God's Grace Is Greater . . .

I hope you guys are getting something from it as well. Um, see Sunny throw up there. Uh, Patty's first birthday. It's been a year already. I feel like it was just the other day you were saying you, you got, uh, that, that wonderful addition.

Well, that— we got him on the 4th of May and he was 8 weeks old, and here he is celebrating his first birthday. And he's big, big. I don't know that that picture shows how big he's grown. But I posted on Facebook over the months, the little puppy that I got that's grown to be a huge big boy. And there he is on the porch yesterday. I put his food out so he could have a nice breakfast outside. It was 85 degrees here yesterday, which is unseasonably wonderful. I mean, just absolutely a beautiful summer day for us to celebrate his first birthday. And he went to the dog park and had a blast.

Great.

It's all good. All good.

Terrific. Love it, love it. Well, if you guys could keep, uh, in prayer for us on Saturday. Rylee and I were speaking at Troy Brewer's church, um, doing a little event called Becoming a King. And as, uh, we're chatting, when prayer time got started just knowing our identities as kings and queens, if you will. But we're royalty, we're, we're in the kingdom, and it's going to be a blessing. A lot of people come to this thing. Troy Brewer speaking at it, Brian Schwartz, who joined us a few weeks back here on this Bible study, he's speaking, and Rylee and myself. And we finally got this bad boy locked in. It was— it all came together. Um, just the idea of it was just birthed about a month ago. We were asked to come in and do this, and we got this bad boy dialed in. So keep that in prayer if you can, and hopefully if any of you are in town or, you know, have some airline miles you want to cash in, come on down. Um, it's going to be an awesome Paula, last week you unmuted towards the end. I meant to ask you, where are you from, Paula? You're muted.

We're so proud to partner with the National Association of Manufacturers. I'm from Duluth, Minnesota.

Okay. How'd you find—

Frozzer area.

How'd you find your way here?

Well, I, um, I, I don't know, but I started, uh, I'm watching these videos, God's Messages Now, or, uh, Call of God, or, uh, uh, God Helps, and your intermission videos are in between these videos as you're watching them, and that's how I found you.

Awesome, awesome. Anyway, but I didn't officially— go ahead.

Let you know that, uh, this really is God talking to you on these videos because they're not ordinary videos. If you do something wrong or say something wrong or something, uh, you can get blocked from texting, you get your messages get erased, and all kinds of things happen. So I know they're not ordinary videos. If they were, it wouldn't make a difference.

Yeah, amen. Well, I didn't officially welcome you last week, but welcome aboard. Um, glad to have you here.

Yes.

All right, so we'll jump into the word here. Last week we concluded chapter 5 of Romans, and the first 5 chapters as we've been walking through, teaches justification. It first teaches that, hey, hey, we're sinners, right? All of us, we're all sinners, but we're justified through our faith in Jesus Christ. And then this chapter, next chapter, in chapter 7, chapter 8, is what Paul's going to do is teach us how we live in Christ, our sanctification. Our, our walk. Once we know Christ, we, we're, we're born again, we have this new identity, we have this new purpose calling on our lives. But now what do we do with it? How do we actually effectively walk that out? So we, we've, we, we've concluded already that we're, we're dead in sin, and now what Paul's going to talk about is how we're dead to sin. Okay, we were dead in sin. We placed our faith in Jesus. He imputes his righteousness upon us all, and now we're dead to sin. And what Paul opens up here is after ending chapter 5— and remember, when he wrote his epistles, all scripture, there was no chapter breaks— so at the end of chapter 5, he says, but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. Right? The depths of our sin will never outdo or outweigh the depths of God's grace. We can't out-sin God's grace. But in light of that, he starts chapter 6 by saying, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? So when he writes this letter, he knows, as he's making a point, he knows what a counter-argument is going to be. So he already established, no matter how much you sin, God's grace abounds much more. So what is some of the, the misnomer some people fall into? It's like, well, heck, Romans 3:23, I'm a sinner. We all, we've all sinned, fall short of the glory, but God forgives. He, he's a gracious God. He always forgives my sins. So I guess it doesn't matter how much I sin. Right, we take advantage of sin. We, we take that as a license to sin because no matter how much I sin, God's grace is more. But what does Paul say to that? He says, well, certainly not, right? It's heaven forbid that, that I should just continue to sin. Matter of fact, there's a, uh, there's a, a monk in Russia in the early 1900s who actually taught that you have more favor, you almost get closer to God by the more you sin, because the more you sin, you get more of his grace. And obviously that's a misnomer based on what Paul is teaching here. But I've come across some people, and particularly one guy I remember that I worked with once I came to faith, and I'm trying to share Jesus, uh, with everybody I know And he said, well, you know, Jesus forgives, right? So if I sin, I'll just, you know, ask for forgiveness. That's what Jesus does, he forgives. Absolutely. But Paul really clears up here, um, just kind of that attitude where we could just keep on sinning because Jesus is a forgiving God. And grace isn't a license to sin. It's— grace is God's power for us to change. We were dead in sin, but sin has no dominion over us anymore. Death has no rule and reign over our life anymore. And when Paul says, certainly not, how shall we who died, died to sin, live any longer in it? The, the phrase in the Greek is a powerful phrase. Like, what he's saying really is perish the thought. Like, it's more than just scoffing at that. It's, it's perish the thought. Certainly not. Heaven forbid. I mean, if that's the way you're thinking, that, that I could just continue to sin because God's grace abounds, he's saying no, no, no, no, absolutely not. Let me clear this up for you. And what Paul does is he lays out our battle plan against sin, right? He tells us what we have to do so, so sin may not reign in our life anymore. And, and it's not something where Um, you know, it's not legalism as far as whenever we get a command in the Bible, it's not legalism. Do this. The reason Paul is saying to do this, because at the end of the day, if we don't do this and we open the door to sin in our lives and sin gets its grip in us, then, um, not only is it not what God wants, but we don't want that either. We don't want that either for our lives. And oftentimes we toe the line of our walk. We get up to that line of sin where we dabble in sin, we entertain sin, and then all of a sudden we find ourselves walking in that sin. So, um, or practicing the sin. In Galatians 5, right, those who practice these things, uh, they're not fit for the kingdom of heaven. All those sinful things where, um, where Paul says if we practice them— well, what does that mean? How long do I have to practice sin before I'm now, um, I'm just a sinner and I realize I'm not saved, right? I think all of us can, can play it safe where we don't toe that line and entertain sin, start practicing sin, because sin will take a hold and become habitual in our lives. So when we became Christians, our relationship with sin changed. Our relationship altogether changed. Paul says here, and also in Ephesians 2:1, that we were dead in sin, and we were. When we came to Christ, we became new creations, 2 Corinthians 5:17. We, we became sons and daughters of God. We became heirs and joint heirs, co-heirs with Jesus Christ. And our identity changed, our purpose changed, everything changed. And now, but now, after Christ came into our lives, we've been transformed. Now we're not dead in sin, but now we're dead to sin. Now, John, if you guys were part of these Wednesday mornings, um, gosh, it's probably going back 2 years now, we went— when we went through 1 John, if you say that you don't sin, then, then you're a liar and the truth ain't in you, right? So you can't say that you don't sin, however, because we, we all still fall short. I've said this time and time again, when we were born again, we walked out— we walk out our new lives, our transformed lives in Jesus Christ. It doesn't mean that we're sinless. We still have these fleshly tents, these fleshly vessels that we're still contending with thanks to Adam. We talked about Adam last week a little bit, but that's why when, when we die and we're in heaven, um, One day we're going to get our glorified bodies, right? When the Rapture happens, the resurrection of the dead, we're going to get our glorified bodies. And our glorified bodies, you know, the men are probably going to have awesome beards like, like Zach Gross, probably going to have, um, you know, the, the chiseled torso of Alan Farina. Um, you know, just that the women— I don't know, you guys could discuss amongst yourselves, uh which women are y'all are going to look like. But where our glorified bodies are going to be perfection, they're going to be incorruptible at that moment. Our flesh right now is corruptible. Our flesh is drawn to the things that our spirit is not and should not be drawn to. But when we're dead to sin, it means that sin has no more legal authority over us. So, so Paul is going to, to give us, uh, 4 keys that are in this passage, these first 14 verses, of how we overcome sin, how we walk out our, our lives as believers, as followers of Christ. And it's 4 Rs. And we'll, as we go through the, the passage here, we'll dive into them. But the battle plan is simple. It's one, to realize 2, to reckon. 3 is to resist. And 4 is to replace. Okay, so we realize, we reckon, we resist, we replace. And as we go through the passage, I'll dive into those so you understand that a little better. Now verse 3 says, or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. So Paul paints this, this picture of baptism. And when Paul wrote Romans back in the day, 2,000 years ago, the word baptismo did not have anything to do with, like, holiness, did not have anything to do with the church. What baptism literally meant, it mostly specifically talked about when you're dyeing fabric. If you put a white fabric in red dye, you immerse the fabric into the dye and you pull it out and it's a new color, right? It's changed. So baptism just really means immersion, right? So we're immersed with the Holy Spirit And when we're baptized in water, right, hopefully everybody who's walking with the Lord, you've been baptized in water as that, that, that show to the world of what has already changed in your heart. Your heart has already been dipped in that dye, if you will, right? Dipped in the blood of Jesus Christ and has been regenerated. Our, our lives have been transformed. And then when we get baptized in water that, that's the outward physical representation of what happened inwardly. But when we're baptized in water, we're immersed in the water, we're covered with the water. When we're baptized in the Spirit, we're immersed by the Spirit, we're covered by the, by the Spirit. And it's a powerful demonstration of that change when, when we are born again, that moment, it's radical transformation. And I know not everybody says their testimony was radical, you know, it— you know, I didn't change, I didn't do a 180, but you did. You, you may feel like you haven't walked it out, or, you know, you still have some old habits, things like that, but that, that is an absolute radical, miraculous, supernatural transformation when when we say yes to the Lord, when we believe in him. And again, Christ, he imputes his righteousness upon us, and now we go from that, that filthy rag, that dirty sinner, to that, that spotless, clean, without a blemish lamb. It's a remarkable transformation. And then because we are in these fleshly vessels still and we contend with sin, um, you know, when Lazarus was raised from the grave Right, what did he have to do? He had to shake off those grave clothes. When we go from death to life, there's still some, some residue on us sometimes, even with that transformation. But we, we shake off those, those grave clothes. We get into the word, we equip ourselves, we're, we're taught. And when I mentioned that battle plan, the first thing of that battle plan is to realize it's really to know, right? Paul's going to say 3 times in this chapter— well, in this passage, he's going to say, do you not know? He's going to say, knowing this, and he's going to say, knowing that, right? And that's the, the realize aspect of our battle, is that we are to know, right? I, I've heard it— I forget who said it, but, you know, some old guy, uh, who's got some quotes. I forget who it is, but They said, uh, the most powerful thing on the earth is a made-up mind, right? So it's to know. So Paul says here in verse 3, he says, do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We need to know that we're baptized into his death. Our old man is gone. When, when we say yes to Christ What are we saying no to? We're saying no to ourselves. So it's death to the flesh, it's death to ourselves. You know, we're told to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus daily. And that's what it is. So do you not know that when we're baptized into Christ, we're baptized into his death? What does it mean? We're, we're dead with Christ. But like the water baptism, when we come out of the water, that represents the resurrection life. So dead to sin, old man is gone, alive in Christ. And, and we need to, to know that, that the old man is gone. The old man is gone. You may still have some residue, some grave clothes that are on you still, but the old man is gone. And now we are not dead in sin, we are dead to sin. So now we're equipped, we're empowered with all we need to, to walk out this resurrection life. Without sin having a hold of us like it once did. Then verse 5 goes on to say, for if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. And I know there's a comma, but I'll stop it right there. That this idea of being, being united together and the likeness of Christ's death, what the what the word there in the Greek, what it really describes is the, the grafting of a branch into a tree, right? Life flows from the tree into the branch. That's what it means to be in Christ. We know, um, John, John 15, right? Abide in Christ, he'll abide in us. And he's the, the vine, or he's the, the root where the branches And the only way we could have life is if we're connected, right? We're connected. We're the branch. We're connected to, to the root. We're connected to the, the tree trunk. And if you ever, you know, if you have a tree and you see like a branch of it has snapped a bit, the leaves on the edge of that snapped branch, they're going to wither and die. But we stay connected to Christ. This idea of We need to know that we've been united together in the likeness of his death, right? Which, if there wasn't a comma and something after that, it's like, okay, I know that I'm united with Christ in death. What's all this Bible stuff about, you know, suffering for Christ and dying with him? All this stuff sounds kind of morbid. But then Paul says, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. We can't walk out full resurrection power, newness of life, until we, we died to our old selves. And then verse 6 says, knowing this— again, the second time Paul is saying knowing. We need to know. I've heard a couple people say it. I think the first time I heard it was, was Ben Shapiro: facts don't care about your feelings. Right. Paul is clear about what we know and what we need to know. We need to know truth. And we live in a culture today where our feelings are everything. What we feel is who we are. We're not— I'm not saying we— the world is teaching children that, hey, you're a boy and you feel like a girl, you can be a girl. If you're a little kid and you feel like an animal, you could be a little furry. And now at public schools, they're, uh, setting up dog bowls for, for kids to eat at because, oh, they feel like a— they feel like a dog, we have to treat them like a dog. You know, their feelings are everything, we can't offend them, we can't offend them. Well, I mean, I, I'd rather— and I think all of us would much rather offend somebody with truth. The truth is offensive. Truth will smack you upside the head. Not every, every time we hear truth we're going to like it, but truth is truth and we can't change what the truth is. And we know who the truth is. The truth is Jesus Christ. The word of God is truth. But us wanting to walk out our lives based on how we feel, that's a dangerous thing to do because we are going to feel and desire things that are sinful, that are going to draw us far away from God. Um, my 2-year-old granddaughter Zayla, she's a She's, uh, one of the cutest kids on planet Earth. And I just say one of because I got 6 grandchildren, so she's one of 6. No offense to anybody else's children or grandchildren out there, right? But she's adorable. But she, she's, she's tough, right? Lala, her older sister, who just turned 4, she, she calls herself Queen Esther. She dances like a ballerina in the house. She is a girly girl. And Sailor is a bulldog. Zayla is a bulldog, and if you ask Zayla to do something, she'll say, I don't want to do that. Like, okay, well, you're 2, we're asking you to do that. I don't want to. Oh, we're gonna have, uh, eggs for breakfast. I don't want eggs. Okay, well, she's 2, so it's very hard to teach a 2-year-old where she could really grasp it. Hey, hey, listen, your feelings mean less to you than what you, you realize right now. Your feelings don't mean everything. But a 2-year-old is going to say, I want to do this, I don't want to do that. And if they don't get their way, they're going to pout, they're going to, they're going to whine. But we do the same thing often as adults, right? I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to. I mean, God lays out that this is the manual for our lives, but it's like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to die to myself today. And we'll get into that a little bit more in the closing verses of this passage when, when Paul tells us to present our instruments, right? Present our instruments to God. And we'll talk about what that means. So verse 7— oh, I want to make this reference as well with the old man being crucified. That the, the body of sin might be done away with. So our old man's crucified. When it says that the, the body of sin might be done with or destroyed— your translation may say destroyed— what that word in the Greek means is rendered powerless. Rendered powerless. So it means that, that sin is still there. Sin is there. Sin is— we're being tempted by the enemy to sin all the time. But the body of sin might be destroyed, done away with, rendered powerless. And what it kind of means is that if a business has been shut down, the building still may be there, but it no longer operates, right? It's rendered powerless. So sin is still there, but it, it's rendered powerless in our lives. And when it comes to, to sin, you know, we— it's been said many times that, hey, think of your spirit and your flesh as two dogs. Whichever dog you feed more is going to devour the other. Well, down by Roger, uh, a few years back, what was found is this little lizard called a skink. Skinks are mostly found in Australia, but a skink was found, and it's this, this long slimy lizard. But this particular skink was a little different. It had two heads to it. So there's a head on one side and head on the other. And the skink didn't get around very well because it's got two heads, two minds, two wills, you know, go a little bit this way, a little bit that way. And if you look at it, it's just kind of like confused, doesn't know which way it's going. Well, that's kind of how we are with our spirit and our flesh, right? And we, we, we, we know what God wants. We, we love him, so we obey him. That's how we show that we love him, is by obeying his commandments. But oftentimes that, that head of flesh, right, that, that old sinful nature that, that we can't completely shake off until we pass from this earth and these, these fleshly tents die. But that's how we walk around sometimes. So, okay, go— going this way, going to church, going to Bible study, spending time in the word, writing in my journal, worshiping the Lord, praising the Lord, and then that other head of flesh that's just attracted to sin. It's like, ah, I'm trying to go this way. And don't you know that oftentimes we, we miss the mark simply by— even if, if we're getting pulled in two directions, if we just— if our flesh is pulling us away from God, we don't even have to entertain the sin or actually walk out that sin. If that lustly desire, the fleshly desires that we have, if it just draws us away from Christ and we're just kind of in that middle ground, the enemy's won. The enemy's won. God wants us like with him, drinking from, from his well, the well of living water. Wants us under the waterfall of his grace, his mercy, his peace, his love, his joy. And all the enemy does sometimes— and that's why sometimes all he does is distract us from that. He distracts us. He can distract us with good things, but it takes our time, our devotion away from what and who matters most. Raj, had you heard of that skink down there by you? No. I thought maybe in, um, when you're traveling the world, maybe you brought some skinks home. And started breeding them. Oh, how's Jacksonville? Yeah, yeah, I, I listened to a, uh, I still listen from time to time, um, don't judge me for this. I'd love to tell you that every waking hour I'm listening to sermons in my Bible, but there's times where I just need to like unwind and I'll listen to, um, sports talk radio, the ESPN New York station that I used to listen to my whole life. And one of the shows, they actually have a segment called Did This Happen in Florida? And it's a wild story and they have to guess, did this happen in Florida? Most times it did happen in Florida. Yeah, yeah, some wild stuff happens in Florida. Yeah, so verse 7 says, for he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ— and remember Matthew 16, Luke 17, uh, only if we lose our lives will we find life, right? Will our lives be saved? But if we try to hold on to those old lives, that's where we're going to find death ultimately. So now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ— again, knowing, second time or third time now he's saying knowing. He said, do you not know that knowing this, now knowing that Again, Paul isn't really concerned with your feelings right now. It's, it's— we need to know. And that's that, that first step into waging battle and gaining victory over sin. We need to realize, we need to know these things. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. Once for all, man. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So, you know, you may have that word reckon, you may have a reference there. It says like consider yourselves to be dead to sin. Um, it's not that Paul is from Texas or anything. He says, reckon yourselves— it's really a powerful word— it's consider yourselves to be dead to sin. Our old slave master was sin, right? And I, I talked about this a couple weeks ago. There's certain, um, certain ways God reveals to us that we're either part of this group or that group. We're either Jews or Gentiles. You're one or the other. You're either a child of God or you're a child of Satan, 1 John declares, right? All of humanity, either God is your Father or Satan is your father. Doesn't mean you're a devil worshiper, but if it ain't God, it's the devil that you're serving. And here we're a slave to something, right? We're either going to be a slave to sin or we're going to be a slave to righteousness. That you can't be both. We're either a slave to sin, and all of us were slaves to sin. When I was an addict, I 1,000% was a slave to that thing. I, I had no power over it, no willpower to abstain. Can you go certain periods of time? Sure. But ultimately, um, that sin and that death and And that addiction had its claws in me so deep that even if I physically wasn't getting high, but was I still a slave in my mind? Oh yeah. If I physically abstained for a day, 2 days, could I say I, I was sober? No. That, that I was such a slave, it was consuming me more than when I was actually doing the drugs, right? Gita.

Wow, this is like my favorite topic in the whole Bible. Thank you. And it's like I was just praying into this, and you're saying stuff that I'm praying about, and you're speaking right through the Holy Spirit. Um, just want to share that. I think it was last year, I was listening to, uh, my sermon from one of my favorite pastors in Toronto, and, um, he's a real hardliner on this stuff. And he said something that really stuck with me. You know, we don't have the same what's the word, temptation to sin as the world does. Yes, we have a flesh like you said, but because Jesus Christ lives inside of us, it's like Jesus defeated that sin, but then Jesus lives inside of us. So in essence, we have defeated that sin. But then because we still have senses, we can see, taste, you know, taste, smell, touch, but then we don't, we don't respond in the same way because when we draw out his power, he responds for us, and then it just becomes a miracle. But Like, for example, I hate the things I used to do before. So as one example, I used to smoke cigarettes way back in the day. Now the smell of cigarettes makes me sick, right? So I pray to God, give me a hatred for my sin, give me a disgust and a distaste for it. And he does. And then give me a hunger and a thirst for your righteousness. And he does. But then the one who— the person who's not saved doesn't have that power. They're trying to do it in their own strength, and they're just never going to make it. We can only do it through his strength. Because he defeated the world, he defeated sin.

Amen, amen. And Gita, I don't know if anybody else has noticed this, she's a little like me. Every week it's like, this is my favorite chapter in the Bible. I love the Gita. I love it no matter what we're diving into. It's like, this is one of my favorite passages. I love it, I love it, I love it. Now you guys could give her crap about it too, all right? Not just me. Now, um, our old slave master was sin. But when we died with Christ, right, we died with Christ. And not just when we get baptized in water— the, the baptism in water is just the physical representation of what has happened inwardly already. But when we died with Christ, um, we, we got a new master. Sin isn't our master anymore. Our slavery to sin could only be broken by death. In the movie Spartacus, I have this in the notes, and the reference is the 1960 film Spartacus. I'm fairly certain there's a newer rendition of it, but there was widespread slave rebellion throughout Rome. And at one point Spartacus says, death is the only freedom a slave knows. That's why he's not afraid of it. Right? Death is the only freedom a slave knows. So when we're, we're dead in sin, the only way we can experience freedom is to be dead to sin, right? That's the point that, that Paul's getting to here. We once were, were dead in sin, and now we're dead to sin. And when we're dead to sins, because we've come alive, we've been resurrected in the newness of life of Jesus Christ. So we've been set free of sin. We've been set free. And Gita, that verse that you mentioned, uh, that 1 Corinthians 10:13, yeah, temptations are the same. We have the same temptations. We're not exempt. Um, although there's times where we know we feel like we're walking with this force field of the Holy Spirit around us where it's like everything's clicking, there's no warfare. We know there's probably warfare, but God is swatting those fiery darts out of the air before they even come near us. But we're not exempt from sin. There's a bigger bullseye on us from the enemy because now we're a target. We're on the opposing team. Before we came to Christ, he was our father, right? He could kick his feet up and say, all right, man, I don't need to do anything today for Christian Edwards to not walk with Christ or be enlightened by Christ. He's doing it to himself. So Christ died once for all, and now he lives to God. And, and, and he died for, for all, like once and for all, but for all humanity, all mankind. I mentioned one of my favorite verses a couple weeks ago, Romans 5:8, that Christ demonstrated his love for us that while we were yet sinners, he died for us. Everybody who ever walked the earth, he died for us. And he's blessed us with the gift of volition, the power to choose, right? Do we want to receive salvation, or do we— and ultimately everlasting life? It's, uh, I mean, when you're not walking with Christ, it doesn't seem so, so great. It's like, is this even real? But this is why Paul says 3 times here, we need to know. We need to know these things. And when we've been touched by Jesus, our hearts have been regenerated and transformed. We know these things. Before I even dove into scripture, I just knew a couple scriptures that Lucy had shared with me, and I really didn't know much of it. I didn't even know that there's so much in the Bible I didn't know. I was just confused about— but once I was touched by Jesus, I started to read scripture and everything made sense. It was like I knew, I knew in my knower, right? And my knower, not just like, uh, you know, I think maybe he's like, no, I know my knower in the deepest, darkest depths of my mind, of my heart, my soul. It's like, this is truth, this is absolute truth. And then when Paul says, likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead, that, that's a Greek word, logizomai. Logizomai, and it's actually an accounting term. So we consider ourselves to be dead indeed to sin. We reckon ourselves to be dead indeed to sin. And what it really means, you can count on it, you can rely on it, consider it settled. It's a done deal. It's a settled account. We reckon ourselves. So, so, so that, that's what it is. Again, that, that battle plan is first we realize, and we realize these things where it's realized. I know realize isn't the word, no, but it's close. And I want to keep this to the 4 Rs. Verse, just so you guys can remember the battle plan. So we realize, we know that as we're— as many of us were baptized into Christ, were baptized into his death, knowing, knowing that our old man was crucified and that the body of sin might be done with, and that we shall no longer be slaves of sin. And then knowing that Christ, right, that it's almost like the, the bad news, all right, it's like I died, it's death. But now knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. Death no longer has dominion over us. So now, now Paul's saying you need to know this. It's not about how you feel. Even with our identities, there's times where we don't feel brave, we don't feel courageous, uh, we, we walk in fear, right? But we need to know these things. We need to know that God has never left us. He's not leaving us. He's not forsaking us, right? We need to know these things. Trust in him. Trust in the word. But then when Paul says to reckon these things. He's saying consider it settled. So it's, it's like know the theology but then walk out the biology. It's, I know these things, I, I think these things, the theology. I know, I understand, I realize the theology of all this, but the biology is how I actually act according to what I know. And that's what the, the reckoned part is, the The, the no part is, say you have a check, right? But the reckon part is endorsing it and cashing it, right? It's not just— it doesn't help anybody's bank account if you just— you get a check in your name for a million dollars, you know it, but it doesn't do you any good until you endorse it and take it to the bank. So that's what it is. You, you know, and then you reckon. What you know now affects your be, how you, how you do things. So when we know these things— beautiful Psalm, Psalm 119— David said, your word I have hidden in my heart. That's how we know these things. We, we get in the word and we hide God's truths in our heart. And, and that's why it's important for us to memorize scripture. We, we implant, we engraft, we ingrain God's word into our hearts so that they're there. So when something comes up, I know what scripture to refer to. I know when a temptation comes my way, I know that 1 Corinthians 10:13— the reason I know 1 Corinthians 10:13 is because there's times I, I— from when I buried it in my heart, I hid in my heart, it's like, I know this is a temptation, but I know as much as that pull is for me to, to relapse, to, to, to go back to the thing that had its, its claws in me for all those years, it's like, wait a second, But I have something that I didn't used to have when I couldn't withstand that. I have the power of the Holy Spirit within me now. So no matter how bad the temptation is, I know I could overcome that because of the power of the Holy Spirit. We walk in the fullness and the power of the Holy Spirit every single day. We should all be crying out to the Lord, God, fill me afresh today. Remember in the book of Acts, the day of Pentecost, the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit in human history. And then today, 2 days later, what happens? John and Peter, they get arrested. The, the church, as small as it was at the time, uh, you know, a few thousand, but still church compared to what the church is today. And what are they doing? They're, they're scared. They're, they're, they're in the house. And what are they praying for? They're praying for boldness. And what did God do? He shook the earth. Shook the house they were praying in, and he poured out his Holy Spirit into them again and filled them with— it's like, wait a second, if the Pentecost— that should be good at least for a couple days. I mean, you think that'd be good for the year, right? Fill me to the point of overflow today with the Holy Spirit, and I'm good for 2026. No. Ask God every single day, fill you afresh. Take yourself back to that, that first time you ever cried out to him, where he— you encountered him, where where he just struck your heart with his goodness, with his grace. And, and God, guess what? He, he gives it to us just like the, the wisdom, um, unabateth not, right? He, he gives it to us as much as we ask. He, he gives it to us, gives him to us, the Holy Spirit. And then when we reckon, that's when that head knowledge turns into heart conviction, right? So what we know now turns into heart conviction, and we lean on what God says. Um, verse 12: Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, For you are not under law, but under grace. So if what Paul's saying is we do have a choice, right? Similar to James in chapter 4, verse 7, resist the enemy, resist the devil, and he will flee, right? We're given these instructions not because God wants us to walk out this religious legalistic life. It's because it's what's best for us. We resist the devil and he'll flee. And when we resist, it's not just like the devil's here, I'm gonna be like, oh, I'm going this way. Devil's here, I'm going that way. Although that is good. Think of Joseph, right? And Potiphar's wife. What do you do? He, you know, temptation was there, he just ran from it. He fled from it. So it's good to do that. But there's times when we resist, we need to withstand. Because, yeah, you ever see like in a boxing match or an MMA fight, just like a flurry of combinations, a flurry, a flurry, a flurry. You're getting from every which angle, just like jab, jab, hook, and you're getting body shots. And you feel like, okay, that enemy, he's not letting up. Well, resisting the enemy isn't just like running from the enemy, it's withstanding the enemy. And knowing that we can withstand through the power of the Holy Spirit. Martin Luther said you cannot stop birds from flying over your head right? We can't stop the sin and temptations from being around us, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair, right? Those birds of sin are going to be flying around us all the rest of our time here on this earth, but we absolutely have the power to, to not allow that bird to take up residency, build a nest in our hair. Temptation's going to come, but sin doesn't have to reign our lives anymore. Gita.

Yeah, thank you. Not to take over here.

No, you're good.

Yeah, I've done a lot of studying on this topic, right? Because as some of you know from my book too, I used to be Hindu and I came into, uh, the Lord. And one of the biggest things is this topic in Christianity. And we have so much more power too than we— when we think we have, because there's something known as inroads, right? When we let the enemy in, if we just give him a little bit of an invitation and that inroad, then he can build that nest. And that's something we don't realize. Like, oh, how'd that nest get here? Like, oh, I'm a Christian, you know. And then we think we're victims, but we have so much authority and free will, and that could work for us or against us. And the Lord has shown me, right, through fasting, repentance, and obedience, how to use my free will to be a vessel for God and be a blessing in the kingdom, and to thwart sin, you know, and then sins and temptations of the flesh. We really have to be cognizant and vigilant That's why Jesus said be vigilant of what we're letting into our life. Even just being surrounded by the wrong people or watching the wrong movies or listening to the wrong media, those are inroads for evil in your life. Or words— our words are also inroads for evil in our life. And then Satan, it's born, right? Sin is born. So we have to kind of— and that's part of the resistance, right, is knowledge, it's vigilance, not letting that in.

Amen. Amen. When you see uh, some of these pastors who are falling for cheating on their wives, things like that, they didn't just wake up one day and say, oh, today's the day I'm gonna ruin my marriage, ruin my church, my reputation as a leader in the kingdom. What happened was is they started giving way to things. They started to allow, um, those birds to just start dropping off little twigs, start building that nest, right? And maybe sometimes it's unbeknownst to you even, because you, you say it's okay, you know, I, I can do this thing. And maybe it's just watching a movie that, that, you know, has a sexy— no, like nudity, but like a sexy, right? Something like that. And a little twig was dropped off, and then all of a sudden, you know, um, now the enemy's convincing you, it's like, oh, I could watch porn a little bit. Oh, it's okay, my wife hasn't been giving me any. I'll watch porn. Something like that. And, uh, I, I apologize if this is like graphic or a little much, but this is reality. This is reality. We're all adults on here. I know sometimes our— some of our kids are like on our laps and listening to this, so I apologize if that's the case, but that's the truth. And then you start to watch porn, then all of a sudden you're living this, uh, fantasy life in your head. And now, um, cute girl that you see somewhere, now all of a sudden you're engaging in conversation because this fantasy world has been built up in your head. And I think oftentimes these pastors that fall, or any example of somebody who is walking with the Lord and walking in an upright life, all of a sudden they commit major sin. It wasn't just an overnight thing. Those birds were dropping off twigs, and the enemy's been leading us down this road to ultimately commit those big sins. Now, the— there's two commands here in verse 13. Do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin. So it's not— it's do not present your members to sin. And then the second command is to present your members to God. The word members there, it means is weapon. That's what the word means in the Greek. Do not present your weapons to sin, but present your weapons to God. And it's kind of like what Gita is saying. We have, um, there's two different armies, there's two different commanders, right? Imagine if you're in battle. Imagine if anybody's seen the David movie. I, I, I, uh, I highly recommended it a few weeks ago. But you see, even the battle at the end— my son Ezra has seen that movie. It's got to be upwards of 50 times by now, like, like through and through. And the scene where Jonathan dies, right, it's not graphic or anything, it's a movie for kids, but he literally gets sad every time at that scene. But lo and behold, it's very shortly after that, like the conclusion of the movie, and you know, he's got his sword and he's running around the house singing the songs again and praising the Lord. But Imagine being in that time and you have a weapon, you have your sword, right? You have your shield, you have your spear. The enemy's right there in front of you. Are you gonna just put down your weapons for him to take? Probably not, right? Those weapons are super important. So what is Paul talking about? To not present our members, our weapons to, to send to the enemy, to the commander in the opposing army. What are our weapons? Our weapons are our body. Our weapons are our eyes. Our weapons are our mouth. Our weapons are our ears. Our weapons are our mind. So who are we going to give those weapons to? Who are we going to give our eyes to? I know for me, referencing movies, there's movies— Lucy and I put on a movie a couple weeks ago, and there's a lot of cursing in the beginning. It's just like, oh, just like, just like it was like a gut punch. And it was like something like that. Like, can I watch that movie and be okay? Right. And not my life does a completely 180 and tailspin out of control. Yeah, probably. But do I want to present my eyes, my ears, my mind to that right now and really offer my weapons to the enemy in that moment. I've shared with you guys in the past that for me, it was hard for a long time to go to the gym and listen to Christian music while I'm at the gym. I wanted to listen to like all the hip-hop that I listened to back in the day, get a good pump, get pumped up, get fired up. And then I realized I'm listening to that, getting a good workout, you know, pray— like even praying first, then go and listen to the secular music. And then I, I realized I was doing something to me. I didn't like what that was doing to me. Like, can you do that? And everybody, we need to know our own vices. We need to know that, you know, because we, all of us, we could play it safe and not get to the line and just resist the enemy and make sure that, you know, the enemy's not putting any twigs in our head trying to build that nest. But why get close to that? At all. I want to be so far from that line where the enemy thinks he's making any, um, headway with me, that, that I'm so far inside of holiness. And that, again, not like walking in absolute perfection, but I want to be— I don't want to give the enemy an inch. The enemy is a scumbag. He's a loser. He hates us. He hates you with all of his heart. He hates you. And we have every right, and we're commanded to hate him. God hates evil. God hates the enemy, right? God doesn't hate the sinner. He hates the sin. He hates the, the father of lies, the father of sin. So when we talk about presenting our members, I talked about, you know, our, our ears, our, our eyes, our, our bodies. Now, back in Exodus 29 and Leviticus 8, this was the consecration of Aaron. And God instructed Moses to consecrate Aaron and his sons to be priests, and the ceremony involved washing, um, sacrifice, the application of blood. And the key moment was with the ram of consecration, right? Now what happened was they would sacrifice and they would put blood on the ear of Aaron as he was being consecrated for this priestly duty, and the blood on the ear meant My ear, my hearing belongs to God, that you must listen for God's voice. Isaiah 54-5 says he awakens my ear to hear as, as the learned. Jesus says my sheep hear my voice, right? So it's important, our ears, what we hear, we need to present those weapons to God. And then blood was placed on the hand of Aaron, right? Blood on the thumb of Aaron meant my work belongs to God. Not everybody is like a handyman, not everybody is a craftsman, right? But we're all anointed. I anoint Ezzie's hands all the time, and I don't know what he's going to do with it, but his hands, uh, I anoint them because they represent whatever God places as his individual purpose on this earth. He's going to place his hands on the plow of that thing, and I want his hands to be anointed. I want his hands to be strengthened. I want his hands to, to, to never come off of that plow. And then they anointed— well, blood was smeared on Aaron's foot, and the blood on the toe of Aaron represented his walk. That represents my walk belongs to Jesus Christ. So when we read something, if you don't like know the context of what Paul's saying and you just simply read Um, gosh, my page