Romans 6:15-23 (Progressive Sanctification, Pastor Jeff Kliewer)

And let's go to the Lord in prayer. God, apart from you, we can do nothing.

So Lord, I call upon you to help me to preach your word as if speaking the very oracles of God.

I ask for the help of your Holy Spirit to give me a preaching gift this morning that I could faithfully deliver your word to your people.

And Lord, I pray for those who hear the word to be changed from the inside out. I pray that you would break strongholds, that you would set people free, that those who have given even a foothold to the devil would be set free this morning.

And Lord, that all of us would be sanctified by your truth. Your word is truth.

Speak, Lord. Your servants are listening. In Jesus' name, amen. Father Abraham had many sons, and many sons had

Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you. So let's just praise the Lord.

Father Abraham, we are taught, and in fact, Paul talks to the Corinthians about how all of the

Old Testament saints were for an example to us. Abraham is the prime example of a man of faith.

And we read in Hebrews 11 about all of those who walked in faith. And they serve as an example for us.

When Hebrews chapter 12 verse 1 says that we have a cloud of witnesses, did you think everybody in heaven was watching everything that you did?

Because that would be kind of a scary thought, wouldn't it? When it says we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, it doesn't mean that people in heaven are watching what happens on earth.

It was referring to Hebrews 11, who by their lives witnessed to us as an example for how we ought to walk in the faith.

And Abraham is one of those great examples. In fact, probably the prime example of a man of faith.

Abraham, when you think of his life, you've got to picture him going to Mount Moriah, where God told him to take your son, your only son, and sacrifice him there.

And amazingly, Abraham took Isaac to that mountain to lay down his own son on an altar and slay him in obedience to the

Lord. We think of that because most of us here certainly wouldn't have that kind of faith.

And so that's an example to shoot for. Abraham was the father of faith and the great example to us.

But Pastor John and Pastor Tim and I, just a few days ago, had lunch with some pastors over in Philadelphia.

Mike Jarrell and Jason and Steve, the guys from Fellowship Evangelical Free Church. We meet once a month and have a lunch.

And we got to talking about Abraham. And Mike said, oh, I've got a great chart to show you from the life of Abraham.

And I want to pull that up now and show it to you guys, because even though Mount Moriah, at the end of Abraham's life, where the man of faith was willing to sacrifice his son, that pinnacle of faith, even though we see that when he's about 115 years old, the story of Abraham's life as recorded in Genesis begins when he was only 75 or younger.

And it was Abraham's father who brought them out of Ur of the Chaldees. But his father only got him halfway to the promised land.

Abraham had to obey and come out from his family and go to the promised land in Canaan.

But as soon as he got there, a famine came on the land.

And after that great victory of faith, where Abraham left everything, Hebrews 11 celebrates it, what we don't want to forget is that right away, he went down to Egypt.

And in Egypt, he pretended that his beautiful bride was only his sister.

So Pharaoh took Sarai as if his wife.

Talk about throwing your wife under the bus. Poor Sarai is in Pharaoh's harem.

But God protected her and delivered them from that trial.

And out they come back to Canaan, to the promised land. But there he doubts the heir that God had given him.

Eleazar of Damascus, is this going to be him? He doubts God until finally God settles his heart in a covenant promise that you will have a son from your own body.

And Abraham trusts the Lord in this promise, except that he goes to Hagar, the

Egyptian, to make it happen. And so after a great victory of faith, you have yet another defeat, up and down.

The sanctificational journey of Abraham is not victory to victory, but sometimes victory, defeat, victory, defeat, victory, defeat.

He's given the covenant of circumcision in Genesis 17. But his initial reaction is to laugh.

So there are victories and then defeats. And then he grows and he's getting older and nearer the time of his great effort in Genesis 22 to please

God. But just before that, he suffers a horrible setback in his life.

Anybody here familiar with horrible setbacks in your Christian life? Where you thought you were better than what you did?

Here Abraham reverted to something he did when he first got into Canaan and went down to Egypt.

I don't know if you realize this, but Abraham fell that way twice. When heading to the southern part of Israel, the king of Bimelech was very powerful.

And Abraham once again pretended that Sarah, now named Sarah, was only his sister and not his wife, and threw her under the bus again.

She ends up in Bimelech's harem until God protecting her by a dream where God says to Bimelech, you're a dead man.

And Bimelech's like, what did I do? And God tells him, look, I protected you from doing anything.

But for Abraham's part, there was a suffering of defeat. The great man of faith did not walk in victory that day.

And yet he continued to grow. Notice the trajectory of his walk with God.

Although there are ups and downs, and sometimes he's at places lower than where he started, as you follow the course of his years, he is being progressively sanctified.

Progressive sanctification is the subject this morning. Turn with me to Romans chapter 6, verses 15 to 23.

As you find Romans 6, verses 15 to 23, I want to tell you the main idea this morning.

In practice, Christians are either progressing in sanctification by obeying

God, or by obeying sin, we are backsliding episodically as if we were in slavery to sin.

Now, I use the word episodically, meaning in episodes. As Abraham, for a time, for a period, in an episode of his life, he backslid away from the progress he was making.

Christians are either on that backslide for a period of time in an episode of their life, or they're obeying and gaining in sanctification.

In other words, there is no neutral gear. You've either got the car in forward or reverse, but there is no neutral gear in the

Christian life. You're either growing by walking in faith and stepping out and obeying the commands of God, or you are in a period of backsliding.

There's no cruise control. When I drive down to Florida, I love to set it on cruise control, because I can just sit there and kind of zone out and think, and then get awakened because I need to put the brakes on.

But the cruise control can help me with that. There's no such thing as cruise control in the

Christian life. You are either making progress, or you're in a period of backsliding. There's no neutral.

Last week, we read from Romans 6, 1 to 14. And the subject in that passage was positional sanctification.

So here, we're going to make a distinction between positional sanctification and progressive dispensationalism.

That's a different subject. Thought we were going deep this time. We'll save that for another day. But have you heard the terms positional sanctification, progressive sanctification?

Positional means where you stand and what is already done and settled.

When you were born again, you were justified by faith, declared righteous. You were also positionally set aside for God's service.

Sanctified. That's why the Bible sometimes speaks in the past tense of you having been sanctified.

Positionally, you're set apart for God. Last week, many of you got to be a part of the baptism that we had down at the shore.

I think there was like 100 cornerstone people that showed up at the beach, which was quite a sight when we go walking onto the beach and heads are turning.

What are these people doing? And nine of you go down into the water with us to be baptized.

That beautiful baptism, and it was powerful, beautiful day, great testimony.

It proclaims what has been done by God, that you are crucified with Christ and raised to newness of life.

It's done. And that's how you're to think. You're to think of yourself as dead to sin and alive to Christ Jesus.

So that was the subject last week, Romans 6, 1 to 14. Now we pick up at verse 15, and it almost sounds like we're going to rehash the same ground.

Like, wait a minute. Paul, I think we just talked about this. Why are you circling back like Jen Psaki?

Circle back, Psaki. Why are you circling back and asking the same question that you just answered?

Notice the parallel between verse 15 and verse 1. He says, what then?

Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace by no means?

Look back at verse 1. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

Doesn't that sound like the same question? Well, didn't we just deal with this in the first 14 verses?

Why is he asking it again? The answer is, now he's going to give a practical answer regarding progressive sanctification whereas the first time, he needed you to think positionally about who you already are.

So it actually is a different subject here. This now will give you a practical teaching.

In practice, Christians are either progressing in sanctification by obedience to God or by obeying sin.

We're backsliding. This is going to be the big idea. No neutral gear. Now, is that just something that we

Christians have said as a tradition? Because I'm sure you've heard that, right? Someone's told you you're either pressing forward in the faith or you're backsliding.

There's no neutral gear. I want you to see the either or for yourself in verse 16.

Because to obey sin is to live as if its power still owns us as its slave.

But as we read verse 16, notice the either or. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?

Either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.

So consider the either or in that verse. Either of sin or of obedience.

This is what we would call a dichotomy. There's just two. There's no third way.

There's nothing but these two options. It is an either or. And what is the dichotomy?

What is the separation? The two different, the roads that diverge in the forest. You can choose this one or you can choose that.

What are those two paths? One is the one you want to choose, which we'll get to, progressive sanctification.

But Paul will begin with slavery to sin, progressing in lawlessness.

In other words, backsliding. It says in verse 16, do you not know that if you present yourselves, who's active in that sentence?

You. Which means you have a will, a real creaturely will.

Now in salvation, we understand that because of our deadness and sin in which we walk, we were slaves to sin.

Our will would never have obeyed God in the call to come to Christ. We were dead in our sin.

We were rebels. And so the idea of coming to him would be the opposite of what we'd want to do.

The dead sinner isn't really free to come because his real will wants nothing of the righteousness of God.

But what happened when you did come? When the Holy Spirit gave you new life, you believed, you became a new man in Christ.

So what our text is telling us is that you have a real will that makes real decisions as a

Christian, either to obey or to disobey. And in the first case here, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey.

You can present yourself as a slave to one master or the other, but you will be a slave of one or the other.

Now, you will obey the one and reject the other or vice versa.

This is the concept here. Now, to obey sin is to live as if its power still owns us as its slave.

That's one option in the either or. It's to live like a slave, a slave of sin.

When you disobey a command of God, you kind of assume maybe this is a one -time slip.

But what ends up happening? You end up repeating the same thing again and again.

Why? Because this power of slavery, this principle of slavery is something to which you are submitting yourself.

And by definition, you're obeying a master. So the person who allows himself to lie once will be more likely to lie a second time.

When you open a door to sin, all of a sudden, it begins to take hold. This is why you're not to give the devil even a foothold, because he likes to climb up your leg and become a stronghold in your life.

This is the idea. You're either moving in that direction, which we have called backsliding, away from God, or the better part, it says, the second half of the verse, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.

I stress those words, leads to righteousness, because the idea here is a progress that needs to be made.

The moment you were saved, you were declared righteous. That is, the righteousness of Christ was credited to your account.

So forensically, you were justified. But here, we're talking about actual righteousness.

That is, doing like God, being like God, representing him, bearing his image.

When it says righteousness here, it is something that you progress in. Notice that it leads to righteousness.

This is progressive sanctification. So would that mean that you can lose your salvation?

Because after all, if it's possible by your will to obey sin and be backsliding, couldn't you just backslide your way all the way to hell?

Couldn't you just keep on going like that and end up lost? I had a pastor meet.

This is different than the one I mentioned earlier. But a group of pastors were sitting around and talking about the subject of once saved, always saved.

Is that a true doctrine? And the thing we agreed on, all of us had the same mind, so it was, it's better said, if saved, always saved.

Because the question is, if you were genuinely saved, then you'll continue to believe and you'll continue to be saved.

But there's some who were never saved in the first place. And as we were talking as pastors, someone brought up a guy in their church who just had this issue on their mind all the time.

And they wanted to convince the pastor that he was wrong to preach that you can't lose your salvation.

And so he would go around in the church and tell everybody that this is a false doctrine and try to undermine the teaching of the church.

And the pastor was saying, it's a real problem in the church. And then he eventually left. Well, when he shared the name of the person, which

I will not do, every pastor in that room had had this individual in their church at one point or another, every single one.

He had made the rounds. He had an agenda to teach that once saved, always saved, or that you can't lose your salvation, eternal security, is a false doctrine.

I want to tell you, as we saw last week, it is plainly spelled out here in scripture. Let's read it, 17 and 18.

Paul is guarding now against the idea that you'll have to keep and earn your salvation by obedience.

And he says, rather, but. That's a transition word from the thought that he was giving, which obedience will lead to sanctification progressively.

But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.

And having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

So in verses 17 and 18, Paul is teaching eternal security. Christians are never actual slaves to sin.

Christians can act like a slave, behave like a slave, but he makes the point here,

Christians are never actual slaves to sin because conversion, being converted, becoming a

Christian, means a genuine change of heart. It can never be undone.

Look what it says in verse 17. You have become obedient, where?

From the heart. Now guys, this is why we have to be very careful about judging other people's salvation.

You see somebody backsliding into sin? How do you know whether they're a backsliding

Christian or a false convert? The two overlap in appearance.

A backsliding Christian might look like they were never saved because they're doing some pretty bad things.

They're caught up in a stronghold. And vice versa, the person who was never converted might even look the part of a good, faithful member of Cornerstone Church.

So we must be very careful not to make that judgment as if it belonged to us, but God sees the heart.

God knows who has been genuinely converted. And you have become obedient from the heart, says

Paul. He's referring to genuinely converted people. To what? To the standard.

The standard is the word of God, the commands of God. God's holy word, which never errs, although we are fallible, if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

He is the standard. And this teaching that we're given is perfect.

The word of God is perfect. So here we are, stumbling, fumbling, bumbling

Christians, genuinely converted in the heart, but sometimes looking like slaves.

Paul here is guarding against the idea that you can lose your salvation.

He's saying you're not actually a slave, even if you act like one. Because notice the tense of the verbs, you have been, have become slaves of righteousness.

Does that sound like something you've got to earn and maintain or something that's settled? Turn with me to Hebrews chapter three, verses six and 14.

Real briefly, this is one of the passages that the gentleman who was disturbing the peace of the church would go to.

Hebrews three, six to 14. And I wanna show you two different ways, and it's just actually those two verses, six and 14.

Two different ways that these verses can be read. The second one being the proper understanding.

In the context of Hebrews, it becomes obvious. Because Paul takes this question on in chapter six, again in chapter nine and chapter 12.

He's actually addressing the problem of Christians who are falling away. And some prove that they were never saved in the first place by their apostasy.

But here's what he says in Hebrews three, six. I think it's Paul who wrote this, or at least preached a sermon, and then someone like Luke put it into the

Greek as we have it. But we don't know for sure, the author of Hebrews. Whoever it is, Hebrews three, six.

But Christ is faithful over God's house as a son.

And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and are boasting in our hope.

Pay attention to that word if. Someone who doesn't believe in eternal security thinks that's a condition which then gives you what you must do to maintain something that can be lost.

You see how that could be read that way? We are his house, meaning we belong to the temple, we are living stones that are saved if we hold fast our confidence and are boasting in our hope.

It's one way to read it. But the proper way to read it is to recognize the tense of the verbs.

What does it say? We hopefully will be his house? Or does it say we are his house?

It says we are his house. The idea is this is a settled fact and the word if is showing not a condition for us to meet, but an evidence of the fact.

How do you know who is a living stone, who genuinely belongs? It's if we continue in the faith in which we began.

We continue to profess Christ. I remember at one point taking a big group of teenagers to a

Greg Laurie Harvest Festival. Anybody ever been to one of those? They're amazing. But at the end, at the altar call, many of those teenagers went forward, prayed to accept

Christ. And they got a decision card to bring back with them, reminding them that they prayed to accept

Christ. What this verse is telling you is don't trust that decision card as evidence that you're genuinely saved.

Sadly, many of those who walk the aisle at the Greg Laurie Harvest Festival are no longer even claiming to be

Christians within a matter of weeks. And I don't fault Greg Laurie for that. I fault false conversion.

And if anybody were to affirm to them, you're saved because you prayed the prayer. You're saved because you filled out the decision card and they gave you a

Bible. You should be sure that you're safe. That would be wrong teaching.

What does the book of Hebrews say here? If you hold fast the confidence you had at first.

In other words, how do I know that you're genuinely saved? You're still here believing in Christ.

You're still holding fast to the confidence that you had at first. It is the perseverance of faith over time that demonstrates that it was real.

Does that make sense? That's the if. It's also said in Colossians 1 .23, same concept.

I mentioned Hebrews 3 .14, Paul repeats it there. And the book of 1 John, he'll say to you, they go out from us to show that they were never really of us.

Does it make sense? The reason for apostasy is that they were never genuinely converted from the heart.

So you can't backslide your way into hell. The genuine Christian converted from the heart, having gone through an episode of backsliding, will turn and continue to believe and progress in this faith.

If not, they were a false convert. That's the idea. So Romans 6, we've studied up through 17 and 18.

Now, 19, he wants to guard against taking the analogy too far.

The analogy is what in this context? Slavery. He doesn't want you to think that if you've backslidden into sin and you're acting like a slave, it's taking power over you.

You're acting like you obey sin and it has a stronghold in your life. Paul doesn't want you to take that analogy to slavery too far and identify you as a slave of sin.

Notice how he does this in verse 19. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.

Now, a Gnostic would read that to mean there's a mysterious knowledge that's so spiritual and ethereal that natural human reasoning can't even attain to it.

You need the secret knowledge. That's what Gnosticism was all about.

The initiate would be given a secret knowledge, a spiritual knowledge that ordinary thought can't maintain.

It's something mystical. It's not understandable. That is not what

Paul means here. What does he say? I am speaking in human terms, meaning

I'm giving you an analogy to slavery because of natural limitations.

It's hard for us to understand things without a specific example, but the idea is don't take the idea too far and be confused.

He said, but because he's guarding you against identifying as a slave, he's teaching you this all -important principle that we return to now, that when you submit yourself to sin, it's like becoming a slave.

It results in a downward spiral from lawlessness to lawlessness. Conversely, when you take a step of obedience, when you step out in faith and believe

God and obey God, you grow in righteousness. It's this way or that way, the either or the or.

So he says, second half of verse 19, for just as you once presented your members, remember from last week, those are the instruments, hands, feet, the faculties of your mind, who you are, your will, everything about you, as slaves to impurity, that's before you were saved, you were in a downward spiral of obedience to sin, and to lawlessness leading to, catch this, more lawlessness.

Sin is so dangerous because as soon as you open the door to it, it comes rushing in.

In the garden or just after the garden, God warned Cain and Abel, specifically

Cain, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to have you.

It desires to master you. It wants to come rushing in and take ownership of you.

This is the idea here. You open that door to sin. You begin a pattern of sin in your life. It will be lawlessness leading to lawlessness.

This is backsliding. Backsliding is when lawlessness begets lawlessness.

A foothold becomes a stronghold. The first love that once raged with passion for Christ grows cold.

Christian, be warned. This can happen to you. Sometimes we mistake sanctification and we think, oh, well, it's progressive, meaning we're getting more like Christ.

Not necessarily. Even Abraham at times was lower than where he started. When he was down in Egypt, he didn't look much like a man of faith, did he?

But God brought him out of Egypt. He delivered him again. And our God is faithful to again and again bring us out when we repent, we turn back to him.

The final part of verse 19, in opposition to that, the alternative on the good side.

So now present your members as slaves to righteousness. Does it say which makes you sanctified positionally?

What does it say? Leading to sanctification. This is where we get the term progressive sanctification.

It's something that comes about over time. When you endure a trial of temptation and you don't give in,

God always provides a way of escape. That's promised. When you endure that trial, what does the endurance produce?

Character. And character hope, which does not disappoint. So this is the progressive sanctification that is offered to us.

Now, a last concept here before we're done, in verses 20 to 23, is the idea of fruit reward.

What do you get? What comes with the disobedience or the obedience?

And the answer is pretty obvious, right? You're going to experience rancid fruit in your life, or you're going to experience sweet fruit in your life.

20 and 21. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free.

Isn't it great to be free? I can do whatever I want with my body. I can do whatever I want with my time.

I'm free. You were free in regard to righteousness. You got no righteousness from that.

You thought you were free, but you were really a slave to your sin. And then 21, but what fruit?

What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death. Disobedience will have a fruit in this life.

What will that fruit be? Death. Now, those who are actual slaves will have eternal hell.

That's what's in view there. But for the Christian, the fruit is the reward that you're getting for the disobedience, the wage that you're paid for that disobedience.

In 1 Timothy 6, we are told that because of greed, we inflict ourselves with many pangs, many sorrows.

It's an example of allowing a sinful desire in the heart to bring about self -inflicted wounds.

Guys, if you go to a secular psychologist, a therapist, the therapist will likely look for ways that you are a victim of your father and your mother growing up, or some disorder that's related outside of your own decision -making that controls you, some diagnosis, and their prescription will be medicine or endless counseling, right?

That's secular psychology. Turn with me really quickly to Proverbs 8, verses 35 and 36.

Biblical counseling is very different from that. We call it euthetic counseling because it comes from the word admonish in the

Greek from 1 Thessalonians 5, admonish the unruly, admonish the idle or the undisciplined.

According to Proverbs 8, Proverbs 8, verses 35 and 36, wisdom is calling out.

Whoever finds me finds life and obtains what? Favor from the

Lord. That's not prosperity theology. It's the reward of obedience is favor from God.

But he who fails to find me injures himself. That's that self -inflicted wound.

All who hate me love death. So returning now to Romans 6, that's exactly what

Paul has said in verse 21. The end of those things is death.

Samson was the strongest man who ever lived, but his competency outpaced his character.

Was Samson saved? Was he actually belonging to Yahweh?

Yeah, I think he was. A Nazarite from birth, set apart. And he believed in Yahweh, he had faith, but he had very low regard for the commands of God.

And he allowed disobedience to the commands of God to create strongholds that were stronger than his physical life.

For him, it was sexual temptation. Three different times we're told of what happened.

The first, he married a woman from the Philistines. When his dad said, can't you take from the

Israelites as commanded? He responded, get her for me.

And I think he was strong enough to boss his dad around. And sadly, the father agreed.

He married the woman, consequences came. Shortly thereafter, he goes to a prostitute.

And the result of that was more suffering. He did lift the entire city gate and carried up a hill after that episode.

But finally, even though God forgave and forgave, what happened the third time? Her name was

Delilah. Tim Hawkins has a very funny song about Delilah. If you ever have a chance to listen to that.

Hey there, Delilah, this is your ex -boyfriend, Samson. That's how it begins. And it tells the story of how she cut his hair.

But remember, in that story, in that story, Samson was worn out by the sin.

She kept showing her cards. He should have understood. When he told her the different lies to get her off his back, what had happened?

She had the Philistines ready to come and rush him and take him captive. She's obviously against you.

But it says in Judges 16, six, six, and when she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death.

She wore him out. And finally, he told his secret, that his strength was in his hair as a

Nazarite. God was the one who was giving the power, but his obedience to the command to not cut his hair is what had kept him strong.

So what happened? He fell asleep in her lap. She had a guy come in and shave his head.

Could have slid his throat right there. Cut off all the hair. And what happened next?

The men rushed in, but he did not have that strength. He had backslidden so far into this place of discipline that these

Philistines overran him and they gouged out his eyes. And they made a mockery of him in the

Temple of Dagon to entertain all these wicked people. But his hair began to grow and God had mercy and gave him a final grace that he could die with them.

The end for Samson was death. A death of discipline, not hell.

He actually killed more Philistines in that battle, killing more than 3 ,000 than in all his life prior.

So he won a great victory for Israel. All of their mighty men, all of their rulers, killed in a day, and yet he suffered so much because of his own disobedience with Delilah.

Isn't that right? Did you know, Christian, sometimes you might come in here and when we take the

Lord's table, you don't really consider the weight of what you're holding in your hand.

The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 11 .30, that is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.

Now that applied to the Corinthians. Some actual Corinthians so abused the table, they had gotten drunk on the wine, they had neglected the food for the poor and the rich went first, and it was egregious in God's sight and so God actually took some of their lives.

That was the fruit of death that resulted from disobedience to the commands of God.

Lastly, in verse 22, but now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, what do you get?

Church, this is good news, and this is the motivation here, right? It's like a carrot and a stick. Verse 20 and 21 was the stick.

God is a loving father and he will discipline you like he did Samson, but here's the carrot.

Here's what's driving us and motivating us towards the rewards of heaven. It says the fruit you get leads to sanctification, that's progressive sanctification.

You get to be more and more like Christ the more you obey, and it's end eternal life.

The final step is glorification, and all along that way, the fruit, the fruit of life, that means you get to live with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self -control, and to wake up in the morning and experience that fruit and to feel free of the strongholds that used to entangle you.

When Abraham was on that upward slope, man, did it feel good, and doesn't it?

This is the reward of obedience, fruit, to be fruitful in your

Christian walk. It is a beautiful thing. It's what Daniel experienced, I think, his whole life.

I read the book of Daniel, we taught through it on a Wednesday, I couldn't find one time that that man sinned.

Can you think of Daniel sinning or his three friends? The idea was not that he was perfect, he needed a redeemer as well, but look at the reward of his obedience, how

God kept elevating him and giving him opportunities over all the kingdom, and his friends would not bow to that idol of Nebuchadnezzar, and it didn't mean that they wouldn't suffer because they said,

God will deliver us from your fiery furnace, and even if he doesn't, we're not gonna bow to your idol.

They were willing to suffer. It didn't mean they'd have an easy road. They might have burned for that, but God delivered them.

In the same way, obedience will be rewarded like Daniel was rewarded. Did you know that?

Be motivated to be sanctified, to obey, and not to backslide.

So in closing, the application is be obedient to what our Lord commands, and we will be progressively sanctified.

The last verse was Romans 6 .23, for the wages of sin is death. You guys know the rest of it, right?

It's part of the Romans road, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our

Lord. The Romans road springboards through the book of Romans to teach someone to be saved.

Romans 3 .23, Romans 6 .23, Romans 10, eight, and nine. The problem with doing that is that you lose the context.

You lose the context of the train of thought in the passage. I don't think this verse was meant to be part of the

Romans road. Although it's fine to use that because it's still true that the wages of sin is death, eternal life for belief, okay?

That's fine, but don't miss what most people do. This is Zion's road, not the

Romans road. This is a verse for Christians to summarize what's been said.

If you go on disobeying any command of scripture, what's the fruit, the wage?

Death. Deadly fruit in that lane. That's backsliding, that's lawlessness unto lawlessness.

But conversely, if you obey, what do you expect to get from God?

Life, eternal life. That's where this ends up. So on Monday this week, we're gonna go to the

Mount Laurel Township meeting because we want to stand against very pornographic books that they put in the young adult section and in the children's section.

There's a movement to call that creating a book sanctuary and we want to stand for righteousness.

On Wednesday, for those who can make it, we want to go to the streets of Philadelphia at one o 'clock and share the truth and the gospel of Jesus Christ with people.

But it's inner city Philly and it's dangerous. And I want to share with you why

I wanted to do that because it very much relates to this. I know that when

I step out and do something that puts me out of my comfort zone, it breaks my own cruise control.

Because I know if I'm not stepping out and growing and pursuing something that's gonna challenge me and cause me to trust in God, then

I will be backsliding without even knowing it. So some of you guys think I'm a little crazy.

And I might be. But the reason that we do things that are a bit out of the box or stepping out in faith is because we know

God will meet us there. And we'll experience God, we'll be forced to trust God. And as we see him move, we will be sanctified, progressing in sanctification.

And that's the whole idea today. I just want you to understand that if you're coasting, you're really backsliding.

If you're not stepping up in faith and reading the word and pressing in to know him, you're not holding steady.

You're backsliding without knowing it. This is the either or that we're given in verse 16.

It's either progressive sanctification or lawlessness unto lawlessness as if we were slaves.

Let's pray for the first to be true of each of us. Gracious Heavenly Father, we recognize that apart from you, we can do nothing.

We know we cannot sanctify ourselves We pray, sanctify us by your truth, dear

God. Your word is truth. Pray that all of us here would take steps of faith, that we would go to places that you send us.

We ask, Lord, that you would set us free from any strongholds, any bonds of the enemy.

And for everyone who's been backsliding, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name that we would repent and turn back to you,

Lord. Set us free. Help us to run hard after you,

Lord, for the joy set before us. God, we pray that you would sanctify us in your truth.