What Is Sin? (And How Do We Overcome It?) | Season 04, Episode 07 | Simple Truth Podcast

Many Christians know Jesus saves us from sin, but aren't really sure what sin is. We often think of sin as bad behavior, lying, profanity, lust, violence, wrong choices, of course, and yes, sin does show up in our actions. But the Bible also shows us something much deeper. Sin is also a fallen condition within us. It affects the heart. It pulls on our desires. It separates us from God's will. And if we keep yielding to sin, sin even tries to master us so that we can't even say no to it even when we want to. That is why willpower alone is not enough. You cannot overcome sin by pretending it is harmless by hiding it in the dark or trying to stop sinning with the same flesh that produces the sinful desires. You need the gospel. In this episode, we're going to see what sin really is, why it is so destructive, and how it shows up through our sinful nature and our sinful actions. We'll define iniquities, transgressions and sins. And we'll answer the question every Christian needs to understand. How do we actually overcome sin through Jesus Christ? By the end, you'll see how the gospel gives us forgiveness and cleansing and the power to walk in newness of life. Let's get into it in this episode of the Simple Truth. Welcome to the Simple Truth podcast, where we open the Bible to uncover simple, biblical, and essential truths that can transform your life. And now, here's your host, Ted Ross. Hi, my name is Ted Ross and this is the Simple Truth Podcast, your home for biblical truth clearly taught and freely given. Welcome to season 4, episode 7 on what is sin and most importantly, how to overcome sin. Let's get into this episode. Why does this episode matter? In this season, right, season 4, the gospel of the kingdom of God, we've seen how God is holy and he's just and he's loving and he's good. Just last episode, we walked through the details of the crucifixion. That is our savior. That is our Lord. What a loving and a wonderful and a perfect God. But sin, it's real. It's wrongdoing. And it exists and it cannot be ignored. Many Christians, they know that Jesus saves us from sin, but they don't understand exactly what sin is or how deeply it could affect our lives in a negative way. Sin, it tries to corrupt from within. It shows itself through our actions and it also tries to separate us from God's will in our lives. That's why we must understand sin clearly and most importantly respond to sin biblically. In this episode, we'll see exactly what sin is, how it can harm us, and how the gospel gives us the forgiveness and the power to overcome sin. If we don't understand the problem of sin, we will never fully understand the power of the gospel. So, what is sin? In its essence, sin is missing the mark. It's falling short of God's standard. It's literally what that word means. And it shows up in our lives in two ways. First of all, we see our sinful nature. It's the fallen condition within us. And secondly, we see sinful actions. Those are the wrongdoings and the violations of God's will. In its essence, when we think of sin, we think of falling short of what God wanted us to do. God has a purpose in our lives. And when we're not doing it, we are sinning. Sin, it tries to both corrupt us from within. That's the sinful nature. And it tries to act through us. Those are the sinful actions. Which brings us to our first simple truth of the episode. Simple truth number 62. Sin is a fallen condition within us. Let's get into it. Let's take a look at Jeremiah 17:9. As a reminder, all Bible verses are from the New King James Version. So, feel free to follow along. Jeremiah 17:9. And here we're going to see the human heart. It's not neutral. Without God, the human heart is deeply sinful. Okay, Jeremiah 17:9, quote, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" What a powerful set of verses. And and I apologize now, this episode is not meant to try to lower your self-esteem. Uh, and I say this also a little bit sarcastically, as you can tell, and that's important. We want to learn the truth about who we are, about how God made us, about what God's purpose is in our life. And some of these verses, they may contradict maybe some of the ways you were raised. They contradicted certainly some of the ways I was raised. But here we're going to see in here the heart is deceitful. Now the heart, that's the inner person. That's includes your thoughts, your desires, your emotions, and your intentions. When we talk about the heart of a person, we're talking about the unseen part of them. We're talking about their soul and their spirit. So we're not talking about the body. And when we talk about the heart, we're not talking about the physical heart that's within your chest. We're talking about this inside person of you, this inner person. And the scriptures when they describe the heart of a man or a woman, it's talking about what they think about what they desire after their emotions and their intentions. And here in the book of Jeremiah, it says the heart, our inner person is deceitful. And that's a tough word, right? This is what I meant. I'm not trying to lower self-esteem, but when God says that our heart is deceitful, he's saying it's crooked. It's not straight. and it's not trustworthy. And it says above all things, so it's reinforcing a very strong point. Our inner person, our thoughts, our emotions, our desires, and our intentions, without Christ, they're crooked. They're not straight, and they're not trustworthy. And that's above everything else. As in all the other non-trustworthy and not straight things in the world, our heart is right up there. It's above them. And that's a strong word. It says that our heart is desperately wicked. It's deeply corrupted. It's frail. It's sick. That's a strong term. Many Christians, they believe that with enough education or enough willpower, they can stop themselves from committing sinful acts. But they don't understand that sin is not only something that we do. It is a fallen condition that we're born into that only God understands. So, we need God's direction and we need God's power to change our sinful state, which will then deal with our sinful actions. Psalm 51:5. And here we're going to see that after David's sin, which is well known, the sin with Bathsheba, it was deplorable. It was terrible. Psalm 51 records David's prayer of repentance. And he even makes an even deeper diagnosis, which is important for this episode. Psalm 51:5, quote, "Behold, I was brought forth, that's to be born, that's to be formed." So he says, "Pay attention. I, David and us, was brought forth. We were formed. We were born into iniquity. That means perversity. It means a moral crookedness." There's that word again, right? There's a perversion to it. There's an iniquity. There's a crookedness to how we're born because our heart it desires after inappropriate sinful things. because we have inappropriate and sinful intentions. And we often walk around with inappropriate and sinful thoughts. And these are the things that we were born into. He says, "And in sin, that's missing God's standard." That's offense, right? He says, "And in sin, my mother conceived me." David does not blame his mother. That's not the point. It's not about his mom. We all were born into it. And he's certainly not excusing his actions. David is revealing to us that the sin problem, it runs deeper than a specific sinful act. It wasn't about the actions that he did with Ba Sheba. Those were terrible. Those were horrible. That was sin. But David is then drilling deeper to see and say, "Wait a second. There is something deeper than just the act." He is seeing a sinful state. He is seeing a sinful nature within himself that he recognized as occurring from the very beginning of his birth. David acknowledges both the root and the fruit, right? He acknowledges the root, the source of the sin, as well as the fruit, which was the action of the sin. And he acknowledges them both to God. This takes more than human willpower then to fix it. It takes the gospel. That's the point. This isn't just about stopping certain actions. This is about stopping actions, but in doing so, overcoming nature. And that is where the gospel and the power of the gospel comes in. Romans 7:18. Here we're going to see that sin is a fallen condition within us. And our willpower can't do it alone even when we try. Romans 7:18. Quote, this is Paul talking. For I know that in me that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. For to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. It's a very honest and a very powerful scripture. He says, "For I know, I understand, I recognize clearly." Paul says that in me that is in my flesh. Now, he gets specific because to say in me, he could be talking about his spirit, his soul or his body. But instead, he's saying in me that is in my flesh. Now, he's zeroing in. He's zeroing in on the human nature, that the sinful fallen part of us. He's describing his body with its desires and its cravings and its appetites. And he's describing the unregenerated part of his soul, which is his will, his intellect, and his emotions. But the part of him that's still pursuing and chasing after wrong things. He says nothing good dwells in his flesh. Nothing good dwells. Nothing resides inside of his flesh that is pleasing to God. In other words, all of it falls short of God's standard. All of it misses the mark. Christians are made up of a spirit, a soul, and a body. We see this in 1 Thessalonians 5:23. In the body and the unregenerated part of the soul, aka the flesh, is no good thing, Paul says. Then it says here, for to will, to desire, to want, to intend, to wish, to will, it's present with me. Paul knew what the right thing was. He knew what was sin and what wasn't sin. And he knew what the right thing was. And he says, "The desire, the intention to do the right thing is with me. But how to perform, how to accomplish, how to produce, how to put into action what is good, aka beneficial, I do not find. Our fallen condition, it exposes our need for an external savior, Jesus Christ Almighty." Let's take a look at James 1, verses 13-15. And here we're going to see that sin, it promises freedom by appealing to our sinful nature, but that then starts drawing our hearts away and separating us from God. James 1:13 and 14, quote, "Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone." Verse 14. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Let no one say, he says, when he is tempted. To be tempted is to be enticed toward wrongdoing. So if you're being enticed toward wrongdoing, don't say, well, I'm being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil. It says, right? God does not get enticed by wrongdoing. God's not sitting around wanting to sin in no way. God is holy and God is pure. That is not at all even in his nature. So God is not tempted or enticed towards wrongdoing. Nor does he himself entice or tempt or draw anyone else toward wrongdoing. That's the scripture folks. But each one as in each one of us is tempted. Each one of us is enticed toward wrongdoing when we are drawn away. To be drawn is to be dragged away like prey caught in a trap. It's a strong expression. So, we're all drawn away by our own desires. That is our own longings, our own lusts, our own cravings, our own impulses, and we're enticed, which means we're lured away. We're deluded. It implies a baited hook or a trap. So, sin disguises death as something desirable. Remember a fish hook everybody? And you may not be an avid fisherman or fisherwoman. But a fish hook has this hook and you would put, let's say, a worm on it. So when a fish sees this worm in the water, the fish goes, "Look, it's food." And the fish bites the worm. But what happens when the fish bites the worm? It's biting a worm and it's biting the hook. And the hook grabs it across the jaw. And then the fisher person will reel the hook in and they'll pull the fish onto the boat. We're the fish in this situation, everybody. We get enticed. We're getting lured away. We're getting diluted. We're seeing this desire and this pleasure of sin. And then when we see it, we see the worm and we often don't think about the hook. There's a hook associated with that sin that we're performing. And before you know it, you were biting after the sin. You're biting after this worm only to be grabbed by a hook. And the difficult thing is that if we're grabbed by the hook, we're being pulled toward the boat and we have little ability to stop it. Or so we think. And this is in the flesh. Thank God for Jesus. So our desires, they don't rule us, but what happens when we entertain them? So we're going to finish James 1:15, but we're going to take a look here. So each one of us is tempted. I'm want to repeat this. We're enticed toward wrongdoing. And we're drawn away by these desires, these longings, these lusts, these cravings, these impulses, and it tries to lure us away. It tries to delude us like bait on a hook. And if we entertain that, if we follow after that, what happens? Well, James 1:15 shows us that sin will never tell you where sin is taking you. It pulls you in the desire. It pulls you in. tempts you and tempts your sinful nature and that it ends by trying to produce death in you. James 1:15, then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin when it is full-grown brings forth death. Desire. When desire has conceived, when those longings, when those cravings, when those impulses, they've conceived, they took a hold of, they've seized, they became pregnant. It's the same word for impregnation. So when desire conceives, when it takes a hold of you, when you entertain it, when you follow after it, it gives birth to sin. And sin when it is full-grown, when it matures, brings forth death. That word death, it's ruin, it's separation, it's harm. It's a destructive result. Notice this deadly progression. Your desires, James would say, are enticed. And then if this temptation is entertained. So yes, we all have desires. Jesus was in a human body. He had desires but he never sinned because when temptation came, he rejected it. So when temptation comes to us, if we were to entertain the temptation, then the desire conceives and then sin is born. And if it is not confessed and repented of, the sin matures and it produces death. In other words, separation, harm, destructive results. Sin starts by looking desirable, but if it's allowed to grow, it ends really, really badly for us. Thank God for Jesus. So, let's take a moment. Often we get asked this question, but some people are just better, right? And they're less sinful than other people, right? Actually, no. All of us miss God's standard. Even the people who are quote unquote more moral and better than others. Sometimes we look and say, "Well, look at that person. Boy, that person's obviously sinning, but I'm okay. I'm doing all right." No, we all sin. We were all meant to live a life that was closely connected to God, like Adam did before the fall. And none of us did before we knew God. None of us were meeting God's standard. And none of us were certainly walking and talking with God as we were intended to do so. Romans 3:23, an often quoted verse and a very appropriate one, says, quote, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." And one can infer here that if all have sinned, then all of us need to be restored. All of us need to be brought back. All of us need the gospel. All of us need God's plan for reconciliation. There's not one person who God looked at and said, "Well, before Christ, you were doing great." Not at all. We were all falling short in one way, shape, or form. We just often take a look at the people who have the more obvious sins, the more in-your-face, the addictions and the gambling addict and the person who's sleeping around. You know, all those things that we like to wag our finger at and point when there's a whole host of sins that are all equal when it comes down to it that are all falling short of God's standard and purpose. It's just that for some of us, it's on the inside and it doesn't look so obvious to the others around us. But it's not about others. It's about God. It's about God's standard. And thank God that he delivers us from everything that would resist us. And if you are a person, a person who everyone in the neighborhood knows has sin around you, God bless you. God's with you. Jesus ate with with publicans, with tax collectors, with prostitutes. There is nobody who's too far off. And here, if you're a person who knows you've been living wrong, now is the time to confess your sins, to repent your sins, and to repent from it, to turn back, to submit yourself to the gospel and obey God. Because of all those things that people knew or they thought they knew about you, this is your opportunity to show them Jesus Christ in you and the grace of God. You are a testimony, folks. You can go from the bottom out of the miry clay, as the psalm said, all the way to be seated up upon a rock. God always takes people from the bottom and puts them all the way at the top. It's the people who at the top and think they don't have sin. Those are the people who are in real trouble. Praise God. There's also another question. Well, what if I'm a good person, right? Nobody is good apart from God. Even Jesus rejected that label in Mark 10:18. Quote, so Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good but one that is God. Jesus was son of man. He was in human form. And when people were talking to him, they were saying, "Hey, wait a second. You're a good master." And he goes, "Don't call me good. We're all to honor God." Jesus was our example. Jesus showed what it's like to walk in the flesh. He was the son of God, but he emptied himself of his godly privilege, of his godly authority, and he walked this earth as a man. He walked in this earth to be tempted like how we are tempted. Yet, he did not sin. Praise God. And when someone came to him and called him good, he said, "Don't call me good. Call God good." That's why you and I aren't to call each other good. We're not good. If there's something good in us, it's from God. God is good. It's God in us that's good. So, let's give God the credit. You're not going to convince me that I need to start calling people in their flesh good. It's not so. And I know that's an expression that gets used and people throw it around. I understand the intention, but I like what Jesus said. Jesus said, "Don't call me good. There's no one that's good except God that's good." Because we are simply wine skins with wine inside of us. And that wine comes from God. And when people see goodness in you, they're seeing God in you. And so we thank God for all the things that are doing. And I pray that you show all sorts of goodness through you, that means you're showing God in you. And I pray God for that. And when someone comes up and you say, "You're really a good person." You say, "I appreciate the compliment, but God is good. That's why you're seeing what you're seeing. It's not me. It's God." Praise God. Let's take one more moment. We have all fallen to sinful condition within us. We see that. We must honestly acknowledge it. But when we acknowledge this sinful nature, this sinful condition, we don't do it with hopelessness. God understands our condition and he has made a way out of our condition through the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's why it's good news to all who believe it. Imagine remember when Jesus came and he preached the gospel of the kingdom of God, people were receiving it with gladness because it was good news. And what is the good news? The good news is that you have a fallen nature, a sinful nature. You have done sinful actions. And the story doesn't end there. The good news is that you have forgiveness of sins and you've got power to overcome sin and you have it through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the good news. That's what these messages are all about. Once we recognize that sin includes a fallen condition within us, then we could better understand why it produces different kinds of wrong actions. Do you understand that fallen condition, that fallen nature? It drives like a root. It drives the fruit which are the sinful actions. What the Bible would call sins, transgressions, and iniquities. Which brings us to simple truth number 63. Sinful acts. They have three expressions. Iniquities, transgressions, and sins. Let's take a look at that. Psalm 32:5. Sinful acts. We're going to see here. It can be iniquities, which is a continuous bad behavior, right? Like a bad habit, something that's constantly nagging at you that you keep finding yourself going back to repeatedly. It also includes transgressions where you know what is right, but you deliberately do what is wrong, a deliberate rebellious act. And then also sins, which are failing to do what is right. It's falling short of God's standard. And we're going to drill into these with more detail in some of our next slides. So Psalm 32:5, quote, I acknowledged my sin to you, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Say, here we have in Psalm 32:5, we have iniquities, transgressions, and sins all wrapped up into one verse. The writer says, I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity. That's my continuous wrongdoing and it's based on the fallen nature. It's a willful deviation from the right path. He says, "My iniquity I have not hidden. I said I will confess my transgressions." That's rebellion. That's crossing a known boundary against God. A trespass. Knowing what is right, but then choosing to do what is wrong. Both of these are expressions of sin. Both of these are falling short of God's standard. It's just one of them is a continuous wrongdoing. It's like a a bad habit. It's like something that's reflecting our fallen nature. While the other is a rebellion. It's knowing what's right, but then choosing with your will to do what is wrong. They're both expressions of sin. One is not worse than the other. But it's good again as we're discussing what sin is. It's good for us to understand these two expressions. And now the third. He says, "And you forgave the iniquity of my sin." Sin, it's missing God's standard. It's offense. It's wrongdoing. Christians, they're challenged by three different dimensions of sin. But the path to overcoming all three, it begins with confession and it begins with God's forgiveness. Praise God. Let's take a look at Leviticus 16:21. It goes to the day of atonement, an extremely important day in the Old Covenant. God showed all three expressions of sin and that they must be dealt with. And he did it in the example of a goat, right? And it foreshadows the lamb who would take our sins away forever, Jesus Christ. Leviticus 16:21, quote, "Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat. Confess over it all of the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man." Aaron shall lay both hands on the head of the life goat, it said, and confess over it. To confess is to acknowledge, it's to openly declare before God. To confess your sin is to agree with God. It's to acknowledge that that action was wrong. And so, you're both acknowledging it, you're declaring it before God, and you're coming into agreement with God. He said, "Confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel." Iniquities are the continuous bad behavior. We're going to discuss some examples of that in the upcoming slide. Also, it said and all their transgressions. Those are their deliberate rebellious acts concerning all their sins. That's failing to do what's right. And then it says, send it away. Send that goat away into the wilderness. That's to release. It implies the sin being removed from the people. So you'll notice here that the day of atonement, it included a priest laying hands on a goat, confessing all the iniquities, transgressions, and sins. All the broader sins that were done by the people, then to release that goat into the wilderness, which implies sin being removed from the people and sin being removed from the camp. We see the fulfillment of this through Jesus Christ where Jesus went to the cross as we saw on our last episode and he took our iniquities, our transgressions and our sins onto his body when he was brutally murdered and then he rose from the dead. He rose from the dead and that when he did it, he said, "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Our sins are forgiven." We're to describe in an upcoming season, we're going to talk about the blood of Jesus that Jesus literally takes his blood. He doesn't put on a physical altar as was done in the Old Testament, but he takes it into the heavenly places. And his blood is then there. And that that blood is an appeasement. It's a propitiation. It's a satisfying factor. It satisfies our sins before the eyes of God. It's a wonderful thing. And we're going to talk more about it, but let's continue on this topic. The Day of Atonement, scapegoat, that's where that term came from, had all three expressions of sin put on it before it was then released out. So let's take a moment. Let's look at the three expressions of sin in more detail. First of all was iniquities. As we said before, it's a crookedness. It's living contrary to God's will. So what are some examples of iniquities? Well, pride, right? Bitterness, greed. These aren't things we necessarily choose to do. We often wake up and we do them several times throughout the day. These often become a lens with which we do things. When we are a proud person, we often do things in pride. When we're a bitter person, we find ourselves unwilling to forgive. And we do it across a whole litany of things. Sometimes a bitter person does it while they're driving. Sometimes a bitter person does it while they interact with someone in public or sometimes a bitter person does it based on some action that someone close to them did. Greed, lust, jealousy, anger. These are some examples of iniquities. They're representative of our sinful nature and they are a crookedness inside of us and they become repetitive. We repeat these throughout the course of our day. These are sins in the broader sense and these are things that you can overcome. Praise God. Second is transgressions. It's breaking or crossing God's command. God has a will and a purpose. We know it and we go the other route. Instead of turning back to God, we turned away from God. when we committed this transgression. What are some examples of transgressions? Rebellion, rebelling against God. Idolatry. We know we shouldn't have other gods, but we make other gods. We put things before us and we worship them. Stealing, right? We know we shouldn't steal, but we go and we steal and we take. Resisting God's correction. God says, "I want you to do X, so you go and do Y." Disobeying God's voice or his promptings. You know, he's leading you this direction, but you choose the other direction. You know, Jonah is a great example in the Bible of someone who did a transgression. God says, "I want you to go to Nineveh and I want you to say these words." And he runs the other direction. Right? It's a good example of a transgression. But there are many, and we've seen transgressions in our own lives. Number three, sins. Sins. All of these are expressions of falling short, but specifically the Bible describes iniquities, transgressions, and sins. Sin is missing the mark. It's falling short of God's standard. So what are some examples of that? Lying, gossiping, complaining. You know, God has done such great things in our life and we're told and instructed in scripture repeatedly to set our mind on God, set our affections on God, to think about things that are good and pure and holy and of good report, but we find ourselves complaining. We neglect prayer. We know we should pray. We're told to pray. There's all these benefits to prayer, but we neglect it. It shows an example of missing God's standard of falling short, not forgiving, failing to help a person in need. So, God didn't even necessarily go out and tell you, but we know, we know that God has a standard where God blesses those in need. God tells us to help those in need. And we know that all too often we find ourselves missing God's standard and we fail to help a person in need. This list is not meant to shame us and it's not meant to condemn us. But when we're teaching on this topic, I thought it was important for you to have some examples. Some of these are examples of things that you know, certainly things you've seen others do. Honestly, there are some things on this list that you may have done today. And it's not meant to convict you. It's not meant to condemn you. It's not meant to shame you. It's for us to recognize just some of the examples of wrongdoing. This is not an all-inclusive list. And that how we can miss God's will for our lives. So now the question is, and this is the important question, what do we do about it? If this is sin, if sin shows itself in iniquities and transgressions and sins, if there's a fallen nature, then there's also sinful actions. What do we do about it? And that is the point of this episode, okay? So let's get this straight. Sin reveals something that is within us, a fallen condition. And sin, it shows up in what we do. So, we see sins and transgressions and iniquities and we know that Jesus is the answer, right? But how exactly is Jesus the answer? And I love people who say Jesus is the answer. And they're right. Jesus is the answer. But too often sometimes in church, we say Jesus is the answer, but we don't know exactly how Jesus is the answer. And that's what teaching and instruction for. That's why we read our Bible. That's why we minister and we teach and we preach the gospel because God does clarify these things quite clearly in scripture. Jesus is the answer to overcoming sin because his death paid the price and he paid the punishment for all of our sinful actions. His blood cleanses us from the fallen condition of sin. His resurrection, it breaks the power of sin that once ruled over us. We no longer have sin as our master. God is our master. The gospel not only forgives what we have done. But when we were born again, God makes us new, right? New within. We're born from above. We have this heavenly calling. We are born again. We have this newness. We're born within ourselves and we are led by God's spirit. So he teaches us to stop obeying sin and to start walking in newness of life. So we're forgiven of our sins, but we're also born from above. We're reconnected with God and we have a newness of life inside of us. And then God leads us by his spirit. And so we can stop obeying sin and we can start walking in that newness of life. So how do we practically overcome sin? Well, we overcome sin by confessing sin, by repenting from sin, by trusting in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and by walking in the power of God's Holy Spirit. Let's take a look at each one of these. First John 1 verses 8 and 9. Here we're going to see that overcoming sin, it begins when we stop denying it and we start bringing it honestly into light before God. 1 John 1:8 says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." Verse 9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So if we say that we have no sin, if we say that we have no acts of wrongdoing, that we don't fall short of God's standard, it says we deceive ourselves. We're misleading ourselves. We're leading ourselves astray. We're wandering away from God's truth. And it says, "And the truth is not in us." What is truth? Truth is reality. Truth is facts. Truth is God. God delivers and reveals what is genuine, what is true. And when we say that we have no sin, that we don't fall short. We delude ourselves and we are not living in reality. We're not living in the facts around us. But it says if we confess our sins, if we acknowledge, if we admit, if we say the same thing as God, if we say that action was wrong and that action was sin and we acknowledge it before God, if we say the same thing as God and we admit to it, then he is faithful. He's faithful and he's just to forgive us our sins. To forgive is to release. It's to pardon. It's to let go of the debt. If we would confess it, then he will forgive it. He will let go of that debt. Many of us have experienced things. We've experienced things that were terrible. They were horrible. We know the experience. Maybe we hurt somebody else. And we know that that action that that sin that it was vile and it was inappropriate. And yet if we would confess it to God, if we would acknowledge it, if we'd admit it to God, if we the same thing as God says regarding that action, he will release it. He will pardon it and he will let it go. which is so important because in your own heart or maybe it's even just the enemy trying to remind you the enemy is not going to want you to let it go at times the law in your heart the legality of your heart your heart won't want to let it go but Jesus Christ said let it go Jesus Christ released it he pardoned it and he has let go of that debt and as God is our witness if we were to confess to him he is faithful and he is just to pardon us of it and to let go of that debt and in addition to that also to cleanse cleans us from all unrighteousness which is all misbehavior, all unrighteous actions, all unright acts and that unright standing. Overcoming sin, it does not begin with hiding or minimizing or excusing sin. It begins with an honest confession to God and trust in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what does God do when you confess your sins to him? Well, he's merciful to you and he remembers your sins. no more. Hebrews 8:12, for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds. I will remember no more. Praise God. God says, I will be merciful. Hebrews 8 is about the new covenant. It's about the new testament, the new covenant that was written in the blood of Jesus Christ. The new covenant that's come through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it says in that new covenant that God will be merciful, which means he'll be favorable. He'll be willing to pardon. He will be forgiving. He'll be merciful to their unrighteousness, their wrongdoing, those things that are not right before God. And he says, "And their sins, those acts of wrongdoing that falling short of God's standard." He says, "Those sins and those lawless deeds," which is your rebellion, your living contrary to God's will, God says, "I will remember no more." That means he won't recall it. He won't bring it to mind. He won't hold it against you. That's what that word remember means. God won't recall those sins. He won't bring those sins to mind and he won't hold them against you. Which begs the question that when you have confessed it, you've repented from it, that you're trusting God for it, and you're being led by God's spirit. Why do you get reminded of it? Well, it's either coming in from the enemy who's trying to drag you back into it, who's trying to undermine your faith in the work and the power of the gospel, or it's just the law and the legality of your heart, which refuses to let it go. And you need to remind yourself. You need to renew your mind. You need to remind yourself of God's truth. You need to remind yourself heart. It says right here and in many other places in the Bible that if I confess that God will be merciful to me. All of my unrighteousness that I've done and my sins and my lawless deeds, all of my rebellion, God remembers no more. Praise God. There are several scriptures regarding this topic. And they're very powerful. One in Isaiah says that he has separates it as far as the east is from the west. It's very far. He remembers our sins no more if we're willing to confess or repent from it. Praise God. The new covenant, it means our sins can be forgiven. It means our guilt can be removed. And God will not hold our rebellious acts against us. And he doesn't do that because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Don't let shame keep you hiding what God is willing to forgive and to forget. Don't let shame hold you back. Don't let shame have you try to hide this away. I don't want God to see it's disgusting. I don't want to acknowledge it. God already knows you did it. He was there with you while it was happening. Right? But he doesn't want you to hide it from him. He wants you to openly acknowledge it. He wants you to admit to it. He wants you to say the same thing that God says about it and you'll be forgiven. You'll be pardoned. You will pay no debt on it. Praise God. God is so good. Praise God. The importance of confession. Confession means agreeing with God about your sin. As Christians, we don't relabel sin. We don't excuse sin. We don't minimize sin. And we certainly don't blame someone else for the sin. Confess by going to God in prayer and naming the sin honestly. Tell God what you did. He was there. He knows. And tell him why it was wrong. He's not asking you to do it for him. He's not asking because he didn't know about it and he needs you to tell him about it. He's asking because he needs you to do it for you. Tell God what you did. Say the same thing about that sin that God says about the sin. Say why it was wrong. Ask God for forgiveness and a deeper cleansing. Ask God to reveal any sinful desires, any iniquities, any heart issues, things going in your heart that may have caused that sin. Ask God to help you identify the root so that you're not just focused on the fruit. As we said earlier, receive God's forgiveness by faith when you confess sin. It says he is faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you through Jesus Christ. But you will get resisted sometimes. So, you're going to need to apply your faith. You're going to need to have a confidence in God. You're going to have to have a belief in God. And if you find your own heart trying to resist and trying to come against you, you're going to need to repeat scripture. You're going to need to meditate on God's word. You're going to need to remind yourself. You need to renew your mind. You need to remind yourself about what God says about it. Because we're about truth. We're about reality. We're about facts. And those facts are that God has so much power, so much forgiveness, so much mercy and grace. And it comes through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which he shed for us. He willingly shed for us. And as people say, as the songs say, if he were to go to the cross for only one person, he'd go for you. He did that. He loves you. He loves you. And he paid the price for you. So we don't use it as a license to do wrong. We use it as a license to be forgiven, to confess, to repent, and then to be led by his spirit. Because ultimately, it's not about sin, is it? It's about doing God's will. So get out there and do God's will. And don't let sin, which tries to weigh you down and hamper you and hold you back. Don't let that get in your way. Overcome it, but get out there and do God's will. Confession is not telling God what he doesn't know. It's agreeing with God about what he already sees so that he can forgive and he can restore you. Let confession lead to repentance. After bringing sin into the light, turn from it and ask God to empower you to walk differently. Which brings us to simple truth number 65. You can't overcome sin without repentance. So in the four steps of confession, repentance, faith, and walking in God's spirit. Let's now talk about repentance. Acts 3:18. But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all his prophets. Remember there's hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament. And they all would show what was going to happen to the Messiah, to the Christ, that Jesus Christ would suffer, that he would die, he'd be buried, and he'd rise again on the third day. All those things were fulfilled. Peter said, "The gospel was brought to completion." Peter told them. Then he says, "Therefore, repent. Think differently. Change your mind. Have another mind. Stop doing the things you were doing and think differently." He was saying, "And be converted is to turn back to God. To change your direction. Change your mind. Change what you're doing. Turn back to God. Stop doing that mess. Get going in the right direction. You know what God wants you to do? Repent. Turn from it. And that your sins may be blotted out. That's why he said, "Repent and be converted." That those those actions, those wrongdoings, those deeds that fall short of God's standard, they may be blotted out, which means wiped away, erased, removed. Praise God. So that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Repentance is a way out of sin and back into times of refreshing with God. What a powerful powerful thing to say. Praise God. We want times of refreshing. But there is sin. And how do we deal with sin? We confess it. We repent from it. We turn back to God. Then God blots it out. He wipes it away. He erases it. He removes it. And then we can go back into times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. As the scripture says, for in your presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures forever more. Praise God. The importance of repentance. Repentance means changing your mind about sin. You stop agreeing with the desire. You stop excusing it. You stop lying about it. These are all the things that led you away from God. Repentance, it turns you back to God. It is not just feeling sorry. Feeling sorry is just a feeling. It's a feeling of guilt. This repentance, it's changing direction. Returning to him with your actions. Praise God. Repentance, it requires a surrender. You release the sin. You stop defending it. You stop agreeing with the pleasures of it. You acknowledge the destruction and the harm of it. And you choose God's will over your own way and over your own desires. You basically say that sinful, fallen nature is not good. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm beyond that. I'm rising above it. I'm going to submit myself and serve God. Regret, it only feels bad about sin, but repentance turns away from sin and it returns to God. Don't be confused. Sometimes we will do regret or we'll tell other people we'll show regret or we'll show remorse. And I understand those things are conviction, but regret and remorse is not repentance. Repentance is turning from it. It's acknowledging what God says and it's turning back to him and returning to God. Repentance, it leads to refreshing. All too often, folks will have some kind of regret or some kind of conviction, but without repentance, they never get to the refreshing. The refreshing is a wonderful place to be. God has so many great pleasures, so many great benefits in your life, but it's going to come through repentance. You're going to be doing the quote unquote hard work of letting go of those passions and those desires and doing the will of God to then just experience the wonderful joy and the peace and the blessings of the gospel. When you turn from sin and you return to God, you come back into his presence, back into his mercy, back into restoration, back into fellowship and relationship with God. Repentance receives the gospel by faith. You believe that Jesus suffered for your sin and that he blotted it out and that he gives you grace to walk differently. Which brings us to simple truth number 66. You overcome sin by trusting Jesus for mercy and grace. Praise God. Hebrews 4:15 and 16. Here we're going to see that the devil and even our own heart may condemn us. But faith that is confident trust, belief in God. Faith trusts that through Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. We are received by God and we are empowered to overcome the sin that tries to oppose us. Hebrews 14:15 and 16. quote, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin." Verse 16, "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." It says, "We do not have a high priest. A high priest is a mediator between God and people. Our high priest is Jesus Christ." The book of Hebrews, spoiler alert, it's all about Jesus Christ. Amen. It's about Jesus versus angels, Jesus versus Moses. The book of Hebrews is a wonderful and a powerful book. And we're going to go through the book of Hebrews chapter by chapter in a future season. But Jesus is the high priest. He's the mediator between God and people. And how could Jesus do that? Because Jesus was son of God, Jesus could come before God the Father and represent. And because Jesus was son of man and he took on sinful flesh even though he didn't sin but he took on the likeness of sinful flesh and he walked in flesh he could then represent people. It's very powerful. So he can be a high priest. He could be our mediator. Thank God for that. He could intercede on our behalf. It says we don't have a high priest Jesus Christ who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. To sympathize is to feel compassion. It's to understand suffering. This may sound like a cliche, but Jesus knows exactly what you're dealing with. He does. He feels compassion for it. He understands the suffering you experience. Jesus walked this earth in a body. He spent his time in flesh. He knows exactly what desires and temptations and all those things mean. He can sympathize with our weaknesses. But in all points, he was tempted as we are tempted. The difference is he didn't sin. He didn't fall short. He didn't deviate from God's standard. It says, "Let us therefore come boldly." Because we have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses, who was tempted exactly as we were tempted, but he didn't sin. We can therefore come boldly. To come boldly is to come confidently, to come fearlessly. We're told to come fearlessly and confidently to God. Let us come boldly to the throne of grace, God's throne in heaven. Let's go by the spirit right before God. Right now, I can come boldly before God's presence. I can come boldly and say, "Father, thank you. I thank you for allowing me to come boldly before your presence." Right now, I can come right before you. And I come for not because I'm good, and not because I'm come before you because of the blood of Jesus Christ. I thank you for Jesus. I thank you for my faithful high priest who came, died, was buried, and rose again the third day that I can come boldly before you. I can come boldly before the throne of grace so that we could obtain mercy. That is God's kindness towards the guilty and towards the weak and grace. That is God's unearned favor. His kindness, his enabling power. Notice that we can at any time in a time of need come boldly before God's throne of grace. We can come right into God's presence through prayer. And we can obtain, we can ask and obtain mercy and grace. Mercy is not getting what we deserved. And grace is unearned favor. We can get both of those things. We can get it in every time of need. And if we need to go 10 times a day, a hundred times a day before God's throne, so be it. He'll never run out of mercy. He'll never run out of grace. It's infinite. There is no limit to the grace and the mercy that God will give from his throne. And the fact that you're going boldly before him shows that you believe him and that you know where to find it. And that is what we were asking for here, folks. We're talking about faith. The importance of faith. Faith means coming boldly to Jesus instead of running from him. Even when you feel weak, guilty, ashamed, or tempted, running to Christ, coming boldly to God's presence right before his throne, it shows that you have trust in him. Faith trusts God's promise over condemnation. If you have confessed and you've repented, then you need to believe that Jesus forgives and cleanses. Doesn't matter how you feel. Feelings are are emotions. Emotions aren't God. That's just a part of your soul. Sometimes I'm happy. Sometimes I have sad I feel all sorts of emotions. Uh I could eat something and it makes me happy. It's not really genuine joy. I can come across something or see something and become sad. It's not really genuine grief. Emotions can can flip and flop. Don't go with your emotions. Go with the truth. Go with the reality as revealed by God. If you've confessed of a sin, you've repented from a sin. Jesus has forgiven your sin. Jesus cleanses your sin. And it's important for you to believe that because it is the truth. Faith speaks God's truth back to your own heart. Here's an example. Say to yourself, quote, "I am forgiven. I am not condemned. Sin is not my master." And Jesus gives me power to overcome. That's a good expression. And why do we say those things? We say it because God says it in the Bible. Everything that we just said there is scriptural. You are forgiven. You're not condemned. Sin is not your master. And Jesus gives you the power to overcome sin. Praise God. Speak it back to your heart. You need to remind yourselves at times. Sometimes you wrestle with doubt. Remember the number one thing that Jesus rebuked his disciples for was for their doubt and their unbelief. Often for humanity, we're wrestling with doubt and unbelief. We don't feel worthy. We don't feel it's right. We don't want to believe. And so, it's very important that we're going to need to press. We're going to need to remind ourselves. We're going to need to repeat back. We're going to need to acknowledge and confess back to God what God says. And so we're going to need to repeat these things back to ourselves to believe these things which are true. But we have a heart that is desperately wicked and deceitful as we saw in the book of Jeremiah that often wants to resist it. Praise God. Faith takes the next obedient step after receiving mercy and grace. We move forward by rebuilding a closer relationship with God. And we do so through the five disciplines. Right? We saw that in season 3. If you haven't seen season 3 of the simple truth podcast, I urge you to go to simpletruth.org or check it out on YouTube or on Apple Podcast, wherever you want to find it, we're across so many different platforms. You can listen, you could watch it, you can see it, you could stream it. There's so many different ways to get to it. But check out season 3 on the five disciplines where we talk about reading the scripture, meditating on God's word. We talk about fasting. We talk about prayer. We talk about being led by God's spirit. Why do you do these five things? as you do it to build a closer relationship with God. And so we do those things and we move forward and we get closer to God so that we can be led by his holy spirit. Simple truth number 67. You overcome sin by walking in God's spirit, not your flesh. Galatians 5:16 and 17. You don't overcome, we're going to see, you don't overcome the flesh and sin by trying harder in your flesh. You overcome sin by walking in the power of God's Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:16. I say then, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Verse 17, for the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you would not do the things that you wish. Very powerful verses. He says here Paul writing to the church of Galatia he says I say then walk in the spirit. To walk is to live. It's to conduct yourself. It's to order your daily life in the spirit. That's the Holy Spirit, the sacred breath, the holy wind of God. He says if you walk in the spirit, if you conduct yourself, if you obey and you order your life around God's Holy Spirit and being led by the spirit, you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. to fulfill is to carry out, to accomplish, to practice or to do. It says that if you are led by the spirit of God, then you will not accomplish or do the lusts or the desires of the flesh. Praise God. When we're talking about our sinful nature, we're talking about the lust of the flesh. When we're talking about the root to sin, we're talking about these desires of the flesh. Paul is getting right to the heart of it and says here, he says, "For the flesh lusts against the spirit, the flesh desires against the spirit and the spirit desires against the flesh and these are contrary to one another." That means they are opposed. They're set against, they're in conflict with. So notice that the flesh and the spirit are at war. So what do you want? You want to build up your spirit so that it's weakening your flesh. The problem we often run into as Christians is we do too many things to build up our flesh and we find our spirit is weaker because we're not praying as we know we should and we're not reading as we know we should and we're not meditating on God's word and we're not fasting and we're not seeking to be led by his spirit and we're not praying right. These are things that we know we're not doing. And so we see here the importance of building up and being led by the spirit. Sin cannot be overcome through the same flesh, the same body and soul that produces the sinful desires in the first place. That's why you don't do it through willpower. Instead, we overcome by daily yielding to and following God's Holy Spirit. In other words, the more we walk in the spirit, the more we're led by the spirit, the less we do fleshly desires, the less we have the challenges of sin. the importance of walking in God's spirit. Walking in the spirit means ordering your daily life around God's leading. Involve God in your thoughts. Involve him in your desires, your decisions, and your actions. In fact, in season 3, we have two episodes because it's so important. One of them is how to recognize God's voice, and the second one is about how to trust and obey God's voice. If you haven't seen those episodes, I hardly recommend that you watch them. Walking in the spirit means ordering your life around. It means involve God in your thoughts, your desires, your decisions, and your actions. Walking in the spirit requires listening and responding. Pay attention to God's promptings, to his conviction, to your peace, to scriptural direction. Right? Be sensitive to God's voice, to God's spirit leading you, and then respond to those leadings. Trust God over your flesh. Choose obedience to God and choose it over comfort and control or impulse. You will not regret it. There are a lot of times in our life where we're pursuing comfort. We we want to stay in control. I have this desire, this craving, this impulse, and I chase after it. Those are the things that get you into all sorts of trouble. You will not regret choosing God and choosing obedience over those things. I sincerely can attest to that. Obey his spirit quickly. Don't delay to obey God's spirit. If you know God is saying something, get on it. Get after it. It can weaken your conviction if you just delay and you drag your feet on it. Quick obedience keeps your heart sensitive to God's voice. Review the fruit. Remember, walking in God's spirit produces fruit, the fruit of the spirit. If you are obeying God's spirit and you're seeing peace, self-control, righteousness, those are confirmations that you're doing it right. But if you are following something and you're not seeing peace, self-control, love, righteousness, you're not seeing the fruit of the spirit, then what you're following may not be the spirit of God. And so it gives you the chance to be able to do confirmation and to assess and to analyze, is this the fruit of God's spirit? And am I doing it right? the five disciplines. Remember, reading God's word, meditating, praying, fasting, being led by the spirit. All of these things build your relationship with God so that you could recognize God's voice and you could walk in the spirit of God more consistently in your life. So, what should I do now? We covered a lot of material. So, what does that mean? What should I do? Well, number one, bring your sin into God's light. Stop hiding. Stop excusing. And don't minimize sin. Go to God in prayer. Confess it. You know, tell him what you did and ask him to forgive you for it. An example. So, I felt it was very valuable in this episode that we got tactical. We got practical with it. What's an example of you confessing your sin before God? You can say something like this. Lord, I confess this sin to you. You can tell him about it, right? I agree with you that it was wrong. Please forgive me, cleanse me, and show me what needs to change in my heart. Thank you. That is confession. That's confessing your sin before God. Then number two, repent and trust Jesus for mercy and grace. Repent by changing your mind. Turn back to God. Choose God's will over the desire that led you into that bad behavior in the first place. Then apply faith. believe that through Jesus you are forgiven. You are cleansed and you're empowered to overcome. Praise God. What's an example of repentance? Well, you could say, "Because of Jesus, I'm forgiven. I'm not condemned. Sin is not my master. God wants me to live differently, and God gives me the grace and the power to do so, and I will do it differently." Praise God. That is a commitment that you can make where you repent and you put your trust in Jesus for the mercy and the grace and the power. Jesus did not die, be buried, rise again the third day for you to just be stuck in all of your issues. He did so because there's a tremendous and a massive power that comes through it. How much power is there? Go read the book of Acts. Ea.. a.. read Acts chapters 1, 2, 3. You can see the power of God. That is the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. The spirit of God bears witness to the resurrection power of the gospel. The power of God comes through that death, burial, and resurrection. And when you put your trust in the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, sin cannot hold you down. Nothing can hold you down. Demons scream and and flee, bodies get healed, the dead are raised. I mean, God does these wonderful, powerful things to confirm that work that he did through our Lord Jesus Christ. Number three, walk in the spirit and starve the flesh. Praise God. Remember we said before, strengthen the spirit. Follow the spirit and starve out the flesh. Starve it out. Starve it out. It's doing nothing for you. Involve God in your daily thoughts, your decisions, and your actions. Right? Pay attention to his prompings, his conviction, and his peace. When I say starve the flesh, I'm not saying don't eat all the time. There is a time for fasting. But to be very clear, folks, I want to make sure I'm correcting it. We're starving out the flesh in the sense of the human nature, the the sinful nature within us. That's the flesh that I'm talking about specifically. Practice the five disciplines so your relationship with God grows stronger and your sensitivity to his spirit increases. An example, before acting on a desire or an impulse, pause and ask, "God, is this from you or is this my flesh? or is this even another voice? I want to please you, Father. Lead me into what honors you. Ask that prayer. Take a pause. You know, often they talk about in things like Alcoholics Anonymous and other programs, they talk about taking a pause. Taking a step or even anger management, take a breath, count to 10, take a step back. Don't just chase after the impulse. Something's trying to drive you. Something's trying to steer you. Take a step back. I love the scripture where Jesus said that men ought always to pray and not faint. Right? Remember what Jesus was doing in the garden of Gethsemane. He looked and he says, "Pray that you enter not into temptation. Something's coming to you. There's a desire coming to you. Take a pause. Give some prayer. Seek God. Sing some praise and worship. Then make a decision. It'll help you not enter into temptation." Remember, we saw in the book of James where we talked about desires and they'll try to entice you into temptation and it'll try to conceive sin. You can stop it nice and early. You'll have a desire, but you cannot entertain the temptation. And if you need to, you pray and you praise and worship and you seek God. Maybe you bring in another brother or sister in Christ and you pray with him and you can say, "I'm dealing with this temptation." We're going to pray it through because I believe in the death, b resurrection and the power in it to steer me away and to take that temptation out of my life. Praise God. And to overcome sin because Jesus didn't come to this earth for us to struggle with it. He came and he had the keys of hell and death. Jesus has the victory and he's giving the victory to us in our lives as he is across millions of people around the world. Don't just feel bad about sin. Don't just feel bad. Don't have guilt about it. Confess it. Repent from it. Have faith in the power of the gospel and walk forward led by God's spirit. Next episode of the simple truth. So, we've seen that sin is real. Sin is serious and sin is destructive. It's harmful. But Jesus is far greater. far greater. Through the gospel, he gives us forgiveness. He gives us cleansing. And he gives us the power to walk in newness of life. But if the gospel is powerful enough to save us from sin, is it also enough to sustain us and to equip us to fulfill God's purpose? Of course it is. Don't miss next episode where we talk about the gospel is everything you need. Where we're going to see how the gospel prospers us. Prospers us in our spirit, our soul, and our body. and how God provides the sufficiency that we need to perform his purpose. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Simple Truth Podcast. Today we saw that sin is not just a mistake, a bad habit or a wrong action. Sin is missing God's standard and it's serious. It's a fallen condition within us. It shows up through our actions and if we keep obeying sin, it tries to rule over us so that we can't even escape. But the good news is this. Jesus is greater than our sin. His death paid the price for our sinful actions. His blood cleanses us and his resurrection breaks the power of sin. And through the Holy Spirit, God gives us power to walk in newness of life. So what should you do now? Well, I challenge you to do this for the next seven days. Each day, ask God to search your heart. Confess anything he reveals that's sin. Repent quickly. Change your mind. Turn back to God. Speak the truth of the gospel over your life. And before acting on a desire, pause and ask, "God, is this from you? Is this my flesh? Is this some other voice? Lead me into what honors you." Right? Let us know in the comments how God has broken the power of sin over your life. You don't need to tell us the details. We would just love to know that you're being set free. And share this episode with someone who is grappling with something. Let them know that Jesus gives forgiveness and cleansing and the power to overcome sin. If this episode helped you, please be sure to like and subscribe. Next episode, we will get into how the gospel is everything you need. And we'll see just how the gospel, it doesn't just save us from sin, but also prospers us in our spirit, our soul, and our body, giving us the sufficiency we need to fulfill God's purpose. It's been a pleasure talking about the Bible with you. I pray God bless you, God keep you, and God give you the grace to overcome sin in your life and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. Until next time, thank you for listening to the Simple Truth Podcast. For additional episodes, visit us at www.simpletruth.org.