Please note: this is part two; part one is simply called, "Attending Your Own Funeral." In part two, I summarized material I covered in part one and added some new material.
Attending Your Own Funeral Conclusion
(Romans 6:1-23 concluded)
1. The War in Iraq keeps dragging on.
2. We hear both good news and bad news, but all of us have concluded the following: it has not been easy.
3. War has never been easy; that is why we are careful about engaging in it.
4. But there is one war the believer in Jesus Christ cannot avoid: the war against sin.
5. There is no volunteerism in this war ¡V if you know Christ, you have been drafted.
6. If you dodge the draft, you lose the war. In this war, pacifism means defeat. In this war, espionage is common place. We betray our Lord and our own selves.
7. It is a grueling war.
8. One of the longest wars in European history was the 30 years war. Guess how long it lasted?
9. But we are in a war that begins at the point of conversion and only ends at death.
10. There is no retirement, no desk job, no decorations in this life, no discounts, no GI bills, no recognition of heroes.
11. This is Memorial Day. We honor those brave men and women who gave their life¡¦s blood for our nation. In a broader sense, we honor our servicemen and women who offered themselves to be placed or potentially placed in harm¡¦s way for us. And so we should. We have finally constructed and dedicated a World War II Memorial, long overdo. These are completely appropriate.
12.But few people, in this life, will celebrate our victories over sin.
13. So should we ignore this war because it doesn¡¦t get much press? Should we lay down our weapons because there is no holiday?
14. No. There is a holiday ¡V an eternity in heaven with special rewards for believers who battle courageously against the enemy. Our press will be an eternal, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
15. In Romans 6, Paul has been addressing this very issue: the Christian’s relationship with sin, a relationship we find to be too strong a bond and too frequent an alliance.
Main Idea: It’s A War! Christians should not take sin lightly, but need to focus on developing their relationship to God as the best way to win the battles.
Paul offers several arguments to convince us of this.
There are other motivations besides merit and fear (Law); Grace motivates us out of love, appreciation, and relationship. Last week I only addressed the first argument and part of the second. Today, by God¡¦s grace, I¡¦ll continue. But first let me review
I. The Argument of Our Confession of Faith at Baptism (1-5)
1. The question of verse 1 is raised in response to 5:20
In our text, we need to remember that baptism is faith in action for people to see. "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." I Samuel 16:7; Romans 10:10, "For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified."
Baptism is the final phase of conversion and is used as a figure for the entire conversion process: regeneration, repentance, faith, and finally public confession by baptism. Salvation occurs earlier, during the simultaneous event of regeneration (which logically occurs first), then repentance/faith (the result of regeneration -- see Eph. 2:1-10 for this sequence).
2. But our baptism pictures POSITIONAL truth, what has legally happened?
„h the main concept of baptism is public identification
„h baptism by immersion pictures this completely
„h We identify with His death, burial, & resurrection
„h The result: legally, we "died to sin"
3. Paul claims that somehow the Christian has died to sin. It means that we are viewed as perfect with Christ, seated in heaven: this is our standing;the problem is that our actual state does not always match our standing.
The Christian life is a battleground, not a playground.
Since we have chosen to associate with Christ and we died and rose with Christ, it makes sense to live the resurrected life now with Christ.
4. We are God’s scouts, citizens of His kingdom trying to enlist recruits and trying to stand for His values and purposes in a society infected by sin. But if we are like everyone else, how can we make a difference? Whose side are we really on? Our baptism is our public proclamation that we are on God’s side.
It’s A War! Christians should not take sin lightly, but need to focus on developing their relationship to God as the best way to win the battles.
5. We wonder why the church does not have a better testimony in this nation, and the best answer is "because many of us do not live out our faith."
"What’s wrong with the world?" a newspaper editorial once asked. G.K. Chesterton wrote in reply, "I am."
II. The Argument of Liberation from From An Evil Master (6-14)
1.We were slaves to sin... We are now to live a life with God in the center of it (18); Please note: this is the logical and spiritually legal groundwork for a holy life; in actuality, avoiding sin and living righteously is still a struggle; but these verses tell us why we SHOULD struggle, why we should hold high expectations for ourselves.
2. Verse 11-13 is the application of this teaching: "In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness."
„h Being dead to sin does not mean sin does not tempt us or overpower us; it does mean we can choose to not let it reign¡Kwe are freed from the egotistical, pride-based protecting my self-esteem cycle; but we can easily fall back into what we are used to.
„h In the United States, we refuse to negotiate, or give in to terrorists who attempt to use fear to force their will upon us. We insist on living free so we fight terrorism. Rather than giving in to the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center, or to the cowards who blew up the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, or to the murders who blew up the US. Military barracks in Saudi Arabia, we resist. We refuse to permit them to govern our actions. In the very same way Christians must resist sin and refuse to negotiate with the sin nature that still lingers within us. (Sermoncentral)
3. The Puritan theologian John Owens once wrote that his biggest challenge as a pastor was persuading non-Christians that they were slaves to sin and Christians that they were dead to sin. We need to undergo a paradigm shift in our lives, to see ourselves differently, as those introduced to a new way of living.
Christians should not take sin lightly, but need to focus on developing their relationship to God instead because they have been freed from the tyranny of sin.
Since we recognize sin as an evil and enslaving tyrant, why would we want to voluntarily serve it?
III. The Argument of Being Bond to A Benevolent Master (15-23)
1. But when Christ freed us, He did not make us an independent agent: we are now His slaves¡K.
Peter T. Forsythe was right when he said, "The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its Master".
2. Our life takes on new purpose. Our purpose is to live for the one who saved us and who broke the chains of sin that held us in its grip!
3. True believers are wholehearted in their commitment to Christ (17)
Someone once wrote and asked Emily Post, the etiquette expert of another generation, "What is the correct procedure when one is invited to the White House but has a previous engagement?"
Replied Post, "An invitation to dine at the White House is a command, and it automatically cancels any other engagement."
4. We should find our satisfaction, richness of life in Christ:
(1) "Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God. Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in us. All these good things, and all our security, are rightly found only and completely in him."
(2) Saying "no" to a particular sin leaves a void in our lives; we sometimes have to grieve over its loss. This is especially true of addictive sin. There is NO ONE SECRET to overcoming sin, but one important truth is this: if we do not fill the void, we will gravitate more easily to the sin. And God wants us to fill that void with Him. Trust Him, serve Him, meditate on His word, fellowship with Him and others. He is your new master!
(3) Just as sin is all encompassing, so the Lordship of Christ is to be all encompassing.
(4) As Bill Thrall put it, "When my fear of the power of sin is greater than my confidence in the grace of God, I will hide who I am."
5. We are legally slaves to God (20-23)
(1)we are always either slaves to God or to sin (pride-based behavior)
(2) if we are truly saved, we want to serve God
(3) hence the relationship of grace to works in verse 23, we no longer have to fear the power of sin; we respect it, but we do not fear it; instead, we revel in our position in the grace of God and find the power to live a godly life...the threat is gone
Christians should not take sin lightly, but need to focus on developing their relationship to God instead because they are enslaved to God, and sin is contrary to God’s will.
Since we are God¡¦s slaves intent on pleasing Him, why would we want to offend His holy nature, which is what sin does?
Conclusion
1. Is their power in God’s grace? Will God save us and then leave us dangling in mid air? Does He stop working with us once we know Christ? No. As we will see in Romans 8, God will not allow His true children to live lives of sinful rebellion. He will work in us by His Spirit to begin a process of conforming us to the image of Chirst.
2. We can hinder that process and force God to drag us along with the brakes on, or we can put it in neutral and let Him work freely. And an attitude of deadness toward sin and aliveness toward God is crucial to co-operating with Him.
3.Every other religion of the world rejects the idea of grace, and insists that we must contribute something to our salvation. We must try harder, we must be better, we must live morally, and so forth. All the various religions of the world offer a self-help way to merit restoration with God, whether it¡¦s the eightfold path of Buddhism, the karma and reincarnation cycle of Hinduism, the laws and ordinances of the Mormon church, or the four pillars of Islam. Only the Christian faith dares to suggest that God offers a relationship to people on the basis of pure grace.
„h Grace works, but we doubt that.
„h The most unhappy people in this life, I am convinced, are not lost people revelling in their sins, nor solid, maturing Christians; the most unhappy people are the fence straddlers.
„h They live their lives pulling out splinters and thinking with the same part of their body in which they find the splinters¡K
„h
--they have neither the joy of the Lord NOR the joy of the world
--be for Him or against Him, but get off the fence.
4. Shall we sin that grace may abound. The answer is clear: may it never be!
