Sanctification Sermon #1: What is Holiness? Do I need it? - 6/26/2022

Sanctification Sermon #1: What is Holiness?  Do I need it? - 6/26/2022

This sermon is from our 6/26/2022 Worship Service.

Speaker: Senior Pastor Steve Estes
Title: Sanctification Sermon #1: What is Holiness?  Do I need it?
Scripture: Leviticus 19:1-2

Now the LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy."

Notes:

1. God says, "I am holy."
A. The meaning of "holy"
B. First: God's holiness means He is separate from us
C. Second: God's holiness means separate because He is superior to us
D. Third: God's holiness means He is different from us
E. Fourth: God's holiness means He has no evil in Himself

2. God sometimes declares certain places and objects "holy"
A. Moses and the burning bush
B. Other objects, places, and times
C. These things are not ethically holy

3. God sometimes sets certain people aside to be "holy"
A. Levites
B. Israelites

4. God not only declares Christian believers "holy"--He commands us to be holy
A. God's demand for holiness seems unattractive
B. God's demand for holiness seems scary
C. God's demand for holiness seems impossible

5. Three thoughts in response
A. Regarding holiness as unattractive
B. Regarding holiness as scary
C. Regarding holiness as impossible

Benediction:

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

(1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)

Sermon Video:

Full Sermon Transcript: (Pastor Steve Estes)

If you happened to see the fireworks in Elverson last night, you may have heard a religious word.  “Oh, that was glorious.”

There are some words that are religious words that we tend to use in everyday life.  Someone gets pulled over by a cop, they’re just waiting for the ticket, he lets them go with a warning and the man goes home and says to his family, “oh, that cop was merciful.”  A religious word used in an everyday context.

A coach threatens the players that are slacking off and arriving late to practice and he says “anyone who comes to practice late one more time this season is off the team.”  And the players walk out onto the field and they said to each other, “boy he sure put the fear of God into us.”  Religious language used in an everyday sentence.

A touchdown occurs in the final seconds, “oh, that was righteous” you say.  Or a social person is at this party and that party and everywhere there’s action and someone says, “boy, she is omnipresent when it comes to social things.”

But there is one word that is a religious word that is rarely used outside of a context about speaking with God.  It’s the word “holy.” 

Holy

It tends to be used about God, and about things or places that relate to God, about things that are sacred.  When people hear the word holy, I would say their reactions vary.  For many people, they’re just a blank.  Many people - they never think about holy things.  Maybe they are secular, maybe they were not raised in a church and when they hear holy, they just have nothing to hang it on to.

We found this overseas when we’ve gone to the Czech Republic, that country that was raised under communism and therefore atheism, and many of the people just had no religious background at all.  A word like holy is meaningless to them.

For many people when they hear the word holy, it’s just creepy.  Stained glass windows with spooky looking apostles on them with the emaciated faces, you can see the bones through the flesh.  They have a kind of a weird halo around and they’re making the peace sign and it just gives you the willies for many people.  Or maybe they think of a boring sermon preached by a clergyman that goes on and on.

For some people, the word holy - I would say this is a minority though - it’s a delightful word.  They think about maybe a delightful hush, a pleasant quietness, maybe they slip into a cathedral when they’re on vacation and they just sit to catch their breath a little bit during the lunch hour and gather their thoughts.

In the Old Testament, which is 2/3, 3/4 of the Bible, when it describes God, it uses the word holy to describe him more than all the other words put together. 

Today’s text is from the Old Testament, the third book of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus.  It’s in chapter 19.  The background is this:

God’s people, the Israelites have crossed through the Red Sea, they left Egypt, they have wandered in the desert for awhile, now they’re at the foot of Mount Sinai, where God will give them The Ten Commandments.  And Moses is up with God on the mountain and here’s what God says.  Leviticus 19:1-2.

Now the Lord said to Moses, speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy.”

Let’s first consider God saying that he is holy, and then asking his people to be holy.

The Old Testament word, the root of it, most people who study languages think that it comes from the word “to cut” and thus, to separate, and therefore maybe to set something apart from something else.  That’s the idea behind it.  So when God says “I the Lord your God am holy,” the first thing it means is that God is separate from us.  He’s different, he’s separate from his creation.

Now this is not true of eastern religion.  Many eastern religions have the idea that all of us are part of the great one.  That you and nature and animals and things have more in common that you don’t.  Everything is a great oneness.  God says no, I am holy, that is, I am separate from my creation.

The second thing God means when he calls himself holy, cause holiness means that he is separate, because he is superior.  He is not separate from us like this - side by side - he is separate from us like this - far above us.  Even better yet, like this.  A well known theologian developed a whole series of lectures just on this picture about the difference and the superiority and the otherness of God over us, where at the bottom circle of course represents us, and the top represents God.

And God’s holiness goes even further.  He’s not merely separate from us.  He’s not merely superior to us.  He is also different from us.  That is what he means when he says he is holy.  He is other than we.

God is separate and is holy because he is infinitely superior to us.  He is exhalted, he is lofty, he is high above us, not just in space, but in who he is in this superiority of his is true of everything about him.  His love is vastly on a higher plane than ours.  His understanding is infinitely greater than human understanding.  His power is incomparably stronger than man’s power.  In everything, he is so high above us, so separate from us, so holy that as one person has said, to say that God is holy is just another way of saying that he is God.

Just to give two examples, he had no beginning.  We cannot even wrap our minds around that.  He is not reliant on anything or anyone.  He doesn’t need to eat, he doesn’t need to breathe, he doesn’t need other people to entertain him, he’s independent. 

Here’s how the Apostle Paul put it in Acts 17.  The God who made the world and everything in it is not served by human hands as if he needed anything.  And so when God gives his name to Moses, he says my name is simply, I am.

And if that sounds mysterious, it’s meant to sound mysterious.  He’s just a totally different cut above everyone else. 

This is how one theologian Wayne Grudem put it, he said “God’s being is something totally unique.”  The difference between God’s being and ours is more than the difference between the sun and a candle.  It’s more than the difference between the ocean and a drop of rain.  The difference between God and us is more than the difference between the universe and the room we’re sitting in.

God is qualitatively different from us.  In summary then, God is in a category all his own.  And so the Bible calls him in Isaiah “the high and lofty one whose name is holy.”  And so Moses said in Exodus 15, “Who is like you, oh Lord, majestic in holiness?”  And Isaiah says in Chapter 40 - well, God says in Isaiah 40, “to whom will you compare me says the holy one.”  In fact, no less than 50 times in the Bible, God is called simply, “the holy one.”  He is separate, he is superior, he is different from us, and there’s one more way that God is holy.  God’s holiness means that he is the opposite of evil.

He is holy in his purity, in his righteousness, in his absolute sinlessness.  Here’s how John put it in 1st John 1:5.  “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.”  Here’s the way James put it in James 1:13.  “God cannot be tempted by evil.”  Well here’s the way Habakkuk put it in Habakkuk 1:13, speaking of God to God, he says “Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil, you cannot tolerate wrong.”

Notice he doesn’t say that God is too pure just to commit evil, he says he’s too pure even to look at evil. It doesn’t mean that God is unable to see evil when it happens.  It means he cannot see it without being repulsed.  That he hates it, he can’t look at sin without being - we might say, sickened by it.  That everything in him opposes any shred of evil when he sees it.

This is where his wrath comes from, this is where the judgment at the end of time comes from.  God has never sinned.  He’s never wanted to sin, he’s never thought about sinning.  He has never entertained the idea, the possibility of sinning.  The definition of sin is doing what God hates.  And one particular sin, the sin of lying, the Book of Hebrews says “It is impossible for God to lie.”   Sin is the opposite of who God is, for he is holy.

The Psalms said about God, “You are good, and what you do is good.”  He’s the source, he’s the origin, he’s the embodiment, he’s the beginning of everything that is pure and right and virtuous.  He is, we might say, ethically holy.

Now what does God’s holiness then have to do with us?  With human beings?  What does God’s holiness have to do with our world?

Well, it might help to think about this.  The Bible declares that at times there are certain places and certain objects that God has declared to be holy.  And by that, we mean there’s certain places, there’s certain objects that God has chosen to set apart for himself.  You remember that the word holy comes from the word to cut, to separate, to set something apart.  There are places and objects that have become holy when they’re associated with God.

So you may recall the story of Moses and the burning bush.  If you’ve never read it, it goes like this:  Moses was out in the desert before he ever went to pharaoh and told pharaoh to let God’s people go.  And when he was out on the desert, he sees a bush burning.  Now apparently it’s not totally uncommon in that desert heat but he sees the bush burning and the bush was not consumed - it kept on burning.  So he goes over to see what is happening and as he does in the book of Exodus chapter 3, we read that God called to him from within that bush, and here’s what God said.

Do not come any closer.  Take off your sandals for the place that you are standing is holy ground.

Notice then that here when God designates a place as holy, that place is to be treated with respect because it’s associated with God and God must be treated with respect.  And so God told Moses to take his sandals off.  Now for us in western culture, I don’t know, he may have told us if you’re wearing a hat, take your hat off.  The idea is that in a lot of eastern cultures, sandals and shoes are for some reason particularly associated with disrespect.

Some of you may remember when younger President Bush was giving a press conference one time and somebody in the crowd worked his way up, took off his shoe and threw his shoe at the president. And we thought, what’s the big deal, he didn’t throw a hand grenade.  Well, the big deal is though, for an eastern culture to throw a shoe at someone is one of the worst items of disrespect that you can show them.

So God told Moses to take his sandal off and show respect, the place was holy.  And other objects and places are considered holy by God in the Bible.  When God gets the Jewish people to setup a tabernacle in the desert to worship him and later when that tabernacle became a permanent temple, the furnishings were the same kind of thing.  The furnishings in that tabernacle in that temple were considered holy.

So for instance, there was bread set out in the tabernacle to illustrate God is the bread of life.  But you didn’t go in there and snack on that bread because this bread is set apart purely to be used by God.  It’s holy.

And the one room in the tabernacle in the temple, the most holy place, the place where the Ark of the Covenant you may have seen in movies or what not was - almost nobody’s allowed to even go in it.  There’s only one person in the world allowed to go into it - the High Priest of Israel.  And when he goes into it, he can’t go into it anytime.  He must go through elaborate rituals, he must wear certain clothing, and then he must go into it only on the one day of the year when God tells him to go into it and he must do his business in there that he’s told by God to do and then he leaves because that room is holy.

God called the sabbath day holy.  You may remember in the Book of Genesis after he created the world, it says he rested on the seventh day.  And in Genesis 2:3, it says “God blessed the seventh day, the sabbath, and he made it holy.”

Because that was the day that he rested on.  Now, we’re not to get the idea that these things are ethically holy in some way.  The stones of the temple had nothing right or wrong about them, the sand that Moses was standing near was not sinless sand.  A sabbath day is not of itself righteous, the sun comes up, it goes down the same way it does every other day of the week.  Rather, these things are holy in that they are set apart because associated with God by showing these things respect, a person shows God respect.

So in summary what we’ve been saying here, God is holy.  He is.  He is different from us, he is superior to us, he’s other than us, and he’s ethically holy, but he sometimes calls places and objects and times holy.

Now that might help us to understand a little bit about what God has to do with people when he deals with us in his holiness because God also calls certain people holy who were not necessarily ethically holy.  They’re not necessarily more righteous than other people, and yet he sets them apart in some way. 

So, for instance, in the Old Testament, God said that certain people in Israel, people from the tribe of Levi were to become priests.  They were to be holy.  And he means by that, that he is setting them apart, they’re not just to get regular jobs.  They are to spend their time serving God.

They need to wear certain clothes, they need to obey certain rules other people don’t obey.  They need to wash in a certain way before they do their jobs.  It doesn’t mean that they always acted holy.  There were some people who were set aside to be holy who failed to ethically act holy. 

So for instance, you may recall in the Old Testament the story of the elderly godly man Samuel - very godly man.  We read that he had two sons who were priests in Israel.  But we also read that they were “wicked men who had no regard for the Lord.”

They were holy.  But they were wicked.  They were holy.  But they were unholy at the same time.  This is the beginning to help us understand what God has in mind when he talks about holiness among people.  Now, all Old Testament Israel, every single person, the nation as a nation was set apart by God to be holy.

He says in Exodus 19:5-6, “you people will be for me a holy nation.”  What he means there is, I have a certain purpose for you.  I’m going to send a messiah through you guys, and then the messiah’s going to give salvation to people all over the world and I want you to be the preparatory race that does this.  And yet, the Israelites didn’t always live in a holy manner.  So, God has declared certain things, certain places, and at times certain people as holy and yet they can use those things or they can act in an unholy way.

You may recall when the Babylonians conquered the Jewish people and leveled Jerusalem and took them captive.  Their prized possession was all the gold and furnishings and the goblets and the instruments from the temple of the Lord.  And you may recall in the book of Daniel that the Babylonian emperor was having a drunken party and he ordered that all the goblets of gold from the temple in Jerusalem of Jehovah be brought in so they could get drunk on it and that is what caused God to make the handwriting on the wall and say you’re a dead man, your time is over.

Now we come to the scary part of holiness.

God declares that Christians are holy, and then he demands that our character match our status as holy.

God tells us that if you profess Jesus Christ the way that people profess belief in Jehovah in the Old Testament that you were set aside for him - you were his holy people.  Christ has a holy church set apart for his purposes.  Now God says to be holy.  Our text not only says “I am holy,” our text says “you are to be holy because I am holy.”

Now, we can’t be holy in the sense of being superior to ourselves.  We can’t be holy in the sense of being different from ourselves.  We can’t be holy in the sense of being others from ourselves.   But the way in which we can be holy is we can be holy - we are commanded to be holy in the sense of being pure and opposed to sin like God is.

Now this gets personal.  God saying, “you must be holy.”  When people at large hear this, and often when Christians hear it, they find it scary and sometimes we find it scary.  It gets personal.  To some people it seems scary.  To some people, it just seems unattractive.  And to other people, it just seems absolutely impossible. 

Let’s take those three things.

Holiness being unattractive to some, scary to others, impossible to others.

God’s demand for holiness seems unattractive to many of us.

People picture when they talk about being holy, oh, it must mean you enter a monastery.  It must mean you don’t turn the heater on in the winter.  It must mean, I don’t know, you wear a hair shirt that makes you itch all the time.  It must mean that you have to look at medieval art all the time, just of pictures of saints.  It must mean that you must become a missionary - pardon me Mr. & Mrs. Iah, traipsing through the jungle, Bible in hand, and as - as one of our brothers said who is a missionary - and have an ugly wife.  It must mean that you’re uptight all the time about things and people doing things they shouldn’t.  It must mean that all the fun is drained from life.

I experience this sometimes when I go out in public.  Maybe I’m, I don’t know, in a taxi cab or I’m in a plane or I meet somebody just standing in line somewhere and they just say “hi, my name’s Fred,” oh, “My name’s Steve,” “Oh yeah?  I’m a carpenter, what do you do?”  “I’m a pastor.”  “Oh.”  There’s just something unattractive about that and our basic conversation is over 9 times out of 10 - so I don’t say it by the way.

If you’re ever out in public with me, I just recommend you don’t introduce me as your pastor.  Just recommend, “oh hi, this is my friend Steve” and maybe you’ll have a chance for at least 32 seconds to speak to the person at least, in some meaningful way.

Other people say or find, God’s demand for holiness is scary.  Many of you will recognize the name C.S. Lewis.  Lewis was a brilliant professor in the 20th century in England.  And he talked about holiness in this manner.  He said when you think about God as holy, think about this.  If you were told “there’s a tiger in the next room” and you believed it, you would be scared.  You would be scared he says because you would have a sense of danger.  You’ve seen nature movies where you’ve seen lions rip up animals bigger than they, effortlessly.

Now he said though, suppose that you were told and you believed it, a ghost is in the next room.  He said if you believed it, you would also feel fear.  But it’s a different kind of fear.  He said it wouldn’t be based on any knowledge because you’ve never seen any movies - well, Ghostbusters, but that’s a little bit trivial.  You’ve never seen a movie of a ghost and what a ghost can do, can a ghost really do anything?  Does a ghost tear people apart?  I don’t think so, but yet you would feel fear.  He said you would feel fear on the mere fact that it is a ghost.  And he said that the fear, rather than being about something being dangerous, it’s the fear of something being just, uncanny.

He said you might call that kind of fear - you would have a certain dread.  Now he says, if you were told and you believed it, a mighty spirit is here right now in this very room.  If you believed it he said, you would be profoundly disturbed.  You would also have a fear, but it would be a fear of wonder and of a shrinking back and of an absolute inadequacy to cope with it.  You might feel the need to prostrate yourself.  You might feel a terrifying awe. 

Now God often has this affect. 

I would say he always has this affect when he is directly encountered in a powerful way.

He has that affect from his holiness.  From his being separate.  From his being far infinitely superior.  From his being other and different.  And he has that affect because of his being opposed to evil. 

And I see this in a very dim, small way at funerals.  One of the privileges of being a pastor beside not needing to talk to people that you meet for the first time very long - one of the privileges is that you get to see a lot of funerals.  You get to officiate a lot of funerals, you get to see people at the moment of death and in the days to follow.  And it’s a great learning experience.  It’s something I’ve observed at funerals many, many times.

Particularly now, let’s consider a funeral that’s not done in a church, but is done in a funeral home.  They’ll have a viewing from this time to that time you may come and greet the family and view the person who is deceased in the coffin and then what will happen is now they will ask people to sit down and they will have a service.  A service in honor of that person.  And for generations, that service was a worship service.  For people today many times it’s not totally a worship service but usually somebody reads Psalm 123, it’s from the Bible or somebody has a little card from the funeral home that has the life dates of the person and often has a picture of Jesus carrying a lamb on the front of say, like this.

And what I’ve observed many times are people that will come and they’ll love the person who died, love the family of the person who died, will gather around, will talk, will be there for the viewing, but as the service starts, they will very obviously drift outside and be in the parking lot during the service.  And then after the service, when the coffin is carried by the pallbearers out to the hearse and they wind their way to the cemetery and they’re buried, they will join the funeral cortege and they will be there for the graveside.

Why is that?  Why do they want to meet the family?  Why do they want to greet and show respect for their friend, but why do they make their way to the door when it comes to the service? 

It is this very thing I’ve proposed to you.  There is a sense of religion, but it’s deeper than that.  It’s a sense of God, but it’s not just a sense of God the nice one in heaven.  It is the sense of the holy.  There is some sense that there is someone or some there, who will be holy or someone mentioned who is holy or some thing about the room that will feel holy and it gives people the willies.

This is what God’s holiness tends to do. 

And so people fear that holiness because it is unattractive or because it’s scary, and then for many folks that they are put off by God’s demand for holiness because God’s demand for holiness feels impossible.

You know this yourself, do you not?  You and I can’t keep our own New Year’s resolutions, let alone keep the holy laws of God.

It doesn’t feel good to disappoint yourself, but it feels bad in your conscious when you have a deep sense that you have disappointed God, and even worse when it’s more than you’ve disappointed God - that your sins angered God. 

And even worse when the Bible talks about God’s wrath against sin and a coming day of judgment against sin when we will all stand before the holy one of Israel.

This makes holiness not just unattractive, which it does seem absolutely impossible, it is a height I cannot obtain, it’s a standard I cannot meet, it’s a bunch of rules and laws thrown at me that I do not have the juice to make it happen.  And therefore you feel defeated and discouraged and repulsed and all that.

And yet, the Bible says in Hebrews 12:14 without holiness - and here it means ethical holiness and impurity.  Without holiness, no one will see the Lord.  Because God has said, I am holy, I have set you apart.  If you’re a Christian, if you are in the nation of Israel, I have set you apart as holy.  You are to be holy.

What do we make of these three thoughts? 

Well, a response, a brief response - just the briefest of responses to each of them.

Regarding holiness of God as seeming unattractive.

Have you ever met someone who used to be addicted to drugs and is now clean?  What they often say is I have been clean for 627 days.  A person who was an alcoholic.  Have you ever known a person with an extremely bad temper who just about lost his family, maybe did lose his family from screaming and yelling and throwing things and finally learned to control his temper and to be calm?  Ask any one of those people, would you ever want to go back?  No, no, no, no.  It is attractive that they have been rescued from these things.

Ask a criminal who was in and out of jail for all kinds of theft and other crimes and finally he turns his life around and he’s squeaky clean with the law, would he go back?  No, I wouldn’t go back.  That life is old, I don’t want to go back.  There is something about holiness that is joyful to people who get a little taste of it, even if it’s just - like in these cases - just a mirror of holiness.  There may not be any real holiness in these people I’m talking about but there may.  But it is a small token of what real holiness is like.  Holiness unattractive?

Listen to what the gospel Luke says about Jesus in Luke 10:21.  It says Jesus is about to pray, and it says at that time, Jesus full of joy through the Holy Spirit prayed such and such.

Now when people think of prayer, they tend to think of misery.  You’ve got to be on your knees maybe, and it’s uncomfortable because your knees hurt.  Or you’ve got to bow your heads and you want to look around, or you’ve got to fold your hands and you don’t want to fold your hands.  Or you’ve got to say something holy and you don’t know what to say.

But it’s just that Jesus was full of joy.  And Jesus was the most holy person who ever lived on Earth.  In fact, Jesus, that’s what he meant when he told the disciples, “I have food to eat that you don’t know anything about.”  He means I have a joy in my holy walk with God my father that you can’t even comprehend.

And when Jesus in the last night that he was alive when he was in the upper room with the disciples at the last supper and he’s praying to God and they’re hearing, he says Lord, I’ve just spent several chapters of the word talking to these friends of mine preparing for when I die and go to heaven and leave them alone.  And he says, I have said these things to them “so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.”  He’s talking about them becoming holy and having to some measure, the same joy that he has.

No true Christian would ever go back to his or her pre-Christian life, because however hard it may be, difficult it may be in many ways, however many struggles and failures if you ask them, would you prefer the old life, the immediate answer is no, no, no.  And that’s why J.I. Packer said this - that happiness - I’m sorry - holiness is essentially a happy business. Holiness is attractive.

What do we say to the idea that holiness is scary?

Well, feeling one’s unholiness, feeling ones unworthiness, feeling one’s sinfulness in the presence of the holy is absolutely the best thing that could ever happen to anyone according to the Bible.  It may feel like bad news, but according to the Bible, it’s good news.  It’s the beginning of the good news.  The holiest men in the Bible are recorded to have felt this scariness, this sense of their own sinfulness and unworthiness in the presence of God when he came close and his holiness splashed on them as it were.

For instance, we read about Peter when he was a very early disciple, maybe just becoming a disciple, he had fished all night, didn’t catch a thing. He comes up to shore, he’s still in the boat, Jesus says go out in the deep and cast your net.  “I tried all night.”  “Go.”  “Yes, sir.”  So he throws his net overboard, you know the story.  The net immediately catches so many fish, as they pull it in, the boat begins to fill with water and they begin to sink.  And Peter, we read, Luke 5:8, when Peter saw this miracle he fell at Jesus’s knees and said “go away from me Lord, I am a sinful man.”

This is his reaction to the holiness of God.  And yet Peter became one of the 12 apostles.  Not only one of the 12 apostles, he became the leader of the 12 apostles and he gladly gave his life for his faith at the end of it.

Or take Daniel, did Daniel ever experience a scariness, even a spookiness about the holiness of God?  Oh, heavens yes.  A number of times, just to take several, reading in Daniel, the book that he wrote, chapter 8, Daniel sees a vision.  The specifics of the vision are unimportant here but they were about things to happen in the future that God gave him and he gave them through the angel Gabriel.  Now then we read that the angel Gabriel approached Daniel to explain this to him.

Now get this now - this is not God himself coming toward Daniel.  This is merely an angel from God coming toward Daniel and we read in Daniel 8:17, as he came near, I was terrified and fell prostrate.

The Bible presents Daniel as one of the holiest men in all its pages.  He is only one of two I think that it records nothing wrong about him - and yet he was terrified, even in the presence of one of God’s angels.

In Daniel 10 it’s even worse.  In Daniel 10 we read Daniel is with some other men, and then he sees a vision again.  A vision about the future, and he says that the other men did not see the vision.  Now, but here’s what he says in Daniel 10:7-8.  Even though they did not see the vision, such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves.

Capture this.  They are in a room or outside with him.  He sees a vision.  They see nothing.  They hear nothing.  But the very sense of God being present in that event absolutely overwhelmed them and they ran.  Because they’re in the presence of God’s holiness.

To be in the presence of God’s holiness, you need not to see anything or even hear anything to be breathless. 

And then Daniel who is left standing said in Daniel 10:16-17, I said to the one standing before me, that is to the heavenly visitor who gave him the vision, “I am overcome with anguish because of the vision my Lord, I am helpless.  How can I, your servant talk to you my Lord, my strength is gone and I can hardly breathe.”

And yet three times in the book of Daniel, he is told by a heavenly visitor straight from Heaven, Daniel, in Heaven, you are highly esteemed.  The man who wrote this book of the Bible, who was highly esteemed, yet knew what it was like to feel unworthy and overwhelmed at the sense of the presence of God.

And finally, there is the prophet Isaiah.  In chapter 6 of Isaiah’s book, he sees a vision.  The vision is remarkable, we don’t have time to go into it, but he gets a vision of God in the throne room in Heaven and it is overpowering.  He sees angels of a kind, serifs, and they are singing holy, holy, holy is the Lord almighty. And the whole threshold of the temple shakes, and it is - I cannot do justice, just the way Hollywood cannot do justice to try and recreate this scene.

And here’s what we read that Isaiah said, Isaiah 6:5.  When I saw it, I said woe is me I cried, I am ruined for I am a man of unclean lips.

Now get this, of all the prophets in the Old Testament, Isaiah is the most loved by almost everybody.  And yet Isaiah said I’m ruined because in the presence of God like this, I see that my lips are so unclean.

This is what God himself said of himself in Daniel’s book.  Daniel - I mean Isaiah’s book.  Isaiah 57:15.  This is what the high and lofty one says, he whose name is holy.  I live in a high and holy place, but I also live with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit and I will revive that person’s spirit.

In other words, Daniel is esteemed by the Lord.  Isaiah is beloved by God’s people and wrote the favorite book and God promises Isaiah, when you are humble and contrite in my presence and sense your own unworthiness, I will live with you and revive you and take care of you.

Fear of the Lord in that sense of high respect and a sense of your own unworthiness, that is the only appropriate response to the holiness of God. 

Here is how Psalm 85:9 puts it.  Surely, God’s salvation is near to those who fear him. Well, they are the people that found God’s holiness scary and unattractive.

But what about if you feel the holiness of God to be absolutely impossible?  

And looking at your week, you know it was impossible, you felt it.

I will tell you right now, imitating God is not possible.  Salvation is not moral reform.  It is not developing better habits.  Salvation is not I make myself pray longer, I make myself read the Bible more.  It is impossible but here is what God said to folks who realize that it’s impossible.  And it comes from the New Testament from the Gospel of John 17.

Jesus Christ at the last supper with his 12, he tells them that he’s going to leave, he gets them ready for a difficult life of spreading his gospel when he will be gone and assume the spirit.  And he prays in their presence out loud.  And one of the things he prays is in John 17:18 to God the father, he says for their sake, speaking of the 12 disciples, I sanctify myself so that they may be sanctified.

The word sanctify and the word make holy are the same word in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament.  So let’s take the word sanctify away, and let’s use the word holy.

Jesus said God, for their sake, I make myself holy so that they may be holy.  What does he mean he makes himself holy? 

He means it in that first sense that we said, that the word holy comes from the word to cut, to separate, to set apart for a certain purpose.  He says God - he had no sin, of course, to set himself away from.  But I set myself away from my own desires.  I set myself apart from a normal life.

Maybe Jesus would love to have been married.  I didn’t have time for that.  Maybe Jesus would have found it easier to have a quiet life as a carpenter rather than have heated debates with people that wanted to stone him all the time.  But I set that aside.  God, I set all my own desires and pleasures aside, I separate myself to you and your purposes so that I might make them holy.

And he’s talking of course about how he sets himself apart so he would go to the cross.  And at the cross, their sins that would make them cower at the holiness of God would be placed on Jesus and now Jesus covered with their sins on the cross as it were cowers in the presence of the holiness of God and feels the divine wrath on him takes it from them onto himself, dies because of it, rises, goes to Heaven, receives from God the ability to give the Holy Spirit to his disciples and now because of his death, they have been made holy in the sense of forgiven.  And because of his resurrection, they received his spirit and they are being made holy because of his Holy Spirit actually changing their character.

So when God says because I am holy, you be holy, what he did not say for another 1400 years after he said those words, what he did not say at the time but now we know in retrospect is, and I am going to die for you so that I might make you holy both on the record books and in your actual soul.   

Brothers and sisters, it is impossible for you.  But with God, all things are possible because Jesus Christ takes you, his holy ones and makes you actually his holy ones.

So salvation is all about the life of God coming to live in the soul of humans.  It’s about as Peter says in 2 Peter 1:14, you participating in the divine nature where God’s Holy Spirit actually comes in you and changes your nature.  It’s about as Paul said in 1st Corinthians 1:30, Jesus Christ becoming our righteousness, our redemption, and our holiness.

Would you bow your heads please for a moment?  Could you pray about what you have heard.

• hymn - “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!”

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!  Early in the morning, our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy!  Merciful and mighty!  God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!
Holy, Holy, Holy!  All the saints adore thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee, who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.
Holy, Holy, Holy!  Though the darkness hide thee, through the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
Only thou art holy; there is none beside thee perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.
Holy, Holy, Holy!  Lord God Almighty!  All thy works shall praise they name in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, Holy, Holy!  Merciful and mighty!  God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Closing

Next week after the service, an elder and his wife will be in that corner.  Anyone wanting prayer, please come up.  Don’t come up to socialize.  But anyone of any age, however long you’ve been here or if you’re a first time visitor, come and get prayer if you need it.

Please hear God’s benediction.

May God himself sanctify you through and through.  May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who calls you his faithful and he will do it.  Amen.

Sanctification Sermon #3: Death to Sin (Part 2)- Romans 6:1-14

Sanctification Sermon #3: Death to Sin (Part 2)- Romans 6:1-14

This sermon is from our 7/17/2022 Worship Service.

Speaker: Senior Pastor Steve Estes
Title: Sanctification Sermon #3: Death to Sin (Part 2)
Scripture: Romans 6:1-14

Notes:

1. We died to sin
A. The Christian's death to sin relates to his baptism.
B. The Christian's death to sin is from being joined to Christ's death in particular

2. The death of Christ Himself was a "death to sin."
A. Christ's death was a death to the power of sin and death (hear Steve out on this)

3. We were buried with Christ through our baptism.

4. Your resurrection to new life is certain.
A. Since we are united with Christ in His death, we will certainly be united with Him in His resurrection

5. Your death to sin affected your whole person, including your body.
A. Your death to sin affected your whole person
B. Your death to sin included your body

6. Your resurrection to new life is certain.
A. Christ cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over Him
B. Neither does spiritual death have mastery over you. You are a new creation

7. What do we do with all of this?

8. All this comes with a promise.

Benediction:

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." -1 Thessalonians 5:23

#sanctification #deathtosin #lifeinchrist

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For more biblical teaching, you can also listen to audio sermons at: https://www.brick52.org/audio-sermons

Full Transcript of Sanctification Sermon #3. Death to Sin part 2

So it was a college chapel message, and after the message there was a time where anyone who wanted to could come up to the front, take the microphone, and just give some word, some testimony, some account of how God’s been working in their lives lately.

These were meant to be encouraging times at the college, but instead of being encouraging times, I found them to be discouraging in the main.  And the reason is, that just about everybody that took to the microphone shared great stories of spiritual victories that seemed to be fairly constant all the time.  Stories of how God had changed them so much and kept them from wrong and pushed them towards what is good.

And as I sat in my seat, I would sometimes just sink lower.  God, why is it that I find it so difficult to be a Christian and these people seem to find it so easy to be a Christian.

It’s the same dynamic perhaps which happens in this room, maybe, depending upon the person and the week.

On Sundays when we have a time of confession, which we do, every week.  Why, well, because confession time for some may encourage them because they’re unable to unburden themselves before Christ and know they are received and forgiven and that’s what God means for it to be.

But on the other hand, it can be discouraging.  If I find myself needing to confess the same sins over and over again, so many multiple times, why am I not changing?  Why am I feeling so defeated?

And thus, we’ve been looking beginning last week at Romans chapter 6, which is certainly not the only, but it is one of the primary passages that God has given us through the Apostle Paul to help us through this.  In Romans chapter 6, which we’re going to look at in a moment and read the first 14 verses, the Apostle Paul gives us the basic answer to this issue.  Not the only answer when he says, do you not know that we died to sin.

Romans chapter 6 verse 1-14, there is a copy of it on every other page in the sanctuary if you don’t have a Bible with you.

What shall we say then, shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  By no means.  We died to sin.  How can we live in it any longer?  Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.  If we had been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.  For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with. That we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  For we know that since Christ died - I’m sorry - for we know that since Christ was raised from the death that he cannot die again.  Death no longer has mastery over him.  The death he died, he died to sin, once for all.  But the life he lives, he lives to God.  In the same, way count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey it’s evil desires.  Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness.  But rather, offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to live.

And offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness, for sin shall not be your master because you are not under law, but under grace.

The basic answer Paul gives to us as we struggle with sin is that as Christians, “we died to sin.”

And we looked two weeks ago when we were last considering this passage at how complex an idea that is and how much confusion it has caused in the Christian church.  And we look at a number of views that are less than biblical, and yet have been very popular.  How some people believe it means that we must die to sin, as if it were something we are to do.  When Paul says, no, no, no, you already did - in the past tense - die to sin.

Other people said that what our death to sin was is that our flesh, our sinful nature, our tendency to sin was crucified with Christ in the cross and we must believe it to be so.  But the difficulty is, of course, that you know in your experience, your old nature, your flesh, like mine, is not dead.  It’s very much alive.

Other people have said, well, okay, maybe our flesh, our tendency to sin is still alive, but since crucifixion is a gradual death, maybe it means that gradually we are dying to sin.  And we mentioned what the problem was with this and with other views.  Misunderstandings.

I would say that I could very well relate to hearing sermons about all these different views of what death to sin was and how they were highly discouraging to me.  They just were not helpful at all.  I realized that Romans 6 was important.  I realized I didn’t understand it very well.  When I graduated from seminary, that’s why I went back for another degree - primarily to study Romans 6 and write about it.  I spent the better part of my life trying to ponder it, trying to work it out.  I’ve not always been successful, but I have seen its reality in my life.  And therefore, this is not just a theoretical time together today.

What does our having died to sin mean?

Uncharacteristically, in the latter part of the sermon, I just want to quickly work verse by verse in that order.  I don’t think it’s always the best way to do a sermon, but I think in part of a sermon it will be today.  And I’d like you to know there are so many writers I would need to credit in order to express it adequately.  I won’t be able to credit them all but please know I am standing on the shoulders of a great many people and I would say John Murray is one of them in particular.

Verses 2 and 3 say that we died to sin.  As I say, it’s Paul’s basic answer through our struggle with sin.  This is the identity of the Christian believer.  If you are a believer, you have died to sin.  Whether you ever heard that fact or understand it or it does anything for you, or you feel it, this is true of you, says Paul.

And then in verse 3, since Paul is writing to Roman Christians, he says to the Roman Christians, or don’t you know this?  Why would he assume that Roman Christians knew that they had died to sin?  Since so many Christians today who have the entire Bible today as the Romans did not, do not know.

The reason Paul could believe that the Roman Christians knew that they had “died to sin” - whatever that means for the present - is because they knew they had been baptized.

The Christian’s death to sin, according to this passage, relates to the Christian’s baptism.

Do you not know - that he says - and then he speaks of their baptism.  Now the Romans understood baptism.  They prized it, it was valuable to them.  Many of them had Pagan backgrounds with all that darkness and all that sin and all that lostness.  And they were thrilled to have been baptized into Christianity.

Many of the people in Rome were Jewish people.  They had a background where they had God’s laws, but they realized they were having trouble keeping it.  They realized that in the past they hadn’t realized that Jesus was the Messiah, and now they got that.  And so they were baptized into his faith and that was a huge change for them.  They were baptized.  When it comes to the water, as we mentioned two weeks ago, the word baptized doesn’t mean immersed.

What it means is to be joined together with something or someone so that you are totally changed.  So for instance, the New Testament talks about the Israelites after they left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea safely, were safe from pharaohs army, that they were “baptized into Moses.”  That’s 1st Corinthians 10:2.

It means that they were now no longer under pharaoh and his domination, but they were under Moses.  And where Moses goes, we all go.  If God leads Moses to the promised land, we all get to go to the promised land, baptized into Moses, joined to him in a way that they’re totally changed.

When the New Testament talks about being baptized into the name of Paul in 1st Corinthians 1:13 - which by the way, Paul denied that anybody was ever baptized into his name.  It would mean that people would have been baptized into being Paul’s disciples.  And he said that didn’t happen, you weren’t baptized into being my disciples.  You were baptized into somebody for a higher.

When Jesus, at the end of his life said to the apostles, go preach the gospel everywhere and baptize people into the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit, he means to baptize them into fellowship with the Trinity.  God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He says tell people you used to be joined to this world, but now you’re joined to the triad of God.

And when Paul says in Romans 6 that we were baptized into Christ, it means we were joined to him.  We have union with him.  We participate in all that he has and all that he has done.  It means that he now, is our champion.  He is our head.  Everything that we expect to get would be only through him.  That his gains are ours.  That his enjoyments - Christ’s enjoyments are ours.  For instance, it’s to know that Christ’s home is in Heaven.  And since we’ve been joined to him in baptism, our home is in Heaven.

It’s to know that Christ had power to heal the sick.  And since we’re joined to him, he will one day heal us if he hasn’t done it already.  It’s to know that just like Jesus’s prayers were heard by God, that our prayers will be heard by God as we pray in Jesus’s name.

Now of course as Paul talks about baptism here, he does not mean that the water that was used in a baptism service makes any of these things happen.  No, no.  He would studiously deny that.  What he means is that God, through the Holy Spirit, has joined us to Christ, has baptized into Christ, and that the ritual of baptism is what pictures that and seals it in the same way that a wedding ring is not what makes you married, you can buy a ring and slip it on your finger and it doesn’t mean you’re married.  What makes you married is giving a vow before some authority and some witnesses.

But the wedding ring is important, it’s the visible picture of it, it seals the deal.  A person who says I want to marry you but that part of the ceremony when I put the ring on, I really don’t want to do that - would make somebody really wonder what’s the deal.

So, in summary then, what we’re saying is this.  Paul writes to the Roman Christians that something immense has happened to them.  And by extension he says something has happened that’s immense to us, the readers who are Christians.  We have been joined into Christ, we have been baptized into union with him, and we have, as he puts it, died to sin.

This has been accomplished by our being joined to Christ.  Or as the New Testament puts it, our being baptized into Christ.  All this is a huge part, a huge key, a huge foundation to our overcoming sin.

But now let’s go on further.  His passage goes further by saying that the Christian’s death to sin is from being joined not just to Christ in general which is true, but the Christian’s death to sin comes from being joined to Christ’s death in particular.

Surely you realize, Paul is saying, that you were baptized into Christ.  Well since you’re baptized into all of Christ, not just part of Christ, everything about him - surely that includes being baptized, being joined to his death.

Somehow Paul is saying through your view of Christ, his death has become your death.  Verse 3, or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.  He says this in numerous ways throughout this passage.

Verse 5.  We have been united with him in his death.
Verse 8.  We died with Christ.
Verse 6.  To put it another way, our old self was crucified with him.
To put it yet another way, verse 4, we were buried with him.

Now the passage says in verse 10 that Christ’s death was a death to sin.  That’s a hard concept to get, we need to think about that.

It says in verse 10, the death that Christ died - he died to sin once for all.  He died with reference to sin, his death had to do with sin.

Now we might think when Paul says that Christ died to sin, that he’s talking about Christ paying for our sins, which of course Christ did and we’re very familiar with that and the book of Romans talks a lot about that.  And certainly that’s a huge element of Christ dying to sin, is paying for our sins, it’s part of what Paul was driving at.

But the chapter’s theme is not about our sins being forgiven and of Christ dying to pay for that.  The chapter’s theme is about our being freed from sins power, from its control, from its domination and its mastery over us.  And Christ’s death to sin was about that.

Verse 6 puts it this way - we know that our old self was crucified with him.

See how it has both us in that verse and him?  Ourself was crucified.  When and how?  When he was crucified, it combines our death with Christ’s death.  And then in verse 6, Paul says why our death was combined with Christ’s death, well it has to do, he says, that was because so that “we should no longer be slaves to sin.”  That’s the whole goal of the passage.

We plug into Christ’s death somehow in a way that we are no longer slave to sin.  Not that we do plug in, but that we have been plugged in.

To put it another way, it says in verse 4 this:  We were buried with Christ through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Ultimately, this passage deals with just not - not our dying to sin with Christ and we with him - but to Christ dying so as to rise, and we rising with him.  We rise with him in the sense of shaking off the power of sin.  We rise so that we might, as Paul says, live a new life.  So that we might overcome our sins, overcome our vices.

We - Paul drives that in Philippians 3:10 where he says we want to know the power of his resurrection. That’s largely what he’s talking about here.  But we will not grasp the idea that we have been resurrected with Christ to a new life until we first grasp the idea what it means that we have died to sin with Christ.

And I would freely grant this - this has a definite element of the mysterious.  It is mysterious that we have “died with Christ” but it is nonetheless real and Paul says it’s critical to know.

Often I have heard, often I have read more times than I could number sadly, Christian teachers, Christian authors, Christian commentators speaking this language without ever in my mind, simply explaining what it means.

I’m going to try to do that today, but even as I’ve worked on this, I thought my goodness, God, help us be clear about this, help me be simple about it, help me grasp it well enough to help my friends here grasp it.

Let’s try to figure what Paul means that we have died to sin by being joined to Christ when he died to sin.

What is clear is that the death of Jesus Christ himself was a “death to sin.”

We’re familiar with the idea that Christ died for sins to take our punishment, but what does it mean that he died to sins?

Well we get some help in verse 10 by how the passage parallels something in verse 10 with something in verse 2.  In verse 2 it says that we died to sin.  In verse 10 it says that Christ died to sin.  And the idea there is that since the whole passage is about our overcoming sin, or having the power to live righteously, the idea is we died to the power of the domination, the mastery of sin, because we’re joined to Christ and Christ died to the power, the domination, the mastery of sin.

The parallel regards our death to sin, verse 14, sin shall not be your master, with Christ’s death to sin, verse 9, that says once Christ rose, death no longer had mastery over him.  The fact that in verse 9 it says that when Christ rose, death no longer had mastery over him, means that while he was alive, in some sense, death - and I would say, sin - had mastery over Christ.

Christ died to sin and death’s power.  And so we died to sin and death’s power.  And its - its mastery over us.

So let’s think about that for a moment because that’s a very new concept to many Christians.  Christ’s death to sin was a death to the power, the mastery of sin and death over him.  During his life - I’m proposing to you and many others that Paul is writing, that sin and death had a certain power over Christ.

In what way?

It does not - please hear me clearly - it does not, not, not mean that Christ ever sinned.  Several of the gospel accounts talked about Christ’s temptation by Satan himself in the wilderness and he never yielded to him.  In John 8:46, Jesus said to his enemies, can any of you prove me guilty of any sin?

Peter, who traveled with him night and day for 3 1/2 years said of him in 1st Peter 2:22, Jesus committed no sins.  That is, he’s not guilty of sin, sin had no appeal to him, sin had no allure to him, he never sinned.  But, sin and death did have a power and mastery over him in a certain way.

Think about it.  Think about what it was like for Christ when he left the glories of Heaven, the ease of Heaven, the joy and the delight and the purity and the holiness and the goodness and the music and the beauty of Heaven.  When he left that, and voluntarily submitted himself to come here on this planet, think of the contrast of the world he stepped into.  He stepped into a world, into an environment.  We might say he stepped into a realm of sin and death.

When Christ came to this Earth, he stepped into a world that was a very cesspool of wickedness and darkness.  And as he did so, sin splashed on him.  It splashed on him without ever staining his soul, but it splashed onto him nonetheless.  His whole life was a march through the swamp of a world infested with sin, and it was a march straight towards death - which is the end result of sin.

Think of how sin and death in this way had a mastery, had a dominion, splashed upon Jesus.  Although he was rich in Heaven, he was born in poverty as Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 8, though he was rich, yet for our sakes, he became poor.  Think about how Jesus, we learn in Isaiah 53, was not physically attractive.  There was “nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”  The fall of humans into sin through Adam which ruined our bodies in many ways, it made us sick and made us at times unattractive, that affected Christ’s human body.

Christ was affected by sin and death in that he had a difficult life.  Isaiah says he was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.  Sin and death dominated Christ’s life in that Christ knew what physical weakness was.  He never knew that in Heaven.  He slept on a boat we learned in the gospels from exhaustion.

He says in Matthew 21, I am hungry.
He says in John 19, I am thirsty.

Sin and death reached him, dominated his life in that he was rejected by the - at the end, by the vast majority of the people who heard him.  As John says in his first chapter, he, Jesus came unto his own.  And his own did not receive him.  And that rejection of Christ by just about everybody, it morphed eventually into a loathing of Christ, a hatred of Christ, so that he can say, Jesus can say in John 15:25, they hated me without reason.  Jesus had none of this in Heaven.

The gospels record multiple attempts to murder him.  Again and again we read verses like, they picked up stones to stone him.  Or, the Jews tried hard to kill him.  And other verses I don’t have time to read.  He was arrested and accused of crimes without a cause.  And finally, the murderers that followed him all through his life succeeded under the governorship of Pontius Pliate, and we read in Matthew 27 then, Pilate had Jesus flawed and handed him over to be crucified.

All this was because Jesus identified with our sins.  And because he identified with our sins, sin splashed on him, sin affected him, sin dominated his life.

You recall the ministry of John the Baptist.  John the Baptist came in order to tell people that the Messiah was coming.  And we read in Matthew 3:6, that when people came to be baptized by John, they came “confessing their sins.”

Then we read just a few verses later, then Jesus came to be baptized by John.  And John we read, was taken aback.  I should be baptized by you, you don’t want to be baptized by me because John knew what he was about.  He was baptizing people who were confessing their sins and Jesus said in John 3:14, let it be so now, it is proper for us to do this.

It is proper for me to go through a baptism that is given to sinful people, the need to confess their sins.  Why?  Because he had any sins he needed to confess?  No.  But because he was living a life and eventually would die a life - a death - where he was taking on himself our sins, where he bore our sins.  Where he was identified with our sins.  Sin had dominance and mastery over him, his entire life to the moment that he expired.

And so Jesus stepped into the middle of sin to absorb it.  He stepped into the middle of death to bear it.

1st Peter 2:24, Christ himself bore our sins in his body.  And therefore when he died on the cross, the Father, looking down, turned his face away from Christ.  And Christ prayed and said my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

The culmination of this whole idea that Christ’s life was dominated, that Christ was mastered by sin throughout his life comes, in Paul’s words in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21, where it actually says these stunning words - God made Christ who had no sin to be sin for us.

If those words were not in the Bible, I couldn’t have believed it.  It means that on the cross, God so identified Christ with our sins, it is like, pardon the analogy, a 55 gallon barrel full underneath an outhouse - full of human waste - and God poured it over his son so that Jesus was drenched and stinking and smelling of our sins so that it is fair to say in the words of Apostle Paul, God made him to be sin as it were.

And therefore Jesus Christ, all though his life and in intense ways at his death, finally cried out with a loud cry.  And he breathed his last.  And he died because of sins.

Sin dominated and mastered Christ in a very real way all though his life and death.

This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 6 verse 9 when it says that Christ having been raised, death no longer has mastery over him.  That verse only makes sense if throughout Jesus’s whole life, sin and death did have mastery over him, because all through Romans 6 and 7, sin and death are pictured as a ruthless slave master.

But when Christ died, when finally he said, it is finished, into your hands I commit my spirit - when he died, he was through with all that.  He had taken upon our - himself, our sins.  Sin and ultimately death feed upon him, but when he died and was buried and rose, he was free forever from all of that.

Verse 9, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again.  Death no longer has mastery over him.  Paul applies everything we have been saying for the last 5 or 10 minutes, Paul applies this mastery over Christ of death, that he freed himself from by his death and resurrection - Paul applies this to us by saying, you Christian were joined to Christ.  Christ is our representative.  The good that he has, we have.  And so let’s add to our former statement.

Since Christ’s death to sin was a death to the power of sin and we’re joined to him, Christ’s death to the power of sin and death was our death to the power of sin and death.  God viewed his achievement as including us.  As applying to us.  Similarly when it says that Christ’s resurrection to glory in Heaven was our resurrection to a new life.

Both at the end of time will be resurrected.  But Paul means in this very life right now.  As you wrestle with sin, there will be a resurrection because God has linked you with Christ in a way that’s beyond our understanding so that his resurrection becomes yours and mine.

The pitiful analogy, and I don’t know what else to do, and as we’ve said before - think about a college basketball team.  Their team wins the game, and their whole school has won.  Have they not?  We won!  We won, shouted thousands of people at Penn State, even though most of them are so out of shape they couldn’t dribble halfway down the court.

The Army goes to war and they win and the whole country celebrates the victory.  We won!  We won!  Your savior won.  And Paul says to Christians… Oh, try to get this.  You won.  You won.  You really did.  And try to learn to celebrate the victory about that.

All right, now let’s quickly work through the passage verse by verse at a good speed to see how Paul fleshes this out.  In verse 1 to 3, let me get my large print of this here.  In verse 1 to 3, we’ve already covered that.  To overcome sin, Paul says we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into Christ’s death.

Now in verse 4 he takes that further.  He says not only were we baptized with Christ into his death, but we were buried with Christ.  That takes it a step further.  Verse 4, we were buried with him through our baptism into his death.  The idea is that if we died with Christ in God’s mind the way God views it, we must have been buried with Christ the way God views it.  That is, just like a person who is buried, now you know they’re dead.  They’re not going to be resuscitated, it’s over, so God considers us as truly having died to sin in that Christ, God considers us as buried with Jesus.

Why is this idea that we were buried with Christ important?  Why is it important?  It’s important because a burial is the only thing that really gives meaning to a resurrection.  People aren’t raised who are not first but are in the ground.   But people were buried because they died.  They can be raised by the power of God.

Why is it important that a person, a Christian is considered by God to have been buried in order to show that the death was real?  It is because death to sin, as important as that is, is not enough.  Death is basic to our overcoming sin, our death to sin.  Our death to sin is fundamental to our overcoming sin, but our death to sin is not the entire story.  Our death to sin is, somebody called it, the precondition of our rising to new life.  That’s why God considers us buried so that he can consider us to be risen with Christ.

Verse - Chapter 5 verse 17 of Romans says we will reign in life through the one man. 

Only people who have been buried are raised, and our being raised with Christ is a huge part of what Paul is going to make in his argument here.

So, we have read that we were buried with Christ in his death.  Now in verse 5 he goes on to say that your resurrection to a new life with Christ is absolutely certain.  You have been raised with Christ and the way that is going to work out in your life is absolutely certain, verse 5.  It doesn’t matter how weak and struggling a Christian you are.  Verse 5, if we have been united with Christ like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with Christ in his resurrection.

The idea is this:  Christ’s death and Christ’s resurrection were inseparable.  It is inconceivable that Christ, the Son of God could die and not be raised.  And so since we are joined to him, our death to sin, but our resurrection to a new life, is inseparable.  Our death - that our death to sin will not result. Let me - I’m sorry.

That our death to sin won’t result in our being raised into a new life here is as impossible as it is that Christ’s death would not result in his being raised, because we’re joined to him.  We will certainly, verse 5 says, be united with him in his resurrection.  And here again, it doesn’t mean primarily the bodily resurrection at the end of time, it means resurrection in this life from being dominated by sin.

By the way, when it says that we were united with him in his death, this is one of those places that - didn’t you hate growing up - Curtis Hoke puts it like this.  You’ve been to church, and you know, the Bible this word says yes, but in the Greek, it means no.  You know, always appealing to the Greek.  But there are some times when it is helpful, and in the language that Paul wrote, which was that language, when he says we have been united with him in his death, he’s using the word that is used of vegetables or flowers that are planted together.

We have been planted together in his death.  It’s not that Christ’s death is gradual like a plant grows gradually and that our death to sin is gradual, no, no, no.  He’s talking about the intimacy of it.  We are joined to Christ like - like things growing together, as it were.  The closeness of our relationship to his death is what Paul has in mind.

Now, furthermore, he goes on in verse 6 and 7 to say, your death to sin that you may not feel, that you may be unaware of, that you may not grasp, that you may not be living in the light of - hopefully that will change, has changed for many of you, will change for others of you in the future - your death to sin affected your whole person, including your body.

Here’s how this happened, in verse 6 and 7.  Let’s take first how your death to sin included your whole person.  It has to do with what Paul calls the old man in verse 6, or the old self in verse 6.  It reads like this:  We know that our old self was crucified with him.

Now there are many people who believe and I think it’s almost, well it is, provable, that it’s wrong that when it says that your old self was crucified, that it’s talking about your sinful nature being crucified.  Or your lower nature being crucified.  Or your tendency to sin being crucified.

The Bible doesn’t teach that, Paul doesn’t teach that, Peter doesn’t teach that, and your experience and mine certainly doesn’t teach that.  No, no, you and I both know that our flesh, our sinful tendencies are very much alive, the New Testament agrees.

Galatians 5:17 says that in a Christian, our flesh - that is our sinful nature, desires what’s contrary to the Holy Spirit.  And the Holy Spirit desires what’s contrary to the sinful nature, they’re in conflict with each other.  It doesn’t mean that our - our old nature has died.  Some people when we hear that our old self has been crucified believe that - well our old self has been crucified, but he’s - he’s still around in some way.  When I feel tempted to sin, that’s my old self, and so I guess I”m supposed to continually be crucifying my old self.  No.  Paul says verse 6, your old self was crucified.

Well what part of you is your old self?  It’s not a part of you.  He’s talking about all of you.  You, your whole being in your entirety, everything about you was in God’s eyes, crucified with Christ.  You and your entirety.  Your whole pre-Christian self.  Yourself before you were born again.  Whether you were saved in life later as an adult and you remember your old life in sin, or whether you were saved as a child and you really don’t remember before you were born again, the you before you were born again in its’ entirety is who was crucified with Christ.

Is this mysterious?  Yes, it’s mysterious.  But what it means is this - in a way that I think we will never fully grasp, hopefully it may be in Heaven, God has put in us a definitive, a once for all, a final break with the mastery of sin.  He has not done this between us and the presence of sin, we still do have the presence of sin in our lives.  He has not done this by killing off our old natures, we still have this bent and this tendency.  But he has done this, this separation, this definitive breaking apart between sin’s mastery and us.

Sin’s mastery is when sin wins every time.  Sin’s mastery and domination is when it’s impossible to rise above it.  It’s when a non-believer, even when I do good works, as 1 Thessalonians put it, I do bad good works because I do them for the wrong motives, or I do them in the wrong sort of way.  But God has promised in verse 14 that sin shall not be your master.  Your flesh exists, you must still fight it, but to win you must know something about yourself.  Verse 6, we know, he says, and what we know is that God has made a final breach between us and sin.

Okay, so I hear you, we say to Paul.  I don’t - I don’t feel that particularly, but it’s in the Bible so I know it must be true.  I want to realize it, why is it important to know that?  It’s important to realize that you are a different person.

May I say that again?  If you are a Christian, it doesn’t matter how young you are, or how old you are.  It - it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve read your Bible in the last year, or hopefully not, not at all.  But if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you are a different person.  You are not the self you once were.

This doesn’t lead to a life of ease.  It leads to a life of constant warfare.  Sometimes that warfare will be intense.  But God is saying in that warfare, as time goes on, you will win.  Because God sees you as having died to sin’s mastery.  And he sends his spirit to make that real in you.  When Christ died to the mastery of sin, that took affect in you when you were born again.

You, and I mean you, who struggled with sin this week.  You are done Paul says, with sin’s domination.

An analogy that many people have used that is very good is what happened in World War II.  As the axis forces, the Japanese, the Italians, and Germans and so forth - as they were winning right and left and things looked miserable, finally, when the allies on D-Day took to the beaches of Normandy, France, and this massive allied force landed, the war was over.

Well the war wasn’t over, but the war was over.  You get what I’m saying?  Everybody knew this war is over.  It’s going to take many months to flesh it out as the allies move inland now, but the Germans knew, and Americans and the British knew, this war is over, really.

We’ll consider this warfare in another sermon because it’s real and doubtless you feel it if you have any sensitivity at all as a Christian.  But we said your death to sin included your whole person.  Now in particular Paul says, your death to sin includes your body.  He’s not saying that you have to make this death to sin happen, he is saying that your death to sin happened, that included your body.

Verse 6, we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with.  Not that the human body is sinful, that’s not what he means when he says the body of sin.  Not that all of human urges or physical urges are sinful.  Not at all.  But what he means is that sin does hugely use our bodies as a beach head to cause us to sin.  Our feet go to the wrong places, our eyes look at the wrong things, our hands get ourselves into trouble, our tongues destroy other people, our stomachs get hungry and we’re more vulnerable to lose our temper.  Our bodies are tired and we’re more liable to lash out sinfully.

Our natural and good biological urges are warped.  Even the sins of our mind depend on our brain.  And our brain participates in our sins.  Paul says that the old self is crucified, that your body was affected by sin, and your body now, the body of sin in the death of Christ and therefore your death was “done away with.”  A better translation is, it is made useless.

You may recall in Luke 13 where Jesus told a parable where there was a tree that wasn’t bearing any fruit and the gardener said to the owner of the vineyard, let’s give it one more year before I cut it down because I know if it goes one more year, it’s going to “make the ground useless.”  That is, it’s going to drain all the nutrients from the ground and make it worthless for anything productive.  That’s the word that he uses here.  He’s talking about making your body ineffective at sinning.  Useless at sinning.  Render powerless at sinning, of course, not all at once.

Here the result is this - it’s not so that you will never sin, it’s rather so that you will never again be a helpless slave to sin because having died with Christ, you died from sin’s mastery and that includes our bodies.  This is important because our bodies give us so much trouble, we need to know what’s true about them.

Now your body may have caused you a lot of sinful trouble, even in the very recent past, even in the last 24 hours.  Paul is saying you need to know something.  Your body was included in what Christ did for you on the cross.  It’s going to take some time for you to realize it, it will take some time for you to flesh it out, it will take some time for you to work that out.  But the beginning first step is to realize it really is so, your body was rescued from slavery to sin and the Holy Spirit is going to spend the rest of your life showing you how that works and how to work it out in your heart.

Your resurrection to a new life is absolutely certain it says in verse 8 and 9, that just repeats what’s in verse 5.  Here’s what John Murray said about this, the fact that you have risen with Christ as well as died with Christ.  The believer is not regarded as dying and rising with Christ again and again.  Undoubtedly there is progress in the Christian life, but the dying and rising of us with Christ are not viewed as a process.  They’re viewed as a definite, definitive, decisive event in the past.

Our dying and rising with Christ can no more be seen as some continuous process, than can the death and resurrection of Christ himself.  That’s how certain it is. Here’s the way one theologian put it.  You are not totally new, but you are genuinely new.  You, as a Christian.  Verse 10, we already covered how Christ was under sin’s mastery, he died all that, and now as he lives to God.

By saying that he now lives to God, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t try to please God the Father while he was on earth.  But it meant after, after his death, sin and all of its ramifications no longer had to be his focus.  He no longer had to concentrate on the negative.  Now he could positively be seated with God the Father in Heaven and could focus as it were on ruling the world on God’s behalf.  So we still have our flesh, but because we have died with Christ and been raised with Christ, we can focus on a life pleasing to God and not spend everything just on fighting sin.

So what do we do with all of this?

Well that’s what Paul wraps up in verses 11 to 14.  What do we do with it?  First thing he says in verse 11, we are to count ourselves as dead to sin.  We are to consider it to be true, we are to reckon it to be so.  This is the first command in the entire book of Romans because everything up to now is what we need to know.

It is not commanding us to become dead to sin and alive to God.  It is not saying by reckoning that you are dead to sin and alive to God, that’s what makes your being dead to sin and alive to God real.  No, no no - no.  This dying and rising with Christ, this - and our counting it dead is not like the signs on the lawns that you see when you drive.

Sometimes you’ll see signs on lawns, 1, 2, 3, 4 in a row, so as cars pass by quickly they can read them.  That they’re against - they’re what people - for people struggling with drug addiction, or for people struggling with alcoholism, or for people struggling with a potential suicide.  And the signs say things like this, you can do this, or you are enough.  You ever see something like this?  You’re okay.  You can get through this.  Well, that is only hopeful self talk.  You may not be enough to get through drug addiction, alcohol addiction or a tendency to suicide on your own.

Rather, what Paul is saying is something far different.  He is saying you are to count on, to consider as true, to reckon, to believe these things about ourselves because they are true.  And they are true even when, and I would like to say, they are true especially when you don’t feel like they’re true.  Here’s what one theologian Anthony Hoekema says.  Christianity not only means believing something about Christ, it also means believing something about ourselves.  Namely, that we truly are new creatures in Christ.

And as a result, the next thing that we’re supposed to do with it is found in verse 12.  He says, don’t let sin reign, R-E-I-G-N, like a king, in your body.  John Murray said this, it is only because sin does not reign that it can be said to you, do not let sin reign.  Here is another analogy, I’ve heard many people make it, I thought John Murray does it especially well.  To say to a slave who has not been set free, don’t behave as a slave, to say that to him is to mock his enslavement.

But to say to the same slave who has been freed, who has been emancipated, to say to the same slave who has been emancipated, that is to say don’t behave as a slave, that’s a necessary appeal for him to put into effect, the privileges that he’s been given.  It’s a mockery to the person who has not been emancipated.  It is necessary to say to a slave who has been emancipated, but who isn’t acting like it.  Don’t let sin reign, up and fight it.

And finally what he says in verse 13, he says, particularly what you should do about it?  Don’t vive up by yielding your body to sin.  He says this negatively first, the positively.  Negatively he says verse 13, don’t offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness.

When he uses the word instruments there, it’s interesting because the word he’s using is the word that’s usually translated in this language, weapons.  Do not offer your body as weapons of wickedness.  The idea is something like this:

The New Testament pictures sin as if it were a person.  It personifies sin as if it were a mean king, a nasty dictator, that’s why it says in verse 12 that sin reigns, like a king reigns.  And it pictures sin as a nasty king or dictator who demands military service from his subjects.

Verse 12, it says we need to obey that - that king, that master, that sin.  And furthermore, that sin is like a king who requires his subjects to use their weapons in his service.  To go to war, to do his bidding.  And finally, this is picturing sin as a dictator who demands military service of his subjects, who requires them to use weapons in his service, and who gives them the soldiers pay, of Romans 6:23, the wages of sin is death.

That’s the kind of king and dictator sin is.  But positively said no, no, no.  He says because you have died to sin, and you’re raised with Christ, even though you can’t feel it, verse 13, offer yourselves to God.  God, I want you to be my king.  You tell me what to do, you take the weapons of my eyes, my ears, my feet, my tongue, all the parts of my body, you use them as weapons in your service.  I give them to you to do that.

Say to God, God, when Christ died to sin, I know that you count me as having died to sin.  I may not understand it all, but I choose to believe it.  I feel like a skinny weakling, but you say to me son or daughter, get into that boxing ring and fight.

And so God, weak as I feel, frail as I feel, as unsuccessful as I’ve been so much, I offer you my weak body, my weak mind, my weak soul to you.  Help me, God.  I’m walking up to that ring, and I now separate and I step though the ropes.  That’s what he’s saying to do.  And all of this comes with a promise in verse 14, the promise is this:

For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law.  You are under grace.  What he means is this, in our final verse.  Here’s what law does, that’s one way to put it.  Law tells you what you must do, it commands and demands all the 10 Commandments and the other laws.  Law proves when you obey.  Law pronounces judgment every time you disobey.  Law shines a light on and exposes your sin and you feel naked.  At the same time, law entices you to sin by putting up Wet Paint, Do Not Touch It sign on the bench.  So of course you’re going to touch it to see if it’s really wet.  That’s what law does.  Law cannot make you right when you have become wrong by breaking it.  And law cannot remove you from the bondage to sin and lawbreaking.

All of this was true of you in your old self, but verse 14 says you are not under law, you are under grace.  That is, you are under everything we’ve been talking about.  Christ died for you, yes.  But being under grace, you died with Christ.  You were joined to him.  You were a branch attached to him as a vine.  Without him you can do nothing but with him, you can do as Paul said, I can do all things through Christ who has strengthens me.  This is what your death to sin bought you.

It doesn’t mean an immediate victory in this life, it certainly doesn’t mean a total victory in this life.  But it means a real and substantial victory in this life that will be totaled in Heaven.  And in the meantime, as you fight with this in mind, when you fail, when you sin, when you blow it, what do you do?

Anthony Hoekema again.  A believer deeply conscious of his or her shortcomings does not need to say, because I am a sinner, I cannot consider myself a new person.  Rather, he or she should say, I am a new person, but I still have a lot of growing to do.

We’ll consider this growing next week when we are together again.  Would you please bow your heads and pray about these matters silently?

Prayer:

God, would you hear the prayers of the following categories of people?  Would you hear the prayers of those who are confused?  Would you hear the prayers of those who are skeptical, or those who are discouraged?  Would you hear the prayers of those who are not yet believers and are reaching for this because they feel they need help with their vices and would you send them the clear gospel of Jesus Christ that they may believe and be joined to him and these things may be true of them?  And God, for the hopeful, for those who say, if God said this, it must be true, I want to start acting on it.  God, give me grace, oh Lord, hear their prayers.  In Jesus name, amen.

Conclusion:

As we get ready to leave, please know again that elders and their wives will be in this corner and anybody, long-timer or first-time attendee is welcome to come and ask for prayer about anything.  Would you please stand for the benediction.

Benediction:

Brothers and sisters, may God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.  May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless, for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

Sanctification Sermon #4: Bad Slavery, Good Slavery - Romans 6

Sanctification Sermon #4: Bad Slavery, Good Slavery - Romans 6

This sermon is from our 7/24/2022 Worship Service.

Speaker: Senior Pastor Steve Estes
Scripture: Romans 6:15-23
Title: Sanctification Sermon #4: Bad Slavery, Good Slavery

Notes:

1. Everyone is a slave to either righteousness or sin
A. We tend to think, "I'm my own person"
B. Experience confirms we are slaves
C. Scripture teaches we are slaves

2. In your pre-Christian life, sin was a terrible slave master
A. Slavery to sin led to shame
B. Slavery to sin leads to death
C. Sin inevitably leads to more sin

3. Righteousness is a wonderful slave master
A. Noteworthy contrast between the two slaveries

4. Applications
A. If your life basically ignores God, why would you be confident of eternal life?
B. If righteousness feels like drudgery, you may not be a Christian
C. If you are a slave of God...

Benediction:

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his slaves will serve him. They will see his face. (Revelation 22:3) The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen. (Revelation 22:21)

Transcription:

In development.