The Master‘s Class, LifeChange Church Wichita

USING GOD'S POWER TO DEFEAT SIN

In a break from our traditional Bible study lesson, here are three scenarios that will help you understand how the believer is dead to the power of sin in their lives.  If you can apply these concepts in your life, then the Holy Spirit can give you victory over any sin.  There is no sin too big for God to remove from your life.

CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE (Romans 6:14-18)

Certainly, one of the most frustrating parts of living the victorious Christian life is the sin that keeps showing up in our lives.  Whether it is the occasional sin, or one that has built a stronghold in our lives that we just cannot seem to get rid of, sin keeps showing up in our lives.  Why does it keep happening?  We know we shouldn't do it, but we do it anyway.  Why?  Is there any hope for us to stop?

If you do not know Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you have only one choice, come and make Jesus Christ your Lord and Master.  That is the only way.  You cannot defeat sin on your own.  You are a slave to sin and it is only the saving work of Jesus Christ that can provide for your freedom from the dominion of sin over you.

If you are a believer, then God’s Word says that you are dead to sin, that you are free from the dominion of sin over you, and so you must choose you this day whom you will serve, either God or sin.  God has declared that sin shall not have dominion over the life of the believer.  There is no sin in your life that God cannot break the power of, if you choose to turn it over to God.  But you must believe that God can do what He says in His Word and you must really want Him to break that sin.  It is not a matter of how hard you try to stop that sin, for you cannot do it on your own.  It is a matter of how obedient you want to be to God as your Master.  

Listen to this podcast to learn how you can choose God as your Master and become free from any sin in your life.  God wants to work in your life.  The question is do you really want Him to?

HOW TO HAVE VICTORY BY SURRENDER (Romans 6:10-13)

To claim victory by surrendering appears to be an oxymoron.  How can anyone be victorious when they surrender to the will of another?  Someone once said, to the victor goes the spoils.  Yet, to be a victorious Christian, to live the life that God wants, we must surrender our will to that of Christ. The source of our power to be victorious over sin, Satan, and the things of this world, descends from Jesus Christ who has been placed above all things. 

We do not have to possess physical, intellectual, financial, or political strength to overcome Satan.  When you are willing to be to Jesus what Jesus was in His humanity to the Father, then Jesus will be to your humanity what the Father was to Him.  

When you fully surrender your life to Jesus, His Spirit will empower you to become victorious over sin.  Whatever sin that you have in your life, when you surrender it to Christ, Satan no longer has control over that portion of your life. 

Living victoriously isn’t your responsibility, it is your response to God’s ability. We are conquerors through Christ. In our lesson today, Paul is telling us that in order to be victorious over sin:

We must know that we are dead to sin.  Sin no longer has dominion over us.

We must reckon that knowledge in our lives.  Christ has more than adequately provided for the sin in our lives, therefore, we must reckon this in the way that we live.  

And then, we must yield our bodies, our minds, and our spirits, totally to the will of God.  We must totally surrender our will to the will of God.

Victory over sin and death is yours through Christ.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT SIN? (Romans 6:6-10)

What value is a promise made to you if you do not believe it and appropriate it in your life?

God has said in His Word that believers have victory over sin and death.  This is God’s promise.  But what good is that promise if we do not believe it and appropriate it in our lives?

The problem is that many of us do not feel like we have died to sin.  Sin is still a problem in our lives.  We are still allowing sin to dominate our lives.  We feel like we are alive to sin.

How we feel is important to us, for it can make a real difference in our performance.  For example, God has given me the task of speaking in front of various groups of people, on both secular and Biblical issues.  When I feel confident about the subject I am going to be speaking about, I perform better, I am more relaxed, I am not worried about making a fool out of myself.  My voice projects, it is stronger, and my whole attitude is one of confidence in what I am speaking about.  In other words, I am victorious in performing the tasks that God has given me.  

However, if I were to get up and speak on something that I know nothing about, and that I have had no time to prepare my thoughts, then I would feel nervous, my words would be halting, and the word “UH” would be repeated over and over.  When I feel less confident, then I am likely to fail in the tasks that God has given me.  My feelings impact how I conduct myself.  

Now somebody might say, Well the Bible says that if God asks you to do something, He will empower you to do it. 

And I would say precisely.  I am allowing my feelings to impact my performance in my obedience to God.  God tells me in His Word that He will provide, but when I allow my feelings to guide me, I am saying that I don’t believe God.  

The same thing applies to how we deal with sin.  If we are confident in our knowledge of the Word of God, then we are victorious in dealing with sin.  Paul has said that we are dead to sin, and that we are to be totally unresponsive to it, but how can we do that?

By putting our feelings aside, and believing what God tells us and applying it in our lives.  This is what our lesson is about today.  Knowing that not only have we died to sin, but that we have also been raised to walk in the newness of life, victorious over sin and death.

HOW CAN YOU DEFEAT SIN? (Romans 6:1-5)

As a believer, would you say that you are in a constant battle with sin in your life?  

Every Christian should answer yes to this question, for Satan has never given up on destroying you, especially once you became a Christian.  But the wonderful good news that God has for us is that each believer has the power of the Holy Spirit of God to defeat sin in their life.  They can be victorious against sin.  

The process of sanctification is the ability of God to make sinners, whom He has declared righteous, actually righteous.  Paul will tell us that the justified sinner cannot continue in sin because he died and rose again in Christ.  This does not mean the believer will not sin, but it does mean that they will not continue live in sin.

To continue in sin leads to slavery.  Believers have been freed from the slavery of sin.  There is no reason for them to go back to it.  The believer has a new nature now, and he is to obey God.  

Union with Christ in His death and resurrection means that He is now our Lord and our Master.  He gives us freedom, but that freedom is not a license to live in sin.

Today, we are going to begin a series of lessons that talk about the power that we have, as Christians, to be freed from slavery.  The slavery that a lost person has to Satan and sin.  We are going to see how the power of God frees a believer from the dominance of sin in their lives and empowers them to live a victorious Christian life.

TO CARE FOR EACH OTHER (James 5:12-20)

When you think of your local church what do you think of?

In this last lesson of our study of the book of James, we learn how to care for each other.  Without question, Jesus wants our churches to be a hospital for those in need. When a Christian brother or sister is facing a trial, they should find support in the fellowship of the church.  When a person needs to find Jesus as their Lord and Savior, they should be able to find Him in our churches.  

This is the challenge that James has put before us.  We are to care for each other.  It should be evident to the world that believers care for those in need.  It should be what makes us different from the world whose main focus is to take care of themselves.  

James closes this letter with an appeal for patience as we wait upon the coming of the Lord, instruction on how to care for each other, and how the believer is to protect their witness before the world.  

TO KNOW GOOD (James 4:15-17)

If we are to know what is good in the sight of God, then we must understand what God’s will is for our lives.  

Now, it is easy to say that we are to seek God’s will in all that we do, but how do you really do that?  How do you communicate with God on such a basic level that you can determine what His will is for your next moment?

We do this by fellowshipping with God.  This is God’s desire, to fellowship with us.  When we pray to God and God responds, that is fellowship.  It is through this fellowship that we discover God’s will for us.  It is through constant fellowship with God that we discover God’s will for the next moment, the next day, and so forth.

As believers, we have the awesome capability of fellowshipping with the almighty Creator of all things.  Yet, even as a believer we must deal with the sin in our lives or that sin will cause our communication line with God to be blocked.  Sin separates us from God. 

If you want to know good, then you must fellowship with God.  If you want to fellowship with God, then you must deal with the sin in your life.  

Listen to this podcast to learn how fellowshipping with the almighty Creator of all things is possible for you.

HOW GOD'S WISDOM SHINES THROUGH YOU (James 3:17-18)

If you were to list the characteristics of Jesus as He lived on the earth you would probably use words like, peacemaker, gentle, easy to approach, merciful, pure, unbiased, and without hypocrisy.  These are the characteristics of God’s wisdom, and they are the characteristics that a true Christian is to exhibit as they deal with those around them.  

When someone makes Jesus Christ their Lord and Master, they are reborn and regenerated, they become a new person, and with the power of the Holy Spirit working through them these characteristics become the way a believer will behave.  It is the evidence that a revolution has occurred in that person’s life, and that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Master.  

Being a Christian is more than just saying a prayer and mumbling some words.   We are saved by God’s grace, we do not work for our salvation, but our lives must show the evidence of the transformation that has occurred in our life.  The words we say, the works that we produce, the way we control our tongue, and the way we deal with those around us are the evidence of the salvation that has occurred within our lives and they identify the Master of our hearts.  

Listen to this podcast to learn how God’s wisdom is to shine through the life of a believer to such a degree that the world sees a positive difference in their lives.  Your behavior is your trademark as a Christian.

WHERE DOES WISDOM COME FROM? (James 3:13-16)

When you need wisdom, where do you go to find it?

Your family, your friends, your mentors, your teachers, the internet, or maybe even some TV or radio show host?

There is certainly some merit in going to someone who has experienced what you are going through to give you guidance on how to handle some problem that you may be facing.  If we were to look back over man’s history we would find that man has discovered many great things and overcome many difficult challenges using the knowledge and wisdom that is available to him.  Think of the advances in science, medicine, psychology, and even religion, that have occurred in just the last 100 years.  

Yet, when you consider how much more knowledge there is for man to discover, and then compare that to what we already know, you begin to realize how little we truly know today.  It would be a bold man that declared that he knows even 10% of all the knowledge that is out there to be discovered.  And with each new discovery, man must rethink everything that he knows to put it into context with what he has just discovered.  It can be an exciting and humbling experience.  

So as you go to other people in your search for wisdom, the first thing you must realize is that everyone you are talking to is giving you answers from that 10% of knowledge that man knows, and they are ignoring all of the answers that could be found in the 90% that man knows nothing about.  If you were to go to a doctor and ask him what was wrong with you, and he told you that he could tell you, but that he only knows 10% of what he needs to know to be a doctor, you would probably be skeptical of the answer, as you should be.  

So, if you don’t go to other men to find wisdom, who can you go to that can provide you with answers from all of the knowledge that man will ever be able to discover, and all of the knowledge that man can never know?

Listen to this podcast to discover that there are two kinds of wisdom; human wisdom, and God’s wisdom.  Human wisdom comes from man’s limited knowledge.  God’s wisdom comes from the infinite knowledge of the Creator of all things, the omniscient, the omnipotent, and the omnipresent, living God. 

IS IT POSSIBLE TO CONTROL YOUR TONGUE? (James 3:6-12)

Is it possible to control what we say?

We usually want to say the right thing, so why don’t we?  Most of us will find ourselves having to apologize for saying something that hurt someone else on a regular basis.  Is there no way to control what our tongue says?

The tongue is powerful enough to impact all of the circumstances of life.  

It is destructive enough to affect the whole realm of human activity.  

And it is vile enough to contaminate the whole sphere of our earthly life.

The tongue can ignite all of our worst passions of lust, envy, hatred, malice, and murder and the fallout is all kinds of evil.

When our political leaders use their words to lie to us, to mislead us, to defraud us, and to stir up feelings of class envy, of class warfare, and of racial hatred, the fallout affects everyone in this country and of those around the world.  It affects the circumstances that we live in.

  

James tells us that no man can tame his own tongue.  We can tame the wild beasts, but we cannot tame our tongue even when we use our best efforts.  The words we say can bless those around us, and they can curse the same people.  They can sing praises in harmony one moment, and then explode in profanity the next.  

But there is a way for you to control your tongue.  Listen to this podcast to learn that God can tame your tongue.  It is when the Holy Spirit of God is in control of the heart of a believer that God can use the words that come from your tongue for His work.