Address—P. Jennings
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Maybe we can start tonight by seeing him number 29296.
First roots of Thy new creation, faithful, holy, may we be joyful, and Thy full salvation more and more conformed to the exchange. Glory to glory, till in heaven to take our place, and to worship and authority lost in wonder, love and praise.
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Mercies grown.
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Pray.
When I.
My heart in love.
Or other person's prayers so by yell.
S are made.
For.
Me.
Joyful and by all our nation more and more.
Change from.
The glory.
To.
And we take our lives.
That I have to worship.
The Lord Dorothy.
Well, I just want to thank everyone for making the effort to come out tonight. I know it is an effort and for some maybe it was a very special effort. And so I am so thankful for the privilege of being able to continue to present.
These truths which.
We're all growing in learning.
The value of that which which stems from the cross and forth from the the.
The value of the person of the Lord Jesus and so.
Tonight, we're going to.
Continue. I'd like to.
Refer back to a verse that I may have given in the introduction on the in the first meeting. It's in First Chronicles 22.
And I use this in the introduction to to help us to realize that God has provided a full salvation.
That the cross is all.
God needed.
For his righteous demands for a holy God to be satisfied that the cross of Christ is also all we need.
For a full deliverance, it is true that because of our natural tendencies to depend upon ourselves.
It is a journey. It was for me. It has been for me. It's a journey to come into the realization of the value of the cross of Christ and of its power, of how God has completely dealt with the whole question of sin. But he hasn't just dealt with the question of sin, He's dealt with what we were.
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Were in heaven, so he has completely dealt.
With Adam and he sees Adam at the foot of the cross now.
It's a lifelong experience for us to enter into the value of how God sees.
This but I would just like to start with this verse because it hit me one time as I was reading and my normal reading through the Old Testament First Chronicles 22 verse 18 it says.
Is not the Lord your God with you? And hath he not given you rest on every side? Speaking of David here.
And.
It could not always have been said of David that he had rest on every side. David went through many battles. He was he was asked to fight many battles. But this was a period of time in his life when it could could be said David Edwards on every side. And you know, the more and more we come into the to the, to the valuable, to the.
Enjoyment of the truths of the Gospel.
Which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believe it. The more we come into the realization of what took place at the cross, the more you and I can practically in our everyday life enjoy rest from our enemies on every side.
I wouldn't present this as something that I would expect of a young person to walk out the door tonight after we've taken up the trees that we're going to take up.
And say, well, I expect you to have rest on every side, because it is only as the Spirit of God takes these truths and makes them good and shows them how they work in a practical in our practical everyday life that they do.
Result in deliverance. But that's what salvation is. Salvation is deliverance.
And so I just share this verse as a verse of encouragement that, you know, some some Christians that go through their life thinking, you know what the life of a Christian is just nothing but an endless struggle. And I'm just on the end of this.
I'm in the squirrel cage and I'm just barely keeping my head above water with all my enemies and all the things that seek to destroy me, and I'm just barely keeping my head above water. But I don't believe that's what God intends for us as believers.
Because of the cross of Christ and as we go through the lesson that we're going to have today.
We're going to mainly take up Romans chapter 6.
We're going to find some very key.
Instruction for us.
In learning how God has provided rest for us and deliverance.
So let's just, we didn't quite finish up where I would like to end up in Chapter 5. And I think it's really, really important that we just cover a few more verses in Chapter 5 before we take up Chapter 6 because as we were speaking last last evening, yesterday.
Chapter 5 really presents the head of the new race.
That God has instituted as the the man who he is going to channel all of his blessing through. And you and I, we really can't go into chapter 6.
Without realizing, remember, as we as we began our meeting yesterday, we changed from the question of deliverance from the from from our sins, the the, the penalty and the consequence of our sins to take up the question of deliverance from the power of sin, the nature that which we have were born with, that which can only produce.
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Sin.
And so we've, we've we've, we've begun this new division, you might say, of taking up the question of the being delivered from the power of sin. This is something that's very real. We all know it in one way or another. Sin has dominion over us until we understand what it means to enjoy the power of death and.
And so the very first thing, as I mentioned yesterday, the very first thing God sets before us when he brings up the the the question of deliverance or the solution for the deliverance from the power of sin as he changes the man in whom we find ourselves in.
So he we, we, we go from being in Adam in verse 12.
To the man who was introduced, the one who we stated Adam was only a figure of.
So God's intention was to bring all of His blessing and have him have our blessing throw through and flow through another man, and He's going to place us in this teaching. He is going to places in the other man. We know what it is to be an atom, don't we? We know what it is to have Adam's nature. We know what it is to have a fallen sinful nature.
But God has.
Changed our identity as believers, all of us here, I believe we've put our simple faith and trust in the Lord Jesus. We have a new life. We have everlasting life. We have eternal life. And so God sees us now with a new identification. He doesn't see us in our identification in Adam any longer.
Unfortunately, because of our experience.
We often see ourselves still in connection with Adam, but we, as I believe I've stated in meetings before, we cannot judge the truth of God.
By our experience, we cannot judge the truth of God by our lack of being able to.
Lay hold when God says something.
Then we have to by faith receive it and then learn by the the the the instruction of the Spirit of God in our lives, learn what it really means.
And so.
It's very, very important. I would like to turn back to a verse in Romans one, it's very key. I found it to be very key and very helpful and in in the process of us being able to go from what we think of by nature to go what faith brings us into and the blessing that God has already brought us into.
And it's in.
Romans One and verse 5.
It says by whom we have received grace and apostleship for the obedience to the faith.
Then we turn to.
The 17th verse of the first chapter it says. At the end of the 17th verse it says the just shall live by faith. God doesn't promise us.
The enjoyment of deliverance, if we aren't going to walk by faith, it says the just shall live by faith. And so as we take up these truths tonight, they're not going to do us any good. If in our hearts we say, you know what, I'm not going to set Adam completely aside. I think there's still something that I can present.
As acceptable to God by my own doing and by my own will and by my own energy. And I'm just not going to accept the fact that He's completely set him aside.
That he he sees Adam at the foot of the cross and he's condemned. And so by faith we need the obedience of faith. We need to say, I accept what God says about me and I accept the new position he has placed me in. I accept the new identification of not being an atom anymore, but being in Christ. And in Christ, I can never take up the law as a principle for life.
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The law, if we take it up, has the potential to bring glory to me.
Something that I can, Gloria.
And so that's the reason why we take it out, because we want to.
Take some credit for this new life of righteousness.
But God says, no, that's not the ground of grace, and the ground of grace is the only ground that I have any intention of blessing you or being on.
And so the obedience of faith is so important. I have to accept God's terms and that means I have to set any potential of ever being able to take credit for anything in the Christian pathway. What a wonderful blessing. It really sets me free so that I can.
Live in all of the provisions of this new life.
And not be put in hindrances in the way of the Spirit of God. It's just a beautiful thing. And so the just shall live by faith. Now we're going to take up the instruction for faith that which God has told us that the cross has brought us into and so.
The beauty of Christianity is that all sinners in the person and the work of Christ. If all sinners in the person and the word of Christ, we come into this blessing that we have, and we enter into the fullness as our Him brought out the fullness of salvation. We enter into the fullness as we.
Realize that he is the source.
For everything. And so as we're going through Romans 5.
Before we get to Romans 6 and we see the, the, the, the what actually took place at the cross, in our association with it, in death and resurrection, we have to see the person that God has placed us in. We have to see the glory that belongs to Him in connection with us being delivered from the power.
Of sin. And so it says in verse 18. It says therefore, as by the offense of one judgment came.
Upon all men to condemnation the offense brought the judgment which brought the condemnation Now I want to help us I'm going to remind us again because I I I covered this in my last year in the last series, but condemnation is a permanent condition so when God.
Placed Adam under condemnation. You know how if you have a house?
And it's got a sign on it that says condemned. Remember, I, I, I shared this with you. It says condemn. The only thing that it's waiting for is not a remodeling crew, but a bulldozer. OK? It's waiting for the, it's, it's waiting for the backhoe because it has been established that there's no hope for this. And we're, we're, we're getting rid of it. And so that's how God sees us. And Adam, that's how God sees that first man. He doesn't have any.
To remodel he doesn't have any plans to try to get anything else out from it. It's it's under condemnation, but so is let's keep reading here. It says Even so the righteousness of one and here's that one that we've been Speaking of the Lord Jesus the righteousness of woman.
The free gift came.
Upon all men unto justification of life. So we, we, we, we spoke about how condemnation is a permanent condition, but justification of life is a permanent condition as well. So Adam brought in a a permanent condition of condemnation. The Lord Jesus brings in a permanent condition of justification.
Justification is a condition.
That we stand before God in abiding righteousness. He sees us in a condition that can never, ever change because it's based upon the work which was accomplished by the One who came and fulfilled God's righteousness and who answered for His righteousness at the cross.
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It's good. So that justification now that we have we have it in Christ and through him and because of the value of his work. And so I just want to point those things out. This is this is so it's it's so beautiful to see that before God takes up the question of our deliverance in chapter 6.
He brings out the superior position.
In which Christ has presented man in a new in a new race. We, we, we now are under the head of a new race. We were under the head of Adam in all that he brought in, but now we're in under the blessing of what Christ has introduced for us. Verse 19 for us by one man's disobedience.
Many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more about. So we see the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law was not to make man righteous, so God.
Knew from the very beginning what the true condition of man is, and he also knew what the remedy for man was, and he knew the remedy for man's condition of.
Of sand and guilt was not going to be remedied by the law, but he knew the law would make the offense abound so.
The law was useful in that it showed us how God see this so saws how God viewed us. We needed to see so that we could come into the blessing of what was going to be provided through the cross, that there was no hope.
Fluorescent atom, and so the law was useful for that purpose.
And so.
But when the law did reveal the fact that sin abounded in this.
Adam, Grace, Sin abounded. It couldn't be. It couldn't be. It couldn't be.
Lessened it just it just multiplied sin because of the nature of man, it couldn't be stopped It it it just abounded. But grace.
Could over abound.
Because.
God is greater than everything that Satan can engineer, that man can produce, God can prove himself to be.
Far above.
All that evil can produce. And so grace over abounds. More over, the law entered the offense might abound in verse 20.
But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto death, Even so my grace reigned through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. You know, sometimes, sometimes we might think, well, we just speak too much of grace.
That you know.
It grace. We don't want to cheapen grace.
And it's true if.
If we go on in the next chapter, and if we're sinning, that grace may abound. We're in one sense we're cheapening grace, but.
Grace isn't cheap.
Grace required the death.
Of God, Sir.
And Grace has.
Reign grace reigns now.
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By righteousness.
God.
Devised a point in which he could take the likes of us.
Children of Adams race.
And he could bring us into a condition.
Of eternal blessing and he didn't have to compromise who he was in the process.
So God didn't just say, you know what, I'm a loving God and I, I'm just going to act in out of my heart of love and I'm just going to bring you into blessing. But that's not, that's not how grace works, not the grace that comes from the heart of God. Grace reigns through righteousness. So God's righteousness was not compromised in any.
Measure at all in order for His grace to reign, for His grace to be free to accomplish what His heart desires to accomplish. Grace reigns through righteousness.
Unto eternal life through by Jesus Christ our Lord. And so we don't, we don't have cheap grace, but we have grace that reigns. We have grace that has gotten a victory, and God is fully glorified.
In all that His grace has produced.
It it's truly wonderful for us to think here we are.
And we're just, we're just the receivers of it. We didn't do anything.
To to merit or or cause God to even want to to act this way towards us. This blessing has come because of who God is and because what His heart has always been for all eternity.
And So what a wonderful thing that we.
You know, brethren, we, we can't, we can't be blessed on any other ground than the ground of grace.
And that leaves us with absolutely no reason.
To be proud.
It leaves us with every reason to be thankful. And so we're just, we're just, we're just the recipients of the heart of God for and we will be for all eternity. And So what a wonderful thing it is that.
All this this beautiful contrast has resulted in God being free to display His heart.
For chapter 6, What shall we say then? Shall we continue and send that grace may abound? So the question is asked, and I, I would like to say as we take up this question, that I don't take up the book of Romans for the purpose of exhortation.
Of trying to get people to the Saints to be a certain thing. I don't take up the book for that reason. I see the book of Romans as a book of instruction.
There is no way that we can get the Lord's people where we think they ought to be unless they have the tools and the understanding of where God has already brought them.
And it is my desire.
Because of this journey that the Lord has brought me on that has taken many, many, many years and much, much pain, much struggle to realize just how free it all is and what blessing is in store. And I can't ask somebody to be something if they don't know what God has done in bringing them into all.
Blessing. And so I don't use the book of Romans as a book of exhortation. It's my desire that it be used as a book of instruction, just that we would learn.
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The value of the cross of Christ that we would learn the heart of God that would be we would begin to understand what grace really is and that.
With those realizations in our soul.
Then comes the energy through the Spirit, as we'll get in chapter 8, to walk this Christian life in a way that is reflective of who the Lord Jesus is. And so that's just a little. So let's just say the question for for us here is, well, shall we use this grace that has been displayed for us for some benefit?
Of what I wasn't Adam.
Or what I am in atom. So I'm seeking of pleasure so that what I am and Adam can continue to to operate. The question is is.
When after we have gone through chapter the end of chapter 5 and we have seen that.
How God has replaced Adam with Christ. The thought is really kind of ridiculous. Should I continue?
In that nature sin the sin nature, should I just allow it to continue to produce?
It's it's sin and dishonor to God when I've been brought into this new identification with the Lord Jesus. So the the question is is really answered as we as we go on, God forbid verse two, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein.
So the I like to think, and Darby's translation isn't as clear, but I like to think that God doesn't even ask me to answer that, because if I answered it, I might answer it according to my experience. And some days I might say, well.
I do continue in sin, that grace may abound. I might go through a day when I don't know the power over.
I don't know how to overcome the power of sin in my life and so in by in my experience, I might say, well, yes, I do consent to continue and sin, but that's not really what God is getting at here. He's getting at the truth of why we don't continue in sin. And so he says, God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin?
Live any longer therein, so the key.
For me not continuing in sin in that old nature, in the on the same course that I was before I was saved and came under the value of the cross of Christ.
The key to that is my understanding of what happened at the cross. So how can you that are dead to sin live any longer there? And so he gives us the illustration.
Of baptism, and says, Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death?
So baptism is a picture of going down into death.
In identification with the Lord Jesus and his death, I'm going to give you an illustration.
That the Lord gave me last summer. He actually.
Asked he asked allowed me to have the privilege of baptizing a brother over in Kansas City.
And on my way to Morningstar last year. And so as I was requested, the request came for me to baptize this brother. I asked, well, is there a lake or a river nearby that we could do the baptism in?
And they said, no, no, we plan on baptizing them in the bathtub. So I said that's fine, I can baptize him in about bathtub. And and so as we went about the process of baptizing a grown man in the bathtub.
I.
Really, really wanted to get this guy under the water.
And so here I am with about this much water in a bathtub and a guy that's probably a little shorter than me but not much different in size. I'm sitting there trying to stuff him under the water and there's absolutely no way I can get this guy under the water.
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And so I figured, well, it was in the name of the Father Son and the Holy Holy Ghost, and so he was baptized. And then we went to Morningstar and they don't usually do have baptisms there. And so we went to a, a, a spring and I watched as three or four people were baptized and I noticed a difference.
I noticed that when they baptized these people.
They went down under the water and they completely disappeared. They were gone. And then they came back up out of the water. And I thought, well, that's really what I was trying to get at when I baptized this brother. But you know, I thought of how.
The truth of our death in association with the death of Christ is so that we see ourselves in Adam.
Yeah, and no longer able to function any longer.
Our experience, though, in our practical Christian lives, our experiences that we're always trying to shove this guy down into.
Association with our death with Christ and we don't really see ourselves by faith.
As being dead.
But God does see us as dead. He says, how can you who are dead continue in sin any longer? And so by faith we need to see this truth and we need to practice it so that when we are in circumstances.
Where?
We're presented with.
Temptation to act according to the nature of our sin nature and commit sin.
We need by faith to see ourselves in Adam as not having any life any longer. So instead of going through the process of trying to get ourselves into that position of being dead, because that's not what really God says, doesn't say try to make yourself dead. He says how can you who are dead?
To sin live any longer therein.
So the question is how does that God doesn't see us in that complete condition of no longer being alive to sit any longer. It's our problem is we by faith aren't laying hold of how God sees us and so we.
Are not enjoying the power of death. You know death brings power now.
Baptism is a picture of death.
But have you ever seen anyone who got baptized left under the water?
Have you ever seen anybody? OK, We baptize him. He's down there under the water, and we're just going to leave him there.
No, there's resurrection, isn't there? So we have.
A.
By faith, we can say that my connection with Adam ended in death.
But I have a new connection now and I have, I have been raised again in newness of life. And that's what we'll just read that.
For therefore, verse four, we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, Even so we also should walk in newness of life. And So what characterizes the believer.
Is death and resurrection. Now I would like to remind us tonight of the scripture that I read yesterday in Exodus chapter 13 where it says God LED you not by way of the Philistines, but He led you by the way of the Red Sea, of the wilderness of the Red Sea.
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We're going to use the Red Sea as a picture of this death.
And resurrection and the wilderness of the Red Sea is our life after death and resurrection, and how death and resurrection is applied on a daily basis. Moment by moment, we live in the enjoyment of seeing Adam, our old man at the foot of the cross.
And my new condition is.
I am not in Adam, I am in Christ and I have his life and I live now in resurrection life.
The Lord is the only one.
Who can teach us what this means in our everyday practical lives? But it's not going to be enjoyed if we're not walking by faith.
So faith is always instructed by the Word of God. This is the truth that God uses to help us to understand that His salvation that was, that was wrought at the cross, is sufficient for deliverance from the power of sin, but the only deliverance from the power of sin.
Is found in death and resurrection. This is the key.
And so let's go on.
For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that the old man is crucified with him, so the old man is crucified with him. You know, I don't, I, I know I'm not a student. So somebody can give us a better definition of what the old man is. But I like to think of the old man as Adam.
Just simply Adam and the body of sin.
Is everything in connection with what Adam is and what he possesses and what he does the body of sin? Is that whole accumulation of everything that comes from Adam, that the body of sin might be a null.
Annulling is setting something completely aside, saying we're living like it never happened.
Do you think God has that for us, a Christian life?
Or the body of sin is annulled. That we see ourselves the old man, we see God. Not only did man take.
Did did man take the Lord Jesus and crucified him on the cross? But God has taken Adam and he's crucified him as well.
Our old man is crucified.
With him.
You know, every bit of identification places us with him.
We see ourselves there in that shameful position.
Of being crucified, the most shameful death that could possibly have you seen.
Yourself.
There, you know, if we saw ourselves in that shameful position of crucifixion, we would never pick ourselves back up again and try to use ourselves to offer to God something of merit.
Because God sees us as having been crucified.
And so.
We just have this wonderful privilege of seeing that yes, God sees what we are in our atom condition as over.
And he has judged it. It's condemned. But we rise in newness of life. We can live our lives absolutely free. When I say that, when I say absolutely free, only absolutely free, We're in the when we're walking by faith. It is so important for you and I to walk by faith.
None of these things are just going to happen.
If we're not living in the enjoyment.
Of these.
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Facts. Promises.
Truths, how God sees us, what he did, His plan of deliverance.
These are all things that we have as our own. You know, it's my desire.
I think I mentioned this in the last series. It's my desire to not tell the Saints of God what they ought to be. It's my desire to tell them what they are and when they know what they are. And sometimes you have to repeat it. You have to tell them what they are, and you have to keep telling them what they are. You have to keep presenting these truths to God's people because that's how we learn time and time again. But as we learn what we are and how God.
Jesus, pretty soon we want to be what we ought to be. We become.
A life that's lived in the likeness of Christ. But we haven't got all the information yet. We haven't got to chapter 8 where we learn that the energy of this life that we now live is the Spirit of God. Such an important thing to learn that it's not my energy by which I live this new.
Likeness of Christ.
Resurrection life, it's not my, it's not my energy, but it's energy that's been given to me because God loves us enough to give us the power to live a life of true deliverance. And so let's keep going.
Verse seven For he that is dead is freed from sin. He that is dead is free from sin. So the so the degree in which we understand our death is the degree in which we are free.
From sin in a practical sense. Now God sees us as being dead. He sees us as being freed. But we don't often live. We're not always living our Christian lives in the truth victory of that deliverance. But faith will bring us into it.
So now, if in verse 8, now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we also shall live with Him.
Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more. So there's no there's there's no need for any other solutions.
The cross is God's solution to the dilemma of us being under the power of sin. God doesn't have any other solutions. He died and he died once.
Knowing that Christ, by being raised from the dead, diet no more death hath no more dominion over him.
Now verse 10 through verse.
No, let's verse 3, verse 10. For in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
So the question of sin.
Is behind us.
At the cross on resurrection ground, the question of sin was completely dealt with. And so verse 10 brings us into how we practically.
Make death and resurrection.
A living reality that brings deliverance. So it says in verse 10, verse 11.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead, indeed to sin.
But alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord reckon that means that we remember it and that we make make it good. So we we this is this is the the reality. So we've taken up the truth. We've taken up the doctrine. Now God says, take the doctrine and make it a reality.
Live in the enjoyment of it, Reckon yourselves so.
Be in remembrance that God sees you no longer alive.
You know.
Reckon you need yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. So we're not only just dead, but we have new life.
Let not sin therefore reign in your immortal body, that you should obey it in the lust thereof. You know sin used to come knocking at our door, and it used to say, As we open the door, it used to say.
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I have full control over you.
And you don't have any option.
I have dominion over you, I reign over you, and you don't have any choice but to let me in.
That's the way it used to be.
That is not the way it is any longer.
Sin shall not reign over you.
That let not sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lust thereof. And so God, you know when, when God gives us instruction, he never asks us to do something that's not possible.
And so here he's saying, when sin comes.
The power of sin incomes and knocks at your door. It may be that it used to gain entrance.
But now you have the understanding that you're no longer alive to it. And you have.
The the ability you have the.
The knowledge that you can address this enemy that has come knocking in a completely different manner, you can say I'm dead.
To your power and I'm no longer.
Under your reign, in fact, we can say I am under the reign.
Of grace I am under the reign of who God is and what He has done for me.
And I no longer have to give you.
Sin entrance into my life I no longer have to accept.
The awful results of you reigning over me, I have been delivered because I am dead and I'm risen and I am in Christ. And so it's a wonderful thing to know that sometimes in our practice.
We can't seem to make it work.
We know that, don't we? Sometime in our practice?
We just can't.
Can't seem to.
Realize the strength of death and resurrection, but that doesn't mean the strength isn't there.
It means we haven't learned it.
And God is in the process of teaching us.
And we're going to find as we go on, because I'm going to cover one more verse before we close because it's extremely important.
The the next verses speak of yielding our members as instruments of Neither yield you your members as instruments of unrighteousness under sin, but you yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness, you know.
I just want to tell you what a wonderful thing it is.
To be delivered from the power of sin in such a way that our members.
Become free in the service of God.
I can't tell you what a blessing it is to learn deliverance from the power of sin in such a way that our members become God's tools and we have the privilege of using them for the glory of God and for free. Perry.
We only know too well what our members used to be enslaved to.
But because of death and resurrection, they're not anymore. Now this may not always be our experience, and God is so patient in allowing us to go through the struggles that.
Show us there's something yet we haven't laid hold of because our instruments are still being yielded in ways that are bearing that truth. But I just want to share verse 14.
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For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. Now this verse to me just came home to me last year last summer as I was communicating these things at Morningstar, and I had never seen this, but this is a statement.
Sin shall not have dominion over you.
When we are in the power of the truth.
That has been presented in the first part of the chapter that were dead and were risen.
Sin has lost its power.
But the verse goes on and it says because.
It says.
For ye are not under law, but under grace now.
As I bring this, this, this thought out just again, I want to remind the Saints here how much time I spend under law. It wasn't something that I had any intention of doing. I didn't know any better. I was seeking to live the Christian life and I was seeking to do the best I can. And I had a series of of of.
Standards to keep and I thought I was pleasing God, but there was one thing that.
Was going haywire. I didn't have deliverance from the power of sin.
And.
Then the Holy Spirit didn't necessarily have power to live through me. But here's the key. Sin shall not have dominion over you. What's the rest of the verse? Sin shall not have, for ye are not under the law. So I just want to, as we end the meeting tonight, I want to give us all something to think about.
The degree in which.
The law has influence in our life will be the degree in which sin.
As dominion over us, the law is the effort of me in Adam to try to produce righteousness for God.
God.
Isn't at all impressed.
With me coming in the energy of the flesh, and in, you might say, the first man presenting righteousness to him, he cannot allow that delivering power from the power of sin, if the law is in any way active in my life.
So sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law so.
We by nature, and we'll always have this tendency. We always revert back to the energy of the flesh in pleasing God. This is kind of our natural default.
We have a tendency to want to please God in the flesh. God says you're not going to get deliverance that way and you're going to go through circumstances in your life which are not going to be pleasant because that is not the ground of grace on which I bless.
And so.
Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law.
Just a verse that struck home with me and I, I, I just share it. I know there's more to this to this chapter, and I don't mean to because it is. These are verses that encourage us to yield our members in a way that bears fruit for God. And there is a responsibility in our life, isn't there? There is a responsibility for us to live for God, for us to, to, to live for.
Glory. And yet we can't do it. If the other truths that we've just gone over aren't really understood, we can't yield our members as instruments for God.
Without realizing we're on the ground of grace. It's because of who God is and what He has done that gives me this overwhelming desire. And I'm going to end with one more verse.
01:00:12
Is verse.
It speaks of the heart.
I'm sorry, I should have 17 but but thank but God be thanked. Here's a thankful believer, OK, A believer who is thinking about how good God is. OK, God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, that ye have obeyed. From the heart, so that the flesh it never obeys from the heart it obeys out of duty.
But we have been brought into this relationship where the heart has been set free.
To yield itself and its members for the glory of God. We are set free and we live our Christian lives out of the heart.
Not out of the head or or with the awesome. An overwhelming sense of responsibility.
We do this because God has given us his desires, the Lord Jesus he was.
He he said that you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
And the Lord Jesus said, I all, I do always those things which please the Father.
He never had an obstacle in his way that hindered him from completely, 100% fulfilling the Father's world no matter what.
The father asked him to do.
Because he had divine life.
We have that life and we haven't even gotten yet to the truth of the power of the Spirit of God. It's so wonderful to realize that this life that we have to live is lived in the energy of God dwelling in me. Isn't it just a wonderful thing to enjoy?