I greet you all in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The title for this evening's sermon is Enslaved to God. And our text is taken from Romans chapter six, verse 16 to 19. We're looking at three subheadings. The first one is self-surrender. The second one is exchange of slaveries. The fourth one is the analogy. Let's go to the text, Romans chapter six, verse 16 to 19. I read. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey you are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? Let God be thanked that though you were slaves to sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. Last week during our evening sermon, we looked at offering ourselves. As Paul concludes his argument on the new life in Christ as contrasted to the old, former life of unrepentance and alienation from God, he gives us several reasons why our attitude to sin and God must change. Because Christ died to sin and live to God. And through union with Christ, we ourselves are dead to sin, but alive to God. and we must consider ourselves as such and offer ourselves to God. Paul describes freedom from sin as being united to Christ. And now he's looking at freedom from sin as being enslaved to God, which leads us this evening to our first subheading, self-surrender, verse 16. I read. Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. Self-surrender leads to slavery. Slavery is involuntary in the most part, but there is something called voluntary slavery. people can offer themselves to slavery simply because of food or money or to save their own lives. So when you give yourself to God, you offer yourself to him willingly, out of the heart, with love, because you now have new desires, a new heart that is after God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, as you have willingly surrendered yourself to God as your new slave master, you cannot simultaneously retain your freedom to do the dictates of your sinful nature or your past unregenerate life in Hadam. So self-surrender leads to spiritual slavery, to one or the other. And so Jesus himself said, you cannot serve two masters. That is true for every one of us. You are either in the devil's camp or in the camp of God. You cannot serve two masters. You either be a slave to one or the other. Slave to sin leads to death, and slave to obedience leads to righteousness. That is what verse 16 is talking about. Obedience is the very essence of slavery. Conversion is an act of self-surrender, which inevitably leads to slavery. And slavery demands a radical and an exclusive obedience. For you cannot be slave to two masters, as pointed out by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now Paul is still giving us reasons why we should live a holy life, why every believer should be sanctified. And that we have no excuse to give if we are not living a holy and a sanctified life. Because he has given us the resources to accomplish that. He has given us grace. He has given us the spirit that is living within us. And so we cannot continue to live in carnality all our lives and claim to be Christian. And in this narrative also, in this text is also giving us another reason why we cannot continue to sin and grace abound. Because we can only serve one master. You cannot be a master, you cannot be a slave of two masters. you either be to one or the other. We have only one choice to obey our master. That is because we have voluntarily chosen him. No possibility of going back. Still reinforcing on the obligation of our new self, death to life in Christ also means spiritual slavery. So why would we want to serve two masters? We would ask ourselves that question. It is either one or the other. It cannot be two. You cannot sit on the fence, so your life is dramatically opposed to either one of them, depending on where you belong. You cannot fool God or others, because by their foot, the Bible says, we shall know them. And so, Paul is reinforcing, making it very clear to us that we cannot serve two masters. We can either serve the Lord Jesus or serve the dictator of our flesh or the devil himself. You cannot sit on the fence. You either be on one side or the other. And so Jesus himself gives us The narrative that there are only two roads, one that leads to hell and the other that one that leads to heaven. And the one that leads to heaven is a narrow path. You can either be slaves to Satan and the flesh or be a slave to God. So there is no sitting on the fence. And so if you are converted, you are radically converted. You are not half converted. You are not halfway a Christian. You are a full body Christian through the grace and power of the Holy Spirit when you become a Christian. And your lifestyle should be characterized by love and obedience for Christ. There should be a difference between your former life of unregenerate self and your new life of Christ. 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. And so therefore, you are a slave to obedience when you become a born again Christian. When you become born again, you are a slave to obedience. And that we must see in your life. If you are truly a slave to obedience, then that cannot be hidden. It would be seen in the way you talk, in the way you live, in the way you do things, in the way you interact. in your relationship with one another, even in your language, what comes out of your mouth, your life of obedience to Christ cannot be even, because you are now a new creation. Which leads us this evening to our second subheading, Exchange of Slaveries. exchange of slaveries. Let's go to verse 17 to 18. I read, But God be thanked that though you were slaves to sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of Conversion involves an exchange of slaveries. In a spiritual sense, every one of us is attached to a slave master. We are either slaves to sin, which is our natural state during our unconverted days, or we are slaves to Christ in conversion. In Romans chapter 1 verse 1, Paul referred to himself as a slave to Jesus Christ. In his letter to Titus, Paul calls himself a slave of God. In the same way, James opens his epistle in James 1 verse 1 by calling himself a slave of God and our Lord Jesus Christ. The Greek word that is used is doulas, which literally means slave. while other Bible translations will say servant or born servant. In John 8, verse 34, Jesus uses the analogy of a slave and his master to make a very valid point about slavery, which 100% dictates, dedicated to obedience. In other words, slavery is 100% dedicated to obedience. A slave master seeks the obedience of his slaves, because slaves obey their master because they belong to them. Hence Jesus said in John 8, verse 34, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Slaves are literally in bondage to their masters and have no will of their own. Now if you look at ancient slavery and the slavery which we see in the Bible, one of the main characteristics of a servant is obedience. You are to obey your master at all cost. because you have been bought with a price. You are taken in involuntarily, and you are sold over to somebody else. And when you come to that master's house, you must obey. And so when the law came, there was slavery already in the human race. But when the law came, God regulated how slaves are to be treated. So a lot of regulations we come across in the Old Testament scripture, as we read this morning from Leviticus, we see how Moses, through the law, regulated slavery. And how slaves are to be bought, how they should be freed during the year of jubilee, and how they should serve their masters. So it was regulated. but it was not abolished. Now how does the Bible regulate slavery? When you have a slave in your house, you should just treat that person as a maid. All of us have, most of us in this day and time have maids. So you treat them with respect, with love. And so it is regulated in the Old Testament. So you should not treat a slave like a dog or an animal or someone that is of no importance to you. A slave is a human being just like you are. But the main characteristics of a slave is obedience and that is why Jesus and Paul used the analogy of a slave to describe our obedience to our new master. So Jesus uses this analogy. Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Imagine your own regenerative life when you were not a Christian, how you used to love the things that you do, how you used to live a wayward life with passion, with commitment. Nobody tells you where to get the bottle and get drunk. Nobody tells you how to go about chasing women. Nobody tells you how to make your life comfortable by the sinful passions of your flesh. That determination makes you a slave to sin. And when you come out of it, Why won't you give the same dedication and time and devotion to the new master, the Lord Jesus Christ? So if anybody is not transformed inwardly, this distinction cannot be evident. And so Jesus is saying, the text is saying this evening, that if you are converted, you are a slave to obedience. Your lifestyle must be characterized by love and obedience to God. And you will hate sin. Sin will not be pleasant to you anymore because you now carry in your life the presence of the Holy Spirit. a boy got converted at a youthful age and he became a Christian. But this boy was known for his reckless life of disobedience. He's known for chasing women and living a life of immorality. And so when he became a Christian, one of the things that God did for him particularly, was to sanctify him in the area of immorality. Because while he was growing up, he was very much into women. And so when he became a Christian, one of the scriptures that God placed in his heart was that you are the temple of the living God. And you must not defile the temple of God. And so that scripture becomes very, very sacred to him. He now looks himself who was a dirty, wretched sinner before a holy God, now God assures him that the Holy Spirit is living in you. And that you must not defile the temple of God in sexual immorality. And this boy who was a pervert grew up into a very decent life. He practically avoided women for 10 years. He never had any encounter with any woman until the day he got married. Do you know what saved him? It's the scripture, through the power of the Holy Spirit. So anytime this boy sees a woman, to him, This is the death that is going to kill him. So for him to have an affair, a sexual intercourse with a woman is like cutting his neck. It's like putting him to death. So he feared women so much that for 10 years he did not have any encounter with any woman. Because he feared God and he feared the fact that sexual immorality is so evil before a holy God, it defiles the temple of God in you. And that is the picture that God gives when he speaks about sexual immorality. He says you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. So to this boy, this is the temple of God. Why would I go and defile it? This boy had gone through all sorts of temptation. Women have come to him naked. They have dragged him into the room and wanted to rape him. He ran away. Several temptations that have come to this boy. And he had never succumbed on one. Because for him, to have an affair with a woman is to defile the temple of God and to bring his life to death. That is how God kept this boy, who was a pauper. That is how God kept him. Away from women and gave him a decent life. You see, there is nothing that God cannot do. There is nothing at all. If you are living a reckless life of immorality, you can be holy. God can change your life. The Bible says, in the day of God's power, my people shall be willing. Your heart may be full of evil, But God is able to transform you. There's nothing that God cannot do. There is nothing impossible for him. And so this is what exactly Paul is saying here. Once you are a slave to disobedience, to sin, when you become a Christian, you become a slave to obedience. I can see That's in the lives of the saints. They don't continue to live their reckless, unconverted life from which God has delivered them from. No. David, after his repentance, did not continue to become an immoral David. No. He was holy through the grace and the power of the Holy Spirit. So we have no excuse of not being sanctified or not living a holy life. Because God has given us grace, he has given us the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish that. And so, Jesus says, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. In other words, commit there is in the present continuous. That is if your lifestyle is characterized by sin and disobedience. That is if this is what people know you of. This is what you do in your life. That translation of your life should be changed when you become a Christian. It should be changed. You cannot continue to be the old person that they know you for. Slaves are literally in bondage to their masters and have no will of their own. A Christian is a voluntary slave to obedience because of his new art and nature. that leads him to love and obey God. Let's look at the transition which breaks open with a spontaneous doxology of praise in verse 17. It says here, But God be thanked that though you were slaves to sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. The thanks be to God. This sums up this experience in four stages. What we used to be, slaves to sin, What we did while we were slaves to sin, which is wholeheartedly obeyed, transfer that to your new nature. That is what you are supposed to be now, when you are a true believer in Christ. What happens to us when we are converted? We are set free from sin. And what we have now becomes by reason of our conversion in Christ, slaves to righteousness. Now, if you are still deeply ingrained in sin, this should serve as a warning to you that Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is not wasting words here. You have to make your calling and your election show. You and I, after hearing these words, should actually strive to confirm our salvation and peace among God's choosing. By grace is not a license to sin, but it empowers you to put to death the desires of the sinful nature. All human beings are slaves, either to sin or to God. Which one are you? Either they are wholeheartedly obeying sin and its passion, or they are wholeheartedly obeying God in obedience to his word. And in verse 17, these people were wholeheartedly obeying a form of doctrine, which is teaching, to which they were delivered The Romans had a form of doctrine to which they were delivered. They obeyed a certain form of teaching. They are not said to obey God or Christ, but a certain form of teaching. This must have been maybe personal ethics or some form of teaching not specified in the Bible. But most importantly, they have been set free from sin, therefore translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. So this transfer had led them to be decisive from slavery to sin, to slavery to righteousness. Now to our final subheading, verse 19, the analogy. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. The metaphor Paul uses to describe conversion is slavery. which is not very appropriate, and so Paul said, I use this word, slavery, because of the weakness of your flesh. Because involuntary slavery is somehow barbaric and evil. Or because of your natural limitations, which is referring to their fallen nature, which has also affected their minds, which makes them dull to perceive the truth and their characters are also contrary to truth. And so they need to be reminded of their obedience to sin to which they have committed themselves. And so the word slavery is actually telling them about how they have devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the form of teaching and doctrine and to their past on regenerate life. Just as in your former life of unrepentance, you presented yourself to the lustful passions of this world and became slaves to uncleanness, leading to more lawlessness. Now present these members of your body in slavery to righteousness, leading to holiness. This is the process of sanctification. being conformed to the image of Christ daily by the Holy Spirit in your life. The analogy is being drawn to moral decay as a result of being slaves to sin and the glorious process of moral transformation that will continue to develop progressively throughout the lifetime of believers in this world and at their death made perfect. So the process is perfected by Christ. As the souls of believers are united with Christ in heaven, they become perfect at their death. But the process of sanctification is ongoing throughout the life of a believer. There must be a stark difference between your own regenerate life the past life of Adam to that new life that you have received freely by grace through the merit and the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ. The contrast is between death and life. It's between light and darkness. Just by the words themselves, you can see the big contrast. Life and death, light and darkness. That is how your life should be if you are a true believer in Christ. If you are not, then you must repent tonight, turn away from your sins, and put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for your salvation. Paul meant every word in this contrast. comparing us to the life of Christ, the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ. The victory of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross is your victory. It's my victory when we believe. And so therefore, sin shall not have dominion over us anymore. We cannot live for Christ who died for our sins. and still be compromising and living a sinful lifestyle continually. He died not only to take away our guilt, but to sanctify us and make us holy, and finally glorify us, unite us with God in heaven. So therefore, this contrast must always be visible, be ringing in our ears. I am in the light and not in the dark. I am not dead. I am alive in Christ Jesus. So I should live a life of living faith. I should live a life of the light. But the Bible says the light shines in darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it. The Bible says we are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hidden. Let us pray. Our Lord and our King, we thank you this evening for your word. We ask for grace to take heed of all your commandments, warnings, promises, and good examples to follow. Give us today our daily spiritual bread, and may these words that I have spoken be applied in each and every one of our hearts, to the glory and honor of your holy name. These and many other masses we ask, through your son's name and for his sake. Amen.