Deciding Who To Serve

INTRODUCTION

• SLIDE #1

• We have fought wars as a nation and helped fight wars in order to help people to be able to experience the freedoms we enjoy.

• Freedom is a good thing and it can be a dangerous thing depending on what you do with it.

• In Iraq we have helped that nation have the opportunity to experience freedom. But ultimately the Iraqi people will have to make a choice, freedom, or tyranny.

• Wouldn’t it be sad to see them go back to a brutal dictatorship after all the blood and money we shed over there to help them? How would you feel if another Saddam Hussein rose to power there or if the people ushered the Muslim Brotherhood into power.

• What a disappointing waste of freedom.

• Well, we are not here today to talk about Iraq. We need to understand that there was a war fought for your spiritual freedom, a war in which God’s Son Jesus shed His blood on the cross so we could be free from the bondage of sin.

• SLIDE #2

• Romans 6:6(ESV) 6We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

• When we are baptized into Christ, we are a new creation in Christ with our sins forgiven, BUT we still will need to decide who we are going to serve.

• We need to decide how we are going to exercise our newfound freedom from sin.

• Today we are going to examine Romans 6:12-23 in order to help us to make the decision on who we are going to serve! How will you use the freedom you have in Christ, the freedom that Jesus shed His blood for!

• SLIDE #3

• Romans 6:12-14(ESV) 12Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. 13Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

• SLIDE 4

• First let us examine the choices.

SERMON

I. The choices. (12-14)

• We need to remember that Romans was written to Christians. Now WHY is Paul telling Christians about making a choice concerning who they are going to serve?

• After we are freed from the bondage of sin in our lives, we then must make a conscious decision as to what we will do with our life?

• The first choice we can make is to allow sin to reign again in our bodies.

• WE know this is a choice WE have to make because in verse 12 Paul says LET NOT, and in verse 13 he says NO NOT PRESENT your members to sin then later in the verse he says to PRESENT YOURSELVES TO GOD.

• This tells us that once the slavery to sin has been broken that we STILL have a decision to make!

• In verse 13 we are reminded that before we were freed from sin we regularly presented the members of our bodies to sin.

• We used our bodies as instruments of unrighteousness (or everything that contradicts God’s standard of right, especially in our relationships with others.)

• The word “reign” is a word used of a king who has total dominion over its subjects.

• Once we let sin have dominion over us verse 12 explains that we will then let sin make you obey its passions.

• When we let sin creep into our lives, it only looks for an opportunity to present itself.

• In the story of Cain and Abel God warns Cain…

• SLIDE #5

• Genesis 4:7(ESV) 7If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

• We have to decide if we are going to go right back to the way things were.

• There is a better choice that we find in the same verses, the decision to present ourselves to God!

• In verse 13 we are encouraged to “present” our bodies to God. The word “present” implies a definite once and for all commitment. The inner man that died and rose with Jesus is responsible for controlling the whole person’s behavior and for putting oneself at the disposal of God.

• Verse 14 says that sin shall not master over you. There is a subtle change in language in the original text. We shift from “THE SIN” or “KING SIN” that has dominion over us to verse 14 that says “sin” or “lord sin”.