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"SHALL WE CONTINUE IN SIN?"
I. WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED THUS FAR IN ROMANS?
A. Chapter one.
1. The gospel or good news of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation to all that believe, Jew and Gentile alike.
2. That the pagan world cannot plead innocence, for God has manifested Himself to them through creation.
3. Yet the pagan world refused to glorify Him as God and became vain in their imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened and professing themselves to be wise they became fools for they changed the glory of an incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man.
4. They changed the truth of God into a lie and began to worship and serve the creature more than the creator.
a. The worship of the human body. Pornography.
b. The worship of sex. Man's reproductive capacity.
1. There is nothing intrinsicly evil about the sex drive.
2. It was created by God for the perpetuating of the human race.
3. God commanded Adam to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.
4. Talking to the Pharisee's about marriage Jesus said,
MAT 19:4 Have ye not read, that he which made [them] at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
5. Paul the Apostle writing about marriage said in 1 Corinthians, 7:2 "Let every man have his own wife and every woman have her own husband."
6. It is an indictment against our times that it takes an act of Congress to recognize this basic fundamental truth that should be so obvious, that marriage is between a man and a woman.
5. Paul tells us in chapter one that because they exchanged the truth for a lie, God gave them over to vile affections for even the woman did change the natural use into that which is against nature. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
a. What can you say about a man marrying a man? Or a woman marrying a woman? "It is unnatural. The Bible speaks of unnatural affection. A recent study done by the University of Chicago found that 7/10ths of 1 percent of the people in our nation live a homosexual life style. Far from the 10% that they seek to claim.
b. The sin of homosexual relationships is no worse than adultery, or fornication, thus we should not think of them as deserving of greater punishment by God. It is only their brazen parading of their sin that gets under my skin just as when those Lakewood High School boys who bragged on national television of all of the girls they had had sex with. It is the wantonness of their sin.
B. In chapter two:
1. Paul shows that we are not to judge another man for his sin, for we are all guilty before God.
2. That often those who have a knowledge of God are prone to judge those who have never known the law of God.
3. That the judgment of man at best is fallible but the judgment of God is right, and that one day God will judge in righteousness.
C. In chapter 3:
1. Both Jews and pagans are sinners. There is none righteous, no not one.
2. There is none who seeks after God.
3. A man cannot be justified before God by the deeds of the law for the law can only show you your sin.
4. God has provided a righteous standing before Him apart from the Law.
5. It is through faith in Jesus Christ, through whom God has provided redemption for mankind, Jew and pagan alike.
D. Chapter 4:
1. Abraham the father of the Jewish race was justified on the principle of faith, "Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness."
2. This was years before the law was ever given, and totally apart from rituals.
E. Chapter 5:
1. Because God loves us and has provided a means of forgiveness of our sins we can now have peace with God.
2. We also have access to God through Jesus so we can come and receive His, love, fellowship, guidance, help, strength.
3. God manifested His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
4. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
II. WHAT SHALL WE SAY THEN, SHALL WE CONTINUE IN SIN THAT GRACE MAY ABOUND?
A. A person may argue that in as much as God loves sinners, and my sins give God a chance of showing His patience and love, why not just continue in my sin that the grace of God may abound?
B. Paul's answer to such a proposition is "Perish the thought" God forbid.
C. He introduces the new principle, that is, we are now dead to sin, so how can we live any longer therein?
1. You that were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death.
2. You were buried with Him by baptism into death.
3. When we came up out of the water it was to live the new life in Him. The life of the spirit.
4. The flesh is no longer to reign as king in your body.
D. He that is dead is freed from sin.
1. No man is immune from temptation.
2. What is a temptation to me may not be a temptation to you and visa-versa.
3. Man becomes a slave to his cravings.
a. Let us take for instance drug addiction.
b. Across the U.S. today many are strung out on cocaine or heroin.
c. They may be to the point where they now recognize that their addiction is destroying them.
d. They are determined to quit, but they find that they do not have the ability or power to quit, they realize that they have become a slave to this drug.
e. In desperation they turn to God for help.
f. God is loving and gracious and points them to His Son who has died for their sin, and invites them to surrender their lives to Him as their Lord.
g. They no longer need to be mastered by their passions or addictions that are destroying them, they can have a new Master who will set them free from their bondage to their fleshly desires.
f. They can have a new life, and abundant life, for Jesus said that He came that we might have life and that more abundantly.
h. When I accept Jesus Christ as My Lord, that old life is now dead, for if any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation, the old things have passed away and behold all things become new.
j. Now that habit or addiction that once mastered me and was destroying me has no more power over me.
k. If a man say has an addiction to drugs and has come to the place where he will steal to feed his habit. He now roams the streets looking for his next fix. Should he be struck by a car and killed, and his body is lying there in the street dead, you could come up to him and offer him some of the purest and most powerful heroin, and he will not even budge, he is dead.
l. The same is true for the one addicted to pornography or any other fleshly craving that is causing him to be destroyed.
m. The principle of deliverance is that I have been crucified with Christ, the old life is now dead.
n. Listen to these glorious words of Paul here in Romans six.
ROM 6:11 In the same manner account yourselves to be to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
ROM 6:12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey the desires of your flesh.
ROM 6:13 Neither yield your body as an instrument of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves to God, as one that are alive from the dead, and yield your body as an instrument of righteousness unto God.
ROM 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you any more: for you are not under the law, but under grace.
ROM 6:15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.
ROM 6:16 Don't you realize, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, you become it's slave; whether it be to sin unto death, or to obedience unto righteousness?
ROM 6:17 But thank God, though you were once the slaves of sin, since you have obeyed from you heart the gospel of God which was delivered to you.
ROM 6:18 You have been set free from sin, and have became the servants of righteousness.
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Square — [Jhn 1:1 KJV]
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