©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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1/30/00
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Final Freedom Foundations
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Romans 6:11-14
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1/30/00 Final Freedom Foundations
We are nearing the end
of our series on the freedom offered to us
through Christ.
We are nearing it,
but not quite there yet.
For much of this study
we have been home-based
in four verses in Romans chapter 6,
verses 11-14.
We have not yet completed our study of those
verses,
but the past two weeks
we pulled out of them long enough
to look at a powerful lie used by Satan
against the Christian
to keep the people of God
under continued bondage to sin,
even after we come to Christ.
We saw the way in which
Satan attempts to manipulate
our attitudes toward both our needs
and our God
in an attempt to bring us into the place
where we believe that we must choose
between meeting our needs,
or obeying our God.
If we choose obedience,
believing that our God is demanding that
obedience at the expense of meeting our needs,
it will twist and distort our concept of our
God,
blinding us to the one thing we need
more than anything else -
a clear understanding
of the depth of His love for us.
The church world is filled with people
who are attempting to obey a God
they do not really trust,
a God whom they believe
is demanding from them
an obedience that will rob them
of the things they need most in life.
Some of them hold on for a little while,
until their perceived needs finally overwhelm
them
and they turn their backs on their God
in a frantic attempt to meet
what they believe to be their needs.
Others will keep up their rigid obedience
to this unreasonable God of theirs for a lifetime,
but in the process they become bitter,
judgmental,
ugly little people
who live out the same pathetic pattern
revealed to us by Christ
through the elder brother in the parable of
the prodigal son.
You remember his words, don't you,
when his father came outside to get him
and invite him to the celebration
of his brother's homecoming?
9 Luke 15:29 "But he answered and said to
his father, 'Look! For so many years I
have been serving you, and I have never
neglected a command of yours; and yet you
have never given me a kid, that I might be
merry with my friends;
Luke 15:30 but when this son of yours
came, who has devoured your wealth with
harlots, you killed the fattened calf for
him. '
That is the Christian
who has believed the lie
and chooses obedience
believing it will not meet his needs.
He resents the joy
and the freedom of spirit he sees
in his fellow Christians
who have come to understand
what it is to live with God on the
basis of grace.
He lives surrounded by great wealth
and yet cannot see it.
And then comes the father's response,
a response in which I hear
a tremendous amount of pain.
The father says simply,
Luke 15:31 ... 'My child, you have always
been with me, and all that is mine is
yours...
Do you know what I hear the father saying there?
I hear him saying,
"My son, I have loved you since the day you were
born,
but you will not receive my love,
and I have always met your needs perfectly,
but you will not receive from me.
I cannot give you
what you will not receive,
and your anger,
and jealousy,
and mistrust of me
has walled you off
from the one who loves you more than any
other."
I understand what it is
to look at our past and tell ourselves
that we just didn't get a fair shake in life.
"...if only God would have given me
a different childhood,
or a different set of experiences..."
And I understand what it is
to look at the weak areas in our lives,
and hold God to blame
for not giving us the same advantages we
think He gave others.
I understand what it is
to bring out our list of grievances against our
Creator
and hold them up to Him and declare:
"...you have never given me a kid, that I
might be merry with my friends..."
But I also know
that all such thoughts are rooted
in that same hideous lie
that our God cannot be trusted
and that His love for us
cannot be relied upon.
..."Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not
eat from any tree of the garden'?"
Now certainly I know
that some of you were deeply wounded in the
past.
And I know, too, that many of you
are wrestling with difficult circumstances in
your lives right now.
But I also know there is nothing you can place into
the hands of your God
that He cannot not take
and reshape into good in your life.
Reshaping evil into good
is one of the many things He does best.
Do you know what I think happens sometimes
in God's attempts to bring healing into our
lives?
We will become aware
of some great evil
that has intruded into our lives.
And we will look at it
and then cry out to our God,
"Lord! Look at this great evil!"
And He will respond,
"Yes, my child, it is a very great evil indeed.
Now I want you to place that evil into my hands
and allow Me
to bring healing into your life,
and to transform that evil into
good."
And we will respond to Him,
"But Lord! Look at the degree to which
this great evil has affected my life.
Look at the pain it has caused me,
and look at the things I have lost because of it,
and look at the way it has affected other
people's lives,
and look at the suffering I have endured
because of it.
And, Lord, look at the roots of this evil,
and look at the way in which
it has been handed down from generation to
generation,
and look at the effect it could have on
those who come after me,
and look at this...
and look at that...
and look at this over here..."
And three months,
or three years,
or thirty years later
when we have examined
and analyzed
and understood this great evil from every
possible angle,
and we once again invite our Lord
into our thinking,
He will respond,
"Yes, my child, I certainly agree it is a great evil,
and now if you are finished examining its
greatness,
will you place it into My hands
and allow me to reshape it into good in your
life?"
Satan comes along and says,
"Look how great an evil you have had to endure.
What kind of God would allow you
to suffer in such a way?"
And our God responds,
"I am the kind of God
who both can and will take that great evil
and work it together for great good in your
life,
if only you will place it into My hands."
All of which is to say
that the heart of Satan's attacks against us
is to keep us forever suspicious of our God,
doubting whether He understands,
or whether He cares,
or whether He truly does love us.
Once that lie has found a foot-hold in our minds,
any further progress toward true freedom is
impossible
until the underlying lie is recognized
and defeated.
Now, for the rest of our time this morning
I want to take us back into our Romans 6
passage
and allow this remarkable passage
to pull together for us
the basic truths we've encountered
throughout this series.
We've bounced around a bit in our study of these
four verses,
but I now want us to return to them
and to move through them progressively, as
they were written,
because they provide us with
what I have come to see as
perhaps the most powerful, unified, single
statement in Scripture
of God's overall program for freeing the
believer from the power of sin.
I'll read the passage for us in it's entirety,
and then we'll study our way through it.
In Romans 6:11-14 Paul writes:
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
Rom. 6:12 ¶ Therefore do not let sin reign
in your mortal body that you should obey
its lusts,
Rom. 6:13 and do not go on presenting the
members of your body to sin as
instruments of unrighteousness; but
present yourselves to God as those alive
from the dead, and your members as
instruments of righteousness to God.
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under
grace.
Now, we have already invested
quite a bit of time in verse 11,
but everything that follows in verses 12-14
builds upon that statement,
so I want to remind us once again
what Paul is saying
when he says to us:
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
If you were with us a month or so ago
when we were studying this verse
you'll remember the importance of that
word "consider".
At the time
I compared that verse to those pictures
that appear to be nothing more than
a mass of meaningless blobs of color
until you force your eyes out of focus
in just the right way
and suddenly discover a 3-dimensional
world filled with a remarkable sense of depth and
reality.
Through that illustration I wanted us to understand
that the beginning of our freedom from sin,
the starting place,
the foundation of everything our God is
doing in our lives in this whole area,
is based first of all upon the recreative work God has
already accomplished in our lives through Christ,
and then, second, upon our staring at that truth,
our wrestling with it,
our chewing on it,
our churning over it,
our CONSIDERING it
until what seemed like meaningless words
suddenly becomes a living,
vital,
powerful reality in our lives.
The calling of religion
is the calling to work harder
to become more of what God wants us to be.
The calling of true Christianity
is to consider,
to discover the truth of who we have already
become in Christ.
God does not want you to try to become holy for
Him,
He wants you to discover
that you already are holy through Him.
And I want to emphasize a crucial distinction once
again.
Paul is not simply saying
that God now sees us as holy
because He sees us through the blood of
Christ,
Paul is saying that we actually ARE holy.
I know we've been here before,
and we'll be here again in the future
because the forces that fight against this
single truth
are both powerful and persistent.
I want us to listen carefully to Paul's words in
Ephesians chapter 2.
These are words written in an open letter to all
Christians,
at all times,
throughout all of history.
These are words written to every true Christian in
this room this morning,
no matter whether you are making right choices
or wrong choices,
no matter whether you are standing upon a
solid foundation of righteous living,
or whether you are living out
destructive, sinful behavior patterns.
Paul writes:
Eph. 2:1 And you were dead in your
trespasses and sins,
Eph. 2:2 in which you formerly walked
according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the
air, of the spirit that is now working in the
sons of disobedience.
Eph. 2:3 Among them we too all formerly
lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging
the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath, even
as the rest.
Now, I want us to continue reading the next 3
verses,
but before we go on
I just want to be sure we are hearing
the verb tenses in this passage.
...and you WERE dead,
...in which you FORMERLY WALKED,
...we too all FORMERLY LIVED in the
lusts of our flesh,
...and WERE by nature children of
wrath...
Now, listen to where he goes next-
Eph. 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy,
because of His great love with which He
loved us,
Eph. 2:5 even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together
with Christ ( by grace you have been
saved),
Eph. 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and
seated us with Him in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus...
What happens with those verb tenses
as Paul moves ahead to talk to us
about the changes God has brought into our
lives through Christ?
...God MADE us alive together with Christ...
...He RAISED us up with Him,
...He SEATED us with Him in heavenly
places...
They stay in the past tense.
And this is just one of dozens of passages
throughout the New Testament
all communicating this one central truth
that at the time we come to Christ
God recreates us at the very core of our
being
into eternal new creations
that are absolutely and eternally
holy,
and righteous,
and pure,
and perfectly pleasing in every way to God Himself.
How old are you?
16?
20?
25?
35?
45 or 55 or 65 or 85?
From the day you entered this world,
and every year you have lived since then,
in fact every day and every hour you've lived
since then,
countless voices have been telling you who you
are.
At the top of that list now is your own voice,
telling yourself who you are.
But most of the words and ideas your own voice is
now using
have come to you from other sources.
Dad and Mom had a lot of input.
So did those teachers at school,
telling you you're an A student,
or a B student,
or a C or D or F student.
You're a high achiever,
or a low achiever.
Uncles, and aunts, and cousins,
and brothers and sisters,
and employers and employees,
and friends and enemies,
and in fact every person we've ever met
has contributed something to our perception of
who we are.
And the voices don't stop there.
The country we live in,
and our economic bracket,
and the attitudes and values of the
culture around us,
and in fact every event and experience and
circumstance that has ever touched our lives
has contributed to our perception of
ourselves.
I mention this
because I want us to see that
it is that backdrop against which
we then hear the voice of our God
saying to us,
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
When we consider that truth,
when we seriously begin wrestling with the
idea that we are now God's Holy Ones,
pure and perfect in every way,
well-pleasing to our God
at the deepest level of our being,
we do so in the context
of countless other voices around us,
and within us,
all of whom are telling us something else.
EX. Picture yourself in a race in a great arena,
an arena filled with thousands of people,
and they are all there just to watch you run.
You take your mark at the starting line,
and spring into action as the gun goes off.
You have been assigned the lane closest to the
spectators,
and as you start running
you hear the people's comments as you
pass.
"You'll never even finish the race!"
"You'll probably finish dead last!"
"You run like an idiot!"
"There's no way you're going to win."
How do you think those comments
will affect your ability to keep focused on the
race?
That is the way I picture the Christian
as we come to this truth of our new identity in
Christ.
Unless we consciously choose
to set aside every other voice we've ever heard
about ourselves,
and listen only to the voice of our God,
we will never hear it.
But if we do allow Him to become our ultimate
source of truth about ourselves,
if we ... consider ourselves to be dead to
sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus...
we will discover within ourselves
a basis for changed behavior
unlike anything we have ever known before.
Rather than continuing to tell ourselves
that we really should get our act together and
behave better,
we will find ourselves recognizing
that sinful behavior
is completely inconsistent with who we really
are.
Increasingly we will say to ourselves,
because I am God's Holy one,
because I am His ambassador,
because He has made me His son,
his daughter,
and because I now serve as His priest here on
this earth,
my selfish, petty, foolish sinful behavior just
doesn't fit with who I now am.
Now, I've invested so much time
in reviewing this once again,
because of what happens in the next verse
here in our Romans passage.
You see, the greatest dissenting voice we will ever
hear to the truth of our new identity in Christ
is the voice of our own daily inconsistent
performance.
And because of this,
it is that dissenting voice
that Paul then addresses next in this
passage.
But we cannot effectively deal with that dissenting
voice
until we have first heard and believed the truth.
And next week we'll pick up the passage right here
and move on to that dissenting voice.