Attending Your Own Funeral

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches from his series in the

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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, good morning, welcome to Recast Church.

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I'm Don Filsek, I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad that we have an opportunity to gather together in the name of Christ and really grow in our faith.

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That's part of the purpose of our gathering this morning is that we would take on more of God's word, more understanding of who he is, how he has revealed himself, and then go out to live according to that.

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Recast is a name that needs a little bit of explanation. It's a little bit of a strange name for a church, and I like that because over the years, it's been a good introduction.

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So I'm at the coffee shop, somebody says, what are you doing? I say, writing a sermon. They say, oh, you're a pastor, what church? I say,

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Recast, and they say, what? And that ends up usually involving a conversation about what we believe and where we stand.

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It is a double meaning. It comes from Luke chapter five, where the disciples had been fishing all night, and they hadn't caught a thing, got blanked, and so Jesus tells them, recast the nets over the other side.

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They obey their Lord and master. They bring in a haul. And so that's kind of the notion behind it, but then also, it's a double meaning because it's an acronym for our core values, which are replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

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And I wanna just highlight one of those as we kind of think about the text that we're gonna go into this morning.

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It's really authenticity. Authenticity was all the rage in church circles 10 years ago when we were getting started, and it's something that slid into a little bit of misunderstanding.

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I've actually seen some blogs written against authenticity, but it's written against a misunderstanding of what we mean when we say authenticity.

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You know, you can get something. You get a baseball, or you get a jersey from a professional, or a bat that's been swung, and it's got a certificate of authenticity with it, that this was actually swung by Miggy.

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This was actually a baseball that was a home run ball at the ballpark, or whatever. And so, not that kind of authenticity.

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Not like it's the real deal, like as in we're the real deal and everybody else is fake. That's all we mean when we say authenticity.

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But when we say authenticity, we mean an honesty about ourselves in relationship to God, and an honesty in our relationship with others.

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In other words, we don't wanna be pretenders to be something that we're not.

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We wanna be honest with others and honest with God. And our text this morning is gonna hit on the subject of who we are now that we have come into a relationship with Christ.

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We need to take on God's word about what it says is true of us. What are we authentically now?

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And it will deal specifically with the way that we relate to sin now that we understand that salvation comes to us by grace through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

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What we've been reading about and studying about from chapters one through five of Romans so far, that gospel, that good news, that salvation is a gift and righteousness comes to us as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

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And what we're gonna be getting at here this morning as Paul launches out into chapter six is that grace can be abused.

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As a matter of fact, if it isn't open to abuse, then it isn't actually grace.

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Let me say that again. If it isn't open to abuse, it isn't actually grace. If you haven't understood all of the first five chapters, then you're gonna kinda miss what he's talking about here to some degree because the fact of the matter is if you understand how radical he has been painting our desperate situation and how ultimately we could remedy nothing of our relationship with God, we couldn't reconcile, we couldn't fix any of it, how completely dead we were in our sins and how we had to be resurrected to new life and that was a complete work of God, that's what we're getting at here.

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It is all by grace and so therefore that can be abused. And so our text will tackle head on any notion that salvation by grace sets us free to sin and do whatever we want.

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I mean, it's a logical question when you understand the gospel. It's an important question to be addressed and Paul is going to, in our text this morning, do something that's a little bit macabre and a little bit bizarre and he is gonna drive us all to our funerals, each and every one of us to the place that we died so that we can see clearly that the old self who was a slave to sin has now died in Christ and we are now made new, raised to new life in Christ.

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You see, we still hear the call and command of the old master but we need not obey any longer.

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Slavery to sin has been broken by grace and in our union with Christ, we have died with him, we have been buried with him and we have been raised to new life in him.

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Misunderstandings about this text will lead to inauthenticity and many down through the ages who have misunderstood this passage, the passage that we're looking at this morning,

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Romans 6, one through 14, many who have misunderstood this passage have used it to rope people back after five chapters of pounding the gospel into us.

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It's as if some would use this passage and say, ah, yep, just kidding, not grace. Just kidding, get back to work, folks.

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Nothing to see here. We will not use that passage this way this morning. We will not allow it to bring us back into a graceless and faithless performance toward God.

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So open your Bibles to Romans chapter six, verses one through 14. You can navigate over there in an app, a device, whatever.

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If you have one of those scripture journals, turn over in that. If you have no other means, then grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you and if you don't have a

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Bible at home, take that one home with you. We wanna give away God's word so that you've got it accessible to you. But follow along in Romans six, one through 14.

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Again, recast, the privilege is found here that we have the opportunity together to hear from God Almighty in these words.

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What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means.

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How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

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We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall surely be united with him in a resurrection like his.

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We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing 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. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

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We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him.

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For the death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God.

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So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

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For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much that in your infinite wisdom, you have not just seen fit to present the gospel to us and let us know about past events, but you also are concerned for our present.

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Each one of us here in various stages of understanding about what to do about the sin that is so entangling us, that's all around us, and that sometimes, to be honest, it just feels like it owns us.

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And so I pray that you would help us to make sense of this text that declares just so openly and boldly that we are indeed dead to sin and alive to God in Christ if we belong to you.

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And so, Father, I pray that you would help us to rejoice as people who are in that process.

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We have indeed been justified, we have been acquitted, and we are in that process of being set free from the bondage of sin, and we have a new life now in Christ.

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And so, Father, I pray that from that new life, we would rejoice and be grateful and our voices would be lifted up as those who, by grace, recognize that our sins have been dealt with, and that we are now in a newness of life in Christ that gives us the freedom to go out and to love you and to love others.

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And so, Father, I pray that you would allow that to be a reality and even press that in our hearts through these songs as we get an opportunity to worship you in Jesus' name.

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Well, you can go ahead and be seated, and again, thanks to the band for leading us. I just really appreciate the opportunity that we have to sing songs of praise to God each week, and that Dave puts time and effort into that, so just thankful for him.

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And if you enjoy that regularly, thank these guys when you get a chance, so. And then, my encouragement to you over the remainder of our time is keep our focus on God's word as much as possible.

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Make yourself as comfortable as you can. Keep your Bibles open to Romans chapter six, verses one through 14, so that you can reference that, see that the things that I'm saying are coming from there, and remember, if at any time during the message you need to get more coffee or juice or donuts, you can take advantage of that.

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You're not gonna distract me if you need to get up in the middle of the service and take care of any of that, so. I wanna start off with a question, and it's a little bit of a annoying question.

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It's a kind of question that honestly isn't super comfortable for any of us to answer, so I don't want you to answer it out loud. What kind of sinner are you?

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What kind of sinner are you? Are you a closet sinner? You know what

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I mean, I think. The kind that is so clean and shiny on the outside that most people around you believe that you are pretty close to the will of God, as a matter of fact, very close to being godlike.

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Is that you? Are you a closet sinner? Are you a contrite sinner? The kind of sinner that is broken and grieved by your sin.

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Maybe you're even to the degree of being immobilized by your own depravity.

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And maybe you're the kind of person who really deep down struggles to reconcile the idea that the Holy Spirit is even really alive in you, or that God could forgive, and specifically forgive you.

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Or maybe lastly, you're a brash sinner. The kind who has literally thought in your mind, what does it matter if I party a little bit right now?

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Didn't Christ already die for me? I'm already saved. So why not live it up a bit?

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What kind of sinner are you? Whether you're a closet sinner, inauthentic and afraid, others will know the real you under all of the makeup.

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Or the contrite sinner, living in a paralyzing fear that maybe you're really not okay with God.

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Or the brash sinner, who could rightly be accused of abusing

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God's grace. Whichever category or combination of categories fits you, this text has something to say to each and every one of us this morning.

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You see, last week, Paul gave us a tour of the kingdom of sin and death that came through the one sin of Adam.

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One sin plunging humanity into a brokenness before God. Sin and death reigning over all who were born of the descendant of Adam.

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And then he gave a tour of the new kingdom of Christ, where grace and eternal life reign.

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And so his opening question in verse one needs to be understood in relationship to those two kingdoms that we talked about last week.

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Those who have received Christ Jesus as their Lord and Savior have been brought into a new kingdom. Brought out of a kingdom of sin and death into the new kingdom of grace and eternal life in him.

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And so now the question becomes, what is our relationship to sin now that we have been brought out of the kingdom of sin and death?

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And I wanna just start off by saying it's very vital, very important that when we think about scripture that we leave room for authenticity in this.

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I talked about authenticity in my opening statements and authenticity would admit that we all have some kind of a relationship with sin.

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How many of you would say that in some ways you would acknowledge and be willing to raise your hand that sin has something to do with your life?

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Still something going on there, right? And so authenticity would require us to deal with it. And Paul here is therefore saying let's deal with it.

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Let's talk it through, let's figure it out. Because we all know it's here. The elephant in the room is that every single one of us is a sinner and so I thought we just said we died to sin.

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I thought we just said we've been brought out of that. So what's going on with me would be the logical question.

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How many of you have actually wrestled with this question before? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? Am I really in with Christ?

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Am I really okay with him? Because I'm still fighting this knock down, drag out battle with sin.

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But the problem with some of this is that when it comes to, I mean we want to be authentic, but some would still doggedly declare a holiness and a purity is available to Christians in this life.

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A literal, real ability to never sin again. It's sometimes called the higher spiritual life.

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You'll see it in writings and titles and books. Sometimes they call it a second blessing. Sometimes it's called the victorious

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Christian life. How many are familiar with any of those phrases that I just said? The Bible college

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I attended was a strong proponent of this victorious Christian life. As a matter of fact, the president of that Bible college that I attended wrote a chapter on five views of sanctification, five views of improving in your life.

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He wrote one of the views that highlights this holiness perspective. That you can achieve a higher walk, but he actually would go so far as to say that's the normal Christian life.

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The normal Christian life is one of consistent victory over known sin is what he would say. Sitting under that teaching took me down a pathway of years of turmoil.

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I knew that I still sinned and that reached a head when I went forward at an altar call.

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I went forward at an altar call. I was visiting a church. It was my second time there. I was looking for a church to attend in seminary.

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I went forward at an altar call to be saved as a seminary student.

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I had such a deep sense of guilt over my life, such a sense of I'm certainly not living the life that this guy is preaching.

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I'm certainly not there. And so what in the world is going on with me?

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Struggling. By the way, I'm confident that I belonged to Christ long before that day in seminary.

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I was studying to be a pastor. I loved Jesus. I had asked him to save me as an eight year old boy and I believe that he came into my life and transformed me.

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But the things that I was being taught were not consistent with the things that I knew to be true of me and I thought, man, am

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I missing it? Maybe there is something out there that I'm missing and I think we've all been there. Am I speaking to anybody in the room?

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I think a lot of us have been there. And so the expectation in this victorious

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Christian life was that I could end each day with no known sins to confess.

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That's what I was being taught. That's what I was being told and that was not what I was experiencing. I couldn't list them all at the end of the day.

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And there were things that I knew deep down that I couldn't even remember that I had done wrong. You know what I'm talking about?

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And so I figured I must not be all in with Christ or something. And by the way, what that did in me in preparation, knowing that I was being called out to ministry, knowing that I was gonna be,

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I thought I was gonna be a missionary. I didn't have any idea about being a pastor at that time or any of that. But in that stage of life,

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I can tell you that I distinctly remember that I was tempted to move from a place of being that contrite sinner where I was convicted routinely of my sins and I was feeling very low and very hard on myself and very mindful of my own sin routinely and regularly.

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And what was at risk in all of that was my authenticity. As a person preparing for ministry,

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I thought thoughts like maybe I should just put on a front and act like I'm perfect.

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Maybe I should drive my honesty about my sin underground and just put on the mask and act like everything is okay.

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But the conviction to live in honesty by his spirit, praise God, kept me from going underground with my sin.

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It kept me striving towards authenticity, kept me striving towards studying, striving towards understanding, and then this text.

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What shall we say then? Since salvation is by grace, are we to continue in sin so that grace abounds?

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You see, the logic here is that Paul might, Paul's heading things off at the past. He's saying there might be some who would actually say the more sin, the more it gives

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God an opportunity to forgive, right? Wouldn't God look even more gracious if I sinned more?

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Talking about that kind of brash sinner and I don't think many of us have formulated the question quite that directly.

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But the idea that we just go on living in sin is something that we've thought about and that we've had to wrestle through.

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The phrase continue in sin is very important that we understand what that is saying, what that means.

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Continue in sin is a bit misleading here. As if, would we even sin at all?

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Would there be any sin in our life? But it would be better to translate it, continue to live in sin, to remain in sin.

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Think of sin as a location and you're getting closer to the Greek structure of the sentence. This would be like asking, are we to remain in West Michigan?

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After the snow last night, maybe not, right? But the question is, are we to remain under the domain of, in the realm of, under the rule and reign of sin?

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Is that where we're supposed to be? Is that where we will stay? Is that where we live out our lives? And Paul cannot see the

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Christian ever settling down in the realm of sin any longer. If you belong to Christ, that's not where you live.

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Your address has changed. In context, he's made a strong case that those who receive, from the text last week, who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness, reign in life through the one man,

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Jesus Christ. Receiving Christ means a change in location. We are no longer in Adam under the realm and the rule and the reign of sin and death.

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We are in Christ under grace and eternal life. So his short answer in verse two will be expanded throughout this text, but he gives us a quick answer.

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By no means, you're not gonna keep your address in sin. We change our address when we come to faith in Christ.

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But more than merely changing addresses, something more radical has happened to us.

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We have died to the power of sin. Paul brings us all to our own funerals here in this text.

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He says, look to your own death to see the role that sin plays in your life now. Look to the place you died.

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And in verses three through four, he appeals, he uses the word baptism into Christ. That needs some definition and some explanation.

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You see the word baptism, you think water. He says baptism in Christ, not baptism in water.

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Baptism in Christ is what he says here. And the place of our death is our baptism into Christ.

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We died to sin when our lives were immersed into Christ.

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Whenever you see the word baptized, by the way, baptism in scripture, your first thought needs to be immersed completely in.

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Now I know there's a lot of debate. Some of you have attended churches where they sprinkle, they pour water, they do different things. That's okay, it is what it is.

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But at the end of the day, the word, if you were to hand my iPad to Paul the

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Apostle and say, baptizo this in water, that would be the last day that this thing would work.

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Okay, submerge it in water, put it up, say, why do you want me to do that? That's exactly what they would do.

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And so that's just what the word means in Greek. We've taken it straight from Greek over into English and made a new word in English, baptism.

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It comes straight from baptizo, which means to immerse in water. But this isn't talking about being immersed in water.

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This is talking about being immersed in Christ. And that happens at the time of your faith in him.

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Now for some, that time is nearly synonymous with water baptism. You came to faith in Christ, you were baptized quickly, and by the way,

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I don't want to get in too much of a rabbit trail here, but I think those two events should be very close to one another.

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As a matter of fact, I think we, in many evangelical circles, have invented something that doesn't belong. It's called the sinner's prayer.

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Or raising a hand at the end of a service, or coming forward and walking down an aisle. That is not what the

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New Testament gives as the model of I now belong to Christ. The next step, if you belong to Christ, is get baptized.

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Not take classes about baptism. Not go through an interview with the board of elders to make sure that every nuance of your theology is correct so that you can be baptized.

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It's be baptized. That's how you demonstrate it. You want to demonstrate it, not say a sinner's prayer, not say something out loud or something like, it's come, confess your belief in Christ, and go under the water and come back again to show that you're all in with him.

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It's a symbol that shows that. Does that make sense? So for some, it is tied closely, but not for everybody.

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For most of us, immersion into Christ came to us before we were baptized in water. Part of it because of our culture and the way that the church has gone away from baptism as that model or that example.

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But the focus is on that time and place when you jumped off the dock all the way into Christ.

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Christ above you, Christ below you, Christ around you, Christ in you,

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Christ living through you. When was that day for you? When did you go under and go completely under with Christ?

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What was that day for you? When did you die? You see, this text is saying,

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Paul is saying, you, there was an old you that was alive to sin, that was delighted and relishing, not even knowing really what a fight with sin looked like.

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Not even understanding that it was something to be shunned or to be spurned or to be concerned about.

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That old you is now dead when your life was wrapped up in Christ because he died.

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And in Christ, or with Christ, is the new location of your life. No longer in Adam or with Adam, but in Christ and with Christ.

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And we were baptized into his death, the text says. We died with him, we were buried with him, and I love the symbol of immersion in baptism because it is a dying to the old self, the old self standing in the water, being put under the water as a symbol.

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Of course, all symbolic, but going under in the terms of being buried with Christ and then coming back up out of the water raised in newness of life with Christ.

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And that's the symbolism, that's the model. And that is what has happened spiritually to you.

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By the way, pay attention to this. It's not what metaphorically happened to you. It's what really happened to you spiritually.

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In the spirit realm, that's what happened to you when you went all in with Christ. Died, buried, and new.

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If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. Old things have passed away, new things have come in your life.

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I think you know what I'm talking about. Not merely metaphorical language, it's not a model or an example as if to say,

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Paul's not getting at here, Jesus died to his own wishes and so you should die to your own desires too and die to yourself daily or some metaphor like that.

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No, this is saying we were crucified with him. Spiritually, we were crucified with him, verse six. We are united with him in death, verse five.

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We died with Christ, verse eight. We were buried with him, verse four. We will live with him, verse eight.

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Our union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection is the key that unlocks our understanding of how we respond now to sin in our lives.

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Of course, you know, we were not literally killed, literally buried, but what

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Christ did on the cross for us has been a legitimate putting to death of our old selves.

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When we are immersed into Christ, his death becomes our death. His burial becomes our burial.

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His newness of life becomes our new life. And in verse six, it's stated clearly that the old us that lived and moved readily in the realm of sin and death has been killed.

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That old self that had citizenship with Adam, that old self that was a slave to sin, that old self that was destined to condemnation and destruction no longer lives and breathes.

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And I know some of you are thinking right now, you're going, wait, wait, wait, where are you going with this, Don? Because if I'm honest, I feel very alive to sin.

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Some of you are already thinking it. You're like, I feel kind of alive to sin. I don't feel super dead to sin, I feel really alive to it.

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As a matter of fact, it seems like it owns me at times. Don't raise your hand on that one, but I think, I don't always know it, right?

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I feel like I'm a slave to sin still, Don. It seems like I relate more often to Adam than to Jesus.

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But the point of this death is clarified for us at the end of verse six, so that we can feel free to remain authentic with our struggles and still at the same time let this passage help us to deal with sin where we see it in our lives.

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The point of this death is the break of our slavery to sin. We're no longer yoked to it, we're no longer slaves to it.

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In other words, our old self was crucified with Christ, which has emptied, he says, the body of sin of its power over us, so that we would no longer be, he says directly, no longer enslaved to sin.

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It doesn't say no longer capable of committing sins. Is that what it says? It doesn't say no longer capable of committing sins, not at all, it says no longer enslaved to it, no longer bound to it, no longer is sin your master.

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So when you go back and revisit your own funerals, which you should do regularly, I'd recommend it as a daily thing, go back and visit the cross and remember that that is the place where my old self died, where the power of sin was broken in my life.

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You are to admit that you're no longer a slave to sin when you go back to that place. I'd say that's a good start to your day.

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Thank you, Jesus, for your cross, where the power of sin was broken. Help me to walk in newness of life with you today, because the old me is dead and new things have come for me.

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That I might walk in righteousness today, because I'm new. You don't need to heed the calls of temptation any longer, recast.

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The one who has died has been set free from the bondage of sin, according to verse seven. You see it there. In Christ, you are a new creation.

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You can walk in newness of life. And we now live lives that are radically stained by hope, according to verse eight.

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In verse eight, he reminds us that in our union with Christ, our old self was crucified and buried, but if we're united with Christ, then we ought not to forget what we celebrated last week.

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The tomb was empty. And he who died and was buried rose to newness of life.

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And we also will live with him if we have indeed died with him. And the life

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Christ was raised to becomes the key to this issue of sin and death in the life of a Christian.

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Death no longer holds dominion over Christ, and in his resurrection, he has been raised to an eternal life, here it is, folks, lived for.

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God. Raised for what, to what end? To live for God.

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So listen carefully, recasts, because this is the turn. This is where things are gonna get different than the traditions that I was raised in, than that struggle and that turmoil that I was going through in seminary and that dates back well before that, even to Bible college.

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Here's where we differ from those who will say you can live a sinless life on this planet. The focus shifts in verse 10.

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In verse 10, it's intentionally shifting away from worry and concern over sin.

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God has not saved you to sit there and think about sin a lot. And many of us have been raised that way.

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Many of us have thought that way. Many of us have read scripture that way, as if the number one thought in my mind needs to be the sins

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I need to avoid. You talk about a way to tempt yourself, just spend your day thinking about your pet sins that you need to get rid of.

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Do you see how that's the wrong focus? Do you see how that's not the point? What does he want to communicate to us about our relationship with sin?

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Dead. A word, dead. That's what he wants you to think about. When you think about your sin, dead, gone, grace, done with that.

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Let's move on to newness of life. Let's move on to the resurrection and towards the life that we can now live through the power of the

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Holy Spirit alive in us. How many of you know that good displaces bad? When you turn on a light switch, what happens?

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The light pushes out the darkness, right? There is no darkness where there is light.

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And so, seeking that which is righteous, coming into a righteous life with Christ.

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Not a focus on the sins. I would suggest to you that the more of Christ that you adopt, the more close you draw to him, the more that you take on in terms of the righteous life that he has for you, the more that those sins will be pushed out.

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So now, from a place of God's grace and forgiveness, your marching orders are now to live lives to God.

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Love God and love others. We see that kind of in verse 10. In verse 11, Paul personalizes this union with Christ to each one of us.

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He says, just as Christ died to sin and was raised alive to live for God, just like that, in the same way, we also are to consider ourselves, consider ourselves, consider ourselves, dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.

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And here, this is the primary command of the text in verse 11. And I truly believe it's the crux of the matter.

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As to sin, when you're thinking about sin, when it comes to your mind, when it's brought to your attention, dead to it.

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You no longer need to live there. Right living will flow out of right belief.

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If you walk around spending all of your time focused on sin, even trying to fight sin, frustrated with sin, worried about sin, then you're not doing what this text is telling you to do.

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You see, we can give sin too much attention in our lives and it can destroy our ability to live for him.

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It can immobilize us in terms of what he's calling us to do. As to sin, consider yourself dead.

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Keep coming back to your funeral as often as you need to. Keep reminding yourself, dead to that, dead to that, dead to that.

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As many times as necessary each day, come back to your crucifixion. Come to the place where he declared this over your life.

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It is finished. And then as to life, consider yourself raised to newness of life in Christ.

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A new life that looks like service to God and service to others. A new life that refuses to let sin reign because you keep reminding yourself that that old self that was responsive to sin has been put to death.

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In verse 12, it's clearly stated that you need no longer obey the passions of sin. You've been truly set free from sin if you are in Christ.

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Free from the guilt? Yes, the word is justified or acquitted. Free from the effects of sin?

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Yes, raised to new life in Christ that relationships could be healed and confession and bringing things back to wholeness but also free from the power of sin.

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Yes, no longer compelled to obey its passions. And so in this new life, we do not present our bodies, our talents, our intellects for unrighteousness.

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Look at verse 13 there. The word translated in the English Standard Version, instruments, is not just merely a word for members of the body, hands, feet, eyes, ears, all of that stuff, but it is a word in Greek that most often translates as weapons.

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Surprisingly, it's the word that's used as weapons in the New Testament. The image is that as soldiers, we have switched sides.

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We were enemies who gave our resources, our time, our energy, our skills, our abilities, to the effort and the disposal of God's enemy.

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But now in Christ, as those dead to that old life, we can now yield our weapons in the cause of righteousness.

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And I suggest to you that for many of us, kind of already hinted at this before, but we get the emphasis wrong in this text.

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We read between the lines and see, don't do this, don't do that. And we can linger on the dead to sin part.

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We can linger on the don't give the members of your body, don't give your weapons, don't give your energy to the evil one, and we can stop there, but the text doesn't stop there.

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The text wants to take you all the way to the next step. See, we can be guilty of thinking that Paul is here in chapter six, pulling back from the full force of grace.

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He's been hammering, it is by grace you are saved through faith. It is by grace you are saved by faith.

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It is by grace you have been saved by faith, and through faith, not anything of yourself, not your works, not your sustaining power, not your ability to fight sin that is your salvation.

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None of that. And now it's as if people would say in chapter six, here at this first 14 verses, saved by grace, says

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Paul. Just kidding, get to work. It's like he's pulling the rug out from underneath us.

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Yeah, saved by grace, right. When what he's been saying instead is that your battle with sin must be waged, and can only be waged strictly at the point of faith.

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You will only experience victory over sin in as much as you keep going back to the place of his victory.

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The place where he won. The cross where Christ died, and where you died with him.

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And he said, you are now righteous. And he said, it's all good with me now. And he said, now come work in my kingdom as one who is deeply and truly loved by me.

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As one who is forgiven. As one who has been set free to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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And to love your neighbor as yourself. Come now, and focus your efforts on serving

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God in righteousness recast. The tension in this text is here intentionally.

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In verse eight, he says, you died to sin. In verse 11, he tells you to consider yourself dead to sin.

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In verse 14, he tells us sin will not have dominion over us. But in verse 12, he tells us not to let sin have dominion over us.

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Which way is it, Paul? Either sin doesn't have dominion over us, or we need to constantly keep an effort towards that.

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Which way is it? And what this tension shows is either that Paul was immensely inconsistent from one sentence to the next, and forgot what he wrote.

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Or he knows that the Christian will need to keep coming back to their own funeral.

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Keep remembering what God says is true of you now that you're in Christ. We need to keep reminding ourselves that we live under grace and not under law.

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And that's how he concludes this text. So sin doesn't own anyone who is in Christ.

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And the final reason is given in verse 14. Because we are not under law but under grace.

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In other words, you don't need to worry about sin if you belong to Christ, because you have not been saved by your performance.

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Not by law keeping, but you have been saved by God's gift. So let's go back to the original question in case we got lost in this extended answer.

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I think we probably did. Are we to continue to remain in sin? Are we to continue to allow that to be our address so that grace may increase?

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That's silly talk, says Paul. Are you serious? Is this a real question, is what he's kind of getting at there?

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We've died to the realm of sin. And now we live in the realm of love for God and honor for him.

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And we now live our lives to God, presenting ourselves, our time, our resources, our skills, our talents, all that we have as tools for his righteousness.

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Martin Lloyd -Jones, the Welch pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for 30 years before he passed away, gave this illustration over this text that I think is helpful.

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And I'm gonna paraphrase it. It's not, I'm not gonna use it in its entirety and not gonna quote him, but I'm gonna just use his structure and his framework for it.

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But he said, imagine that there's two fields. Two fields separated by a very, very, very high wall.

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All of those who were workers in the one field were abused, beaten, and the culture there was one of sin and death.

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The master of the field, of course, was Satan. The original plot in the name of Adam.

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But Christ came in among the workers of that field and recruited for his neighboring field. And anyone who would receive him would be transplanted to a very, very, very new work environment, a new culture, a new life, and a freedom to use talents and abilities for the benefit of the master and the benefit and love of others in a place where love reigned and grace reigned and there was abundance and good life.

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But occasionally in the darkness of night, the voice of the old master could be heard shouting over the wall, barking orders and enticing those who switched teams.

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Evil and sin is no longer the master of those who are now working in the field for Christ, but they can choose to obey the voice of their old master if they want to.

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So ask yourself this then, with that illustration. What needs to be done for the one who keeps heeding the voice of their previous master?

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What needs to be done for one who keeps listening to the cries and the temptations for evil and obeying it?

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Well, you could say, yeah, they just, they need to stop obeying it, right? Just stop it, just cut it out. But what they really need is to remember to remember, to remember, they are no longer slaves to that old master anymore.

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Most fundamental, they need to go back to the place where their life was transferred from the slavery to that old master to the place where they are now in a new field with new marching orders, with a new leader who has actions and work for them to do, deeds of love and righteousness.

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So let me ask you before we come to communion this morning, who's your master?

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Do you have a funeral that you can attend? Romans 6, one through 14 is saying that your conversion and baptism have a role to play in your battle with sin.

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So go back in your mind to the time when you were baptized into Christ. Take a moment even now to reflect on that moment that you went all in with Christ.

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When did you say, I wanna be all in with Jesus? That's when you died to sin.

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That is when you were buried, and that is when you were raised to new life with Jesus.

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So that just as Jesus now lives for God, you do too. And let me encourage you, some of you are sitting here and you're just saying,

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Don, I don't have a date. I don't have a time. I don't really know exactly when that happened.

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I believe that that transition has happened for me. Not exactly sure.

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Today wouldn't be a bad day to just make that, make that today. I just kind of encourage that, not that you have to be saved a bunch of times, or that you have to say, but sometimes for our own benefit.

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Because this text is actually saying, it kind of matters. It kind of matters.

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And I think that the fear is here kind of saying, you know, some of you are like,

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I don't know, I'm confident that I'm saved now, but I can't think of a time or a place. And I'd rather err on the side of just saying, go ahead and do it.

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Go ahead and make it real. Go ahead and make sure that you've got that time and that place that you could literally just kind of say, yeah, today

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I want to be sure. I want to know for certain. And I want to just ask Christ, I want to be all in. I want to jump off and say,

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I'm all in with you, Jesus. I want you to be my Savior and my Lord. I want you to be the master. I want to be put to death.

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I want the old flesh to be gone, and I want the newness of life that you're talking about. Today might be that day for you.

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And it's not to say, not to denigrate or to go back on the things that maybe God has done in your past, but there's something in this text that says reflect.

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Reflect, think about this. And I guess I'd just rather risk, I'd rather risk, you know, you were really saved before and you're just gonna put a stake in the sand today and say definitively today, yeah.

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I think that sometimes we need that. We need that reminder and that place that we can turn back to. But let's come to the table this morning to remember our funeral in Christ.

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Together, by getting in line and drawing closer to that cracker and juice, remember that every step toward that table while you're in line is a step closer toward a reflection on your death to sin.

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Think of it often. It's one of the reasons we do this every week, is to reflect that and rejoice in it.

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But if you've not yet died, some of you are here and you're definitive about it, you're not on the fence at all.

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You know that your life hasn't been plunged into the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. And if you've not yet believed that he died for you, then

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I'd encourage you to remain in your seat as Dave comes up and plays the next song and I would encourage you to have an internal discussion with yourself.

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Do you wanna be transferred to the leadership of Jesus Christ today? I'd encourage you, you could come and talk with me if you'd like to see the old self that is enslaved to sin die today.

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Maybe today would be someone's funeral day here today. For those of us that are in Christ, let me encourage you, consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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And let's consider that often this week. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the grace that is available to us in your son,

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Christ. And I just pray that you would help us to walk in that newness of life that has been given to us.

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As often as is necessary to reflect on our death, our burial and our resurrection in Jesus and to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to you.

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And Father, I pray that that would be an increasing reality in our lives as you work with us day by day. And where we see that we are caught in a pattern of sin or where we see that sin would well up and seek to own us,

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I pray that you would break that chain. For those who are your children, I pray that you would break that chain by reflecting and remembering the cross, by going back to that place of purchase and that place where we have been deeply loved, that place where our sins have been dealt with and that in us and to us, there is therefore now no condemnation for those of us that are in you.

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And so I pray that that reality would be worked out in our day -to -day walk.

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Made alive in Christ, what a beautiful picture. And Father, I pray that if there's anybody here who is not walking in newness of life, that today might be a day where you press on their hearts to give them the boldness to come and speak with me or speak with Dave or speak with the elder on duty or just to find somebody that they can talk with about these things and maybe today would be a day of a start of fresh life.

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Father, I recognize that all of us are struggling in various capacities. Some of us are the closet sinner, some of us are contrite, some of us are brash.

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Father, I pray that you would move us all to the place where we are dead to sin and alive in you and where that remembrance comes to us regularly, wherever we find ourselves, and that that would be the power that breaks sin in our lives, in Jesus' name, amen.