SPEAKER_00: This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information in our church, please visit Grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned at the beginning of service, my name is Lance Williams, and I'm one of the pastors, uh, spiritual formation pastor here uh at Grand Parkway.
SPEAKER_00: Glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are continuing on in our series in the book of Romans, and uh we are in chapter six today.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are in chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have your Bible, uh you can uh grab one on the end of the row or punch your neighbor and they'll uh they'll at least throw one down to you.
SPEAKER_00: And on that Bible, we are on page 942 uh of the Bible on the end of your row.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and we again will be in chapter six of the book of Romans, and uh it is uh we're gonna be going through the first 14 verses of that particular chapter, which is uh quite a bite, but we'll uh we'll take it one at a time.
SPEAKER_00: And so um we are gonna be talking about today why sin is not your master.
SPEAKER_00: Why sin is not your master.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a dovetail into what Neil talked about, more importantly, what God uh spoke of in Romans 5, which we'll talk about here in a second, about how we are underneath the reign of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, that thought continues on behalf of Paul, and God continues to reiterate that truth.
SPEAKER_00: But if let me just say this before we get lost in Romans 6, uh and they tell us in seminary to preview your sermon to kind of tell them what's coming.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna give it all away, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Right up here at the top, I just want you to know where we're headed so that it can just kind of be reiterated over and over and over again in your mind, uh, which it will be nonetheless.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but let me just say this.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a believer, if you believe in Jesus and you call yourself a Christian, there are a lot of different things that can be said about you.
SPEAKER_00: Probably one of the most important is that sin is not your master.
SPEAKER_00: You do not have to sin.
SPEAKER_00: It has no power over you, over me, unless we give it power.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is this that sin has no power over our life.
SPEAKER_00: The only power it has is the power that we yield to it.
SPEAKER_00: The devil does not make you do it if you're a believer.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have that authority.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the life of defeat, of just continual or constant sin is not the life of a believer in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This habitual, ongoing, continuing to choose, living in the realm of sin is not the life of a believer.
SPEAKER_00: And so, uh, just right up top, if you are here and you've been struggling to make sense of the Christian life, take heart.
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you are Christ, and he is yours.
SPEAKER_00: And so let me just put that out there before us because we're about to jump into, and I read this particular passage and I thought to myself, okay, I need to be reminded of that subtitle of our series on the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_00: And the subtitle, is it up on the screen?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe?
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00: But it it would have been great.
SPEAKER_00: It would have been awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but instead, I'll just tell you what it is.
SPEAKER_00: The subtitle of our of our of our series, the book of Romans, is You Don't Have to Be a Superhero.
SPEAKER_00: And there were a couple of times in my uh in my preparation this week, and I thought, are you sure?
SPEAKER_00: Are you sure you don't have to be a superhero?
SPEAKER_00: Because I kind of feel like I need to be, and I'm not, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna take this in bite-sized pieces very simply to understand uh what can be certainly confusing.
SPEAKER_00: And so chapter six of Romans starts with this.
SPEAKER_00: What shall we say then?
SPEAKER_00: Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
SPEAKER_00: And so before I even get to anything, I have to explain what he's saying here.
SPEAKER_00: Because we can't just go on and say, well, what shall we say then?
SPEAKER_00: Are we going to continue in sin that grace may abound?
SPEAKER_00: That makes no sense if we don't tie it back to what we talked about last week, especially in Romans 5, verse 20, the second part of verse 20, where Paul says this he says, where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul, if you know anything about Paul, he is an expert in the law, which means in our terms that would be a lawyer.
SPEAKER_00: And so what lawyers do is they think about three steps ahead of you of wherever you're headed, and they cut you off at the pass with questions and confuse you.
SPEAKER_00: Not that I have a family of lawyers or anything, uh, but but that's what they do, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so he he is thinking in that way.
SPEAKER_00: And so he kind of cuts everybody off with the pass, and he thinks he knows what they're thinking.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what the people in Rome are thinking, he knows what people in Sugarland are thinking.
SPEAKER_00: When he says, hey, uh back in 520, he says, hey, you know, where sin increases, grace abounds all the more.
SPEAKER_00: So he says this in verse si uh chapter 6, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: What shall we say then?
SPEAKER_00: Are we to continue to sin that grace may abound?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he knows you're thinking, well, if God's gracious and he forgives sin, might as well keep on sinning.
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely has relevance for us today.
SPEAKER_00: You know that in our country Christianity is dying.
SPEAKER_00: We are losing our influence in our country, whether you're in the Bible Bell or in Seattle, it doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is dying in our country, and actually the fastest growing religion in our country, you know what it is?
SPEAKER_00: No religion.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're looking at people of faith, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and they're looking at all of them and going, that doesn't make a difference in your life.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna lie to myself and say I believe something if it doesn't make a difference.
SPEAKER_00: So I might as well just go with, I don't believe in anything.
SPEAKER_00: Because basically that's what's governing you all, anyways.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they're saying about us, which is a travesty, which is why we got to recapture the power that's found, number one, in the person of Christ, number two, in how he's communicated to us in great hearty texts, like Romans chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: Nowhere else in the world could you get away with what we American Christians get away with, that we claim Christ and then basically do nothing with it.
SPEAKER_00: And in India, you claim to Christ and you might die.
SPEAKER_00: In Costa Rica, where we go these places, in Costa Rica, if you claim Christ there, your village might kick you out.
SPEAKER_00: You won't have anything to eat or no shelter or anything.
SPEAKER_00: Uh people of Middle Eastern descent, even Muslims, which I have a few friends that are Muslim now Christians, I mean, when they believed in Christ, they lost their family for a long season.
SPEAKER_00: And not because they were living it, but because, hey, I believe in Jesus now.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, you're out.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if we had those consequences, we certainly would live a little bit differently.
SPEAKER_00: And so we look and we read now chapter six, uh, verses one to fourteen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read this together now as we uh try to understand what Paul, more importantly, what God is communicating to us, is why sin is not our master.
SPEAKER_00: Uh let me pick up at verse one.
SPEAKER_00: What shall we say then?
SPEAKER_00: Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
SPEAKER_00: By no means.
SPEAKER_00: How can we who died to sin still live in it?
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
SPEAKER_00: We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
SPEAKER_00: We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
SPEAKER_00: You hear the language, master and slave?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: For one who has died has been set free from sin, and now we have died with Christ, and we believe that we also, we will also live with him.
SPEAKER_00: We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.
SPEAKER_00: Death no longer has dominion over him, for the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.
SPEAKER_00: And so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.
SPEAKER_00: Do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present your yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace.
SPEAKER_00: What great, unbelievable news that we are under underneath the reign and rule of grace as believers.
SPEAKER_00: And so let me just say, I think the text makes for us probably a lot more points than three, but we're gonna break it down into just three.
SPEAKER_00: When we say why sin uh is not our master, the first reason why sin is no longer our master is because you and I belong to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You and I belong to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We are united with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just kind of start breaking down the text for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: We've already talked about chapter or verse one and two.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just say this, that it is not normal, uh, reiterate, it is not normal life, uh the normal life of a Christian to keep living in sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why Paul breaks it down for us right at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And notice what he says in verse two how can we who died to sin, been separated from sin, been cut off from sin, still live in it?
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying that you won't ever commit sins again.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying that I won't ever commit sins again.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven knows.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what he's saying is, hey, it's not that you're not going to want sin, that you won't ever commit a sin, that you won't ever sin again.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what is being said here.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what he's saying is, how can we, who've died to the realm and the rain and we've lived in this area called sin, how can we keep doing that if we're believers?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't live there anymore.
SPEAKER_00: We no longer live in that area anymore.
SPEAKER_00: This is all over the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Ephesians 2 talks about it very poignantly.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Ephesians 2 starts off with, you were dead in your transgressions and in your sins, and you used to follow Satan, and you used to follow the world, and you used to follow your flesh.
SPEAKER_00: You believe that about yourself?
SPEAKER_00: That apart from Christ, you were dead.
SPEAKER_00: You loved some Satan, and you loved some sin and you loved how the world ran things, and so you ran headlong into it.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how good you thought you were, or I thought I was, I thought I was just like, man, I'm just doing my best over here.
SPEAKER_00: Give me a break.
SPEAKER_00: No, the Bible says that we are so far from God that we are following and obeying Satan.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, seeker friendly here on the first weekend of spring break.
SPEAKER_00: Ease us into this new time change, will you?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Negative.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what I will say that that was once who we were, but if we kept reading in Ephesians 2, we would realize that in verse 4, but God, who was rich in mercy, just stuck his hand down in the grave, started pumping our hearts, brought us to life so we could live with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's the good news of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm indebted to a man named Martin Lloyd Jones, who I got to reading uh over this week, and I just got lost in it.
SPEAKER_00: It was just so good.
SPEAKER_00: It was just beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: I don't do that very often.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but uh, I'm indebted to a man named Martin Lloyd Jones who was referred to in more than than a few people in regards to breaking down this passage because he basically set out for everyone who would read and understand this passage a great analogy that I want to just reference and then kind of build upon as we go through this particular passage.
SPEAKER_00: He says this that that that to understand Romans 6, you basically have to understand this analogy, that there's two fields.
SPEAKER_00: And there's one field, which is your old life, or this country, which was your old life, and you were apart from God, you were separated from a relationship with God, and whether you liked it or not, you obeyed underneath and you submitted underneath the reign and rule of sin and Satan.
SPEAKER_00: And it was familiar because you knew how to operate in that world.
SPEAKER_00: And then somewhere in your life, when you placed your trust in Christ, God reached down in that field and plucked you out of that field and put you over here in this adjacent field, and it's a new field.
SPEAKER_00: It's a new country.
SPEAKER_00: And no longer are you underneath all the government here.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're underneath the government of Jesus and of grace and of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a little uncomfortable because it's a little unfamiliar.
SPEAKER_00: We knew how to live over here.
SPEAKER_00: We're not so sure how to live over here, which is why we have texts like this.
SPEAKER_00: And so we get into our new pasture.
SPEAKER_00: We're kind of got our half acre here of the kingdom, and we're kind of plugging along, and everything's okay, but it's real foggy, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just painting for you a picture of how Martin Lloyd Jones really just breaks this down for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: It's real foggy.
SPEAKER_00: And so we'll come back to that fog later.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's probably the greatest news of all.
SPEAKER_00: In between these two fields is this stone wall that separates the two.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's the stone wall there for?
SPEAKER_00: It's simple.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 5 kind of fleshes this out for us.
SPEAKER_00: 5.18, which will come up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: It says, We know that everyone who has been born of God, that would be you and me, call ourselves Christians, does not keep on sinning.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean you won't ever sin.
SPEAKER_00: It means you won't keep on as a habitual practice of pursuing sin.
SPEAKER_00: That when you think about Friday night, you're not thinking about sin.
SPEAKER_00: When you think about Sunday morning, you're not thinking about all the ways that you can pursue that.
SPEAKER_00: But he who is born of God, that is Jesus, protects him.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why the stone wall is there.
SPEAKER_00: The evil one does not, cannot, will not touch you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, he's over in this field, you're over in this field, you're separated by this wall.
SPEAKER_00: I can hear his voice.
SPEAKER_00: Satan's over there, he's yelling at us, he's screaming at us, he's intimidating us, he's tempting us.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we're in this new field, and so no wonder every once in a while we might get bored with what we are really uncomfortable with, this new Christian life, and we kind of go, ah, what are our friends doing over there?
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we forget the reality that we have been plucked from country of sin, reign of Satan, over into country of grace, reign of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We forget that, which is why Paul says three times in ten verses, hey, don't you know about your relationship with Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know what Christ did for you?
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know that you are unified with him?
SPEAKER_00: Three times he says it, don't you know?
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know?
SPEAKER_00: And so I just want to read three through five, the first, don't you know?
SPEAKER_00: Verse three, don't you know?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just assumptive language, like you guys should know all this.
SPEAKER_00: I've never met you, but man, this is real and true.
SPEAKER_00: All of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, and we were therefore, we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: For if we've been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know?
SPEAKER_00: And there's this great language here in the Greek text going down to verse five.
SPEAKER_00: There's this word for being united with Jesus because we belong to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's why sin is no longer our master.
SPEAKER_00: This Greek word in verse five to be united is this Greek word symphotos.
SPEAKER_00: It's not one that you're going to use this week, but maybe we should.
SPEAKER_00: It means this to be deeply implanted or fused together.
SPEAKER_00: To be deeply implanted or fused together.
SPEAKER_00: We are fused together with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what got my imagination running and exploding because I thought about this and I thought, I bet anybody that has ever gone through a spinal fusion knows what this is all about.
SPEAKER_00: And so I uh I got a hold of our resident uh spinal surgeon, and I said to him, I said, okay, give me kind of the breakdown of what it looks like uh to fuse your spine.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and basically the the reality is this let's just say you have one vertebrae that kind of floats.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of wander, uh, it's prone to wander, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And so what they do in surgery, that causes you pain, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that causes you discomfort.
SPEAKER_00: And so what they do in surgery is they take that floating vertebrae and they align it, and then they fuse it together with one of the adjacent vertebrates.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so that will hopefully kind of create in you a straight spine so that you are all aligned and your discomfort is gone.
SPEAKER_00: Your mobility may be, you can't go where you used to go or do the things you used to do, but now you're in alignment and you're fused together.
SPEAKER_00: You see how that works and fits for the spiritual life, especially when it talks about being fused together with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We are prone to wander.
SPEAKER_00: And yet being fused together with that which is aligned, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden we don't wander anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Or we shouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have been stabilized by this anchor of our soul, by this, by this stabilizing vertebrae, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, could you imagine anything more at the core of who you are than your bones physically?
SPEAKER_00: And so it's no wonder that it's spiritually now that we're fused together in our souls.
SPEAKER_00: And what the what the Bible is saying here is that Paul has no other words besides baptism.
SPEAKER_00: You've been immersed in this, you've been identified in this.
SPEAKER_00: You're so unified with Him that you couldn't separate yourself if you tried.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this great mystery, but reality that when Jesus died, we died.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus was buried, we were buried.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus rose again, somehow spiritually, we rose again with him.
SPEAKER_00: That's this fusing, that's this unity that Paul talks about.
SPEAKER_00: And so he moves on into verse 6 and he says, We know that our old self was crucified with him.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we know.
SPEAKER_00: Our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
SPEAKER_00: The good news of the gospel is that Jesus came not just for sin to pay for sin, but to defeat the power of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says in verse 6, you gotta know this, and Paul says, You know you're gonna forget this, I'm just gonna keep telling you, you gotta know this, you gotta know this, you gotta know this.
SPEAKER_00: You know that our old self, that body of sin, has been done, has made, been made.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I can't even say it, I'll just read it.
SPEAKER_00: Brought to nothing.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I wanted to say.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6 The body of sin might be brought to nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that old self, that life of Adam, rendered powerless, great word in the language here, literally means it's reduced to a condition of absolute impotence.
SPEAKER_00: That's our old self, that's our old life, that way of Adam, reduced to a condition of absolute impotence and inaction.
SPEAKER_00: It's as if it were dead.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's no wonder that the Bible says your old your old way of life, it's been rendered impotent, useless, inactive.
SPEAKER_00: And why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he keeps going in the last half of the uh verse six, so that we no longer be enslaved to sin.
SPEAKER_00: We no longer have to obey sin as our master.
SPEAKER_00: How fusion.
SPEAKER_00: And we could sin.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally, God knows we could sin.
SPEAKER_00: And we do.
SPEAKER_00: Do we not?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, don't hear in me, and please don't hear in me.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you're what you're really saying, you're setting the bar so high that Christians never sin.
SPEAKER_00: Not saying Christians never sin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying we don't have to.
SPEAKER_00: And so things like food, anything to kind of take the edge off, like food or TV, uh, or or maybe it's the it's the interwebs, the pornography.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's fashion.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I got some friends that are dudes that literally ridicule the way I dress every time I'm around them.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they're serving a God of fashion.
SPEAKER_00: I can't help it that I take care of my clothes and I still got clothes from the seventh grade.
SPEAKER_00: I can't help it that this belt is for my sophomore year in high school.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_00: Why buy new stuff?
SPEAKER_00: It still works.
SPEAKER_00: Don't care if it's out of date.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you find your identity and fulfillment in friends or cars or work or accomplishments or who you're associated with or who you're not associated with.
SPEAKER_00: And all that, Jesus is telling all of us, it is never going to work to fulfill you.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, what Jesus is telling all of us today through all these complicated languages, which I'm I don't think it's all that complicated once we break it down, but what he's saying through all this is there was once a time and a place when all that worked for you, back in your old field and your old country, that temporary temporarily satisfied you, but it was only temporary.
SPEAKER_00: And instead, now that you've been transferred over into this new field, this new country, now you're mine.
SPEAKER_00: I won't let it work for you.
SPEAKER_00: I won't let those things satisfy you.
SPEAKER_00: I've sacrificed way too much for you in order for you to be satisfied with all those lesser things.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's no Wonder that we get to our new pasture and we really like the Christian life, and then we get bored with it, we kind of start reaching our hand back over across the wall.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Oh, I've just I've done too much for you.
SPEAKER_00: Now that you live in the land of the living, in the land of grace, the only thing that's going to satisfy you, that's going to set you free from all this is me, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why Paul says this can never be the case.
SPEAKER_00: May it never be that we keep abounding, keep pursuing, keep living in sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's not who we are anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the Bible in all the New Testament never says you're a sinner for those who believe.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it says just always approaching you.
SPEAKER_00: You're saint, you've been perfected, you've been made holy, you've been made right with God.
SPEAKER_00: Never does God see you through the lens of imperfection in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And so we see this, of course, everywhere, but Paul continues to tell us, you gotta know this.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, don't you know?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6, we know, verse 9, we know.
SPEAKER_00: You have to know this, and he keeps repeating it because he knows we're prone to wander, prone to forget.
SPEAKER_00: But he says, this is a statement of fact.
SPEAKER_00: You do not have to be enslaved to sin, which kind of dovetails right into our second point, right in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read verse 11 and I'll give you our second point.
SPEAKER_00: It says this.
SPEAKER_00: So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God and Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Why is sin no longer my master?
SPEAKER_00: Why is sin no longer your master?
SPEAKER_00: It's because of consideration is constant.
SPEAKER_00: Because consideration is constant.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: It kind of doesn't make sense until you break it down.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul is making a point here.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, don't you know?
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know?
SPEAKER_00: And then finally he comes to verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: The first command in the entire book of Romans, consider.
SPEAKER_00: Not go do something with your hands or your feet, not worship me, not praise God, not hallelujah, not anything.
SPEAKER_00: Consider.
SPEAKER_00: It is a command that he goes straight to your mind, knowing that we are prone to forget the very simple truths of the faith.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, you've got to consider, and the language here is not just a one-time consideration, it is an everyday, ongoing pursuit of understanding and considering the truth of whose you are, whose not you are, which is sin, and that God has raised you in on the inside from death to life.
SPEAKER_00: This consideration being constant.
SPEAKER_00: It's all over the Bible, as I talked about in Ephesians, 1 John, Romans, 1 Peter 2, 24 says this about the reality of our life.
SPEAKER_00: He says, He, Jesus, himself, bore our sins in his body on the tree.
SPEAKER_00: Bore our sins.
SPEAKER_00: That we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same concept right here.
SPEAKER_00: Death to sin, live to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Separated, cut off from the power of sin and living, intimate relationship, all for the purpose of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: By his wounds you've been healed.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many times have you stayed up late at night and listened to somebody on TV butcher by his wounds you have been healed?
SPEAKER_00: And to tell you, well, because Jesus' wounds were physical, that means that you are going to be healed physically.
SPEAKER_00: It probably not.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's just all face it.
SPEAKER_00: We're all going to die, right?
SPEAKER_00: Is this all going to be okay?
SPEAKER_00: The only way that we're going to actually be healed is when we pass over into death.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you all that because uh I've been uh really honored to meet with a couple for premarital counseling, and they're doing it right.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they are pursuing the Lord and trying to do things right and making sure they're doing it for the right reasons.
SPEAKER_00: And I get the uh privilege and the honor to marry them or to officiate their wedding uh uh in April.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh they said, Hey man, can you like sit down with us and do premarital stuff?
SPEAKER_00: I was like, Absolutely, man, that'd be awesome.
SPEAKER_00: So we sit down, we start talking, and anytime I do that, the first one, uh I just try and break them up.
SPEAKER_00: Uh like I just I just try and really get them to really understand that this is uh this is gonna be uh this is gonna go beyond your willingness here, okay?
SPEAKER_00: All the romance is gonna fall off.
SPEAKER_00: And I told them all this, all the romance is gonna fall off, and you just have to work at romance, it's not gonna come natural to you anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I said, hey, if you want your life, if you want your marriage to have life, that means you are gonna have to die.
SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing what happens when you tell people that uh and you don't say Jesus said this?
SPEAKER_00: Like you just kind of talk about scripture and you don't say, Well, this is from scripture, because people kind of go, Yeah, I don't like that.
SPEAKER_00: I remember the guy looked at me and he goes, Dude, you are really bleak.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not bleak.
SPEAKER_00: This is good news.
SPEAKER_00: You have to die to yourself so that your your wife can live.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you not want to do this?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you hating me?
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so we kind of talked about it.
SPEAKER_00: I just said, Look, you know Jesus said this, right?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, now you're listening.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's not me, it's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He said, in order for you to have fine life, you gotta lose yours.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to find life for your relationship with your spouse, you gotta lose your own.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you think is important when you come at the end of the day comes in second, third, fourth, or fifth to whatever they think is important.
SPEAKER_00: It's just the way it is.
SPEAKER_00: It's how we're going to find.
SPEAKER_00: I started to tell them all that.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the reality from them is that's just bleak.
SPEAKER_00: I can't handle that.
SPEAKER_00: That's not fun.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't seeker friendly.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But it's true.
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
SPEAKER_00: And isn't it weird that this is what Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: He kind of turns everything else upside down.
SPEAKER_00: In the physical life, which we're certainly familiar with, we live and then we die.
SPEAKER_00: I know I'm a genius for saying that.
SPEAKER_00: We live and then we die.
SPEAKER_00: And in the spiritual world, he says, you gotta die before you live.
SPEAKER_00: That'll mess you up if you start thinking about that.
SPEAKER_00: He totally flip-flops it on you.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's no wonder we get into this new field underneath the rain and rule of grace, and we just kind of go, I don't know how to do this anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I thought I knew how to do this Christian life, but now I'm finding I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I have met with probably more people in the past three or four months who've been walking this Christian life, trying to do what's right, but realizing that, man, it's so much easier just to go across the fence.
SPEAKER_00: It might be.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul just keeps kind of coming after our minds here, this battleground of our minds, and he says, you've got to keep on considering that you've been cut off.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that so important?
SPEAKER_00: We go back to this illustration of the fields, because he knows that the allure of Satan is and sin is real.
SPEAKER_00: And he knows that in this new field, we'll wander around for a while, like I talked about, be satisfied with our little half acre.
SPEAKER_00: But eventually, if we're not, if we're not careful, if we're not really pressing into the Lord, we'll just get bored with it.
SPEAKER_00: And then we'll wonder what our our old buddies are doing across the fence, and we'll put our little cup to the fence and go, oh man, it sounds like there's a party.
SPEAKER_00: I'll get my little stepladder out.
SPEAKER_00: Let me see what's going on over there.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh yeah, that is a party.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, Joe's over there, what's up?
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I haven't seen you in forever.
SPEAKER_00: And then you kind of crawl over the fence, and all of a sudden you're right back where you started.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, That is not the case, that can't be the case.
SPEAKER_00: And so we peek over the wall, we go, and one commentator said, When we do that, when we sin, it's like going back to the graveyard and digging up a corpse for fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: One uh contemporary Christian singer, Matthew Perryman Jones, says, It's like it's like dancing with a dead man's bones.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do that.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible, more importantly than any of that, says, Yeah, when we do that, we when we sin like that, it's like a dog returning to its vomit.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I love Baxter, but he ain't licking me after he does that, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's going straight outside until he figures out what to do with his life, which has come back to me and I don't know, I'll eventually take him back.
SPEAKER_00: And not only does in the same passage it says that it's like a dog returning to its vomit, he also says, you're like swine.
SPEAKER_00: Yay, love being a pig.
SPEAKER_00: You're like swine if you go back and you keep going back to sin.
SPEAKER_00: You're like swine who's been washed off, cleansed off, refreshed, renewed, and then as soon as you get done, because it's your nature as a swine, you go right back into the mud.
SPEAKER_00: Right back into the filth.
SPEAKER_00: And so the command to keep considering, constant consideration is here so we don't get bored, so that we don't just get bored with this small pasture, this half acre or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And it may be small and it may be foggy, but the reality is this, we may not know what we're doing, but if we keep pressing into Christ, if we keep coming after him, if we keep dying to ourselves and living for Christ, if we keep pursuing him, learning, being led by the Spirit, keep following hard after him, keep considering that he's Lord, that he's master, and that grace is my new land, that all of a sudden, as we keep plowing that field, the fog will all of a sudden lift, and we will all of a sudden have new eyes to see that we're not just in a pasture, we're in a kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And we're with the king.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, all that's behind us and before us, now it's yeah, I want to go out there.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even want to sit next to this wall where the party's going on.
SPEAKER_00: And so you just start distancing yourself from that.
SPEAKER_00: And you just go, Oh, this isn't a field.
SPEAKER_00: This is like a whole new land.
SPEAKER_00: This is a whole new kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: Now we can go in more than a pasture.
SPEAKER_00: We can explore this new world, we can enjoy this new world.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to use a word here that I only use in the spiritual sense.
SPEAKER_00: We can go frolic.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't say frolic.
SPEAKER_00: Dudes, don't say frolic.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what you do.
SPEAKER_00: But we can go and frolic and just enjoy the heck out of what it looks like to be a believer, forgetting all that's behind, pursuing all that's ahead with the king of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: So it's no wonder we sang these beautiful songs.
SPEAKER_00: Sin has no power over us.
SPEAKER_00: So we keep on considering this truth that Paul talks about.
SPEAKER_00: It brings us to our third point, not just that we're going to just go and frolic in that goodness.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on.
SPEAKER_00: That just invites me in.
SPEAKER_00: Fog lifting.
SPEAKER_00: You can see more of it.
SPEAKER_00: But not only that, but why is sin no longer our master?
SPEAKER_00: The third reason is because right worship is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you what I mean in the last three verses, and then we'll be done.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Now notice the language of worship here, and I'll explain that here in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.
SPEAKER_00: Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought for brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace.
SPEAKER_00: Great thing about the Bible is over and over again it tells you the right things to believe.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over again it gives you correct doctrine, and then it kind of breaks off, and he starts to give you commands to live the correct life.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what these three verses are all about.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is the power of sin broken over us, and we don't have to give way to it, we don't have to yield to it, but that is a fact and reality, but there's also another fact, and that is our experience.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we still sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why the let us consider, let us therefore, or let not sin therefore reign.
SPEAKER_00: It's what I said in the beginning of the sermon.
SPEAKER_00: The only power that sin has, the only reign that sin has is the rain and power that we give to it.
SPEAKER_00: But if you look at this and you start to see it with language of worship, what you're really seeing here is that Paul is saying, you can use your members, that's your hands, your feet, your mind, your heart, your eyes, your ears, your members, and you can lay those open and present those to sin and go, okay, sin, whatever you want to do with it, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Or you are in the new field and you go, okay, uh, God, here are all my members, use them as you will.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see in the Bible is this word for instruments, also it could be weapons.
SPEAKER_00: Whoa, man, now, now we're talking, now we're speaking my language here.
SPEAKER_00: Weapons for warfare?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And so I started to think about the military, and then I started to do some research on the military, and I was never in the military.
SPEAKER_00: Don't plan on being in the military, I know it's a big surprise.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I remember being on the uh AM's campus, and I remember thinking to myself, those guys are really overzealous about this grass on the MSC.
SPEAKER_00: And other than that, I don't know what they do.
SPEAKER_00: I know they're preparing for military, but I know that they're yelling at me for stepping on the corner of the grass.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why those things are the same, but they are uh somewhere somewhere uh at AM.
SPEAKER_00: But let me just say this these guys would uh line up and they would uh get ready for battle.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things in the commands that they would do during drill, which is kind of their preparation for battle, uh they would say, present arms.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm I don't even that's not even comfortable to me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm probably gonna get shot for even saying that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but they would say that, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you've heard this.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody that's been in the military, you've heard this particular command that they're doing this while they're doing drill.
SPEAKER_00: And they present arms.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you and tell you what it reminded me of this particular passage.
SPEAKER_00: Present your members, present who you are.
SPEAKER_00: This is what uh one uh military dictionary I found said about presenting arms.
SPEAKER_00: The act of presenting arms is a central part of drill.
SPEAKER_00: That is the series of prescribed and formalized movements that are used to prepare soldiers for battle.
SPEAKER_00: And so when they present arms, they get their rifle in front of them and they are getting ready.
SPEAKER_00: That is an absolute way to get ready, them to get ready for battle.
SPEAKER_00: And what God is saying to us, present your arms.
SPEAKER_00: You're either gonna wage war for the enemy or you're gonna wage war for me.
SPEAKER_00: And so, whatever your members are, your eyes, I mean, just let's just start breaking these down and then we really are done.
SPEAKER_00: What you look at, I mean, look and see and try and find what God sees, not what you might consume upon your own lust of your old eyes.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just sit down right here and say that some of us in this room uh need to find a really good accountability partner.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us in this room need to find really good accountability software.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us in this room don't need to have cable or internet or a laptop or anything or even a smartphone.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we can just need to find that accountability partner so where we can have that beautiful reality of Proverbs 28, 13, where he just says, Those who confess and renounce their sins will find mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Presenting our eyes for instruments of righteousness, weapons of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's your ears that we listen now when we go to the restaurant.
SPEAKER_00: You hear it over and over again when Neil talks about when he's at restaurants and what happens at restaurants.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he's listening for woundedness in someone, and he's gonna step in and speak the truth to them in love.
SPEAKER_00: Your ears, your mouth, maybe it's your hands, maybe you take a few days off a vacation this summer or whenever, and you go down to South Texas like we just did this last week.
SPEAKER_00: A bunch of men just went down there, had no idea what we were doing.
SPEAKER_00: Lance Smith, who does construction for a living, he was busy answering questions.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he got actually any work done, but he was answering questions.
SPEAKER_00: How do I put a roof on?
SPEAKER_00: How do I run electrical?
SPEAKER_00: How do I do plumbing?
SPEAKER_00: What do I need to do with this siding?
SPEAKER_00: How do I do this uh this uh this door?
SPEAKER_00: What do we need to do here?
SPEAKER_00: And we need shims, we need that, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine.
SPEAKER_00: He had patience and he was gracious with us.
SPEAKER_00: But maybe you take your hands and your feet and you go to South Texas and you build a house for a new believer who is gonna host a Bible study in his home in a neighborhood that is yet to be reached for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's what this looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it means wherever you're gonna go tomorrow, that you're the instrument there.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your feet, you need to chart your course Godward and not in places that can easily entangle you as you run this race of the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's your heart or your mind, your heart what motivates you, that you are doing things for God's kingdom and not our own.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's our mind where we, and that's what Paul's been talking about, right?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, consider that we would know all these things, that we would know the truth, we keep considering it, and we won't get bored with a new field because why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we will keep plowing ahead, all of a sudden the fog will lift, and we'll realize we're in a kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The place where what God wants done gets done.
SPEAKER_00: And we get to live this newness of life for new reasons, new motivation, not for us, but for him.
SPEAKER_00: Would you hold your hand out like this?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna borrow a line from one of the songs we sang today for your uh blessing for this week.
SPEAKER_00: Every sin or crime is no match for Jesus' blood.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing can, nothing ever will overcome the Lord our God.
SPEAKER_00: Now live like it.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.