Fragrance Of The Father Iii Series

Fragrance of the Father Part 3

Script: Romans 6:5-23

Introduction:

In his book, A Ready Defense, Josh McDowell states: “You can laugh at Christianity; you can mock and ridicule it—-but it works. If you decide to trust Christ, start watching your attitudes and actions, because Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives.”

Contributed by: Robert Leroe

This is why I preach every Sunday to change a life for the better. Jesus is in the life changing business. Look at all the examples that God gives us in regards to his life changing business, Saul of Tarsus, Peter, James, John, Jacob, Elisha, Martha and Mary, the list goes on.

I. Has Our Life Been Through A Change? :

1. We are all here because of the change of life that Christ has performed within us.

2. Some come to church here because Jesus had changed your lives for the better and you want more of what he has already given you.

3. You want more of him because you died out to your self and your old ways of living.

4. You’ve found that your old ways of living did not satisfy as much as your new life in Christ.

5. Listen to how The Message Translation By Eugene H. Peterson reads Romans 6:5 – 23 (TMNT) follow with me in your Bibles starting with

Verse 5 That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.

6. Verse 6 & 7 Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call!

7. Verse 8 What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.

8. Verse 9 We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word.

9. Verse 10 You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.

10. That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.

11. So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly.

12. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act.

13. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do.

14. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!

15. Verse 19 I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had?

16. And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?

17. As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.

18. But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.