Identification Truths Plus 2012

And we're working our way down Romans chapter six. I wanted to mention a couple of things as we get going here. We have maybe to put it in, put it in a a formula, maybe say it that way. The first ten verses of chapter six are just things that, positional truth, things that we should know. Actually say it another way, things that we as believers should already know.

It's the way Paul comes at us, he says, don't you know, don't you know, and he lays out what we should know. So the first, if you're going to do a formula, you have knowing, Believing and counting and then presenting. So, knowing, counting and presenting. Acting on what you know.

So, when we got finished with verse 10, then 11, 12 and 13, which Courtney covered, has to do with 11, reckoning or counting upon the facts that we've just learned to be true. your counting upon them doesn't make them true, your reckoning on them is in light of the fact that they are true. So it's a formula that works in any study of the scriptures.

And then the last couple of weeks Paul says, he gives us a command, you don't have to let sin or don't let sin reign You don't have to, so don't do it. And then he talks, he uses this word, don't present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

So you have a choice. You do not have a choice in whether you're going to sin or not. You do have a choice in whether you're going to believe or not, and you certainly have a choice as to who you're going to present yourself to. That's really the decision that every believer has. He has the ability to present himself. Now, let's make this easy and practical. Find yourself in a situation where you're tempted to sin. Anger, I don't know, pick one. Pick your favorite one. And here it comes and you become aware of the fact that here is the temptation. There's a circumstance right in front of you which a thousand times before you have taken the bait and you've sinned.

At the same time, here's some understanding in your mind that the Spirit of God makes you aware of all of the Romans 6 truth up through verse 10. Your old man was crucified. that the body of sin might be put out of business. You don't have to serve sin anymore. He makes you aware of that information and you know it's true. And right at that point, you say, you know what, it is true. I don't have to yield or present myself to this sinful temptation that's gotten me a hundred, a thousand times before in my life. I don't have to go there and I don't have to go there because I know that I don't have to go there.

So what do I do? I know that if I fight sin right here it's going to get me because I have no power over it. I'm reckoning those facts to be true but right here is where the fulcrum tips. What do I do? Question mark. We reckon ourselves dead to sin. More than that. That's right. You've already done that. You say, I know I'm dead to sin, I reckon it to be so, but I don't want to sin here.

How am I going to prevent sin from controlling me? This is a critical point right here. Because this is where your will comes in. It's the word present. you and I have the choice to say I am going at this point allow the Spirit of God to control me and I'm going to present my members to him or I'm going to present my members to this temptation to this flesh and it's going to control me. So my only decision is that I'm not going to control sin, it's I'm going to let somebody else do it.

You see that? When it says I'm to present my members my mind, my body unto God as those that are alive from the dead. Once I do that, I have made all the decisions that I need to make. I don't need to fight anymore. The problem is that we think God needs help right here. He needs my resolve. He needs my determination. No, He doesn't. He just needs you to let Him do it. And that's what this verse means. You okay with that? You doubt me. I can tell in your eyes you're doubting me.

Because you're all Americans and you're all fighters. I think the thing is how do you practically do that, present your body? Present your members. Yeah, great question. Everybody hear the question? How do you practically do that? How do you do it? I just told you. Were you? Were you buried with them and resurrected in the newness of life? Was your old man crucified? Did that happen? The only way you know it happened is you read it in the word of God. So it did happen. Did it happen to you? Just you. Nobody else, just you.

Was your old man crucified? to be true. I'd bet the equity in my motorcycle on it. Will you do that? Will you bet your life on those facts? That's what reckoning is. I have no other place to go. I know the facts. I've reckoned on the facts. Now what do I do about the facts? I use my will to yield myself or present myself to God as one who's alive from the dead. It's a lot cooler on this side of the room. That's why everybody's over here. But there's no more space for you locals. You're okay there, that's fine. So this is a very critical point.

Practical application of the identification truths As you present your members, what do your members, what do some of your other translations say in lieu of the word member? It would be your mind. Your mind? Okay. Does every translation say members? Yourselves. Present yourselves. Okay. Is it just your whole body, who you are? Who you are. Okay, and let's talk about what this word present means. What does it mean? I'm looking around the room. I'm the only person in this room that was in the military. Were you in the military?

Good for you. Who knows then? We know. You guys don't know. There was a day in our life when we went down in front of some officer and we did this. We enlisted. And what did we say? To put it crudely, my buck belongs to you. And you can do with it whatever you want. And the Marine Corps said to me, thank you very much. They didn't change their mind, even though I did a lot of times. You're in the Air Force. You presented yourself to the Air Force for them to do with you whatever they wanted to do.

That's what present means. Do you present yourself to God as one alive from the dead for Him to do with you whatever He wants to do. That's what present means. That means then you need to let go of your idea of what you want then and you're submitting to whatever God wants for you.

You don't get to the presenting stage until you have the knowing stage in place and the reckoning stage in place. All that has to be there first. Then you present. So couldn't there be one more step, like let's say, not a step, like a formula, but all right, let's say your sin is anger.

And you say, God, I give this to you. And then let's say you're in a circumstance. And then rather than do what your habit is, God gives you peace instead. and then you realize that you didn't respond the way that you normally would, and then you get to go, you know, thank you God, to his glory. That's what you discover.

We may change our mind about the presenting, but he doesn't. I had a buddy, one of the guys who led me to the Lord, he used to put it this way, Yield yourself up to the Lord. It's too late for you after that. He takes you at your word. And you can change your mind and dance around all you want. He does it. You gave yourself to him. He's keeping it. So, as he begins to work in the next step, we'll talk to him in a minute, in grace, you begin to discover from a practical standpoint, wow, I really am free. I am free. Now, critical point here.

We, and I have taught this for a long time, that the word present is in the aorist tense, which means it's a once and for all presentation. It's not, doesn't mean that. I used to think that, but I don't think it anymore. What the aorist tense means, it's a fact.

So let's use your example. I come to this point in time and I present myself because I know at this particular time it's true, facts are true, and I'm doing it. But let's say two months down the road you're presented with the same temptation. One would think that, well, you don't have to go through this exercise again. Yeah, you do. Yeah, I would think God would want that because it shows just how much we depend on him. You know, if he did it once and I was like, okay, and then that then it would feel like you don't have to keep making the choice. Yeah, now I'm past that. So, I wanted to make that as clear. So, knowing, counting, presenting, and I've got a bunch of notes on that.

Now, when you get to verse 14, something really cool happens. for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What shall we say then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not. Don't you know, and here's this phrase again, you should know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one slave whom you obey. option, whether to sin, leading to death, or obedience, leading to righteousness. But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from your heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. I'm going to stop there.

So, first question, in verse 14, from an identification point of view, why would we not be under law and therefore sin would not have dominion over us? Why are you not under a law system anymore? Just because I said so? Why? Because we're under grace. How did you get under grace? What happened? We gave ourselves to God. No, but we were put into Christ. What's that? We were put into Christ. And how did you get put into Christ? At what point were you put into Him? The moment we believed in the gospel. At what moment in His existence were you put into Him? The issue is real simple. You are not under a law system because you died.

Example. Let's say this one right here commits a felony. And it's a capital crime. She goes to court and she gets convicted of a capital crime and she gets sentenced to the gallows. Okay? She goes down to Canyon City for 31 years while they appeal. But finally all the appeals run out and she's walking down the hallway to the gas chamber and she trips and falls and hits her head on the side of the building and she dies. Are they going to pick her up, haul her into the gas chamber and give her the gas? Or come?

She's dead. Once you die, law doesn't have anything to say to you anymore. That's a really important point. Your faith in all of these things, but the issue is you died. And death means separation. And if you die, when any and all of us in this room leave the planet, it won't matter who got elected.

I got a thing in the mail yesterday saying that if I don't pay a $50 parking ticket, they're going to boot my car. Problem is, I don't own a Subaru, and I wasn't where they said I was. If I die today, where are they going to get their $50? They're not going to get it from me. Important point.

Now, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is now our federal head, and we've talked a lot about in Romans 5.12 what a federal head is, he's not under law because he's died to law too. So if you're in him, you died, you have nothing to do with the law anymore. And I know what you're thinking. If I'm not under law, that means I get to do what I want and I'm going to sin like crazy.

No, we're going to get a new set of laws. laws that we call grace. It is deeply significant here that even to us, new creatures in Christ and recipients of the Holy Spirit, it is definitely announced to us that we are not under law, under a law system. This is not mosaic, this is the entire law system. So speed on the way home and see how it goes. else bondage and helplessness would still be our lot. All of our responsibilities ended at the cross and now grace has dominion over us. Now think about this. If verse 14 says sin shall not have dominion over you because you are not under law, you are under grace. Why was grace implemented? To show God's glory? Huh? To show God's glory? Nope. It says so right in the verse. So the law won't have any power over us? Not law. Sin.

The whole reason. The whole reason for grace is to put sin out of business. That's the whole reason that there's grace. And to put sin out of business so we can have a constant relationship with God. Yeah. You're not going to have it under law, but you are going to have it under grace. I don't want to jump ahead here, but I think one of the qualities that we run into with sin is that sin allows us to have a sense of metric and merit.

And so grace has to come in and wipe that out entirely. Then your currency is void. It's as though it's monopoly. That's a good way to look at it. The currency you've been saving up and the legal system is all void now. It's not worth anything. Now, not everybody's here. Next Sunday, I'm doing the main service, and this is what I'm going to talk about.

This very verse. Oh, do we get to interject? Actually, it'd be cool if you did. Because I'm way more comfortable. You know what you're saying. I'm way more comfortable with interaction than I am standing up there. I really am. So a lot of, we had planned a couple weeks down the road to do an introduction to grace. I'm going to probably do most of that tomorrow so that when we get to grace in a few weeks. I mean next week. You said tomorrow. Next week. Next Sunday. Well, next Sunday on the main service. Yeah. But two or three weeks down the road we'll be doing grace in here. That's the next section we're going to do. Grace, which is 10, depending on how long Courtney teaches, I got one sheet that should take me at least four weeks.

Somebody look up 1 Corinthians 9.21 and read it.

To those who are without law as without law, though not being without the law of God, but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. the difference between Romans 6.14 and 1 Corinthians 9.21 as regards to one's association with the law. Paul says in 6.14 that we are not under the law and the Greek word is huponomo, nomon. Hupo is the word obey and it just means to be under.

That's all it means. Now here's the problem that you're going to run into in your Christian life. If you begin to live graciously, people are going to accuse you of being lawless. That you have no restrictions or parameters in your life. And if they call you antinomial, say, yep, that's right, I am. That means anti-law. The expression indicates placing one under an external enactment, under a principle. You have to understand that law is external to us, right? It comes in from the outside and impinges on us. It's not built into us. It's from the outside.

What if somebody was like, let's say, raised atheist and was always atheist? Would they have laws? And what would those be? They'd have a system of moral conduct that they would... Romans 2 talks about the fact that even if you aren't a Jew and you don't have the Mosaic Law that you have a law unto yourself and God will judge you based on your law. The problem is even under those circumstances you're in big trouble. Paul in describing his ministry in 1 Corinthians says, to those without law, those that don't have any law, I became as without law. See what he's doing here? Let me give you an example. My neighbor across the street, my new neighbor is a Jewish rabbi. When I go into his house, I observe whatever's there.

I don't care. I mean, I do care. I'm not shaking hands with his wife because I'm not supposed to. So I have become whatever they want me to be. I became as without law, not at all being without law Godward. In other words, I'm certainly under a controlling environment when it comes to the relationship between me and God, which is called grace. But on the contrary, I am in-lawed to Christ. See that?

Remember a week or so ago, Courtney used the example of before he was married he was a single guy and then he marries Ingrid and now he's a husband. His whole environment changed. When you became a believer, you became in-lawed to God. Your whole entire existence and relationship to God changed. You're not under law, you're in-lawed. You now have a relationship that you didn't have before. That's what Paul is saying. Paul is saying he has a relationship with God that he didn't have before. It's not under a law system, it's under a grace system.

But can you see how in-lawed makes it different? Or not? Courtney, when he married Ingrid, he became in-lawed to her. It changed his behavior. He was not out searching around to see if there was somebody better than Ingrid. He made up his mind. He married her and that initiated a relationship now. So he wasn't an outlaw. He's an in-law.

Isn't he talking in the Corinthians run, isn't he just talking about Gentiles? That those without the law. I mean that's what he is, in the Corinthians passage, he's just saying who he witnessed to or who he talked to, but he's just saying those who are not under the law, that being the Gentiles. Yeah, like he wouldn't go in a Gentile environment and act like an ascetic Jew.

Yes ma'am. So then, maybe how would we define law then, so that I can put it into... Because law has so many, like there's Mosaic law, moral law, law as far as principles, how things work, Christ's law. So is law just... law is a way to say how one thing is in relationship to another? Maybe explain it this way.

We've spent these weeks now discovering who we were in Adam. And now the word of God is opening up to us that we are now in Christ and now we are learning who we are in Christ. Who I was in Adam was a totally lawless person. There was no restrictions on my behavior unless God came and put them on me. The first law that was given was a restriction put on Adam not to eat the fruit.

That's an external restriction, right? It wasn't internal, it wasn't something inside of him, it was something on the outside that said don't do this. And if you do, there's a consequence. He did and there was a consequence. Now, fast forward to Moses. Moses gets the Mosaic Law on the mountain from God and he brings it down and it's in an external It's external to who the Jews were. It was outside of them. It came alongside of them.

Romans 5.20 says the law came in alongside, not inside, alongside. Now what happens?

Whether you're under the mosaic system, a moral system, a self-imposed system, it's external and what does it do? I mean what you think it does and what it really does is different. What you think it's going to do is control your behavior. What it really does is what? It inflames the sin nature. Now, you think I'm wrong?

Go back to the classroom back there where those two year olds are and put your coffee in the middle of the table and tell them not to touch it. See what happens. They'll touch it. They didn't even care about it until you said don't. My son being the first? Sure, be the first one.

So what law is designed to do, it appears initially it's designed to control human behavior. The problem is it doesn't. And so why did God give the Jews these laws? So that sin would be exceedingly sinful. And so what would the result be? That they'd all go hide under a rock someplace? and say, I can't do this. And he'd teach them how to live by faith in the coming sacrifice.

Every Jew that got saved in the Old Testament got saved by faith, not by keeping the law. So it's external. It's important to understand it's external. Now, when the Millennial Kingdom comes, what's going to happen to the Jewish people that enter the Kingdom? They're going to have the law written in their heart.

And guess what? They don't even have to think about it. They'll just do it. And they won't have to teach each other either. They'll all know God. There won't be any Sunday school in the millennial kingdom. There won't have to be. Now, is that a better shake than you and I have? No, it's not. Why not?

Because we have the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We have the very life of the resurrected Christ. He doesn't need any law. He functions in a holy manner all the time. And we have that life. His life. And that life functions only in an environment of grace. Never under any law principle. Never. Because He never functions in a law principle.

You see that? Sin won't have dominion over you because you're under grace. Grace is designed to put sin out of business. That's what it's designed to do. Law never would do it or could do it. I've got a question. This one verse says apparently we have the choice to become slaves to sin. Yes we do. And that leads to death. But I thought we already died. We did. So it seems kind of contradictory. The word death means separation.

If you're a believer, and I'm assuming you are, you have a position in Christ that can't ever be touched. You also have, along with that, an intimacy and a fellowship with him, right? But you also are capable of sinning, and when you sin, what happens? The position never changes, but the fellowship does. The death part is a separation of fellowship, not position. In other words, if you insist as a believer to sin, you're going to be living in a separated experiential environment with God. It won't affect your position. It's not damnation, it's relationship. And that's why confession restores you to what? It restores you to relationship. That's what it's there for.

Everybody okay? I don't know. I want to know what Courtney's laughing about. My analogies and metaphors, you know, it basically in that the relationship, somebody put this, not me, somebody told me this, you know, it's like when you have a fight with your wife, you're still married, but you're sleeping on the couch. That's pretty good. That's why I said somebody else.

That's the separation. You're still married. It didn't change anything about your position of being married. But the relationship is just... You're walking away from the relationship. So you're sleeping on the couch. That's the death of the separation. It never changed your position.

The same thing can be said with your kids. Your kids don't obey you and there's stress and strain and they don't have fellowship with you. Are they still your children? Absolutely. Question 3. What relationship does a believer have to the law? Right answer. Do you hear his answer? One word answer. None.

Galatians 4. But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God sends forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so that you are no longer a bond-servant, but a son.

And it is a son that inherit through God." Now what's interesting about that, do your children, well it depends on who you are, Your children have to live up to a law system in order for you to make them an heir or to make them a son. They're born a son. You and I are born a son of God. You are an heir. There is no legal obligation on our part to become an heir or to become a son. You already are one. So your relationship to the law is exactly what Christ is. You have none.

So what's the answer to verse 1? Read Romans 6. Somebody read about that. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? What's the answer to that question? No way. How come? because grace is abounding. And he goes through a lengthy thing for 14 verses on why you shouldn't continue in sin. The first one is, don't you realize that you are baptized into Christ? You were baptized into his death. Grace abounding over sin warrants and enables one believing the doctrine to go right on in the old life? No way. We know from other scriptures the impossibility of this.

In John he said, whoever is born of God does what? He does not sin. Oh, but I sin. Because his, God's seed abides in him and he is not able to practice sin because he is begotten of God. Now have you ever tried to reconcile that verse in one John? It's a great verse because it points out that if you don't know identification, you cannot answer that verse. Because you have to look at God and say, what are you talking about? I sin. What's the difference? If I say to you, okay fellas, here's the deal. You were born of God and you don't practice sin. And you say, Who's right? You or me?

Chickens. Where is that scripture? 1 John 2-3? I'm not sure. And then he says a little later that if you say you have no sin, you call God a liar. Well, you can't have it both ways, can you? Yeah. 1 John 2, 3 and 4. Here's the deal. If I say to you, do you have a sin nature? Yes. If I say to you, if you're walking in the Spirit, you won't sin? You go along with that? So, God can reasonably tell us. If I'm a believer, born of God, abiding in my position, I'm not going to practice sin. I'm not going to do it. If I don't stay abiding in Christ, guess what? You're a new man and Christ doesn't sin.

You have to leave that position and present yourself unto sin in order to sin. That's why you're responsible. You see that? So the issue comes down not whether I'm going to sin or not, who's going to control allow the Spirit of God, I present myself to Him, I'm not going to sin. That's what John said. If I present myself to the temptation, I'm going to sin as long as He's in control of me. See that?

So it isn't your willpower and your strength. It's grace that keeps you from sinning. And what do you have to do? All you have to do is present yourself to it. Just believe and rest in it. And you won't sin, because Christ will become the object of your life, instead of your trying to be good.

That make sense? Yeah. Well this word, present, it almost sounds like do it. It does say do it, it's an imperative. But do it in light of the facts. The word present seems vague or you know what does that mean? Some translations say yield. I don't like the word yield as much as I like present because present tells me to do something.

And that sounds like that's what I would think is okay you go do whatever's right. Don't think about it just go do what's right. Now you're getting into I'm going to do something. No. The only thing I'm impelled to do is to present myself to God. And what does that Good question. You've got a lot to do myself.

When you start accumulating information with 6-1, what the information that you've learned is, is the core of the identification truths that I was, my old man was crucified. I was baptized in Christ's death. That's a fact. I was buried and resurrected with him. And it was done so that my sin nature would be put out of business. I would no longer serve sin. Those are facts. What am I to do with those facts? I'm to believe them. I'm to reckon them to be true. I'm to reckon myself to be dead to sin and alive in the God.

Now, if that's true, I can't go to God and say, well, I'm going to make the decision to sin because I'm dead to it. It'd be like when my mother died, she was in a funeral home, she decided, I'm not going to be dead anymore, I'm going to get up. She can't get up, she's dead. You can't get up because you're dead to sin. But the difference is, you still got a sin nature that's trying to convince you otherwise. And that he is, can control you, and he can if you present yourself to him.

Is that like listen? Listen under. Listen to God? By listening to God, what you've done is you've looked at the first 12 verses of chapter 6, you understand them and you believe them and you reckon them to be so, and based on all of that, there's a resulting consequence that God asks you to do, and that is to yield yourself to him as one who's alive from the dead. As an example, if you're a non-believer, And I come to you and I just, I don't say anything other than the gospel. 1 Corinthians 15, the first five verses.

It demands that you respond. You have to respond. You either reject it or you buy it. You have to do something with it. When I come to you and lay the identification truths on you, you have to do something about them. You either have to say, yes, I did die or no, I didn't. You're forced into a decision. You see that? So when he says, okay, the decision has been made, you did die. You were buried, you were resurrected, now you're reckoning it to be so. Based on those facts, here's what God says I want you to do. Present yourself to me as one that's alive from the dead. There's no tension there. Oh, that's what I do next.

I understand. The intimacy, the beat, as you put it, the being in law with Christ, the contract of marriage with Christ, there's that relationship quality and that's where abiding and beholding come into play here. Of course, I'm going to present myself to Jessica every day as her husband. those come out. So that when she says, Randy, will you unload the dishwasher, she's not giving me a law. That's what we're doing now. She's saying, this is part of the relationship. This is an action that's going to be part of that. Yeah. Well, like, I don't have to, after Courtney got married, I didn't have to call him up every night and say, keep reckoning yourself married. Why did you do that all the time?

When you get married, where do you go home at night? It isn't back to the apartment you used to live by yourself. You go wherever your wife is. Because it's a law? No, because that's where you want to be. You've made a home. You've decided to be married.

I've decided that Christ has crucified me, buried and resurrected me in Christ. He's told me to reckon that to be so. What do I do about that? He says, give me your members. Okay. When you get to 12.1, he says, I beseech you, brothers, by the mercies of God, present your body of living sacrifice to me. That's not strainful. You just say, oh, I'm glad you told me what to do with my body. I don't know what to do with it. It's a vehicle of sin up until that point.

I'm really happy to know that I can give it to you. Based on the facts. Not based on just give it to me. The facts are important. Really important. And that, to me, is the not presenting. I don't have to present myself. I just don't have to listen to that urging or that temptation. That, to me, is the presenting. Mine is still the reckoning. Once you realize it, that you're crucified, you're dead to it, I don't have to respond. And that, to me, is the presenting part. I don't have to do it anymore. Let me run down the verses.

2. We who died to sin.

3. We were baptized into his death.

4. We were buried with him through baptism into death.

5. We became united with him in the likeness of his death.

6. Our old man was crucified.

7. He that hath died is justified from sin.

8. We died with Christ.

11. Reckon yourself dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Verse 13, based on all of that information, present yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead. Oh yeah, kind of goes together, doesn't it? Fits. You see that? It fits. So God never asks you to do anything that He hasn't already taken care of in the first place. He just asks you to agree with Him. And based on the facts that He's given you, here's what I want you to do.

He wouldn't say reckon yourself dead unto sin if you weren't. He wouldn't tell you to reckon yourself alive unto God if you weren't. He wouldn't say present your members to me if he wasn't standing there ready to take them because you're alive from the dead.

See that? Mike, isn't it kind of like when you believe that's not a work because it's a belief The value of what you believe is in what you believe, not the fact that you believe. So when you present yourself, is that kind of the same thing? It's not a work. I mean, it's God that has to do it. So that's how it's not a work. Yeah, and there's no strain. There's no strain. You are engaged willfully to do that. You want to do it.

It's almost like, Courtney's wife says to Courtney, here's what we're doing next. Courtney says, Father how we thank you for your grace and how we thank you for the work of your spirit in us to teach us who we are in your son. And because we are your sons, we are able to listen under and comply with whatever is consistent with being your son, Father. We thank you. We pray in the Lord Jesus' name. Amen.