Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Pottstown Bible Church. It's another glorious day to be in the house of the Lord. I know I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else on a Sunday. So like I always do, I read a scripture, get things kicked off here. Why don't we all stand together? And you guys are going to know this one. So I want to, you guys can finish this one. Everybody knows this one. Jesus said to Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And that's John 14, six. And all God's people said. Amen. So I'm a little hoarse today, so I'm not gonna be singing. I'm gonna be turning it all over to Rick and Jack. So, you know, you guys can worship just like you do. All right, help us out here. Worthy of every song we could ever sing Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe We live for you you I ain't trust nobody Are you learning and broken within? Overwhelmed by the weight of your sin Jesus is calling Have you come to the end of yourself? Do you thirst for more? For him, for you So I'm going to ask you to have a seat for a second. I'm going to ask the ushers to come forward. Father, we consider it It's a privilege to be in your house and that we can call you father. All God's children gather to worship you and send their Lord in prayer. In an act of worship, we give back a portion of what you provide, Lord. I ask that you would accept these offerings, you would multiply them and use them to glorify your name and your kingdom in all God's You say Sing to Jesus, come on. It's getting late Thanks. There's nothing else for me to do but to feel the warmth of your embrace. That's it It's so beautiful. Holy, holy, here we go. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Who was and is and is to come. In the world of creation I sing. much to the delight of many. You are my everything, and I will give you the world Your breath is giving you water, such a marvelous feeling. Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy. One more time! You're breaking me through All my life you have been so, so good I regret that I am evil A mistake, I could be so good I don't wanna know. I'm gonna mess up my life. Your goodness is running out, running out Your goodness is running out All my life you have been so, so good Every breath that I am taking I'm scared of the goodness of God next to you and will be joining us online. Make sure you stay tuned for Pastor Jack Appleby. So we're going to continue through the Book of Romans. We're going to be in the 6th chapter. We're going to read verses 16 to 23, which ends chapter 6. And then next time I'm up, we're going to dive right into chapter 7. And we're going to talk about the believers being united in Christ. So follow along with me. I'm going to read the version I told you before that Moses brought down from Mount Horeb, the NASB. No, I'm just kidding. But you can follow along with me. I know Andy likes this NASB too. All right, verse 16 through verse 23. Let's dig into the Word of God. Do you not know? that when you present yourself to someone as slaves for obedience, you are a slave of the one whom you obey, either of sin which results in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness. Verse 17. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Now I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Just as you presented your members of slaves to impurity and to lawlessness Resulting in further lawlessness. So now What am I to do now present your members of slaves to righteousness? Resulting in sanctification or being set apart For when you were slaves of sin you were free in regard to righteousness therefore What benefit then were you deriving from the things for which you're now ashamed of? For the outcome of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit resulting in sanctification and the outcome eternal life. for the wages, the paycheck, the payment for sin is death. But the free gift of God is what? Eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So last week we looked at why a person, why in the world a person would try to find excuses as to why he or she would sin. We looked at slavery to sin or obedience to the Lord. So we're going to take a quick moment and just review a little bit of that. Then we're going to dig in and finish chapter six. So look at slide four. Do you not know that when you present, literally when you offer yourselves or you surrender to or submit yourselves to someone as a slave for obedience, meaning you're complying with or following the commands of that person, you are slaves, you are servants of the one whom you obey, either resulting in sin, which is resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness. Slide five. So I wanted to make sure you guys remember that word present that Paul uses here, presenting yourself to. Greek word is peristome. What does that mean? Paul's talking about yielding to or surrendering to or completely submitting to. Submitting to what? Surrendering to what? Becoming a slave for obedience. Do we remember what Paul meant when he used that word slave? That Greek word there you see on the screen is the word doulos. Right? I'm proud of you guys. You all know you're Greek. See that? Dr. Carter is going to be awful proud of you. What is a doulos? A doulos is a person who is literally the property of and wholly subjected to another, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Again, remember that back then, people would sell themselves into slavery because they wanted to avoid financial disaster. And as I said last week, today people become slaves to debt by selling themselves as slaves to those credit card companies, slaves to the drugs, the booze, the alcohol, all that, the fentanyl. You're giving your time, talent, and treasure to, you're submitting to, you're walking in obedience with that, and that is wrong, that is sinful, and that will destroy your life. So the point that Paul is making here for you and I is that all slaves, particularly voluntarily ones, are bound to be obedient to their master, to the one whom they obey. So then a person either yields or surrenders himself as a slave to sin, which results in what we read in verse 23, where the payment is death. or obedience resulting in righteousness. To consider again what Jesus said, slide 6. Jesus' own words says this, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits a sin is what? A doulos of sin, a slave to sin. Think with me. As I said last week, the way you and I live out each day, the way we live literally each day, literally proves who we're slaves to. What has your life revealed that you're a slave to? Think about it. See, the way we live out each day, we're now proving who our master is. Is it the world? Satan's system? Or is it the Lord? So, if we live a life that is characterized by sin, it reveals that we're slaves to sin. Look at slide 6. Do we willingly live each day and choose to disobey God even though we know what we're doing is wrong? Oh, it got quiet in here again. Think about it. Do we willingly live out each day? God allows you to wake up and you live out each day. Do you choose to disobey Him even though you know that what you're doing is wrong? Are you laying with somebody you're not married to? That's sin. Are you using something that you're not supposed to be using in your body illegally? That's sin. Is it the bottle or your family? The drugs or your job? Which is it? Think about it. We want to grapple with the text. I want you to engage the text. I'm insignificant. The Word of God is the final authority in all matters of life, faith, and practice. So, if your life and my life are characterized by a willingness and obedience to Christ, then our lives should reveal that we are slaves to Him. Hear me this morning. I said this last week. Living a habitually unrighteous sinful life can never be a Christian life, church. Ever. All people are either slaves to sin, where sin is master, or they're under the lordship of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and He is master. If we clearly know and understand God's will for our lives, and we resist walking in obedience to Him, you and I are giving evidence that our loyalty is to something or someone else other than Christ. Slavery, as I said last week, is a living experience, not just a legal status, church. So let's look at verse 17, look at slide 7. Paul then goes on and says, but thanks be to God that, and this is what we call the Greek, the Irish tense, you used to be or you were slaves to sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. Are you committed to the living Word of God, which is active and sharper than any two-edged sword? Paul says, thanks be to God. So what's going on here? Think about this for a minute. Notice Paul, he's not thanking them because of how smart they are. He's not thanking them because they're well-behaved He's not thanking them because they have some wisdom. Why? Because none of those things will ever get a person into heaven, ever. A person is saved one way, solely by the grace of God alone, through faith alone and Christ alone. There is no other way a person is saved. Paul says, you were slaves of sin. as we just previously learned in that verse. That was the reality of their life as well as ours. Sin was master over us. But Paul then says this in slide 8. You became obedient from the heart. This word obedience is actually two Greek words that come together. Verse one is hupo, meaning under or to place under, and akoo, meaning to hear. But not just here, just with this, but hearing with the idea of yielding your life over as a servant. So this begs the question, slide nine, who are we following, yielding, or serving under today? That hupakuo, who am I under? Who am I listening to? Whose advice am I following? How do we understand this, church? If you and I are truly born-again followers of Christ, we once yielded and obeyed sin as our master, but when Jesus got a hold of us, He began to change us from the inside out. We began to yield our life over to Him. Can that be said about your life this morning and my life? See, church, if this is true of you and I, then righteous living, living a life that glorifies God, should be a habitual way of life for you and I, whether on your job, the streets, whatever you're doing. Even when you're in traffic and the people are driving in the left-hand lane, when they're supposed to be going faster in the right-hand lane. That's an inside joke, I'll leave that alone. Sorry, God. So being obedient to God does not make you saved, it doesn't keep you saved, but it will reveal to others that you are saved. He says something else in here, slide 10. To that form of teaching to which you are committed. Now normally when we see the word form, we think of the word morphe, but here Paul's using a different word, he's using the word tupas. Tupas has the idea of a mold, a die, or a cast. And how's the idea of they're pouring this hot molten metal into a cast to fabricate something? Well, there's a steel beam or something else. So that form, that mold, that cast of teaching that you were committed to. And that word committed in slide ten has the idea of being delivered over to. So yeah, I was delivered, I was in the world following that, and God delivered me over to his form of teaching and his word. What does J.B. Phillips say in slide 11? Great theologian. J.B. Phillips says this, do not let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within. How does that happen, church? Here, you've heard Dr. Carter and I say this until we drop dead. Please open up your Bible and get into the Word of God. Please. Do not let Satan's forces try to take this born-again believer, which could be you, and fit you back into that old, sinful mold from which God delivered you from. Let God continue to fashion you into the perfect image of His Son. So here's the question this morning, slide 12. What are you allowing to be poured into your mind? Now, I want you to think about this for a minute. What are you allowing to be poured into your mind? Is it 45 hours a week of video games with the thumbs? Is it 17 hours a day on Facebook or Twitter? Oh, I got to know what somebody thinks about me, because I live in a selfie world. Click, click. What are you allowing to be poured into your mind? You are who you are because of what goes into your mind. What would be harmful if you took just five minutes a day, opened up the scriptures, and let God pour into your mind what God wants for you? See, here's the thing. The world will promise you freedom and give you slavery. If you allow God to pour his word into your mind, you're going to be transformed. Your mind's going to be renewed. What is squeezing your mind to think differently than the way God wants you to think? You can watch the news, you can watch TV, and it's going to take your mind and throw it upside down, and you're not going to know who to think, what to believe. But here's the thing, if you open up your Bible tomorrow, it's going to say the same thing it says today, two days from now it's going to say. It's immutable, God never changes. So Paul is trying to get across to each of us the important relationship of God's truth to a believer's life. Look what John MacArthur says, slide 13. MacArthur says this, saving faith is Christ, in Christ, is built upon God's revelation about Him, not on men's ideas about Him. Wow. There is a divinely revealed content to the gospel and the person who rejects or circumvents that content gives unmiscapable evidence that he is not truly seeking God's kingdom and righteousness. Now, did that go over your head? I want to read that sentence one more time. There is a divinely revealed content to the gospel, and the person who rejects or circumvents that content, which is in the Word of God, gives unmistakable evidence that he is not truly seeking God's kingdom as righteousness. What does your life reveal each day that you're seeking after? Is it the money? Oh, 1.7 billion dollars. Let's follow the bouncing ball on TV. That'll change everything. And God, listen, I'll give you 10% of it if I win. I won't forget you, Lord. Now forget the fact that God says man shall work by the sweat of his brow to the dust of the return. God created man to work. Not to play scratch-off tickets and gamble your life away. Oh, don't get me started now. Slide 14. What did Jesus say? No one can come to me unless... Oh, look at this verse. The Father who sent me draws him. I will raise him up. What does it say? Upon the last day. And He, that's what Jesus was saying. For this reason, I have said this to you. No one No one can come to me unless it has been granted him from the Father. I'm going to share some stuff that's going to be hard to fit in some people's ear today, but you look at that one more time. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. You see that sentence? I'm going to raise him up on the last day. For this reason, I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted him from the Father. Now, I want to kind of unpack this a little bit. I want you to notice slide 15, that word draw. Greek word is halkoua. No one can come, or so you see that, no one comes unless the Father sent me draws him. What does that mean? to drag, to induce, to come. Dictionary.com actually gives this definition. To cause to move in a particular direction or as if by pulling force drag. Right? So I want us to really try to understand John 6, 44 and 45. Okay? I am not a big thing about the sinner's prayer. I've studied this Bible for two decades. I can't find anywhere in the 66 canonical books that if I pray some certain specific prayer, boom, I'm saved. I can't find it anywhere. But I can go to John 6.44. The only reason I'm saved is because He saved me. I can save myself. I can't buy my way into heaven. I'm not against prayer. Prayer is important. But just because somebody reads the back of a pamphlet or goes to a crusade and prays a prayer doesn't make them saved. And I can tell you, I've sat with people in my office and I ask them when I'm doing some biblical counseling, so how did you come to faith in Christ? Well, I prayed that prayer with so-and-so, so therefore I'm going to go to heaven. Then I'll say, well, what does it mean to be saved? They can't answer that. What did Jesus do for you? They can't answer that. So no one comes to the Father unless it is granted by the Father. It comes to Christ except that it's granted by the Father. So, let's see if we can back up John 6, 44 and 45 with some other scriptures, okay? So, slide 16. I want to talk to you about a thing we call effectual calling. this drawing, this helcuo, of a person to God. So what is it? Well, effectual calling, this drawing, is the work of God's almighty power and grace, whereby out of his free and special love to his elect, and from nothing in them moving him thereunto, he does in his accepted time invite and draw them to Jesus Christ. How? By his word and his spirit. His spirit bears witness to my spirit that I'm His. Savingly, He enlightens our minds. Because remember Ephesians 2.1, we're dead in our sins and trespasses. He renews and powerfully determines their wills. That's the helku, that's the drawing. So as they also dead in their sins are hereby made willing and able to freely answer His call and accept and embrace the grace offered to them. I want you to notice something in these verses here, in this text. You and I cannot make ourselves saved. I'm sorry, you cannot make yourself saved. Okay? No person can come to Christ on his own. Remember, if Ephesians 2.1 isn't lying to you, you were dead in your sins and trespasses. Now, I don't know how many of you have been to a funeral, but I've done plenty of them as a pastor, and I've never seen a person in the casket make himself alive again, drive a car again, work a job again. So the only person that can make somebody who is dead is God the Holy Spirit which will awaken them, enlighten their minds. So when they hear that Eugalion, the gospel, they come to a saving faith in Christ. But salvation, make no mistake about it, it is all God's work and it is all God's plan. And it was planned before time was invented. So hear me this morning, that's the truth. Slide 17, no one can come to me unless it has been granted him from the Father. That's really hard to swallow. Now, what is so bad in our American society today? Well, in our society today, let's face it, we all want to be in control. We want to make all the decisions on our own, because we know what's best for us. But as we've already learned, all people are born spiritually dead. They're physically alive, but dead spiritually. I know I was. I didn't want anything to do with God when I was growing up. Nothing. I wanted to be financially free and successful and God was just not even a blink and an eye of it. As we had learned earlier in chapter 5 and 6, we're either in Adam or in Christ. So I don't want to miss this point. So I want to share some scriptures to back all this up. Okay? Because scripture validates scripture. The Bible is a self-authenticating book. So, slide 18. Unsafe people are dead in their sins. Where does it say that? Ephesians 2, 1 and 2. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. You formerly walked according to the course of this world. You walked according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. The NLT puts it this way. Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin just like the rest of the world. Obeyed the devil, the commander of the spirit powers in the unseen world. He is a spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. It doesn't get more clear than that. I don't know about you, but it doesn't to me. How about unsaved people are slaves to unrighteousness? Where does it say that? I'm glad you asked. Slide 20 and 21. 2 Peter 2.19, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption. Now look at this, for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. If anybody struggles with addiction, that verse points it out. NLT puts it this way, they promise freedom But they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption, for you are a slave to whoever controls you." Ask yourself, who's controlling you? Who are you yielding your life to? How about being alienated from God? Colossians 1.21. Paul writing to the church of Colossae says this, "...and although you were formerly..." what? "...alienated..." and what? "...hostile in your mind, engaged in evil deeds." The NLT puts it this way. This includes you who were once far away from God. You were His enemies, separated from Him by your evil thoughts and actions. Is that a present tense statement for you or have you surrendered your life to Christ? How about this? Hostility towards God. Romans 8.7, we'll be looking at that later on, but here's the verse. Because the mind set on the flesh is what? Hostile towards God. for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so." How about being spiritually blind? Slide 25. In whose case the God of this world has what? Blinded the minds of the unbelieving, so they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Church, you are fighting an enemy that hates your guts and wants to destroy you. You are fighting an enemy that wants you to burn with him in hell for all eternity, in that lake of fire, the exodus eschatos, as it says in Revelation. It's right there. So you should be able to see, without Christ we can do nothing. How about captives of Satan? Slide 26, 2 Timothy 2.26. And they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held, what? Captive to do as will. Slide 27, incapable of understanding spiritual truth. But the natural man, this means the unsaved man, he does not accept the things, the revelations of the Spirit of God. Why? Because he's dead in the sins. They're foolishness, meaningless, nonsense to him. He cannot understand that because they are spiritually appraised. Is that a word, appraisal? You want to trade in your car. You take it to the dealer. He does an appraisal on the car. What does that mean? He attaches a numeric value to what that is worth. Right? You're going to sell your home. So the guy comes out and he says, your home is worth this. So he attaches a value. So when he says, spirit of praise, a person who is dead in their sins attaches no value to the word of God. It's foolishness to him. Think about that. How many people have you shared Christ with that think you've lost your mind? Some Jewish carpenter 2000 years ago died for me. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. But the only way you know that is because his spirit bears witness to your spirit that you're his. The Scriptures are clear. The Scriptures speak plainly to you and I. Because people are born dead in their sins, slaves to unrighteousness, alienated from God, hostile towards God, spiritually blind, captives of Satan, incapable on their own of understanding spiritual truth as the Bible teaches us, it is clear that an unsaved person could never come to God on his own. He cannot save himself. But here is the awesome part of God's wonderful grace, as we read earlier. Church, it is God alone who irresistibly and effectively draws the dead sinner to Christ, makes him alive, and actually gives him the faith to believe the gospel. It is God, not us, who actively seeks out dead lost sinners like me and you, as we just read in John 6, 44 and 45. Sinful, dead in the sins, unsaved man always chooses to hide from God because just like our first parents, Adam and Eve, they did that by hiding behind the fig leaves. What are we still hiding behind? Are we hiding behind the bottle? Pornography. What are we hiding behind? A person is saved solely by the grace of God alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. There is no other way. So I wanted to give you those 10 to 12 scriptures because I want the Bible to self-authenticate for us so we understand the truth. It is the imputed righteousness of Christ to our count and our sins to His count. Remember, I've showed you this before. All the worst about you and I, all the horrible, filthy worst about you and I, the heroin, the crack, the drugs, the alcohol, sex out of wedlock, stealing, lying, cheating, all the worst about you and I was placed on Jesus. And all the best about Jesus was now transferred and placed on you. So when the Father sees you, He sees His Son. Slide 28, being justified as a gift by His grace through the rejection, which is in what? Christ Jesus. We are, from the moment we are saved, sanctified, meaning the moment we come to faith in Christ, we are set apart for the Gospel. Something happens inside you that you can't run from. Sanctification what is that is the process whereby God the Holy Spirit? Who is fully God who is a person not a force? Renews us Continually is molding us every day to look like Christ and Paul says in slide 29 Philippians 1 6 Paul says I am confident of this very thing he who began a good work in you and He's going to bring it to full maturity. He's going to perfect it until the day of Christ. How does that flesh out for you and I today in 2023? How do we take what we just learned from the Bible and apply it to our lives today? God alone puts in each of us the ability to live right and obey the gospel. Don't blame Him when you screw up. If you are born again and the Holy Spirit indwells you, by the way, in the Scriptures that indwelling, that oikion is a Greek word, I want you to think about this. The moment you come to faith in Christ and the Holy Spirit indwells you, that's a permanent deal. There's no eviction notice. There's no, your lease is up, I'm running out. He's there with you for eternity. So He puts in you the ability to live, write and obey the gospel. That starts by transforming and renewing your mind by being in the Word. Here's something else you need to know. It is a process that will continue for the rest of your life and my life while we're here on earth. We are under the slavery of righteousness as the text indicates. When we sin and disobey the gospel because we belong to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Bible says who he loves he chastens, he disciplines. We will find ourselves in a position of difficulty or confusion. Think about it, if you're in a position of difficulty or confusion right now because you know you're not living right, you should get on your knees and thank God. You see, when that's going on, He's perfecting you, sanctifying you, molding you, pruning you, chopping away those areas of your life that are screwing up your life. Because you now belong to Him, you're His slave, His doulos. So I'm hoping by now that all of us this morning realize we cannot deliver ourselves from being slaves to sin, nor can we make ourselves slaves of righteousness. Remember what we learned when we started chapter 6 of this book of Romans. When we were united together with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, that's beginning of chapter 6, it was all about what Christ has done for us on His behalf. It is our union with Jesus that makes everything we've been learning this morning possible. So you're either an Adam, dead in your sins, or you're in Christ. Listen, there's no middle ground. The Bible says if you're either hot or cold, I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth. Remember what he told the church later? You're neither hot nor cold. You're trying to have one foot in the world and you're trying to have one foot with me? No, that don't work for me. I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth. And here's another frightening thing. Can you imagine standing before him on judgment day and he says, well, you depart from me. I never knew you. That is some of the most terrifying words a person could ever hear. I never knew you. And let me finish this up, slide 3031. Paul says, listen, I'm sharing all this with you in human terms because your flesh is weak. For just as you presented the members of your body as slaves to be an impure and be in lawlessness, that resulted in further lawlessness. Now listen, you need to present the members of your body as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. And the NLT puts it this way, because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led to even deeper and deeper and deeper sin. Now, you must give yourselves to be slaves of rights living so that you become holy. So Paul says, I'm speaking in human terms. So what does that mean for you and I today? Paul is, in essence, stating that he's been using these illustrations from their everyday, ordinary life for the purpose of making plain the truth of the Scripture. It is clear that he wants the readers of his day to understand biblical truth, and that is something that the leadership here wants for everybody here and you listening around the world. We want you to be able to understand biblical truth, because biblical truth is pure truth, replacing the lies of the world. This business of preaching and teaching the Word of God for Dr. Carter and I is to make the truth of Scripture plain and clear for everyone. Our job is to tell you what it says. So he says in slide 32, because of the weakness of your flesh, your human nature, what's he trying to get across? Slide 32. What does he mean by that word weakness? He's talking about feeble, sick, diseased, asthenia, flesh, sarx. See, this word usually speaks of our human bodies, that word sarx. He's not using the word soma, it's our flesh, but he's trying to get a point across to us when he uses this word. Here it has the idea of the whole person, your mind, your will, your emotions, which are influenced and perverted and controlled by sin. Listen, you really need to be very careful about where you get your information from. I don't know how else to put it to you. You really, really need it. Okay. You don't need your mind polluted with the garbage. all of the sensuality and all of the stuff that Satan's throwing out there to try to shred you up. So when somebody says, well, you're a believer and you're shacking up and having sex with a girl you're not married with, you're over there getting high with that person over there, you're in that bar getting drunk day after day while your wife's at home trying to take care of your kids. He wants each of us to know that as long as we are alive, Our bodies are gonna remain in this place called the flesh whereby sin is going to continue to launch an attack on you. So you need to get rid of the things that are causing you to stumble. In Ezekiel 14, one through five, he says these elders have set up idols in their home. These stumbling blocks. This is back in Ezekiel. What are you setting up or allowing in your life that's causing you to stumble? Think about that, church. You know, if you have stuff that's on your phone, get software, get an accountability partner so that you're not viewing the porn. I'm preaching plainly to you this morning. If you know that you have a problem going to the bar at a certain time, because we're very cyclical in humans, and you know it's going to happen, call somebody and change that direction. Metanoia. If you're going to go down here to try to get high, to get a bump, get anything, and you know that you have the weakness, plug into an accountability partner. Say, listen, I'm struggling. I know he's there right now and he's got the fentanyl, he's got the crack, he's got the heroin, he's got the oxy. Come meet me, help me. That's what the brothers of Christ are supposed to do for each other. I'm having temptation with this porn. Get into a group. Get into a celebrate recovery group. Do something to change the direction of your life. And if the woman that you say you love, that you're shacking up is worth it, why isn't she worth the wait? Why isn't she worth the wait? For just as you presented the members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led to deeper sin. Church, just as we used to yield ourselves as slaves over to impure and sinful living, we are able, through the power of God the Holy Spirit indwelling in each of us, to present our members as slaves to being righteous people, set-apart people. If the Holy Spirit is now indwelling you, you are able to yield and submit yourselves as slaves to living a life that is set apart from the Lord. It really boils down to, have you left your first love? Who do you love more? Do you love Jesus more? Or do you love the trinkets of the world more? What do you love more? Amen, Jesus. From the mouth of babes. Here's something else, and I'm just about done. God's purpose in redeeming us from sin was not done so, so we could do whatever we pleased to do. It was done for each of us to do what He wants us to do. Here's the interesting thing, you know, we have plans and dreams and all this stuff, some of us do, and it's amazing when God gets a hold of you, how your prayer life changes. It's a really amazing thing when you get into the Word of God and you yield your life over Him, how your mind and your plans change to be more into conformity to what His will is for your life. You may think that you want to be this, but He's got another plan for you over here. And there's that tension because then you start to put God on trial. Well, God, if you really loved me, You put them on trial. But it's amazing, the more that you fall in love with Christ, and the more you soak in His Word every day, and the more you spend time in Scripture, and the more you say, Lord, what do you want from me today? The more that your plans in life change, your dreams are renewed, and they become very differently than the worldly dreams. See, the world wants you to win the lottery. It wants you to have all the trinkets of life now. Buy now and pay later. We don't care if you ever paid a bill. We don't care if your credit's in the toilet. We're going to give you a car loan of 70,000% so you're a slave to debt for the rest of your life. Oh, I know I'm talking to somebody here today. What happened to weight? Wait on the Lord and He will renew your strength. What happened to wait? So again, God's purpose in redeeming you and I from sin was not done so you and I could just do whatever we want. It was for each of us to do what He wants us to do. So a person who is truly in love with someone is really a slave to that person. He or she lives for that person whom they are truly in love with. See, love is an act of the will. Everybody, I feel this, I feel that, oh, I feel this, I feel that. You see, agape love is not heiress love. Heiress love is the, even though that word's not in the Bible, it's a sexual type of love. Agape love is an act of the will. So you live for the person you truly love. There is a true dedication to that person, a commitment to that person. What a wonderful slavery. Look at slide 35. How have you been presenting yourselves this week? How has the way you have lived this past week revealed to others who you truly love? How about your speech? How's the way you've been talking to people reveal? See, your mouth is a tattletale of your heart. Be around somebody long enough you really find out where their heart's at, right? Are you setting apart time to grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ? Do the others who come in contact with you each week see that you're really a slave to Christ? Do they see that you don't walk according to pattern in this world? And lastly, are there parts of our lives that are sadly still in the service of sin? Slide 36 and 37. We're going to stop here. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. When you were slaves of sin, you were free from the obligation to do what's right. Church, before you came to Christ, if you are somebody here this morning that's come to Christ, you and I had no connection to righteousness. So it really couldn't make any demands on us because we wanted nothing to do with it. Why? There's no desire on our own to meet those requirements. We were controlled and ruled by sin. Sin was the master whom we were bound to, enslaved to. So in a sense, we were in fact free and had no responsibility for righteousness because we didn't want it in the first place. And on our own, we were powerless to meet those demands. So as we met with unsaved people, we noticed many of them do not think that their lives need any reformation or transformation. If you are sharing the gospel with somebody, they think things are pretty good. They think they're really okay. They think, well, I do this for people, I do that, they really think they're okay. They think that works, gets them into heaven. Like God's gonna have a little accounting system up there, you know? So the Bible's clear that apart from Jesus, we're slaves to sin. Dead in our sins, right? So Paul makes this statement, 38 and 39. What benefit were you deriving from the things which you are now ashamed? The NLT says it this way. What was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do? Things that end in eternal doom? Hopefully, we can see now that we derive no benefit from the things that we're ashamed of. By the way, when you come to a saving faith in Christ, this is important. And I'm going to stop here, because I can tell that your heads are like, oh, stop. When you come to Jesus Christ, this is important. You're saved past, present, and future. that blood washes away your sins all the way from the past from your very first sin to where you are presently to the day you draw your last breath. All of that goes and was placed on Christ. I'm going to ask you to bow your heads this morning. If you were to draw your last breath today, you leave here, maybe you get hit by a car, you have a heart attack, something happens to you, and you were standing at that behemoth seat, that judgment seat of Jesus. So he's there on the seat. Actually, I should say the Father's there on the seat, Jesus is there, Satan's there. So let's give you the courtroom scene. So the Father's there. He's the judge. I don't think he's got the beard like that, but he's the judge. Over to the left is you. You're guilty of all the sin. You know you're guilty of it. They got the real tapes to show that you did this, this, that, and the other. And Jesus is there next to you. And then over here, seeing the prosecuting attorney. Now, he doesn't have to lie. He says, well, look at the evidence. So and so did this, this, that, that, that, and the other. Right? So the Bible makes it very clear that it's the job of the judge to execute judgment. You are guilty. Here's the penalty. On earth, we go to jail for a long time. But when you die, you go to hell. But then your attorney comes up, Jesus says, wait a minute. Father, wait a minute. Every filthy, rotten, sinful, horrible thing that person's ever done, I'm going to come up and pay the bill. I'm paying the bill. So even though he's guilty and doesn't deserve anything, he can leave here righteous, positionally. He can leave here as if it never happened, even though it did. There's your gospel. So your advocate with the Father is Christ Jesus. When you die, if you die and you've surrendered your life to Christ, He takes that robe of righteousness and says, let's go to Abba, let's go to Daddy. So you're here this morning. You don't know if today could be the very last day you're alive. You may think you're going to live another 10 or 15 years. A lot of people yesterday thought that too, and they're dead. This is serious business, because whether you're a believer or not, there's one fact that every human being knows. Someday you're going to drop dead. You're going to die a physical death, and there is no second chance. It's appointed once for a man to die, Hebrews 9.27, and then the judgment. There's no, you get to do it over, and I'm sorry, but there's no purgatory, my Catholic brothers and sisters. You will not find that anywhere in here. All it says in here is we must all appear before the judgment seat of God to give an account of the things we did on earth, whether good or evil. And it says in Hebrews 9.27, it is appointed once for you to die and then to judgment. Please understand, sin generates consequences and there's no second chance. So you're here this morning, if you sense God the Holy Spirit right now speaking to you, speaking into your life, speaking into your heart, There's only two things, repent and believe. Bible says, if you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and to continually, it's a present active verb in the Greek, continually cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Doesn't mean you have a license to sin. It means that you are now, if the Holy Spirit is indwelling you, then you know the things I'm sharing with you are true this morning. You're listening around the world in those other countries right now. What I'm sharing with you, if you have your Bible, there's truth. I've given you the Scriptures to back it up. So, if you were here this morning, I'm going to ask you to do something. I'm going to ask you to bow your heads, and if there is any unconfessed sin in your life, why don't you share it with the Lord right now? Whether it's the drugs, the alcohol, having sex with a woman you're not married to, treating them like a used car, I don't know, whatever your sin is. Hurling out profanity like a junkyard dog, whatever it is. Just confess it to him. He already knows that this is for your benefit. And then I'm going to ask you to do the second part. Surrender your life to Jesus Christ as He has been freely offered to you in the Gospel. That's it. Repent and believe. And if the Holy Spirit isn't dwelling in you, He will bear witness to you that you belong to Christ. Amen? Now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. In Yeshua's name, amen.