Let's return to Romans chapter
6. Romans 6. There is a subject so offensive
to our natural flesh that we avoid speaking of it. If we are
forced into a discussion, a serious discussion about it, we typically
address it in hushed tones and with a limited audience. Death
is the topic that we tend to avoid. We don't mind speaking
of death in general terms. In Adam, all die. or death passed upon all men. But it's a whole different fact
when I say, in Adam, I die. Death passed upon me. And to sit down and truly face
that fact, that I have a death to die, and start writing out
a will, there are a multitude of people that die every day
without a will because of the fact that they do not want to
face death for themselves. For those of us whose life is
hid with Christ in God, Death is a central tenet or a central
doctrine of the good news of the gospel. When our Lord starts dealing
with us, when the Holy Ghost starts dealing with a sinner
that He has set His affection on, the first thing the Holy
Ghost reveals to us is the fact that we are dead in trespasses
and sins. In Adam, we lost life. We lost that ability to approach
unto God. We are dead. We're not sick. We're not injured. We're dead
in trespasses and sins. Then as the Holy Ghost continues
to work with us, we are made to see God as He is. Holy and just. The God who cannot freely pardon
sin. but demands that the penalty
be paid in full. He can't just brush it under
the carpet somewhere and hide it. Our sin must be paid for. We are made to see our death
in Adam. That that death is a just result
of our rebellion against God, that we are without hope. And
when we see that we are so far removed from God and we see God
as being holy, that's when we fall and cry out, Lord, have
mercy upon me. When we start crying that out,
Then we begin to see a little of Christ Jesus, our Lord. We see Him, the Son of God and
the Son of Man, who kept the law of God in absolute perfection. Not for Himself, He didn't have
to, for Himself. He kept it as a representative
for those that He came to save. We see Him dying upon that tree,
made a curse for me because He bore my sin and He suffered the
penalty of my death. He laid down His life to pay
what I owed. We see Him laid in the tomb for
the wages of sin is death. We see Him arisen and ascended
back to the right hand of the Majesty on high. We see Him,
our Lord, the just God and Savior of sinful men. And we're made
to know that He has satisfied the law. He has suffered the
just penalty of the death. And He did it as our substitute. He made those for whom He died
righteous. If we aren't dead in trespasses
and sins, we have no hope. If our Lord did not die, we have
no hope. Death is certainly a central
tenant to the good news that salvation is of the Lord. Psalms 116 verse 15 says, Precious
in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. If you've only been to a couple
of funerals, I have no doubt you've heard that verse quoted.
particularly if it was the death of a believer. It's a promise that in times
of great sorrow we look at and get much assurance from. And
we comfort ourselves and one another with that promise. Why would the physical death
of a believer be precious in God's eyes. There are a couple
that I'll present for our consideration. This is just in brief. But their death is precious in
His eyes because we're His sheep, His chosen, His redeemed. Their death is precious because
they're precious to Him. Another reason it's precious
is that sin is obnoxious to God. He cannot bear it. It cannot
be in His presence. And our Lord Jesus Christ shed
His blood to atone for the sin of God's saints. And when this
flesh dies, when we put off this mortal body, we're separated
from the old sins of this flesh for all eternity. And the last reason I've got
is that saint's death is precious, because when we do put off this
body of flesh, we're going to be in the presence of Him who
gave Himself for us, and we're going to be made like Him. We're
going to dwell with our Lord. That's a precious death. In the Scriptures, we find multiple
types of life. You have the life of animals,
life of plants, life of humans, evangelical life, natural life,
eternal life. Different types of life. Just
as we're presented with different types of lives, we see different
types of deaths given in the Scripture. In the creation, in
Genesis chapter 2, we find two deaths exposed immediately in
the scriptures. In Genesis 2.17, the Lord God
said to Adam, In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt
surely die. And the sentence of death was
carried out as soon as Adam partook of that fruit. Adam died. He died spiritually in separation
from God the Father. 930 years passed before Adam
gave up the ghost, before his eternal spirit left his body
of flesh. Two different deaths, the natural
death and the spiritual death. Hold your place here in Romans
6, we'll be right back to it, and turn over to 1 Corinthians
chapter 15. There are deaths of the righteous,
deaths of the sinful, long-awaited deaths, sudden deaths, the death
of the body, and the death of the soul. Eternal death. There's
the death at the last trump. First Corinthians 15 verse 51.
Behold. 1 Corinthians 15.51, Behold, I
show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we
shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be
changed. There are many types of death.
You can go back to Romans 6. But today, I hope to address
the precious death. First, we'll see that death that
is precious. Why that death is precious. Then we'll see some of the benefits
that the believer receives because of this precious death. Back
in Romans 6, That final putting off of this physical world and
sleeping in Jesus will be gained to us. That physical death will
be gained to us. It is the last we will endure
of sin. It's the death that we'll awaken
and be as Christ is. We'll know Him as He is and we'll
be like Him. That's great gain to the believer. But there's a death that all
of God's sheep die prior to our physical death. We read of these
two deaths in Romans 6. First one we read about, I believe
is in verse 2. The child of God is dead to sin. And we are crucified with Christ. As I studied for this message
and I considered the various deaths that a believer will experience
as they grow, I thought of each of them in light of the scripture,
precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. And I believe if we were to take
all the deaths, various deaths that we die, and put them next to one another,
compare them one against another, there's one that is going to
shine greater than all the rest. And that is our being crucified
with Christ. That is the death that is precious
in the sight of our God. The other deaths that we experience
are all a result of this death. The other deaths that we experience
are all to our gain. But being crucified with Christ
is how all those others are blessed to us. Look at verse 6. Knowing this,
that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin
might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. We become
dead to sin because we're crucified with Him. It is our Lord's crucifixion
that put away the sin of God's elect and made peace between
God and men. Our being crucified with Christ
must be precious in God's sight, for this death brings all glory,
all honor to our Lord and Savior alone. Upon that cross, He had been
forsaken of His friends. He alone can bear this burden. None of us can help He bears it, He bears it alone.
Upon that cross, God the Father took the sins of all the people
that He sent His love upon in eternity past, those whom He
chose out of this rebellious race of Adams, He took all those
sins And almost as if Aaron, in the Old Testament, when he
went to that scapegoat and placed his hands upon the head of that
scapegoat and confessed Israel's sins and iniquities upon that
scapegoat, God the Father took our sins and iniquities and placed
them upon our Lord. We're crucified with Christ because
it is our sin and our iniquity that hold Him to that tree. He alone who walked before God
without sin died for His sin. He was made sin for us who knew
no sin. My old man, That man of sin was
placed in Christ with all that sin that he might pay the debt
that I owe. In his death, my sin was taken
away, atonement was made, and I am now seated with him at the
right hand of God. In the death of Jesus Christ,
in His crucifixion, God was glorified. Every attribute of our Lord was
glorified. And Jesus Christ proclaimed God
to be the just God and Savior of sinful men. Our Lord's death
satisfied the Father. It brought honor and glory to
His name, and it magnified His holiness. It is His death and our death in Him that causes
God to view our death, being crucified with Him, as precious. Now let's look at some of the
benefits we gain from being crucified with Christ. In verse 2 of Romans
6, we read that we are dead to sin. Are we dead to sin? Do you sin? Yep. Believing on
Christ? Do you commit sins? I do. How can we be dead to sin? We
know that this flesh profits nothing. Romans 8.8 says, So
then they that are in the flesh cannot please God, Those of us
who have been crucified with Christ, we can echo Paul's words
in chapter 7, 18 of Romans. It says, for I know that in me,
that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing, for to will is
present with me. I want to do good. I don't want
to sin. I want to glorify God in all
that I do. For to will is present with me,
but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would, I
do not, but the evil which I would not, that do I. So what does it mean to be dead
to sin if I can't live a life without sinning? Look over at chapter 6, verse
14. Romans 6, 14. Being dead to sin
means that you no longer serve sin. For sin shall not have dominion
over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. Outside
of Christ, in our natural condition, as we are born in Adam, man continually
strives to prove himself worthy of God's satisfactory attention. How do we do it? We pick and
we choose our moral conduct. We decide, if I do this correctly,
God has to accept me for it. I can ignore everything else.
I get to choose. This is where I'm going to be
good and everything else I don't have to worry about. That's how
we conduct ourselves. And we use that topic, that one
thing that we choose, we use that to elevate ourselves above
the other worms and maggots around us. And we call that being righteous
before God. We use different terms. The atheists
use one term, the Muslim use another term, the Baptist use
another term, but it's all the same. When you get down to the
heart of the matter, that's what we're doing. And we do it because
it's what we inherited from our father Adam. And that is sin. come before
God outside of Christ as sin, as living under the bondage of
sin, and sin having dominion over us. We tend to think of
sin as something that we do. But the vilest of sinners will
find something to glory in, something to elevate themselves up amongst
another." Our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified
on a cross between two malefactors. And while those three men hung
upon that cross, one of the malefactors turned over and said to our Lord,
If Thou be Christ, save Thyself and us. Have you considered what
that man was saying? That man who had been condemned
of a crime so heinous, so horrible, that the Romans could think of
no way to punish that man enough except by crucifixion. That man
looks over at another man dying the same horrid death. And he looks at him and he says,
yeah, I might be guilty of what I've done. He might be guilty
of what he's done. But you know what? I never once
claimed that I was the Christ. I'm a little bit better than
he is. He was trusting that in making
himself a little better than that man dying next to him, he
would obtain eternal salvation. When the redeemed sinner is dead
to sin, we know that sin is not what we do. It is what we are. And we stop trying to approach
God through those things that we do or don't do. We fall before
Christ and we acknowledge, I am nothing but sin. Lord, will you
please have mercy upon me? Knowing that he alone can satisfy
God, And if we are going to be looked upon favorably by the
God of all glory, we must be found in Christ, His Son, and
in His righteousness alone. We are dead to sin because our
Lord died upon that cross for our sin, and we are crucified
with Him. Being crucified with Christ,
we have life. Real life. True life. Eternal life. Hold your place
here in Romans 6 and flip over to Galatians chapter 2. Galatians 2.20. We're coming
back to Romans immediately. How do we have this life? Galatians
2.20, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me and gave Himself for me." Now flip to Romans 8.1. If your
Bible is like mine, it's one page from Romans 6. Paul finished up with, The life
which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son
of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Romans 8, 1. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and
death. The life I had before, outside
of Christ, when I was in my sin, in my rebellion,
thinking that I had life, that I lived a full and satisfactory
life, that was a miserable life, full of duties and work. Every morning I woke up when
I was lost, I woke up with the thinking that
today I have to not do this and be sure that I do this. Every day I woke up with that
in the back of my mind. I couldn't go out and cuss. And
I had to make sure I read at least one chapter of my Bible.
because that was what was going to matter when I died. That is
a miserable existence, to live under that bondage of sin. But now, now, God came and he said, come
forth to this dead sinner. And now I rest in Christ. He has finished the work. He has fulfilled the law. I can do nothing to add to my
salvation or take away from it. He is all and in all. and I rest, and I have life because
of Christ living in me. Being crucified with Christ,
the last benefit that I'll address here, being crucified with Christ,
that death that we have yet to face, that physical death, It
holds no fear for us that are crucified with Him. We've already
suffered death. Now, I'm not saying in here that
all of us at one time or other, probably the closer we get and
the more we think about it, are not anxious about death, about
this physical body departing us, We love this flesh. We take care of this body. We want it to last for quite
some time. But we all, by our natures, we
worry about things that we really have no business worrying about.
The Lord provides for us the grace that we need for today. not for tomorrow, what we need
today. Christ told us Himself in Matthew
6.34, Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow
shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the
day is the evil thereof. But our nature wonders, how shall
I die? What will I suffer? Who's going to care for my family
once I'm gone? Saved and lost alike, these thoughts
come into our minds. But for the redeemed sinner,
that's about as far as it goes. Because we don't take anxious
thought about what happens after I die. we shall be like our Lord."
Listen to 1 John 3, 2. Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know
when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see
Him as He is. Leading up to those final days
of our mortal life, we may have some anxious thoughts. While
I was thinking of this, I thought of a tale I heard of Mr. Spurgeon. There was a man that
came to him one day and he said something to the effect of, sir,
I'm afraid that I don't have dying grace. And Mr. Spurgeon looked at the man and
he said something to the effect of, are you dying? To which the
man replied in the negative, Mr. Spurgeon followed up with,
then sir, you are not in need of dying grace. But when that last day comes,
when we're about to let go of this mortal life, we have this
firm stance, oh death, where is thy sting? O grave, where
is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and
the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection
has given us the victory over sin. for we are crucified with
Christ. Our final death we must all face
is for the believer simply falling asleep in Christ. In Acts 7,
Stephen was stoned, a very violent death. And he kneeled down and cried
with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he
fell asleep." Is there anything more peaceful that we can have
on this earth than to fall asleep? That's our final death. Believer,
those who are crucified with Christ, it'll say, and he fell asleep. Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of his saints. The only reason this statement
or any other promise in these scriptures can be applied to
us is that our Lord Jesus Christ died upon that cross to save
those for whom He came. Save those that He loves with
an everlasting love. Our natural death must come to
the believer and the lost alike. But for those whom Christ died,
for those that He loves, we are crucified with Him. And that
death is precious in the eyes of the Lord. By His sin atonement,
we are made the righteousness of God. The law of God must be
satisfied. We have all sinned and come short
of the glory of God. There is a price to be paid.
There is only one who can pay that price. God Himself. He sent His Son into this world
to save sinners, and only sinners shall be saved. If you die outside
of Christ, trusting in that so-called righteousness, that piece of
moral code that you've chosen, you die rejecting God's Word,
rejecting God's Son, and rejecting God's Son's shed blood. And God will not have mercy upon
you for rejecting His Son. So let us today flee to Christ,
crying out to Him, for mercy, clinging to Him, for He alone
is life." Romans 6, 8. Now, if we be dead with Christ,
if we're crucified with Him, we believe that we shall also
live with Him. Pray the Lord will make that
a blessing to us.