Church Sermon - June 26, 2005

Rev. Mark F. Bartels

Old Testament Lesson; Jeremiah 28:5-9
Gospel Lesson; Matthew 10:34-42
Sermon Text; Romans 6:1-11

I want to tell you about an incident I ran across, with one of our shut-in members, a number of years ago, (long since then, she has died and gone to Heaven). She was a sweet, tender, kind, older lady. However, she was not very healthy, at all. Because of her health conditions, she was not able to get out of her house. So, we would go and visit her.

I had visited her, many, many, many, times. One day when I got to her house, I was quite surprised. I was very surprised to see someone there, who I had never seen before. He was a young man, about my age (well, that maybe is not so young!). But, a man about my age, who looked like he had come from the "wrong side of town." When I got there, he was talking to her. And, very shortly after I got there, I noticed that he took her checkbook out of her purse and left.

I turned to her and asked, "Who was that?"

"Well, that is a man I used to know, many, many years ago. He just knocked on my door one day. He started to befriend me. He comes and visits me. And, one day he asked me if there was anybody that was doing my checking for me, or my banking? And I told him, ‘no’. He said he would do my banking for me."

I was concerned, so I asked her what he does. She told me that he would go to the bank and take out the money that she would ask him for. And, usually he would write himself a check, because he needed some money.

When she told me that, I asked her how much he usually wrote the check for. She told me it was usually quite a bit of money.

It certainly appeared to me as if that man was doing "what" to our shut-in member? He was using her. He was just using her.

Now you, as members, would certainly want me to do something about that, wouldn’t you? I want to take that over to the spiritual realm of things. Certainly, if we see somebody using our Savior, you would want your pastor (and all of us) to do something about it. Did you know that it is the tendency of our sinful nature, our sinful nature, to use, to misuse, to abuse our Savior? And, our sinful nature wants to use Him as a license, or a free ticket to sin. Let me explain. Our sinful nature knows who our Savior is. Our sinful nature knows that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. He paid for the sins of the whole world. We are saved by grace alone. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to deserve it. We don’t have to do anything. We don’t even have to do good works to get to Heaven. Our Savior died. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, simply by trusting in Jesus Christ alone. Our sinful nature knows that.

And so, our sinful nature then says, "I am going to use Jesus. I am going to use Him as a license for sin. If He freely forgives sins, if we don’t get to Heaven by what we do, but by what Jesus did for us, then I am going to use Jesus as a free ticket. I am going to go out and sin all I want to. I am not going to have any intention of changing my sinful life. And, then I am going to go to Jesus and ask Him to forgive me for my sin."

That is using our Savior. That is treating Jesus as a license to sin. That is not the Christian faith. Let me give you some examples of how that happens in real life. Unfortunately, I have been in conversations with people who have been brought up in the church and they know that adultery is wrong. They know that it is a sin. They know that it is a sin to be sexually active outside of marriage. However, they have decided to live with someone, outside of marriage. And so, I have walked through scripture with them, showing them that it is a sin.

Finally, they have admitted, "Yah, you are right. It is a sin. It is wrong."

But then they will look at me and say, "We are all sinners. Jesus died for all of our sins. So, I am going to continue to sin. I am going to continue to do the wrong thing. I know that Jesus will forgive me."

That, my friends, is a sinful nature that sees Jesus as a free ticket to sin, as a license to sin, and is simply using our Savior. That is not the Christian faith. In fact one of the most sobering passages in scripture, describes that very attitude in the book of Hebrews when it says,

"If we continue to sin,

when we know the sacrifice for sin,

there is no sacrifice for sin left,

but only a fearful expectation of God’s wrath."

There scripture tells us, if we think we can use Jesus as a license to sin, as a free ticket to sin, then there is nothing left, but a fearful expectation of God’s judgment and of wrath. And so, our scripture reading today addresses that very issue, for anyone here who thinks, "I can live a life of sin, with no intention to change it whatsoever, because I know my Savior is just going to freely forgive me."

Our scripture addresses that very attitude when it says,

"Shall we go on sinning

so that grace may increase?"

It asks the question and then it gives the answer.

"Shall we go on sinning

so that grace may increase?

Absolutely not! That is not the Christian faith.

Then it goes on and describes the Christian faith, in maybe some of the most bold and vivid pictures that we find in all of scripture. Here, in this section from scripture, it describes what Jesus did for us, in pictures that almost make your heart stop. Often, when we talk about Jesus, we say, "When He died, our sins were nailed to the cross with Him." But you know, it goes far beyond that. In today’s scripture reading, it even goes so far as to not just say "my sins were nailed to the cross with Christ." It says,

"For we know that our old self (our sinful self)

was crucified with Him."

I died with Christ. There, the picture the Bible gives us is that it was not just my sin that was nailed to the cross with Christ. I was nailed to the cross with Christ. I died with Christ. My sinful nature died with Christ. There is the picture, that in God’s eyes, the person who was nailed to that cross was me. It was my sinful nature, (my sinful nature which is an enemy of God, which hates God, which despises God, which loves the things that God hates and hates the things God loves), that is the very thing that was nailed to the cross. That is the very thing that deserved to be punished by God. There on the cross, my sinful nature was punished. It was nailed to the cross. There on the cross, my sinful nature died, in God’s eyes. It suffered what it deserved for its sin.

Only, by grace, it was not me who actually had to undergo that. It was Jesus, my Savior. It was God’s own dear Son. By grace, God sees it as if I, my sinful nature, suffered everything that I deserved, because of my sin. That’s what happened on the cross.

Then the passage goes on and talks about what happened in our baptism. In our baptism, everything that Jesus did becomes our personal possession! We benefit from what Christ did for us. Listen to what it says.

"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."

When I was baptized, God the Holy Spirit reached into my heart, through the power of His Word. He brought me to believe in Jesus, as my Savior. It says we were buried with Christ in baptism. By faith, God causes me now to see that when Christ was lying in the grave, so did I. So did I, in God’s eyes! There in the grave lay my sinful nature. That sinful nature, which is opposed to God and is an enemy of God, is dead. It is dead! It is dead! It has been put to death, with Christ!

"Just as Christ was raised from the dead

through the glory of the Father,

we too may live a new life."

We live a new life, as a new man. Now by faith, we see that our sins have been paid for, in Christ. We will not suffer the condemnation we deserve, because Christ suffered it for us. That sinful nature is dead. We do not want to live in sin, anymore. We do not want to serve sin, anymore. That is the very thing that caused God to have to condemn His own Son. And so, now by faith in Jesus, knowing what He has done for us, just as Jesus got up out of the grave, by faith we get up out of the grave. A new man comes forth. Not that sinful nature anymore, but a new man who wants to live for and serve our Savior. A new man who loves Jesus and loves His holy, perfect, life and says, "I want to imitate my Savior. I want to live a God-pleasing life."

That is a Christian. A Christian is someone who is sorry for sin, not only for the guilt of sin and the condemnation, but despises sin itself, does not want sin, knows that our sins have been paid for at a huge price, trusts in Jesus’ forgiveness, and then says, "With the help of God, I do not want to live in sin. I do not want to live in sin! I want to live for my Savior."

There was a young man by the name of Augustine, who lived several hundred years after Jesus ascended into heaven. He was a young man who was brought up with a Christian mother, but he fell away from his faith. For a long period of time he lived a very sinful life. He even took for himself a mistress. He repeatedly broke the Sixth Commandment, committed adultery, and lived in sin.

His mother, whose name was Monica, continued to pray for him. She prayed he would somehow be brought to repentance and faith in Jesus, as his Savior.

One day he went away on a trip. And on that trip he accidentally met a pastor. That pastor began to talk to him about sin and his Savior. And, by God’s grace, Augustine repented of all of his sins, and turned to Jesus, as his Savior.

He went back home. And, as he was walking through the streets of his town, walking toward him was his mistress. As they were coming toward each other, she looked at him, but he looked straight ahead and walked right by her, without saying a word. At that she stopped, and ran up to him. She grabbed him, turned him around, looked him in the face and said, "Augustine, it is me."

He looked her in the eyes and said, "But it is not me. It is not me."

You see, he was a new person. He was a different person. By repentance and faith in Jesus, he now wanted to live a new life. That is a Christian.

However, as a Christian, we also realize that so long as we are in this body, we will continue to do battle with our sinful nature. Our sinful nature still hangs around our necks and it is a battle. Our sinful nature will, all of our life, see sin as something small and trifling. Our sinful nature will consider it a great fortune, a great fortune if we can follow the desires of our sinful nature. Our new man does not want that. Our new man does not love sin and it does not want to follow sin. It wants to follow our Savior. That is the battle we fight.

The devil, will try to "get us", (as he did with Judas), step by step.

Then we have lost the Christian faith.

There was once a young man who came to his pastor. He was concerned that he had lost his faith. He said to his pastor, "Pastor, I keep falling into this one sin, over and over, again. I don’t want to. I want to do the right thing. But, I keep falling into sin, over and over, and over, again. Pastor I am afraid that I have lost my Christian faith."

His pastor looked at him and said, "You have not lost the Christian faith. How do I know that? Because you are still fighting the battle. The new man in you still wants to serve Jesus, still wants to live for Jesus, and still loves Jesus. But the old man in you is strong and he causes you to fall into sin."

Then he told that young man, "You should get concerned, when that battle is not there anymore. When the battle is done, when you don’t have a desire anymore to serve your Savior, when you totally give in and you begin to live in that sin, with no regrets, then the faith has been lost."

And so, Brother and Sister Christians, it is to arms, it is to battle. So long as we live in this life, we do battle our sinful nature. We have the weapons that God has given to us.

To arms! Let our lives be lives of daily repentance, sorry for our sins, knowing our Savior forgives us, as we drown that old, sinful, nature daily and the new man daily come forth in faith in Christ who says,

Amen.

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