Scott Brown's sermon 'Crucified to the World' draws from Philippians 3:17-21 and Galatians 6:14 to illustrate the transformative power of the cross. He emphasizes that the cross of Jesus Christ not only atones for sin but also actively works to sanctify believers by breaking the chains of worldliness and sin in their lives. The sermon describes three key crucifixions: Christ's crucifixion, the believer being crucified to the world, and the world being crucified to the believer. Brown stresses that the true power of the cross results in a life transformed and separated from worldly influences. He warns against false gospels, particularly the prosperity gospel, which promises life improvements without true spiritual transformation. The sermon calls believers to daily mortification of sin, highlighting that the cross demands death to the old self and life in Christ. Brown uses historical and biblical examples to illustrate the ongoing process of sanctification and the necessity of repentance. Ultimately, the sermon is a call to embrace the full power of the cross, leading to a life of holiness and dedication to God.

Philippians 3, 17-21. Brethren, join in my example and note those who so walk, as you have asked for a pattern. For many walk, of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping that they are enemies of the cross of Christ whose end is destruction whose God is their belly and whose glory is in their shame, who set their mind on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself. And now I'm going to read what is really going to be my primary text.

Philippians chapter three is an illustration of, I believe, Galatians 6-14. But God forbid that I should boast Accept in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world Let's pray father. We thank you for your holy word, its beauty, its help. We pray, O Lord, that you would exercise your power through the cross of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please be seated. These passages of scripture are pointing to victory. They're pointing to a vanquishing power of God to deal with your greatest problem, which is sin. The cross accomplishes the freedom by which you are set free. It's such a glorious message.

Now that dragon, that reptile, that serpent of old, his head will be crushed. It has been crushed at the cross And by the work of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, it's continually crushing his head in your life. And it's such a blessing to know all these things. So as we continue our series on the apostolic preaching of the cross, this is the sixth message consecutively that we've had in this. We find ourselves in Paul's letters to these two churches, Philippi and Galatia.

The Apostle Paul says that the cross of Christ crucified him, crucified him to the world, and secondly the world to Him. And what does that mean for you and me? We'll unpack that in the space of time that we have. And it's a very closely related matter that is encountered in Philippians chapter 3. There are enemies of the cross of Christ.

And the uncrucified and the enemies are the same. But it's here that we learn something very, very important about the cross and about the gospel of Jesus Christ. The atonement, the forgiveness of sin, is not the only, it is not the singular message of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross is wonderfully as deep as that, but it's deeper still. And it is that through the power of the cross, God is delivering the enemies of the cross from worldliness, from shameful living, from worldly patterns that have held them in bondage, literally crucifying the things that are shameful to God that come upon us slowly over time after we're converted.

He crushes the head of the serpent and that's why the apostle Paul says, God forbid that I should boast in anything else than the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're here at this moment to deal with the power of the cross to break the chains of the world. Oh, those chains. To break away all the manifestations of worldliness that exist in our affections, in our words, in everything that we do. John Owen spoke of this at length in his book, The Mortification of Sin.

And here's how he stated the importance of it and how we ought to consider it, consider it every day. He said, do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be killing sin or it will be killing you. And there he's speaking about this process of sanctification where God is continuing to kill the flesh.

And it can be a painful thing, it can be a very embarrassing thing, as you go along your life and you find out things either you didn't understand before, you were ignorant of, or maybe you have just ignored it your whole life as a Christian. It can be painful, but let's be very clear about the cross. The message of the cross is about death. The cross kills. We are looking at the very purposes of the cross in this passage of scripture, you know, and it answers the question, why did Jesus Christ suffer and die on the cross?

And that is that God was doing something for our justification and also for our sanctification. And the purpose of the cross is that we would die to the world, not only that we would be set free from the guilt and the shame of sin, but that we would actually die to the world. The Romans used the crucifixion to make a powerful statement. And here's the statement, if you defy the emperor, you will die. That's what a crucifixion meant.

And the cross kills, Let's be very clear about that. The cross stops a man in his tracks. The cross takes no prisoners. The cross kills. And the Romans changed you And the Romans changed you by killing you.

That's how they dealt with you and your position against their sacred government. But in the same way, the cross has one purpose in terms of sanctification, and that is to neutralize and justification, and finally to dominate and terminate sin in your life. The purpose of the cross is to kill sin, not just to make you feel good about how forgiven you are. That might come strange to some ears, but the cross kills the old man. The cross kills a man and it's you and me.

If you believe in the cross, the old man will be being killed. Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be killing sin or it will be killing you. The cross ends one life and it begins another.

This has been a very burdensome message to me over the week, over the weeks because I've anticipated preaching this message for a while And it's been very convicting to me. But this is a death that brought life. The cross ends one life, but it begins another. What a glory the cross is, it can be difficult. His death transformed a proud, self-righteous killer into a healer.

His name was Saul of Tarsus. That's the power of the cross to kill sin. In 1 John, John says the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we're living in that world. We've been profoundly affected by that world.

But we're not stuck. We are in the world, but the world does not have a final grip on the believer who has embraced the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. These sins have gripped us and broken us and when we believed we were set free from the law of sin and death, and that's why the apostle says, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. There's a power of the cross to kill the sin ongoing in your life. Christ suffered on the cross, and when he did, he issued a double blow.

First, to break our bondage to the world, and then second, to put a brake, A B-R-A-K-E, a brake like in your car on your sin. The cross puts a brake on your sin because you're convicted of sin when you stand at the precipice of it when it becomes conscious. And Augustus Topplady, the hymn writer, called it a double cure. Freed from sin to make me pure. Those two things.

And so, in him is death, But in him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. He is the way, the truth, and the life for all those who die. This is the great contradiction of the gospel. So there's a break from sin.

God neutralizes the power of sin in your life, and then there is a break, a B-R-A-K-E, on sin. That's the power of the cross of Jesus Christ. So in the death there's much, much richness. There are many issues that come to my mind when I think about this. You know, If you live in evangelicalism today, you realize that there have been many false baptisms.

There have been many people that got baptized because they had a feeling, they made a confession, but their lives never changed. And then finally, they actually hear the preaching of the true cross and they say, Oh my, I've never changed. The power of sin was never broken. My affections never changed. Now, Christians never become perfect in this life, but there is a power of the cross that breaks the power of sin.

And these happen to be people who had an emotion toward God. They felt they were saved, they were told they were saved, but there was never really any difference in their life. The emotions didn't last. And by the way, the emotions don't last. Your emotions won't last.

That's something that every person needs to understand before they get married. It doesn't mean that your love doesn't last. Your love goes and it grows. But your emotions ebb and flow. You've always been that way, you always will be that way.

And you will be that way toward God as well. Your emotions will ebb and flow. Maybe you're at a low point right now. Maybe you're flying high as a kite and your soul is so fat and so wonderful, But you might not be that way today. Your faith doesn't rest on your emotions.

If it did, oh my. I hate to shudder. I hate to think of it. Often people engage in a false baptism because they want to be a better person. They see an example that they'd like to follow.

They'd like to have a marriage like that, or they'd like to have children like that, or they'd like to have success like that. And so they come to what they thought was the cross, but they really came to a prosperity gospel. They didn't come to the cross of Christ. So this cross kills, and that's why the apostle said in Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. The old man dies, and is in a continual process of dying. What am I trying to say? I hope it's been clear. The cross severs you from yourself.

The cross severs you from the world. There is an amputation that takes place if you've embraced the true cross. If there's been no amputation, if there's been no severing from the world in your spirit, You did not come to the cross of Jesus Christ. You came to the cross of the prosperity gospel to try to make your life a little bit better. But Jesus didn't come to make your life a little bit better.

He came to kill the old man. And that power of the cross is to reproduce his life in us, not primarily to improve us, but to kill us, to kill the flesh and the works of the world and the devil. That serpent of old, that reptile whose head will be crushed finally. In Galatians chapter one verse three, at the beginning of this great text where Galatians 6-14 exists, The apostle begins the whole letter this way. He started the letter this way, and then now in 614 he repeats it using different words.

He says, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this evil present age, according to the will of our God the Father, to whom be glory forever and other. In other words, the power of the cross isn't just to make you feel so free and good because your sin has been forgiven but it is also to deliver you from this present evil age. In 1st Peter 318 we read the very same thing, For Christ suffered once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit. He makes you alive in the spirit. Your death actually makes you alive.

Another contradiction of the gospel, seeming contradiction. Now in this text, Galatians 6-14, there are three crucifixions, and I'd like to speak about them. There are three parts to what the apostle is speaking about when he says, but God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, that's the first crucifixion, by whom the world has been crucified to me, that's another and then third, and I to the world, three crucifixions in one verse. So the first crucifixion that I want to identify is is Christ's crucifixion Christ's crucifixion itself of this the apostle says God forbid that I should boast in anything else, but Christ's Crucifixion in other words God forbid that my life is built on anything else God forbid that I love anything else that I'm attracted to anything else that everything else takes Lower lower place that Lloyd-Jones said of this what we once boasted in does not matter to us. They don't matter anymore.

When the power of the cross has come, those things that you once loved, you don't love them anymore. You may love them a little bit, but you know you ought not to. And there's a process that is launched in your heart. And he begins to put a break, B-R-A-K-E, on your sin, because he has broken the sin. If there's no B-R-A-K-E break on your sin, it ain't been broke.

But The cross is victory, death is conquered, sin is disarmed, the powers and the principalities are declawed. That serpent of old has his claws pried off of you. Praise God for that. He did not help us at all. God muzzles the devil and finally and finally kills him for all eternity in hell.

Until that time the world lies in the power of the evil one and God is sanctifying us. Now when you when you come to Christ you came to the one who would kill that dragon. It is a dragon, it is a reptile, he has whispered in your ear, he has manipulated you, he has abused you, and he has lied to you. And Hollywood loves him and wants you to love him. He speaks so sweetly in your ear, on your shoulder, while his claws are digging into you.

But the cross disarmed the works of the devil and that Disarming brought life. In John 10, 10, we realize that his death brings abundant life. I have come that they may have life and might have it more abundantly. Jesus says, I'm the good shepherd. Devil, get your claws off of my people.

I'm the Good Shepherd. In John 12, 24, Jesus said he's like a grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies so that it would bear fruit. And he's saying that you're the same way. When you die, you bear fruit. It's more beautiful than ever.

You discover your sin, it's embarrassing, but you realize when you turn away from it, it's beautiful. And you start bearing fruit. It's more wonderful. The turning from sin becomes the most wonderful thing in your life. But often we just delay it.

We delay it. We think it'll provide us some pleasure. But it never really does. It just kind of leads us on, usually into more and more and deeper and deeper. It makes us more trivial.

It makes us more lustful. It makes us more worldly. It makes us more useless to God. But this is the freedom that sets people free. You know, there's much discussion about the purpose of the law of God, and people say, well, I'm not under law, I'm under grace.

Well, what does that mean? What does it mean if you're set free from the law? It's very important that you understand what Paul meant by that. He didn't mean that you should ignore the law. He meant that you're not under the curse and the condemnation of the law.

That's the power of sin that's been broken. The Baptist confession, the confession that our church embraces in chapter 21 addresses this, and the first paragraph in that chapter actually identifies 13 things that define what it means to be set free from the law. You know, first, it's freedom from the guilt of sin. Second, it's the freedom from the rigor and the curse of the law. Third, it's, or, third, or fourth, it's freedom from being delivered from this present world.

Fifth, it's freedom from bondage of sin. Sixth, it's freedom from the dominion of sin. Seventh, it's freedom from the evil affections. Eight, it's freedom from the fear and sting of death. Nine, it is freedom from the victory of the grave.

10, it is freedom from everlasting damnation. Eleven, it is freedom from freedom for free access to God. Twelve, it's freedom in yielding obedience to him. And the last element from the freedom that the law, freedom that God has given us from the law is the fear of God. It's not slavish fear.

It's freedom from slavish fear. Not out of slavish fear, but out of childlike love. That's the freedom that sets you free. If you're trying to escape the law of God, don't escape it by ignoring it. The only escape is through the cross of Jesus Christ while you continue to seek to be obedient to God and his law.

So the cross kills its victims, but what is it killing? It's killing the most harmful thing to us, and we are free from the law. And you know, it's painful to separate from sin. We all know that. And that's why we avoid it.

We often don't want to read the law of God because we're afraid it's going to convict us of something. And so we don't want to hear it. So we avoid it. Christians do this. I've done this.

And sometimes we linger in certain patterns for years. Sometimes it's because we're not aware of it. The Old Testament calls these unintentional sins. They might be sins of ignorance as well. God didn't awaken us by his word.

We read, the more you read the Word of God, the more of your sin you see. That's the way it works. The more of that dragon gets killed. Praise God for that. But it's a process.

But then the Lord shows you something. It's either in His word or from a conversation or from something that you heard. Maybe in a sermon and you realize, oh my, I've been disobedient on that my whole life. And God just revealed it to you. And by the way, that doesn't mean that you're behind in the Christian life.

It means that God is sanctifying you. It means that God is picking you up in the place that you are as he always does he picked you up where you are and he keeps picking you up where you are all through your life and that's the mercy and the grace of God you know this this often happens when a person is trying to break some kind of addiction to some kind of addictive drugs. It's very painful. It's extremely painful. And the Lord reveals the sin of it and the realization that there's tremendous pain in getting free and in withdrawal and it lasts for days sometimes.

Sometimes just a few days, sometimes a lot of days. And so facing the pain builds a reluctance. But that's true of all of our sin. We face the pain of abandoning our sin and there's a certain pain in it. And I think what happens in addiction is a little bit like a parable of what it's like for everyone when they realize that if they turn from the sin, there's gonna be some pain, but what's the gain?

The gain, there's much gain. That's the power of the cross because there's life that gets breathed into your life, his life, and the pain actually leads to the opening of the windows of heaven and blessing because all obedience is blessing. There's always more happiness and obedience that's wrought by faith. Not by legalism but by faith. Out of love for God, not by legalism.

Not by moralism but in a heartfelt response to God. So this is the crucifixion of Christ, the first crucifixion. Here's the second crucifixion. The believer is crucified to the world. Paul personalizes this.

He says, and I to the world, I am crucified to the world. And what does this mean? It means that his whole relationship with the world has changed. To be crucified is to be killed to the world, to be separated to the world. The apostle is literally saying that he's died to the world, but the reality is it's the worst part of you that dies.

It must die. It is not in your best interest, but it's not your best life that dies, it's your worst life that dies. People today talk about, you know, being their best self, putting on their best self. That is so funny to me. But with the gospel, your worst life dies.

And when you come to him, you come to the one who would kill that dragon, that serpent of old, that reptile, that who whispered in your ear, who has manipulated you, who has had his claws in you. And Jesus Christ is prying his deadly poisonous claws off of you over time. Because he disarmed the devil at the cross. And that means that your whole relationship with the world is changed. We talk about this in different language.

We talk about worldview. What's your worldview? And your worldview is different. You begin to view everything differently. Your view of law, politics, medicine, you know, all these things, you know, what is essential and what is not essential.

You know, all these matters of jurisdictions, you start thinking differently about the world. You just do, you can't help it. And you look at what's going on around you and you say, what happened to my world? They don't think like me at all. They don't.

But to be crucified is to die to something. One of the commentators, Ritterboss, said it in this sentence, the glory of the world is absolutely radically objectionable. It is dead, obliterated. And so the things that we once boasted in don't matter to us at all. This is equivalent to the Apostle John writing in 1 John, do not love the world or the things that are in the world.

So the cross separates a man from his old life. 2 Corinthians 5.15 speaks of it. He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. No longer live for themselves, but for him. So the cross separates a man from himself.

The cross contradicts his past thoughts. It changes his routines. It shifts his reading. It changes his songs, his movies. It changes his rituals, and it changes his adorations.

The cross even separates you from humanity. You know, David actually referred to this in Psalm 27. It's a beautiful picture of the worship of God. He says, one thing have I desire to the Lord that will I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. You know how he ends the Psalm?

He begins it with that security and that beauty of God. Actually, he's talking about the gathered people of God worshiping there. But he ends it by saying, even if my father and mother forsake me, The Lord will not forsake me. Because the cross can separate you from your family members. Jesus made that very clear.

The man's enemies will be in his own family. And when times get really, really rough, children will turn in their parents, and parents will turn in their children to the government and they'll die. That's what it means to die. Beware of any professing Christian who weakens you to the purpose of the cross to be crucified to the world. Beware of any professing Christian who weakens you to the purpose of the cross to kill sin in your life.

They are enemies of the cross, whose glory is their shame, whose God is their belly, who think that you can be a Christian and continue to fulfill those desires. It's a false gospel. It's a prosperity gospel. It's a happy-faced gospel where there's no true happiness. Their creed might be orthodox, but they're earthly minded.

They set their mind on earthly things and they want you to do the same. Beware of any professing Christian that wants you to do and live the same. So the cross is not simply Christ bore your shame. He's delivering you from shameful living. The cross points you in the direction that Isaiah spoke of.

It's a highway of holiness. I'll give you an illustration. You often find young people, they're trying to find their own way, they're trying to find their own beliefs. This is something that must happen. They need to somehow recognize that their faith is their own and not their parents.

In that process, They sometimes find themselves just not agreeing with their parents on fundamental matters. And here's always my question, I only have one question for those children. Does this change make you more holy? Does it mortify the world to you? Does more of the world die because of your newfound freedom?

That's my only question. Is it a direction of holiness? Does it set you apart for God does it humble you before God does it purify your heart does it separate you from sin that's the question Because that's the question that every gospel preacher must ask everyone who hears them. Did the cross separate you from your sin? In the society that we live in we have lots of people whose cross did not separate them from sin And it's a very serious matter.

The Apostle said it in Colossians 3, he said, You died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. And he's saying, therefore seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. If your life has not changed when you came to the cross, maybe you might have come to a cross of moralism. You might have come to a cross of your better life. You might have come to a cross of success.

You might have come to a cross of your better life. You might have come to a cross of success. You might have come to a cross because you just didn't want to go to hell. If you're a little child, you might have come to Christ because you wanted to take the Lord's Supper. I heard that so many times in my life.

But the practice is contrary to the cross. So, the apostle speaks to Titus in the same way in Titus 2.11. He speaks of the whole purpose of the grace of Christ. And it's really an illustration of what the cross says. Earlier in this series I said the cross speaks.

What does the cross say? Well, one thing the cross says is that you've died. And, but here's how Paul speaks of it to Titus. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. Now how does that happen?

The apostle actually tells us how it happens by using the word by whom. By whom. God did this. It's God who separates you from the world and the world from you. By whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

God does it, it's a power of God. It's not something that you just crank up as a result of your emotions. It's not a work of the flesh, it's a work of the Spirit. And what we find here is that God has devised a man or a woman or a boy or a girl to escape the corruption and the bondage of their sin. It was for freedom that you were set free.

It was freedom in Christ. And so when you came to Christ, you came to the one who would kill the old man, that dragon, that reptile sitting on your shoulder to neutralize him, to shrink him, to starve him. This is why you starve the flesh. You know, people who are having trouble with pornography, I always want to say the same thing. Starve the dragon.

If you starve him, he'll shrivel. You feed him, he'll get big. You feed that dragon of lust the smallest morsel, and he will get bigger and bigger and bigger, and he will devour you. And he will destroy every relationship in your life. One morsel at a time, kill that dragon.

As a side note, maybe, this verse also gives us a view of the local church in the ancient world, the early church. We often over exalt the early church. We think just if we could only go back to the early church, wouldn't that be just wonderful? They were just so awesome. Well, if you went back to Corinth, you might find out what that kind of awesome was, with the divisions of the lawsuits and the immorality and the compromise and all the hero worship.

Oh my. So the early church struggled with the same thing the modern church struggles with, worldliness in the church. This is nothing new that we see today. And Galatians 6, 14 gives us a picture of the early church for our own instruction, and it shows us that the people of God have always had to deal with worldliness creeping into the church and using a false gospel to justify their sin. It's been that way from the beginning.

Beware of the carnal church. Beware of the carnal church. People often change churches, just beware of the carnal church. That makes the grace of God a lie, because there's no holiness there. There's no drive for sanctification.

A carnal church is a church where people aren't living according to the word of God, they're living by their own creativities. A carnal church is a church where people aren't living according to the word of God. They're living by their own creativities a Carnal church is a church of people who are just making up their own way not being guided by the word of God not being corrected by the word of God Not hearing the preaching of a true cross. That's the most devastating thing you can have in a church. And frankly, most likely, there are large churches in our area that they preach the prosperity gospel, but it's done in a veiled way.

So this verse exposes a false gospel that's demonstrated in people who say, well now that you're saved, you're safe. Your life is secondary. The way you live is secondary. You're saved, it doesn't matter what you do. You've heard the term anti-nomianism, anti-law, no law.

No law. It's a false gospel. It makes people feel good about themselves. They're involved in Christian things. They give money to the church.

They're known as Christians. They have the face of a Christian, yet they've remained unchanged in their affections. It's the kind of Christianity that makes you just feel so good about keeping your parties and your idolatries and your entertainments running right alongside your Christianity. Your operating system never changed. Everything is still running all the time.

And there's been no death, there's been no crucifixion. The cross is meant to purify the church. The apostle spoke about this in Ephesians five. He said that he came and died, that he might present the church to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, but that she should be holy and without blemish. Christ went to the cross to make for a holy people.

And that's what husbands are supposed to do. They're supposed to be what they can to make their wives more holy, to live in a way that holifies her, not defiles her. God forbid that any men in our church are doing anything to defile their wives by their entertainments, by their music, by their activities, by their speech, by their behavior. Anytime in bed, out of bed, defiling your wife by the worldliness of the world. Beware, beware brother, if any of that's going on.

The effect of your life on your wife is that she would be holier when she is presented before the Lord than she was when you married her. This is the calling of a husband. Now we know that husbands can't control that completely, but they can definitely be a sanctifying influence. Well the third crucifixion is the world is crucified to the believer by whom the world has been crucified to me. In other words, the world rejects you.

The world has killed you. The world crucifies you. And I think it's both literal and cultural. Some literally will be killed. Jesus in Matthew 23 tells the Jews, you're gonna crucify some of my men.

They will be crucified, So some will die. Matthew Poole, the commentator, said it like this, I care no more for the world than it cares for me. The world despises and condemns me. Like if you think that if you become a Christian, your reputation is gonna rise in the world, you ought to think again. That's totally contrary to the gospel.

Your reputation will be wrecked by the gospel. You know, there's a growing list of ministries and broadcasts on various matters that are being banned on the greatest social media platforms of the world, Facebook and YouTube, because they violated their policies. Their policies of their truth, which is a lie. They tell a different story than CNN. That's a problem.

And they're being crucified culturally. Denounced, obliterated, and turned away. The algorithms are going to silence you, and they're going to erase you. They're erasing true ministries of the cross right now so that you can't find them. Or things just run contrary to the political correctness of the day.

The world will crucify you. Vanity fair does not want you in its town. You are an aroma of death to death. That's what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians, to those who are perishing. You're in a realm of death to those who are perishing, but you're in a realm of life to those who are being saved.

By the way, that's what The riot in Ephesus was all about, there's this famous riot in the book of Acts, it's such an amazing scene. You know, 20, 000 people screaming, and the apostle Paul is right there in the midst of it. Because Paul was preaching the gospel that changed people's lives. People's lives are so changed, they were burning their books and they were burning their idols in the street. And that so infuriated the idol makers who were making a lot of money off of it and the people who love their idols and their idolatry.

Because those idols actually had to do with their morality primarily. The idols, just to be very clear, the idols of the ancient world had to do with success and immorality. That's it. So That's what idolatry is. It was not smooth for Paul.

So you have this illustration in Philippians chapter 3. For many walk whom I have told you often. In other words, there were people in that church or influencing that church who were walking according to a false gospel. As I have, as you have us for a pattern, for many walk whom I have told you often and I now tell you weeping. The apostle Paul had told them about this many times.

He was like a broken record. Paul was like a broken record when it came to the prosperity gospel. He kept telling them, worldliness has gotten into you, and you're listening to a worldly testimony Pastors should be broken records On this matter of worldliness they should you might think well our pastors are broken records about that. I hope so. Well, Paul is weeping.

This breaks his heart. I tell you, even weeping, they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction. In other words, they're going to hell. That's the danger of a worldly church. It's a church that's headed for hell, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly.

They just do what they want to do, and they want to do what the other worldly people want to do, whose glory is their shame. They love the things that are actually shameful and they laugh at them and they give them a pass, but it's worldliness and he says they set their mind on earthly things. So they were professing Christians in Philippi who were perverting the gospel by their approval for sin. I just quoted R.C. Sproul.

I wanna take a few minutes to wrap this up a little bit if I can. The cross kills in one moment and simultaneously makes you alive, dead to sin and alive to God. For the rest of your life, in God's patience. Christ's death rendered the devil powerless. Hebrews 2, 14, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Romans 6, 8-14 says the very same thing, that the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise, you also, reckon yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead. For sin shall not have dominion over you.

For you are not under the law, but under grace. It's the grace that sets you free. Here's some applications of all this. You know, everybody, almost everybody wants to reopen America again from this virus and start getting back to normal. Let's just get back to normal.

Here's my admonition for us as a church, not so fast. Don't get back to normal so fast. It will be really not, hey, we're actually meeting here together, that's a little, it's kind of normal, you know, But business is not normal. But not so fast. We as a church here, we need to understand how unprofitable it would be for us, for our church, for our families just to get back to normal, just to snap back.

And to illustrate how critical it is, I want to take us back to 1647. In 1647, a plague began to ravage a town in Scotland called Arr. And this church had been busy pursuing and engaging in things that God has forbidden, some on the surface, some deep. Pastor William Adair, he leads his congregation in a time of confession because of the plague. He believed that the Bible teaches when there's a plague it's a time for the people of God to repent.

That's actually the comprehensive testimony of God about plagues. God brings plagues to get his people to repent. That's why plagues come. God starts them, God stops them, he does it for a very specific purpose only exclusively for repentance and the chastisement of his people. You can go read the Bible, that's what you're going to find out.

And it was a very difficult time in ire, or in air, sorry. There were parallel hardships running. It wasn't just a time of plague, but it was also a time of civil war. That plague couldn't have happened at a worse time. And many died.

And the outbreaks were striking England and Scotland all throughout this period. During the 1644 plague, one-fifth of the population of this city died. And Pastor William Adair preached on Zechariah 12-12, which says, and the land shall mourn every family by itself. And so he preached this sermon and a most remarkable thing. First of all, he repented and he came before the church and repented of his own laziness, his own lack of care for the lost.

And rose up behind him were 14 elders and 14 deacons. And these 28 men confessed their transgressions and shortcomings publicly before the congregation. And they were confessing things like carnality. They were confessing things like laziness, unfaithfulness, self-indulgence, little hunger and thirst for the salvation of souls and a lack of bringing worship to their families. And there were eight groups of craftsmen that actually lined up as groups of craftsmen to confess their sins.

There were the hammermen, those were the metal workers, there were the coopers who were the barrel makers, there were the square men, those were the masons. Then there were the weavers and the people who made gloves, the glovers and the shoemakers, the fullers of wool, the tailors, and they broke into their individual trade groups. And from morning to night, they appeared before the church and confessed their sins publicly. Adair, he met with the merchants and the sailors and they confessed the most serious sins, the traveling men of immorality and love of gain and lying. They repented of taking their sins lightly.

There was just this, over all the groups, half-hearted hearing of sermons, having sworn to take the covenant and not keeping the covenant. Some repented of returning to their old Catholic ritual secretly. Some of the sailors repented of selling children in the American colonies to be indentured servants. They repented of missing services at sea and at home. And the pastor ended up reading the confessions out loud.

How about that? They gathered and they confessed their sins for a week, an entire week. Finally, as it accumulated, 18 groups went before the congregation and confessed their sins. They confessed their failure to lead their wives and their children. So a confession, repentance broke out.

Interesting things happened. After that, very, very few people died in the whole town. And the fisheries were more profitable. And there was a general, actual commercial success that began to happen in that town. Now we don't repent for commercial success, but this is just the story.

This is just a story. Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be killing sin. Or it will be killing you.

There's an illustration that was brought to me this week. I'd forgotten all about it. I read it in my early 20s probably out of C.S. Lewis's book The Great Divorce, and it paints a picture of how we often resist turning from our sin. And it's a scene you have these travelers in a bus, they're sightseeing, they're actually sightseeing in kind of a heavenly environment And they're interacting with characters in the eternal realm.

And one of the travelers gets off the bus and he has a conversation with an angel. And the angel notices that on the shoulder of that man is a lizard. And he's flipping his tail and he's whispering, he's twitching and he's whispering in his ear. And the man turns to the lizard and he says, shut up. And the lizard has his claws in that man.

And the angel asked that man, can I kill it? The angel says, I'll kill him. And he steps forward toward this man. And the man says, Oh, oh, oh, look out, look out, you're burning me, keep away. That was the lizard.

And the angel says to the man, don't you want it killed? And the man says, you didn't say anything about killing it at first. I hardly meant to bother you with anything so drastic as that. And the angel says, it's the only way. Shall I kill it?

And the man says, well, that's a further question. I'm quite open to consider it, but it's a new point, isn't it? And I mean, for the moment, I was only thinking about silencing it because up here, well, it's so embarrassing. And the angel says, may I kill it? And the man says, there's no time to discuss that here.

And the angel says, no, there is no time, may I kill it? And the man says, please, I never meant to be such a nuisance. Please please don't don't bother look. It's gone to sleep of its own accord I'm sure it'll be all right now Thanks. Thanks ever so much and the angel says may I kill it and The man says honestly, I don't think there's the slightest necessity for that.

And I'm sure I'll be able to keep it in order now. I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it. Well, as the story unfolds, the man finally realizes that there's a reptile with his claws in him, And he's finally delivered. And that reptile, that lizard, that dragon is killed. And that man becomes the happiest man, The freest man you could ever meet.

And this is what the cross is all about. This is what the cross says to you. That there is a devil that has had his claws in you. Turn from sin. Turn from remaining sin.

If you're not a Christian, turn from your sin that has you in perfect bondage. Because when you when you come to Christ, you come to the one who would kill that dragon, and he's going to stay on you to kill that dragon. And it's a dragon that's been whispering in your ear and it's manipulated you and it's abused you and has lied to you. But Jesus Christ has disarmed the dragon. He is crushing the head of the serpent.

That serpent of old, that liar from the beginning of the world. And that, the death to sin and sanctification is often painful. And it can be a little bit like withdrawal from an addictive drug, maybe not exactly like it. And there are these unintentional sins, there are these sins that we have been ignoring. You know most older Christians become more and more aware of their pride and their self-sufficiency the older they get.

That's the experience of many old men that I know, myself included, and they've felt more spiritual pride in the first half of their life. They see more of their sin now, But Jesus is sweeter than ever. And they become so even more amazed at His grace and His mercy and His patience and His kindness toward sinners as they're being sanctified. I was reading to Deborah last night in the Psalms and I just want to close with this phrase out of the Psalms that we were reading. It just hit me to be so perfect for the moment that I was in and trying to grapple with all this.

Blessed be the Lord who has not given us as prey to their teeth. Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. This is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Would you pray with me? Lord, these things are so wonderful. But they're so convicting and they are so killing of sin. And Lord, that we would, Even now, we would not just reopen, we would not just get back to normal as a church, this church, this little local church. And that we would say, we would say to ourselves, do you mortify, Do you make it your daily work?

Be killing sin or it will be killing you. Amen.