10-31-10 Where’s My Payment Book?

ROM 7:25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

ROM 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

ROM 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

ROM 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,

ROM 8:4 in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

We are involved in an adventure together,

an adventure of discovering who we really are,

and what that discovery means for us in real life.

In a group this size

it is safe to assume

that some of you came in here this morning

feeling discouraged,

defeated,

and completely overwhelmed by life.

You are a child of God,

there was a time when you placed your life,

your sins,

your past,

and your future

into the hands of your God.

And he accepted you.

You know that He did.

But now things have changed.

Now you find yourself feeling like a spiritual beggar

sitting along side the parade route of the Saints of God.

You have your little cup in your hand,

held out to those you see passing by,

hoping someone will notice you

and toss in just a tiny bit of something

to help you make it through the next week.

You don’t think in terms of victory.

You think only of survival.

It wasn’t always this way.

There was a time in the distant past

when you were not sitting on the curb,

dressed in rags,

eyes fixed on the pavement at your feet.

There was a time when you were marching in the parade yourself.

It was all new to you then-

a new life,

filled with hope,

filled with optimism,

filled with the exhilarating thought

that maybe, just maybe this God you’d turned to for help,

for redemption,

could actually bring about some changes in your life.

But then, somewhere along the way,

something happened.

Those other travelers who came along side

and struck up a conversation with you,

they may have had something to do with it.

That one fellow got you looking

at all the other marchers around you,

pointing out their costumes,

and their decorations,

asking you why you didn’t have what they had.

You began to feel rather out of place,

even a little embarrassed about the clothing that had been selected for you.

What you’d been given

certainly fit you well,

but...well, it didn’t look like anyone else’s,

and it troubled you.

But that other fellow was the one

who really caused the problems.

He seemed so nice,

so concerned,

even compassionate at the time.

But somehow he got you talking

about some of those awful problems

that plagued your life before you met the King,

and the more he talked,

the more he helped you to see

that nothing really did change

when you turned to the Lord.

The more he talked,

the slower you walked,

and the more discouraged you became.

And then there came that day,

a very long time ago,

when it just seemed more reasonable,

more sensible,

more honest to step out of the parade,

and sit down on the curb,

and watch as all the others passed you by.

And that’s where you’ve been ever since,

just a beggar sitting along the parade route of the King,

watching His people marching by,

hoping someone will notice you

and toss you some little tidbit

to get you through the day.

And if any of that seems familiar,

I want you to know

that you have not been defeated by the truth,

you have been defeated by a lie,

and by the father of all lies, Satan.

There is a phrase used by Paul

in Colossians 3:18

that describes so well what happens

when the truth is replaced by a lie within us.

He says,

“Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize...”

The passage we will move into today

as we continue our study of Romans chapter 8

may help you to reclaim your rightful place in the great parade of the King.

It is true that you were once a spiritual beggar,

with neither the right,

nor the ability to walk with the King.

But that day when He stopped in front of you,

knelt down into the filth surrounding you,

took your hands in His,

and looked into your eyes

as He asked you if you wanted to be made whole,

when you griped His hands,

and told Him, “Yes!”,

he did far more than you have allowed yourself to believe.

Paul puts it this way in the first chapter of Colossians.

He says that your God, “... qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. ... He delivered you from the domain of darkness, and transferred you to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

It was no mistake that you once walked in step with the holy ones of God,

because even though the lies

may now have blinded you to the truth,

you, too, have been transformed by God Himself.

You have been qualified

to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

We left our study at the 2^nd verse of Romans chapter 8.

But we cannot reenter this passage

without getting a running start at it.

Paul ends the 7^th chapter by saying,

ROM 7:25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

During the past two weeks we were in this study

we have come to understand

that Paul is describing

this remarkable situation we are called to relate to

once we come to Christ.

Do you know what it is?

It is the exact opposite

of that situation

that forms the basis for so many of those really stupid scary movies

where some normally nice, good person

is possessed by an evil spirit.

When we understand what Paul is saying

in the last half of Romans 7,

we realize that the Christian

has an absolutely holy,

pure, glorious spirit

taking up residence in a really raunchy body,

a body that has been trained and conditioned

to function in absolute rebellion to the truth.

We don’t have a bad spirit

possessing a good body,

we have a good spirit,

a perfect spirit

taking possession of a bad body.

Paul says, “For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war...”

Then, from there Paul presented God’s perspective

on this good-spirit/bad-body situation in which we find ourselves:

ROM 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That voice that once walked beside you

as you marched in the parade,

pointing out to you all of the reasons

why you had no right to walk with the King

was the voice of Satan,

shooting you with blanks,

but the noise of his attack frightened you.

None of us have earned the right to walk with the King.

None of us ever could.

I love the way Paul said it

in his letter to his friend, Titus.

TIT 3:5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,

TIT 3:6 whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,

TIT 3:7 that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

But that isn’t where Paul stops.

He then goes on in Romans 8

to complete the picture

of this remarkable transformation

that God has accomplished in the life of the Christian.

He says,

ROM 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

He wants to be sure we clearly understand

that our faith in Christ

has provided us with our entrance into

a relationship with our God

unlike anything we had ever experienced before.

The Christian has been freed

from what Paul calls “the law of sin and of death”

and now lives under

what Paul calls “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”.

I really do not want to make this

more complicated than it is.

Those two phrases

simply describe

the two systems under which we relate to God,

one of them before we come to Christ,

and the other one after we come to Christ.

The Law of Sin and of Death

we have examined in some detail

during the past few weeks.

God reveals His moral law to us,

our self-centered spirit rebels against it,

and we then live out our lives

hiding or running from the real and justified fear of the condemnation of our Creator.

But what changes when we turn to our Lord,

accepting His offer of forgiveness through Christ?

What happens when we exchange the Law of Sin and Of Death

for the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus?

Well, the truth is that the entire framework

of our relationship with God

is changed forever.

Rather than having to continue

living out a futile attempt to earn God’s acceptance through our performance,

never knowing for sure

where we stand with Him,

He picks us up in His eternal love,

removes our sin debt from us forever,

places His Spirit within us,

and then begins performing in us

and through us

those things we could never have accomplished for Him through our flesh-based efforts.

The problem is

that most of us simply do not believe it.

Do you have a mortgage on your home?

Those of you who do

know what a constant, major financial obligation it is.

Shortly after we started our mortgage payments

the bank sent us a packet.

It contained payment coupon books

containing coupons to accompany

every payment for the entire life of the loan.

I opened one of the books

and saw a coupon with the date

for a payment I would be making

fifteen years in the future.

Now, imagine what it would be like

if, shortly after receiving those coupon booklets,

I were to receive a letter from a wealthy uncle

informing me that he had just sent a check to the bank

paying off my loan in full.

OK, the first of the next month comes around

and there I am at my desk.

On one side of me is this stack of payment vouchers,

and right on top is one dated for that month,

with the exact amount I owe,

and a second line telling me how much additional I will owe

if the payment is not in their office by the 10^th of the month.

On the other side of me

is the letter from my uncle

telling me the loan is paid in full.

And the question is,

which do I believe.

Every day we live our lives as Christians

we face a similar choice.

On one side we have our stack of sin vouchers -

all those things for which we know,

rightfully we owe the Lord.

There was that stupid thing we said to our marriage partner,

or our child,

or our brother or sister or parent.

There was that lust we succumbed to,

that lie we told,

that anger we gave reign to.

And we know it matters,

and we feel the weight of moral debt before our Creator.

And then, on the other side of us

is a letter from our God,

a letter saying,

PSA 103:10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

PSA 103:11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.

PSA 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

PSA 103:13 Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

And the question is

who will we believe?

And the answer to that question

will determine how we live out our relationship with our God that day.

The answer will determine

whether we continue to sit on the curb,

eyes cast down,

our little cup held out to those who pass by,

or whether we step in stride next to our King, ...giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

Paul knew how difficult it would be

for us to take those coupon books,

all of those coupon books,

and toss them into the trash.

And this is why he says what he says

in the next two verses of Romans 8.

He says,

ROM 8:3-4 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh...

And when Paul says that God “condemned sin in the flesh”

he is not saying that He condemned us for our sin,

he is saying that He condemned,

ended,

destroyed forever

the power of our sin to ever again separate us from our God.

He condemned sin in the flesh...

in order that the requirement of the Law...

And the requirement of the Law

is absolute and total moral perfection.

That is what was required from anyone

who ever hoped to stand before God without fear.

And Paul tells us that through Christ

the total requirement of the moral law of God,

absolute and eternal righteousness, has now been...

fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

There is a battle raging in the life of every true child of God.

But it is not the battle that our religious training

has led most of us to expect.

If we listen to the religious voices around us

we very likely believe

that the battle we have been called to fight

is the battle to become the people we should be

so that we can then do the things our King wants us to do.

It is that type of thinking

that causes so many children of the King

to eventually drop out of the march

and drop down onto the curb in defeat.

You see, it is that type of thinking

that causes us to frantically look around us

at the other Christians around us,

trying to figure out who we should be

and what we should do.

And the more we look at them,

the more we see ourselves falling short,

failing in our calling.

And all the time

we fail to recognize

that we can never win because we’re not even fighting the right battle.

The battle we’ve been called to fight

is not the battle of becoming who we think we should be,

it is the battle of discovering who we already are

because of the life of Christ within us.

And if you’ll let me stretch my parade analogy just a little bit farther,

let me tell you how it really is.

It is true that you were once separated from your God,

sitting on the curb,

watching from a distance as the King came your way.

But then, wonder of wonders,

when He reached you in the road,

He did not pass you by.

He stopped right in front of you

turned, and knelt down before you.

You were embarrassed by the filth in which you sat,

and by the rags you wore.

But He didn’t seem to mind in the least.

Then He reached out, took your hands,

looked into your eyes,

and said, “My precious child, I have chosen you for Myself. Will you join Me?”

And when you said yes,

He stood, pulled you to your feet,

and then handed you a pure white robe just your size

and exchanged it for the rags you’d been wearing.

But it didn’t stop there,

because He didn’t just walk off and tell you to follow,

He placed His arm around you

and told you that now and forevermore

your place was right there, next to Him, with Him, by Him forever.

You see, the truth is

it never has been a mass march

with the King in front

and you lost in the throng trying to keep up.

It’s always, only been you and Him, walking side by side,

His arm around you,

His Spirit within you,

His love your reason for each new step.

And only when we understand that

will the power of the lies be broken within us

and we will find our spirits overflowing with gratitude,

with His love and His endless grace becoming both our reason and our strength.