And for y'all that are worrying
about if you're going to make lunch today, I have been up here
with 14 pages before, so we might make it. I'm going to do my best
anyway. But with this scripture reference,
the Sunday school class from last week, they'll know that
for this one time, I didn't change my mind on the subject and the
passage we'll be looking at this morning. And we've already talked
about it this morning, Betty. Last week's title, The Results
of Grace, Part One. Today is Part Two. And for those
of you ain't from Harnett County, as y'all can tell, we don't like
to make things too complicated. Part Two. So as I begin this
morning, like Craig did, I'm gonna ask forgiveness of last
week's Sunday school class, because I do want to do just a little
bit of repeating myself to set up where I want to jump off from
today. So if you would, look in your
Bibles right there if you've got them open, and let's just
look at verse 1. Let's see how Romans chapter
6 starts. Paul, the Apostle Paul writes,
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that
grace may abound? The question that Paul puts before
us is one of the main charges that have always been leveled
against salvation by grace, at least since the beginning times
of the church, as evidenced by Paul here writing at the time
of the church's start. Now in the first five books,
or first five chapters of this book of Romans, The apostle has
shown, and since I can't put it any better than the way Mr.
Hawker put it, he's shown in those first five chapters that
justification before God, and I love the way he put this, is
holy in and by Christ. Salvation is by grace alone. It's not by merit. It's not because
of any morality you might have. It's not passed down through
bloodlines, most especially just because you're Jewish. And it's
not, most importantly for us to know, it's not because of
any works. At least not any works done by
the sinner. There is a work and we'll speak
on it a little later. But what it all boils down to
is that salvation is by the grace and mercy of God. And if that's
the case, then it is. The charge that has always been
made against grace, as I just read there in verse 1, it's as
if those people have been saying, well, since salvation is by grace,
what does it matter if you sin? Just keep on sinning. That's
really what that charge amounts to. Romans 6 is Paul's answer
to this ridiculous charge, this charge made against God's method
of saving sinners. And that's how he saves sinners,
by grace. Now I made a few statements last
week trying to come up with why people make this accusation against
grace. I'm sure I probably even did
it in days gone by. One reason I stated was that
many religious folks, they just can't give up the belief that
they must do something in order to help God save them. And they
detest, they even hate the idea that nothing they do warrants
any favor from God. Grace is salvation all of God,
none of man. They hate that message. Another
reason I came up with is that I had the feeling that if you
ask a lot of folks, just what is salvation? Their reply is
going to run along the lines of salvation is spending eternity
in heaven and not hell. That's all salvation means to
them. And that most definitely is one of the results of salvation.
It's what I spent a lot of my time on last week, but since
I've got a few more of you here this morning, I do just want
to look at it for just a second, because Paul most definitely
addresses this subject in several places in chapter 6, but we'll
look at just one. The very last verse, verse 23
of Romans 6. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of
God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. With this verse we learn, death
is earned, but eternal life is free to the recipient, to the
one who receives grace. It is free. That's what a gift
is, isn't it? It costs the receiver nothing,
not one cent. And in this case, what we're
looking at this morning, not one deed. But I remind you, just as I reminded
the Sunday school class, and though it costs the saved one
nothing, it is the most precious and most expensive gift ever. This gift caused God the death
of His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. I didn't spend as much time on
this statement last week as I wanted to, and in truth, a person can
never spend too much time reflecting on the sacrifice made by the
Savior. I'm going to look at it a little
bit more, just a touch more in detail a little bit later. But
if there is one thing I want you to remember from today, is
to go about and contemplate this thought, the preciousness of
Jesus Christ and what He's done to save us
sinners. Spending eternity in glory, in
the glory of heaven and in the presence of God is only a part
of what it means to be saved. Though she's not here today,
I think about Kaylin, saved in her early 20s. She has, hopefully,
a long life to live. There was Mr. Smith. He wasn't
saved till around 90, right, Ray? He didn't have a short while. But there were still benefits
that they received, and Kaylin, in her case, still receiving
by being saved. Being saved is more than just
not spending eternity in hell. Some of the benefits, or what's
termed gifts, come from the Holy Spirit. There's a few of them
listed in Galatians. They're actually called fruits
there. We've all heard them and read them before. Love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. As you walk through life, these
blessings from above, they just sort of rain down on you just
when you seem to need them most, don't they? And sometimes they
come when you least expect them. Due to time, I'm not going to
mention these much today, but in probably what will end up
being my closing remarks, because I'll end up running out of time,
I am going to look at one of these gifts from the Spirit.
One of these that I've received in preparing for this message,
and then hopefully it'll help you also, and maybe you'll receive
a little bit of it as you listen to these words. So for now, I
want to return our attention and move on to some new material. Just think back to that charge
which Paul lists there for us in verse 1. If you're confronted
with this question, I don't believe that you could just reply to
it if A non-believer comes to you and makes this charge to
you. You can't just open up your Bible and start reading Romans
6 to him. Though Paul gave a very long
and a thoughtful reply, and it actually continues into chapter
7, but really for me to summarize his response would be to state
it this way. What? A believer to willfully
continue in sin? That's preposterous. I'll illustrate it to you in
this way. Someone can talk all they want to to you about how
good a 10-layer chocolate cake tastes. But until you put your
teeth into it and put your tongue on that thing, you'll never know. Likewise, a person will never
understand what Paul is speaking about here unless they've experienced
grace. That's just the way it is. It's because grace changes a
man in many ways. His desires, what's important
to him beyond just what he wants, it changes his master. And sometimes
these changes aren't evident to observers because most of
these changes are eternal and they're between you and God. And if you've never had these
changes made on you, if you've never had this difference made
in your life, it's foreign to you. You just can't understand
it. But now one of the changes that's
made in a man, and it goes along the lines of what Paul was speaking
about and what he's trying to explain to us, is that he just
no longer has a willingness to sin. But unfortunately, a man
will never completely stop sinning in this lifetime. But for a believer,
he wants to. And that's a huge difference.
And it's a change that's made in him. And it's God that makes
that change. It's nothing he does for himself.
Now, I can go several places in this chapter to speak to this
point, but since I told the Sunday school class, I'd probably start
at verse 4 today. That's where I'm going to start
and finish today. verse four of chapter six. So
if you would, let's read it together. It says, therefore we are buried
with him, we are buried with Christ by baptism into death. That like as Christ was raised
up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also
should walk in newness of life. Those who are saved by grace
walk in newness of life. The first thing to take notice
of is the power that makes this action, the power it takes to
make this change. The power to effect this change,
this walking in a newness of life is compared to the power
it took to raise Christ from the dead. Now I won't even pretend
to think that I came up with that, or to tell you that I came
up with that thought on my own. I actually read it in Robert
Haldane's commentary on Romans, and then only picked up on it
after I'd read it at least twice, maybe three times. But when it
finally hit me, what that man was just saying, the power it
takes to change a sinner from death to life is the same power
it took to raise Christ from the dead Whoa. That was the word that come to
me. Whoa. And then I thought, in relation
to our subject matter before us, how can a man continue in
sin after he's saved, like the charges made? If God exercises
this type of power to change a man, He's changed indeed. He's
changed indeed. He went on to put it this way.
He said, believers are dead to the guilt of sin. And if you'll
go back and read your chapter, that refers back to verse 2,
and that's what being dead to sin means. But believers are
dead to the guilt of sin. And if so, the ground of their
separation from God being removed, His almighty power is engaged
and exerted to cause them to walk with their risen Lord in
that new life which they derive from Him. This newness of life
is a new walk, and that is to walk with Christ. Before, when
in unbelief, a man walks in selfishness, walking and living only for himself. He's trying to find happiness
in this life, but what he does find It doesn't last, so he moves
on to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing.
Nothing in this temporal world fully satisfies. They always
have to keep moving on. It's also, unbelief is also a
walk in ignorance. Ignorance of the things and the
ways of God. And worse yet, not even really
caring that you're a fool. You don't even have to turn.
All of y'all know this passage. David put it in Psalms 14. The fool has said in his heart,
there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done
abominable works. There is none that doeth good.
The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of man to see
if there were any that did understand and seek God. They are all gone
aside. They are all together become
filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one." David wrote,
there is none that doeth good. They are all gone aside. They
are all together become filthy. That's all of us. It is said
of all of us. So therefore, his first statement
is true, and it's said of us, the fool had said in his heart,
there is no God. So don't fool yourself. Just
because you may have been in a church all of your life, just
like I was, and you think you've always believed
in a God, well, you probably have. You believed in a God,
but it was a false God because it was a God of your imagination. I'll use myself as an example
here. The first time I can ever recall of having been explained
to me what Calvinism was, it was in 1983. And I was in a religion
class at NC State. And the reason I remember that
so well is that that's one of the classes I skipped the day
after State won the national championship. I had to do that, Rupert. He
didn't look after you and Bill's conversation last week. But I
did. I skipped that class. I had it
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But now Calvinism is not salvation
by grace, but it's included within that. And I distinctly remember that
day that the professor explained those five points to me in class,
and I must have been wide awake. You know, I have a hard time
remembering names, but there are certain things in my life
I can close my eyes, and it's like I'm just sitting there.
And I can close my eyes, looking at the teacher. I was on the
right-hand side of the room, second row from the end, second
seat from the back. I was sitting right there. I
looked at that man, and I thought he was crazy. Crazy. I did not believe in the God
of this Bible. I believed in a God, but David
described me. I was a fool. It was a God of
my own imagination. My God wouldn't act this way. It's exactly what I said that
day. Just to further illustrate how
closed-minded and blind we are to spiritual matters, at least
I was, and I'm going to assume y'all were too at one time in
your lives, Rupert was here at this very church at that time.
He was already preaching the gospel of God's grace to us,
and I was showing up almost every week completely oblivious to
what the man was saying. It takes God to save a sinner. You walk in selfishness, you
walk in ignorance, and you also walk in anger and unbelief. angry against God It's funny
how things work out, but it's actually I did some of this in
reverse order and I found a little comment online to actually illustrate
this point when I was looking up another verse that I used
later on which I actually wrote first But I run across this poor
fella named Gary and he was complaining that on some kind of religious
website, and all I was doing was looking up verses. I'll type
in a few words, and you can find a verse in no time, and it'll
pop up for you. But poor Gary had lost his wife, he lost his
job, and then, of course, he then lost his money. And don't get the wrong idea
here. I'm not condemning this man. Really, after I read his
comments, if I had been put in the same situation, I would have
had, I'm pretty sure, some worse things to say. But everything
I just said about walking in unbelief, he exhibited in just
that one little short comment. The selfishness, his ignorance,
his whole point was, how could this happen to me, a good man? He thought he was a good man.
It had never been revealed to him of what he truly was. And
though some bad things had happened to him, especially as we view
him, it should have been a whole lot worse. And what did that result in?
Anger. Anger with God. Before grace, We were angry with
God for so many things. That's just one example. Just
think about yourself, though, how many times you questioned
God, you disagreed with His ways, you didn't like what He did,
especially His methods of dealing with people. You see a natural
disaster, you have no understanding of it. Someone you love died.
How could God do that, especially at a young age? All of those
things, that's anger with God. And at one time, we've all had
it to one degree or another. We've all had this anger. But,
and this is a big but, after the Spirit puts a new heart into
a believer, The believer now walks in it, as Paul terms here,
a newness of life. Yes, and a lot of times I'll
say man and him, but of course I mean a man or a woman. The
man or woman who has been given grace has made a new creature. They've been given a new heart.
And as it says in the next chapter of Romans, chapter 7, they've
been given a newness of spirit. In his commentary, Matthew Henry
said of this change in a believer that they walk by new rules,
toward new ends from new principles. They make a new choice of the
way, choose new paths to walk in, new leaders to walk after,
new companions to walk with. Old things should pass away and
all things become new. The new man is what he was not. does what he did not. As I contemplated
this change in a believer's life after grace, the word that kept
coming to my mind was motivation. The reason that the idea that
the newly converted, and for that matter the long time converted,
but the reason that they don't want to continue in a life of
willfully sinning, the reason that's so ridiculous to Paul
and to me, is that because after grace comes to a believer, they
are motivated to be more like Christ, or as Mr. Hawker put it, to walk with their
risen Lord. So what are just a few of these
motivations or changes in the believer that gives them the
desire to walk away from sin and not toward it? And so, I
don't forget later, remember that these two are, and that's
where I get the title from, results of grace. They are gifts from
above. One thing that happens to a man
given grace is that his ignorance begins to be removed. Now, he
doesn't all of a sudden become a doctor of theology, but God
is pleased to reveal some things to him. There's only ever been
one doctor of theology. That was the man that wrote the
book, the Lord Jesus Christ. One thing a believer, and it
might be really the first thing a believer learns, is what is
sin, and that he is a sinner. I explained in Sunday school
last week that when I was growing up, I really believed that what
sin was, was what got me in trouble. If I got in trouble with mom
and daddy or grandma, I had done wrong. That's not sin. Sin is a breaking of God's holy
law. If I tell you a lie, I've not
sinned against you, I've wronged you. But I've sinned against
God. He said, thou shalt not bear
false witness. All sin is against God. There's something else you learn
about sin. once you've been converted, once God's shown you grace. You learn that sin leads to anger. God's anger. God is angry with
the wicked every day. That statement should strike
fear in the hearts of every son and daughter of Adam. God finds
all sin heinous. But guess what grace does to
a believer? It makes the believer angry also. He becomes angry
with himself. He too loathes himself and his
sin. He's offended God and this upsets
him. His sin makes him despondent
and the guilt he carries weighs him down. Sin is such a burden to a believer.
If you've ever been under conviction of sin, you understand what I'm
trying to say. A believer does not want to continue
in this state. So why would he willfully continue
to sin? Sounds sort of silly, doesn't
it? There's another part to the benefits
of grace that are given to believers. Not only peace with oneself,
as I just tried to talk about, but also peace with others. Remember
what Jesus said concerning the commandments. He said, thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment,
and the second is likened to it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself. God's law can be divided into
these two laws or these two commandments. And if you want to find peace
in your life, if you want to make things simpler, you want
to get along with God and others, try to keep these two commandments
and see how much better things go for you. Believers know this,
and though not always successful, they're always motivated to try
to live by these two commandments. And since it's part of the two
great commandments, I'll mention it now, another motivation is
love. I'm gonna make short work of
this one. So I'll just tell it to you this
way. Think about yourself and your lives. You all have family,
you all have friends. Think about why you do certain
things for them. When everything is stripped away,
There's one thing behind it all. Love. When someone you love is
sick, why do you help care for them? When they're hungry, why
do you help feed them? When they're cold, why do you
warm them? It's love. It's love. Grace, too, imparts
love in a saved one's heart. Instead of being angry at God,
you now, for the first time in your life, fulfill this first
commandment. You love God. And with that love
comes a love of His ways and a love of His precepts. He has
been so kind to you and so merciful to you and gracious to you to
show love to you. How can you not love Him back
and keep His ways? You desire to sin no more. Now, these two things, and one
I'm getting ready to mention there just to start. But I want to move to one I hinted
at earlier. I've spent a lot of time in the
last few weeks trying to think how others think. Last week,
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out, well, why do the
unregenerate level this charge that Paul writes down in verse
1. What's their motivation behind
it? Today, one of the things is what I just mentioned. I spent
some time on what are some common traits among believers. Conviction
and dislike of sin and love towards God. I can't do that for this
last point, this last change I'm going to speak about. I can
only ask and answer it for myself. It's a question I've come up
with, and it's this. When I look at the cross, why
do I see Jesus hanging there? One word, sin. Sin. And it's not Charles Manson's,
and it's not Bonnie and Clyde's. It's mine. Not even Judas and his betrayal. It's my sin. Jesus hangs on that
tree for me. My sin had to be paid for. My
God's justice had to be satisfied. My Christ had to die. And it's
all because of my filthiness and my unrighteousness and for
not only what I do, but what I am, sin. A price of immeasurable worth
was paid for that sin. I really believe that I just
have an inkling of an idea of what it cost God to put his son
to death on that tree. For lack of a better way to say
it, God turned his back on Christ. turn His back on one so perfect
so that He could die for one so imperfect, for one like me. It's really beyond my comprehension. All I can do, and as little as
it is, all I can do is sing His praises and offer Him my thanks. Now Christ's body was removed
from that cross. And it laid in the tomb for three
days. And then he rose from that grave. And I know this and I
understand that. But when I sin now, to me, it's that sometimes it's
as if he is still hanging on that cross. And I sin. and that crown of
thorns is pushed down harder into his head. I sin, and somebody
else spits on him. I sin, and more soldiers ridicule
him. I sin, and a nail is driven deeper
into his flesh. I sin, and his side is pierced
again, and that blood and that water flows from his side. I
sin and he cries out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? I sin and probably worst of all,
his soul is in more torment and more agony. How my sin weighs on my guilty
conscience. To know what I've done, really,
to kill the one that I've killed. Do I want to sin more? No, God. Help me to sin no more. That's
my prayer. Time's short, so I want to move
on, and Craig and I were talking this morning, and I said, you
know what, Craig, I don't even think I made a conclusion today. And
I was reviewing my notes between Sunday school and and this hour,
and lo and behold, even after we talked, I still didn't go
and do a conclusion. So I'm going to use my last point
as my conclusion. And like I said, hopefully, like
I did in studying for this message, you'll find a little benefit
to it. I don't want to let the rest
of this time go away without speaking about how and why this
change, this newness of life occurs in a believer. And it
also speaks, just like I was just speaking, to the wonderfulness
of the one I was just talking about, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, time's not permitting me
to read the entire chapter today, but I encourage you to do so.
Now Paul's wording, it can be somewhat difficult to follow,
but there is one theme that runs throughout the entire chapter.
It's as plain as the nose on your face. And that's why there's
such a change in the believer between before and after grace. So if you would, pick up your
Bibles. I want to read just a few verses for you. See if you can
pick up about the common theme that's shared among all of them.
Verse three and four, I've already read four. Know you not that
so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized
into his death? Therefore we are buried with
him by baptism into death. That like as Christ was raised
up from the dead by the glory of his father, even so we also
should walk in newness of life. Verse six, knowing this, that
our old man is crucified with him, is crucified with Jesus
Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth
we should not serve sin. Verse eight, now if we be dead
with Christ, we believe that we also shall live with him. Verse 11, Likewise reckon ye
also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. How? Through Jesus Christ our
Lord. And to repeat verse 23 once again,
for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal
life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Should be rather evident
by now. These results of grace, these
ones I've been talking about to you, and so many, many more, they're all because of the Lord
Jesus Christ and what a complete Savior He is. His death on the
cross satisfied the justice of God for the sins of His people. And since those sins have been
paid for once by His death, they're remembered no more, completely
gone forever. And yes, his people's only hope
of acceptance before God lays in the fact that Jesus Christ
is the Lord our righteousness. That's his very name. And yes,
anything that comes to a believer, and most especially these results
of grace, it's all because of Christ. I'm almost out of time, but if
you go back and review those verses, see if you don't have
the same thought that I have on this matter. What a wonderful
and all-sufficient Savior we have. There's one more benefit. It seems like a believer's life
after conversion is that he takes on a constant state of repentance. True, there's a willingness and
a want to sin no more. But the old man which binds us
with our first father, the first one listed on that family tree,
our father Adam, this old man just will not be still in this
lifetime. And when he rears his ugly head,
it results in sin. And for a believer, this sin
leads to guilt and abhorrence to oneself. The sinner, he just continually
browbeats himself and he lays prostate before God and he confesses
his sin to God and he begs forgiveness all the time. Why? He's offended
God with that sin. And remember what true repentance
is. It's not a sorrow or fear of the consequences which sin
brings about, those wages of sins or death. The true repentance
sorrows for offending God and breaking His holy law. That's
why a believer feels guilty. Now, I had a little bit longer
this time to prepare And I can't tell you how many messages have
gone through my mind. I spent three weeks in numbers
on two different things, and I just couldn't get it. But I
finally run across this passage, and I don't think I'm stretching
the truth any. While I was contemplating this
passage, I spent two weeks probably saying, am I qualified to speak
on this passage to these people? My sinfulness and my guilt over
my sin, it just seems so many times to far outweigh the results
of grace. I just didn't think I had the
right to speak to you. But that's where doing this is
hard work. The other fellows who are doing
Sunday school and these services, it's hard work. But it's necessary. It's like exercise. When you
get through, you hate it when you're doing it, but man, the
benefits make you feel so good when you're done. That happened
to me this time. I found some peace when I was
preparing this message and thinking about it and studying on it.
One of those fruits of the spirit, I found some peace. And here's
how I did it. You think about our author, and
if anyone had a grasp on this subject we're looking at, it
would have been the one who wrote about it, the one whose, the
spirit used his hand to pen these words. But what did Paul say about himself?
My time's about gone. Quickly turn to Romans 7. You're
there close by, so you can just read along with me, and I'm gonna
try my best to get right through these, this last little bit.
Paul writes, beginning at verse 14, talking about himself. For
we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow
not. For what I would, that do I not. But what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would
not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then, it is no
more I that do it, but the sin that dwelleth in me. For I know
that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For to
will is present with me, but how to perform that which is
good I find not. For the good that I would do
not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that,
I would not. It is no more I that do it, but
sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law that when I
would do good, evil is present with me." Do any of you here
find yourselves reading these words and thinking to yourself,
I could have wrote that. That's me. Well, misery loves
company. And Paul has a companion in me. But that's where I found some
peace in all of this. You know that Paul loved his
Savior. And more importantly, you know the Savior loved Paul. And you have to believe that
Paul attempted to live his life as he describes it here in chapter
6 and in so many more of his epistles. Still, in all honesty,
He had to write these words about himself here in chapter 7. I
believe that God saved Paul, and yet this is how Paul views
himself. The fact that I share these same
feelings and thoughts about myself, and I do, it gives me a little
hope. It gives me a little hope that
just maybe, like Paul, God's shown me some grace and some
mercy and some love. And that as Paul also wrote,
that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until
the day of Jesus Christ. I pray to God I'm still a work
in progress. I found some peace with Paul
in studying this message and maybe you can too. We're all
sinners. It'll never leave us till we
leave this earth. But no matter how big a sinner
we are, we've got a greater Savior. And He's willing and able to
save. Thank you.