Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] And I was just thinking of that beautiful psalm. It says, today, if you hear my voice, you know what the next part says?
[00:00:07] Do not harden your hearts. Isn't that amazing that we could actually do that? God could be speaking into our lives, and we just resist it. How many think that would be an unwise response?
[00:00:17] So let's pray today that God would open our hearts, that you create in us a ready heart, a desirous heart.
[00:00:26] Create in me, O Lord, a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. So, Father, we pray these prayers. Lord, we thank youk for your word that teaches us how to pray. We pray as well this morning that yout would help us, Lord, to discover how to live a victorious Christian life. How to live, Lord, free from the things that would entrap us and keep us, Lord, from serving youg wholeheartedly and with great freedom in our lives. And we just pray to that end that you would speak into each of our hearts and that you would call us out, Lord. You'd call us into freedom, you'd call us into joy. You would call us, Lord, into this beautiful life that you desire for each of us to experience. And we thank you for that. In Jesus name. And God's people said, amen. Amen. So, you may be seated. I'm going to have you turn to the book of Romans. I'm not in any series right now. This is through the summer months now. I've finished my other series, so I'm giving you a break. Because when I start the next one, it'll take a while, I'm sure.
[00:01:30] Romans, chapter six.
[00:01:32] You know, I was reading a newspaper article and it shared the following story. Could you just turn me down just a tad there, Victoria?
[00:01:39] A woman was driving home and she noticed a huge truck behind her. And he was kind of driving uncomfortably close.
[00:01:47] And she stepped on the gas to gain some distance from the truck, but when she sped up, the truck did as well. The faster she drove, the faster the truck drove. Now she was scared. She exited the freeway, but the truck stayed right with her. She turned up a main street, hoping to lose her pursuer in traffic. But the truck ran a red light and continued the chase.
[00:02:07] Reaching the point of panic, the woman whipped her car into a service station and bolted out of her car, screaming, help me. Help me. The truck driver sprang from the truck, ran towards her car, yanked the back door open, and pulled out a man that was hidden in the backseat.
[00:02:25] You see, the woman was running from the wrong person.
[00:02:28] From his high vantage point, the truck driver had spotted A would be rapist in the woman's car. And the chase was not an effort to harm her, but to save her, even at the cost of his own safety.
[00:02:41] You know, there's a lot of people today running from God. How many know that's true, fearing what he might do to them? Now I'm going to just say something about God. First of all, you need to know God made you number two. God saved you, he died for you. He's expressed love towards you. So running from God is probably the wrong response to life. But a lot of people today are doing that very thing. You know, God's plans for us are for good, not for evil. To rescue us even from the hidden things in our life, particularly sins in our life that are endangering us, I believe, from living life to its fullest. You know, Jesus said, I've come to give you life and that to its fullest.
[00:03:23] I think when we think of people running from God, we generally think of people who are not believers.
[00:03:30] But I just want to say this. Some of the greatest track stars are people who profess to be believers, but they're really running from God. They're denying what God wants to do in their lives. You say, well, why would we do that, Pastor? Well, that's because we have our own agenda. We don't necessarily.
[00:03:48] We have things we want to accomplish. And maybe what God wants for us isn't really on our radar screen. But I'm going to say this to all of us. Whatever God has for each of us is far better than any of us could ever imagine.
[00:04:01] And I would argue that if you and I do God's will, we will experience the greatest life, the most purpose filled life, the most meaningful, the most significant life, the most hope filled life. It's the best life.
[00:04:14] We need to know that. I think we try to hide, you know, things in our lives. We're kind of like Adam in the guard. You know, once you mess up, you just want to hide. You know, maybe we feel, you know, insecure, maybe we feel a little condemnation in our life. But Jesus, you know, didn't come to condemn us. He came to save us. And Paul says, now when you're in Christ, you no longer have any condemnation, especially those who are walking after the Spirit. We're going to talk a little bit about how to do that today.
[00:04:43] You know, one of the things that can easily happen in our lives is we can miss the obvious things in our lives. We can desire or profess an orthodox belief. And I think a lot of Christians you know, maybe have the right theology, but they don't fully understand what they believe, number one. Number two, they allow worldliness and ungodly living to defeat us. And you know, some of you have probably read Pilgrim's Progress and you know, if you read it, it's an allegory. John Bunyan wrote it. And it's really the story of the Christian journey. And one of the that happens. This Christian is trying to go to heaven. He's on his way to heaven. But there are some pitfalls on the way. You know, there's emotional pitfalls, but there's a big pitfall called Vanity Fair. It's a little community.
[00:05:27] And Vanity Fair really is the lure of the culture. And in our society today, with so many attractions in North America, so many different ways to consume our time and energies, we get caught up in Vanity Fair and pretty soon we no longer are marching towards, you know, the celestial city. We're not moving towards where God is really calling us to be a part of. And we can't understand why, you know, we're not super happy with our life. There's something always missing, you know. And I would argue that, you know, without realizing that even though we have orthodoxy, in other words, we believe maybe the right things, we don't always practice what we believe.
[00:06:08] And what benefit is a proper and right belief structure when we have an unloving and critical attitude towards others?
[00:06:16] In other words, there's a divorce between what we say we do and what we practice. And I think that that's a huge challenge in the Christian life. A lot of people say I believe this, but then they believe, then they do this. I'm going, well, wait a minute, that's not exactly what should be happening there. And I want to focus in on that today.
[00:06:36] Or maybe we have an indifferent and distant attitude towards those around us. And I believe this kind of grieves the heart of God. God's concerned about people. And if we're really walking with God, he's gonna shift you from being self focused to other centered. He'll just move you that way. Because I believe that's how we serve God, with our whole heart. We have to be focused on God. And I said something to somebody today and I wanna make a distinction, cause a lot of people get confused.
[00:07:00] I believe that you and I need to learn how to please God and love people. And I think there's a big difference.
[00:07:07] See, a lot of us are trying to please people.
[00:07:10] And the Bible says that if I'm a pleaser of people, I cannot please God because you're never going to be able to please everybody. How many have ever figured that out? You know, it's very liberating. I'm going to tell you. I am so liberated. I'm not worried about pleasing people.
[00:07:25] I'm worried about and concerned about pleasing God. And when you do that, you. Yeah, some people are happy and some people are mad, and I just go, whatever.
[00:07:34] I'm free from that. That doesn't bother me.
[00:07:38] I'm gonna love them anyways because I'm committed to pleasing God and loving people regardless of their response. How's that?
[00:07:47] And that kind of throws people off a little bit. They don't know what to do with that.
[00:07:51] So how can we apply the gospel or. Let me go back here. I think in many of our lives, there is a genuine desire to know God. You know how I know that? Because you're here. You wouldn't be here if you didn't have a desire. Okay. We want to grow. We want to overcome areas of struggle and difficulty. And, you know, I've been a pastor too long, and I deal with people every single week. And believe me, people are all having struggles and challenges, and they're trying to get over those things. And so I'm just going to say it this way, but a lot of us, we just can't seem to beat it. It just seems like we're just down. We're trying to figure a way out. We're trying to figure out how to get free from these things that haunt our souls.
[00:08:33] So maybe you're on the slippery slope of sin today, and you're finding yourself sliding down more often than walking in spiritual victory and vitality. This message, I hope you'll hear what I have to say that will be of help to you, and that's what I want you to understand. You know, maybe some of you have prayed and prayed and you've, you know, you're hoping to solve these perpetual struggles in your life, and you hear that there is freedom, but you're not experiencing it. You're struck. So how can we apply basically the gospel into our everyday life? How can we live out the good news, not just talk about it, but actually experiencing it and living it. And I think we have to look at a very fundamental thing. So we're going to go back to the basics. What's the basics, Pastor? Well, Jesus loves us. How did we know that he died for us? And it's going to impact our living, in overcoming our greatest problem. And I think our greatest problem is Sin.
[00:09:32] You know, a lot of us think our biggest problem is somebody else.
[00:09:36] And, you know, as long as we play that game, we never get better.
[00:09:40] So I'm going to move you away from, you know, it's not my brother nor my sister, but it's me, oh, Lord, standing in the need of prayer. This is where we're going today. So don't. You know, I always have people jokingly say, yeah, I'm glad you were speaking on that this morning, Pastor, because I know it really. My spouse needed to hear that.
[00:09:56] You know, my kids needed to hear that. My parents needed to hear that. No, no, no, no, no.
[00:10:03] Today, don't look around. Just say, lord, are you talking to me?
[00:10:08] That's what I want you to say to yourself, Lord, are you talking to me this morning? Because I want to hear it. Bring it on, Jesus. Speak into my life. Okay, so let's take a look at the Book of Romans. We're going to look at a very exciting chapter. It explains how God's grace can help you and I become an overcomer. Isn't that great? How does this work anyways? Because I've been struggling with some things and I've tried to overcome passive, but I'm still struggling. Okay, Paul's going to explain the personal application of what Jesus did by dying and rising from the dead. And he spends chapter six dealing with the relationship between sin and grace.
[00:10:48] Big, big issue.
[00:10:50] He raises the question, I think we'll get there.
[00:10:55] He raises the question, I know what I should be doing, but I'm not doing it. You know, Paul talks about that in Romans, chapter seven. O wretched man that I am, who can deliver me from this terrible state of sin overcoming me? And the answer is found in the very last verse in the book of Romans, chapter 7. But thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord. So Christ is the answer. He not only forgives your sin, he's going to deliver you from your struggle. How many are you going, man? I'm interested, Pastor, to have my struggle. I'm overcome. And so here we're going to look at how Christ's death and resurrection impacts our lives and overcoming sin. And so Paul is posing two questions regarding God's grace. You know, and the questions are really how grace prevails over sin and over law, not just in theory, but in practice, in reality. So let's take a look at the first question, you know, is the ability to prevail in our lives.
[00:12:13] God's grace's ability to prevail, how does that happen? It's real simple. It's going to sound simple. And it is simple. Yielding to grace, giving into grace.
[00:12:25] So having concluded in chapter five with this powerful declaration, but where sin increased, grace increased all the more.
[00:12:37] That's Paul's conclusion in chapter five.
[00:12:40] Paul knows he needs to address those who will use this as an excuse to sin rather than understand the nature and power of grace over sin. So, you know, you hear it a lot in the churches now. You know, well, don't worry about it. God's grace, it'll cover it. God's grace. You know, I am saying what Paul is saying is not, you know, don't worry about sin in my life because God will just cover it with grace. No, I'm saying don't worry about sin in your life because grace has a power to set you free from sin.
[00:13:14] That's a totally different ball game. And that's what we're going to look at, how to be free from the power of sin in our lives. Okay?
[00:13:24] Paul did not want to be understood or sorry, misunderstood as promoting sin. So does grace encourage sin? And the Apostle Paul is going to be very vehement and he's going to shout it out to us emphatically, no, grace does not encourage sin. Okay? So if you hear messages that seem to indicate to you that it doesn't matter if you sin or not, grace will fix it.
[00:13:47] I'm saying, no, the grace of God is going to teach you something, but it's not to sin. It's going to teach you how to avoid it, how to get out of it, how to be delivered from it, how to live free from it. And so let's take a look at what he's saying here. So what shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
[00:14:07] And by no means.
[00:14:11] So the gospel is good news because it's going to deliver us from sin. Jesus is a deliverer.
[00:14:17] We are those, he says, who died to sin.
[00:14:22] How can we live in it any longer? So in other words, sin is our enemy. It always has been our enemy. It will always lead to separation from God, and it will lead to separation and in our relationships to other people. So what Paul is saying is we're going to die to this problem called sin.
[00:14:40] And he's going to explain how that comes about. How do we die to our sin?
[00:14:44] You know, Pastor, I've struggled with this sin for so long, I don't even believe that I can die to it. But I'm going to share today. You can die to it first of all the believers died to sin through his identification with Christ's death and resurrection. Well, you may wonder, how does this come about?
[00:15:00] I think it comes through a proper understanding. The apostle states that we've died.
[00:15:05] That's a past tense. We've died to sin.
[00:15:09] But you might say, well, wait a minute. If I've died to sin, why am I still tempted? If I've died to sin, why do I still struggle with sin?
[00:15:17] That's a good question. I'm glad you asked that question, because I'm going to answer that question today.
[00:15:22] That's an important question.
[00:15:24] Okay.
[00:15:26] We died to sin when we gave our life to Jesus.
[00:15:32] That's when it happened. You didn't know that, but something miraculous happened when you gave your life to Christ. You thought, well, I'm just praying a prayer, and I'm inviting Jesus into my life as my Savior. He moved you from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God. He moved you from darkness to light. You now became a new creation.
[00:15:53] He renovated.
[00:15:55] How many have ever done any remodeling?
[00:15:58] You know, one of the things you have to do is undo before you can redo, right? So he's going to do this amazing work in your life.
[00:16:08] He says, or don't you know, that all of us who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death.
[00:16:16] We were therefore buried with him through baptism in death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
[00:16:29] So God wants to end an old life and create a new life.
[00:16:35] I'm trying to make this real simple. We're going to get this picture in our mind.
[00:16:40] So if we have been united with him in death like his, in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like him.
[00:16:50] How many here want to live a new life?
[00:16:53] You want to live a resurrected life? You want to live the life that God intended for you? That's where I got my hand up. That's where I want to be living all the time, every day, every moment of every day.
[00:17:04] Okay, so that's what Paul is talking about here.
[00:17:11] He says baptism pictures our union with Christ in his death.
[00:17:17] It's a discovery of a new life through his resurrection.
[00:17:21] We who were once dead in our trespasses and sins. That's our past. That's where we were. We were dead.
[00:17:29] The word death means, you know, you don't have life.
[00:17:32] Death means you've been separated from God. Death means you don't have a Relationship with God. You had nothing to do with God. But then all of a sudden, you came to faith in Christ. You were born again. You were regenerated. You were given a new life. You were given resurrection life. You were given a new identity.
[00:17:51] Some of us are still living with a mindset that I have an old identity. You know, a lot of people are so locked into their sin that they've let their sin define their life.
[00:18:01] You know, I'm going to be radical today. Can I be a little radical today?
[00:18:07] Okay. I'm going to say something that's going to shock you.
[00:18:10] I believe with all of my heart that when you give your life to Jesus, if you were an alcoholic, you know, a lot of times, and I'm going to go against some of the ideas that alcohol AA has. They say they keep confessing one thing. My name is so and so, and I am an alcoholic.
[00:18:28] I had a good friend that was an alcoholic. When he became a Christian, he stopped saying that. He said, my name is so and so, and I was an alcoholic.
[00:18:36] Past tense.
[00:18:38] Whatever you were doing before you became a follower of Jesus, it's now past tense.
[00:18:45] So if you were committing this sin, you don't identify with that sin. You know, I'm no longer that. That's what I once was. It doesn't mean I might stumble back into it. I'm not suggesting you may not. You know, you may have a propensity towards that all of your life. I think you will.
[00:19:03] I think whatever you struggle with before you were saved, you'll probably struggle with it after you're a Christian, but not to the same intensity and degree. And I believe that you don't have to give into it. That's the big difference.
[00:19:15] Because before, you just didn't have any power. You were dead. Now you're alive. Okay, so now take a look at this. The life of Jesus Christ and his power at work within our lives helps us overcome that sin's power and the principle that was formerly greater than ourselves.
[00:19:34] Now we have choice. We didn't have it before. We just kept giving in.
[00:19:39] And we have a free will. Our will was in bondage before. Now it's free to do what is right in God's sight. So God is liberating our will to do the right thing. God is giving us a freedom of choice. We couldn't do it before. We just kept capitulating back into that over and over again. But now, as a believer, there's a power at work in our lives that helps us to overcome.
[00:20:01] Grant Osborne Says this. Of course, this does not mean that sin no longer affects the believer. For Christians do yield to sin, but sin has now become a force tempting us rather than a power controlling us.
[00:20:18] How many see the difference?
[00:20:20] One's, you know you're being controlled, the other, you're being tempted.
[00:20:24] Before, you were being controlled. Now as a believer, you're being tempted.
[00:20:29] Okay, everybody get the distinction?
[00:20:32] Romans 6:6 says, for we know.
[00:20:35] We know that our old self, this is our unregenerated nature. Before we were born again, before a part of God's kingdom, you know, our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin, that's our sinful nature, might be done away with.
[00:20:54] It has been rendered powerless that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Isn't that beautiful?
[00:21:02] So the power to keep you, a sinner has been removed. The power.
[00:21:08] There's a power, you know, how do you remove a power that's still there?
[00:21:13] Well, this is a great question.
[00:21:15] Okay.
[00:21:17] It is not that sin has been removed in the sense that we never deal with it again, but rather that sin's power has become ineffective. In the life of a believer who understands and realizes what Christ really accomplished on the cross, we can experience the working of God enabling us to overcome the demands of our sinful nature. We need to understand that we can say no to sin, and God's power and grace within us will help us to do the right thing.
[00:21:45] So Paul's argument is simple. Dead people don't sin.
[00:21:50] That's true.
[00:21:51] If you're dead in Christ, then you're dead to the things that used to call you to sin.
[00:21:56] Goes on to say, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
[00:22:00] That's his argument. If you're dead in Christ, then you're dead to the things that beckoned you to sin.
[00:22:09] Now, verse 7 says, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Christ.
[00:22:21] And he goes on to say, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again.
[00:22:27] Death no longer has mastery over him. The death, he died. He died to sin once and for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God.
[00:22:38] Hey, that's great, Pastor. But I never. I still feel like I never died. I'm still alive, right? I still commit sin. Well, we all do.
[00:22:46] We're about to see there is a difference between sinning and letting sin rule over your life. There's a big difference.
[00:22:53] Now, Paul uses an analogy of slavery to help us understand the truth of being free from sin's dominion in life. Now, in the Roman world, what Paul was living in, about 6 million people in that empire were slaves.
[00:23:07] That was a lot of people, about a third of the population. A lot of people.
[00:23:10] And in the city of Rome, it was predominantly slaves. And Paul's first hearers understood that the master no longer had power over a slave once death had conquered the slave's life. Now everybody can follow that, right? I mean, if you have a slave and the slave dies, then you don't have mastery over that slave because the slave's been set free. Because they died, they're no longer in slavery.
[00:23:33] So Paul is not saying that sin is destroyed, but rather it's robbed of its power by a greater principle called death.
[00:23:42] How many follow that thought?
[00:23:44] Okay, sin is, you know, is.
[00:23:48] He's not saying it's destroyed, but there's a greater power at work. When you die, you're no longer under slave. I mean, let's face it, if you physically die, sin's never going to bother you again.
[00:23:58] You're dead. Right?
[00:24:00] Remember what death means? Separation. To be dead to sin means separation from sin. How? By being united with Christ. Well, okay, somebody might say, well, how can sin be rendered powerless According to Romans 6, 6, and I struggle with sin, you say, I'm struggling. I feel like I'm defeated. I yield to it. I give in to it. It's a constant battle for me. Pastor, I'm going to give you an illustration that I found by Michael Green. I love this illustration. He says, consider the effect of gravity. Okay? How many know gravity is always at play?
[00:24:35] Follow that. Sin is always at play.
[00:24:37] Okay? But here's what you need to know. Let's take, for example, this. You know, this gravity. If I let go of my Bible, what's going to happen?
[00:24:49] It's going to fall. Why?
[00:24:52] Because there's a power. There's a principle at work. It's called gravity. It's going to just drop it right to the ground. It's going to fall down. But what happens if I take this Bible and I place it on this table?
[00:25:05] I got to ask a question. Is it going to fall down?
[00:25:09] No, because something has come in between gravity to keep it standing. Are you following this? Stay with me now.
[00:25:17] Now, has gravity lost its power?
[00:25:21] No, it's still there, but it's lost its ability to have an effect on the book right now. Why? Because there's another law at work.
[00:25:33] It's just that the table is stronger, right? Now than gravity's effect on the book.
[00:25:38] So the Christian, I want to say this to you. Sin is like gravity. But once you put your life in the hands of Christ, there's a power at work in you that is greater than the power of sin. How many have just followed the illustration?
[00:25:53] How many go, I like this.
[00:25:56] I finally figured out, okay, I've been letting gravity control my life. I've been letting sin control my life. But there's a power in this world that is greater than sin.
[00:26:09] Wow.
[00:26:11] And all I need to do is put my life in this power.
[00:26:17] It's actually a person.
[00:26:19] It's called Christ. And what does Christ do? He gives us grace. And this grace sustains us so that you and I no longer have to be falling.
[00:26:30] Okay?
[00:26:32] For the Christian, the grace of God through the gift of the Holy Spirit is like this table. And our sin nature is like gravity's pull. As long as we allow the grace of God and the person of the Holy Spirit to hold us up, which places our dependency on his power to give us victory over sin, our sinful and falses have no power to pull us down.
[00:26:51] Now, in light of our union with Christ and his resurrection, we're to count ourselves dead to sin.
[00:27:00] As great as Christ's victory is, we too have a responsibility to enjoy the results of God's work of grace. And it's spelt out to us in verse 11 through 14 in the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. The word count is an accounting firm.
[00:27:20] It means to reckon something. It's to understand.
[00:27:25] Some translations say reckon. It means that we're to factor in an important truth that will liberate us from the strongholds of the enemy. The enemy keeps us bound. How? He's a liar.
[00:27:37] Do you know?
[00:27:38] Satan's language is lies?
[00:27:42] And he's a deceiver.
[00:27:43] And as long as he can deceive you and lie to you, you're going to be in bondage. How many go? That's true.
[00:27:50] But what happens when truth comes?
[00:27:53] Truth, the Bible says, and the truth shall what?
[00:27:56] Set you free. And so we need to have the truth overcoming the lies, you see. And a lot of people walk around, they're saying, you know, pastor, this is who I am. I'm going, no, you are who God says you are.
[00:28:10] And so for some of you, I would encourage you to study Ephesians chapter one and say, who am I in Christ?
[00:28:17] You know, I'm a beloved child. Can I ask every one of us here if you had Children.
[00:28:23] When you first had a child, you looked in the eyes of that child. What happened. You immediately loved that child.
[00:28:29] As a matter of fact, you know, you couldn't help yourself. You just went, wow, this is so amazing. I love this child. What did that child do to earn your love?
[00:28:40] Thank you very much. Absolutely nothing.
[00:28:43] And you know, what did we do to earn God's love?
[00:28:47] But what does God do? Can't help himself. I love you.
[00:28:52] So I want you to rethink about yourself. Most some people walk around going, you know, I feel unloved. I feel nobody loves me. You know, I got that, you know, self defeating, you know, self depreciating attitude. You know, I'm a terrible person. Who could ever love me? I want to tell you a secret.
[00:29:10] God loves you.
[00:29:13] You're his.
[00:29:15] Isn't that beautiful?
[00:29:17] You got to get that in your head. So you got to start figuring out who am I. And I made a decision a long time ago. I'm going to just believe what God says about me and not believe what the devil's telling me about myself.
[00:29:28] And it is really liberating.
[00:29:30] Okay, so you have a choice. Who you going to believe? A liar and a deceiver, or the one who loves you and speaks the truth and wants to bring freedom into your life.
[00:29:40] You get to choose. Choose you this day, whom you will serve. Right.
[00:29:45] You know, the enemy keeps us bound by deception and lies. And we must discover and experience the truth that we are delivered. It's a problem in our thinking that impacts our behavior.
[00:29:58] Now, Henry Houdini. How many have ever heard of Houdini, the famous escape artist? He issued a challenge wherever he went. He said, lock me in any prison cell in the country says, and I'll set myself free in a short time. And he always was able to get away. But one time, something went wrong. Houdini entered a jail in the street clothes. The heavy metal doors clanged shut behind him. He took from his belt a concealed piece of metal, strong and flexible. He set off to work immediately. But something seemed unusual about this particular lock.
[00:30:30] For 30 minutes he worked and got nowhere. An hour passed and still he had not opened the door. By now, he was bathing in sweat and panting in exasperation. He still couldn't pick the lock. Finally, after laboring for two hours, he collapsed in utter frustration and failure against the door he could not unlock. And when he fell against the door, it swung open.
[00:30:55] What happened?
[00:30:57] You see, it had never been locked.
[00:31:01] But in his mind, the door was locked. And that was all he took to Keep him from opening. That's all it took to keep him from opening the door and walking out of the jail cell. I think far too many of us are like Houdini trying to break out of a prison cell of seal but not realizing Jesus has already unlocked the door through grace.
[00:31:21] All we need to do is open the door by faith. Just say, I believe you, Jesus.
[00:31:26] You see, and when we're tempted to sin, we need to say to ourselves, I'm dead to this.
[00:31:33] You see, I think our problem is many times we've set our minds and affections on things below and that's why they keep pulling us down.
[00:31:41] But Paul says to us in Colossians, he says, why don't you set your mind on things above?
[00:31:46] You see, whatever you are targeting, you're moving towards.
[00:31:51] And so I'm encouraging you this morning. How many of us say, I just want to serve God with all my heart. I just want to live a life of freedom. I just want to live a life with a greater purpose.
[00:32:01] You know, how many people are living on earth right now with such a limited lower purpose to life to just please themselves? I just want to be happy. I'm going to help you with that. The only people that are happy are the people that forget about themselves.
[00:32:18] That's the happy person.
[00:32:20] You see, when I start focusing on Christ and I begin to serve people, I don't have time to be worrying about little old me all the time.
[00:32:28] And it's really freeing.
[00:32:31] You know what I mean? You just start giving your life away to other people and pretty soon, you know, the needs in your own life are being met and you didn't even realize it. Isn't that amazing?
[00:32:40] You know? Okay, some of you are not necessarily convinced, but I'm trying to help you get there.
[00:32:46] Griffin. Thomas says this.
[00:32:48] When sin makes its appeal, we must refuse to recognize it or entertain it by reckoning that we die to it in Christ, and at once it will go, its power broken. In the same way, when we long to be holy, we simply reckon that we're alive to God in Christ. And as we reckon this to be true, the power of God's grace will flood our souls.
[00:33:09] Then we shall see that the Christian life is not a constant battle, but a constant victory.
[00:33:15] Go back to verse 12. Therefore, do not let sin reign or rule in your mortal body so that you obey all its evil desires. Well, how do you do that?
[00:33:24] Here's the key. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as instruments of wickedness. I put down here in a Little bracket. It's a choice.
[00:33:33] But rather, offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.
[00:33:42] So you know what I say? Just give your whole heart, soul, mind, strength, body, time, future, everything to God. Just go, here I am, God, you got me, all of me. For better or for worse, God goes, I already know all about you. I already know all the issues.
[00:33:59] But I'm going to help you get to where you need to go. Isn't that beautiful? He's going to help us become like Christ. Wow, that's great. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. The application of this truth for believers is that when we are doing what is right, we will not be doing what is wrong. How many of that's true? It's displacing. So a lot of us, we're so focused on trying to beat out sin. I'm saying forget about it. Don't even worry about your sin. Just get caught up in what God's asking you to do and sin will be left in the rear view mirror.
[00:34:30] Okay, so here. Stop. Stop focusing. I'm trying to get over this. I'm trying to get over this. I'm going, no, no, just focus on what God's asking you to do. And you're going to leave this behind.
[00:34:40] That's how you do it. You're displacing it. Okay, now, so therefore we should live a life in obedience to God.
[00:34:50] So the question implied in Romans 6:12, 14 is, what good is it to be freed by sin, by Jesus, and have every opportunity to walk in holiness and righteousness if at the moment of choice, we ignore these things and go right on letting sin rule over us?
[00:35:05] Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Absolutely not.
[00:35:09] Actually, you know what grace teaches us. And Paul says this in Titus. He says, for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. And it teaches us to say what?
[00:35:20] No to what? Anything that's not godly, in any worldly passion, and to live what self controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.
[00:35:31] That's how we should be living.
[00:35:33] Okay, we have a choice. James Dunn expressed it so clearly. Believers have a responsibility in all of this, a responsibility to let the power of grace come to expression in their lives. Moral effort is in no way anthetical or in the opposition to faith. It's rather the outworking and expression of faith. I've given myself to It. Let me move on to the second point. It's simply this relationship between grace and law.
[00:35:58] Okay, if we're free from the law, are we then free to sin? That's the question Paul now is going to pose and address.
[00:36:06] He realizes that some people will misunderstand their freedom as a result of grace. In verse 15, what then shall we sin because we're not under law, but under grace? He goes, no, no, don't do that. By no means. Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey?
[00:36:24] Whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. What Paul is saying here is radical. The law in the Jewish mind was always a means of grace. But Paul has continuous put law here in the book of Romans in opposition to grace. He's placed it on the side of sin.
[00:36:43] Law makes us aware of our sinfulness. It doesn't deliver us from sin.
[00:36:48] So what is God doing in life?
[00:36:51] Why is the law important? Why is the law never rendered ineffectual? Well, I'm going to explain to you why there's a moral law. And God says, these are the moral laws, and these are the boundaries by which humanity lives by. And if we stay within those boundaries, we're going to live a healthy life. But if we go outside the law, we're going to live an unhealthy life, okay? Because that's the realm and the region of sin. So we don't want to be living over there. We want to stay within God's moral boundaries.
[00:37:16] But he goes on to say here its purpose is to bring us to the end of ourselves. How many in this room can honestly say, I finally came to a realization that sin is greater than my ability to conquer it?
[00:37:30] Got my hand up. Anybody else?
[00:37:33] Well, most of you don't know. You haven't got your hand up. Haven't figured this out yet.
[00:37:38] Well, I can tell you sin is powerful.
[00:37:42] I can't overcome it.
[00:37:44] But I'll tell you what, Christ has overcome it. And if I surrender my life to Jesus and I die with him in baptism and I'm raised again in newness of life, and I make my focus God's purposes in my life, and I don't give myself opportunity to do the bad things, and I'm doing the good things, guess what happens? I'm walking in freedom.
[00:38:06] And that's what this message is all about. How to live in freedom.
[00:38:11] Right to be under law means to be ruled by Law is the principle of a covenant of works. James Dunn writes, under grace implies two things. A revelation of God's gracious attitude towards repentant sinners and the gift of God's power to enable them to desire and will to obey Him. I like that.
[00:38:29] One of the great misunderstandings of the Old Testament was that people thought by keeping the law, they were being saved. But the reality is, no one has ever kept the law except one. His name is Jesus.
[00:38:40] They all had to trust that what God had promised and acted on that. For example. This is amazing to me. But you know what God is trying to teach us? Yeah, these are my moral boundaries. But the only way you have any hope is that you learn to trust God. And Abraham figured that out way back in the very beginning. It says, is God the God of the Jews? Only he says, is he not the God of Gentiles too? Of course, Gentiles.
[00:39:05] Since there's only one God who will justify the circumcised, that's the Jews by faith and the uncircumcised Gentiles through that same faith. This is how people become free from sin. It's by through the gift called faith.
[00:39:19] Do we then nullify, he says, the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law. See, we're not getting rid of the law. But you know what? You and I are going to. Actually, I'll say it to you this way, if you can summarize the law, give it to you real quickly. Jesus summarized it when he was asked, what is the law all about? Jesus, love God, love people.
[00:39:42] I just gave you a summary of the whole law, and guess what happens? You and I can't seem to do that. We have a hard time loving God and loving people. How many say that's true?
[00:39:50] So he says, do we nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law because once we experience God's forgiving grace and his enabling grace and his overcoming grace and his empowering grace, actually, every day I get up, I just live by grace.
[00:40:06] But my grace is, you know, God's grace. And then I just put my trust in it. I'm living by faith. And so then we begin to do what God wants us to do. Love people and love him. Right? That becomes the most important thing. He goes on to say, we can only obey the law when we believe what God said. Faith is the key to obedience. And without faith, you cannot obey.
[00:40:29] So Romans 4. One says, what should we say? That Abraham, our forefather, according to Flesh discovered in this matter.
[00:40:37] In fact, Abraham was justified by works he had something to boast about, but not before God. So there's no person that can say, I'm so good, I don't need God's help.
[00:40:47] That critter doesn't exist. How's that?
[00:40:50] Every one of us needs God's help. That's the only way we can be good.
[00:40:54] We need God. We can't do it without him. Abraham figured that out. What does scripture say? Abraham believed what God said and it was credit to him as righteousness. So when you and I just say, okay, listen, I don't need to figure it all out. I just need to trust God.
[00:41:09] How's that? So you know from day one, the first day after becoming a Christian, I just need to trust God and I just need to learn how to trust him every single day. And if I keep doing that, God's going to empower me, strengthen me, develop me, mature me, make me more like Christ. The change now comes from the inside out. It's not a bunch of rules and pressures coming from the outside. You know, sometimes we become Pharisees, we're criticizing people. I go, stop doing that.
[00:41:35] That's not your job.
[00:41:37] Let God deal with people.
[00:41:39] Unless you can see that what they're doing is self destructive and you have a relationship with them. Then you say, hey, you know you're destroying yourself, right?
[00:41:47] That's what you do.
[00:41:50] But really, we have to trust God. It comes down to that.
[00:41:53] It comes to believing what God has to say.
[00:41:56] So one of the subtle lies of the enemy is let us sin. Not that grace may abound, but because grace does abound, God's going to forgive us. I keep hearing that one. Well, you know, God will forgive me. You know, it's that idea. I don't need to, I don't need to do what God says. I'll just ask for forgiveness. I'm going. Well, wait a minute. That's rebellion. You don't want to be doing that trick that doesn't work.
[00:42:17] You're just getting your hearts harder and harder and harder by doing that. How many said today? If you hear my voice, listen to what I'm saying. You know, in other words, God's gracious and forgiving and that he is.
[00:42:30] So it is no big deal if we sin. That's not right.
[00:42:34] We presume upon his nature and willful sin against his will for our lives. And guess what? When we need to remind ourselves is that God's will is ultimately best for each one of us. And when we sin against what God is asking us to do. We're sinning against God primarily, but we're also sinning against ourselves. And we're affecting negative things happening in other people's lives. Paul paints two scenarios for us. Whoever we serve either sin or doing what's right, we become their servant or slave. Wow, that's powerful. It either leads to separation from God or union and communion with God. As God's children, we have that choice. Very much like our first father, Adam. You know, it's so funny to me, some of you probably thought this, what was wrong with Adam?
[00:43:17] Come on, let's be honest. You ever thought that if Adam and Eve had not messed up in the garden, we'd be in paradise, Right?
[00:43:25] So it would be tempting to say it's all Adam's fault, not my fault, God, Adam's fault. Let me see what I'm getting at.
[00:43:34] Adam, you know, he's got the perfect parent, he's in the perfect environment, he still messes up.
[00:43:39] How many parents in here are beating yourself up because your kid's messing up and you're going, hey, I'm an imperfect parent and we live in an imperfect world. And my kid's struggling. I'm going, well, yeah, but they have a choice too. So did Adam. Here's the point. The point is simply this. The moment you give your life to Christ, you're like Adam and Eve. Now you got a choice. You have a perfect father and he's creating a perfect environment. Not, you know, our environment is not perfect, but the environment God's creating is perfect. And now we have a choice. Are we going to obey God's word? Are we going to let that tempter come along and say, well, you know, you can do this.
[00:44:15] Will you really die?
[00:44:17] Hmm. That temptation comes to us. We just don't think of it that way. We're kind of like Adam.
[00:44:23] Whoever we serve either sin or doing what's right. And so Adam, you know, we can choose to disregard God's word or we can lovingly obey it and we get the same results as they did in the first garden.
[00:44:34] That's powerful.
[00:44:36] This is what Paul challenges us. You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. Do not use your freedom to indulge in the flesh or the sin nature, rather serve one another humbly in love. So God's got a purpose for us, but it's not to just live a self centered and selfish life.
[00:44:51] Our lives are to serve God. And we do that by serving other people in humility, dependency on God.
[00:45:00] Okay.
[00:45:01] Ah, it's not that by chance that Paul called himself at the beginning of the book of Romans. Paul a what?
[00:45:09] A servant of Jesus Christ. But that word in the Greek is doulos and it really means a love slave.
[00:45:15] A slave by choice. I'm motivated to obey God out of love.
[00:45:21] Paul then reminds them of where they have come from. Verses 17. I'm closing with this, but thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you've come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You've been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. I'm going to use an anal example from everyday life because of your human limitations, just as you used to offer yourselves to impurity and ever increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness, which means separated from sin, holiness separate from when you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. How many know that was true? You just didn't do what was right. You just kept doing what was wrong. You were free from that control.
[00:46:07] What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?
[00:46:16] Those things resulted in death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have been slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness. And, and the result is eternal life.
[00:46:27] For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[00:46:32] I wonder, as I look at verse 22, how we can lead a life absent of holiness and still expect to get into heaven because only the pure in heart are going to see God.
[00:46:42] That's a stunning statement. You know, we have this idea that everybody gets to heaven.
[00:46:48] Show me that. It doesn't say that.
[00:46:51] No.
[00:46:52] You see, I would argue that if you're truly a lover of God, there should be something inside, a pull to do what's right. You may be struggling with sin, but there's a desire to do what's right. If you have no desire to do what's right, you're probably not a child of God. And maybe today you'd like to say, I'd like to be. And I'll tell you what God will do. He'll change your nature.
[00:47:12] You see. How many know you can clean up a pig, but once you let it loose, it's going to get dirty again? That's his nature.
[00:47:19] You got to change the nature of a person. And by coming to Christ, he changes our nature. That's what we need to Understand? And all of a sudden, you may struggle with sin once in a while, but you have a new nature now. And all of a sudden your nature is to please God.
[00:47:32] When I became a Christian, you know, Patty and I were talking about this. We had a heart to do what was right in God's sight. We wanted to please God. I don't get it. When people go, I want to do what's wrong. I go, why? I want to do what's right.
[00:47:44] You see, I have a nature that wants to do what's right. I have a nature that God's put in my heart.
[00:47:49] Now let me close with this. Paul. Well before Paul was born, there had been a Roman law stating that no freeborn person could be enslaved. Therefore, a person could literally sell themselves into slavery, collect the proceeds, have a friend come later, and attest to his status as a freeborn person, and that person would have to release them.
[00:48:11] This was actually causing havoc in the Roman economy because it was well oiled by slavery. Therefore, just before Paul's day, a new law was enacted whereby any man who sold himself into slavery could no longer claim free status. Later, the law could no longer help him. It was clear to Paul's readers in Rome that to whom you present yourself as slaves for obedience, his slave, you are. So I'm going to have a stand in closing this morning and my prayer. I mean, I prayed this morning for you.
[00:48:40] I prayed for me, I prayed for our church, I prayed for our nation. I just said, lord, I know what the problem is in our country.
[00:48:49] Some of you go, yeah, you got to get another government or you got to do this, you got to do that. I go, no, that's not the problem. You say, well, what's the problem?
[00:48:56] Problem's inside of us, in each one of us. It's called sin. We got to deal with sin.
[00:49:03] And you say, I've been a Christian for a while saying, that's great.
[00:49:06] But my prayer today, if you heard at the beginning, was today, if you hear God's voice, don't harden your heart.
[00:49:13] Maybe you're struggling with sin.
[00:49:17] I'm going to challenge you today.
[00:49:19] Turn to him.
[00:49:21] Turn to him and say, lord, I'm going to change my mind. I've been thinking about this all wrong. I've been so fixated on maybe being free from sin. Or maybe you're here and you're tired of living in sin. Maybe you're tired of living that way. You're tired of living as an addict.
[00:49:38] You can be addicted to all kinds of stuff. How many of that's true.
[00:49:42] You know, people can be addicted to all kinds of things that take them away from spending time with God, for example, or serving people.
[00:49:51] Maybe you're addicted to yourself. I want to live a self life. I want to just live a life of ease and comfort and I don't really care about anybody else.
[00:49:59] Well, you know, it's a sinful way of life.
[00:50:02] You're not going to be happy living like that. You're going to be lonely and miserable and no one's going to want to live with you. Tell you that flat out.
[00:50:11] Okay, so what are we going to do? We're going to deal with sin.
[00:50:14] Big problem. It's the underlying problem we all deal with.
[00:50:19] So with every head bowed here this morning, how many say, you know what, Pastor? This is making sense to me.
[00:50:26] I have a choice today.
[00:50:27] I can either serve sin and be a slave of Satan and allow all of his lies to dominate my thinking and my mind and my life.
[00:50:37] And I can live in defeat, and that actually separates me from God and from the people I love. Or I can make a choice today and say, lord, help me.
[00:50:45] Help me today to choose you.
[00:50:48] Help me to choose what you say about me. Help me to believe the truth. Help me to reckon myself if I've come to you. Help me to reckon myself as being dead to serve sin and alive to you. Help me to set my affections on things above and not on things below. Help me to hear the voice of God speaking into my soul. Help me to hear your voice to be called to do your will and purposes for my life and not just my own agenda. Deliver me from Vanity Fair. Some of you are caught up in Vanity Fair. You're just totally locked into this world. All of your ambitions are things that are temporal. Let me tell you something. They're all going to perish.
[00:51:23] You need to set yourself sights higher.
[00:51:26] Here's the verse that changed my life. I'm going to give it to you right now.
[00:51:30] Matthew 6:33.
[00:51:32] Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
[00:51:36] God says, I'll add these other things to you. I'll take care of you. In other words, don't make the things of this world the aim and the goal of your life.
[00:51:45] Make doing my will and following my kingdom your aim.
[00:51:49] You want to be free. That's what you got to choose.
[00:51:53] So you're here today.
[00:51:55] God's speaking to your hearts. How many here say, you know what, Pastor? I want to admit God spoke to me today. Just raise your hand. You don't need to tell me what he's talking to you about, but just tell me. God spoke to me today. Raise your hand.
[00:52:06] I want to just see God speaking to you right now.
[00:52:10] God spoke to you today.
[00:52:13] You have a choice.
[00:52:15] Choose you this day, whom you will serve.
[00:52:18] Make a choice today. Say, lord, forgive me. Forgive me for, you know, entertaining sin. Forgive me for allowing sin to rule my life. Forgive me, Father, for, you know, you know, basically allowing myself to be a slave to something I should be free from. Forgive me for that, Lord. That's your prayer this morning? Forgive me, Lord. Forgive me, Lord. Set me free.
[00:52:40] Help me to do your will, Lord. God needs you. I'm gonna. This is shocking. I'm gonna tell you. God needs you in his kingdom to be free from sin so you can begin to do his will and have an impact on the culture in which we're living in.
[00:52:55] But unfortunately, too many in the church are bound in sin, and they're having negligible or very little impact on the culture.
[00:53:06] The culture is impacting us, and we can't understand why the world is going downhill. I can tell you why. You know what they need? They need models, they need patterns. They need examples. They need people living right.
[00:53:20] They need people living in victory over sin. That's what they need to see.
[00:53:24] And you don't just do it for a week or a day, folks. You got to live a lifestyle like this for the rest of your life. You say, lord, I'm your slave.
[00:53:33] See, I knelt down one morning on a Sunday morning. God spoke to my spirit and said, paul, would you be willing to be a doulos, a love slave for me?
[00:53:43] And I wept for a half an hour.
[00:53:45] Everybody had left the church. I was weeping.
[00:53:48] I said, lord, I will.
[00:53:50] I give myself fully to you. I'm a Doulos. I'm like Paul. I'm giving my life to you.
[00:53:56] I have no agenda. But your will, that's all I want.
[00:54:00] It has motivated my life for 50 years.
[00:54:06] People look at my life, they go, man, you're so consistent. No, I'm a Doulos. I'm a love slave.
[00:54:12] It's not about me, folks. It's about Jesus.
[00:54:15] I'm his servant. That's all that matters to me.
[00:54:19] That's what should matter to you.
[00:54:21] So, Father, I pray for my brothers and sisters and those that are listening to me and those that may not know you yet.
[00:54:26] We have a choice today. And those that don't know you, if they will surrender to you, Father, you'll change them. You'll change them from the inside out. You will transform their lives. You will move them from bondage to freedom. You will move them from defeat to victory.
[00:54:41] But we have a choice today.
[00:54:43] And I pray my brothers and sisters will choose wisely.
[00:54:47] They will choose you. They will not get sucked into Vanity Fair. They will not succumb to the ways of this world. They will choose a different way to walk.
[00:54:57] It's a narrow path.
[00:54:59] Most people aren't walking this path. Most believers aren't even walking this path. But I pray, Father, by your grace, that this congregation will walk this path. I pray by your grace, that my brothers and sisters here will walk by grace in this pathway and be free from the power and dominion of sin in their life.
[00:55:19] And I thank you for that. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. God bless you.
