Practice

Why does following Jesus sometimes feel harder than falling back into old habits? Why do we keep struggling with the same sins, patterns, and failures? If you've ever wondered whether you're simply bad at being a Christian, this message is for you.

In this episode of The Dirt Path Sermon Podcast, Pastor Jason Barnett opens 1 John 3:4-10 and explores the difference between sin management and spiritual transformation. Jesus did not come merely to forgive sinners and leave them where they are. He came to destroy the works of the devil and reclaim what sin has damaged.

Together we'll discover:

• Why living for Jesus can feel difficult in a broken world
• What John means when he says, "sin is rebellion"
• How spiritual habits shape the direction of our lives
• Why Christianity is about family resemblance, not behavior modification
• How Jesus is still taking ground from the enemy today
• Why you are not doomed to run on the same hamster wheel of sin and dysfunction forever

Whether you're a new believer, a mature Christian, or someone who feels stuck and discouraged, this message offers hope. The same Jesus who saved you is still at work in you.

Jesus is still taking ground from the enemy, and He can take ground in your life too.

Linkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.

Ravenna Church of the Nazarene
530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472

Transcript

Pastor Jason 0:00

The greatest lie many Christians believe is that Jesus died just to get them into heaven. But no, Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and reclaim what sin has damaged. I'm Pastor Jason Barnett, and this is the Dirt Passerman Podcast. So you get to hear some of our congregation members, their kids, and stuff in the background. And I love that. I think that part is uh adds to this podcast a little bit. But last Sunday, uh somewhere between the lapel mics we use that directly feed our life video, not the in-house ones, but they the ones that are connected to our Facebook, or maybe it was Facebook itself having connectivity issues, or it could have just been our internet because we are located in Estel County, Kentucky, in the mountains here. I don't know. And it was a rather wet week last week. But for what for whatever reason, um our live stream decided to take the morning off. So this week's episode is gonna be a little bit different. Uh, instead of a a um you listening to being able to hear what they heard in-house, uh, this is gonna be a re-recording, a fresh recording of a message that meant a great deal to our church family last week. So again, if you're new with this, uh this is not the normal way you listen. If you're a regular, I'm sorry you're gonna miss out the background noise, but you get a kind of a rare moment where you get a fresh version of a sermon. Now it's already been preached, but I guess you all get the second version of it here today. Um, before we jump in, maybe you've asked yourself this question before. If Jesus changed me, why does the old life still seem easier? Why am I so good at sinning and so bad at following Jesus? And why do I keep finding myself running the same patterns, fighting the same battles, and struggling with the same things? And if you've ever wondered whether change is really possible, or maybe you're just tired of feeling like you just you're just managing your brokenness while waiting for heaven, then I think you need to hear this message. And this message is in 1 John chapter 3, and we're going to discover that Jesus did not come merely to forgive sinners and leave them where they are, he came to destroy the works of the devil and reclaim what sin has damaged. So wherever you're listening from, I'm grateful you've joined me and let's open God's word together. Some of you all maybe remember this, but a few years ago, there was a discussion online where someone argued that they could do just as good a job as a surgeon without all the years of medical training. Now, imagine you're you are that person's patient. You're lying on the operating table, instead of the doctor, you get that joker coming in. And they say to you, don't worry, I've watched six hours of YouTube videos. I've got the general idea. How confident would you be? I bet you you'd be changing hospitals real quick, wouldn't you? Why? Because nobody except expects someone to be good at something without practice. There are no accidental surgeons. There are no accidental mechanics or musicians or athletes. What we practice shapes what we become, and that's that's why I'm not a mechanic. Right? Like I can do some things, but um I can take a two-hour project or I can take an hour project and turn it into a two, three, four whole day ordeal when it comes to working on a car just not that long ago. Well, my wife has a Kia Optima, and we've had nothing but problems out of this thing. It's a 2018. And one of the main problems we keep having over and over again is the headlight bulb keeps going out. And so I've gotten pretty proficient now at changing them out. But that first time I went to change one out, I hit my wrist and I actually dropped the replacement bulb inside like the headlight lens. And I like never fished it out. So I turned that one, you know, that that simple 15-minute project into two hours. Uh but again, as I've gotten to do it more, I've gotten faster at it. Uh again, what we practice shapes what we become. And so we understand this principle with many things in life. But when it comes to living for Jesus, we think somehow this is different. Right? But there's there is no patience in the Christian life without practicing patience. And we expect holiness, but without practicing holiness, right? You just like anything else in this life, living for Jesus is about developing a pattern, developing habits. And that takes time. That doesn't happen to snap happen at the snap of a fingers. That sounded really bad, didn't it? But it doesn't happen when you snap your fingers just like that, right? It's it's it's it takes a minute. And that's the problem. The problem is that we discover living for Jesus can be tough because we're in a world that's not operating by his standards. And here's the news flash. You can make all the rules you want and try and orient this world to living living by his standards, but at the end of the day, the standards aren't going to change anything. And so we're we're still gonna be living in a broken, sinful world that's impacting us. And again, it doesn't take living for Jesus Jesus for well, it doesn't take living for Jesus for long for us to realize that living by our old life is easier than living for him. So the question is, why is that? Why am I so good at sinning and bad at living for Jesus? And that is exactly the issue John addresses in our passage for this message. And it's in 1 John chapter 3, and here John is going to challenge us to look beyond what we claim and examine what we practice. Alright, so 1 John chapter 3, I'm gonna be re-reading verses 4 through 10. It says, Every person who practices sin commits an act of rebellion, and sin is rebellion. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and there is no sin in him. Every person who remains in relationship to him does not sin. Any person who sins has not seen him or known him. Little children, make sure no one deceives you. The person who practices righteousness is righteous, in the same way that Jesus is righteous. And the person who practices sin belongs to the devil, because the devil has been sinning since the beginning. God's son appeared for this purpose to destroy the works of the devil. Those born from God don't practice sin because God's DNA remains in them. They can't sin because they are born from God. And this is how God's children and the devil's children are apparent. Everyone who doesn't practice righteousness is not from God, including the person who doesn't love a brother or sister. Now, this is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Now, in these verses, and actually in this letter as a whole, John is an old pastor, and he's an older pastor writing to a church threatened by false teachers. And again, you can if you read throughout this letter, time and again, Paul, or John's going to use this phrase, little children. And again, it's like an older pastor speaking down to this flock of people he raised up. They may be younger than him, or they may just be younger than him in the faith. But either way, he he recognizes that he is in a position of a leadership and of eldership, right? He's just older than the other ones. And so again, he's he's writing to a church threatened by false teachers. And in this letter, he's challenged what the false teachers are telling them, right? And then what kind of the idea that uh what most scholars think that the false teachers are teaching on, uh it's kind of the beginning of Gnosticism. If you're not really what they're getting at is it uh kind of the core of the teaching that John is addressing is these false teachers are suggesting that it's faith is the only thing that matters. As long as you have faith, it doesn't matter what you do after that point. And so that's what John is addressing in this letter. And he's challenging what these false teachers are saying by sharing about both truth and love. And that's what John's been doing up to this point in the letter. But now John's taking it a step further. Right? Now he's calling them to obedience, which is evidence of the truth, then them recognizing the truth and the love that they have for God and the love that they have for neighbor. Um, so again, this is not a sermon, this is not a try harder sermon. And again, if you heard those verses, you're trying, you're probably wondering how this connects to that question of why am I so bad at living for Jesus and so good at sinning, right? Uh but stick with me. If you stick with me, we'll get to that here in a few minutes. But let me walk you through these verses first. In verse 4, here at 1 John 3, John writes, every person who practices sin commits an act of rebellion, and sin is rebellion. Now, when we think about sin, especially in our modern context, what we think about is breaking the rules, right? As long as we don't break the rules that God has laid out for us, we're fine. So we think, so it's it's just like that. These are the rules, as long as they don't break them, that's that's great. But what John is getting at here, and to the early Christians of their day, and even to the Jewish people that would have been listening to John's message, but especially the Jewish Christians, uh, sin was more than is much more than that. Uh when he's talking about rebellion here, it's it's referring to the same act as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, right? They they knew what God's law was. They didn't have a sinful nature, they just chose to try and do things on their own. They and that choice was an act of rebellion against God and what God wanted from them. So what sin what what sin really is is choosing our way over God's way. And whenever we choose our way over God's way, that's an act of rebellion. All right, now let's continue on verses five and six. It says, You know that he appeared, and he here refers to Jesus, you know that Jesus appeared to take away sins, and there is no sin in him. And every person who remains in relationship to him does not sin. And any person who sins has not seen him or known him. So what John is saying in these verses is Jesus did not come to pacify us in our sin, right? He's not coming so that way, you know, we can put faith in Jesus and then continue living the same life we always lived, right? And be happy about it. Um, or he didn't come just to die on the cross to shut us up and about crying about the oppression that sin is doing upon us. And again, Jesus didn't come to justify us in our sins, right? He that's not what he came to do at all. Jesus didn't come to just treat the symptoms of sin. Jesus came to take sin away. This is like a relocation type scenario. And in this case, Jesus is coming as God in the flesh. The whole reason for his coming was to take sin and cast it into the sea of God's forgetfulness, casting it out of existence, casting it, you know, one day we know in the lake of fire later on. So again, what John is sharing here is remember, the false teachers were showing that faith mattered and that was unaffected by a person's behavior. But John is saying, no, that's not the case. Jesus, Jesus didn't come just to keep you in sin. He didn't come to change the nature of sin. He came to transform the sinner by taking sin away from them. So John, right here in these verses, is asking, if Jesus came to take away sin, why would we continue embracing it? In other words, John is saying faith matters and behavior matters too, because it's a reflection of your faith. Now, John's going to emphasize that point here in the next two verses. He says, Make sure no one deceives you. The person who practices righteousness is righteous in the same way that Jesus is righteous. The person who practices sin belongs to the devil because the devil has been sinning since the beginning. God's son appeared for this purpose to destroy the works of the devil. So we're coming back to this idea of what a person does reveals what they are. So remember, the false teachers are saying that as long as you have faith, it doesn't matter what you do. John is saying what you do will reveal your faith. He says Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. He didn't come to pacify them, he didn't come to set up camp and applaud them. He didn't come to appease them. He didn't come to just try and find ways for us to cope with it. He came to destroy them. That word destroy, it's more than just eradicate. It's deeper than that. So again, the deception John is warning against is the idea of a person that the idea that a person can claim faith in Jesus, the same Jesus who came to undo the devil's actions, but that same person practicing the very works Jesus came to dismantle. Again, it's kind of like daylight savings time, right? It makes no sense for a person to do that, right? Um daylight saving saving time is literally taking a day and thinking that if we just shift the clock in one direction or another, we somehow stretch out that same 24-hour period and make it longer. That's not really accurate. You're just messing with the clock to make it fit. And that's exactly what John's getting at. Then John goes on further in verses 9 and 10 here. In verses 9 and 10, they're all about family resemblance. Uh he says, those born from God don't practice sin because God's DNA remains in them. Your version may say God's seed remains in them. It's it's this idea of because you're born again from above, you have God's spirit in you. Now, again, this is again this verse is talking about family resemblances. And to us, this is a cute illustration. Right? When we think of that, we think of the kid, you know, going and putting daddy's work boots on or going and pretending to sweep mom, you know, dressing up like the parents or pretending they're like their parents. But this is more than that, right? And for the first century Jewish Christian, this was everything. A child was formed by their father's reputation. If their father had a bad reputation, it was gonna impact them, it's gonna set them up poorly for the future. But also the flip side, of the father that had a good reputation, right, uh one of the worst things that a child could do then was tarnish that reputation.

unknown 17:54

Right?

Pastor Jason 17:55

They wanted to live up as a reflection, as a resemblance of who their parent their father was in this culture. So John is asking when people look at them as Christians, what do they see? Do they see a real resemblance to Jesus? Or do they see something else? All right, now, again, if you've been following along, you know what our opening question uh uh is. Uh it's uh what was it? Why am I so bad at following Jesus, so good at sinning, right? And you may listen to these verses. At first glance, they they seem to do a good job of defining sin and what sin means for us. But you're probably curious, how again, how does this help us with the question? And again, we read him and we feel like we might be like the guy who watched a YouTube video and thought he was a surgeon. We might feel like we're an imposter or we're not something in this is telling us there's more to the Christian life than this, and we're we're not getting it. We're following short. But again, John is not giving us these words and these verses, he's not giving us a list of rules here. Notice that. If you look in verses 4 through 10, it talks about sin, it defines what sin is, but it never gives us a list of rules in this moment. Because why? Because rules will not help us. Rules or the lack of rules is not the issue in our Christian life. In this verses, John is talking about the Christian life. But so often when we think about Christian living, our goal becomes sin management. But the goal of Christianity is not sin management, but growing in the family resemblance to Jesus. Are we growing to up to look like him? Again, notice what he does, what John does not say in these verses or anyone else in this letter. Or he doesn't he doesn't say in his gospel. He he does not say try harder. You trying harder to live for Jesus is not the issue. You're recognizing there's an issue, but that you trying harder is not the issue. What John connects sin to in our life. Well, John takes the issue as sin, he connects the removal of sin to Jesus. Remember, he says, Jesus came to take away sin. He says Jesus is the one responsible for undoing the works of the devil and unbinding us from them. And he writes that it's it is Jesus, God's DNA in us, that does it. So the focus in these verses is not behavior modification, it's transformation. Jesus came to undo, dismantle, destroy the works of Satan. He came to take ground from the enemy. Think of it this way, right? Go all the way back to Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2. And Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 describe to us the world that God designed. The world that was good. That was described as very good. The world before sin and the humanity existed. These were the factory settings, right? That's the way God intended it. He intended it as this as male, he created the male and female in his image, right? A resemblance of him to the rest of creation. He created them to not have a hierarchy of one is more powerful than the other. He created the man and the woman. Yeah, they're different, but they're the same. They're partners in managing and stewarding God's creation together. That's the way God created them. They were sinless. But because they chose sin, right? And that's what Genesis 3 is about. They chose sin. Sin becomes this curse upon humanity. Again, we so many times read Genesis 3 and we think that is a curse that God places on us. That is not a curse from God. God is simply just saying, because you sin, these are going to be the results of it. Sin brings its own curse upon it. The curse of sin is death. The curse of sin is hierarchy and struggle. The curse of sin is you and I, as human beings, were born sinful into this world. That's why when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus in John 3, he says, you must be born again. That word born again. And if you've been following church culture for a long time, you've heard it before. But what born again simply means is you've got to be born again from above. And why would Jesus say we have to be born again? It's because there was something wrong with the way we were born the first time. We were born sinful. And every everyone again, every one of us, we practice something. We all have habits, patterns, and ways of responding to life. And because we are just like Adam and Eve, who passed on the sinful nature to us, we've had a lifetime of sinning in a sinful world. And that's what makes us bad at following Jesus. It's not that we don't love him, it's that it's that we need to allow him to transform us from the inside out. So you might you might say, I love Jesus. You might have placed your faith in Jesus, and then it was a glorious moment where you his Holy Spirit washed over you, and you sense the grace washing the sins that you committed away. And you recognize that through his grace you are forgiven. And indeed, you are forgiven. Some of us as Nazarenes, we believe in this idea of being entirely sanctified.

unknown 24:19

Right?

Pastor Jason 24:20

That sin nature I'm describing that we are not stuck and bound by, right? When Jesus says, I came to make all things new, when I came to, he came to restore, renew, redeem, he came so that we could be born again. Why does he be using those words? It's because God is the God's goal by sending Jesus was to restore you and I to factory settings, right? Adam and Eve were created without a sin nature. Now, when I say God came to deal and take away our sin nature as well as our sins we've committed, that's not saying that we're incapable of sinning. Adam and Eve were created without a sin nature. And they still sinned. Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit without a sin nature. But when he was tempted, he was legitimately tempted. Otherwise, the temptation didn't count. Hebrews talks about that. We have we can follow him, we can believe and trust Jesus because we have a Savior who was tempted in all the same ways that you and I were tempted. So Jesus would, yeah, he was conceived, formed in Mary's womb by the Holy Spirit without his sin nature, but he was he he made choices. He didn't come to change the nature of sin. Jesus came to transform the sinner. He didn't come to just relieve the symptoms of sin or play pattercake with our sin. Jesus came to take sin away and not just sin the outcome of our sin, but to take away our very nature that drives us to do it. And that's what makes us bad at living for Jesus, that sin nature. And he wants to remove that. But you can have that removed. But because you spent in your heart, so you can be saved in an instant, you can be entirely sanctified in an instant, but even then you're not done yet, right? Because you still have to learn how to live that life. Again, some patterns you you follow might reflect your old life, but but by just placing faith in Jesus, you change the trajectory of your life, right? You exchange the life destined for the finality of death for everlasting life. So that's what that's salvation. And just like a newborn baby is bad at talking, walking, eating, and going to the bathroom, when we are born again at the very beginning, we are poor at following Jesus because the habits we have are from an old life that no longer fits in the new life Jesus is forming in you. And again, we come to a moment where we become spiritually mature. We recognize that there's that there's something I'm trying to live for Jesus, but I can't. And that's that second crisis I'm referring to. And that's the Holy Spirit pulling us to being entirely sanctified. It's the Holy Spirit telling us, okay, you understand the breath that's in you now. Now let me show you how to live with this new breath that you have. And you're given that new breath, but even from there, you have to learn how to live in that new breath. You have to unlearn the patterns of the old life. And God gives you the grace to help you do that and understand that. Again, faith in Jesus is important. He is the only way to eternal life. But the mistake we make is thinking that it that is it. The mistake we make is thinking that all we need to do now is wait for our golden ticket for the pearly gates. But Jesus did not merely come to forgive sinners, that was only part of it. He came to reclaim what sin is damaged. Jesus came to restore humanity to factory settings. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. Again, when we use that word destroy, that destruction, it's not only a distant event. Again, Jesus will come to make all things new, but Jesus can and wants to do that transformation in you right now. Jesus came to take ground from the enemy, and that includes the ground the enemy still holds in you. And Jesus has already begun that work when you placed your faith in him and you were saved, when you were born again from above. Enemies snat Jesus snatched you away from the enemy. But now there's still parts of the enemy holding ground in you, and Jesus wants to take those away. Jesus wants to remove that ground the enemy of the enemy is holding in you. So what do we do when we recognize places where the old life is still holding on? And again, this sermon is not about a checklist. It's not about earning salvation. The question is, what are you practicing? And notice what I'm saying here. I'm not questioning your belief in Jesus. I'm not questioning your faith. I'm not clean. I have no reason to doubt your claim that you love Jesus and you're doing your best to live for him. But I'm also not I'm not talking about what happened in your life 10 years ago. I'm asking, what are you practicing right now? Because what you are doing shapes what you become. Just like John asked these Christians, these Jewish Christians in this letter. When people look at you, who do they see? Do they see your resemblance of Jesus? Practicing righteousness, taking on the family resemblance is all about allowing Jesus to continue his work in you. It's learning to forgive instead of holding a grudge. Instead of worry, it's trading it for prayer. Rather than hide. It's being honest. If you're a person that's full of criticism, maybe it's giving that up, giving up that spirit of criticism for a spirit of kindness. But really, what it boils down to is really transformation, living for Jesus, being good, at living for Jesus, is trusting Jesus enough to take one step of obedience in an area where God is speaking to you right now. I can't tell you what it is, but right now as you're listening to this, the Holy Spirit is saying, He is talking about that thing that you and I have been dealing with. This one pattern. Not all that you you may have a bunch more patterns that you th you know are m are are chipping you up. But the Holy Spirit is worried about one. What is that area? Then let and then what you need to do is let him gain that piece of ground in your life. That's a piece of ground in your life that the enemy holds. But Jesus is saying, I can take it. Now he's not gonna come in like a SWAT team member and take it from you. Jesus is much too much, Jesus is too much of a gentleman to do that. And Revelation tells us, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. Jesus hasn't changed what you let him into your heart. He's still the same person. If you tell him that he has to stay in the living room, he's gonna stay in the living room, he's a good guest. He's not gonna go peeking in your closets or in the refrigerator until you give him access to it. And whatever that piece of ground that the enemy's holding in your life is, it maybe it's a closet, maybe it's space under the bed. But you've let Jesus in the room now. You've given him permission, he spotted it. And Jesus saying, I want you to give that to me. Let the Holy Spirit have the one spot where your old life is hanging on so he can breathe new life into it. Let him serve the eviction nose to a place where sin, bitterness, fear, pride, resentment, or selfishness has made itself at home. I believe today that you are not stuck. You are not doomed to keep running on the same hamster wheel of patterns. You are not trapped by your past, your family history, or your struggles. The same Jesus who saved you is still at work in you. The same Jesus who forgave your sin is still transforming your life. So, whatever it is, give Jesus that ground. Jesus is still taking ground from the enemy. And he can take ground in your life. As we close this message, uh I close this sermon in person with the song uh by For King and Country called Burn the Ships. And I want to share that with you a bit because the image, I think the image is important for what the sermon was talking about. And what I think the Holy Spirit's trying to communicate to us through first John here. And that phrase, burn the ships, comes from an old story about soldiers landing on enemy territory. And once they arrived, their leader ordered the ships burned. There would be no retreat, no going back. Ford was the only option. And maybe that's where you are today. Maybe there's a piece of ground in your life that Jesus has been putting his finger on. Maybe it's bitterness, fear, pride, worry, resentment, dishonesty, criticism, or some old pattern that keeps pulling you back into the life Jesus died to set you free from. But friends, Jesus did not save you so you could spend the rest of your life managing your brokenness and waiting for heaven. He came to destroy the works of the devil and reclaim what sin has damaged. And he's still doing that today. So maybe your prayer today isn't, Lord, make me perfect overnight. Your prayer is Jesus, take this ground. So burn the ships. Stop keeping the old life as a backup plan. Stop believing you are doomed to run the same hamster wheel forever. Trust him enough to take the next step. Because Jesus is still taking ground from the enemy. And he can take ground in your life too. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for loving us enough to not leave us where you found us. Thank you for sending your son not only to forgive our sins, but to destroy the works of the devil and reclaim what sin has damaged. And Lord, there are places in our hearts where the old life still tries to hang on. Places of fear, pride, bitterness, and old habits. And we surrender those places to you today. Those places the ground the enemy is still holding ground. We give you permission to take that ground from him in our life. Continue your work in us. Teach us to practice righteousness. Teach us to resemble Jesus. And remind us that we are not stuck because the same Christ who saved us is still transforming us in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Now, friend, if this message encouraged you, challenged you, or if God is used it to speak to you, I would love to hear from you. You can send me a testimony, a prayer, a request that you have, or just let me know where you're listening from. You can do that by uh emailing dirtpathpastor at gmail.com. It's dirtpath at gmail.com. And it's always encouraging to hear how God is working in people's lives. And it would be an honor for me to pray with you and even journey for with you if you need someone to journey with you. Um also again if this message helps you, would you consider sharing it with someone else? Sometimes the person who needs hope the most is the person who never thought they needed to hear a sermon podcast. And perhaps the only way they can hear it or come across is by you sharing this particular episode. Um if you'd like to support this show, uh you can do so. There is a subscribe button. And just know if you subscribe to the show and you want to become a regular supporter, uh, you're welcome to do that. And I'm not pressuring you in any way. And I want you to know that I don't take any of the money myself from this show. Whatever the show brings in, uh I give to the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries and specifically their disaster relief fund. And what the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries do is when life is at its hardest, when it's its darkest, where it seems like there is no hope, they go and be shine a little light in the darkness by being the hands and feet of Jesus, helping people recover up the storms and hurricanes and things like that. So these storms that just rocked the Midwest, you can you you believe the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries is going to be evolved in some of these processes of cleanup and helping people. And your supporting this show will help them in those efforts. Um you can find a link in the show notes. Um, before let me before you go, let me leave you with this. The old life may explain where you came from, but it does not determine where Christ is taking you. You're not trapped by your past. You're not doomed to repeat the same patterns forever. You are not alone in the fight. Jesus is still taking ground from the enemy, and he can take ground in your life too. Until next time, grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bassman Podcast. It's recorded by miniature sneakers. If you'd like to send me a message, just simply show