Father, we're glad that we're
able to pray. We're glad that you are a Father who loves us
and answers our prayers. Lord, we continue to pray for
each other. We pray for just our grief. We pray for our fear. We pray for our bodies. We pray
for our minds and our hopes and our emotions. Lord, we pray for
our behavior. Lord, and most of all, we pray
for our peace that comes only through Jesus Christ. In the
midst of all those things, that your will would be done and that
we would not hoard over you, Lord, as demanding of you that
which we desire, but Father, that we would trust that what
you have established and decreed would be greater than anything
we could dream of. Even if it seems bad, Lord, we know that
it is for our good. Father, many of us have come
tonight tired, some have had to work, some are not able to
be here because of sickness and other things, but Lord, we thank
you that your word is true, that your gospel is powerful to save. And so as we look in your word
tonight, Lord, I pray that it would be just that to us, freshness
and breath and life, knowing that we have a savior who has
done all the work required for our redemption. In Jesus' name
we pray, amen. We're going to start back in
Romans tonight. It's tough to start in Romans
chapter 6, but that's where we're going to be. It's tough to start
back up in Romans 6 because Romans 6 is a response to the unstated
question that obviously comes to mind when we see what the
gospel is. And so I'll take a minute not
to review the first five chapters, but just to get us in the state
of mind of what's really taking place here. Paul, of course,
is writing to a people who are mostly Gentile, mostly Roman,
but also amongst them are Jewish Romans. So that in the Church
of Rome they have both Gentile and Jewish Christians. Now, the
problem was, is not necessarily that the Jewish Christians of
the Church of Rome were really trying to be legalistic or Judaistic
or whatever else that they could be, but that the Gentile Christians
in Rome were feeling less than Christian because they knew that
the Jews had a long-standing relationship with God, a long-standing
relationship with Scripture, a long-standing relationship
with the promises of Messiah. And so for them, it'd be like
thinking of the Apostle Paul joining Grace Truth Church, and
what am I doing standing up here teaching, you know? That's sort
of how they felt. Well, let's just, we're the second-rate
Christians. Paul then, in the sense of trying
to give them a systematic theology, writes this letter to establish
in them right understanding of what the gospel is and what the
gospel does. And he does that from the picture
of who God is and who man is. So that when we see the gospel,
what happens is that we all of a sudden now realize that every
human being is guilty. Every sect of human being are
guilty. Every type of population are
guilty, every denomination is guilty, and so on. There is no
one, no Greek nor Jew, that is not guilty before God. And so
because of that, we know that we also, in our day, are guilty
before God. And the only way that we can
have redemption is that God in His divine work did something
to satisfy Himself in His own justice. So the covenant that
we see in Paul's teaching to the Romans is that faith alone
in Jesus Christ alone is the only means through which a person
can have eternal life. And it is the finished work of
Jesus that He became a man that He lived and obeyed in a way
that we could not. He fulfilled all the requirements
of righteousness so that God, as He says, be holy, there is
a human being who has been holy and His name is Jesus. And then
because He is the obedient man and He is the fullness of all
righteousness, then in His death It was fitting that it satisfied
the justice of God against those for whom He died, and more specifically
and particularly against the church, against the elect. So
that then God was just and forgiving, and God was also just and redeeming. sinful people. And the gospel
is such that it is the power of God unto salvation, that the
hearing of the gospel, as we'll see in about six chapters, actually
in about four chapters, is the power through which God saves.
He saves by the Spirit through the hearing of the Word of Christ.
And in doing so, it is all of grace. And because it is all
of grace, because Paul has so eloquently described that we
have died in Adam and that we live alone in Christ through
grace, by grace, through faith, Therefore, the question that
comes, that Paul wants to passionately answer, is where we see ourselves
in Romans chapter 6. And if you'll notice, most of
you don't follow what happens to me on social media, but social
media around Romans 3 and around John 3 begin to light up with
accusations of me being antinomian. And that means that I believe
that we can just live how we want to live and we have no bearing
of obedience to anything in Scripture. That we can just sin, sin, sin,
sin, sin, and we're fine with it. And that's in a nutshell. I've taught on antinomianism
in the past. But when you preach the right
gospel, that is the accusation. Because the gospel is not to
be married, and we'll close out our time tonight explaining this.
The gospel is not to be married with obedience. The gospel and
the power to save is not to be married with a strict order of
law abiding. The gospel is not to be married
in assurance or evidences by any type of work that man can
do. Because as we've seen throughout this teaching and also throughout
the teaching of John, is that there is no perfection in man,
that even in the best of days he has still fallen short of
the glory of God in a far way. And so here let's look at the
first four verses of Romans chapter 6. Follow along with me if you
have your text. He asked questions, two, three
actually. What shall we say then? What
shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that
grace may abound? By no means. How can we who die
to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us
who have been born, excuse me, who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into His death? 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 Father, we too might
walk in newness of life. And those of you who are not
familiar with that text, it is something that I refer to when
I do a water baptism. The water baptism has many pictures,
one of which is the death of Jesus Christ, and that we who
are in Christ are also dead in Christ in our flesh. And then
it also has a picture of the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
and that as Christ is raised from the dead, so are we raised
out of the water in picture to walk in newness of life. However,
what happens when we think of these things? is Paul now knows
that his readers would say, well, grace is so great, he's already
said that over in chapter 3, grace is so great that we should
not do it an injustice. Grace is so great that we should
sin a little bit more so that grace can show its greatness.
That's the argument. And we think it's ridiculous,
but many people believe that way. Many people who could be
labeled hyper-grace, and that's a misnomer, a mislabeling, because
grace is hyper. It is overly doing everything
that it is said that it would do. Grace is the effectual means
through which one has salvation. It's not anything else but grace.
But in that sense, when we hear someone say, you're hyper-grace
or you're antinomian, it means that they in time will begin
to teach that we are not only able to sin as believers, which
we are able to sin, but we ought to be encouraging sin as believers. Which is ridiculous. And that's
what Paul is dealing with here. So that people would not get
into the mindset, because you think about the Roman versus
the Jew. The Roman person lived a pretty good life, did what
he wanted to do, but the practices of Rome were everything but holy,
everything but good, and everything but righteous. As a matter of
fact, most of the practices of Rome, even in their paganism,
were absolutely contrary to everything that we see Paul teach is debauchery. So I have two points tonight,
and they're long points. The point number one, I'm going
to say this. The glories of the gospel automatically
suggest that sin is good because grace is amazing. I'm going to
read that again. The glories of the gospel automatically
suggest that sin is good because grace is amazing. Now that's
not true. I'm just saying that in the context, the gospel is
so glorious that it automatically imparts in the mind of the hearer
that sin must be good because grace is so amazing. Now how
could sin be good if grace is so amazing? Because the more
sin that takes place, the more grace that comes. And grace is
so good and so effectual, let's just keep on sinning that grace
may abound. Haven't we already heard that
argument from Paul? But Paul then says, what shall
we say then? That then there is relating back
to what he's already said. We are alive in Christ, we are
dead in Adam. There is no hope for us in our
humanity, there is no hope for us in our Adamic nature, there
is no hope for us in our fallenness, there is no hope for us in our
freedom of our will, our decisions to choose, our morality, our
self-righteousness, or law-keeping, or anything therein. There is
no hope for us, because in Adam we have died. I want to remind
us that that teaches, the Scripture teaches, not just in that, in
what Paul teaches in Romans, but in Galatians, and we see
that even in the writing of Moses, and all through the Gospels,
that we are sinners. before we ever commit sin. So
therefore, because we are in Adam, we actually are guilty
before God before we ever willfully or even actually commit a sin
of our own. That means that every person
that is conceived of human beings are guilty before God as being
unrighteous, and they are worthy of wrath. But the good news is
that though we all die in Adam, we are alive in Christ. We do
not deserve to be alive in Christ. We have not worked enough to
be alive in Christ, but we are alive in Christ. So when we see
this question, what shall we say then? Paul is referring back
to this truth. So we live in Christ, some would
say, because we're so alive in Christ because of grace, then
what does it matter how we live in the flesh? What does it matter? And if we ask that question in
an angular way, what does it matter according to our justification?
What do we lose in salvation if we sin? Nothing. As we'll
see in chapter 8, therefore now there was no condemnation. But
here Paul comes up with a different point of view of looking at sin
from a judicial standpoint, but also from a spiritual standpoint.
And that we are actually raised into the newness of life. So
the next question he says, he says, what shall we say then?
And then the question, are we to continue in sin that grace
may abound? I've already said this, but let
me reiterate it. It's sort of like this, if grace is so great,
If it is the grounds for all things and its measure is glorious
and its existence is effectual, why don't we go on and sin all
the more that grace may be overly active and thus as grace is given
more and more, God is glorified all the more. Now that sounds
absurd to you, doesn't it? It sounds absurd to Paul too.
As a matter of fact, he says when he answers this question,
he's so direct He does one of these, by grace you've been saved.
He answers this, by no means. By no means. It cannot be. It is impossible for this to
be true. So speaking in that sense to
those who would say it's okay to continue in habitual sin.
It's okay to desire sin. Now don't we all do that? So
this is where the catch comes. This is where the catch comes,
and where we cannot forget what we've learned about the Gospel.
We cannot forget what we've learned already about the grace of God,
which puts us to this question to begin with. This is a critical
pivot in the teaching of Romans. Because if we misunderstand what
Paul is saying, we're easy to slide down into either a legalistic
or an antinomian place, which is both legalism. In other words,
we create our own law. So let's hold fast to the confession
of our hope that is in the gospel of Christ, and then let's learn
what is required of us, and most importantly, what God can do
in us and through us by the power of the gospel. But for the audience
of Paul, he is saying, just as Peter has spoken to this issue
as well, and Jude, as we'll see in a moment, that there are people
who not only continue in habitual sin, but that they love it. And that they do so in such a
way that they justify themselves in their sin because of grace. Not I'm sinning because I'm fighting
against it. Not I'm sinning because I'm just
a sinner and I don't care and I'm an unbeliever. No, I'm a
believer and I'm going to walk this way because grace is my
guard. Paul's saying it's not. It cannot
be. It cannot be. It cannot be. Now what are these
sins? Well, I don't know, I've thought
about it and it's just off the top of my head this afternoon. I thought,
well, let me write down some things so that we can all be
in the right frame of mind. Well, some sins that we have
in our lives as Christians are habitual, right? They are habitual. For example, there are some sins
that are habitual due to the nature of our bodies, the chemical
makeup of our bodies. Some people are habitual and
they habitually eat certain things, or do certain things, or bite
their nails, or pick their nose, or scratch their butts, or whatever
it might be. I'm not saying that those are
sinful, I'm just saying they're habitual things. There are some
habitual things that we do, like language. You know how hard it
is to stop saying certain things? If I told you today, do not use
the word this for the next four days, or this, or these, or whatever
word that might come to mind. Such as, what are some of these
habitual sins due to the nature of the body and the mind? How
about depression? Is depression a sin? Yeah, it's a sin. It's
a sin because it fails to trust in the fullness of the power
of God. But is it a willful sin? And we sit up and say, you know
what? I'm just going to be depression today. I'm going to do a committed
act of depression. No. And as someone who's suffered
depression chronically and severely to the point of psychotic episodes
and not knowing what was real and wasn't real, I understood
for the first time ever what it meant, what it felt to be
across the desk in the counseling room. And I had all the answers
over here with all my papers on the wall, but then when it
was over here, what have I stepped in? I can't stop it. I don't
know what's going on. By the Lord's grace, He healed
me of that to a great degree. Addiction. What do we do with
these types of sins? The Scripture says that we're
patient with people in those things. We don't let them just run amok
and say, Grace, grace, grace, I can do what I want to do. No,
we do. But sometimes these things are out of our control. Some
sins are addictive to the flesh because of depravity. Not necessarily
chemically or habitually, but like sin of greed or sexual sin. These aren't things that we can't
overcome. What about doubt? We can overcome
doubt, but it is a sin just the same. It's a sin that comes,
in some sense, as an addiction. Sometimes we have the sin of
self-righteous correction, you know? There's always the one
person that you know that's always telling everybody else how they're
doing wrong. The spiritual police officer, someone needs to take
their whistle and their bullet. I mean, they're really putting
harm in our lives. But we're not talking about these
types of sins. And I don't think Paul is talking
about these types of sins. Unless we say, oh, grace, grace,
grace, I don't have to worry about it. But I don't think that
it even fits with the occasion. I think what Paul is dealing
with more are some sins that I would consider rebellious in
nature. Like the sins that reveal an unwillingness or either a
blatant blindness to the truth. For example, a refusing to see
what Scripture teaches in the context of doctrine. That's a blatant sin. It's a
blatant sin of rebellion. You can't say, well, I'm just
not going to believe that, but I'm a Christian. Well, if I'm
wrong, grace, I throw the grace card. That's garbage. That's
not how salvation works. God teaches His people. So if
we're saying that we're going to read Scripture, and we're
not going to adhere to what it says, and we're not going to
believe what it teaches, we're just going to say, well, you
know what? You believe what you want to believe. I believe what
I'm going to believe. But I know my Jesus. And He's going to forgive
me if I'm wrong. Well, that's silly. It's silly. Some sins that are rebellious
in nature and unwilling to see the truth, like refusing fellowship
with the church. Well, I don't have to be in the
church. I don't have to be a part of a church. Then what New Testament
letter are you going to read then and apply to your life?
Name it. Maps. That's one. The maps. You can look at the maps in the
back of the Bible and you can apply those to your life very
easily without being part of a local body of believers. But
all the others, not going to happen because everything that's
commanded by the apostles through every letter they write is commanded
to the body as a whole as they interact together under one place,
under one headship, which is Jesus Christ, and under one orchestrated
authoritative polity, which are elders who oversee the teaching
of Scripture. And people go, I just don't believe
that. I don't care what you believe. That type of blatant sinfulness. People refuse it. How about people
who just are hateful? You ever met a Christian that's
hateful? And when I say hateful Christian, they're just hateful.
You know, they can't stand anybody, they can't stand anything. They
don't come, you know, I don't want to go there because the
music's too loud, or the seats are too hard, or the children
are too frustrating. I don't like that preacher because
he spits or he doesn't wear a suit. Well, you know my neighbor, she
says she loves Jesus, but I saw her stumble out of her house
the other night with a wine bottle. I know she's a reprobate going
straight to the bowels of hell." I mean, you know these people,
right? And they're not all fundamentals, fundamentalists. Some of them
are our neighbors, some of them are our family, some of them
are us. We can all be like that. But when someone shows you in
Scripture that we ought to be loving and patient and kind and
gentle, And we go, I don't care. Grace abounds. You know what,
I'll be mean if I want to. I'm going to straighten some
stuff out. God will give me grace. You've heard some people say
stuff like that. Or at least I have, many times over. That's
what Paul is talking about. Paul is talking about these people
who hold fast to their legalism. People who hold fast to their
free will. People who hold fast to, you know, I can do crack
and run around and I can do whatever I want to do and it doesn't matter
because grace abounds. You see how silly that sounds?
So we're not talking about the normal, continual war against
the flesh, the war against sin. We're talking about a blatant,
rebellious and absolutely blasphemous reality that some people live
under to say, I can continue in this because God is gracious. It's a dangerous place to be.
These are people who typically, if they're in the church, and
that's the context, we're not talking about the world, we're
talking about people who profess Christ, people who are in the body who then
have to be put under discipline, hopefully that through the shame
or the pressure of discipline that they would see their error,
and also sometimes that they could be protected from their
error, and that they would then see and repent, or be granted
repentance through that process, and say, oh wow, you know what,
I can put these things away. These types of people need rebuking,
but one of which, you know, all of which, these people distort
the Scripture. They distort the Scripture for their own angle,
for their own benefit, for their own glory, or for their own purpose.
They use what we call a pretext, and that's where they'll take
a specific sentence, or word, or phraseology out of the Bible,
and they'll say, see, it says that, but it's not talking about
that. It's not talking about that. We can't just say, oh that
fits the theme, when it's not about cooking cake, and we say
it's a recipe for cake. There's nowhere in the New Testament
that teaches us about cooking cake. So why would we have a
pretext that we use to prove how to cook a cake? Or how we
should dress? Or how we should sing? or what
we should be doing with our money outside the context there, or
how we should play our football game, or whatever else might
be there. But most importantly, where we
are in the context of the sovereignty of God and His redemption of
His people. People distort the scripture. Peter says something
about that in his second epistle in chapter 16 of 3, 316, 2 Peter
316. He says, as he does in all his
letters, talking about Paul, this is why I think Paul wrote
Hebrews, because he's talking about Paul writing to them, the
Jews. And there's only one unnamed
letter to the Jews in the New Testament, and that's Hebrews.
As He does in all His letters when He speaks in them of these
matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction
as they do the other Scriptures. And I think the question was
asked last Wednesday night, you know, where is the free will pretext? Where is it? It's not there.
We went to Joshua and we showed that it wasn't there. Even in the hardest of wood scalpels,
with the finest of razors, you can pull whatever you want to,
you can slice and just cut out an F and an R and an E and an
E and stick it somewhere. That's the closest you can get
to a proof text for that type of thing. But yet when you show
certain people the truth that it's not there, they do not want
to believe. They do not want to hold fast to a sovereign God
with a sovereign grace who is effectual in their salvation
and effectual in their preservation. They don't want to hold fast
to that. They will twist the scripture. People will use that same ability
to come into the place of the church and to say, or to the
presence of the church and to say, it's okay that I do this.
It's okay that I curse my neighbor. It's okay that I steal because
God is gracious. God is gracious. That's a distortion
of Scripture. People twist grace as a means
through which they can live unregenerate lives while professing to be
in the faith. That's John's entire argument of his first epistle.
And the litmus test of John's argument, if you ever want to
see what the condition of the heart of a believer really is
in the center of it, is that they love each other. They love each other. They're
concerned with each other. People twist grace so they can
live unregenerate lives while professing to be in faith. People
twist the idea of obedience. Not only on that side, but they
twist the idea of obedience as a means through which they can
live unregenerate lives while professing faith. Unregenerate
lives in the sense that they would ignore grace and stand
on the law, so it goes both ways. People then would twist the law
and grace as a means through which they can live disobedient
lives and be in willful sin in their actions and their affections.
They can be not loving, they can be insubmissive. They can
be impatient, they can bear false witness, and all the while they'll
say, but it's okay, grace, grace, grace. They will disobey the
Word of God at every turn when it suits them while they claim
that they're actually obeying it. And when we're called out
on it, they will say it is because of grace, it's okay. Faith with
grace alone. Faith, faith, faith in grace
alone. Or, Obedience because of grace. Either
one. Sometimes people find themselves
in a camp of trying to do what Paul is talking about here, by
abusing the grace of God and saying, I can do what I want
to do because grace abounds. While others would say, I am
doing what is right. Don't tell me what else I need
to be doing because grace abounds. And Jude We hear these words,
for certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were
designated for this condemnation. In the context here, if you don't
remember, Judah's talking about those who were destroyed like
Sodom and Gomorrah. Ungodly people who pervert the
grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and
Lord Jesus Christ. So to pervert grace is to deny
Jesus. And to pervert grace in this
context is to say that, let us sin that grace may be seen. But
it's also just as perverted to say, let us earn the salvation
that's so graciously given. These are the obvious evildoers,
like thieves and liars, haters, gossips, and also the self-righteous.
What's the old cliché of the one who gossips, or the one who's
mean and cruel and crass, and they always say, well, you know,
just gotta keep it real. Just got to keep it real. I got
to tell it like it is. I'm just telling the truth. Back
in the 90s, you know, I'm just keeping it real. They'd snap.
A little sassiness. That's the spiritual mindset
of those people. I'm just keeping it real. I'm
just telling it like it is. I'm speaking the truth. In love,
God bless their soul. That equates to forgiveness when
they murder someone. I'll be honest with you, I think
it's really stupid. We don't have the permission of God to
sin because we're saved by grace. I'm going to say that again.
We don't have God's permission to sin because we're saved by
grace. The law of God is still over
us as it is every person. The difference is we're not going
to be condemned by the law, nor measured by the law, nor judged
by the law. Praise God. Because we would never be found
anything but guilty. Paul knows that sin will be ever
present in this life. Those who claim this sinless
perfection, those who like to take the laundry list of wickedness
that they see in the church and iron it out for everybody and
say, well, this is sinful and that's sinful and this is sinful
and that's sinful. Well, it may be sinful to you
and your conscience, but the Bible hasn't commanded it, so let's
not put an undue burden on the rest of the church. You know
how easy that is for me to do? Oh, it's so easy. As a father,
I could just pretend like y'all are my children, and I could
make us all feel really bad. And I could use the Bible to
do it, and in some sense be justified in parts of it. Because it might
even be true, but the heart of which I could preach it would
be nothing but manipulation and cruelty. We're not going to be sinless.
But that in itself is not an excuse to just say, I'm not perfect. Have we not said that? Have you
ever caught yourself in a gossip and somebody says something to
you, well, I'm not perfect. I mean, it's an easy way out. We laugh
at it because it's pretty funny at the time because we're, other
than crying and running out of the room, screaming, it's not
coming out and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it happens.
What about if we catch ourselves really hating somebody? We don't
even say it. It's sinful. It's sinful. It's not good. And
it's a reminder that we have to stay focused on how we escape
the judgment of that sin. How is it that we put it to death
and don't ever do it again? Too late. We've already done
it. We're guilty of it, so we're going to suffer for it. Except
that Christ took it on Himself. See, Christ took the sin of gossip.
Christ took the sin of thieveries, Christ took the sin of sexual
immorality, Christ took the sin of unbelief, Christ took the
sin of lying, Christ took the sin of all the things that I've
ever done to murder His heart. And He put it on Himself and
He made Himself guilty when He was not guilty. And He was charged
with my sin and God satisfied the justice of His righteousness
and then said, now Jesus and His obedience belongs to you
and your wickedness belongs to Him. It's a beautiful thing. But we're never going to be sinless
until the day we're glorified. Paul talks about that in Romans
7. Let me give you a peek there. Romans 7 verse 14. It says this,
well verse 13, Did that which is good then bring death to me?
By no means. It was sin producing death in
me through what is good. In order that sin might be shown
to be sin. And through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know, this is what I wanted
to see. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of
the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own
actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing
I hate. See that? Now people will argue, oh no!
See what a legalist will argue, what a conditionalist will argue,
what do those people mean? People that believe that we have
to obey the law and believe in order to be saved. A conditionalist
is someone who says that if you are saved, then you will walk
in a sense of perfection to prove your salvation. Or your assurance,
worse, your assurance is there. Those people would say, well,
you know what, what they've done is they've violated the very
essence of syntax. They've destroyed grammar and
they've changed present tense to past tense. No, no, no, no. Why do I do what I don't want
to do? What am I doing? Oh, you meant
what you did yesterday. No, no, no. What am I doing right
now, Paul says. No, no, no. What you did last week. No, what
I am today. Oh, what you were, Paul. That's
the only way they make that work in chapter 7 is they try to say
that was Paul's pre-conversion experience. But Paul's pre-conversion resume
goes something like this. Born of Jewish parents, given
the name of the first King Saul, circumcised on the eighth day,
raised in the traditions, taught the scripture, became a Pharisee
of the Sanhedrin, and all before I was 20. According to the law,
blameless. So what the world is Romans 7
got to do with anything except when he says, hey y'all, when
the word, when the law came to me, and when the Lord opened
my eyes, I was no longer righteous and perfect, but I saw my wickedness. So Paul says that sin's gonna
be forever present until we are glorified, beloved. And because
this is true, it also is not an excuse that we continue in
sin, is it? Well, I'm going to sin. Might as well enjoy it.
I'm going to sin. Might as well get my point across.
I'm going to sin. Might as well be in control.
You know what's really true about sinful behavior? We're not in
control of it. It is in control of us. We're
not in control of sin. If you think, what are my sins?
What are the things that I fight back every fiber of my breath
with? It's that by the grace of God,
I don't lose my temper. If I lose my temper, the world
comes to a stop. And I'll shake your heads, yes,
children. I mean, you know, it's not a
good thing. I've lost my temper in front
of some church members before, and those people to this day
do not respect me, and that was 15 years ago. Because I hurt
them so bad, they're scared of me. And that's wicked, and it's
evil, and I deserve hell for the very fact that I can produce
such wrath with my mouth. But Christ took the guilt of
it all. He took the guilt of it all.
And because I know that I will sin, does it give me the right
to just go ahead and do it? Because Christ paid for it, why
would I want to? I'm really praying about teaching
through Hebrews when we're done with Romans on Wednesday. I want
to do it again. It's been a long time. I have a clearer picture
now than I did a long time ago. It's been 11 years. But just
because I will sin doesn't mean that I should. Why would I want
to add more to the penalty of Christ, in a sense? Well, He's
paid for the sin. He's already paid for this one.
Might as well go ahead and commit it. See how wrong that is? The writer of Hebrews says that
it's holding Christ up again once to public shame. It's as
if we're saying we need you to be on the cross again, Jesus,
so I can just go ahead and do what I want to do with my flesh. And
it's a vile thing. And those sins are those things
that we do in rebellion and also those things we do in omission
by not doing the things that we know we should be doing. And
beloved, if we were to take a list and we were to begin to write,
we would never get up from that list. We would never exist in
the world, but it's still not a reason for us to continue in
them. What does that mean when Paul says then, we should by
no means, we should not live in sin? How can we who died to
sin still live in it? What does he mean? Well, let's
think of it this way. We should not nourish our vices. You ever thought about that?
I've been trying to figure out a way to say this for myself
over the last few weeks. We should not nourish, I should
not feed the things that I know grieve God. I should not feed
them. I have friends who have never
been on Facebook their entire lives. I have a friend who has
never been on the internet. He's 67 years old. He's never
been on the internet in his entire life. His secretary runs his
Facebook page, runs his emails, she prints them out, puts them
on his desk. He's never been on the internet. You know why?
He heard of someone falling into sexual sin online when he was
in his forties. And he thought, I don't want
nothing to do with that mess. Now I think it's ridiculous,
but that brother's living his conscience. He's not saying that
I'm wrong. He's saying God's given me a
measure of grace that he doesn't think he wants to try to fight.
He's not going to feed. He's not going to nourish that
vice. We don't feed our flesh, we don't
set a table, a place at the table, here comes the train, for our
sinfulness. We do not feed our own spiritual
blindness and then say, oh, we're in grace. What's that bag of
chum you got right there? You know, chum's what they throw
out for sharks. What's that bag of chum? Oh, that's for my flesh. That's for my sin. Yeah, just
in case it gets hungry, you know, I'm just gonna feed it. We don't
feed it. We don't feed it. At the end, I'll tell you what
that really should look like in our lives, how we overcome
it in that regard. We don't say, it's okay to do the things that
Paul said in Romans chapter 1 that the wrath of God is coming upon.
We don't say, hey, it's okay. It's all right. It's okay to
say you're forgiven, right? But it's never okay to say it's
okay. It's not okay to sin against God. It's not okay to continue
in sin. It's not okay to follow in the
path of unrighteousness and wickedness, and I'm using those terms as
we know them in our vernacular. It's not okay. And so the war, the lines, the
battle lines have been drawn. And that's the difference. The
battle lines have been drawn for we who have the Spirit. We
are at war with our flesh. We are at war with the world.
We're at war with our own mind. We're at war with our desires
and our affections. We're at war! We're at war. The good, the bad, the ugly,
the smelly, the smelly good, and all of that in between, we're
at war. And the war is not ours to win.
It has already been won through Jesus Christ, who is the victor
over sin. He is the victor over death.
He is the victor over the judgment that belongs to us, because we
are the elect of God. And by the mercy and the love
of God, because of the love and the measure of love that He had
for us, He calls us to be born again and He could do so and
still be just because Jesus Christ took the penalty of our sin. So then the question is, how
can we who died to sin still live in it? I think the matter
is best understood with this statement. A believer who is
born of God, though he will sin, he does not love to sin all the
time. And when he finds himself in
love with sin, what does he do with it? He doesn't
say, oh well, grace. That's what Paul's talking about. He does not love the fact that
sin trips him, that temptation catches him, that the lust of
the eyes and the pride of life and the pride of possessions
rule him from time to time because they don't rule us anymore. They
don't ensnare us forever. Yes, the season that we live
in sometimes in rebellion or unbelief or faithlessness sometimes
can feel like an eternity and we can look in the mirror and
say, oh, I am lost and there is no hope for me. But there
is only one hope for us and His name is Jesus Christ. Though a believer will still
sin, he will not nourish And the idea of a believer nourishing,
encouraging, and promoting the opportunity for others to sin
as a lifestyle is absurd. And that's what Paul is talking
about. Paul is saying that it is an absolute absurdity and
it is an absolute impossibility that a believer would encourage
wickedness in his own life or in the life of others because
grace abounds. That's point number one. Point
number two, the glories of the gospel are not to be confused
with the growing of God's people, nor be married to a hyper-graced
or balanced law. So the question I want to leave
us with before we move further, because I won't have time to
deal with the other section of this text tonight, is what do
we do when we find sin? Think of this. First is that
we see it. And we see it because it is a
gift of God. It is a gracious thing that we
see it. Not all the time and every person who sees sin means
that God has gifted them the eyes to see. The law of God is
written on the heart of every human being. We know what is
right and know what is wrong. But we do see it. But as a believer,
we see it and we are not condemned because of it. We're not condemned
because of what Christ has done. And because of that, and because
we are freed from the bondage of sin, we are able to overcome
it. Christ has been risen from the
dead in the same way we live in Christ. Because our life is
hidden in Christ, we can overcome sin. But there is a power that
the enemy continues to work and tempt us with. And the power
is in us. It's a powerful thing. And it's the power of guilt,
and it's the power of self-reliance, and it's the power of self-righteousness,
even as people who believe in a sovereign grace. When we come
to see sin in our lives, and we fight the fight against our
own flesh, with our own flesh. That is the dumbest thing that
I've ever done in my life. Now, the world at large will
tell you, fake it till you make it. Put on the mask and go in
the game. Go up there, find a reason to
be happy. Smile in the midst of all the
pain. No, the Bible doesn't teach us
that. The Bible says that we have been empowered to overcome
sin because of several things that we now have the liberty
to do. One is we have the liberty to confess our sin. Not just
to God, but to each other. We have the liberty to confess
our sin. What is one of the greatest ways of knowing, of having a
hard time overcoming something, is that someone else is with
you. Someone else is there. Whether the sin be doubt, whether
the sin be grief, whether the sin be fear, or whether it be
some act of debauchery or some temptation of lucidiousness or
whatever it might be, confessing our sin to one another creates
accountability and I believe it is the resting plate of a
good conscience. Now I know that there are some congregations
who have this little mourners bench that come up here and sister
so-and-so, brother so-and-so, and they tell all the nasty laundry
to the whole assembly. I don't think that's healthy,
but I think that it's healthy sometimes to confess our sin
to someone. The Scripture teaches us to do that. We're also able
to overcome it because we are continuing in grace through faith.
When we see sin in our lives, we're not distraught and hopeless,
we are burdened and hopeful. There's a difference. There's
a difference. The flesh says, I'm done, done.
There's no way. But the gospel says, Christ took
it. And there is a way. He is the
way. Through faith, we remain under the means of grace. We
are under grace because of the gift of faith. And one thing
that I thought about today is the part of the means of grace
that's so beautiful for the believer is that we're together under
the currency of God's economy, a spiritual economy. Just like
we're doing tonight, you're under the teaching of the Word of God
by the elders, and you're in an intimate love relationship
with the church, with each other. What a beautiful combination.
This is where God grows and disciplines and prunes and establishes. The
worst thing we can do as Christians is to sit silently in the church
and never ever create any type of intimacy with the person in
front of us or behind us. It's almost like we're sitting
outside the restaurant thinking we're getting full watching people
eat inside the window. Because even though we're taught
We're taught unto the reality that we as a church are going
to interact together. We're going to live our Christian
life together. And when elders teach rightly
and the brethren and sisters love each other intimately, through
it all, Christ reigns supremely. And that is a good thing. It
is so. We also have been given the tools of war. We've been
given the tools of war, as we see throughout Scripture, Ephesians
6 and other places, that we can wage war with prayer. We can
wage war with fellowship together. We can wage war against sin in
our lives through the Word of God and through confession, as
I've already stated. And we can also wage war in our
prayer by praying rightly, where the Lord has said, lead us not
into temptation. Father, guide me with your Spirit.
Lord, give me wisdom. Father, give me strength that
is not my own. Do we want our strength to be
stronger, or do we want the superior and supreme majestic power of
Christ? There's the difference. That's
where the rubber hits the road, when we stop battling in our
flesh and we start trusting by faith in Christ as our warrior.
We embark on the primary doing of the Christian life. And friends,
sometimes people think that the doing of the Christian life,
and we talked about this a little bit last week, is our personal
sanctification. That is a fool's errand in a
blind cave in the dark. It is not going to take place,
but what we ought to do is to set out on the journey that God
has given each of us, and that is to serve each other. Because
if I am serving you, as I'm doing now with my gifts, I am less
timed to sit in my own mire and worry about my own temptations.
I cannot be tempted when I am laboring for you. And in the
same way, if you are laboring for somebody else, you cannot
be tempted as easily. Why? Because you're busy. You're busy about the Lord's
work. You're busy about somebody else but you. But what we have
a tendency to do, beloved, is that when we see sin in our lives,
we sit down and we say, OK, I've got to get it. I've got to grab
it. I've got to do it. And even when we pray, and we
do it right, and we get in the Word, and we may even be in the
fellowship of the church, we forget that our journey is not
to overcome sin. That was Christ's victory. But
our journey is to serve each other. So if we spend our time
laboring about what we need to do in our lives versus laboring
for what we can do in the lives of others, we lose the battle. We lose it. It's over. A servant
is someone who does not think of themselves. A servant is someone
who doesn't have time to worry about whether or not they have
good hygiene or whether or not they are in shape or whether
or not they get nutrition. Another word for that is a mom.
They give of themselves continually. A servant is somebody that I
worry about whether or not they're having time to go fishing or
do this or do that. That's what a dad does. He works
and he labors for the sake of his family. That's what happens. We're serving each other the
same way in the church. If we serve each other rather than
trying to, quote, sanctify ourselves, we will have an intimacy where
we can see that Christ is our sanctification. Will we have
the opportunity then as we're serving each other, primarily
in prayer and then also to encourage one another. What does it say?
To encourage one another unto love and to good deeds today. That's why it is one of the grievest
sins to the church, not just to God, but toward the church
is when we just have a very failed Intimacy with each other. Now
let me go ahead and give a caveat there. Some of us, like Brother
Jim and others who have health problems, it's hard. You can't
always be here. But when we are, we need to be
here. I remember years ago, back in the megachurch days, where
Robin would say, well, you know, you're not around. You're not
here. Well, I've been home the last 12 nights. But you're not
here when you're here. We need to be here when we're
here. God, even if it's only one person, God will use us in
their lives of the church. We preach the gospel to ourselves,
and this is the ultimate and the last thing I'll say tonight.
We preach the gospel to ourselves in each moment. And that's really
how we're going to overcome. We preach the gospel to ourselves
in each moment, trusting not in the cleanness of our own lives,
but in the perfection of the life of Jesus, the certainty
of the death of Jesus as justice for us, and the power of the
resurrection of Jesus as power for us. We have it, because we
have been baptized in Christ, we have died with Christ, and
He is victorious. So what shall we say then? Are
we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. 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 were baptized into
His death? 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 Father, we too might walk in newness of life. And
so I'll leave this with us and we'll talk about it some next
week. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. He overcame the
penalty of sin and He wasn't due the penalty of sin. And by
Him, we also are going to escape that penalty, and we are going
to escape that power, and we are going to escape that death. So therefore, we do not have
to live in sin, because Christ is our life. Let's pray. We thank
you, Lord, for just an amazing truth, Father, a continual, overwhelming,
and perfect picture of everything that we are in Christ. And Lord,
I know many of us might come to the place after we hear this
type of teaching and we'll focus on the negative aspects of what
we've learned and we'll look at our sin and then we'll start
to sit and do the exact same thing that we talked about we
should not be doing. Lord, drive us to the gospel
and drive us to the service of each other. Drive us to confess
our sins to one another as well as to you. Father, help us to
stand and move into those things that you've called us to in the
ministry that you've given us, in the journey that you've equipped
us for, and the talents and the gifts that we have for one another.
Let us be about your business in our lives instead of trying
to be Christ, trying to pay for our own sins. And Lord, in that
same thing, Father, help us to correct those around us who would
use grace as a crutch to continue in sin. Help us to see that discipline
starts one-on-one, that church discipline, Father, starts with
intimacy, that we might correct one another, that no one else
would be the knowledge of it. Father, through it all that we
do so as spiritual ones who are trusting not in ourselves and
our own morality, but God by faith and the one who saved us
and who lived in a way that we could not to satisfy your holy
requirements, Father, and most importantly, to satisfy your
holy justice. We pray for those among us, Father,
for those in our lives who use grace as an excuse to continue
in sin. God, would you open their eyes
to see Would you bring them to repentance? Would you bring them
to faith in Christ Jesus? And Father, would you help them
also to see that it's not always about the ugly things of life
that constitute sin, but Father, sometimes it's about those things
that we hold dear in our heart that are idols or the attitudes
of our mind or the hatred in our soul toward others. That
none of us are perfect. None of us are worthy. None of
us are obedient. But God, by your grace, we can
walk in a life whereby we war against sin. And we pray that
you would help us to continue in that walk. And as sin comes,
Lord, we stand before your throne. And it is a throne of grace.
It is not a throne of justice, for justice has been served.
But God, a throne of grace. And it is in that power and in
the authority of the gracious one, Jesus Christ the righteous,
that we stand, that we pray, and that we live in His name,
amen.