Yeah. Well, looking at the songs that uh that God led our worship team to pick out this morning, it's it's evident that God really wants you to know that He loves you this morning. That's kind of been woven all throughout. And I think that's it's interesting because a lot of what we're gonna talk about today has to deal with this understanding of who God is and oftentimes misconceptions that we have about who God is. We have a tendency as people to see God as a distant, demanding ruler when in reality he is a loving, caring father. And it's actually one of the biggest paradigm shifts that we all have to experience and almost continually do it because there's just something about our nature, there's something about the world that just pulls us to say, like, no, God must be more harsh, he must be more upset, more angry. And in reality, no, he's incredibly kind, he's incredibly patient, he loves you very, very much. And everything that we do has to be about focusing on that because we we need to remember that as often as possible. All right, well, last Sunday we started a new series called Free. And what we're doing is we're gonna spend the next few weeks going through this section of a letter in the New Testament called the Letter to the Romans. And it's a very complicated, very nuanced thing. We'll talk about that in a minute. Nuance is good. Uh, but if you had to give it a theme, the theme would be freedom. So, for example, we'll get to this one a little bit later on. This is toward the end of the section we'll be studying. Romans 8.2 says, Because you belong to him, because you belong to Jesus, the power of the life-giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. Now, if you're someone who's kind of new to the whole church thing, uh, whether you're here or you're watching from home, and that statement, the life-giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin and death, you're like, it doesn't mean anything to me. Just stick with it. I think it'll make sense. But this whole section is about this idea of freedom. That Jesus has done something, and the result of what he's done is that you have been set free and you can live in a freedom you could never experience apart from Jesus. Now, we talked about this a little bit last week, and I'm approaching this one a little bit different. I've got visual aids this time around. Uh, this is a diagram of freedom. This is what freedom looks like. Freedom is really messy. It's really messy, right? That's why as parents, we struggle sometimes to give our kids more freedom because we just can't visualize how they're gonna handle it, what they're gonna do with it. It's so much easier to provide more and more structure. Think about our nation. We are a free country. And we've been a free country for about a quarter of a millennia now. 250 years or so, we've been a free country. And if you study the history of our nation, what you find is that it's pretty messy. There's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad, and it's just sort of a mess. The good news is it's it's interesting, right? American history at the very least is interesting because it's so messy, because turns out it's one thing to be handed freedom, and it's another thing to figure out what to do with it. Like, how do you actually live in freedom? Freedom can be abused, freedom can be misused. People do funny things with freedom. And it's it's interesting because we we like to imagine God being a God who's not about freedom. You know, it's that paradigm shift I was talking about a minute ago, that whole distant demanding ruler, that God must be a God where it's all about order and structure, there's a lot of rules, it's like a tightrope that you have to follow, right? One step to the left or to the right, you're out, because God is definitely not a God of freedom, because God would never be okay with a mess. Right? But that's just not the case. That's not the case. In fact, one of the best pictures we have of the will of God and just what God desires would be if you go back to that original story in the Bible. And even if you're not a Jesus follower, you're new to church, you're probably familiar with it, uh, the story of the Garden of Eden. We'll reference that story a few times today. That that gives us a really clear picture of what God's will is like, because that was before everything sort of went awry. And God tells the people in the garden, he says, hey, look, you can eat, what does he say? Does anyone know the word? He says, eat what? Eat freely. Eat freely. He says, You can you can eat freely. It's freedom. He's like, all that you see, all the all the trees in the garden, they're all yours. Have at it, have, have at it, have what you want, eat freely. And he says, Oh, but there's this one tree you should avoid. See, we like to think of God being the opposite of that, that God would have a thousand things you shouldn't do, and there's only one good thing to do, that his will must be like a tightrope. When in reality, no. No, God is a God of tremendous freedom. But we struggle with freedom because freedom is kind of messy. And the reality is, this is not just a picture of freedom, this is me. And I hope it's some of you too. I hope I'm not the only messy one in the room. Anyone else willing to admit that you're kind of a mess? Right. And so it can be disillusioning and disheartening as a Jesus follower because you know when you give your life to Jesus, you think to yourself, oh wow, this must, this is gonna fix everything. This is gonna fix everything. I'm gonna give my life to Jesus, I'm gonna get baptized, I'll go to church, I'll read the Bible, and boom, it's all fixed. And in a sense, yeah, it is all fixed. That's the the eventual destination, but in in practicality, we're still, we're still really, really messy. And this section on freedom, it deals with that. In fact, Romans chapter seven, it's kind of halfway through, Paul says, I don't really understand myself. I don't really understand myself. And he goes on to say that I do things I don't want to do that I don't think are good, but I do them anyway, and then there's things that I really want to do because I know they're good and right, and I don't end up doing them. I do what I hate and I don't do what I love, I don't understand myself. Can anyone relate to that? Does that sound like life to anybody else? Why do I keep doing the things that I do? Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep getting stuck on the same stuff? Why do I keep telling myself that tomorrow I'm gonna start doing that thing that's really good? Now tomorrow's gonna be the day. And then tomorrow shows up, I'm like, actually, today's not a good day. Tomorrow would be better, and tomorrow just keeps happening tomorrow. Why don't I quit the things that I say I'm going to quit? Why don't I do the things that I know I ought to do? I don't know, I don't understand myself. It's messy. But please understand this. God is okay with your mess. What I mean by that is not that he wants you to stay here. This isn't a fun place to live. But but he's not intimidated by your mess, he's not disgusted by your mess, he's not turned off by it. There's nothing that God looks at and sees in you where he goes like, ugh ah. You know, like maybe you've been in a dating situation before where you saw some mess at some point before it was too late. You know what I mean? All of us married people are laughing at that. Uh and you're like, oh no, I abort, abort, go, run, run, right? You know, that's the reality. And again, we're talking about God's love. There's a lot of ideas. This whole section is very nuanced, there's a lot of layers to it. Nuance is okay, but the reality is a lot of times as people, we love out of ignorance. We love because we don't know just how messy it is. God never loves out of ignorance. He knows everything, he sees the mess for what it is, and he loves you anyway. But again, he doesn't want us to stay here. Part of freedom is learning how to how to understand it, at least it should be. And so last week we kind of created a framework that we're gonna use to sort of guide us in what what Romans 6 through 8 is communicating, because it's pretty complicated. Like if you're a if you're a new Jesus follower or you're kind of thinking about it, there's a part of me as a pastor that's like, don't do Romans. If you've been a Jesus follower for long, you know why, but it's interesting. Uh, the book of Romans, the letters, it was written to new Christians. Because everybody at that time was a new Jesus follower. There's no such thing as someone who's like, yeah, I grew up in the church, didn't exist. And so we've got to make sure we don't underestimate our ourselves and our ability to understand really complex things because what God has done for us, it's it's beautiful, it's simple in many ways, it's also complicated. We need some help. And so as we go through this section of Romans, we're gonna cover a lot of ground. Last week I showed you guys a list of all the concepts in Romans. It's a lot, but this is a framework that just basically helps us understand the gist of what's going on. Everyone in this room was born, correct? Great. Uh when you were born, you received a nature. And you might use language like the way that you're wired. You know, that you're just naturally, this is this is who you are. This is this is everything from your imagination, your desires, your feelings, your thoughts, this is you. And the Bible has a word for that. It's it's flesh. Sometimes, depending on your translation, it might actually say the phrase sin nature instead of flesh. And there's language used saying that that apart from Jesus, we're actually slaves to our flesh. That we are slaves to our sin nature. Now, culturally speaking, that doesn't fly. No one's gonna go for that. If you say, hey, agree or disagree, you're a slave to your sin nature, people would be offended. But we talked about this last week. How often have you heard someone say something like, I'm only human? I can't change the way I feel, I can't, I can't help the way that I feel about this. Those are statements that are basically saying I'm totally a slave to this. I can't help it. I feel really strongly about something and I'm compelled to follow it. And so we're born, we get this nature, the Bible calls that flesh, and then that leads to, unfortunately, death. It leads to death. And we'll go into more detail about that in a minute. But then when you give your life to Jesus, something happens. You become born again. You're born again. Jesus says this in John chapter 3 that you must be you must be born again. And when you're born again, guess what? You get a new nature. There's a new life that develops inside of you. And that new nature actually desires the things that God desires. That new nature desires things that line up with what God would desire for you, and we call that spirit. That's the phrase we see in scripture: that we're we're born not of flesh, but of spirit. At your core, you are a spiritual person. That is who you are. You're spiritual. And so there's got to be some life in your spirit for you to actually be the person that you're meant to be. And if we live by the spirit, it leads to life. And so as we study this section, you're gonna see a lot of terms, a lot of phrases, and it's gonna feel like it's all layered on top of each other. It's gonna feel like a mess. But this is a framework to help us understand what the author's trying to tell us, what God's trying to tell us, because we want to be people who live here. But it's it's hard. It's hard to live here. It's it's kind of messy. And so, with that said, I just want to jump into Romans chapter 6. I'm gonna read the first 11 verses. This is really what we're gonna cover today. And by the way, um, I'm reading everything off of the His Hands Mobile app. If you ever have that up, you can follow along. All the scripture that we use is there, and uh something you can use afterwards as well. So here we go. Again, this is gonna feel really messy. Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more of his wonderful grace? Of course not. It's a funny idea, right? What what Paul's saying is, hey, God's given us grace, he forgives us for our sins. And so there's one logical out outcome to that is to be like, sweet, let's do way more of that. Right? He says, of course not. Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death. For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. The reason we do baptism the way we do is it's symbolic. When someone goes into the water, it's symbolic of them being like it's like Jesus going into the tomb. When they come up out of the water, it's symbolic of Jesus being raised to life. So he's making that connection there. He says, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we've been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. Now we know that our old sinful selves, that's this person right here. He says, We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ, so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin, and since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. Simple stuff. Right? There's a lot going on there. But all of this, again, this is this is all designed to help us understand ourselves, to help us understand how to live in this freedom that we're meant to live in. And so I want us to kind of unpack this a little bit together. Alright, there's a word that popped up. It's it's a word that no one really likes, and it's the word sin. Now, we we often have a lot of misconceptions about sin. It's kind of it's kind of a nuanced thing. I want you to think for a second about the word love. We see love probably is very opposite to sin. Love is something that we do, right? Like you love things. Think about some things that you love, maybe people you love. I love my wife, I love Jesus, I love this church. But there's also stuff I love, like I love basketball, I love biscuits and gravy. And you know what? I think I communicated more love at the end there, and it's not that I love that more than my wife or Jesus for sure. It's just uh I'm kind of hungry. So uh that's all. Like love is something that you do. And there's probably some things that you love really well, like you're good at loving that thing, it's something that you do. Well, sin is something that we we do. And sometimes we look at this word and it's like a really negative word. The Greek version of it literally just means to miss the bullseye. Anytime we step outside of what God has deemed as good, that that's just that's sin. But sin is more than just behavior, it's more than just something that we do. Think about love. Not only do we love things, not only is love an action, sometimes we talk about love as if it's something that's like out there in the world, right? We might say things like, I'm I'm looking for love, I'm searching for love, I found love. Love is like, it's something that exists outside of us. We see that in scripture with sin as well. In fact, the very first time that this word is used is Genesis chapter 4, verse 7. God's talking to a man named Cain, and he says, You will be accepted if you do what's right. Cain's really going through some stuff right now. He's about to make a terrible decision. He says, But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out. Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you, but you must subdue it and be its master. Okay, he's saying, Hey, sin is it's like this thing, and it's out there, and and it has really bad intentions for you. So sin is something we do, but it's also some like kind of external force. But but go back to love. Not only do we do love, it's not just an action, it's not just something that's kind of out there, but we also have this sense that love is like inside of us, that love is at work within us. And sometimes you're just you're filled with love. I mean, I I those of you who know me well, you know my kids, and I talk about them all the time. Number one, having four kids is like perfect for my job because I need material. I need constant stuff. You know what I mean? Like every week it's gotta be a new message. And so they give me lots of stuff. And and I have I have three boys and I have one girl. And I joke all the time and say things like I repeat stuff a lot that you know, the difference between boys and girls if you're a dad is really simple. You would you would die for your boys, but you would kill for your daughter, right? It's just the truth. And you know, I love I love my daughter so much, and it just has this different effect on on me than even my son's. I don't love her more, it's just a different kind of love. That sometimes I'll just catch myself just watching my daughter, and I'll just cry. Like she'll just be singing in the car poorly, and I will look at her through the rearview mirror and just tear up. In fact, I think I I spend more time with the rear view mirror on the back seat watching my kids than I do looking at the cars behind me, which is the purpose of that. It's probably not good. But but it's like there's a love inside of me and it it almost takes over sometimes. And I'm just swept up in it. It's an internal force, not just something out there. Well, the Bible talks about sin in similar terms. In fact, in Romans chapter 7, verse 20, Paul wrote, But if I do what I don't want to do, I'm not really the one doing it. It is actually sin living in me that does it. It's sin living in me. So sin is something we do, it's something that's kind of out there, but it's also something at work within us, and it's really, really serious. Jesus actually talked about sin in very serious terms. He said, Hey, if your right eye causes you to sin, just gouge it out. And if your right hand, assuming that that's your strong hand, if it causes you to sin, just cut it off. Now he's being hyperbolic. Jesus is always talking a metaphor, but he's talking about sin in very serious terms. In fact, Romans chapter 6, verse 23, that's part of this section we're studying, says, For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. So what this tells us is that sin it's not just serious, sin is like expensive. See that? Now it's a dollar sign. Isn't that funny? That is the most clever thing I will do all day long. And I don't just mean while I'm here, I mean all day long. Sin is is expensive. There is a price for sin, and apparently that price is death. Now, this is where that whole misconception of God thing comes in, because we we struggle with this. We struggle with this even if we've been following Jesus for many years. We have this tendency to believe that God overreacts to sin. That God is like really touchy, and you know, he just overreacts. There's certain things that just set him off. I'm sure there are things like that in your life. There are certain things that they just they set you off. You get really annoyed, really, really frustrated. Like, like have you ever been uh in a car? Well, yeah, of course, okay. Everyone been in a car? We're good? You still with me? Okay. If you ever been in a car and you're you're the second person at the the stoplight, and the person in front of you, when it turns green, just doesn't go. Like they're on their phone or they're looking at their kids in the rearview mirror or something like that, you know what I'm talking about? And it's time to go and they just don't, and you have to honk, and like they get through just in time, but you don't? Has anyone ever had that experience? Is that not the most like rage-filled sort of like such injustice has been done to you in that moment? So I'm not gonna name names, but I I did that um on accident, obviously, and uh a few weeks back, and I looked in the rearview mirror and was like, sorry, and uh the person was just like giving it to me. And they totally go to church here, and it was awesome, it was great, and they didn't know, and and and they they still don't know, but it was me, and I was so like, this is so cool because I love them and I actually super respect this person, and I kind of like them more now. Um you know, you know, like certain things they they just set you off, and you just kind of ah, you lose it. Well, we have a tendency to think that God is like that with sin, that God is really touchy and he gets really offended by sin and he overreacts and it's overblown, and that's why sin leads to death, because God overreacts to sin. But but that's that's not the truth at all. In fact, it couldn't be further from the truth. God is not the one who who forces death on us, right? It said the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. See, God is not the one who demands payment for sin. Sin demands payment in and of itself. God is the one who provides payment for sin. In fact, the reality is that we just we way underestimate this. We really do. And part of that's cultural. We happen to live in a time right now where, culturally speaking, we kind of have this idea, and I'm not talking about you individually or even everyone in this room or watching online, but just a culture as a whole. If our culture does believe in God, the idea is kind of like, well, shouldn't God just let me decide what's good and what's not? Shouldn't God let me be the one who chooses what's right for me and what's wrong for me? And if it's right for me and I like it and it feels good to me, shouldn't God be okay with that? And that kind of makes sense from a really egocentric, selfish, selfish place of thinking. It really does. You know, I I had a really interesting conversation with Marlon, uh Yoder, who paints the Tree of Life paintings in our building. It was a couple weeks ago, and uh Marlon was talking about how he very uh often has given away paintings of his to, you know. For charity or whatever it is. But, you know, it's his work, it's his life. And he said something so profound. He said, you know, I give stuff away, but when I give it away, it has to be on my terms. Because he's the one who created it. And so if he's going to give it away, it has to be his way. We've got to be okay with the idea that God has a certain way, that he would like things to be. That's not unreasonable. That's not ridiculous. Sometimes our culture is like, I can't believe that God has like preferences. You know? That's ridiculous that God would desire things to be, I don't know, a certain specific way, because like maybe he knows better. But he does. He does. And when we step outside of what he says is good, that's sin. What almost always happens is that we vastly underestimate what's going to happen as a result. It's not God who overreacts to sin, it's us who underestimates it. Take, for example, the story I mentioned earlier, Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. We've all probably heard that story, even if you're not a Jesus follower, right? There's the forbidden fruit. And God says to them, hey, don't eat the fruit from this one tree. Because if you eat it, you will surely what? Die. He says, You'll die. Now, we can read that as a threat. God is like, if you eat this fruit, I swear, I am going to kill you. Right? And that's very often how we see that story. That God is threatening them, that He's saying, Hey, if you step out of line and do what I don't want you to do, you're gonna die, meaning I'm gonna do it. That's not what He says. He says, if you eat this fruit, you will die. That is the result of the action. The truth of the matter is, sin kills. Period. End of story. It demands death. It's never satisfied. Sin is insatiable. When you start living out of that, out of that old nature, that flesh, sin nature, whatever you want to do, or you're just living, doing whatever you want to do. It's amazing how much that sort of takes over. And there might be things that you started doing maybe years ago because you enjoyed it. You did it because you wanted to, now you do it because you have to. You're not in the driver's seat anymore. It's a compulsion that takes over. Because sin is never satisfied. Sin will not stop until it destroys everything in you. It will destroy your self-respect. You'll feel like a hypocrite all the time. You'll have no peace because it's not satisfied with you having peace. It will destroy relationship and trust. It will destroy every opportunity. It will ravage you. It seeks to control you and to dominate you. Sin is evil. It is of our enemy. And it doesn't play nice. And so when we see Jesus, we see God takes sin seriously, it's because sin is serious. And if we don't deal thoroughly with sin, sin deals thoroughly with us. And it isn't kind. Sin is serious and it is costly. The wages of sin is death. So what is the solution? What do we do? How do we escape this? Really simple. All you gotta do is die. That's it. You just have to die. Because that's the way sin works. And all of us have already done it. We've already experienced it. Like we've already we've already eaten the fruit, so to speak. It's done. All you have to do is die. And so let's go back and let's look at Romans 6. I'm going to read 3 through 10 again. We read this earlier, but I want you to read this, think about this in the context of what we're saying. Have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death. For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ, so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead. He will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. Okay. There's a lot going on. But here's what that basically said: Jesus is not the only one who died on the cross. If you've given your life to him, you did too. At least that old, sinful self, that flesh. That when Jesus went to the cross, he didn't just go alone, that he took upon himself all of our stuff, all of our sin. And he paid the price. Scripture uses lots of language to describe that. Sometimes the language of ransom is used. He paid that ransom payment to sin, and it's done, it's settled. Jesus said, On the cross, it is finished. And when we put our faith in Jesus, sin no longer has any claim over us, not just because Jesus died on the cross, but because we did too. See, see, death is what gives sin its power, and death only has power once. Like you don't die twice. And so when that when that old self was crucified with Christ, so to speak, well, death happened. So sin paid its wages. It was done. Which means that now sin doesn't have any any say over you. Because that whole thing has been played out. We'll go back to this little chart that we have. Like this this whole thing, this is already played out. This happened on the cross. Jesus died on the cross. But if you've given your life to him, you joined him in that. That you were we were with him. And so you died on the cross, and now sin is like, oh no, it's already been paid. I have no power over you. But but we don't often think in those terms. Yeah, you clap for that, by the way, sin having no power. That's a good thing. That's a good thing, but we don't often think in those terms. See, this is where it gets really vital. This is where it's really interesting. And I have this conversation very often, and it's something I'm just, I'm like, I'm waiting for our church, and I don't just mean this church, like the church, to understand this. We've got to change the way we think. Romans 12, 2 says that God will transform you by changing the way you think. The way we think matters. We're believers. If you're a believer, what you believe matters. And what I find when I talk to people, and sometimes I'll even map this out for them, is that we don't really believe that this is us. We believe that this is us. This is the real me, and this is some like, I don't know, kind of idyllic me that maybe one day in heaven will exist. No, no, no, this is the real you. We talked about this last week, but this is vital. This is you. This person's dead. This is you. You were born again. Your spirit joined with God's actual spirit, the Holy Spirit, and you came to life. You were set free from the power of sin and death. You are free from the power of sin and death. You are now free to live the life that God has for you. But you have to believe that that's true. Because if you believe for any moment that this is the real you, you'll stay stuck. And it's needless because you've been set free. I mean, it's like, how tragic would it be if someone was released from prison and said, now I'm just gonna stay? I mean, we we do timeout in our house, and I've yet to have one of my children opt for an extra few minutes of timeout. It's never happened. Or let's say you paid your mortgage off, and it's paid for. Price is paid, done, and the bank's like, you're you're good. You would never say to your bank, would you mind continuing to send me those bills? I just I'm so used to it. You know, I'm just so used to having that monthly mortgage payment that I'm just keep them coming. But see, guys, we're used to this. We're used to this life. So even though we've been set free, it's so easy for us to still live here. And then we wonder why am I not experiencing the joy and the peace and the passion and the power of God? Why am I not feeling that love? Why don't I I feel full? We've got to start living out of this life. This is the real you. This you is dead. Romans 8 12 through 13 says, Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. You have no obligation. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. Spirit leads to life. But we've got to believe that. That's why it says in Romans 6.11, we read this already. You should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive through Christ Jesus. You have to think this way. You have to consider yourself, you have to believe this. You know, I love that I get to follow Jesus Christ. No one can top Jesus. And honestly, if you study the faiths of the world, it's really interesting how many faiths have this weird need to incorporate Jesus. Like he's a prophet, he's an enlightened one. It depends on who you're looking at. Like he because he's Jesus, and there's something about Jesus that is really hard to reject. In fact, when most people don't like Christianity, it's not Jesus that they're rejecting, it's the hypocrisy that they've seen. But Jesus on his own, you look at Jesus and he's like, wow, he's he's awesome. And you know the great thing about Jesus is that he's alive. He died and he got back up. And you know what? I don't listen to dead people. I listen to people who are alive. So why is it that oftentimes in my life I listen to this person? I don't need to listen to dead people anymore. My God is alive. And I believe, I believe fully, as with every fiber of my being, that if we as Jesus followers would actually for a moment just believe that this is the real us. And when this old dead version of us tries to like speak from the grave to us, so to speak, we just go, that's spooky and weird. Okay? I don't listen to dead people. Shut up. I have no obligation to do what my sinful nature desires. I can just say no. I have no obligation. Now, if we don't believe that, if deep down inside we're like, I mean, I think I have some obligation, it's hard. Sometimes I think it's more simple than that. In fact, I heard a pastor say once how amazing it was that one day this man who had been paralyzed his entire life has an interaction with Jesus. And Jesus says, Your faith has healed you. Now pick up your mat and walk. How interesting must that moment have been for that guy? He's never walked before, he's never used his legs, and Jesus is just so simply, just go, just do it. And the guy could have been like, Well, I mean, you know, it's gonna take me some time to warm up to that, Jesus. You know, like, I've never done this before. So can you give me just a few minutes to sort of like get my feet underneath me? Jesus just says, no, just walk. But if that man would have believed, I don't know if I can, no, but that's not what happens. He's like, deal. And he does it. Do I actually believe that I have no obligation to do what this me wants to do? Do I really believe that? And the answer oftentimes, guys, is I don't. There's a huge part of me that's like, I mean, I've just I'm compelled. No, you're not. I'm not. This is you. So when you make any decision in life, you appeal to one of these natures, it's time for us to start asking the question, which one am I listening to? Which one am I feeding? Which one am I giving attention to? Which one is growing? When you have some major decision to make in life, ask the question, what is my spirit desire? And you know what's interesting, and I know I'm kind of rambling on this, I promise we're gonna wrap this up. But when you when you hear someone say, even a Jesus follower, when you hear someone say, This is what I really want, I mean I really want to, when they say I really want, which nature are they usually referring to? It's the flesh, right? We use these, we're so used to this. I I really want to do this thing. No, you don't. This is you. You really want to serve people. You really want to show people a love that doesn't make sense. You really, really want to forgive. You really want to let go of being obsessed with money and possessions and all of that stuff. You really, really want to stop being dragged down into the ugliness of politics. You really, really want to be generous and kind. You really, really want to be patient. That's that's the real you. But again, like it says in Romans 6, 11, you have to consider yourself dead to the power of sin. You have to think this way. So I want to challenge you this week. This is a hard one. Anytime you say the phrase, I want, or anytime you think I really want, stop and ask the question which one of these do I believe is really me. Because I know what's gonna happen to me. I I didn't get much sleep last night, had a rough night, and I'm gonna go home, and I really want my kids to leave me alone. And I really want to rest. Good luck indeed. It's not gonna happen. But you know what? That's actually not true. I might want that, but I don't listen to dead people anymore. My God's alive. No, no. I want to do whatever I can to bring joy to my children today. I want to spend time with them so that they know that they're loved. I want to bring a smile to their face. I want to pour into them and invest in them so that they're filled up. That's what I want. I just have to believe that this is really me. This is a huge paradigm shift. And it's gonna take time, but I'm telling you, if you if you would take me up on this challenge and like really catch yourself every time you start thinking in those I want or speaking in those I want terms and go, which I do I believe is me? This person is dead, and that's a beautiful thing. Because now sin has done its thing. It can't do anything else. Sin has no claim on your spirit. Does this make sense? All right, then I'm gonna shut up. Um there's no reason to beat a dead horse, so to speak. Um. Okay. If you're listening to this and and you're like, okay, interesting, but maybe you're not at a place yet with God where you even know where to get this whole thing started. Uh the answer is really simple. It's just simple steps of obedience. Three people drop something at the exact same time. That was amazing. It was like all over the room. It was awesome. Um it's really simple steps of obedience. It's it's just simply saying, okay, God, what's what's next? What do you want me to do? And I'll tell you where it starts. It starts with giving your life to Jesus. He's already given his life to you. You ever think about it like that? Like, he's already done that. That's said and done. You can't change that. You can't look at Jesus and be like, no, I'd rather you not. He's already done it. So the first step is you just accept him in your life. Accept him, let his love wash over you, realize that he's given everything for you, that he took your sin, your failure. Matt said it in these words earlier: your shame, your guilt, your shortcomings. He took your mess to the cross and he dealt with it, and it's dead. And when you take that step of belief and say, Jesus, I'm yours. I believe. His spirit joins with your spirit, a new life is created, and you begin to live the life that you're meant to live. You are now free from the power of sin and death. And you can learn how to live that out. The next step would be to be baptized. Something that God just asks us to do. He says, Hey, when you give your life to me, be baptized. Jesus said, Go to all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We've got two awesome people that are getting baptized this morning as we wrap up. And so, yeah, clap for them right now on the front end. You guys can go ahead and make your way into the tank. I think they're coming somewhere. Um, I'm gonna pray and then I'll I'll introduce them to you guys because this is a really special moment for us. So let's do it. God, thank you so much for the love that you have for us. Thank you so much for literally dying and including us in that death. We are now, I mean, in a sense, Lord, it's like we're dead and free at the same time. Help us believe that. Help us truly believe that that that sin nature that we're all so accustomed to has no actual power over us, that we are under no obligation to do what it asks. That we are completely and totally free. Lord, help us learn how to walk that out. It's hard. It's hard for us. It's like we said earlier, freedom is one thing to have it, it's another thing to figure out what to do with it. And sometimes, Lord, we're struggling to figure out how to live in that freedom. But I just pray, Lord, that we're able to think in the right terms this week. I mean, I pray, Lord, we're able to see things the way they really are. That we see ourselves the way that we really are, that we are born again with a new spirit, with a new nature, and we can live out of that spirit and experience life and joy and goodness and love and all that goes with that, Lord. But only if we if we truly believe that that's us. So I pray, Lord, that you would help us think in those terms to consider ourselves dead to our sin nature. We love you, Lord. We pray all this in your name. Amen.