Think (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

United with Christ in His Death and Resurrection

How are we free from sin's tyranny is the question. Here's Paul's answer. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, by divine reckoning, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

This is Christian's sure victory over sin, a resurrection to a new kind of life. The old you is gone, freed from sin's tyranny, powerless. Look at verse six. We know that our old self was crucified. By the way, aren't you glad it doesn't say, your old hands were crucified, your old mouth was crucified, your old will was crucified, your old emotions were crucified, no, everything.

That old you, I'm positive, if you met the old, I mean, maybe some of you don't like me that much now even, but if you would have met the old Mike, you would have said, praise the Lord, that guy's gone.

And frankly, I'm glad I was gone too. That whole old self, the disposition and tendency, everything, the person himself, gone, was crucified with him. Again, this is all divine accounting, divine reckoning.

This is how God sees it. You're to see things like God does, that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin, for the one who has died has been set free from sin.

Again, no claim over that person anymore. Why go on living like you used to? You show me a person that says, I'm a Christian and I still live like I used to, then what do we say? A, may it never be, and B, you ought to ask yourself the question, are you really a Christian?

Christ was crucified for the purpose of destroying sin and freeing his people, so how can you live it anymore? We sin, not because we have to, but because we want to. Augustine had four categories of sinful people, or potential sin.

Before the fall, Adam, was, Augustine said, able to sin. After the fall, Augustine said, Adam was not able not to sin. In heaven, you're not able to sin, and on earth, Romans 6 teaches, you're able not to sin.

Now, when you sing this song, would you start thinking of Romans 6, Charles Wesley's hymn? He breaks the power of canceled sin and sets the prisoner free. If you're a Christian, you don't have to yield to the things that you used to yield to before.

It holds nothing over you. Speaking of Augustine, remember he was a profligate and a sinner and was with all kinds of loose ladies, and he got saved by the grace of God, reading Romans 13, by the way.

And there was a woman who was a prostitute, and she saw Augustine, and she said, Augustine, Augustine, it is I, it is I. And he thought, I'm sure, about the truths of Romans chapter 6, and then he ran like Joseph would run.

Sometimes it's just good to run, by the way, guys. You just run, or ladies. And he ran, and he ran away shouting, it is not I, it is not I. Because that old person was dead. Now, here's the thing, Christian.

You probably think you sin more now than you did when you were an unbeliever. Why is that? Shouldn't Christians sin less? Right? The slogan is, Christians aren't sin less, they just sin less and less.

But before you were a Christian, you didn't know who God was, you didn't know His holiness and His transcendence and how great He was. You didn't know the Word and what He required in His Word. Yeah, you knew the big sins and adultery and stuff like that, and murder, hatred.

But it is a sign of maturity where you say, you know what? I think I'm sinning less in one sense, but I think I'm sinning more because I just see God's holiness in who He is. Paul just keeps adding, verse 8 and 9, now if we've died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.

We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. Can't go back to an old life of sin and Adam. Verse 10, for the death He died, He died to sin once for all.

But the life He lives, He lives to God. How many people like Rock of Ages by Top Lady, the song? I love it. How many times have you thought about the lyric, be for sin the double cure? I mean the double cure.

Be for sin the double cure. What's the double cure for sin? Saved from wrath and made me sure. No longer the penalty of sin, Romans chapter 3, verse 4 and 5. And no longer the power of sin, Romans 6. And here we come to this verse, verse 11.

Consider Yourselves Dead to Sin and Alive to God

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Now here's where we get to thinking, right here. Just think about maybe some sin you struggle with and now what's your plan of attack?

How do I get done with this sin? Maybe I have an accountability person. Maybe I get some block on the internet. Maybe I have to call my friend. Maybe I have to pray more. Maybe I have to study more. Maybe I have a slogan, no devotions, no breakfast.

Maybe I go to summer camp. Maybe I go to Awana and be a leader. Maybe I serve more. I don't want to sin like this. What do I do? Answer? Think. Yeah, but that's hard. And we live in a culture that minimizes thinking.

I just drive past worship centers every single night. And they all, everybody in my neighborhood and everywhere else, it seems like the worship center is controlled by a big blue orb. And it's bright and it's full of lights.

And everybody sits around and they're huddled in front of the blue orb getting instructions for what to do in the big blue orb-ville land. I'm not against TV. I'm not against watching TV. Have a slogan.

Here's the Abendroth slogan. Do what you want to do after you've done what you're supposed to do. You work, then there's rest. I'm all for rest. I like rest. I'm going to rest on Wednesday. Nothing wrong with TV.

It's a box of circuits. But there's everything wrong with not thinking. And I'm just telling you, we live in a culture where people want to emote. You can't even say, what are you thinking these days?

Because the right way to ask the question in our society, how do you feel? I just like to feel things. I like to relate. I'm about community. Matter of fact, I'm about authentic community that's really relevant.

I'm after your thinking. If I was really mean and no compromise radio style, I'd go, no wonder your life is so messed up. So let's go back to the Bible. There's grace to be found. But this isn't a radio show now, is it?

I can say it this way in a nice way. If you struggle with sin, Christian, all the legalistic things and running back to the Ten Commandments and doing anything you want, how's it working for you? You say, it's working pretty well.

Well, then I'll appeal to you. There's a better way. There's a better way. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians, excuse me, we spent like five years of my life in 1 Corinthians. Paul says in Romans 6 -11, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Now, here's the great news. 148 verses so far, and he hasn't told you to do one thing. This is the first command in the book of Romans. The very first time he tells you to do anything. We like to-do lists, don't we?

How's your to-do list doing? I have a little piece of post-it on my desk in my study, and I just have it. It says, to-believe list. Because I know believing is more important than doing because believing will affect my doing.

Paul is saying this, when you struggle with sin, you just need to take an hour of your life and say, I'm just going to sit and contemplate the truths of Romans about I don't have any righteousness and God by His free and infinite and glorious mercy has granted to me His Son, who died His only Son on Calvary.

What happened there, what He's done for me, how He considers me dead with Christ and alive with Christ, and I don't have to sin, and I want to please Him. That's the cure for holy living. It's a present tense verb.

First verb imperative in all of the book of Romans. Boy said, a holy life comes from knowing. Knowing you can't go back. Knowing you've died to sin and been made alive to God. Oh, you know what? I'm glad you let me out of jail.

I've been paroled and now I get to go. Free man. Who would ever, if they'd been free from jail, go back to prison? That's what Paul is saying. Can't. No wonder Satan attacks the mind. I had a kid once.

Well, I still have a kid. But one time one of my kids did something wrong and sinful and I said, you know, when the kids are little, parents, here's a quick parenting seminar. Don't say to your kids, why did you do that?

When Adam sinned in the garden, God didn't say why you did. He knows why you did because all sin stems from unbelief and then leads to lawlessness and immorality. God just said, Adam, what did you do?

When your little kids sin, forget the whys. What did you do? Kids get older, though, it's good to know what they're thinking. You could ask them, why did you do it? And I asked this particular kid one time, why did you sin?

And that kid was guilty. And that kid said, I wasn't thinking right, Daddy. Oh, you should have used an adverb there in thinking right. You're not thinking rightly, you mean? I didn't say any of that.

I was so happy that the kid, A, admitted it and said, I wasn't thinking rightly. I wasn't thinking rightly. John Bunyan said, sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, and the contempt of his love.

Just sit and think for one hour this week before you get in the car and crank up the music, crank on a sermon, crank on how to get rich and famous, put in the eye buds, just take a good long walk for an hour and just consider what God has done for you freely.

It will change the way you live. Think to yourself, I'm dead to sin and I'm alive to God, verse 11, in Christ Jesus. Friends, what does this tell you about those people who put on seminars for quick fixes?

You come, you're struggling with something in your life, you come to our church and we'll fix it on the weekend retreat. You're struggling with something, you need the second blessing is what you need and come up.

You need to be slain in the Spirit, that's what you need. Friends, those things are all unbiblical, they're all pragmatic, none of them work and none of them relate to Romans 6 .11. There's no quick fix.

It is a present tense. Keep on calculating. Lloyd-Jones says, consider and keep constantly before you this truth about yourself. I've got to count this as true. By God's divine reckoning, I'm dead to that old life.

I'm alive to God. I'm a new creature in Christ Jesus. Old is gone, new has come. Is there anything else I should do or think about? Paul, verse 12. I've got to keep doing the commandments. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

Don't let sin reign. Thomas Watson said, be killing sin or it's going to be killing you. Yeah, there is a responsibility, there is a duty. And then he uses decisive language here. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

That second word present there, it's decisive. When I officiate a wedding, you had to take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, better for worse, sickness and hell, forsaking all others, I do commit myself to God's holy ordinance of marriage.

And then they say, I will. That's that word here. When you go to the military and they install you into the military, I don't know what they do, they ordain you in the military, I don't know the words, what do they call it?

Pardon me? Induct you in the military, thank you, where were you last service? It's a decisive act with consequences. Present yourself to God. Why? Because the gospel is true. Present your members as instruments for righteousness.

Verse 14, For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. Christians aren't lawless when the New Testament gives us a command, we're under the law of Christ. But law was given to make us see our sins.

Now we've seen our sins. We don't run back as we've seen in Galatians chapter 3 today to the tutor. Ten commandments are a ministry of death. 2 Corinthians chapter 3. No allegiance to the law anymore.

No please God by the law. Couldn't do it. And then the second key question comes up in verse 15. Second key question, so Christians are equipped to understand the sanctification. What then? Are we to sin because we're not under law but under grace?

By no means. Now the first several verses, talking present tense, ongoing, verse 11 is the same thing. Here this is Eris. This is probably an isolated act. Paul, you know what? I guess maybe I can sin because I'm not under law but under grace.

So can I maybe just sin like one time, isolated act? Is that permissible? No, and here's what Paul's going to say. When you're free from the law, you're never in a DMZ. You're never in a neutral zone.

You're never in neutral. You're either a slave to sin or you're a slave to God. Being freed from the power and dominion of sin does not mean you're free from following a holy God. You're free to serve Him for the first time in your life.

Verse 16, do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, your slaves are the one whom you obey? Either of sin which leads to death, as the old man, or obedience which leads to righteousness.

Can't serve two masters, but everyone has a master. Verse 17, but thanks be to God. Christians who are stuck in sin. Christians who would love to stop a certain sin in their lives. Thanks be to God. Get your eyes onto your thinking of the Scriptures.

That you who were once slaves of sin, you had to, have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching, to Bible teaching, to the doctrine of the Bible to which you were committed. And having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

The great theologian Bob Dylan said, you've got to serve somebody. Everybody's a good theologian, right? No? Everybody's a theologian. Because of the Spirit of God's work, we obey from the heart. We used to sin from the heart.

Believers are free from this. I have a question for you. Well, let's just keep going. Verse 19, this is kind of interesting. All this talk about slavery. Paul's like, you know what, I kind of almost want to apologize a little bit because the relationship a child has with a father, that a person has with the triune God, maybe slavery's pushing it a little bit.

So here's what he says. I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. Using slavery is probably inadequate, but this is probably the only thing you can understand, Romans. I speak in this manner so you can just get it.

For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, what does sin give? The judgment of sin is more sin. So now we present your members as slaves to righteousness.

And what's the reward of righteousness? Sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you're set free in regard to righteousness, and vice versa. And by the way, I have a question for you. How'd that work out?

If you're an unbeliever today, how's it working out for you? Now there's a time people can live far away from God and live as an unbeliever, and they just have the time of their lives, but actually that's even a greater judgment of God.

Because built into the system and the fabric of the world is, when you kick against the goads of God and you will not bow your knee before the risen Savior Jesus Christ, life is hard. Let me put this burr under your saddle.

The way of the transgressor is hard. How's it working for you? Look back at your life. I was saved when I was 29 years old. What was the fruit of my 29 years in rebellion to God, free from God's worship and enslaved to sin?

How'd that work out for me? And I could tell you all the ways it didn't work out for me. Christian, how's it working out for you now, that you're a Christian going to heaven based on Christ's work? How's that working for you?

Well, let's take a look at the passage because it says exactly that. There's a pay scale for sin. It's not too good. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you're now ashamed?

By the way, that's my life right there. That's probably your life. As an unbeliever, we're ashamed of our lives. That's why it does no good to just get up and give people a big flowing testimony of how just great you were in your sins.

It's just shameful to talk about. How's that working out for you, unbeliever? For the end of those things is death. Even if things work out well in this life, you're going to die and then stand before God.

And the time for His infinite grace will be over, and you will experience His inflexible righteousness. But there's fruit for Christians too that Christ has earned for us. He's empowered us to do. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get, the fruit you get freely, sovereignly as a gift, the fruit you get leads to sanctification.

And in its end, heaven, eternal life, all earned for by the work of another. That's good fruit. And then it says in verse 23, this is military language, by the way, the word wage is what you would give a military person for his salary, as this is a wage.

And that word free gift is what a soldier would get above and beyond his daily pay when you would ransack a place and get all the spoil and the treasures, and then maybe a good general, a generous general would say, I'm just going to give you some special bounty, special booty, special treasure.

That's the word free gift here. Military language. For the wages of sin is death. And then Spurgeon called this next section a Christian proverb, a golden sentence, a statement of true worth to be written across the sky.

Go to the beach on Memorial Day, sky riding. Sky riding in the sky. What do you see in the sky? Drink Red Bull. Okay, I guess. The free gift of God is eternal life. That's what you get if somebody gave you such a great gift.

Then how do you treat them? How do you treat their son? How do you respond? That's the point. And you're able to obey. You have the Spirit of God dwelling in you. All because of what Jesus did. Friends, every Christian struggles with sin.

Paul's solution is stop and think. What did they teach kids? Maybe if you're on fire or maybe it's a nuclear bomb or something, stop, drop, and roll. Did they teach kids that? Is that when they're on fire?

I was once on fire, and I was trying to just put out the fire, and I could not think of that slogan, stop, drop, and roll. Just like trying to put the fire out. I needed stop, drop, and roll. But the Christian, what do you do?

So you know what? Paul wants me to know that one day I died. They asked George Mueller that question. What is the key to your holy living? George Mueller. He said the key to my holy living is one day George Mueller died.

That old person is dead. Why run back to that old life? On the cross, Jesus was crucified for you, and on the cross, you were crucified with him. So they asked Luther. Hey, reformer, justification by faith alone?

Now you can live the way you please, right? And Luther said, that's true. Live the way you please. Now what pleases you? I think he stole it from Augustine. Augustine said, justification by faith alone leads to this maxim.

Love God and do as you please. It's all because of what Jesus did. The focus is back to Calvary. The focus is thinking. I love the story of Moffat Gantry in one of his sermons. He said, not many months ago, in England, there was a village in which an old saint was lying, dying.

Over 80 years, she had been a saint on the pilgrimage to Zion, to heaven. And there was an Anglican priest from the Church of England came to her because she was in his parish. And he was one of those priests who believed that you could find no access to God in heaven unless the priest unlocked the gate.

Madam, I'm coming to you today to grant you absolution. This is so classic. She said, what's that? I've come to forgive your sins. And he put his hand over like this and she looked out at them and she said, you are an imposter.

The one who has forgiven my sins has nail prints in his hands. You have none. In light of what he's done for us, if you think about your sin, you'll run from it. Because by divine reckoning, you're dead to your old self and alive to God.

Ministry and Legal Disclaimers

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.