Bible Guys Classics: Romans 6

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Hey, Chris, I'm excited about today's episode because we're talking

about sin and apparently you could just keep on sinning,

just keep keep on sinning, do whatever you want, like

live it up right.

Wow. Nope, Nope, that's what Paul says. Today. Paul says nope.

So today he is Kyle. I am Chris, And because

Jeff is still in India, that's right. We are the

Bible guys.

Jeff. We miss you, Yes, we certainly do.

Hey, today, we are actually going to be hosting a

segment that is a sort of you know, classic It's

what's what I'm looking for. It's a spinoff spinoff.

Yes, because of classic Chris that we're doing a spin off.

Yet, well, listen, I'm old enough to know what the

old spinoffs were like. Did you know that Happy Days

had three spinoffs?

Wow? You know, I didn't know?

Idea and la Vernon, Shirley. Have you ever heard of Vernon?

That was a spinoff from Happy Days?

For really?

Yes? And then there was an episode there's a thing

called Jonie Loves Chatzi.

I've heard the saying before, but I had no idea.

Yeah, and it lasted like one season, and then there

was a third one. Oh it was Morgan Mindy.

Yeah, answer real quick, because this is totally unrelated. What's

your favorite recent spinoff?

You have?

Any recent spinoff? Movie, spinoff shows?

H recent spin offs? Holy Christmas? Recent spinoffs. I'm sure

there's one that exists.

Only when I well know, don't you like the eighteen

eighty three and all that kind of stuff?

Or no?

Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah that was a considered spin.

Was massive spin off. It was a prequel. Okay, but

but but I mean I guess it could be called

a spin off. Yeah yeah, actually no, I don't. I

don't think they qualifies, no, because it really was it's

different today than it was back then. Back then, they

would take just a character and they would shut down

that whole storyline and they would sort of build a new,

a whole new thing based on one character.

You know, I've not seen it, but I've heard that

the Better Call Saul, which is a spin.

That is a spin was good. That was great. I

loved it. I love Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul

was a great spinoff. I was thinking of Fraser.

Okay, Fraser.

Fraser was a spinoff from Cheers in the eighties. Yes,

I don't.

Well, Fraser's very popular as well. I didn't realize it

was spin off.

Well, yeah, it was a spinoff from Cheers. Is awesome,

So okay, Well, anyway, so here's the spinoff. Instead of

what Chris What made Chris mad this week, We're going

to ask what made Kyle happy this week?

What made me happy this week? A lot of things.

But you know something that's a little odd that people

may not know. I just picked up a new hobby

last week, literally last week. But over the past month

or so, my wife and I have been really taking Sabbath,

taking a Sabbath day seriously as we should as Christians.

Right.

It's not aways easy, you know, to to really focus

on that, but we really try to take our Sabbath

seriously and try to rest from working and rest from

technology that sort of thing.

And so explain, explain the concept of what what do

you mean when you say the word sabbath.

So Sabbath, you know, it's part of a commandment, something

Jesus even honored. But the idea of taking one out

of the seven days a week and just taking a

time just to I sent you. I mean, it looks

different for a lot of people, but for us, it's

this time of no work. It's a time of kind

of resting in God's presence and whatever that looks like.

So some people do, you know, maybe a spiritual retreat

or get away or they're do a bobber reading thing

or you know, no devices, whatever it may be. But

and then a lot of people sometimes in the sabbath

will may be fast and there's a lot of spiritual

implications for fasting and that sort of thing. So for us,

it's just you know, a twenty four hour span where

we you know, try to refrain from working, right and

focus on God and just enjoy his goodness. But Anyways,

uh So, one of the things I did because we're

trying to go technology free is last week my wife

bought me a Sudoku book, and it makes me feel

like a boomer playing sudoku. But it's funny because now

I'm like hooked on Sudoku. Do you know, do you

ever play Sudoku or any.

Of the crosswords or any of those types of things?

Not really?

Okay, So Sudoku, it's just basically it's similar to a

crossword puzzle and those types of things. But something about it,

even though maybe I'm working a little bit, because it

feels like I'm working my brain a little bit, I'm

doing it, but something about it just feels nice to

sit there with an actual book, like a physical book

and a pencil and write things, sound things down. And

so if you're somebody who's into Sudoku, crossword, any of

those types of things, you know, message me let me know,

or if you see me at church or see me around,

let me know. I would like to I do wordle.

You do wordle?

Okay?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, I on your phone though, yeah on the phone,

yeah yeah.

But it's kind of nice for you to just like,

for a minute, just like work your brain a little

bit and it's it's different. Yeah. Sure, So this is

the sudoku and again not doing it digitally, just doing

it with the book. And so that that's made me happy.

I discovered a new hobby that I enjoy. That thing

is going to bring me peace for the next stuck

a couple of.

Weeks in these weeks until it doesn't exactly. That's really funny. Yeah.

Yeah.

So by the way, just since we opened the can

of worms, you know, so remember the Sabbath day and

keep it holy was a very specific command given to

a specific group of people. And there were a lot,

I mean, just hundreds of commands that were actually given

very very specifically, you know, to the children of Israel,

and I had to do with them specifically, you know,

like you know, we would never try to, you know,

go collect manna. Right, There's so many things that were

just given to them as commands for their situation. And

so the principle of the Sabbath is what we think

is important because I believe that even though that our

days and our rituals and everything else, it doesn't fall

into the you know, the Hebrews. However, the principle of

remembering a Sabbath day and keeping it holy was if

you read all the way through the Old Testament describes

how the purpose is to rest, yes right, and to

renew and everything else. And so, by the way, that's

the reason why Seventh day Adventists would say that the

true Sabbath is on Saturday, like that's a big point

of contention for them, and whereas like Christianity would say, well,

it doesn't matter the day, But actually we celebrated on

Sunday for one reason, because Jesus rose again on Sunday,

So our choice of Sabbath went towards Sunday. But the

principle of practicing a sabbath for you and me, it

is hard to do on Sunday because we work so

hard on Sunday.

Absolutely, So you got to find some other times, right, right.

Because when you decided to go into full time vacational ministry,

then that all of a sudden becomes a time where

you're not obeying a sabbath, you're really working hard, you know,

for honestly other people's sabbath.

You don't know something crazy about you mentioned a Seventh

day Adventist. So it's a denomination that takes that Sabbath

very seriously, like it's religiously right. Maybe sure to be extreme,

it's very very serious. But the crazy thing is there

studies a show that when you look at the average

life span of a human an American, right, and you

compare that to somebody who has been practicing in that

you know, that denomination and really takes that seriously the Sabbath.

They say that Seventh day Adventists live on average of

seven years more than the average person. And if you

do seven years and if you do the math on

the amount of days that essentially like off days that

they take, that it works out to be like that

that essentially is like almost like it's giving them more

life in that wild that there's like studies that show

that that they actually live seven years longer.

So the message is if you want to live long longer,

just convert, take.

A day off, just convert. Yeah, I was gonna say,

practice sabbath.

Yeah, it's the principle of stress free. Isn't that funny? Huh?

How stressed it was meant for us.

That's the thing is people try to use it as

a you know, obviously like a religion or rule or

whatever that sort of thing, but it was the Sabbath

was designed for us as something God blessed. I just

hard for us. I know for you you're the same way.

You're like a fast moving dude. It's very hard to

slow down. But it's very important.

So yeah, that's awesome, very good. So today we're talking

about Roman chapter six, verses one through twenty three, and

we're talking about sin's power being broken, and we're going

to read through the entire chapter and Paul is going

to just continue on with this idea of sin and

what it means for our lives.

That's right, Well, then should we keep on sinning so

that God can show us more and more of his

wonderful grace? Of course not or as Chris said earlier, Nope,

since we have died to sin, how can we continue

to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when

we were joined with Christ, Jesus and Baptism, we joined

him and his death. For we died and we were

buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was

raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father,

now we also may live new lives since we have

been unified with Him and his death. We will also

be raised to life as he was. We know that

our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that

sin might lose its power in our lives. We're no

longer slaves of sin from we died with Christ. We

were set free from the power of sin. And since

we died with Christ, we know we will also live

with him. We are sure of this because Christ was

raised from the dead, and he will never die again.

Death no longer has any power over him. When he died,

he died once to break the power of sin. But

now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God.

So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to

the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.

Do not let sin control the way you live. Do

not give into sinful desires. Do not let any part

of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead,

give yourselves completely to God. For you are dead, but

now you have new life. So use your whole body

as an instrument to do what is right for the

glory of God. Sin is no longer your master, for

you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead,

you live under the freedom of God's grace. Well, then,

since god grace has set us free from the law,

does that mean we can go on sinning? Nope, nope, yep.

Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever

you choose to obey. You can be a slave to sin,

which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God,

which leads to righteous living. Thank God. Once you were

slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching

we have given you. Now you are free from your

slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous

living because of the weakness of your human nature. I

am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand

all this. I love how like blatantly puts that as

if you know. It's like you didn't get it. So

I'm just letting you know. I'm using this as an illustration. Previously,

you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which

led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves

to be slaves to righteous living so that you may

become holy. When you were slaves of sin, you were

free from the obligation to do right. And what was

the result. You are now ashamed of the things you

used to do, things that end in eternal doom. But

now you are free from the power of sin, and

you have become slaves of God. Now you do those

things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life.

For the wages of sin is death. But the free

gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Yeah,

that's another classic mentioned to be ready several times here

in this week. The Romans Road that that final one

for the wages of since death, there was a payment

for our mistakes. It was death. But the free gift

of God is eternal life.

Yeah. Yeah, And those of those people listening you don't

are not familiar with the term Romans Road. It's just

several verses out of Romans that were pieced together and

made popular by calling it. It's basically a road map

through the Book of Romans, and we're sort of skipping

around chronologically in the Book of Romans, and it basically

lays out salvation through the truths that Paul's laying out here.

So that's what that's what Kyle's refern to do. So anyway,

So yeah, so he starts out with the question should

we should we go on sinning? So that got me

show more of us of his wonderful grace. Of course not.

So it's so interesting, isn't it? Because he had just

spent the previous parts of the letter that Paul's writing

talking about how, hey, listen, obeying the law does not

make you righteous. Right, It wasn't that way with Abraham.

Listen that there were people who died before the law

was given, you know, from Adam all the way to Moses.

You know, Jesus Christ said that it's by faith. You know,

it's not by works, you know, all these different things.

So he's laying out, you know, that idea. But then

he goes back and says, Okay, he's sort of feeling

like what he's and he's about to get into actually

that the law does have its purpose and that actually

we should obey the law. We should strive to obey

the law. It's just that the law is not a

means of righteousness or right standing with God or salvation.

But it doesn't mean that the law is discarded, doesn't

mean the law is thrown out right. So that's why

he asked the question, you know, is the law useless. Now,

that's what he's asking. He's saying, like, does that mean

that God no longer cares about our righteous living, our commandments,

our obedience, you know, all the things that God wants

us to do. Shall we just continue to just do

what God doesn't want us to do because we have grace?

And then of course he says, of course.

Not right. And it makes me think too, the word

that a lot of times it's a theological word that

I don't it's not mentioned in this chapter, but a

lot of times people think of the word sanctification, which

is a theological term of this idea of becoming more

like Christ. And I think this chapter, the word sanctified

means to be set apart. Yeah, set apart. And so

these this chapter, and I think the next few chapters,

even in which we're going to continue out in the future,

talk about this idea of becoming more and more like Christ.

And this is this idea that as you get closer

to Him and you're set apart, you're becoming more and

more and more. And I think it's it's funny because

he's talking about the opposite for so many people, you know,

they may know the truth, but yet they're keep on sinning,

and their sins just keep on separating them. And he

even talks about the idea of you know, some people

that share like it. Talks later on the chapter the

idea of looking back and realizing you kind of threw

your life away, you made there's mistakes, and now you

look back, Man, I wish I would have done those things.

And he's saying, well, what if you would have just,

you know, quit sitting. What if you would have just

accepted that free gift and started living this holy, blameless,

sanctified life. So he's really talking about the importance of

that right setting himself apart well, I mean.

He's giving these the introducing the idea of baptism through

Jesus' death in the Resurrection is an entirely different way

to look at you being free from sin. And so

think about it. If you're living in the first century,

when you think about being free from sin, the only

thing that is ingrained in your mind, especially as a

Jewish boy, especially being taught all the scriptures, the only

thing is just the law. If you want to be

free from sin, obey, obey, obey, And what Paul is saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

the laws there, we don't want to keep sinning. But

instead of finding righteous through the law, just know this

that when Jesus died, that actually he freed you from

the power of sin, that actually you're no longer a

slave to sin. And by the way, where you thinking

of the song? Yeah, yeah, no longer slaves to.

Fear father something with the word father, isn't that.

Yeah, So anyway, but when he talks about that, I

love the word picture of baptism. So again, let's just

talk about baptism for a minute. Right, So we have

in our church baptism coming up in like ten days, right,

and we baptize what three hundred and sixty people, three

hundred and forty eight people.

Yeah, it was close to it was close to three

sixty five. And oh that's kind of We're like, it.

Was close to that just in twenty twenty two, which

is pretty pretty pretty awesome, really great, And so we're

having our very first baptism in twenty twenty three coming up.

And when we baptize at our church, we take somebody,

you know, and we and we help them go under

the water and then we don't hold them there. We

bring them back up right, and a lot of times

what I'll say is if I use extra words, is

I'll say buried in the likeness of Jesus death and

raised to walk in newness of life, or you know,

raised to walk in the resurrection of Christ. And Paul

is actually talking about the word picture here, which is

the reason why we do immerse by the way we immerse,

because as we believe that Jesus was immersed John the

baptized John the Baptist baptized Jesus, and it says that

he put him under the water, and then he straightway

he came up out of the water, and so we do.

And then and then also here Roman chapter six that

also in Corinthians, he talks about the idea of the

word picture. In order for Jesus to be buried under

the earth, he would have to be lowered into, in

this case a cave or a grave. Right, we see

it as six feet under right, and we go into

the earth. And then what happens in Jesus' case is

he rises up from the earth. And so he took

sin with him, he became our sin, and he died.

And then what happened was he rose from the grave

proving that he is power over sin. And so Paul

is saying that, Okay, the person you used to be,

the sinful person you used to be, your sin was

paid for, so you through baptism, when you went under

the water, you were actually attached to the sacrifice and

the payment that was made by Jesus Christ, and just

symbolically your sins went away, right and you were raised

to walk as a new person.

Yeah.

That awesome.

Yeah, that's verly cool. It's really cool. And even even

still with this, when I read something like this to

talk to this idea of should I just go on sinning?

And it's this idea that as we come to know

Jesus more, we understand the depths in which you went

to save us. Our only response should not to continue

on to just keep on sinning and accept his forgiveness.

But it's to see change heart.

Now.

I was thinking about this way. Think about it from

a parenting perspective. When kids are small, when you have

like a child and you have an infant, if you

can remember back to having an infant, right as a parent,

you have no relationship, like real relationship with that kid.

Obviously you're their parents, you're the father or you know

those listening to the mother. But so it's like high control,

no relationship because you control everything about that child, right,

You control how they eat, you control when they sleep,

you control their clothing. You're like they're completely de pendant

on you, but there's really no relationship. As kids get older, right,

so my kids are ten and twelve, now, things are

starting to change. Although I have control over them, like

I provide a lot for them and that sort of thing,

there are starting to be a shift where almost like

there's control and there's also a relationship, like I'd be

starting to become have a relationship my kids, so we're

almost like friends, right, we have to have a strong relationship.

And then there gets a point where the kids are

like in their twenties, which is what you're experiencing in

your life right now, where there's this this whole shift

where all of a sudden, you begin to realize you

have no control over your kids right the way they

live their lives. You don't have any control anymore. And

so the key then is to shift from control to relationship.

And if you have a hot if you're high in relationship,

all of a sudden, you don't need the control because

that's kind of you know, the way the things shift.

And I think in the same way when it comes

to God, as we get closer to him, it's all

about relationship and trust in him. And therefore I obey him,

not because I have to. I have free will. I

could choose, but I'm choosing to obey him and to

be sanctified and to draw closer to him because my

relationship with him and I want to be closer to him. Right.

By the way, there's another way to say that too.

I teach that same principle. The words I have always

loved is as a parent. You know, you actually parent

from a position you say because I'm mom, because I'm dad,

and somewhere along the way you have to transition from

position to influence. So if your words carry weight, you

said relationship, right. I like the word influence because relationship

hopefully exists the whole time, even when you're a parent.

Right.

You know, when you say because I'm dad, hopefully that's

relational too. But position to influence is when they're twenty,

and to be honest with you, it actually starts when

they're like thirteen, twelve year old, and so hopefully have to.

So one of our counselors that used to serve on

our old staff used to say that as a parent,

you need to just live in the question instead of

saying I'm going to tell you what to do. What

you do is you sort of ask them and you

sort of live in the question and you start to

you know, transition to that seat of influence. Because when

they graduate and they leave, they leave out of your house.

You want to be able to say, hey, I'm going

to say, I'm going to say a sentence to you,

and I want to still maintain so much influence in

your life that you're going to still listen to me. Right,

But it's not through because I'm Dad, it's because I

mean I matter in your life.

That's good.

So to go from position influence.

And I think that's kind of how God is really,

all the ways he's influence, he's influenced, he's set, you know,

sent his son to be the ultimate influence. And therefore

we don't do these things. We don't try to live

for him out of obligation or duty or the law whatever.

We do it out of love. It's it's the relationship,

it's the influence.

So yeah, you can almost classify that as Old Testament

New Testament.

You can't you exactly.

Let me just go ahead and say that there's a

we Love our Life application study Bibles. And there's a

section in here that breaks down everything we just read

from chapter six, verses number one, all the way through

in this case for summer sixteen. And it has three categories,

and it basically says, hey, verses two or six is

one category. Five through eleven is the other category twelve

or sixteen, and it says Paul talks about new life,

a new nature, and then new freedom, and so under

new life. When he talks about new life, he says,

sins power is broken. Your sin loving nature has been buried,

and you no longer under sins control. That's why you

have new life. When he talks about new nature, he says,

now you share Jesus Christ new life. Your old self

is dead. Instead, you are alive to God. That's a

new nature. And then new freedom, and the next four

verses he says, do not let sin control you give

yourself completely to God. You are free and you can

choose your own master. Gosh. I just love that. That's good,

and it is pretty extreme that it uses the word slavery.

And it's important to know that just because slavery existed

in the Bible, and Paul mentioned slavery because it was

a part of the culture, doesn't mean that he condoned slavery, right,

So you know, just just as polygamy, uh, you know,

existed in the Bible, people had multiple wives and even

even God the people did. But but God never said

that was a good thing, every right. He actually, in fact,

whenever he spoke on it, he actually spoke of being

a man of one wife, right, So he never condoned it.

So the point is is that Paul uses the reference

and he says, I'm doing this because of your feeble minds.

I'm using this because you could understand the word picture.

And Paul, as I mentioned before, is a He's a

phenomenal word picture person. He's a visual learner.

Yes, well, some people as soon as he said this

being a slave, this sin versus slave to was he

said at the end of some of the slave to

basically following god like pain. In the contrast, there is

just and the word.

Slave he used very specifically is bond servant right to

actually be to be tied to it with your life

because of debt. Debt paid, so it's really cool. So

it's a great word picture. I think that that's a

good place to end, just knowing that God has freed

us from sin, and just as we've been baptized and

we have shown our commitment to Christ, that we are

free from the power of sin that enslaves us.

It's right.

So anyway, that's good for today and we will see

you hopefully on Monday on the Bible.

Guys, see you