The Invisible Fight

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Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Who?

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will deliver me from the body of death. I love that, not what. Give me a pill, give me a prescription, give me some advice, give me some counsel, give me something. It's not a something, it's who, it's Christ.

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You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

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It's pretty amazing. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 16, says therefore, we do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing. Yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. Look, my body's physically ill right now, but my spirit's saying let's go. You have somebody. You have someone, you know someone who's dying of cancer or something. Their body is the only thing that's dying. You remember this? There's somebody who's on hospice, like that.

Take your Bible to them, Start reading to them out loud. Say pastor, you don't understand who it is. It's my dad. He's really old and he's really mean. And well, how sick is he? Is he going to get up and beat you up? No, he's all plugged into machines. Then take your Bible and read it to him. Listen, you see. Well, my friend's in a coma. Have you heard about people in comas? Sometimes now I begin to wonder. People are in coma. God has locked them out from hearing everything else. People that often come out of a coma will say I heard everything I said. I heard everything I said for six months. So you better watch out what you're saying in front of that coma friend of yours. But give them the Bible. Put on praise music. Wow, the inward man's being renewed.

By the way, the day that the Christian dies is the day that the inside of us outgrows the outside Caterpillars. Do that? Caterpillars crawl up your wall, spin a chrysalis or a cocoon, turn into liquid. Metamorpho is the Greek word Comes together as a butterfly that reaches a point of growth that breaks open the shell. What happened? The inside grew to the point that it was greater than the outside.

When that happens for the believer is the moment of death. That ought to cause you to look at death a little bit different. If you're a Christian, if you're not a Christian, you should freak out because that's not happening to you. The moment you drop dead is you get on a slide that takes you straight to hell, and it's buttered or greased on top of it. Not funny. Jesus died on the cross so you wouldn't have to experience that. Everybody in hell today got there because they wanted to go man, verse 17,.

2 Corinthians 4, for our light affliction, which is, by the moment, is working for us a more exceedingly eternal weight of glory. Isn't that beautiful? Secondly, under this point is the fact that we fight the invisible, he says in verse 23,. But I see another law in my members, that's his body parts. It's an interesting word, by the way. The word members is me los. It speaks about.

I mean, it's not very attractive, but it means it pertains to our human body, but it pertains mostly to a limb. You know, limbs are limbs. Limbs digits or appendages. That sounds kind of cold. How's your appendage? Isn't that a funny word? Huh, but I see another law in my members, in my appendages.

What law is that? It wars against the law of my mind. My hands say I want to touch that. You see, jack, are you insane? There's no brain, there's no determining factors in your hand. I know, isn't that weird? And yet the Bible says it happens. And I want to ask you right now does it not happen? You can be the most saintly person alive on the earth today and on the inside you can have this desire that shoots like an arrow into your thinking oh, I want that, I want to touch that, I want to taste that and immediately remember, up goes the wall, the mind goes to war against the appetites of the flesh.

And you're called a Christian. When he says this is another, he says another law. It's interesting that word is heteros. It means it implies there's another man, heteros, like heterosexual. It's. Listen, it's one kind, but there's two sides to one coin. Have you ever heard that term before? There's only one coin in the argument and that's human, but there's two sides to the coin male, female. Spiritually speaking, there's only one part of you, but now that you're born again, there's two sides to you. It's you, but there's the old you and the new you that war against. I wrote this down. I don't know if it blesses you or not, but it meant something to me.

Our bodily members, my body, become the tools of our will. Is that not true? Whatever I will determine, decide my body is going to do. Number two I thought this that my bodily members become the tools for our will. I choose to do it and then I decide how I'm going to do it. That's either good or bad For our bodily members. Number three become the tools by our will. That's the key of our will for our will. By our will, I decide, you decide. Jesus says walk with me. I say no. I say later I say yes. That's true about all of us. Listen to this. You know I love CS Lewis. Listen to this. We never find out the strength of an evil impulse inside of us until we try to fight it. Is that a great statement? That word war? It means to declare war.

The mind, the war that is being raged against my mind. The word mind, it's ethereal, invisible. The reality of man. Your mind is much more the reality of you than, of course, your physical body, which is simply a puppet to execute what your mind is all about Logic, understanding, reason, comprehension, the rationale of man.

A lot of people want to talk about reason, isn't it funny right now, you know, because I don't feel good, I think I might be in hard on you today. I just feel like I'm being a little honoree and I'm just thinking. So people today are running around saying, well, it has to be rational and logic. No, kidding, of course. So what is it that you're trying to explain? And people say now, in the name of rational, they actually take the literal meaning of words and they flip it upside down. Well, yes, somebody, is it rational Out of the? Well, a year ago there were 74 genders and now there's over a hundred. So is it rational for you to pick one? Yes, and I determine that on who I want to be today.

What if we take a blood test? Can we take a little DNA. Why would you want to do that? Because we want to find out what you really are here. You see what's going on.

Listen, the Bible tells us in the last days, evil will be called good, good will be called evil. Light will become darkness, darkness will become light. Men will say this good is evil and evil is good. And if you don't think, we're near the end. The very, very first chapter of the Bible, chapter one of Genesis, is under wholesale attack by Satan. When you begin to destroy man in the image of God, the end is near.

Thirdly, under the second point is that we fight from freedom. Verse 23 says and bringing me into captivity, to the law of sin which is in my members. In other words, my body is trying to pull itself into destruction. It's just, it's all about instant gratification, my body and it's fighting my spirit. Right, your body wants stuff now and your spirit is looking from an eternal perspective and there's a war.

But listen, we fight from freedom when it says bringing me into captivity. That's if I allow it Now. We're not perfect. Each and every one of us will at times allow it, but just know what this is saying here. You don't have to stay there. Are you a Christian? But you've been held captive by sins. Let's push it to the extreme. Are you addicted? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? But he hasn't been the Lord. He's your savior.

And you're in constant turmoil because the drug, or the porn, or the money, the gambling holds you captive. You don't have to be held captive by it any longer. You need to get along with God and cry out to him and watch what he does. I'm not gonna listen. I'm not saying that he'll snap his. He could. He could heal you of it in a second. He can and he does.

There are times, though, most often, where he will begin to develop your walk and you'll go through a detox session, so to speak, from the world, not from the drug. I don't care about the drug. Oh, I'm so hooked on whatever, whatever. I'm so hooked on it I can't break it. Go to God with that thing and let him detox you out of it. You can't do it. And the Christian? The Christian can say I can't do it. See, the person who's got confidence still in their flesh says I can do it. I'll just go to Malibu, check in, pay $10,000 a day, come out, I'm fine. You know how those companies stay in business. A lot of repeat customers. Only Christ can break those chains. Man, if Hollywood knew that, if New York knew that, if Hong Kong knew that, the world would be different.

Freedom captive that word means to take, to lead away captive, to take as a prisoner, to take by force or by stealth, to seize upon, to bind up. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 12 says therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Listen to that Christian man speak that way. Isn't that awesome? Hey, if you think you're tough and you can take it all, you better think again. No temptation is overtaking you, except such as his common demand, but God, who is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able. But with the temptation, notice, satan tempts you. God doesn't bring the temptation. The world, satan and your flesh tempts you, but God's watching so that you don't get swallowed up by it. Notice it says with the temptation that's coming from the world, god will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear. It Isn't that great news? That's awesome.

Third and finally, is this verses 24 to 25. Am I me, as the statement Sounds like a question? But is it the statement? Yes, you are you, and we know the one to whom we belong. I'm so grateful for this. Verse 24 teaches me that a sinner, I'm, a sinner in need of redemption.

O wretched man that I am, says the great Paul the apostle. Hey Paul, what do you got to say for yourself, o wretched man that I am? Who? Circle the word who, not what. Who will deliver me from the body of death? I love that, not what. Give me a pill, give me a prescription, give me some advice, give me some counsel, give me something. It's not a something, it's who, it's Christ. When he says wretched, the word means distressed. Listen to this. It means miserable. O miserable man that I am. O alone man without any resources. Man the word employs the imagery of being alone or abandoned at sea.

A friend of mine told me that when he was in US Navy SEAL training, they took him him and his five other guys took him 14 miles off the coast of Coronado. They had underwear on and a knife. That's all you had. You had your underwear and a knife. They throw you. Well, they don't throw you. Okay, get out. You jump into the water. Stay together as a team 14 miles out.

Listen to this at 18 inches your head's 18 inches above water, at the top of your head, but your eyeballs are about six inches below the top of your head. At that, at 14 miles, on a moonless night, you can't see the horizon. And they said we'll see you should be back at a certain time. We've done this a thousand times before. We'll see you, not sure. And they drove away. The boat leaves. They're supposed to listen classified information. They learn how to read the movement of the water to find out which direction's land. They start swimming in that direction as a team. They believe this. If a shark attacks you, the rest of you guys are all gonna stab it and kill it and you're gonna continue on and you'll be able to use your underwear. You can tear it and turn it, help the guy out. We'll see you at the beach Abandoned.

The whole point is to get them abandoned. But they know down deep inside they wouldn't have put me out here unless I could make it. They know something about me. I don't know. Well, listen, god knows something about you. You and I often forget, and that is the Holy Spirit has a homing device, as it were, in you, like GPS leading you home.

Oh wretched man that I am Happy, is the man who can say that today? Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of sin and death? We can't officially read Romans, chapter 8, verse 1 yet, but you're feeling it. He said moving from the darkness into the light causes details. All right, causes details. Moving from the darkness into the light causes details to come into view. It is in the darkness that most listen to this most. Anything looks good. Everything looks good in the dark because its true identity cannot be fully discovered. It is only after the light is turned on that what is present can be seen for what it truly is.

Cs Lewis put it this way listen to this. If a thing is free to be good, it is also free to be bad, and free will is what has made evil possible. Why then did God give them, us humans, free will? This free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. Badness cannot succeed even in being bad. In the same way in which goodness is good, goodness is, so to speak, itself. Badness is only spoiled goodness. Evil is a parasite, not an original thing. Leave it to him. Brilliant, awesome, number two, quickly, we're almost done.

A sinner, that's who I am. Am I me, yep, a sinner who is saved? Saved, my body keeps me in the category of still being a sinner. The inside of me has put me in the position of righteousness, of loving Christ, of wanting to have the separation from my body. Happy is the man or woman who recognizes I'm a sinner or saved by the grace of God. And if you know what I'm talking about, that doesn't give you license to sin. It gives you the unction to hate it all the more. It's beautiful. We're saved. Have you trusted Christ? The Bible says you're saved. And then, finally, you guys, it's this. A sinner who knows the truth. Back to the truth. So then, verse 25, with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. So what does that mean? It means he continues to fight, day in, day out.

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