Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Thank you, Stephanie, for being an example to all of us on how to go through suffering with a renewed perspective.
All of us can be thankful for all the blessings that we just take for granted every day. Just the fact that we have a healthy body, we take that for granted. So let’s remember to overflow with thanksgiving each day.
One prayer request I missed was that Stephanie’s aunt was struck by a car a couple of days ago. She came out of a coma, but she has many broken bones and a poor prognosis. So, let’s pray for Stephanie’s aunt. And let’s begin this service.
Okay, let’s pray.
Father, we just lift up to you Stephanie’s aunt. We don’t know her, but we trust that she is your child. And although she has broken bones and the outlook looks bleak, we just pray that whatever happens, she confesses her faith in you, holds onto you. We pray that on her last breath she would confess faith in Jesus and that you would take her home. Father, if it’s her time, may she go out with full faith.
Lord, if you’re going to extend her life, Lord, may we experience a miracle of bones being healed and her being fully restored. Either way, Lord, we just want to believe that you have her exactly where she needs to be, and she will.
We just pray for final salvation for her, whether it’s now or whether it’s in the future. Thank you, Lord. We pray that you be with us as we start this service. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
I just want to read a couple verses and then we’ll wrap it up pretty quickly.
1 Corinthians 15:56-57.
56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:56-57, ESV)
Okay, let’s pray.
Lord, we don’t understand fully what this resurrection means, but Lord, we pray that you would give us revelation from above. We pray that you would unpack these two verses for us in a way that we can understand them.
Lord, we want to experience the full resurrection power, the full promise that is given to us as a believer and a follower of Christ. We want this victory. Help us, Lord. Give us understanding. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
If you’re a parent, then you understand there are rules in the house. It is not a free-for-all if you are trying your best to raise your kids well and to protect them from the evils in this world.
So, I have three boys. I was maybe a little too lenient with the first? No, actually, no. No, actually, no. I think I was pretty strict with the first. I got a little bit too lenient with the second. The third one, he really pushed the boundaries.
So, we have rules in the house. And so, like, I gave. We gave Timothy a phone too early. Jeremiah asked for it even earlier. I buckled under the pressure. There is no phone for Elisha. So, I am learning. I’m learning by my third try to do it better each time.
And it’s like when the kids sin, they invent new ways to sin.
So, there’s just new laws that just get started in our house. Like, okay, why don’t you limit the phone? Okay, why don’t we take the phone away from you? Why don’t we actually shut down the phone? Let’s take the phone away.
So, there’s different roles that have come in different seasons of our house and things I didn’t think I would ever have to say. I have to say it now. It’s like when I see a little bit of aggression, I say, you better respect your mom. Oh, you’re getting a little bit.
You’re pushing a little bit too much. And I have to just spell it out, okay. If mom slaps you in the face because you deserve it, and you do anything to her, and you even lay a little finger on her, your life is over. I have to actually put that as a rule because I saw something I didn’t think I would ever see. And that’s just. That kind of stuff happens in our home.
And the Jewish people, they took the Torah. And in those first six books of the Bible, they extracted 613 laws.
248 positive things you must do. And the rest, that’s 365 things you must never do. And imagine if you live that way, so conscious of laws and not breaking the laws. Things you need to do, things you cannot do.
Every parent understands there is a season when you have the children in the home. There are house rules, whether they want them or not. But at some point, they leave. Like Michelle is leaving for college. And at that point, all the laws are lifted. That might be good news for Michelle.
That might be terrifying for the parents, but that is just how life is. You have rules, but eventually you cannot enforce them when they’re not under your roof.
And so, at some point it moves from the law. That was good. And now you live by the Spirit, and you live not under the law. You live under grace.
And if you want to understand what this process looks like, read Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8. It will unpack for you. And by the help of the Spirit, he will start teaching you.
What does it mean to be under the law? And now coming out from under the law, now under grace, and now Jesus Christ is there to grant victory over sin.
It says the sting of death is sin. So, from the very first Adam, the fall in the garden, we’ve been poisoned by the stinger of death. And so, a child from birth, you see it by age 1, 2. Like you didn’t have to teach them to sin, they just sin because the stinger is there.
We’ve been cursed under Adam’s sin. We are born into sin.
And so, without even understanding laws, am I breaking a law? Am I holding to a law? Sin just comes out. It is just the nature that we are born into.
But then it says the second part, the power of sin is the law. And if you’ve tried to be a good parent and you try to enforce certain laws, it seems like the more laws are placed, the more sin comes out, even greater.
You put a law, and somehow there’s a temptation to break that very law, and not just break that law, but break 10 more things that were not even a house rule. But that’s just the nature of our fallenness.
You put a law, not only will you break that, you’re going to break 10 more things. So 10 new laws have to be placed, and then you’re going to break another 10 laws.
You can see how quickly you got to 613 laws in the Old, in the, in the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. Romans describes that the law is good, the law is spiritual. But just the fact that the law is there, we’re provoked to sin more and more and more.
When you’re under the law, it doesn’t matter. You can put 613, you can put 6013 laws, you will break all of them if you’re under the law.
But the good news of this Resurrection Sunday is that the old law-abiding approach to Christian life is now gone.
Now there’s a new pattern that Jesus has started, and he says it is a path of victory.
Some people in the body of Christ think, well, I’m a sinner, and sinners, what do sinners do? Sinners just sin. And while that’s true, we’ll never be perfected in our sinlessness. But the power of sin with Christ has been broken.
And before you were a slave of sin, you had no choice. Before you met Jesus, you sinned and you sinned and you sinned.
And people in society, your parents, put laws over you and you just kept breaking them and breaking them and breaking them even more.
But this power of sin. We live in the presence of sin. We’re in a fallen world. We have a sinful nature, our flesh. Even in us, the presence of sin is always there. But the power of sin is broken, meaning you have a choice. The victory is in Christ.
So, we now we don’t. We’re living by the Spirit. We’re holding on to Jesus. And with Jesus’s help, the power of sin, the patterns of sin start to break off of you.
And let me just. Actually, I need to give. Let me give you a few verses in Romans. I’m not sure if you’re going to read them for yourself, so let me. Let me give them to you. Just a few verses in each of these chapters. Romans 5:18.
18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:18-21, ESV)
And then let me read chapter 6, verse 1.
1 What 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? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4, ESV)
And so there we begin to see the law was given, and it just keeps increasing the trespass. You keep on breaking and trespassing more and more laws.
But with Jesus Christ, there is a new pattern. The old is gone, the new has come. And now with Jesus, we walk in a newness of life. It might not happen in a moment, but as you keep walking with Jesus, the expectation is your life will become new.
It’s not just Jesus’s righteousness that is credited to us. No, you begin to walk it out.
You apply the sacrifice, you apply the death, you apply the resurrection of Christ. You were dead with Christ, united with Christ and his death. you’re raised to new life. And now you start walking in a new way.
The righteousness that Jesus displayed now becomes yours, and you walk it out. And then chapter 7, verses 5 and 6.
5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:5-6, ESV)
Before you met Jesus, your parents put laws upon you, and it aroused in you a desire to break that law and to break laws that were not even in place, because that is the nature that’s being aroused by the law.
The more laws you give, the more this tendency to rebel against the laws that were given and laws that were not even given. This is the pattern of your life before you met Jesus Christ. But that pattern has come to an end. You died to that old way of life. Now you’ve been raised with Christ in the newness of life, and now it’s not by the law. It says, now you are serving in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
So my prayer for each one of my boys is, they had certain laws, they had certain things that I hope they remember as they leave my house. But at some point, these laws will not keep them safe. At some point, I have to release them to the Lord, and they have to walk in a new way by the Spirit.
And the Spirit will guide them. Not trying to memorize 613 laws and trying hard in my effort to obey them. No Jesus Christ, I need to hold on to him by the Spirit, and he will help me to overcome. That is the victory that is promised on every Resurrection Sunday.
And then verses 9 and 12 of this same chapter.
9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. (Romans 7:9-12, ESV)
So, there’s nothing wrong with the law. But the same law that is good and holy and righteous caused sin in us to come alive, aroused sin in us, and we died.
And so, this law-keeping mindset at some point needs to lift. It was there for a season to protect. But as you grow, you cannot overcome sin by just adding another law, by joining a different accountability group. That’s not how you overcome sin.
You overcome sin by the Spirit by holding on to Jesus. And his victory over sin gets applied to your life in very specific areas. And one by one the chains fall off. And that’s why this chapter ends a little bit confusingly, but it ends with a note of victory.
Chapter 7, Romans 7:21.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25, ESV)
Christians, we’re not stuck in chapter 7. We do have a sinful nature. We do have a flesh. We do. We will sin on occasion.
We crucify that flesh with his passions and desires.
24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:24, ESV)
But this chapter 7 is not an excuse to take the Lord’s sacrifice in vain, to trample on the Blood, and to profane the Blood of the Covenant. That is not. This is not a license to sin and abuse grace.
It says thanks be to God. And all of chapter 8 is a promise that if you hold on to Jesus, there is no condemnation because you will walk in a new way.
Not because you’re trying to obsess over the laws and trying to find accountability to keep on this path of law keeping. No, by Jesus Christ. He came to set you free. He resurrected to set you free. And so we have to believe resurrection means victory is ours in Jesus. The victory is ours in Jesus. The sins that characterize the 50 plus years of your life doesn’t have to characterize the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years of your life. The victory is yours in Jesus Christ. You just have to apply it. You have to believe it.
Don’t believe in somebody’s partial theology out there. All the theology you need is right here. Just wrestle with it. Just wrestle with it until it becomes yours, until the victory is yours.
Take your sins, have an attitude. I’m going to shed my blood to overcome this. Jesus will help me to overcome this. I will not be this nasty person who, who just gets into fights, who rebels all the time, who keeps falling into sin all the time.
No, with Jesus’ help, I will have his victory applied to me, and I will be raised with him in the newness of life. That is the promise of this Sunday. And every day we walk with Jesus. You can overcome, and you will overcome in Christ. More and more of these besetting patterns of sin.
Let’s pray.
Father, as we look out into this world, we see so much sin. And as Christ followers, as parents, we get afraid. Is my kid, am I going to fall into sin? Am I going to fall into addiction?
Am I going to lose my way and waste 20, 30 years? There’s all these false teachers. Am I going to lose 30 years in a false teaching church?
There’s so many things out in the world that are dangerous. But, Lord, we cannot protect ourselves or our loved ones through laws. It will just burden us down. It will. It will suffocate us. It is there for a season when appropriate for a young little one growing up in this world.
But at some point, the laws lift, and we hold on to Jesus, and we walk in the newness of the Spirit. Jesus, you conquer sin and death, these patterns of sin. You came not only to forgive us and cover us over these sins, but the power of sin is broken by your resurrection from the dead. And so, Lord, we want to apply it daily in the concrete and specific areas of our life, that we too may walk in the newness of life. We thank you that your Body was broken for us and Your Blood shed. We celebrated that on Good Friday. But, Lord, you rose from the dead. And so, Lord, we’re interacting with a risen Lord who still speaks, who still sets people free.
So, Lord, we pray that you minister to us. Heal us of all sicknesses. Deliver us from all deception. Demolish all strongholds. Set us free, Lord, so that we can walk in the newness of life with you.
Thank you, Lord. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.