Why do I want something that has caused me so much grief and anguish?  Something that has wanted to constantly war against my lovely and beautiful?

Can this flesh be perfected?  Can this flesh be perfect?

I cannot see how.

It is impossible.

Let my flesh die.  Let my spirit and soul live.  I don’t need my flesh.  It is destroying me.  It is kicking my ass on day-in day-out basis.

God, how can you make this flesh new?  How can you make it to where I am not decaying?  How can you make it to where disease and iniquity are not lurking behind ever corner waiting to master me?  How can you make it to where sin would wage war inside of me no more?  That I have to continuously fight to take every thought captive.

I don’t know any other way of life.  This life on earth is the only thing I know.

Please say there is relief!  Please say there is rest.  Please say there will be time where I don’t have struggle.

This fight is beating the mess out of me.  Some days, I don’t see how I can win in the end.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

It is you!  My hope, my faith and my love belongs to you and you alone.

The only thing I have to go by is what you have said in your Word.  I can only believe this and trust in this because I know that I know your Spirit dwells in me and gives me the capacity to understand and trust in you.

My God.  Help me.

To the end.

Help me run this race well.

You are my finish line.

You are my goal.

You are the only one I want to see.

Now…

I am focused on you, I now know: you must make everything right standing with yourself.

You went to the Cross and died.

You rose from death and lived.

So that you give us your Spirit in order for us to live.

So that our souls will know and love you.

So that our flesh will be made right back when you declared it to be good.

Romans 8:11 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.

This is your righteousness.  This is what it means to make everything right standing with you.

I trust you.  Do you work.

I will bless you, Lord, with all of my soul and with all that is in me, I will forever bless your precious name.

Amen.

This is the act.

This is the act of the Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead because Christ Jesus was perfect and righteous before God.

Because we believed in Christ Jesus, that is to say, we trust that Christ is Lord and King and ruling and reigning over all and we live our lives according to that trust.  Because of that trust in Christ, our faith is counted to us as righteousness before God.

Romans 4:5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness

Okay.

We get to stand before God.

Now what?

The fact that we get to stand before God and stand in his presence, that means that death has no hold on us.

Death had no hold on our Christ because of His righteousness.

Romans 6:9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

How do we know Christ was perfect, righteous and blameless?

Matthew 5:48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Hebrews 10:14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Hebrews 9:13-14 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

1 Peter 1:17-19 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

Because of our faith, His Spirit now dwells in us:

John 17:23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

Again, it is because of our faith in Christ, our faith is counted to us as righteousness.  It is everything that he has done and nothing that we have done that makes us righteous and blameless before a holy and just God.

Ephesians 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love

Ephesians 5:27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Philippians 1:10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,

Philippians 2:15 that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,

Colossians 1:22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

1 Thessalonians 3:13 so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jude 1:24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,

2 Peter 3:14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.

It is all due to Christ’s perfect life is now our perfect life and all of our sins were weighted upon Christ’s shoulders on the cross.

2 Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is more than just simply knowing of.

We might know of God.

We might know of Christ.

If we grew up in the right church, we might know of the Holy Spirit.

We might know of Christ dying on the cross for our sins so that we won’t have to suffer in hell but get to live wonderful lives in heaven.

We can know of something all day long.  When you actually have let that knowledge of truth and trusting in that truth begin to change who you are from the inside out and not just an outside appearance of being “good”, then what do you think you life would look like?

Because I trust who God is, I no longer have to love God or my neighbor but I get to love my God and my neighbor with joy and gladness.

Because I trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross, I know all of my sins, past, present and future, were all killed and buried by Jesus’ death and burial and now I am no longer under condemnation.  Furthermore, no longer can I harbor bitterness and unforgiveness towards any person who has ever done me wrong because my God has taken care of it.  I am only identified by what Christ has done for me and not by what others have done to me.

Because I know that the Spirit of God dwells in, I no longer have to do good things in order to please God but rather I get to do good things because they are pleasing to God.

Therefore…

This is the promise.

This is the promise of God that even though our bodies will perish and decay because of sin that has entered the world because of our exchange of Creator for created things, we will live because the Spirit of Christ that dwells within us can never die.

We get to be with our beautiful and gracious God forever.

What is it like to be with God?

Finally alive.

Fullness of joy.

Pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 16:11
You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Do I really belong to Christ?

More than a year ago, I made a simple prayer:

“Lord, if there is any sin left upon my heart, I beg of you to remove it from me.  Do what you have to do.  I am yours.”

I prayed that prayer.

God then exposed lust upon my heart.

I faced a year of absolute hell.  It felt as I was thrown far away into a God-forsaken desert.  I felt like I was in a constant sandstorm where the sands within the whirlwind were constantly eating away at my flesh.

I was in habitual sin of lust.  I constantly and consistently pick lesser joys over the greater joy that is in my God.

I would confess my sins.  I still felt like I was dying.  I would pay for those sins.  God still felt far.

The only thing that kept me from completely breaking was this one little verse:

Hosea 2:14
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.

God was doing his work.

It hurt.  It was painful.  It was nauseating.

Just speaking of it now, I so badly want to litter this entire post with nothing but the fiercest cuss words.

But yet, my beautiful, merciful Savior was never far from me, for he was speaking tenderly to me with words of comfort.  Not screaming at me.  Not yelling at me.  Just whispering comfort and encouragement.

It is not only what Christ has done in my heart when he saved me but it is everything He has done once He had me.

I know without a shadow of a doubt, that…

“Christ has the yoke and heart of my love.   That I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” – Samuel Rutherford

O Lord, for the agony of being apart from you, I almost fear to pray this prayer to continue your good work in me.  Yet, I have so little of you and I want only more.  For wanting to be closer to you, I cry out for one thing.  That is, to show me your glory.   God, I love you with what very little I have.  I pray this in your Son’s beautiful and holy name.  Amen.

Secondly, as I continue in this thought from last time, is it an actual fact that the Spirit of God dwells in me?

Is the fruit (emphasis on singular fruit) of the Spirit evidence within me?

Look at it from another angle: am I trying to manage my sin and iniquity with my own strength, my own willpower and my mental prowess?  Am I white-knuckling good behavior and moral uprightness?  Am I being convicted and condemned of sin upon my heart?

No.

First, the Holy Spirit does not condemn me of sin (Romans 8:1) but rather He convicts me of my right-standing with God by my trust, belief and faith in the blood and sacrifice of of Jesus Christ on upon the cross:

John 16:7-11 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

Second, despite my flesh succumbing to sin and I do the very thing I hate (Romans 7:7-25), my inner being feels the pain and torment of being far and apart from God.  I know the truth of Scripture and while God will do whatever it takes (Hosea 2:14) to conform me to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29-30), I know my God does not lose His kids (John 10:27-29) and He will not leave me to corrupt and hell:

Psalm 16:10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.

Lastly, I know that I am not exchanging swapping out misery, heartache and depression in order to achieve love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23) but rather those things are evidenced in my life by the work of the Holy Spirit.  I have these things despite and including anything that is going on in my life and in the lives around me.  My hope is not things get magically better but my hope lies in the fact that my Lord and my God is sovereign and by his might and grace, will make everything right-standing.

I am not saved by my good works but my faith and trust alone in Christ Jesus:

Romans 4:5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,

I am saved, for His glory, so I get to show and tell the love of God which is in Christ Jesus:

Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

I get to do good works because God did it all to make me His.

Because of all that He has done, I will bless the Lord with all of my soul and with all that is within me, I will bless His holy and beautiful name forever and ever.  Psalm 103:1

Read this verse in light of every single verse since Romans 7:7 [reading link], how much weight does this verse bear?

How can I, a proclaimed believer in God, simply scan and skim and all but skip over this verse as there is nothing to worry about when the same author, five epistles later, will beg us to ‘work out our salvation with fear and trembling’ and not just in front of other Christians (Philippians 2:12 cf. 2 Corinthians 13:5)?

First and foremost, am I in the flesh? I mean, really?  Really.  Do I have my mentality, my mental mind set, my focus, my drive, my passion, my sufficiency, my dependency rests in the world at all?

Is my joy sufficient in God alone?  If I don’t get what I want, is God enough?  When I lose it all, will God be enough?

Let the Scriptures cut a bit deeper: What do I fear? Do I worry or anyway anxious about anything when Jesus (Matthew 6:25-34), Paul (Philippians 4:6) and Peter (1 Peter 5:7 cf. v.6) told us don’t?

So I list a whole slew of items (microscopic example at best) such as:

• fear of man
• fear of feelings not being returned in relationships
• worry about provision

Then I have to check those fears, worries against what the Scriptures say:

• Fear of God alone – Deuteronomy 6:13 It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. (cf. Proverbs 29:25)
• Outpouring of love regardless – Matthew 22:37-40 “…You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
• God alone is my provision – Numbers 18:20 “You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them. I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel. (cf. Psalm 16:5)

Now the questions remains, “Whom will I believe, my heart (Jeremiah 17:9) or the sufficiency and inerrancy of the Scriptures as God-breathed words that I know I can trust in teaching me, reproofing me, correcting me and training me in the righteousness of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17)?”

In other words, when I read the rest of the Bible, do the Scriptures have any effect on me whatsoever?

I don’t even claim to have read and understand all of the Bible.  When I was unsaved, I read the Bible 5 times through.  Ask me how much of it did my heart and mind retain?  Not a drop.  Back then, I would read certain Scriptures and hear certain Scriptures preached and in my head, it would fall into two categories:

• “I have no problems with this passage because I either no clue on what it’s actually saying or I am already doing right by it.” or…
• “Uh… the world is different… some stuff about the culture around us… uhh… we have evolved so much since those ancient cultures… insert more lameass excuses here…”

Now when I read the Scriptures, I hope this is only thought that goes through my mind:

• “Lord, you are the Perfect Surgeon.  Your work is guaranteed (Romans 8:30).  Use your words to cut any sin and iniquity on my heart because I cannot be apart from you.  Spirit, convict me of the righteousness that you have imputed into me (John 16:10).  I can only claim righteousness because of my faith in You (Romans 4:1-25).”

God, I pray I never push back on you.  Help me because I can’t do this without you.

Paul and really the rest of the Scriptures make it abundantly clear that we are in either or group. We cannot straddle both camps. I will take it a step further: once you are saved, you cannot go back to being unsaved. If you do, guess what, you were never saved in the first place. That is why there is such a distinction between the non-believers and the believers.

Yet, what does the Scripture say?

Romans 8:8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Does this verse not say: “If you are unsaved, you cannot please God.”

How can the verse say anything else?

Is it even remotely possible for this verse to say anything else but what it is saying?

Have we not built the case in verses 3-7 that makes clear distinction between unsaved and saved. That those who are saved are still sinners but saved only by the grace of God alone?

By the weight of this verse and this passage, the question remains:

Is it possible for you, in your “free” will, with your “intelligence”, with your “goodness”, with your “good works”, with your own “righteousness”, generate faith on your own to please God in anyway?

God did not send His Son to live as a missionary from heaven, live the perfect life and die under the Father’s just and holy wrath just so you can take His grace meant for those who are trust in Him in order for you to dwell and wallow and swim and live in perpetual, habitual sin. To use any grace in such a way is outright perverting what grace is and with that mindset, it is nothing but blasphemy against God.

Go back and dwell on verses 3 to 4 once more:

Romans 8:3-4 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfulled in us, now… get this next part and read it with me… who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Grammatically, isn’t this saying, “Jesus Christ did not bare the weight of the sin of those who reject Him, those who blaspheme His name, those would ignore Him, those who would deny Him or even better still, like what Hebrews 6:4-6 would say, have a taste of what He has to offer, do works in His name and yet never acknowledge as Lord over all the creation.”

I am not just saying this wild theory because Paul said it. Paul is simply expounding on what Jesus said. Flip over to John 10 and read it with me:

John 10:3-4 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

John 10:11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

John 10:14-15 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

John 10:16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

All that means is that there are some who are not part of the body of believers at this moment but they are still His. In the Father’s timing, through power of the Holy Spirit for the blood that was spilled by Christ, He will call them and they will follow. Why? He knew them and loved them before the foundations of the earth. This is why Jesus tells Paul in Acts 18:10, “Don’t be afraid. Keep preaching the gospel. No one is going to harm you, for I have many people in this city.” That is why Jesus told us, “Go, therefore and raise up disciples. Proclaim the gospel in word and deed to the four corners of the world. Do not be afraid for I will be with you for now and always to the end of times.”

John 10:17-18 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

Over and over again, Jesus emphatically states He has come to lay down His life down for His flock. He did not lay it down for the entire world. He did not lay it down for the world so that if they miss it the first time they will eventually be saved after they died. No. Jesus Christ laid His life down once and we live one life and die one death to be judged by Christ. In other words, if you don’t think you need a savior then God cannot save you. We have no good news for you because you already have righteousness by what you do which is self-righteousness.

In case you want to argue and pushback with all that Jesus said here, let Him go and hit the grand slam and drive all the runners home. Let’s Christ respond to those who would call the Son of God ‘a madman’, ‘insane’, ‘full of demonic spirits’ or better yet, ’someone who was just a good person’, ‘just a prophet’, ‘a good teacher’, ‘just an example by how we should live our lives’ or ‘Jesus never said he was God’ or ‘Jesus is not God’. Here is Jesus’ response:

John 10:25-30 “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

This is what Christ is saying: “You hear, read and see the good news that I came into this world to save sinners and yet you do not believe. I know who my people are. “I will have Mercy on No Mercy and I will say to those who were Not My People “You are My People” and they will cry out, “You are my God!”. It is only for them that I will lay my life down because I have always loved them even before I created the world. Because I know them and I have always loved them and will always loved them, I am the good shepherd and I don’t lose my sheep. God in heaven is the Perfect Father and He does not lose His kids and no one or no thing can separate My people from the My love which is in Me.”

If you are a child of God and you trust in Him for it all, know that He has been passionately, relentlessly wooing and chasing after you for all of your life and for all of His eternal existence.

For those who are not His people:

You can keep denying who God is and what Christ came to do.

You can keep compartmentalizing your life and living as a Christian just on Sundays.

You can keep doing the same sinful things you were doing and thinking there is nothing wrong with what you do.

You can keep heartlessly pretending to worship God by singing some songs and listening me yell into this mic week in and week out.

You can keep trying to do things on your own schedule and you can keep striving for the life you want whether or not it would be His will and His glory.

You can keep putting all your joy and satisfaction in things He has created and not Him.

You can keep trying to make yourself right before you can come to God.

You can keep trying to make yourself perfect.

And maybe all of that is working well for you.

But to those who are tired of running and running endlessly.

To those who are so beaten and broken and have nowhere else to turn to.

To those who have achieved it all, fame, money, sex, education, job, spouse, kids, the toys and still as empty as you were before and you know you know you know that there has to be something more to this life.

To those who are still searching for something better… something that can fill that emptiness inside your heart.

Before God got a hold of me, I had nothing but anger, bitterness and lust fueling my heart and my life. I was addicted to porn so badly that I ended up working in the adult entertainment industry for years. I have seen more nudity, more sex than anybody else. It was that addiction that destroyed my marriage and my home. Despite that destruction, I rebuilt my life to a place where I thought I was doing pretty good. But even with new friends and new life, my thoughts were always lustful and I continued to drown in sin and despair and death. You could put me in the middle of a deserted island with nothing but the clothes on my back and I had enough porn in my mind to last me several lifetimes over.

I wasn’t looking for God but it was God, in his beautiful and majestic grace and mercy, overflowed for me to where everything in this life including all the anger, all the bitterness, all the lust, all the perversion and all the pride within me, became ugly and disgusting. I didn’t want that anymore. I couldn’t stand anymore. I didn’t want some semblance of a life I have built for myself so which I can fool the world that everything was okay.

All I wanted and all I cared about was God.

I didn’t know if He could heal me. I didn’t know if He could make me whole. I didn’t know if He could clean me up. I honestly didn’t care about that. All I wanted was just Him and I wouldn’t be satisfied with nothing less until I could hold His face in His righteous.

But God did heal me. He made me whole. He gave me a new soft heart and it instantly renewed my mind. The perverted nightmares went away. The wandering thoughts soon vanished. God gave me His heart and I forgave those who have done me wrong included my father who molested me and my ex-wife who divorced me.

What God does in our lives is real. Without Him, I am a pervert. Without Him, I am not a daddy to my son. Without Him, I will continue hold bitterness, anger and jealously and let those sins eventually kill me.

If you think there is something better for you, then all that is God calling out to you. All you have to do is call upon Him to save you and to repent, to change your mindset about your sin and your folly and let Christ come into your life and go to work so He can give you a new heart and a new desires…. all for His glory and your joy.

Let us pray.

You know that we have gone through Romans for about 7 months now.  I like to remind everybody, from time to time, to step back and remember the doctrine by doctrine of Romans 1 thru 8.

Romans 1-3 Doctrine of Sin
Romans 4-5 Doctrine of Salvation
Romans 6-7 Doctrine of Sanctification

Did you catch that?  Sin, Salvation, Sanctification?  Yay for alliteration!

Anyways, all 7 chapters culminates into Romans 8 which is the Doctrine of Glorification or what some theologians call Perfected Salvation that is when we stand before Jesus Christ, we are perfectly saved as the psalmist so eloquently puts in:

Psalm 17:15 (ESV) As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

That is, not only will I be perfectly satisfied and content when I come face-to-face with God but will then God will have completed His work in me that only He was so faithful to complete it in the first place (Philippians 1:6).

But Paul is no fool when it comes to teaching.  He has been hitting us with doctrine after doctrine before heading into glorification.  However, in order to properly setup for us to feel the weight of glory that we will behold standing before God, Paul is going to cliff note Romans 1-7 in the first 2/3s of Romans 8.  I don’t have solid evidence that Holy Spirit did it for one reason or another but I think God was trying to avoid the whole attitude of, “I am saved, I live but the only thing I have to really look forward to is being with Christ.”  With that attitude, then you end up being like some end-time nutjob holed up in the middle of nowhere in a bomb shelter with food rations and dehydrated water reading 1 Thessalonians and Revelations over and over again.

Dehydrated water, what?

So to properly know all about our growth in the likeness of Christ, we are tearing apart Romans 8 and especially for the last week, verses 7-8, on what that means to walk in the Spirit till we are completely saved to Christ in the end.

This week, we are expounding verse 7 and turning it around and asking the question, “So how do I submit to God’s law?” or a better way would be, “So how do I submit to God?”

Before we dive into what submission, we have to unpack a couple of things.  Just like with last week on worship, I want to avoid the ABCs of submission to lest you go, do the checklist and think you are good.

First thing we have to the false preconceptions that each of us has a free will or that we can do whatever we want to.  That might be a nice feeling of power but that ain’t in the Bible.

So lets start in the beginning with Genesis 3.

I. Believe it or not, we are all in submission or in other words, the myth of free will

Genesis 3:14-15 (ESV) The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”

So from the word jump, God automatically deals with what needs to be dealt with first which is place Satan under submission.  It is in this passage where God now puts Satan on a leash (Job 1:6-12).  What many people who read this text don’t realize is that dominion was given first to Adam (Genesis 1:26-28) but in the fall of mankind and the brokenness of all creation, dominion was now given over to Satan.  God knows this so he curses not in order of blame but in the order of importance.  Apostle John goes later on in his gospel, chapter 16, to say that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of three things, last of which the “ruler of this world is judged”.  So at the time when Jesus spoke this, whom was he referring to as the ruler of the world?  Satan.  What is intensely beautiful about the John 16 passage is that the past tense of the word “judged”.  In other words, Jesus goes ahead and declares His victory over death, hell, demons, sin and Satan to be so even though he has not died on the cross yet and subsequently, has not resurrected to champion over such things.  Jesus declared it to be a done deal just like in Romans 8:30 when those whom He has predestined, He has called, He has justified and He has glorified.  When God says it be done, it will be done.

So my question to you guys is, “Can Satan do what he wants to?”.  Obviously not.

Lets keep going:
Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

The thing I want you to get out of this is: “Can a woman eliminate the pain in her childbearing?” No.

Can the woman remove the desire, the want to master over her husbands?  Can the man remove the desire to rule over her wife?  That means you have to go against your instincts with every single encounter and conflict in your marriage.

Keep going

Genesis 3:17-20 And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”

Can you uncurse the ground?  Can you make work not seem like toil?  Can you not die?

Genesis 3:24 (ESV) He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Can you return to Garden of Eden?

Later on in Romans 8, we will learn that God subjected all of creation to futility and not willingly.  We know that animals don’t have free wills per sa but Romans 8:20 states that “the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it”.  So wouldn’t “the creation” include us who are most definitely created beings according to Genesis 1:27 (see Romans 8:23)?

I say all this to simply prove the fact that you and I are not truly free to do what we want.  Sure, we can go out and knock over a bunch of liquor stores but we are not going to spout wings and fly around.   We might be able to race through the streets of Dallas but we cannot grow to nine feet tall.   We can go do a bunch good things for other people but we cannot save ourselves from death.

That is part of the futility that all of creation is not willingly subjected to.

If all of creation is subjected to futility by God because of the Fall and our mortal bodies are subjected to death by God, then what does this all mean?

It means that we are utterly dependent upon the One who placed us under that submission in order to truly live.

II.  We have to submit to God for our very lives

Remember when I said that the only real “freedom” we have the freedom to sin but not to save ourselves from futility?  Let’s check out:

James 4:1-4 (ESV) What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

I honestly think James gets a bad rap especially when it comes James 2 “faith without works is dead”.  The Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther, called it the “epistle of straw”.  But the more time I spend in Romans and in James, it seems to me that Paul or James is really playing of each other and they don’t really contradict each other at all.   So in verses 1 through 4, James essentially expounds the text over Romans 8:7 for us.  Did he not?  It is almost James read what Paul wrote, which is more than like Galatians, and was like, “Oh snap, that’s hot!” *scribble, scribble, scribble.  There is some theologians who think that James had no influence from Paul’s writings as they are self-contained which goes to show the work by the Holy Spirit.  But I digress.

James is writing to his own church with their own set of problems.  When we are truly exercising what “free will” we might have, we do the only thing we can do: sin.  Look at verse 2.  We desire and do not have, so we kill for it. Maybe not one another but how many times have you heard a man desiring a new wife so he is willing to kill his marriage.  or that money will solve all of our problems, both present and future, we are allow to kill ourselves by working ourselves to death and kill our relationships with our spouses and our children and our friends.  I don’t think I have to tear through the verses 2 through 4 in order keep beating down this point.

So how do we get out of this supposed “freedom” we have?

James 4:5-10 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

III. Submission does not begat God’s grace but God’s grace begat submission

At the surface level, it seems as thought it should be easy enough to submit to God and He would bestow grace.  But look at the order of the ideas in verses 5 through 10:

He yearns jealously – He foreknew you.  He loved you before the earth was made.  Therefore He pursues you and calls out to you and he will overwhelm you with His grace to where you can’t resist.  When you have seen the most beautiful thing in the world, everything else in the universe is completely ugly.  What is worse, you can’t unseen what you have just seen.

It is only when God display’s His fullness and grace to you is only when you would submit to Him.  This happen to Paul who was a Christian murdering, violent opponent of Jesus Christ until Jesus Christ appeared to Him in His fullest splendor and asks, “Saul, why do you persecute me?” and the only thing Paul could respond with falling before Him, ask a silly question “Who are you…” but realizing the ignorance of that question and quickly acknowledges Him to be Almighty God who is Lord above all.  This happened to Isaiah, who was just a wealthy noble, pretty much minding his own business and Jesus Christ appeared to Him in full splendor with angels all around Him.  Jesus is so glorified that the sinless, perfect angels had to hide their eyes.  Isaiah responds by crying out, “Woe is me!  For I am lost and I am sinner among sinners.  For I my eyes has seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Listen, I can beat Romans 3:10-12 into your head all the day long.  You know it by heart.  I know it by heart.  But just in case we even fathom trying to argue against what Paul was saying when he says as he quotes David in Psalm 14 & 53 “No one is righteous, no, not even one”, lets take a look one more time at verses 5-8:

Romans 8:5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

Does the verse say, “Those who live according to the flesh can possible set their minds on the things of the Spirit?”  Absolutely not.

Romans 8:6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

Does the verse say, “For to set the mind on the flesh can possibly have life and peace?”  No.

Romans 8:7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.

Can the mind that is submitted to sin and set on sin, dead in our trespasses and sin submit to God’s law?  Romans states, “it cannot”.

Some reason, it is taught in the majority of American churches that there is something intrinsically good within us that calls out to God, “Save us”.  But what started as a just a tiny little thought that God might have given us enough for us to make the decision to choose God versus death as evolved into a thought that perhaps, we are not all that bad.  Or there is good people out there that God is going to save and either we break our backs trying to be that good.  Some of us make it.  Some of us go through life or at least give the rest of the world the impression that they are good folks.

For the rest of us like you and me, we give up.  We can’t do it.  Something happens to us and we can’t be that good because, I don’t know, we don’t want to work that hard or we feel as though the chips are stacked against us. We give up and just fall headlong into sin.

What about us who can’t do anything possible to work that hard to be good?  I guess we are all screwed.

Can that possibly be good news?  Is that what Christ came to earth, to break His body and shed his blood so that the people who are just intrinsically good get to make it?

What is the reality of it all?

Here is what the scriptures say:

All have sin and fallen short of the glory of God.

That no one is righteous.  No one seeks after Him.  No one understands.  No one does good.  No, not even one.

We are dead in our sins and trespasses.

By our very nature, we children of the wrath of the Almighty God who created everything in the entire universe.

Fact is that dead men and women cannot possibly asked to be saved.

Just like Ezekiel preached the Word of God, the Holy Spirit gave life to dry dead bones.

Just like Jesus preached out to Lazarus, “Hey friend… get out here!” and Lazarus is fully alive and comes out of the tomb.

Just like God called out to you and in His Word and His calling by the resurrecting power of the Holy Spirit, you are now fully alive.  Before you were dead.  Now, fully alive.

I know that I received mercy because there was nothing in me intrinsically good that was smart enough or wise enough to call out to God to save me but I know I had acted foolish and ignorantly in unbelief, and the beautiful grace of our Lord overflowed for me in the faith and love that is in Christ Jesus alone.  The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save all of us dead sinners, of whom I am the chief and foremost.  But I received mercy for this reason, not that I did anything good, but because I was the foremost and chief of sinners, that Jesus Christ might display his perfect, tender, merciful, loving patience as an example, witness and a testimony to all of those who would believe in Him for eternal life.

That is truly good news.  I hope and pray that this truth sinks into our hearts and let it take root.  That the way we live our lives, engage with the world around us and love one other because nothing I can brag or boast about but because of what God has done to save me.

Let’s pray.

Romans 8:7 (ESV) For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile towards God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot.

It is hopefully by the time we drill down to verses 7, any unbeliever or even those who think they are Christians by virtue of what they do, should be asking,  “How can I please God?  How can I worship God?”

In order to rightfully answer these questions, I have to go to the heart of the matter, “How is your faith in God?” or even a better question, “What is your faith in God?”  My connection between worship and faith is this: “If you have little or no faith in God, can you really worship God?”

In short, the answer is no.

I feel like I a pretty trustworthy guy and I hope you would be able to take my word for it.  But don’t take my word for it because as we will find out in a minute, God doesn’t want you to take my word for it.

So… let’s walk through the Scriptures and understand it together.

In doing so, please understand I am not about to began some series or start some rant on how to properly worship God, lest you take what I say and try to follow it to the letter.  In other words, you go through a “How to worship God” checklist and check… check… check… check… done, good to go!   Because the Scripture speaks against such heartless toil of religious works:

David knows and proclaim in…
Psalm 40:6 (ESV) “… Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required”

and it is God’s proclamation to His people (that is you and me):
Hosea 6:6 (ESV)  For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Steadfast love and knowledge especially in the Old Testament are usually terms that can be switched out.

To know is to love.

To love is to know.

God is omniscient, He is all-knowing.  God cannot know more or less and He cannot learn anything knew and is shocked by nothing.  While we can’t be all-knowing, we know God is love and God cannot love us more or less.   God loved you before the beginning of time.  That is why He sent His perfect son to live the way we should live and to die the death we should have died in order that we too might be raised from death and saved to Himself forever.

With that in mind, God expounds on the what He says in Hosea 6:6 in case you don’t know what He meant:

Amos 5:21-24 (ESV)
“I hate, I despise your feasts,   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,   I will not accept them;and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,   I will not look upon them.Take away from me the noise of your songs;   to the melody of your harps I will not listen.But let justice roll down like waters,   and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

The truth of the matter is that some of us tend to worship God on our own terms.  Either we praise Him when things are God but try to resolve our own issues when things go bad in order to give the illusion that everything is hunky dorey.  Or the flip side of that is not even acknowledge Him when things are good but be so quick to curse God when things go bad.  Or even worst still, some kind of jacked up mix of the two ideas of worship.

Which all leads into what is the gospel of God.

Two weeks ago, we spoke on great detail about our total depravity as sinners by deed, word and nature rebel against the will of God.

Last week, we spoke about who can possible save us from our sin and sinful nature, which is Jesus Christ.

So now, you know we are sinners and that there is one person who can save us to God forever.  But it is not mere head knowledge and agreement of those two facts that get you saved.  It is the fact we believe, that we have faith in, that we absolutely trust in that Jesus Christ is the only one who can save us from death and more importantly, to God Himself and that He is Lord reigning over all creation including you and me.

So let me ask this: If it is not mere head knowledge and going through heartless rituals that gets us saved, how is it that heartless faith and ritualistic worship helps us grow in the likeness to Christ and gets us closer to Him?

So lets dig through the Bible to properly know and undertstand what faith is all about.

I. What Faith Is Not

Before I can really begin, let us dispel some myths and misunderstandings about faith.  First and foremost, faith is not something you can really focus on and concentrate on like The Force and then all of a sudden, things will magically appear or things will magically go really well for you.  If you immediately think of the story, from the synoptic gospels, where Jesus heals the Centurion’s servant and think, “Hmm, that Centurion had faith and Jesus rewarded him because of his faith by healing his servant.” then you have missed the point of the story.

Faith of the centurion
Matthew 8:5-9 (ESV) When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

So lets answer the question, “What does this man believe?”.  It is simply not that Jesus heals but this man truly believes and acknowledges and puts his trust in that Jesus Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords and reigns and rules over all creation.  That Jesus Christ has absolute authority and this centurion understands respectful and honorable authority.  He is making the parallel in his own life, “If I am in charge and care for and serve the men under my authority and I give the commands and they are done by my men, surely the Lord, who commands everything in creation and has power and authority over sin, disease and death.”  Some might argue “That dood didn’t believe all of that” yet… keep on reading in verse 10

Matthew 8:10-12 (ESV) When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west Who is Jesus talking about?  He is refering to Gentiles to get the point across to those of Jewish descent i.e. those who think they are saved “because they are born of the seed of Abraham”… more on that in Romans 4 and Romans 9 when we get to it and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, in other words, rest in the salvation of the Lord and joyfully worship and praise Jesus Christ with all the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles and the saints, you and me, of our faith at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19 while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Jesus is stating that all the nations will be blessed based on their faith just as He had promised Abraham back in Genesis 12 just as Abraham heard God’s promise and had trust in God alone.  But likewise, God will curse and judge those who dishonor the seed of Abraham which is Jesus Christ alone.  God said blessed by the descendant of your seed not your seeds.  Romans 4 tells us that it is the faith in Christ Jesus that will count as the righteousness to God just like Abraham.  You are not saved by birthright but by faith alone (but that is another week).

Matthew 8:13 (ESV) And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

It is by faith that this Roman centurion was saved and given new life.  That life is evident in his household and those under his command.

There is another misconception and misunderstanding, especially to the world, that faith is not blind.

You might have heard that in order to believe in a religion, you have to have jump into it and not know anything about it in order to believe it.  That is a totally awesome thought except that worldly idea cannot be apply to Christianity.  In fact, the Scriptures say over and over and over again to not blindly have faith in Christ.

Acts 17:10-11a (ESV) The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness,

Paul and Silas, trying to develop the same ninja skills as Jesus (look it up: John 8:59; John 10:39), and had to sneak into Berea in the wee hours of the morning.  They went into the Jewish synagogue and start preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in which Bereans were freakin’ estatic that they were hearing the Word of God preached.  2 Corinthians 2 says that we, who preach and proclaim the gospel, are aroma of Christ to God, either the fragrance of life to those are being saved and the stench of death to those who are dying.  But check this sucker out:

Acts 17:11b (ESV) examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Bereans were are all throwing down big block parties upon hearing the gospel but they go home and do what?  Studied the Word of God and then what happened?

Acts 17:12a (ESV) Many of them therefore believed…

They did their due diligence and pressed into the Word and find what Paul and Silas was preaching to be good news indeed and they believed and trusted in the God of the gospel.

And this acceptance and trust in God is not some one time all sustaining thing when you are saved to God.  If we simply talk about justification, then that would be an imcomplete gospel.  It is that we are now justified before God and that God gives us a new heart and new life or God regenerates us in order for us to live like Christ did on this earth.  God instructs us this way in:

1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 (ESV) Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.

1 John 4:1 (ESV) Beloved, that is you and me as believers do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

So then unbelievers hear the Word of God, they press in and then they believe.  But ah ha, this is a two-way street.  Check out:

Romans 10:14-15 (ESV)  How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?  And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

This is the Great Commission.  This is what we have been commission to do.  These are our orders from God himself.  We are to go, proclaim the gospel and raise up disciples in Christ.  If the unsaved never hear the gospel, how can they believe and if they don’t believe in Him then how can they call on Him for salvation?   Likewise, how can we preach the gospel of God if we are not trained up, sent out to preach it.   Beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.  Why?  Again, 2 Corinthians 2, brother.  We are the messengers who bring the aroma of Christ which is the aroma of life and salvation to those who would be saved.

Remember what Jesus told Paul in Acts 18?

Acts 18:9-10 (ESV) … “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”

That is the way that God saves people.  He uses men and women who are faithful in Him and walk in the Spirit and are obedient to His word in order that the good news might be proclaimed to the ends of the earth.

Jump to verse 17 and let’s us answer the fundamental question, “Where does faith come from?”

Romans 10:17 ESV  So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

It is through our words and deeds that proclaim and preach the gospel of God.  It is through our worship to God in our lives.

II. Where does faith come from?

Romans 12:3 (ESV) For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think…

That is we are to live our lives humbly before the Lord and to love, serve and lay our lives down for our neighbors whomever they may be.

… but to think with sober judgment, (rely on the wisdom of God) each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

It is Jesus Christ, the founder and author and perfecter of our faith and assigns us a measurement of that faith to each of us in order that we might believe in Him.  1 Corinthians 2:12 says that we can understand the things freely given to us by God.  God gives us wisdom and faith in order for us to grasp even what salvation is.  Paul fully expounds on this thought in:

Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV) For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

In other words, faith is not born out of your will, what you do, how hard you believe or how hard you try.  Faith is assigned and given to each us according to God.

So you might be thinking to yourself…

III. How do you grow your faith?

We already covered one part.  Hearing the word of God preached.  This along with other spiritual disciplines along with prayer, praise and reading the Word all works together to grow your faith in Christ.

Let me put it this way.   You run into a complete stranger, say in even your church.  You guys have no friends or associates in common.  They don’t know the same people you know and vice versa so there is no one going to vouch for this guy.  So are you going to let the guy watch your kids or housesit for you?  Probably not.  Yet, for many, many of us (dare I say 99%) here didn’t accept Christ the first time we heard the gospel.  But it was after several times we heard the gospel, engaged with those sharing, asking questions, going back and thinking, asking some more, reading, studying, cursing, whatever until Christ got a hold of us and we trust in Him.  So much more does your faith and trust in God builds when you study Him, engage with Him, give thanks to Him and hear Him speak to you through His Word and His Spirit.  That is why Paul says we are to train up like a soldier, a boxer, a runner and all-around totally super-conditioned athlete who is running after the finish line that is Christ and in that training, we will grow stronger in grace and strength and might of Jesus Christ.

Part of the disciplines of that an athlete goes through is self-discipline and it some of our own self-discipline may get us started but without coaches and trainers (that is teachers, preachers, those who have walked a while in Christ), it is very very likely that we might be a bit off target.  This is why we don’t go out on our faith, our beliefs, our doctrine, our lives alone.  We build community with fellow believers and every believer building each other up through prophecy and encouragement and having believers sharpening each other and let teachers correct us by faithfully keep our feet pointed in the right direction according to the Word of God.

Lastly…

IV. What is the true power of faith?

In other words, “Awesome, I have all of these faith, what do I do with it?”.  Remember what we covered at the beginning.  Faith is not, “If I have large amounts of faith, then God will give me boatloads of money and He will cure my cancer and sickness when I need it.  Likewise, if I don’t have a lot of faith, then I won’t be rich and wealthy and I will be death and sickly all the time?”  Faith is not some sort of liquid to be measured like buttermilk that we use to make delicious and edible God pancakes.

A. Faith like a grain of mustard seed

Matthew 17:20 (ESV) He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Jesus uses the mustard seed analogy because to his audience, it was the smallest seed they knew of in that region.   Jesus is saying, “If you had just this much *pinch your fingers down in order to hold a seed about 1mm in size* then you could have moved mountains and cast out demons and above all, know that I am your Lord and I will take care of you and I can get you through this situation and this season.”

What is your faith in?  Let me contend that if your faith is in Jesus Christ as your saviour from death, your redeemer from despair and He is Lord and King and rules every single part of your life and you know without any shadow of a doubt that He is so good and holy and righteous and just and loving and merciful and gracious and compassionate and no matter what the circumstances you are going through now and no matter what struggles you are dealing with that God, the Lord Jesus Christ, is ruling and reigning and has absolute power and might and it is in His hand that it is to make great and to give strength to all and He has done it all to overcome Satan, sin, demons, hell and death and He rules over all creation and nothing ever can seperate you from Him ever.

To tightly sum up faith, James Denney, Scottish Theologian from the late 1800s / early 1900s pointedly remarked,

“The simplest word of faith is the deepest word of theology; Christ died for our sins.”

If your faith, focus and your heart i.e. your trust is in Christ alone and not just in what He can do for you, then I promise you, your heart will overflow with love not just for your God but for everyone and thus fulfilling the commandments that Jesus laid down as He quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5 and expounds upon it Luke’s gospel:

Luke 10:27 (ESV) And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Matthew 22:40 (ESV) On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

Mark 12:31b (ESV) There is no other commandment greater than these.

This is how you truly worship God.  This is how you live your life in spirit that is of God and in truth that is by God alone that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners and that you and I rejoice in His salvation that you and I have received mercy for this reason, that in you and me as the foremost, the chief of all sinners, that Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience for anyone in the world that would believe in Him for eternal life.  Your faith in God and every waking second of your life is worship to Lord God Almighty and this will serve as a testimony to all-powerful and all-sufficient grace of God.  That in fact, He is good enough and big enough and powerful enough and loving enough to rescue you and you and you and you and me and save us, not just from hell and eternal torment but save us to Himself so that we might live in His glory forever and ever.

It is Romans 1:17 boldly declares, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” If you view your faith as in how the Word of God declares it to be and you properly view worship to God, not in just the singing part of Sunday morning, but the reading of the Word, the driving to and fro to our jobs, the fellowship with believers and non-believers, the time we spend with our spouse and our children and the way we boldly proclaim the gospel of God in deed and in word.

This might be daunting if we go at it by ourselves.   But Christ is always with us through the power of the Holy Spirit.  God boldly promises He is always with us.  He will never leave us nor forsake us.  And God just so happens not to be in the business of breaking promises.

Let us pray.

Romans 8:3b-4 (ESV) By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Now let us read the passage that we are going to review tonight:

Romans 8:5-8 (ESV) For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.

Stop right here.  We already bifurcate this particular passage and study the one half that describes what it means to walk in the flesh.  With some creative word juggling, we came up with and expounded the following:

For those who live according to the flesh have set their minds on the things of the flesh, you are hostile to God, you do not and cannot submit to God’s law and it is impossible for you to please God.  You are going to die.

I did this for the express purpose to hopefully show you that the intent in which Paul wrote this.  I have to be crystal clear that Paul intended this passage to be either/or, this or that, this one thing or that one thing but never a mix of the two.  There was no way Paul could have been more clear that you either walk in flesh or walk in the Spirit but you cannot do both.  I threw even more verses at you in order to beat this into your head.

So last week, I left you hanging with questions like

“Who can save me and keep me from having my mind on things of the flesh?”
“How can I not be hostile towards God?”
“How can I truly submit to God’s law?”
“How can I have my faith in Him alone?”
Even more importantly, “How can I not die?”

For those of us who grew up in church, the correct answer is always ‘Jesus’ and we all know that there is power in the name of Jesus.  But we are not simply talking about the name that is made up by the letters J-E-S-U-S.  Because if that is the case, every unbeliever could simply walk out on this message, say the name, “Jesus!” and think that he is now right with God.  When you speak of the name of Jesus Christ, you are speaking the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty of Jesus Christ.  You are speaking of His honour and not the fact you can simply pronounce it.

How many of us rattled off the sinner’s prayer when we were kids and yet the lives we lived could not be confused as Christian?  *raises hand

This is about denying your old self, literally changing your mind about sin and placing all of your trust, hope and belief into Jesus Christ and be all satisified with Him alone and unsatisfied with the things of this world.

So…

I. Who can save me and keep me from having my mind on things of the flesh?

… or as Paul puts it:
Romans 7:24-25 (ESV) Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Wait a second.  My mind still remembers some of the bad things I used to do.  Even still, I remember some of the bad things I used to do and I really really really want to do them now.  I know that it is wicked and perverse and evil but I still want to do these things.

Understand what your body really is in the eyes of the Lord:

1 Corinthians 3:9 (ESV) For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

In other words, it is you, into your heart and into your mind where Christ comes in, strapped with toolbelt with some awesome power tools, powered by the Holy Spirit, and goes to work in you.  How?

1 Corinthians 3:10-17 (ESV) According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

I won’t digress too much over this but I wanted to give you something to think about.  Think of all the times God uses fire in the Bible: burning bush, pillar of fire by night, chariots of fire and horses of fire that took up Elijah, tongues of fire in Acts and even the eyes of fire in Jesus Christ in Revelation 19.  It is God who will reveal your heart by fire.  If you have not been given a new heart by Jesus Christ, then whatever pitiful foundation you have built will disintegrate like taking a Bic lighter to sheet of rice paper.

1 Corinthians 3:18-19 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

By repenting of sin and believing upon His name, God comes into your temple, cleans it out and gives you a new heart and declares you to be holy and righteous.  Just like when Jesus Christ came into the temple, immediately goes bat-crazy and doesn’t just start to tidy up the place but cleans it totally out.  That temple might have been the same old temple on the outside, just like you have the same old body.  But the temple is now holy and righteous because Jesus Christ has done all the work to clean it out.

Romans 12:1-2 (ESV) I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Only Jesus Christ can do that work in you.

II. How can I not be hostile towards God?

Churchfolks, what’s the answer? Jesus!  Okay, so how did Jesus do it?  Simply put and to really make this stick, I am going to be as graphic as possible: because of your sin and your sinful nature, God in His holiness, righteousness and justice should have poured His wrath upon you.  But Christ in your place and took all that wrath upon Himself.  This is the fancy seminary term: propitiation.  Look how it works itself out in the Scriptures:

Romans 3:21-25 (ESV) But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

We are all sinners and we have exchanged the glory of God for our own glory.  Yet, if we believe in Jesus Christ that He was propitiated, that is, He took on the likeness of sinful flesh and incur the wrath of God for our sins, then we are forgiven and wiped clean of all sins and justified and made right standing before God.  Even those who lived before the time of Christ, they have believe for the One who would be their Messiah and would cleanse them of all their sins and unrighteousness.

1 John 4:9-10 (ESV) In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

It was out of the love, grace, mercy and compassion, of which God is fully, that God sent forth His Son to die in our place.

1 John 2:1-2 (ESV) My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

This is not to say He died for all the world and the world is justified before Him simply by what He did.  This accounts for all the sins that were committed against you.  When His blood wiped your sins clean, those were all of your sins and the sins that were committed against you.

You might have been raped but God sees you as whole and new and beautiful and wonderful.

You have might been physically abused but God is your shield, sword, strength and might.

You have might been called an idiot or worst things all of your life.. you are this guy who seems to constantly make the wrong decisions time and time again but God gave you a renewed mind and gives you not the wisdom of the world but the wisdom of God and it is all there if you just ask for it.

Hebrews 2:17 (ESV) Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.  For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

When you are a child of God and you face temptation, you know you are child of God because that temptation is painful.  You suffer under the brute force attack of it.  But Jesus Christ lived the life that you could not have lived, suffered the same exact temptations as you and I faced but with the strength and grace empowered by the Holy Spirit, He overcame it all just so He could hang himself on the tree, taking all of our sins with Him, bled to death and taking all those sins into the tomb where they will be there forever forgotten.  When the same Spirit that empowered Jesus with strength and might raised Him from the dead, and resurrect with new life just the Holy Spirit is able to resurrect you with new life.

Now, Paul runs with the thought from verses 1-4 that is essentially the heart of the Gospel. In essence, God lays down His law which is standard of perfection, we try to obey the law, we fail and then we cry out to God, “How on earth can we obey Your law?”. God responds, “You cannot on your own but I am going to send my Son, whom you can put your trust in, and He will keep the law perfect and He will fulfill the righteous requirement of the law for you.” In other words, God makes a covenant and instead of counting on you to hold your end, the Father sends His Son to do it for you. The covenant is locked in place, never to be broken. But that is for the end of chapter 8.

Let’s work on this:

Romans 8:5-7 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.

When I first came upon this text, I didn’t want to do this contrast/compare like we did in Romans 5:12-21 (Adam, Christ, Adam, Christ, etc.) because I felt like that is not what Paul is doing. To me, Paul is presenting two truths: either the wide road to destruction or the narrow and hard gate to life (Matthew 7:13-14) and you are on one of these paths and you know which path you are on.

Forgive me because I don’t know if this the right way to do it or teach it but what I am going to do with these verses is take them in entirety, cut them in half down the middle, talk about one half and then other half next week.

Here’s what I mean. Take verses 5-8 and lets talk about what it means to not belong to Christ:

For those who live according to the flesh have set their minds on the things of the flesh, you are hostile to God, you do not and cannot submit to God’s law and it is impossible for you to please God. You are going to die.

I. For those who live according to the flesh have set their minds on the things of the flesh

Galatians 5:19-21 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Romans 1:29-31 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

1 Timothy 1:8-11 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

I don’t think I need to go on.

Matthew 5:27-30 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

How in the world can you win? How can you even be good in this world?

I pull up these passages and think, “Well that is me. That’s me. I am a liar. I am still have a lustful heart. I am foolish with my time and money and resources. You are a unbeliever and you know these things are in your heart. You know you carry bitterness, anger, resentment, jealously inside of you. I am supposed to be a Christian and yet I still have these things in my heart.” It is Paul’s passage in Romans 7:7-25 is the cry of my heart: “What I want to do is good but yet I keep doing evil things or even better, do not do the good things that should be done.”

Or to be summed up like this:

Romans 7:24 Wretched, pitiful man, full of sorrow, that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Lets keep going.

II. You are hostile to God

Psalm 3:7 (ESV) Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.

Psalm 6:10 (ESV) All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

Psalm 7:6 (ESV) Arise, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.

Psalm 9:3 (ESV) When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence. Some translations will say, “my enemies will stumble and perish because of your presense.”

Psalm 37:20 (ESV) But the wicked will perish; the enemies of the Lord are like the glory of the pastures; they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.

It is funny in that a book (The Psalm) known for it’s praises to God that it would contain so many references to God vanquishing His enemies.

Yet let us look at another book, very well known but not really well know for praise & worship as it should be.  And if you know me or been following me for sometime, you know I was going to try to come back to this passage because quite frankly, it is the coolest passage in the Bible.

You got to imagine this: Jesus, on a white horse, just drew a sword out of His mouth, coming out of the clouds, eyes full of fire, head full of crowns, robe dipped in blood, and is called The Word of God. You have heard it preached, the Bible is not about you but it is about Jesus Christ.

Revelation 19:15-18 (ESV) From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, “Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.”

Pay attention to verse 19:

Revelation 19:19-21 (ESV) And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.

Who makes war against God? Those who are hostile to God.

Who is hostile to God? Those who do not believe and trust in Him for eternal life.

If I don’t believe in Him but I don’t have anger issues or I am pacifist, how can I be hostile? If you do not walk and live according to the Spirit, you are walking according to the flesh and therefore you have your mind set on flesh and your mind is therefore hostile to God. I don’t care how “spiritual” you think you are or whatever spirits you pray to. If it ain’t to God the Father through the His Son Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, then you are praying to Satan and his demons. There is no third team full of fairies and goody good spirits going from human to human sprinkling magic pixie dust and making everybody feel warm and cozy.

III. You do not and cannot submit to God’s law; it is impossible for you to please God

You might be able to read God’s law and do it a ‘T’ but without salvation, that is justification by Christ alone and the regenerative work of Christ Jesus alone, it is really all for naught.

Psalm 40:6 (ESV)
In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required.

Amos 5:21-24 (ESV)
“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them;and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them.Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

You get to worship God in the way you want and not in the way He deserves.

You get to call on Him when things get a little bit tough but ignore Him when things are good to go.

“Hey Lord. Hmm, nothing for me thanks, I am good to go. What’s that? You want me to share your gospel with my neighbors? You see, my schedule is really booked with work and stuff which is all the stuff You have provided which I am totally grateful. Well, maybe if my schedule frees up a bit, I will let you know. Love ya, kthxbai!”

Or even better yet, you praise Him only when you things are great but you curse him when you get hit with something like cancer or sickness or your spouse walks out on you or God forbid, one of your kids die. You have a lifetime of going to church every weekend, whole family is Christian, many times in the middle of the week, went to the VBSs, was homeschool or Christian private schoo, went to Christian college, got the nice job, got married, got the kids in the suburbs, gave tithes and offerings and even raised your hands in praise & worship and then tragedy strikes and you shake you fist at God and declare, “How dare this happen to me?! I did everything right and you let me down like this? If God is real then it can’t be a loving God.”

The tiniest, smallest thing breaks your faith. What the truth of it is that if something like that broke your faith, then you really had no faith whatsoever… at least not in God.

What happens now?

You put your faith in something that you can control and manipulate and make it your own. James 4:4 says that “… You wish to become a friend of the world and in that, you become an enemy of God.” Put your faith in things not God and you will see that…

IV. … all you end up is with death.

Romans 8:6a (ESV) For to set the mind on the flesh is death…

James 2:10 (ESV) For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

Romans 1:32 (ESV) Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Romans 6:23a (ESV) For the wages of sin is death…

This world, according to Genesis 1 & 2, was perfect and good at one time according to God’s perfect plan. Then our original parents, Adam and Eve, choose not trust in God and His plan for perfect peace but instead choose to trust in themselves. Thus all of entire creation breaks and starts to long downhill slope into death.

All of us, those who are listening on the podcast, reading these notes and even I, the one who is speaking into the mic, were born thinking that the same plan that Adam & Eve went after is a pretty good plan despite the historical fact that the plan of me being a god and me opposing the will of God goes horribly bad and ends up in death.

Like, I don’t have to beat you over the heads with recession talk. But think for a moment, “Was my faith in my paycheck, my retirement funds, my investment, my money or was it in God?”. Guess what? That god of money and investments and security blanket that you had your faith in? He is very much dead. Since that god of money is neither holy nor righteous nor having the Spirit of God, he didn’t come back to life after 3 days. Several months into this and you can go check out the rotting corpse in the corner and poke him with a stick. “Yep, still dead.”

So what can save me from having a mind set on the flesh? What can keep me from being an enemy of God and make me His friend? How can I truly submit to God’s law? How can I have faith in Him? How can I live forever?

All of that is next week.

Let’s pray.