Sunday Service

This morning, I would like you to open your Bibles to Romans chapter 6. Verses 1 and 2.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that Grace May abound? Certainly not how shall we? Who died to send live any longer in it? Let's pray. Father, these two verses?

Are the beginning, Lorde. Of someone that is received you as their savior. and, Then question how we should go about life and live. Fathers. We study these words.

And the verse is around it Lord help us to see how you want us to live as your children. Nasty things in your precious name. Amen.

As Marlene and I were traveling. Up to Lacrosse. We noticed that there was a lot of the times in the fall, the whole hillsides are just a beautiful array of colors. And this year there were just kind of blotchy. There was a spot of color here than it was a green. Maybe a slow spot of color over here and it was kind of that way all the way up to Viroqua and when we got into it, kind of changed and then it was some beautiful color and the whole Hillside kind of come together and made a beautiful picture. But it reminded me of how we are in our walk with God. sometimes that we pro-trade some beautiful colors as Christians, sometimes, and then other times people see us as something different and so, I thought about that and I thought about these two verses,

the God says, if you want to be free of bondage, Like you should be if you've received me as your savior. You need to look at these words in these passages. We need to understand that God had no plan for joining his holy spirit to any person of old sin nature. So what does that tell us? That God is not going to. Forgive you of your sins and then not change your nature. He said, I will not leave you where you're at.

When you receive Christ as your savior, you repent of your sins and repentance means change. The means to do a 180 and the change. And to conform to the way that God wants us to live.

Gray says any house that is divided against itself, shall not stand. And Matthew 12:25 says that, And sometimes in our circumstances, we may feel like a house divided even though we know Christ is our savior.

We can get into those dilemmas we can get into the calamities of life. And we can feel it. God is not there, but he says that he is God would never set us up for failure. So we need to look further into the scriptures. To find another cause for The Strife that we're having within us. When we feel that we're House Divided, there is a reason for it, but it's not because God is Not There. So we need to look further into the scriptures.

Jesus use some analogies. He said you cannot put a new piece of cloth on an old garment for a patch and expect it to stay and I have Marlene and I we discussed that she's the same person. She's patched a lot of clothes. As to what that Matt and we decided that if you put on a new patch and you put the sewing all over all around it and hold it to that old patch. That it will break loose because the new patch does not have any give to it. The old patch does and it's in that old ways and it will not stay, and it will not hear that, it will break loose. So that's why she takes my old jeans, cut the legs off. I'm more there wasn't any holes and she saved them for patches. That way you're putting old on old and it works a little bit better. And it talks about God says that you cannot put new wine in Old skins, it will spoil. And uses that as analogy for the synonym for life. He says I cannot come into your life. And have you continue in sin because I cannot live there. And you will spoil your testimony by the continuing of sin in your life, and you will ruin your testimony for Christ. So we have to ask the question. So when we receive Christ as our savior,

Did we get a new nature?

And the answer to that is yes. Christ gives us a new nature when we believe as Christians, that we going to baptize them baptism in, it's a full immersion. It's that old nature dye. And the new nature comes forth. From repentance. and that there is a change and that we do actually have a new nature but we have That old body.

Who has?

Still. Satan is apart of that old body.

The new nature, what it does is it gives us a choice. As to whether we're going to listen to that old body or not.

We have a new nature, we have been forgiven of our sins. But we still have. That old self. It's still in there and it will haunt us and it will keep tempting us. To send.

God said that.

We can't bring light Into Darkness. Darkness and Light, don't mix. It's either going to be dark or it's going to be late, but sometimes we try, To make that work. And what a, what a brings about is a dimness. There is some light there but there's also Darkness there, and our light doesn't shine. For Christ, the way that he wants it to, because of the darkness that we allow. The stay. It's hard, it's hard to let go of everything. We talked about it in our study, this morning, their repentance and turning back to God. Yes, that sounds easy. But it also requires actions and it requires a reaction, which means change. Change. And that's the hard part. The hard part is to change, but God says, in my grace and in my power, you can change. But you have to choose to. It's a choice thing. You know when God created the animals, he didn't give them a choice. It was Instinct, they done everything from Instinct but people he gave a choice. We could either choose to follow him in obedience and trust him at his word in the Bible. And we can choose to keep studying the Bible so that we have a knowledge of who he is. So that when we do come into calamities, we have the ability to trust God that he will take care of it and he will take us through those times.

But sometimes we also talked about what a person can have all the knowledge of the scripture. He can read it through and through and have an understanding of the scripture. But if you do, I'll take it from here and put it here. And then act on it. It's of no use to him, it's no good. It's just like a spraying, we get on our knees and we pray that God. And we asked him for all these things and we asked him to renew us and to transform us into what he wants us to be when you get up off of our knees and we don't do anything about it. It's not going to happen. It takes action on our part.

God gives us the power. But we got to do something with that power. We can't just sit on our hands and wait for God to do everything for us. That would be like, being a robot.

In Matthew 6:24, it says no one can serve two masters.

Lots of people have one master Satan, not two masters. Christians also have one master god. Not to Masters.

but our old former Master, the one that we had before, we knew God, He constantly temps us. And Badgers us to submit. Cut that Master. instead of the to the one true God, And we will have that old master. Until the day that we die, you will always be a part of us. And folks, we got it, we got to choose not to listen. Because that old man or that old Master is sinful and he follows Satan.

And he's a Great Deceiver. I talked to a fellow the other day and he was asking me about how things was going at the church and we were talking and I told him how excited I was that I was going to be stepping into the senior pastor role and he said well I just I got to get over there, I got to get over there. You said you know He's a very busy man, like the rest of us like a lot of us doesn't have a lot of time and he's life carved out for other things. And he says, I consider myself kind of Bob Maybe a C- Christian.

I looked at it myself, do you think God grades on the Curve?

and he said, no. I don't think that he does.

He says, you know, we can come up with all kinds of excuses as to why we are the way that we are and why we choose to live the way we live and do the things that we do. And none of those excuses. Are any good for a Christian that stands before God and has him as your master.

We have no excuses. We really don't. Other than we're just sinful people.

We try to do what God wants us to do. We try to do the best that we can and sometimes that best that we can is done to our own powers and we don't look to God for that strength to make those right decisions and we just kind of continue to go on in life thinking that God understands and he threw his grace.

We are saved and that's what we hang on to. It's through his grace that we are saved.

God loves to forgive. So why not give you a more to forgive?

If forgiveness is guaranteed, do we have the freedom to send as much as we want to?

Pause forceful, answer, their inverse to was, of course, not such an attitude.

Deciding ahead of time to take advantage of God. Shows that a person does not understand the seriousness of sin.

God's forgiveness does not mix in less serious. His son's death for seeing shows us the Dreadful seriousness of sin or you would not have had to die on the cross. The availability of God's mercy, must not become an excuse for careless living. And moral laziness.

I was reading. About the other day.

And this analogy came up sinner saved by grace.

Or are you a saint that sends? I'd like to read it for you.

he made the point that it is birth not performance that dictates Nature. Humanities definition of a sinner is performance-based if a sinner if a person sends, he's a sinner. But that is not God's definition. His view is that a sinner is a sinner because he was born that way. And neither good nor bad performance can alter it. It's not soon that sends a person to Hell. His nature, sends him to hell. All you have to do to go to hell, as be born and get old enough to be accountable. Think about that. There's a lot of truth. That is the truth. If we don't ever change from the time that were born and we are held where get to an accountable age and we choose to continue to follow. We are lost.

When a sinner gets saved, he does not become a sinner saved by grace. He becomes a saint who sends the way the worldly man sees it as a saint is a person who rarely sends. We usually reserved this label for people who are too old to send We refer to them as dear old Saints, but we never speak of dear young Saints.

The labeled is bestowed as a reward for years of good performance. If we teach a Sunday school class for 40 years or serve as a teacher, as a Turf Church officer 4:30 or that we are a pastor. We may have a chance at sainthood before we die. Now my question is to each one of you. Do you look at yourself as a sinner saved by grace? Or a saint that sends. God calls us Saints. And the scripture he calls us Saints.

I shudder to think about, that's a higher High Calling. To be a saying it's far easier to accept the idea that I'm a sinner saved by grace. Because it seems like there's more allowance. There for me. But I don't think that that's the way God wants us to think. I think that he wants us to consider ourselves Saints.

That do send.

That we are ambassadors for him.

An ambassador is somebody that has leaves their comfortable spot from where they are and they go out in April claim they represent. Something else God wants us to be that person he wants us to come out of our comfort zone. He wants us to be a light, not a dim light, but a bright light showing the way for people to come to his presence.

I think that. I could do better. I know, I can do better. And I think that there's everybody out here that wants to do better. How do we go about it? Getting into his word. And taking that knowledge that we read and putting it in our heart, taking it to her heart as to who God really is. How much love that he has for each one of us and he wants us to portray that love. back to all those that were around and all those people that we come in contact with

And it's not so easy to do because God calls that agape love his kind of love, it's the kind of love that don't have any strings attached. It's easy to love someone that loves you back. Or shows love for you. Or shows that they appreciate the love that you have for them. But it's hard to love somebody with expecting absolutely nothing back. But that's what God wants us to do a man. A man that spray.

Father.

I ask your forgiveness of my shortcomings.

father, as we study your word and we look to you father you show us more and more how to be like you That you came to this earth in the same. Man suit that we live in everyday.

You left your all your powers in heaven so that you could live and experience life as we live.

and it was a sinless life, those years that you were on this Earth

because you chose, To trust and obey your father. So that you could be a perfect sacrifice for each one of us. When the time came Lord, for you to die on the cross for our sins, could you do that? That's the way that it had to be. Now we in our hearts, we know that this is the way that God wants us to be. And to strive for. Father just help us to persevere in our walk with you help us to study your word Lord. And Abby that safe that does send. We give you all the praise in Jesus name. Amen.