Amen. Thank you so much. Take your Bibles, please, as you turn with me in God's Word to Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter number 6. Have you ever lost your keys? Now, ladies don't lose your keys as much. Is that true? Okay. You tend to put your keys in your purse. Is that right? And it's easier to find your purse. But us guys, we put them in pockets. We put them in coat pockets. We put them in pants pockets. We put them on the counters. We put them on the chair beside us. Sometimes they slip out of our pockets when we're sitting in the recliner and the chair eats them, you know? You find all kinds of things down in recliners and things. I was pastoring in West Virginia and, you know, you tend to have to have keys for most everything, you know? And so I had those kind of keys that had two rings, and one side was more for home, you know, and the vehicles, and the other side was more for church. And if I needed to, I could separate them, you know, and hand somebody the key to get into such and such place. And, boy, it was very important, and you could almost lift weights with them, you know? It was just so many keys. And because of that, it was harder to lose. I misplaced my keys, and I had no idea of where they were. And my wife, boy, I tell you, bless her heart, she just, you know, she can preach. She can preach. And boy, she just preached at me. I told you, you need to do this, you need to do that, put those keys in a certain place, and if you just did it this way, you wouldn't have this problem. And yes, yes, yes, I know, dear, I can't find them anywhere. I looked everywhere, everywhere. I could not find them. I mean, both sets, the vehicles and all that kind of thing, long story short. I was going through, we were cleaning, doing kind of like spring cleaning after the winter, getting ready for Easter, and there was a certain closet there at the church. And I went in that closet and was clearing things out, and there was an overcoat. Now, I know if you grew up in Florida, you don't know what an overcoat is, okay? But up north, you know, you need an overcoat and a scarf and gloves and sometimes a hat, you know, because it gets really cold. And there was this overcoat there. It was black. And I thought, that looks like my overcoat. And I looked at it, and I opened it up, and it wasn't. I could tell by the lining. The lining was different. It was like a plaid, you know, kind of a warm lining. And I thought, that's not my overcoat. That's Tim's overcoat. That's Timothy's overcoat. And so I thought, boy, I'm glad I found this. And I picked it up, and I heard jingle, jingle. And I looked in the pocket there, in his overcoat, and there they were. After I recreated all the keys that I had to have, I had a whole nother set, it was in his overcoat. He had borrowed my keys. I had help. Now, if my wife were here, I would make sure, she's running the restroom, but she'll be back out in a second. But I told her, I said, I had help losing those keys. You know, without keys, your car's not gonna start. Without keys, you're not gonna get into your house. Without keys, you're just stuck. People aren't carrying keys as much these days. You know what they give you these days? They give you passwords. And without passwords, you can't really do much of anything these days. Now you gotta have an app to keep all your passwords and stuff, because who can remember all those things? Let's look, please, this title I've given this passage. for our study in Romans 6, the keys to a faithful Christian life. Keys to a faithful Christian life. Look at verse number 6, Romans 6, chapter 6, verse 6, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is Dead is freed from sin. Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. And we could press on and read some more verses there. Let me give you a preview. If you have a pen with you, and if you have not yet marked this passage, let me invite you to underline or to circle three words. Three words. In verse number six, underline or circle the first word, knowing. Knowing. Underline or circle that word. I encourage you to do that. And verse number 11, I would encourage you to underscore or circle the word reckon. Reckon. And number three, verse 13, I would encourage you to underline or circle the word yield. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness. These three words and these three verses are keys to a faithful Christian life. Now, let me make something very clear. No matter how smart someone may be, no matter how astute someone might be at teaching and preaching the Word of God, no matter what your desire may be, let me encourage you to understand something. The Bible is spiritual truth, and it is revealed by the Spirit of God. And, in fact, Jesus said that, "'No man cometh unto me except the Father. Draw him. And so, I encourage you as a Christian to not look at this passage or any other passage academically. I ask you to look at it spiritually. I ask you to depend upon the Holy Spirit of God. I ask you and invite you to please ask God to help you because, you know, there's probably no one that wants to get to heaven and the Lord Jesus says just basically, I love you. Don't we want to hear him say, well done, thou good and faithful servant? Wouldn't it be great to hear him say that? The Apostle Paul, he said, I fought a good fight. I finished my course. I have kept the faith. It can be done. Christians all down through the centuries have lived faithful Christian lives. Now, when I'm thinking about the way a Christian life seems to go, it reminds me of years ago when I took my children to SeaWorld. And at SeaWorld, they encouraged me, they pled with me, begged with me to ride a roller coaster. I think it was called Superman. I think that's the roller coaster there. They have several, they have many. But this is one of the new ones. And I got on that roller coaster, and I'll be honest with you, Brother Ben, it increased my prayer life. I said, dear God, please get me off of this thing safe and sound. My heart started pounding. I was pulling Gs up, down, all around, upside down, inside out. I mean, I thought that I was with Chuck Yeager in a fighter jet or something. And I was never so thrilled to be coming into the home stretch, and I could see the people next fools ready to get on that That roller coaster. You couldn't pay me to ride that thing again. You couldn't pay me to. Now, listen, there are a lot of Christians who view the Christian life that way. They view it as that they have little control over their life, over their attitudes, over their passions, their pride, over their selfishness, covetousness, It just seems like they're in a spiritual pinball, back and forth. They know that they should be serving God. They know they should be pleasing God with their life, but they just have no control over it, and this thing of faithfulness and steadiness in serving God, it eludes them. Please, if you've ever experienced that in your life, and I believe that all of us have, Please, don't let go during this study of this passage. I believe that God will do something wonderful for us here today. Would you pray with me, please, and ask him to do that? Would you do that? Let's pray. Now, Lord Jesus, we do humble ourselves. And as your church, you want to give us the abundant life. You want to give us the resurrected power through Jesus Christ and the indwelling Spirit of God. Lord, help me not to preach a sermon. Help me not to deliver a message. But Lord, help me just simply to point to Jesus in this time. And Lord, I pray that when we're said and done, that this thing of the Christian life, there'll be simpler in our heart and our mind so even a child can grasp it. Thank you for what you're going to do. I give you the glory and the praise in advance, in Jesus' name. Amen. First of all, I just want to, by way of introduction, I just want to remind us of why we should want to have a faithful Christian life. Let me remind us that, and you know this, sin severs our fellowship with God. As a Christian, sin severs our fellowship, not our relationship, but our fellowship with God. And I could give you Isaiah 59, 2, your iniquities are separated between you and your God. Psalm 66, 18, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Sin severs our fellowship with God. Second, sin soils our testimony for God. It soils our testimony. Whenever David sinned with Bathsheba, 2 Samuel 12, 14, the Bible says, "...howbeit because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme." How many times do you have someone who has some kind of reverend attached to their name, somebody who's a member of such-and-such church or whatever, and they have failed and they have sinned and been caught in some terrible wickedness and things. And boy, I tell you, they put that all up over the news. And the world has a tendency to kind of think, well, now see, that's what all those Christians are like. It's what all those preachers are like. And so sin soils our testimony for God. Sin saddens the Spirit of God. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, the Bible says. We're not to grieve him. with our willful, sinful life. This old nature that we still have to carry around has been and can be overwhelmed by the new nature that God gives us, and the keys are here. Let's look, please, in verse number 6 again. The Bible says, knowing this, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed. If you're jotting things down, I encourage you to jot this down, personally accept the facts, personally accept the facts. He says, knowing this, knowing this. Now, when you got saved, there were certain facts that you accepted by faith. That Jesus died on the cross, he died on the cross for our sins, and he was buried and he rose again the third day. And there's evidence for the facts that we put our faith in. I mean, the eyewitnesses and all the things that go into that, that's not the message. But the Bible tells us here that our old man was crucified with Him. Here's the thought. God put my sinful life in Jesus when He was crucified. God put my sinful life in Jesus when He was crucified. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says this. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousnesses of God in him." What happened, just like the... I'm so glad we have the Old Testament. Some people would tell us we need to unhitch from the Old Testament. Some people would tell us that we should not study the Old Testament. We should not get any spiritual guidance at all from the Old Testament. Listen, please, the Old Testament illustrates what Jesus was going to do in the New Testament. It pictures that. So when the high priest would put his hand upon that sacrifice on the altar, in essence, Symbolically, he could not do this because he's just a man, but he was symbolizing what God was going to do when he put his hand upon the Son of God and transferred our sinful life onto him to where he would judge our sins on Jesus. And it was pictured every time that they went there to the tabernacle, every time that they sacrificed in the temple. 1 John 2.2, he has the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. The whole world. God put my sinful life in Jesus when he was crucified. Somehow, someway. And this is a miraculous kind of thing. But Tom Fegler, sitting right back there in the back. Tom Fegler was somehow put into the spiritual DNA of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as if... Now, listen, please. If I was driving to work one day, I was 16 years old. And you know how 16-year-olds are. They know everything, right? They can handle anything. I was driving in Chattanooga to the grocery store where I worked and driving my mother's car. and I was fiddling with the radio. And that road took a gentle bend, there on Jenkins Road, took a gentle bend and I took a straight shot. And I started to go off the edge and there was this great big ditch that went like that. Started to go off the blacktop a little bit. I felt it go off as I was adjusting. And what did I do? Well, I jerked that great big 1972 Buick Limited. I jerked it too far. Well, it started going across the other side of the road. And so I jerked it back, trying to get back in my lane, and now it's, you know, it's gone. And I went down in and through that ditch and kept on going. Let's just say for a moment, I was 16 years old. Let's just say that I'm so thankful that God's grace was such that there was not a tractor trailer on that other lane meeting me at that moment. There were no other cars there. What if there had been? And what if I had been killed at the age of 16 years old? Where would Timothy and Melody and David be? They wouldn't be anywhere. They wouldn't exist. They would have died in me. Long before I ever met hope, long before we ever thought about having children, 16 years of age. If I'd have been killed right then, they'd have died in me. The Bible is telling us that we died in Christ, that God somehow miraculously took us and put us in Christ. And there at the cross, He judged our old life. There at Calvary, died in Him. During the Civil War, there was a guy named George Wyatt. George Wyatt, he was drafted into the war. He had a wife and six children, and he pled and he asked to be let go and to not go. And there's another guy named Richard Pratt, very young man, and he volunteered to go in Mr. Wyatt's place. And so, Pratt took his name, and his number, and all that kind of thing, and he went, and he fought in the Civil War for him. It wasn't too long before Pratt...until he was killed. They came back to Mr. Wyatt, and they said, hey, listen, we're just down to it. We need some more men fighting. And he said, you don't understand, I already died. Looked at it? Check your records. Check your records. George Wyatt already died. He said, well, I'm standing here looking at you. Well, check and see. And sure enough, they had record of George Wyatt dying because, you see, Richard Pratt, he died as a representative He died as a substitute for George Wyatt. It was in the records. It was legal. And when Jesus Christ died, he legally paid our sin debt. We died. It's not something that God is allowing us to get by with. Our sin was just...and we have to personally accept that, to personally accept the fact, knowing. The Bible says, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. Say, I don't understand that. Join the crowd. Honestly, this is where a lot of people unplug. They say, wow, this is crazy stuff. These are essential keys. This is the first essential key. You're going to have to... be willing to personally accept what God has said that we died in Christ. And before I lose you, let's go on to the next one. Personally accept the facts, and secondly, positionally admit the facts. Look at verse number 11. The Bible says, likewise, reckon ye all see yourselves to be dead indeed of sin. The word reckon has the idea of gathered all together, added up, come to a conclusion. You don't just know it, now you apply it. Okay? Let me just explain how the Lord dealt with me on this. I was a teenager in high school, and someone recommended this book to me. Has anyone ever heard the title? the Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee. Anybody recognize that title? Yes. Okay, quite a few, several. Watchman Nee was a Chinese man. He began preaching when he was 19 years old in China. In 1922, he held his first revival meeting. He preached for 30 years. He gave the gospel, he discipled believers, started churches all through China. When the communists came in and the revolution took place in China, they arrested Watchman Nee. And the last 20 years of his life, Watchman Nee spent the last 20 years of his life in prison. But he wrote several books. And one of those books that he wrote that I had read was The Normal Christian Life. When sometimes you see people that are like Paul, Elijah, you know, great evangelists, great preachers of our day and of yesteryear, you say, wow, wouldn't it be great to be like them? They're just special. No, Watchman Nee suggested this fact. They're just normal Christians. We're the ones that are abnormal. If we're not faithful, if we're not spirit-led, if we're without the enthusiasm of the Holy Spirit within us, if we're not obedient to the Lord, then we are abnormal Christians. The sad thing of it is we've embraced the abnormal and relabeled it because everyone's like this, it seems, in our nation, in our world today. That must be the normal way. And in that book, he broke down Romans 6, and I encourage you to get that book. You can go on Amazon, go on Christian book distributors. You can go on any place and get a hold of that book, The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee, N-E-E. And basically, as a high schooler, I got to the point that I realized that I personally, personally had to say, Okay? I believe that I died in Jesus. I believe that as he rose from the dead, that I received that same power, and we'll get to that in just a moment. I received the same power for a newness of life. So today, I'm going to have a funeral service for Mark Sears. Every morning, I'm going to have a funeral service. Mark Sears died on April 10th, 1970. That's when Mark Sears got saved. That's when I was born again in the family of God. Now, you might not know the date of when you got saved, but you might say it was out in the backyard by the cherry tree. That's when Shirley died. And so I believe that I died in Christ, and so I'm asking your Holy Spirit to fill this dead body and use me this day. I renew this. Luke 9, 23, Jesus said, "'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.'" Now, the cross is a place of death. So how can someone take up and die daily physically? He was going to die once. No, we as children of God, we put self on that cross, so to speak. We acknowledge the fact that we are dead in Christ and ask the Holy Spirit to empower us. That's what he meant in Galatians 2.20 when he said, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me. And the life is I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Do you hear all the personal pronouns? Personally, you got to make it your own. I'm not telling you something that is some ethereal thing. I'm telling you the thing that works. This works in the Christian life. This is something that you need. This is something that I need every day of my life. And when I take the time to set the old man's self aside and set that aside and say, God, I acknowledge that you said it in your word that I died in him and to reckon myself dead in Christ, okay, I'm going to accept that by faith, and I'm going to obey what you have to say. So, Holy Spirit, this is a dead body. Pastor Jim preached about this not too long ago while I was gone. And he got quite graphic on what you could do to a dead body, and it's not going to do anything. But when the Holy Spirit empowers that dead body and gives boldness to our mouth to speak, brightness to our brain to bring things to our memory, things that we didn't even realize we had in there. When you're witnessing to someone, has anyone ever had this experience? That when you're witnessing to someone, and you're talking with them, and they ask you a question, that you come out with an answer, and you're thinking, where did I hear that, Brother Paul? What message did I listen to? What book did I read? I didn't know that I knew that. Positionally admit the facts that God judged my sinful life when Jesus died. Positionally, I, me, not we all, no, no, no, no. It's me, it's me, it's me, oh, Lord, standing in need of prayer. I have to get that old man dead. There was a dear lady. She lived in Alabama. She and her, this was years ago, I mean, back in the plantation days. She and her husband, they had a great marriage. I mean, just one of those picture-perfect intimacy, togetherness, and all that kind of thing, 30 years of wedded bliss, and then he passed away. And she could not bear the fact, the brokenness of her heart. And so when he died, and I'm sure that this was odd back in these days, but she couldn't bear the physical separation from him. So she had his body embalmed and embalmed in such a way that she brought him home and set him in his chair. And then she had a glass box made, a glass shell to encase and to set over top of him, over the chair and everything. Every day when she came home, she'd speak to him. and talk to him like he's just sitting in his chair. I can't imagine, don't even want to know what that looked like after time. She decided to take a trip, and she went to visit England. She was in England too awfully long before she met a man, and she fell hopelessly in love. It wasn't long until they got married. On their honeymoon, they went to Europe and they traveled and all that, and before coming back to America. And they got back to Alabama. And he picks her up and carries her over the threshold, and walks into the living room, and he looks over there and sees this guy sitting in the chair. And he drops her to the floor. He said, who's that? She said, oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot, I forgot. That's my old husband. And he told her, he said, that old man's gotta go. You're under new management now. Get rid of him. And that's what Jesus is telling us. That old man's gotta go. We're under new management. And the Lord Jesus Christ needs to live his life through us, and he does that through the person of the Holy Spirit of God. And we add up the facts, and we reckon it, and we come to the conclusion that somehow spiritually God will take us over if we admit personally, accept it, and then admit it that we're dead in Christ, and then apply it. Apply it. Presently, right now, apply the facts. Look, please, at verse number 12. Let not sin, therefore, reign your mortal body. You know that word let's pretty important. Okay? Let not sin, therefore, reign your mortal bodies. I think of Matthew 5.16. It says, let your light so shine before men. In other words, it's in there. It's in there. Well, guess what? Our old nature is still in us. If you hear somebody teaching, somebody saying that, whether it's on the internet or in some books or whatever, that somehow down here before Jesus comes back and before we die and have a glorified body and all that, if they try to tell us, that we can eradicate that old nature, that we can live without that sinful nature in our life, they're just lying to themselves, and they're trying to lie to you, too. The Apostle Paul said he struggled with that old nature, but he found the keys for faithful victory over them. So, if you allow it to, it'll just run your life. I thought about having three guys up here. So I'm not going to do it, I don't think. I was going to have three guys come up here. I was going to name one of them the world, one of them the flesh, and one of them the devil. That's probably the reason why I just don't feel the Lord leading me to, you know, because whoever gets named the devil, you know, it'd be hard to live that down. And then I was going to have those three guys just kind of shove me around. That's probably another reason why I didn't do it. I was going to have him shove me around and to demonstrate how the way a lot of Christians are in this present world, that the world, the flesh, and the devil, that they are no match for them. And then I was going to pull out a card that identified me as a child of the king, that identified me as empowered by the Spirit of God. And they have no rule over me anymore. We need to apply it presently, today, in our daily life, in the storms that we're going through. God gave me new life when Jesus arose. Look at verse 13, neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." On 1792, if you're going from Orange City into the land, you will come to this neighborhood Walmart on the right. And right before you get to that Walmart, you'll get to this roundabout. I'm not a fan of those things. Okay? Especially double-lane roundabouts. It seems to me like, you know, I approach that with fear and trepidation because I'm not sure exactly all the time what I'm supposed to do. But I see one sign there. It says yield. Yield. And so I put on the brakes and I'm watching and I'm ready and I want to make sure in case there's somebody walking or in case there's somebody pulling out, if they're pulling out, do they have right of way? Do I have right of way? You know, and I know I've got to be yielding. And listen, please, we're going to yield to our old nature or we're going to yield to our new nature. We're going to yield to one or the other. We are. A man went to a motel, and he checked in, and the lady at the desk, couldn't help but notice, came in on crutches. One leg was handicapped, one leg was healthy. And he was hobbling on those crutches. And he went up to his room. Early that morning, he came back down, and he had a T-shirt and had swim trunks on, and he went out there to the pool. And he got in the pool, and she could see it through the glass from the breakfast area, and he was swimming, and she thought, well, that's nice, you know, a handicapped man like that out there swimming. And when he got in the pool, it was about shoulder height of water, he walked back and forth in a straight line, walking in that pool. No crutches, nothing needed. You know what happened? Of course. The buoyancy of the water allowed him to walk. Even with that crippled leg allowed him to walk, held him up. Listen, please. The Holy Spirit of God allows us by His strength and buoys us up so that things that would topple us over, things that would pull us down, whenever we surrender to Him and the power of the indwelling Spirit of God, He enables us and we walk a straight line, walking with Christ. Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh, the Bible says. Walking with Him. We were talking about truth walkers the other night. These three keys, I could... If the Holy Spirit does not reveal this truth to you, it will not come to you. It will not. You have to be wanting. You have to be willing. You have to be seeking. But let me tell you something, if you reach out to Him, He will reach back to you, and He will guide you, and He will help you. Who taught Watchman Nee in China, for crying out loud? He didn't have fundamentalists and fundamental churches. There was Anglican church and things that his father was ministering in, and they didn't tend to teach a lot of these kinds of truths of the Word of God. You know who taught him? The Lord Jesus Christ through the power of His Holy Spirit, through His precious Word. So I'm telling you the honest truth. The honest truth, when...and there have been, sadly, sadly, there are times that I just think, well, I've got this Christian life thing, you know, pretty well in line. I've been doing this for quite a while. And I don't humble my heart, and I don't say, Lord Jesus, now today, today on Thursday, I do believe that I died in Christ. I do believe that I was buried in Christ. I do believe that I was raised again to walk a new life in Christ. I do believe that. So I ask you now that you would fill this dead body. Use me this day. Lord, I am dead. I died on April 10th, 1970, when you put me into Christ, when I got saved. So therefore, I acknowledge that, and I reckon myself dead. Help me to yield myself to you. Let me tell you something, folks. I'll be honest. When I do that, those days, I do feel the buoyancy of the Holy Spirit of God enabling me to walk in ways and enabling me to witness and to talk in ways that is not of me, it's not of earth, it's of the Holy Spirit, of his kingdom, for his glory, and pride is out of the way because Jesus Christ is in charge. The keys to a faithful, Christian life. Got to accept it. Got to admit it. You got to apply it. Heavenly Father, I pray now that you would help us as Christians with a very simple, simple truth from your Word. Help us to glorify Jesus and lift him high. That's what this passage is all about. And if we try to do it ourselves, And we try to do it in the flesh and not by faith. Lord, we will fail, and we'll be on that roller coaster. And we'll just wish that somebody else would take our place, and we'd never get back on again. But, Lord, you have a way of evening everything out. I pray, dear God, that you would give us the steadiness that Job had, the strength that Elijah had, the faith that Abraham had, the courage like Joshua had, the consistency like Paul had. Lord, that'll make marriages heaven on earth. That'll make home a place of peace and rest. That'll make finances stretch. That'll make miracles happen in the hospitals and souls saved. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for what you've done. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for buoying me up by your spiritual hand. Lord, help us to seek that every day. Our heads are bowed. Our eyes are closed. If there is a person here that does not know Jesus in that personal way of salvation, my friend, you come to Jesus. It'll be the best decision you ever made in your entire life.