Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Hey New Life Gillette Church, we are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlife gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:25] Hope you guys are well this morning. We are talking this morning about everybody's second favorite thing to talk about in church. Obviously your your first favorite thing's money. Your second favorite thing is sin. So talking about sin this morning, I hope you're excited.
[00:00:37] Romans chapter six is where we're gonna be. If you got a Bible, go ahead and open up there.
[00:00:43] While you're turning there, open up the app on your phone. Next week is the last week of this series that we've been in while I breathe. I hope and really next week is what this whole series has been building towards. So I just wanna encourage you.
[00:00:58] If you got a friend who's on the fence about church, if you know someone who needs to to hear the hope of transformation, next week is the week to bring them. Hopefully every week is a great week to bring someone because we are a come as you are church and everyone's welcome no matter what, all the time. But next week especially we are praying and believing that God is gonna move. So next Sunday make sure you're here and you got somebody sitting next to you. But today we're gonna start reading in verse 15 of Romans chapter 6. Here's what it says.
[00:01:29] What then shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? By no means.
[00:01:36] Don't you know that when you offered yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey. Whether you are slaves to sin which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. I'm using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.
[00:02:16] When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death.
[00:02:26] But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let's pray.
[00:02:46] God, this is your word. We ask that you would speak to us. God, we want to hear from you. We want to. We don't need my opinions today.
[00:02:52] God, would you speak. If there's anything in this sermon that's just my opinion or what I think, would you make it clear so that we can throw it away? But if there's anything that's faithful to your word and consistent with your character, God, would you plant that in our hearts that we would become like you? Jesus, we love you. Amen.
[00:03:09] I want to show you a picture.
[00:03:13] Yeah. This is the rattlesnake that I almost sat on last month when I was hunting. I was hunting, you know, down by Nunya Creek in Business Canyon. And it doesn't matter. There wasn't any elk there anyway. But I was hunting with my friend Paul, who goes to new life. And we're walking. It's hot. We decided to take a break, sit down for a minute. And I sat down. And I sat down about a foot and a half away from that sage bush right there.
[00:03:42] And, you know, so I decided to sit. If this stool is the sage, I was sitting this far away from that stool, from that sage. And I sat down, and there was a breeze right there. Felt great. I unsnapped my pack, had my pack on. I just unbuttoned it, unbuckled it, and just kind of let it fall off my back. And when I heard my pack hit the ground, I heard sh.
[00:04:08] And it wasn't a rattle.
[00:04:10] It was the sound of something slithering away from me. Now, I want you to think about that for a second, because the snake wasn't in the sage yet. The snake was in between me and the sage.
[00:04:22] And it made me feel like a horrible parent. Cause I tell my son all the time to pay attention. And apparently I can't see a snake right here.
[00:04:30] And so I dropped my pack. And I don't know if I dropped my pack on the snake or what, but the snake crawled away. I jumped, grabbed my stuff, made a sound no human should be proud of, and ran away. Turned around just in time to see the tail of that thing going into the bush away from where I had been sitting. And then I took a picture. And the zoom on the new iPhones is wild because I was a long way away from that snake when I took that picture.
[00:04:57] Honestly, that snake was about this big. So I zoomed it in because it's better for the story.
[00:05:05] Having that encounter, which I hate snakes so much.
[00:05:11] Having that encounter, though, made me remember some statistics that I have heard over the years about snake bites. So I decided to research them and see if they were still true or not, see if I was remembering them accurately. Here's what I found. Did you know that 65% of people who get bit by a venomous snake are male?
[00:05:28] Yeah. No one's surprised by that. All the women in here are like, duh, that's not what women do. No, women aren't out playing with rattlesnakes. That's guys for.
[00:05:35] But here's the thing that surprised me the most. Out of all of the places on the human body that you could get bit by a snake, I mean, ankles, feet, legs, you know, toes. If you're like hiking with sandals on or something like that. Out of every place, 44% of the bites occurred on the distal upper extremity, which, if you, like me, don't know what that means. It's hands.
[00:06:00] That's what that means. It technically means from here down, basically like your lower arms, but it means hands. That's what it means. Half of snake bites happen on the hands, which means 44% of all snake bites, first off, are dudes, for sure. Every single one person that gets bit on the hands is male.
[00:06:16] And 44% of all venomous snake bites happen like this. Someone says, hey, watch this.
[00:06:26] That's how they're happening.
[00:06:29] So another way you could say this is the wages of playing with a rattlesnake is getting bit.
[00:06:38] You play with the snake long enough, eventually it's going to bite you. Now, hopefully you realize that snake is venomous and you stop playing with it. Because what tempted Adam and Eve in the garden? A serpent. We should have known this. But anyway, in this passage, Paul is dealing with a conundrum that every Christian. If you're a follower of Jesus, then you have wrestled with this before. And if you're on the fence, if you're thinking about following Jesus, you should just know it's coming. If you decide to follow Jesus, you'll wrestle with this all the way back to the very beginning. The first Christians. Now, the book of Romans is considered by at least some scholars, predominantly N.T. wright, who's probably the preeminent New Testament scholar alive today. He says that the book of Romans is the most important book that Paul wrote. Paul is the guy who wrote approximately half of the New Testament. And this book's important not because it's more important than the other Books. But it's important because the book of Romans is a summary. Paul wrote the book of Romans to a church in the city of Rome, to people that he hadn't met in person yet, and a place that he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to visit. So he wasn't going to be able to go there and teach. So he writes the book of Romans as a summary. Here's everything that you need to believe. I want to make sure you believe the right things. So he writes this letter. So chapters one through 11 are what you're supposed to believe. And then chapters 12 to the end of the book are how you're supposed to behave, what you're supposed to do if you believe all of those things. And the book of Romans is a summary of belief and practice for those of us who follow Jesus. In chapter six, in these verses, he's dealing with this conundrum that we all deal with. Here's basically what it is.
[00:08:21] If I'm forgiven, if Christ died and rose again to forgive my sins so that I can go to heaven when I die, if all of that's taken care of, I'm forgiven, reconciled to God going to heaven, then does it really matter what I do now?
[00:08:36] If I'm forgiven, do I really have to stop doing things that are fun but God says are bad?
[00:08:44] If I'm forgiven, does transformation really matter? Look, if I'm going to heaven, because we know, we know if we're going to surrender fully to God and let him change us, like open up our hearts to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, then we're going to find at some point in that process, it's going to be uncomfortable. He's going to start changing something that we would prefer not be changed.
[00:09:04] So you open up your heart to that, and you're choosing to endure some discomfort. So we think, man, why would I go through that if I'm going to heaven anyway, if that's the most important part, If I'm going to heaven anyway, why would I do that? I think every Christian at some point has thought, maybe, maybe this hits a little closer to home for you. But you've thought, look, I know I shouldn't, but he'll forgive me, right? If you haven't thought that, I'm not calling you a liar, but you'll be forgiven for lying. So I think, all of us think that. We think, okay, yeah. I mean, I know, I know I shouldn't be doing that, but I mean, forgiveness is already offered. He'll forgive me. It'll be fine. And we live in that gray area. And I think.
[00:09:46] I think that we.
[00:09:49] Our answer to that question, the answer we've come up with just as humans, to why we should follow the rules, why God still expects us to obey even after he forgives us.
[00:10:01] Basically, the way we would say it is because he's a huge bummer.
[00:10:07] Because God is just kind of a bummer. He's hard on us. He's really picky, and you don't want to break his rules. That's kind of the way we think of it. We kind of think of, like. We kind of think that God is. He's the way with us, the way dad was with his tools. Did you have a dad who was, like, real picky with the way you put his tools away? You know what I'm saying? Like, you don't put those out of order. No. You don't put the wrenches where the hammers go. Don't you dare do that. That's kind of how we imagine God, or if you didn't have a dad, like that. We imagine God is a micromanaging boss, right? That boss has a way you're supposed to do things, and you do it his way. Why do you do it his way? Because it's his way. Is there a better way? Who knows? You don't question. You just do it his way. And then what do you learn to do? Right? You learn to not get caught when you don't do it his way. You learn to do it his way when he's watching, and then to do it a different way when no one's watching.
[00:10:55] This is kind of the way that we imagine God.
[00:10:58] We imagine that God, like, look, he made the world. He gets to make the rules. And he's just picky. He cares about what you look at on the Internet. He cares about who you sleep with. Don't make him mad. He cares about what you say. He cares about how you say it.
[00:11:11] He cares about how angry you are. So just don't make him angry. Because God's picky. So follow the rules. Why do we follow the rules? Because there is rules. And that's our answer.
[00:11:20] Interestingly enough, this kind of goes all the way back to the beginning of humanity, to the Garden of Eden, when God created Adam and Eve. When God made Adam and eve in Genesis 2. You should go read this. Don't believe it just because I say it. Go make sure what I'm saying is accurate. In Genesis chapter two, God puts Adam and Eve in a garden, and he Gives them rules. He gives them expectations. And he says, in this garden, you can eat from every tree and every tree. These trees bear fruit. They're good. They look good. They taste good.
[00:11:49] He gives you tons of generous options. And he says, don't eat from one tree. There's one tree. It's called the knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why? Because if you eat of that tree, you will surely die.
[00:12:03] That tree, the pressure, the weight of that tree is going to kill you. Look, it's too much pressure for you to handle, to be able to bear the weight of discerning right and wrong on your own. You need me to carry that burden for you. Trust my guidance.
[00:12:19] That's what God says. He's protecting us from danger.
[00:12:24] And in his effort to protect us from danger, he precludes. He says, do not eat from this tree. You can't handle the knowledge of good and evil.
[00:12:34] Then in chapter three, the serpent, snake. The serpent tempts Adam and Eve. Do you remember what he said?
[00:12:41] The serpent says, so what happens if you eat of this tree?
[00:12:44] Eve says, oh, we'll die.
[00:12:47] The snake says, look, you're not going to die.
[00:12:50] But God knows. God knows that if you eat of this tree, you'll know what he knows.
[00:12:55] God doesn't want you to know what he knows.
[00:12:58] God said, if you eat of this tree, you'll become like him. And he doesn't want anyone else to be like him.
[00:13:03] God's holding out on you.
[00:13:06] God's just hard on you. God has rules, and he's just being hard on you. He's trying to keep something from you because he likes to be in charge. He likes to control things. This is the implication of what the serpent says to Eve in Genesis, chapter three. God's holding out on you.
[00:13:25] God's being hard on you. If you eat of this tree, you'll have more fun. You'll enjoy life, more. Things will be better. God's not protecting you. God's being hard on you.
[00:13:36] That's kind of how we imagine the way that God treats us.
[00:13:42] This is why if you have kids that get to that age where they start questioning the rules, where they start saying, ugh, that rule's stupid, or, you don't know anything, or, you just don't want me to have any fun. That's Genesis 3. It's the human condition that when expectations get put on us, our natural reaction is to say, oh, you're holding out on me. You're just trying to be hard on me. You're just trying to control me.
[00:14:05] It's actually worth noting if you're a teenager here today, if you're like 15 or 16 and you're in that place where you feel like every rule that gets given to you is just somebody trying to control you, I just want you to know that's the human condition. We all felt that way when we were young. It's the brokenness of being human where we don't like to be controlled. We don't like anybody else to tell us what to do. But when we view God that way, when we view anything that way, we react in one of two ways, depending on our personality. The same way people react to a micromanaging boss. We either get really good at covering stuff up, we get really good at passing the buck. Dad, I haven't touched your tools all month. I haven't even been in the garage. But my sister, she was in the garage yesterday, right? We get really good at not getting caught. Or we become terrified of ever breaking the rules and we become paralyzed. So afraid of letting God down that the fear of doing something wrong controls us. It's fear controlling us either way. Do you remember what happened in Genesis 3? When Adam and Eve sinned? Their reaction to God was to realize they were naked and have shame and then to go hide.
[00:15:08] They immediately started hiding. It's the same way we react today. Because if the goal is to not get caught or to not make God mad, the only options because we all mess up is to hide and cover up and live in shame.
[00:15:23] This is the conundrum Paul's dealing with. Why? Why do we follow the rules? Why does God expect this of us?
[00:15:33] And his answer is, effectively, because the wages of playing with a rattlesnake is getting bit.
[00:15:39] But you don't seem to see that it's a snake.
[00:15:45] He's dealing with this exact question. He says, because you live in grace. In other words, because you're forgiven, because you'll be forgiven for your sins. Does that mean that you should go on sinning? By no means. But why? He goes on, because if you give yourself to something as a slave, if you give yourself to something, that thing gets you. If you give yourself to something, that thing has power over you. If you surrender to something, you're giving up power to that thing and you're gonna surrender to something. He says, I'm using an analogy from everyday talking about something that would have been common in the ancient world, but doesn't make a lot of sense to us. He's talking about slavery. When you and I think of slavery, our first reaction is chattel slavery from American history, where people were owned and bought and sold without any decision on their part. They didn't have any free will involved in it. In the ancient world, in the Roman world specifically, slavery like that did exist. But what was more common in society was slavery that was somewhat voluntary, where if you were in a lower class, if you didn't have a lot of financial options, you'd have the option to give yourself to effectively choose to devote yourself to a family, to a wealthy family, as a servant or as a slave. They would use the word slave or a word like bond, servant, where you would make a bond. You would dedicate yourself to this person or to this family for the rest of your life to be their servant. What Paul's saying is, don't you understand that if you give yourself to something, then you get what they pay. If you give yourself as a servant to a household, you get the wages that you worked for. You get the thing that they pay out.
[00:17:19] If you give yourself to something that gives death, then guess what the wages are. If you work for something where the pay is death, then guess what you get paid.
[00:17:29] Death.
[00:17:30] You give yourself to that. But if you give yourself to that, you get the reputation of that, you get the name of that, you get the expectations of that. It defines your life. But if you give yourself to God, then what do you get? You get life if you give yourself to obedience. What is the wages?
[00:17:49] Righteousness, freedom, life. What God is saying is sin is a snake and the wages are getting bit. What he's saying is sin is poisoning you, it's destroying you, and I'm trying to protect you. It's all the way back to Genesis, chapter two. I'm trying to protect you from the thing that's killing you. But our natural reaction is to say, that thing's not killing me. You're just picky.
[00:18:13] But God's saying, no, I'm in control. I don't need more control. I'm trying to protect you because I love you. The wages of sin is death, and I don't want you to die. Please don't let the thing I've forgiven you from kill you. Please don't let the thing that I died to solve control you. Do you see?
[00:18:34] The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. When God calls something sin, it's because it's killing you.
[00:18:43] God does care about what we look at on the Internet. Why? Because it's poisoning our mind. God does care about the way we forgive our enemies. Why? Because unforgiveness and bitterness is poisoning our relationships. You've probably heard the phrase before, that bitterness, unforgiveness is like drinking poison, hoping someone else dies. God is saying, pour out the poison and start taking the life that I give you.
[00:19:05] The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Now, just in case you think that I'm taking this verse out of context or I'm painting sin the wrong way, this is the way sin is described throughout the whole course of Scripture. In the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 30, we read a verse that's going to be on the screen behind me. This verse comes after God gives the law. It comes after the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, which are the books most people skip when they read the Bible because it's where all the rules are. And after all of these rules, this is what God says, summarizing his instructions. He says, this day I call the heavens and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curses. Then what does he say? Read this with me. Now choose life.
[00:19:53] Now choose life. This is what God's saying. I didn't put a whole bunch of rules before you to set a bar so high you can't live up to it. I didn't set rules before you to try to control you or micromanage you or make you prove your loyalty to me. That's not what God did. God isn't a micromanager. He doesn't just like things done his way. He's not just picky about how you touch his things. God has set before us life and death. Why? Because he invented the world and he understands how it's supposed to be work, how it's supposed to work. And when you use it incorrectly, it brings damage and destruction into the world he set before us life and death. So when God calls something sin, it's not out of his anger, it's out of his compassion. Do you see that?
[00:20:38] When God calls something sin, it's not out of his anger, it's out of compassion.
[00:20:44] And why is God sometimes angry about sin? Because it kills the things he loves.
[00:20:51] Listen, you start talking bad about my son, we're going to have words.
[00:20:56] Because I love him, right?
[00:21:01] It's out of his love that he deals harshly with sin. Why? Because sin kills the thing that he loves.
[00:21:07] Sin destroys that which he loves. He calls something sin out of compassion for us. The same way that you, because you love your kids, give them rules the same way that you love your kids, so you don't let them run with knives.
[00:21:21] You're not trying to ruin the game. You're trying to keep them safe.
[00:21:25] This is why God calls something sin.
[00:21:27] But our reaction is to say no, you're just picky.
[00:21:33] You're just trying to control me.
[00:21:35] You just don't want me to have any fun.
[00:21:38] You're just being hard on me. God, what I'm trying to tell you this morning is that God is not hard on us. Sin is hard on us.
[00:21:46] Sin is hard on us.
[00:21:48] Sin destroys us.
[00:21:50] It kills us. The addiction is what's killing you.
[00:21:54] The bitterness is what's killing you. The gossip is what's killing you.
[00:21:59] The self hatred, the things you tell yourself when you look in the mirror, that's what's hurting you.
[00:22:07] And God wants you free from it.
[00:22:10] Choose life now.
[00:22:13] In a message like this, maybe there's something in your mind that you have that you've started to realize you need to surrender to the Lord.
[00:22:24] Maybe there's something in your mind that you realize that thing's killing you. Maybe you've been holding onto it for a while, you haven't wanted to let it go. But the Holy Spirit is finally, finally breaking through to say, let me take that thing so it doesn't hurt you anymore. I'm not gonna try to guess what that is. It could be a whole bunch of things. I mean, anything from an extreme addiction to lack of forgiveness, to gossip, to anger. There are a lot of things that are sin that we justify as just our personality, but they're actually killing us. Oh, I'm just lazy. That's just me. You know me. No, it's killing you.
[00:22:55] I'm not going to try to guess exactly what that is. There's a good chance that the Holy Spirit's bringing that to your mind already. Oftentimes the Holy Spirit convicts us when we start talking about sin. We know exactly the thing that he wants to work on, that we've been holding back. You're just really, really hoping I'm not saying it. It's probably the thing that you really, really hope the pastor doesn't say.
[00:23:14] That's how you know the thing you need to surrender. If you really hope we don't talk about it that day, then that's probably it.
[00:23:21] I want to give you some really practical steps for how to deal with this, though. When we find ourselves struggling with sin, how we can open ourselves up to the transformation of the Holy Spirit, I want to give you four things. Here's the first one. Confession.
[00:23:36] Confession. If you grew up Catholic, or if you didn't grow up in church, you might think of confession as something that you go to a booth to say to a stranger where you admit your sins and they give you something to do to fix them. That is not what scripture means when it says confession. Confession is acknowledging out loud the thing done wrong. The book of James says to confess our sins to one another, that we would be healed. One of the common analogies in scripture for sin is it's a sickness. It's something that's killing us. If you go to the doctor in extreme pain, but you do not tell the doctor what hurts, the doctor cannot help you, right?
[00:24:09] So God says, confess your sins so that you may be healed. Confess your sins so that the thing killing you can be dealt with.
[00:24:16] We cannot be free from something we will not acknowledge is controlling us. Now. Here's the problem. Most of the time when we go to confess, at least when I go to confess, my temptation is to confess. Like this. Yeah, I've done some bad stuff. Probably should. I did something I shouldn't have. So, yep, that's not confession. That's nothing, actually. But that's how most of us do it. It's like, oh, man. Yeah, I've been struggling this week. Been struggling with what? Just some stuff, you know. That's not confession. Confession is, last night I looked at porn. Confession is, I do not want to forgive my neighbor. Confession is, I am addicted to alcohol. I had too much to drink. Confession is, I slept with someone I'm not married to. Confession is acknowledging the thing that is sin. It's acknowledging it, giving words to it. It's not vague. We don't do that for the sake of shame. You are already forgiven. You are already loved. The thing you're going to confess, Christ already died for. So you don't need to be ashamed to confess it. You're confessing it so that it will not control you anymore.
[00:25:19] So confess. We confess it to God, and you should confess it to another person. Confess it to a trusted friend, to somebody in your life group, to a pastor. Say it out loud. Do not let that secret control you anymore. Here's the second one. Repentance. Scripture is full of instruction about repentance. The problem is that generally when we think of repentance, we think that repentance is saying sorry.
[00:25:43] That's kind of how we equate repentance. Hey, I did something wrong and I'm sorry.
[00:25:48] I'm really sorry that I did that to you. I'm really sorry, God, that I said that thing. That's how we define repentance. But biblically, the word repentance means literally to turn away.
[00:26:02] The word repentance means to turn away from something. So you were going this way, and now you're going this way.
[00:26:08] That's the idea of repentance. You confess so that you acknowledge that that thing is death, that that thing is causing harm. And then repentance is to let go of that thing and turn away from it. The reason why a whole bunch of us constantly struggle with the same sin is because we repent like this. If I'm repenting from this stool, if I. If I'm repenting from holding onto this stool, we say, hey, look, I'm so sorry.
[00:26:32] I'm so sorry that I keep carrying this thing around. I am so sorry. I promise I'll never do it again.
[00:26:42] Hey, I'm so sorry that I haven't got rid of this stool yet. I'm so sorry. I know that it's annoying and that it's hurting you. I promise I won't do it again.
[00:26:53] Repentance is.
[00:26:55] I shouldn't.
[00:26:57] I'm sorry.
[00:27:01] And you move away from it. Repentance leads to the next habits, confession, repentance, habits.
[00:27:08] Habits are the third thing that we do to open ourselves up for transformation. The Book of Proverbs is full of instructions for how to have habits that set you up for success, habits that lead you to health. One of my favorite places in the Book of Proverbs that it tells us to change our habits is in an instruction to a young man who's basically dealing with lustful temptation.
[00:27:31] And the Book of Proverbs is written kind of in the voice of an older man or a grandfather to a younger man, maybe a son or a grandson.
[00:27:38] And he says, son, don't go near the home of the adulterous woman.
[00:27:45] He says, don't walk down her street.
[00:27:49] Don't go near at all. Take a different direction. Why? Why would that be the instruction? Well, because if you walk down the street, you're going to notice the door. And if you notice the door, you're going to think about knocking. And if you think about knocking, you're going to think about what's going on inside. And if you think about what's going on inside, guess where you're going.
[00:28:03] Because that's how temptation works, right?
[00:28:05] Is that we put ourselves really close to temptation, and then we promise ourselves we don't do it. The book of Proverbs says, no, Take a different route home. Don't go near the door.
[00:28:14] Don't go. Look at the temptation. If you don't look at the temptation, you won't fall into it. There are a whole lot of people promising to quit drinking in a bar.
[00:28:23] Can I just say that real directly? There are a whole lot of people who are like, I promise I will not drink any more of this 24 pack of bush.
[00:28:31] Well, you got to stop buying it if you're going to stop drinking it, homie.
[00:28:35] Like, this is kind of the way that we go about it. You change your habits, alright? There are a lot of people who promise to quit looking at people porn, but they're still on their computer at 1am when they're the only one awake in the house.
[00:28:47] Shut the computer, put it in the living room. Don't look at it. Change your habits.
[00:28:52] There are a lot of us who want to stop gossiping, but we keep going to lunch with the same people who always gossip.
[00:28:59] We want to let go of the anger. We don't want to be angry people anymore. But we keep incessantly replaying the thing in our mind that we're mad about.
[00:29:08] We don't change our habits. We convince ourselves that we can just use our willpower to just quit doing the thing.
[00:29:15] But you won't.
[00:29:18] You won't.
[00:29:21] There's a reason why Paul says that when you give yourself to something, that you obey that thing.
[00:29:28] Because we were created to be surrendered to God, but we decided to be God instead, which means we surrendered ourselves to sin.
[00:29:38] Do you see that?
[00:29:41] The Serpent in Genesis 3 said, if you eat of the fruit, you will be like God. And we said, I don't want to obey God. I want to be God. But if you're created to obey something, you're going to obey something.
[00:29:52] So we can't just willpower our way out of sin. We have to see that it's killing us and then change our habits.
[00:29:59] Here's the last thing. Accountability.
[00:30:01] Scripture is full of instructions of why we need one another.
[00:30:06] Two are better than one. Because if one falls down, the other can pick him up. And a cord of three strands is not easily broken, which means it works better if you do it together. I think every single one of us, you, me, every single one of us needs someone who knows us, who knows everything about us, who knows your struggle. You need someone who knows that you struggle with gossip, who can say, hey, what did you talk about at lunch today?
[00:30:30] Who can hold you accountable? You need someone who knows that you're trying to quit drinking, who can say, hey, why did I see your car parked outside of Good Times?
[00:30:37] We need someone who knows that you're trying to obey God in your relationships that's gonna say, hey, why are you over at her apartment at 2am if you're trying to be faithful with your sexuality. We need people who can keep us accountable. And I want to say something that's gonna sound extreme right now, but I, but I believe it. I think every single man and most women need an accountability software on their computer.
[00:31:01] We need something that shows someone else what our search history is. And some of you are thinking, why in the world would I ever need that? It's because, Statistically speaking, between 70 and 90% of men and between like 40 and 60% of women have used pornography in the last month.
[00:31:16] Pornography is human trafficking. It's the direct link to human trafficking. It. It changes our minds so that we view other people as objects. It warps our sexual expectations. It warps our sexual experience in marriage and it destroys us. And it is not the only thing that's sin. But it is a great threat to our minds and to the health of our marriages and to our self worth. It threatens everything. And once again, statistically speaking, most of us struggle with it.
[00:31:42] So how do you beat it? You confess, you repent, you change your habits and you get accountability.
[00:31:50] We should do that with everything. But sometimes you got to talk about the issue that's the most common.
[00:31:55] I think every single one of us need accountability with that.
[00:32:02] What I hope you see this morning is not that you should be ashamed because God has already forgiven you.
[00:32:12] Christ died because he loves you.
[00:32:15] Christ died because he has good things for you. Not just in heaven, but here on earth. He wants you to live free from sin. Can you imagine a life where you're not ashamed of what you did yesterday? Can you imagine a life where you are not driven by the addiction? Can you imagine a life of healthy relationships where gossip isn't poising anything? Can you imagine what it would be like to not wake up angry? Can you imagine what it was like? It's like to live forgiven and forgiving other people in peace and joy and the fruits of the spirit. Can you imagine what that's like? That's what God is saying. That's what God's offering us. What he's saying is that while I breathe, I hope if you are alive today, there is hope that tomorrow you will have more freedom from sin than you have today. If you're alive today, there is hope that the addiction will end. If you're alive today, there is hope that lust will not control you. If you're alive today, there is hope that sin will not define you or control you anymore. You can live free from sin. It doesn't have to destroy you. But we have to see what it actually is.
[00:33:17] We have to quit pretending that it's just the rules and start seeing that it's a rattlesnake.
[00:33:23] The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus wants to give you life. He wants to give you abundant life. He wants you to live in freedom not defined by the things you struggle with, but defined by the transformation, defined by the fact that he is causing you. He is making you into the person you were always created to be.
[00:33:50] Let's pray.
[00:33:52] God, we love you.
[00:33:54] God, you.
[00:33:56] You have forgiven us. God, would you give us the courage to fight, to battle against the sin that we struggle with? God, would you give us the courage to confess and to repent? Would you surround us with people who can keep us accountable, with brothers and sisters in the faith who can push us to become who we were created to be? God, would you let us know and experience the freedom that you have for us in Jesus Christ?
[00:34:24] Because you are Lord God. We give you glory because you have forgiven us. And we give you glory because you are setting us free.
[00:34:33] Let us not miss out on any of the good things you have for us. Jesus, we love you. Amen.
