©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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5/14/00
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New Wells And Old Pipes
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5/14/00 New Wells and Old Pipes
We come this morning
to the final study
in the series on freedom from sin
that has been the central theme of our
Sunday mornings together
for a number of months now.
In the last phase of this series
we have been using Romans chapter 6
as our guide through some fascinating
and at times unexpected ideas.
Romans chapter six begins with the following
words:
Rom. 6:1 What shall we say then? Are we
to continue in sin so that grace may
increase?
Rom. 6:2 May it never be! How shall we
who died to sin still live in it?
...How shall we who died to sin still live in
it?
From the first words of the chapter
Paul prepares us
both for what he is going to do
and how he is going to do it.
He is going to talk to us
about the Christian's relationship to sin.
And then he tells us immediately
how he is going to equip us
to deal with this sticky problem in our lives -
he is going to reveal to us
several things that have already taken place in
our lives,
things that took place in our lives
at the time we entered into the family of God
through faith in Christ.
The first thing he mentions
is actually the third thing
we have placed on our little outline
we've been using for this study most
recently.
If you've been in on this study,
you may recall
that Paul tells us
the key to destroying the power of sin in our lives
will be found in recalling
and recognizing the truth
of four major changes
God has already accomplished in
our lives.
And before I go any farther here this morning,
I need to tell you the great fear
that has formed the backdrop
to this entire study we've been in.
It is the fear that none of what we do
and none of what Paul says to us
will ever touch real issues in our lives.
Freedom from the destructive power of sin
is our birthright as children of God.
When we enter into His family
through our simple faith in Christ
one of the many fringe benefits
granted to us by our Creator
is both the right and the ability
to live free from the corrupting,
addictive, destructive power of sin in our lives.
That, of course, is how we entered into this whole
study in the first place,
with a simple statement from our Savior,
telling us that, "... if the Son makes
you free, you will be free indeed."
We know from the context of His statement
that He was talking directly
about freedom from the power of sin in our
lives,
because that promise of freedom
was preceded by His saying,
(John 8:34) "Truly, truly, I say to you,
everyone who commits sin is the slave of
sin..."
That freedom from sin is our birthright.
It is one of the things
Christ sought to bring into our lives
as a result of His death for us.
But unlike our adoption,
the living reality of that freedom from sin
is not an automatic result
of our faith in Christ.
Most of you here this morning are Christians.
Some of you are not -
some of you are still hungry seekers
who somehow found your way here
with the desperate hope
that there just might be some reality
to this whole GOD THING.
If that's you,
we're very glad you're here,
and it is both our hope
and our prayer
that those of us who are Christians
will be able to mirror the reality of our Lord
in a way that will make it easier
for your to find your way to Him.
And, of course,
in every group of true believers
there is also at least a sprinkling of religious
folk -
people who, for a lot of different reasons,
have clothed themselves in the outward
appearance of the people of God,
but who have never known true faith,
or the reality of the Person of Jesus
Christ in their lives.
But most of us here
are real, living, redeemed children of the King.
And yet, within this group this morning,
there are very likely some of you
whose lives are consumed with sin.
It may be the sin of bitterness,
a bitterness against someone who has treated you
unjustly.
And your life is filled
with a driving bondage
to conquer,
or destroy,
or defeat,
or prove yourself to them.
They may not even be alive any more.
And yet still you choose to give them power in
your life
through the sin of bitterness.
And there are others here
whose lives are being driven by uncontrolled
sexual desires,
fed by pornography,
or by immoral sexual relationships
that form THE driving force of your
life.
Some of you find yourselves
in the grip of a lust for possessions,
or for power,
or for prestige,
or for popularity.
When Paul talks to us about sin,
it is these types of issues he's talking about.
And he talks with us about them
for only one reason -
because sin always brings with it
slavery and bondage,
a slavery and bondage
that always wars against the presence of Christ
within us,
and the expression of His life through us.
Paul says it more clearly than I do.
He says simply,
Rom. 6:16 Do you not know that when you
present yourselves to someone as slaves
for obedience, you are slaves of the one
whom you obey, either of sin resulting in
death, or of obedience resulting in
righteousness?
And this is the crucial point I want to make here -
whenever our God addresses sin issues in our
lives,
He does so
not because He is ticked at us for messing up
and wants to slap us around a little
until we shape up,
but rather because His endless love for us
gives Him a desire
to free us from slavery
and bring us into the living reality
of the freedom He died to bring into
our lives.
Now, we have seen in this 6th chapter of Romans,
that when Paul equips us
for entering into that freedom
he does so by turning our eyes back to
four changes God has already accomplished in our
lives.
The first two we have studied at some length -
#1. The change in our true identity,
and
#2. the change in our relationship to the moral law of
God.
And now, in our remaining time this morning
we'll conclude this series by looking
at the last two changes,
#3. the change in our relationship to sin,
and #4. the change in our relationship to
righteousness.
And I want to begin by reading
some of the comments Paul makes
in this 6th chapter of Romans
concerning the Christian's new
relationship to sin.
These comments come from Romans 6:2, 6, 7, 11,
18, and 22.
Paul says:
...How shall we who died to sin still live in
it?
...knowing this, that our old self was
crucified with Him, that our body of sin
might be done away with, that we should
no longer be slaves to sin;
... for he who has died is freed from sin.
...Even so consider yourselves to be dead
to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
... and having been freed from sin, you
became slaves of righteousness.
... But now having been freed from sin and
enslaved to God, you derive your benefit,
resulting in sanctification, and the outcome,
eternal life.
Now, we are going to run into the same problem
here
that we ran into when we were talking about our
true, new identity in Christ.
What God says to us
and what we experience in our daily lives
don't match up.
I don't know if you noticed it or not,
but what Paul said in those verses
and what we would have expected him to
say
are two very different things.
I think we would have expected him to tell us
that we SHOULD die to sin,
and that we SHOULD be free from sin.
But what he actually said is that
we have already died to sin,
and that our old self WAS crucified with
Christ,
and that we have already been freed
from sin.
You see, here it is again -
Paul pointing us back
to what he says has already taken place in
our lives.
Just as we have already become new creations in
Christ,
and just as we have already been freed from the
law,
so we have already been freed from sin,
and, to complete the picture,
we have already become slaves of righteousness.
Now, your mind is already starting to glaze over on
me here.
I know that.
It is a natural mental protective response
whenever we get near ideas
that are absolutely incompatible
with our existing thought
framework.
It's that message flashing up on our mental
computer screen saying,
"Illegal action - restart system".
So let me see if I can help a little.
And let me start by offering you
a definition of sin that may help.
I know we protect ourselves
by thinking about sin
in terms of specific actions or attitudes
that are offensive or unacceptable to
God.
Telling a lie,
stealing,
cheating,
adultery,
blaspheming - these are sins.
We like to think in those terms
because it helps us create the illusion
that sin is a relatively manageable problem
for us,
one we can contain and control
if we just work hard enough on it.
But the truth is,
SIN in its broadest sense
is anything that denies the absolute truth or
reality of God.
Now, I really want you stay with me here
for just a few minutes.
You see, I want us to somehow
break free from the thick mental fog
in which we live out most of our existence,
and get just a glimpse
of the way things really are.
There is a real, eternal, all-knowing,
all-powerful Creator God.
We are each His creations.
We are created by Him,
and for Him.
That is who we are,
where we came from,
and why we exist at all.
Our chief calling in life,
and the ultimate purpose for our existence
is that we know our Creator God
and display the truth and reality of who
He is through our existence.
Paul says simply,
Acts 17:28 for in Him we live and move
and exist...
Anything we think or do as human beings
that does not display the living reality
of those fundamental truths of our existence
is inconsistent with who God is
and as such, is therefore, SIN.
But wait a minute!
If that's true,
then a great deal of everything we do every
day of our lives is sin!
Every time I worry about something
I am denying the existence
or the love of my God for me,
and as such it is sin.
Every time I make any choice
that does not reflect the values,
the character,
or the true nature of my God,
it is a denial of the truth,
and as such it is sin.
Now, if you are still with me,
one of the things that may be happening in your
mind right now
is that this whole SIN issue
is suddenly becoming much bigger,
and much more massive
then you ever allowed yourself
to believe before.
Do you see, now,
why it always has been
and always will be impossible
for any human being to ever find
security with God
on the basis of his or her performance?
The only life
that could ever offer us solid footing with our
God
is one that perfectly displayed
the living reality
and exact nature of God Himself
in everything we did and thought
every second of our existence.
And I hope you also see, now,
what God really accomplished for us through
Christ
when... He made Him who knew no
sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might
become the righteousness of God in Him.(2
Cor. 5:21)
He didn't just remove the barrier between us and
Him
created by all those naughty little offenses we've
committed along the way.
He removed the barrier between us and Him
created by the total denial of the truth about Him
made by our lives
through nearly everything we think
and do
and say every day of our lives.
OK, but then why does Paul say
that in Christ we have already died to sin?
Obviously, we continue to deny the truth
and the reality of our God
in a thousand different ways every day we
live.
To understand what Paul is saying
we need to remember
the relationship that existed
between us and our Creator
at the time we entered this world.
Paul offers us an excellent description of us at that
point in our lives
in a single verse.
He says in Ephesians 2:12:
... remember that you were at that time
separate from Christ, excluded from the
commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to
the covenants of promise, having no hope
and without God in the world.
Not only were we not displaying the truth about our
Creator,
but the whole focus of our spirit
was a determination to avoid submission to
Him at all costs
and deny any claim He might raise
to His Lordship in our lives.
This heart orientation within us
caused several massive problems for us.
First of all, it kept us separated from the only One
who knows how we were designed
and how all our needs can be met.
Second,
our determination to be our own god,
to run our own life,
and to prove we have both the right and
the ability to function without our Creator
caused us to fight against His
commandments,
just so that we could prove to ourselves
that we are in control.
And of course,
the greatest consequence
is the huge void within us
created by the absence of our Creator God,
a void that nothing else
and no one else can ever fill.
The end result is an unbroken flow
of attitudes,
and actions,
and reasoning processes
all of which are sin,
because they all flow from a life center
that denies the truth and the reality of God.
Let me put it into a single sentence -
our problem prior to our union with Christ
is not that we commit sins,
our problem is that we ARE SIN.
Then we come to Christ.
In His miraculous way
our God opens our eyes
to the idiocy of a created being
living in rebellion against his Creator.
And if we accept His offer of reunion with Him
through our trusting Christ's death
as payment for our sins,
He places a new heart,
a new spirit within us,
one that now loves our Creator,
delights in His presence with us,
and longs to worship and follow
Him.
Now, here's where I'm going with all of this:
it is the recreation of this new heart within us
that Paul is talking about
when he tells the Christian
that we have already died to sin.
He is telling us that the source from which
all of our sin once flowed
is now dead and gone forever.
In a true, real, eternal sense,
we have died to sin forever,
and been resurrected into a new life
that loves and delights in righteousness.
But then why do we still have problems with sinful
actions?
We do because our pipes are still full of mud.
I tried to come up with an illustration
that would help here,
and we'll try this and see if it helps -
A lot of our homes here in Alaska
are on well systems for our water.
I want you to picture a situation in which
the walls of the well at your home collapse,
filling your well with a thick, gooey mud.
When your well pump kicks on,
rather than pulling up clear, pure water,
it pulls up this brown gunk.
And as your pump continues to work
it eventually fills every pipe,
every faucet,
every toilet,
every tub,
and even your washing machine
and your water softener with mud.
It is a horrible, hideous mess
that gets worse with each surge of your pump.
Then you get the well man to come out,
and he pulls out your pump,
and then pumps out the mud and gunk,
and once again creates for you
this underground reservoir
of clear, pure, cold water.
He puts the pump back in and leaves.
But when you turn your kitchen faucet on
mud still pours out.
Why?
Your well is now clean,
and pure,
and perfect.
But your sink, and tub, and toilets are still filling up
with mud.
Obviously, it's because even though your well is
clean,
your pipes are still full of mud.
The sixth chapter of Romans
was written to us
to help us understand
how to relate to our muddy pipes.
And if I can stretch this illustration just a little
farther,
there are two basic approaches
God will use in dealing with the mud.
Some of the system can be cleansed
by bathing it with the pure, clean water from
down below.
And there are many parts of our lives
that can be transformed
by continually, repeatedly bathing them in
the truth.
As God begins to fill your mind
with the truth about who you have become in
Him,
there will be times when you see some
sinful behavior pattern in your life
and suddenly realize how completely
inconsistent it is
with who you really are.
What once drew you and held you,
will be seen as the worthless trash it is.
This cleansing process, however,
only has the power to transform us
as we grow in the living reality
of the knowledge of our new, true
identity in Christ.
And then there is a second tool used by God as well.
Sometimes a toilet
or faucet,
or dishwasher is so corrupted
that it has to be pulled out and replaced
altogether.
And in every Christian's life
there will be corrupted parts of our past
that God will need to remove.
That process is sometimes more painful,
but it, like everything else our God does in our
lives,
is motivated by His love.
Paul's approach to sin in our lives
begins with his affirmation of the truth -
in Christ we have already died to sin.
The center of our being
has been cleansed and purified by the blood
of Christ.
From that foundation God then begins the process of
cleansing the residue left behind.