Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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So this evening, I wanted to bring a verse up that was recently brought up to me.

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I was having a discussion, saying something out of the law.

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It's like, well, the law of Moses had something about this and this, and just as an illustration.

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And the response was, you're not under law, you're under grace.

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And I started thinking about that. It's like, well, that's true. I mean, basically just a quote of the

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Bible, but what does that mean? We hear it, actually, quite a bit.

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And I think, culturally, we've infused our own meaning into it. If you just read that, you can apply it in many different ways.

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You can do all sorts of things with it. People can quote this and say, well, that's why you shouldn't read the

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Old Testament. That's for the Jews. That's not for you. I mean, it's there, sure.

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I mean, hey, we can put the Ten Commandments up in front of the courthouse or something. But for the most part, we're not under law, we're under grace.

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So and I can quote it for you. It's in Romans chapter 6. If you want to know what a word means in scripture, you look to see where it's used other places in scripture, how it's used in immediate context.

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If you want to know how a verse is used, read the verses before and the verses after. That's a good place to start.

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So what I'd like to do this evening, and granted, it's just a survey, I wanted to see, how does

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Paul use it? When Paul uses this phrase, what does he mean?

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Does he get to define it? Does he have authority to define that?

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And if we have the time, we'll look at a couple of other different places. So that's what we're planning on doing.

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So let me pray for us real quick, and then we'll get started. For God in heaven, thank you so much for this evening.

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Thank you for our time together. Thank you for our time in the word. Please bless this time and help us to see what you want us to see from your word, and not what we think we should or what someone has told us, but allow the

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Holy Spirit to actually teach us and let your word speak for itself.

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As in Christ's holy name, we pray. Amen. All right, so this is quite the statement.

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For sin will not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

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Why can he say this? Probably because the first 13 verses prior, he kind of sets the stage.

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So looking at this briefly, and I was kind of thinking we might do inch deep and a mile wide.

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Let's keep this in context. You could mine the depths of Romans chapter 6 for a year.

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There are people who have written long books on that, and they still haven't exhausted it.

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So, you know, we're not going to hit everything, but I thought maybe we could hit a couple of things. So, verse 3, just as a little bit of context.

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Did you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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 God the

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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Okay, Paul says, you died.

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You were so dead, you were buried. And because Christ rose from the dead, you were raised to newness of life.

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He goes on to say that because Christ was raised up, we too look forward to that future resurrection as well.

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But you are united to Christ. 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.

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United to Christ. You were so united to him, you died with him. You buried with him, you were raised with him, and you're so united to him, you're actually seated in heavenly places with him.

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That's in the book of Ephesians. Okay, all right. So, you died, you're dead. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

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Okay, you died with Christ so that you're no longer enslaved to sin. Why? For the one who has died has been set free from sin.

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Okay, we're kind of working towards the point here. In verse nine, death no longer has dominion over him.

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Why? Because he died and he rose again. Death has dominion over you because you died and you rose with him.

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Let's read that again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For that reason, sin will not have dominion over you.

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Why? Because you're united to Christ. In union with him, you died. You died to sin.

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That's why Paul can make this statement. Okay, there's the setup. For sin will not have dominion over you since you were not under law but under grace.

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Okay, what does that mean? You're not under law but under grace. He explains that in the next couple of verses. What are we?

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Are we to sin because we're not under law but under grace? No, no, I'm not saying that. That's the Greek word meganitad.

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No, no, no. By no means. Heaven forbid. Perish the thought. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey?

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Either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to righteousness. Okay. Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.

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A little bit further down. For just as you were presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawless leading to more lawlessness.

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Now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to thanksgiving. For sin will not have dominion over you since you were not under law but under grace.

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First point. He says, you, you're still a slave.

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You are not under law but under grace. You're a slave. You just have a new master.

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Now, you'll notice I kind of put slashes here. There's a point to that. He's going to make three main points and he's going to repeat them in chapter seven.

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All right, so what kind of a slave, what kind of a slave are you now? Slaves to Christ.

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One of the words he uses is slaves to righteousness, slaves of God. There you go, you're a good slave.

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Okay, but he says, verse 22, but now that you have been set free from sin, you have become slaves of God.

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That's good. That's a good thing. But it's a little different now. Now, when you were a slave to sin, that was, resulted in lawlessness, and more lawlessness, and more lawlessness.

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What is, what is sin? Lawlessness. First John, chapter three.

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So sin is defined as lawlessness. It comes from the Greek word where it says, you know, sin is missing the mark.

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It's an archery term. You know, it's holiness is perfection. Anything off that is, is, is sin.

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But, you know, the problem with that definition is if you don't hit the bullseye, you know, something else is hit. You're hitting evil.

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So, you know, that's what sin is. It's, it's, it's, it's off holiness, off perfection.

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So if you are a slave of sin, resulting in lawlessness and more lawlessness. If you're a slave to righteousness, resulting in more righteousness and more righteousness, or as the

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Paul, the word Paul uses, sanctification. It's progressive. It's good. It's like, okay, yes, yes, we're obedient slaves.

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We're supposed to be obedient slaves. But you're a good slave.

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Verse 17, thanks be to God that you who were once slaves to sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard teaching for which you were committed.

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Okay. Sin will not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. Means you're a slave.

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It also means that you obey from the heart. Not just in the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law.

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You want to obey, because you have a new master, a master that you love. You want to obey.

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You're obedient from the heart. It's very different when you were, when you were a servant of, of, of sin.

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It's really more of a, a loving relationship now. And when you were a slave of sin, what was your wage?

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How'd you get paid? Death. The wages of sin is death.

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Now, it would make a lot of sense to me to be, you know, parallel. It says, well, so then the wages of, of serving

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Christ is eternal life. That's not what he says. So, you, you get paid, but it's like a free gift.

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So, your pay is a gift. And what is it?

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Eternal life. Okay. So you are a slave, you obey from the heart, and you do get paid.

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But if I got paid my wage, my actual paycheck, what

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I deserved as a servant of God, I don't think

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I'd get paid very well. I certainly wouldn't marry eternal life.

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It has to be a free gift. There's no other way it would work. Certainly no other way that, that I would get there.

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So, you're still a slave. So, when someone says to you, you're not under law, but under grace, you can say, yes, I agree, I'm a slave, and I obey from the heart, and my payment is a free gift of eternal life.

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Moving to chapter seven. Do you not know, brothers, that I'm speaking to those who know the law?

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I'm speaking to intelligent, educated people, many of which were, were students of the law itself. These are not just Gentiles in in, in Rome.

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These are, this is the center of the known world. This is, you know, it's intelligentsia. They understand that.

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It says that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives. What's the analogy that he gives here?

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He uses something that we would all understand. He uses the covenant of marriage. So, if you are married, you are married as long as you both shall live.

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And if your spouse dies, you are not bound to, you are, you are free to move free to marry someone else.

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It's not adultery. So, it's something that people understand.

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I say, okay, yes, I, I get that. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ.

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So, instead of the spouse dying, you're the one that died. So, you died. You're not married to sin anymore.

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You're not married to that. You're not married to the, to the law. You're under grace.

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So, you have died to the law. It's interesting, he doesn't say died to sin here. He says died to the law. So, he starts to kind of move that, move that direction.

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So, same thing, you know, you died. So, you died.

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And then he has this, you know, were versus are motif.

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He keeps going back, he says, you were a slave of sin. Now you were a slave of God. You were this, now you are this.

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You were this, you are this. He keeps going back and forth. So, he starts off with, you died. And that's why sin will have no dominion over you.

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He says it again. You've died to the law. You're no longer married to that. You are free to, the word that he uses, belong to another.

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It's verse four. Belong to another.

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We can use that in the context of marriage. You can also use that in the context of servanthood as well.

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You're in someone else's household. You belong to another. Seeing how he's kind of repeating things and he's moving even along the same timeline or the same, literary speaking, he starts off with, died in Christ because you're united with him.

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Slave from the heart, free gift. Because you died, you belong to another.

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But now we are released from this, verse six. Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive so that we may serve in the new way of the spirit, not in the old way of the written code.

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Okay, in the new spirit or the new way of the spirit. Same idea, it's internal. You want to.

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Not just the letter of the law. Not just making sure you're just living up to exactly what it says, but really from the heart.

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You want to obey. Then he goes into this heart -wrenching section that I think all of us can identify with.

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What are we saying then? You know, he died to the law. Is the law sin?

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No. The law is holy and righteous and good.

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Because the one who gave it to us is holy and righteous and good.

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It's not the problem with the law, the problem is with us. Now, the law came in and what did it do?

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It showed us sin, it set the standard. And when we knew what the standard was, that's when we really wanted to break it.

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It's madness, absolute madness. But that's what we did, and that's what we kind of still want to do.

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Sin, verse 11, sin seizing opportunity through the command deceived me and through it killed me.

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So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

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He declares it, he says it, it is absolutely true. It was sin that produced death through the law.

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It took an opportunity through the law. Here's something that I can use to kill this guy. And it was really us, our flesh.

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So he goes kind of back and forth and he starts to mix some metaphors here, but I think you guys get the idea.

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For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am a flesh, verse 16. Now, if I do what I don't want to do,

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I agree that the law is good. If you're doing something and you didn't want to do it, or you did it or you certainly chose to do it, and then afterwards, you feel horrible and you're doing the things you don't want to do, what you're agreeing with is that the law was good.

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You're your own prosecuting attorney. So sin will have no dominion over you, for you were not under law, but under grace.

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So what does that mean? Well, yes, I agree. It means I belong to another, and it means that I want to obey from the spirit, for I delight in my inner, for the law in my inner being.

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In the spirit, I, oh heavens. You delight in the law.

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If you were not under law, but under grace, you delight in the law. That's, somebody says to you, you're not under law, but under grace, so you don't really need to look at some of the

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Old Testament and kind of leave that stuff out. He says, no, no, no, no, no, no. I delight in the law. I'm a slave, and I want to obey, but I know that I don't very well.

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In fact, we cry out with Paul at the very end of seven and says, who will release me from this body of death?

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Thanks be to you, Lord God, through Christ, that there is what?

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No condemnation, thank you. No condemnation.

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Sounds a lot like the free gift of eternal life.

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In Christ Jesus, our Lord, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

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So when you read, sin will have no dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

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You could remember that you're a slave and you want to obey because you delight in the law, but when you don't, there's no condemnation.

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You're safe, you're loved, you're safe, and you will be raised up again because he was raised up again.

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How did Paul start this entire section? You are in union with Christ.

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He finishes chapter eight with, because of who we are in Christ, that neither death nor life or anything will be able to separate us from his love.

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Now, I could be completely off base here. I could be. Now, what

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I want to do is I want to look at the verses before and the verses after and keep everything in context.

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And God only has to say something once for it to be true, but if he repeats something, repeats it, and he goes over multiple chapters to do so, it's like, okay, you're probably a little bit safer.

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But does Paul say anything about this in other books?

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I mean, you probably already know the one that I'm thinking of here. Let's go with Galatians 5.

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I think that'd be a good one. All right, Galatians 5, 18.

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Galatians 5, 18. So another, this is why we ignore the law.

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But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. See, that's why we don't need to pay attention to the law.

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You're not under the law. It's over. It's done with. Really, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control against such things.

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What? There is no law. The law certainly doesn't tell you not to do that.

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So what does Paul tell us to do? Bear one another burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

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Bear one another's burdens. What's one of the fruits of the spirit? The lead one?

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Love. Romans chapter 13. Love fulfills the law. So as we're changed into this newer servant, better servant who wants to obey, we love each other.

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We bear one another's burdens. We produce the fruits of the spirit, meaning it ain't you doing it.

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It's the spirit of Christ in you that's doing it in you and working it out.

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But if love fulfills the law of Christ, it says, oh, yeah,

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I think Jesus talked about that too. He said, you know what?

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What was some of the things that Jesus said about love and the law? Like the greatest commandments, what were they?

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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Where does that come from?

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The law. It comes from Deuteronomy 6, four. It's the Shema.

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It says it's Shema because it's here. Shema here. Shema Yisrael. Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.

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Here is where the Lord is your God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul.

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It means to love the Lord your God with everything that you are. And the second commandment is like it.

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What's that one, the second greatest commandment? Love your neighbor as yourself.

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Where does that come from? Also the law, right,

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Leviticus 19, 18. And he says, all of this on these two commandments turn or hang the law and the prophets.

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So love is the fulfillment of the law. We have a little bit more time.

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I wasn't sure if we were gonna have time for this, but if there is a Christian chapter of the

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Bible, John chapter three, y 'all must be born again, right?

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Yes, yes, yes, you may. Yes, you, and that is, you must be born again.

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Who here knows where that comes from? So Jesus wasn't talking about something new.

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He actually looks at Nicodemus and says, you must be born again, don't you know that?

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And Nicodemus says, how can these things be? And Jesus answered him, are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?

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Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

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He's like, how can you be teacher of Israel and you don't know these things? And she must be born again, born of water and born of the spirit.

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He's referencing something, something that the Pharisee should know, something that the teacher of Israel should know, something a member of the

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Sanhedrin should really know. He's referencing that you have to be born of water and of the spirit.

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And if you, so truly I say to you, unless you were born of water spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. What's he referencing?

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Well, we think he's referencing Ezekiel. Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 25.

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If you guys wanna turn there, I'll give you a second. We don't spend a lot of time in Ezekiel.

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It's scary, it's long, it's confusing, it's a little weird at certain times, but it's quoted a lot in the

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New Testament. And John chapter three says, you must be born of water and of the spirit. What does he say here?

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Verse 25, 36, 25, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and all your idols and I will cleanse you.

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And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit and that I will put within you. I will remove from you the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

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I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. You be careful to obey my rules. I will sprinkle you with clean water and give you a new spirit.

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I will, you must be born of the spirit and born of water. That's what a

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Pharisee would know. That's what member of the Sanhedrin would know. And more than that,

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I will cause you to walk in my statutes. You have a new spirit, you want to obey from the heart.

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That's what it means to be born again. And you can read further in John chapter three where he says, you know, where obedience is critical for a disciple of Christ.

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So John chapter, let's go. Moses says,

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Moses lift up the wilderness. So must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

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Whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world. But in order that the world might be saved through him whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the judgment. Our light has come into the world and people love darkness rather than light.

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For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light. Lest his works be exposed. Whoever does what's whoever's true comes to the light that may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

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Real belief produces something. You are a slave.

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You obey from the heart and it is God who is the one doing that.

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The new spirit within you delights in the law. Love fulfills the law.

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So you're gonna be doing those things that are the fruits of the spirit. The things that loving the Lord and loving each other.

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When you were born again you have a new heart and a new spirit and it changes you and it changes your behavior.

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We like to quote John 3, 16. But I think we've just seen with the new heart and the new spirit and the one that God causes within you to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

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It actually is productive. You obey and you do and you do those things that are loving and sacrificial for each other.

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What did our pastor pray? A part of his prayer tonight was that we would love one another as Christ has loved us.

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And when, even though we have every resource, we have a new heart and we have a new spirit and we're safe.

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It's all been done for us. Even then we constantly fall short.

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There is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. You do have a new heart.

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You do have a new spirit. It is being worked out. But that free gift is eternal life.

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You're safe. So I hope that this reminds us of who we are and who we are becoming.

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Please don't ignore the law. Don't ignore those standards that were set. Understand their purpose.

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Read through that. Don't understand that the law is holy and righteous and good.

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And the purpose of your salvation was so that, I mean, you see it in Ephesians.

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By grace you are saved through faith, not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works that no man should boast, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

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You were saved for a purpose. So go out and do it. And when you fall short, know you have an advocate.

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But that desire to obey is part of who you are now and not who you were.

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Like I said, you can go, you can mine the depths of all sorts of stuff.

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You can mine the depths of any one of these verses for a month. And I know that we just went inch deep, mile wide, but I hope that the smattering of verses that we looked at, the concepts that we looked at, shows that it isn't just said one place.

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It's said multiple different places. And when God really wants you to pay attention, he repeats things.

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God only has to say something once for it to be true, but when you repeat it, he really wants us to pay attention. So I think that's what he's doing here.

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And I think that the points that we made are repeated. So there you go.

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Somebody says, you're not under law, you're under grace. You can say, yeah, I delight in the law. All right, let's pray.

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Oh God in heaven, thank you so much for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank you for its clarity. Thank you that you repeat things because we are hard of hearing.

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Thank you that your word is clear and that your spirit teaches us. In Christ's name we pray, amen.