Romans chapter 8 follows the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Romans chapter 8. I'd like to read through some verses before we begin. Again, I'd ask you to be praying for your own soul as we do these things too, please. Romans 8, beginning at verse 1. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because Through Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do, and that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the spirit. Verse five, those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the spirit have their minds set on what the spirit desires. The mind of the sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who lives in you. Verse 12, Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it's not to the sinful nature to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die. But if by the spirit you put the death, the misdeeds of the body, you will live because those who are led by the spirit of God are the sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, Abba, Father. Let's stop right there. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, please open up our minds, untangle twisted knotty ideas of what You've come to do, what You have done, and what You intend to continue to do in us as Your people. I pray that we would recognize in ourselves a mortal struggle that is occurring. And Lord, I also pray for any who don't have that struggle inside of them, who don't have Your Spirit, that You would convict them of their sin, that they might indeed repent and turn to You, Lord Jesus. Amen. Last week, we remembered Pentecost, as I had mentioned earlier. It was that Sunday when the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit upon the church gathered in Jerusalem and the wind rushed and the tongues of fire were above everyone's head and they began to speak in different languages. But it was a time when Jesus baptized His church with the Holy Spirit. He clothed them with power from on high. And we discussed why the baptism of the church with the Holy Spirit is crucial for Christianity, how it is necessary for the church It is as necessary for the church as the incarnation or crucifixion, the resurrection and ascension. Indeed, without the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church is left without spiritual power and life. She would have remained she would have remained trapped in her sin. What do I mean by that? I said last week that we each have our own mortal enemy dwelling within us. I want you to picture this, please. We each have our own mortal enemy dwelling within us. All our lives from conception, it's like a poison has permeated every cell of our construct. Like a symbiotic, or a symbiote from the Marvel Comics series, this enemy has bonded with us and become inextricably identified with our every thought and action. And actually, we never knew life apart from this contamination, apart from him. We've always been intimate and comfortable in the suit of sinful flesh. The enemy in me, he is I and I am he. The result is that mankind has been utterly helpless to keep God's law. The enemy inside of us had always prevented us from obeying God's commands. And for many men, that's still the case. Paul describes his own flesh and the work of flesh in particular with Romans 7 where he says, I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. No. The evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it, Paul said. So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? That's the question. Mankind hardly even asks that question. Friends, on Pentecost, Christ sent us, His Holy Spirit, to rescue us. And the Holy Spirit has entered into our bodies, the building of every believer, in order to strangle our sin, to kill our mortal enemy. The thing that I'm saying is that Christ has sent the Holy Spirit in order to establish a new order of operation in us. We are no longer like the rest of men. No, rather, God's spirit has brought into us. His power to mortify our flesh. The Holy Spirit has come to kill the enemy. That's a glorious thing. That's a glorious thing. And we're going to get into it in a little bit, but there's a tension that that creates inside of each and every believer. Non-believers, they kind of just walk in darkness, dead in their sins and trespasses. But believers, it's like we're not content anymore. Completely content. There's this stirring, this tension always because there's a war going on. Some believers, I believe, become oblivious of this. They forget there's a battle And they get real content with where they're at in the Lord, and you never see much difference in them at all. In fact, there's an apathy that you notice in people like that, and you see that apathy throughout the church these days. But Christ has baptized his people with the Holy Spirit, and that is to enable them to keep God's law. Where before we couldn't, but the church is no longer helpless. And the enemy inside of us, which had always prevented us from keeping God's commands, now has an opponent with which it must contend. John Owen wrote a wonderful treatise called The Mortification of Sin. And in it, he writes to the Christian. Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it, whilst you live. Cease not a day from this work. Be killing sin, Owen says, or it will be killing you. Owen rightly emphasizes that our sin is still within us, okay, and still is a mortal enemy. He continues, and I want you to hear this. Sin is always acting, always conceiving, always seducing and tempting. And this trade, he treats sin as if it had its own occupation, like a plumber or a carpenter. And this trade, will it drive more or less, all our days. If then sin will be always acting, if we be not always mortifying, we are lost creatures. If we don't mortify it always, if we allow it to do its thing, which is natural, we are lost creatures, Owen says. He that stands still and suffers his enemies to double blows upon him without resistance will undoubtedly be conquered in the issue. If sin be subtle, watchful, strong, and always at work in the business of killing our souls, and we be slothful, negligent, foolish in proceeding to the ruin thereof, can we expect a comfortable event? There is not a day but sin foils or is foiled. Prevails or is prevailed on. And it will be so whilst we live in this world. Here's what he's saying. There can be no truce. There's never a time in our Christian lives now that we can take the attitude of saying, I'm going to take a break from all this. At ease, soldier. The battle, rather, must be at the forefront of our minds until we leave this earth. Thankfully, we rest in another's strength. This battle doesn't fall upon our shoulders by ourselves. That's what Pentecost was about. When Paul asked, who will rescue me from this body of death? He gave us the answer in the very next verse. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now I want you to turn quickly and we're going to look back at Romans 8, verses 5-8. 5-8 says, Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. Paul reviews here the plight of most men. If a man still continues to live according to a sinful nature, If the Holy Spirit has never regenerated him, then his mind is still comfortably all right, comfortably chained to what his flesh desires. Jesus once told the Jews that the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed. They took offense to him when he said that. They did not consider themselves slaves to anyone. They believed they were on top of their game. But they were slaves. And all men start enslaved, we start enslaved. And most most people will know, will never know anything besides being enslaved in their sin. So these guys in their blindness and not knowing anything else. They didn't get where Jesus was coming from. How can you say that we're slaves? We haven't been slaves. We're Abraham's children. Jesus told him what you need to be freed from. I tell you the truth, he said, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. He was talking about their their natural slavery, their being dead in trespasses and sins. They're living according to the course of this world and according to their sinful nature. That's what's normal. If the things of God, if the scripture and the church and all these things are a great big burden to you, And you don't really care for much of anything and want, if you had your druthers, would really check out and never look back. I think it's probably because you're still in your sin. And when the light is shining upon you and you want to scurry into darkness, there's a discomfort in that. There's an annoyance there. But you don't know anything else. It's the way it's always been. But what we can be grateful for is that Christ's bride has been made an exception to the rule that once was in us. When Jesus baptized us with the Holy Spirit, our minds were open and we could all of a sudden see the kingdom of God. And so now, thankfully, thankfully, a battle rages in the breast of every true believer. It's not the same for unbelievers. There's no fight there, not even a minor skirmish. They cannot relate to what we have the privilege of experiencing. Yes, I said privilege. They are still enslaved and quite frankly, they're comfortable with who they are. Every cell is comfortably dead in trespasses and sins. But Christians, As God's sons and daughters, you've been given new life. You've been born again. And so the battle began and now is constant. And do not let it be irksome to you. Some churches, I just don't understand it. They want to take away all of those convictions of sin. They want to make everything rosy and smiley Joe said, they want to hug you harder because they want you to feel so good about yourself. It's like they want the yellow brick road always to lead you where you need to go. But there's a battle going on. And if they don't understand that the tension is a good thing, That it means that the Holy Spirit is at war with your sinful man and is putting it to death and strangling it. If they miss all that, they miss what Pentecost was about. They miss the glory of it. You should feel the tension when you sin or are tempted and disobey God. You should feel tension then. Of course you should. It should drive you to your knees before your heavenly Father, confessing your ill thoughts and stained actions. And you are obligated as children of God to take sides with the Spirit of Christ against your own sin, against yourself. But it's a wonderful thing. It's not a bad thing. Listen to the Canons of Dort, one of our creedal confessions. says in chapters 3 and 4, article 16. This grace of regeneration does not treat men as senseless stalks and blocks, nor take away their will and its properties or do violence thereto, but it spiritually quickens, it heals and corrects, and at the same time, sweetly and powerfully bends it, bends our will. that where carnal rebellion and resistance formerly prevailed, now a ready and sincere spiritual obedience begins to reign in which the true and spiritual restoration and freedom of our will consist. So, brothers and sisters, this all means that we can grow as people now. We can grow as people and become healthy and mature. And it all happens when we respond correctly to plain teaching of God's Word and it's coupled with the work of the Holy Spirit within us. And that's all good. That's all good. Whereas non-believers, they're still hostile to the things of God and to God's law. We, on the other hand, are continually drawn back to its demands. And you know, we often want to go the other way. We often give in and indulge in our sin. But we're not comfortable doing that. It hounds us. The Spirit hounds us. God's law is good. We know it. It cleans us. And so we're not left at peace or in peace when sin causes us to want to disobey. Oh, God accepts you as you are. That's the message most people want to bring to you at that point these days. No, He doesn't accept that. He's killing that. He wants to kill what you are. Rather, we end up feeling as if we've done something against the Spirit when we sin or when we don't do some of the things we should be doing. He is in us and fighting against our sin and we are like grieving him as Ephesians 4.30 says. John Kelvin recommends if we are to renounce the flesh, we ought not to consent to it. And if the spirit ought to reign in us, it is inconsistent not to attend to his bidding. And this is where Paul takes us in verse nine through eleven. You, however, verse nine, you are you, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the spirit, if the spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin. Yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who lives in you. It's important here for Paul to include a disclaimer. He does this often. So he writes, if the spirit of God lives in you, if. He does not assume that the church he is writing to, that all of them are believers, that all of them have the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit of God lives in you. You see, Paul, he himself was a religious man who lived much of his life without being born again. Which means he attempted to obey God's commands and worship, etc. While the poison still permeated every cell. The Son had not set him free, yet he was trying to live like one of the people of God. Paul even writes somewhere, if anyone thinks he has reason to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, the Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church. As for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my prophet, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ." You see, Paul is not about making spiritual fakers feel comfortable in the church. I want to say that again. Paul is not about making spiritual fakers feel comfortable in the church. He would rather they take care of first things first. Repent. Call out to Jesus and you will be saved. This is His message for them. Repent. Call out to Jesus and you will be saved. Only the Son can set you free. And when He does, you will be free indeed. For then He will send the Holy Spirit for you, too. But for us, in verse 10, if Christ is in you, then a new principle of life has begun. And trust me, He's capable of giving life to your mortal bodies. Listen, the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. He's the one who raised Jesus from the dead. He's living in you. You have not been left alone. You are far from helpless. You are far from being a victim. Nor do you need to be a perpetrator any longer. Rather, the question is, Christian, Christian, do you want your sin mortified? Do you want your sin mortified? And then how badly? Is it badly enough that you will begin to take sides with the Spirit? Further, Christian, do you even know which sins beset you? And then do you make light of those sins? Do you say to yourself, it's just the way I am. Or, my sin can go a little distance, and I will keep an eye on it. I won't let it take me over or anything. Listen, as Christ's sons and daughters, our greatest mistakes come from taking sin too lightly. and not mortifying them immediately. But now we're getting pretty close to actually entering into our bodies and into the conflict. And I don't want to quite get there yet because it's a war zone in there. But here's a glimpse of something we'll discuss next week. It's another John Owen quote, and if you like it, it's in your bulletins. But Owen writes, Rise mightily against the first actings of thy distemper. It's its first conceptions. Suffer it not to get the least ground. Do not say, thus far it shall go and no farther. If it have allowance for one step, it will take another. It's impossible to fix bounds to sin. It's like water in a channel. If it wants to break out, it will have its course. So there you are. Christian, there's a mortal battle which exists within you and you're under obligation to take sides with the Spirit of Christ to defeat the enemy. Next week, we'll inquire as to how to take sides with the Spirit in order to mortify your flesh. Alright, let's pray. Lord Jesus, I just pray and I ask that we would be awakened, enlivened, that Your Spirit would continue to curb us and to tame us and to kill, to mortify that flesh, and that we would set our minds on Your Spirit, that we would not indulge the old man, Help us to think on these things, to not be content with where we are, but always want to strive to be more and more the people You intend for us to be. Holy Spirit, continue that work of sanctification in us and help us to see the glory of it. In Jesus' name, Amen.