Well, I certainly hope your new calendar year is off to a good start. I know that we frown upon, rightly so, New Year's resolutions, but that being said, there is really never a wrong time to develop a positive new habit. And if that happened to align with the new year, then so be it.
As Richard mentioned last week, human life is a succession of habitual behavior. Now the timing of my new habit was not intentional, but on January 1st, after many years of knowing I needed to start this good habit, I finally heeded the counsel of my older and wiser brother. For years, I have known I needed to do this. (And no, I did not change my allegiance from the Carolina Panthers to the New Orleans Saints. I prefer proper Queen's English.)
Perhaps I was inspired by the book we listened to over the winter break. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. After all, it seemed like everyone in that book was doing this. But more likely this good habit, like many, was spawned by following my wife's footsteps because she had started a few weeks back. Regardless, I really hope this new habit sticks, and I am kind of holding myself accountable by speaking on it here today because I am sure somebody is going to ask me when I see them in the future, "Hey, you still doing it?" And I hope I will be able to stay in this good rut, so to speak.
So what is this new habit? Well, after years of fighting it, after years of excusing it, I finally started putting into writing a daily synopsis and creating a daily journal. (Shout out to Dr. Maas for the inspiration for that.) And there are many who consider a daily journal a keystone habit, that is, a habit that actually crosses multiple dimensions of your life and brings a lot of value. And one of the greatest benefits is the forced self-reflection each day, capturing both what went well and more often than not, the many opportunities where we would like to hit that redo button on a decision or an action that could have been better.
A journal is indeed a great way to identify and improve areas of our life that are incongruent with what we really want them to be.
But as I started writing, I thought, what would I call this journal? "There and Back Again" came to mind, but I quickly settled on a more appropriate title, and I am going to let you guess this one. If we do this one thing, we will not be hurt by the second death, and our name will not be blotted out of the Book of Life. We will be clothed in white raiment, eat of the Tree of Life and hidden manna. If we do this one thing, we will be given a new name, and our name will be confessed before the Father and His angels. If we do this one thing, we will be given power over the nations, become a pillar in the temple of our God, and inherit all things as we sit with Jesus Christ on His throne.
All of these great promises are ours if we do but this one thing: Overcome. So my daily journal and title of this sermon is "Daily Overcoming."
But that brings up a question: just what is overcoming? Now we are called to a lifelong pursuit of becoming holy like God. We could jot down I Peter 1:15 or I Peter 2:5, where we are called to be a holy nation and a holy priesthood. We could also jot down to I Peter 2:9, where we are called to be a holy generation. There is multiple scriptures that prove out our lifelong pursuit is indeed to become holy like God.
Now we can unpack that just a bit more to say our calling is to a daily cleansing process of overcoming our carnal selfish nature and developing a godlike nature that is selfless, pure, and holy. And we could recall John's message from the Feast, the cost of holiness is indeed significant. Its cost is complete, self-sacrificial love.
As we study into the Greek word here used and translated as overcome, we see the word nikaó, Strong's #3528, meaning to prevail, to conquer, to get the victory, or to overcome. Now, this is a verb, and that implies prevailing or being victorious in a battle. But what is it exactly that we are to be victorious over? We must overcome the daily battle against our carnal nature that drives us to do anything contrary to God's will.
Now, overcome is not a once and done event. In the B.L.O.T., the bottom line on top for this sermonette, is this relatively simple message today. Overcoming is the all day, everyday victory of making the right selfless choices. Now there are two basic types of selfish choices we could make, wrong choices we could say. The first basic wrong choice is to do something bad, something against the letter of God's law. We could jot down I John 3:4, "Sin is the transgression of the law." The second selfish choice we can make, the second type of wrong choice we can make is a wrong choice to not do something good. And I think we often lose sight of this one. We could jot down James 4:17, "Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin."
Turn with me to Romans 12. We know, again, God's purpose is to create in us His holy image. And overcoming is again about using our faith in God to yield to His will in all aspects of our life. It is that purification process of cleansing our mind, and it really goes alongside the sanctification process. Overcoming is part of the sanctification process that Jesus Christ works out in His church.
Romans 12:1 [We all know this scripture.] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
Paul confirms here for us the cost of holiness is what? It is self-sacrificial love.
Now, no doubt, we all want the reward for being an overcomer. We all want to be known as overcomers. We all want to be seen as overcomers by the Judge, Jesus Christ. But inherent in the definition of an overcomer is action and constant forward progress over all our carnal tendencies. In order to be an overcomer, we must have daily action and progress over all our carnal tendencies. So if our growth becomes stagnant in any area, we should really think hard here, brethren. We should recall Jesus's warning in Matthew 25:5, which I will read for you. "While the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept."
We know this is to the end time church, and we are warned here, brethren, that to some extent, during the end time, we are all a bit asleep. And remember, later on in that parable Christ tells us, only those that are ready are allowed into the marriage before that door is shut for good.
Most of us do not spend near enough time reflecting on our daily decisions and confirming where we made the right selfless decision versus where we made the wrong selfish decision. And this is where that daily journal proves to be such an important tool. It forces a level of self-reflection and evaluation without which it would be very difficult to look back and remember daily progress. It would be almost impossible to measure that progress across a period of time. A period of time like years.
Now, for years, I have excused myself from this daily journal, convincing myself that, "Hey, my mind could hold all that information. There's no need to write it down, Bill." But the hard truth is, fellow Family members, very few minds have that level of detailed retention, and I certainly do not. The key point is here though, most importantly, with or without a daily journal, that self-reflection is required because we will not get the reward if we do not make the daily progress towards holiness. To overcome, we must be more self-aware of that sin that is so deeply ingrained in our daily habits.
To this day, here I am. I have been in the church 20-some years, and yet I was outside of the church longer than that. And that time outside the church had such an influence on me. I struggle against my competitive nature every single day. Almost every action, it comes to mind, I want to win. It was just instilled in me from the time that I could even talk or walk, and I struggle with that.
But the first question we have to ask with anything that we struggle to overcome, any sin that has been with us so long, the first question is, Are we really disgusted with that behavior? Do we really see it as God sees it? Do we see it as Isaiah says, all sin separates us from God? Do we see that sin in our life separating us from God the Father and Jesus Christ?
Please turn with me to Hebrews 3. And as you are turning, let us recall Brother Clyde's reminder just a few weeks back. It is Satan's deception that causes us to continue to live in sin and think that we are receiving God's favor at the same time. Hebrews 3, we will pick up a couple of scriptures here.
Hebrews 3:12-14 Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.
We must overcome our evil, selfish heart, brethren, and avoid all sin that separates us from God. We have a daily responsibility to ourselves and to each other to exhort and encourage one another in our daily battle of overcoming the hardness of our hearts and overcoming Satan's deceitfulness of sin. Too often we allow sin to just be in our lives, either because we cannot see it or because we do not see it as really being that bad. Satan deceives us into actually comparing ourselves to others because by doing so, our problem seems okay compared to theirs. But it is all sin, and sin separates us from God.
This deception allows us to become just like that publican in Luke 18 with the Laodicean attitude. It is what allows us to become the unwise virgins in Matthew 25 who carelessly waste away their time to prepare.
Now if we could create a list of the things that we need to overcome, things that we struggle with, we can pray and meditate on those things, and we can actually build a plan, a mitigation plan with controls to try to help us detect and prevent that behavior. (More on that next time, God-willing.) But the battle to overcome occurs predominantly in our minds. For many of us, the sins we struggle with the most are not easily identifiable against the Ten Commandments. Examples might include daily sins of neglect, where we just do not put enough time or effort in to study, to pray, to reflect, which is really how we purify our minds through Jesus Christ's words. His words are spirit.
Maybe it might be daily sins of idolatry, where we allow something in this world to take a more prominent place in our minds over God. We may struggle with daily sins where we do not properly care for our physical bodies to eat right and to exercise. We may struggle with daily sins where we do not put in near enough time for the proper care and edification of the Body of Christ, our spiritual Family.
The point is, every choice is an opportunity to overcome our selfish nature. We must carefully evaluate our choices to really think and understand what does God want, not what we want. What would bring the most glory to Him? What requires the greatest self-sacrifice from us? What would bring the greatest benefit to our relationship with God? What would bring the greatest benefit to the Body of Christ?
It is really easy to justify our selfish decisions and allow Satan to deceive us into thinking it is okay. We all have a critical role in the Body of Christ. Are we using all the God-given gifts and resources we have to serve and care for the Body of Christ?
Now, the question is, how do we accomplish mission impossible, the seemingly impossible task of overcoming our carnal nature? Turn with me to I John 5. And as you turn, we should recall Paul states in Philippians 4, we can indeed "do all things through Christ who strengthens [us]." And we could tie that to John's warning in John 15:5, without Him, without Jesus Christ, we can do nothing.
As we reviewed earlier, the Greek word translated overcome is Strong's #3528, nikaó, which means to prevail, conquer, get the victory, or overcome. But did you know that these references, roughly, I think, 25 of them in the New King James, all have an underlying Greek primary word? And that word is only used once in the entire Bible. It is Strong's #3529, niké. It means conquest or victory, but most importantly, it is used to represent the means of that success. That means, the very source of our overcoming is clear to us. It is niké.
I John 5:4-5 For whatever is born of God overcomes [that is nikaó] the world. And this is the victory [Here is the one and only usage of this underlying Greek word, niké, that is to say, the source of the victory] that overcomes the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Whoever is born of God overcomes the world, we are told, and we can jot down John 16:33. Jesus, the Son of God, has overcome the world. So it goes to reason then, whoever is born of God, whoever has God the overcomer, inside them, they therefore, too, will overcome through Him. And this is the victory, the very source, the means of that victory, it is indeed our faith in Jesus Christ. Through faith, we become one with Him, and we can tie this back to the scripture that we read earlier, Hebrews 3:14.
We become one with Him. We become partakers with Him. We receive His Spirit and our enabler to indeed overcome and achieve mission impossible.
Now over to II Peter as we start to wrap this up.
II Peter 1:2-4 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things [all things] that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which we have been given exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
God, through His grace, has called us, brethren, and given us everything we need to overcome. We are partakers with Christ, partakers of His divine nature. Through Him and His Spirit, we are fellow overcomers, and we have escaped the corruption of the carnality in this world. As Paul puts it in I Corinthians 15 and Romans 8, "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." "In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us."
The incredible promises of Jesus Christ to the end time church are given to the overcomers. We must awaken and make ready for the Bridegroom who will return soon. Overcoming is an all day, everyday victory of making the right selfless choices. Overcomers by definition are those that are making daily progress to identify and eradicate sin as they work to purify their minds in the constant pursuit to holiness. Overcomers are partakers with Christ, walking in His enabling Spirit of self-control and self-sacrificial love.
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