There won't be any service this
evening, you might have guessed. It's going to get ugly in a little
while here. In fact, after the Bible class,
we'll look outside and see what's happening and make a judgment
call. Because I think anything that falls is going to stick
at this point, it looks like. So we'll keep an eye on it. In
Romans chapter 6, we're in verse 15. This is Such a needful passage of Scripture.
We've been looking, of course, in the Book of Romans for some
time now, and through the first several chapters of Romans, Paul
clearly teaches how God saves a sinner by His grace, through
faith in Christ, without the works of the law. And then now,
in these last several lessons, he's dealing with what happens
once God does save a sinner by His grace, through faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ, without the works of the law. Here's what
happens. Look at verse 15. What then?
Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace?
He's been making that case for several chapters. We are not
under the law. In fact, by the deeds of the
law, no flesh will be justified in God's sight. If you are what
the scripture calls of the law, you're doomed before God. You
have no hope. You're on a standing of law and
obedience before God. You have no hope because none
can measure up. All have sinned and come short.
But Does that mean we go out and live for ourselves once God
saves us? Now that we're under grace, we
can do what we please because grace will just cover it up and
everything will be fine. God forbid. God forbid. That's not the way believers
act. When you're a new creature, you act like a new creature,
don't you? That's what he's simply saying. Know ye not, verse 16,
that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants
you are, to whom you obey, Who did Adam obey in the beginning?
Did he obey God or the devil? He obeyed God for a while, perhaps,
but when Satan said, this fruit is awful desirable, it's pleasant
to the eye and desirable for food, and the Lord has withheld
this from you, and he shouldn't have done that. He didn't have
your best interest at heart when he forbade you to eat this fruit.
And we'll see the wording in a minute exactly what he said.
But when Adam heard this, when Eve heard it, she disobeyed God
and obeyed Satan. And really, obeying Satan is
to serve ourselves, isn't it? Because that's the way the devil
comes. He comes saying, what would be best for you is if you
ate this fruit. He didn't say you need to serve
me instead of God, did he? That's not the way he comes.
He says you need to do what's right for you, not God. You see
the difference? So that's why it talks about
servants of sin, which is us, not the devil. We can't blame
the devil for our sin. Sin is what we are. That's our
nature. And the devil appeals to that.
There's a big difference. The one is blaming our evil on
somebody else like they did in the garden. Adam blamed it on
Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. When the truth is we have sinned. We have sinned. David said before God, against
thee only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. That's
the truth of it. But who did he obey? He obeyed
the devil. Because he thought it was in
his best interest. So he obeyed self, really, at
the bottom of it. But look at verse 17. But God bethanked that
ye were the servants of sin. But by God's grace, without works,
the gift of God, faith is the gift of God, not of works, lest
any man should boast. By grace, through faith in Christ,
you have obeyed from the heart. That form of doctrine which was
delivered to you. That's what faith is. It's obey. It's the obedience of faith,
Paul calls it in another place. And that's what it is. You obey
God when he says, come to Christ, bow to Christ. Abandon your own
self and your own works and your own foolish notion of righteousness
before God and come to Christ. Hear my son. Believe him. Bow to him. And we obeyed by
grace, didn't we? without works. We are not under
the law but under grace. Being then, verse 18, made free
from sin, you became the servants of righteousness. That's what
we do when we come to Christ. We say we're leaving off serving
ourselves and the devil We're going to serve you from now on.
That's what we're going to do. And we say that when we get in
the waters of baptism. That doesn't wash any sin away.
That's just you publicly confessing, I'm not my own anymore. I'm his.
That's what that is. And the apostle here in verse
15, he asks essentially the same question that he did in verse
one of chapter six. Look back at that. What shall
we say then? Shall we continue in sin that
grace may abound? And then in verse 15, what then,
shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? It's essentially the same question,
isn't it? And he gives not a different answer, but the same answer in
a different way. He uses a different illustration
in this passage, as we'll see in a moment. He emphasizes the
importance of the question. Shall we, and there are many
who claim to have obeyed, claim to have believed, claim to be
Christ. They call themselves Christian,
but they're still serving themselves. And that's what Paul's dealing
with here. He emphasizes the importance of this question.
And we won't grasp it without divine revelation. We won't be
able to answer the question, just like any truth from God.
This comes not by reasoning, but by grace. And in the first instance here,
as we saw, Paul illustrates this truth by our death to sin. We
saw that in the first 12 or 13, 14 verses of chapter 6 there.
We're dead to sin and alive unto God. Just the opposite of what
we were before. Before, we were dead to God and
alive unto sin. But God has changed all that
by His grace. And He introduces here, now in
this context, Such a simple and undeniable principle. He's simply
saying this, whoever you serve, that's whose servant you are.
Is that complicated? Whoever you're serving, that's
whose servant you are. That's what he said. It's that
simple. And that's one of the things,
of course, that we love about the truth of God and how it's
so easily distinguishable from error is because of the simplicity
of it. It exalts God in all of his persons
and puts man in the dust, and it does so in such simple and
clear and undeniable terms that it's easily recognizable, isn't
it, from error? It's very easy. And so he gives
us a different illustration here, answering essentially the same
question. Salvation in the experience of
God's grace Once God has done that new creation work in your
heart, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. That's what
that word is, creature. It's Christ doing for you what
you can't do for yourself. And He does that for you and
He does it in you. We could never muster up faithfulness
to Him. That's not something that comes
naturally to man. Faith is not of ourselves. We
never would have believed if not for His grace. And we're
not going to serve Him if not for His grace. He said, without
me you can do nothing. And nothing is pretty simple,
isn't it? It's pretty clear. And that's right. But in the
experience of His saving grace, there's a change of mind in there.
That's what repentance is. Again, very simple definition.
It means you changed your mind about some things. You changed
your mind about who God is. Now he's not somebody you're
running from. He's somebody you're running to. He's somebody you
bow to. And loving, you fall in love.
It's a change of heart. Isn't it? He said, I'll give
you a new heart. And that new heart's not like the old one.
No, it loves the Lord Jesus and it serves Him and worships Him.
And then also, it's a change of behavior. Isn't that right? Walk worthy, he said in Ephesians
5, of the calling wherewith you are called. And those that war,
those who God has called to be soldiers, entangle, if not themselves,
in the affairs of this life, that He may please him who hath
chosen him to be a soldier. He said, we reckon that if he
died for us, then we ought not to live for ourselves, but unto
him who died for us and rose again. And all of these scriptures,
we can see all through the word of God that this is true. There's
a change. We're changed. When he saves
us, we're changed. And there's going to be another
change too, isn't there? Salvation has to do with change in our
experience of it, doesn't it? He changed us. He brought us
from darkness into light. What a difference He's made.
But Paul said, yet when this mortal shall put on immortality,
then we shall be changed again. We'll sure enough be changed
from mortal to immortal, from this body of death to His very
presence. And so salvation is a work that
brings about change. And Paul's not speaking here
of the cause of salvation. That's what he's been talking
about in the first several chapters of the book. The cause of salvation
is God's free, where you hear Wednesday night, you remember,
what kind of grace does God bestow upon sin? Free, sovereign, distinguishing,
electing grace. That's how he saved, that's the
cause of our salvation. Now he's talking about the result
of our salvation. What happens once He saves us?
And you can't make the result of something the prerequisite
for it. And that's what religion tends
to do. If you do this, this, and this,
God will save you. No, wait a minute. Unless He
saves you, you can't do this, this, and this. We love Him because
He first loved us. That's the truth of it. And if
you turn it around, who gets the glory? It's a matter of who
gets the glory. And God said, I won't give it
to somebody else. It's my glory. And it is His
glory. And we, by His grace, bow and
acknowledge that we love Him, we serve Him, we worship Him
because He did something for us. You can't come to me unless
my Father draws you, He said. You cannot make the result of
something the prerequisite for it. That's basically flawed thinking.
And that's what That's just the doctrines of men, isn't it? They
teach for doctrine the commandments of men. Never learning, they're
unable to come to a knowledge of the truth because by nature
we believe a lie. We can't believe the truth. The
fruit of the Spirit is manifest wherever the Spirit is. That's
another way of seeing what Paul said here. When God's Spirit is present,
The fruit of the Spirit is present. And you notice there in Galatians
6, he didn't say the fruits of the Spirit. It's one fruit that
manifests itself in all these different ways. Why is that important?
Because you can't have one without the other. It's the fruit of
the Spirit. It's love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
faith. Faith is the fruit of the Spirit.
And we don't see God or know God, believe on Him without faith. So it starts with the Spirit
and it ends with the Spirit. It starts with Christ and it
ends with Christ. Our experience of salvation starts
with the Spirit of God coming where we are and indwelling us. And where the Spirit is present,
the fruit of the Spirit is manifest every time. Ephesians 2.10, we
are His workmanship. created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk
in them. It's not left up in the air,
is it? It's not you ought to do, you know, you ought to serve
God. If you're his, you will serve
him. That's what he's saying in this text. If you're God's
servant, you'll serve God. If you're the devil's servant,
you'll serve yourself and you'll serve him. Now, whose servant
are we? It's not a matter for me to determine.
I can't tell you whose servant you are. Romans 14, 4 asks this
question. Who are you that judges another
man's servant? To his own master he standeth
or falleth. It's not up to me to judge that,
is it? And Paul doesn't write these words in our text here
in Romans chapter 6 to make us critics of one another's behavior.
And so I said, oh, you're serving sin, you know. That's not up
to me to judge. You'll stand or fall to your
own master, whoever that is. And that's another thing that
we've got to be careful of. People love to judge everybody
else. Christ said, what are you doing looking for the splinter
in everybody else's eye when you've got a beam in your own
eye? You can't see because you've got such a beam in your own eye
and you're judging everybody else's splinters. Judge not that
you be not judged. If you wanna be a judge, think
about God judging you and giving you what you deserve. That'll
get us off of that real quick. I don't wanna be judged of God,
do you? And so I don't think I feel man
enough to be judging anybody else by his grace, I don't. And he's simply stating here
the irrefutable truth that whoever you serve, That's whose servant
you are. It's just really so simple, isn't
it? If we serve ourselves, then we're our own God. And if we
serve God, it's by His sovereign, distinguishing, free, electing
grace that we do so. It's the result of that grace,
that work of salvation. in us. Was it Joshua that stood
up and said, you decide today who you're going to serve. As
for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord.
That's a determination that everybody makes one way or the other. You're
going to serve one of the other gods, which is all boils down
to serving self, because you'll choose the God that you like
without God's grace. Now, you'll choose a God that
you like based on what he'll do for you. You're serving yourself. Or, by God's grace, you can bow
to Christ and say, my Lord and my God, like Thomas did. He's
my God. And I'm gonna serve him. I'm
gonna serve him by his grace. That's just the way it happens.
And it doesn't matter what your doctrine is on paper. You think
about this, and I wanna show you from the text that this doesn't
matter. What your doctrine is on paper is one thing. You may
be a Calvinist or whatever on paper. in profession or in creed,
but it's what you are in reality. It's what you are at the grocery
store. It's what you are when you're laying in bed by yourself.
That's what you are when you're alone with God and in your dealings
with men before God. That's who you are, not who you
profess to be. Who you agree with, you can express
with your lips, can't you? You can say, I agree with your
doctrine or your doctrine or that doctrine. Here's what we
believe. We can have a doctrinal statement. We can express that
with our lips. But I'll tell you this, where
a man's treasure is, that's where his heart is. And that's expressed
by everything else that he is and does. You can lie with your
lips, but your actions won't lie. Where a man's treasure is,
God said, that's where your heart will be. That's where your heart
will be. And it'll be evident to everybody.
You can fool people for a while, but you can't fool God for a
second. Notice the words in our text,
from the heart. Look back at the text, from the
heart. Verse 17, but God be thanked
that you were the servants of sin, that you have obeyed from
the heart, not just professed that you agree with it. You've
obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine, which was delivered
to you. It's heart doctrine, not paper
doctrine or lip doctrine. It's heart doctrine. Is that
where you are before God? That's the question this morning.
The heart here is the seat of thoughts, passions, desires,
appetites, affections, purposes, endeavors. That just about covers
it, doesn't it? Everything you feel, everything
you think, everything you do comes from the heart. And that's
how you're to obey the gospel, from the heart. Oh boy, you see
why it's by grace and not by work. Oh, if that was, Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. That's what's
required of you. You gonna do that without grace? Not for a
second. When left to serve who he pleases,
a man will serve who he loves. Your heart, your heart will betray
you. Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou
me? That's the question our Lord
asked. And look at verse 19, we'll have to hurry, but look
at verse 19 back in our text. He said, I speak after the manner
of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as you have
yielded your members, servants to uncleanness and to iniquity
unto iniquity, even so now yield your members, servants to righteousness
unto holiness. You see what he's saying? He's
saying, I speak after the manner of men. He said, I'm using an
earthly illustration here of servants and masters just like
he did before of being dead to the law and not being under the
obligation to the law anymore because you're dead. The law
is to people that are alive, that are under the law. And you're
dead by God's grace to the law. Christ has accomplished and fulfilled
the law and obeyed the law for us and we're not responsible.
Thank God we're not responsible. to keep his law before God because
we fail. We fail every moment. But now
again, he's speaking in the manner of men. He's using this earthly
illustration of servants and masters. And he says he does
that because of the infirmity of our flesh. He's not just saying
the Romans are not real bright. He's saying that none of us are
real bright. We don't understand the things
of God unless they're brought down into earthly terms that
we can understand and relate to the things. to the spiritual
things. And he makes a comparison here. Look at it. When you were the
servants of sin, verse 20, you were free from righteousness,
weren't you? Did you ever give a thought for the things of God
when you didn't know God? Oh, you might have been a little
religious, but not the true things of God. As far as it come down
to, am I going to please God or am I going to please myself?
That was an easy choice before. There wasn't anything holding
you back. What fruit had you then in those things where You're
now ashamed, for the end of those things is death. But now, being
made free from sin and become servants to God, you have your
fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. He's saying
just like you yielded yourselves to yourself before without a
thought for God, let's do that same thing only in reverse. Isn't
that what he said? Let's serve God the way we used
to serve ourselves, wholeheartedly, with both hands, earnestly, shall
we? What an exhortation. And what
a clear comparison here. When we were ungodly, unregenerate,
unbelievers, Let's behave the way we did then, but only in
reverse. Let's serve him as well as we
served sin. Let's serve him as wholeheartedly as we served ourselves. The truth that he insists upon
here that servants serve their masters. The very thing that
defines a servant as a certain master servant and the master
as master of a certain servant is the service rendered by one
to the other. That's what defines it. Before
we knew God, we served ourselves in the iniquity of our nature,
he said, in the sinfulness of our wicked hearts. And we did
so to the exclusion of any righteous thoughts. We didn't have any
thought toward God. We didn't have any motive that
was honorable and honest before God or any inclination to worship
Him. We served ourselves exclusively.
Let's serve Him that way. Without regard for God. Let's
take no thought now for ourselves. Don't be anxious to serve ourselves. Isn't that what the Lord said?
That's what the Gentiles, that's what the godless people do. They're
always worried about, what am I going to eat? What am I going
to wear? What am I going to, you know, how's it going to be with
me? He said, you seek first His kingdom,
and He'll make sure you don't lack anything. Let's serve Him,
not ourselves. Genesis 3, 5, here's what Satan
said. For God doth know that in the
day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and you
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil, determining good and
evil. You shall be as gods. And that's who we serve. We served
our God, which is me, ourselves. Paul reminds us of this here,
that we used to serve another God. And He does it to exhort
us to serve our new Master the same way. Did you notice the
words, even so now? The way you used to serve yourself,
even so now. Serve the Lord Jesus Christ without
reserve, without compromise, and without the half-heartedness
that plagues our flesh. We didn't serve ourselves half-heartedly.
We woke up every morning Thinking about how I can promote myself,
enrich myself, make a better life for myself. And we went
to bed thinking the same thing. David said, I meditate upon thee
in the night watches. Let's wake up thinking about
him and how we can honor him today. And let's go to bed the
same way. How can we honor the Lord Jesus
Christ? King David said, my soul shall
be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise
thee with joyful lips when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate
upon thee in the night watches." What do you think about when
you're in your bed? Yourself or him? That's who we are. That'll determine whose servant
we are. Before, all that satisfied our soul was meditating upon
our own selfish interests and advantages. But what about now? Our old nature hadn't changed,
we know that. But bless the Lord, and praise Him forever. He made
us free from sin. Is that what verse 22 said? Made
us free from sin. By the sacrifice of Himself,
and now by His grace, we're not the servants of sin anymore,
but we desire to please Him and serve Him. Paul said, I'm a servant
of Jesus Christ. A bond slave of Jesus Christ. Colossians 3 24 it says knowing
that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance
For you serve the Lord Christ Isn't it an honor to be a servant
of the king? That was Paul's ambition The
servant that was his title He didn't he didn't have a doctorate
of theology. He said I'm Paul a servant of
Jesus Christ I'm not a doctor of anything or a master of anything.
I'm a servant. I'm a servant. And may God grant
this morning that we heed this exhortation of Paul to yield. That word yield. Let me define
that for you and we're through. He said yield your members as
servants unto him. What does that word yield mean?
It means to place a person or thing at one's disposal. Isn't that simple and beautiful?
We're at your disposal. Isn't that what Saul of Tarsus
said when the Lord met him on the road to Damascus? Lord, what
would you have me do? I'm at your disposal. That's
what a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ will say and do. May we in thought, word, and
deed be at the disposal of our gracious, loving master. May
he make it so if it's not already. Let's bow in prayer.