Would you turn to Romans chapter 6, we're going to read our selection verses 1-14 and then 21-23. So keeping in mind that we just read this summary about the reason why Jesus had to die, just a little bit of a background to that before I read this, that portion of the Heidelberg Catechism is working through the Apostles' Creed and talking about what is the work that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, who is Jesus Christ the Lord, what is His work that He has done to save us? And we've looked at other aspects. And then the issue of His dying comes up in this passage tonight that we looked at. And now in Romans 6, notice how Romans 6 deals with those things as well. So verses 1 through 14, and then we'll jump down to verse 21 and to the end of the chapter. Starting with verse 1, hear God's word. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Well, do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death. that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. for he who died has been freed from sin." Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more, death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it and its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, under law, but under grace." And then going down to verse 21. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." So far the reading of God's Word. May God bless it to us. Brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus, as I mentioned before, the Apostles Creed is outlining these basic biblical teachings about the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, and particularly Jesus Christ, our Lord. And last time we looked at this idea that Jesus suffered. Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate. He suffered. But now there's more. Jesus' suffering extended all the way to death. The death on the cross, now death isn't something we like to talk about, but death is constantly with us, right? Members of our church have recently experienced the loss of loved ones. Eventually death is gonna come to everybody. Now that's a very humbling thing. the strongest person in the world, the richest person in the world, the most powerful people in the world, the most popular people in the world. Hank Aaron died yesterday or the day before and so on. A very, very well-known person, one of the greatest baseball players of a generation. But all these people, all along with the weak, along with the poor, along with the oppressed. Death is the great leveler, and it's humbling. It humbles us all. What we need to understand and remember is that death wasn't a part of the original creation. It came as a result of sin. And death has been with us ever since sin entered into the world. We read in our passage, the wages of sin is death, right? So scripture says that sin is the cause of our misery, sin is the cause of our physical death, sin is the cause of our spiritual death. And it's been said really that Adam did die when he sinned. Because he was banished from God's presence, remember? God sent Adam and Eve away from his presence and God never came, didn't come to them again in that special way as he did when they were in the garden. So Adam, in a sense, did die. The psalm tells us to live apart from God is death. The physical death that Adam finally did succumb to was just a natural result of the fact that he, in his sin, was separated from God. And so God had informed Adam right after the fall. God came and he says, Adam, dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Adam was formed out of the dust of the ground. Remember that? To dust you are, to dust you shall return. Death is now in the world. There are many ways for people to die. We know that. But every one of them is rooted in that basic cause of sin. And every time we come to a grave side of a loved one, we're reminded of that again. Dust we are, to dust we shall return. Now, all of that, I think you'll agree with me, all of that is very bad news. We don't like to talk about this. We don't like to think about this. So if there's going to be good news, if there's going to be the good news that comes to people who are fallen in sin and dealing with the miseries that sin brings into the world, then God is going to have to address death as a consequent of sin. So this is another reason why the Son of God had to become flesh, while the Word had to become flesh, because as a human person, he was able to die. And that's what he had to be to be our savior. He had to be able to die. So you can't speak of salvation unless you speak of dealing with death. And so really, there is good news. There is gospel in the news of Christ's death. And that's what we're looking at here. What is the good news to us? Why is this good news to us that Jesus died? Well, first of all, we need to deal with why Why did Jesus have to die? Why the gospel must deal with death? We've hit on that, but just a few things we need to mention. We saw our passage ended up with, in that last verse, the wages of sin is death. Adam was told, if you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the day you do that, you shall surely die. And you know the story. Adam and Eve ate. And God had said the just penalty of disobedience to me in this will be death. God is just. God's word is true. And so Adam and all of Adam's children, except for Enoch, except for Elijah, all of them have died ever since the fall of Adam and Eve. So Jesus, the son of God, comes into the world. And he came to save sinners. The penalty for sin is going to be met by Jesus. And so Jesus comes, and the Bible calls him the last Adam, the last Adam. The first Adam came, and he was perfect. He was without sin, and he was able to not sin. And he was a representative, really, of the whole human race in what he did. He fell, He sinned, and He died. Well, Jesus comes as our representative also, the one who's going to save us, and He's going to be our Redeemer. He's going to be the Savior, Redeemer, and the Mediator that we need to bring us back to God. And He has to, in order to do that, He must undergo the penalty that God had declared against sin. He has to undergo it in full. I draw your attention to Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews 2, verse 9 and 10 says this. But we see Jesus for the suffering of death now crowned with glory and honor. He was crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death. That's what it's saying. Because he suffered death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. You see how he's representative there. His death is going to be representative. He's going to taste death for us. And he did. Philippians 2 verse 8, Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. So Jesus did do this. This is the good news we're beginning to see. Did somebody deal with death? Yes, Jesus did. Jesus died. He came and died as our representative in his death. He was going to do that to save us. And he had to do that, of course, because satisfaction for sin had to be made according to the justice and truth of God. See, God is a God of justice. God is just. And so his penalty for sin was a just penalty. The mighty Lord loves justice. Our God is a just God. And so the penalty for sin has to be paid. It has to be dealt with. But God is also truth. His word is truth and His law says, His holy law says the soul that sins must die. And so if it required that, then God is not going to go back on His word to take away the penalty for sin. If Jesus is going to be the sin bearer, if Jesus is going to be the Savior, He is going to have to suffer death. So when God's Son was on the cross, remember when Jesus was on the cross, and there He is, He's there as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. He's giving His life as a sacrifice for our sins. There on the cross, what happened? God didn't hold back the full cup of His wrath. He didn't hold it back, not even to His Son, His well-loved Son. He didn't hold it back, but He poured it all out. And Jesus had prayed in the garden. Remember before Jesus went to the cross? Remember what Jesus prayed? He said, Father, he was struggling and he was sweating, as it were, great drops of blood. And he says, Father, if there is any other way, take this cup from me, this cup that I'm about to have to bear, this cup of your judgment against sin. If there's any other way, would you take it from me? And then he says, but nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. So he submits himself fully to the father's will in this. And so the answer to that prayer came a little while later, right? Some hours later, we hear Jesus crying out from the darkness. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? See, Jesus knew what it meant to be forsaken completely by his father as he's on that cross suffering. He is living apart from God in that sense, right? Not because he was a sinner, but because he was bearing our sin. And so he had to go all the way there, right? Then at the end of his sufferings, Jesus cried out, it is finished. He's borne it all. He's borne the whole penalty. It is finished. But his suffering wasn't done, because what did he have to yet do? He said, Father, into your hand I commit my spirit, and he breathed his last, and he died. So now the full penalty has been paid. See, all of this was necessary in order for sinners to be freed from our own penalty of sin and the power of death, physical death, but also spiritual death. It was necessary. And all of that is very good news. But there's even more because it goes on to say that he was buried. Remember, he was buried in the tomb of a wealthy man. Nicodemus? Anyway, why did I get a, my brain can't work. But he was buried. Now, why was he buried? Well, the catechism gave a funny answer to show that he was really dead. All right, you only bury dead people, right? But that's not an incidental thing. This is all part of his humiliation. All of the work of salvation was him humbling himself, even to death, the death on the cross. So he had to be conceived in the womb of his mother Mary, He had to be born, right? He had to live a life like all of us have to live. He had to suffer all of his life long in a fallen and sinful world like we do. He had to be crucified, and then he had to die, and then he had to be buried. Think about it. As a human person, Jesus' entire life was experienced, he experienced a life like ours, right? Sin accepted, but he came and he experienced and suffered all ways as we do. We're going to die. See, so Jesus is knowing this. Jesus knows we're going to die. We're going to be buried. And so it's for our comfort and it's for us that when we face death and we face the grave, knowing our Savior went through this before us, He died and he was buried. And so will we be, right? And that is a complete indignity. It is humiliation. Because when we die, when a person dies, it seems like we've been defeated. The grave has claimed another one, right? Death reigns. force of that and it's frustrating and it's sad. Flowers and nice green grass over graveyards can't pretty that up. Death reigns. We're helpless in the face of it, but you see that's why we hear this is good news. Jesus had his body laid in the tomb and what? He arose. He conquered death. He conquered the grave. He broke out of it. He has the keys, Revelation says, of death and Hades. So we often say at the burial grave site of a believer, we say Jesus sanctified the grave for his people. I'm not sure what everything that means, but I do think it means this. Our Lord suffered the humiliation of burial to proclaim to us that death does not have the last word, that I have defeated death, and you shall be raised too, as certainly as I was raised. Know that about your grave. Know that about your death. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory? See, the grave couldn't hold Jesus. And our grace will not hold us. We shall be raised. In fact, the Bible says that death because of Jesus, death has been swallowed up by life. In the last analysis of it all. There will be no more death. Death is gone and there will only be life. When Jesus comes again and brings a new heaven and earth, death will be swallowed up. It's the last enemy. Now, that's the gospel. That is the gospel, that Jesus has broken all of this. In fact, Paul says it very explicitly in 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 and 4. He's talking about the gospel that he preached, and he says, I simply delivered to you first of all that which I have received. I was taught this, I was told this by Jesus himself. I was taught this in the reading of scriptures, but this is what I was taught by Jesus himself, that Christ died for our sins, that according to the scriptures, that he was buried. See, the gospel includes the burial of Jesus and Paul's words there, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures. That's the gospel. Death for sin, burial, resurrection. Jesus had to do this. He had to do this to break death's power. So the question arises, why do we then still have to die? We're believers in Jesus. We belong to him. Why do we need to die now? If death is the penalty for sin and it's been paid, why do we have to die ourselves? Well, that's a really good question, isn't it? But you'll notice something that the Catechism doesn't actually answer that question fully. Not really. What does it say? It says, since Christ died for us, why did we also have to die? Well, our death is not a satisfaction for our sin. It doesn't tell us why we had to die. It just says it's not a satisfaction for sin. Then it says, it's only a dying to sin and entering into eternal life. But what it does give us then is a very pastoral biblical teaching, a very comforting biblical teaching. Our death is not going to be a penalty for our sin. So if you die, when you go to die, when a loved one goes to die as a believer, you don't say, well, it's because God was angry at them. God's angry at me and so he's going to put me to death. Never think that about death. Our death is not a penalty for sin. That's been taken away by Jesus. It's already been paid. It can't be paid twice. But what death is, and I think the catechism is right to say this, death is a passageway by which we enter into eternal life. It's a dark door. It's a dark door. But it's a door by which we enter into eternal life. We die and then our spirit, our soul goes to be with the Lord. And it goes to be with God in glory. And it's resting there with all the saints, resting in glory. But the door by which we go into heaven is not Elijah's door and it's not Enoch's door. It's through death. And so it becomes this door. Death for us is really a part of the already not yet idea of the scripture. When Bible talks about salvation, it's saying, well, we have already the great blessings of salvation, but we do not yet have all the blessings of salvation. Well, death is part of that. We already have eternal life. Jesus says, if you believe on me, you will never die. You will live forever. But at the same time, we will die, right? So we have this hope that we will never die. We will be living forever, but we're not yet in that state of eternal glory. We're not yet there. And so death is part of that not yet, of the blessings that are yet in store for us for salvation. And in this life, death is still gonna haunt us. We're still gonna fear even having to go through death. And some of us do fear death, some people more than others. But I remember reading R.C. Sproul once said, the great theologian, reformed theologian, and many of you know him, okay, R.C. Sproul said, it's not death I fear, he says it's the way that I might have to die that I fear. Yeah, and I think a lot of us can really, we can really identify with that. But the Bible wants us to be rooted in a gospel hope, in a hope. And so our death is going to be an entrance into eternal life. And we need to understand that. If God does call me to die anytime soon, then we can know and we can have this comfort. It is going to be an entrance into eternal life. Paul says, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. He said, it will be much better for me if I die and go to be with the Lord. Be much better in every way, he says. It's a very intensive kind of construction in the Greek language. So he's saying, my death ultimately will usher me into something much, much better than what I have. Some people fear that. They think, when I die, what happens? Am I just going to sleep in the grave? Am I just going to be sitting there? Am I going to be unconscious? Am I just going to be a soul wandering around? No, it's going to be much better. Well, Paul won't tell you that your death will be much better if it's going to be a strange and weird existence. No, it's much better to live as Christ, to die as gain. So we need to take that hope because that's what Jesus has purchased for us in his saving work. And so we need that hope. But we also ought to hear carefully how the catechism says that. It says it is also a dying to sin. Death will be a dying to sin. In other words, when you die, you will go into heaven and you will never sin again. Sin is now gone. Gone for you forever. I recall my uncle talking about that was he was dying from cancer. And he says, you know, he says, that's the part of the good news that I really look forward to that I won't have to wrestle with my sin anymore. I won't have to wrestle with my sin, it'll be all gone. That's the good news we're not ever to forget. But there will be an end of sinning. There will be end of that sense of guilt or shame that Paul talked about at the end of chapter six, where he says, what fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? You were delivered from sin. You were delivered from the power of sin, and yet you gave yourself back over to it. And what has it brought you? What fruit? Shame. He's saying someday we're going to be done with the shame. It's all gone. It's a dying to sin. For the time being, death is still our last enemy, and the last enemy. In fact, Paul says in 1 Corinthians, Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Jesus hated death. Death is conquered. Death is not destroyed. In the wisdom of God, he's kept around this last enemy for now. But death is the door. that opens up into the Father's waiting arms in heaven, our Savior, and he uses it to bring us home, to bring his children home to himself. So we're counseled, I think, from biblical language, we're counseled to think about that and to look forward to that sense of, okay, take the fear of death and strip it away a bit, think about this, that in your death, right, it'll be the dying to sin and the entering into eternal glory. And that's good news. That's a good thing for us. But there's one final thing that we need to think about in terms of Christ's death. It satisfies our sin, yes, and it assures us of our sinless eternity and glory and so on. But it also has a wonderful benefit for our life now. The death of Christ did something for the way we live now. It changed our lives. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the death of Jesus has done something that will change your life forever. Our old man. The catechism puts it that way. What does that mean? Our sinful flesh, our sinful nature that still clings to us, our old man is crucified, dead, and buried. Jesus, crucified, dead, buried. We, crucified, our sinful nature, crucified, dead, buried. Where do we get that language? Well, now you go back to our reading in Romans 6 and it just pops out at you. Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? So in a sense, it's talking about baptism there as a symbol of union with Christ, of being united with Christ. So when you're united to Christ, whatever happened to Him happens to you. You're with Him as He goes through it. So as Jesus goes through His death, you went through His death with Him. You say, well, how does that happen? This happened 2,000 years... By faith, we're united to Christ. And the Bible says that's what happens. Baptism is a symbol of that. It's the sign and seal of that, that through faith in Jesus, you are united to him in his death. And so it says that, okay. So it says we were baptized into his death, therefore we were buried with him through baptism into his death. that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we shall walk in a newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, well then, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. He was raised and He's a living one now. And so we also, if we went through death with Him, we'll also have been raised up in some sense. We have been raised up from death in Jesus' resurrection and now we are the living people. And that's why Jesus says, even if you die, yet you live. How can that be? Well, because Jesus lives and so do I. Jesus lives and so are we united to Him. We're united to the living. We can't die. We cannot die spiritually anymore. We've been baptized into his life. We have been brought into his resurrection life. So this is wonderful thinking to think about what happens to Jesus happens to us. So through faith, we receive that reality of Jesus death, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. So his crucifixion meant the death of sin. So our sinful nature has been put to death. It's dead. Now, it's still kicking in the sense that it still has influence in us, but its power over us is no longer there. And so you read through chapter 6 and you see this keeps coming out all over. Our old man was crucified with him, verse 6 says. It was crucified, our old man, so that the body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves. We're not slaves of sin. We've been set free from the power of sin. It doesn't mean we don't sin. It doesn't mean sin doesn't cling to us, but it isn't our master. It doesn't hold a grip on us that forces us, but it's a powerful influence in our lives, but its power has been broken and diminished greatly, all right? because he who died is free from sin, and we died. Essentially, our sinful nature died. It's dead, and it was buried, right? That's what this passage is telling us. And at the same time, Christ was raised, and so we also will walk in newness of life. So now, not only is our sinful nature dead, but we have a new nature, and that new nature is a living one, and we walk, right? We walk in newness of life. We walk in newness of life. And so the passage keeps going on and grinding out all the benefits of what it means if you're united to Jesus and he died to sin, but rose to life. Well, what good is that for us? Well, we are now raised up to be able to live with him, verse eight says. Death no longer had dominion over Jesus, it no longer has dominion over us. And so the life that he lives, he lives to God, and so the life we live, we live to God. And so verse 11, you reckon yourselves, you consider yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. So notice what it says there, therefore don't let sin reign in your mortal body. Don't obey its pressures. Don't let it rain. Don't present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin. You know, every time you give yourself over to sin, you're presenting your members, you're putting the members of your body in the service of sin. Don't do that, he's saying. Turn away from those things. Right? For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace. So that passage is a wonderful reminder to us. What did Jesus death accomplish for us? It accomplished the killing, the putting to death and the power of our sin in our lives. And that was necessary. We needed the power of sin to be broken in our own lives, didn't we? because otherwise it does terrible things to us. And we do terrible things in the face of sinning, right? Brings great misery. And so we now have a power in us, the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of Jesus' resurrection life in us, right? So this is really good news. It's really good news for us, isn't it? And it's good news for the world. See, death is reported every single day in this world, especially in our COVID day. They won't let us away from the statistics every single day, hammering it away, right? But there's cancer deaths, and there's deaths by shootings, and there's terrorism, and bombing deaths, and accidental deaths, and there's suicides, and on. We hear those. You see it when it bleeds, it leads. News is always telling you the bad news, and it's telling you these things. Death is still one of the most difficult things that we will have to deal with in life. Death sticks to us. Death scars us. I remember talking to a woman who used to be a member of our church here, Jessie Houck, and she was in her 90s, in her 90s, and Jessie had lost a daughter when she was in her late 30s or early 40s. I can never remember exactly at the age, but she was quite young, 30s or 40s. And so here she is, 90 years old. So 40, 50 years later, she would say with tears in her eyes sometimes, she would say, not a day goes by that I don't think of my daughter. See, death sticks to you, it scars you. So that's one reason why the Bible is such a blessing to us and the gospel, a story we have to proclaim to other people and that we should tell to our, keep reminding ourselves of. The wonderful love of God, that he sent his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, into this world to live and to die. to die to put to death our sin, and to die to put to death the penalty of sin and the power of sin, and to give us life. To give us life. He suffered humiliation, he suffered death, he suffered burial, to take away the sting of the grave and the victory of the grave and of death, and even to begin to take away the fear of death for us. See, Jesus died so that he could triumph. He died so that he could take away this terrible plague, this plague, right? He rose triumphantly so that he would raise us up to eternal life, so that we could be forever people, people who live now forever, so that the power of our sinful nature is now broken. And he wants to ensure that when we die, our death will be a door to eternal glory, in the presence of the Father, in the presence of Jesus, and of the holy angels, and all of this myriad of saints that have been brought there before us, we go home. Do you believe this? Do you trust that Jesus Christ died for you? If we do, this is wonderful counsel that the catechism summarizes and that Paul has really said in Romans 6, that we should offer ourselves unto him a sacrifice of thanksgiving. We should offer our lives unto him, a life dedicated unto righteousness, dedicated unto his service. That's what we join together doing because we are living people that God has set free. And may God give us grace to do that. Amen.