Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - How Do I Fight Sin and Temptation? With Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.New episode from the Dial In Ministries Studio! In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis sits down with Hank Bowen and discusses the topic of fighting sin and temptation.Watch VideosVisit the Website Pre-order Consider the LiliesFollow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Well, welcome in everybody. We're super glad to be back with you. My name is Hank Bowen. I'm here with Johnny Artavanis. This is Dial In. And over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be diving through some practical conversations around holiness and the pursuit of holiness. I think today we're going to be talking about fighting sin. So Johnny, with that, would you mind setting the table for us? What is sin and why is it worth fighting in the first place? Well, yeah, sin is really anything that is a violation of God's holiness and sin is hostility. It's rebellion and sin is anytime we prefer anything or anyone above God. So I think sometimes we have Jerry Bridges used to call them respectable

sins, but it's important to understand that sin is not just the things that we do. It's who we are. We are by nature sinners. And one of the wonders of the gospel is that if you're a Christian, you're no longer under the power of sin. You're no longer under the dominion of sin. You're no longer a slave to Satan. You're no longer a child of wrath. That's Ephesians. But if you're a believer, you're still vulnerable to Satan's schemes. You still have the remaining sinful flesh dwelling within you, and you will still battle sin the rest of your life. J.C. Ryle used to say in his book on holiness, he wrote it probably in the 1870s, that there

is no such thing as a person who goes instantly from justification, that's our positional standing before God when he reckons us righteous. No one goes from justification to perfection. In between justification and glorification, that's when we're totally made like Jesus in glory, there's something called sanctification. And so that's just the process by which we become continually conformed into the image of Christ. And so sin is something worth fighting because if you're a Christian, you want to be like your Lord Jesus. And I think probably one of the other things in setting the table for our conversation, it's important that if you're a Christian or if someone's a Christian that's

listening, fighting sin is one of their main responsibilities and main, really, main delights to shun sin and to become more like Jesus until they meet him face to face. And I think sometimes even from an imagery perspective in the scripture, you have different types of imagery that goes to represent who we are as children of God. And people like, even I said the children of God, people like familial language. God is my father. The church is my family. You're my sibling in Christ. That's my sister in Christ. Hey, brother. Hey, sister. We like familial language. And one of the chief metaphors or really themes throughout the scripture is not just that familial language, but that warfare language that goes to really show us that we are, in fact, even as Christians,

even though Jesus Christ has already won the battle, we could say, we're still in a battle. And you're going to see that in 1 Peter 1.13, where it says, prepare your minds for action. Why? Well, in 1 Peter 5, it says, the devil is prowling like a roaring lion, seeking to destroy you. In Ephesians 6, we're to take up the whole armor of God. Why? Because we're in a battle against Satan, the world, and our sinful flesh. And so we need to kind of think with those types of parameters in mind. And the language in scripture, when it's talking about how a believer interacts with their sin, is never polite. It's never gentle. It's never delicate. It's always aggressive.

Colossians 3, put to death the sin. You know, you consider yourself dead to sin. It's Romans 8, 13. It says, if you live according to the flesh, you must die. But if you, by the spirit are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Paul says in Galatians 2, 20, I have been crucified with Christ.

And then Galatians 5,20, I have been crucified with Christ. And then Galatians 5.24, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. It's not polite language. It's severe. It's aggressive. And if you're a Christian, you're in a battle. And the question is, are you fighting it? Yeah, absolutely. So two things I'm picking up on right from the onset. One, you're talking specifically to Christians. So I want to pull that to the forefront. For sure. Because the first and foremost is, have you actually been transformed from death to life? For sure. As you mentioned. Second, now, if you are a Christian, you're finding yourself on a spiritual battlefield. And so we need to almost recognize the game that's being played.

And it's not a game. It's a war. Yeah, an eternal reality that's actually being waged across this earth. But so with those two prerequisites in mind, then, what else are we just supposed to be thinking? Or what's right thinking as we enter that battlefield? Yeah, and I think probably just one thing in regards to even making sure

we're talking to believers. I think I would say if you have no interest in fighting sin, that shows where you're at from a spiritual condition perspective, because when God gives you a new heart, he gives you new affections and new desires that long to be like him. And so if we, even when you're using the language of fighting sin, if you're just succumbed to sin, that does say something about your spiritual condition where bare minimum you want to take a look in and say, hey, where's my heart before the Lord? I do like one thing John Piper says even in regards to how serious is sin and the warnings of sin that are written in the epistles. When Paul's writing those warnings about sin, those are written to both believer and unbeliever. It's the church. It's, it's a mixed bag, you know, and Piper says, I don't, the person that says that I don't need that kind of a warning against sin,

that type of Christian who says I'm secure, I'm saved by grace for goodness sake. I don't need any threatening words regarding sin. Like if you live according to the flesh, you will die. Piper says that's for someone else. Someone may be saying, of course, fighting temptation is good, but don't make it sound like it's such a big deal. I don't think my eternal life hangs on killing sin. I have eternal life. And Piper just says, that's a worldly way of thinking. That's not the way the Christian thinks. And this is quiet rebellion against God's word because we're to take this seriously. And so I think even with the warnings about sin,

we'll talk about some of the warnings against sin today. And Piper says this and I like it. He says, warnings don't make you love God, but they're really helpful when our minds are enveloped in so much darkness that we are about to go to bed with the wrong woman. And there's truth in that. And we'll talk about this in future episodes in the series

that there's the fighting sin element. Then we'll talk about the renewing of her mind. We'll talk about even where's the line between our responsibility and God's power and sovereignty. Like if it's Christ who works in me, then do I just let go, let God, or am I really engaged in this battle? And then I think even confession

and kind of working through things together. But I have kind of four main bullet points for us as we talk through this element of fighting sin. The first would be, I call it discipline don't drift. And what I mean by that is you're never gonna fight sin sitting on the couch. And from a engagement perspective, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, 27,

that he disciplines his body and keeps it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. The idea there is that Paul's saying, hey, sin is so serious. And this is probably one of the godliest men in human history. He's saying sin is so serious that I discipline my body and I keep it under control. And this is a guy that's going to preach on the grace of God. This guy that's going to say that it's, it's all a work of grace. And he's going to say it's, it's our, our righteousness is because of what Christ has done. And I think sometimes there's spectrums where you feel like you're trying to earn your way to God. And then other times where you go, well, he's already declared me righteous. Who cares? And Paul,

who's going to, you know, thunder justification by, is saying, I keep my body under control. I discipline it. He tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 4.7, train yourselves for godliness. Training is what type of imagery? Warfare. He says in 2 Timothy 4.7, I have fought the good fight of faith. He's not in this easy river. He's not in this easy river. He's fighting. In Titus 2.12, he says,

train yourself for the purpose of godliness. And in Philippians 2.12, he says that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And then he says, for it is God who works in and through you. So there's this element of human responsibility and God's sovereignty and this fear and this awe of God is really what drives our sanctification. That's not this fear that, oh, God's going to strike us dead necessarily. Even though God does discipline sin, even in the believer's life, it's the awe of who God is. But I think the main kind of point there initially is, hey, if you're facing a sin in your life, if you've got a specific struggle, sometimes I sit down with young men and I say, hey, what's your secret? What do you got going on? Fundamentally, I would just tell you,

you're not going to just overcome that sin by osmosis. It's not going to go away. Sin only grows. You're not going to grow out of your sin. Your sin will grow. So I think that would be the first principle. Any thoughts there? No, I think it's a great one. I think there's a lot there to unpack. I think first and foremost, growing up in a church outside Chicago, we were blessed with some great pastors who emphasized some of these exact same points. And the fact that it's a spiritual sweat or a discipline to be striving after something and that it's in alignment with kind of all of living more broadly. We don't get better at that which we don't practice and that which we don't take seriously as a focus in our lives. With that, I think on the flip side, though,

there is this reality that there are specific situations that we actually should be avoiding at all costs. So maybe talk a little bit more. So it's a discipline on the one hand, and it's something we're training for, and we're active. We're not passive participants. But then maybe what else would you say in regards to fighting sin? There's a couple of phrases that a mentor of mine brought to mind, but I'm curious what you might say.

Well, I think first of all, I would say, yeah, discipline, don't drift. The second would be flee, don't fight. I think in regards to temptation, so many times people ask me, how can I fight temptation? And my instant answer is don't. Don't fight temptation. Joseph responded to temptation, not by fighting it, but by running as fast and as far away from it as possible. And we should do the same. We don't want to flirt with the things that tempt us. We want to flee from them. This is Paul's commendation to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2.22. He says, flee youthful lusts. Even in, I want to read Proverbs chapter five. I used to read this kind of on a daily basis that in Proverbs chapter seven, and you could just take this, the fool, the naive one in Proverbs seven,

that's flirting with sexual immorality. He doesn't go and kick open the door of a brothel. He walks down the corner by her house. And it says in Proverbs seven, eight, or in seven, seven, it says, I saw among the naive and discerned among the youths, a young man lacking sense, passing through her street near her corner. He takes the way to her house in the twilight, in the evening, in the middle of the

night, and then darkness. A couple of things. Why is he walking alone at night? Why is he going down that street? Why is he passing her door? He's flirting with sin. And I think a lot of people live their life in this state where even if they're not directly indulging in the sin, they're flirting with it. And over time, that flirtation with temptation begins to wear down on you. Even if you think through the way in 1 Corinthians 10, 13, the familiar verse says, no temptation has come upon you that is uncommon to man. And then it says, but God is going to provide a way, what's the key word there, of escape. It doesn't say of engaging that temptation.

It is escape, get rid of it. Even the way you pray in the Lord's prayer, it's not that our Father gives us this daily bread and then help us to fight temptation. It's what? Yeah. Lead us not into temptation. I don't want, bottom line, any tempting circumstances and situations in my life at all. As much as possible, I want to avoid those things. And that's why even in Genesis 4, after the fall, God tells Cain, sin is crouching at your door and you must master it. Like it's always there. And so I think probably that's a main way of viewing temptation.

James 4, 7 says, you know, flee from Satan. He will flee from you. This is a serious matter. And there are certain battles you don't want to be fighting. The battles are already going to come. So don't go looking for them. Well, it's such a critical delineation because we're supposed to be fighting sin. But to your point, there's no biblical mandate to go fight temptation.

I mean, I'm just, I'm reiterating what you've said, but get out of the way of temptation. I had a mentor growing up in high school who said, what's the easiest way to avoid losing to Mike Tyson in a boxing match? He'd say, don't get in the ring with Mike Tyson. Like every time you get in the ring with Mike Tyson, you're going to lose and you're probably going to get knocked out. And so what's the best way is just don't get in the ring with them. And that's sin. And I think same thing. And I'll talk about this as we go on. But like, if your battle is pornography on the phone, get a different phone, get a flip phone. And so I think even moving on, it's a good segue into where the third is.

If the second is flee, don't fight. The third would be starve, don't feed. And in Romans 13, 14, it says, make no provision for the flesh, meaning that you can flee the things in your life that are explicitly sinful and yet continue to expose your life to the things that open the door for iniquity. Fighting sin then means that you take an inventory of all of the different opportunities or different things in your life that may be morally neutral, that steal your affections from Jesus Christ and even cause you to be distracted and deviant and thinking upon the things of the world. There is a, even, you know, if I go to Matthew five and you know,

the passage, Jesus is talking about adultery and he says, you know, uh, I tell you, you know, you think it's adultery. If you actually sleep with another woman, he says, I tell you, you know, you think it's adultery if you actually sleep with another woman. He says, I tell you that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've already committed adultery. And then he says to this to you, he says in verse 29 of Matthew 5, if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it far from you. For it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you. For it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you. For it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. A couple observations here, straight out of the mouth of Jesus. Sin is very, very, very, very, you don't think about it enough, very serious. It's a life or death matter. And he's

not calling for self-mutilation here, but what he is saying is there must be drastic measures that you take against sin and fighting sin. And now you can ask the question, isn't I only good for lusting after a woman? What's the answer? No, no, it can be full. It can be good thing. It's can be hold beauty. Yeah. Is a hammer, um, only good for killing people. No, it's a wonderful tool, but wonderful tools can become dangerous weapons. And the idea here is that, you know, you need to take an inventory of what are the things that in my life are gateways for sin. And then how can I starve those different things? I talked to a lot of guys that maybe, you know, they have brothels in their pocket.

You know, it used to be you had to go buy pornography at a gas station. There was the sheer terror of walking in and buying a pornographic magazine. The public embarrassment associated. Yeah. Now in everyone's back or front pocket, you have forbidden fruit that grows on new trees every single day. And I think there's a level where, hey, if this is a constant struggle for you with what you look at on your eyes, and that doesn't, I think even there's these scales of what's explicitly wrong. And obviously, I'm talking about lust here. But if pornography is a 10, people kind of inundate their lives with

a five on social media, and they become numb to kind of what's stealing their affection. And really, it's callousing their hearts from what's sin. So I think even that's the idea. John Owen says in his book, Mortification of Sin, he says, be killing sin or it'll be killing you. And that's why we make no provision for the flesh. We put to death, you know, that sin. We close the laptop. We shut off the phone. We go on a run. We end that relationship. We don't surround ourself with the things that

tempt us. We do flee. We don't fight. And then we take even the morally neutral things that it could be a show. It could be, I don't know, a relationship. And we don't feed our flesh. Yeah, I think it strikes me this. I feel like this is a supremely practical point. So the first one being discipline, like we need to be aware of the game we're playing. Secondly, flee the temptation. So avoid at all costs. We don't want to be burning energy, constantly fighting sin, fighting temptation when we don't need to be, when we can be avoiding the situation altogether. Third, to your point, I think it's taking an inventory of my own heart and my own life, the ways in which I'm especially prone to specific sins and actually

trying to systematically root out the surface area of those sins to be touching my daily living seems like a very practical starting point. Maybe give us, I think you've got one more on kind of a next step or another technique, another discipline to be maintaining in our life. Yeah. And I think probably semantically, like, I don't know if I would call them steps or techniques necessarily. I think that you're going to have to, you know, A.W. Tozer says it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian. I say it all the time because I don't want to ever separate the fighting of sin from the renewing of our mind as if those are

part one, part two. We're going to talk about the renewing of our mind next week and the transformation of our affections. But it is important that while you're asking God to transform your affections, you begin to close the door and put behind you and remove from your eyes and your mind these things that rob you of your focus and fixation of your gaze on Jesus Christ. Or your joy. Yeah, your joy. Well, that's just biblical because that's what sin does. That's Psalm 32, that when I kept quiet about my sin, I felt like I was being drained by the summer's heat. Bones were rotting.

Yeah. And so sin does steal your joy. Satan can't take the believer's security in Christ, but he can rob them of assurance and he can rob them of joy. The fourth one would be regiment, not recluse. So if you got discipline, don't drift, flee, don't fight. Then I have, I forgot my third one already, but I have starve, don't feed. And then fourth would be regiment, not recluse. And the idea there is just that if you're thinking about a band of brothers, if you're thinking about warfare language, you don't fight any battles alone. I think there's so much secrecy in the Christian life. I think we live lives that are veiled by external posturing and makeup and

kind of the way we want other people to see us. And there's very little transparency. Sin thrives in isolation. And so you don't fight sin as a recluse. You're not a one man band. You need to be kind of allied with other men and women, preferably older godly men and women that can help you. Ecclesiastes 4 verses 9 and 10 says, two are better than one, for if either falls, his companion can lift him up. In Hebrews it says, take care, brothers, lest there be any one of you in an evil, unbelieving heart, lead you to fall away from the living God. And it says, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called the day. It just means the idea there is, Hey, when we live in isolation, we're in danger. You are in danger. What is the greatest thing for you and your battle against sin is to drag it into the light with other

brothers and sisters in Christ and to shoot it, you know, and for them to be able to come alongside you and not only point you to the grace of God, but to keep you accountable. And even that idea of accountability is so relative, but accountability isn't just, hey, how's it going? It's, hey, I'm going to call you tonight. You're traveling. Okay. I'm going to call you at nine o'clock and I want to, it's actual, it's trench warfare. It even occurs to me that as you say, not fighting solo, David and Bathsheba, where does that story begin? But David's alone on the rooftop walking. He's not surrounded by his brothers where he should be in war. I think, so we've covered a variety of different points here.

First, kind of what's going on. There's, we are in a battle. We're fighting sin. Two, this is a unique call specifically as Christians. The moment you're transformed from death to life and you're a Christian, there's an element in which we know how the game ends. We know the ending of the story and that can bring us supreme joy, hope, peace as we live our life on this earth. And yet from now until judgment day, we're still going to be fighting these frustrating sins that seem to be nagging and trying to tear us back down. You gave us four fantastic principles, and I just want to recap them again quickly. One was discipline, don't drift.

Two, flee, don't fight. Three, starve, don't feed. And four, regiment, not recluse. Regiment there being this band of brothers, right? Togetherness. And also just, again, it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian. And just to your point, it's convicting even for me, the familial language of scripture to always make sure we're using scripture in its totality. I think of Ephesians 6, we're putting on the armor of God.

Like, are you even aware that, that we need to be fighting a battle, you know, on a Tuesday morning, I have to admit, I'm not waking up thinking like I'm going into battle today, but, and yet I am. No. And I think that too, I think ultimately too, I mean, we'll talk about this next week, the higher view of God, the prayer is not just that we would stop sinning, but that we would love righteousness. That's why David says, you know, your word I've hid in my heart that I might not sin against you is because, or how can a young man keep his way pure by keeping it according to your word? Why? It's not just because the Bible is full of warnings. It's because the Bible is full of promises and it changes our affections. And so we will talk about that next week, but the stakes are high. You know, James 1 says, let no one says in verse 113, let no one say when he is tempted,

I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And then this is important. And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Sin is serious. And these are the questions I would ask just kind of various people listening or watching. Number one, what joy-stealing sins

are you most prone to give into? I would take an inventory of those. If Satan, secondly, were to tempt you, how would he do it? How might he do it? He's prowling like a roaring lion. He's after your soul. You know, if the battle seems quiet, all quiet on the Western front, he's scheming. Third, if you were going to access sin, how would you find it?

Number four, when are you most susceptible to temptation? How can you prepare for these times? Number five, what passages of scripture have you memorized or marked to quickly access in times of temptation? Number six, what lies are you most prone to believe about your sin? One of those being, it's not that serious. Or conversely, God will never forgive me, which he does, 1 John 1.9. And number seven, whom are you regularly confessing your sins to? And whom can you call whenever you need to when you feel tempted? So I would think about those questions and maybe write those down, talk about them with someone else. And then I think next week we'll pick up with the renewing of our mind, which is so important and so transformative

to the way that we pursue holiness. And that's our desire. We want to be like Jesus Christ. Absolutely. Well, those are some fantastic thoughts. I think I've taken a lot away from this conversation, a lot to reflect on and talk about more deeply with deep brothers in Christ. So I appreciate you taking this time together and I look forward to the coming weeks as we unpack a few more elements of our pursuit of holiness. All right, sweet. Thanks, Hank.