We pray this morning that you will be with us in this space and in this morning. We pray that your spirit will be active and at work in our hearts and our minds, and we will have ears to hear your words, and that we will be ready to respond with the obedience of love and the obedience of faith. We pray in Jesus' precious name this morning, amen. We can be seated at this time, and any children who are here below fifth grade, so fourth grade and under, can go on back to the back. We've got our children's ministry ready to go back there. If you have a copy of God's word, let's turn together back again to this greatest letter ever written, the letter to the Romans. This morning we're at Romans chapter 8, verses 1 through 11. Romans chapter 8, verses 1 through 11. Not only are we in the greatest letter ever written, the letter to the Romans, but this morning as we come to chapter eight, we are coming upon one of the most comforting passages in all the Bible. This is a passage in which we learn that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Our study through Romans in particular this morning in Romans chapter eight is yet again proof that doctrine is not just for the seminary student. Doctrine is not just for the scholar who is writing commentaries on the Bible. But the doctrine is for our souls. We have been looking at the book of Romans and we have been noting along the way all of the rich and lasting eternal truths that God has revealed to us through the writing of the Apostle Paul. And as we do that, maybe we have not noticed very often, but we have been looking precisely at that doctrine. Doctrine is the truth. And the truth is what sets us free. And so we want to, as we continue in Romans, to be pulling out all of the rich doctrinal truth that we can know and learn and cling to. Because the comfort that is in the Bible is only as comforting as the truth that is in it. When we go through hard times, or if you have had loss in your family, you may have had someone come up to you and tell you, it's going to be all OK. And that's a comforting thing to say. It can be. But it's not comforting unless we give reasons for why it's going to be OK. And that's what doctrine is all about. Doctrine in scripture gives us all of the answers as to why certain things are true. It helps us to better understand them. So we want to take doctrine seriously. If you don't like NASCAR, You just don't like cars. Someone told me that one time. If you don't like NASCAR, you just don't like cars. Because everything about NASCAR embodies What is amazing about cars? The power, the science, the need to control. Now, I don't like NASCAR, so apparently I don't like cars. And that's OK with me. If you don't like doctrine, you simply don't like Christianity. Because doctrine is what embodies the things that we believe. It's what's been recorded for us. And so for us to be faithful Christians, we must be ever pursuing a better understanding in our hearts, a closer relationship with Christ according to what he has told us in his word. And so that's what we're going to continue to do this morning as we come to this comforting passage, strangely about condemnation. We want to see what is the comforting truth about condemnation. Here we are in Romans chapter eight, verses one through 11, and here's this great comfort. Don't miss it. This is a passage, if you have not already, this is a passage for you to memorize, to write upon your heart, because you need it. But then we're gonna go further, and we wanna dig down into this promise, dig down into this comfort, into the doctrine that we find in Romans chapter eight. Listen to what Paul says here in verse one. Therefore, because of all of the rich truth that he has been delivering for seven chapters already, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is no condemnation for us. This is a magnificently comforting verse. The grace of Jesus Christ, the work of Jesus Christ, who entered our world lived a perfect life in our place, died on the cross in our place, miraculously rose from the grave unlike anyone else, and is one day coming again, he has freed us from condemnation. There is, for those who are in Christ, now no condemnation. Now what does that mean? What does it mean that there is now no condemnation? If we're going to answer that, I think it will help us if we could take some snippets of what's true about us. What are some of the things that we have deserved and yet God has treated us differently? This is what we mean when we say there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Even though all of us have earned God's all-consuming wrath, we have received his all-encompassing grace. Even though you have earned God's just and terrible displeasure for your sin, you have received his unending favor. You deserved for God's righteous judgment and punishment to hunt you down all the days of your life. But you have been promised goodness and mercy to follow you all the days of your life. You deserve to be treated as your sins deserved, as an enemy of God, but you have not been treated as your sins deserve. You have been treated as a son or daughter of God. You were on your way down a broad road leading to destruction, but you have been redirected onto a narrow road leading to life. You were trapped in a domain of darkness, ruled by the devil. but you have been reassigned to a kingdom of his beloved son. You should have been ended the moment you took your first breath, but you have been given an eternal life to live. You should have been assigned to a hellish destiny full of torments and troubles, but you have been granted a seat at a great wedding feast where there will be pleasures forevermore. We have all earned condemnation. but there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Every time we come across this verse, whether you have been a Christian for a long time, or whether you are young in your faith or even questioning your faith, when you hear these words, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, it ought to prompt you, no matter who you are, to ask the obvious question. Am I in Christ Jesus. Am I a believer, a follower, a slave, a brother or sister of Jesus Christ by his grace? If you are, there is now no condemnation for you because you are in the one who came to deliver you. If you are not in Christ Jesus, all condemnation belongs to you. It is hanging over you. waiting for the final moment when God will unleash it, and you will be condemned forever on a day of judgment. If you're apart from Jesus Christ, you're not a follower of his, you don't believe in him, you don't walk with him, you're marching every moment closer to the moment of your death, or you're marching ever closer to the moment of his return. And either way, you will stand before the perfect righteous God, and He will condemn you for your sins. He will put you away forever in a place called hell. But there is good news if that's you. There is time and there is grace for people like you. I was just like you. For the first 18 years of my life, God's condemnation, His wrath was hanging over me by a spider web. And yet in his sovereignty, he held it because he had a plan in which he was going to come to me and he was going to awaken me and change me and bring me in just as he's done to every other genuine believer in Christ who is here today. And in that moment, there was no longer any condemnation for you. He promised to never pour out his wrath out on you, to never treat you as your sins deserve. And that is the good news of the gospel in part. He has been so abundantly good to us. That should be a comfort to you. Every day when you and I look in the mirror, we see the remaining sin, as we talked about last week, our garment as Christians, though redeemed and made new, still with remaining sin holes in it. should be a comfort to us every time that the law that's written on our hearts comes against us and tells us how we failed again, how we've broken his law again, how we ought to be in trouble again. We've got to hear this comfort come back again. No, there is no condemnation for me because I am in Christ Jesus. I have been changed. I have been born again. I have nothing to fear. Just like other forms of comfort that we may give in everyday life, it's only as good as the depth of truth that is beneath it. And that's why the Apostle Paul doesn't just say these words, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and end it, and then sign off on the letter and send it away. He spends the rest of this letter to the Romans unpacking those realities, and he does it even here in Romans 8. Because we need to understand more than just the fact that there's no condemnation for me, but why. Why is there, if there is not condemnation for you in Christ, Why is it? How has that come to pass? What exactly has God done? So that in the moment of guilt and fear and trepidation before Him because of something that we have done, something we have neglected, that we might return to those truths and preach them to ourselves. or that we might come together and preach them to each other. Continue on in Romans eight, verse two. He explains how this has happened and we need to know this. This is the doctrine that will comfort our hearts. He says, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. We might think there when we see law, we might think reality. Power for the reality of the spirit of life that is in Christ. The fact that Jesus Christ is a life giver. He is the one who can make people new again. He is the one who can rebirth people. He has set us free from the reality of sin and death, of condemnation. Our sin was pushing us ever closer to condemnation one day, but he has forgiven us, he has changed us. Verse three, he says, for what the law, that's something we've been reading a lot about in Romans recently, the law, the 10 commandments, all of God's righteous requirements upon us, all of the things that we are to obey, for what the law could never do, weak as it was through our sinful flesh, God did for us. And this is how he did it. This is what we've got to know. This is what we've got to bring to mind. How did he do this for us? How did he take away our condemnation, which was so very serious? He sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be one of us, to be like us, to take our place. And he sent him as an offering for sin. By doing this, he condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus Christ, in his body. He condemned sin for us so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. So that we would be made new, we would be put back in right relationship with God. As people who had broken his commands, we would now be seen by him as people who were under the perfect righteousness of his son, covered in all of his obedience, which had been given to us. And as a result, we then are people who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Okay, if we want to put this in more doctrinal terms, this is what we would call it. We call it the doctrine of propitiation. That's a word you don't use every day. The doctrine of propitiation. That's a word that the Bible uses to refer to this work that Jesus Christ has done for us. It means that he has removed or cleaned or taken away God's wrath from us. This is one of those mammoth caves of truth that we can't be like the average tourist and walk upon it and say, wow, I don't think I want to go in there. It's far too dark. It's far too deep. I don't even know where to go. But we must, we must go into these truths. We must push in to these doctrines, like the doctrine of propitiation. We need to get good at using these words. We need to know what they mean so that we can recall them. So what is propitiation that Jesus Christ has done for us? Though we were in our sin, just like everyone else in the world who is apart from Christ, before we were Christians, we were under his wrath. Because he is just and righteous, his wrath was coming for us. He cannot tolerate any sin. Ultimately, he must make all things outright in the end. Jesus Christ took that wrath and he drank it for us. That's what he did for us. He took all of the anger, all of the hatred for sin, all of the torment and punishment that was rightly ours, and he took it upon himself, and he removed it from us. Have you ever been in a store with a little child, and the little kid wants a particular toy that he or she cannot have? And because this child believes that he deserves this toy, and he must have this toy, and nothing can be right until this happens, he throws the most unbelievable, wailing, wrathful fit sitting in his cart. And there's nothing you can do. Have you ever been there? Just wait. There's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can say. The only way that you can appease that wrath is to do what? Give him what he demands. Now, I'm not saying that God is like a child in a store crying over a toy because that child has an illegitimate claim upon the toy. That's mine. You have to give it to me or suffer my wrath. No, it doesn't work that way. That's why we don't give the child the toy, but it's entirely different for God. His wrath is wailing because of justice, because his creatures have violated his commands. His creatures have been saying things that he would never say. His creatures have been doing things that he would never do. His creatures have been wanting things that he would never give them. And it has stirred up his wrath. And the only way to make it go away is to give him what he demands, to give him the atonement that he requires. Because one way or another, he is going to get it. He must. He can't just pass over it. He can't just sweep it under the rug. He can't just take some lesser thing. He can't just accept something lower and lower the standard so there's something that we can give him and make it all right. And none of us could give it to him. And this is the good news. Do you see where this is all going? When there was nothing that we could do to give him what he demanded, he sent his own son to give it to him. He sent his own son to do for us what we could never, ever do for ourselves. And that is what has saved us. Jesus Christ, for those who are in Christ, has saved us from God's condemnation. He has saved us from the punishment that is rightly ours. Jesus Christ has saved us from God and needed it all. on the cross for us. Listen to 1 John 2, verses 1 and 2. We find this word propitiation come up again and again. He says, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, a serious understatement, right? It's not an if. When anyone sins, we We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins. He is the one who has removed God's wrath for us, that even now for us as Christians, as we continue to limp along at times in the Christian life, our remaining sin continues to rear its ugly head, and we continue to say things that God would never say, and do things that God would never do, and want things that he would never give us. All along the way, there's Jesus, standing as our propitiation, as our mediator, as the one who took all of God's wrath for all time for us onto himself. And he has brought to us the atoning sacrifice that we needed. As we think about these truths, we must make it a daily thought. That's why we have to be taking doctrine seriously as a church and as believers. but we have to get familiar with what the Bible teaches us about why we have this hope that we have. And that's gonna require us to do this thinking every day, centering our life on Jesus Christ who has done this for us. It is a very serious thing. And it's a very serious thing because this is not pie in the sky. This is not just fire insurance to get us through to the end. And in the meantime, we can kind of do whatever we want, say what we want, want what we want. But rather this truth, that Jesus Christ was sent by the Father as a propitiation for our sins. And in fact, for those of the entire world, there's no one else to look to. There's no one else who can save you except Jesus. It has a bearing then on our everyday lives. Listen to what Paul says next in verse five. He says, for those who are according to the flesh. Now, you've heard this language a lot recently in Romans, so let's be reminded of what he's talking about. He's drawing a distinction between two people in two different places before God. There are people who are according to the flesh. That's who I was before June 21st, 1995. Before I came to faith in Jesus Christ, this is the family I belong to. I was according to the flesh. But when I came to Christ, I gained a new family. I became a different kind of person. I was born again, like many of us have been. And so he's showing the difference between these two people, And what we need to see is what he has done by sending Jesus for us. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. This is how we can sense or know who is a Christian and who is not. The person who is not a Christian has set his mind on the flesh. He goes on and he says, but those who are according to the spirit, those who are followers of Jesus Christ, those who have been changed and made new, they set their minds on the things of the spirit, on the things of God. He says in verse six, for the mind set on the flesh is death. Because that mind, that person who is still set on the flesh, is still the person who is not in Christ Jesus. And what happens to every person who is not in Christ Jesus eventually? Condemnation. Death. But the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God. The person who is apart from Jesus Christ, the person who is not his follower, is always at war with God. Always fighting in his heart against the good things that he's hearing from other Christians. Against the things that he's reading, perhaps, in the Bible. His heart continues to war against them. He says, for it does not subject itself to the law of God. The mind or the soul or the heart that is according to the flesh, that is living in the flesh, according to the unredeemed human nature, the person who is apart from Jesus Christ does not subject himself to the law of God. He doesn't fall down before God and worship Him. He doesn't come before His ways and want to know them, want to hear them, want to practice them. He doesn't think about what God wants and that's something I should want. How could my heart become more like His? And then Paul says, for it is not even able to do so. Wow. A person who is apart from Jesus Christ, Me, before June 21st, 1995, I did not subject myself to the law of God. He says, I couldn't even do so. There's nothing that I could do to solve the situation that I was in. And verse 80 goes on, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Can't even please God. We can't please God without faith in his son. We can't please God without having a change of our heart. He says to us, however, you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you. If we think in doctrinal terms again, what is he talking about here? We heard about a moment ago the doctrine of propitiation in which Jesus Christ has brought the atoning sacrifice that took away God's wrath from us. Here, here we're reading about in verses five through nine, what we might call the doctrine of regeneration. To regenerate something means to renovate it. It means to make it new again, to fix it, to give it life again. And that is exactly what he's saying needs to happen and has happened in every person who follows Jesus Christ. There must be some kind of work that God will do in my heart as someone who does not subject himself to the law of God as an unbeliever. And I'm not even able to do so. I can't even please God. I'm running away from him. And yet by his grace, because of what he's done in Christ, he's come to us and he has changed us. He has renovated our hearts. One of the key places we read about this in the Gospels is in the Gospel of John in chapter three. Maybe the first thing that's coming to mind for you is John 3, 16, a verse that hopefully many of us have memorized and is another great source of comfort to us. but let's make sure we keep it in the context of what else John has said in John chapter three. Listen to this in verses one through eight, he says. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to him by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Forget about entering it. He can't even see it. He doesn't even know about it. Nicodemus said to him, like we all would, how can a man be born again when he is old? He can't enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he? Of course not, that's ridiculous. Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." You see, there's those two distinctions that Paul has been making, those who are according to the flesh and those who are according to the spirit. And he says, do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it comes from and where it's going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit." In other words, how can this happen? It's a mystery. It's an unseen work. It's not that I, before I was 18, started doing different things and that suddenly made me a Christian. It's not that I got with the church program and I figured out what are the things that Christians do? What should I wear? What should I say? If I start wearing those things and saying those things and going to the places with Christians, that'll make me a Christian. What does John say happens? He said, it's like the wind. You can't see it. You can't explain why it blows where it blows. But when it does, you see things change. That is the doctrine of regeneration. God, by his grace, through his spirit, has caused his gracious power to flow into our lives and change us. He has breathed into us a renovating, life-changing kind of work. He has made us alive again. If we're talking about fancy words, we might as well just talk about fancy words. Here's another one. This work that we're talking about is monergistic. You might hear that word, and it sounds similar to another one that's synergistic. What's synergistic mean? It means that two things work together to accomplish something in the end. Monergistic, hear the beginning, mono, only, Monergistic means there's only one person who is working to bring about the end result. That is God who is doing this work in us. You see how incredibly comforting this can be, how helpful it is, how important it is for us to recall this. Because there are times in your life and mine where we feel like it's all up to us. I've got to do what's right. I've got to fix my life. I'm the one who's ultimately in charge. If I'm going to please God, I've got to figure out how to be like Him. And I've got to make it happen. And you know just as well as I do in those moments, you can't. You won't. So what is so comforting about the doctrine of regeneration? It's again, that God has done what I could never do for myself. I couldn't breathe new life in my own dead soul. But look at what he's done. He's breathed his life into us. He's renovated our hearts. He's changed us, not only taking away the wrath that kept us from him, he's come near and he's given us everything. He made us alive again. And that means that our lives are going to be different. That's what we're talking about when we keep talking about sanctification, how we're spiritually growing. We're working community group together on Sunday mornings and in our own time with the scriptures because we want to be different. Because even though he's talking about unbelievers and believers, Unbelievers set their minds on the flesh, it leads them to death and condemnation. Believers have set their minds on the Spirit, and that Spirit, that work of God, is leading them into ultimate redemption one day when they will be finally saved and go to be with Him forever. We still have hulls. We still have these pulls in our souls back to the old way. We are still people who can, for a time, find ourselves set on the flesh, making poor decisions, displeasing God, not loving the people around us, forgetting that He's even there, worrying all the time, responding in anger all the time. But there are also times when we find that by His grace as we're growing, our minds are set on the Spirit. And there's that battle again we talked about last week. There's that conflict that we're all in. But we've got to come back to the comforting truth of the gospel that He is changing us and He's given us power so that we can change. So what are we going to do then as Christians? Let's talk about ourselves as Christians right now. When we read these verses in five through nine and we read about the mindset of the flesh and the mindset of the spirit and we know that's a battle for us, what then is the obvious thing we must be doing by his grace according to his word together? Every day it's gonna be a fight to set your mind on the things of the spirit. It's not gonna happen naturally, that's the point. You're not gonna wake up and just go along in your life just naturally as a Christian. because you have holes. We're going to have to continue to work at this and fight at this. It is a war. Summertime is coming. If you are fortunate enough to have an air conditioner that works, you're going to set it You're going to set it at a particular temperature. And what's the thermostat going to do in conjunction with the AC? It's going to try to hold the temperature at 68 to 72 degrees and hold it there. That's what we mean when we talk about setting our minds. We take our minds and we set them. We hold them there. We take the truth of scripture and we hold it there. We take the promises that God has given us in his word. We take these doctrines that we're learning about today and we hold them there. We set them. Even as we're bombarded with all of these different competing voices, we have to set our minds there. Have to walk the dumb dog every now and then. Okay, we have this dumb dog and he has to be walked. And I say he's a dumb dog because it's so hard to walk him. He cannot just walk. Just walk right there. We're going down here. Tell me when you need to go. We'll stop. And then we'll walk again. Squirrel. Bird. Another dog. A person. A car. The wind. The trees. It's constantly something. What are we trying to get him to do when we're saying heal? Heal. No. We're trying to get him to set his mind on what we're doing. Even though there's all these distractions taking us away, we have to set his mind. That's what we need to do. We've got to set our minds. That's not going to happen on its own. But because Christ lives inside of us, he has given us eyes to see and ears to hear, this is what we can do. We don't have to be like my dog, constantly running after all of the different things in our lives. We can, with a fight, set and hold our minds there on what is true. I want to give you a couple other passages that you can take home and read this week so that you can think more about this just like I need to and I will. Here's the first one, Colossians 3, 1 through 3. Hear the same language again from Paul who wrote Colossians about setting our minds. He says, therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, Keep seeking the things above. Keep seeking the things that he is most concerned about. Keep thinking after him the thoughts that he has told you he's thinking. Keep looking at his ways and doing them. Set your mind on his perfect, righteous, sovereign kingdom, the one that you're being taken to, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Here it is, verse two. Set your mind on the things above. Take the things above and hold them. Hold them in your mind. Hold them in your heart. Think about them. Work at them. Not on the things of the earth. The squirrels and the birds and the cars and the other dogs. Not on the things of the earth. Not on the things of the flesh. Not on the things of sin. For you are different. You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Set your mind on these things because this is who you are. Where else are you going to go? You have been changed. Another passage also from Paul, Philippians 4, 8 and 9. There's a song that goes with it, I'll spare you. Finally, brethren, listen to this. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good reputation, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. You will know the surpassing peace of God. You will have the experience of God's peace in the moments of trouble. Now this is not just Zig Ziglar power positive thinking. Find something happy and think about it. That's not what this is. How do you know that? Because he says, if there's anything worthy of praise, That means it's something that you owe praise to someone for, and that person is God. These are the things, the lovely, good, true, honorable things that God has given to you, shown to you in his word. You also know that this is not just the power of positive thinking because of verse nine. They are particular things. They are the things you have learned, doctrine. They are the things you have received, the scriptures and God's promises. They're the things you've heard preached to you by one of your pastors or even preached to you by another Christian in your church. And those things you have seen in other Christians. It's not the things that you see in all of the pleasant stories that we read about and hear of people doing nice things for each other. They're the things you see in other people who have been regenerated. Other people who have been freed from God's wrath. Other people who have been changed and born again. Those things that you see, practice those things. Set your mind on those things. That is the essence. That is the beauty. Beyond simply having fire insurance for the end day, that today this is the life we have been given to live. Because Jesus Christ has brought us an atoning sacrifice. Jesus Christ brings us new life. He changes us fundamentally who we are. This is finally, though, as we come to a close, I want you to see this. Best of all, most comforting of all, if you will set your mind on this, Jesus has brought us to God. It's not all about the gifts. It's not all about the things that he's done for us or he's brought and given to us. What's most important, where all of this is going, is the fact that Jesus Christ has brought us to God. He has brought us into God. Now listen to this. Listen to it very carefully. He's saying something striking, something alarming. It's something that we need to say quietly so that we'll slow down and hear it. If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. If there's any person who does not have this working of God's grace in his heart, this covenant promise that has been made to him, that his wrath has been taken away and he has a new heart and he's been regenerated. If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, that person does not belong to him. It's another one of those moments, but by God's grace, we want to be hearing in our own hearts. Oh, but not me. Not me. I belong to him. I know that I belong to him. How do I know that? How do I know that there's no condemnation for me? Because he's taken away God's wrath from me. Because he has birthed me again. I'm a new person. I'm a different person. I want different things. I give my attention to the things of God. I set my mind on these things. Not me. What about you? The Spirit of Christ is not in you. you do not belong to him. If Christ is in you though, though the body is dead because of sin, though you see, as Paul says, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? I look at these holes that are still remaining in me, I see my failure, I see my sin. Though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. One last doctrine. This is one that's easy, because it's a word we use. This is the doctrine of adoption. The doctrine of adoption is the doctrine of our union with Jesus Christ. You hear that? He hasn't just done things for us. He's brought us to God. He's brought us into God. like two people in love. You can't tell where one begins and the other ends. They are so unified and together. This is what Christ has done for us. He has brought us to God. As his child, he will ensure that we have everything that we need. He will sovereignly control everything in our lives for his glory and for our good. This is no game. The stakes are infinitely high because the only way to have this, the only way to know this is to be in Christ, is to be married to him, to belong to him, to have Christ as your husband. Imagine that, you know what a good husband is. Most of us are not good husbands, but you know what a good husband is because you have a Bible and you know what Jesus is like. He's the good husband. He's the husband that always takes care of you. He's the husband that always provides for you. He's the husband who's always gentle with you. He's the husband who is always patient with you. He's the nurturing husband. He's the one who keeps you. This is what God does. There was a time a long time ago when someone was reiterating and remembering something that Martin Luther had been talking about when it came to this very experience of being adopted. And he also did this. He related it to marriage. And this is how the recollection of this person goes. The person says, it's rather like the story of a great king marrying a harlot. And what happens is this harlot can't make herself the great king's wife by anything that she does or her performance. But by his wedding vow, she becomes his. And he says to her, all that I am, I give to you. All that I have, I share with you. And so gives to her the status of royalty and all that is his. And she turns to him and says, All that I am, I give to you. All that I have, I share with you. And so the poor sinner shares with King Jesus all her sin, all her death, all her damnation. And when Luther had articulated this, he said, therefore the sinner can consider her sins in the face of death and hell, and say, if I have sinned, yet my Christ who is mine has not sinned. And all his is mine and all mine. My sins, my death, my damnation is his. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. All because of what Jesus has done for us. Nothing because of anything that we have done for him. It is amazing, incredible, unending good news. And if you walk out of here and you don't think about this again, it's useless to you. It's useless to you. If you don't run into a hard time at work on Monday morning and you don't bring this to mind and set your mind there, you're done. It's useless to you. It must be taken in and it must be put to work. So I'm gonna give it to you again because I need it again, okay? The exact same application from last Sunday's sermon. It's not because we couldn't come up with anything else. It's not because God couldn't give us something else. It's because this is what we need. It's too easy to say it on one Sunday and walk away and never think about it again. Okay, here it is again. Hopefully it'll sink in even more. Aptat, A-P-T-A-T. This is what we're gonna do. This is what we're gonna do as believers for those who have no condemnation because we're in Christ. We are going to, we are going to admit that we can do nothing apart from Jesus Christ. I have nothing, I can do nothing. I cannot handle my life. That's the first thing we're gonna do. The second thing we're gonna do, knowing that, is we're gonna pray. We're gonna ask this God who has been so gracious to take away his wrath from us, our condemnation, and who has made us new again, and by his son has brought us in. We're gonna ask him, the sovereign Lord, the true King, who has married the harlot. We're gonna ask him for help. God, help me. I need you. I cannot do this on my own. And along the way, we're going to T, trust a specific promise. You remember that from last week? This is a major hinge in doing this every day. What is the specific promise that we are going to hold to and cling to and trust? We've got to go find those. There's one right here. If you look in the passage, if the spirit of Christ who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal body one day. He is going to make everything new. He's going to make everything right. And this is the God who we're chasing. That's a promise. So make use of that promise. And then we've got to act. We've got to set our mind. Get that thermostat set. Hold that truth there until it gets into us and wiggles its way into every fiber of our souls, of our new redeemed garment, and begins filling up those holes. And of course, because of all of this, we only have one person to thank. It's not me. It's not you. It's the Lord of glory. It's the one who did all of this for us. And so we should be singing. We should be singing to him. Thank you, God, for being so good to me. And we're coming to a close and it's time for us to sing again. Let's set our minds right now. Let's do it right now. We can do it. Set our minds on the gospel. And if you're here today, and you are not in Christ Jesus, be assured that the condemnation of God is hanging over your head by a spider web. And if it falls, it will fall. But there's time. There's a God who can take away God's wrath from you, a God who can change your heart and change everything about you. There is a Savior who can bring you into God. We're praying that will happen for you. We wanna talk to you about that at lunch, afterwards, whenever. Let me pray for us though and ask God to continue to bless our time as we sing once again. Our Father in heaven, again, we thank you for your grace and your mercy. You are abundantly kind to us. We are grateful today, hopefully in new ways, that there is now no condemnation for us because we are in your son. You've changed us. You've taken away your wrath by pouring it on him. You have chosen not to treat us as our sins deserve, but you've caused goodness and mercy to follow us all the days of our life. You have breathed like the wind, your life-giving breath into our hearts, and you've changed us. We're no longer according to the flesh. We no longer want to live like that. We want to follow you and know you, but we still struggle. And above all, you've brought us in and you're holding us, you're keeping us here. God, we ask for help. We need your help this week in setting our minds on the things above. To set our minds on the Spirit, which is life and peace. that we would strive to please you and love you and know you. And we do pray for our friends fervently. We know that hell is a breath away. And so we pray that now, while there's time, that you would radically, graciously, miraculously convert them, change them, save them. We don't want them to go to hell. We care for their souls. Please give them everything that they need, that they would repent and believe. and that there would be no condemnation for them like there's no condemnation for us. We give you infinite praise and worship because of this. Even as we sing now, we pray it all in Jesus' name.