Systematic Theology (part 38)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.

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In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave

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Himself for me." All of those things are things to know. Things that are assertions, things that are not, well, you know, it depends on how

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I feel, it depends on how I'm doing, it depends on how the week is going. And all of that, there is none of that in that verse at all.

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It is just a series of assertions and statements of fact that are given.

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That is the kind of thing that we need to be rehearsing, the kind of truth of God that we need to be rehearsing as we go our way.

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I'll remind you that old John Gill said, all of the Christian life is a confession.

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I think he was, I think he was mostly right. All right, all right, let's have a word of prayer.

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Heavenly Father, we come to You this morning, we're going to, as we look at Your Word, we pray that You would bear us along by the

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Holy Spirit who inspired it, even as You bore the prophets of old along, as the wind bears a sailing ship along.

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We pray that You would help us to understand, that You would illumine our brains and illumine our hearts with Your Word.

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And we pray that You would draw us to Christ this morning, even as we consider our confession of Him.

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It's in His name we pray, amen. Now, here's where we've been.

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Has it been three weeks since we were together? Or no, last week we were together, right? Let's see, where am

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I? Okay, all right, we were together last week. So let's just review quickly where we've been.

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We're in the book of Romans, and the first three chapters are basically the indictment of the world after Paul tells the

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Romans that he's coming to visit them and that he wants their support as he plans to go off to Spain to give the gospel.

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But then he begins his indictment of the world for the first three chapters. And then at chapter four, after the world has been told that it ought to shut its mouth before a holy

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God and that no one is not guilty, then we get the rehearsal of Abraham in the fourth chapter,

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Abraham who believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. And we rejoice in the credited righteousness that was not for Abraham only, chapter four ends, but also for all of us who believe and all of the

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Romans who were believers. And then chapter five, of course, begins with the first about 11 verses that are exaltation of peace with God through faith in Christ.

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In other words, God is no longer the enemy and we are reconciled to Him. He's not out to kill us, which

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He rightly and justly ought to be and ought to do with human beings.

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And then at the end of chapter five, we have the whole idea of the two Adams, the first Adam who broke a commandment and we were all in Him when

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He broke that commandment. Therefore, we all are guilty, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

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The likeness of that is over in Hebrews, where it is noted that Aaron, the first great high priest of Israel, tithed to a guy named

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Melchizedek who was priest of God most high from Jerusalem. And that Melchizedek blessed

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Aaron and Melchizedek shared with Aaron bread and wine.

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There's a lot of typology in there about Christ. And if you're sitting there thinking, wait a minute, that wasn't

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Aaron, that was Abraham. Aaron doesn't come for more than 400 years after all of this happened.

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And then the writer to the Hebrews goes on to note that when Abraham tithed to Melchizedek and when

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Abraham was blessed by Melchizedek who shared with him bread and wine, Aaron was in Abraham.

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In the same way, we all were in Adam when he sinned.

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Therefore, the whole world is guilty before a holy God. And then the second man, Adam, comes and by one act of obedience, that is his death on the cross to make payment for our sin, then we see that all have the opportunity to be saved by faith alone, grace alone, through what we read in the scriptures alone.

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So chapter 5 ends like this. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men who believe.

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For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

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And let us note here that this is one man's disobedience brought sin and one man's obedience.

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He was a man. Jesus was a man. Pastor Mike has been emphasizing that in the study on Hebrews.

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He was not an apparition. He was not a lot of the things that at the end of the first century had already begun to show their heads, but he was not

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God. He was a man. He was not man. He was a God. He was not man.

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He was a spirit. He was not anything. He was an apparition and all of that. No, no. He was the man,

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Christ Jesus. And by one act of obedience, by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

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Now, the law came in to increase the trespass. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

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The law came in to document the trespass. Okay, you say, well, was adultery going on in the world from Adam to Moses?

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Absolutely it was. Was thievery going on in the world from Adam to Moses? Absolutely it was.

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Was murder going on in the world from Adam to Moses? Absolutely it was. But people did not take into account their sin until it was documented by the law.

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That's what Paul is saying. So the law came in to increase the trespass. The law came in so that everybody knows that they are nailed.

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It's one thing to say everybody's a sinner. We don't like to say that in America. No sinners in America.

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Okay, only neurotic people. And but the law comes in to...

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And notice what happens when we don't want to deal with sin. What happens is we want to obliterate the law.

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It begins with an attack on the Scriptures for many people. For other people, it just goes into the whole postmodern philosophy of the reality is whatever

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I say the reality is. And the reality is I want to do what I want to do. And so there is no law.

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It's called antinomianism in the New Testament. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

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So that as sin reigned in death, which it did, that's why funerals, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. That brings us to chapter six. Now we've been working with an overarching principle here from Romans chapter 10.

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It is the confession principle. With the heart, man believes and is justified.

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With the mouth, confession is made unto justification. With the mouth, confession is made unto sanctification.

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With the mouth, confession is made when we are glorified. Okay? So with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.

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Therefore, that's preceded, isn't it, by verse nine, that if you will confess with your mouth Jesus is

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Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

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You will be justified. For with the heart, man believes and is justified. With the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.

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And if you are sitting there thinking, sorry, I have a little cold today.

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Actually, when you get over 30, little colds are not so little as they used to be. And that's why

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I sound like Dr. Gerstner this morning if you have listened to him on a raffinate.

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Anyway, I've got a little dry throat too. I wonder if I could get a glass of water.

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I don't usually do that, but I can tell what's coming here.

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Which brings us now to chapter six and chapter seven and chapter eight.

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These are things, thank you. These are things which ought not to be left if you happen to be on a ship that's going down.

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You want to rip chapters six, seven, and eight, maybe five, six, seven, and eight out of Romans and carry them in a safe place because they are what you're really going to need.

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So chapter six, we have looked at in passing and I want to look at it in more passing today because we only have three.

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Do we have three weeks together or two weeks together? Today's the 15th, 22nd, 29th, and then it's over.

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Okay, we have three weeks together. We're going to try to cover these three chapters. So you can imagine since there are months of messages in these chapters that in three weeks we're going to hit only some of the high spots.

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What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Oh great,

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Christ has died for my sin, all my sin is paid for, then I'll go send my head off and no problem.

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No problem, all right. By no means, that's very soft.

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I like the King James. God forbid, how can we who died to sin still live in it?

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Now these first 13 verses of chapter six contain several things to know, not to feel good or bad about, but to know.

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And this is why we want to remember the profound little phrase that is in the children's song,

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Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

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And here's one of them. How can we who died to sin still live in it? We who believe have died to sin, this

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I know, for the Bible tells me so. If my view is,

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I have died to sin, how can I know? My experience doesn't tell me so.

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Okay, then I'm on thin ice. Actually, I'm on unbiblical ice, and that ice is always thin.

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So we have died to sin. How can we who died to sin live any longer in it? The presumption is that we won't live in sin anymore because we have believed.

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That doesn't mean we may not sin anymore. We're going to get to that. Okay, but we're not living there.

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This we know, for the Bible tells us so. And then he goes to amplify that.

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Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

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When Christ died, we died. We were baptized into Him. We were placed into Him so that when

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He died, we died. When heaven looks at us, His experience is our experience.

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Now, when we look at us, our experience is not a very heavenly experience. Often. But when heaven looks at us, when

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God looks at us, looking at us because we are in Christ. That little prepositional phrase is critical.

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We are in Christ. We are in His death. We are in His burial. We are in His resurrection. We are in His glorification.

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He is the advocate at the right hand of the Father for us so that if any man sin, we have that advocate.

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Jesus Christ, the righteous one. All of that is credited to us because we believe.

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Now, we can say that in a message -type style, but that's not the point here.

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We're talking about sanctification. And so it ought to be part of that which we confess, that which we are rehearsing.

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And let me remind you, that rehearsing, in my view, this may not be everybody's view, but it's my view, and I think

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I have defended that before you. That rehearsal goes on with the mouth.

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With the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. Someplace along the line, this last week,

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I should have been rehearsing. In fact, I did in this particular case. I have been placed into Christ.

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I have been placed into His death. I have died with Christ. That's what

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Galatians 2 .20 is about. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. And so forth.

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That ought to be on our lips. From Hebrews chapter 13, that is the fruit of lips that confess

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His name. There's the word again, that confess His name. So I have been baptized into Christ.

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I've been baptized into His death. Meaning, this is not about water baptism. I have been placed into Him.

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I have been placed into His death. We were, therefore, buried with Him.

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Oh, I have been buried with Him. See, when heaven looks on, His experience is my experience.

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I have been buried with Him, therefore, by baptism into death.

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By being placed into His death, I not only died with Him, I have been buried with Him. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

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Father, we too may walk in newness of life. 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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Now, there's enough stuff in there that's no stuff. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.

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I have been placed into Christ because I believe, because I confess

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Him as Lord. I have died with Christ. I have been buried with Christ.

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I am resurrected with Christ. You say, wait a minute, I'm not resurrected with Christ. You know, probably all of you are going to...

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not all of you, some of you might come to my funeral. Okay, we say, well, hey, you're not resurrected to me.

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No, I don't. But as heaven looks at it, I am resurrected with Christ.

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Okay, let's go back there to verse 5 for just a moment. That little four, if we have been united with Him.

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You've got to get these ifs straight. This particular if is a conjunction which assumes that the conditions that are involved are true.

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There's another conjunction, also often translated if in the New Testament, which is the iffy if.

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You know, well, if this, you know, as they say in Kentucky, well,

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I'll be there, Lord will, and if the creek don't rise, well, we don't know whether the creek's going to rise or whether it's not going to rise.

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And so whether or not I'll be there, that's the iffy if. This is not the iffy if.

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This is the, we have been united with Him in a death like His, it is assumed to be true as part of the logic.

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We have been united with Him in a death like His. Now, here's why it's important that we get the ifs right. If we don't get the ifs right, we'll end up in that camp of folks that say, well, if I've been united with Him in a death like His, but I don't know whether I've been united with Him in a death like His, so maybe

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I have and maybe I haven't. All right? That's not the kind of if that this is. This is, we have been united with Him in a death like His, it is assumed to be true.

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We shall certainly, does that add emphasis to that? We shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.

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Okay, we know that our old self, that's really old man, was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.

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The King James says might be destroyed. I think both of those are inferior translations.

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I like the translation that says we have our old self, our old man was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be rendered powerless.

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Which is not to say that there is not a body of sin. There is a body of sin. And we're going to get there if we get to chapter 7 here today.

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There is a body of sin, but it has been rendered powerless. And it has been rendered powerless, we will find out, because it is crucified.

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All right? When Christ was crucified, I was crucified.

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And I think about, well, we're going to get there when we get to chapter 7. For one who has died, it might be rendered powerless so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

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For one who has died has been set free from sin, and we've already observed that sin is not the big problem down here in the cemetery.

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It is not. All of those people are dead, not involved in sin. You say, well, wait a minute,

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I'm not dead. And you say, I'm dead to sin, and I've been buried with Christ, and I've been resurrected with Christ.

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And Paul will say to the Ephesians, you are already seated in the heavenlies, which assumes that resurrection that is being spoken of here as I am in Christ.

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Paul says that. And so how can you say, because I experienced sin, how can we say that one who has died has been freed from sin?

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This is as heaven looks at us through Christ being in Christ, all right?

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One who has died has been set free from sin. We have been set free from sin. Oh, you think I ought to confess that this next week?

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I think so. I have been set free from sin. That would be a great way to start out in the morning.

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I have been set free from sin. I am free not to sin. You know, it's one thing not to sin and wish you could.

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Jesus said, if the Son therefore shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. And you know what?

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Over time, and in our growth in Christ and all of that, we become free to do the right thing, okay?

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We are not like the kid that is sent to sit in the corner that is sitting there thinking, yeah, but I am standing up on the inside, okay?

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It's not like that. We will be free on the inside to do the right thing, and free on the inside to reject the wrong thing.

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Have we arrived there yet? No, we will not arrive there until we stand in His presence. When we see Him, we shall be as He is.

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Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe we will also live with Him. I'm going to live with Christ. That ought to be on my lips this next week.

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I'm going to live with Christ. I have died with Christ, okay? And there's that iffy if again, except it's not the iffy if, it's the

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I have died with Christ, all right? We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again.

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Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life

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He lives, He lives to God. Now, there's a whole list of things to know there.

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And now here is something to do. The things to know, and this is divorced from my emotions.

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There may be some, I mean, there may be the emotion of rejoicing that comes out of rehearsing these things.

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But these things do not change regardless of whether I'm rejoicing or in mourning. But there is something to do, and it comes in the next verse.

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So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin. Why? Because when

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Christ died, I died. When He was buried, I was buried. When He was resurrected, I am resurrected.

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He is at the right hand of the Father advocating for me. So Paul is saying to these Romans, so you get on with your life, but you consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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There's that little critical prepositional phrase again, in Christ Jesus. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

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And here we come to an interesting verse. Here is also something to do. There's something, there's some things to know here.

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There's a way to point your brain here, consider yourself dead to sin, but alive to God, and rehearse that.

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That's how your brain gets pointed. I guess we shouldn't talk about pointed brains. You get a pointy head.

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No. Okay, that's how your thinking changes direction.

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That's how we realize what is being spoken about in Romans 12, 2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

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And it will be a new mind that thinks I am dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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But it will not think that apart from the regular rehearsal of the fact, of the fact.

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Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members, it's literally, do not yield your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness.

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But present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members as instruments for righteousness.

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Now there's an interesting little tense change here in the verbs. And I'm not a

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Greek student enough to really, you know, write a book about this or anything like that. Okay.

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But in the first place, do not yield your members, do not present your members, do not present the parts of you, not just your body, but the parts of you as instruments of unrighteousness.

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That's a present tense verb. It's imperative. That means do it. Okay. Or in this case, do not it.

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All right. But it's a present tense verb. Meaning, don't go on presenting yourself and yielding yourself to sin.

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Don't go on. You Romans, you West Boylstonites, you, you know, whoever.

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Okay. Don't go on presenting yourselves, the parts of you as instruments of sin.

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Don't let that be your process. But when you get down later in the verse, when it says, present your members, yield your members to God as instruments of, for righteousness, the tense changes.

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And it's an aorist. Now, we don't have aorists in English. Okay. An aorist tense in Greek, in which the

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New Testament was written, is a tense of verb that, you know, we have past, present, and future verbs.

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But an aorist is just a, it happened. I think your Greek grammar teacher would say it is punctiliar, or something like that.

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Okay. It's just happened. We don't know the time. We don't know the point, anything. Now, a lot of translators will say, well, aorists are translated past tense in English.

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And some would even say, and I wouldn't go too far with this. Some would even say, well, when it's an aorist tense verb, that means this is a once for all.

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You did it once for all. Okay. I get that, why they say that.

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But I wouldn't necessarily take it to the bank. But the idea is, it's just done.

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Okay. So here's the idea. Don't keep on presenting yourselves, exposing yourself, making available yourself as an ongoing thing.

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Don't keep doing that, and presenting the parts of you as instruments of unrighteousness.

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But, present yourself to God, and the parts of you as instruments for righteousness.

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Okay, now that doesn't, I don't think that means, I think the interesting thing here is, that does not mean, necessarily, that both of these are processes.

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All right. So the idea is, you have died with Christ. You are buried with Christ.

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You are resurrected with Christ. Present yourself to God. I think we present ourselves to God, maybe when we stand in the waters of baptism and say,

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Jesus is Lord. I believe in my heart that God has raised him from the dead, and the scriptures declare, you will be saved.

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Okay. So I get the one -time thing, but I don't want to go too far with it, you

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Greek scholars. Okay. The other thing is, this business about instruments of righteousness and unrighteousness.

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Oh, this is confusing. Oh no, it's loose. All right. Give me two bottles here.

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You know, it's not nice to confuse old people. All right. Okay. Last week,

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I think it was last week, Judy and I were watching a documentary. It was a documentary about the first Israeli Air Force.

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And what happened was this, after World War II in 1948, finally, through a lot of convulsions, the

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United Nations was about to make a declaration that Israel, and particularly the survivors of the

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Holocaust of World War II, that they could go back and have their own land. And by the way, for my all -millennial friends, should there be any here among us, you who think that God is done with ethnic

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Israel and all of that, and that the promises to Abraham about the land are not going to be fulfilled literally, and God is done with Israel.

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I get that. I don't understand how you get it, but I get what you're saying. All right.

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But I don't get how you get there. In fact, not only do I think that the scriptures will be fulfilled literally, the promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and all those things are going to be fulfilled, that it has something to do with the nation of Israel, the land and the people.

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Not only that, I think a casual look at the news almost any day will tell you that Israel is at the center of a great deal of the controversy that we are dealing with now.

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Okay, another day we can do the eschatology. All right. Anyway, we watched this documentary.

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Twelve days before the declaration was to be implemented by the United Nations, five

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Arab nations began to move their military toward Israel, which was hardly

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Israel at the time. All right. That would have been Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Iraq.

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Anyway, they were all coming toward Israel. And they knew that they were coming.

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And so two Jewish guys, and then later many, began to smuggle airplanes out of the

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United States, surplus airplanes. I don't know if you know that after World War II, there were just mountains of all this surplus military stuff.

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One guy bought a C -146 for 5 ,000 bucks. And then they took it and were about to take off with it.

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And the government came in and said, you can't do that. There's an embargo on arms on this new Israeli nation.

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And this is an American plane, and we can't do it. The guy said, this is my plane. I paid 5 ,000 bucks for it.

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Well, it's still an American plane. So he got a bucket of blue paint, painted a Star of David on the side, and said, no, this is my airplane.

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It's part of the Israeli Air Force now. And if you're going to stop me, you're going to have to shoot me down. And he took off in the airplane.

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But the first two guys that went to Israel went in Piper Cubs. I don't know if you know what a

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Piper Cub is, but it's not much. I mean, actually,

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I've sat in a Cessna 206 with a 55 -gallon drum of aviation gas behind me, flying with one of our

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New Tribes mission pilots. And a Cessna 206 is huge compared to a

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Piper Cub. So these guys get two rubber bladders is what they amounted to.

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They fill them with aviation gas and run the hose up to the wing tank so that they would be able to pump gasoline out of that wing tank.

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One guy said it was the dumbest thing we ever did. We were two flying Molotov cocktails.

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And anyway, so those two Piper Cubs were the first Israeli Air Force.

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And they began to do observation of those who were coming to attack the Israelis in 1948.

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And because of what they did, they not only encouraged them, but all of them were stopped.

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Finally, they got one airplane there that could actually shoot. That would not have been the

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Piper Cubs. They got one airplane there that actually could shoot. It went on one mission after they had reassembled it.

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After they reassembled it, the test was to go on the mission. No test, just go on the mission.

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And they went on the mission and they shot up, I think it was some Iranians that were coming in from the north.

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And the Iranians thought, oh my goodness, there's probably lots of airplanes coming now.

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We'll just dig in here and we won't go any further toward Israel. In fact, there was that one airplane, now probably out of bullets and bombs, and two

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Piper Cubs. And that's what there was. And then others got there. The point is, those instruments of warfare, which is what's in view here, those instruments of warfare, you say, why are these instruments of warfare that are being presented to God here?

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The word is hapla in the Greek text. For example, when the soldiers came to arrest

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Jesus, they brought their hapla, and we translate in English.

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They brought their swords and their spears. And it was instruments of war. That's what they brought. Now, Paul says here to us and to the

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Romans, you don't go on presenting yourselves as instruments of unrighteousness, instruments of war for unrighteousness.

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Don't be in the war for unrighteousness. But present yourselves as instruments of war to God.

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Now, you say, what are you talking about all the Piper Cubs and all that for? Let me tell you what.

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When I present the parts of me to God and say, here I am, look at these instruments of righteous warfare here.

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I think heaven looks back just looking at me outside of Christ and goes, I think we got two

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Piper Cubs here, you know, not much to deal with.

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And that may be why the one tense here is that error is tense.

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Just present yourself to God. He'll take your Piper Cubs. He'll take your miserable what you are, the way you think, the way you emote, the way you make decisions.

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He'll take all of that stuff that's part of you, and He will use it. And He will make something out of it as instruments of righteous warfare.

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And so I suggest that if you are a believer, you need to understand that you have presented yourself to God, all the parts of you, as instruments of righteousness.

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Sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace.

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By this time, I was supposed to be well into chapter 7. All right.

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Well, let's just read chapter 6, finish chapter 6 here quickly. And we'll do chapter 7 next week.

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All right. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law, but under grace?

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By no means. Okay. Now you're not under law, but under grace. This is the freedom to do the right thing.

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Even though, and Paul's going to say in chapter 7, the law is spiritual, the law is righteous, the law is good stuff.

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But you and I don't have freedom to do it. We always are gritting our teeth saying, okay, when we do it in ourselves.

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But when Christ is in us, and Christ is in us by the

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Holy Spirit, when Christ is in us, God is producing in us freedom to do the right thing.

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And freedom to reject the wrong thing. Doesn't happen instantly, but it is happening.

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That maybe ought to be part of our confession. God, I have been presented to you as an instrument of righteousness.

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Now, oh God, make me that instrument of righteousness. Did you get that?

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There's one thing that the Bible says is true. I've been presented to you as an instrument of righteousness.

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And then there is the petition. Oh God, make me that instrument of righteousness today.

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And guess what? The freedom to do the right thing and the freedom to reject the wrong thing. That begins to grow as that is the praise and the petition that is on our lips.

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Do you not know, here's that no thing again. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?

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Either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. Well, let me try to do this in just a couple of sentences.

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Everybody is a slave to somebody. You know why? Because we are contingent beings.

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You know what that means? That means we are not in ourselves able to do anything.

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We are contingent on others. Physically, we are contingent on our parents.

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None of you just appeared, all right? We are contingent on our parents.

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And therefore, we are weak beings. And we are always slaves to someone.

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And the idea here is when we came to Christ, we become slaves to righteousness. But people that are outside of Christ, they are slaves to sin.

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Now, they would say to you, Oh no, not me, man. I'm a slave to sin. I just do what I want. And you know what that is?

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That is slavery to sin. That's what that is. Because what they want, when I just do what

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I want, what they want will not match up to the holiness and the righteous standards of God.

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So everybody makes a decision. Everybody makes a decision. When the gospel is preached, and people may be encouraged to receive

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Christ, Pastor Steve encouraged people to believe in Jesus last Sunday, okay?

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And people are encouraged to receive Christ. If there are unbelievers present, they make a decision.

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If they stand up and they walk out and say, Not me. I'm not having anything to do with that. They have made a decision.

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And they have made that decision because they are slaves to sin, in the words of Paul here.

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But thanks be to God that you were once slaves of sin, but you have become obedient from the heart.

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Got that? Obedient from the heart. That's the freedom in Jesus. To the standard of teaching to which you are committed.

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And having been set free from sin. There's some confession for you for this next week. I have been set free from sin.

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You say, I have? Confess it. I have been set free from sin. You know what will happen?

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As that is on your lips, freedom from sin will begin to grow and will increasingly grow.

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And you have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you are committed.

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Having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness. I'll put my finger there so I don't lose it.

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All right. That ought to be on my lips this week. I am a slave of righteousness. I don't feel like a slave of righteousness.

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I'm a slave of righteousness. This I know for the

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Bible tells me so. Okay. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.

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For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, and you did before you came to Christ.

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So now present your members, I think the word would be yield, your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.

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And that's where we're going. No? For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

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But now that you are a slave to righteousness, you are free in regard to sin. That ought to be on my lips.

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Now that I am a slave of righteousness, I am free in regard to sin. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

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For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin, there it is again.

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I have been set free from sin. For those of you that are thinking, I haven't been set free from sin, man, you ought to see me

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Monday through Saturday. If you are in Christ, if you are in Christ, you have been set free from sin.

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So clear back up to verse 13. So why then as an ongoing process, look at me

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Monday through Saturday, okay, as an ongoing process, are you yielding yourself as an instrument of unrighteousness?

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Paul says, you can't do that. And I'll say this to you too. You can't do that without what

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Paul says to the Corinthians, the squirreliest church in the New Testament. Paul says to the

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Corinthians, that will produce godly sorrow. When the parts of me are presented as instruments of unrighteousness because of my willfulness, because of what we're going to look at in my flesh in chapter 7, when that happens, it will produce in the believer godly sorrow.

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If somebody sins with impunity, just, if I'm under grace, now

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I can sin. I would say to them, I cannot tell whether or not you are actually saved.

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Only God knows that. You've made a profession of faith in Christ, fine and dandy. Okay, but the

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Bible says salvation shows. And there are some things about you

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I probably don't see. But what shows a lot is nothing that the Bible describes. So what

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I would say to you is, you need to examine your relationship to Christ. There are a lot of people on the landscape that have come to Christ to make the money better, make the marriage better, make the house better, make the job better, make the whatever better.

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That's not what it's about. What it's about is, I've come to Christ because I am the great sinner and He is the great

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Savior. The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, I am a slave of God.

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The fruit you get leads to sanctification and it's in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. You say, well, that's all great there in chapter 6. That's wonderful.

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All that stuff that's true of me because I am in Christ. Now we get back to the

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Monday through Saturday deal. And Paul knows that. And so he's going to discuss that whole little problem.

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What happens to me Monday through Saturday? When I seems like I'm not a slave to righteousness, and from time to time,

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I seem like I'm a slave to sin. So what's that all about? That's the whole discussion in chapter 7.

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Chapter 7 is at one and the same time a most discouraging chapter.

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But it is also a most encouraging chapter. You know why? Because the

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Bible speaks to me where I am, not where somebody thinks

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I ought to be. So we're going to look at that next week. Let's pray. Thank you,

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Lord, for your word. We are astonished when we come to it at its depth.

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We praise you that it speaks to us not only where we are, as we will see next week, but it speaks to us about where we will be because we are in Christ, about who we are now because we are in Christ, about what has happened to us now because we are in Christ.

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Oh, Lord, those things are foreign to us as people that have come from a fallen world.

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The very idea that we could be considered in the heavenlies, that we could say, the life

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I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

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Those ideas are so foreign to us from a fallen world that we need to have them on our lips constantly.

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And so we pray this week that as we look at your word, as we think of your word, as we remember your word, that you would find us mouthing the great truths that have transformed us in Jesus.