[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Forecone's Bible Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an exciting passage that we get to look at in the exciting series of events.
[SPEAKER_00]: An exciting topical study that we've been throughout the month of February.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's open with the word of prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, we thank you and we praise you for this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for the opportunity to come together and be transformed, both corporately and individually, the image of your son, Jesus Christ, Lord, and it's all by your grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for the joy that comes from the fellowship that you've given us with one another and with yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we look today, what it means to live this Christian life, I praise you, that it's all encapsulated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be governed by the identity that you've given us in your son and the work that your son, Jesus Christ, did on the cross Lord, we praise you for this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: look at your son Jesus and be transformed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, our passage this morning is in Romans chapter 6.
[SPEAKER_00]: One through 11, be in and out of others as usual, but this will probably our mainstay for this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what shall we say then?
[SPEAKER_00]: Shall we continue and sin that grace may have bound?
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly not.
[SPEAKER_00]: How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, and that just as Christ was raised from the dead from the glory of the Father, even so, we also should walk in newness of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we no longer
[SPEAKER_00]: to be slaves of sin, for he who has died has been freed from sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if we die with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more, death no longer has dominion over him.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Boy, that one, it's like Ephesians 1, 1, 3, through 14.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I don't know, it's like spiritual adrenaline.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fire right into you, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just really exciting passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're entering into part three of a four-part series on our identification with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've talked about a number of times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Identification is a nice handle that we can use to understand our relationship with what God has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: February 7th, we looked at the bad news as an atom all died.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 15, 22A, we saw the hopelessness of our condition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last week, we had a very exciting message about how, in the heavenlies, did we get here?
[SPEAKER_00]: And where are we?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is here for us as believers?
[SPEAKER_00]: This week, we get to look at death and consequences, which we
[SPEAKER_00]: But actually, I've also, kind of alternatively, thought about entitling this the lighter side of death.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're going to look at the phenomenal way in which death is used in this passage and the great news about death.
[SPEAKER_00]: for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And next week we look at the story of my life and once again not my personal testimony time, but better than that we're going to learn about the hope that is ours in having our own personal history replaced by Christ's spiritual history, our own personal spiritual history replaced there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is exciting, pivotal.
[SPEAKER_00]: view changing stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the kind of stuff that if you understand it, the rest of the Bible unfolds.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't understand it, boy, you've got a lot of confusion on your hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: So looking at some keywords in our study, and you might be wondering, why in the world we continue to reiterate these keywords.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, you can plan on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're probably going to look at them again next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason is is that these words aren't just in the passages that we're looking at today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not zeroing in and taking out the only passages that involve identification with Christ and your identification with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the teaching of the whole Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you see these words, I want you to go, oh, that was that word that Brad brought up four times in a single month or more, and I'll likely go ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a word that insinuates identification.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a word that means that this is making something of my identification with Christ, my standing with him clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a question we need to ask as we confront every passage of the Bible to core her monutical issue, to know when we approach a passage of Scripture we say is this talking about my position, or my standing, or is this talking about my condition, or my state?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this about what God has eternally done in Christ Jesus, my Lord?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is this about my day-to-day walk down here on earth?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this regarding?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why we keep looking at these words.
[SPEAKER_00]: In, being placed entirely in, so as to share an identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: We use the illustration of a paper, a piece of paper, in a book.
[SPEAKER_00]: You put that piece of paper in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: and all of a sudden anything that's true of the piece of paper is true of the book if you throw the book in the water paper in the water burn the book paper got burned there's no cutting slicing dicing to get that to draw a distinction between the two fully in which we have graphically uh... display here on the screen as well
[SPEAKER_00]: with, intimately joined in action and consequence and also together with.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is our word with combined with the reinforcing idea of togetherness.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even more underscoring the same identity and action.
[SPEAKER_00]: We looked at the idea that if I say I'm going to the store with April, I mean that we went together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mean that I went and then she went to ours later after I'd come home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Similarly, as we're going to see in Galatians 2-20 today, you, if you're a believer here today, we're crucified with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only way that statement is true, and we take it in faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: We believe what God has revealed to us, what we otherwise would not have deduced.
[SPEAKER_00]: We take it in faith that that's true if Paul can say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the Holy Spirit can tell us that you were crucified with Christ, the only logical assumption left is that you were on that cross by the process of spiritual identification 2,000 years ago and there's some magnificent consequences to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, United with implies a oneness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oneness is what's completed.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see this that God is uniting us with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we looked at unity in the body, way, way back on January 3rd, I believe it was, it was God that unites us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's on the basis of His Spirit that we are united, that we are one, that we are identified with Christ together.
[SPEAKER_00]: We looked at this in great depth, we'll review it a little bit more later, but baptism is a change in identity, a permanent change in identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, no matter of your view, where were you when you were born, you were identified with Adam.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the destiny of all those who are identified with Adam,
[SPEAKER_00]: For all those who are in the book of Adam, if you like, death, verse 15, 15, 22, as is for as in Adam, in Adam, all die.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone who is associated with Adam is hopelessly and completely separated from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our position would be completely and totally hopeless if God had left us there.
[SPEAKER_00]: God had not done something, if God had not sent Jesus Christ, that's where we'd be and that's where we'd stay, end of story, but he did send Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we learned that not only were we identified with Adam, we were identified with our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: We identified with those individual acts of unrighteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: that separated us, if you like, further and probably more preferably proved our separation.
[SPEAKER_00]: from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're identified with Adam, you're identified with your sins, your individual acts of unrighteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the unbelievers, eternal state, not only involves their positional inability to reach God, but also their individual acts of righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we looked at Isaiah 646 that told us that even our acts of righteousness are filthy
[SPEAKER_00]: pretty serious stuff, but there is something that I want to draw your attention to and we'll go into more depth next week on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were before you put your faith in Christ identified with your sins, your acts of unrighteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you are identified with Christ placed into Christ and we looked at it time and time again, how does that come?
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 15, by believing the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw an axe, the Philippian jailer, how could he be saved when he asked Paul or a phone size?
[SPEAKER_00]: believing the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's faith alone in Christ's alone by grace alone that you are no longer associated with those sinful acts.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ones you did before you were saved, the ones you did yesterday, the ones you're doing today or will do today or the ones you will do in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not associated with those acts of sinfulness anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, in review, to baptize the word baptize or to baptize, you'll remember, we talked about how it was used in a number of secular context and those contexts included, dunking a piece of cloth in die.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as de permanently as far as they were concerned at the time, permanently changed its color.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was an irreversible change in the identity of the cloth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another way this word was used was with metal working.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sword would get hammered, heated, hammered, heated, when it found the right shape, dumped that tees-o in the water, and that changed the identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It changed the usefulness of the sword, it tempered the steel, so it was hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we got to look, and I hope you got one, I got a copy of this hand out, if you didn't, please let me know, I can run more off for you, or we can email it to you, whatever works for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the possessions of the believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to outline these again today as I did last week, but there's five pages and quite frankly, getting through them all always brings me to the verge of tears.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this list of things is only the beginning of the things that are true of you in Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are only the beginning of the ways in which God has cared for you in Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is only the start of the things that you can have faith that God will do in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a result of you putting your faith in the work, the finished work of Christ on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a big, big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: told you we're going to talk about death and consequences, we have arrived.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, for word on death, how we understand the concept of death, especially in Scripture, is very important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oftentimes, oftentimes Scripture will use a word in a way that we don't use it in our ordinary parlance.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, the Bible will define words differently, a great example of this is the word grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul takes the word grace, which had a cultural meaning, and he's got a stretch it and stretch it and stretch it to mean what is communicated as God's grace in the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: We take this word and take it and try to define it purely biblically to find out what God means by the concept of death.
[SPEAKER_00]: We find that even though the world sees death as an end, a annihilation or the finishing of something, we look at death as we did a few weeks ago as separation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's the Garden of Eden.
[SPEAKER_00]: We looked at this, yeah, not too long ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis 217 reads and the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all know the moral of the story or we all know what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adam and Eve did eat and they did not die in that day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, not physically.
[SPEAKER_00]: We looked at the Hebrew and it said, dying, you shall surely die.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we found that in that day, they did die.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were separated for the first time from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus and His High Priestly Prayer in John 173 says, that knowing the Father is eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not knowing Him, then.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were separated from the Father and also the physical decay became began.
[SPEAKER_00]: Physical decay, the physical process of death began and was brought to completion in the person of Adam and almost every person since.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now death is separation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first example of death in the Bible is separation from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Physical death is separation of the immaterial part of the person from the material part of the person and we saw in 1st Corinthians 1522 as in Adam all die haven't got that memorized by now Then you're not paying attention All right, here's our rather large Large text actually just looks large.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only 11 verses
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's look at what you are separated from.
[SPEAKER_00]: This passage tells us that when we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into His death.
[SPEAKER_00]: We find that Paul tells us that we have died to sin for more text today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, it's not all that you've been separated from or died to.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we find that the believer is also separated from or has died to the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we find that he's also separated from or has died to the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the world and the law and the flesh, or the sin nature, are the three things that control the non-believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before everything used in was dictated by those three task masters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, for time reasons, we're going to look at what it means to have been separated from sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: But know that those other two are equally as important.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, sins are sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Up until this point in Romans, Paul has been dealing primarily with or addressing sins, individual acts of unrighteousness, and our source, meaning there's no definite article, no word thee, and plural, meaning, or that we easily bring across sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here Paul makes too very distinct and significant changes, change one.
[SPEAKER_00]: to sin in the singular, and this is brought out in most of our English translations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Change number two, Paul begins to use the definite article V in front of the word, sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that might not come across quite as clearly in your translation.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we dig into these languages, it is not to make you doubt the legitimacy of your translation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to know Greek to study the Bible, spend time in the Word, nevertheless, digging into those languages can be helpful in understanding with laser-line accuracy what the Lord has said to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no also that your translations are good, they're worth reading, they're worth looking at.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so what's the meaning of this?
[SPEAKER_00]: This whole sin sin distinction.
[SPEAKER_00]: is a key point to understanding the Christian life.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't get this boy wearing for a world of hurt, Paul explains that our sins were covered by the blood of Christ when he died on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first section of Romans, or that section, the section preceding this of Romans, existed to explain that your sins were covered by the blood of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're no longer being held responsible for those sins because they were punished, they were taken care of on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sin here describes the sin nature, the operating principle for every unbeliever all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sin nature is the force that that actuates their every decision.
[SPEAKER_00]: Roman six portrays the sin nature as a deposed dictator who used to control our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we're used to, that's an important word there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the old dictator.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul uses the image of a king who has been conquered to describe the sin nature to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we have been separated from this tyrant who pays only death as his wages, it is not without some remaining ability and presence in our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, it's why it's so important to understand that biblically speaking, death is not annihilation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor is it eradication, but separation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sin nature called the shots completely 100% on what you could or couldn't do.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's before you're in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: a picture from the Old Testament of this type of imagery now this is taken from judges one fourth or six I don't know that this is exactly what Paul had in mind but it does give us an image of the kind of thing that he's talking about so your judges one fourth or six reads then judo went up and the lord delivered the kainanites and the parasites into their hand and they killed ten thousand men at bayleth bezzac
[SPEAKER_00]: and they found Adonai Bezek in Bezek, and fought against him, and they defeated the Canaanites and the Parasites, then Adonai Bezek fled, and they pursued him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and big toes, pretty graphic, pretty gory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the next verse, if you're to read on, talks about how this king says, hey, I've
[SPEAKER_00]: He says that he would cut off their thumbs and big toes and make them wrestle for scraps under his table.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thumbs and big toes though, it just seems like such a weird thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, not exactly, imagine what life would be like without your thumbs.
[SPEAKER_00]: What could you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, grasping becomes awfully difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the ordinary small motor skill activities that you would participate in are harder to get figure out how to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most importantly, you ain't going to get close to picking up one of those heavy swords.
[SPEAKER_00]: You become without the use of thumbs immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: less able to do things.
[SPEAKER_00]: What about big toes?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as I pace back and forth as I want to do, I realize that most of my weight seems to be falling on my big toe as I roll off it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So without my big toes, it would be hard for me to move around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be hard for me to walk, to run.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, the symbolic act of cutting off the thumbs and the toes seems like a very obvious physical demonstration that they are completely disabled from doing anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: that the other king has showed full dominance over them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always thought that image was really poignant as we come back to Roman six.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you got the sin nature who's been conquered by Christ work on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: The minute you put your faith in him, he was in faith in Christ, the sin nature was dethrone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the sin nature, sometimes called the sin, often called the flesh, is a powerless,
[SPEAKER_00]: So what can he do, what can it do to us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Seriously, if he's totally cut off in his power, he's totally separated from us, what can it do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, here's the reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sin nature can still manipulate, holler, seduce, insult, bait, tease, deceive, and go to us in the believing that it should still be calling the shots.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a huge problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have an enemy within the gates.
[SPEAKER_00]: Within you, you have within me.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have the Holy Spirit as one functioning principle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have the flesh or the sin nature as another and alternative functioning principle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even though we have been one
[SPEAKER_00]: In the spirit, the sin nature still exists as a threat, as an enemy to all the goals of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sin nature knows the patterns that we have developed are whole lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before you met Christ, you are walking exclusively in the sin nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: listening to it's every command obeying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every situation that came up, you let the sin nature decide how in the world, am I going
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I react when someone attacks me?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I react when someone says things I don't like?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I react when I'm having a bad day?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I do?
[SPEAKER_00]: All of those decisions were hardened into patterns in your life and then you met Jesus and that sin nature was immediately dead to your, you were immediately dead to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that point, you were separated from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sin nature knows how it's beat you before, it knows the part of you that it's got most firmly in its grasp, and it knows how it's beaten you since you've put your faith in Christ, it knows how to subtly tease you in to walking in it again, subtly draw you from faith in God, how does it do that, it knows what has hurt us the most in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can take that painful experience and just bring it to mind, and all of a sudden, you're not walking in faith in Christ anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're reacting to a situation or something that happened to you years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: It knows what tempts us the most in our flesh, it knows the things that most easily and most readily have that siren song that will call us away from Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It knows how to wield guilt, fear, and on emotions against us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And don't think that those three things are small things that it can wield, or wield.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's always right at our side.
[SPEAKER_00]: The flesh is with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: As long as you're in this body, the flesh, with a sin nature, is right at your side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tough question.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Roman 6th 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is God's answer to a tough question.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reckon here is an accounting term.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means put it down as true.
[SPEAKER_00]: You imagine I actually did bookkeeping for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you put something into the ledger, you presumed it was true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Put things into the permanent ledger unless you knew that it was right.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we tripped double and triple and quadruple repeat our sums to make sure that we got it exactly right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It tapes and tapes and tapes of calculator, you know, adding machine nonsense because I do it again and again and again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here we're to reckon that is, put it down as true.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Greek word is logitsamai, logitsamai, believe it is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Put it down as true.
[SPEAKER_00]: What Christ has done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, should be noted that it's in the middle voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, in English, we have the active voice and the passive voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: The active voice has a tenet means the boy hit the ball.
[SPEAKER_00]: Subject the boy hit the ball the passive voice is the ball or sorry the boy was hit by the ball the subject is acted upon By the object or receives the verb and finally in the middle voice has which we don't have an English has two meanings or two possible meanings one is and it's reflexive in other words.
[SPEAKER_00]: I give myself a birthday present or
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that the subject is intensely and personally involved in the doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the meaning I believe is here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're being told that we need to count it as true as an intensely personal process.
[SPEAKER_00]: intensely involved in the in the act of faith of counting it is true what the Lord has said and done all by the way it is an imperative it's a command to do this but it's it's triply if you like triply pronounced by the fact that it's in the imperative it's in the middle voice and in itself the word itself implies that there's something to be done here we can do it
[SPEAKER_00]: or not, we'll look at some of the consequences of this, but some good news that you can count on in this difficult battle with your sin nature, with your flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: An unbeliever, as an unbeliever, you could do nothing, but sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no second option.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were a slave to sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a slave to sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: You no longer, ever, ever, ever have to sin again.
[SPEAKER_00]: You never have to sin again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I am not teaching sinless perfectionism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Statistically speaking, must the Lord come back right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will sin again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the reality, as long as we have this sin nature within us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will stumble, we will fall, we will goof up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the reality, every time we do goof up, we could have avoided it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time we do make a break our fellowship with God, we could have avoided it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a way we couldn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where we could have not done it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're never obligated to sin again.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're free from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the sin nature can make its convincing arguments as to why you need to obey it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get a choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can believe the sin nature, or you can say, I am not obligated to obey you any more ever again, because I believe what God has told me is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a graphic way or a graphical way to understand this and hopefully this is helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the left side of this diagram, you see a circle.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is, that circle will call your old man or being in Adam.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all of who you were in Adam before.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, down there at the bottom, you have a mind, a history, and an ownership, and the sin nature is the actuating force in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sin nature is the source of decisions in life and so on and so forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you put your faith in Christ and what happens that old man will, we know that he's crucified.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's cut off.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are moved from being in Adam to being permanently fully and completely in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before you are separated from God now you are united with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have fellowship with God and you know Him and look what happens you have a new nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Holy Spirit is now the actuating force.
[SPEAKER_00]: in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, none of these mean that you don't have a will.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, the sin nature might not dictate exactly what you did before, but it would dictate the types of things you could do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the only types of things you could do were sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't determinism, in other words.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Holy Spirit, he doesn't say, he doesn't unfortunately, because we'd like it a lot of the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just possess our bodies and say, I'd go and do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the types of things you will do as you rest in the Holy Spirit are 100% different than the types of things that you're able to do as you rest in the sin nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you notice you're separated from the sin nature, but it moves over and here's why there's a continuity of person that exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why Paul talking about his life before he put his faith in Christ still uses the word I.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a continuity in person.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, if you like ice cream before, you'll like ice cream again.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you, you know, had blonde hair before unless you dye your hair in as part of your conversion experience, which is not, yeah, I've never heard of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you will have blonde hair or whatever color before your physical characteristics are the same Your personal identity is still the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to go get a passport change or get a new driver's license because you put your faith in Christ Yeah, so that's the idea, but now you have a new mind You have the mind of Christ you have the new history you have Christ history and you have a new ownership and you have a new nature
[SPEAKER_00]: However, because of this continuity of person, you still have that sin nature among you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have a choice to either obey the sin nature or obey your new nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: obey your flesh or obey the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the conundrum before us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's use a quick illustration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say that you have a job, and your boss is horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's an extortioner.
[SPEAKER_00]: He runs you down all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's insulting.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's condescending.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's rude.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just the worst boss you could ever have.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's constantly just crushing your soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Put up with him anymore, and finally, thank your lucky stars, the company finds out what a jerk he is and fires him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Woohoo!
[SPEAKER_00]: You're free, you go home and do the happy dance all weekend, come back on Monday morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this fellow can still is still around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Turns out you work in a public place.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he keeps calling you up, he has your phone number.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he keeps...
[SPEAKER_00]: Telling you what to do, trying to boss you around.
[SPEAKER_00]: He threatens to fire you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's rude, he's still condescending, he keeps calling you up.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really frustrating.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there's someone you should call in that situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what would you be if you continued to obey him?
[SPEAKER_00]: What would you be if you continued to obey him at that point?
[SPEAKER_00]: a proposed to you that you would be a moron, if you continue to take his abuse and put up with him and obey his orders, even though he'd been let go, released from the company, you're under no obligation to obey him again, you'd be considered a goofball and you'd probably lose your job for obeying someone who's been let go from the company, all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what does that look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or as I've got up here, what does that look like again?
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul, in Galatians 516, gives us a similar picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is what we've been studying in the Wednesday Night Study.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like you say, if you've been missing it, it's phenomenally exciting, study to be in.
[SPEAKER_00]: But.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I've said then, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Walk as a metaphor and scripture for how you conduct your whole life, your daily life down to the very smallest minute detail.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they didn't have cars back then.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have too many other ways to get around.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and quite frankly, it wasn't readily available to have your own chariot, unless you were pretty wealthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, how most people got around most of the time was on their own two feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Walk over here and do this, walk over here and do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it became a clear metaphor for the rubber meets the road,
[SPEAKER_00]: In, actually, is more clearly brought across by means of.
[SPEAKER_00]: So walk in the spirit gives one idea, but it's more clearly understood, and the grammars may be a little bit better brought across by, walk by means of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've got a tug of war.
[SPEAKER_00]: On one side, we're commanded to walk in the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's the same on the other side?
[SPEAKER_00]: We will not fulfill the lusts, the inordinate desires of the flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and this is important to get this right, because it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: do not obey the lust of the flesh and you will walk in the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, even if by strength of will, you cannot do the things that you know that the sin nature or that the flesh will have you do, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're walking in the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Crazy, huh?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need to be walking in the spirit or walking by means of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reliance on the Holy Spirit will produce the fruit of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: We looked a little bit at this last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas obeying the sin nature produces only the works of the flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to remind us, we talked about this a little bit last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why is it the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, if a branch is connected to the vine, it will produce fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's not connected to the vine, there's no natural productivity coming from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can tape apples onto an apple tree, but it's still in a healthy apple tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unless it's growing its own apples.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that process happens by our connection, as we saw last week, to Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Galatians,
[SPEAKER_00]: I have been crucified with Christ and is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The life that I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, simply and briefly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is it for this morning, so pay attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your position in Christ and his death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating are the reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: When God says something, it is the reality, the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And He has said that you've been identified with Him in all these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your sin nature is lying to you, the world and the law, also.
[SPEAKER_00]: or as tools in your sin natures hand, but the world in the sin nature are lying to you, trying to convince you that you're not actually forgiven, that there is actually condemnation, that you can somehow sin your way out, drop your way out, or that the victorious Christian life based on Christ, the over-comer, is not available to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the sin natures up to.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he's doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just trying to deceive you and so that you don't open this gift and that's that six-payer that big old hand out that you saw so that you don't put your faith in and begin to use these tools that the Lord has given you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you start using them, he knows that his days of calling the shots are numbered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he might get his, his hurrah and he might be able to sneak in trick and make a trip and stumble again and, and all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he knows that the minute you understand and believe, reckon it, count it is true that you never have to listen to that sin nature again.
[SPEAKER_00]: that it's all over.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the question that I have for you this morning is, who will you choose to believe today?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to believe God's Word?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to believe your sin nature?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to believe God's Word?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to believe the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to believe God's Word?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to listen to the accusations, in fact, the devil, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The accuser of the brethren?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to listen to those accusations?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to believe what God said about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, we praise you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've given us everything that we need for life and godliness.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have provided us with
[SPEAKER_00]: The smallest to the greatest Lord, every spiritual blessing, and it's all possible as we behold you as we rest in what you have done as we trust in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And learn through that, the fruit of the Spirit will be produced, will come, we trust you for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We praise you for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for the gift that you've given us, the grace,
[SPEAKER_00]: that you have towards us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, I pray for anyone in our body or on the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone connected to our body who is still a slave to the sin nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've told us that sin nature pays only death as wages.
[SPEAKER_00]: That he's the most abusive boss or master that any of us could have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are people that we know living, possibly people in this room living in that reality, in that slavery.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, please open their hearts in their minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let them know and let them have the courage to boldly put their faith fully.
[SPEAKER_00]: in your son Christ Jesus, his work on the cross and accept in faith the promise that you have freed us from sin and it is for a freedom that you have set us free.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus holy name we pray, amen.