirror out of your purse. Somebody has one. Pass the mirror around. It's us. You say, "Well, I don't drive that way," but you've got some category. You have something in your life where God has said, "Hey, here's the boundary," and you go, "I understand that's a guideline, but me, I have a little pull. I'm grandfathered."

Whatever your deal is, that doesn't apply to me. And always my question is: and how has that been working out for you so far? You say, "I can do what I want to do when I want to do it." It doesn't turn out to be that case in prison where they finally stop you. So let me keep reading this and think about this and think about the law in terms of something that keeps slamming up against you.

So he said that you may be married to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. "For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter."

Now, this is what is so tricky and almost impossible to explain to people who are locked into, "I've got my checkoff list." Everybody in this room and listening somewhere beyond here has got issues. Your deal may be alcohol, it may be drugs, it may be anger. You have this raging anger, and so you have said, "Oh, this is my list. Oh God, help me today not be angry." You are praying about the sin, not to the Savior.

And you have proven, I have proven over and over and over in my life that if I attack the dos and the don'ts and try to keep that list, then even if I pull it off for a day, I start walking around going, "Wow, look at me. Look what I did. Look what I pulled off. I made it a whole day without using the F-word," or whatever your deal is.

By the way, if you're thinking you made it, did you say it in your brain to somebody? You just didn't say the actual word. So it just starts to fall completely apart. Now why would God set it up this way? We keep running into the law so that sooner or later we run into Him and go, "You gotta help me because I have no power over this."

And then Paul here tries to explain to you, look, the person that you were married to, this law that has created these problems, died and you can get remarried. And the new guy takes care of all this. You're not under the oldness of the letter, it's the newness of the Spirit. So just so that I don't forget to say this, what does this look like?

You wake up in the morning and you don't go, "Oh God, I'm so scared to leave the house because I'm such a scumbag and I'm going to end up drinking again. I'm going to end up doing some, I'm going to smoke some weed at lunch. I'm sure of it. You've got to help me." You start praying and thinking about these terrible things you do, this terrible person you are.

How about waking up and going, "Lord, thank God that You are God, that You died on the cross, buried, raised from the dead, and when You died, all that, I'm freed from that. And so I want to stay as connected to You as I possibly can. So I'm going to listen to You and I'm going to let You steer me, guide me, to tell me where we're going, where we're not going. And when I get in a situation that I know I've been overcome by in my previous life, but with You in charge and Your power, I'll be able to glide right through."

And your expectation is to let Him live in and through you and not go checking off your boxes. And you get to the end of the day and you go, "Wow, that was so peaceful." Did you get attacked? Sure you did. But you've been fighting these battles by yourself. Let Jesus take them on. As far as I can tell, He's defeated every enemy we have: sin, death, the grave, Satan. He's got them all whopped. Let Him say, "Here, you fight the battle."

Keep reading. Verse seven: "What shall we say then? Is the law sin?" Is sin a bad thing? "Certainly not! On the contrary," now look at this phrase, he says, "I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet.'"

Now, this is very personal to Paul. You say he's just using an example. But he picks a very fascinating example. If you go read Philippians, I think it's chapter three, where he lays out all of his qualifications, Hebrew of Hebrews, Pharisee of Pharisees, he's the guy. But now all of a sudden he's become aware because the law says don't covet, then all of a sudden he hits it and realizes, "I've got a problem coveting."

And it's these heart things, these heart issues, even if you can figure out a way to keep it all together on the outside, keep nine out of 10, but you've got heart issues and coveting or some other heart category, then you've got a problem. So you have your little list and go, "Well, I didn't do that, I didn't do that."

Stop focusing on all the dos and the don'ts and ask Him what the thing that like Paul got revealed to him, like, "I would not have known I was covetous until the law said, 'Don't covet,'" and all of a sudden, bam, I'm exposed. And it turns out that my little thing exposes me so greatly that that's where God shows me the heart of my sin.

And I thought I was all that. And He says, "No, you're not all that. You've still got struggles, you've still got areas. I want all of it." So read this again: "For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was intended to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good."

Then keep reading this. "Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful." So you say, well, what is God willing to put up with? Nothing. He has to put up with everything, as it turns out.

But what do you get to keep? Nothing. "Well, I've got some little secret sin nobody knows about." What are you talking about? If no one else sees it but God, He sees it. But I'm telling you, there's more people seeing your stuff than you think are seeing your stuff. You know what? At some point, I have to get somewhere by myself and go, "Lord, look at me. I'm a mess. I don't want to be this way. I don't want to just look right. I want to be right. And I don't want in my own strength to go out here trying to conquer these sins. I just want to acknowledge that I'm not married to that old deal. It's You. New husband, new life, new power. You've overcome all this."

And it is so hard to explain to people who have grown up in very religious environments like I did, very legalistic environments like I did, where it was about doing this, not doing that, all these things, to say to someone, "Look, this is a relationship." And this God who moves in your body, in your life, trying to live in and through you, He is powerful.

And the Scripture is replete with promises about you say, "Well, I'm being tempted." It's guaranteed. First Corinthians 10: you're not going to be tempted beyond what you're able. So you can't say it was too much, because He won't even allow that to happen.

Verse 14: "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do," now look at this if you've never heard this, this is amazing, "for what I will to do," I go, okay, this is what I'm going to do, "that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do."

Now, this is Paul the apostle, Paul the gun, the guy, wrote half of the New Testament, and he's saying, "The thing that I hate, that's what I do. If then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it's good. But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice."

Isn't it interesting how the thing you don't want to do comes so easily? "Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good." Now, by the way, folks, you've got to make an allowance for this. Evil is present.

You engage Jesus and say, "I want to live the way You intended," then evil says, "Well, we're right here and we're going to bring it." So when you go to do the right thing, evil is right there, but greater is He who is in you than he who's in the world, the evil that's out there. "I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man."

The new me, I love what God says, I want to do what He wants me to do. "But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." And then he says about himself, which you at sooner or later you hope you get to this point where you say, "O wretched man, O wretched woman that I am!"

You can't just let it go and say, "Oh, well, I just have a struggle, I have a problem, I have an addiction, I have a," you've got to call it what it is. It's sin. It's wretched. Now, that He can deal with. And you say, "Well, I'm going to feel terrible." You're going to feel terrible if you keep living this way. Because it doesn't work. It's just this loop you get caught in. "Oh God, forgive me. Oh, do it again. Oh God, forgive me. Oh, do it again." You say, "Am I just going to die this way?" That's not what He intended. "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

He's the answer. I keep trying to think of ways to make this more simple so that it's simple, but it's so simple you can't make it more simple. What you may be struggling with is you really don't want a relationship with Jesus. You got your ticket. I like the fact that I'm going to go to heaven. And from now on, what I'm interested in is being a moral, ethical, nice person that keeps the rules.

I'm going to put myself back under the law, because I do not want a relationship with Jesus. I don't want Him telling me how to live. I don't want Him even living in me and through me because He's going to get me doing things I really don't want to do. And so I would rather live under, sold under the law, owned by sin, and living that way than free.

You say, "Well, that didn't sound good. How do I get a relationship?" If you're a Christian, you already have one eternally. But do you have one daily? Now, what is involved in a relationship? It's going to take some time. It's going to take some conversation. You're going to end up doing some things that go against whatever everything in you wants to do, but once you yield and say, "You know what, Lord, I'm tired of this fight. Let's do what You want to do. You take over."

And you go, "Yeah, but my life's going to suck." How do you know? You haven't given it a shot. I love all these people, "Oh, if I give my life to Jesus, He's going to ruin it." You're doing a great job of that already. How could He possibly do any worse? Because we end up doing what? Breaking the laws that we were so determined to prove we could do.

Okay, so go read Galatians chapter three on your own. Don't read it now. And it'll give you some more explanation about this. I'm not going to take the time to read this, but I do want to go over to Galatians chapter five in the context of what I've just said.

Verse 16, and I've read this repeatedly, and you say why do you keep coming back to this? It's important that you understand and hopefully this context will help it make more sense. Paul again writing, he says, "I say then: walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." And then a similar argument he just made over in Romans: "For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law."

So you want to get out from under all these dos and don'ts and the rules? You say, "Well, what happens then if I don't keep all the rules?" You're going to end up doing the right thing. How's that going to happen? Because you're walking in the Spirit and He's not going to lead you to do something you shouldn't be doing. But you have the power to do what He wants you to do because He's the one that's living in you and through you to accomplish it.

Now it can't be that easy. Try it. Give Him a day, give Him a couple hours. Just a couple hours. Say, "Okay, we're going to make a run at this. You take over." Now you say, "What's going to happen?" You're going to have to listen to Him and you're going to have to be willing to go where He says go, do what He says do, say what He says say, be quiet when He says to be quiet, and stop running your own life and mouth.

You say, "But what if I get in a situation and He tries to talk to somebody that I don't want to talk to?" Then it's over. Not your relationship with Him, but you just shut Him down. "Well, I don't want to be uncomfortable." And again, how much more uncomfortable can you get than the way you're living?

You'd be amazed how crazy fun it can be sometimes. Because you'll find yourself saying things to people that you might not have said, but when Jesus says it, you go, "Wow, did I say that?" And He says, "Not really. It was Me, but you let Me, so good job. Because you never would have come up with that on your own."

I hate and love the movie The Help. If you haven't seen that, it's an old movie now. Those black maids go in those white houses. They lived in terrible conditions, terrible jobs, terrible, terrible, terrible. And yet something about a black maid in that environment could look at a little white kid and say what? Three things. What she say? "You is smart, you is kind, you is important."

Where'd that come from? "Forget these little white kids. Hope they burn in hell. I'll be nice, I'll smile. I ain't raising these kids, not my kids." How does a black maid in somebody else's house, not even with her own kids, spending time with her own kids, and looking at a little kid—where does that stuff come from? Somewhere else.

When He changes your heart, everything changes. You find yourself talking to people you never would have spoken to. You find yourself loving people you never would have loved. Something changes, and a lot of racial and hatred and all kind of mess just goes. That's not me. If you want to live that way, you live that way, but that's not me. If I'm going to live in this house, I'm going to run this house. Let Me run this house, and I will change your life and everybody's life around you.

Guest (Male): We'll get back to Richard in a moment to close out today's talk. But first, I want to share something with you about the program. Our mission is actually very simple: to take the planet. So it's our prayer that these daily talks from Richard aren't something you only hear and enjoy, but that they inspire you to share with others. Together, we can do this. The message of the gospel is something everyone needs to hear, and that's why it's a huge priority to us. And you can join us in this important mission. Call us at 855-6-RICHARD to say you're in, or you can get on board with us through our website, richardellistalks.com. Well, here's Richard with some closing thoughts for you.

Richard Ellis: So instead of coveting some woman's five-inch heels, getting all attitudinal, you go, "Wow, those are some beautiful shoes. I love your shoes. Well, I don't have any shoes like that." Compliment somebody. Stop wanting everybody else's stuff and let them enjoy it and be glad for them. Simple stuff.

Instead of seeing some person with beautiful eyes and why didn't I get those eyes? "Wow, you have beautiful eyes. They light up." You say, "Well, pretty people, they don't need any encouragement." How do you know that? Some of the most insecure people I've ever met are beautiful people.

So say, "Lord, we're going to make a run at this. I'm going to let You live in me and through me. I'm going to walk in the Spirit. No dos and don'ts, no rules. You show me." "Oh, that's dangerous. What if somebody gets out of bounds?" You're already out of bounds.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening today to Richard Ellis Talks. We're confident that the program blessed you and we want to hear about it. One way is to give us a call and let us know. The number is 855-6-RICHARD. Another way is to drop us an email. Jump on over to our website, richardellistalks.com, and click on the Connect tab at the top. We'd love to hear from you.

And while you're there at the website, it's the best way to stay up to date with all the audio and video talks with Richard, post on the prayer wall, how you can join the team, and even a place where you can ask any questions you have to get straight biblical answers. Check it out: richardellistalks.com.

Finally, we're grateful when you help us with the cost to bring you this program. Call us at 855-6-RICHARD or you can contribute through the website, richardellistalks.com. That's 855-6-RICHARD or richardellistalks.com. Until next time, thanks for listening to Richard Ellis Talks.