I greet you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The title for this evening's sermon is Offering Ourselves. Our text is taken from Romans chapter 6, verse 12 to 15. We're looking at three subheadings. The first one is offering ourselves to God. The second one is seeing not our Master. And the third one is logical, Conclusion. Let's go to the text, Romans chapter six, verse 12 to 15. I read, therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in its lost. And do not present your members as instrument of unrighteousness to sin. but present yourself to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. What then shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not. Now, last week, during our evening sermon, we looked at grace to you. Paul gives us more reasons why grace is not a license to sin, such as our old self crucified with Christ, and we will also live with Christ. and that we must count ourselves dead to sin, alive to Christ, because we have partaken through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. So today we are looking at offering ourselves. This brings us to the conclusion of Paul's argument, why our whole attitude to sin and God must change. It must change because Christ died to sin and lives to God. And through union with Christ, we ourselves are dead to sin and alive to God. And we must consider ourselves as such. So we must not offer ourselves to sin, but to God, which leads us to our first subheading this evening, offering ourselves to God, verse 12 to 13. I read, therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lust. and do not present your members as instrument of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourself to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instrument of righteousness to God. Now this brings us to the conclusion of Paul's argument as he uses the word therefore. Do not offer yourself to sin because you have died to sin and instead offer yourself to God, because you have reason in new life to live for His glory. Now, this is the main point of these verses. In verse 12, Paul refers to our physical body. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body. Sin normally uses our bodies to enact evil and disobedience to God. Not all our desires are evil, but sin can use the lust of the flesh, the pride within us, and desire for wealth to carry out evil in our lives. And so we are called as Christians to rebel against the evil inclinations of the flesh caused by sin. Because we are free from sin, Therefore, we must fight against it. Therefore, it gives us grace and the Holy Spirit to help us in this fight. Therefore, we have no excuse for living a reckless, unsanctified life. For we are created, the Bible says in Christ Jesus, unto good works. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should work in them. And then in verse 13 also enforces on verse 12. These are two negatives. Verse 13 reads, and do not present your members as instrument of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourself to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instrument of righteousness to God. In other words, do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instrument of wickedness. Instead of yielding to sin, giving in to it, letting it rule over our bodies, Paul now gives us a positive alternative, which is our offering ourselves to God. In verse 13b, the command not to offer ourselves to sin is in the present tense, which indicates that we must not go on doing it. On the other hand, the exhortation to offer ourselves to God is in the Aorist verb, which suggests a deliberate and decisive commitment. This includes both members and faculties of our bodies as instrument or weapons of righteousness. On the grounds that we have been brought from death to life, since we have died to sin, to let sin reign in us or offer ourselves to it is unthinkable. The right thing to do is to offer ourselves to God because we are alive to God. The theme that runs throughout this section is life and death. Life to God, death to sin. and our former life in Adam, or unregenerate life. Let us now live the new life in Christ. As the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. All things have passed away. Behold, everything has become new. Christ died and rose together with us in faith. And we must therefore regard ourselves dead to sin and alive to God and offer ourselves to the service of God. Now this is very important for Christians to understand that we are living a new life in Christ. That the power of sin over our lives has been broken. Sin has no dominion over us. It was having a dominion over us when we were in Adam, when we are living an unconverted life. You should be able to see the difference by now when you are a non-Christian and now that you are a believer. If there is no difference, then it means you were never saved in the first place. All of this that Paul is trying to put before us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is to contrast our former life with our new life. That our former life is characterized by a life of death and our new life in Christ is characterized by love and obedience to God. And God has given us all the resources that we need to accomplish this mandate. If it were not possible, God wouldn't have told us. He says, be holy, even as I am holy. He said, without holiness, no man can see God. And so God has given us all that we need to live a life that is set apart for him. Because we are new creation in Christ, we are dead to sin and alive to God. We don't have excuses. We cannot keep on giving excuses for living a reckless and unconverted life. A life that is not testifying to the goodness and the power of the Holy Spirit. We are living as if we are still bound. With the devil, we are still bound in darkness and with the evil of this world. Our lives must show that we are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. If you cannot contrast between your former life of alienation from God and your present life of being a true Christian, then you are not a Christian in the first place. Now to our second subheading. Sin not our master. Let's go to verse 14. Sin not our master. For sin shall not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace. Now this text provides us with a further reason not to offer ourselves to sin, but to God. What is that reason? The reason is an assurance, a promise that sin shall not be your master. Don't be so fearful and say, oh, what a miserable man that I am. You can say that what a wretched man that I am. That is true. We are undeserving sinners. We are wretched sinners before a holy God. Even our best work of righteousness is tainted with sin. But we must also say with Paul that I press on towards the mark of the eye calling of God in Christ Jesus. I cannot resist this temptation. Some people will say it is overwhelming. This statement is an indication that you want to die in this sin and not ready to resist it. one bit. But if you see literal fire coming to burn your house, you will not sit there inactive and wait for the fire to come and burn you. You would definitely get up and do something. So we cannot be giving excuses for a reckless and unconverted life. We cannot We cannot be giving excuses for the devil. If you say, oh, how wretched a sinner that I am, then you must also be able to say with Paul that I press on towards the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Anytime we sin, it always goes with a willful determination to carry out our sinful activities. In the same vein, we have to use that willful determination and pray fervently and ask the Holy Spirit to help us. So when you see sin knocking at your door, you must be able to resist it. As the Bible says, resist the devil and he will flee away from you. Come. out among them and be ye separated. For you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people that belong unto God. I cannot imagine seeing someone who calls him or herself a Christian Continually drunk. Drunk today, drunk tomorrow, drunk next tomorrow. You are in the bar drinking all the time, you are drunk, and people are making a jest of you. And you still claim to be a Christian. Where is the power, the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ? Where is the grace of God in your life to look at drunkenness and say, drunkenness, I am no longer going to patronize you. Not by power, not by might, but by the Spirit, says the Lord. God is willing to stand with you with short a determination and a confession. You cannot go unnoticed by God. And that is why He has given us the grace. He has given us the Holy Spirit. so that we can be sanctified and live a holy life. We have no excuse as Christians to get pregnant today for one man, tomorrow we get pregnant for another man, and the next time we get pregnant for the third person. And we are calling ourselves Christian. We don't have self-control. Where is the power of the Holy Spirit in your life? Where is it? Some people will come to us and give excuse. They say, oh, we are living in a carnal world. Look at the Christians in the Bible. Look at Moses. Look at Abraham. Look at Noah living in a perverse generation, but he stood firm in righteousness because Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. That is the same favor that you and I have found that makes us Christians. God has given us grace. He has given us power. So we have no excuse. The Bible says that we should put to death the desires of the sinful nature. All the precepts in the Bible where are given to us. And God is speaking to Christians because he knows they can. That's why he gives them grace. He gives them the Holy Spirit so that you and I are without excuse. And some people have gone to the extent, especially when they are seeking for marriage. Some people have gone to the extent of cohabiting. what we call in our lingua franca, tap to me. And they do it, and they still go to church, and they claim to be Christians. They are living in an open sin of immorality, living with a man that they are not legally married to. And when you tell them they want to cover it under the carpet, Where is the power? Where is the grace? Where is the Holy Spirit? You cannot claim something that you don't have. Christians, how to prove that they are Christians? By their lifestyle. Bible says, that by their fruits we shall know them, not by claiming to be Christians, not by coming to church every Lord's day, but your fruits should prove to the world that you are a Christian. No excuse. You don't have any excuse to live in a continuous, uncompromising Christian life. You have no excuse. If the unbelievers out there, some of them, can prove to be honest and to be faithful and true to themselves, some of them, why won't you, with the grace of God in your life, with the Holy Spirit within you, What am I saying in essence is this. You have the Holy Spirit. You have grace. And our scripture is giving you assurance. That sin shall not be your master. That is what verse 14 is saying. It's giving you now an assurance. Sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. Now, what does it mean that you are not under law, but under grace? Law and grace are opposing principles in the Old Testament and the New Testament. So to be under law is to accept the obligations to keep it, and so to come under its cause of condemnation. You know, sometimes people will want to venture into a life of holiness without the Spirit of God. It will lead to disaster. Without the grace of God, it will lead to disaster. And so they just get frustrated. They put a mark before themselves, and they want to do this. They want to do that, and they get frustrated. To be younger, Grace is to accept our dependence on the work of Christ for salvation, to be justified rather than condemned, and thus be free. But you see, some people are not living as free men and women. You can see it in their lifestyle. They fall under the ground and bury themselves there. instead of rising up, dusting their bodies and moving on with renewed strength and grace in their Christian journey. When you see a man without grace, you see disaster in his life. He will try and try to be holy, but when he falls down, he will fall flat and will not be able to rise up. He will not be able to rise up. and they will fall down flat. They will come up with this determination that this is what I'm going to do in the next three days. It's just like Russia, when the war with Ukraine started, which Russia, what did Russia said? They said in three days, we are going to overcome this nation and take it over. Three days has become three years. That is how a man who tries to be holy without the grace and the spirit of God will end up. He will set up a mark for himself that he is never going to be able to accomplish. So we have to depend on the grace of God and stand on that grace. We are free and we should behave as those who are free. We have the grace of God. We have the Holy Spirit. We can say to our flesh, be quiet. We can put our bodies under the subjection of the Holy Spirit. We can say boldly, within ourselves, that I'm not going to get pregnant until I get married. not by my strength, but by the grace of God in my life, by the power of the Holy Spirit in me, who has called me to live a sanctified life. God will be pleased to go in that journey with you. I want all the young girls and the young boys in this church to grow up, not like the other Christians in this community, who are just Christians by name. Before you know that, they get pregnant. They will be in school and they get pregnant. And they put the name of Christ to shame. And you will see someone who is not a Christian, who does not claim to be a Christian, that person will go to school, complete grade 12, go to the university, until they get married before you will see them with a pregnancy. But the Christians, those who claim to be Christians in this nation, just look around them. They have one or two or three kids before they get married. That is a disgrace to the name of Christianity. We cannot preach the gospel in that kind of lifestyle. We must stand out among them and be separated. We must say to ourselves that I am called by God. I am a royal priesthood, a chosen generation, a holy nation. I belong to God. I cannot disgrace the name of my master. In this shameful way, I will never get pregnant until a man comes to my parents and marries me legally and takes me to his marital home. When you live such a reckless life, you are proving that you don't have the Holy Spirit. You don't have the grace of God. Why would Jesus die for sin, only for you to live in it? Obviously, the power of sin has been broken over our lives. And so, therefore, we must live as those who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, who have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Proverbs chapter 24, verse 16. For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked fall by calamity. A righteous man may encounter numerous difficulties and setbacks, but they will rise again. But the wicked are said to be overthrown by calamity. So when a wicked man falls, he breaks his leg, breaks his hand, and even his spinal cord. And he cannot walk. He stays there and buries himself there. A wicked man will fall, a big fall. because he does not have grace. He does not have perseverance. He does not have faith. He does not have patience, long suffering. He does not have those graces that are given to us by the Holy Spirit. So when they fall, they break their leg and their spinal cord. Then they look for a place to rest and let the calamity overtake them. It's just like a woman desperate For marriage, it would go into an home that does not belong to her. And it will claim that home to herself and take marriage away from that home. And the last resort is to cohabit with a man. In Proverbs chapter four, verse 18, the Bible says, but the path of the just is like a shining sun that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. Our challenge in the Gambia is that we have a few Christian men, a few Christian women, a few Christian men, a lot of Christian women who are going to give up their Christianity to marry Muslim men. I've seen a lot of that happening around here. No grace, no Holy Spirit in the lives of those women. Because if you are filled with the grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, sin shall not have dominion over you. For you to look at Christianity and abandon it and become a Muslim because you want to get married, it's an abomination to the highest order. That is, the Bible says, Jesus says, if they can easily go out from among us, it means they were never with us in the first place. That is a sign of an unregenerate life, a life that is not filled with the power and the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says, do not be unequally yoked together with a non-believer. Why would a Christian be content to go and marry a Muslim, or Buddhist, or an Atheist, or a non-believer? What do you have in common? You don't have anything in common. If you can go to that length to betray our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, it means in the first place that you are never a Christian. In 1st John chapter 3 verse 3, the Bible says every man who had hope in Christ purifies himself. If you have hope in Christ, you purify yourself by living a holy life. And the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 14, without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. and resist the devil and they will flee from you. Teenagers, pray to God with determination that no man is going to see your nakedness until you get married. Teenagers, it's impossible to men, yes, but it is impossible with God. Hence God has given you the resources to be faithful and holy. Grace discourages and outlaws sin. Grace opposes sin and lays upon us the responsibility of holiness. So live a new life after the will of God and not after the flesh. Because when Jesus Christ died and was resurrected from the dead, the victory he achieved over sin and death was imparted to all who are saved in Christ. Therefore, we must live as victorious Christians over sin. Before salvation, sin was like a slave driving master over us. That's what the Bible says. Now, as prisoners of Christ, Jesus, we no longer live on the sin. Is that an expression in your life? That under freedom of God's grace, the power of the life-giving spirit has set us free from the power of death. Romans chapter eight, verse two. You know, we have people today in church who only talk about weakness because of spiritual laziness and excuse for spiritual sloth. They overemphasize weakness over the grace of God in their lives. I've seen some men who will say, what can we do? We are men, we are prone to this thing. We cannot resist. I say, no, you can. You can. Say, no, we cannot resist women. You can. You can be faithful to your spouse. You can. You don't have any excuse. Also, women will say, oh, I was so weak. I cannot resist. You can. You can resist. You cannot turn immorality into your lifestyle and claim to be a Christian. You can resist the sin of fornication and adultery. If you fall into it once or twice, you are able to rise up and say, never. Your life should not be characterized. The people should not see you and say, look at this immoral husband. You cannot call yourself a Christian and you are moving around with one woman to the other. You cannot be perfect. There are times when you will fall, but when you fall, the Bible says, you will rise up. A righteous man will fall seven times, but he will rise up again. And you will not go the next day and look for another woman to throw liquid. Let's say you fall today, and tomorrow you are looking for another opportunity to fall. That shows you're not a Christian. Where is the grace? Where is the power? If you fall today, let's say it takes you years before you'd ever again try to do that kind of thing. Years upon years. Not today and then tomorrow you rise up again to do the same thing. And next tomorrow, next week you are there again. The following week you are there again. And in the next week you are there again. No evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit in your life to resist him and put it under the subjection of the Holy Spirit. John Owen, a Puritan, said these words, if we say with Paul, oh, our wretched man that I am, let us also be able to say with him, I press on towards the mark. Because when Jesus Christ died and was resurrected from the dead, the victory he achieved over sin and that was imparted to all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we must live victorious Christian lives. We must live that life. Now, as prisoners of Christ Jesus, we no longer live under sin, but under freedom of God's grace. The power of the life-giving Spirit has set us free from the power of death. J.C. Ryle, a quote from his book on holiness, page 40, said this voice. He said, Jesus is a complete savior. He does not merely take away the guilt of a believer's sin. He does more. He breaks its power over your life. Close quote. Now to our final solve heading. Logical conclusion, verse 15. What then shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? Certainly not. Now this brings us to the parallel verse of Romans chapter six, verse one. The same words are found in both of these verses. Two differences here. We have sinning and persisting in sin. These are two different things. The book of John is going to clarify more on that. Those who have died to sin cannot persist or continue in sin. In other words, our lifestyle cannot be characterized by that former life that we were known for. If you are known to be a drunkard in the past, when you become a Christian, you cannot continue to be a drunkard. If you are known to be a humanizer, a fornicator, An adulterer, when you come to Christ, you cannot continue to be like that. Your lifestyle will change. That's an evidence of the power of the resurrected Christ in you. I'm not talking about sinless perfection, but a lifestyle that is characterized by love and obedience to God is different from a reckless, unsanctified life. It simply means sin is no longer our master. Having been set free from sin, we have become slaves to righteousness. We have become slaves to righteousness. Even as new creatures, we still have the propensity to sin because we are still falling sinners. Salvation breaks the power of slavery that sin has over us. It breaks the power of slavery. The difference is we can no longer live lifestyles of sin because our nature is changed. That is what is meant by continuing, persisting. Can we continue to sin or live that reckless, unsanctified life and grace abound? Paul said definitely no. The lifestyle you formerly lived in cannot abound with grace. There must be a difference. You cannot only continue, you cannot continue in that reckless, unsanctified life you formerly lived. If you are never saved or born again, that is when you can continue with that life. That lifestyle of unrepentance, When you come to Christ, it changes. So as soon as you are converted in Christ, you are a new creation. 1 John 3 verse 4 puts it very clearly to us here. Whosoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that he was manifested to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. Whosoever abides in him does not sin. Whosoever abides in him does not sin. In other words, you cannot continue to live that reckless unsanctified life that you were known for in the past. You cannot continue to live that life and claim to be a Christian. That is a sign that you don't have the Holy Spirit in you, you don't have the grace of God in you. whosoever continues to live that reckless unsanctified life, John says, whosoever sins has neither seen him nor known him. The nature of those indwelt by the Holy Spirit is to live in righteousness. I remember a boy who was very disobedient to parent. And this boy, even when the parents would ask him to do something in the house or to carry out some house chores, he would grumble. And sometimes he would blantantly refuse. And so this boy became a Christian, a true Christian, through the Deeper Life Bible Church. When he came back, the parents noticed some dramatic change in the life of this boy. Anytime the parents would tell this boy to go and do something, he would smile and go ahead and carry out the responsibility and come back to the parents and say, mom, I'm done. The father will call him again and say, boy, go to the shop and buy something for me, he would happily take the money, go to the shop and buy the things with joy and come and give to the father. They would ask him to do something in the house. He would do everything. And the father noticed something and called the boy. He said, what has happened to you? Why have you suddenly changed? The father was not a Christian. The father does not go to church. The father does not believe in Christ. I'm telling you a true story. And the father looked at the boy and said, I don't have problems with you since you became a Christian. You have behaved in such a way that I'm so impressed with your life. If this is what it means to be a Christian, go ahead and become a Christian. I give you full stop ups. I'm a witness to what I'm telling you. Go ahead and become a Christian. And for the first time in the life of this boy, he was not very studious. like the other guys in the house, most of the time you have to tell him to go and study. But he would manage to pass his exams. He would manage to pass the exams. He's always between the first five or the first ten, even though he is not studious at all. So when he became a Christian, he started reading books. He said to his father, I want to pass this year's O-level exams. The father said, wow, that is great determination. And this boy became so studious. They no longer tell him, come and study. They don't tell him, go and take your books. He would take his own books by himself, sit down and begin to study. And the father became so impressed. I'm telling you a true life story that I witnessed with my eyes. The father became so impressed. The father will go out and buy things for this boy when the boy will be sitting down. You know, the father is always happy anytime he sees this boy with his books studying. Because the father is a great intellectual. You want to please him, get to your books and study. And so this boy took the O-level exams and came with a very good result that took him to grade 12. Everything about this boy changed and the parents were a testimony to it. No more nagging, no more complaining. He became so studious that the mother followed him to the church. He said, wherever the church is, where you have become this good and respectful child, I want to go to that church. Somebody in the community that knows this boy to be ruthless and reckless said to himself one day, Whatever church that this boy, this boy is going to, that have changed his life, I must go to that church. That man, who was a chief of the fornicators in the area, went to church, one day showed up in the church, and everybody was astounded. Everybody was looking at him. What bring you to the church? What brings you to the church today? You know what the man said? He said that boy that we live together in the house, that came to this church and suddenly his life changed. That is the boy that brought me to the church. He never invited me. I just want to know what kind of juju you people have in this church that can change people. That is the power of the resurrected life. If your life, your former life of disobedience has no difference with the one you are living now, then you are not a Christian in the first place. Had I repented, turned away from your sins, and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ alone to save you from the wrath of a holy God, from this present evil world, and to reconcile you to God through his blood atoning sacrifice. Unless you do that, you believe in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, your life will never be changed. No matter how they talk to you, no matter how they try to discipline you, in fact, you will hate the people who are trying to correct you. And when they preach the word of God to you, you think it's an insult. You don't want to hear it. And this boy, through the life of this boy, the mother came to church and the father on his deathbed believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. He confessed the Lord Jesus Christ. This was a man. who don't go to church, don't believe in Christ. When you go to his, an intellectual, 100% intellectual, all that he knows in his life is intellectualism. An African tradition society. He hold those two together before he died. after the son had preached the gospel to him several times. Before he died, he confessed the Lord Jesus Christ. He believed in the Lord Jesus Christ to such a point that he was gathering us for prayers. He said, come, let us pray. Something that he had never done throughout the lifestyle of this boy while they were living in the house. Never for once has this man gathered his family for prayer. But before he died, he did that because of the testimony of his only son. What grace, the Bible says, where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. I am most scared of sinners. Let them come to church. Whether they are prostitutes, whether they are armorers, whether they have lived any kind of reckless life before, let them come to church. When they meet with the power of the Holy Spirit in Christ, they cannot resist. The Bible says, in the day of God's power, my people shall be willing. No one can come to me except the Father who sent me draws him. That is what the power, the resurrection power of Christ can do to your life. It makes a difference between your former life of unrepentance and your new life in Christ. For if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. All things have passed away. Behold, everything has become new. Let us pray. Our most gracious and everlasting Father, we thank you this evening for your word. We ask for grace to take heed of all your commandment, warnings, promises, and good examples to follow. Give us today, oh Lord, our daily spiritual bread and give us grace to forgive at all times. These and many of the masses we ask through your son's name and for his sake.