SPEAKER_00 0:11

Who loves freedom? Yeah. I love freedom. We love freedom here. And I'm grateful for the freedoms we have here, especially today on a Sunday, the fact that we get to worship God openly, without fear of punishment. But I was thinking about I, I don't know about you, but I tend to take freedom for granted. Freedoms for granted. Where you get so accustomed to it, don't even really think about it until someone takes away or restricts that freedom. And then I don't know about you, but I get angry, annoyed, grumbling, complaining, right? I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it, how I want to do it. And today we are going to look at freedom, but not a temporary freedom or whatever, but a the freedom we have in Christ. I don't know about you. Do you take that for granted? In Christ, you're set free from sin and death. And this morning I want to, for myself, but for you as well, better understand just the depth of that freedom that we have in Christ. And the reminder that we're going to read here in just a second, that if you are in Christ, there's no condemnation. The verdict is in not guilty. Jesus took that on. And with that, we get to have a new mindset, a mindset on the Spirit, so that we can live and walk with Him more closely and live a life that's empowered by the Holy Spirit. And so I find Romans 8 to be one of the most encouraging reminders in all of Scripture. So my homework for you right off the get-go is at the end of this, when you go home, reread Romans 8 or just these first 11 verses. I've been so blessed and thankful to be rereading it in the week and a half leading up to this. So hope you're encouraged today. But let's read Romans 8, 1 through 11, and then we'll talk about it. All right, Romans 8 says, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do, 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. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If in fact the spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. All right, there's a lot in there. But the first thing we're gonna do the opposite of what you might find in a good courtroom drama, movie, or show. We're gonna just start with the verdict. We're not gonna build up to it. The verdict is in Christ you are set free. There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You're free. You're not condemned, you're free to go. Isn't that great to hear? Have you ever been to a principal's office or in front of a judge? You're free to go. Oh, doesn't that feel great? There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So Paul writes the word therefore there. So again, we've got to look what it's there for. Anyone have Pete's voice in the back of your head? You gotta look what it's there for. It's a great reminder. So we're gonna just jump back to Romans 6 and 7 real quick. So Paul has just gotten done writing about how the old self is crucified with Christ. When you come to Christ, surrender your life to him, your old self is crucified with him, you're dead to sin, alive to God. And praise God for that. But yet, as he talks about in uh chapter 7, as a follower of Jesus, you still have that struggle of the sin nature that's there and the spirit. That's why at the end of chapter 7, excuse me, he says, Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? He's just gotten done saying, I do what I don't want to do, I don't do what I want, you know, that whole that whole bit, which I don't know about you, I feel that. He's saying, Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And he the end of seven says, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. He's talking about this war between the flesh and the spirit. So he's just gotten done saying that, and now he's given this great, we get this great declaration. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And notice he says now. There's therefore now no condemnation. Not someday. Not just when you die and stand before God. Now, right now, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What an amazing truth that is. That condemnation that I am guilty. We're all guilty. We've all sinned. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. And yet Jesus, in his grace and his love, has taken that condemnation for me. And this is not less condemnation. There is therefore now less condemnation. This is there is therefore now no condemnation if you're in Christ Jesus. None. Zero. So your standing doesn't just kind of improve with Jesus. God sees you as the righteousness of Jesus. You're not condemned. Praise God for that. But now the flip side is also true. If you're not in Christ Jesus, there is condemnation for you. And I say that with love, and I hope you hear the love there. Please take that seriously. Jesus has offered the solution. If you're not in Christ, you are going to face that condemnation yourself. So he's saying, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are really well behaved. Right? No. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That's the basis for it. Being in Christ Jesus. Have you turned in faith and repentance, surrender your life to Christ? That's it. Not how good you are, not how well behaved you've been, not who your family is, not what your job is, not how much money you've donated, how many times you come to church, how many times you've taken part in the Lord's Supper, not in your how well you've obeyed God's commands. Are you in Christ Jesus? If so, praise God. There's no condemnation. But what's the basis for your identity? Is it how well I'm behaving, how well I'm obeying God? Is that where I find my identity? Or we've been singing at night to the boys, Jesus loves me, this I know. The Bible tells me so. I might have messed up the lyrics. Whatever. You know what I'm talking about. Where is the root of your identity? Is it in how good you are, your career, this and that, or is it, man, I am saved by God's grace. That, no matter what's swirling around around me, that's where I come back to. So if you're in Christ Jesus, praise God. There's no condemnation. You have a right standing before God, not because of anything you did, but because of what Jesus did. That's freedom. Talk about freedom. But that should motivate us towards holy living, towards living for Him, not do whatever I want. Because, see, for years I used to misunderstand the Bible, and I grew up in a church that I think preached the gospel. And so my fear is maybe you're here and you're mishearing it too. This is not pray to Jesus, invite him into your life, you know, punch your ticket to heaven, and then do whatever I want. In that case, Jesus is not your Lord. Jesus is like your Santa Claus. Surrender your heart to Jesus, that should motivate us towards I want to live for him now. Not now I get to go do whatever I want. That's missing it. In verse 2, he talks about these two laws, the law of the spirit of life and the law of sin and death. He's saying the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus. Jesus came to set captives free. Do you and I live with that joyful reality? And this is not to say, you know, fake, you know, fake happiness and all that business. But when circumstances are really bad, can you come back to the joyful reality that I'm guilty, I deserve, I deserve that condemnation, but praise God, Jesus took it for me. And so in verse 3, he makes it clear the law, it couldn't, it couldn't be our savior. It can't be our savior. Not back then, not now. So he says in verse 3, for God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemns sin in the flesh. The law, how well you obey God's commands, it's not going to save you. It was not the savior back then. Many people still tried. You remember Jesus' encounter with a rich young man? I've obeyed all these things, or the Pharisees. We keep all the Sabbath rules and all that. It's not a savior. The law is not a savior. Paul addresses this in uh, I think it's chapter six or seven. It's a mirror revealing I need a savior. I read this quote this week that stuck with me. It said the law could not defeat sin, it could only detect sin. So we go through God's law, right? All those commandments, it's not meant to inspire you to go, oh, I'm gonna obey those so perfectly that God loves me and accepts me. That should reveal to us, oh man, yeah, I'm in trouble. I need Jesus. So your behavior, my behavior, does not produce our right standing before God. Our standing before God, my standing before God, should produce behavior that reflects a freed captive. So if you're in Christ Jesus, the verdict's already in. There's no condemnation right now and forever. You're free. And not just free to figure things out by yourself. We get to have a new mindset. A mindset on the things of the spirit. I'm gonna ask you a question, don't shout anything out, okay? Where's your head at right now? What are you thinking about? What were you thinking about this past week? What was if you could do a little pie chart of the majority of things I was you were thinking about, what would it show? Where is your mindset? What do you think about when no one's forcing you to think about anything? Anyone ever hit imaginary home runs? Okay. Listen, I know there's more than just me and Cliff. Yeah. Okay. Right? Even like church softball, you know, where they're tossing it up. Man. Just want to hit it all the way out of there. So, what's my mindset on? He's given two choices here: a flesh mindset or a spirit mindset. And to put it pretty simply, I think the flesh mindset, he talks about being in the flesh. That's really not a believer, not a follower of Christ. Someone being in the spirit, that's a believer. Even as believers, you can drift back towards fleshly mindset, right? If we're sitting around just hitting imaginary home runs and all this, the flesh mindset is really to set your mind on self. What brings you pleasure, what brings you glory. It's a mindset oriented towards pleasing and glorifying myself. It's where my desires, ambitions, and values are centered on me. So he says, those who live according to the flesh in verse 5, set their minds on the things of the flesh. Those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. To set your mind. It's a conscious, deliberate preoccupation. Or to set your affections on, to entrance oneself in. What spins around up there? What do you tumble around up there? And one of my favorite verses when we're thinking about thoughts in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 10 5, which tells, Paul again writes and tells us, take every thought captive to obey Christ. I like that visual. Okay. Thoughts sometimes just pop in there, good or bad, they pop in there. You have a choice. Am I going to set my mind in this direction? Is this something, is this something good I should be thinking about? Take it captive. Take it prisoner. Interrogate it. Should you be in here? No? Get out. It might sound silly, but it's you get these thoughts, bring them before God. Is this pleasing to you? God help me to not think that way. Me to turn to you. So why does God even care about what we think about? It's just up in our mind. It doesn't really hurt anybody, does it? I don't know about you, but uh I can think of times in the past where my thoughts, Kate likes to call it a spiral, where I'm spiraling, usually at nighttime, thinking about bills or this or that. Not the Buffalo Bills. Well, them two. But I'm starting to spiral. It does not lead anywhere good. Now it's affecting not just me up here, it's affecting my family. It has great effect. What is your mind set on? Is your mind set on the things of the Spirit? What are the things of the Spirit? Are we setting our mind on Jesus? On what He's done, on His Word? Are we feeding our soul daily by reading this? Or are we starving ourselves? How easy is it for me to spend like an hour watching YouTube videos that are just mindless and dumb, and yet it's so hard to spend 10 minutes in just concentrated prayer with Jesus? Where is our mind, where is our mindset? Please hear me. I'm not saying never do anything fun, just sit around, read your Bible, and pray all day. But where is your focus? Because the fruit of your life is going to come come out of that. In verse 6, he says, uh, to set the mind on the flesh is death. Keep that in mind. When we're tumbling around thoughts that we shouldn't, it doesn't lead anywhere good. And later he'll he says it if you're doing that, it's hostile to God, not submissive. But instead, to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. Makes it pretty clear. The mindset in the flesh is death. To set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. What do you want? Death, life and peace. And verse 8, he makes it pretty clear. Those who are in the flesh, so I believe this is non-believers, not submitted to Jesus, Jesus is not your Lord, cannot please God. Are you in Christ or in the flesh? And my hope for you is if you're today and you're recognizing, I'm not sure I'm in Christ. Don't even know what that means. You're talking about surrender to Christ. What does that mean? My hope for you is not to leave here and modify your behavior. Behavior modification, that only lasts for maybe, I don't know, an hour, a day, a week. I've done that before. You leave here, okay, set my mind on the things of the spirit. Think good things, and then like half an hour later, oh well, that's gone. My hope for you is that you don't leave here and just try harder and just, oh, I'm gonna do better. My hope for you is if you were recognizing, I think I'm in the flesh, is that you would turn to God. That maybe God is softening your heart, that the Spirit is speaking to your heart. Turn to Him in faith and repentance to experience that freedom. So that you are not in the flesh anymore, but you can be in Christ, adopt into his family. There's no neutral ground here. You're either in Christ or you're not. And that verse makes it pretty clear. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And I I really don't want you to be deceived in thinking, well, I come to church every week, I don't swear, or at least not the really bad ones, and I sometimes read my Bible. You know, because the common thing when I'm when I'm out in the in the community and trying to talk to people about Jesus, the common thing I hear when I ask, when you die and stand before God, why should he let you into heaven? What's your what's your hope? What's the standing for that? I feel like 90% of the time it's, well, I'm trying to be good. I haven't done this, I haven't done that. That's basing it on my good works, my behavior. The Bible is so clear. It's not based on that. It's in Christ alone. Your moral living, great. I'm glad you, you know, you want to live moral lives, it's not going to earn your standing before Christ. And my fear is that people maybe walk out these doors week in and week out, self-deceived. I know because I was one of them for many years. Turn to Christ. There's freedom there. If you're here today and you're saying, I am in Christ, I'm just struggling with, you know, fill in the blank. Take heart. Set your mind on the things of the Spirit. Uh here's another quote for you. This one's from Max Anders. He said, Though the power of sin is still present, so we still struggle as followers of Christ, we're still gonna have struggles. The Holy Spirit frees the believer from being controlled by what this appetite desires. So you're still gonna have those things where you go, man, why am I still thinking about that? Or why would I even entertain that thought? I know that's not right. You don't have to be controlled by that. Are you yielding yourself more and more to the Holy Spirit each day? So in Christ, we're free from condemnation. That's the verdict. We don't have to face the condemnation. Praise God for that. We have freedom from the flesh. We get to have a new mindset, a mindset in the spirit. And not only that, we get that we get the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. To live life. We that's I've got to repeat that to myself often. I have the Holy Spirit dwelling in me. So my almost two-year-old son Toby, he does this, he's been doing this thing, I guess for about, I don't know, six months or so. Anytime there's an airplane in the sky, he goes, Oh, oh, and he just points. Could be like 20 minutes later, oh, oh. And he's so awed by, and I'm like, Toby, it's just a plane. Come on. But then I forget, that's a giant hunk of metal flying through the sky, and there's people in it. That is awesome. We should all be going, oh, whenever we see one of those. If the Wright brothers were here and saw that, man, they would have a heart attack. That has become so common to me that I've lost how incredible it is. Have you lost sight of how incredible it is that the Holy Spirit dwells within you? If you're in Christ, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. Is dwelling in me, you kin me, I should each day go, Oh, I got the Holy Spirit. Instead, it's like, well, I got the Holy Spirit, yeah. Verse 9 says, You however are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you, this is not a visitation, this is dwelling with you. And anyone who does not have the Spirit of God does not belong to Him. If you're in Christ, you've got the Holy Spirit. Praise God for that. He's dwelling with you. He's making his home, he's taking up residence. A while ago, Pastor Adam brought up the example of it being like a home renovation. Holy Spirit comes in. Talking about it being a gut job. Just clear the walls, clear everything, start over. I think about that pretty frequently. Are you allowing the Holy Spirit to do his work in you? I think sometimes we like to try to take over for him and say, actually, I like that picture. Put it back. Or, you know, I want that. You know, yield yourself more and more to the Holy Spirit. You have the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead dwelling in you if you're in Christ. I hope you are awed by that. I hope each day we wake up wanting to listen to him. But too often maybe you're like me and you're, all right, Holy Spirit, come on, we're going this way. I should be listening to him. And verse 10, so he says, the spirit is dwelling in you, but then verse 10 says, if Christ is in you. So now he's comparing it to Jesus. There we get the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity. Christ takes up residence in you. Although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. Our bodies are decaying. Nobody say amen, okay? But you're here today, maybe you feel that. You're getting older, things stop working. Seeing although the body is dead because of sin, that's the effects of sin. The spirit is life. In verse 11, we get this again, just amazing piece of scripture that I hope you guys, I hope I think about often. It says, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. So the same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, we don't get like a you know second-tier spirit. This is the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. He will give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. You and I get to live with the resurrection hope now. Even as our bodies decay and crumble and all that bad stuff, we get to live with the resurrection hope right now. God has taken a dead person, dead in my sin, separated from him, and he's given me life. How does that affect how you live each day? Are you living in light of that freedom? Or are we taking that for granted? 2 Corinthians 3.17. I read it earlier, but I want to read it again. It says, now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Please do not be fooled by the world's messaging that if you are master of your own ship, you know, you're in charge, that's freedom. Don't let anyone tell you what to do. You're in charge, that's freedom. It's not. You'd be a slave to your sin. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, though, there's freedom. I was thinking about prisoners on death row. So occasionally I'll read a story about somebody on death row where you know the DNA evidence comes out, they go, you know, whoops, he's actually innocent. You know, they get to go free. I was reading about one guy who was on death row for, I think it was like close to 30 years, where for all those years, he knows he's innocent, but he's headed towards this death sentence. When he's finally freed, I don't know about you, maybe you're angry, you spend all that time in there, or maybe it's just, hey, I'm free. The difference between us and that example is you and I are guilty. We deserve that sentence. We're headed to death. Imagine yourself on death row. We're headed there. And yet Jesus steps in. He takes your place on the cross. I want to encourage you, don't lose sight of that. If you're in Christ, you've been freed. And this is not freedom, again, to just do whatever you want. This is, man, I get to serve the same Jesus who set me free. But maybe for some of you here today, you're still there. You don't want Jesus to take your place. Because you don't think he's fair or just or whatever, or you don't believe he even exists. I want to encourage you, please reconsider. And again, reread Romans 8. It'll bless you. It'll God will open your eyes to all sorts of things. This passage is for any believer, any follower of Christ who's struggling. Maybe you're struggling today with you just keep beating yourself up over things you did in the past. And you need to hear there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Or maybe this passage is for anyone still living in bondage to sin. God wants to set you free. He's already done the work. So in Christ there's no condemnation. That's the verdict. Then you and I get to have a different mindset, set on the Spirit, and He gives us life. We get to have His Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Will we live in light of that freedom? Not take it for granted, but live in light of that freedom. Stop there. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you that you took our place on the cross. I thank you that there's no condemnation for those who are in you. Lord, I pray that you would help us to have minds set on your spirit and not get so caught up in material things and our bank accounts or whatever else that we lose sight of what really matters. Help us to worship you, have our minds set on you, and I pray that we would just live empowered by your spirit to do what you would have us do. Help us to be salt and light here in this community. And I pray that all in Jesus' name, amen.