Well, good morning and greetings to each one. Welcome to this time of hearing God's word. Let's begin by reading from Romans 6, verses 1-14. Verses 1-7 is a review reading. And then verses 8-14 will be the section that we're going to be preaching from this morning. Let's hear God's Word. Romans 6, verse 1. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, We shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, We believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin, once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its lusts or passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the miracle that you've worked in our lives. You've worked in us as your children, We thank you, Lord, that you have arranged for us to die with Jesus Christ, and you have arranged for us to be raised with him. And we thank you, Father, that you brought us up from that death into new life and resurrection life, that you brought us up into a new climate, a new domain, a new realm. where we can serve you and where sin no longer has dominion over us. Help us, Lord, in hearing the word and understanding it today. Amen. In our last message, we considered the fact that believers are those who died to sin. And we see that that title was taken from verse two that says that, how can we who died to sin still live in it, still live in sin, or under the dominion of sin? That since we died to sin, sin is no longer our master. Now sin may attempt to still master us after our conversion, but sin does not have the authority over us that it once had. In Paul's, he talks about this. We notice that he brings up the matter of baptism. In verse three, he says that, don't you know that if you've been baptized into Jesus Christ, you were baptized into his death. And Paul here is saying that baptism, spiritual baptism, This is the baptism by the Holy Spirit into Christ. This is not speaking about water baptism as the important act. It's signified by water baptism, but he's talking here about baptism, meaning the believer being united with Christ in Christ's death. And just as Jesus, when When he died, he was separated from the world of sin, from the realm of sin, and he was separated from the realm of death, that when Jesus died and was buried and he rose again, he rose in a new realm. There was not a 40-day wilderness temptation for him after his resurrection. You think about that, you know, that sort of met him, you know, right at the beginning of his the beginning of his ministry after his baptism. But when he was raised from the dead, he was forever separated from the realm of sin and freed from that domain where sin mastered. And this is the lesson of verse 3 to us. So we're freed from sin as our master because we died with him. But just keep in mind in this passage as you read and you meditate on Romans 6 that Paul is not speaking about water baptism here. Water baptism is just the sign of or the confession of or an illustration of the baptism by the Spirit into Christ. Now Paul takes this truth and just hammers it home This matter that we died to sin. In verse four, that we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. Verse five, we have been united with Christ in a death like his. Verse six, our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. In verse 7, for one who has died has been set free from sin. In verse 8, if we died with Christ, And in verse 11, so then consider yourselves dead to sin. And so Paul just really hammers this home again and again and again. He wants us to get this. He wants us to know this, that the believer is one who has died to sin. He says, consider this. Now, Paul is not promoting positive thinking. I couldn't believe it years ago, but somebody actually gave me, a fellow professing believer, a series of books on positive thinking and said, Philip, you need to read this. And I glanced at it, I knew the author, and if I mentioned the name, you would know the name likely. But positive thinking is, is trying to think really, really hard about something that's not true so that eventually it will become true. And Paul is not, this isn't positive thinking. He's not saying, think about something that ain't true, hoping that it becomes true. He's saying, I want you to think about this because this is true. This is reality. And think about what is true, not what you wish to be true. When Paul says that we died to sin, he's not just giving us a little lesson on the power of positive thinking. Nor is he saying that if you presently are living whole hog in sin, that you should somehow pretend that you're not a slave to sin. He's not saying that either. That if you give yourselves over to sin, You shouldn't pretend that you're not a slave to sin. Because someone who desires to sin and wants to sin and delights in sin, that person is a slave to sin. That person needs to be baptized into Jesus Christ. And Paul is not encouraging us to be in denial. He's not saying, well, just deny reality and deny what's true and hope it goes away. There are three words that are often used in understanding chapter six. I think they're helpful words. The penalty of sin, the power of sin, and the presence of sin. And in our justification, we are freed from the penalty of sin, aren't we? That Christ took the death that was our death upon himself, and we have been freed from that penalty. In our identity with Christ, we've also been freed from the power of sin. And that is a past and present experience for every believer. We're no longer under the power or the dominion of sin. Now, the third word, the presence of sin, that's future. And it's certain that we shall be removed from the presence of sin But that is a future hope or certainty that we have. And all of these are works of grace. And to help you understand this, think about a young woman who's worked for maybe many years to become a doctor. And she went to medical school, and that's a lot of work. She's smart. She graduated with honors. She got her degree, her medical license, and she got married after some time and had a family, had some children, and some years later she went back to her work and she had an auto accident one day. And she was seriously injured in this accident. And so she was prescribed a pain medication as she was recovering. And very unfortunately, she became addicted to the meds. And she foolishly began to steal some meds from the hospital and from the clinic where she works. And her life began to unravel more and more, and she became involved in illegal things to cover up her illegal habit. And it began to affect her family and her marriage and her children. And it came to light, and she was called before the court for a hearing, before the judge. And the judge considers the case, and the judge says that because there's mitigating circumstances here, he's kind to her, and he says, I can't determine what the medical association's going to say. I can't fix your career. I can't speak for your husband, I can't speak for your children, but concerning the law, I'm not going to send you to jail. I'm going to dismiss this, and I want you to get treatment, and I want you to deal with your drug problem. Now I want you to notice what the judge does in this illustration. Because he's a kind and gracious judge, he forgives the legal part of her problem. And he lays aside the legal penalties and consequences that she faces. But that's sort of all that he can do for her as a judge. Her career, her life, her family, her children, her addiction. Those are things that he can't fix, can he? All he can do is sort of release her from the legal implications of her wrong. Now this is not what God does in salvation. That illustration is not what God does. He's not just a legal fixer. God doesn't just wipe the slate clean for Christ's sake, and then send us out on our own, still with a broken marriage, still with a dysfunctional family, still with an addiction. If that's all God did, is that He forgave our past, we would soon undo that forgiveness. and we would go out still addicted, still bound to sin. But God infuses, by His grace, new life into those that He forgives. He infuses a new life that brings about a transformation. Praise God for this. And He does this by joining us not only with the death of Jesus Christ, but by joining us to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I thought about, in relationship to baptism, calling this sermon, The Other Side of Baptism. And if you've ever been baptized, especially by immersion, you're happy for the other side. You know, the first side is putting you under the water. The other side is bringing you up out of the water. But my title is, I'm not using that title, that we are raised with Christ. We not only died with him and died to sin, but we're raised with Christ. And baptism symbolizes both the death and burial part and the resurrection part. I don't know if you ever thought about it or not, but baptism is a naming ceremony. I don't know if you ever thought about that. It points backward to a death, that's true, but it also points forward. Baptism is about identity, about a new identity. In Matthew 28, verse 19, which we're familiar with, Jesus commands us to go and make disciples, baptizing them in. If you look up the word in, in your Strong's Dictionary, you'll notice that the first definition is to or into. That we're baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And I contended for years that this is not a formula of things to say at a baptism, but we're baptized into an identity with. We are now taken out of and put into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Dr. Ferguson tells the story once of how he was at a gospel conference, and he met a young man who was definitely, he said, Oriental by birth. And when introduced to the young man, the young man gave his name as Timothy. And Dr. Ferguson said, I knew he wasn't a Timothy. I just knew he wasn't a Timothy. I didn't know what he was, but he wasn't a Timothy. And so I asked him after maybe the second or third day of the conference, What's your real name, man? And he said, Timothy is my real name. I only go by this name because this is who I am now. This is the name that I took when I was baptized. Someone got it right. He understood baptism. Baptism is about a new identity. It's being raised with a new identity. And I just think that illustration helps us very clearly to think more clearly about baptism. So let's move now into verses eight through 14. And I want to divide this part, this section, into two parts. We want to, first of all, talk about our identity with Christ in his resurrection. So we're going to think about that in verses 8 through 10. Our identity with Christ in his resurrection, and then in verses 11 through 14, we're going to talk about our response to this new identity. So two parts, our identity with Christ in his resurrection, and our response to this new identity. And I have four brief points under the second heading, how we should respond. So verses 8 to 10 show us that We not only identify with Christ in his death, which was the subject of the first part, but we also identify with Christ in his resurrection. And even while Paul was talking about dying with Christ, he kept interjecting this resurrection part. It's just as if Paul couldn't wait until verse 8 to go ahead and say it. So in verse 4, while he's talking about the fact that we died with Christ, he says, there's more to come. Notice that in verse 4 again. We're buried with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of God, we too might walk in newness of life. And so Paul says here that because of our union with Christ and our death with Christ, we have also The resurrection of Christ at work in our life, that we not only died with Him, but that we are also raised with Him. And brothers and sisters, this is not talking about the second resurrection. The second resurrection is the resurrection when the believer is going to be raised from the grave. That's the second resurrection. The resurrection that Paul speaks about in verse 4 is the same resurrection that John speaks about in Revelation 20, where he talks about the first resurrection. Now, that gives us a little bit of a puzzle or riddle. Think about this. Believers experience the first resurrection before they experience the first death. And now that may puzzle you a bit, but just take it and chew on that a bit. Now, the believer is never going to experience the second death, are we? Now that's gone, the second death. But we are, unless Christ returns, we're going to experience the first death, but we are raised before we die the first death, and that's a marvel of grace. That's like fixing the problem ahead of time, and I'm so thankful that God in his grace does that. That's just like the marvelous, wonderful grace of God, that he doesn't come tagging along, hurrying up to fix a problem, but he takes care of the problem right up front. And then in verse five, Paul also, when speaking about our old self being crucified, he says that we're united with him in a resurrection like his. And I'm so glad those words like his are there, that our resurrection is not a cheap imitation, but it is a resurrection like his. And then in verse 8, he turns more fully to this truth of our resurrection as part of our union with Christ. Like I said, he's not talking about the resurrection guaranteeing the second resurrection, which is future. It's included, but it's not the focus here. The resurrection he's speaking about is a resurrection that every true believer in this room this morning has already experienced. If you're a true believer, if you've been saved, you've already been raised. You've been raised with Christ. And our resurrection with Christ begins now, not just at the second coming. In verses 8 through 10, as Paul writes here, he makes a great deal out of the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead. Notice, it seems like he just keeps saying it and saying it and saying it. Now, verse 8, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he, that's Christ, died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. And he says three things here that we share in that resurrection with Christ. Number two, it's a permanent resurrection into a different circumstance or a different realm. Jesus did not come back into the same realm as he lived before. And when we're raised with him, we do not, we don't come up into the old environment where sin has dominion over us. And thirdly, His resurrection is unto the life of God. And our resurrection also is unto the life of God. It says in verse 10, the death He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life that He, that is Christ, lives, He lives to God. And so, in His resurrection, He entered in to a new realm and so do we. So the first point here is that we identify with Christ in his resurrection, not only in his death, not only in his burial, but in his resurrection that we were with him and we identify with him in his resurrection We need to consider this. We need to think about this. We need to meditate upon this. We need to enter into the truth of this. And this means life for us and hope for us. Let's go on now into the last 11 through 14 and let's look at the implications of this. As the Apostle Paul, he makes statements concerning our resurrection with Christ, and now he talks about the implications or the imperatives. Like I said in our last message, this is the first time in the Book of Romans that Paul gives us something to do. And maybe you're a doing kind of guy, and that's fine. I can identify with you. But here's the first command that's given to us in the whole book of Romans. And he now begins to give us some things to do. We have four imperatives. Know who you are. Number two, don't live like a slave to sin. Number three, don't allow any part of yourself to be a tool for sinning. And number four, present yourself and present your members to God. So here are four imperatives. Verse 11, here's command number one. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Consider yourself not only dead to sin, but consider yourself alive to God. This is not step two, and I want to make that clear, that we don't get justified and then wake up to God at some later time in our life. It's not step one, step two, but it's another dimension of the same salvation. We only have one great salvation, and anyone who is justified is also sanctified. Anyone who has died to sin is also alive to God. And they both are true. It's not one now and another later. It's just another dimension of the same salvation by grace. Paul uses the word here in the ESV, consider. What does this mean? So you also must consider And here's definition for it, synonyms. Know this. I want you to know this. I want you to learn this. I want you to apprehend this. I want you to grasp it. I want you to realize this. I want you to meditate upon this. I want you to take this in. I want you to internalize this. Appreciate this. fathom the depths of this. But consider this. Consider that if you're a child of God, you're alive to God. Know this, that if you're a believer, you've been raised with Christ. Now, does Paul know we struggle with sin? Yes, he knows that. We'll get to that in chapter 7, won't we? We'll hear his own testimony. He knows we struggle with sin. It's not that we want to sin, but we do sin. We struggle with sin, I struggle with sin. You know, sometimes it doesn't feel like we're very alive to God, does it? Did you ever have a time like that? When you didn't feel very alive to God? Sometimes it doesn't look like we're very alive to God, does it? It looks very different sometimes than that. It feels very different than that. When I look at myself in my life, sometimes I don't feel very dead to sin and alive to God. And if you're a mature Christian, you know what I'm talking about because you know your faults. It seems like that's a mark of a mature Christian. Some people have said that mature Christians get soft and flabby and they become big, they become wimpish. Well, some do, but that's not all the reason. Part of the reason is that a mature Christian is more quick to see their faults than what they ever have been before in their life. and they realize that I don't always feel very alive to God, and I don't always look very alive to God. I have many faults, we have many faults. And we see them because they're really there. And that's sad realities, but it's true. And so Paul says that you're going to have to give extra special thought to this truth that you're alive to God because when you, what do I call it, your theolometer, when you look at that, it's going to indicate a different condition. And so Paul says, this is true. The Philometer doesn't say it's true, but this is really true. And so I want you to spend your time considering, knowing, thinking about, internalizing what I say is true, what the Holy Spirit says is true. I want you to know this. I want you to spend time on this, because you're going to get some pressures from over here. that are going to seem like to say this isn't true, but Paul says, this is the truth. This is what's true, and that's what you feel. This is what true is true. This is what may seem to be true. I think that it's important for us. I'm sorry about my voice. I preached Friday night without a loudspeaker to a large group at the prison and their batteries had died on it and I shot my voice. Let's get the order right here. We do not strive to obey in order to be redeemed, do we? We don't strive to obey in order to be redeemed. But rather, because we are redeemed, we strive to obey. Knowing our redemption enables us to obey. Knowing our redemption helps us to obey. Knowing that these things are true helps us to say no to what we feel and yes to what God says is true. In other words, what we are in our Christian life, what we are, that precedes any fruit or any ability to obey those things that God would have us to do. And God does have things for us to do. But all of our doing must come out of what we know to be true, that we are alive, we've been raised with Christ. Suppose I told you the story of Exodus. Well, we know that story, don't we? Those of you here on Wednesday night, how God sent Moses into the land of Egypt with the holy law of God and how he said to Israel, if you will obey my law, I will deliver you out of Egypt, out of bondage, I will redeem you. And you say, wait a minute, I don't quite remember it like that. Of course you don't, that's not the way it was. God did not send Moses in there and saying to the people that if you obey my law and you keep my commandments, then I'll deliver you out of Egypt. God didn't say that at all. Instead, God sent Moses into Egypt with a revelation of himself. God sent Moses into Egypt with a covenant of grace. God sent Moses into Egypt because of a covenant that God made with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And it was only after God redeemed them out of Egypt that He gave them the law for their obedience and for their good and for His glory. Moses, many times after they were delivered out of Egypt, he reminds them, remember who you are. You're the people that God delivered out of Egypt. You were in bondage and God brought you out. And it was only in that context that God gave his law to them. And so Paul in verse 11 says, I want you to consider, I want you to think about what's true. I want you to think about how that you're alive to God now. I want you to consider this and learn this and grasp this. I want you to realize this. I want this to be often upon your mind. I want you to appreciate this. And in chapter 12, Paul strikes this note again when he says, how is it that you're renewed? Well, you're renewed through the renewing of the mind. That's how it takes place. were transformed by the renewal of the mind. And so the very first thing that the Apostle Paul gives to the Roman believers that received this letter, the first commandment was, it was an exercise to think carefully about what is true. This is not positive thinking. This is thinking about something that's very true. Now, I need to poke just a bit. at Travis this morning, Yoder. I was going to include Kristen in this poke, but he's not here. And I don't think that either of these men have this problem, okay? I really don't. I'm sure they don't. But suppose someone was single for many, many years, more years than you were, young man, 30 plus, you know, busy, businessman, jobs, tasks, relationships, fully engaged in life. And then God in his providence brings them to marriage. and he finds a lovely bride and they get married and wonderful, that's great. But he has a problem, sometimes he forgets that he's married. Not forget-forgets, just forgets. I'll make that clear. I don't think that statement does, but anyway. So this man, he makes social plans without talking to his wife, like he stops in after work with a guy who's been his friend for many, many years and gets tied up there. Or he works late on something that's really, really fascinating to him. And so someone goes to this man and says, hey, my friend, you need to consider that you're married. You need to know that you're married. Now, he's not saying to that husband, if you sit down and think, think, think hard enough, you'll be married. He's already married. He just needs to think about what is true so that he will live like he's married. And this, I think, is what Paul was saying to us in verse 11. that thinking about being raised with Christ doesn't raise you with Christ. But since this is true, we need to think about it, because as a man thinks in his heart, that's the way the man becomes. You may not be who you think you are, but what you think you are, and what you think about, that becomes true and real in your life. And so this is the first imperative Know who you are. Let's move to verse 12. The second imperative is, don't live like a slave to sin. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. And he says, I want you to move on from considering and thinking Here's a conclusion. And he says, don't let sin reign in your life. And Paul is not saying that since you're a Christian, you're never going to sin again. And if you ever sin, you're not a Christian. He's not saying that. But he does say, do not let sin reign in your mortal body. When you were raised up with Christ, you didn't come up, you didn't come to the surface, into the world where sin is your master. In the next chapter, Romans 7, shows us that we still struggle with sin, and Paul knew this. And if we did not struggle with sin, Paul would not have written this to us. But since we do struggle, he says, don't let it reign in your life. Now, it's really true that if we're a believer, sin does not have dominion over us. That's really true. Before I was a believer, I wanted to do what I wanted to do, whether it was right or not. And before you were a believer, you excused, delighted, covered, hid, but you did what you wanted to do. Sin had dominion over you. But now that you're raised up with Christ, this has changed. This is different. We willingly obeyed sin. Now, in our resurrection, we have a new life to live to God. We have new desires. They're not perfect desires, but I tell you, my desires are different now than what they used to be. I can recognize that in my life. I hope you can too. It's not perfect desires, but they're new desires. There's new ambitions. There's new passions that move us. There's new goals that we strive for. And we could go on and on with testimonies at this point of how that this changed in my life. And there was a desire, you know, sometimes some people wonder and they doubt whether or not, they doubt their conversion, their regeneration. And sometimes it's helpful just to think about, well, what is it that really makes you happy? What is it that you really want to do? Well, it's this and this and this and this. Now, did you want to do that before you were a believer? No. Where did you think these things came from? I'll tell you where they came from. That's the resurrection life of Jesus Christ at work in you. That's why you have new desires. You didn't cook those up. Those are gracious gifts of God. That's the new world that we came up out of the baptismal waters into. So Paul says, knowing that this is true, say no to what you're not anymore, and say yes to the new dominion of the life and love of God. Now, there is something that must be said here, and Paul says it in this section. When we're raised in the new realm, in the new life, and we're alive to God, and we come up out of that death and burial into new life, when that happens, we come up into a new realm, but we come up with the same old body. Do you see the tension that that brings? We do come up into a new realm, but we come up with a body that's not yet resurrected. And baptism is not about a physical resurrection, it's about a spiritual resurrection. And so coming up into this new realm, I remember the night that I was born again. I thought that it's over, it's done, I'm a new man. And I had an unconverted brother that night who told me, he says, would you just calm down? Would you just calm down? And I couldn't. I didn't want to. You know, there was something happened, a miracle happened in me that I just, I couldn't get over it. But, you know, after the evening comes the morning. And I realized that though I had died to sin, sin had not died to me. And I had members, I had eyes, and hands, and feet, and a mind, and a tongue, that were still from the old man, not the old man, the sinful nature, but the old body. So that brings us then to verse 12b. Notice at the end of verse 12, he says, Don't let sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members. Now he's not talking about you as a person, but your individual members. Do not present your members to sin as instruments or tools for unrighteousness. And so the third imperative is, don't allow any part of yourself to become a tool for sinning. The body that we have, even as Christians, can be a conduit for sin. Now, I wish it weren't that way, and one day it's not going to be that way. But it is true that the body that we have is still an unredeemed body. And the word flesh, as I would use it in relationship to the unredeemed humanity, I'm not talking about the flesh as is used in chapter 8, and we'll talk about that when we get there. But the body we have can be a conduit for sin. And verse 5 of chapter 7, just looking ahead at that, I had 5-7, it's 7-5. For while we were living in the flesh, Our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. That while we were old men, not dead to sin, our members, the members of our body, were at work to bear fruit for death. And he's talking about how that prior to conversion, that's B.C. that our members, the members of our body, they were committed to the fruit for death. 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 2, very similar. That now, We're to live the rest of our time in the flesh, and so we still live in these bodies, don't we? When we're converted, we're not delivered from the physical body. And so we live the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for human passions, but for the will of God, that though I still have the body I had before, I do not give the members of my body to evil passions, but I give the members of my body to the will of God." So Paul's saying that your eyes can be a portal for sin, or a conduit for sin, or an instrument for sin. And my lips, and your lips, your lips can be a portal for sin, or a conduit for sin. I can gossip about you, and that's sin. And I do it with the lips of my body, and the mind of my body, although I'm I've died to sin, and though I'm alive to God, I still have these same members present with me. In your stomach, in your hands, in your mind, and who you are as a man or a woman. We need to recognize that being converted, being saved, and being alive to God It does not free us from the discipline of saying no to using our body, our eyes, our ears, our tongues, our time in a sinful way that we need to say no. And we can say no. There was a day whenever we had no power to say no. But do not allow any part of yourself to become a tool for sinning. Now, here's where the monasteries and the individuals that thought that they could become holy just by denying themselves all pleasure, they had it wrong. Because God wants you to have eyes and ears and a tongue and to use them in a mind. He just wants you to use them for himself. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. But if you're going to use them for him, you're going to have to say no to them. And it's not that eyes are bad. Eyes are good. And the members of our body are good members of our body. And we're just not to give them over to the enemy to use. How shameful is that for me as a child of God to give my eyes to pornography, my sexual organs to immorality, my time to waste and wickedness, my tongue to gossip, my eyes to pride and ego. We need to recognize our inherent weaknesses, what may be called our besetting sin. We need to recognize temptations. We need to confront sinful practices in our own lives and say, no, I'm not going to give my members as a tool for sinning. And this is what Jesus was talking about when he says that we need to be radical with this and pluck out right eyes and cut off right hands. This is so true and so important for us. This is an imperative for us. As surely, brothers and sisters, as you will not lend your gun to your neighbor to murder his wife, you should say no to lending your members to sin. As sure as that. And I know that you would say, if someone came in some absurd, crazy way and said, hey, can I have your gun? I want to go kill somebody. You would say, no, I'm not going to lend you my gun to do that. In the same way, we should not lend our members to sin as a tool for sinning. So Paul said, know who you are, consider that. Don't live like a slave to sin. Number three, don't allow any part of yourself to become a tool for sinning. And then number four, 13b through 14. Let's finish the section. But instead of presenting your eyes, your ears, your mind, to sin. Instead of that, present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will not have dominion over you, since, or for, you are not under law, but under grace. Present yourself to God. Do you realize the Christian life is not all about you? It's not all about me? We're not the center of this new life. God is the center. We're to present ourselves to God and present our members to God. I like it that Paul says both here. Present yourself to God, number one. Number two, present your members to God. The whole man, present your whole self to God. We ought to view ourselves as having the privilege of serving God. We exist in a new life for His glory. We're channels for Him. We're instruments of God. Isn't that marvelous? That I'm able with myself and with my members to glorify God? I'm able to eat and drink for His glory? That I'm able to speak and think for His glory? It's not all about us. Being a Christian is not what I get out of it. I'm a Christian to serve Him, to serve God. He raised us up in Christ for His own glory. He raised us up. He raised us from the dead so that we might live unto Him. Isn't it marvelous that these same members that we could use, that we could give to sin for wickedness, we can give them to God. We're alive to God now. These same hands and eyes and feet and sexual organs and all that, we can give them to God and say, God, I present myself, I give myself to you and my members to you as a tool for righteousness. Since I'm no longer obligated to sin, I give myself to you, all that I am. You know, that's something that we haven't heard near enough about in the last 10 years as a church, this subject of consecration and dedicating and consecrating ourselves to God. I say it, I think it's my fault, I'm one of the elders here, but I don't think we've made a big enough deal out of that. That in our salvation, that we have an opportunity to give ourselves our time, our money, our thoughts, our energy, who we are, as a tool for righteousness. And of course, we need the grace of God to do this. We can't present ourselves to God and present our members to God and serve Him in our own strength. I know we need the grace of God, but you're going to have to do it. God's not going to do it for you. You have to present yourself. You're responsible to present yourself. No one else will do it for you. God commands us to present ourselves to Him. And it's interesting, his argument is, present yourself to God because God gave us the ability to present ourselves to God. And Augustine said, I don't have the quote here, that the God who commands gives the grace for the command. So this is my duty. This is an imperative. To present myself to God, present my members to God. Let's move on to verse 14. For sin will not have dominion over you. For sin will have no dominion over you. For you are not under law but under grace. Now this verse, is not so much a command or an exhortation. It's not a statement of consequence. It's an encouragement. Verse 14's so misused and misinterpreted. Paul's not saying, well, you know, since you're not under the dominion of sin and you're not under the law, just go ahead and live in sin. And verse 15, which we're not getting into, Paul, he hears it coming. But He's encouraging us to go ahead and do what I said you should do. He's saying that for sin will not have dominion over you, go ahead and give yourself to God. Go ahead and say no to giving your members to sin. Go ahead and stand up and press forward, because God has put you in a realm where sin does not have dominion over you. You know, the reason God sent His Son to die on the cross was to destroy the works of the devil. That's one of the reasons why we could just say that God sent Jesus to die on the cross to destroy the works of the devil. And because God did that, Sin doesn't have dominion over you. God's determined that sin will not triumph over you. And praise God, it's not going to. Sin is not going to triumph over the child of God. The last half of the verse, we have another for here, or since. For you're not under the law, but under grace. How can you be so dogmatic that sin will not have dominion? Well, Paul says, because you're not under law but under grace. If you were under law and all you had was a command, then sin may have dominion over you because you're pathetically weak, right? I am, you are. He says, if you were under law, if that were the realm under which you operated as a believer, then sin would have dominion over you. But since you're not in that domain, you're in the domain of grace where God gives, therefore sin will not have dominion over you. The grounds for my assertion, Paul says, is that you're not under law, but you're under grace. Law as a principle is weak. It commands, but it does not equip. It states the true and it condemns the false, but the law is not an agent of power. It was never intended to be. Being delivered from the law doesn't mean that the law is diminished and gone. but we are delivered by grace that makes keeping the law of God possible and a delight. You can look at, we don't have time, Ephesians 1.19, Ephesians 3.20, Philippians 2.12 and 13, 2 Peter 1.3 and 4, but sin shall not have dominion Because you have been supplied by the wonderful, matchless grace of God. That's why sin does not have the dominion. Because God has poured into us His grace, His power, His strength. And I rejoice in that. These imperatives are not ours to keep in our own strength. But there are hours to obey and hours to keep under the overflow of the wonderful matchless grace of God. And I want to close with a very, very short quote from Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. By the way, he preached 14 hour long sermons from Romans chapter 6. Oh, and it's marvelous stuff too. But he said in relationship to verse 14, and I will close with this, that we are given a new nature by grace. We are not given a new set of instructions. We're not given instructions, but we're given grace. More law would only ruin us further, wouldn't it? but grace supplies to us what we need for Christian living. Well, let's close with prayer, and then we'll be dismissed. We thank you, Lord, again for the infinite, marvelous supply that you give to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, that even these wonderful things that you've done for us that they're in Christ and not separate from Him, that He doesn't somehow, that you don't do this and then abandon us. But even the life that we live today, we live by the power of the Son of God who came and died and was raised for us. We thank you, Father, for how well you have supplied and that you do supply for all of your children.