Rebrand | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding

which is really just a continuation of the book study that we've been in walking through the book of Romans. And for me to kind of set up where we'll be this morning in Romans chapter six, I got to tell you a story about going to Las Vegas. Okay. Because there's nothing that's more synonymous than church and Vegas. Amen?

What happens here stays here, that whole kind of thing, right? So the first time I went to Vegas as an adult and really got to

have the opportunity to fully participate in all of what Vegas offers was when I was 22 years old. A buddy of mine was getting married and so I got invited to go to his bachelor party in Vegas. And you know, when you I just grew up, if you get invited to a bachelor party in Vegas, you don't really ask many questions. You just say yes and get in the car and go. So that's what I did. Right? But pretty quickly after saying yes,

I started to really think about it. I was like, man, I don't know if this is the best idea in the world, right? Because at 22, I was in just a totally different season of life than most of my friends, right? I kind of rode the party train for as far as it could take me and I did the whole fraternity life.

At 19 years old, I ended up getting radically saved and kind of stopped partying. Then pretty quickly after that, I met my wife. And by 21 I was a new Christian, married and I had a little baby at home. So by 22

I was now married Christian and I had no money. Right? It's like if there's three things that like keep you from having any fun in Vegas, It's being a Christian, being married,

and having no money. Right? Like if that's your season of life, just skip it. Go on to the next town. Vegas has nothing for you. All right? I don't know this. Right? I just say, yes. I go, I get in the car with my buddies and they don't like print out an itinerary for what you're going do at a bachelor party, but it's also pretty self explanatory.

And so we're in the car driving out there, my buddy starts to talk about the plans for the weekend and it began to really set in like, oh man, this is not going to be the best idea. Like I probably should not have gone on this trip, but I also was still living out that tension of

like I had all of my friends that I grew up with and I really did like love these guys and I still do, but like I just didn't want to really participate in any of the things that I used to. I had genuinely just become a new person. It was weird for me.

I had started serving with high school kids and doing high school ministry, and so my friends started calling me Father Dan because they're like, So you're a priest now? I was like, yeah, sure. I'm a priest. Okay, Father Dan's on the trip with us. And so we go to Vegas

and we start doing the festivities and doing the stuff you do at a bachelor party. And I just really had no interest. And it wasn't like I was trying to be holier than thou. I just genuinely, God had changed my desires from the things that I used to desire to kind of being a new creation. And it was really cool on one hand to see how far God had taken me because just a few years ago, like if you wanted to make really dumb decisions and get into some illegal stuff, like I was your man. Like give me a call, we will figure out some creative ways to get into some trouble. Like it's part of why I'm sure they invited me on the bachelor party. But all of a sudden now I'm Father Dan, I'm the priest, right? And I just, I spent most of the time like my buddies would go to dance clubs at night and I would go to the hotel and FaceTime my wife.

And pretty quickly, my friends started to realize like, oh, he's kind of on the outside of this and a buddy of mine kind of pulled me to the side. And I think really well intended,

started to say like, hey man, there's, you know, this whole thing that you're doing, like this whole God thing, it's all grace related, right? Like you know, it's a free gift, just ask for forgiveness and God forgives you, right? And I'm like, yeah. He's like, well, have fun with us this weekend,

and then on the drive home, we can even do it together. We'll ask for forgiveness, and then you're good, right? And I remember when he said it, I just was like, this guy could be on to something. You know what mean? Like that's not the worst idea.

That's not the worst idea I've ever heard. Like maybe he found the loophole. Right? Like there's a loophole to this thing. And the funny part is I couldn't theologically articulate why what he was saying didn't sit right with me.

But there was really only two things that kept me from making dumb decisions that weekend and getting myself into trouble. Number one is I didn't want to come home and look at my wife and A, tell her things that I did that I knew she would be bummed about or even worse, have her ask me and me lie to her and build another relationship based on lie and mistrust. Like I'd already done that enough.

And the second thing is I had a group of these high school kids that I had started to live life with.

And I had these eight or nine high school boys that I had kind of begun to fill almost like a fatherly role to them because so many of them didn't even have dads at home and I'd been challenging them to, man, live differently. Let's what would happen if we believe this Bible and the instructions in it to be real? What would our lives look like? Like how do I go back and face them on Wednesday?

Do I lie to them? And I really felt like sitting there poolside in Vegas, my faith journey was at a bit of a crossroads. The reason that I start there this morning is I don't know what your Vegas is, but I believe at some point all of us on our faith journey,

on the other side of having met Jesus and have this moment where our life has been transformed, because we don't immediately get beamed up and go to heaven, we still have to navigate life in this sinful world,

in this broken and fallen place. All of us at some point will hit the crossroads of going, what do we do with sin?

What are you and I called to do as Christians when it comes to the things that we used to struggle with? Is the answer to just embrace it, ask for forgiveness, hold our get out of jail free card and go, you know what? Well, at least I'm getting to heaven one day. In Romans six, Paul is going to address this very question.

But before we get there, if you're just joining us this morning, what I want to do is kind of catch you up, Romans six, we're six chapters in.

But to really understand Romans six, you have to understand the totality of the book of Romans. But to understand the book of Romans, you have to understand the author because who wrote it tells us almost everything we need to know about the importance of it. The book of Romans was written by a guy named Paul.

But Paul wasn't always Paul. His name used to be Saul. And Saul was a really brilliant Jewish scholar. He knew the old testament better than anybody. And so when Jesus was on the scene, he knew that what this guy was starting was going to build something that was going to stand in contradiction and become a competition

to the Jewish faith. They didn't believe that he was the Messiah, so they needed to get rid of him because his message was spreading. And he believed that if they got rid of Jesus, if they got rid of the leader, they could stop the movement.

But how do you kill the Mr. Rogers? The guy that's taking a kid's lunchbox and feeding thousands and taking a girl that was dead for days and bringing her back to life. How do you kill that guy? We have to find something that he did that would justify execution. The only crime that Jesus ever committed

is he claimed to be God. He made no bones about it. He didn't claim to be a good teacher. He didn't claim to be somebody that brought moral instruction for you and I to follow to become a better version of us. He said, If you see me, you see God. I only do what my father in heaven does.

Him and I are one and the same. He forgave sin and for it, he was crucified. They murdered him and they thought mistakenly if they killed him, they would stop the movement of his message. But what they didn't know is that the death of Jesus was always the beginning of the church.

And after his death, three days later, he came back to life and the movement of Jesus really began when the Holy Spirit entered the scene in the third part of the triune God, entered into the world.

And so what Paul did, Saul at the time transitioned from going after Jesus and he went to stamp out the Jesus movement. And he went town to town, city to city, village to village trying to kill anybody that was still spreading this message. And one day on his journey to kill a literal Christian,

he encounters the resurrected Jesus and Jesus meets him face to face and says, Hey, I'm the one that you've been persecuting. And he radically is transformed and God literally gives him a new name. He goes from Saul to Paul.

And instead of killing Christians, he now goes and starts planting churches and telling everybody, hey, this thing, it's real and it changes everything.

And he did that for a while, went all around the Mediterranean planting churches and a lot of the New Testament that we read is him writing letters to those churches and encouraging them and correcting them and helping them live out their faith journey. But at some point,

Paul realized for this message to really make the impact that it's going to make in the world, he needed to write a book and he needed to get the message of Jesus out to the world so that some two thousand years later in Queen Creek, Arizona, a bunch of people would gather here at Rock Point Church and open that book

to begin to understand the mysteries of the resurrected Christ. And in the city of Corinth, he wrote really the only book that he ever really wrote. He wrote the book of Romans and he writes the most theologically important book that we have arguably in the entire Bible, but for sure in the New Testament.

And he starts in Romans one, two and three and he articulates the basics of the gospel. For us this morning, I have a visual of what he does. He says, look, the gospel says that all of us, we stand before a holy God. If you are black, brown, white, green, yellow, rich, black, Jew, Samaritan, Greek, Gentile,

it doesn't matter. All of us have this thing in us called sin. He said because of what happened in the book of Genesis, it's mostly Eve's fault, you can blame the women. Sin has entered the world. And he said, if this holy God is real,

then all of us, no matter how religious you are, no matter how bad you think you are, all of us before God are separated because of this sin. There's no way to earn it. There's no way to achieve your way back to God. And then he says in Romans three, But Jesus. He says, Jesus stepped out of heaven.

He did what we could not do. He lived a perfect life and he died the death that we deserve. And when he did it, here's what happens. When we invite him into our lives,

it says that he actually restores us back to the original image that we were created. And some of you are like, man, chemistry is blowing my mind. I get it. I would tell you how, but a magician never reveals his secrets, right?

He says, What Jesus did on the cross is he actually restored you back into the image of God that you were made in. This is our original design to be image bearers of the God of the universe, to be his representatives

on this earth. He said that's what Jesus did on the cross. And then in Romans four, five, and six, he begins to go, how do we live this out? What does God want from us? And Bill talked about last week, God wants from you and I something incredibly game changing for the Jewish audience listening.

He doesn't want you to be his servant. He doesn't want you to be his subordinate. He wants you to be his friend. He wants to walk with you. He wants you to enjoy him even in seasons of suffering. He said, what does God did is he changed everything.

And he says, how do we receive this gift? And he introduces the concept of grace. And he's going to ultimately introduce the concept of the Holy Spirit, which is the thing that empowers us to receive this grace. But he starts to talk about grace and this free gift, this thing that you can't earn.

And again, he's talking to an audience that their only relationship with God was based on following a list of things that they could or could not do. And he says all of that was only there to prove your inability to fulfill it. And then he says there's this thing called grace.

And in Romans chapter five, here's where he ends longest introduction ever to get to Romans six, but here's how he ends Romans five. He says, God's law was actually given

so that all people could see how sinful they were. The sole purpose of the law was to show us our inability to fulfill it. He says, but as people sinned more and more, God's wonderful grace became more abundant. Verse 21, he says, so just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death,

now God's wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul concludes Romans chapter five with the most profound message that the world has ever heard.

He says what Jesus is doing, his restoration of you, is a free gift. You can't out sin the cross.

For some of you that are like, man, you don't know what I've done. You don't know who I've been with. You don't know the things that have happened to me. You don't know the family I come from. There's no way that God could use me. Romans five emphatically states that there's nothing that the cross can't cover. Grace

is enough. But what happens a lot even inside of church, there's some churches that if I got up and preached a message of just grace, they would go, hey, you can't do that. You have to preach that it's it's grace and works. It's grace plus our ability to do things.

We happen to live in a community that has a pretty prominent religion that essentially says what grace is,

is grace really is designed to cover the difference of your ability to be a good person and just what you're unable to do. Like your works, your ability to become a good person, that's about 90% of how you get to heaven. Grace covers the 10% that you can't do on your own. And Paul says that that's a false gospel.

That is not true. That friends is not a saving faith.

He says, because the faith that we get is a free gift through grace. But Paul knows, he must have been like a junior high pastor that was getting ready to have the sex talk, right? Because anytime in junior high that I would be like, hey, this is what the Bible says, we can only have sex with our spouse and we can't have sex until we're married.

You have three kids in the back like, hey, Dana, I got a question. Is this sex? What about this? Trying to find the loopholes. Right? They're trying to figure out the ways around the letter of the law. Paul knows the question's coming.

The same question that my friend sat there and asked to me in Vegas twelve years ago going, can't you just because you have all this grace, do whatever you want, live however you want, and then pull out your Jesus card and go, I'm good. He knows the questions coming and that's where we start in Romans six

verse one. He says, well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Here's the big idea this morning if you're taking notes.

Here's what Paul is going to essentially say. He says that grace is not a license to sin. He says grace, if you really get it, if you really understand it, it's not just a license to sin, it's actually the thing that will empower you to truly win. What I mean by win

is I mean actually live a life of purpose and significance and meaning. For some of you are like, oh, I like winning. That means like a bigger house and more money and more cars. Awesome. I'm for that. For a lot of us, truthfully, winning looks a lot like sinning and that's not what I mean.

What Paul is saying is if we really begin to understand what grace, the implications of grace, it will not only be the thing that gets us in the door and gets us into heaven one day, but it's the thing that can empower us to live a life beyond our wildest dreams and to have an eternal impact on this side of eternity.

So Romans six, he starts with the question and here's how he answers it. Verse two, He says, of course not. He says, he literally just starts and answers it simply and he says, should we just keep on sinning? And he says, of course not. There's no way that you can continue to live in sin.

The rest of what we're gonna read in Romans is his explanation why, but his simple answer of should we just keep on sinning? He says, of course not. You and I have to be really careful with what we do with sin post salvation.

Because what happens in a moment is justification, right? In a moment, in a moment of grace, we receive faith. But then we have to walk out our life on this side of eternity until we're called home. So what do we do with sin? I wanna show you an extreme example. It's a picture of a really ugly guy,

but I would encourage you to do research and read about this guy named Grigori Rasputin. If you know much about history, he was one of the most influential spiritual voices in the late eighteen hundreds to the Russian czars. And he essentially was the one responsible

for the spiritual formation of Russia back in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. He developed an entire theological disposition centered around Romans five verses twenty and twenty one. Where sin increases, grace increases all the more. Therefore, God is in the business of forgiving sinners.

Our responsibility is then to sin. And he had an entire country following him that believed the narrative that if you really want to experience the fullness of grace,

you gotta go out and sin like in some really big ways. Why? Because it does one of two things for you. Number one is on the other side of sin, typically there's like shame and guilt that's associated with it and it'll keep you humble. And number two is to feel and experience the fullness of God's grace,

you have to experience the fullness of sin. The reason that I start here as a silly example, I'm not sitting here saying, hey, this is the theological disposition that we're sitting here living our lives within, but this is the thing that we deal with to the extreme nth degree. Right? What Paul

is bringing up, what this guy is a representation of is the uncanny ability that you and I as humans have to justify our behavior. We are the most self deceiving group of people ever. And what do we do when we rationalize things that are in our lives that shouldn't be there? We just tell ourselves rational lies. Right?

We go, you know what, it's not that big of a deal. It's just a website. I'm not actually technically cheating on my wife. These business practices aren't like illegal. They're just unethical,

but it's it's like what everybody does. It's kinda how they all do them. And all of a sudden, we try to take with us this sin into this new life and we go, yeah, it's it's all grace. And what Paul is going to say is we're completely missing what grace is supposed to be. Here's where he continues in verse two.

He says, of course not. Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? He says, or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and we 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. He says, the fact that we even ask the question, okay, because we have grace, does that mean that we can abuse it?

Because God has forgiven us and he's given us a free gift, does that mean we can just do whatever we want, ask for forgiveness later? He said, the fact that we even ask that question and deal with it proves that we don't understand what we actually signed up for when we were given the invitation of faith.

He uses an illustration that paints the point that he's trying to make. What Paul is saying is that if you've died to sin, how can you live in it any longer? You're like, what do you mean? What Paul brings up is he uses the Greek word baptismo, which means to be buried underneath something.

He's speaking primarily to a Jewish audience where salvation and baptism were almost one in the same. Not like us where sometimes we get saved, we do it, and then we get baptized six months or a year later. This audience would have been baptized if not instantaneously

after understanding who they were in Christ and accepting the free gift of grace that he offers. It would have happened within a day or two. So for them, salvation and baptism were almost one in the same. So he uses the illustration of baptism to say, hey, look, you've got to understand what it is that you signed up for.

The invitation of faith, grace, the free gift, it doesn't cost you anything. You don't have to pay me a $100 to receive the gift though if you want to, I'll allow it. Just kidding. Some of you are like, oh, here's the money talk again. He says, it's not gonna cost you anything, but don't forget,

it's at the same time the most expensive thing that you will ever invest into. He says, the reason that we go through the act of baptism, right, we're having sign ups now, it's happening in two weeks. Why do we as a church go through the act of baptism?

It's mostly so that we can flex on all of our friends in the Midwest that we can be in bathing suits in January because we live in Arizona, right? Like that's part of it. But the real reason that we go through the act of baptism is because what happens in baptism is we physically, we externally, we symbolize

what happened internally. There was a person that we were, a life that we lived, but that person is now dead. And it goes underwater. We could do it under dirt. It just would be a lot more uncomfortable for everybody. It might drive the point home a little more.

He says, but you go under. Baptismal means to literally be buried underneath something. You go under water and then what happens? Out of that water comes a new creation. The hard part for you and I is it's like, well, I feel the same.

I went back to the same job. I'm still in the same family. I still wear the same clothes. And some of us sometimes even struggle with some of the same things. And he says, but you have to understand what happened internally and spiritually.

That old person that you were, the coping mechanisms that you learned, the things that you've used to get through this life, that person is dead. And the way that you will rob the new life that you've been given in Christ of the power that's supposed to come with it through grace

is by going back to the old person that you used to be and trying to drag them out of the grave with you into this new life. He's trying to set up that you and I cannot, it is impossible to hold faith and sin at the same time. Now again, there will be moments, there will be things that we always struggle with, I believe.

But what he's talking about are the big things. The big issues that have been a part of our lives for a while that we just refuse to get rid of. For some of us, these are sins of commission, things that we're doing that we know we need to stop doing.

But for some of us, our faith journey has become just as stale and stagnant because of the sin of omission. The things that we know we're supposed to start doing, but we refuse to trust God in that area. When we do that,

what will happen eventually is we come to church, we tell our self rationalize as to why this thing is still here, why it's still with us. But what happens over time, and it might take months, it might take years, but eventually

we'll walk into church and it goes, oh man, when I used to come to church, it was like I felt God during worship and I just was like, ah. Like it was amazing.

But you're like, you now look at those people like, oh, they must be new Christians. Like that's cute. Look at them go. You know, like, get it buddy. Give it a few years, man. You'll settle in.

And then we find ourselves going right. We have these glimpses, these moments when like the lighting is right and the fog is just right. You're like, oh, that's my song. Like they're playing Bethel. Whoo, let's go. And all of a sudden we start to go, why don't I feel the passion that I used to feel?

And you know why I know this is true about us? Because the guy that the Bible says was a man after God's own heart, David, prayed a prayer actively that said, God, bring me back to the joy of my salvation. The beginning moments when I understood what the implications of grace were, of who I was and who I am today.

But friends, my fear is that if we just hold on to these old lives and we bring these things with us, what happens every single time if we don't let go of them? If we try to hold on to faith while holding on to this thing, what always happens, I've seen it play out a 100 times, is eventually because we've rationalized

these things for so long that eventually it just becomes easier to let go of the faith thing, walk away and go, ah, I tried the church thing. It didn't work for me. I've had that conversation with people. Oh, like, that's awesome. You're a pastor. Like, I did the church thing. It just didn't work for me.

And I always wonder what they mean by that because it wasn't really ever designed to work for you. It was supposed to kill you. Well, that's not really positive. That's I thought it was supposed be like a better version of me. God does not want to make you, you two point o. He wants the person that you were to completely die

so that he can birth a new person. That is the only way that we truly will begin to experience not just heaven someday, but heaven today. Life that is abundant. Yet I think so many of our Christian lives, again,

it's a flawed illustration, but if we could see the picture, think it would begin to connect the dots. It's like we've been given a ticket to Disneyland, which is like a million dollar ticket nowadays, right?

And you get in and you go to Disneyland and you smell the incredible smells and all the food is great and the lines and the rides and everything looks exciting, but you're just there. You're not actually participating.

You're not enjoying what the experience is supposed to be, what it's meant to be. You've settled into just being there and that's good enough. And what Paul is saying is it's even greater than that. It's like Walt Disney steps down and he comes back to life and he says, let me walk around with you.

Let me show you all that this place is supposed to be for you. Stop settling for what you've allowed your Christian life to be. For some of us, 2022, the only year the only way we make this the best year ever is we have to finally make it the year that we refuse to go back to the old person that we used to be.

If it really died, how can you live in it anymore? I don't want any of us to mistake what God wants from us. He wants 100% devotion. He wants your marriage. He wants your business. He wants your kids. He wants your quiet time. He wants your football devotion. God wants it all. And the moment that we do that,

when we let those areas die, all of a sudden what comes back to life is the thing that we actually want, which is meaning and purpose and significance. It's like when we stand at the altar. I did it a long time ago on 08/22/2009.

I stood at the front of a church with my wife. I had a rented tux. She had a dress she had to buy. I don't know why it works like that, but it does. We stood at the altar and we committed to each other.

Every part of who I am, I'm giving to you in sickness and in health. The only thing that will ever separate us is death. And the part that's crazy, like I don't like to talk bad about my wife, but like right after we went through that ceremony, she had the audacity to expect me to sleep with only her

every night for the rest of my life. I'm like, woah, hold on. There's three sixty five nights out of the year. Like I'll give you three sixty, but like I get at least five mulligans a year. Right? That's like 98% devotion or something. You know what I mean?

And all of us laugh. Like, it's it's a crazy concept. Like, my wife gets mad at me if I cheat on her in my in her dreams. Like, I'll wake up and I'm like, you're mad at me? Like, what did I do? She's like, you cheated on me. I'm like, where? When?

And it takes like a whole day for her to like forgive me. I'm like, I didn't even do anything. You know what I mean? Ever experienced that? Like, heck, I can't even cheat on you in the dreams. You know what I mean?

And it makes total sense. It would be ludicrous for me to get up here and to say, hey, I'm married to my wife. We're committed to each other. We love each other. We're devoted to each other, but I get five mulligans a year. It's crazy because we all know that what we signed up for is 100% devotion. And to break that

is the ultimate betrayal. And yet we approach God, the God of the universe who made us, who built us, who knows the very hair on our head. For some of you, it's easier to count them than others. Right? And yet when he looks at us and goes, will you give me all of you? Will you submit 100%

to who I am? We go, I'll give you 98%, but I want to hold on to this. I want to keep this area I'm only sleeping with my girlfriend because like I feel like we're married in our heart,

and God's like, man, you are storing up punishment and judgment that's going to come, right, because sin has consequences. It's not because God's punishing us, it's just because sin has natural consequences. What Paul is essentially saying is, friends, we got to remember what we signed up for.

This is an all or nothing kind of deal. You don't get to dip your toes in the water of faith. But if you do it, the return on investment is the greatest you could ever make. So the question is, what do we do?

We find ourselves here this morning. There's things that we've dragged into 2022 with us that we don't necessarily want to be here, but we don't really know how to get rid of them. What do we do? Here's where Paul starts to get practical with us in verse five. He says, since we have been united with Him in His death,

here's where the key and the power is. He says, we will also be raised to life as He was. In the NIV it says we're united with Him in His death,

but more importantly, we're united with him in his resurrection, in his new life. If you read the New Testament, you read Paul's letters over and over and over and over again, he's he's always trying to understand the mystery of the resurrection.

He says, all I wanna talk about and understand is the power of Christ and the resurrection of Jesus. Why? Because he knows that in there lies the key to this whole thing.

Because if we got in the door through grace, through a free gift that we didn't earn, why do we think that it's anything else that will transform us and change us and make us into the likeness of Christ?

The mistake that we make in church a lot is we think it's grace that gets us in and then our ability to fulfill some type of arbitrary law that gets us through. And what Paul is saying, no, no, no,

The power exists in the resurrection of Christ because the New Testament says that that same power is alive and active in you. Grace gave it to you. It was a free gift and God is not now just around you, he's within you.

It's why Jesus gathered his disciples and he told them, guys, I have to go, but it's better for me to die. It's better for me to go. And they didn't get it and they said, do you mean? Why would it be better? We want you here. You're our leader. Just be amongst us. And he says, No, after I die,

I'll be able to live within you. And we're going to see in Romans the Holy Spirit come onto the scene. And Paul tried to break down the mystery of having God live within you. And he makes a point in verse five that's so simple, we can miss the deep implications of what it means.

He says, You died and you were united with Christ in his death. But understand, you are now united with him in his resurrection. The part that I've struggled with all week is trying to figure out how to articulate to us in a way that this makes sense. Because here's my struggle.

We love like the three steps to living a spiritual life or the seven keys to the miraculous and the five principles to break it. And there's not one here. What Paul says

is that if you and I are really going to live a life where we win and we conquer sin and we advance the kingdom of God, we have to stay united with Christ. How do we do that? By remaining in him. It's John 15. John 15, Jesus again trying to explain this mystery, this concept to his disciples.

He said, guys, you have to understand. You are the branches. I am the vine. And he says 11 times in seven verses in John chapter 15 that we our responsibility on this side of eternity is to remain. It's to abide.

It's to stay. It's to stay connected to the source. And he goes so far to say that if you get disconnected, he says, apart from me on this side of eternity, you can do nothing. This is where the concept of grace gets really tough for us because the profound truth that I have for you this morning is if you really want 2022

to be the greatest year ever and to see sin begin to break off of you and you to change generational cycles that have existed in your family forever, your primary responsibility is to remain, is to abide.

I I think some of the ways that we do this practically is when we begin to think about coming to church. Again, I don't know what it's like for you and your households. Maybe you guys are more spiritual than us, but there's a lot of weeks where it's a fight. Like my kids don't want to go to church and we're like yelling at them. And there's parts of me like, why are we doing this?

What's the point? What's the argument? Like by the time we get there, I'm so mad, like the last thing I want to do is go into church and worship, right? Like, so let's just play bedside Baptist, turn on the YouTube channel and call it good. We'll phone it in.

And then I remember when I read Romans chapter six, that part of my responsibility is to remain. And one of the things that happens when we corporately gather together that cannot happen at home by myself is this ecclesia. There's something powerful that happens when two or three are gathered in his name and he comes and together corporately we worship him. And we're reminded of who he is and who we are in him. And then we walk out of here empowered.

And for some of us, that's an incredible place to start. But if this is the only time during the week that you stay connected to the source and that you remember who you are,

don't be shocked by Wednesday, Thursday that you begin to feel like your Christianity has lost its power. What I believe we can begin to do in 2022 is look at our quiet time. If we set goals this year, like I'm gonna read the whole Bible, good for you. It's a lot of reading. I don't think I'm gonna do it. I'm too ADD. But

I sit down every morning and I spend time with God in the word, not because I have to, but because it's one of the few simple practical ways that I stay connected and united with him in his resurrection. And remember that I'm not doing this on my own.

And I believe where we start, if you know the thing that God is telling you, you've got to get this out of your life, but you don't even know the place to start. I believe the starting point if you're struggling with pornography,

there's incredible software you can put on your computer and that is awesome and that's helpful and accountability is great. But what I believe we need to start doing is understanding that there's a power at work within us that has the ability to not just modify our behavior, but actually change our desires.

And if we can stay connected to them and go, God, will you change my heart? If you're here and you go, man, the thought of giving the church money is like the craziest concept in the world. I'm not trusting God in that area. I'm not even here saying, hey, we're going to do a tithe challenge, which is a real thing. There's churches that are like, we're gonna do a tithe challenge for twelve months. Give 10% and we'll keep track of it. And if at the end of twelve months, your life isn't better, we'll give you a refund on your money.

Is that practical and can it help? Maybe. But I think the true starting point, what Paul is saying is you need to start and ask God to do something that you can't do on your own. To change your desire. To change your heart. Would you start and go, God, I don't even know if I agree with this,

but I know what the word says. I know what the bible says. And I want to be obedient to that. I want to experience your blessing. Would you begin to transform me? Paul is saying that's what grace is. Don't settle for being a cheap trump card that just gets you out of sin. There's forgiveness and all that for that. Amen.

But if you tap into it, it could lead you to a power that you only could dream of. Here's how Paul continues.

He says that 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 that we will also live with him.

We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead and he will never die again. He says death no longer has any power over him for 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 should also consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. Paul says something profound in Romans six. He said, what Jesus did on the cross, yes, 100%, it satisfied

the penalty for our sin. It brought us back into right standing with God. And that's amazing. Yes and amen. He says, but it also did something else that you might not be aware of. Some of you right now, even if I say this, you're like, man, I can't

break these chains. I can't stop doing this. I've tried. It's just become a part of my life and I just have to live with it. Paul says, no way.

He says, what God did is when sin tries to come back in, and these old ways try to creep back up, and the old people try to come back up, and the old thinking, the old motives, and the old coping mechanisms, when they come back in, he says, there's something within you that you can't see.

That no matter how much it tries, it will never saturate you again. It will never overwhelm you again. You will never be enslaved to this like you used to be because Jesus on the cross not just broke the penalty or paid the penalty for our sin, he also broke the power of sin. That's

the greatest news we've ever heard, friends.

He says, might feel like it in moments. You might feel like you were a slave to it, but you're not. It's a lie. There's something within you that if you can tap into can break those change, can end those cycles.

And there will be moments that we struggle, and if you come back next week, Romans seven, Paul walks through that of why do I keep doing the things I don't wanna do,

and why do I know the things that I don't wanna do, and those are the things that I just keep doing. He says there's going to be this tension that's within us, but we can work through it if we can tap into this holy spirit. Friends, I believe that the year the way that we make the year 2022 the greatest year ever

is we have to understand that the power that sin has over us, had over us, it no longer has. The only thing that we're slaves to is to Jesus, the one that we've willingly given the reins of our life to. Here's how Paul concludes

this section of Romans six. He says, so therefore, do not let sin control the way you live. Do not give in to those sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. He said, instead, give yourselves completely to God for you were dead, but now you have new life.

So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. Sin is no longer your master For you no longer live under the requirements of the law, instead you live under the freedom of God's grace. The last point if you're taking notes is this. He says, we were forgiven and freed

so that we can live for God. Not for ourselves, not for our own desires. He says, you wanna know why the moment you get saved, the moment you give your life to Jesus, you stay in the same family, and you go to the same job and you go to the same school because you now are God's vessel. And he's going to use your life

to be an instrument of grace to the people around you. Friends, this entire life, we try to find so much meaning in it. And I think it can be pretty summed up simply. What we're supposed to do is after these powerful encounters with Jesus,

we spend the rest of our existence leveraging everything that we have to get the people that are in the line going to hell out of that line and into ours and go, man, grace saved me. It was a free gift. And I've been able to be made new.

And they go, man, is that open to me? Is that possible to be too? Yes. It's a free gift. And here's the truth. As we wage war with sin, you know what's crazy that I never knew? Is all of those guys that I went to Vegas with? A lot of them, I've been able to do their weddings now. I've actually done their marriages.

And a lot of them, when issues started to come up, they called me, Father Daniel. They called me and said, hey, man. There just seems to be something different about your marriage. Can you help us walk through this? And it wasn't anything I did. They just saw the fruit

of what happens in a life submitted to Christ willing to wage war with sin. It's nothing super mysterious.

It's something that God wants to do in all of us. Friends, if you're here today and you feel like you've just allowed grace to be this thing that is just a trump card that gets you out of jail and allows you to justify all the sin in your life. I'm telling you, you've settled for a Christianity that Jesus didn't die for.

Spurgeon famously said that the grace that can't change your life, it probably can't save your soul. We have to begin to ask the question honestly, is if it can't even change our behavior, are we sure it can save our soul? If you came to my house, I got a bunch of trees. I don't know what half of them are.

But if you try to tell me one was a lime tree, and then I watered it and it produced oranges, I would tell you, you're a fool. Why? Because we know the tree by its fruit. Not by what we think it is or what it claims to be. The Bible says that our lives are the exact same.

And sometimes we have to have healthy moments of reflection and go, what is the fruit of my life? What am I producing? If you're here and you're a Christian, the decision for you to follow Jesus is one you made a while ago. My only encouragement,

my challenge as we leave this morning is that you would have an honest moment of reflection with God and ask him to begin to change your heart towards the one thing that it is that you know you need to stop doing or you need to start doing. And that you would realize that grace is the thing that's there to empower you.

But I believe there's other people that are here this morning that you've never even had that moment. You've never had the moment where you have been made new and you've understood who Jesus is. And friends, that's where all of this starts.

Anything else besides starting with that moment is a futile attempt to become better people. And the Bible says that it is in vanity. So what I wanna do right now is I'm gonna ask everybody to close your eyes and bow your heads. And what happens is the Bible says that this is something that is supernatural,

where the Holy Spirit begins to give us enough grace to begin to be awoken to the truth of who Jesus is. And if you're here this morning and you feel like there's this old person that you want to die, you want to leave this old person behind and become a new creature,

this message is for you. This is your moment. God orchestrated all of these things to get you here this morning. The Holy Spirit makes it seem like I'm speaking specifically to you, but that's God.

What I wanna do right now is tell you the Bible says that if we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord, that in that moment we are saved. And if that's you this morning, what I want you to do right now in the quietness of your heart is just pray a prayer like this with me. Make it your own words.

But just say, Jesus, I believe that you are who you say that you are. I believe that you stepped out of heaven. You came to earth and lived a sinless life. And on my behalf, for my sin, you died on the cross. And three days later, you came back to life. And right now, you are seated at the right hand of the father.

Jesus, I ask for you to come into my heart right now and set me free. It's in the mighty name of Jesus that everybody said, amen.

That's our hope and confidence. Yes. Hey, as you leave this place, remember that you're covered by the grace, the love, and the mighty power of the name of Jesus. Amen? Amen.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.