Your Failure Is Not Final

1:38 as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church for the last 26 years where I have served is in the middle 80s. It was in the middle 80s when I wrote an article for our church newsletter entitled Missions and Masturbation. The article didn't come out of nowhere, and I don't mention it simply to get your attention.

2:08 It relates deeply and directly to Colossians 1 to 3 that many of you have been studying, and it relates directly to my dream for your global significance in this world.

2:29 I had just returned from a missions conference in Washington, D.C., where George Verwer, crazy, crazy George Verwer, was speaking, and his burden burdened me. His burden was that there is a tragic number of students, high school students, college students, many of them just like you. who have dreamed a dream of being radically significant in the world, doing something, laying down your life, sacrificing anything to spread the renown of Jesus Christ to the cities and the nations and the campuses, and then... you lost it.

3:26 And one of the huge reasons he said that it was being lost was that there was so much guilt and a sense of unworthiness because of sexual, sexual failure, that the guilt and the unworthiness finally bled down into a gnawing sense of spiritual powerlessness yielding the dead-end street, the dead-end dream of middle-class, American, comfortable, secure security. And thousands were walking away from the dream they once dreamed for global impact because of sexual sin in their lives and sexual failure in their past.

4:26 In other words, what seems so tragic to George Verwer as it does to me is that so many young people are lost to the cause of Christ. I mean, aggressive engagement, not just filling a pew, but aggressive engagement are lost because they have not been taught, perhaps you have not been taught, how to deal with sexual failure in your life. Notice how I'm saying it. Notice what the issue really is. I'm not saying you haven't been taught how to avoid sexual failure. That may or may not be true. That's not what I'm focusing on. I'm focusing on the issue not of how not to fail, but how not to have your life made into a total waste because you have failed. That's my biggest concern here.

5:32 The great tragedy of Christian young people's lives is not masturbation. It's not fornication. It's not being a peeping Tom or a curious Kathy on the Internet. The tragedy is that Satan uses the guilt of all those failures to strip you of your once radical dream and to put in its place a life that is happy and safe and secure, American middle class filled with superficial pleasures so that you someday die on your lakeside rocking chair, wrinkled and useless and leaving a big fat inheritance to your middle aged children to confirm them in their worldliness.

6:35 That's what he wants to sell you because you failed so badly. And the only alternative is that instead of what you once dreamed for Christ and his kingdom. And I have not come here to waste your time or my time. I have come with a passion that you not waste your life. my aim is not merely to cure you of sexual misconduct. I would like that to happen. I'm a dad. I've got four sons, one daughter. I like very much sexual chastity. That's a good idea. It's a biblical idea. It will spare you much pain and much agony and bring Christ home to you in powerful ways. I want that to happen.

7:29 That's not why I came. I came because I don't want Satan to take the failure and make you a waste because of it. I don't want you to waste your life because of what you did last night. You know what the real meaning of do something now is?

7:55 20,000 towels for Atlanta shelters. 11 wells for fresh water in Africa, college education for 20 International Compassion students. Thank you. New Testament translated for the Dela people of Indonesia. Freedom Center for the Kurds in northern Iraq. Life-changing surgery for kids in South America. Bibles for families in East Asia. Liberation for those enslaved in sex trafficking. You know what the point of that is?

8:39 The point of that is not what you do with your loose change. The point of that is that is what you do with your life. You don't want to be always sitting high in your SUV dropping nickels into other people's dreams. Is that really where you want to go? Give me that favorite car. Give me that favorite house. Give me that favorite wife, and I will drop nickels for the rest of my life into other people's dreams. I don't think you came to passion. to get stoked for that. What broke George Verwer's heart back in the 80s, what broke his heart back in the 80s and what breaks mine today is not mainly that you have sinned sexually, but mainly that this morning Satan said to you, because of the failure at 2 a.m. on TV, in bed, you're a loser.

9:54 you'll never have a dream. Passion is totally over your head. You are out of your element here. You may as well not go to worship this morning. What you should do is go back to school and get a real good practical education. Get a good job. Get a big wide screen and watch sex till you drop. That's what Satan said to you this morning. And what is tragic is that so many believe him because they've never been taught what to do about it. What do you do at 9 a.m. about 2 a.m.? so that's why I'm here to help you deal with the guilt of failure in your sexual life Colossians 2 13 to 14 It goes like this.

11:00 and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

11:36 Now those last words, this, let's make sure we know what this is. The record of debt that stood against us. So there's a record. There's a record of everything you've ever done, good and bad. And the record of your bad is very long. It's sufficient to damn you. That's why it's there. It is a warrant for your arrest and execution.

12:08 This text says this, this record of your debt to God, He, this God, who is the executioner, nailed it through his son's hands onto the cross. Now, when did he do that? Not yesterday, 2,000 years ago. This is historical, objective salvation work. God took the warrant for your arrest and your execution with all the sins that you'll ever commit on it, and he nailed it through his son's hands on the cross outside of you 2,000 years before you came into existence. It didn't happen with any of your help at all.

13:07 Now make sure you see the glory of this objective salvation. We're a debtor. and wrath hangs over us, and instead of holding up that warrant in front of our face, saying, this is why a just God may sentence you to hell,

13:35 he takes it away from your face, and he puts it in his son's hands, and he puts the nail on the warrant, and he drives it through his son's hands, for us, all the sins that we have ever, ever committed. My sins and yours. All those sins for all those people who despair of saving themselves and throw themselves on the mercy of Jesus. There's a name for that. I want to name it because it's being scorned today. And I don't know if you've read the books that are scorning it, or you've sat under teachers who are scorning it, or you yourself may be scorning it. But the name for it is substitutionary atonement.

14:32 whose hands did the nails go through? Not yours. Christ's. Whose warrant brought the nail into his hand? Not his. He had no sin. Yours. That's called substitution. And if you ever hear anybody mocking the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, walk away in tears or show them the scriptures. But don't be sucked into these modern ideas that there is no wrath. God doesn't have wrath. And therefore, there's no need for any penal punishment substitution. All that is old-fashioned stuff. It's not. It's Colossians 2.14.

15:29 Clear as day for those who are not afraid to embrace the whole counsel of God. So I put the name on it. It is substitution of Christ for you and your sin on him. Here's another text. If you want to put two in your head. This is Romans 8.3. what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did. Sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, God condemned sin in the flesh. Whose flesh bore the condemnation? Christ's.

16:22 whose sin was punished, yours. I don't think clearer words can be spoken than to say, God did what the law could not do, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. It was the likeness, because He had no sin. It was our flesh minus sin. And in that flesh of Jesus Christ, the man who ate and drank and touched lepers, in that flesh, God condemned my sin when he died. That's the substitutionary atonement. Embrace it. Build your life on it. Don't let anybody take you away from it. Now, the next verse in Colossians, verse 15, is surprising, perhaps, to you. I don't know. It was surprising to me.

17:18 And the question is, how do they relate? Here's the next verse. This is Colossians 2.15. God disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to an open shame by triumphing over them in him.

17:39 Now, how does the triumph over the devil and his demons, How does the triumph over the devil in verse 15 relate to the nailing of the warrant for my arrest to the cross through the hands of Jesus in verse 14? because surely we know that the devil is quite alive,

18:09 roaming like a lion, seeking those whom he may devour. So in what sense is he defeated? How did the cross result in the triumph over the devil, when in fact, 1 Peter 5, 8 says, He roams around like a roaring lion. And the answer is this. Verse 14 is back to back with verse 15 for a reason.

18:41 He nailed the record of our debt to the cross and in that way defeated the devil. How so? Because even though the devil has many weapons, he can beat you up. He can taunt you. He can tempt you. He can make you see weird things on the walls of your room.

19:06 He can throw you into prison. He can kill you. But he cannot damn you. And the reason he cannot damn you is because there is only one instrument of damnation. Unforgiven sin. Only one thing sends people to hell, unforgiven sin. And that weapon has been taken out of his hands 2,000 years ago. He cannot use unforgiven sin against those who trust in Jesus. Now, I called this first point, Theology Can Conquer Biology. And then I gave it the subtitle, Justification Can Conquer Fornication.

20:11 And I haven't said anything about justification yet. but I can't read Colossians 2.14 where my forgiveness is purchased at the cost of the son's life and my warrant for my arrest is nailed through his hands so that I bear it no more. I can't read that without thinking of all the other places where this doctrine is filled out and completed under the banner of justification by faith. Let me define it for you. Justification is the act by which God declares you not only forgiven, but righteous. God requires two things of you, that your sins be punished and that your life be righteous. God requires two things of you, that your sins be punished and that your life be righteous.

21:08 You cannot bear your own punishment and you do not have righteousness. Therefore, in the abundant love that God has to shield us from His wrath, He sends His Son not only to bear our sins, but to perform our righteousness. So Christ becomes my punishment, and Christ becomes my righteousness, and the righteous life that I am required to have, I now have in Him by faith, and the punishment I'm required to bear, I have borne in Him by faith. This glorious substitution works in both ways, justification and clemency or forgiveness. Theology can conquer biology. And I know that when I'm done here, somebody will say to me, I know a PhD in theology who ran off with the secretary of the department.

22:24 So, so much for your all-conquering theology. I know that, and that's right. I'm not putting theology in the place of passion for Jesus. I'm saying the human soul, the whole soul, mind, heart, spirit, was created to be strong in the knowledge of Colossians 1-3. Our mind was created to be packed with glorious truth about Jesus Christ, about God the Father, about the Holy Spirit, about how He saves sinners by becoming their punishment and becoming their righteousness.

23:29 Our brains were made to hold these things. And too long, oh, let passion not be part of it. Too long we have preferred theology to passion or passion to theology. Oh, let us sing and jump up and down, but don't teach us anything. or, oh, teach us, but we're not jumping if it costs us a million dollars.

23:56 I hope, my prayer, the reason I like Passion and Louis Giglio and have been here 11 years is because I believe here is the potential to get it together. Here is the potential for young people who come and they are told a passion for Jesus Christ and the spread of His renown is supremely important. And I suppose the reason I'm here is to say there is something else important, really important. And it's that your head not have stupid ideas about Jesus in it, but that it be packed with Colossians 1, 2, 3, with a true understanding of what it is about. The Bible wasn't written to be misunderstood. It wasn't written to just get little buzzes of feeling from. It was written to be followed clause on clause, phrase on phrase, until it glows with light as well as heat.

24:58 And so when I say fornication is conquered by justification or theology can conquer biology, I don't mean it separate from a passion for what you see in your theology. I think there are as many charismatic types who fall down sexually as there are doctrinaire intellectualistic types. They're both vulnerable because we were made to be whole. And we will triumph both before and, if necessary, after sexual failure. if we see these things. Let us know. Let us press on to know the Lord. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

25:52 This is Hosea 6. Our people are laid waste with sexual temptation. Why? Because our souls have shriveled up to the size of a TV sitcom. I mean, can you imagine soaking in front of soaps or sitcoms for hours on end and then going to a church where they don't give a rip about theology and thinking you're going to have any fiber in the tree of your faith? You're just going to get blown flat. That's what's going to happen. So find the right church and read your Bibles and read the right books. Theology with passion for Jesus can come.