SPEAKER_00: And now there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The law of the Spirit that gives life has set us free from the law of sin and death.
SPEAKER_00: God has now accomplished what the law weakened by the flesh could not do.
SPEAKER_00: By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin, God has now condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might now be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: See those who live according to the flesh, they set their mind on the things of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: But those who live according to the spirit set their mind on the things of the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The mind that is set on the flesh is death.
SPEAKER_00: But the mind that is set on the spirit is life and peace.
SPEAKER_00: The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile toward God.
SPEAKER_00: It does not submit to God's law.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, it cannot submit to God's law.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
SPEAKER_00: But you brothers and sisters are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: If in fact the spirit of God lives in you, for if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ who does not belong to him, but if Christ is in you, then although your body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Through his spirit that lives in us.
SPEAKER_00: So brothers and sisters, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: For if we live according to the flesh, we will die.
SPEAKER_00: But if by God's spirit we put to death the deeds of the body, we will live.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone who is led by the Spirit of God is a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: We have not received a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.
SPEAKER_00: We have received a spirit of adoption by now.
SPEAKER_00: We cry, Abba, Father.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
SPEAKER_00: And if we are children of God, then we are heirs of God, and we are fellow heirs with Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Providing that we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
SPEAKER_00: For the creation is eagerly awaiting the revealing of the children of God.
SPEAKER_00: The creation was subjected to futility.
SPEAKER_00: Not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in the hope that the creation itself might be set free from the bondage of corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
SPEAKER_00: We know that the whole of creation has been groaning in the pains of childbirth to this present time.
SPEAKER_00: Not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We also groan inwardly, eagerly awaiting the adoption of sons and daughters, the redemption of our bodies.
SPEAKER_00: For in this hope we have been saved.
SPEAKER_00: But if we hope for what we have not seen, then we wait for it with patience.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit likewise helps us in our weakness.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what to pray for as we are.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings to words.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for God to those who are called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: So that his son would be the firstborn among many brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, what do we say about these things?
SPEAKER_00: If God is for us, who can be against us?
SPEAKER_00: He that did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also graciously and freely give us all things?
SPEAKER_00: Who's going to bring any charge against God's elect?
SPEAKER_00: It's God who justifies.
SPEAKER_00: Who is to condemn?
SPEAKER_00: Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who died.
SPEAKER_00: More than that, who is raised to life and is seated at the right hand of God, and he indeed is interceding for us.
SPEAKER_00: What shall separate us from the love of God?
SPEAKER_00: Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword.
SPEAKER_00: It is written that for your sake we are being killed all day long.
SPEAKER_00: We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
SPEAKER_00: But no, brothers and sisters, in all these things.
SPEAKER_00: I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_04: I was gonna get a kilt and paint my face and just come out and yell, FRIDA! After that, it felt right, but uh couldn't find a kilt.
SPEAKER_04: So there are uh, well, first of all, Happy Resurrection Sunday.
SPEAKER_04: Glad that you are here.
SPEAKER_04: There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible.
SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of chapters in the Bible.
SPEAKER_04: It is a large book, but the chapter that you just heard Dave recite, Romans 8, is considered by many Bible scholars and Bible thinkers as the greatest chapter of all 1,189.
SPEAKER_04: Like if you were stuck on an aisle and you couldn't bring a whole Bible and you got to bring one chapter with you, that would be a really good chapter to have with you the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_04: Not just because the words in that chapter are good, not just because it's encouraging, but because if those words will make it past your head and if you will believe them in your heart, they are life transformational.
SPEAKER_04: We're actually kicking off a brand new series today called Resurrection Life.
SPEAKER_04: And here's why.
SPEAKER_04: As we gather together for Resurrection Sunday, and people are doing this across the globe, we are celebrating that Jesus Christ defeated sin and death, that he died, and three days later was raised to life.
SPEAKER_04: And that is incredible, good, amazing, awesome news, and we should celebrate that.
SPEAKER_04: But here's the reality that we also need to consider today and in this series moving forward.
SPEAKER_04: Life with God is not just an insurance policy to make sure that one day we don't go to hell.
SPEAKER_04: Life with God, an eternal life, an abundant life, actually starts right now.
SPEAKER_04: It starts the moment that we say yes to Jesus Christ because what that decision does is it invites the very Spirit of God to transform every part of who we are.
SPEAKER_04: But I'm gonna say this real quick.
SPEAKER_04: It doesn't happen automatically.
SPEAKER_04: When you receive the Spirit of God, when I receive the Spirit of God, here's what happens: it gives me the capacity and the ability to have this new life in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_04: And absolutely, one day when Jesus returns, I will be with him forever.
SPEAKER_04: If you're in Christ, you will be with him forever.
SPEAKER_04: But Jesus said, Hey, it's better for me to go to heaven because if I go to heaven, I can send you my spirit to live inside of you.
SPEAKER_04: How many of you know that that is the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead?
SPEAKER_04: And that spirit wants to bring freedom in your life right now.
SPEAKER_04: I wonder if any of you have ever thought there's got to be more to life than this.
SPEAKER_04: If Jesus came to give me an abundant life, then why do I continue to fall into the same holes and the same traps over and over again?
SPEAKER_04: Why do I live with this consuming guilt?
SPEAKER_04: If I'm actually forgiven, then why do I keep rehearsing the mistakes that I made 10, 30, 40, 60 years ago?
SPEAKER_04: Why do I keep doing all of the things that I don't want to do and yet I don't do the things that I want to do?
SPEAKER_04: And actually, if you look back at the chapter right before Romans chapter 8, Romans chapter 7, the author of this book, Paul, he very candidly and very vulnerably talks about his own groan and the own ache of his heart of not being able to do the things that he wants to do.
SPEAKER_04: He says these words, for I have the desire to do what is good.
SPEAKER_04: Anybody join Paul in that thought?
SPEAKER_04: But I can't carry it out.
SPEAKER_04: For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.
SPEAKER_04: Have you experienced that?
SPEAKER_04: I know that I have.
SPEAKER_04: Salvation happens automatically, but actually, transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit, it happens, you know what, as we actively cooperate with God.
SPEAKER_04: And so you might be here this morning, and you maybe don't have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_04: There's gonna be a clear invitation this morning for you to look deeply into God's heart for you.
SPEAKER_04: There's also gonna be an opportunity for those who are in this room where you are a follower of Jesus, but you are experiencing all kinds of defeat in your life.
SPEAKER_04: There are areas of your life where you continue to trip and fall, continue to stumble, continue to struggle.
SPEAKER_04: It could be just a sin that entangles you and overcomes you.
SPEAKER_04: It could be your thought life, that the same thoughts that you've ruminated on that actually affect your mind, will, emotions, and feelings, all of those things.
SPEAKER_04: Those are thoughts that you're consumed with.
SPEAKER_04: And so you're not living the free life that God has given you through his son Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: And so as we walk through this series, we're gonna walk through what it actually means to live a resurrected life with Christ.
SPEAKER_04: If you're open to any or all that, I'm gonna invite you just to put out your hands.
SPEAKER_04: There's nothing about putting out your hands that is special.
SPEAKER_04: It's just symbolic that what you're doing and what I'm doing is we're coming before God and we're saying, God, I'm open.
SPEAKER_04: I'm open.
SPEAKER_04: I want to surrender my thoughts, I want to surrender my mind to allow you to speak to me this morning.
SPEAKER_04: And this posture is important.
SPEAKER_04: And so, Father, we do come before you with open hands and open hearts, and we invite you in this room in these next few minutes, we invite you to allow your love to break through to the deepest parts of who we are.
SPEAKER_04: We thank you that you are a God who pursues us.
SPEAKER_04: That even in this room, there are people in this room for all different kinds of reasons, some out of obligation, some who are sitting here right now and thinking this whole thing is whack.
SPEAKER_04: Why are these people singing and dancing?
SPEAKER_04: Like, even doesn't matter why people are here.
SPEAKER_04: You are pursuing each person in this room and you love them deeply.
SPEAKER_04: And so, God, I pray that your love would break through this morning.
SPEAKER_04: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_04: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: My friend Bill has this saying.
SPEAKER_04: He says, The presence of God is our greatest need.
SPEAKER_04: And the reason why the presence of God is our greatest need is because God has created that and he's given us this innate sense of there's got to be more to life than what I'm experiencing.
SPEAKER_04: And that more to life than what you might be experiencing is the life that God offers.
SPEAKER_04: And it's the life that we saw all the way back in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, where God created the universe, but he also created Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_04: He breathed life into them, and they had this unbroken, perfect relationship with God.
SPEAKER_04: They were accepted by God, they were loved by God, they were not separated from God.
SPEAKER_04: And then in Genesis chapter 3, we see what is the fall of man.
SPEAKER_04: We see sin entering the world that God did not create robots and human beings.
SPEAKER_04: He created people to choose to receive his love and to love them back.
SPEAKER_04: And what did Adam and Eve do?
SPEAKER_04: They chose to go out on their own.
SPEAKER_04: They chose their selfish desires over being in relationship with God.
SPEAKER_04: And what happened in that moment was not just true for Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_04: It's true for every single person since.
SPEAKER_04: Death and sin enter the world.
SPEAKER_04: Physically, we see this, right?
SPEAKER_04: Nobody beats death.
SPEAKER_04: Nobody comes back from death except for Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: Sin, all of us know in this room that we are sinners, that we have fallen short of the perfect standard of God.
SPEAKER_04: And what happened in that first story is that Adam and Eve, they were judged for their sin because God is perfect, God is holy, and God is just.
SPEAKER_04: They were judged for their sin and then they were separated from God.
SPEAKER_04: They were removed from the garden.
SPEAKER_04: And really from that moment on, the entire rest of the Bible, which is like 780,000 words, can just be summed up in a few words, and it's this God desires to still be in relationship with us.
SPEAKER_04: And he shows us in his scriptures the ways that he pursues human beings.
SPEAKER_04: Even when human beings run away from him, God is running toward them.
SPEAKER_04: The whole story of the Old Testament is how God has chosen this people of Israel to be in relationship with him, and he's done everything for the relationship, and yet over and over, the Israelites they do the things they don't want to do, and they don't do the things that they want to do.
SPEAKER_04: They don't follow God.
SPEAKER_04: And so what it leads to over and over is God judging the people of Israel, and there's separation that they experience.
SPEAKER_04: And the end of the Old Testament closes with God leaves the temple.
SPEAKER_04: This is the place where God said, I'll dwell with my people.
SPEAKER_04: He literally leaves the temple at the end of the Old Testament, and all we have are these moments from the prophets in the Old Testament that predict a time when a Messiah will come, when God Himself will come, and He will do all that is necessary to restore relationship between Him and human beings.
SPEAKER_04: And so what we're gonna see in Romans chapter 8, we're gonna see how God solves the two major core needs that we need as human beings.
SPEAKER_04: And whether you know you need these or not, I can promise you that underneath the surface of all of the things that we do to try to fill these needs, the deepest part of who you are as a human being, because you were created in God's image to know God and love God, the deepest part of you needs to be accepted by God and to know that you will never be separated.
SPEAKER_04: And so this is about no condemnation and no separation.
SPEAKER_04: Look at Romans chapter 8, beginning in verse 1.
SPEAKER_04: We're gonna look at the first part of this passage and a little bit of the last part, and then the next few weeks in between, we will talk about what the rest means.
SPEAKER_04: Verse 1 of chapter 8.
SPEAKER_04: There is therefore now, everybody say now.
SPEAKER_04: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: The reason why I had you say the word now is because something has happened in this moment.
SPEAKER_04: When Jesus died on the cross and he rose from the dead three days later, every single person from that moment before had lived under the condemnation of sin.
SPEAKER_04: But when Jesus defeated sin and death on the cross, that condemnation, there's a possibility for it to be removed.
SPEAKER_04: Paul says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: Some people describe Romans 8 as the gold ring of the Bible.
SPEAKER_04: If Romans 8 is the gold ring of the Bible, then Romans 8, verse 1, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, it is that big diamond stud right in the middle.
SPEAKER_04: Why?
SPEAKER_04: Because of Paul's words.
SPEAKER_04: For anyone who is in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation.
SPEAKER_04: Now, Paul's not speaking about every human being.
SPEAKER_04: Here he is uniquely speaking about those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: This is the position of a Christian before a holy and perfect God.
SPEAKER_04: The word condemnation, as you probably know, it's a legal term.
SPEAKER_04: It means to be free of any penalty or any debt.
SPEAKER_04: But it doesn't just mean the verdict.
SPEAKER_04: It also means the sentencing.
SPEAKER_04: So when Paul says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, he's not just talking about not guilty, he's also talking about the removal of the sentencing or the punishment for our sin.
SPEAKER_04: And so if there's no condemnation, then there can be no charge against a person.
SPEAKER_04: That's why Paul's saying, if anyone is in Christ Jesus, they are no longer under the condemnation of God.
SPEAKER_04: And so we got to pause here.
SPEAKER_04: We got to let this sink in because if we are standing in a place of no condemnation, that means that God has nothing against us.
SPEAKER_04: He finds no fault in us.
SPEAKER_04: He finds nothing to punish, to be accepted by God, as I said earlier.
SPEAKER_04: This is a core need by human beings.
SPEAKER_04: And here's how I know this.
SPEAKER_04: I get into a lot of conversations with neighbors and other people where I try to turn the conversation to spiritual things, hopefully not in a weird way, but I try to turn the conversation to spiritual things.
SPEAKER_04: And I'm going to tell you nine times out of ten, as I'm talking to someone who is yet to believe in Jesus, even if that person doesn't actually believe that there's a God, that conversation almost always turns to the person looking me in the eyes and saying, Well, I hope if there is a God, I've done enough good things.
SPEAKER_04: Because I want to be with my family who's already passed away.
SPEAKER_04: And I do a lot of funerals as a pastor.
SPEAKER_04: I've done a lot of funerals in the past, and there's something about a dead, lifeless corpse laying in a casket where it just invites people to ask questions.
SPEAKER_04: And I have conversations with people, and really what's underneath that they're asking, whether they're believing in Jesus or not, is what's going to happen to me when I die?
SPEAKER_04: And what Paul's saying here, and what he's going to continue to say in Romans chapter 8, let me just listen, because this is the prevailing thought in our culture today.
SPEAKER_04: There is no such thing as good enough.
SPEAKER_04: I gotta say that there's no such thing as good enough.
SPEAKER_04: Like, give me a measuring stick of somebody I know in my life who's really, really bad, and if I can measure myself against them and I am better than them, then somehow I'm justified.
SPEAKER_04: Listen, God's standard of good is perfect.
SPEAKER_04: Bible says there is not one who is righteous.
SPEAKER_04: No, not one.
SPEAKER_04: For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_04: Every single person in this room, every person watching online, all of us, we stand condemned before God because his standard is perfect.
SPEAKER_04: You see, this statement, as good as it is, because for those who are in Christ Jesus, it means that we will stand before God and hear him say, Not guilty.
SPEAKER_04: We will hear him say, You are accepted, you are welcome, you are loved.
SPEAKER_04: As good as this statement is, it actually carries another weight as well.
SPEAKER_04: It is a declaration of no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but it also implies that there is condemnation for those who are not in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: So this is good news.
SPEAKER_04: This is the greatest news ever, but not everyone will receive this good news.
SPEAKER_04: It's a good news that actually also can be bad news.
SPEAKER_04: It's a good news for those who are in Christ Jesus, and it's bad news for those who are not.
SPEAKER_04: But I'm going to tell you right now, whether you're in Christ Jesus or not, all of us, we start at the same place.
SPEAKER_04: Our beginning is identical.
SPEAKER_04: Ephesians 2, 1 through 5 says this.
SPEAKER_04: This is Paul writing to the church at Ephesus.
SPEAKER_04: He's writing to a group of people who are no longer condemned.
SPEAKER_04: They are secure in Christ, but listen to how he speaks of their past.
SPEAKER_04: He says, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
SPEAKER_04: All of us have also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.
SPEAKER_04: Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath, meaning we're all under condemnation.
SPEAKER_04: But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions, transgressions.
SPEAKER_04: It is by grace you have been saved.
SPEAKER_04: And so the starting point for all human beings is we're living under the sin of Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_04: We are living under condemnation, and it is only by God's grace and his mercy that he has given Jesus Christ in our place in order to save us.
SPEAKER_04: That's why when I look at you and I say, there is no such thing as good enough, because it's either the sacrifice and the death of cross in our place, or it's my good behavior.
SPEAKER_04: I've had some pretty good weeks, but I can tell you, even in those weeks, I'm not a very good sacrifice.
SPEAKER_04: God looks at me and goes, nope, you missed that, you missed that, and you thought about that, and you really wanted to do that, but you did that.
SPEAKER_04: No, we are all dead, and the promises and the offer is we can all be made alive in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: What Paul's saying here is clear: there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: This is not temporary freedom from condemnation.
SPEAKER_04: This does not come and go.
SPEAKER_04: It does not depend on your circumstances.
SPEAKER_04: For those who are in Christ Jesus, literally, condemnation does not exist.
SPEAKER_04: And for some of us, we need to hear this again.
SPEAKER_04: We need to invite the Holy Spirit to make this real to our minds and our hearts because if you're like me and you grew up in a legalistic church, then you were told, and it was modeled to you, that God's feelings for you, what he's doing for you, is based on your behavior.
SPEAKER_04: His acceptance is based on how you're doing in life.
SPEAKER_04: And the reality is what Paul is saying here is that God's acceptance of us and his willingness to not condemn us actually has nothing to do with our behavior, and it has everything to do what Jesus did in his one-time sacrifice.
SPEAKER_04: And so Paul continues to write.
SPEAKER_04: He says this in verse 2 for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
SPEAKER_04: Now, anytime we hear this in the Bible, the word law, it can be really confusing.
SPEAKER_04: And it can be confusing because sometimes Paul is talking about a law as a principle.
SPEAKER_04: So a few days ago there was a shuttle that took off into space.
SPEAKER_04: And what happened is that shuttle, because of the power and a lot of scientific things that I can't explain to you, it defied the laws of gravity.
SPEAKER_04: We also have other laws, the laws of thermodynamics.
SPEAKER_04: So sometimes in the Bible, particularly in Paul's writing, he's talking about law as a principle.
SPEAKER_04: Here's the principle he's talking about.
SPEAKER_04: Every single human being from Adam on is born into the law or the principle of sin and death.
SPEAKER_04: That means all of us sin and ultimately it will lead to spirit physical death, but also sin leads to spiritual death.
SPEAKER_04: He also, later in the passage, he talks about law in a different way.
SPEAKER_04: He talks about law in the sense of commandments, like the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_04: We read about this in the Old Testament that God gives the people of Israel the Mosaic law.
SPEAKER_04: And what this is, is the law is a list of things that God tells his people to do and not do that are a reflection of his heart.
SPEAKER_04: And guess what?
SPEAKER_04: In both of those circumstances, we as human beings are powerless.
SPEAKER_04: We're powerless to overcome this principle, the law of sin and death, on our own, and we are powerless to follow God's law perfectly.
SPEAKER_04: And so we need help.
SPEAKER_04: And so what Paul is saying here is the Spirit of God coming to live inside of the believer of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_04: Here's what happens: there's two things that happen.
SPEAKER_04: There's a legal dimension, stick with me for a minute.
SPEAKER_04: There's a legal dimension.
SPEAKER_04: Meaning, because of Jesus' sacrifice, and because of the reality that we break God's law, we are proclaimed not guilty because Jesus dies in our place.
SPEAKER_04: He satisfies the law perfectly because he was a human being in human likeness, although without a sinful nature, and he met all of the requirements of the law by living without sin.
SPEAKER_04: So there's a legal dimension that we receive as followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: There's also a power dimension.
SPEAKER_04: And the power dimension is what we talked about over here.
SPEAKER_04: Remember, the law is a principle.
SPEAKER_04: Here's what happens when you receive the Spirit, the Spirit comes inside of you, and what the Spirit does is it breathes life into you so that you can overcome sin and death.
SPEAKER_04: You see, before Jesus Christ, all sin and death does is bullies you.
SPEAKER_04: It just bullies you.
SPEAKER_04: It just leads you down roads of destruction.
SPEAKER_04: For me, for the first 22 years of my life, I lived without the Holy Spirit, lived without a relationship with God through Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: I was not in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: Didn't mean that I didn't have a conscience, but to be honest, most of the decisions that I made were decisions based on self-interest.
SPEAKER_04: How do I get ahead?
SPEAKER_04: How do I make sure that this situation serves me?
SPEAKER_04: And I didn't really care how it impacted me, and I didn't care how it impacted others.
SPEAKER_04: But let me tell you what, when I became a follower of Jesus and the Spirit of God was given to me, that Spirit of God began to overcome sin and death.
SPEAKER_04: I began to see things like I had never seen them before.
SPEAKER_04: Like walking into a dark room and flipping on the lights and seeing things as they were supposed to be seen.
SPEAKER_04: I experienced conviction.
SPEAKER_04: I saw things that I didn't even think were clearly wrong.
SPEAKER_04: I saw them as things that I needed to run from.
SPEAKER_04: This is what the Holy Spirit does in our lives.
SPEAKER_04: This is why I talked about at the beginning.
SPEAKER_04: Yes, Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday is about glorying in the fact that when Jesus returns, we will not be separated from God.
SPEAKER_04: But his power is actually right now living in us to change us and to transform us and to bring freedom in us right now.
SPEAKER_04: It's a gift from God.
SPEAKER_04: Verses 3 and 4, Paul writes these words by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemns sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
SPEAKER_04: I'll just step back and let me break that down.
SPEAKER_04: So God, understanding that there was a sin problem that keeps us separated from Him, chose to intervene.
SPEAKER_04: And he chose to send Jesus Christ to take care of the sin problem.
SPEAKER_04: A lot of people ask, why did Jesus actually have to die?
SPEAKER_04: If God created this whole thing, then why couldn't God just save everyone?
SPEAKER_04: Because God is holy, he's perfect, and he's just.
SPEAKER_04: And so it's outside of his character to just kind of look the other way when there's sin.
SPEAKER_04: Let me just give you a human example.
SPEAKER_04: Let me give you a human example of a judge who is proceeding over a case where you have a drunk driver, and that drunk driver drank way more than they should have, and they got behind the wheel, and as they were driving, they swerved up onto the sidewalk and struck a five-year-old girl on a bicycle, killing her instantly.
SPEAKER_04: What is justice in that circumstance?
SPEAKER_04: Is justice for that judge to look the other way?
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_04: Justice is for that judge to rule rightly in that moment.
SPEAKER_04: And so by God sending his son Jesus to take on the punishment and the due penalty of our sin is for God in his perfect nature and his perfect holiness and his perfect love and his perfect justice to rule rightly and to judge sin and to ultimately condemn it.
SPEAKER_04: See, we see this throughout the Old Testament in the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_04: Before Jesus, God set up a sacrificial system whereby the priests of Israel, during certain times of the day and in certain circumstances throughout the year, they would bring an animal, often a goat or a lamb, they would bring an animal, and that animal would be sacrificed in place of the people of Israel for the atonement or the covering up of sin.
SPEAKER_04: Now, here's what happened during those offerings.
SPEAKER_04: As soon as the sinner brought the animal sacrifice to the priest, here's what happened.
SPEAKER_04: This is very important.
SPEAKER_04: The priest would take the animal, and the priest would begin to inspect the animal to make sure there were no blemishes and no defects.
SPEAKER_04: And so as soon as that sinner handed the animal to the priest, guess what?
SPEAKER_04: The priest's attention was no longer on the sinner.
SPEAKER_04: The priest's attention was fully on whether or not that animal was a pleasing sacrifice to God.
SPEAKER_04: Listen, you have to hear this.
SPEAKER_04: Every single person, every single human who's ever lived is going to stand before God.
SPEAKER_04: People don't want to talk about that today, but it's the reality of Scripture.
SPEAKER_04: And when we stand before God, we have two options.
SPEAKER_04: One is we can stand before God and go, Oh man, I didn't really buy all that, but I'm a pretty good person.
SPEAKER_04: I was better than my neighbor, I was better than my coworker, and every single time God will look at that person and say, My standard is perfection.
SPEAKER_04: If you want to live with me forever, then that doesn't work because you have sin in you, and I provided Jesus Christ to take care of your sin.
SPEAKER_04: You see, when we stand before God, the other option is to say, God, get your attention off me and put it on Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: He is the perfect sacrifice.
SPEAKER_04: And that is what will happen at judgment day.
SPEAKER_04: We will either cling to our goodness or we will cling to our unbelief, or we will cling to Jesus Christ as the perfect sacrifice in our place.
SPEAKER_04: And this is how we are not condemned.
SPEAKER_04: This is how God looks at people who are in Christ Jesus and doesn't judge us, but instead is able to see all that Jesus has done, everything that Jesus has done when we are in Christ Jesus is applied to us.
SPEAKER_04: It changes everything.
SPEAKER_04: Let me give you a picture of this.
SPEAKER_04: And I used this illustration a couple weeks ago, but if you were here, don't tune me out because I added to it.
SPEAKER_04: Can you guys see?
SPEAKER_04: Can you can see?
SPEAKER_04: You probably can't read it, and that's okay.
SPEAKER_04: So I grew up in uh Helotus, Texas.
SPEAKER_04: I went to Helotus Elementary, and I had a teacher, man, God bless her.
SPEAKER_04: Um, she had about four students in our class.
SPEAKER_04: Any one of them would have driven most teachers into an early retirement.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, we were we were bad.
SPEAKER_04: And so what she did is she would she would write our names on the chalkboard, and these these are not points.
SPEAKER_04: This is not a good thing.
SPEAKER_04: Like there's a point in time where we would have enough clusters of five where she would just send us down to Barney Newton and let him deal with it.
SPEAKER_04: That was the principle.
SPEAKER_04: And so each day she would kind of write down in the moments when we would get up when we weren't supposed to, or talk out loud, or just be general distractions or class con.
SPEAKER_04: She'd write her name on the board and then she would just start putting marks next to it.
SPEAKER_04: And at the end of the day, um, she would she would clean it, but it was an old chalkboard, and so even after she cleaned it, and we left for the day, when you came back the next day and you sat in your seat, you were immediately reminded of the mistakes of yesterday.
SPEAKER_04: And so it was never a good start.
SPEAKER_04: You were reminded of all of the pranks and the jokes you had told, and it reminded you to tell them again.
SPEAKER_04: And here's why I like this illustration, because many of us, even those of us who are in Christ Jesus, this is a little bit of how we view God.
SPEAKER_04: Like he's forgiven us, but he still kind of holds on to it.
SPEAKER_04: You know, we tend to put God in our image because we often have a hard time forgiving and actually not holding sin against other people, don't we?
SPEAKER_04: And so we tend to take that aspect of who we are and we we can easily put it on God.
SPEAKER_04: And that's not what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_04: In fact, David, King David, who his nickname from God was a man after my own heart.
SPEAKER_04: Who'd take that, right?
SPEAKER_04: David also committed adultery.
SPEAKER_04: And then the guy who whose wife he slept with, he sent him to the front lines to be killed.
SPEAKER_04: And so David understood what it meant to experience deep pain.
SPEAKER_04: He understood what it meant to sin greatly against others and to sin greatly against God.
SPEAKER_04: I want you to hear what he writes in Psalm 103.12.
SPEAKER_04: He says this as far as the east is from the west, so far does God remove our transgressions from us.
SPEAKER_04: Now that's really powerful when you stop and think about it.
SPEAKER_04: For those of us who still believe that the earth is round, if I were to have a globe up here and I started spinning that globe from north to south, there's a point in time where I will stop going north and I will start going south.
SPEAKER_04: But if I had that globe up here and I started spinning it from east to west, at no point, if I begin east, will I start traveling west.
SPEAKER_04: And this is what the Bible says about our sins.
SPEAKER_04: This is what the Bible says about God.
SPEAKER_04: That he has separated our sins from us in a measurable fashion.
SPEAKER_04: Praise God.
SPEAKER_04: It means he doesn't hold them against us.
SPEAKER_04: This is why Paul can write, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because if you are in Christ Jesus, God no longer sees your sin, he sees Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: Every now and then we would come in, and my teacher would be gracious enough to take a sponge or a wet rag and just clean off the board, and it cleaned away all of the residue, it cleaned away all the reminder of the sin of our yesterday.
SPEAKER_04: And honestly, this is this is how, for those of us who are in Christ, this is how we are to view our standing with God.
SPEAKER_04: We are not to define ourselves by our past, we're not even to define ourselves by our present or our future.
SPEAKER_04: We are to define ourselves fully and completely by the condemnation, by the no condemnation that comes through relationship with Christ.
SPEAKER_04: As I was thinking about this illustration, um I feel like the Lord just kindly reminded me that although the illustration was good, it was incomplete.
SPEAKER_04: Because the Bible says something even greater than this.
SPEAKER_04: Here's the deal.
SPEAKER_04: This would be amazing on its own, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_04: Just to know, just to know that we're fully forgiven, that God doesn't hold our sin against us?
SPEAKER_04: Is that not enough?
SPEAKER_04: But how much more does the Bible say?
SPEAKER_04: That it's more.
SPEAKER_04: That when we are in Christ Jesus, not only are we not condemned, not only is God not holding our sin against us, but everything about Jesus and what he has accomplished, it becomes true of us.
SPEAKER_04: John 1.12 says we are children of God.
SPEAKER_04: Ephesians 1.5 says we've been adopted into his family.
SPEAKER_04: Colossians 3.12 says we are chosen, dearly loved, and holy.
SPEAKER_04: Ephesians 1.7 says that all of our sins are forgiven, but also we have been redeemed by his blood.
SPEAKER_04: 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, Not only did Jesus die in our place, but he's literally given us his righteousness.
SPEAKER_04: We are the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_04: And this new identity, we try to do it all the time when we have those thoughts of condemnation.
SPEAKER_04: We do it when we remember our past.
SPEAKER_04: We try to take this eraser, we try to take this towel, we try to scrub that, we try to make sure that all this stuff isn't true, and ultimately this identity that's given to us in Christ is unerasable.
SPEAKER_04: It's unerasable because it's in Jesus' permanent blood.
SPEAKER_04: That means there is nothing that you can do if you are in Christ Jesus to make God love you any less.
SPEAKER_04: And there's nothing that you can do in Christ Jesus to make God love you anymore.
SPEAKER_04: And that's why at the end of this letter, Paul, he's stretching for ways to try to describe this.
SPEAKER_04: And here's what he says: knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors for those uh through uh him who loved us.
SPEAKER_04: For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor death, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_04: So the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it meets one of our greatest needs, and that is to know with full assurance that we will not be condemned by God.
SPEAKER_04: It also meets a deep core need that we have that we will never be separated.
SPEAKER_04: We will never be alone and without God.
SPEAKER_04: That the love of God finds us in every circumstance.
SPEAKER_04: There is no separation from Him.
SPEAKER_04: So I'm gonna invite you just to bow your heads for a moment.
SPEAKER_04: If you're here today and you are in Christ Jesus, meaning you're saved, that you have a relationship with God through Christ.
SPEAKER_04: I want to invite you to ask the Holy Spirit, we're gonna see this in Romans chapter 8, that the Holy Spirit does the work of taking what is true in the Bible and he makes it real to us.
SPEAKER_04: The Holy Spirit's job is to take what Jesus has done on the cross and the resurrection and to make that true to our minds and our hearts.
SPEAKER_04: So if you are in Christ and maybe this message is hitting because you're living under the weight of condemnation, I want to just invite you to invite the Holy Spirit to make this real to your heart.
SPEAKER_04: For God's love to break through.
SPEAKER_04: And this morning, today is the day to start a new life.
SPEAKER_04: We had baptisms here a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_04: We had people who were 10 getting baptized and people who were 70 getting baptized.
SPEAKER_04: It's never too late to start a new life with Christ.
SPEAKER_04: And if you're here this morning and you would just go, I don't, I don't have certainty or I don't have assurance that I'm not condemned before God.
SPEAKER_04: And so today I want to make the decision to walk out from under condemnation and to walk into full acceptance and full love and the promise of no separation with God.
SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna invite you just to pop up your hand real quick because I'm gonna pray for you.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
SPEAKER_04: Praise God.
SPEAKER_04: God, we're grateful for your love for us.
SPEAKER_04: We're grateful that you didn't have to save us, that you could have left us underneath the law of sin and death.
SPEAKER_04: But instead, you chose to give us the spirit of life.
SPEAKER_04: And so for each person who raised their hand today, God, I pray that they would walk in this new life that you've given them, empowered by your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_04: God, for those in this room that have been following you for a while and today was a reminder that there is no condemnation.
SPEAKER_04: God, I pray that you.
SPEAKER_04: If you raise your hand today, or you're a newer, you're a believer in the beginning next week.
SPEAKER_04: We have a new believer's class during your reviving 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_04: And this is a first step.
SPEAKER_04: This is a way for you to say, hey, I want to live in the reality of being led by God.
SPEAKER_04: You're understanding I'm not condemned by God because of Jesus sacrificed for me.
SPEAKER_04: This is a great first step, so we want to encourage you to click the QR code.
SPEAKER_04: Make sure you sign up for that class.
SPEAKER_01: This song is a thousand hallos.
SPEAKER_02: This song is yours.
SPEAKER_02: A thousand holes.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, Lord, let that be true of our lives that we would live lives of worship.
SPEAKER_03: Not just in word, but but in our actions and in our hearts, Lord.
SPEAKER_03: May we be transformed into your likeness, Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: To experience the new life that you have to offer us here and now.
SPEAKER_03: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Before you go, we want you to know that our prayer team is available down by the crosses as we dismiss.
SPEAKER_03: And there's two people I want to make sure to hear this call to prayer.
SPEAKER_03: Number one, if you raise your hand and you accepted Christ for the first time, don't leave without being prayed for.
SPEAKER_03: Or telling somebody we want to celebrate that with you in this second.
SPEAKER_03: It is so common and normal and is so pervasive within the church to be crushed by the weight of condemnation.
SPEAKER_03: And if that's you, you've been living life and you're just living under that weight of condemnation and guilt, please don't be prayed for.
SPEAKER_03: God wants you to experience that today.
SPEAKER_03: And so don't leave without being prayed for if you're in either of those kingdoms.
SPEAKER_03: But all of us in this room, would you lift out your hands and receive a blessing?
SPEAKER_03: God the Father sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for us and to save us from our sin.
SPEAKER_03: And not only that, he rose again to new life.
SPEAKER_03: And he offers us the same new life.
SPEAKER_03: We get to follow him.
SPEAKER_03: The firstborn of the dead.
SPEAKER_03: We get to follow him into new life.
SPEAKER_03: Empowered by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: So go and live in love like Jesus and right where you are.
SPEAKER_03: We love you.
SPEAKER_03: Happy Easter.