ROMANS: The Death that Produces Life

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Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open up to Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

I'll start reading in verse 12.

I want to talk to you this morning about the death that produces life.

The death that produces life.

The Bible says there's a way that seems right unto a man, but the end of that is destruction, is death.

But by the same token, the Bible says that there's a death that we're called to die that produces life.

And Paul talks about that in Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

I'll start reading in verse 12.

He says, So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of Adoption as sons by whom we cry.

Abba, Father, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we're children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Basically, just the text makes two points this morning that I want to draw to your attention.

I want to unpack one, and then I want us to rejoice in the other.

And the first point is simply this, and this death that produces life, mortification is necessary.

Mortification, the Bible tells us, is necessary.

You may be thinking, great, what is the mortification?

Glad it's necessary.

I don't know what it is.

Very simply, mortification, when the Bible talks about, when Paul says this, he says, so then, brothers, in verse 12, I want you to get the context.

He says, so then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

Now, what he's talking about there, he says, hey, if you live according to the flesh, if you just live a natural life your entire life, when you he's not talking about physical death, he's talking about spiritual death.

You're going to be separated from God for eternity.

That's spiritual death.

That's what the Bible, that's hell.

It's separation from God.

The Bible says all the way back in Isaiah, God told people, hey, in Isaiah 59, about verse 2, your sins have cut you off and separated you from God.

It's what Jesus says in Matthew 7, about verse 22, and he says, talking about judgment day, he says, On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, do we not cast out demons in your name and perform many miracles?

And Jesus says, and I will tell them plainly, depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

I never knew you.

Now hear what Jesus said.

Depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

You people who lived in sin your entire life.

I never knew you.

What is Jesus saying?

He's not saying, hey, you thought you knew me, and at the last minute I ran the okie doke on you.

No, he's saying, hey, all along, to know me, it means that you have to have a different relationship with sin.

You can't just pray a prayer, live in sin your entire life.

What glory for God is there in a salvation that brings him no honor?

You see, Paul jumps in and says, hey, mortification, putting, that's why he says, so if we if you live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But here's the good news.

But if by the Spirit, and that's the only way you and I can do it, if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Mortification, that's the big word for putting to death the deeds of the body.

It's not self-hatred, it's not cutting, it's not taking pliers and tearing your flesh and hating yourself.

Mortification is this the clear-sided recognition of sin is sin, leading to decisive and radical action.

The clear-sided recognition of sin is sin leading to decisive and radical action.

You say, now I don't even like the word radical because I think you know the word radical is nowhere in the Bible, right?

Hello?

You know that's not in there, right?

And I understand that there's a great book written a few years ago called Radical by a very godly man.

Great, but I just I think we need to be careful that we label radical what the Bible just says is normal.

And we've kind of, by saying, by labeling it radical, we kind of put it out there.

But Paul is kind of saying when he says, hey, you gotta put to death the deeds of the flesh.

He says, hey, but if by the Spirit, this is how you do this, you know, you say, well, what boil it down?

What is he saying?

Here's what he's saying: because what Christ has done to free you from sin, you're now able because of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you, you and I are able to kill sin, and your identity as sons and daughters of God is verified, borne out, validated, and experienced by you, following the leading of the Holy Spirit to kill sin.

If you live according to the flesh, you're gonna die.

Think about it this way: because how can we possess life and court death at the same time?

This inconsistency between who we are and how we live is unthinkable.

You know, the man lived a long time ago named John Owen was a great writer and thinker and preacher.

Now, before I give you this John Owen quote, I'll come up on the screen because a lot of times we see people quoted in church, we go, oh man, if I could be like that guy, look up there.

Look at that quote.

Put the quote up there if you would, Marcus.

I mean, he's a very godly, profound thinker.

I mean, look at that and just think about it.

He says, the choicest believers who are assuredly freed from their condemning from the condemning power of sin ought to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

Now, we don't speak that way, so it's kind of hard for us to get our head around the old English.

Owen was famous for saying, you need to be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.

But here's the part of Owen that a lot of people don't get that I think we need to understand.

He also referred to his own heart as a habitation of dragons.

You say, What do you mean?

He said, and and and I'll contemporize it, he said, My heart is so hard and parched and so besotted with sin, so tempted to sin, it's like dragons live inside of me.

And he said, I gotta get up and I gotta mortify, I gotta put to death the deeds of my flesh.

Or as that great theologian Johnny Cash said, when after he struggled with addiction to amphetamines for years and he got clean and sober, a reporter asked him years later, so how does it feel like to have overcome your addiction?

And he said, Overcome my addiction?

Oh ma'am, I've got I've got the the this this animal in me, and if I'm not careful every day, he'll get me.

And the reporter was like, Oh, okay.

Okay.

See, he understood what John Owen understood, that his heart is a habitation of dragons.

He just couldn't get up and say, Hey, I prayed a prayer and I accepted Christ as my Savior 20 years ago, and God loves me and God forgives me, and so here we go.

He said, No, no, no.

I got to be actively engaged in this whole process of killing sin or it's gonna it's gonna kill me.

Because what we do is we tend to tolerate sin.

We hope it'll eventually go away.

Let me just say this: sin never leaves of its own volition.

Therefore, it must be dealt with in power.

And this power is the Holy Spirit because it doesn't leave of its own volition.

And beloved, let's be honest, I don't and you don't have enough volition to send it away yourself.

If you did, and if I did, we wouldn't struggle with habitual sin.

And we'll get to that in just a minute.

But by the way, this is not just a one-off in the Bible somewhere.

The Bible talks about it right here.

It's all through the Bible, it's putting to death the deeds of the body.

Paul talks in Colossians 3 about put to death what belongs to your earthly nature.

But let me just remind you what Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount, one of the most quoted uh sermons in the history of humanity.

It is in in in halls of academia, it is considered one of the greatest discourses on moral ethics.

And we kind of forget that Jesus, in that little discourse on moral ethics, he said this in Matthew chapter 5, verse 29 if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

Matthew 5:29

For it is better you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.

For it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell.

Now this is that's can you feel how extreme that sounds in our day and age of cheap grace?

Can you feel people wincing back from that kind of going, oh no, Jesus didn't, he was just kind of exaggerating to get your attention.

Why does God need to exaggerate?

That's what we do.

No, he just says, hey, hey, be he's he's not saying, by the way, cut your hand off or gouge your eyes out.

If you lust, gouge your eyes out.

Because if the penalty for lusting was gouging your eyes out, we'd be a bunch of blind people in here with white sticks killing each other right now.

Is that your way of saying amen?

Absolutely.

See, that's not what he's saying.

What he's saying is this: hey, think biblically about sin.

Mortify.

Don't just tolerate it.

Don't just kind of go, oh, well, you know, because see here's the thing.

The Bible says, what fellowship does light have with darkness?

The Spirit of God, the light of God doesn't come to live inside of you to cohabitate with darkness.

No, he comes to wage war on darkness, and unless you and I join the Holy Spirit and waging war on darkness, to not join the Holy Spirit and waging war on darkness and mortifying the deeds of the flesh is evidence that you don't know God.

Because you have a different agenda for God residing in you.

You want presence.

But let me just say, beloved, you don't get present the presence of God without the power of God manifesting itself in your life.

It would be the highest form of hate.

It would not be redeeming love, like we sang about a few minutes ago.

For the Spirit of God to come and live inside of my body and leave me at the mercy of my fallen nature.

That would not be love, that would be hate.

And so, because God loves us with a redeeming love, when he comes to live inside of us, he says, Hey, by the way, we need to start dealing with this.

And what happens is when I go, you know what?

You're exactly right.

I'm gonna agree with you, God, about that sin in my life.

And when I do that, and when I mortify, when I put it to death, when I cut off its air supply.

You say, What do you mean?

Some people struggle with internet situations, looking at inappropriate things on the internet so much.

You can't own a laptop computer.

You can't have a smartphone.

Don't make excuses for that.

Don't apologize for that.

Mortify.

Put it to death.

People say, hey, why don't you have a smartphone?

Because I don't trust myself to not look at inappropriate things on the internet.

I was having coffee not long ago with a guy that works at a church.

Now you want to be around some rascals.

You get some people that work at a church.

Those are some smooth talking sinners right there.

I mean, the longer you work at a church, you can justify anything.

And so we're having coffee and talking, and about two minutes in, I'm bored.

It's like that third date, ten minutes in, you realize this was a bad idea.

This is not the girl I'm gonna marry, and she's eating an expensive meal I'm gonna have to pay for.

And so I'm sitting there about ten minutes in, and I'm trying to be nice and be good and think, you know, all right, oh hey, and he kept saying, So, brother, how are things at Grand Parkway?

Man, don't roll up on me and call me brother.

No one knows me, calls me that.

And then the more he talked, the more I felt myself just thinking, this is an hour of my life I'm never gonna get back.

So I thought, let's do something meaningful.

And so when he stopped plathering on about his church and blah, blah, blah, well, what's God doing at Grand Parkway?

Well, I mean, it's great.

Despite my leadership, the church continues to go well, blah, blah, blah.

Well, that's good, that's good.

Amen.

Praise God.

And I'm thinking, do you talk like this all the time?

And so he said, So, what do you want to talk about?

Now it's a party.

I said, What sins have you killed lately?

He said, What?

I said, I'm just committed to having meaningful conversation, not just getting together and buffing each other with affirmation cream about our churches.

Let's get down to the get down.

Let's take our shirts off an Indian leg wrestle or something.

They've never seen that in this Starbucks.

What sins have you killed lately?

And the guy put his call, he took us and put he said, I don't know what you mean.

Sure you do.

Sure you do.

You got to be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.

What sins have you killed lately?

I'm preaching through Romans, and so I said in a couple weeks we'll get to Romans 8, where he talks about mortifying, putting it by the Spirit, using the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit to kill sin, or sin will be killing you.

You'll struggle with the same sin your entire life.

I know grown men who struggle with pornography that started when they were 11.

Because they don't kill sin.

They take it in as a pet, and pretty soon it's their landlord.

It owns them.

So let's just get honest here and make this worth our while.

What sins have you killed like?

Well, I really I really don't think in those categories.

I mean, I mean, well, if you had to kill one, which one would you want to kill?

Well, uh uh, I think sometimes I exaggerate.

See what happens when you work at a church?

You turn into a schmuck.

You can't even say you're so phony, you can't even tell the truth about your sin.

You can't say, hey, sometimes I lie to make myself look better.

He said, Well, sometimes I exaggerate.

I said, What do you mean you exaggerate?

You mean you lie?

No, I prefer exaggeration.

So I just start unbuttoning my shirt.

We're gonna have to Indian leg wrestle right here.

I said, Well, what do you mean?

Well, sometimes I I I I I mean, I kind of um, like earlier when we were talking about numbers, I kind of inflated the numbers at my church, so you would you you would think well of me.

Why why would you do that?

Well, I mean, I I you know how it is in ministry, ministerially speaking.

No, I don't know.

That's called lying.

What that is.

That's not exaggerating.

You see, maybe you maybe this week you could you could kill lying.

He's like, Well, I don't know how to do that.

Okay, let me help you.

Can I be your pastor for a minute?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

Uh next time, I said, can you feel when you lie?

You know you can feel when you lie, don't you?

Sure you can.

Your chest gets hot.

If you can lie and you don't feel it, you've been lying too long, my man.

You and I need to see you after the service.

We need to pray deliverance on you.

You can't even feel when you're lying.

You're like, it's just my native.

Hey, the Bible says in John 8, about verse 44, that the devil is the father of lies when he speaks, he speaks his native language.

That's his native language.

Lying is not your native language if you're a Christian.

You should just tell the truth.

And just sometimes, by the way, telling the truth gets you in trouble.

You say, What do you mean?

See me after the service.

I'll tell you.

He says, So hi.

I mean, what what what do you expect me to do?

Oh, it's not what I expect you to do.

If you live your life for the approval of men, the fear of man is a snare, my brother.

It'll get you.

You better live your life for the approval of God, which you already have, so why can't you be authentic?

Well, you know, sometimes, you know, I just find myself kind of like I say, exaggerating.

The Bible calls that lying, okay?

Next time you lie, and when you feel it, you know when you feel it, yeah.

I said, just stop and just doubt yourself.

He goes, What do you mean?

Just say to everybody you just lied to.

Hey, you know what?

I so wanted to manage your impression of me.

I just lied to you to make myself look better.

Are you serious?

That's how you kill lying.

Lying can't survive in that.

And pretty soon people want to get around you because you're gonna tell the truth.

Well, people like I have a lot of people look up to me.

If they look up to you for being a liar, imagine what could happen.

Revival could break out if you just start telling the truth.

Just kill that one sin.

Or they may not like you anymore.

So you're bound to keep lying the rest of your life.

It's like when my wife cooks something I don't like, my wife experiments.

We no longer have rice.

When I was growing up on food stamps, we had white rice.

It didn't kill us.

Now you health nut people have gone crazy.

Oh, we gotta have, you know, this old hand-picked brown boom made rice.

Now we have quinoa at my house.

I don't know what quinoa is.

It looks like a bunch of BBs, but you women stop going to the Whole Foods Market.

Oh, that rice is bad for you.

You didn't have quinoa.

I'm like, I didn't know stuff existed when I was a kid.

I didn't know there were multiple kinds of lettuce either.

We got iceberg lettuce every once in a while, 49 cents a head.

Oh no, there's red leaf and green leaf.

I'm not making this up.

I came home the other night, and my wife had made kale chips.

Yeah.

Some of you know what that is.

You get the same magazine, you crazy women.

My wife, kale is like stale lettuce, and she put it on a baking sheet and put it in the oven and drills it with olive oil and sea salt because on some cooking show they got a little thing of sea salt.

What happened to a salt shaker with iodine in it?

And some ground some pepper because Martha Stewart grinds her pepper.

And she put this stale lettuce in the oven and baked it until it got crunchy and pulled it out like she was giving me gold nuggets.

I said, What's for supper?

Well, we got this.

And I also made some kale chips.

She said, cow chips?

What?

And here's the crazy part.

I've been under her spell so long.

I ate it.

I ate every bit of it.

And here's the worst part.

The the spingali brainwashing has worked on me.

It was good.

And she said, you know, olive oil, because I was looking down the bottom of the panel, all that oil, I was like, you know, you could fry some bacon and have just as much oil left over.

And I would eat all that too.

Oh, extra virgin olive oil, also known as EVO, is good for you.

Yeah, what lobbyists got that life started.

Well, why why why are you telling us this?

I'm telling you this because, see, here, here's the thing.

When it comes to this whole mortification thing, putting to death the deeds of the body, let's get back to the you you you cannot, you cannot just, oh, well, okay, it's no big deal.

No, big deal.

Big deal.

Mortify.

Put to death the deeds of the body.

If you live in the flesh, you will surely die.

But if by the Spirit, the Spirit now lives inside of me, I can think differently about my sin.

I can say that I can agree with God.

That's what repentance is.

You know what, God, that's right.

That's not okay for me to do that.

I don't care if my girlfriend thinks it's okay.

Or my boy, my buddies say, oh, it's no big deal.

If God says it's a big deal, then I gotta declare war on that.

Let me just give you a couple thoughts about mortification.

First one is simply this that without it, there can be no measurable progress in discipleship.

Without mortification, there can be no measurable progress in discipleship.

You say, What do you mean?

It's the same sin, same response, same feeling.

And over time you just start thinking, does it get any better?

And no, it's not going to get any better, so does it even matter?

That's why people drop out of church.

It's not that they hate church.

It's not that, oh, church is lame.

No, it's just that they're so sick of the sameness of their life.

And they go to church and we talk about everything except things the Bible talks about.

My life, and you say, Man, you're jacked up today because my Christian life changed forever when I understood that I had to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in putting to death the deeds of the flesh.

There are things that I struggle with in college, I don't struggle with anymore.

Because I didn't just come to church and make it the preacher's responsibility to fix my life.

I tried to find a church, and it was hard to find a church that taught the Bible so I could hear the truth and go, you know what?

Absolutely yes to that.

Without mortification, there can be no measurable progress.

What do you mean?

If you're sitting in the room thinking, it's kind of like a marriage.

You know, a lot of people don't have a 10-year marriage.

They have this two-year cycle.

If you've been married 10 years, you have this two-year cycle, you go on.

So you have the same two-year marriage five times.

You don't have a 10-year marriage.

A lot of people's Christianity is like that.

They haven't been a Christian for 10 years.

They have about an 18-month cycle.

They go on, they go to a church, they all get they join, get plugged in.

Same sin, same response, same guilt.

Well, this church didn't meet my needs.

I'm going to church.

It's not the church, it's you.

Second thing about mortification cynicism renders us content with a certain level of sanctification.

Cynicism renders us content with a certain level of sanctification.

Said differently, we have this desire, but we like the confidence that we'll be successful.

So we think I I've tried this before and it's not worked.

What's the use?

That's cynicism.

Just spiritual cynicism.

Hey, you know what?

Just let me just write it out right here.

Third thought on mortification.

We learn enough about grace and forgiveness to make mortification optional.

Let me just say to you, people I love, it's not optional.

It's not works.

I'm not saying, oh, well, this is just another form of religious.

No.

We learn about grace and forgiveness.

Grace, true.

Forgiveness, absolutely done deal.

That's why I hoist my cup when we sing something about just being fully forgotten.

I'll drink to that.

I am fully forgiven, past, present, and future.

So why sin?

Why have the same besetting sin in your life since you were a little kid?

Why deal with everything except the high places?

You ever read in the Old Testament where God tells the people, hey, do away with all this stuff.

And He says, They did away with all these idols except the high places.

That's what comes back to haunt us.

The question we should maybe ask ourselves today is just, what sin have you killed lately?

Maybe when your community group meets next week, you should sit in a circle in someone's living room and say, hey, Bob, what sin have you killed lately?

Let's talk about, or what sins are we trying to kill currently?

What sins are we currently trying to just put to death?

By the way, the two most common responses to this teaching are resignation and legalism.

You hear this teaching and you kind of just go, man, there is no way I could ever do that.

I'm done.

Or legalism.

You kill one sin and you're so excited and you do it with such the wrong motives that you give birth to another.

Pride.

But see, God kind of rescues us, as is his nature.

Look at verse 14.

He says, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

What do you mean?

This is what he says, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

By the way, one of the things you hear in the media and in and in culture, and it kind of gets kind of woven into the school system these days, is the universal fatherhood of God.

That's not true, by the way.

You say, What do you mean?

You ever heard this?

Well, God's everyone's father.

No.

The Bible says right here that those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God.

What do you mean?

Well, God's everyone's father.

Then why did Jesus say to the Pharisees, you are of your father the devil?

See, be careful because the next step is, well, if God's everyone's father, then we're all Christians.

Then the next step is, well, who are you to judge me?

You can't judge me.

I believe in God.

It's just a subtle slope you get on.

And I just want, I ain't, I don't want to go into that.

I just want to point this out and say, oh, by the way, one of the things we get fed through the media and most especially through music.

Remember a long time ago, you people that are old, remember eight tracks and albums?

Remember we are the world.

We are the world.

My favorite part was Willie Nelson.

No one caught this.

I was like, hello, that's not the way it happened.

Willie Nelson said, As God has shown us by turning stones to bread.

And they were all like, Yeah, we should turn stones to bread and feed the hungry.

No, Willie, he didn't turn.

He was tempted.

Jesus was tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread.

But Jesus didn't do that.

But you can sing bad theology and get away with it.

Especially if you're holding hands with Dion Warwick.

We are the world.

Y'all know that is, do you?

If you're under 30 right now, you're going, I got nothing.

What am I saying?

Notice what he says.

He says in verse 14, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.

Second point, identity makes it all possible.

Let me finish with this.

Look at verse 15.

What do you mean, your identity?

He says, For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.

But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba Father.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we're children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, in order that we may also be glorified with him.

And he said, What do you mean our identity makes it all possible?

It starts in verse 15.

I just want to tell you four or five things about your identity as a Christian.

And if you're in the room today and you're like, hey, I've never begun a relationship with Christ.

My life has never been changed.

I want you to know this is what's available to you today.

Starting in verse 15, he says, For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.

And now, let me just say this.

He says, the spirit of slavery, you fall, as a Christian, you were called out of fear.

The Bible says God's not given us a spirit of fear.

You know that, right?

He's not giving you a spirit of fear.

You don't have to live because slaves live in fear of their master.

But sons and daughters live in the enjoyed acceptance of their father.

You don't have to fall back into fear.

You were delivered out of fear.

We did not receive the spirit of slavery, so we fall back into fear.

First thing I want to tell you about your identity is that I'm not a slave, but a son.

If you're a woman, you're not a slave, but you're a daughter.

There's no more fear.

I've been adopted.

It's like the story of the two kids, one of them, two little boys, one of them was adopted, one of them was born naturally.

This couple couldn't get pregnant, so they adopted.

And right after they adopted, they got pregnant.

The boys grew up, they're about two years apart, they're arguing about who their parents love the most.

And the adopted kid looked at that one and said, Hey, listen, mom and dad had to take you, they chose me.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Because the Bible, one of the things that when he uses the word adoption, he kind of changes the way Paul changes the way we think about God.

See, he uses a lot of words in Romans up to this point.

Justification, you think about God as judge.

Redemption, you think about God as redeemer.

Saved, you think about God as Savior.

But adoption, none of those words seem to fit.

Here's why.

Christianity is not about, it's not for smart people.

It doesn't insult the intelligence.

You got to think about it, but you don't have to be smart to understand it.

Adoption all of a sudden puts God in the category of father.

We all have a frame of reference, either for a good father experience or a not so good father experience.

He comes along and says, Hey, I'm not a slave, but I'm a son.

And by saying that, he's saying, hey, think about God in these terms.

I think I told you yesterday when I sent out an email about I was reading in preparation for this morning about in natural adoption.

We have folks in our church that have adopted different people.

It's a great thing.

Some folks can't get pregnant.

Man, they can adopt.

Glory to God.

Get after it.

I think that's great.

I think the church, it's one thing to go pick at an abortion clinic.

It's another thing to hold up signs and say, we'll take the baby.

That's a whole other sermon.

I don't have time to preach, but you can't just go to the abortion clinic and scream at those women over the fence.

Hold up a sign that says, We will adopt your baby.

Don't kill it.

The media is used to the other wackos.

But you say, what do you mean, adoption?

I was reading about adoption, and one of the things that they talk about in adopting children today in America is that the older a child gets when he's in the system and he goes unadopted, he starts living with the fear that he's A, never going to be adopted, or B, he's going to be adopted, and then he's going to do something to disappoint his adopted family, and they're going to send them back.

Matter of fact, when a kid gets over the age of eight, they start counseling them in the system about, hey, you know, when you go to live with your adopted family, you need to be patient.

You can't act out.

Take your meds, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Because they want them to kind of fit in.

And there's a trial period where the family can say, hey, we tried it, it didn't work.

Take this kid back.

By the time a kid gets to be 12, they live with this thought in their head that says, I'm going to screw this up eventually.

So why not just screw it up right now and get it over with so I can get out of this realm of uncertainty and go back to the orphanage.

It's an orphanage, but at least it's certain.

I know what I'm going to deal with here.

And so a lot of kids will get adopted and they'll go and they'll do something horrible and they'll get sent back.

You say, why am I telling you that?

Because a lot of Christians live with that same uncertainty.

You think, okay, yeah, God adopted me.

But one day he's just going to get fed up and he's going to say, you know what?

That's it.

I'm disappointed for the last time in you.

You go back to wherever you came from.

And I just want to say to you, that's not God.

That thought is so prevalent that I sent that email out yesterday, and within five minutes, I got this response from a lady in our church.

And with her permission, I said, Can I share this?

I won't use your name.

And she said, I said, I think this is more prevalent than you may realize.

And she wrote these words.

She wrote, whether you're born into a family or adopted into a family, for many, the fear of abandonment is a harsh reality.

For me, due to low self-esteem and the belief that the words of the enemy that the enemy yells or sometimes quietly whispers, that, quote, you're not good enough, smart enough, you're born a female and not a male child.

You are too different to be loved or wanted.

You're the black sheep.

No one really loves you.

You're wasting good air.

Just end it all, and everyone will be better off without you.

No one will miss you.

These are difficult words to ignore when you hear them over and over, repeatedly for years.

Like being weighed down with concrete shoes in a lake, fighting to reach the surface to no avail.

You finally give up and sink, watching the light slowly, ever so slowly, dim from your outstretched hands.

No one other than the power and the faith and the hope that one has in Jesus can break you free of these lies and concrete anchors.

It is not just knowing that Jesus loved me when he created me and he loved me even more when he died for me, but believing in him and that he thinks I'm worth it.

He is the reason I am here today.

So if you're in this room out now and you're thinking, man, I don't fit in a church.

It's a bunch of perfect people.

That lady was in our first service.

I saw her and winked at her and said, Thank you.

Some of you, you got more out of what I just read than anything I said up to this point, and that's fine.

But if that's you, I just want to say to you, your God has adopted you.

He's never gonna change his mind.

To quote that grow that great theologian Toby Garner, he's your dad.

He's your dad.

He's never, when he comes to adopt you, he comes into this room and says, I want that one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one.

And the people are going, sir, it cost, you know, it costs a lot of money to adopt a child.

I don't know if you it's expensive.

He's got the resources.

See, the first thing about your identity says, I'm not a slave, but I'm a son.

Secondly, I now have intimate access to the father.

That's what Jesus means when he says this.

You still with me?

When Jesus says, uh, in verse 15, after he says, Hey, you've received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

That's what I mean when I say you now have intimate access to the Father.

That word Abba is actually it's Aramaic and it literally means daddy.

It's the way uh a small Jewish child would refer or uh would would refer to his dad.

They say Abba.

Like I have a friend, his children call him Papa.

When I'm around him, it's a little, I'm like, because I never hear that.

I mean, they're they're like teenagers and they're papa, and I'm like, what are you, the Waltons?

What's what's going on here?

It's a little, because you've heard dad, daddy, da-da-da.

But when someone says papa, and the only thing that would be, and it's very intimate, I think that's very cool.

Can you imagine your kids look at you and going, Abba?

You'd be like, ooh, don't put that pressure on me.

But you got to understand something.

In Jewish culture, the name of God was so revered that when they were reading, they would come to the letters Y, W, H.

It didn't have any vowels in it in their vocabulary, and they'd see those letters, and because they didn't know how to quite pronounce that name, how to sound it out, when the Bible says, do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, the the devout Jew wouldn't even, he would get to that and instead of mispronounce God's name, he would just be silent for a moment to acknowledge and revere the name of God, and then he'd pick up with the next word and keep reading.

Into such a culture, Jesus comes, and every time Jesus prays in the gospels, it's Abba Father, Abba Father, Abba Father.

It's this intimate connection with his father.

The only time he doesn't pray that is when he's on the cross and he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

God turns his back on his son because his son is taking on my sin and your sin.

And he, it's the only time he doesn't say Abba Father, he feels the separation of God because God cannot have a relationship with sin.

Jesus is burying the sin of the world, and it's not Abba, it's my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And then he dies and he's buried and he rises from the dead.

And in John 17, excuse me, John 20 and 21, he's right back to Abba.

Father.

When the disciples said, Lord, teach us how to pray, he said, when you pray, pray this way.

Our see, Jesus came to change the way you think of and relate to God.

You don't have to be afraid of him.

He's your dad.

One of the greatest accomplishments of my life is my children are not afraid of me.

Yesterday, when it was raining canned hams and lightning streaking across the sky and it's green outside, I'm thinking we're gonna have to cancel church.

One of my kids rolled up on me and said, Hey dad, would you go to Chick-fil-A?

And my first thought was, What?

What whose kids are these?

And I thought, they're mine.

I've done that to them.

In the next service, they'll be sitting right over there.

I won't get off this platform and walk down here to talk with people, and my nine-year-old will come home and go, Dad, what's for lunch?

And I'll say, Whatever you want.

And she'll say, Can we get Subway?

Hey, I got lunch meat at home.

Just because somebody with plastic gloves makes it, doesn't make it any better.

My kids think it's a feast.

And I go right over here and get them Subway, and I go home and eat leftovers.

And here's here's the heart of a father.

I would eat leftovers every day so my kids could have Subway if that's what it took.

And you go, Well, your kids are spoiled.

Easy now.

You don't want to get in that that ain't your relationship to get in.

I hear Merle Haggard and my spirit man.

You're walking on the fighting side of me.

Listen, George Jones, the possum, died on Friday.

I'm a little sad.

I might take it out on you if you're not careful.

What am I saying?

Here's the point: God feels that way about you.

The spirit of adoption is that's the Holy Spirit.

And the Spirit inside of you cries, Abba, Father.

I now have intimate access to the Father.

Thirdly, the Spirit of God confirms my identity.

That's what he means when he says right there in verse 16, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our Spirit that we're the children of God.

His Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God.

You ought to have those moments in your life where the Holy Spirit does something or says something or leads you to do something where you go.

Oh, thank God.

I really am a Christian.

Sometimes I doubt it because I'm so inconsistent.

But man, in this moment, God, thank you.

Somebody come up to me after the first service and said, Yeah, last week he was talking about that waitress, and we were kind of like, we never have experiences like that.

I mean, we want to have experiences like that.

I don't want to have experiences like that.

I just want to know God.

I want to get up in the morning and have my eyes wide open.

I don't want to miss it.

I don't want to have awkward conversations with a guy that works in a church where I say, hey, what sins do you need to kill?

Oh, I exaggerate.

You mean lie?

I'm not a harsh person, but I just try to walk in the spirit.

That's an authentic life.

And that's available to every one of you in this room that knows God.

The Spirit of God comes.

His Spirit.

It's called the inner witness of the Spirit.

His Spirit bears witness with our Spirit.

His Spirit says, Yes, when you tell people you're a Christian, something inside you doesn't go.

Woo.

People say, Are you a Christian?

Yeah.

Something inside you goes, you go, girl.

That's the inner witness of the Spirit.

If when you try to represent yourself as a Christian, you feel like a phony, the Spirit's telling you something.

Fourth piece of my identity is that I'm an heir of God.

I'm an heir of God.

Look at this.

He says the Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit, the real children of God.

Verse 17.

And if children, then heirs.

Heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ.

Now, you say, what do you mean?

Heirs of God.

Now, in all languages, there's different tenses and texts and subjective, and there's the objective and there's the subjective.

The subjective in this thing means that God is a subject.

When it says heirs of God, that means that God is a subject and we belong to God.

The objective says heirs of God means that what we inherit is God.

Now be careful.

Don't check out on me.

Because some New Age people say, well, you become like God.

No, you become a little God yourself.

Not what the Bible's saying at all.

He's saying, hey, remember you Old Testament people?

When the tribes were in their land and they divided up the land to all the different tribes?

The first service didn't get this.

This is free for you.

Remember, they divide up all the land, all the different tribes have come, and they appeared before God, and God said, You get the land from here to there.

There was also a tribe of people called the Levites.

That was basically the preachers of the day.

Remember what God said their inheritance was?

Say it again.

Him.

They lined up, everybody was getting, you get from the Tigris all the way over to here and all the way to the sea.

And they were like, Yes, we got the King Ranch.

Woo! And then the Levites get up there and God says, You get me.

And I mean they shot off confetti cannons.

Woo! Bingo! They were falling on the ground doing snow angels, winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Everybody else was just walking home going, We got land.

And they got God.

The problem with many of you is you prefer land.

And so when someone says heirs of God, you're like, oh, well, I'd like to have, you know, I gave a homeless guy 20 bucks one time.

I don't get a return on that investment.

If you get to heaven and your inheritance is God, are you going to be disappointed?

Are you going to say, hey, hey, we used to sing an old hymn called I've Got a Mansion just over the hilltop.

Don't I get a mansion?

You're heirs of God.

Fifth thing is that you're now able to suffer.

Say, what do you mean?

And if children and heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs of God, provided we suffer with Him.

Provided we suffer with Him does not mean that it is a condition of salvation that you suffer.

Listen to me closer.

We're just about done.

Are you still with me?

You see, he says, provided that you suffer, it's not a condition for salvation.

It is a consequence of salvation.

Do you hear the difference?

It's not God saying, oh, hey, in order for you to get this, you gotta suffer.

No, no, no.

It's God loving enough to tell you the truth.

Hey, by the way, in this life, you will experience tribulation.

But be of good cheer.

I've overcome the world.

You see, that reminds us, oh man.

Oh, yeah, this is really true.

And one of the hardest moments of our life, my wife looked at me and she said, You know what?

This Christianity thing is true.

And in my mind, I'm thinking, you were doubting it?

And she's like, No, it's just, it's, it, it, it, it, it, it is what it is.

Yeah, absolutely.

John Piper tells a story in his book, Let the Nations Be Glad, of a man.

I think his name was Joseph, uh, but he had come to this village to share the gospel.

He'd become a Christian, and he was so excited.

He went from village to village to village to tell everybody about this new, this, this new thing he had, this relationship with God, and he wanted people to have this.

And some of these people were militant against it.

And he went in this one village and they drove him outside of the village and they beat him unconscious.

And he says, when he came to, they were all standing there staring at him.

And he thought, Well, they're gonna beat me again.

And he said, Well, if I must suffer, I must suffer.

And they said, We want to help you get back to health and come into our village and tell us this news you've come to tell us.

And he said, What changed?

And they said, Well, when we beat you and dropped you under the tree, we saw the Bible.

Of your feet and how blistered they were.

And if you were willing to suffer that much to come all this way to tell us this must be the truth.

See, especially in this day and age in America, when we embrace suffering, it opens the eyes of people that are so jaded to all the phoniness in American religion.

Last thing I would tell you about your identity is your promised glory.

That's what he says there when he says, Hey, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

This is Jesus in John 17 saying, Father, give me back the glory I had with you before the world began.

This is what the Bible says.

Paul said earlier in Romans chapter 3 that we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

And God came to restore what we gave up through our disobedience.

And when you think about eternity, when you think about heaven, you think about the glory of God, and the Bible says that's where you're headed.

That's what it's about.

And so, because of that, and so because, hey, this is true and this is real, what do we do?

We mortify the deeds of the flesh.

You should walk out of here this morning thinking, what sin do I need to think about killing?

What if I just tolerated for far too long?

What if I just kind of let just take up residence in my life?

That I just need to say, you know what, Holy Spirit, let's begin to wage war on that.

But you wage war on that.

I think it was Sinclair Ferguson that said, hey, when it comes to waging war, you don't go to a place of action.

You start at this place of understanding.

And that's your identity.

Don't go out, oh, I'm gonna go wage war.

That's a place of action.

Come back to this place of energy.

The place of energy and power is your identity in Christ.

You say, What do you mean?

Remember Jesus sent out the 70, and they came back and they said, even the demons are subject to us in your name.

And Jesus said, Rejoice not that the demons are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Rejoice in your identity.

Rejoice that you're children of God.

Beloved, rejoice today that your Father has seen your helpless estate and has adopted you and is never going to change his mind about you.

That's your identity as the people of God.

And if you're here today and you don't know this God, that's what he holds out to you and makes available.

Stand to your feet.

Hold your hands out and speak a blessing over you.

Your heart knows what your head forgets.

And that's that you're adopted.

Chosen by a God who never changes his mind.

He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

He remains unquenchable in his desire to know and bless and provide for you, to love you.

Believe who God says you are.

Depart now and give yourself to this kind of life and living.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you, you're dismissed.