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.
19. Tim Labeau track 9
Transitional:
When we come to Jesus helpless and hopeless looking to him for all the answers of life, we will experience a change in our outlook of living from day to day.
II. Our Spiritual Reception Will Come In Clearer:
1. We talked last Sunday about our radio reception tower and where it is located.
2. And I quote: For some reason the world’s station comes in more clearly because we are more closer to the world’s reception tower than we are God’s reception tower.
3. A.W. Tozer writes in the Pursuit of God: Why do some persons find God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course the will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within his household. All he has ever done for any of his children he will do for all his children. The difference lies not with God but with us.
4. How open are we to trying something new, even if it takes a little effort on our parts.
5. Our spiritual receptivity or our openness to God depends on who is in charge.
6. The more God is in charge the more receptive we are to his voice and experiencing his presence.
7. John 10:25 - 27
25Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father’s name speak for me,
26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.
27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
8. Those people who are lovers of their own self are hard of hearing for they hear no one else’s voice except their own.
9. People will think of ways around the death of self but scriptures are pretty clear on the topic.
10. Romans 8:5 - 10 (NIV)
5Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
6The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; 7the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. (The Message: Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God.)8Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. (The Message: That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.)
9You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
11. We must be dead to our own ways of thinking our own ways of living spiritually.
12. Matthew 7:13 - 14
13“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
13. Dying out to self is not very popular in the churches of today.
14. But if you want to experience God and have an openness to receive his presence in a much fuller more sweeter way then dying out to our ways of the flesh is the only way.
15. Romans 8:7-8 (The Message) Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God.
16. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored
17. We will either take on the ways of God in regards to the death of self and find the narrow road that leads to life, and be a part of the few that find it.
18. For it is impossible for us to know how to draw closer to God except that God himself shows us.
19. Which he has through his written word!
20. Do we read God’s word with the anticipation to hear from the voice of God?
21. John 1:4
4In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
22. His life was a light given to us to see our way back to God.
23. Skip down to verse 10
24. John 1:10
10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
25. They did not recognize him nor did they receive him.
26. The people in the 21st century are the same way they still do not recognize him when he tries to reveal himself to us because either they not hungry enough or else they just don’t want to.
27. Illustration: A gem dealer was strolling the aisles at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show when he noticed a blue-violet stone the size and shape of a potato. He looked it over, then, as calmly as possible, asked the vendor, "You want $15 for this?" The seller, realizing the rock wasn’t as pretty as others in the bin, lowered the price to $10. The stone has since been certified as a 1,905-carat natural star sapphire, about 800 carats larger than the largest stone of its kind. It was appraised at $2.28 million.
28. It took a lover of stones to recognize the sapphire’s worth. It took the Lover of Souls to recognize the true value of ordinary-looking people like us. (Online Leadership Journal (America Online) To Illustrate: Redemption Wanda Vassallo) Contributed by: Greg Osborn
29. It took a lover of gems to recognize a natural star sapphire and its worth.
Transitional:
Those that want to experience God with his presence will become a lover to all that is of God and comes from God.
As David was in Psalms 19:8 - 10 The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.9 The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous. 10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
III. Are We Experiencing God? :
1. As a true child of God we must experience God in our lives if we are not then we are not alive unto Christ.
2. For God will reveal himself to us one way or another.
3. In Impressions From Above by Martin Wells Knapp A good book for knowing God’s will.
4. In it he talks about impressions on page 7.
5. An impression may be defined as “an influence on purposes, feelings or action.”
6. While we are free to choose the right or wrong, yet we are continually acted upon by influences, which impress in different ways.
7. Some of them come silently as the sunshine; others come like lightning’s stroke or thunders peal; others like gentles zephyrs, and some like the devastating tornado.
8. Every impression has a source.
9. Back of all operating second causes there is with each impression a designing mind which is the source of it.
10. God is the author of all good impressions, Satan of all that are evil.
11. Hence all impressions are naturally divided into two classes: (1) those from our Father, which we will call “impressions from above.” These, if followed, ripen into convictions; and (2) those from the devil, which we will call “impressions from below.”
12. All impressions from above originate with God. He speaks directly by his Spirit in the heart wherein he reigns.
13. The devil is also speaking to us to which one are we listening the more too?
14. G. D. Watson says the Holy Ghost never guides us contrary to the Word. The Word never guides us contrary to Providence, and Providence does not guide us contrary to the Word or Spirit. So, these three elements of divine guidance are always harmonious.
15. Last week we talked about, “Are we listening to heaven and Are you a good listener?
16. Once we get alone with God, to be still before him, we must close out of our time alone with God the world and all of its timetables, schedules and appointments.
17. We experience God speaking to us for the first time.
18. A wonderful presence surrounds us, engulfs us with an overwhelming feeling of God wrapping his loving arms around us.
19. Read Genesis 28: 10-22
20. By God’s presence he had changed the deceiver into a new man Jacob.
21. In chapters 29, 30, 31 you see that God was with him after Jacob believed and turned his life completely over to God.
22. In chapter 32 the name Jacob that was always deceiving was changed to Israel because of his faith in God.
23. A new life in Christ always brings change to the person who has turned from his or her old ways.
24. A.W. Tozer writes in the Pursuit of God: If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where he is not, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world? The patriarch Jacob, “in the waste howling wilderness,” gave the answer to that question. He saw a vision of God and cried out in wonder, “ surely the Lord was in this place; and I knew it not.” Jacob had never been for one small division of a moment outside of that all pervading presence. But he knew it not. That was his trouble, and it is ours. Men do not know that God is here.
25. In our experience with God we must be looking for him in order for us to experience him.
Transitional:
In experiencing God’s presence in our lives we will reflect all that he is and all that we are to become.
In conclusion:
IV. Our Reflection of Jesus:
Exodus 34:29 - Exodus 34:35 (NIV)
29When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD.
30When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.
31But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them.
32Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai.
33When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face.
34But whenever he entered the LORD’S presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded,
35they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD.
1. In Tommy Tenney and David Capes book on “God’s Secret to Greatness” says: Later on, Moses life demonstrated a divine difference in another way that affected everyone who saw him. When he descended from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, after spending 40 days with God, the scriptures say that “Moses face literally reflected the glory of God’s presence. He actually had to put a veil over his face before the Israelites could bear to look at him. If you have been with the Lord, you will reflect him. God’s presence has transforming power that cannot and will not leave a human life unchanged.
2. Which is what Christianity is all about!
3. Moses face reflected the Glory of God’s presence and so will yours, we cannot spend time alone with God and not reflect his presence.
4. Our faces may not be radiant like Moses, but people will know that we have been with Jesus.
5. If you do not want or like change you’ve come to the wrong Savior Max Lucado writes it well, “God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Jesus.”
6. Saul of Tarsus was the most notorious hunter of Christians in the New Testament- until the day he encountered the living God on the road to Damascus.
7. Peter, James and John in a fishing boat.
8. Zacchaeus up in a sycamore tree.
9. The woman at the well.
10. A crippled man at the gate called Beautiful.
11. A blind beggar at the roadside.
12. Wherever you are have you allowed God to change you.
13. The only way to have the fragrance of the Father in our life is through a change of heart.
Psalms 51:9 - Psalms 51:10 (NIV)
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Everyone sings chorus create in me a clean heart
