Who Will You Serve?

Recap Dead in Sin or Dead to Sin

We continue in our series on the early church. We have been looking at Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul is addressing certain issues and possible questions that arise from life in Christ. For the last couple of weeks, we have been looking at God’s grace and how it is abundant. There is no pit that we get ourselves into that God cannot get us out of. Where sin increases, grace increases as well.

Unfortunately, our sinful and selfish nature can look at that and believe that since the debt has already been paid, then we can just continue to live our lives and sin however we want. What harm can come by that? Since God can forgive any sins, then it makes sense we wouldn’t need to worry about it. That is a very immature way to look at salvation. It is looking at it from the individual perspective, the entire, “what’s in it for me?” kind of questioning. I have had conversations with unbelievers and their question is along the same lines. “So you are saying I can sin as much as I want and as long as I confess my sins, then God is going to forgive me?” That is an accurate statement, but it lacks any level of discipleship to it. When we come to Jesus and repent of our sins, He forgives us, but we are also changed. Rather than wearing the cloth of unrighteousness, now we are wearing the cloth of righteousness. Why would we want to spoil that?

When we come to Jesus, He completely cleanses us of our sins. However, that does not mean we are going to stop falling into sin. Last week we looked at the fact that when we come to belief and have been made clean, temptation can become even greater. We have to make choices, do we give into that temptation or do we get on bended knee and ask that God help us. Do we run from that temptation or do we give in.

One thing we did not talk about last week was that the more we stand up to that temptation and fight it off, the stronger we become and we can have an easier time fighting through it. If we continuously fight through the temptation and don’t give in, then eventually there’s not going to be a temptation there anymore. The enemy gives up and goes back to the drawing board. That doesn’t mean the attacks will stop altogether, it simply means that a new battle plan is going to be developed. If something is not working, then eventually the antagonist will get tired enough of it and just stop.

There’s the story of the train station manager. The manager had a bright and shiny new train delivered to the station. The next day when he came back to the station, he found that someone had graffitied all over the train. So his first order was to have the train repainted. All was well, but when he came back to the station the next day, the train was again covered in the exact same graffiti. Of course, he decided to have the train painted again, the next morning, the same thing, same graffiti tag and all that. Well, this went on for years, painting, graffiti, and repainting. Then one morning, the manager showed up and saw that the train had been left alone. The culprit knew that no matter how often he graffitied the train, his work was going to get covered up. So finally, he just gave up. The same will happen with sin in our lives. If we stop long enough and don’t give in, eventually it will stop being a temptation.

We all serve something. Who do we serve? Are we living lives that communicate we serve God? When people see us, do they see our commitment to Christ? Or do they see something else? When we come to Christ, we are supposed to die to self. We are supposed to take up our crosses and follow Him. Luke 9:23 “Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.” Do we live lives that reflect that?

Today we are going to look at the rest of Romans chapter 6. Paul essentially asks the question of who we serve. Do we serve Christ? Or do we serve something else?

Romans 6:12–23 CSB

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace. What then? Should we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Absolutely not! Don’t you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey—either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? But thank God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over, and having been set free from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness. I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to impurity, and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness. So what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed of? The outcome of those things is death. But now, since you have been set free from sin and have become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in sanctification—and the outcome is eternal life! For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul continues with his admonition against sin. Sin comes at a hefty price. We cannot pay for our sins to have them taken away. We can’t just write a check and that covers the sin. Paul closes out this chapter with the exhortation that the wages of sin are death. God promised the first two humans that when they sinned, they would die. They did not physically die there, but they died spiritually. Our sin is payable on death.

Sin is not just a word. It is not just a silly little thing that we can easily dismiss. Sin has grave consequences. We get the word sin from archery. To sin is to be off the bullseye on the target. When we sin, we are off God’s mark. We miss His holy standards and therefore are condemned. However, God makes a way for people to atone for their sins. At first it is through the sacrifice of animals. After Adam and Eve sinned, they realized they were naked and tried to cover their shame by making garments of fig leaves. God gives them animal skins to cover themselves. The Bible does not call it a sacrifice, but it essentially is. An animal had to be killed for those skins to be given. Then in the Old Testament we have the atonement sacrifice. The blood of the animal is supposed to cover over the sin. I have said it before and I will say it again, the priestly duties back in the Old Testament were incredibly bloody. They were making sacrifices constantly. There was shedding of blood regularly in the temple complex. It was a reminder to the people how their sin is an affront to God. It was a reminder of just how serious their sin is. Then God sent Jesus. Jesus, fully God and fully human, God’s Son comes to earth, He lives a perfect and sinless life, and then He is hung from the cross. His blood is the perfect sacrifice and it wipes away the sin like it never happened. Since it is the perfect sacrifice, we got away from doing regular killings and shedding blood. It sterilized the atonement process. Since we weren’t there to watch Him die in anguish, it allows us to minimize how serious sin is.

But it’s not a minimal thing. Sin is so bad that God was pleased to crush His Son because of it. He was pleased because justice was fulfilled. I have had atheist friends that have asked why God could not just go ahead and take away the sins and forgive them without the cross. It’s a great question. God did not do that because He is just and He is fair. He was not going to abandon His standard of perfection and justice. When we come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, He forgives us, and His righteousness is imputed to us. We didn’t earn it, but we receive it anyway. So even though we were not there when Christ was crucified, our sins were. God already knew the sins we were going to commit. He already knew how messed up we were going to be. With that in mind, why would we let sin reign in our bodies still?

We are baptists. From time to time we have baptism here at the church. Baptism is a symbol. When we are upright and dry, that represents our sinful selves. Then we are dipped, which represents our burial. We have died to sin, then we come out of the water alive, living a new life with the Holy Spirit. We have a new life. Paul put it this way to the Galatians in Galatians 3:27 “For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.”

Luke 16:13 “No servant can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.””

Here’s the trick, money is not bad. The love of money is bad. I think it’s a good idea to take a long and hard look at this Scripture here and put something that we love in that category. Substitute money for whatever it is. We can’t serve both God and our job. We can’t serve both God and sports. We can’t serve both God and school. We can’t serve both God and family. I think we would all agree that none of those things mentioned there are bad. However, if they wind up taking precedence over God, then they are bad. How often to we make a commitment for church and then as soon as something better comes along we just drop it. It happens regularly. Or people refuse to help out with something to evangelize to the neighborhood because they feel they are too busy with other commitments. Commitments are great, but when we break our commitment to God so that we can do something else. It is a problem. As believers when we say something, we should mean it. When we say we will do something, we should do it. Jesus tells the people in Matthew 5:37 “But let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more than this is from the evil one.” Are we willing to put aside the things of the earth to do His will or will we only do His will when it is convenient for us? Service to God wasn’t meant to be convenient. God is not always going to call us at a convenient time. Another way to look at it is how would our coaches, bosses, and family feel if they were treated the way we treat God? Things happen and we will not always be able to make it to every service. Things happen and we will not always be on time to Sunday School or church. How do we feel when we are running late to work or to practice? Do we have the same commitment to God as we do the other things in our lives? Prayerfully we have more commitment to Him than the other things in our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of things out there that demand our attention and they are important. We are not supposed to abandon these important things. It is a matter of figuring out where they fit in our lives. What is the priority? Ultimately, what do we serve?

In the Gospels a scribe comes to Jesus and pledges his loyalty to Him. What we have to understand about scribes is that they were part of the religious elite. We don’t often talk about them because we focus more on the Pharisees and Sadduccees. Scribes were important people back then within the faith. When they first started off, they were merely transcribers of God’s law. As time went on, though, they interpreted God’s law. This scribe comes and sees just how important Jesus is and tells Jesus that he will follow him anywhere. Then Jesus says something rather discouraging to him. He tells the scribe that foxes have dens, but the Son of Man doesn’t even have a place to lay His head. At this, the scribe loses heart. He is not as ready to follow Jesus anymore. I think the scribe thought that since he was going to be following Jesus, he would get all the worldly benefits of serving a king. It’s not surprising, we see the disciples doing the same thing during their walk with Christ. The issue there is it was not about Jesus, it was about them and what benefit they are going to receive. So I have to ask, is our following about Jesus or is it about selfish ambition?

To the scribe’s credit, he backs out and says that he is going to go bury his father. This did not mean the guy’s father was dead. Instead, it meant that he was going to live his life until his father died and THEN he would go follow Jesus. He did not want to have to leave his family behind or the other work he was doing. Basically the guy is saying, I’ll wait until later. Jesus responds in Matthew 8:22 “But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”” When we come to faith in Christ, our priority and concern should not be over the things of this world.

God is not always going to give us everything we want. He is not going to always make our lives easy. There have been times when I have gone through trials and I wondered why in the world God was making me endure something. Later, though, God would use those times in the wilderness so that I could help someone along. Or He would use that time in the wilderness to get me to my next place. My life today is radically different than what I thought it would be 25 years ago. I remember when I joined Uncle Sam’s canoe club everyone thought I was crazy, including myself. Why did I go? Because God was saying go. Do we go when God says go. Do we say no to ourselves when God says no? Who do we serve? Jesus or something else?

I think some people don’t want to fully throw themselves behind Jesus because they think that their lives are not going to be as fulfilling. They will miss out on something. That’s not how it goes, though. Jesus explains the secret to quality living in Matthew 6:33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.” Are we seeking God first or are we seeking a promotion first? Are we seeking God first or are we seeking a diploma first? Are we seeking God first or are we seeking a hefty 401k first? Again, none of that stuff is bad, but here’s the thing, none of that is going to save us. Only Jesus can. If we die fully educated, rich, and good looking we are still going to die and all that education, money, and good looks are going to go where every temporal thing goes, to sheol, to death. Do we serve the things of this world or do we serve the LORD that created this world?

When the Israelites were sent out on the exile, some of the exiled Israelites chose to just blend in with the Babylonians and live that life. Babylon was a spreading empire. It had plenty of money and creature comforts. In many ways, it was similar to the US. Ezra and Nehemiah both wrote about bringing the exiled Israelites back to Jerusalem. Many of them did, but many of them did not. We have Babylonian texts that prove plenty of the Israelites stayed in Babylon to live that life.

There was a group of Babylonian men that were not going to fall into that trap. They were conscripted for the king’s service. They were given food from the king’s table. But Daniel, Mishael, Azariah, and Hananiah did not want to defile themselves. Daniel 1:8–10 “Daniel determined that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or with the wine he drank. So he asked permission from the chief eunuch not to defile himself. God had granted Daniel kindness and compassion from the chief eunuch, yet he said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and drink. What if he sees your faces looking thinner than the other young men your age? You would endanger my life with the king.”” The chief eunuch was worried about allowing these four men to eat vegetables and drink water instead of enjoying the meat and wine that was served to the king. This worry makes sense. He figures that if these guys are just going to be vegetarians, they were going to waste away and be skinnier than everybody else. Since they were in his care, then he would be the one to blame about their condition.

So Daniel struck a deal with the eunuch and requested that they be allowed this diet for ten days.Then after that period, if they looked sickly then they would start eating the king’s diet. We read something rather remarkable in Daniel 1:15–16 “At the end of ten days they looked better and healthier than all the young men who were eating the king’s food. So the guard continued to remove their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables.”

Do you see that? These four men did not put the worldly things first. Instead they put God first. They seek Him first and decide to please Him first. At the end of the time, God not only keeps them healthy, but He makes it so that they looked healthier than the other men.

So when it comes to our faith, do we really think that when we give ourselves fully to God that He is going to fail us? Do we think we won’t be able to make up our time spent with Him during the week? Sometimes God will let us fail at something, but He is not going to fail us. A life lived for God is a life well lived. Are our lives reflecting that or do our lives show that we still belong to sin? When people see us do they recognize Jesus in us or do they see something else? Are we making God the priority every day or are we making ourselves the priority every day? The wages of sin are death. Christ paid that wage for us. Do we live our lives as if we are dead to sin? Do we serve Christ? My hope and prayer is that daily we will wake up and choose to die to self and sin and live for Christ.