Attention Funnel: Who Wins in A Fight?
Introduction:
- How many of you go hunting? How many of you go bear hunting? How many of you would go grizzly bear hunting?
- If you have watched the Movie the Revenant you have a picture of how crazy a Grizzly Bear encounter can be. The bear attacks quickly and keeps coming back in an effort to kill Hugh Glass. It won’t give up, won’t run away, won’t back down, until Hugh has finally managed to kill it. (Perhaps show video for Senior High).
- Imagine yourself in that scenario. There is no going into the fetal position, no convincing the bear to run away. Either the bear dies or you die.
- This is what happens when you encounter something from the outside that threatens your very life. But what about the thing that resides within all of us that threatens our very life… sin.
- Over the next seven weeks we are going to be going through a series called Death Row where we look at some of the common sins that still tempt, enslave, and kill us. Why?
Big Idea: Either we kill sin or it kills us.
- The Christian life involves becoming more like Christ. This is what we refer to as sanctification. And a big part of that process is to fight against the sin that is still present in our lives. (John Owen – “Be Killing Sin or It Will Be Killing You”)
- This is based on Romans 8:13 – “For if you live according to the flesh (which is the word Paul uses for sinful nature here), you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
- Kill sin… or it will kill you.
- Goals for this series:
- 1) I want sin to be exposed in this series. And so, if you listen to this series and are never once convicted of sin in your life… then this series has failed.
- 2) The other and ultimate goal of this series is also that we would fight against sin in our lives and that we would replace it with something better. And so if you only feel convicted by this series and never respond with action and feel hopeful in the fight against sin, then this series has also failed.
- My goal tonight is to show you the importance of identifying and fighting against sin by giving you a small anatomy of sin.
- To do that I want to look into Jeremiah 2
- But before we do… let’s get a definition of sin so we are all on the same page: Sinning is any feeling or thought or speech or action that disobeys God.
- Sinning is any time I think, feel, speak, or act in a way that disregards God or thinks that we know better than Him.
Main Points:
- Sin kills our happiness.
- Sin robs us of our freedom.
- Sin hides from our sight.
- Jesus gives us the power to kill sin.