More Things To Do When Contemplating Sin

Morning. Let me, let me have you turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6. And we have been doing a, verse by verse study through, Romans 567, and 8, and this is a journey that we are on into the heart of the gospel.

And what a journey it has been, and I can say, I like, I'm just now starting to get this. Like in my own mind, some of these things we've been looking at in Romans 5, Romans 6 are reaching critical mass and it's, just day by day, week by week, increasingly making a difference, in my life. And, I love Romans 6. This is a wonderfully practical, chapter, and today we're going to receive even more practical help.

If you want to give a title to the message, this morning, it would be more things to do when contemplating sin. More things to do when contemplating sin, and I don't want you to feel like it's like, oh my goodness, there's more things I have to do. No, these are some more things you can do. You should do, but there are more opportunities, ways that you can think that will help you in, Moments where you find yourself contemplating, sin.

All of us in our Christian walk over this past week, and certainly in the week to come, we all find ourselves inside of moments of temptation, in which we find ourselves contemplating the prospect of sin, right? How many of you had such a moment this week? OK. maybe sometimes we end up sinning and we didn't even think about it, right?

But then we find ourselves contemplating the prospect of continuing in that sin that we may have found ourselves in. In an explosive moment of anger, or what, what have you. And guys, I just want to submit to you that what we do and what we think inside of those moments of temptation when we are contemplating sin define our lives. They will define our lives in a number of ways and end up shaping our destiny, both temporally.

In this life and in the life to come for good or for evil. And if you're anything like me, you probably have many such moments that you would love to be able to go back to and think differently and respond differently inside a moment of temptation. And Paul in Romans 6 is just coming alongside of us right in that moment of temptation. When we're contemplating sin and says, let me help you, in terms of knowing what to think and what to do inside this moment.

That's how practical Romans 6 is. Paul is addressing the question of sin in the life of the believer. In verse one, he says, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

Now that we're saved, how do we live our lives and what do we do with this thing called sin? And hey, now that we're under God's grace and His grace will abound to us no matter what we do, maybe sinning isn't that big of a deal. Maybe we can continue and sin. And then in verse 15, he re-asks the question, what then shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace.

So shall we sin? Shall we sin? And Paul takes this entire chapter. In fact, we'll see he even spends Romans 7 answering this question, as well, answering this question about sin in the life of the believer.

And as I mentioned two weeks ago, Paul is not answering some, adversarial question asked by one or two people in the church. He's speaking to all of us in answering this question because this question lies inside of all of us. In fact, look at verse 19. He says, in talking to you, the I am in this chapter.

I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. You need to hear what I am saying, and that's why I'm repeating myself and just going out of my way to express things in terms of the human institution of slavery in order to help you to really lay hold of these concepts so that you can think this way and respond this way in moments where you find yourself contemplating sin. Well, all we're going to have time for, this morning is to just look at three more directions, 3 more directions regarding what we can and should do when we find ourselves in moments where we're asking the question, shall I sin?

Paul, in answering this second question in verse 15, shall we sin because we're not under the law, but under grace, has already given us three things to think about in such a moment.

He tells us in verse 14 that we need to think upon grace and the fact that grace is now in charge. We talked about that two weeks ago. Also, number 2, we learned that, from Paul that in our moments of temptation where the question rises from within, shall I sin? We need to think about the fact that obedience is always slavery.

Look what he says in verse 16. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either a sin resulting in death or of obedience, resulting in righteousness. We need to understand the fact that, in fact, what Paul does is he dispels the notion, that I think all of us have, and that is that we tend to view sin as a servant. Sin is our servant.

And it comes to us and we can hire this servant to serve our purposes for a moment of pleasure, and we can hire it and then we can fire it when we're done, and it has to go away. Almost like we're in control, we're the master, and we hire sin as we see the need or the desire to do so. Paul says, that's not the way it works. When you sin, you're not hiring sin to work for you.

You're not the master here. In your moment of sin, you are surrendering yourself to the sin master. And you are obligating yourself to that sin. You are yielding yourself as a slave to that sin.

And allowing it in that moment to be your master. And in that moment of agreement, you are essentially contracting yourself to receive whatever wages that sin is going to pay you for that moment of surrender. And Paul says, so shall you sin now that you're not under the law, but under grace? What you're really asking is, shall I be enslaved to sin?

Shall I serve sin as my master? Once again, Paul would say, absolutely not. Why would you do that? And then number 3, Paul encourages us in moments of temptation to think back upon our first act of obedience to the gospel.

He says, but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching. to which you were committed. The form of teaching to which we were handed over is the gospel. And he says, on that day of your conversion, you rebelled against your sin master, you defied the sin master, you did the opposite of what your sin master wanted you to do.

You rebelled against sin, and you obeyed the gospel, you obeyed God. And as a result of your belief in Christ, you received the gift of justification. And you were liberated from sin, and became a slave to God. And Paul is wanting us to think about that, your Christian life has been birthed out of a defiance of sin, and a submission, or obedience to the gospel, and to God.

Would a life birthed out of that now be characterized by obedience to sin? And by rebellion against God? Paul would say to live this way. Is very inconsistent with even the decision you made on the day of your conversion.

Well, we come now to verse 18, where we will observe three more things to do in our moments, when we find ourselves contemplating sin. All right? Number one, which in a sense, maybe we could say is number 4, but, the three things that I want us to look at today are these. And number one is in your moment of contemplating sin, recognize the fact that sin is a master from which you have been delivered.

He says in verse 17, but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. So he's speaking of the day of our conversion, verse 18, and here's what happened on that day, having been freed, or loosed, or delivered from Sin, Paul says, on the day of your conversion, you were delivered from sin as your master. Sin is a master. It is only interested in ruling, not in serving you.

It wants to dominate you. But on the day you believed in Christ, you became freed from sin. You say, Pastor, I, I've been praying every day for God to free me from sin. If you believed in Jesus, God would say, I've already answered that prayer.

If you're praying, God, deliver me from bondage to this sin, God would say, I already did that on the day of your conversion. Stop praying and asking for what I have in fact done, and just start believing in what I tell you that I have done on the day of your conversion. In delivering you from sin. Now, because we are so accustomed to this relationship with sin that we had all of our lives, it's easy to, to still submit to sin even as a believer, but we have to believe that it's no longer our master.

I'm sure you've all been watching what's going on in the Middle East over the last, couple months. just take for example, Hosni Mubarak, who, for 30 years reigned over Egypt and for most of that time as the president of Egypt. And he ruled with an iron fist in a lot of ways and struck fear into the hearts of the Egyptian people, but they rebelled. They defied his leadership, rightly or wrongly, and on February 11th, he stepped down.

But what, he's still alive. Mubarak is still alive. In fact, he's still living in Egypt. And some people in Egypt are so accustomed to him being in control, that I was reading this week that there's a, there's a small minority of people who because he's still in Egypt, believe that behind the scenes, he's still an active participant.

In governing Egypt now that almost certainly is not true, but it just shows how the fact that he's still present in the country living in Egypt still causes some to think maybe he is still in some way still in control, but Most people don't believe that. And if Hosni Mubarak were to drive up into some community and with his motorcade and all the old trappings of power, and he's wearing his military uniform, and he were to come into that community and start barking out commands and orders.

In most every community, the people would laugh at him. And they would say, Wait a minute, we see you, you're alive, you're still living in this country, but you are no longer our master.

You no longer have authority over us. You may try to assert authority over us, but you are no longer in charge. We've been delivered from your rule. And Paul is telling us in moments where sin comes up in its motorcade with all the old trappings of power wearing its old uniform that it used to wear that asserted its authority over us, when sin comes to us and demands that we submit.

to it, we are to respond in the same way and say, wait a minute, you still exist. And there's still remnants of you inside of me, but you're not president anymore. You are not king anymore. You are not my master.

And I do not have to do what you tell me to do. Because on the day of my conversion, a release took place. I was freed from sin and sin's power. Obviously freed from the guilt of our sins, through the shed blood of Jesus and the forgiveness we now have, but also freed from the power of sin, and having to do what sin demands.

Well, there's a second direction that we can infer from Romans 6:18 and 19. that we should follow when we find ourselves in moments where we are contemplating sin. And that is that we need to recognize in such a moment, that righteousness is a master to which we are now enslaved. Righteousness is a master, to which we are now enslaved.

He says in verse 17, thanks be to God. So God's the one who accomplished this, that though you were slaves of sin, You performed a God wrought act of obedience, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed and having been free from sin. You became slaves of righteousness. On the day of your conversion, you were loosed, you were released from bondage to sin, and you entered into a new slavery.

And that is slavery to literally the righteousness. We, we need to realize, guys, that no human being is free. When a person is contemplating believing in Christ, it's not like, the decision is, man, I've been living in freedom, doing whatever I want. do I want to continue living a life of freedom, or do I want to enter into this bondage to God and to righteousness?

No, every human being is a slave to some master. He is a slave either to the sin master, or he is a slave to righteousness. Those are the only two options. And when a person is contemplating coming to Jesus, the decision is, do I want to continue being a slave to what I want to do?

Do I want to continue being a slave? to sin, and having to receive all of the wages that sin is insisting that I receive from it, and the sins that I commit, or do I want to set aside that slavery and replace it with slavery to God, and slavery to righteousness? And in verse 18, we learned that on the day of our conversion, something wonderful happened. And we need to think this way.

We need to remind ourselves of this fact in any such moment where we are contemplating. Sin. And that is we need to recognize that righteousness is a master to which we are now enslaved. He says, and having been freed from the sin, you became slaves of the righteousness.

You've been brought under the controlling governing influence of the. Righteousness. Now, I want us to think for a minute about what it means to be a slave to the righteousness. I've been thinking about this actually over the last 10 years since April of 2001.

And going through Romans 5, Romans 6 has provided more opportunity to think this through. What does it mean to be a slave of the righteousness? Is Paul simply saying, you are now a slave to having to do the right thing all the time for the rest of your life? congratulations and welcome to the Christian life.

You're free from sin and you are now in bondage to having to do the right thing for the rest of your life. Is that what he's saying? Is that all that he's saying? I don't think so.

When he says that we on the day of our conversion became slaves to the righteousness, There's actually 4 directions that I think our mind should go. All right. When we think of the righteousness, please don't let your mind immediately go to the thought of, I got to do the right thing. I got to do the right thing.

I'm in bondage. I'm obligated now, because I believed in Jesus. No one told me this when I believed in Jesus, but now I'm being told when I believed in Jesus, I obligated myself to having to do the right thing. when you think of what the righteousness is, don't go there first.

Please go to Jesus first. To be enslaved to the righteousness means four things to me. Number 1, it means to be enslaved to the righteous one. OK, Jesus is the perfect embodiment of righteousness.

In fact, in Isaiah 53:11, we learned Jesus is referred to as the Righteous one who will justify the many. So whatever being enslaved to the righteousness means, it involves being enslaved to the one who is the perfect embodiment of everything that righteousness is all about. Let me define righteousness for you. Righteousness is technically defined, it's, it's conformity to what is rightfully expected.

Conformity to what is rightfully expected. In fact, this isn't the word righteous in Greek and Hebrew was not always used in a religious context. If I were speaking Hebrew and I planted an apple tree in my front yard and that apple tree produced apples, I would call that a righteous tree. I'd say there goes a righteous tree.

Look at that. It's producing apples like it's supposed to. It's an apple tree. and Jesus is the righteous one.

When we read the Old Testament law, you're actually, you're actually reading about Jesus' lifestyle. You're learning about Jesus. He perfectly obeyed every provision. You want to learn about the daily life of Jesus, read the Gospels, but also read the law, because that's his life, he fully obeyed it in every way.

And what are the two commandments that sum up all of the law? Love God with all our being, love our neighbor as ourself. On those two commandments hang all of the law and the prophets. Jesus perfectly loved his father, and he perfectly loved his fellow man.

We see that beautifully recorded in the Gospel accounts as he gave his life. To serving other people while he was alive. He is the perfectly spotless righteous one. And I cannot think of verse 18, where it says, I'm a slave to the righteousness without involving in the meaning of that, that I'm now a slave to the perfectly righteous one, who loves his father perfectly, and who loves other people with a perfect love.

Also, we need to think of this enslavement to the righteousness in terms of enslavement to the righteous act. We need to actually go to a particular moment in human history where something happened which was the epitome of perfect righteousness. Paul tells us there was an act in human history, one act of righteousness that has profound significance to the entire world. in Romans 5:18, Paul says, as Adam through Adam, Adam sinned and death came to all men, he then says in Romans 5:18, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.

The the clearest picture of righteousness you will ever see is the cross. At the cross, Jesus at great expense, and at great pain to himself, loved his father enough to obey his father, who had instructed him to go to the cross and obedience to his Father. In love for his father, Jesus went to the cross. That's why in John 14:31, just, just before he was arrested, leading to his crucifixion on the cross, he says, so that the world may know that I love the Father, I obey him, let's get up and let's get going, that moved them ever closer to the reality of the cross.

Christ dying on the cross is a supreme act of righteous, loving, obedience. To God. His death on the cross is also the ultimate act of righteous love for one's neighbor. OK.

The law is fulfilled in the cross in Christ's perfect obedience to the Father, and he loved mankind to the extent that he was willing to lay down his life and to do so painfully. Man, anyone that's impressed with their own righteousness, I would counsel them, come to the foot of the cross and behold. Perfect righteousness. Anyone you ever talked to who's pretty impressed with their righteousness?

Yeah, I can get into heaven. I've been good enough to get into heaven, my righteousness is sufficient. They've never been here. OK, they have never witnessed this righteousness.

And if you think you're going to stand before God, and he's going to be impressed with your righteousness, just realize that this righteousness at the cross, that's what the Father's used to looking at. And the one who did this perfect act of righteousness throughout his life, and then at the cross is the one that the Father's been staring at for the last 2000 years. And his righteousness fills the room, and you're going to walk in with your own righteousness and think God's impressed with that?

I don't think so.

I don't think so. Christ is the righteous one. We are now enslaved to him and a delightful slavery. He assumes governing control of our lives.

And also this righteous act changes us and begins to govern us. From the moment we are saved, it's like Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul had been accused of being crazy, and Paul basically in 2 Corinthians 5 says, if you define crazy as someone who's not in control of their own faculties, I'm crazy. Because I'm not in control. The love of Christ controls us, it controls me.

Because I've been doing some thinking and I thus judge that if one died for all, and then he continues his train of thought. Paul spent time at the foot of the cross, and he beheld this righteous act, and it took control of him. Again, the epitome of the law is to love God and to love one's fellow man. We see at the cross Christ perfectly loving his Father, obeying him to the point of death.

And perfectly at great expense to himself loving his fellow man. And if we spend time at the foot of the cross, basically to be enslaved to righteousness, the righteousness is partly to allow this event, this act of righteousness, to assume governing control over our lives. We're changed by it. We're being ruled over now by the righteous one.

We're being governed and shaped and influenced now by the righteous act. And also to be enslaved to the righteousness must include the idea of being enslaved now to the righteous verdict, right? What is the righteous verdict? It's our justification.

When we came to Jesus by faith and put our trust in Him, God made a decision about us. And on the day of our conversion, We brought our sinful selves to Jesus. And God on that day made a decision and the decision was, he said, I will forever from this day forward, think of you as forgiven of all of your sins. I will ever think of you as righteous with the righteousness of Jesus, I declare you righteous in my sight.

And I will never think or feel or do or show any countenance towards you from this day forward that is not fully governed by this verdict, this decision I just made. Paul says, you came under the influence of that decision. This justification is not just something God does. And now move on, forget about it, press on towards your sanctification.

No, sanctification is simply the process wherein I put justification in front of my face. And just celebrate that live in the good of that, and allow that to just give shape to my life, and to bring joy, and transformation. It's allowing ourselves to come under the influence of this righteous verdict. This God from whom we deserved unmitigated fury for all of eternity instead says to us, I forgive you, and I will forever think of you as righteous, and I will treat you accordingly.

Just thinking about this this week, it's, it's been a pleasure for me to get up in the morning. And the first thought on my mind, just, I'm, I'm justified. I'm justified. God has made a decision about me that he will forever think of me as forgiven and as righteous.

And as a result of my justification, I've been brought into a luxurious, peaceful relationship with God. I've been Brought into a standing and grace that's absolutely unalterable. I've been given the Holy Spirit. His love has been poured out in my heart.

God's wrath has been completely removed from me. I will never have to experience or taste a single ounce of God's wrath today and throughout all of eternity. To remind myself of that and then say basically I'm going to let this justification be the ruling principle of my day. I'll just live in the good of this.

And Allow it to control me. Pardon the illustration, but, and I know I've shared some of this with you before, but, and I'm not even recommending this for people. in fact, we don't even allow our children to do what my wife and I did when we were in high school. How's that for an introduction to an illustration?

But My freshman year of high school, I became smitten with Donna Woods. Who is now Donna Vincent. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. And She was not interested in me.

But for two years, I, she had my heart. I dated a couple of other girls, but. before I'd be very deep into that relationship, I would ask myself if I found out tomorrow that Donna liked me, what would I do with this girl? And when I realized I would drop this girl in a heartbeat for Donna, that always brought an end to the relationship.

and I imagine Donna had my heart, wrongly so, but that's the way the story happened. She had my heart. I would, I would imagine we'd, we'd go on trips with the basketball team, and I would imagine her in the city that I would arrive at, getting off the bus, and she would be standing there waiting for me. she had my heart, but she was not interested in me.

But our junior year of high school, we were at a youth activity and it was a skating activity and A mutual friend told me that Donna liked me and just, I'd given up any hope of that ever happening. It was an unrealistic hope, so I'd given that up, and I could not believe that that was true, but they had a couple skate where the girl asked the guy. And Donna came up to me and asked me to skate with her. And I'm not being melodramatic when I say that was the most exciting moment of my My sorry existence.

And, absolutely thrilled, but then terrified. Like, what if I fall while we're skating and we're skating together, my hands are sweating and I'm just thinking the whole time, she's probably regretting this and, and we got done with the skate, and I was ecstatic that she had asked me to skate with her, but I was certain that she had changed her mind about me. And about 10 minutes later it was another couple skate time for the guy to ask the girl. I was so convinced she had changed her mind about me that I couldn't get up the nerve to go ask her to skate with me.

And in my delay, another guy swooped in and asked her, and I sat on the bench. Off the ring just glowering at him, How, how dare he do what he did. But when we got back to the church, we were all waiting for our parents to come pick us up. And Donna came up to me.

I still remember this like it was yesterday, and she asked me out on a date. Two weeks from that date we were having a Valentine's banquet and the girl was supposed to ask the guy. And she asked me to that Valentine's banquet. That was the most exciting moment of my life.

What a day that was. The decision she had made about me. The verdict she had arrived at. That was expressed in her standing before me and asking me out on that date.

Took control. Of me, it took control of my countenance. I didn't have to tell myself, now, Milton, have joy, smile, let it show on your face. Come on, no, it took control of every facial muscle that I had.

It took control of my heart. My heart just was pounding with excitement. I got in the car and I told myself I'm not going to just jump in the car and announce it to everybody. I'm going to wait.

And so I got in the car and about 2 minutes later I just calmly said, Hey Mom, Dad, guess what? Donna Woods asked me to the Valentine's banquet. And they were rejoicing with me and it just completely took control of the atmosphere in the car, that verdict that she had arrived at. I went to bed that night, woke up Sunday morning, which was the next day, and for about 4 or 5 seconds it was a normal morning, just a normal morning.

But then I remembered that the day before, Donna had asked me to the Valentine's banquet. And once that thought hit me, it took control of my day once again and even to a fault. And I went to church that morning just walking on air and I ran into a guy who was a stud athlete at the high school I attended who was somewhat interested in Donna and who, who felt that he was a better prize than I was and And he said, how's it going? I said, good.

Donna asked me to the Valentine's banquet. And this guy, I'm not kidding you, he, he had a look of shock on his face and he literally, he said this, he said, What? She's blind. And I wasn't offended at all.

I agreed with him and I even said, I know, I know. I said, but I'm just hoping she stays blind and And she has. There were moments where sight returned and she tried to break up with me, but then the blindness would return and 23 years ago, she stood in front of me in a ceremony we had and pledged her life to me. And she's stuck with me now, but the verdict that she arrived at, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to tell, she didn't try to exhort me or anything, just she arrived at a decision, at a verdict, and it was one of love.

and one of grace and one of beauty, and it captivated me. And guys, far greater than anything that happens on a human level with one that we love, such as what I'm talking about now. We have a God, absolutely stunningly beautiful, Jesus Christ, the perfectly loving, gracious, and righteous one. And we deserve from this God as a result of the sins that we have committed his unmitigated eternal fury.

We deserve for him to pronounce a sentence of eternal judgment in the lake of fire and outer darkness where the smoke of our torment will go up forever and ever. And yet we come to the cross. And we see something in our sorry existence, sinful existence, we, we see righteousness perfectly displayed, and it, part of it, it terrifies us. To encounter perfect and pure, unselfish.

Righteousness, we're attracted to this one, to this God, to this, this righteous one, this, this savior. But our sin comes between us and him, but he says, here's what I need you to do, just, just believe. Just believe, just give up on yourself and anything else and just come to me by faith. And we do that.

And God says, here's my decision. Starting on this day, I will forever think of you as forgiven of all of your sins. I will forever think of you as having done what my son did. And I will always allow myself to be governed by this decision and treat you accordingly, and I will bring you into a luxurious, peaceful relationship with me.

You'll be brought under my grace, which is absolutely permanent and unalterable. there's nothing you can ever do that will alter this standing in my grace. I give you my love. I give you my Holy Spirit.

I remove you from my wrath. You'll never have to taste a single ounce of my wrath. And guys, if, if we really understand our sin, And really understand God's holiness, and really understand this verdict. We cannot help but be governed by it.

We get up In the morning, and after a few seconds, it dawns on us, wait a minute, I'm justified. The God of heaven has made a decision about me. And that cannot help. But touch our emotions and govern our lives.

And when Paul says on the day of your conversion, you became a slave of the righteousness. Yeah, you didn't know everything that was involved in that. But that's what happened. And just like a slave would need to get to know his master, and the master get to know his slave, and the slave will learn over time what all it means to be surrendered to that master.

So you need to learn, but on that day, you became enslaved to the righteous. One to the righteous act to this righteous verdict, and to a righteous lifestyle. If the righteous one performed this righteous act at the cross, and delivers this righteous verdict, what is there not to love about righteousness? what?

I don't know if I want to live that way. Come on. The day we were saved, we became slaves to this righteousness, delivered from the old sin master, and now enslaved to the righteousness. There's a third thing that Paul encourages us to do.

In this passage in our moments where we're contemplating sin, and that is present your members. Surrender yourself and present your members as slaves to this righteousness, the way you once did to sin. And when he says present, look at this in verse 19, I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and the lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, Let, let me stop right there.

When he says present your the way you presented your members, he's talking not just about the physical members of our body, but our faculties, our emotions, our thoughts, our mind, our personality, just the sum total of who we are, including our ears and our eyes and hands and feet, and so forth. And what he's saying is, here's what I want you to do now that you're a Christian, now that you're under grace, just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity, and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness.

You remember that, guys? Before you were saved, you would enter into a sin.

And in sight of that sin was another sin, and you would enter into that, and there was another sins inside of that, and you would progress in sin, right? You didn't just commit one sin and say, man, I, I, I will never need to do this again. This was so immensely satisfying for me. No, one sin led to another and another and another.

Paul says, just as you were presenting your members as slaves to impurity, which renders us unclean before God to lawlessness, flagrant disregard of the law of God, resulting in even further law, less ness look what he says. So now present your members as slaves to the righteousness resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Now think about what Paul is saying here.

This, this is really something that I, I think we need to let ourselves be challenged by. Paul doesn't just say present your members now as slaves to the righteousness. He could have just said that. No, what he says instead is go back and think about how you used to present yourselves to sin.

Remember that. And now what I want you to do now that you're saved is just as you used to devote yourself, and pursue and yield yourselves to sin. I now want you to actually follow that pattern. And now with just as much devotion and diligence, be presenting yourself to the righteousness as a slave for obedience.

You can call this, as Martin Lloyd Jones says, the just as so now principle. Paul would say, there's not a lot about your former life that is worthy of emulation now that you're a Christian, but there's one aspect in which there was something you did before you were saved, that ought to serve as a really helpful template for how you live now. And that is this, as devotedly as you used to yield yourself to sin, Let that be the pattern for how devotedly you now pursue and yield yourself to righteousness.

Let's think about that for a moment.

How devoted were you to sin?, before we were saved, guys, we devoted a lot of time to sin, right? Nonbelievers devote a lot of time to sin. They'll stay up till 2 in the morning giving themselves over to sin, even though the next day they got to be up, and, and going to work at 8:00 or 9 o'clock. they, nonbelievers often will devote a whole weekend to their sin.

and also we pursued, sin, non-believers, they're, they're not passive about their sin, they pursue sin. what? Before we were saved, we were pursuers of sin. We were passionate about, about sin.

Remember reading a number of years ago, Nick Nolte, the Hollywood actor, who's just had a number of bouts with, alcoholism, drunkenness, what have you, and he was talking about how earlier in his life he and his friends would go out to the bars to drink and they would drink the night away, and then eventually the bars would close and the stores were closed and there was nowhere where they could go get some more alcoholic beverages to drink. So he says we'd go to the LAX airport and just take a plane going anywhere.

Because at least on the plane, we could order as many drinks as we wanted and be served those drinks. That's someone who's passionately pursuing sin.

And nonbelievers, and even us before we were saved, we were willing to sacrifice for our sins, sacrifice relationships and lose relationships, sacrificing time, sacrificing, sometimes large amounts of money and opportunity. that came our way that we just said no to because we preferred our sin, the amount of energy that we devoted to our former lifestyle of sin, the perseverance that we manifested in our sin. I remember as a kid, one of the dumbest things I ever did is I went to a store, like a 7-Eleven.

And stole a root beer, which I didn't even like, and some candy, stuff my pockets full, put the root beer in my shirt, tried to walk out the store and I got caught.

And, Long story short, they found out who my parents were and they called my mom. And my mom came and got me. You remember those Hot Wheel tracks? she took about 7 of those things and bound those together somehow, and I'll, I'll leave the details to you to imagine, but, the amazing thing is after that awful terrible moment of getting caught and getting in so much trouble, I continued to steal.

I didn't say, wow, that didn't go well. I'm going to stop that. This is just too difficult. No, I kept on stealing.

Until God got a hold of my life, I persevered. and the passion we put into our sin, the boldness, the brazenness that characterize our commitment to our sin, we were committed to our sin. Paul's like, I want you actually to think back to the way you were with regard to sin. And I want you now to just as passionately, with just as much devotion, with just as much diligence of pursuit and perseverance and persistence and energy, boldness, brazenness, commitment, I want you to be all of that now towards righteousness.

Isn't it amazing though? We're like so passionate about sin and Then we get saved and we're just bothered that holiness doesn't just come walking up to us and it's not all easy. Sin wasn't easy. But that didn't stop us then.

people before they were saved were willing to give their whole weekends to sin. Now, to get them to just take two hours to come to church. Whoa, I'm busy. And then care group, whoa, whoa, easy there.

And to read the word, before they were saved, reading some immoral romance novel full of sin and filth, they didn't get up in the morning and say, all right, I got to spend 15 minutes reading this. That's my discipline, OK, I'm going to do this, and 15 minutes is up, I'm done. But now that they profess faith in Christ, do they spend time reading the word? Are they passionate readers of the word like they used to be passionate readers of sin?

The question I just want to ask you guys is this. If someone knew you before you were saved, And they know you now, would they say there's one thing that's consistent. As passionately as this person pursued sin. They're pursuing God and holiness and righteousness with just as much if not more passion.

Are you as passionate for righteousness as you used to be for sin? Paul is telling us in this passage. That in your moments where you're contemplating sin, here, here's 3 things to do. Number 1, just recognize that you have been delivered, released, loose from sin.

Recognize that righteousness is a master. The righteousness is your master now, to which you are to be governed and controlled. And in your moments where you're contemplating sin, And even when you're not contemplating sin, your life is now to be characterized by just presenting your members as slaves to this righteousness with the same devotion and the same passion and the same diligence, perseverance, and commitment that you used to manifest in your commitment to sin. Me ask you to bow your heads.

Here, here's the way all of us ought to think, Christ, the righteous one, Christ, the righteous one, righteously obeyed his father and dying on the cross, righteously loved mankind and dying on the cross. And now this righteousness gets imputed to me. God has declared me forgiven and righteous, and he always thinks of me as forgiven and righteous. He always treats me as forgiven and righteous.

I now possess peace with God and perpetual standing and unalterable grace. His love is poured out in my heart, His Holy Spirit's given to me, I'm delivered from his wrath. This is righteousness. This is the righteousness, and we all ought to just say this is our rebel cry against sin.

We ought to remind ourselves of these things and then say, step aside, sin. This righteousness is now my master. This is what governs and influences me. May that be our rebel cry against our old sin master.

And our yielding cry to the righteous one. We're going to take an offering in just a moment. I would encourage you to give as the Lord leads you to give. Let's pray together and ask God to help us to live this way that we're learning about.

That we might glorify Him. Father, we thank you for your goodness to us. What a, Lord, we ask you this almost every week. Just, just remove the scales from our eyes and help us to see, Unshrivel our souls, Lord, that we might, Have our ability to feel the greatness of what we're talking about.

And to let it in And let it seize control of our lives, controlling our faculties, controlling our disposition. May we go forth from here as justified ones, and that's not just a fact that's somewhere in the basement of our, of our thoughts, but no, it's, it's, Reigning over us. We live as justified ones and we reign as justified ones, enjoying and relishing the abundance that is ours as justified ones. We thank you for the privilege of being able to give to you a portion of what you've blessed us with, Lord, do much with this offering.

And we give ourselves to you in the name of Jesus. And all God's people said,