08-03-14 Final Freedom Foundations

We are nearing the end

of our series on the freedom offered to us through Christ.

We are nearing it,

but not quite there yet.

For much of this study

we have been home-based

in four verses in Romans chapter 6,

verses 11-14.

We have not yet completed our study of those verses,

but the past two weeks

we pulled out of them long enough

to look at a powerful lie used by Satan against the Christian,

a lie designed to keep the people of God

under continued bondage to sin,

even after we come to Christ.

We saw the way in which

Satan attempts to manipulate

our attitudes toward both our needs

and our God

in an attempt to bring us into the place

where we believe that we must choose

between meeting our needs,

or obeying our God.

If we choose obedience,

believing that our God is demanding that obedience at the expense of meeting our needs,

it will twist and distort our concept of our God,

blinding us to the one thing we need more than anything else -

a clear understanding

of the depth of His love for us.

The church world is filled with people

who are attempting to obey a God

they do not really trust,

a God whom they believe

is demanding from them

an obedience that will rob them

of the things they need most in life.

Some of them hold on for a little while,

until their perceived needs finally overwhelm them

and they turn their backs on their God

in a frantic attempt to meet

what they believe to be their needs.

Others will keep up their rigid obedience

to this unreasonable God of theirs for a lifetime,

but in the process they become bitter,

judgmental,

nasty little people

who live out the same pathetic pattern

revealed to us by Christ

through the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son.

You remember his words, don’t you,

when his father came outside to get him

and invite him to the celebration

of his brother’s homecoming?

9 Luke 15:29 "But he answered and said to his father, 'Look! For so many years I have been serving you, and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a kid, that I might be merry with my friends;

Luke 15:30 but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with harlots, you killed the fattened calf for him. '

That is the Christian

who has believed the lie

and chooses obedience

believing it will not meet his or her needs.

They resent the joy

and the freedom of spirit they see

in their fellow Christians

who have come to understand

what it is to live with God on the basis of grace.

They live surrounded by great wealth

and yet they cannot see it.

And then comes the father’s response,

a response in which I hear

a tremendous amount of pain.

The father says simply,

Luke 15:31 ... 'My child, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours...

Do you know what I hear the father saying there?

I hear him saying,

“My son, I have loved you since the day you were born,

but you will not receive my love,

and I have always met your needs perfectly,

but you will not receive from me.

I cannot give you

what you will not receive,

and your anger,

and jealousy,

and mistrust of me

has walled you off

from the one who loves you more than any other.”

I understand what it is

to look at our past and tell ourselves

that we just didn’t get a fair shake in life.

“...if only God would have given me

a different childhood,

or a different set of life experiences...”

And I understand what it is

to look at the weak areas in our lives,

and hold God to blame

for not giving us the same advantages we think He gave others.

I understand what it is

to bring out our list of grievances against our Creator

and hold them up to Him and declare:

“...you have never given me a kid, that I might be merry with my friends...”

But I also know

that all such thoughts are rooted

in that same hideous lie

that our God cannot be trusted

and that His love for us

cannot be relied upon.

..."Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"

Now certainly I know

that some of you were deeply wounded in the past.

And I know, too, that many of you

are wrestling with difficult circumstances in your lives right now.

But I also know there is nothing you can place into the hands of your God

that He cannot not take

and reshape into good in your life.

Reshaping evil into good

is one of the many things He does best.

Do you know what I think happens sometimes

in God’s attempts to bring healing into our lives?

We will become aware

of some great evil

that has intruded into our lives.

And we will look at it

and then cry out to our God,

“Lord! Look at this great evil!”

And He will respond,

“Yes, my child, it is a very great evil indeed.

Now I want you to place that evil into my hands

and allow Me

to bring healing into your life,

and to transform that evil into good.”

And we will respond to Him,

“But Lord! Look at the degree to which

this great evil has affected my life.

Look at the pain it has caused me,

and look at the things I have lost because of it,

and look at the way it has affected other people’s lives,

and look at the suffering I have endured because of it.

And, Lord, look at the roots of this evil,

and look at the way in which

it has been handed down from generation to generation,

and look at the effect it could have on those who come after me,

and look at this...

and look at that...

and look at this over here...”

And three months,

or three years,

or thirty years later

when we have examined

and analyzed

and understood this great evil from every possible angle,

and we once again invite our Lord

into our thinking,

He will respond,

“Yes, my child, I certainly agree it is a great evil,

and now if you are finished examining its greatness,

will you place it into My hands

and allow me to reshape it into good in your life?”

Satan comes along and says,

“Look how great an evil you have had to endure.

What kind of God would allow you

to suffer in such a way?”

And our God responds,

“I am the kind of God

who both can and will take that great evil

and work it together for great good in your life,

if only you will place it into My hands.”

All of which is to say

that the heart of Satan’s attacks against us

is to keep us forever suspicious of our God,

doubting whether He understands,

or whether He cares,

or whether He truly does love us.

Once that lie has found a foot-hold in our minds,

any further progress toward true freedom is impossible

until the underlying lie is recognized

and defeated.

Now, for the rest of our time this morning

I want to take us back into our Romans 6 passage

and allow this remarkable passage

to pull together for us

the basic truths we’ve encountered

throughout this series.

We’ve bounced around a bit in our study of these four verses,

but I now want us to return to them

and to move through them progressively, as they were written,

because they provide us with

what I have come to see as

perhaps the most powerful, unified, single statement in Scripture

of God’s overall program for freeing the believer from the power of sin.

I’ll read the passage for us in it’s entirety,

and then we’ll study our way through it.

In Romans 6:11-14 Paul writes:

Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Rom. 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts,

Rom. 6:13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

Now, we have already invested

quite a bit of time in verse 11,

but everything that follows in verses 12-14 builds upon that statement,

so I want to remind us once again

what Paul is saying

when he says to us:

Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

If you were with us a month or so ago

when we were studying this verse

you’ll remember the importance of that word “consider”.

At the time

I compared that verse to those pictures

that appear to be nothing more than

a mass of meaningless blobs of color

until you force your eyes out of focus

in just the right way

and suddenly discover a 3-dimensional world filled with a remarkable sense of depth and reality.

Through that illustration I wanted us to understand

that the beginning of our freedom from sin,

the starting place,

the foundation of everything our God is doing in our lives in this whole area,

is based first of all upon the recreative work God has already accomplished in our lives through Christ,

and then, second, upon our staring at that truth,

our wrestling with it,

our chewing on it,

our churning over it,

our CONSIDERING it

until what seemed like meaningless words

suddenly becomes a living,

vital,

powerful reality in our lives.

The calling of religion

is the calling to work harder

to become more of what God wants us to be.

The calling of true Christianity

is the calling to consider,

to discover the truth of who we have already become in Christ.

God does not want you to try to become holy for Him,

He wants you to discover

that you already are holy through Him.

And I want to emphasize a crucial distinction once again.

Paul is not simply saying

that God now sees us as holy

because He sees us through the blood of Christ,

Paul is saying that we actually ARE holy.

I know we’ve been here before,

but I will continue to reaffirm this truth

because the forces that fight against this single truth

are both powerful and persistent.

I want us to listen carefully to Paul’s words in Ephesians chapter 2.

These are words written in an open letter to all Christians,

at all times,

throughout all of history.

These are words written to every true Christian in this room this morning,

no matter whether you are making right choices or wrong choices,

no matter whether you are standing upon a solid foundation of righteous living,

or whether you are living out

destructive, sinful behavior patterns.

Paul writes:

Eph. 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

Eph. 2:2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Eph. 2:3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

Now, I want us to continue reading the next 3 verses,

but before we go on

I just want to be sure we are hearing

the verb tenses in this passage.

...and you WERE dead,

...in which you FORMERLY WALKED,

...we too all FORMERLY LIVED in the lusts of our flesh,

...and WERE by nature children of wrath...

Now, listen to where he goes next-

Eph. 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

Eph. 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ ( by grace you have been saved),

Eph. 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...

What happens with those verb tenses

as Paul moves ahead to talk to us

about the changes God has brought into our lives through Christ?

...God MADE us alive together with Christ...

...He RAISED us up with Him,

...He SEATED us with Him in heavenly places...

They stay in the past tense.

And this is just one of dozens of passages throughout the New Testament

all communicating this one central truth

that at the time we come to Christ

God recreates us at the very core of our being

into eternal new creations

that are absolutely and eternally holy,

and righteous,

and pure,

and perfectly pleasing in every way to God Himself.

How old are you?

16?

20?

25?

35?

45 or 55 or 65 or 85?

From the day you entered this world,

and every year you have lived since then,

in fact every day and every hour you’ve lived since then,

countless voices have been telling you who you are.

At the top of that list now is your own voice,

telling yourself who you are.

But most of the words and ideas your own voice is now using

have come to you from other sources.

Dad and Mom had a lot of input.

So did those teachers at school,

telling you you’re an A student,

or a B student,

or a C or D or F student.

You’re a high achiever,

or a low achiever.

Uncles, and aunts, and cousins,

and brothers and sisters,

and employers and employees,

and friends and enemies,

and in fact every person we’ve ever met

has contributed something to our perception of who we are.

And the voices don’t stop there.

The country we live in,

and our economic bracket,

and the attitudes and values of the culture around us,

and in fact every event and experience and circumstance that has ever touched our lives

has contributed to our perception of ourselves.

I mention this

because I want us to see that

it is that backdrop against which

we then hear the voice of our God saying to us,

Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

When we consider that truth,

when we seriously begin wrestling with the idea that we are now God’s Holy Ones,

pure and perfect in every way,

well-pleasing to our God

at the deepest level of our being,

we do so in the context

of countless other voices around us,

and within us,

all of whom are telling us something else.

Picture yourself in a race in a great arena,

an arena filled with thousands of people,

and they are all there just to watch you run.

You take your mark at the starting line,

and spring into action as the gun goes off.

You have been assigned the lane closest to the spectators,

and as you start running

you hear the people’s comments as you pass.

“You’ll never even finish the race!”

“You’ll probably finish dead last!”

“You run like an idiot!”

“There’s no way you’re going to win.”

How do you think those comments

will affect your ability to keep focused on the race?

That is the way I picture the Christian

as we come to this truth of our new identity in Christ.

Unless we consciously choose

to set aside every other voice we’ve ever heard about ourselves,

and listen only to the voice of our God,

we will never hear it.

But if we do allow Him to become our ultimate source of truth about ourselves,

if we ... consider ourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus...

we will discover within ourselves

a basis for changed behavior

unlike anything we have ever known before.

Rather than continuing to tell ourselves

that we really should get our act together and behave better,

we will find ourselves recognizing

that sinful behavior

is completely inconsistent with who we really are.

Increasingly we will say to ourselves,

because I am God’s Holy one,

because I am His ambassador,

because He has made me His son,

his daughter,

and because I now serve as His priest here on this earth,

my selfish, petty, foolish sinful behavior just doesn’t fit with who I now am.

Now, I’ve invested so much time

in reviewing this once again,

because of what happens in the next verse here in our Romans passage.

You see, the greatest dissenting voice we will ever hear to the truth of our new identity in Christ

is the voice of our own daily inconsistent performance.

And because of this,

it is that dissenting voice

that Paul then addresses next in this passage.

But we cannot effectively deal with that dissenting voice

until we have first heard and believed the truth.

And next week we’ll pick up the passage right here

and move on to that dissenting voice.