Romans 6:15-23 Freedom!

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Well, good morning.

Okay, now I'm at a quandary here. There's like two Bibles. I need mine. Put this down here.

Well, I hope you all are having a great morning this morning. If you're like me, you've been up and around for quite some time, had a cup of coffee or two or three.

I made my son get up pretty early, a lot earlier than usual. I said, you are going to be awake this morning for church, and I hope that you are as well.

I've got to tell you about a dream I had this past week. I really needed to –

Pastor Don had asked me a couple weeks ago, actually several weeks ago, to speak, and gave me the opportunity pretty much to speak and to preach on whatever

I wanted to preach on, knowing that it's the 4th of July. I told the office here that I'd have my outline here by Wednesday, my

PowerPoint. Thursday may be the latest. I went to bed Wednesday night, and the

PowerPoint wasn't done. I had a dream that night when

I woke up in the morning. My dream was that I got here on Sunday, and I totally forgot

I was supposed to preach or teach or anything. I had no PowerPoint. I didn't even have my Bible in my dream.

So I woke up at about 5 .30 Thursday morning in a panic, and from 5 .30

until about 9, I completed everything when it comes to this message, my notes, my

PowerPoint, got it all sent in as quickly as possible. So it's good to know that I'm here.

I do have a message, and I feel a little bit more prepared than I did a few days ago.

I want to share a little bit. It's 4th of July weekend, and this is a unique time.

Churches all over the U .S. are celebrating differently. Some are just continuing their sermon series as usual.

Some are super patriotic. We're going to do a little bit of both here when we talk about what we find here in the book of Romans.

The title is Freedom, and that's kind of not true, because really we're going to be talking about you and I, what

Romans talks about as being a slave, a slave to sin, and yet we are free from that as well. We'll talk about that in just a minute.

I think it's important for us to walk through our history first and to show the way that you and I are naturally bent as Americans, primarily.

Those of you who don't know me, I was on staff with Pastor Don over at Berean several years ago, and I've lived the last nine years with my family in the country of Costa Rica.

We moved back here just before the pandemic hit, by God's grace. That's when we moved back, and then the pandemic hit literally about 15 days later, so we got everybody back home here safe.

But I understand what it's like to live in a foreign country, to live here in the

States, and to appreciate the rights and the freedoms that we do have here. I want to walk through just a little bit.

There we go. A little bit of history. You guys can help me on some of this if you'd like. 1492, what happened?

I was hoping someone would say that. Thank you. Columbus sailed the ocean blue. So in 1492, the

New World was discovered, the New World being where we are at here, the Americas. Interestingly enough,

I told you I lived in Costa Rica. The Spanish word for Columbus is Colón. That's the

Spanish. That's how you say it in Spanish. And the money that we had was the Colone. So our money in Costa Rica was named after Christopher Columbus because they claimed

Christopher Columbus as being the founder of Costa Rica. And it was the first time in my life that I really had to wrestle with the idea of, wait a minute, no, he found

America. I had to wrestle with what it meant that Columbus found the

Americas together. Jump ahead about 100 and some years, and we have the first settlement in the

United States. In 1607, you have Jamestown being established. And Jamestown later became

Virginia. In 1620, we have Massachusetts. You have the Pilgrims coming, and you have

Plymouth, Massachusetts being established. After that, in 1623, we have

New Hampshire. 1632, 1634, you have Maryland.

In 1636, you have Connecticut, Rhode Island. After that in 1638 is Delaware. 1663 is

North and South Carolina. I hit my microphone there. North and South Carolina. In 1664, you have

New York. In 65 is New Jersey. In 1681 was Pennsylvania.

And then for whatever reason, for several years later, in 1732, Georgia was added to that list.

So what you have here is the formation of what we know as the 13 colonies that settled here within the

Americas in this new world. Now, each colony was given by Great Britain, by England, given a governor over them.

And that governor was appointed by Great Britain to rule, and yet he went into the colonies, and the colonies established their own legislature.

They decided the laws that they would have, so they changed from colony to colony. They also decided all the taxes that would be drawn from the people.

And what happened here after all of that was set up and established, in 1754 to 1753, you have what was called the

French and Indian War, which is part of the Seven Years' War. And the French and Indian War, interestingly enough, was not against the

French and Indians, but against France and against Great Britain. And that was here in the

Americas, especially fighting over rivers and trade and that type of stuff. And that was a very costly war for Great Britain.

So they ended up winning at the end, but they won but pretty much had no money when it was all done.

So what happened was Great Britain then passed an act in 1765 called the

Stamp Act, or the Stamp Act of 1765, there were several others after that. And what that did was they decided that they would start taxing the colonies, bypassing the governor and the local legislature.

And then that's where you get the whole idea, the concept that came out of that was no taxation without representation. We've all heard of that from history class,

I'm sure. And it was the idea that they were really getting upset because all of a sudden now, you have colonies who were,

Great Britain in general, they were pretty hands -off. Now they are beginning to impose taxes upon each of these individual colonies.

In 1668, you have, for the first time, Great Britain occupying the city of Boston.

So the very first time, now you have troops that are living in a city in the United States, or in the

New World at that time. That led in 1770, that led to the

Boston Massacre, which then, three years later, led into the Boston Tea Party that we've all heard about.

Again, products and goods were being taxed in, they decided to revolt and rebel against that, so they threw the tea over the boats.

And what ended up, or what the result of all of that was, not just Boston, all of Massachusetts became occupied and was governed by the

British military. So this was obviously not a good thing for the colonies at that time.

And then in 1774, you had the formation of the very first Continental Congress.

So you had this Continental Congress, and the idea of the Continental Congress, the first one, was not to declare our independence, was not to go against Great Britain at that level, but really to figure out how they were going to boycott certain products coming from Great Britain.

They also sent a letter to King George, giving them all of their grievances and all of their issues, and trying to make things change back to the way they were.

That was not received well. Actually, King George did absolutely nothing about it, and maybe sent even more troops, and more issues were brought on because of that.

So the following year, in 1775, you have the second

Continental Congress meeting. And it was at that point in time where they decided, how are they going to be able to rebel against the

British government? Of course, we know the American Revolution happened then from 1775 to 1783.

In 1776, we declared our independence with the writing of the

Declaration of Independence. And that was the time when we drew the line in the sand and we said, no, we are now a free nation.

We are not going to be ruled by Great Britain. We are not going to be ruled by a tyrant.

We were going to be free, and we were going to do it the way that we wanted to do it. Two years later, 1778, you had the writing of the

U .S. Constitution, and you really had the formation of the United States Constitution, and the United States as we know it today.

1783 then was the end of the American Revolution, and at the Treaty of Paris, we were finally acknowledged and seen to be a nation, the

United States of America. Now, you go on and we can talk about the settlement of the West and everything. I love history.

For me, it's an exciting thing. So why do I say all that? I say that because it's important for us to realize where we're coming from.

And I'm not just talking about our history, but I'm talking about what's been ingrained in us. How many people here have heard pretty much that timeline?

Hopefully, everybody has, okay, if you're old enough. Because in school, that's what we go through, right? We know this, and we know as Americans, we love our freedom, and that's a good thing.

That's not a bad thing, okay? But we love our freedom. And as Americans, there is a freedom that we celebrate.

There's an individualistic attitude that we have that we don't like to be ruled over.

We don't like to have something in control over us. We like freedom.

We like liberty. It was John Adams that said, Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way that leads to liberty.

And few nations, if any, have found it. I like that quote because it sounds like it was quoted from Scripture or something, which it's not at all.

The Bible talks a lot about our freedoms. And we talk about the

American dream, the American way of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Okay, life, you got that one here.

I think God definitely loves life. Okay, liberty and freedom, the pursuit of happiness, these are things that is part of ingrained with us in the

American culture. And Scripture talks about those things, and we're going to look at that a little bit today.

We're going to look at Romans 6, verses 15 through 23.

You can read it in your Bibles, or you can read up there if you like. I'm going to read my Bible here. And we're going to walk through this.

And then what we're going to do is, we're going to take a few minutes here, and make four observations from this passage.

So in Romans 6, verse 15, it says, I'm reading,

I probably should be turning this as we go on here. I'm speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations.

You presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness. So now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regards to righteousness. But what fruit you were getting at the time from the things of which you are now ashamed of, the end of those things is death.

But now that you have been set free from sin, having become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification, and its end, eternal life.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our

Lord. I want to take a minute here, and I want to look at four observations that we see from this text, as we look at the idea of our freedoms, and the reality of that as followers of Christ.

First thing we see here, is we see that we were slaves to sin.

Now I need to unpack this statement here just a little bit. First of all, who is the we that I'm talking about?

The we that I'm talking about here, Paul is writing to the church in Rome at that time.

He is writing to believers, to followers of Christ. So when I talk about we, I'm talking about you and I, those of us who have placed our faith in Jesus Christ.

We understand who Jesus Christ is, that he came to this earth, we understand that he died on the cross for our sins, he took away those sins, he rose from the dead, proved himself to be

God, and purchased our salvation. We have placed our faith and trust in him, and are trusting him for salvation.

That is the gospel message, that is the we that we are talking about. So you and I who have done that, who understand that, we were slaves to sin.

Paul says in verse 15, Paul, in the book of Romans, gives a lot of rhetorical questions, the way he addresses it.

He walks through Romans, and he gives a harsh statement, or a deep theological concept, and your natural train of thought is going to be, well then, should

I just do this? And Paul says, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, well then, should

I do this? He just says it. Paul had just got done talking about that you were slaves to sin, and now you are free by the grace of God.

And he basically is saying here, so now that we're slaves, not slaves to sin, should we just be able to do whatever we want, because God's grace covers it?

And Paul says, in the Greek, the most emphatic way he could say it, by no means, absolutely not, that's ridiculous.

That's the way Paul addresses this. And you look at here, and it says in verse 16, Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to whom the one you obey, either to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

What does it mean to be a slave? Now this word slave, in the

Greek, some translations will use the word servant. Slave here is the better translation of that.

The Greek word doulos, it means, it refers to a legal status. That you are ownership.

Something is owning you. That you are now obligated to them. You are basically their property.

And I was looking at my life, and I was thinking, you know, I have two, but I have dogs.

And my dog, maybe you've seen me here. I've been coming actually a couple times around here, running through your woods.

I'm training my dog, his name is Ruger. He's a black German Shepherd. I'm training him to track wounded deer for next year's hunting season.

So if you need one, give me a call. And he's really getting good at it. I mean, he really is. And I have actually been here through your guys' woods all around, with Pastor Don's permission.

But I've run around and had him track and everything. I trained dogs as kind of a hobby in Costa Rica.

I had a couple different German Shepherds, and we did protection work. And the reality of it is, here in the

United States especially, I have a license for my dog. That dog is mine. He's my property. He's not yours.

You might like my dog, but he's my dog. He's not mine. Or he's not yours. He is mine. I actually have ownership of him.

And as a trainer of a dog, you realize that if you want your dog to obey, you will set good rules, good guidelines, and you will stand by them, and that dog will obey.

And when you lax off, the dog gets sloppy, and the dog does whatever he wants to do. So as a good master,

I control what my dog does. I control where my dog eats. I control where my dog sleeps. I control what he jumps up on and what he does not jump up on.

I control every aspect of that dog's life, because I am a master who's doing what I should be doing.

As we look at this, the idea of being a slave is the idea of being property, being controlled by a master.

And you and I, apart from Christ in our life, before we received that gift of salvation, we were slaves to sin.

We had to obey. Our natural bent went towards sinning.

2 Peter 2 .19 says, We had to sin because we were sinners with a sin nature.

We were naturally bent that way. It does not mean that bad people couldn't do good things.

They can. We see that all the time. But what it means is, even in their doing of good things, their motivation is not godly.

It's not God -honoring. It could be because they feel guilty. It could be because they want to make themselves better, put themselves in a better situation.

But the idea is, you and I, we were slaves to sin. Now, the second point is that we are now free from sin.

Those who have received Christ as their personal Savior and Lord, they are now free from sin. Verse 17 says,

So we were trapped. We were heading that direction. We couldn't do anything but not please

God. Now, when you have Christ in your life, you are free from that. Jesus says in John 8 .34

-36, So the idea that Christ, what

He did on the cross for our sins, is He freed us from the control of sin in our lives.

It's kind of like weeding a garden. How many people enjoy weeding the garden?

Okay, we got like Dave Bunt. Maybe. I think he's lying, but maybe. Alright. I don't.

I hate weeding the garden. And I think it's because I never really did it correctly. I would go in the garden, if you have kids and you work with them and show them how.

You know, you go in and you grab the weeds and you pull out, and all of a sudden you're pulling off all the tops off the weeds. Right?

Did you get them? No. Because you've got to get it by the root. You've got to get down deep and pull the whole root out.

And I remember my wife and I, we were weeding our front garden, flowerbed area over there.

And she just kept yelling at me, you're not doing it right. Because I kept grabbing it and pulling, pulling, and I just, all the leaves are in my hands and the root's still there.

Of course, this year now we're re -weeding that root because I didn't get it. And the idea is, prior to Christ in my life,

I never could get the root. I never could get down deep enough and get the root of it. I can get those tops off.

I can make corrections in my life. Absolutely. But the root of the matter, I couldn't get to.

What it takes to get sin out of your life and to really get to the heart of the matter is to get down to your heart.

And that takes Jesus Christ. That takes the Holy Spirit working in your life. And you were a slave to sin means you can pull all the weeds all you want, but you can't get down to it.

Now that you're free from that, you have the tools, the shovels, the tools and the ability to get down and to get to the root of the matter.

Which is my heart. And I can change my attitude in my life, let Christ do that, in my heart.

So now we are free. Can you, do you remember a time when you were free?

And that feeling? Now you're thinking, well, what do you mean? Think about the time, the excitement you have the first day after you graduated from high school.

And you're like, yeah, I don't have to do any school ever again if I don't want to. Or college.

That whole idea of the first day after, of course your student loans start to kick in and you're back to reality pretty quick. But your first day after college thinking, if I don't ever want to go to school ever again,

I don't have to. And just that, oh, this is great. I did that. And then

I went on for a masters and then fought for years through that. And thought

I was free from that and then continued on for more stuff. And in a year from now I'm pushing and I'll be done hopefully with everything at that point in time.

But that first day of freedom, the first day after you guys got married. And you're like, wow, wow, we are on our own now.

Okay, I mean just how incredible, maybe the first day of your vacation. Where you could sit there and go,

I have no responsibilities. Just that sense, maybe it was the first day after you had your first child.

No, that's slavery again. But you look at it and you go, that first day of freedom.

It's like, guys, that's you and I today. We were slaves to sin.

And now we have the ability to overcome that because of Christ's work in our lives. And we should be forever grateful for that.

Third point, let's keep pushing here. We are now free to be slaves again, is what

Paul says here. We are now free to be slaves again. In verse 18, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves to righteousness.

Paul's saying, you're going to be a slave, period. You're either a slave to sin or you are a slave to righteousness.

Now what does this word righteousness mean? It could be right standing, it could be doing what is right, holiness.

It is an adjective that modifies a person who is conforming to a particular custom or standard that has been set.

So the idea is our standard is right here, is God's word. And now we are free to act as according as God's word tells us to act.

We can do what God's word tells us to do. And therefore, making ourselves more

Christ -like in our everyday walk. Paul goes on in verse 19, I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.

Paul, this whole human terms, he's been giving a lot of illustrations throughout the book of Romans. And he's like, hey, just practically speaking here what

I'm talking about. He's like, in human terms he's saying, this is what I really mean here.

For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to more righteousness.

You were once a slave to sin, and as you know, as we get involved in sin, sin usually breeds more sin, which breeds more sin, and breeds more sin.

And leads you in a downward spiral in your life. You are now free from that, and now you have the freedom and the ability to do what is right.

And as you do what is right, and as you're in God's word, and you're reading, you're praying, you're fellowshipping as the body of Christ, you're encouraging each other, you're using your giftedness and abilities within the local church, that begins to spiral in a different direction and helps you look more like Christ.

Verse 24, when you were slaves to sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Before, you were a slave to sin and you had to sin. Now, you are free and have the ability to not sin.

What Paul means here is, think of it in the flip order here, if you're a slave to righteousness, that means you're free from sin.

He's saying when you're a slave to sin, then you're free from the ability to do what is right in your life.

No matter what you do, you're going to fall short, as long as you are trapped and a slave to sin.

Number four, as slaves, we are producing fruit.

As slaves, now he finishes it all up with the idea of we are producing fruit. How many people live right here in Matawan?

A good majority. My wife and I, we moved here in 2004.

We lived here until 2011, the end of 2011. We moved to Costa Rica for nine years and we just moved back.

We love this area. We live right there on Main Street, Matawan, is where we live.

The best thing, our most fondest memory, I think you can say that, of all of Michigan is getting up in the fall, walking outside when they're harvesting the grapes.

The wind kind of comes down off the hill there and you just go, you're like breathing in grape juice.

You can smell it. We love it. I mean, it is a comfort smell for our family. When we were in Costa Rica for nine years, that's all we talked about in the fall, was how we missed the smell of the grapes.

We missed going down to, is it Schultz's? We missed going to Schultz's. I mean, right now, you drive by, there's cherries everywhere.

I love Michigan cherries. In the fall, we get apples. They have apple trees all over there.

We get apples from it. I remember years we would make applesauce and can them all. We do peaches and pears.

You know what's interesting? You don't get a cherry from an apple tree. They have cherry trees right there by the road.

The apple trees are on the side. You get apples from apple trees. You get pears from pears and peaches from peaches.

Grape vines produce grapes. See, what happens is a vine or a tree, they produce what it is.

And the fruit that you get comes from the particular tree. And Paul uses this illustration.

He uses it a lot throughout Scripture. In verse 21, But what fruit were you getting at the time of the things in which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death. When you were a slave to sin, you were doing things that was spiraling downward.

Yeah, it seemed fun at the time. But the end result, the fruit of that sinful action is death.

It's more sin. That's why you have movie stars and sports stars, and they live this life up without God in their life, and they have everything that they could ever imagine, and then you see them kill themselves.

Or they talk about this empty feeling that they have. All the stuff in the world won't fill that. He goes on, and he says, verse 22,

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become a slave to God, the fruit that you get leads to sanctification.

And its end is eternal life. The fruit that you and I have in our life now, if we are free from sin and now we are a slave to righteousness, the fruit that we get leads to eternal life.

It leads towards sanctification. Sanctification is a big churchy word here, and what it means is to be made holy, to look like Christ.

Positionally, there's two types of sanctification we can talk about right now. Positional sanctification means when

God in heaven looks down and sees John McGuinness, he does not see my sinfulness. He sees the blood of Christ covering my sins.

He sees me positionally before him being holy because he sees Christ. But I know several of you, and you know me, and you know that I am not perfect, and I am not holy.

See, every day I strive to look more like Christ and to not do the sins in my life. I read

God's word, I pray, I fellowship, I do spiritual disciplines.

I strive to understand and know God at a deeper, more intimate level so that tomorrow

I will look more like Christ than I do today. So that I will look more like Christ now than I did maybe a year ago.

Do you look more like Christ now than you did before the pandemic? How about five years ago?

Each day in our lives we should be trying to look more like Christ. That is what's called progressive sanctification.

That's what Paul's talking about here. He's like, the fruit that you produce makes you look more Christ -like in your life, and that is what leads to salvation.

It's not that you do things to get eternal life and to get salvation. That is the end result. The fact of the matter is,

I want to know Christ at a deeper level so that I can look more like him as I live my life.

Now that you've been set free, your actions produce fruit that make you look more like Christ.

And then the verse that we all are familiar with, Romans 6, 23,

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord. The fruit of sin leads towards death.

That's where it goes. But through God's free gift, you and I can have eternal life.

Now Paul goes on, we're not going to study it now for the sake of time, into Romans 7, and he talks about the battle that you and I have with sin.

Yes, you're free from sin, you and I, if you're a follower of Christ, we're free from sin, but it doesn't mean that we don't continue to battle that.

Paul talks about in Romans 7, he's like, I do the things that I don't want to do, I don't do the things that I do want to do, and that daily struggle that we have.

And it is a battle that we have, but let's go back to the weeding illustration.

Now you and I have the ability to get to the root of that, and to really do some hard work in our lives, and to make changes that will actually last long term, because we have the work of the

Spirit in our lives. So I want to end it by asking a question on this

Independence Day. Independence Day, there you go. What are you a slave to?

We talk about freedom, and I understand that, and we're bent that way. What are you a slave to?

Are you a slave to sin, or are you a slave to righteousness? If you're a slave to sin, let me just say this briefly.

You need a Savior. You need a new master if you're a slave to sin. Jesus Christ came to this earth, he died on the cross, rose from the dead, proved himself to be

God, purchased your salvation, placing your faith and trust in him, brings eternal life. And if you're here, you were brought by someone, you just stopped in to see it, talk to someone here.

They want to share that with you. I'm positive. Talk to myself, talk to the pastors here. If you're watching online, give the church a call.

We want to show you how you can be freed from that sin. If you are a slave to righteousness, are you acting like it?

Are you acting like it? Are you producing a fruit that shows yourself to be looking more like Christ each day?

How are you and I doing? How are we doing in our spiritual disciplines? How are you doing in God's Word?

Have you been reading it during the week? Have you been praying besides maybe at meals? How are we at fellowshipping together, building up the body of Christ?

Do your neighbors know that you are a follower of Christ? Do your friends, your co -workers? On this

Independence Day, I'm here to tell you that you and I, that we are not free.

You're either a slave to sin, or you are a slave to righteousness. And the question that I ask you to ponder and to think through is, which one best describes you?

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for today. I thank you for what

Paul wrote here in Romans 6. Lord, we thank you for the freedoms that we have here in the

United States. We don't negate those. We don't look down on those. But we also realize,

Lord, that you have put us in a position where we need a master.

May that be you in our lives. Thank you, Lord, for what Christ did on the cross for our sins. That we are now no longer slaves to sin, but now that we can be free from that, and choose to be slaves who follow you,