Deliverance from Digging, Pt. 2

[0:00] Romans 12 and then Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4, Romans 12.

[0:23] ! We're going to conclude with some thoughts on this same material.

[0:34] And the idea was the first sermon was from a couple places in the Psalms and Proverbs, even in Ecclesiastes, describing the wicked digging pits and then falling in those pits.

[0:47] And the thought was that they're not the only ones doing that. Christians, just like the wicked, are leading some sinful lives and undercover and digging themselves into pits that get them caught and stuck.

[1:02] And it takes years of their life away from serving Jesus Christ, or it just causes them to have a bad testimony, or just messes with their fellowship with Christ.

[1:12] It messes with their confidence. It makes them feel like a hypocrite. They quit coming to church. And it's because they dug themselves into a pit. And so we looked at that. We identified several pits just to kind of illustrate the idea of what that was, what it can look like for you and I.

[1:29] And then the second sermon from this was getting delivered from that pit. And we took a look at Psalm 40 and saw a pattern where David cried to the Lord. He got God's attention.

[1:39] We saw that he was patient and that it takes time to get out of the pit, whereas it takes time to get in it. It takes time to get out of it. And then the third thought was a total surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ because he brought me up also out of a horrible pit.

[1:56] And then from there on, it's all the work of God. And if you don't surrender yourself to him, you just say, just get me out here and fix this. It's not going to work. It's not going to happen. You'll be right back in that same place.

[2:07] So last week, then, we took the third sermon of this. And the idea wasn't just being delivered from the pit. But now that he brought you up out of that horrible pit, then it's delivery from digging and from going back to these same habits and the things that got you in the place in the first place.

[2:24] The first thought we saw last time was again from Psalm 40. And it says that he brought me out and he set my feet upon a rock. And the thought was that God brings you out of that pit.

[2:34] He puts you in a new place. And that new place is his own presence. And I gave you a scripture on that to show you the person and the presence of God. And one of the words in the Psalms was, I think it was Psalm 27, verse 5, about his pavilion, brought me into his pavilion.

[2:52] And it said, place me on a rock. And so God leads you to a new place so that you don't go back to digging. He gets you out of the dirt. The song we sing is Away from the Mire, because that pit said it was miry clay.

[3:06] And then secondly, God establishes a new behavior. And that is he established my goings. And I showed you and we looked at several passages. And some of you found your own where he establishes our goings according to the word of God.

[3:18] And then he inputs a new substance in the one that he delivered from the pit so that they don't go back to digging that pit. He put a new song in our mouth, even praise unto our God, and something new on the inside.

[3:32] And so just concluding last week's thoughts is that God knows that the old place has got to be replaced with a new one. And the old behavior has got to be replaced with new behavior.

[3:44] And the old substance that we sought after and for satisfaction, that also has to be replaced with a new substance. And the desires and the urges and the lusts, they don't go away.

[3:56] They don't disappear. But the behavior has to be replaced with something new, something that won't land you in a pit. And so now we're in these two places, Romans 12 and Ephesians 4.

[4:08] Let's begin in Romans 12 and verse number 2. Well, verse 1 sounds an awful lot like the total surrender that we spoke of in getting out of that pit.

[4:23] I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

[4:45] So on one hand, you've got being conformed to this world, worldliness. But if you would have your mind renewed, you could be transformed from worldliness to then godliness.

[4:59] And you could live a completely different life if you renew your mind. Because your mind is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and your mind is going to want to go back to the dirt.

[5:11] It's going to want to find the dirt and spend time in the dirt and dig a pit. Now flip over to Ephesians 4. We read these verses last week. I remind you of very similar material here.

[5:22] Verse number 22 through 24. Verse number 22.

[5:56] I'm going to have a thought about renewing your mind and come back to that. I closed last Wednesday with a famous quote that I'm sure many of you have heard of, and it's just a really great line and concept that speaks a lot of truth.

[6:12] It is, if you sow a thought, you'll reap an action. And if you sow an act, then you'll reap a habit. If you sow a habit, you reap a character. If you sow a character, you reap a destiny.

[6:25] And all of that to say that it begins with the mind. It begins with your thoughts. And if you sow a thought, you're going to act upon that. And then that act, as you continue to sow that thought and that action, becomes a habit.

[6:37] And that's kind of the thought here. That's what the digging was like. It's habits. It's doing the same thing. It could be detrimental to you as a Christian, but you find yourself in love with it.

[6:48] You find yourself drawn to it. You continue in it until you find that you're stuck. In Proverbs chapter 5, it describes a wicked man, says that he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.

[6:59] He's trapped now. His own sins have just got a hold of him. Now, remember, we're using biblical imagery of digging a pit to illustrate the concept of that quote of sowing this and then reaping a habit, and a habit that forms a character.

[7:18] And as Christians, it's important for you to realize that it's common, it can be very common, to get trapped by your own habits and to have a sin that so easily besets you and eventually develop a character, a trait that is going to hinder you from being right with God and from serving God and from having a pure testimony.

[7:43] Now, I mentioned this book, and I'm going to spend a little time talking about some things I learned in this book that just fits right into this material and what we want to avoid about digging pits.

[7:54] The book was called The Power of Habit, and the book explained why we do what we do in life and business. And it wasn't anything scriptural or spiritual about it, but reading through it, I could not help but see these biblical truths just jumping off of the page.

[8:11] The book details how good and how bad habits are formed. It doesn't even, it's not about you and saying, oh, you have a bunch of bad habits, you need to be better.

[8:22] It's not even that at all. It's just saying, why does one person do this and the same person seemingly does something different? And why are one successful when the other that had the same opportunity isn't?

[8:33] And it was trying to understand the differences there. And so this book broke down habits that are formed, and then once they are formed, it shows how we're kind of almost robotically governed by our habits that we've taken upon ourselves, and they've just become everyday life, and we don't even think about it.

[8:51] Even subconsciously, we just do the same things. And this can happen with sin. This is the key in the note that we're trying to really drive home, is we want to not dig that pit and fall therein.

[9:04] So the power of habit, the book described habits as a repeated sequence of three elements. Those three things, I'll give you and then explain a little bit about them.

[9:19] The first one is a cue, which is like a trigger, something that kicks it off, a cue. The second step was a routine or a behavior.

[9:30] And then the third was a reward. So a cue, a routine, and the reward. This is the sequence or the cycle that was just noted, documented, and it just showed up every single time.

[9:46] Now, I want you to believe this and hear me. It sounds like I'm talking about something a little secular here, a little psychology. But understand this, that every single one of us in this room, every single one of us, there's not a person exempt from this.

[10:02] Every one of us are constantly living out this cycle. Cue, routine, reward. All through your day, you're living out this cycle in little ways and in big ways.

[10:13] And you don't even know it. It's just subconsciously doing some things that just become habit to you. The book calls this a habit loop. And it shows up in a variety of days. Some of you, it's like as soon as you wake up, coffee.

[10:27] It's just your habits, what you do. It's probably a habit of yours to brush your teeth before you leave for work in the morning, which is a good one to have. But that's a habit.

[10:38] It's something that your parents trained you to do. But whether it's a good habit or a bad habit, the idea is it follows this sequence or this cycle of cue, routine, reward.

[10:50] It could be biting your nails. It could be watching a particular show on TV or watching the news at a certain time. There's so many different habits that make up our daily lives.

[11:00] Some of them are harmless. Some of them are even good habits to have. But some of them could be classified as digging those pits.

[11:11] And that's why we're talking about this stuff tonight. They could swallow us up, and we want to avoid those habits. We want to conquer those habits if they're wrong and if they're ungodly and if they are damaging to our relationship with Jesus Christ and if they're damaging to our testimony to sinners around us.

[11:28] We want our lives or our goings to be established by God and pleasing to God. So let's talk just briefly. Let me help you understand what this is. A cue.

[11:39] I mentioned the cue. The first step is a trigger moment. It's something that incites a response out of you. It could be boredom. It could be a certain time in your day that you just find yourself going to do something.

[11:54] It could be a visual stimulant like a commercial or an advertisement. Something that just, it's a cue for you to do something. It could be a person. Certain people get around other people and they start acting a certain way.

[12:08] It could be a person that influences you to certain behavior. And so there's the cue. Then there's the response to that cue, which is referred to as behavior or in the cycle they call it the routine.

[12:21] Since this is a habit, it's routine. You get the cue and then you go into your routine. An example that you can get is say there's a commercial on TV and you ate your supper and you didn't have any dessert yet and there's ice cream.

[12:37] Or there's cheesecake factory, something or other. And it's the thickest fudge you've ever seen and the best looking chocolate. That it just, the sight, the cue of that can invoke a behavior.

[12:53] It can invoke hunger or a craving for something. I think we've all experienced this somewhere along the lines that we're craving something because why? We saw it. And it got us thinking on it. And so then we go into a routine of finding something sweet to satisfy that urge that just came on.

[13:10] And so that was the end of the cycle then. The reward is that form of gratification or that accomplishment and whatever the thing is. It's not necessarily a good thing or it's not necessarily a bad thing.

[13:21] It's just these are the three steps. If that commercial showed you and got you excited for something, made you hungry, then the reward was the treat that you went and found.

[13:31] And while you completed the cycle, you fulfilled the cue of craving some sweets, achieving that reward can also do something else. It can also leave you feeling guilty.

[13:43] Like I was not supposed to eat that today. Or I'm trying to lose weight, not gain it. Or something like that. You know, if that's the case. Because you gave in. Now, ultimately, as children of God, we want to be dealing with things about this that are sinful.

[14:00] Meaning we want to caution ourselves against digging pits and falling in them and being trapped in them. But to get you to understand this whole concept of how this breaks down, why we do what we do, I think pointing out some of these everyday situations is helpful.

[14:16] So let me give you some more examples here. These are ones that, after reading the book, I just came up with these. They match perfectly to what the book says or to this concept of cue, routine, reward.

[14:28] Example one, you're bored. And what does most people in the world, or at least in first world countries, do when they're bored for 20 seconds, 5 minutes?

[14:42] What do they reach for? You do it 100 times a day. I'm bored, so 10 seconds have gone by. Let me get my phone out. Why do I reach for my phone?

[14:55] Because I need to stimulate my mind. I don't want to sit here bored. So just as an example, boredom can be the cue for a response. The response is very often grabbing a phone, reaching for your phone, and then the reward is now you're stimulated.

[15:14] And you're not bored. Your attention's on something. It could be a game. It could be a... Or the stimulation could be a variety of things. It doesn't have to be a bad thing at all.

[15:25] But it certainly can be a bad thing. And you could say, for instance, you're bored, so you get your phone, and now you end up doing some online shopping and buying things that you didn't need. And you weren't going to buy, but you're bored.

[15:37] So you end up with a behavior. You could be looking at things that you should not be looking at at all. You could be watching or listening to things that you shouldn't be listening at all. So the boredom is the cue, and it leads to a routine, and that routine leads to the reward.

[15:55] Whether it's good or bad, it doesn't matter. The point is this is the cycle. Here's another example. You have a bad day. You have bad news, and you're depressed. You're just sunk on the inside.

[16:07] And you're a little beat down. And I hope this isn't you, but a lot of people in this world don't know how to handle bad news and things going wrong in their life. So what do they do? They had a cue of their depression, and so they have a behavior.

[16:22] A response to that is to reach for a beer. Reach for a bottle. Reach for a bottle of pills. They'll reach for something that will get that feeling away.

[16:33] It'll give them some kind of sensation, whether it's alcohol or drugs, or it could even be food. People do that all the time to cope with things they just eat. This is something I haven't really heard much of this lately, but probably 10 to 15 years ago, it was getting to be pretty big amongst teenagers, especially, and young ladies.

[16:53] And they were cutting themselves with razor blades. And why did they do that? Because they felt lonely and depressed. And so they took razor blades, and they cut their skin until blood came out.

[17:04] And that pain and the sight of blood for them distracted them from their issues. And they would even say things like, that pain just made the depression melt away.

[17:15] And it's a terrible, terrible habit. But I saw a girl at Starbucks with her shirt sleeve just barely over her shoulder and just cuts. I couldn't even count how many there were.

[17:25] The whole arm was filled with scar tissue from all these little sliced back and forth patterns of razor blades. She was cutting herself to pieces. And, man. But the cue was there, and her routine was to go to that.

[17:41] And she's done it hundreds and hundreds of times. And so that's another case there of this cycle and how it plays out. I'll give you an example. You're in Ephesians. Look over at Philippians chapter 4.

[17:52] I'll give you a biblical look at one in the Bible here. Philippians 4. And some of you guys will remember covering this in our prayer time last time.

[18:08] Or a couple months ago. Verse 6 and 7. 4. 6. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

[18:22] And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Now what's the situation? There's some kind of present care or issue in your life.

[18:36] And the teaching is don't be full of care over anything. Take it to God. Let your requests be made known unto God. You take it to the throne of God.

[18:48] That's what you're told to do. Now what could you do is you have some issue in your life and you just get full of anxiety over it. That could be your routine.

[18:58] The cue is the bad thing happens. Your response could be just melting to pieces, pulling your hair out, biting your nails, just consumed with it.

[19:09] But the biblical response is to take it to the throne. That's the response. And then the reward is in verse 7. Your mind could be going nuts over this situation in your life.

[19:28] Or you can take it to the throne and drop it off and God fills you with peace. That's your reward if the behavior is to take it to God. But at any rate, there's a cue, the problem.

[19:41] There's a response. Hopefully it's go to prayer and then the peace of God is the reward that comes from going to prayer. So there you can see it in a spiritual sense as well.

[19:52] Now getting back to this cycle we've been talking about, the research that they've shown has been tested and gone over through decades of time and study. And the cycle is concrete.

[20:03] The cue, the routine, the reward. And the teaching then is that you can't alter the elements of this cycle or this habit loop. But what you can do is you can alter your behavior.

[20:16] You can alter your routine, your response to the cues. And then as a result, the reward would look different as well. So somebody who eats because they're bored or they eat because they're stressed, well, they need to replace that behavior or that routine with something that's not going to lead to extra pounds or misery or whatever the case.

[20:36] They can have the same cue, but they need to replace the behavior or the response. Somebody gambles or somebody finds themselves doing things when they're around certain people.

[20:48] In order to avoid the negative results that can accompany negative behavior, you've got to replace the routine. You've got to replace your response to that cue with a different one and form a different habit.

[20:59] Now, the trick in all of this and what kind of was the end all in the book was locating the cue. That is, locating the exact reason why I end up doing this all the time or doing this, etc.

[21:16] And that was tricky. For the author, he found himself gaining weight by eating a cookie every day in the middle of his day at the cafeteria where he worked.

[21:27] And he could not figure out, why am I doing this? Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep doing this? I'll just stop. And that lasted for about three or four days. So willpower just didn't get it done. He found himself just continually.

[21:37] And so he had to just kind of come up with a plan, come up with a chart. And finally, he figured out that it was a certain time of day. And it was just like he needed some break.

[21:48] He needed something to just get him over the hump. And that was what his behavior, his pattern was going to get a cookie in the cafeteria. When he found out, this is what I'm doing, this is why I'm doing it, then he altered some things.

[22:01] And he got over that and he lost his weight. And so he's happy. But the trick was identifying the cue that facilitates the behavior. Now, in our study, we're talking about digging yourself into a pit.

[22:14] And if you can spot the cue, then you can play around with alternative responses or routines that can lead you to a more favorable result. Just like the wicked dig pits and fall in them, we've established that Christians do too.

[22:28] But now I want to help you see that willpower is not enough to break a bad habit. And you might think, oh, no, I'll just knuckle down and I'm going to do this.

[22:39] No, you're not. Human nature, history proves to you that you're not stronger than your lusts and your desires that are inside of you. If a habit's been formed over time, it's going to take something else.

[22:54] Confession won't do it. I repent, God. I repent. It just doesn't get you away from digging that pit again. And tears, there's more to it. And the thought is that the routine has to be replaced.

[23:07] That second step, that response has got to be replaced with a new routine in order to alter the habit. Because the cue is still there. But the response has to change.

[23:18] Now, my dad told you on Sunday that he was a druggie and he was a partier for a while. And so that's just prompting me to spill the beans a little. To tell you about myself, I came by it naturally.

[23:30] No, there was about, I want to say, a five-year section in my life where just, for instance, I smoked marijuana for a good solid five years, like very, very, just every day.

[23:44] Just all through the day, many times a day. Smoked cigarettes for five years. Through this time of just living that lifestyle and doing what I did with people, there were many times that I thought to myself, how am I going to kick this habit?

[24:00] And I was just a young man. I didn't know, you know, how long life was. I know other people quit. But I thought, how am I going to kick this? I can't kick this. I couldn't do it even if I tried. It's like it has me.

[24:12] And it's not like some street drug that, you know, you're stealing and selling stuff to get it. It's not like that at all. I could function without it. But when I didn't have it, all I could do was think and exhaust every opportunity, every person I knew, every phone call I could make to try to find some.

[24:28] Because it was just consuming me. And I remember feeling like, I don't think I could beat this thing. Like, I wake up thinking about it. Every chance I get when I'm not high, I want to find an opportunity to do it.

[24:42] And when I go home from work, I'm getting high. And before I go to bed, it was just all the time. And it consumed my mind that this is, it's got a hold of me. And I didn't like it. But when I got right with God and I repented of just the life I was living, I dumped all of it.

[24:58] Like everything that I had been involved in. Cold turkey just laid it out there and said, I'm done with that. I can't do this anymore because I want to be right with God. And I know I can't, to me, it's all or nothing.

[25:10] I can't play games and do this sin on the side, but then try to pretend I'm living for the Lord. And so cravings and urges were still present.

[25:21] Even though a radical change had taken place in my life, the triggers were still there all the time. Like, go to work the next morning and the first thing everybody's doing, standing around the shop, is lighting up a cigarette.

[25:36] Or get down off the scissor lift and load up new material. And before we go up and do that, just burn one. And so it's just smoking all day long.

[25:50] So being in that, that was my habit. That was every day. I was just doing that with all these guys. But it all had to change and it stopped. I don't know where I got the idea. I have no idea where I got the idea.

[26:03] But I bought a bag of those green, the green bag of winter greens. Those mints that are here in church. Maybe they're out there or not. And those big winter greens.

[26:13] Because I bought me a bag of those and I kept them in my car. And I kept them in my truck. And I kept my pocket full of them. And I put my, I had that pocket up here, you know, the work with my name on it.

[26:26] And there are the cigarettes and the lighter used to be. I filled it with those lifesavers, those winter greens. And every single time that we stopped and everybody lit one up, I dipped in and popped them in.

[26:39] And I just, that was my behavior. What I did was I, the cue was there. I changed my routine. I found something else to replace the cigarettes and the other stuff with mints.

[26:51] I couldn't tell you how many bags of mints I ate. I don't know. I don't care. But I know that I changed my routine. The habit was changed because I put something else in there. Then I was able to beat that thing.

[27:03] And I never got addicted to lifesavers. So it was a win-win. Now, I don't think lifesavers got me off of weed or cigarettes.

[27:13] The Lord did that. And my love for Him and just a desire to do right did that. But that's something I had to do was replace it.

[27:24] I couldn't just pretend willpower was enough because there were times when in the wrong situation, I could have fallen. So identifying the trigger and the cue is one thing.

[27:39] But then experimenting with alternative routines or behavior is another thing. And that is going to be, that's a very necessary component, what I want you to see, into getting, keeping yourself from going back to digging those pits that the Lord gets you out of.

[27:54] So essentially, the mind has to be reprogrammed to respond differently to the common cues. It could be the boredom. It could be the stress.

[28:06] It could be a break in your day. Just everyday triggers that causes or results in a certain behavior. And I said last week that to have your goings established by God, like Psalm 40 said, that's going to take time because it says that He established my goings.

[28:26] It takes time to establish anything. It just doesn't happen with a snap of your fingers. And so the routines and the ways that you respond to things, that doesn't happen overnight to establish them as something good or something new.

[28:42] It's formed over time. Ultimately, we want to replace the habit of digging, that behavior that got us into a pit, we want to replace it with behavior that's approved of God.

[28:54] Replacement is the reprogramming of our minds to respond to the cues and to respond in a righteous response. So the verses that we read at the beginning said that our mind needs to be renewed.

[29:08] Be renewed by the renewing of your mind. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. The triggers and the cues won't go away as long as we're in this flesh and as long as we're in this world.

[29:22] But the new man that God establishes his goings and puts his feet upon the rock, he has a new behavior because his mind is renewed to think differently and to desire different things.

[29:35] He can remain in fellowship with Christ and resist going back to the dirt. Now, consider the Apostle Paul.

[29:46] You're in Philippians, are you? Look at chapter 3 and look at verse 6. The Apostle Paul talked about his former life and how he lived, and he was a very zealous man.

[30:00] In verse number 6, concerning zeal, persecuting the church. That's the response he had to this queued up zeal inside of him.

[30:13] He was not a passive man. He was not a sit around and talk about it. He was a do it kind of guy. He was full of zeal, and zeal is an outward passion.

[30:25] It's an outward display of passion. For Paul, it was for God, but it was misplaced in the law of Moses, the Old Testament. And he thought, I've got to get rid of these Christians and preserve this Jews' religion.

[30:40] And so he was wrong about that. But what did he do? He persecuted the church. But after he's saved, he's still full of the same zeal. That is his cue to a different action.

[30:51] Flip over just a few pages to Galatians chapter 1. The cue, I'll say, was his energy and his zeal. It never left.

[31:04] But the routine, what was the destruction of the church, was replaced with a new behavior. Look at verse 23. Galatians 1, 23. But they had heard only that he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed.

[31:24] Paul's zeal and his energy was on display for the wrong reasons. Now it's on display for the right reasons. And talk about traveling.

[31:35] Acts chapter 9, we see him like, hey, will you give me letters? I'll go all the way up into Syria to find every last one of them. But he's just a go, go, go and do the job. And when God calls him, guess what he says?

[31:49] Go, go, go. And he got to travel by boat, by foot. He went all over the place to preach that gospel. Instead of to exterminate Christians, now it's to make new ones.

[32:01] And so there's kind of a, in his own testimony, you can kind of see this thing working. I want to take you one more place in scripture. We're almost done here.

[32:11] Go to 1 Corinthians 15. We're talking about being delivered from digging. And this involves altering the negative habit with a change in your response to what is the same trigger.

[32:32] So you're replacing behavior of the old man with a new routine established by God and acceptable to him. Before we get to 1 Corinthians 15, the Holy Spirit of God is going to send you cues all day long.

[32:46] He'll speak, if he's inside of you, he'll speak to your mind and remind you to do things that are right and that are pleasing to him. And he'll also speak and remind you to stay away from things that are not pleasing to him.

[32:58] You ought to know his voice. You ought to be able to understand when the Lord's speaking to you and pointing you a direction. He will, if you're a young believer, he will speak in your heart or he'll draw you or point you to the word of God or point you to a prayer or point you to attending church on a regular basis until those things become a habit.

[33:21] And then he doesn't have to point you into doing it. Some of this, you didn't have to think about it. You didn't have to be like, oh, it's Wednesday. You didn't have to pray about it. You just, this is what I do. Wednesday night, 630, you're here because it's a habit that you've already formed.

[33:37] The Lord has done that in you and you've responded to him. His cues of this is what's right. This is what's right. And you did it. Now, the same thing can be said on the other hand when you're young in the Lord. If you don't allow these things to establish you, he's going to point you to him.

[33:50] He's going to point you to him. He's going to point you to him. And it's going to be on you to listen to his voice or to choose to grieve him. So the Holy Spirit will send you cues and speak to your mind and remind you to do right and even enlighten you to opportunities.

[34:06] Some of you have it in your mind. You have tracks in your car and you see somebody, you give them a track. Some of you, though, the Lord has to say, hey, give them a track. Remind them. And you've already, some of you can develop a habit of doing it.

[34:19] And in other cases, the Lord has to cue you to the response to the behavior until it becomes a habit. And that is that pattern of good works that we looked at last week. So now, finally, last place to look here this evening, and we're done, is 1 Corinthians 15.

[34:36] And just to get you into the context, look back at verse number 12. Verse 12 says, now, if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, here's a question. How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

[34:50] Like, how do you, there's people that say this, and they're teaching this in Corinth, that there is no resurrection. There's some apparently in this church, maybe. That blows my mind, so maybe it's not in the church.

[35:01] But they say there is no resurrection of the dead. But Christ is being preached that he rose from the dead. So somebody's saying something that's wrong. Just get that. That's what he's addressing.

[35:11] And then he goes down this line of reasoning. Like, if what they're saying is true, if Christ didn't raise, then we're not going to be raised. If Christ isn't raised, then we're of all men most miserable.

[35:22] You're yet in your sins. And you can read down through those verses where he makes this argument. So now move ahead to verse number 32. Paul says, So why would I even bother giving my back and all my energy to preaching and to fighting the good fight of faith if there's no resurrection and if all of this is vain?

[35:58] His response then in verse 32 is, Let us eat and drink. For tomorrow we die. Instead of serving Christ, let's just serve ourself. That makes total sense to me too.

[36:08] If the dead rise not. And if all that's false. Now he makes this statement that I want you to get. It's verse 33. Be not deceived. In the context, somebody's deceiving them.

[36:22] Somebody's telling them something that's wrong. Be not deceived. Evil communications corrupt good manners. If you listen to the wrong voices and the wrong teaching, it's going to corrupt your responses.

[36:38] You see how this ties into this study into you digging yourself into a pit of sin that you can't get out of. And then you have to cry out to God. If you listen to the wrong people tell you there's nothing wrong with that, you're going to start doing something and find out, I'm miserable.

[36:54] And I'm in a situation I shouldn't be in. Because you told me that drinking's okay. Or you told me that there's nothing wrong with that. Or that you can listen to this. Or that you can be part of this.

[37:05] And you find out whatever sin that could be besetting you or getting you into a trouble. Into a mess. It could be that you're listening to the wrong voices that justify that behavior.

[37:16] Because your flesh will find the right one. Your flesh wants to sin. It tells you it's not that bad. And it just finds somebody in this world that's going to tell you, Oh, it's hereditary.

[37:27] Or, Oh, it's not your fault. Or there's nothing wrong with it. It's legal in California. And they're going to tell you that it's okay. So, it's true. And then you find yourself digging away.

[37:39] Instead of planted upon the rock. And it's goings established by the word of God. You listen to somebody who was saying some things that weren't true.

[37:51] And it corrupts good manners. It corrupts your response to the cues that come up in your day. And you're going to find yourself digging yourself into a pit. And right back where you started.

[38:02] So, the message is part two of delivery from digging. And I think if you can understand why we do what we do. Why we find ourselves in this behavior.

[38:16] It may help you to find a new pattern. A new routine. A new thing to fill that void or that gap. So that you don't continue to fall in that behavior. Maybe you need to buy yourself a bag of mints.

[38:29] Maybe that will help you with one thing in your life. Maybe you need to find something else to do. To keep yourself from falling into that. Maybe you need to sever some relationships with some people in your life.

[38:41] That are constantly pulling you into behavior. That is not pleasing to the Lord. It's your response to the cue. That leads to the wrong behavior.

[38:51] So forth. So, if that's something you can understand. Then I hope it helps you. If not, sorry. But there's a lot there. And it's all alive.

[39:02] And working in each of our lives. Whether we're aware of it or not. And the goal is for us to have our feet planted on that rock. And our goings established by the Lord. And to be a pleasure to Him.

[39:14] And a good testimony to others. So, let's dismiss in prayer. And ladies, you'll be here Saturday, Lord willing. And then see you all the rest of you on Sunday. Father, thank you for tonight.

[39:25] Thank you for these folks here. And I pray that this material and this thinking would help us, God, to get out. To keep us from going to the dirt. And from digging. And Lord, just expose and illuminate our minds to the problems that we create for ourselves.

[39:40] Help us to understand the behavior and understand a way out. You say that you'll make a way to escape. And so we believe that. And I pray that you'll help us to see that way.

[39:51] And understand how we can escape falling back into these pits. And I pray, Lord, that you'd purify under yourself a peculiar people zealous of good works. Help us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts.

[40:04] And I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.