Exposing the Enemy Within
By Pastor Matt Black
09 March 2008
Lord’s
Day morning
Ephesians 4:22
Scripture and Theme: Would you open your Bible to Ephesians 4:17-24 and stand with me as we honor Jesus Christ this morning? This morning we are going to search out and find out how to destroy our greatest enemy. So the title of this morning’s message is “Exposing the Enemy Within”.
The greatest fight in the universe is going on right now! The greatest fight wasn’t Mohamed Ali verses George Foreman. That made a lot of money and generated legendary publicity—even a famous documentary. Ali could “fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee”. You didn’t want to get in his way. But that wasn’t the greatest fight.
There’s another battle that we are much more concerned with today. So many times we blame it on the devil, but there’s something much more hideous that we carry around—the dead corpse of the “old man”—the wicked flesh, and it is the greatest fight that we have. It is called “the old man” in our text. And we are going to learn how to defeat and how to expose and how to do away with this, our greatest enemy.
Would you stand with me as we read Ephesians 4:17-24 concerning this fight to the death? Paul writes, “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, 18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: 19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. 20 But ye have not so learned Christ; 21 If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: 22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; 23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
[Prayer for guidance]
Introduction: We read very clearly in our text that we are to “put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts”. There is an enemy on the loose that wants to destroy your desire for holiness.
We are going to look at four things:
The old desires that fuel the old life are corrupt and stealth. They are deeply hidden and need to be exposed. The truth here is change! The wording here is used for clothing. We need examine the soiled clothing of our life and throw off the garments of sin, putting on the clean clothing of the new life.
I. First let us look at a Description of the Enemy: What is the old man? We are going to look at three main passages in the Bible that describe the old man, and what we are going to find out is that it is the whole personality of who you were before Christ gave you a new heart. It is the old you—who you were before Christ. As I said, we are going to look at the term “old man” and how it is used in three places in the New Testament. And what we’re going to find out is that the old man always describes what we WERE in our entirety before conversion.
A. Our old life is what we were, and it is done away with forever in Christ. Romans 6:6, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” The old man is done away with Positionally. In Christ, we are a new creation.
B. Our old life is what we were, and it is done away with forever in our conversion/repentance. Colossians 3:9, “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds”. The was a Point in time when we died to the old life when we came to Christ.
C. Our old life is what we were, and it is done away with forever in our daily turning away from sin and consecration to God. Ephesians 4:22, “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is [growing or being corrupted] corrupt according to the deceitful lusts”. Daily we Practice living dead to the desires of our old life and being filled with the Person and Presence of God.
So let’s review. What is the “old man”? The old man is what we WERE in our entirety before our conversion.
II. Now let us Search for the Enemy: Where can we find this enemy?
Illustration: The police put out an all out alert for a criminal. They need a full description if they are going to find him. We look for the old man. We look for that enemy, and we turn our gaze to a hill, and we see his form. There he is! What we were before we were saved is hanging there with Christ on the cross!
A. Yes, the old man is crucified with Christ on the cross. It is a defeated enemy. This old man has been dealt a decisive death blow called crucifixion and the result is that he is dead. Romans 6:6, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” There are two things here, the old man, which is dead. You will never be what you were! Sin may remain in you, but it will not reign in you—it will not rule over you and dominate you. Salvation made sure of this. You will never again return to what you were before salvation. The person you used to be was crucified with Christ at salvation, and the possibility of you returning there if you are truly saved is ZERO! Jesus says in John 10:28, “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” What this means is not that you are saved and live any way that you want—no! What this means is that Jesus promises to sanctify you and bring you to be “conformed” to His image. Whoever is elected and justified will most definitely be made holy and Christlike in this life. That is the promise of Romans 8:28-29. You will never be what you were before Christ, so live up to your calling!
Illustration: When Jimmy Carter became the 39th President of the United States, he ceased being a peanut farmer. He had a much higher calling. As President it would be unbecoming for him to spend his weeks in the peanut field. He had a much higher calling now!
Application: In the same way, we are called throughout the Bible to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Ephesians 4:1). Paul says in Philippians 1:27, “Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ”. When a lady wears a beautiful dress, we say that it is really becoming of her—it really reveals her true beauty. Does your conduct reveal the beauty of Christ within you? Walk worthy of your calling!
In other words be who you are! You are not the old man. That is what you were. The old man was defeated on the cross with Jesus Christ. He is nailed to the cross. He is hanging there. You are to be dead to the old man. “Put off…the old man”! (Ephesians 4:22). You are to put off everything that you were in your old life like an old dirty garment!
Yes, you will never be what you were before Christ! That’s wonderful and amazing. But we see something else. Even though the old man is crucified with Christ, his old corpse, the flesh, is still present with us.
B. You see, the remnants of the old man are still present in your in your flesh. Paul said “In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18). Walt Kelly during the Korean War had a cartoon character that said some famous words in 1952, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Your greatest enemy is YOU!!
Paul identified where his greatest battle took place in Romans 7:21, “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. A few verse later, Paul named his enemy again: “O wretched man that I am” (Romans 7:24). Our greatest enemy is our ourselves! That’s his whole point in Romans 7.
We must understand that our greatest battle is against ourselves!
Ø John Owen said, “The old man is nailed to the cross, he struggles, strives, and cries out with great strength”.
Ø Abraham Kueyper said, “God’s child remains the old man’s grave digger until the hour of his own departure.”
The dead copse of the old man that you dwell in day after day is your greatest enemy. It will oppose you. It is what you must struggle against daily.
1. Now let me be clear, that we do not think anything material is evil and anything immaterial is good. That is a pagan philosophy called Greek dualism.
This philosophy is easily refuted by the Bible. There is nothing wrong with your physical body. Paul said in Romans 6 that we can yield to God the members of our physical bodies as “instruments of righteousness to God”. He said later in Romans 12 that we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God, and that this is holy and acceptable to God. The problem is not with that which is material, your body, but the desires that are proceeding from your heart that you feel in your body.
2. Paul gives several theological terms for this in Romans 7:
· Romans 6:6, “old man”
· Romans 7:11, plain old “sin”
· Romans 7:17 & 20, “sin that dwelleth [lives] in me”
· Romans 7:18, “my flesh”
· Romans 7:23, “law of sin”
· Romans 7:24, “the body of this death”
· Romans 7:21 “evil present with me”
· Romans 8:2, “the law of sin and death”
Theologians have called it “indwelling sin.”
What Paul teaches in Romans and Ephesians is that since the possibility of us returning to the life we had before salvation is not possible, we should get rid of all remnants of the old man. We should remember who we are—our old life, and our old nature was crucified with Christ, but the desires and the temptations and the passions and lusts that push us and tempt us to sin remain. They remain! And you must go through death to those itches to satisfy your sin by dying to yourself.
Paul refers again to the remnants of the old man in Romans 7:18. He says, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”. So here the remnants “old man” is called Paul’s “flesh”. When God saves a sinner, he does not renovate, repair, and renew the old nature. He creates a new nature in his elect. Our old, Adamic, fallen, sinful nature is not changed. The flesh is subdued by the new man; but it will never surrender to the new man. The spirit wars against the flesh; but it will never conquer or improve the flesh. The flesh is sinful. The flesh is cursed. Thank God, the flesh must die! But it will never be improved.
In fact, Ephesians 4:22 says it is growing more and more “corrupt”. So our old man is crucified, but the corpse he left behind with all its sinful desires must be daily crucified. If God’s people really got a hold of this, we would hear of it more in our prayers, see more struggle against it in our lives, and see less of its fruit in our actions. When we find that this law is in us, and we fully realize it, we begin to echo with Paul from the very depth of our souls, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). Paul says ‘I carry around the corpse of my old life, and all it wants to do is sin!’ But he also knew what it was to die to sin and self and claim the final victory: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).
III. Cornering our Enemy.
A. We need to first see the enemy’s Battle Plan. The old man uses some stealth weaponry: “deceitful lusts”! Much of what God calls sin goes undetected in our life. If the truth were known, much of what we do that is sin goes under the radar. We get the big stuff, but we are often blind to a great deal of what God considers sin in our lives. Patterns of sin have developed, and all we are doing most of the time is dealing with the top tier sins. We deal with the dome of sin, but we never deal with the little bricks that support it. We are only dealing with the tip of the ice burg, and not the mass of sins lurking under the water that support the big sins. There are many things we do that displease God that we do without even thinking!
Let me illustrate this principle in a couple ways…
1. Let me illustrate this with a story I came across by a guy by the name of Kris Lundgaard which I think we can all relate to. He says:
All I wanted to do was surprise my wife.
Since we had moved into our new house almost a year ago, the refrigerator door handle had been on the wrong side. I had put off moving it because of my clumsiness with mechanical things. But on this Thursday afternoon while my wife was at work, I was set to redeem myself and right the wrong.
I was halfway through the job. I had the refrigerator and freezer doors off and wanted to get them back on soon so nothing would spoil. I was at the pivotal step of swapping the hinges from the right side of the refrigerator to the left, when I realized that each hinge was fastened by two torx screws. Two lousy torx screws. There is only one tool in the universe that can (safely) remove a torx screw: a torx socket.
I didn’t have a torx socket.
Right then my three boys decided to move their Traveling Sibling Rivalry Show into the middle of my angst. I lost it. I let them have it, though they didn’t deserve it. They stared at me as if I were a monster from Alpha Centauri, while I ranted in an unknown tongue.
In mid-fit I had an out-of-body experience. I saw my contorted red face screaming at my charming boys and knew at once I was doing something evil. So I stopped and asked their forgiveness right? Wrong. Something had control of me—it was as if an alien had invaded my body and was forcing me to do his bidding. It was long after they had fled from my wrath before I recovered my sanity and my conscience and humbled myself before them in groveling apologies.
I spent the next days feeling like a whipped puppy. Was I really that wicked? How could I hurt my children like that? Had I done irreparable harm? Would they forgive me? Would God forgive me?
Anything like that ever happen to you?[1]
What is it that causes the madness of the above situation? There is sin in the heart that needs to be EXPOSED!!
2. We don’t see cockroaches in the walls of restaurants, but they are there. I once demoed a cafeteria in a government building. The day before there was hot food, soft music, and people eating. They were totally unaware the hoards of roaches and rats in the walls. A day later, I was tearing down the walls with thousands of roaches pouring out. Let me ask you, what hidden sins are in your life? We want all the cockroaches to scurry out of the corners of our hearts! We want to see all the dirt so that the cleansing power of the Gospel will make us holy!
3. Before our modern day advances in medicine, surgeons would use the same scalpel on every patient without disinfecting the tools. Just as many were dying within the hospitals as those without any medical attention at all. Why? Because microscopic bacteria are just as dangerous and lethal as the more noticeable diseases! The microscope brought great advances in medicine because it uncovered the unseen and unnoticed bacteria and diseases!
That’s really what we are talking about today. We are going to bring the microscope of the Word of God to our lives to uncover sins in our life that we may be unaware of.
We all have regular medical examinations because we know that catching a disease early is the key to defeating it. Shouldn’t we have constant spiritual examinations of self? We are commanded to! “Put off…the old man!” (verse 22). Paul says it another way in Ephesians 5:11, “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”
We are to cease from evil and do good. But in order to cease from doing evil and do good. But in order to cease from evil, we must be able to see it in our lives!
What I am proposing to you is that you as a Christian have the spiritual capability and responsibility to find every disease of sin in your life, and to work toward an eradication of it.
We need to say with David in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
B. Now we need to see the enemy’s Battle Field. Where is the Enemy hiding? Where does this battle take place? Verse 23 gives us the clue. In the Mind. If we are to “be renewed in the spirit of our mind” then the putting off is referring to a change of behavior which has it’s roots in the depth of our heart and of our thinking.
The one thing that corners your enemy is: focus and remembrance. You must change your thinking! You must constantly look to Christ and see who you are in Christ. Dear friends, the standard is higher than any of us wants to admit. God calls us to a holiness that resembles His own holiness. You must remind yourself that you are not what you once were! Put off the old man! You must remind yourself of your high calling in Christ! Put off the old man, and put on the new! You are a new creation in Jesus Christ! You are called to holiness.
IV. Defeating the Enemy. How do we practically “put off…the old man”? I want to give you three ways from Scripture: don’t feed the flesh, don’t ever exercise the flesh, and don’t ever stop fighting the flesh.
A. First, don’t ever feed the flesh. We read in Romans 13:14, “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”
You can smell this word. Before a meal we say thank you for the provisions we are going to receive. The flesh wants provisions of sin. Don’t feed your flesh. Don’t feed the remnants of the sinful nature that is in you. Don’t be foolish! Don’t lead yourself into temptation.
Illustration: When you go to a forest preserve or an outdoors park, you see a sign that Yogi Bear didn’t like: “DON’T FEED THE BEARS!” The sign is there for a reason. If you give a bear food, he will eat your food, and then he will eat you. Bears have big appetites. The same is true with your flesh. If you feed your flesh, your flesh will be your master. The flesh never satisfies; it has an insatiable appetite. If you want to be satisfied, go to Jesus. Jesus will give you living water, and you will never thirst again!
1. There are certain places that are bad for you—stay out off them! To go to such a place is to feed or make provision for the flesh! You know beforehand that if you go there, your flesh will be stimulated! Therefore, never go to such places!
2. There are certain people that always have a bad influence on you, and until you are strong enough in the faith to influence them, you should avoid them!
3. The same is true with what you read or what you view. There are some newspapers and magazines that will hurt your spiritual life. They are filled with suggestive pictures of the stars. They glorify that which God hates. The vast majority of TV programs, commercials, and Hollywood films are full of innuendo and suggestion. To watch them is to make provision for the flesh. Make a covenant with your eyes like Job! Say with David, “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me” (Psalm 101:3).
Keep your eyes away from those things that entice you and attract you to sin. Job says in 31:7 that our heart walks after our eyes! Proverbs 4:25-27, “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. 26 Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. 27 Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.” Don’t feed your flesh through your eye gates!
The children’s song is true!
Ø O be careful little eyes what you see
Ø O be careful little ears what you hear
Ø O be careful little feet where you go!
If you’ve got the provisions ready, about to feed your flesh, FLEE! There is a way of escape. Always remember 1 Corinthians 10:13, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
Make no provision for the flesh! Don’t feed it!
B. Secondly, don’t ever exercise the flesh, but put it to death. Colossians 3:5-10, “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry…” We are to put to death all of the desires of the flesh.
Illustration: Have you ever went to a funeral and talked to the corpse? Imagine your surprise if you found out that the corpse began to talk and tell you how he was in love with another corpse down the hall in another coffin! That’s not going to happen (at least I hope not)! Why? Because copses have NO desires.
In the same way, Romans 6:11 tells us to “reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
In other words, IGNORE the alarm bells and sirens of desire welling up in your flesh. Turn a deaf ear to them. Put your spiritual fingers in your ears and tell those desires, “I can’t hear you! I’m dead!!”
Illustration: If you starve the flesh, the deceitful lusts will weaken their hold on you. If you do not use your muscles they will deteriorate and become weak. Without food and sustenance, or the desires for sin will fall into disuse and die. They will never completely vanish, and they may show up in strong ways from time to time, but they will weaken their grip on your life! Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
C. Don’t ever stop fighting against the flesh. In 1 Corinthians 9:26-27 Paul testifies of this fight: “I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: 27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
The word translated “keep under my body” means to ‘hit under the eye’ or to ‘pummel as a boxer’. Imagine Mohamed Ali in a ring and the ruthless spirit he had against his opponents. He would beat them to a pulp. He would not let his opponents rest. Paul says, I am pummeling my flesh black and blue!’ Now he’s not doing this literally, but he is always fighting against my flesh—on the attack for holiness! I am going for the knockout against my flesh. I keep my big shoe on the neck of my flesh—I never allow it to breath—I never reward it or give it a break! I never for a moment allow myself to seek the pleasure of sin for a season!
D. Don’t get distracted! The one thing that helps our enemy escape is: distraction. A Distracted Conscience. The point of putting off the old man is so that our hearts can be in a state to receive the illuminating power of God by the Holy Spirit applying the Word. Your conscience is to be awakened to God’s holiness. Anything that dulls the conscience is a distraction.
One of the enemies of self-examination is it’s very opposite. The very opposite of self examination is distraction. We read in 1 Corinthians 7:35—Paul says, “this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely [SOMETHING THAT LOOKS RIGHT, I.E. A TESTIMONY IN GOOD STANDING], and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction.”
The word distraction means “to have your thoughts scattered” away from what should be your focus (from John Wesley’s journal on “Dissolution”). Anything that causes our thoughts to be scattered away from God is a distraction. We are to focus (attend) upon the Lord with all our being. What I am saying is that we cannot even begin to “put off the old man” and examine the hardened areas of our heart and break up the fallow, hardened, trodden ground of our heart and make it receptive to the Word of God and the Spirit for the new way of living until we put away distractions.
Application: TV, Internet, and film can all be tools that draw our thoughts to God, but they can also pull our thoughts away from God. Anything that scatters your thoughts away from God, or causes you to forget God or you love that activity more than God must be put away.
Illustration: We need to deal with sin, not forget about it through distractions. If you have a disease, you don’t go to a movie. It might take your mind off of your disease, but you need to go to a specialist. You need to go under a microscope. You can cover the open wounds with band aids and beautiful clothing, but band aids and beautiful clothing will never cure your disease—they only hide it. Are you hiding sin in your life instead of dealing with it? Instead of putting off the old man, are you trying to ignore sin in your life?
Application: Man, your greatest responsibility in life is not your job! It is that you glorify God. Mother, your greatest responsibility in life is not your children! It is that you glorify God. If we gain good jobs but lose our testimony, what have we gained?
If we raise our children but lose our testimony, we will lose both our testimony and our children!
Conclusion: If you’re married, you know it wasn’t too long after you were married that you heard something in your house in the dead of night. Soon the husband (hopefully) is on the prowl checking every corner of the house looking for the intruder! We are to “walk circumspectly”. And when you find that enemy corner him and put him under your foot! Don’t let him win! Expose the sinful habits in your life. You can do that by charting habitual besetting sins. Be aggressive against sin. Next time we meet, I’m going to tell you how much hard work it really takes on your part.
[1] Kris Lundgaard. The Enemy Within (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing: Phillipsburg, NJ, 1998).