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What a Ghastly Thought!

For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:14 ESV)

In 1824, Peru won its freedom from Spain. Soon after, Simon Bolivar, the general who had led the liberating forces, called a convention for the purpose of drafting a constitution for the new country. After the convention, a delegation approached Bolivar and asked him to become their first president. Bolivar declined, saying that he felt someone else deserved the honor more than he did. But the people still wanted to do something special for Bolivar to show their appreciation for all he had done for them, so they offered him a gift of a million pesos, a very large fortune in those days.

Bolivar accepted the gift and then asked, “How many slaves are there in Peru?” He was told there were about three thousand. “And how much does a slave sell for?” he wanted to know. “About 350 pesos for an able-bodied man,” was the answer. “Then,” said Bolivar, “I will add whatever is necessary to this million pesos you have given me and I will buy all the slaves in Peru and set them free. It makes no sense to free a nation, unless all its citizens enjoy freedom as well.”

It didn’t make sense in 1824 and doesn’t make sense in 2015. Why free us from the penalty of sin (through the cross) and not free us from the power of sin? Paul had similar concerns.

Paul again affirms the truth—we are not under law but under grace. What does this mean? Let me illustrate. The law says, “The speed limit is 65 mph.” And since the law says this is the speed limit, if you go 66 mph you have broken the law. The state trooper pulls you over, points out that you were driving 66 mph. He can give you a ticket. Instead, he instructs you to slow down, gives you a warning, and you go. That’s grace. Now let me paraphrase what Paul is saying: “Speeding shall not be master over you, because you are not under the rule of the speed limit, when you are pulled over, you will receive grace.”

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! (Romans 6:15 ESV) Some translations render that, “What a ghastly thought!”

What then? Should I drive 75 mph because, when I get pulled over for breaking the law I will not be given a ticket? May it never be! Or, as we discovered last week, of course not! What a ghastly thought! God forbid!

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Jesus, the Selfless Master

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:16-18 ESV)

Either: you have a choice. You can either obey sin or you can obey righteousness. No longer must you show up to the taskmaster of your own flesh and say “yes.” You can say, “no.” Why does Paul saturate this description with slave language? A slave among the Romans was considered his master’s property, and he could do with him as he wanted. Under a bad master, the slave lived a dreadful life. His ease and comfort were of no concern; he was treated worse than an animal; and, in many cases, his life hung on the mere whim of the master.

That’s what the old slave master, sin, does. Satan cares nothing for you. And when you come to Christ, his hatred for you intensifies. Your old nature, the sinful nature that you possessed when you came to Christ, you still have. Deep within you is the desire to sin. When you give in to that old sin nature, you are throwing away the freedom given you in Christ. Your own evil lusts and appetites become your most cruel taskmasters.

The truth is that you choose your master—and you do not have to show up at your master’s house one more day. You can be free. As a Christ-follower, slavery to sin is voluntary.   Look at what Paul says. You are a slave either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness.

Why use the same term, slave, to refer to believers? It more forcibly shows that we are our Master’s property; and that, as he is infinitely good his service must be perfect freedom.   Jesus Christ asks no obedience from us that he does not turn to our eternal advantage because He has no self-interest to secure. You see, before Christ, you had no choice. The temptation came along, you gave in, and you fell to it. Now you have a choice. You have God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, living inside you. When temptation comes, you don’t have to say yes.

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Walk Down a Different Street

This is my version of a poem originally written by Portia Nelson. I didn’t agree completely with some of her statements, so I adjusted them. Some of you need to walk down a different street today. Not tomorrow…today.

Day 1: Today I walked down a street. I fell into a hole. I did not see the hole until I had fallen in. I climbed out.

Day 2: Today I walked down the same street. I saw the hole. I knew it was there all along. I got caught up in the crowd and fell into the hole again. I climbed out.

Day 3: Today I walked down the street. I knew right where the hole was. All of a sudden, my attention was drawn to an accident. And before I had realized it, I had fallen into the hole again. I climbed out.

Day 4: Today I walked down the street. I saw the hole ahead of time and I walked on the other side of the street.

Day 5: Today I walked down a different street.

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A Prayer for Saturday

Incomprehensible, Great and Glorious God,

I adore you and abase myself. I approach you mindful that I am less than nothing, a creature worse than nothing.

My thoughts are not screened from your gaze. My secret sins blaze in the light of your countenance.

Enable me to remember that blood which cleanses all of sin, to believe in that grace which subdues all iniquities, to resign myself to that agency which can deliver me from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

You have begun a good work in me and can alone continue and complete it.

Give me an increasing conviction of my tendency to err, and of my exposure to sin.

Help me to feel more of the purifying, softening influence of religion, its compassion, love, pity, courtesy, and employ me as your instrument in blessing others.

Give me to distinguish between the mere form of godliness and its power, between life and a name to live, between guile and truth, between hypocrisy and a religion that will bear your eye.

If I am not right, set me right, keep me right; and may I at last come to your house in peace.

From The Valley of Vision (page 174-75)

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The Believer’s Ledger

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:8-11 ESV)

Jesus died once and will never die again. Why? His death was no ordinary death. He died receiving God’s wrath against sin. Consider the guilt you have felt over some ridiculous sin you’ve committed…again. Multiply that guilt by billions of sinners who have lived through all the millennia: Jesus experienced at once that multiplied guilt. His death was no ordinary death. The physical weight of the cross paled in comparison to the moral weight of your sin on his shoulders.

Jesus’s work didn’t stop with his death. But the life he lives he lives to God. He now mediates on behalf of all believers. He was single-minded in his death and he is now single-minded in his life.

We must be too.

When we received Christ as our Savior, we died to sin. That one act of faith didn’t finish the work. We have a day-to-day, and sometimes moment-to-moment, responsibility: consider yourselves dead to sin. The word consider is an accounting term: it means to write it down in the debit or credit column. Here we have an entry for both sides. Every day in the debit column we write: dead to sin. But we don’t stop there. In the credit column we write: alive to God! The name of the account at the top of the ledger: Jesus Christ. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

debit credit

What kind of balance does this yield? A victorious Christian life.

This is what it means to consider yourself dead to sin and alive to Christ. No emotional fanfare. Some days you will not feel “saved.” Some days you will battle harder against sin than others. Every day your thinking must be on point: you are dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. That’s who you are! That’s the believer’s ledger.

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I Did Not Know

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4 ESV)

For the first 17 years of my Christian life I did not know.

Here’s what I did not know:

  • I did not know that I was baptized into Jesus’s death.
  • I did not know that I was buried with Jesus in his burial.
  • I did not know that I was resurrected with Jesus in his resurrection.

I did not know. I’ve told this before (and it’s really embarrassing, but true). For several years I drove a Chevy S-10 that had a 3rd door. chevyred-754828Behind the driver’s door was a 3rd door! For years, when Trent wanted to ride with me, he would climb behind my seat into the back and sit on the fold-down chair. I never saw the door handle to the 3rd door. It was hidden in plain sight. That’s embarrassing.

But it’s more embarrassing to admit that for 17 years of my Christian life, I battled sin in my own power because I was ignorant. I was ignorant of this reality: when I trusted Jesus as my Savior (baptized into Christ Jesus) I was immersed in his death. My old sinful nature died that day. Death isn’t fun. My sinful nature hasn’t been happy ever since. As a matter of fact, every day my sinful nature (flesh) tries to rear its ugly head, tries to convince me to satisfy its desires, tries to deceive me into thinking I can be satisfied by its desires.

Death is devastating unless there’s a resurrection in the future! I did not know that I was baptized into Jesus’s death. And I did not know that I was buried with Jesus in his burial. And of course I did not know that I was resurrected with Jesus. That’s right!

How was Jesus raised from the dead? “By the glory of the Father.” That’s a loaded statement…one that this blog won’t allow today–tomorrow we will delve into it. Here’s what I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the death of my sinful nature had lead to the resurrection of a new man in Christ…one not bound by sin, one not under the sway of the world, one not gripped by the power of temptation.

Lamar Silver showed me the 3rd door on my truck. Chuck Swindoll, in his sermon series on Romans 1-8, opened a whole new vista into what it means to walk by grace, to be raised to life by the Spirit, to live an entirely new life.

Now I know. And I have choice. Climb over the seat to get to the back of the Chevy S-10…or open the 3rd door.

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When God Changes Your Name

Throughout all of Scripture God has changed people’s names. Abram became Abraham. Sarai became Sarah. Abram means “noble father.” Abraham is the “father of many. Sarai is a princess; Sarah is the mother of nations.

Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. (Genesis 17:3-5 ESV)

Jacob became Israel. His name change was dramatic. Jacob means “supplanter.” Israel is “one who strives with God” because Jacob refused to let go of God until God had blessed him. God specializes in changing you for the good. Speaking to his people through the prophet Ezekiel, God says:

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-27 ESV)

God delights in making you (and all things) new. Naomi didn’t get that. She blamed God for doing exactly the opposite.

So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (Ruth 1:19-21 ESV)

God didn’t change Naomi’s name–she did. God longed for her to be the “pleasant one.” She chose to become bitter. The question in the mind of the readers of Ruth has to be this: will God change her name back. Will the God of Abraham and Israel prevail as the God of Naomi? Time will tell.

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The Irony of Running From God

In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. (Ruth 1:1-5 ESV)

Bethlehem. We know the town well today because it was the birthplace of Jesus. In Naomi’s day it was a little-known spot on the landscape of southern Israel. However everyone knew what the name meant–the house of bread. Ironically enough Elimelech and Naomi were from the aristocratic Ephrathite clan living in the House of Bread and they couldn’t find anything to eat. There was a famine in the land. When God decides He’s going to send a famine, the house of bread isn’t exempt from his disciplining hand.

Elimelech and Naomi ran–to Moab. Moab was a stretch of land east of the Dead Sea. It wasn’t part of Israel–as a matter of fact it was settled by the descendants of a tragic incestuous relationship between Lot (Abraham’s nephew) and his daughter. The Moabites’ heritage wasn’t anything to write home about. However, it isn’t the Moabites’ family tree that is most surprising in light of Naomi’s plight–it is the meaning of the word “Moab” itself. Moab means “seed of father.”

Think about it. Naomi left the House of Bread because she couldn’t find bread. She went to the “Seed of Father” and lost both her sons. You can run but you can’t hide. Bethlehem starved Naomi and Moab robbed her of her sons. The House of Bread and the Seed of Father came up empty.

Corrie Ten Boom said, “There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety – let us pray that we may always know it!”

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Turning Messes Into Messages

By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. (Hebrews 11:31 ESV)

I love the honesty of the Bible. If I were making a list of the Who’s Who of the Old Testament I would be tempted to leave some people out. Rahab is surely one of them. She was a prostitute. She made her living by selling her body. She lived on the city wall and watched for lonely passersby who might want her company. She had no discretion, no self-respect. The writer of Proverbs has a stern warning about women like Rahab:

My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways. For a prostitute is a deep pit; an adulteress is a narrow well. She lies in wait like a robber and increases the traitors among mankind. (Proverbs 23:26-28 ESV)

Rahab was a deep pit. She waited like a robber and made traitors out of otherwise honest men. Then one day Hebrew men showed up. They didn’t come looking for Rahab, they came needing cover. Sent by Joshua to scout out the great city of Jericho they hid on Rahab’s roof. The king of Jericho caught wind that the feared Israelite spies were inside the city walls. He sent his soldiers to find them. Rahab covered for them and sent the soldiers on their way. She found the Hebrew spies on her roof and spilled her guts:

Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. (Joshua 2:8-11 ESV)

For we have heard how the Lord…Some in Jericho heard about what God had done and tried to resist Him. Rahab heard and embraced Him. Notice how she finishes her confession to these men: For the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens and on the earth beneath. Rahab believed! Rahab, the prostitute became Rahab the protector. Rahab who was accustomed to wrecking men’s lives, saved their lives. Rahab who usually sold her body for sex, offered her house for safety. She believed. And she made it into Faith’s Hall of Fame!

Only Christianity would celebrate a prostitute turned protector and tout her as a defender of the faith.

And you think Jesus can’t turn your mess into a message to the world!

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Bold Requests of God

Come, thou long-expected Jesus,
Born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver,
born a child and yet a king,
born to reign in us forever,
now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal Spirit,
rule in all our hearts alone;
by thine own sufficient merit,
raise us to thy glorious throne.

This favorite Advent carol has six bold requests. Charles Wesley revealed his deep longing for God when he penned the words. I challenge you to make these same requests your own:

Come thou long expected Jesus. Do you really want Jesus to invade your space? To call your heart His home? To become your boss? To be Lord of all of your life? Ask Him. I dare you.

From our fears and sins release us. What is your worst fear? Your greatest temptation? Do you believe He can set you free from it? Do you believe he can break the chains of sin that bind you?

Let us find our rest in thee. Are you weary? Tired of the rat race? Frustrated with the hectic season called Christmas? Tired of trying to keep up with your neighbors, outdo your coworker, impress you relatives? Rest in him. Jesus himself said, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.”

Now thy gracious kingdom bring. Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…on earth as it is in heaven.” What kingdom thwarting habit are you practicing? Who has been reached through your obedience?

Rule in all our hearts alone. This is a bold request. “Jesus, rule…alone!” No one else. Nothing else. No selfish ambition. Just Jesus.

Raise us to thy glorious throne. Jesus, change us from the inside out. Replace hopelessness with hope. Fill our emptiness with your fullness.  David talked about this in Psalm 40:

I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD. (Psalm 40:1-3 ESV)

Notice when David was raised to God’s glorious throne–after he patiently waited.  If you are in a pit, put your hand in his and let him draw you out and raise you to his glorious throne. He’ll change your tune! (my paraphrase of “he put a new song in my mouth.”) Then many will see and fear and say, “What happened to her! What’s up with him!”

Today, pray those six requests of Wesley’s old hymn. The next time you sing it, be careful what you ask for!