Burial: Death's Demise Series

INTRODUCTION

• SLIDE #1

• Usually when someone dies we bury them and it is more or less the end of the story.

• There will be no more walks in the park, no more good times together.

• Death claims another victory; the world seems to go on like nothing ever happened.

• With Jesus something was going to be different.

• On Palm Sunday, Jesus enters into Jerusalem a hero… but just a few shorts days later, He leaves on a cross, buried in a tomb, BUT He did not stay in the tomb!

• SLIDE #2

• 1 Corinthians 15:55–57 (ESV) “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

• With the burial of Jesus came death’s demise!

• This does not seem like a victory, if people are still dying it does not seem as though death’s demise may be overstated.

• How does the demise of death help us? What does Jesus victory over death do for us because to this day we still die?

• Today we are going to examine Paul’s writing in the book of Romans, chapter 6 verses 1-5. In our passage today we are going to see some ways in which death’s demise affects us.

• One thing we always need to understand is that we are saved by the shed blood of Jesus.

• But the death of and the shed blood of Jesus on its own does not save us because IF just by virtue of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins we would ALL be saved.

• By the blood we all CAN be saved but we have to do what God asks us to do for that to happen.

• What needs to happen for that sacrificial death to have an effect on us is that we need to have the blood applied to us. We have to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

• For the blood of Jesus to cover us we need to place our faith in Jesus, we need to confess Him as our Lord, we need to repent of our sins and we need to be immersed into Christ.

• There is a point in time where the blood of Jesus is applied to us. To see this we will dig a little deeper today.

• As a side bar to our dealing with death’s demise we will also see when the benefits of Jesus sacrifice on the cross is conveyed to us individually!

• Let’s begin our examination in verses 1-3.

• SLIDE #3

• Romans 6:1–3 (ESV) 1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

• SLIDE #4

SERMON

Burial is Death’s demise because…

I. Our burial with Christ breaks our bondage to sin. (1-3)

• One of the themes of Romans that Paul lays out is that when sin is present, God’s grace is greater. In other words God’s grace can overcome any and all sin.

• A natural question one might ask then is why don’t we continue in sin so that God’s grace can shine through. This is what Paul is answering in verse 1.

• Think about the concept for a moment. When we hear of someone whom society considers a BIG sinner come to Jesus, we sit at the edge of our seats when we hear them describe their former life outside of Jesus.

• Then we are wowed when they reveal how Jesus changed their life.

• We too are impressed by a BIG sinner coming to Jesus through God’s grace.

• Being JUSTIFIED (declared innocent when one is guilty) BY FAITH was not meant to be an encouragement by God to sin even more. And Paul makes that clear in verse 2.

• The question, going back to verse 1 is, “are we to CONTINUE in sin that grace may abound.”

• Paul asks if we are to act as we did BEFORE we were converted or saved. The obvious answer in verse 2 is NO!

• Then verse 2 unlocks the reason we CANNOT CONTINUE living the way we did before becoming a Christian.

• How can we who died to sin still live in it?

• When something dies they cannot react. A dead cat cannot chase string anymore. You can parade a string of swimsuit models in front of a dead guy and he will not even crack a smile!