Freedom from sin
Freedom from sin
(Freedom from sin)
David Wilkerson
What I believe is the only way to get dominion over sin. It’s the only way I’ve seen after all these years of preaching.
First of all, let me begin by saying that a man cannot save himself. He cannot deliver himself from the power of sin. It is impossible. It has to be the work of God by His Spirit.
God said the Old Covenant to take away those feelings of holiness out of you until you get Christ’s holiness. God had a problem. He still has a problem. Before you can have dominion over sin, God has to work out these problems. I see two major problems.
Two things have to be accomplished in a man, before God can deliver him from his besetting sin.
First of all, God has to get the sin-bound man. The first thing He has to do is get you to want to be free.
He has to bring us to the place where we have to cry out, “I want out of this. I don’t want to carry it any more.”
Because a man in his natural self, in his own nature does not want to be delivered from his sin he wants to toy with. He wants Jesus and his sin at the same time. He really doesn’t want to be delivered. No, he says he does.
And he wants to be delivered only because of the pain it causes him and the guilt.
But you see, God has to bring forth something in the heart of a man, something that causes this man more than anything else in the world to want to be free from sin.
Problem number 2 that God has.
How does He get this man to come to the end of himself and all of his human efforts to break himself free and then cast himself in the only hope he has in Christ Jesus?
How does God bring a man to the end of his strength? How is He gonna do this? How does God accomplish to bring a sin-bound man to give up the fight and lay down his human pride and come like a dead man to the cross?
It’d all accomplish by what the Bible calls the Old Covenant.
The Bible says there are a number of covenants but in Hebrews 8 chapter the writer’s dealing with two covenants. You and I are living either under the Old Covenant or the New Covenant. Christians live, for all their life time many live under the Old Covenant. They never do get into the New Covenant.
Some of you sitting here now, you are under the Old Covenant. Unless God set you free you’re gonna go out under the Old Covenant. And you will never be free. You will be always bound by your sin. You will never understand freedom. You won’t understand the glory of the cross when you are under the Old Covenant.
And you got to come by faith into the New Covenant.
God says in the Old Covenant,
“if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant,
… ye shall be unto me … an holy nation. Obey my voice, and I will be your God.”
(Exodus 19:5-6)
It depended on absolute and total obedience.
… by the law [is] the knowledge of the sin
(Rome 3:20)
The law was given so that we can know our hearts, we can know how helpless, how sinful, how wicked we are with this Adam nature.
… that every mouth must stop and all the world become guilty before God
(Rome 3:19)
A man has to acknowledge he’s guilty.
You see, the New Covenant has nothing to say to the man who wants to continue in his sin. Nothing.
The New Covenant is completely designed, totally designed for a sin-sick soul who says,
“I am tired of my sin. I don’t want to grieve the heart of God. It’s more than just getting to Heaven. It’s more than just getting rid of my guilt. I know what the Word says. I know How holy my God is. I want to be in communion with Him.
I want to love Him. I want His power, His authority in my life. I want victory over my sin.”
That’s the man, that’s the woman who gets to the New Covenant. Not written for anybody else. Nobody else will understand it.
God would rather have you go soberly to His throne, confess your total inability to obey His commandments, acknowledge your absolute utter helplessness until (you say)
“God I surrender. I come as a dead man. I come as a dead woman. And all my strivings I have failed. I come to You to trust You first. Now Lord, accomplish these two things, these two problems You always had with a man. Bring me now through it, Lord. I confess that I can’t do it. I confess that I want to be delivered from my sin.”
Folks, if you don’t want deliverance, you’re still not allow the Old Covenant to do its work, you can get so hard hearing this word of God.
That’s why the word comes. That’s why often even the lowest preached in love only is a mirror to get you want to be free, and to show you exceeding sinfulness of the sin.
Now if you are dead to any hope or ambition of doing it on your own, now you are ready to hear about the New Covenant.
I want to talk about the blessing of the New Covenant, get you out of the Old into the New.
Remember what it said,
“I’m gonna make a New Covenant with you, a new agreement, not like the Old One made with your fathers.”
(Hebrews 8:8-9)
This is a better covenant made on better promises (Hebrews 8:6).
Read verse with me verses 25 and 26 3rd chapter of Acts talking about the blessing of the Covenant.
Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made
with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the
kindreds of the earth be blessed.
Acts 3:25
Now who is the seed of Abraham?
Jesus Christ
(and all who believe in Him)
He said, “The whole earth will be blessed by Christ.”
He will be blessed.
Now listen to the next verse.
Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to
bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.
Acts 3:26
Listen to the words.
God having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you …
(Acts 3:26)
Think of a sin-bound man who the Old Covenant accomplished its own work. He said, “I really want to be free. I can’t free myself.”
Number 1,
God determined to set you free and he has made an oath to do it (Hebrews 6:13).
Number 2,
You can’t do it yourself on your own strength. That’s why He gave the Old Covenant to prove it to you.
Number 3,
He has promised to send a Holy Ghost to do in you everything He commands you to do (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
This is the glory of the New Covenant. This is the blessing of the New Covenant.
Everything God expects him. God expects under the New Covenant perfect obedience, absolute obedience.
Jesus through the Holy Ghost was perfectly obedient to the Heavenly Father. I’m not talking about sinless perfection, but I’m telling you that it is possible for the Holy Ghost to overcome and subdue your sins, crush the dominion of them.
What is the blessing?
To turn you from your iniquities (Acts 3:26)
Folks, all I have to do is to believe my God has resource, the Holy Ghost has a power. He’s going to come.
We say in so many words. But, can’t you understand God’s made an oath? He made a covenant. He can not lie. (Hebrews 6:13-18) That has to grip our inner man. This has to grip our very life. And until the Holy Ghost makes that real, until I began to see it accomplished in my life.
Even though I may be sometimes a failure in trying to yield to Him it’s just a failure of yielding. But until that happens the Holy Ghost is loving and patient and kind. He will not cast you away in the process.
There is a step out of the Old Covenant. You can step out right now and say,
“Pastor Dave, I’m tired to be what it is. I am fed up. I’m sick and tired of trying to do this on my own.”
If you tell God that, mean it and you convince yourself and come to this death,
there is a power of the Holy Ghost. Hallelujah. They can overcome that besetting sin.
I want to be free so that I can commune with the Lord.
I want to be close to Him.
I want to draw nigh to Him.