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Living Water

The Unhindered Gospel

Daniel Pel

Something or Someone?

A Pattern or a Person?

A Perfect Mirror

What Does God Remember?

A New Identity

Dying in Order to Live

God’s Sustaining Power

Reality Check!

Father in heaven, we come before you with grateful hearts.

We come before you, Lord, anticipating that you will speak to us as we sung in that song.

Lord, we desire to hear you, to discern your voice, And we ask that as we open your word that you will open our hearts and our minds and that you will teach us these beautiful truths from your word that we may understand the gospel more fully and embrace it more heartily.

And Lord that our lives may be formed by you, that we may be like the clay in the hands of the potter, that you may shape us and mold us and fashion us until we represent your Son, Jesus Christ, that he may be seen in us and that his life may be lived in us.

So thank you so much for guiding us throughout this week of prayer.

What a great joy, a moment to rest in you.

And Lord, I pray that tonight you'll just remove all distractions from our minds and that you will allow us to experience the gospel.

All right, well take your Bibles and turn with me to Romans chapter 6, and we'll be starting there right there in verse 1, Romans chapter 6 and verse 1.

As you know, I live in the country of Norway.

My wife is a Norwegian, and I live in Norway.

I like it very much, it's a beautiful country.

And 1 of the things that I like about Norway is it has 4 seasons It's not all countries where you have really the 4 seasons throughout the year in Norway We we do have them the winter is definitely the longest of the 4 we actually have about 4 or 5 months of snow and so it's pretty it gets pretty cold and We also have very very short days in the winter actually our shortest days the sun will come up about 9 in the morning and it will go down at 3 in the afternoon.

So we only really have about 6 hours of light.

But then on the other hand, when we have our summer, we have very long days, and in Norway you can experience the midnight sun, which really means that it's there in the middle of the night and it's just amazing that it hardly gets dark.

Where we live, we live a little bit more south in Norway, but in the summer and some of the longest days, it won't actually get darker than it is now outside, so it's quite an experience.

But when you've had a long winter with many months of snow and frost and ice and cold weather, you start appreciating the spring even more.

I've always appreciated the spring, it's 1 of my favorite times of the year, but especially for the last 10 years since I moved to Norway, I appreciate the spring even more, because when spring comes around and the snow starts to melt and the flowers start coming out and there's just this breeze of warm air.

It's just like, it's just this yes to life.

And but nonetheless, the life that comes in the spring is a beautiful lesson, when you look closely at these 4 seasons and winter followed by spring, it's a beautiful lesson of what the gospel is all about.

And tonight I titled this message, Dying in order to live.

And what I find fascinating each and every time, when I go out into the garden in spring, and when I plant those tiny little seeds that they're basically just dry and they look dead and you bury them in the ground and you cover them with soil, that eventually that springs forth and actually starts growing.

There are miracles in nature that sometimes we just take them for granted, right?

But if you really think about it, these are lessons of the gospel.

And if you look in Romans chapter 6, we find in Romans chapter 6 a very pivotal lesson, a very pivotal truth when it comes to the gospel.

In order for us to fully live with Christ and Christ living in us, first what must take place is there must be a death to self.

Something must die in order for Christ to live in us.

It's just like in nature, you see the cycle of death and life.

In the winter, everything's dead, it's covered by the snow, but then in spring it springs out, it gives life again.

The buds, they come forth and it's just a beautiful cycle of life and it has all the lessons of the gospel right in there.

Now look at Romans chapter 6 and verse 1 and 2.

Paul the Apostle says, he asks a question, he says, what shall we say then?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

And then he answers his own question in verse 2, and he says, "'Certainly not.

How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?' He's talking about dying to sin.

We must die to sin in order for Christ to live in us.

Just like the seed, it's put in the soil, it's covered, it's like a burial.

But then springs forth and it gives life.

Now the very same question is asked when you drop down to verse 15.

Basically chapter 6 in Romans chapter 6, Romans chapter 6, verse 15, brings us to a second illustration and we're going to look at both of them here tonight.

And Paul asks the same question, almost identical question.

"'Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?

And he answers his own question, certainly not.

So we find a similar question in verse 1 and a similar question in verse 15.

And basically, chapter 6 can be divided into 2 parts, and Paul is giving 2 illustrations of what it means to die to self, what it means for us to allow Christ to live His life within us.

And then as you move into chapter 7, and basically the first portion of chapter 7, the first 6, 7 verses, Paul gives a third illustration of what it means to die to self in order for Christ to live in us.

And so we're going to look at these 3 illustrations tonight.

That's all we're going to do, that's all we're going to cover.

And The first illustration is about baptism.

The first illustration that Paul gives us is the illustration of baptism, which is really a picture of dying to self as you go into the watery grave, and then as you come up out of that watery grave, it is like the resurrection of Christ, right?

You are dying to self in order for Christ to live.

The second illustration that Paul gives that we're going to look at, the second portion of chapter 6, deals with an illustration regarding slavery, and we'll see what that all entails in just a moment.

And then the third illustration that Paul gives in the beginning of chapter 7 is probably some of the most difficult verses in the Bible to understand.

I've, you know, bumped into a lot of people that say, well, what is that exactly, what is Paul getting to there in Romans chapter 7?

And for a long time I myself had a hard time understanding it because Paul gets very theological at times, a little bit complex language there.

Even Peter says that in 1 of his letters, You know, Paul is hard to understand.

But what we're going to do is we're – I believe you're a smart group here, and we're just going to take it bit by bit, we're going to break it down and see if we can wrap our understanding around the third illustration that Paul gives, and it's an illustration of marriage.

And again, this illustration of marriage is also, again, tapping into the same truth that we must die to self in order for Christ to live.

So this is the main teaching that we find running throughout chapter 6 and also into chapter 7.

We must die to self in order for Christ to live.

Illustrated by baptism, illustrated by slavery, as we will see in the story where Paul gets to, and illustrated by this marriage, okay?

So we're gonna look at these 3 illustrations.

Let's start in Romans 6 and the first illustration of baptism.

We'll read a couple of verses here, and I'm going to read from verse 3.

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his what?

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 what?

Verse 5, For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin." Now, Paul gives us here the illustration of baptism, and he says when you are baptized, you're baptized into the death of Jesus.

And just as you go under that water, and that's why it's so important that in baptism it's not a sprinkling because that wouldn't illustrate a real burial, it's completely under the water.

It's signifying entering into the death of Christ, but then coming up it is illustrating or signifying the resurrection of Jesus.

And we talked about this a little bit yesterday when we studied Romans chapter 5, that Jesus, when he died and when he rose, he united himself so much with humanity so that he says that his death now becomes our death, his resurrection becomes our resurrection, And we are invited into a new family.

And this we signify to those around us that we want to belong to that family when we decide to be baptized.

We decide that we want to show publicly that we want to, that we appreciate the death of Jesus, that we appreciate his resurrection, that this is our only hope, and that we want to be united with him in the family of God.

And so we are buried and we come up out of that watery grave, and it is a picture, a beautiful picture, of the old man that dies in order for Christ to live his life within us.

Now, but of course, baptism, even though that is a one-time experience usually, Well, there are times that people are rebaptized, but it's not something you do every week, it's not something you do every month, it's not something you do every year.

It's usually a one-time thing in your life.

And, but nonetheless, baptism, the experience that it portrays, The picture that it gives to us is really something that must be experienced every single day.

You know, Paul the apostle in another place, he says, I die, can anyone finish that?

So The experience that baptism pictures of dying to self is not just something that happens once in a lifetime in the life of a Christian, but it's an experience that we must go through daily.

That's why Jesus said things like this, and I'll just read this verse for you.

In John chapter 12 and verse 24, Jesus said, verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone.

But if it die, it brings forth much fruit.

So in order for it to bring forth fruit, something must happen to that seed.

So we see this in nature, we see this in, we see the Gospel revealed in the lessons of nature around us.

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Series

The Unhindered Gospel

Dying in Order to Live

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

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