Rebirth: Hard Hat

Hard Hat, Hammer, Boots, Sunglasses, An Old Pair Of Jeans – I’m ready to build. Last week we saw that w are building a Spiritual House. But before we can even build we need to have the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, you cannot build a spiritual house. Jesus tells us we need to be spiritually reborn then, and only then, can we start work on our spiritual house.

If you take out your sermon outlines you will see that we are starting to look at how to build a spiritual house. This morning, by examining our given Scriptures, we will look at, starting to remove the power that sin has over me, spiritual rebirth is more than saying the right words, in the right order, being sure that I have the Holy Spirit.

Having a Spiritual rebirth – or as Jesus put it – being born again, is not an end in itself – it is the beginning.

Story – Cross Country.

I ran was on the Cross Country team for a year – but being a sprinter, I found it boring. When we would have a meet. we would Line up and wait for the Gun. Everyone would take off as fast as they could. Being a sprinter in 10 yards I would have a comfortable lead, but it was the beginning of the race, being in the lead wasn’t the goal – winning was. I always lost.

The same with Spiritual rebirth, it is not the goal – but the start. It is like punching in at the time clock for work.

Punching The Time Clock.

Story – Perfect Employee.

HR: Only employee out of 300 who got to work on time….and left on time all year. She secret: Stand at the time clock and wait for the exact moment. HR was thrilled with her – truth is she didn’t get much done during the day. She looked great on paper.

We don’t just want to look good on paper – do we? We want to be great at spiritual construction. So we need to grow spiritually, growing spiritually builds our spiritual house.

Let us turn to our Scripture from Romans Chapter 6, page 1116 in red bibles.

When we look at this Scripture we need to know the following. It is not about baptism. It is not saying that we have to be baptized to be saved. We will continue to sin. It is not talking about not sinning again. God will accomplish it in my life.

Remember our verse from a couple of weeks ago?

Zech. 4:6 So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.

God will accomplish it in my life.

This Scripture from Romans – above all else – deals with sinful conduct.

Interpret The Blueprints.

Verse 1 – Paul says a curious thing here

Rom. 6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

See God’s Grace covers us. In fact the more we have sinned, the more we are covered with God’s Grace. Some of us have done a large number of rotten things. Yet, when we give our life over to Christ – we are forgiven and he continues to forgives us. So one could reason: The more sin I have in my life, the more God’s grace will cover me. So the more I sin – the more of God’s grace I have. I want the most grace I can get – so I better start sinning. This is Logical. Natural. Pious.

Logical. See, most religions tell us that if we stop sinning and do good works and do them long enough, we might be saved. When Martin Luther objected to the corruption in the church this was the argument given: Then God’s grace increases…..

Natural. Sin is just natural for us. Paul, in Romans Chapter 7, uses the term sinful nature meaning – our natural, unspiritual state of being.

Some people will say people are naturally inclined to be good, buthe Bible teaches the opposite…..

Pious. Pious, meaning, it only occurs in a religious setting. Those Jesus dealt with who were religious leaders they ere concerned with righteous conduct. If I live well, therefore I will be acceptable to God. But Jesus taught: we are righteous when we follow Him.

We also see in verse 2 that w are dead to sin.

Verse 6 w are to count ourselves dead to sin.

It is not we are dying to sin. It is past tense – it already happened. It is not that we do not respond to sin. We are tempted – and will not fall into temptation. It is not that we should die to sin. Remember it is not us – but God. It is not dying day by day, rather we are dead to sin, not dying. Dying is not something we do, but God has done this. It is not we have renounced sin and there for will not continue to sin.