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Romans 6:19b-23
19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6 as we continue our study through the book of Romans. We'll be picking up in verse 19, actually the second half of 19. So 19b, if you will. It's there in your worship guide as well.
Joel Brooks:Romans chapter 6. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, So now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at the time at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
Joel Brooks:But now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification. In its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Father, we are here gathered this morning because we believe your words are life. And we want life. We want to live a life that is pleasing to you. We want to live life to the full.
Joel Brooks:And Jesus, you give that to us. So may we listen to you. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. So last summer, I got to go back to Montana for a couple weeks. I try to go there every summer. And, I got to spend a day helping one of my friends, herd some buffalo or some bison, which sounds a lot, you know, more cool than it actually was. It was pretty cool, but but it wasn't as cool as you probably think.
Joel Brooks:I'm not on a horse, you know, roping them up or anything. They were already in a corral, and, and so I just needed to try to encourage them to get in a trailer, and most of them, you know, you could kinda wave your arms and stuff and they would be encouraged enough to get in there. However there was one, rather large bull that, would not listen to my words of encouragement to get in there. And I'm with some friends and we're just, you know, we're waving our arms trying to get him, to go and he just will not move. Matter of fact, he starts getting agitated and he begins running around.
Joel Brooks:And at one point he runs right at me. I mean he is £2,000 and he is running right at me and the owner of this bison says, don't move, it's just a bluff. Which, you know, is kind of hard when when the animals, you know, coming in on you. But I did have the corral in front of me. So there were steel bars in front of me and so, I just, you know, kept waving and sure enough he ran right up and he stopped.
Joel Brooks:And then he starts running around again. He did this repeatedly over and over and over. And finally he stops on the other side of this pen and he's looking at me, and I could tell something changed. Something changed in his countenance, and he starts running right after me again and I'm waving and then I'm like forget waving and I just leave and I'm glad I did because it lowered its head and it went right through the steel bars like they were not even there. Just burst right through it.
Joel Brooks:If I had been on the other side like I would have been nailed by this thing. And, immediately the owner of the bison, he tells his son, get out the rifle, put him down. His son's name is Remington. How cool is that? I mean he's 15 years old and his his name's Remy there.
Joel Brooks:And he goes, Remy, get out this rifle. And so so I've known Remy for a long time. Remy, he runs to the truck, he gets out his rifle, he shoots the bison right in the head and the bison just kinda shakes it off and moves, keeps walking. And then Remy gets out his knife, goes up to him, begins stabbing the bison in the neck and all my daughters are there just I mean he's trying to impress them, you could tell, and they were impressed. I was impressed.
Joel Brooks:I mean, they just raised them different in Montana, and he is stabbing stabbing this bison as it goes down and then finally it dies. And then we got to skin it, eat it, and I have it skull up on my wall at home. So I showed it to who's who's boss. But but but after this, I went to the owner and I said, so why did we have to shoot it? I mean, why can't we just, you know, we get in our cars whatever, we wait till it comes down, we try to corral it again later.
Joel Brooks:And he said, Well you can't. Once it burst through the fences, it no longer sees fences. It no longer sees corrals. It will literally just walk through everything destroying property. And there also won't be any more false bluffs here or bluffs.
Joel Brooks:He's aggressive. He will come after you. He has to be put down. I began thinking that's just such a great picture of sin. That bison is a beautiful picture, a powerful picture of sin.
Joel Brooks:There are certain sins that we have in our life, that we try to corral, we try to contain, we try to pretend they're safe, we think we can control them, we can keep them in isolation, but there's times like that's that sin is gonna come charging right at you. You're gonna say it's just a bluff. I still got control. It's just a bluff. But I think it's a 2,000 pound animal.
Joel Brooks:It's gonna burst right through whatever containment you think you have. It doesn't see fences. It then become aggressive and it only desires to kill you. That is the picture of sin that we have throughout the Bible. It's an animal, a wild animal that comes after us seeking only to kill us.
Joel Brooks:And Paul here in this chapter, he is saying that you either kill sin or you let sin kill you. It says, the wages of sin is death. Make no mistake about it. It's likely for those of you who grew up in church or maybe went to a Vacation Bible School, a long time ago, you had to memorize Romans 623. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Joel Brooks:If you haven't memorized that verse, it's a good verse to memorize. The word or the phrase here is interesting, the wages of sin. It means exactly what you think it means. It means the payment of sin. It means payment for service rendered.
Joel Brooks:When you sin, you are you receive some kind of payoff for it. But the payoff that sin promises you is gonna be different than the payoff you actually receive. But sin is gonna promise you some type of payoff. Sin wants you to believe that its wages are good. So you know why should you sleep around or why should you give in to lust?
Joel Brooks:Well, because you believe the payoff is pleasure. Why spend so much time obsessing over your body or how you look? Well because the payoff is receiving praise. It's affirmation. It's being noticed by others.
Joel Brooks:Why should you hold on tight to your money? Why should you be greedy? Well the payoff is a life of leisure or comfort. Why should you gossip? Well the payoff is you get the attention you crave or you get to be part of a inner circle talking about others behind their back.
Joel Brooks:Why should you slander someone? Well, the payoff is that you feel superior. So sin promises a payoff. It promises you good wages but the real wages of sin is death. Yes, there might be a moment, a temporary moment where it seems like it was worth it, but that's never the final payment.
Joel Brooks:The final payment is always death. This is why in verse 21, another way he says it is the end of those things is death. They're leading to death. And by death here, I think he's talking about not just eternal death and damnation. I think he's talking about a destructive behavior.
Joel Brooks:Sin destroys you in this life. The obvious examples of this, you know, perhaps is, you know, if you drink too much and you get drunk. Drunkenness can lead to dangerous behavior. Perhaps it can lead to an addiction where you begin to spiral out of control. It'll rob you of your health.
Joel Brooks:It's gonna rob you of your family, of your friends, of your money. It's going to destroy you. Or you can look at sex outside of marriage. And no matter how glorious that is presented in our culture or through, our movies, the reality is that it can result in shame, obsession, depression. Actually, a lack of intimacy rather than the intimacy it has promised.
Joel Brooks:And you find yourself losing a part of yourself with every new encounter. If you give into anger, it promises a certain payoff. But actually the end, the final payoff can be an end to friendships. You will hurt others. You will isolate yourself.
Joel Brooks:If this anger continues unchecked, it could grow into violence or even murder. It destroys you. The wages of sin is death. Sin destroys you. The payoff of sin is death.
Joel Brooks:So kill sin or it's gonna kill you. Sin is portrayed throughout the Bible as a predator. Actually this is the way God himself introduces sin to us in the 4th page of your Bibles. In Genesis chapter 4, we read how Cain had become envious of his younger brother Abel. And God in extraordinary kindness comes to Cain and offers him a word of warning and encouragement.
Joel Brooks:And he says this, he goes, Cain, sin is crouching at your door. Its desire is for you and you must master it or you must rule over it. So this is the first time in the Bible that we have sin described, what sin is. And God himself describes sin for us. And when he describes sin, he describes it as a predator.
Joel Brooks:It's a predator. He says he said, it's it's a predator crouching down or or hiding trying to make itself look as small as possible. That's what crouching is. It's making itself look small. But its intent is to kill you.
Joel Brooks:It's hunting you. So what does Cain do here? Well well Cain first, he opens the door to sin. Remember sin was at the door. So sin was outside and the first thing Cain does is he opens up the door to it.
Joel Brooks:He thinks that whatever is out there, he can handle it. He's he was safe inside, but he opens up the door to the sin in his life and then sure enough he looks at the sin and it looks so small, but it was just crouching. And that sin devoured him. And if you notice the same image of that sin devouring him, like predator like came and just attacked him, he then becomes that sin. What does he do to his brother?
Joel Brooks:He lies and wait, and he attacks his brother. That sin consumed him, and he became an instrument of sin. Never forget that sin is hunting you. Every summer, I want you to notice if you if you read the news, you're always gonna find an article about someone being attacked by bison at Yellowstone National Park. Have you noticed this?
Joel Brooks:Every single summer, there's all these articles about it. And usually there's some great video footage or, or pictures of it because usually the person being attacked was taking a picture of the bison. 9 times out of 10, that's why they're attacked because they're looking and they think it's a cow. I mean, the the the the bison is just so docile, they're just eating its grass and so they just kinda walk right up and they keep getting closer and closer and closer. And then when they're just a few feet away, they literally turn around to take selfies.
Joel Brooks:They're taking a selfie with a 2,000 pound wild animal behind them, and then you can see the attack. That's why there's such great pictures. You can see it right there. And some of us treat sin that way. We just don't think it's a big deal.
Joel Brooks:Literally in Yellowstone, there's warning signs everywhere. We've been God's word warns us everywhere about the dangers of sin and we're just backing up into it. It's gonna make a great picture. That sin desires you. It's a predator.
Joel Brooks:It wants to kill you. So what are we supposed to do with this? How how exactly do we kill? Kill it. Well Paul so far in Romans, he's told us that in order to fight sin, we remind ourselves of who we are, that we're a child of God, and we remind ourselves that we serve a new master.
Joel Brooks:We spent the last couple of weeks looking at that. And now he gives us one final strategy. He says we are to present our members as slaves to righteousness. Look at verse 19 with me. That second half of it.
Joel Brooks:For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness. So now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. We are to present our members as slaves to righteousness. And by members here, Paul is talking about members of your body. He's talking about body parts.
Joel Brooks:He's talking about your hands, your feet, your mind, your your tongue. Before you were converted all of these body parts were used for sin. Says now we're to take those body parts and we're to offer them up in service to God. And I believe what Paul is talking about here is we take the time to offer up each individual body part to him. And we offer them up and we say like with the same amount of energy and the same amount of creativity that I used of sinning with this body part, I now offer that same energy and creativity to you in service with this body part.
Joel Brooks:And so we hold up our tongue. We we present our tongue and we say, Lord, in the past, I'm sorry to say it but this tongue was used to lie. It was used to slander others. It was used to manipulate people in order to get what I wanted. It was used to gossip.
Joel Brooks:It was used to speak behind people's backs. But now I present it to you. I offer it to you. Use it in your service to bless, to speak words of life, to offer forgiveness, to declare your truth, to speak your love. Use it to build others up instead of tearing people down.
Joel Brooks:Use it to sing your praises. And Lord hear my eyes. In the past, I used my eyes to look at all sorts of evil. I coveted with them. I lusted with them.
Joel Brooks:I watched heart numbing shows with them. I endlessly looked at my phone with them. I have used them to judge others by their appearance, but now I offer them to your service. Let me look away from things that are impure. Let me see the world the way you would have me see the world.
Joel Brooks:Let my eyes pour over your word. Lord use my eyes. That's what Paul means when he says you present your members. We're offering up each one of our body parts as a slave to righteousness. He's gonna pick this theme up later in Romans 12, another famous passage in which Paul says, present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Joel Brooks:Let me ask you, have you done this? Have you offered up each of your body parts? When you do so, what you're gonna find is that it is absolutely liberating. It is liberating when you offer up each of your body parts because you're realizing that's what you were designed to do. God actually created you to use those members for his glory.
Joel Brooks:And so this, when he talks about the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, That eternal life, that's what you begin to experience not just in the future, but you experience now. That is a new way of living that breaks into your life now. You become alive as you offer up your members in service to him. This morning, what I want us to do is I want us to take time in which we can offer up the members of our body in service to the Lord. And we're gonna do this by taking communion together, which I think is appropriate.
Joel Brooks:When we take of the bread and we take of the wine here, we're gonna remember how Jesus offered up his body parts. He offered up his hands and his feet and his side to be pierced. He offered up his head to receive a crown of thorns. He offered up his mouth to speak words of forgiveness, instead of lashing out in anger on the cross. When we come to this table, we remember how Jesus offered up all the members of his body.
Joel Brooks:And when Jesus went to the cross, it was not only to pay for our sins. That's not the only reason He went to the cross. Yes, he went to the cross as our substitute to pay for our sins, but he also went to the cross as an example for us that we are to die to ourselves. We're to die to sin. We're to present each member of our body as a sacrifice.
Joel Brooks:And can I just tell you that that will feel like death for many of us as we offer each individual? And we say, Lord take this. I've been doing this with this body part. Forgive me. I die to that.
Joel Brooks:It will feel like a death. The resurrection power is on the other side. So we don't just come to this table as a way of remembering Jesus' substitute for us, that he was a substitute for us, that he paid for our sins, we also look at this and we think this is what God is calling us to. That we would die to ourselves. That we might be risen to new life.
Joel Brooks:And so this is how we're gonna take, communion. First off, this table is for all those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ as their lord and their savior, who trust wholly on him for the forgiveness of sins and for eternal life. If that is you, this table is for you. We have 2 ways to take. You can either break off some of the bread and you can dip it into wine and take, Or if you want, we have these communion in the cups.
Joel Brooks:You can still come down here and take one of those and return to your seat and take it that way. And what I ask is that you come down these middle aisles and you return to your seats using the outer aisles there. And we're gonna take time to do this. We have 3 songs laid out for us. If at any point you wanna come up here and pray during time of communion, you're welcome to.
Joel Brooks:If you want to come and present, repent of maybe ways that you have sinned with different members of your body, and where you want to just present the members of your body as a sacrifice to the Lord, take time to do that, whether it's here or back in your seat. But this is your time, your space over the next 20 minutes or so. The night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. And he said, this is my body given for you. In the same way, he took the cup, and he said, this is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of many.
Joel Brooks:As often as you eat of this bread and you drink of this cup, we remember Christ. If you would pray with me. Father, in this moment, we remember your son Jesus and his sacrifice that he made for us. We also remember the path of life you've laid out for us. That if any man wishes to come after Jesus, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow him.
Joel Brooks:We die in order that we might have new life. Jesus, thank you for giving that to us and we present our whole selves to you in this moment. Be with the spirit. Lead us in this time. We pray this all for the glory of Jesus and in his name.
Joel Brooks:Amen.