Get Right

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Let's start with the word of prayer this morning before we're jumping into Romans chapter 8. Lord Jesus, we ask for you to bless the preaching of your Word. We ask you to bless your Word. Bless it as we receive it, as we listen, as we understand, help us to discern what you are telling us, Help us to make decisions for you, listen to your spirit. I pray that your word would go out strong. And it's your name that we pray, amen. Now we're gonna be in Romans chapter eight this morning and we're gonna be starting in verse 12. If you do not have a Bible, there should be a Bible around you. Also, if you have a phone, a smartphone, you can find the Bible on your smartphone and we're gonna be in, again, Romans eight. We're gonna start in verse 12. So our series this spring is called Right to Life.

And we've been following this question down. What does life look like in the spirit? If we are following Jesus, if we are walking in the spirit like Romans eight is talking about, then what does that look like? What is it supposed to be? Are we doing it right? We often don't have an expectation. We often don't have an expectation beyond, don't mess it up too bad, okay? We don't really know how to know if we're doing a good job. We don't understand what that process is like. And so this morning we're gonna get right into it. We're gonna start in the verses and we're gonna kinda move through that. So Romans chapter eight verses 12 and 13 it says, So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh, not to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Okay.

So quite simply, if you follow Jesus, what these verses are telling us, if you follow the Lord Jesus Christ, you begin to hate sin. Okay, so you begin to when you deal with lust, when you deal with pride, when you deal with greed, you begin to hate that you begin to say, I don't want to do that. I don't I don't want to lust. I don't want to be prideful. I don't want to be greedy. I don't want to do that. I want to be ruled by that. And so what scripture tells us to do is to put sin to death, to kill sin. Okay, to mortify death. How? How are we going to, I think we're a slide ahead, how are we going to do that? How are we going to put sin to death? Well, we are going to repent of the root cause. We're going to repent of the root cause with our whole hearts. We're going to confess it to our life group. We're going to repent of the root causes with sincerity and with sorrow.

Now the how of killing sin could be its own sermon, but that's not today's sermon. That's not what we're going to be talking about. And that would be a great sermon, mind you. I love preaching on that. I think that's really important on how we're going to do that. But that's not really what we're going to be talking about today in Romans, the latter half of chapter 8. Today I really want us to see that killing sin is a form of suffering. Killing sin is a form of suffering. The Bible likens it to Jesus being on the cross. So Galatians 5, 27, it says those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires. I'm starting to hear myself a little bit. Is that kind of a shaky? No, here we go. Okay, good. So we're gonna be talking about killing sin. We're talking about something that is not just something that you do like for fun on the weekends. We're talking about

something, if you're gonna be killing sin, it takes focus, it takes grit, it causes stress. Trying to kill sin, when you lust and you say, no, no, I don't want to lust. Because when you go through that process, that will cause stress. It will cause anxiety. It could even lead to being depressed. And on this point, exactly, right here, on this point, we need to understand that we break with modern culture severely. Modern culture tells us that if you have stress or anxiety about anything, that is bad. You've got to stop it immediately. and anxiety are bad. You don't need to fight against it. You need to somehow accept whatever you're not accepting as normal. As normal. You need to somehow cope with what you're dealing with. But don't fight against it. Don't deal, don't get stressed. Don't have anxiety that could lead to really bad things. But scripture here is very clear, here in

many other places, that we should fight sin. We should lose sleep. We should effort With strain, we need to please God. He is worth it. He's worth the effort. Even if that effort causes stress, anxiety, and can lead to depression, yes, still please God. And this strain, this thing that we're talking about, it points to a larger fact in that following Jesus is heavy and taxing. Following Jesus is heavy and taxing. It is not an easy thing to do. Following Jesus is not easy. It is fraught with introspection, pressure. It is easy to grow weary. It is easy to get faint hearted. That's why you see all over Scripture in the New Testament. Don't grow weary. Don't be faint of heart, right? You know, don't suffer that way. And it's because following Jesus causes stress and anxiety. And because we do that, because we suffer that way, when we strive against sin, Christians,

it is almost a mark of Christianity. Christians experience doubt concerning their faith. They experience doubt on a regular basis. And the next few verses, verses 14 through 16 illustrate this doubt with how it encourages us, okay? So it illustrates this doubt with how it encourages it. So it doesn't say here's how people doubt, but by the encouragement you can see what's going on. So Romans 14 through 16. It says, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. The encouragement here points to the problem that Christians suffer doubt through their adoption.

And look at the encouragement. The encouragement is, look, you were given your adoption. You weren't given a spirit of fear. You were given something different. And this is the enemy's favorite target for a lot of us, is that when we go through something difficult, and we go through a period of stress or anxiety or we're battling depression, one of the things that you're going to experience, I'm just gonna, spoiler alert, the enemy is going to say, hey, are you really saved? Is this what normal Christians are supposed to go through?

Is this what your life should look like if you're following Jesus? I thought you're supposed to, I thought I was supposed to be more joyful than this. As you attempt to kill sin, as you attempt to repent of the root causes and confess your sin to your life group, there is an emotional fatigue that can set in. Right, and so like if I've sinned, right, like if I've, I don't know, if I've just given in to the idea that everything's all the way up to me, right, so it's pride, I deal with pride, right, and I'm going to my life group and I say hey, and I'm kind of gearing up in my mind, I'm like okay, I've got to talk to them about this whole thing. Well, at the same time, that emotional fatigue that sets in, there's gonna be questions like, is this worth it? Am I crazy for believing this is gonna make a difference? Am I just being neurotic? And that's why I wanna confess whatever's going on.

Because in our culture, it is very easy to believe, and look, man, this gets preached on a Sunday, lots of places. It's easy to believe Jesus doesn't want me to stress out. That's an easy thing to believe. Some of you might actively believe that, right? It's easy to believe Jesus doesn't want me to stress out because in our culture where we're already, well, we're hearing all the times that stress and anxiety are bad and that we need to disengage, we need to not deal with that. Toxic people are bad. You need to stay away from toxic people. You need to say, well, effectively, if you follow that advice, You never do anything hard and you only hang around people who agree with everything you say. That's not reality. It just isn't, right? That's part of being an adult, right, is facing hard things, doing hard things.

Part of being adult is loving and encouraging people who are very different than you, who do not agree with you. Sometimes even people that cause you stress and anxiety. Sometimes people that other people would call toxic. It's gonna happen. If your plan for toxic people is to always avoid them, that's a bad plan. It just is. It might be good in like a short term for like a week or something, you know, like if you're trying to figure something out and you're like, okay, I got got to just only talk to like two people this week. That's great. But for a lifetime, that's bad. It doesn't work. It's easy to believe Jesus doesn't want me to stress. dress, but even in his most, one of his most famous off quoted callings, Matthew 11, 29 and 30, what does Jesus say? Jesus says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Okay, that will preach people love hearing that. What

does Jesus say, as he keeps going, he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, you will find rest for your soul. Why? For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jesus doesn't want to take your burdens away. Jesus wants to make sure that you're carrying the right ones. Jesus does not want to take your burdens away. Sorry, I understand their heart. That's why they're called burdens. But we were not created, we were not saved, so that we could somehow juke every burden in our life. Jesus wants to make sure that we're carrying the right one. And it is, look, it is not easy to do. It is difficult. It causes stress and anxiety. It's hard. But it's critically important that we understand if we're gonna follow Jesus, we must resist one kind of burden

and we must grab hold of another kind, a better burden. If all you're doing is just letting go of burdens and you're just kind of floating in the ether, that's not the Lord's will for you, like it's not. The Lord wants you to grab hold of the right burdens and resist the wrong burdens. And if we look, starting in verse 14 and kind of going on, it helps us identify both kinds of burdens. Okay, so look at verses 14 through 16 verse. So remember these verses are encouraging those who doubt. I wanna look at the encouragement. It says, for all who are led by the spirit of God or sons of God, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Our encouragement here is rooted in the fact

that we have been given a spirit of adoption. It does not say you have earned the spirit of adoption. It says that you've been given that. Something has happened to you. That's really, really important. Because of that, because something has happened to you, we must carry the burden of spiritual awareness. We must carry the burden of spiritual awareness. We have been given the spirit of adoption. We see our life, both our problems and our accomplishments. We see all of our life, our history, our future, all of our life, we see that with this spiritual set of eyes, this spiritual awareness. And this is the burden that we should carry. This is how we grow. What is, consider humility, right? What is humility except that it is spiritual awareness in the midst of an opportunity for pride? That's what humility is. If you're in the middle of an opportunity, if you've just scored like a major victory

and you want to get your portrait hung in your living room because you're feeling so good about yourself, right? What is spiritual awareness? Spiritual awareness is waving the red flag going, no, no, no, that's not gonna end well. Don't do that. humility. What is repentance but spiritual awareness in the aftermath of sin? In the aftermath of sin, when you do something that you know you shouldn't do, when that causes stress, when you are trying to resist something but you fall prey to it, and you've done it again and again and again, in the aftermath of sin, in your ignorance, you can cave in on yourself. If you lack spiritual awareness, you're going to begin to just say, well, you know I'm not worth it anyway. You know I do this all the time. You know I'm just such an idiot. I'm such a second-class Christian. I'm such a... that's going to happen. Spiritual awareness tells you that none of that's true. I can

confess it. I can be free from this. I can repent. What is peace but spiritual awareness in the midst of conflict? You get people that want to fight. People are revving up, gearing up, ready to go. Maybe you're one of them. Spiritual awareness is saying, look, look, hey, hey, I know it's gonna feel really good to yell right now, but don't do that. Strive for peace. All of these things, humility, repentance, peace, confession, all these things take training, pain, loss, diligence, striving.

And it's precisely because we are fighting distraction and doubt and self-centeredness. We're fighting those things, so we must carry the burden burden of spiritual awareness. And these verses also tell us the burden that we should resist. It says that you did not receive a spirit of fear. And you see this again, the same phrasing in 2 Timothy 1:7. It says, our God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self control. So look, I want you to, I really wanna just kind of, I've talked about fear the last couple of weeks, but I wanna say it this way. Fear is not a feeling. Fear is not a feeling, okay? Fear is not a feeling. Fear is another set of spiritual eyes. Fear is another burden. It is the burden of self-preservation. We need to resist the burden of self-preservation. This is what fear is. Fear is a set of spiritual eyes that only sees limitations,

scarcity, threats, opposition. And when that's all you see, it's all on you to balance it, negotiate it, not, you know, step where you shouldn't go. I need to handle this just right. It's all up to me. And you know what? That also takes training and pain and loss and diligence. It's just not worth it. It's just not worth it. You can see all these threats. You can negotiate all of this opposition, all these limitations. You can negotiate all of that, all on your own, and then what have you learned? That you're trustworthy?

That you can rely on yourself? That's a fool's lesson. You haven't learned anything. We resist the burden of self-preservation. It is a burden that we cannot and should not take up. We must resist the burden of self-preservation, and we must shoulder the burden of spiritual awareness. Even though it is painful, it is worth it. And this is why, and these verses right here, this is why fear is contrasted, not with bravery, but fear is contrasted with being a child of God. As his child, God is our protector. God is our provider. And it even says at the end, the Holy Spirit himself bears witness. We are his children. It doesn't say the whole spirit of birth witness. You are strong. You've got this. Go you. It doesn't say that. It says your children. Verse 17 gives more insight.

And we see another burden to carry and another to resist. Verse 18, it says, and if children then heirs. Now, listen to this. This is amazing. If children then heirs. Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. What's our inheritance? Provided we suffer with Him in order that we also may be glorified with Him. Our inheritance, our adoption, what we walk in as followers of Jesus, is a mixture of suffering and joy. Right? It is this burden that we carry of suffering, Well, and when we see this, when we understand, when we really grasp the fact that suffering is normal, it's part of the package, it helps us embrace it. If you believe, if you believe that suffering, suffering won't happen to me if I obey. If you believe that, if you believe I can bypass suffering by planning well, if you believe that, then you will never, ever embrace the suffering that you should embrace.

You will never ever grow from it. You will always feel like you're just being punished by God because you didn't plan well enough and that's why you're suffering. You didn't obey hard enough and that's why you're suffering. And what, look, what I've just described right there is the prosperity gospel, right? Just in reverse, right? The prosperity gospel says I obey so I get blessing. I do what I'm supposed to do so I get blessing. I plan ahead so that the Lord will bless me. I name these things and claim these things so that God will bless me. But prosperity gospel has no idea what to do with verse 17 here. We need to carry the burden of suffering well because what is true is that suffering actually validates your adoption. It doesn't put your adoption into question. It doesn't mean you're some second class Christian. It actually and only validates your adoption.

It's not a scar, it's a stamp. It's not something to hide, it's actually a comfort. I know it doesn't feel like that. So how do we carry it well? Verse 18, verse 18 says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. So there's this saying, and there's a couple of different iterations of this saying, but it's saying that you can tell yourself if you're trying to watch what you eat. And here's the saying. Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels. This is the saying. Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels. In other words, when I want to eat that piece of chocolate cake, because that's me, I want chocolate cake. And I'm going to eat that piece of chocolate cake. That's going to taste good, but it's not taste as good as it's going to feel whenever I'm healthy, whenever I'm not having a heart attack at 51.

That's going to feel really bad. That's not going to feel good at all. Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels. And look, I know that that mentality rests on willpower. But the dynamic is kind of the same when you look at verse 18, because in Jesus, Suffering can't take away more than glory brings. Suffering cannot take away more than glory brings. In following Jesus, he says to us, look, I know your suffering hurts. I know that you don't understand it. I know it seems like it will never end. And in this life, it will not. Your suffering feels like it's never going to end. And Jesus says, you're right, it's not ever going to end in this life. This life will be marked by pain, suffering, trial, frustration. Everything that you do is going to take effort, grit, strain, pain, diligence. So all the stuff that you suffer, it's never going to end in this life. But here's our promise in the Lord.

He says, I will use every ounce of it for glory. It will not go wasted. The key to suffering well is to remember that suffering can't take away more than glory brings, right? So let's go back to those examples where we talked about an opportunity for pride, right? Where you're humble. We can be humble in the midst of an opportunity to pride because we know that the reward that we will get outweighs whatever pain that we feel now. Whatever we feel like we're missing out on now, right? We know, we can trust the Lord that the reward that we will receive later far outweighs whatever we can get for ourselves now. We know that. When we face our sin, when we name our sin, even at great cost, we know that it will be worth it in the end. It doesn't feel worth it now. It's frustrating now. It's humiliating now. Right now we feel like we're losing face, but in the end it will be worth it.

Peace is worth going after, not because it's going to last. By the way, listen, if you are thinking, hey, I'm going to help people, and I'm going to help people in a way that's completely permanent, like they'll never have any other problems. Look, I mean, maybe spend a week in a soup kitchen, you know, like figure it out because you're always, whenever you help people, right, whenever you bring peace, for example, if you're resolving a conflict between two coworkers, it's not a mark of failure if they fight the next day, okay? The peace that you're bringing is always, it's always going to be temporary. So peace peace isn't worth going after because it's permanent. It's peace isn't worth going after because of the good it will do. Peace is worth going after because Jesus Christ has said to us many times, blessed are the peacemakers. We trust Jesus is blessing.

And yet, look, it might do good. It might not. It might blow up in our face. We don't know. We can't control that. That's not where our confidence is. That will not help you suffer well. When you are walking, so a couple years ago, I was walking with a married couple. This is, you don't know them, they don't know you, so it's a perfect story. Working with a married couple, and they are fighting like every night. And they're calling me every night. And I'm driving 15 minutes to go sit with them and listen to them bicker every night, like a week. It's like four days out of seven, okay? I'm going over there and we're talking through the exact same things. I mean, it is mind numbing, I'm telling you. It's frustrating. I'm sure it's frustrating for them to be going through this, but it's frustrating for me. I'm suffering because they're stupid, okay? And look, and that's the life that we've been called to,

to suffer at the hands of other people's stupidity. That's it. I mean, look, we could sugarcoat it, we could say it better than that. I'm sure scripture does say it much better than that. But that's it. What did our savior do? The guy we worship, what happened to him? He suffered at the hands of other people's stupidity. Severely. But he trusted that it'd be worth it. And look, the resistance to this kind of thinking is very high. It is in our culture, There's a lot of people who want to avoid suffering and will look down on you if you do, especially if you embrace it, especially if you tell other people to embrace it. There is a looking down on the nose at that, okay? Even among people who claim to follow the Lord, and here's why. We see Romans 8, verses 19 and 22, I'm gonna kind of skip between those two for time. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God,

for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Look, everybody knows, worst kept secret in the world, everybody knows. Everybody knows it's not supposed to be this way. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows it's supposed to be better than this. Everybody knows we're not supposed to be hurt in this way. It's not supposed to end this way. Children shouldn't die. People shouldn't shoot up malls. Like, it shouldn't happen. We live in the midst of a lot of it, it shouldn't happen. Why does it have to be that way? And so even in the Psalms, what you see this refrain over and over in the Psalms is, how long, oh Lord, how long will you keep letting these bad things happen? And it's a real point of contention and frustration.

Everybody knows it's supposed to be better than this. Even creation itself. Not just people, even creation itself. Look at verse 23. It says, and not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. In our frustration, in our waiting, we just want it to be fixed. We just want it to be better. There is a TV show, a Marvel TV show. It was The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And it got mixed reviews, even from me. It got mixed reviews. But at the end, it was a particularly frustrating end to the TV show for me. Because at the end, the new Captain America. I'm not trying to suck you in the story here. It's not even that good. But the new Captain America at the end, He has all the world leaders right in front of him. So it's this golden moment, golden moment

that they've written into this show at the very end. And he has all these world leaders. And he gets to advise them. They're all like baited breath, like tell us, Captain America, what shall we do? And there's news crews. I mean, it couldn't have been built up more. I mean, it's this huge moment. And what's his speech to them? Do better. Do better. Okay. Worst end of the movie speech ever. It was, it's a terrible piece of advice. It is not an encouragement toward anything. It wasn't, look, it was a few steps down from I have a dream, okay? I'm just gonna put it that way. It wasn't quite Martin Luther King Jr. It was a few steps down from there. And the reason I'm so annoyed at do better, right, the reason I'm annoyed at that is because it doesn't fix anything. It just is an expression, it's what we all feel, we all wanna do better. And look, I'm not making an argument for these world leaders

because they're fictional and I don't care, but for anybody who's a leader at all, you don't think they wanna do better? You don't think the principal looks at the school and sees the problems and thinks, oh, I need to fix that. You don't think the teacher looks at their classroom thinks, hey, I got to do better. You don't think the parent looks at their child and says, yeah, I really got to do better. So what good does it do to sit there and just wag your finger and say, wow, do better? Oh, thank you. I was unclear as to what to do with my future, but now. Man, is that coming a full to-do list, or is that just to do better? OK. Look, when the pain hits home, when our frustration hits home, when the waiting hits home, our desire for it all to be fixed and it all just to be better intensifies. Because you want it to be better, but you really want it to be better whenever you're going

through a health crisis. You really want it to be better when you're going through a job crisis. And we need to resist this burden of trying to fix it all. We've got to resist that burden. to look, I want to be clear here because I feel like I need to kind of discern a little bit. I want to speak clearly. Yes, let's stop abuse. Yes, total agreement. Yes, let's identify injustice where it's happening. Yes, let's help those in need. The reason I can say yes to all those things, because Jesus did all those things, right? Jesus demonstrated He wanted to do all these things, but it is helpful to keep in mind that you can help the poor, but you can't cure poverty. And there's a big difference. You can plead the case for victims wherever they are in whatever form it takes, but you are never going to stop hatred and abuse, ever.

And you can fight for what's fair, you can, But you are never, we are never, I don't care what year we're in, we're never going to attain full equality. You cannot legislate it, you can't browbeat people enough for it, you can't hold up enough stories to where you make every person in the world say like, oh yeah, despite whatever differences we have, race, creed, color, whatever, we're equal. I've been browbeat enough, now I know, I've learned my lesson, we're all equal. No, it won't happen. It won't happen. And again, fight for what's fair, but you need to have this kind of sobriety that war, famine, oppression, abuse of all kinds. It's never going to stop. It's never going to stop. And practically, the reason I say all this, the reason I'm making a point on this, is practically, you cannot carry the weight of all of that. This is one of the really bad things about social media.

Okay, now I'm not just harping on social media here. Let me just give you an example. There was research done with 9-11, 9-11, obviously a big, big tragedy, right? There was research done, there were two groups, and they measured the stress levels, the long-term, like five-year stress levels, of people that actually survived 9-11, like they physically went through it, versus people that spent, and I don't remember how they qualified it, they spent a significant amount of time watching the news coverage of 9-11.

They weren't involved in 9-11, but they were watching news coverage. So you had Group A, went through 9-11, B, watched news coverage of 9-11. Group B had higher stress levels than Group A concerning 9-11. By watching it and experiencing it by proxy, they actually got more stressed out than if they were actually in a burning building fighting for their lives. Think about that. In our society today, it is cool to, I mean, if I may say what's cool, I'm 45 years old, okay, so take that with a grain of salt. However, this is kind of what I see, so I'm just tread lightly here. It is cool to take on everybody else's burden. It's cool to fight for a victim, people who can't speak out on their own behalf. So in our society, it's really kind of an end to identify victims and then be an ally for those victims. Look, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with being an ally for a victim.

But man, you can't be everybody's ally. You can't. It'll break you. In many cases, it already has. It's going to leave you disillusioned and resentful. And here's my complaint. How many bright-eyed teachers do we need to lose? How many young leaders need to check out and become disillusioned? How many times do they need to have before we start going, OK, yeah, maybe we shouldn't try to get everybody's burden, put everybody up there? Older members need to mentor the younger, but not toward resentment and disillusionment, towards suffering well, that healthy burden of suffering well. Let's read the last two verses, verses 24 and 25 of Romans chapter eight.

It says, for in this hope we were saved. What hope? The hope that the glory will far outweigh the suffering. The hope that the suffering can't take away what the glory is going to bring in. In this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope or who hopes what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Our salvation is that glory outweighs suffering. We groan, we lament, but we keep fighting. We face sin and we confess it, knowing that it's going to be worth it in the end. We hold on to our inheritance of suffering and glory, knowing they are intertwined. intertwined, you don't get one without the other. I want to leave you with this quote from Martin Luther.

And it's from just a small work, kind of a relatively unknown work called The Defense and Explanation of All Articles. And it goes like this. And it helps us kind of understand maybe where we are. He's talking about this spiritual life, what we've been preaching on the last couple of weeks. He says, this life therefore is not righteousness, book growth in righteousness. This life is not health, but it is healing. It is not being, but becoming. It's not rest, but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for your word. Pray that you would help us to listen to you, to hear your voice in the midst of our pain and suffering, to know that it's not just gonna be worth it, but there's glory that outweighs all of it. There's a moment whenever we're gonna be in glory and we're gonna look back and we're gonna kinda laugh at everything that we're going through right now. We know that these things that we're going through right now feel heavy and we know that you want to be there in the midst of them with us. Help us to carry it well. That's your name that we pray. Before we sing I just want to invite you after the service, after we're you know kind of all done singing and do the benediction and all that, I'm gonna be right over here. If you want to come and talk I'm gonna be right over here and we can we can kind of just just talk through whatever you need to talk through but

that all happens.