Well, good morning Summit Church at all of our campus locations in the Triangle and for the first official time.
I had the privilege of welcoming me here live with us our Alamance County campus which launched last weekend in Mebane in Alamance County as our ninth official campus. They have been meeting informally now for the past several months and just growing and last week they had their first official service with over 300 people there. About 200 of that 300 are new people to the Summit Church.
In fact, a hundred of the 300 last week. Last week was the first time ever they had attended a service at the Summit Church including a lot of teachers from the middle school where they're meeting there as well as a bunch of students from Elon University and so Summit Church at all of our campuses could we put our hands together and welcome Alamance County as a part of our church. It is amazing the way that God continues to grow and expand really through your leadership as we keep up with what the Holy Spirit is doing here in the Triangle area. If you've got a Bible, I'd invite you to take it out now and begin to open it to Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6 is where we're going to be.
We were in Romans 4 a couple weeks ago, so just a couple chapters to the right of that. As you're turning there, if you are new to Christianity one of the things that you will very quickly figure out about the Christian subculture that you are now part of is that we Christians love bumper stickers. If you ever see somebody who has just their whole backside of their car that is plastered with bumper stickers, it either means that they are a tree-hugging liberal or they are an evangelical Christian. Those are the two kinds of people that do that sort of thing. So over the years I've collected just you know my share of what I consider to be the worst Christian bumper stickers that are out there.
Hopefully these are not revealing your car, but I'll give you a few of them right here. First we have what I call the confrontational evangelism Christian. You know, this fish won't fry will you? I'm sure you've seen some version of this. Then there's what I call the passive-aggressive Christian.
You can see this. Do you follow Jesus this close? Yeah, just kind of the self-righteous Yeah, sort of thing there. Then I've got a cheesy Christian. You know, see what's missing. You are.
Yeah, just just terrible. And then there's, how about I glorify God with even my fast food choices Christian. This is, you know, I support Christian chicken, Chick-fil-A, Christian values there. Then you've got... Oh, this is a good one. Pastors favorite church member Christian. Tied if you love Jesus. Anybody can honk.
So we're giving those out as soon as you leave today, so you might want to get one of those. Then there is a politically sensitive Christian. Pray for Obama, Psalm 109-8, which is kind of nice, right? I pray for our president like the Bible tells us to. Until you look up Psalm 109-8, which says, may his days be few and another take his office. And so, I took all these pictures on the way walking in through our parking lot this morning. That's a joke. But if you do want to stage a bathroom break right now and run to your car and pull one of these off, then that certainly will be fine. But here is one more bad one that I've seen. I use it because it sort of sets up what we're going to talk about today. A misconception.
Here it is. Christians aren't perfect. They're just forgiven. Now part of that bumper sticker, or I guess license plate here, is true. It is true that Christians are not perfect, but they're not just forgiven. They're not just forgiven.
That's a misconception that gets embodied in a bumper sticker that I want to talk about. We are in a short series called Phantom Faith in which we are discussing a handful of things that people just don't get regarding Christianity. When they're new to Christianity, or even if they've been around church for a long time, these are kind of things that just don't connect that cause them to live to go through the motions of Christianity, but often without the soul. That's what a zombie is, right?
Isn't a zombie, last week we talked about, is a moving body without the soul? Many people are like that with their faith. They're going through the motions of Christianity, but they've never really developed the heart of Christianity, and I want to explain why that is. The very first week we went through Romans chapter 4, and I showed you how so many people just don't seem to get what the Bible means when it says that we're saved by faith. If you weren't here for that, I would encourage you to go back and listen to it, not because I felt like it was a great sermon, but because it's a great passage of Scripture, and it shares with you the one thing that separates Christianity from every other religious message in the world.
It shows you the one thing that you have to understand if you are going to know for sure you go to heaven. Not one thing that we looked at in depth a couple weeks ago is what it means for salvation to be received, not achieved. That's the distinction of what Jesus taught more of any other religious leader, is that God credits to us Jesus' righteousness, even though we don't deserve it, even though we don't have it in ourselves.
He credits to us Jesus' righteousness when we trust personally that God accomplished what He said He accomplished in Jesus' death on the cross, and that is the full and the complete payment for our sin. This week I want to talk about another misconception that people have about Christian salvation, and that is that Christian salvation is just forgiveness, that the Gospel is just God's agreement to wipe out your sin debt. You can hear that in how we phrase the question about salvation. We say, I went over this a couple weeks ago, if you died tonight and God were to say, why should I let you into heaven?
What would you tell it? As if that is all that the Gospel is really concerned about is how you answer that question. How are you going to take care of your sin debt? What I want to show you this weekend is that in the Gospel are not only the resources to be delivered from the penalty of sin, you're going to get the resources that you need to be delivered from the power of sin too. It's not just forgiveness, it's also the power of new life. So the question is not just if you died tonight and God said why should I let you into heaven, what would you tell Him? The question is also if you get up tomorrow morning, if you get up tomorrow morning, how is your life going to look different that Christ is in it?
I'm really excited about this. I will be totally honest with you about being able to teach this to you because what I'm going to share with you today has the potential to radically transform some of your lives because you are going to discover today that there is a power available to you that you may not have even ever known about. You do not automatically get this power when you become a believer. You've got to learn to access it and let's just face it, if some of you were really honest, you would admit that you feel plateaued in your spiritual life.
You're not really going anywhere. The relationship's not developed. The same old temptations you've always had are as in control of your life as they've ever been. You're not developing deeper love for God.
You've got the same bad temper, the same foul moods. I want to try to show you why that is and how it is that you can change that. Romans chapter 6, Paul begins with a question.
Here is the question. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? After what Paul has just taught about how salvation is a free gift, that it is received, not achieved. It's not something we do to earn it. After Paul has taught all that, the natural question is, well, do we now have it like a divine visa card with an unlimited balance that we can just run up as much sin charge as we want and Jesus has already got it covered?
You know, when you've got an unlimited credit, then why not just spend as much money as you want? Why don't we just go ahead and sin since Jesus' blood has covered it all? It's a very natural question once you understand the gospel. Number two, Paul says, by no means.
By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? All right, what does Paul mean when he says we have died to sin?
Well, let me tell you what he doesn't mean. What he doesn't mean is that we are gradually moving away from sin, gradually getting more and more righteous, and this just died to sin is just a metaphor. No, he said dead to sin. You know, dead to sin is, you're not like mostly dead.
You're either dead or you're not. So Paul's not talking about a gradual process where you become more sinless as you grow more righteous. Nor does Paul mean that we have simply renounced sin saying, you know, like an Italian mafia boss may say to his son if he disappointed him, you are dead to me. You know, he's not talking about that either.
Something much greater, something much bigger is going on. He explains, verse three, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death. Putting sin to death was something that Christ did for us on the cross. And when we are baptized into him, we are joined to his killing of our sin. Verse four, we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we also, we too, might walk in the newness of life. The baptism that Paul speaks of specifically here is spirit baptism, where the Holy Spirit takes us.
It's an invisible process, but the moment that you put faith in Christ, the moment you trust in Christ, the spirit of God takes you and he baptizes you in the spirit into the death of Christ so that Christ's death on the cross becomes your killing of sin and Christ's burial in the ground became the burial of your sin forever. That spirit baptism is supposed to be mirrored by water baptism. We often say here that water baptism is just an external depiction of what has already happened as an inward reality. That just like you and I, when we were baptized in the spirit, when we trusted Christ, just like we were put into the death of Christ, right, so we are going to put somebody in the water showing that they have been buried with Christ.
And just like Christ was raised from the dead and we were raised in him, raised in him, the spirit joined us to that, so we're going to be raised up out of the water, right. So that's what we're doing when we do water baptism is we're giving an external picture of something that has already happened on the inside. So occasionally somebody will say to me, you know, well pastor, why don't you sprinkle people? It feels like, you know, they're just so much cleaner and easier and it doesn't involve all the tanks and the changing of clothes and why don't you just sprinkle? And listen, when I answer this, I'm not trying to be catty, I'm trying to be cute, we don't sprinkle because it depicts a burial.
And when you bury somebody, you don't sprinkle dirt on their head, you put them under the ground. People say, well, why don't you baptize a baby? Well, because a baby has not been put into Christ yet.
Water baptism is supposed to be the external depiction, the external symbol of something that has already happened on the inside and it happens when you believe on Jesus and when you are baptized in the spirit, you're supposed to demonstrate that by a water baptism. Now, I'm telling you, I've told you for a few weeks, we're going to be doing that today. We're going to, you know, throughout the year from time to time, we will give people a chance who have never been baptized to be baptized. And I know some of you didn't come prepared, you're like, I wasn't thinking about it today, I already forgot where you said it a couple weeks ago, which is, well, first of all, God graciously has prepared you by making you get wet for the last nine days in a row, so you shouldn't be that nervous about that. But we also have everything that you need, a change of clothes, and at the end of the service today, all of our campuses, we're going to give you a chance because you need to take this step because it's an important one and it's what Jesus said is supposed to be your first act of faith after you become a Christian. Some of you have been Christians for years and you've never done it.
Today, we're going to give you that chance. All right, that unification, Paul says, to Christ gives us access now to Jesus' newness of life. Verse five, for if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.
United, that word is a horticultural term in Greek, and it means where you would graft one branch out of one plant into another one. And what he's saying is that our plant was dead, and so Jesus took the branch of our lives and he grafted it into Jesus' root. And because Jesus was alive, Jesus' life began to flow up into us.
Now, let me just stop for a second. Do you understand? I feel like this just goes right over our head. Do you understand what Paul just said and about the implications of that for the power and the potential that you have in your spiritual life? Do you really kind of get your mind around Christianity? It's not you turning over a new leaf.
It's not you resolving to do better. Christianity is the power of new life. There are some people who seem to be looking for so little when it comes to salvation. Man, they just want inner peace.
They just want to find some meaning in their life. They want to get out a hell-free card. And Jesus will give you all of those things, but he is so much more. Union to Christ means that everything that is true of Jesus is now legally true of you also.
You've not only got his perfect record attached to your account, you've got the power of his resurrection. Eternal life is not just something God was going to give you by an eternal duration of days in the afterlife. Eternal life is something he wants to give you right now.
It is a quality of living, not just a quantity of days. Does that not change how you see the potential of your life? There is no brokenness or no corruption in you that Jesus did not put in the grave, and there is nothing that his resurrection cannot remove, heal, or redeem from you.
I want you to think about this for a minute. The greatest people that God used to change the world, if you go back and read their stories in the Bible, are always deeply flawed people. I mean, people that you would like learn their past, you'd be like, I don't even know why you're here. Peter was a coward. I mean, repeatedly throughout his life, a coward. Paul was harsh and abrasive. You would not want to be friends with the Apostle Paul. He was always self-righteous, telling you why he did it better than you. The Apostle John was arrogant and vengeful. Several of the most prominent women in the early church had very shady pasts. Yet the new birth made these men and women people of incredible power. They changed history, and they were not made out of more promising material than the person that is sitting next to you if they are a believer in Christ. Because it's no longer about what you and I are able to accomplish for Christ.
It is what the power of his resurrection can do in and through us. In fact, right now, I don't think you're getting this. Right now, look to the person, right now, at every campus, to your right. Everybody look to your right. Now look to the person to your left.
If they are a believer, they have literally, literally, they have the power that brought Jesus out of the grave inside their chest. Does that not change how you feel about that person? Don't you want to just kind of reach over and touch him for just a minute? Just be like, let me try to get a little bit of that off onto me. That is the potential that Paul says is in you.
Right? I had a friend, I got to see him last night for the first time in a long time. He, for years, struggled with a temptation that he just could not shake. And y'all, I'm telling you, no matter how many, we learned verses together. We read books together.
We did accountability groups together. And he could never shake that temptation. I eventually had a job that caused him to move away. And I got to see him, not last night for the first time, but a while back. And the first time I'd seen him in like a year or two, he smiled real big. And I could tell, it's like, something's different.
He said, man, God's given me victory over this temptation. I said, well, what did you, you know, what new thing did you learn? Which of my podcasts were you listening to? And you learn that missing piece. And he goes, man, he goes, I didn't learn anything new.
I certainly wasn't listening to one of your podcasts. He said, I didn't learn anything new. He said, but finally, I think somebody explained to me what it meant that for Christ to live through me. He said, I always was trying to fix this for Jesus. He said, then I finally realized he wasn't asking me to fix this for him and offer it to him. What he was asking me to do is to yield myself, to let him do it through me. And he was able to do in his resurrection power in my life, what I'd never been able to accomplish, no matter how much willpower or how many verses that I learned. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans six. So he's going to try to get really practical with you. All right. So go to verse 11. I'll show you how he gets really down and down in the weeds with us. Likewise, you also, you need to, to reckon yourselves to be a dead indeed to sin reckon, but alive to God and Christ Jesus, our Lord, the rest of this passage is going to be built on around two imperatives, two verbs.
The first one is this one right here. Reckon. Now reckon is that Greek word logizomai that we spent so much time on a couple of weeks ago. I told you it is an accounting term where you count one thing as if it were another, even though it is not. And the first time Paul uses it in Romans, he's talking about how, when we put faith in Christ, God logizomai, he reckons our faith to be righteousness. He accounts it as righteousness, even though technically it didn't. I compared it to a wild card.
Remember that? Like when your hand of poker, if you got a joker and you can count the joker for whatever you want it to be, and you need a queen of hearts, and you can count that as a queen of hearts, even though it's not. Paul says, when we put faith in Christ finished work, God logizomai, he counts that as righteousness. Now, Paul says, it's your turn to do the reckoning. It is your turn to reckon yourself to be dead to sin and alive to God. And when you reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God, it is then that God infuses the power of new life into you. You say, but I don't feel dead to sin.
Sin and wrong desires feel very much alive in me. You're totally missing Paul's point. When you believe that God has declared it to be, it is then after you believe it that he begins to infuse the power into you. Again, Abraham is our example. Abraham was infertile at 90 years old when God declared he would have a son. When God said that to Abraham, Abraham did not say, you know, I think you're right.
I've been feeling unusually frisky for the last few weeks. I believe you. No, Romans says he didn't feel anything at all when God said it. But he believed what God said because God had said it even though he didn't feel it, even though he knew his equipment was way out of working order. And when he believed what God said, even though it went against how he felt, it was then that he received strength. So Paul says, in the same way, you will receive strength to be dead to sin when you believe that God has made you dead to sin.
This is not some kind of mental trick where you tell yourself, I'm brave, I'm brave, I'm brave, I'm brave enough times until you actually become brave. God gives you actual power when you believe that what he says he has done is true. And so when you say, I am dead to sin and I am alive to God in the resurrection, it is then that the power of righteousness and the power of new life comes into you. You see, we always want to feel first and then we'll believe and God says, nope, that is not it at all.
You've got to believe what I said because I said it and then you will feel. This is what we call name it, claim it, sanctification. You see, the name it, claim it crowd gets at least one major thing right.
They get some major things wrong. Name it, claim it is the idea that you just take a promise of Jesus and doesn't matter if you don't have it, you don't feel it, you just claim it. It's just not in Jesus. And then you name it and it's yours.
You stab it, you grab it, however you want to, you think of that. What they get right, and this is, you've got to learn this, what they get right is that when Jesus has made a promise then you can claim it as your own even if you do not feel it in one shape, form, or fashion at all. What they get wrong is the object of what you are claiming from Jesus. Because what Jesus died for was not to give you a new BMW, he died to make you holy.
And holiness is a much greater possession than a hummer. So when you name it and claim it, what you're claiming is you're claiming the promises that Jesus gave, not about making you materially prosperous, you're claiming the promises about him making you more like Christ. And that is a promise that you can name, it is a promise you can claim, and when you claim that promise then God will infuse the power of new life into you. Paul says you got to reckon it even though you don't feel you reckon it, and when you reckon it that's when God begins to infuse it into you. So Paul continues, verse 12, here's your second one, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.
Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. Instead you should present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. Here's your second command, Paul tells us after you reckon yourself dead to sin, number two, you must restore God as the center of your life. Now he doesn't use the word restore in this text per se, but that is what he is talking about when he tells us to present the members of our body daily to God. You see Paul says, listen to this, watch this, there is something at the center of your heart, it sits on the throne, there's something and every day you will present your members of your body in service to that thing. There's something in you that you feel like is so central in your life that you've got to have it, this is the God that you worship and every day you will get up and you will present the members of your body in service to that thing and say what do I got to do to obtain you. Now at this point I know some of you may object, you say wait a minute Paul I'm not a servant of anybody or anything, I do whatever I want. Paul anticipates your objection by the way, did you know that for the first at least 100 years maybe even longer at Harvard Law School they read the book of Romans line by line not for theology, they read it so that they could learn how to develop a law case where you anticipate objections and just shoot them down as you're making your argument because what Paul does anytime he senses an objection he just goes ahead and takes care of it and so he figured there's a group of Americans 2,000 years ago and he was writing this that would object the way that you just objected so Paul sensed your objection and then watch how he smacks it down verse 16.
Do you not know? Do you think you don't serve somebody is that what you think? Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anybody as obedient slaves you're the slaves of the one you obey whether that's to sin which leads to death or of obedience to God which leads to righteousness. Every day he says you present your body your members of your members of your body in pursuit of something something's at the center of your heart something commands your obedience it's whatever it is that's most important to you whatever you feel like that you have to have to be fulfilled or to be happy it's whatever you feel like you can't live without that thing controls you functionally that thing has become your master. Christian counselor David Pallason and others like him have identified a set of what they call core idols core masters in the human heart which are sort of you know based on your personality or based on the time of life one of these four will become more prominent than the others but they're like root idols or core idols that are sort of behind everything else. It's really been helpful for me to think through these let me put them up here for you. The first one he talks about is power there are certain people that are driven by a desire for influence or recognition man it's just for them for life to be good they got to have power and influence and they got to be at the top there are others that their God is controlled they're going to be happy as long as everything is going according to their plan these are the people that plan all the time these are the people that save lots of money these are people who just feel like as long as everything is just kind of going the way that it's supposed to and there's nothing I'm going to be okay there are others that what the core of their heart is is approval they have this craving to be accepted or desired and they can't be happy unless certain other people are happy with them that might be their family it might be their friends at school it might be the people in their career field it might be their spouse but they live by approval then there are lastly here comfort there are some who what it means for them to be happy is they just want to be comfortable it might take the form of longing for pleasures like sexual pleasure or even alcohol food pleasure or it might just be they want creature comforts they feel like as long as I'm you know just got my my house as long as I got my land and as long as everything's comfortable then I'm gonna be okay let me ask you this when you look at those four which one just sort of more naturally thinks that that would be my one right there kind of identify it if you have your spouse lean over and tell them which one you think their one is as well and see if you guys got you came up with the same one there's nothing wrong of course with any one of these things in and of itself it's when it becomes central in your life ultimate when it becomes the thing that you can't live without when it becomes something that commands your obedience more than God does when you get up daily and you think about how to pursue these things because without that thing you could not be happy that's when God has been displaced as your master and that thing has become wicked John Calvin the theologian said that evil is not typically desiring something wrong evil is usually wanting something good too much it's not desiring a bad thing it's elevating a good thing to a God thing and then when it becomes a God thing it becomes a bad thing in fact Paul uses a very illuminating word in verse 12 that'll that'll that'll show you this if you got your Greek New Testament you probably saw it when we read it let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body he said to make you obey its passions that word passions in Greek is the Greek word epithumia epithumia just means a desire a strong desire even when you add the little prefix epi to it it means that the desire becomes so large that it controls you or dominates you I want money there's nothing wrong with money money's a good thing but if I can't have it I'll be bitter and I'll feel like I live a second-class life or maybe I'll even feel like life is not worth living because it'd just be miserable to be poor so I'll worry all the time about not getting money or I'll save money all the time or I'll be jealous of those who have more of it than I do I'll overwork maybe even I'll cheat to get it I want a family I want a family and if I can't have that well then life doesn't really feel like it's worth living so I'll sit around and feel sorry for myself and ask what I did wrong that would make God hate me like this or I'll obsess about finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend and I'll be willing to compromise all kinds of standards just to have somebody with me because I can't be happy I can't live without companionship Tim Keller says that there are three tests that'll show you what your spiritual master is three kind of um you know uh litmus tests first one's anger anger whenever something blocks you from getting a good thing you get upset that's normal and it's fine it's an emotion God created listen if something blocks you from getting an ultimate thing you don't just get angry you get epi angry you snap because they have threatened the core of your life in fact look through your life and see where you can't forgive somebody else because wherever you can't forgive somebody else it's because they touched one of your spiritual masters fear is the second one if something good in your life is threatened you get worried that's natural if I find out my kids are in danger I get worried that's very natural but if something ultimate in your life is threatened something you feel like you can't live without then you are paralyzed your fear has become an epi fear you are so anxious about it that you can't think right you develop worry or anxiety problems you go through panic attacks here's your third one sadness when you lose something good in your life you grieve and you weep which you should grieve and weep but see when you lose something ultimate you despair you fall apart you say life is not worth living any longer you want to throw yourself off of a bridge you see those three emotions the epi version of those three emotions point to where God has been displaced as the master of your heart so again just a little self-diagnosis where where what triggers those three emotions most than you what is it throughout your life that has gotten you the most angry what has caused you the most worry what has caused you the most sadness you know of the years and we've talked about this I've always told you there's kind of two that sort of fight for dominance in my heart besides God one of them is um control which one of the reasons that when when I got married um one of the things that my wife and I thought about as many married couples fight about is we thought about money why because money for me that's security and I was just convinced that one day I was going to open up our bank account there wouldn't be anything left and there's no money there and I need that to feel secure about the future because as long as there's enough in there to take care of emergencies and get us through a couple rough months and I feel okay and if it's not there I feel like you know it just it just drives me bananas right because it's control the other one is approval and I've told you this before but I've just throughout my life always felt like I you know was a good person if other people around me the right people were telling me that I was awesome and so what I did is I just transferred that to our church when I became a pastor and I thought well if the church likes me the church is big then that means I'm doing something right right so that's why when I would preach a bad sermon it would just devastate me I wasn't just sad that you guys didn't get the you know the point or I bored you a little bit it was like it was because it got to the core of who I was if I'm not a good preacher then I'm not worth anything and people aren't really going to like me and I just was after I preached a bad sermon I'd show up the next week convinced that none of y'all were going to show up that the sermon was just so bad and boring that y'all were like in fact sometimes you know it's just like I know it sounds crazy to you but I I drive up and I'm like you know this is a volunteer organization none of you have to be here yeah and like this is the week that all of you say you know what I'm just sick I've heard that story like seven times that same one if he tells them I'm just walking out I'm not coming back and you just go to another church and you listen to another preacher and I come here and there's like a handful of staff because they have to be here and then there's my wife you know on the front row and she's got her iPod she's not really there but she's got her iPod in and she's listening to Matt Chandler because he's funny and so you know it's and while I'm trying to preach and I'm like boom it's just you know it's this kind of fear that begins to paralyze my life because the master that I've lived for is approval Paul says you got you everybody's got to serve somebody maybe that wasn't Paul that was Bob Dylan but Bob Dylan got it from Paul he got it from Paul right here in Romans chapter 6 so what Paul says is you got to put God back in the center because everybody serves something you see if you present yourselves as anybody who is obedient slaves you're going to be slaves of the one you obey either to sin which leads to death or obedience which leads to righteousness whatever master you choose and you're going to choose one it's going to lead you to a certain destination and every master that you choose besides God the destination they lead you to is death so if you're enslaved to approval like I was your life will be plagued by constant self-pity feelings of envy toward other people who have what you want hurt feelings people always walking on eggshells because they got to say the right things to affirm you and make sure they don't criticize you you you feel you have these feelings of inadequacy if you're enslaved to comfort if you're enslaved to comfort that means that well a couple of versions of it you you can't say no to the pleasures of the body you get addicted to sex or food or pornography or alcohol or something another version of this a much more civilized version of this is you can't ever be generous with your money why because to give away money for the mission or to share it with somebody else derive deprives you of some of the creature comforts that you love so you'll be generous as long as it doesn't affect you having the things that you really want which is that home that vacation driving that kind of car because you worship the god of comfort and you can't be happy unless the right comfortable things are around you that's why you can't really be that generous or man when i talk about somebody leaving to go to the mission field you act like i'm talking to people from another planet like why would you ever do that why would i leave my comfortable home and go live somewhere that's uncomfortable what are these fools doing good living in the dwell living in another part of riley durham where they're living intentionally somewhere that's not comfortable you can't do that because you worship comfort if you worship if you worship where are we if you worship power you become domineering and vengeful harsh even abusive if you ever saw yourself in the mirror you wouldn't like what you see you you're the kind of person who wants to talk about yourself all the time right you're that guy you know hey i'm tired of talking about how awesome i am why don't you talk about how awesome i am for a while and then that'll you know take it away from me you just become that person if you're enslaved to control you worry all the time obsessively you you you you you'll lose your temper a lot people around you feel manipulated by you because you're trying to control them the wages paul says you see of sin verse 23 is death you've known that verse the wages of sin is death but what you've probably never done is connected it to the larger context paul is not just talking about going to hell when you die he is talking about that but he's talking about a hell you begin to experience on earth before you ever get to hell in the afterlife what he's saying is that death is a law that begins to just disintegrate you and ultimately one day when you do die and go to hell it's just the fulfillment of the way that you lived on earth paul says the wages of sin is death but but but the gift the free gift of god is eternal life in christ jesus our lord paul says there's another master and this master doesn't pay he gives he gives you a gift whereas every other master threatens you and tells you if you don't work enough for me i'll make you miserable isn't that what a master does isn't that what money does you better work you better work hard for me and if you don't work hard enough for me you're going to be poor and then when you're poor i'll make you miserable and you'll be cursed relationships say you better work for me you know what if you're hot enough and you're if you're skinny enough then you'll get the relationship that you've always wanted you'll get the attention you want and then you'll feel like you're worth something so you better starve that body and you better get it down you better feel inadequate all the time because you got to find that relationship because without that you'll be miserable you better work for me work for me god says i'll give you all my joy and all my blessing as a gift you don't have to work for anything you can't work for anything you don't have to earn it it's not a wage it's a gift every blessing that i have in christ i'm going to give it to you for free salvation my salvation my blessing my presence is not something you achieve it is something you receive tim keller has a wonderfully simple way of saying this jesus is the only master that you give yourself to the only master who if you find him will satisfy you and the only master that if you fail him will forgive you you see jesus is more satisfying and he's more reliable than money why because he owns the cattle on a thousand hill and he promises to supply every need that you ever have and he never crashes and never dips below 12 000 you don't have to get up and switch on some business channel to figure out what he's what he's rating at for the day he is more fulfilling and more comforting than romantic love you see earthly marriage good marriages all they are supposed to be a dim shadow of heavenly love it turns out that the arms that we yearned for and we sought in romance were actually his arms it was his tenderness his security his companionship that was the ultimate fulfillment of those things jesus is better than earthly pleasure he's the fountain of all pleasures jesus is better knowing god is better than earthly power y'all what greater power could there be than for you to know that the sovereign god who cherishes you has commandeered every molecule in the universe to work for his purposes and for your good you don't get greater power than that jesus is greater than popularity to be known and honored and esteemed by the god of eternity that is honor that's the one who i want saying i approve of you well done good and faithful servant no matter what i compare god to god wins and what paul says is listen you have got to get god back at the center of your life after you reckon yourself dead to sin realize that the way that you were living you'd put something in your life that was leading you to death you got to put god back in the throne and daily present your members to him because that will lead you to life one of our campus pastors had a great illustration of this he says you know he said i have a shellfish analogy an analogy allergy i have a shellfish allergy not an analogy um he says what i do um is i i if i ever eat shellfish he says my throat constricts so you know break out in a rash i can hardly breathe he said the problem is is i love shrimp i just love the taste of shrimp and so he said for years as a young man i just convinced myself you know what willpower this time i'll eat shrimp and i'll just kind of mind my way over the the thing he said it never worked it never worked and he pulls out this little thing he says the good thing is i have one of these it's an epi pen an epi pen that you know if you eat shrimp then you stick it you know somewhere in your body and you parents know what it is and it it counteracts the effects of the shellfish now he's not suggesting nor am i that you just develop that as a routine of life where you eat it and stick yourself with an epi pen he said but you know it sounds like that's what you're saying that essentially sin and the gospel that's how that works is sin is epithymia that begins to take over your whole body and man you love the taste of it for a minute but it begins to constrict your breathing and even constrict your circulation and it begins to work death and the only way that you can counteract that is to take the epi pen of god's word and you got to put it into your bloodstream and you got to have a vision of god that begins to open up those passageways and open up what light what what sin is created in death i've got to re-infuse with life paul says you got to serve somebody and what you've been serving leads you to death you need a vision of god and his promises that will infuse you with life god needs to become epi again in your life because he's the only one that will give life so paul began this discussion with a question the question was if we're really saved by grace as a free gift should we just go on sinning like we have an unlimited spiritual budget to cover sin paul's answer was god forbid why because sin is a trajectory that leads to death and if you've really repented you don't want to be on that path and by the way if you do want to be in that path paul would say that begs the question of whether you've ever really repented there's some who are like oh i got my heavenly visa card he's like that's not repentance that's trying to use god right what repentance means is that you recognize i was walking a path that led to death i want to walk a path that leads to life and so i forsake this path and i'm going to choose this one and if you are not choosing to follow after god then i don't care what prayer you prayed you didn't really become a christian because repentance means a change of mind a change of mind about one thing and beginning to pursue another one paul says after you have made that choice that you want to follow god how is it that you begin to live victoriously over sin he says your two steps you got to reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to god you got to believe what god says you got to believe that you're not a slave to sin anymore they you know they say that back in the days of um the 19th century after abraham lincoln and made the emancipation proclamation and even after the civil war had been won there was a whole generation of slaves former slaves who just could not get their mind around the fact that they were free people because their identity for all their life had been i'm a slave and they would say that when their other their former masters would come around sometimes they would tremble and they would quake and they would just begin to be servile and do whatever was said all right you want to tell those people you're no longer slaves you are free you don't have to tremble and quake because you are not under the control of that person anymore paul says when you have become a christian sin that old master comes around you and you don't have to listen to them anymore because they start saying things to you like hey you know what you're always going to be an addict you're always going to be a failure you're never going to get any better you've seen what you've done in your life that's what we can expect from you and paul says in roman six no no matter what you feel no matter what you may have experienced god has told you in his word that if you are in christ you are no longer under the reign of sin and when you do fall into sin it's because you've forgotten who you are so you need to remember what christ has made you you need to reckon yourself dead to sin because that's what he has said and then you need to live according to your new identity you need to reckon and then you need to restore god as the center of your life as the master who brings life all this starts with just trusting christ that's where it begins just trusting christ that what he has said about what he's done for you is true the gospel the gospel is that jesus christ has removed both the penalty and the power of your sin have you ever just trusted that as your salvation that's where it begins you see some of you think that you got to improve your life and get better and then god will accept you here's the irony listen to this the irony of christianity is that the only people who will ever get better are those who know that their acceptance with god is not dependent on their getting better it's when they recognize that he has done it all and paid it all and his power has been given it's then that you begin to receive the power to actually become better and to escape the slavery of sin it all starts with trust in christ and then the first thing you do after that is you demonstrate that by being baptized i'm not trying to take a small thing and make it a huge thing it's a big thing because it symbolizes for you it you come back to it throughout your life and you remember that's where i gave this picture like jesus told me to that i was buried with him and then i was raised like i told you there's a bunch of you in here that have never made that step some of you are in a minute i'm gonna give you a chance to trust christ if you never have you're making that decision today some of you made it last week some of you made it a month ago some of you it's been 10 years but you never you've never been baptized and you got to get that rectified today you got to get that rectified today we're going to give you a chance in just a second yeah i know that that you you immediately say well i didn't come prepared but listen we have everything that you will need i mean everything with there's products for your hair we have changes of clothes like i told you begin the service you're going to get wet going home when i have it count for something you know so we'll we'll take care of it we got everything very modest clothes um in just a minute i'm going to have you um if you want you're going to come at different campuses we had a bunch of people at our saturday services you could come we'll answer your questions if you have any if you after you talk to somebody you want to get baptized you can opt out of it but we'll give you that chance you see why i got baptized when i was a baby and i don't want to insult my parents you're listen i praise god for what your parents were doing when they baptized you honestly what were they doing they were saying i hope you grew up and follow jesus you are that's all you you fulfilled their desire baptism is supposed to be you declaring your faith baptism is not something you receive because of somebody else's faith it's how you declare your own faith and so what you're going to do is you're going to ratify the decision they made about you 20 30 years ago and you're going to say what you wanted for me now is happening right it's supposed to be your choice that you make that you make um you say well somebody drove me today and they're not going to want to wait for me if they do i promise they do i i talk to them not one-on-one but just in general terms i talk to them and say don't invite somebody if you're not willing for them to wait and get baptized so right now they're like yes i will wait for you so in fact look at them right now and if they're shaking their head like this that means they won't wait and if they do then just raise your hand and point to them like this right here because we have an usher that will come and grab them and go have a little discussion with them whatever the bottom line they'll wait okay i promise you at other campuses raise your hand right now and point we'll take care of that they want to wait they're excited about weight in fact if you drove somebody just kind of look over at them right now and sort of nod at them which means not only will i wait i'll go forward with you in a minute i'll walk up there so you don't have to walk up there by yourself we're going to give you a chance to do that but let's let's start it this way why don't you buy your heads at all of our campuses by your heads if you've never trusted christ as savior it's simply believing and what god said he did he did and receiving it as your own would you right now say jesus i believe that you died to be my savior and i receive i receive you as my savior jesus i surrender to you as my lord right now i do thank you for saving me now if you've never been baptized whether you prayed for me right now or whether you it's been a few weeks or a few 30 years if you've never been baptized would you say jesus i'm ready to to do what you said i'm ready to take this step jesus will you give me the strength in just a minute when jd asked me to come will you give me the strength to say yes and to step out but jesus i'm ready i'm ready father i pray that you would give every person of the summit church or is attending the summit church this weekend the courage to do what i'm going to ask him to do now i pray in christ's name amen
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-09-04 18:10:34 / 2023-09-04 18:30:27 / 20