Speaker: if you didn't have to turn in your homework, would you do it?
Um, and we, we, and equip, uh, which is our little like extra, extra
credit thing we do before true North, we sometimes we'll have homework
and I won't collect it, and they'll be like, oh, why did I even do it?
Right?
That'll happen, right?
Why did I even do it?
If it wasn't for a grade, why did I do it if it, if it wasn't, um.
There was a, there wasn't a grade for it, right?
And that we talked about how with God, sometimes we treat it that way.
Well, if, if I'm forgiven of all my sin, right?
If God's not gonna grade me anymore, right?
If I, if I don't have to, um, answer for the things I do, then
I can just keep sinning, right?
If there's no consequences for my sin, then I can just
keep doing whatever I want.
And that same question is gonna come up, but a little differently.
In our passage tonight.
Alright, so in Romans six, verse 15, we see another question before in verse one.
We saw, um, if we're, or should we keep sinning, if that gives God
opportunities to show more grace, right?
If, if God shows his grace when I sin, then shouldn't I just keep
sinning so God can show me more grace?
Isn't that what I should do?
Instead, we're gonna look at, at this in verse 15 is, okay,
so should I keep sinning because I'm not under the law anymore?
Now what?
What does that mean?
Well, if I'm under the law.
That means that I'm in sense, right?
Being graded by God, right?
I'm, I'm someone who's trying to, to be good enough based on all the
requirements that God gives me, right?
Think of like a spiritual report card, right?
Is God gives you these commands, right?
Maybe like the 10 Commandments, and then you say, well, if I'm under the
law, that means my standing before.
Based on my report card, right?
How many of the 10 commandments did you do?
Right?
In our case, that would be zero, right?
We broke all of 'em, and so if we're standing before God based
on the law, then we fail, right?
F minus zero to 10.
But if we're under grace, instead, if it's God's grace through Jesus, right?
He gives us his righteousness instead of our own, then it's a hundred percent.
So it's like, great, I don't have to do anything.
Right.
That was the whole point of the first five chapters of Romans, right?
That God gives me righteousness, I don't earn it.
Right?
Righteousness is a gift from God, not something I produce of my own effort.
And he says, well, that doesn't mean you should just keep sinning, right?
Even though you, you already got an A in the class, you
should still do the homework.
That's what he, that's what he's saying here in verse 15.
And, and the type of person that would ask this question, um, if you're, if
you're the type of person that says, oh, well, God's gonna forgive me.
I should just sin anyway, right?
If God's gonna forgive me, I can do whatever I want.
If that's the question that, that you think of, right?
If that's the question you're like, oh, well God will forgive me anyway.
I should just do whatever I want.
The, the people who think like that usually, and maybe this is you, are are
people who they think of Christianity more about a set of ideas rather than
a relationship with a person, right?
Maybe that's you.
Maybe you're someone who thinks of your Christianity.
Is just, oh, I, it's just a bunch of rules for me to live by, but if, if, if
I don't have to live by them anyway, if I'm really, I'm just gonna be forgiven.
It, it's not a big deal.
If it's just a set of rules or a set a bunch of ideas, if that's what you think
of, of, of following Jesus', like, then this is, you're gonna say, well, yeah, I
should just be able to do whatever I want.
Why would I want to follow God?
I have no desire to do that.
Last week we talked about how when someone becomes a real Christian,
their desires change, right?
We talked about how two weeks ago, how, uh, when you become a Christian,
you go from sin being on the throne of your life in the castle, right to God
being in control of the castle now.
And so now instead of doing the things that you used to
wanna do, you have new desires.
There's, there's things that you don't wanna do anymore that you used to
wanna do, and there's new things that you want to do that you used to be
like, oh, that's lame, that's boring.
Why would I do that?
So something changes about you that makes you, instead of saying,
how much can I sin, you start asking, how much can I love God?
So your perspective changes.
So instead of asking the question, how much can I sin, how much can I
get away with before God punishes me, you start asking, well, I
I, I don't wanna dishonor God.
I wanna love God.
How can I love him?
How can I serve him?
How can I live for him?
This.
Idea is really, really interesting because I think a lot of people, maybe
at your school, maybe your friends or maybe you, you, you think of following
Jesus almost like it's restrictive.
It's a bunch of things I can't do, right?
Well, if I start following Jesus, I can't talk that way anymore.
I can't make those jokes anymore.
I can't do those things anymore.
I can't watch those videos anymore.
Maybe that's what you think of when you think of following Jesus.
You think of a bunch of risk things I can't do.
You think that's being restrictive and maybe you think of, well, if I'm
not a Christian, that means I'm free.
That means I get to do whatever I want.
There's no rules, right?
I'm not under the law anymore, but I'm free.
I'm free from God's rules too, so I can do whatever I want.
Maybe that's what you think of when you think of, oh, I'm, I wish
I wasn't a Christian, maybe, or I wish I wasn't in a Christian home
and I could go do whatever I wanted.
What we're gonna see in our passage tonight is that being
whether you're a Christian or not.
You're always enslaved to something.
You're always serving something.
We've talked about this a bit, right?
You always do whatever you most want to do.
You're always enslaved to doing whatever you want.
That's why when God changes your desires, you now have new desires
that you want to follow instead of following your old desire.
So I'm gonna give you three questions that we're gonna see in our passage
that'll help you think through what, what we're talking about.
Okay.
In our passage, there's, there's three pairs, not like the fruit.
Uh, three pairs in terms of sets of two, right?
Like animals on the arc, right?
There's three pairs.
We're gonna see two masters.
Then we're gonna see two kind of rewards or two results, and then
we're gonna see two destinies or two destinations, two places you're going.
So our first question is about the masters, one or the other.
Whom will you serve?
And I say whom?
Because even if you don't like grammar, I do.
So we say whom?
Whom will you serve?
I was always thinking, you know, that scene in, um, I think it's, it's one
of those two last Avengers movies.
I dunno if it's Endgame or Infinity War, when they go into space
and, um, it's like Spider-Man and Star Lord and Ironman and Dr.
Strange and, and Star Lord's like holding that, that like gun to Spider-Man's head.
And it's at Infinity War I, I don't know when one of 'em ends
and when one of 'em starts.
Um.
And they're like, who do you like, who's your master?
Like, who do you wanna serve?
And then Star Lord goes, what do you want me to say?
Jesus?
Right?
That's what I kept thinking of whenever I thought about this point.
Anyway, that's for free.
But um, in verse 16, we're gonna see that you really are always serving someone.
And this might be new for you, this might be a new idea for you.
But look here with me at verse 16.
He said, okay, so we shouldn't keep standing even though we're not under
the law anymore, we're under grace.
And here's what he says.
Don't you know that if you present yourselves, we've seen that before, right?
You give yourself over to anyone as an obedient slave, you are
slaves of the one you obey.
So he's saying that you're always obeying someone.
You're either obeying sin, you're, you're obeying your own selfish desires.
Which leads to death, or you're obeying God, which leads to righteousness.
So you're always giving yourself to someone.
You're either serving yourself, you're serving your own sin,
or you're serving God, right?
There's no middle ground here.
Everything you do is placing yourself at the disposal of your master, right?
You are either serving sin or you're serving God.
You're not a free agent.
Like in sports, right?
In NFL right now it's free agency.
So there's guys that are signing with different teams they wanna be
on, they wanna be on, they don't wanna be on the cowboys, probably.
They wanna be on different teams.
Um, but they want to be on, you know, like the super MVP, he just
signed with the chiefs, right?
Because he's like, oh, I want to play with Patrick Mahomes and I want to,
you know, score a lot touchdowns.
Right.
Even though Patrick Holmes probably isn't gonna play for the first month
of the season, but that's okay.
Gimme back.
Sorry, Weston.
Um, but Right, so we often, we think of ourselves as free agents, right?
I can go do whatever I want to do.
I'm in control of my decisions, right?
Which in a sense, you do really decide to do things, but you're
always playing for a team, right?
If you're in the NFL, you don't wanna be a free agent, you wanna be on a team, right?
You're always on a team.
You're either on God's team or you're on sins team.
There's no, I'm on the neutral team.
Right.
There's none of that.
You're either on God's team or you're on sins team.
Everything you do is serving someone.
You're either serving God or you're serving sin.
And what we're seeing here is that if you're not a Christian,
you're always serving sin.
You're not just doing whatever you want, having fun away from God, you're
actually serving a different master.
And maybe you've never thought about your life like that before, man.
Before I was a Christian, I was serving sin.
Maybe you're thinking, I'm not a Christian.
I, I, maybe you wanna be a Christian, but right now you're serving sin.
If you say, I'm not following Jesus, that means you are serving sin.
So then how do we get outta that?
Right?
How does what happens to a Christian when they, when they become a
Christian and start following Jesus?
Well, he says, thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin.
Remember we talked about.
In the first 14 verses of this chapter that you are freed from sin, right?
Sin doesn't have dominion over you.
It's not dominating you anymore, right?
We talked about like the dog on a leash, right?
Sin is not taking you wherever it wants you to go.
You're in control now, right?
'cause you're following God.
You who are, once slaves of sin, have become obedient from the
heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.
So you're starting to obey what God has said, and you're set free from sin
and you're now slaves of righteousness.
So you're still slave.
But now you're serving someone else, you're serving God.
You're not serving sin anymore.
So how does this happen?
How does God free you from sin?
Well, it has to do with your heart.
God changes your heart.
Um, in the Old Testament, God talks about a day when one day, right.
If you think about, maybe you've heard the word, like the new covenant,
God would give people new hearts so that they would want to follow him.
Our daily Bible reading.
We're reading Deuteronomy, which is all about the heart.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart.
You guys have a heart of stone.
You need to change your heart.
And then he says, you can't change your heart, so God's gonna change your heart.
That's what's happening here.
You become obedient from the heart.
So God gives people a new heart by the Holy Spirit, right?
The fancy word for that is regeneration.
He gives you a new heart.
So now you don't wanna sin anymore because remember we said that
you're always controlled by your.
Your desires.
You always do what you wanna do.
So God, what he does, he changes what you wanna do.
He says, well now you don't wanna sin anymore.
Now you want to live for God.
He changes your heart and you become obedient to the standard of
teaching to which you're committed.
This word right here, standard, it comes from a word that's like a, like a mold.
I dunno if you've ever seen one of these before, um, where they pour like
that molten like iron or steel into the something and it becomes a certain shape.
I don't know, like imagine like this is a sword, right?
Um, let's say they take it apart and it's like a sword.
Um, I always think of Lord of the Rings, but you guys probably aren't
cool enough to, to think of that.
Um, but what's happening right, is this is you, this is you, you're this
cool looking molten lava thing, right?
And you're getting poured into the teaching that God gives.
So when you become a Christian, God melts you down.
And he pours you into the, the, the mold of his word.
And what you do is, is you, you come to God and you say, God, I wanna be yours.
I don't wanna live for me anymore.
I wanna live for you.
And so you get melted down and poured into this mold and God shapes you.
Into becoming more like Jesus, right?
You start obeying the things that God says in his word.
That's why we care so much about the Bible here, right?
We don't just want you to do things and read the Bible and get smarter.
We want you to read the Bible because we want you to love Jesus,
and this is how you get shaped into a type of person that loves Jesus.
As you spend time in God's Word and God's word shapes you, and so you want to be.
Lava, right?
You wanna be, you want to be this melted down medal and you want God to shape you.
That's what Christians want.
We become obedient to God and you trust that his way is better, right?
You have to trust that, well, if I'm this lava right, I have to trust that
whatever this is, is gonna be good for me.
Right?
I don't want to get turned into, you know, some, like you have to
trust that if he's turning me into this thing, I want to be this thing.
Right.
Giant ladle looking thing, right?
Or maybe it's a cool sword, right?
You, you wanna, you wanna believe, you know what God, your way is better.
So that's why when we come to God's word, we come to God's word saying,
God, I wanna be like you, right?
I want you to teach me how to live.
That's the posture Christians have towards God's word and what God says, right?
Christians don't come to God's word saying, well, if I agree with it,
I'll do it, but if not, that's okay.
I'll pass on that one.
Right.
When Christians come to God's word, when, when we read the Bible, when
we hear sermons, when we, when we hear Godly advice, we don't say, eh,
well, if I like it, I'll do it right.
When we come to God's Word, when, when you hear a sermon that's from
the Bible, you say, if God's saying it, I wanna be moldable, right?
I want God to shape me.
I don't get to determine, oh, well, I know that God says that about what
types of people should get married.
I think this, so I'm gonna go with what I say, right?
We, we we're supposed to be moldable.
We don't get to make God who we want him to be.
We say, God, I want to, to take you for who you say you are.
Right?
That's the type of people we do and that, that Christians are,
and that's how we serve God.
If you're someone who's serving yourself right, you're not gonna be moldable
because you're, you're serving sin.
You don't want to, to follow God.
And so I want you to ask yourself, who am I serving?
Right?
The way I'm living, the decisions I'm making, the way
I approach God and his word.
Am I serving myself?
Am I serving my sin or am I serving God?
I don't want you to fall for the trap that sin is freedom.
I think a lot of people believe that being, that being
away from God is being free.
A lot of people believe that, oh, if I'm living for myself, I'm really actually
happier than, than those lame Christians who can't do all these fun things.
That's a really dangerous lie that the world is trying to sell you.
'cause when you sin, you're really not free because you actually giving
yourself over to a different master.
You're not being free from God and just being whatever you want.
You're actually saying here.
I want my sin to take me wherever it wants me to go.
And so even if you are a Christian, you have that choice
every day, every moment, right?
Who am I serving?
And so when you make decisions, think about it.
Ask my, ask yourself, who am I serving?
When you think about what college you wanna go to, when you think about who you
want to date, when you think about what you're gonna wear today, when you think
about what sports you're gonna play, when you think about how you're gonna spend
your time, think about who am I serving?
Is this for me?
Is this for God?
Who am I giving myself to?
Am I saying, God, I'm moldable use me?
Or am I saying, God, I want to dress the way I wanna dress.
I want to live the way I wanna live.
I wanna talk the way I wanna talk.
I wanna watch what I wanna watch.
We wanna be moldable and serve God instead of serving our sin.
And one reason we want to do that is because the slave master of sin.
Is a horrible master.
He gives, he doesn't give good things.
God is a good master.
He treats us well.
But sin, uh, if you look at the rewards of sin, does not treat us very well.
So we saw two masters, now we're gonna see two results, if you will.
So the second question is, what do you get?
What do you get?
So who am I serving?
Second question, what do I.
What do I get?
When you think about your decisions, right?
When you think about, okay, am I gonna serve God or am I gonna serve sin?
I want you think about am I, what do I get out of it?
How does this work?
What will this bring me down the road?
If I choose to serve God, what do I get out of it?
If I choose to serve sin, what will I get out of this?
So look at verse 19 here.
So we talked about how.
We're being kind of molded by God's word, and he changed our heart, and
that's why we follow him as Christians.
And then he says, I'm speaking in human terms, right?
I'm using a, a human analogy of slavery, right?
Because of your natural limitations.
And he says, just as you once presented, your members as slaves.
So again, right?
If you are Christian, he's talking about you.
This used to be you, right?
When you're, when, if you're sharing your testimony and you're a Christian.
You weren't just, oh, I was like not that bad of a person, and then God
saved me and it became a little better.
Right?
No, you were giving yourself to sin,
right?
You need to be real about who you were.
Right?
You don't wanna sanitize it and say, oh, I wasn't that bad.
I was No.
You were offering yourself to sin.
I presented yourself to, to sin as slaves, to impurity and to lawlessness,
leading to more and more lawlessness.
So now present your members, right, your body as slaves to righteousness,
leading to sanctification.
So what I wanna focus on here is that leading to right, you giving yourself
to a master leads to something.
There's consequences, there's results, there's rewards, there's,
there's something that happens when you give yourself over to a master.
See, right here.
Sin leads to more sin.
You see that to slaves, to impurity and to lawlessness needing to more lawlessness.
So when you sin, I remember Pastor Mark said this to me a while ago.
When you sin, it makes it easier for you to sin the next time.
Even if you repent of that sin and you turn from it and, and you feel bad about
it, you ask God for forgiveness, it makes it easier for you to sin that next time.
So even though God forgives you, and even if you're a Christian, God forgives you.
Jesus paid for your sin.
It's gone as far as the east is from the west, it's still,
there's still consequences.
If you give into temptation, it makes it easier for you to give in the next time.
But also, the opposite is true, right?
If you choose to follow God, right in that moment, let's say you're really
anxious about something, but you're really anxious about your test, and as you
pray about it, instead of being anxious.
That makes it easier for you to pray about it the next time and to trust God the
next time so it kind of stacks up, right?
Like a snowball.
You, you know, those snowballs that roll down hills and they get really big,
allegedly, I've never seen this happen, but supposedly that's what happens when
the snowballs roll down hills, right?
Is they, they gain momentum and they get bigger and bigger and bigger.
Righteousness snowballs, right?
If you make righteous decisions today, if you in little things,
choose to trust Jesus and follow him.
That snowballs.
But if you choose to sin and not trust God and live your own way, that snowballs
too, and it gets easier and easier to sin and harder and harder to turn from it.
And that's why we care so much about you learning how to
follow Jesus at your age, right?
Don't put it off until you're older.
Don't put it off until you're in college.
Don't put it off until you're married.
Don't put it off until you're in high school, right?
Don't put it off until next week.
We want you to to think about it now because the more, the more
momentum you get in either direction.
The harder it is to turn around
and so you are slowly becoming your master when you think about it that way.
You, what you serve is shaping you.
If you're serving God, you are going to grow.
You're gonna grow in holiness, is gonna change you.
Who you give yourself to is gonna change you.
If you give yourself over to sin, you're gonna start changing.
You're gonna become more angry or more anxious or less self-controlled.
Over time, your master is going to shape you.
You're the product of all the decisions you make.
Someone I heard, I read this once, they described it to me as you
are putting a vote towards the person you wanna be tomorrow, every
time you decide something today.
So when you, let's say you are like, man, I really wanna trust God.
Every time you trust God today, you're almost voting toward a future version
of yourself that trusts God more.
Or let's say you're really, you, you really lazy.
You're just, you just hate doing stuff, right?
You're like those veggie tails, pirates, right?
You, you're really lazy.
You don't like doing anything.
Um, every time you give into laziness, you're putting a vote
towards being a lazier person.
Tomorrow,
you're slowly becoming the product of your decisions, and that is
especially true for choosing to sin or choosing to trust Jesus.
Something we talked about at the beginning though, right?
Was that slavery to sin feels like freedom, and that's the trick that
sin uses to keep you enslaved.
Verse 20, for when you are slaves of sin, you were free in
regard to righteousness, right?
When you're a slave to sin, you, you don't feel any obligation,
any desire to obey God, right?
If you're not a Christian, you're like, why would I read the Bible?
I don't care that I don't read the Bible, right?
If, if you're a Christian or if you're not a Christian, you don't care about about.
Wanting to pray to God.
You're just like, why would I wanna do that?
I don't need to do that.
You're free.
You don't feel that responsibility to do that.
But in reality, what were you getting?
This is our question, right?
What fruit, what's, what's the result, right, that you were getting at that time?
From the things of now, which you're ashamed for?
The end of those things is death.
So what he's saying is, all you got from your freedom to sin that
you thought you had was shame.
One of the best things you can do when you're tempted is to think
about where is this gonna take me?
What's gonna happen as a result of this?
What's gonna happen is you're gonna be, you're gonna, that sin is gonna
get a stronger and stronger grip on you when you're tempted to be anxious,
when you're tempted to be angry, when you're tempted to be impatient, when
you're tempted to be lazy or lustful.
That temptation, if you give in, it's gonna have a stronger and stronger grip.
On you.
That's what you get out of it, right?
Maybe you get a few moments of feeling good that you, you really
clap back at that person and you put 'em in their place, right?
But
ultimately, what did it get you?
It made you an angrier person.
It brings you shame when, because when you stand before God, you're not
gonna be like, God did, man, you, you thought that I really got that person.
You're gonna be ashamed that you said that.
You're gonna say, you're gonna say, God, I'm so sorry that I said that right?
And I'm so glad that Jesus died for that.
So thinking about what will this get me?
Or what, what will I think about this eventually?
How will this feel when I stand before God?
How is this affecting the people around me?
How is my laziness gonna affect my future life?
How is that?
How is, how is that gonna affect my future spouse if you choose to get married?
How is you being lazy now gonna affect them later?
Right?
How are the decisions you make with your purity or with your friends
gonna affect you down the road?
Right?
You can't undo those decisions.
They all have consequence.
And sin tricks you to think, oh, it's great.
It's gonna be so fun.
It's really freedom.
There's a, there's a book, um, that's kind of like a analogy for the Christian life.
It's the second most sold book of all time.
But in that book, there's this guy and his name is Faithful, that's him over here.
And he meets this dude, um, who's named Adam.
Okay.
And so Faithful is talking to Adam, and Adam is like, Hey, I
have this great deal for you.
You get to work for me and you get to live with me.
I'll provide all, everything you need.
Uh, you get to marry my, all three of my daughters.
Not just one of them, but all three of my daughters.
And he, he says, I, it is gonna be great.
It's gonna be awesome.
I'm, I'll even pay you right.
Um, for doing all this.
And Faithful is almost, he almost gives in, he says, that sounds great.
I get to, I get to marry these people.
I get to live with you.
You're gonna take care of me.
You're gonna pay me.
And at the last moment, faithful says No.
He turns down the offer because what he realizes, he says, I
realized in that moment that Adam would sell me to be a slave.
That is what I want you to realize.
When you're tempted, I want you to look your temptation in the face, right,
and, and you can see all the, maybe it'll be really fun to go to that party.
Maybe you're really fun to say those words or watch that video and it'll make
you really happy for, for a short time.
What that sin is going to do is sell you to be a slave that sin is.
It doesn't care about you, doesn't love you.
Sin doesn't love you.
Sin doesn't wanna make you happy.
Sin wants to kill you.
We talked about this last week, right?
Your sin is actively trying to destroy you.
Your sin is not looking out for your best interest.
Think of the end of your sin.
Where will this take me?
Right?
It promises you what you want, and it leaves you with less than you had, right?
That's what someone said about sin.
Think about how it will affect others.
Think about the, the dissatisfaction that, that you'll get out of it.
You're like, oh, well it was super fun for a moment.
And then, right.
Think about, will I, will I enjoy this in 30 minutes?
Will I enjoy this in 24 hours?
Will I be glad I did this next week?
Think about that, right?
Imagine it sometimes we see sin and it looks great, it looks so awesome,
and we don't think about the result.
If you don't think about what's gonna happen, and so when
you're tempted, think about it.
Consider, think deeply.
What will this do to me?
How is this gonna affect me?
And that'll do you so much good in resisting temptation,
right?
We talked about how your sin wants to kill you, and that's really what we see, right?
The end of those things is death.
Now you've been set free from sin become slaves of God.
The fruit that you get leads to sanctification and its
end eternal life, right?
You've got two masters.
You've got two choices.
One of them loves you, right?
God wants to give you life.
He wants to give you joy.
He gives you commands not to be restrictive, but because he knows you
and he loves you and he cares about you.
Sin gives you offers because it wants to kill you, right?
Sin gives you poison.
That tastes good.
So think about what will I get, what master is looking out for me, right?
God cares way more about me than I do.
God cares way more about me than my sin cares about me.
So ask yourself, what will I get from my sin?
But also, right?
You see in our verses it said the end of these things, right?
The, the final result, the destiny.
So we've got two masters, two results, and two destinies.
Where, where, where does ultimately, where will I end up
if I keep following this master?
So our third question is, where will you go?
Because who you serve will take you somewhere
and you'll get either shame or joy, and ultimately, you'll
either live or you'll die.
That you'll either live with God forever or you will live away from God
and be really disappointed and upset.
Unimaginably.
So, and that's what we see here, right?
You've been set free from sin, become slaves of God.
And that's a good thing.
'cause God's a good master, right?
He gives you good rewards for what you do for him, right?
Release the sanctification and to its end, eternal life.
And this verse 23, you've probably heard this verse before, for
the wages, the payment, right?
The result of sin is death.
But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
So I want you to see here, right?
We've got our two masters, right?
Sin and God.
Sin has wages.
God gives gifts.
You ever noticed that?
I hadn't noticed that until this week.
Sin gives you wages, right?
You earn stuff from your sin, and what you earn ultimately is death.
Sin kills you, right?
Sin offers you these great looking things and then comes
around and stabs you in the back.
That's what sin does, God.
You don't earn anything from God, right?
You can't put God in your debt to pay you something.
You don't earn stuff from God.
God gives you gifts.
He gives you good gifts, free gifts, right?
When you take God's offer, there's, there's not strings attached, right?
Sin.
It's you take the offer for sin and then it slides in all these, you
know, those like side effects, right?
Taking this medication will result in like, you know, 5 million things and it's
like, and probably death, and you're like.
Wow, okay.
That sounds really worth it.
Um, but people take those medications, right?
Because they buy it.
They say, well, that thing that you're offering, even with all
the side effects is good, right?
Sin pays you with death.
When you follow sin, sin wants to kill you, right?
God gives life to his servants, the slaves of God get life.
The slaves of sin get death.
It made me think of, um, one of my least favorite animals.
I have no idea if this is a real picture or not.
I couldn't tell.
Um, but you know what this is, right?
It's the black widow.
You know why they're called black widows?
They're called black widows because, uh, the females eat their husbands.
Right.
The husband.
Yeah.
I don't know if they do this.
Probably not.
Like husband falls in love with this lady spider.
Right.
And he, he thinks it's, he's gonna live happily ever after and have a
great marriage and they have some kids and then boom, he's on the menu.
Right?
That's sin.
All right.
Sin gives, promises you this great life, right?
Oh, if you reject God, if you do whatever you want, right?
If you follow your heart, if you live the way that you want to, you'll be happy.
Right?
You'll, you'll get to, you'll get to enjoy all the things the world has to offer.
You'll get to have so much fun.
You won't have to do those lame, boring things that those Christians do.
You don't have to sound like them.
You don't have to talk like them.
You don't have to to be weird like them, right?
You'll have all these great things.
And you get a little bit of those things, right?
Just like the, the, I don't know, what's the male one?
The male one's called black widows two, I don't even know.
Whatever the, whatever they are, they marry the spider and
they get a little bit, right?
They get a little bit of marriage and then they die and they get eaten, right?
That's sin.
Sin says, here, look what you can have, and it gives you a
little bit and then it kills you.
That's the wages of sin.
After all of your service of sin, think about it, right?
Think about how much time you've spent sinning, how much
effort you've spent sinning.
I know for me, think about all the effort I've put into
finding new ways to sin, right?
And all I get for that is death.
That's all I get.
That's what sin will pay me for all the time I spent sinning i'll, I'll die.
All the time you spend living for the world, all the time you spend
trying to find your satisfaction and stuff, that's not God.
The payment you get is death, and that's such a.
Great weapon for you to resist temptation.
When you think about, man, I'm putting all this effort into
sinning all this time, all this devotion really into sinning, right?
And all you get from it is death.
That's the only payment you get.
Whereas God generously gives gifts, right?
He isn't pay you with wages.
He gives the free gift of eternal life that you didn't earn, that you didn't have
to work for, that you received by faith.
You get, as we said two weeks ago, connected to Jesus, right?
So what it means to be united with Christ, you get connected to Jesus
and then instead of God being against you, God becomes for you
and you, you're part of his people.
And so now, right?
That's why it says in Christ Jesus, remember that the free gift of God
is eternal life in Christ Jesus is 'cause you're connected to Jesus.
And so instead of.
Serving sin and, and getting killed for it, right?
You serve God and you gain everything,
right?
Jesus says that, um, you can gain the world and and lose your soul.
And I think a lot of us, we would say, well, I don't know.
Like that doesn't really sound that like, especially.
Like, if you're thinking about it from that perspective of, well, I
could have so much stuff, right?
I could have this great existence, right?
I could, I could live, like there's a lot of non-Christians.
They live very happy lives.
They live happy lives.
They make money, they have families.
They, they do all these great things.
Maybe they're, they're pro athletes.
They get millions of dollars, right?
But all they get for that is death.
All they get for the time they spent living for themselves
is death and they lose.
Everything.
They lose everything.
There's a famous missionary quote.
He says, you're a fool if you give what you can't keep to, or you're not a fool.
Sorry, I almost pastor around, almost fired me on the spot right there.
I'm just kidding.
Um, you're not a fool.
If you give what you can't keep right.
You can't keep the world.
You're gonna lose it anyway.
You're gonna die.
Right.
You give it all away to gain your soul, which stays with you forever, right?
It's you forever.
That's a great trade, right?
It would be a foolish thing.
It would be dumb, right?
You would be tricked.
You would fall for the lie of following sin, of serving sin.
So don't fall for the lie, right?
Instead, follow Jesus.
Right?
He what?
Everything you do for Jesus will always be worth it.
Hm.
Everything you do for sin, you're gonna be embarrassed about and ashamed of.
Let's pray and we'll talk about that more in small groups.
God, we are so thankful that you are a good master.
We are grateful that everything we do for you is worth it.
Everything we do for you is, um, something that.
We can say, uh, confidently that we'll never be ashamed of, but I pray that
you would help us to think clearly about how embarrassing and foolish it
is to follow sin and to serve ourselves.
I pray that you help us to see through the lies that sin promises
us, and instead believe the sure and certain offers you make for us.
So help us to be focused and to be honest in small groups.
We pray all this in Jesus name.
Amen.