©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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4/2/00
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The Second Truth We Do Not Believe
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4/2/00 The 2nd Truth We Do Not Believe
Everything we need for a totally fulfilling
and effective life with Christ
we have already received
and now possess in fullest measure.
I am speaking to those of you who are Christians,
those of you
who have already come to God
through faith in Christ's death as full
payment for your sins.
And for those of us who are Christians,
everything we need for a totally fulfilling
and effective life with Christ
we have already received
and now possess in fullest measure.
The reason we frequently do not experience that
fulfillment
or that effectiveness
is because we either do not know what we
have received,
or do not believe it is real.
I like the way Peter said it
in the first chapter of his second letter to us.
In II Peter 1:9 he says,
For he who lacks these qualities is blind or
short-sighted, having forgotten his
purification from his former sins.
He says that
when we feel as though we lack what is needed
for truly effective Christian living,
it is not because we really lack anything,
but rather because we are either blinded to
or have forgotten
the work God already accomplished in our lives
when we first came to Him in faith.
We are involved in a study of the 6th chapter of the
book of Romans,
and occasionally we slop over
into the 7th and 8th chapters
because all three of them
were written by Paul
for the purpose of equipping God's people
with the knowledge we need
for dealing with the ongoing sin issues in
our lives.
And most recently
I, and hopefully, along with me,
you as well have made a remarkable
discovery through this passage.
We have discovered
that, when Paul reaches this crucial point in his
writing,
this point at which he addresses
what is perhaps the most emotionally
charged
and often times agonizing issue
in all of Christian living,
when he writes for the purpose
of equipping God's people
with the knowledge we need
in order to find freedom
and victory in the moral battles in
our lives,
rather than injecting
some dramatic new piece of truth or knowledge
into our minds,
rather than turning our eyes forward
to some great spiritual jewel
that we have not yet received,
Paul turns our eyes back
to what God has already accomplished in our
lives,
back to what He did for us
and in us at the time we entered His
family.
And in doing this
he is saying to us,
"What you need for the life you want to lead
you already possess.
But you are not experiencing the benefits of it
either because you don't know you possess it,
or because you don't believe it is true."
And so far in our most recent approach to this
passage
we have seen Paul single out 4 changes
that took place within our lives
at the time we came to Christ,
changes that were sovereignly enacted by God
Himself
in the lives of each of us
at the time we entered His family,
changes upon which rest
God's entire program
for bringing us freedom from sin.
And Paul's message to us is not complicated.
He is telling us that
to the degree we accept
and build our lives upon the reality of these 4
changes,
to that degree we will discover
the power,
the freedom,
and the victory we long for
in the moral battles of our lives.
Let me list those four changes for us once again,
and then we'll look more closely
at the second one on the list.
1. The change in our true identity.
2. The change in our relationship to the moral law of
God.
3. The change in our relationship to sin.
4. The change in our relationship to righteousness.
We have spent the past two weeks
looking at the first one on the list,
the change in our true identity.
We've talked at length
both about the way in which God
has already recreated us
at the deepest level of our being
into pure, holy, righteous children of God,
and also about why we have so much trouble
accepting that as true.
And then last week
we spent most of our time
talking about some things
that can help us grow in our acceptance
of that recreative work
that our Lord has already accomplished within
us.
Now, for the rest of our time this morning
I want us to move on to the second truth we
don't really believe,
the change God has already accomplished
in our relationship to His moral law.
And as we return to this,
we are obviously also returning to a topic
into which we have already invested
a whole bunch of time.
But we are not done with it yet.
And to get us started,
let me just state it for us once again right out of
the text,
so we can hear it in Paul's own words.
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under
grace.
And then again in Romans 7 he says,
Rom. 7:1 Or do you not know, brethren
(for I am speaking to those who know the
law), that the law has jurisdiction over a
person as long as he lives?...
Rom. 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also
were made to die to the Law through the
body of Christ, that you might be joined to
another, to Him who was raised from the
dead, that we might bear fruit for God...
Rom. 7:6 But now we have been released
from the Law, having died to that by
which we were bound, so that we serve in
newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of
the letter.
Throughout this passage
Paul is once again talking to us
about the way in which
yet another huge transformation
has already taken place in our lives.
He is telling us that
when we came to Christ
the moral law of God
forever ceased to be the governing
authority of our lives,
and it was replaced by the Person of Christ
Himself.
I know this is scary stuff for us.
I know the confusion,
and the fear,
and the misunderstanding
that can so quickly engulf us
when we start talking about our no longer being
under the law.
Having related to our Creator
on the basis of His moral law
for our entire lives,
even though we know that the law
was powerless to bring about permanent changes
within us,
still the law is something we understand,
and something we draw comfort from.
But when God talks with us
about His removing us
from a relationship with Him based upon our
performance as measured by the moral law of God,
He does so not because our behavior doesn't
matter,
but rather because all attempts
to change our behavior
through approaching God
on the basis of His moral law
will always ultimately fail.
Two statements,
one from the book of Galatians,
and the other from the book of Acts
will show you what I mean.
In Galatians 3:21 Paul says this,
Is the Law then contrary to the promises of
God? May it never be! For if a law had
been given which was able to impart life,
then righteousness would indeed have been
based on law.
If there was any way
God could have transformed our lives
through His moral law
He would have done it.
But it cannot be done.
And in one of Paul's sermons
recorded for us in the 13th chapter of the book of
Acts
he says the same thing:
Acts 13:39 and through (Christ) everyone
who believes is freed from all things, from
which you could not be freed through the
Law of Moses.
Now, before I attempt to explain
what it means for us to no longer be under the
law,
I want to first explain why
the law can never bring the Christian
into the kind and quality of life God has for him.
OK, you're a Christian.
You want to live a life worthy of your calling.
And you attempt to do that
by turning to the moral law of God as
your guide for leading you into that worthy walk.
Now, there are lots of moral laws given to us
throughout the Bible.
So where do you start?
Well, fortunately, Christ Himself tells us
that there are two of those laws
that are at the top of the list,
two that sum up all the rest.
So those two should be a safe place to start.
Those two laws are recorded for us
in Luke 10:27.
" You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your strength, and with all your
mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
So you set about living with God
on the basis of that moral law.
In your effort to love your God with all of your
being,
you rise at 6:00 a.m.
and you spend fifteen minutes reading His
Word,
and another fifteen minutes in prayer
before the day's duties begin.
But then the law stands next to you and it says,
"Is that really loving God
with all your heart,
and all your soul,
and all your strength,
and all your mind?
Surly you could rise at 5:30,
or at 5:00,
and invest even more time.
You are not keeping the law to your greatest ability".
And the law says you are to love your neighbor
as yourself.
And so you see the single mom in the house next to
you
struggling under a work load
she cannot get on top of.
And you reach out to help her
through child care
and meals you bring by occasionally.
And then the law stands next to you
and points out that you could do far more if you
really cared-
you could bring two meals a week,
or three, or four.
And then, of course, there is the family on the other
side of you.
Haven't you noticed
that they also need help?
And if you honestly attempt to live with God
on the basis of the law,
rather than the law leading you into a heart of
obedience,
it will force you to do one of two things:
either you must lie to yourself
about what the law is really saying,
narrowing its demands
until you can create for yourself
the illusion that you are fulfilling
what the law requires,
or else the law will create within you
a resentment against its impossible demands that
you can never quite fulfill,
and through that resentment
drive a wedge between you and your
God.
Now, when Paul talks to us
about the knowledge we need
to break the power of sin in our lives,
one of those pieces of knowledge
is the understanding that
when we came to Christ
God removed the ruling authority of His
moral law from our lives
and replaced it with the Person of Christ
Himself.
In these sixth and seventh chapters of Romans
Paul tells us that this transformation has to take
place,
both in literal reality,
and also in our minds
for at least two major reasons.
#1. As long as we continue to see our relationship
with God
being measured by God
on the basis of His moral law,
the power of what Paul calls "the law of sin and of
death"
will remain active in our lives.
That law of sin and of death
is described for us in Romans 7:5.
Paul says,
For while we were in the flesh, the sinful
passions, which were aroused by the Law,
were at work in the members of our body
to bear fruit for death.
sinful passions + the law = death
In simple terms -
when we hear THOU SHALT NOT!
it triggers within us
a flesh response
that makes us want to rebel.
You remember, don't you...
"Thou shalt not touch the chair in front of
you..."
And as long as we continue to see ourselves
called to relate to God
on the basis of our obedience
to His THOU SHALT NOT's,
rather than producing a growing heart of
righteousness within us,
it will produce a growing sense
of either rage
or helplessness at being held to a
standard we can never quite fulfill.
#2. And second, and even more important,
it was also necessary
to free us from the law
so that we could then begin to discover
the reality of the love of Christ for us,
and in that discovery
find the only adequate motivation
for transforming the human personality.
Do you know what God was doing for the human
race through Christ?
He was creating for us
a condemnation-free environment
in which, for the first time in our lives
we could begin to hear the heart of God.
I don't know if this will work or not,
but I'm going to give it a try.
A movie came out this past year called The Matrix.
If you saw it
you know that it is a science fiction thriller
about a small band of men and women
who are the last hope for freeing the
human race
from a world-wide network of computers
that have conquered the human race
and are growing human beings
in massive underground tanks
so that they can use us for their
energy source.
Except for this small band of courageous rebels,
nearly the whole human race
is immersed in these growing tanks.
But in order to keep the human race content during
the growing process
everyone's brain is wired up
to a computer program
that makes everyone think
they are actually living out their lives
in the world as we know it today.
This computer simulated reality is the Matrix.
The story centers around the hero
who is rescued from his growth tank,
unplugged from the simulation program,
and brought into the real world
by this rebel band.
As the hero is going through his mental transition
from the simulated world that existed
only in his mind,
and the world that really exists,
there is one conversation he has
with the leader of this rebel band.
The leader tells the hero
that he is being trained
to go back into that simulation program
and ultimately fight and destroy the
forces that are running it.
The hero responds by saying,
"So what, are you telling me that eventually I'm
going to be able to dodge bullets?"
Now look at that -
in the process of this transition
between the Matrix, the old reality,
and the new, true reality,
the hero takes what he is learning in this new world
reality,
and tries to place it back into the context of the
old reality.
And the rebel leader responds,
"No, eventually you'll come to realize that you
don't have to."
Now, I think there is a similar learning process
that needs to take place in the mind of the
Christian.
Just like our hero in The Matrix,
through Christ we, too, make a transition
from one reality into another.
But, also like our hero,
we begin that transition
believing that the two worlds
operate on the same exact principles.
The first world,
the world into which we are born,
is a world that offers us a relationship with
our God
based upon our obedience to the moral
law of God.
He wrote the rules.
If we keep all of them perfectly we live,
and if we do not, we die.
The problem, of course,
is that none of us can keep them perfectly,
so we all live with a constant tension
both between us and our God,
and between us and His moral law.
Then, through Christ,
as Paul puts it,
Col. 1:13-14 ... (God) rescued us from the
domain of darkness, and transferred us to
the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom
we have redemption, the forgiveness of
sins.
We literally change worlds,
and exchange the reality of one,
for the reality of the other.
But we do not understand
the governing principles of this new reality into
which we have entered.
And it is just natural
that we assume our new world
must operate under fundamentally the same
principles
as did our last world.
And as we prepare for our warfare against sin in this
new world
we naturally assume that our acceptance by God
is still rooted in our ability to perform for
God.
Now, somewhere in our training process
we will find ourselves saying,
"So what? Are you telling me that I will eventually
be able to reach the point
where I can keep the law perfectly?"
And at that point
we are doing the same thing
our hero in the Matrix did -
we are attempting to take a principle
that applies to the new reality in Christ
and plug it back into the old reality
of life with God under the law.
To which our Lord will respond by saying,
"No, eventually you will reach the point
where you realize you don't have to."
And it is at that point
that, for the first time in our existence,
the staggering reality
of the true nature of the love of God for
us
will begin to intrude into our minds.
It is certainly true that we in the church world
can keep the people of God under control,
keep them within "acceptable" moral limits,
by continuing to promote a law-based
approach to God.
But in so doing
we will also take the true nature of the love of
God
as revealed to us in Jesus Christ
and shroud it in a thick, dark fog of shame,
and fear,
guilt,
and regret,
that makes it virtually impossible
for us ever to be engulfed
in the reality of His love
in a way that has the power to heal, and
transform the human spirit.
And as long as I've gotten into this Matrix thing,
I want to make one other observation.
When we come to Christ
we are literally transferred into a new world,
a new reality in Him.
But I believe with most of our learning
and growing in Christ
we tend to do
exactly the same thing as our hero in the Matrix
did.
We take the new principle we are learning
and attempt to plug it into the old reality
of a life with God on the basis of the law
system,
and then wonder why it doesn't fit.
And I'll give you one example
to try to explain what I mean.
When we hear the principle
that in Christ we are no longer under the law,
and then find ourselves thinking,
"Well, then, it doesn't matter
what I do, or how I act."
we are taking a new reality principle,
cramming it into the old reality,
and then wondering why it doesn't fit.
Let me leave you this morning
with a presentation of God's plan for changing
the human personality
in two simple statements.
How does God go about changing us?
#1. He recreates within us a new heart,
a heart that loves God and longs to please Him.
#2. He takes the moral measuring stick and throws it
away forever.
And in the context of those two truths
He creates for us a new world environment
in which, for the first time ever,
we can begin to hear His love,
and discover the power that love has to change us.