New Spirit Old Flesh

SPEAKER A You once to every time in the sight of the good or evil sky don't break on you that I choice of life forever with that darkness. And. SPEAKER B The Bible assures us in Ephesians two, verses eight to ten, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Welcome to faith to faith Here are your hosts, Ettienne McClintock and Braedan Entermann. SPEAKER C Dear listener, greetings and a warm welcome. Thank you for joining us on the program. I'm glad to have your company and Braedan is in the studio here with me. And we're looking forward to having a wonderful conversation about a thing that's plagued all of humanity since sin entered the world. And quite often that's misunderstood in regards to the plan of salvation and how we are to conduct our lives moving forwards. So just before we start, we're just going to ask God to bless us and ask for the Holy Spirit to lead us in our study. Gracious Father in heaven, we're grateful for your love. We thank you for Jesus, who means so much to us, Father, that Jesus'victory is a victory that we can claim as ours as well. We're grateful, Father, for this wonderful plan of salvation. We're grateful for the word of God that can help us understand these things. But ultimately, Father, we can't understand these things in the natural sense. We need the Holy Spirit to reveal them to us. And we just pray for that revelation today in our study. This is our prayer in Jesus name. Amen. SPEAKER D Amen. SPEAKER C So, Braedan, we've discussed in the past that we are born with a fallen human nature. And quite often when people come to the know for the first time or they become baptized, they expect a dramatic change in who they are as a human being. Now, we know that anyone is in Christ. He's a new creation. We've discussed that in the past. But there's something that sometimes can be misunderstood by people and they can become very discouraged. Now, to illustrate, what I'm saying is we expect a high sense of achievement. We expect a high ability that we all of a sudden now have received when we are converted. But then when we start going through our life, we start realizing, but there's some challenges because the flesh has not been taken care of. Our fallen human nature, our sinful flesh is still present. Now, we thought that should have been washed away. I just want to give a little illustration about that. When I grew up, at the age of twelve, they had a tour in South Africa. They would go through all these hills and mountains and they left some flats. It's like the Tour de France, but the African version of it, right? And I would look at these guys and I was fascinated that some of these guys would be able to get up to speeds of 100 down the hill. And they were cruising sometimes these cars, keeping up with them. And I'm thinking, well, if I could get a proper bike, because I had this old bike, it was like a little three speed, right, and it wasn't all that fast. And to change the gears, you actually had a free wheel, then change the gear and then you could pedal. It's not like you keep on pedaling, like with a racer, and then it will magically go up through the cogs or down through the cogs as you change the gears. So what happened is my bike got stolen. I was very disappointed. My bike, it got stolen. But the good news was my dad was able to buy me a brand new bike. And at that time, the twelve speed was the latest and the greatest. Before there was the ten speed, but now they had twelve speed. SPEAKER D What would you do with all those gears? SPEAKER C I was just thinking, I've got two more gears than the one that my friend had, I'm going to be able to go faster. That was in my mind, right? So I thought, look, if my dad buys me this bike, what I'll be able to do is I'll be able to get onto the freeway. And at 60 km, well, that's not really a freeway, but on the road it was a double lane on both sides. Where they do 60 will actually be able to keep up with them because on television I've seen them do 100. Not only that, I'll probably be able to pass them. Just think how impressive that would be. Now, in my little mind, I couldn't remember any seeing anybody doing that. It's probably because there weren't a lot of cyclists around. I thought so. The day that my dad bought me this bike, I was so excited. And once we'd gone down the hill, over the river, then up the other side on the flat, I said, dad, would you mind dropping me off here? We're about 5 km from home. I would like to bike home on my new bike. And he said, yeah, that's fine. He said, we'll keep up with you. No, you keep up with me. I thought I'd be able to achieve some great feats here anyway. So I got on the bike and started going, started learning how to change the gears. And I'm not getting up to the pace of the cars. Now the cars are doing maybe 60. Think there's something wrong with this bike, that's twelve speed. And then I realized, but I'm starting to get tired fairly quickly here because I'm trying to get my pace up to the pace of the cars and I cannot sustain it. I'm getting close, but not close enough. They're all passing me and I go, well, this is not what I expected. I expected be able to do 60, put my hand out, pass a car, wave at them. As I'm going past, there was all these thoughts of glory. SPEAKER D It looked so good in the imagination. SPEAKER C In the imagination. My mind at the age of twelve, was writing some checks that I discovered I couldn't cash. SPEAKER D Interesting. SPEAKER C And I was so disappointed. And then later, of course, as I started biking more, I started getting fitter and I was able to actually do a lot more. But it almost cost me my life. It almost got run over because what happens? The next morning I took my bike to school and at the top of the hill there was a T intersection and there were cars going, turning left and right and then going across in front of me. And I saw a gap. It's a gap that my dad typically would take in his car with not too many problems. And I saw the gap and I jumped on my bike and started pedaling. But my bike wasn't moving as fast as I thought it would. And this car was hurting. That hit their brakes. They almost ran me over. And this is where I realized I had the second lesson. Within 24 hours. That what I thought I could do, I was not capable of doing. Although I had a brand new bike. SPEAKER D It's interesting. Have you ever heard the old saying, all the gear and no idea, someone gets they get excited about a particular thing, it might be surfing or it might be whatever, and they go out and buy the latest and the greatest, the best, the finest, and they got no idea what to do? SPEAKER C Yes, well, that was me. SPEAKER D We have a tendency as human beings, we've got these massive and huge unrealistic expectations that we put upon ourselves in our abilities. How hard is it to surf? It looks so easy, right? SPEAKER C Great. On television, I took a surfboard out. SPEAKER D One time, I borrowed one and I had grand ideas in my mind about what that day would look like. Little did I realize I would come in just waterlogged, just coughing and gasping and just never going to pick up a surfboard again. That was a rough day. SPEAKER C Okay. SPEAKER D It was one of those boards that are a bit too buoyant. You can't dive, duck dive. SPEAKER C Yeah. SPEAKER D And so every wave that comes I just get taken at the most, wiped out. Just get wiped out. But I had all these it was very simple in my mind how it would pan out. And it didn't pan out another time I too doing some cycling. My dad and some of his friends and I, we would ride maybe 20, 30 km once or twice a week at nighttime. It was great. It's not too far on a bike, roughly an hour. It's quite social riding and then everyone gets this really great idea to join the Ipswich 100. Because I grew up in Ipswich. SPEAKER C Right? SPEAKER D The Ipswich 100, which is a 100 kilometer bike ride. And I think it might have been grade ten or something like that. And my fitness is pretty good. And so I said, yes, sign me up, I'll do it as well. I never really got to do anything more than a 30K bike ride. We did one hundred and fifty k, but I was so confident. One hundred k is like it's just another you just have to do it twice. Right. You have to just do thirty k. Yeah. And so I was so confident in that it would be okay. Jumped on that bike. I tell you what, it was terrible. Got about halfway and we're going up this hill, one of the only big hills on the bike ride. And there's this man, a huge man, going by me on this bike with little tiny cranks, so he doesn't have much room to pedal. He's overtaking me and I'm absolutely exhausted. And I get to about the faint and I could easily fall off the bike. I had to have like one of those glucose gels. SPEAKER C Oh, right. You're running out of energy. SPEAKER D I was out of energy, but at the beginning I anticipated that the story would go very differently. This is interesting. I didn't really know my capabilities and I didn't know what it would take. SPEAKER C Right. SPEAKER D So I didn't match those up too well. Had high estimations on my abilities and I had low estimations on what it would actually cost. It's interesting how God calls people this is Jesus talking in the Gospels. He calls people who want to follow him to count the cost. SPEAKER C That's true. SPEAKER D And that is to follow him intelligently, not with, erroneous, extravagant, unrealistic ideas. To follow him with your head screwed on. Right. Understanding what the cost is. He says, no one goes to war without sitting down and working out whether they are capable of actually defeating the enemy. SPEAKER C That's right. SPEAKER D And no one builds a house without budgeting and working out whether you've got enough money to finish the house. So he said, I want you to enter this whole thing of being my disciple intelligently. SPEAKER C That's right. SPEAKER D Having the right understanding. Because why is that the case? Well, otherwise you end up being you're running away on the scene of battle because you didn't do the math right. Otherwise you've got a half built house, you don't get anywhere. So Jesus says, I want you to follow me. SPEAKER C Right. And you know, quite often they may hear some stories and there are some supernatural stories, people's experiences and their lives attest to it, where they were struggling with addictions. And then somehow they just said, lord, I can't you take this away from me? And the God has taken it away, whether it be cigarettes or whether it be alcohol or something like that. And in those instances, people have heard the story and then they expect, well, if I come to the Lord, if I'm baptized, then all of a sudden all these desires that I have, my sinful desires will all be taken away in the same way. Now, we know there are exceptions, like some of those testimonies, but in my life it's never been that case. I've always had desires contrary to what I read in the scriptures. It talks about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Pride and all those things selfishness, all those things that I've got to battle with. When I got baptized, those things weren't washed away. My sins were washed away. My guilt was washed away. But there was a matter of having to surrender the flesh. So at conversion, the question could really be asked does our flesh, does our fallen nature, our sinful flesh, does it actually change? Because when we are baptized and we find out that the flesh is still the same, we can get discouraged because we've heard these stories of these remarkable, these miraculous transitions for people where they were addicted and the addictions were taken away. Now, I think addictions are a little bit different to dealing with the desires of the flesh on a regular basis. Not everything in regards to sin is necessarily an addiction. I think there is an overriding principle in fallen humanity that makes us do the wrong thing. But then some people who specialize and what I mean by specialize is they become so enslaved by it that nothing else matters. That's the only thing in their life. And then God, to break the spell that sin has on them in that environment, will actually take that away from them. Then they can cope with the rest of it. SPEAKER D I've got a verse here that I think will illustrate a little bit here. This is Proverbs 24 and verse 16. It says, for a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity. This is very interesting. This is talking about a righteous man. SPEAKER C So we're not talking about an unrighteous person. SPEAKER D We're not talking about an unrighteous person. We're talking about a righteous person. And it says that they may fall seven times. Yes, the idea of a righteous good person falling for some people, it's like, what's going on there? SPEAKER C Yeah, that's not a righteous person. But the Bible actually uses the description of righteous for someone who's fallen. But what's the difference? Why are they still righteous? SPEAKER D They get back up again. SPEAKER C That's right. If they fall five times, they get up five times. They fall seven times. SPEAKER D That kind of sounds like a battle. They trip and they get back up again and they keep walking. They trip and they get back up and they keep walking. But the wicked, on the flip side, they just fall and stay down. They just fall and stay down. SPEAKER C There are some people, just because they think of those miraculous experiences they've heard about, that their experience is going to be identical. And when they find out that is not the case, they may think that they actually were never converted. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C And they doubt the whole experience. Now, I remember reading recently in a book, Steps to Christ. Wonderful little book. Brings this out a little bit as well, where some people start making steps towards Jesus, they start abhorring sin, they start making modifications in their own life, but they never would call themselves a son or a daughter of God. They would never consider themselves to be converted quite simply because they haven't seen that switch take place in their life, where they've gone from a life of sinful flesh to a life of sinless flesh. But we are here to bring encouragement to you because what happens is you'll always have the flesh with you. The flesh changes at Glorification when Jesus transforms our body. Now, either at the resurrection for those who have fallen asleep in Jesus, or those who are then translated without seeing death. But in regards to justification, that is by faith just as much as sanctification is by faith. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C So are we talking about when we talk about conversion, are we talking about new flesh on an old spirit? Are we talking about a new spirit in old flesh? SPEAKER D That's right. I think the second one, yeah. SPEAKER C So that's the thing we've got to unpack. So it's not new flesh on an old mind. It's a new mind in old flesh. And this is how the victory is gained. So we have the flesh that we are to deny and it is with us continually. But through the grace and the power of God, we're able to resist the temptations. But the temptations are with us. And I think we can unpack temptations just in a simple way, two ways. There's temptations from without. So, you know, say maybe there's something that we're addicted to. Let's say it's alcohol. Now, we drive past the pub and we just feel this urge to go in. That is a temptation from without. Or you're at your home by yourself and all of a sudden these bad thoughts start popping up inside of you. That's a temptation from within. So dealing with those issues, God is able to give us the power, but that is just the flesh. That's just the manifestation of the flesh. SPEAKER D It's interesting. In the book of two Peter, the Bible says in verse four, it says, by which have been given to us exceeding great and precious promises. Now, we've looked a lot at the promises of God and how he keeps his promises. So it says that we've been given exceedingly great and precious that's some amazing adjectives, exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature. Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. So the Bible says that by clinging to the promise of God that he is willing to transform our lives, we are actually able to partake or receive into us the divine nature. So we've got the sinful fallen nature, which is a nature that is bent. It's basically like animals have instincts. Yes, they function in a certain way. It's their nature. We have a natural bent. It's a selfish, evil bent. But by God and by his great merciful power and the power of the Spirit working in our lives, we can actually receive the divine nature having a new drive, a new direction in our life. But the question we need to ask is when that happens, when we receive this divine nature, which is the process of conversion, receiving the new heart and the new mind, what happens to the old nature? Does it disappear? And from that moment onward we are just, everything's just fine and we're just functioning like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. What happens to it? I believe the answer can be found when we turn to the Book of Romans. Yes, we glean some very important insights. We'll start with verse twelve. It says therefore this is saying that after all of the things that Paul has shared, he says therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. If the sinful flesh is removed at conversion, this saying would not make sense. That's true, because if it's dead, it certainly can't rain. But what Paul says, he says don't let it rain. Don't let sin, the sinful nature inside of you, don't let that have control over you and don't obey it. When you feel those temptations drawing you away and enticing you away from God, don't obey it. Now that would be a bit of a rough thing to say to an average human being because we have no ability to disobey it. That's why we always do the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D But when the power of the Holy Spirit is in us, we actually are made able and capable of resisting temptation if we shoot on over to Romans, chapter seven. In verse 22, Paul says for I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. Now, according to Paul, this inward man is the divine nature, the, the thing that God has implanted in him, the new man, the new creation. He says, I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. Verse 23 but I see another law in my members or in my body, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. SPEAKER C Right. SPEAKER D So he sees a battle taking place. There's the inward man and then there's his flesh. He has the inward man which delights in the things of God, which wants to do holy things, which wants to be pure and good and noble. And there's the flesh, this other nature that is warring against it, that's trying to bring him into captivity, responds to. SPEAKER C Temptation in a way that he doesn't want it to respond. SPEAKER D That's right. And so what we find in Scripture is that God does not give us a new flesh. He gives us a new spirit, he gives us a new heart. And we are called to bring our bodies into subjection. And we can have a little look at a verse about that a little bit later. SPEAKER C Look, there's a text in the Old Testament in Jeremiah, chapter 13 and verse 23, which actually just talks about how our human nature actually functions. And it's the law of sin and death you mentioned just talking about bringing me in captivity to the law of sin and death. And this is verse 23. And it says, can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Now, the answer to that question is, no, they can't. The leopard doesn't change his spots. He's not able to. SPEAKER D You could paint it, but there'd still be a leopard. SPEAKER C That's right. This will just be a little bit of cosmetic over the top, but underneath is still exactly the same, still the same spots. Then it answers the question then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil? So what it's actually saying that it asks the question? The answer is obvious, but now it's almost assuming. Okay, let's say that they could change it. Then you can do the same good things as well that you who are accustomed to do evil, but the fact remains is they can't change their skin. So therefore you cannot do the good things that you are accustomed not to do. By nature. However, we are, as you said, clearly, we are to be partakers of the divine nature. We are to put on the new man, which is really Jesus Christ. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C And then live by looking to him, because what happens is the flesh is there as a distraction. It's to distract us if we start getting distracted and thinking, oh, I just didn't live up to performance. I was supposed to cycle at 60. I'm barely getting up to 30. I was expecting 60 because I've got another two gears now. Something has changed in my life. I've gone from a three speed to a twelve speed. That's going to make a huge difference. I'll keep up with the car and I can't even keep up with the car. Then we see there that the temptation comes to us. And it says in James, chapter one, verse 14, we all drawn out away by temptation, by our own desires and enticed. So we all of a sudden now may feel surprised, well, why do I have this desire? I've given my life to the Lord I don't expect to have this desire anymore. And then it tells us when the desire conceives, it gives birth to sin. And some we may even fall into sin. We don't want to do it like the man in Romans seven. We just read before all the good things we want to do, we can't find the power to do that. And all the bad things that we hate, these are the things that we end up doing it. Then it says there, o wretched man, who shall deliver me from this body of death? And then we can say, I thank the Lord through Jesus. Yeah, god is able. But it's not by looking to the problem, it's by looking to the solution. And what the flesh does, it distracts us, it discourages us. And I just love the text you shared there in Proverbs chapter 24 and verse 16, that a righteous man, a righteous man may fall seven times, but he gets up seven times because it's. SPEAKER D Not in the falling down, it's in the getting up. SPEAKER C It's in the getting up, yeah. SPEAKER D And so they basically have a desire to keep moving forward. The wicked, it says they just fall by calamity, they just stay down. SPEAKER C That's right. There's no getting up there, is there? SPEAKER D So the difference between the wicked and the righteous is how they respond to falling, because both fall. They both fall. But the righteous say, no, I will not allow this to define me. I've stumbled, I've kicked my toe and I've fallen. But I'm not going to be defined by that fall. I'm going to get up and keep moving. SPEAKER C Amen. SPEAKER D I'm going to get up and keep moving. And once we realize that, the Christian walk becomes a whole lot more simple. The Christian walk is a walk of faith, and God calls us to count the cost. We are called to deny the flesh? Yes, to deny the flesh. The Apostle Paul says in one Corinthians, one sorry, one Corinthians 927, he says, But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection. Subjection is another word for submission, he said, lest when I've preached to others, I myself should become disqualified. What does he do to his body, this flesh? He says, I discipline and bring it into subjection. He says, I don't allow my sinful flesh to dominate and to direct the way I do my life. He says, I bring it into subjection. Not by his own strength, of course. He claims the promises of God. He claims Scripture, just like Jesus did, and says, get behind me, Satan. Get behind me, Satan. Now, unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, the Lord is able to keep you from falling. He claims those promises and the temptations pass and he moves on and he. SPEAKER C Relies on the power of God's word that God will do exactly what he said he would. All he's waiting for is us to say, yes, Lord, I agree. Yes. Lord, I believe and I will not let doubt get in the way of my relationship with you. SPEAKER D The guy who's got the world record for the marathon at the moment is a guy from Kenya. And I will probably mispronounce his name, but his first name is Elliot. And I will not say his last name because I will get it wrong. But he did the marathon in the 2016 Olympics in 2 hours, 1 minute and 39 seconds. SPEAKER C Wow. SPEAKER D It's breathtakingly fast. SPEAKER C That is almost running at a sprint, continually almost a sprint. That is fast. SPEAKER D It is for some people, their sprint pace, I think it's like the equivalent of running 17 seconds for 100 meters wow. SPEAKER C With a squeak. Yeah. SPEAKER D Is significantly fast. And to do that over 2 hours is a very, very long time. Now, my brother, very recently, he decided to do a half marathon in one of his training runs. He ended up in hospital. It just all went wrong. He got delirious and whatever. SPEAKER C Probably got dehydrated. Dehydrated. SPEAKER D It's so easy when you bite more than you can chew. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D And you end up on the ground. God calls us to approach the Christian life not like a sprint, but like an endurance race. That's why in Hebrews chapter twelve, it says therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight in the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance. The race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. So we've been called to endure. The sinful flesh is trying to pull us back to the old life, but the Spirit of God is moving us forward. Those times where we kick our toes and stumble and fall, get up. Get up and keep moving. Because it's not about the falling, it's about the getting up again. SPEAKER C Amen. And I like the fact that it also tells us that this run with the race, with endurance, but setting our eyes on who? On Jesus, who is the author and finisher of our faith. So, dear listener, we pray that as you run the race with endurance as well, that God has set before you. Not to be discouraged if you recognize sin in your own flesh, but look to Jesus, who is the author and finisher of your faith. And by faith and confidence in him and his ability and claiming his victory as your victory, you can also be victorious. Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to catching up with you next time. Until then, God bless. SPEAKER B Thank you for joining us on Faith. To Faith. If you would like more information about today's program or if you have any questions, please contact 3ABN Australia Radio by Phoning. 02 4973 3456. Or you can send an email to [email protected] You can also contact us on our 3ABN Australia radio Facebook page. We'd love to hear from you.