Unburdened #2 - Living Without Bondage
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues in Romans 8 looking at 3 different kinds of relationships we can have with the Holy Spirit in our journey through faith.
Message Transcript
Hey, welcome again to Orchard Hill. It is great to be back with some of you as we have re-engaged in in-person worship services. So welcome in Butler, in the Strip, Wexford in the Chapel, and in the Gym. Welcome to those of you at home, those of you watching with friends or family. We're just glad to be together.
Hey, just a couple things about re-engaging and in-person worship. When you come, right now we're encouraging you to wear masks. And here's what that means. I know some of you will say masks don't do anything. It's a statement. It's this, it's that. Our government in our state is still asking us to engage in mask wearing in public. And we just want to do our best, even if you say hey, that isn't where I'm at, to make people comfortable being in our gatherings. And so, you can say it's a little bit like the weaker brother argument form the Bible about how sometimes you may choose to do something so that it's easier for other people to worship. So unless it's a medical issue or it's something for you that you say, hey, this I'm doing because I am really uncomfortable, if you could wear a mask, at least for a while, that'd be great. We're also limiting our gatherings to the 250 that our government has asked for. We will keep adding gatherings as we go. I think this weekend, we have seven gatherings. And we know our demand right now will be lower than normal because we anticipate many will right now say, hey, we're not sure, we're not going to go into a gathering. And right now, our governmental kind of guidance is that 250. And so, we'll add more and more services, but we do ask that you register ahead of time, because that allows us to help you not be in a room that is overcrowded at this exact moment. So, those are some of the things going on.
Hey, it has been week, a sad week here, probably a week unlike, any week that many of us have ever seen. And there are so many things happening. And there's an impulse that I have sometimes in a moment like this to say, do I need to address the issues again? Or do I need to teach kind of what we had laid out? And I've decided this weekend to continue with our series in Romans. If you weren't around last week, or you didn't watch either way last week, I want to encourage you to go back. We started the series on Romans last week, Romans 8, and we looked at verses 1-4, which was about no condemnation. It is a foundational teaching to Christianity. It's a foundational teaching to Romans 8, which is a foundational understanding chapter for all of our faith. And so, if you didn't see that, I'd encourage you to go back and see it. But then we also last weekend, talked about our current situation. And so, if you didn't hear that I'd really encourage you to go back and watch that. And today we'll talk some about where we are, but we'll do it through the rubric of the text that we're looking at.
So, let's take a moment and pray together and we'll jump in. Father, as we are gathered today, in different locations around our city and around our region, in homes, Lord, I pray that you would bring healing to our land. God, we have seen division and different things happening that we haven't seen for some time. And I pray that you'd bring healing. God, I pray that in these moments that were gathered together, that you would guide our thinking, and help us to gain perspective on life. God, if I've prepared things that don't reflect your truth, I pray you'd keep me from saying them. If there are things that would be beneficial, I pray you would lead me to say those as well in this time. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.
I don't know if you've ever seen an elephant tied down or maybe you've seen one of these pictures. But evidently what happens is when an elephant is really little, they'll tie an elephant with a rope and then put a stake in the ground. And the elephant will pull, and pull, and pull, and try to get away from the stake and be unable to do it. And so, in the elephant's mind the memory will become that they can't get away from the stake in the ground. And because of that, what they'll do, is they will, in essence, learn that they can't pull a stake. Now what happens is, then the elephant as it gets older and bigger, the people who keep elephants, can put a little stake in the ground, tie the elephant to it, and the elephant who is strong enough to pull away from the stake, won't pull away from the stake. And so, elephants can be staked in something that can't really hold them back. And this is maybe an illustration of how we can sometimes be bound by something that doesn't need to bind us.
In Romans 8, we're looking at this idea of being unburdened. And we talked last weekend about the idea of being unburdened from the life of condemnation. And today we're going to look at this idea of being unburdened from the things that bind us, the things that put us into being staked to something that we don't have to be staked to anymore. The concept of sin is introduced in the Bible very early. And one of the early references to it is in Genesis chapter 4:7, where Cain and Abel had their little disagreement. And then there's this statement that says, sin is crouching at your door, and you must master it. And it's a vivid picture because the picture is that sin, crouches like a wild animal looking and waiting for an opportunity to devour its prey. And the idea of crouching implies this idea of hiddenness. It implies the idea of evil intent and that what sin does is it gets its way into our lives and wreaks havoc.
You know, we know this bit as a nation right now. We could talk about the sin of racism. We could talk about the sin of lawlessness. We could talk about the idea of some people today that says, I should get everything for free. First or second Thessalonians 3:10 says that if somebody won't work, they shouldn't eat. And yet we live in a time in which some people are kind of giving the idea that says I shouldn't have to work; people should give me things. And these are sinful attitudes that even among people who don't necessarily acknowledge a God or any kind of standard, would say these are things that can be destroying the very fabric of our country. But it isn't just our country, sin crouches at the door of your life, in my life, in a way that it is hiding itself and it's seeking to destroy and devour. I've been a pastor for enough years that I can say that I have seen a lot of times where people treated sin very lightly in their lives. And then the crouching, pouncing nature of it, wreaked havoc.
Out of curiosity the other day when I was thinking about this, googled deadly pet attacks. And here are some of the ones that came up. A man, aged 30, Mark Vogel was found dead in Dortmund, Germany in his apartment. And his body was draped in spider webs with more than 200 spiders, several snakes, thousands of termites, and a gecko were all feasting on his corpse. This is how this was written. I'm not sensationalizing. His pet spider, a black widow, Bettina, is believed to have administered the deadly bite. So that's one. Here's a 44-year-old lady who was killed by venomous snakes, and it was found among her collection that included alligators. Here's a woman who was killed by her pet camel. Here's how it says this. It says an Australian woman was killed by a pet camel that was given to her on her 60th birthday as a present from her husband. Because evidently, the camel when it was a baby had tried to connect with this woman. I won't read exactly how it says it here and the guy thought it was funny. So, he bought her this camel, and then the camel sat on her and crushed her. Now you may say okay, Kurt, where is this going? Here's a lady in Pennsylvania, who was killed by her black bear who was a pet. She tried to raise a black bear. A 66-year-old man, named Norman Baldy from Ontario, was killed by his 300-kilogram pet tiger. And somebody else had a pet lion.
Why do I tell you this? Because when you hear those stories, if you're like me, you go, well, what are you thinking? You have a pet tiger, a pet python, you have a pet, you know, a black bear, of course it's going to turn poorly for you. And yet some of us look at sin and we say, well, sins negotiable. We don't think that it's that big of a deal, or we think that our victory over sin will someday be automatic, or we think that that it's impossible. So, we say I'll just kind of trifle with it. Or we compare ourselves with other people and we say, well, this person is not as good as I am in this area. We always, by the way, compare on things that we can be on the favorable end of the scale.
Well, what Romans 8:5-17 really does is it talks about how we can be free from the bondage of sin, how we cannot have a wild animal basically crouching at the door waiting to devour us. And in a sense, it gives us three relationships that we can have with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is mentioned over 20 times in Romans 8. And in this context, what it does is it shows us how we can relate to the Holy Spirit.
And I heard this basic outline, not how I'm talking about it, years ago from a pastor named Warren Wiersbe. And it stuck in my mind, so I'm going to share it in some of the way that he shared it years ago. "Here's what we see in verses 5-7, 'The first relationship is this, and that is that you don't have the Holy Spirit. It says those who live according to the flesh, the flesh here being our earthly desires, have their mind set on what the flesh desires. But those who live in accordance with the spirit have their mind set on what the Spirit desires.'"
So very simply, he says, there are two pathways here. There's the mind set on the spirit and the mind set on the flesh. And if your mind is set on the flesh, he says, then it's not set on the Spirit. The mind governs this, verse 6, by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life in peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
And the idea here is that some people will live their lives, and in fact, I think we can kind of see this in the way that this is talked about, in all three of these. I'll just mention this. We have the head, the hands, and the heart. Those who don't have the Holy Spirit, their head, and their mindset is away from the things of God. In fact, it says here that it's hostile to the things of God. Now, that doesn't necessary mean that it's mad at her, it yells at the things of God, but it just simply says, I don't need God and I don't care about God. God's stuff doesn't matter to me. God's law doesn't matter to me. God's ways don't matter to me.
In fact, it's possible, some of us who gather, week in, week out, we kind of check the box of religion. But down deep, we say I don't need God, I need my life, my way, on my terms. Maybe you're here and this is the church you've grown up in and this has been your parents thing, but you can't wait till the day that you can just simply say, I cast it all aside and I do my thing. Well, what this text is saying to you is you don't have the Holy Spirit and if you don't have the Holy Spirit, it means that you aren't actually a Christ follower.
And in terms of the hands here, it means that you have no peace. In other words, that you're always trying to quiet the voice, and I would say of condemnation. This is what Romans 8:1-4 talked about. And the reason I say we're trying to quiet the voice of condemnation is because what we're doing when our mindset is away from God is, we're basically saying, I'm going to find something to tell me that I'm enough. And we don't think God gives it to us, so we go through our lives looking for it in every other way. But we don't have peace.
And then we see here that this person, it says, in terms of their heart, or actually was the heart that has no conviction, or can't quiet the voice of condemnation in the hands, that cannot please God. It doesn't mean that there's never anything that pleases God. But what it means is that in the end, and the final analysis, that when we don't have the Holy Spirit because we're not born of God, that our lives will just be lived to our own ends.
You know, we live in a moment where people are trying to offer all kinds of cultural answers to what's broken. And we should do that, we should do it as a society, the church should be engaged in those conversations. But let me just be really straight with you. Our culture will never fully answer those issues because whatever system it puts in place, as long as there are people that are involved in it, there will be unregenerate people and regenerate people who will make choices that will end up bringing sin to bear in the midst of any structure that we put in place.
Now, again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to have just structures. But what it means is we shouldn't put our hope entirely in the structure, we should put our hope in heart transformation. And this isn't just a cultural issue. This is also in the church. Philip Kennison wrote this. He said, "What has happened in many cases is that the church is simply cultivating at the center of its life, the seeds that the dominant culture has sown in its midst. As a result, the seeds that the Spirit has sown are all but being choked out. And the fruit that is being brought to harvest has little or no likeness to the spirits fruit. Said another way, the church in the United States looks suspiciously like the dominant culture rather than being an alternate to it."
And here's what Romans 8:5-7 is basically saying, and that is, that there are those who simply don't have the spirit. But then when we move to verses 8-12, what we see is that there are those who have the Holy Spirit. Verse 8, "Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God." Verse 9, "You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh, but are in the realm of the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ." Okay, so verses 5-8 there, these are the people who don't have the spirit. Here, he's saying, but you have the spirit. That's what he's saying. And the difference is in terms of our head, we're receptive to the things of God. If the person without the spirit, their mindset is the things of the flesh, and they're hostile to the things of God, you know, you have the spirit when you say, I actually care about what the Spirit of God says. I actually want to know what God's word says.
And in terms of heart, it means that we're alive. If the part of the spirit that doesn't have the spirit, the relationship without the spirit is dead. What that means is that we end up living in a way in which we say, I don't care about the things of God. But here, what we see is somebody who's alive and wants to know what the Bible says, hungers for worship, hungers for community, hungers for Bible teaching, and hungers for the things of God on some level.
And then when it comes to our hands here, I would say that this means that there is a mix of victory and defeat. And here's where we get some debates. So just indulge me for a moment. Some of you may find this tedious or boring. But there is a debate about whether or not the person who comes to faith, whether or not this teaches that they come to a point where they defeat sin so thoroughly, so completely, that they don't struggle with sin. And the challenge of this is in Romans 7, Paul goes on about how the things that he wants to do, he doesn't do and the things that he doesn't want to do, he does. And he says, I struggle with sin. I'm struggling with sin all the time. That's what he's talking about here. He says this is how I'm living. And some people who want to kind of promote the view that there's not sin in the Christian life, will say, well, this was pre-conversion. But if you read through Romans 7 and then into Romans 8, I believe that ultimately, this is Paul speaking as a Christian.
In the ESV Study Bible, which is a great little resource, here's just some of the reasons that they give for this way of thinking. It says that there's a shift to the present tense in Romans 7. So, in other words, Paul and Romans 7 is saying this is my current experience, and he was writing as a Christian. Secondly, they say that unbelievers do not desire to intensely keep the law like Paul expresses in Romans 7:21. The delight in God's law, verse 22, is the same. The deliverance of the sinful body is seen as future, verse 24. In chapter eight, verse 10:11, verse 23, in other words, it points forward to something.
Now I could go on and read about this and even in Romans 8, we see that the adoption of sonship is said to be a present reality and also a future reality and theologians have called this the already and the not yet. In other words, we possess something from God today, and then we will possess it even more in the future. And here's what this means, is that when you have the Holy Spirit, it doesn't mean that you instantly are without sin. But it means that you're in a struggle and that you'll start to recognize sinful things in yourself that maybe you didn't see before.
But here's the real challenge of this. You can have the Holy Spirit and still be trying to do things in your own strength. This is a little bit like if you've ever been at the beach and tried to hold a beach ball under the ocean or under the water. And when you do that, what happens is you hold it under the water for a while but sooner or later it always pops out. And the longer you hold it under the water you just get exhausted. Or maybe if you're not that exhausted, you get proud because it's like look at how well I can hold the beach ball under the water. I can hold it under the water better than everybody else. And what we see here is that having the Holy Spirit is a means of change, but it doesn't change us completely. Maybe a way to state this is it's a little bit like having a power saw. And using the saw without plugging it in, you would become exhausted. And that's a little bit of what happens for some of us in how we try to live our lives.
Now again, genuine follower of Jesus, saved, no condemnation, but still living with some bondage. And that leads me to the third kind of relationship and that is the Holy Spirit has you, verses 13-17. Let me start in verse 12. "Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation but it's not to the flesh to live according to it. In other words, don't be a debtor to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live." Now here it's talking about this idea of putting to death the deeds of the of the flesh. And it's talking about living by the Spirit and some versions say mortify or put to death, the deeds of the flesh.
Verse 14, "For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The spirit you receive does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." And here's what you have here, is you have the head, that is the assurance, so when the Spirit has you, you start to feel and sense the assurance of the relationship with God. You're confident of your position of sonship. Now some of you may say, well, shouldn't we just say children of God? Isn't that better, so that we're gender neutral? Well here, the sun imagery is actually important because what the sun imagery means is that if you are a child of God, are a complete heir. Girls could not inherit their father's world, his wealth, but a son could.
And I would say this is similar to the image in scripture that says, we're a bride of Christ. We don't change that to say you're a spouse of Christ in order to eliminate gender. What we do is we say no, there's something in the bride imagery that's important here. There's something in the adopted son imagery that's important. And it means that you have an assurance of your place. And it means in our heart that we sense that we're being led by the Spirit. Did you see this little phrase? If you are led by the Spirit, or if you put to death, or verse 14, for those who are led by the Spirit, this word connotes the idea of being led voluntarily. In other words, our heart says, God, I want you to lead me.
And then notice this phrase suffering. One of the ways you know that you're being led by the Spirit, that the Spirit has you, is that you're willing to suffer for Jesus. In other words, you're willing to say, God, this isn't what I would choose. I want something different, but your will not mine is where I'm willing to be. And then our hands we put to death. In other words, deal radically with our sinful nature. That's what this is talking about. One author put it this way, he said, "Sin can only grow in the soil of self-pity and the feeling of owed-ness." Notice that we're debtor earlier, we're not a debtor to the sinful flesh, we're a debtor instead to what God is done and as long as we feel owed by God or God should do something for us, then we will always say I need something different.
Now I love the image of adoption here. Because somebody who's adopted, has status, and yet the experience changes based on their experience. And that's exactly what we have here. And here's something that's really important. If you've tuned out for a moment, come back just for a moment here. And that is horizontal consequences do not equal vertical condemnation. Sometimes, God will let us pay a price for our sin, horizontally, meaning in this life, and that does not equal vertical condemnation. And vertical condemnation does not equal horizontal consequences. No saying, no vertical condemnation does not equal horizontal consequences. In other words, when we say there's no condemnation, now for those who are in Christ Jesus, it doesn't mean that there will be no consequences for sin, it means there's no condemnation. In other words, our experience changes based on our relationship to the Spirit of God.
Now, if you've tracked with this, let me just add a couple arrows to this. So, in one relationship, it is you don't have the Holy Spirit when you come to trust Jesus Christ, you acknowledge your sinfulness and you say, I'm a sinful person, I need a savior, you move from that to I have the Holy Spirit. And then there's two arrows that just go back and forth between, you have the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit has you. And the reason I picture it this way, is I want you to not think of this as a three-tiered experience. Some people see Christianity as a three-tiered experience, you're unsaved, then you're saved and unspiritual, and then there's the super spiritual. And it isn't. There's really, Christian, and non-Christian. And the Christian will move between these two experiences on a somewhat frequent basis. But the more that we grow in our experience of Christ, the more we will get to a point where we can live more and more in the place where the spirit has you. That doesn't mean that we will be there all the time. But it means that it's not normal to just say, well, I've come to Christ, but I live in a defeated space. Struggle, yes, defeated consistently, no.
Now, what's the key to this? Well, I would suggest that it is really about our surrender. That the way to not be staked to sin, to not have sin crouching at our door, I guess sin will always crouch at our door, but not to be overcome by it, is really in letting the spirit lead us in putting to death the deeds of the flesh. And the reason I say that this is surrender. Notice the emphasis in this text on the mind, and on this idea of surrender that's here.
And what this means is that what is surrendering to God, is how the Spirit leads us, or we have let the spirit have control of us, is by paying attention to what is in the word of God so that we understand it and know it. Because what happens for a lot of people is, we say if I don't know it, then I can't be held accountable, so I don't need to know. And then what we know, we obey in every detail, we don't negotiate. Instead, we say God, I will follow you in this way. In Genesis 4, the phrase that's used is it says, that sin is crouching at your door, and you must master it. In other words, not be mastered by it.
See, it's really possible that you can come to faith in Jesus Christ and not be destroyed by sin. Now, I understand that in our cultural moment, to even talk about sin seems to be unaware of the cultural narratives which are basically, well there's people who are misguided. There are things that are difficult, challenging, but we don't really have sin. But in the Bible, sin is any alignment that's against the things of God. This is anything in your life, anything in my life, where what I'm doing is, I'm saying, I am living my life my way instead of according to what God wants.
In 1 John 3:23, we read this, "And this is his command." In other words, if you want to know what God says, you know when it talks about the law and the Old Testament, "And this is God's command: to believe in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us." Do you hear the resonance with what has already been taught? In other words, the way that we know is because we feel drawn to the things of God, we say this is what I want.
And here's what I want to say to you today. It's easy to look around, especially in our world right now and say there's the problem, there's the problem, there's the problem, that group of people is the problem. The thing the Bible always does is it has us look inside and say, part of the problem in this world is me. And the way that I'll contribute to this world being different, better, is by letting the Spirit of God control me living in accordance with the things of God. But I can be bound like that elephant so easily if I'm not paying attention to the Spirit of God and saying, God in everything that I know to be true, I will surrender to you.
Now in Genesis 4, the Cain - Abel story, what happens is Cain kills Abel. And then Cain is approached by God and God says, "Hey, where's your brother?" And this is not a question of information. It's not like God was wondering, "Hey, where's Abel today? Where did you put him?" He knew, he was asking the question to prompt repentance. What he's doing is he was saying, I want you to acknowledge that you've chosen your own path and that it's destructive. And I want you to come home. And in coming to me, I want you to experience the life that I have created for you.
You know, this was right after the Garden of Eden. You have the Garden of Eden, God created everything, humanity through its own choices made its decision to fall, and then you get this story. And what does God do? He shows up in grace immediately and says, look, the issue here isn't to go try really hard not to do that again. It's to come to me and acknowledge your need. And that is the message that we see over and over again. And as we do that, then what happens is we start to grow in our desire to say, who wouldn't want to follow a god who has made it so that I can live without condemnation and made it so I can live without bondage? Who wouldn't want to align my life to that? Well, the answer is, sometimes we don't because we think we know a better way. But when we say God, your will, not my will, God, I surrender to you. Then we live in a place where we can say I don't need to be burdened by my bondage to a destructive habit, to even an unknown kind of demeanor or perspective, or way of viewing the world that brings destruction to others and to myself. Instead I can be part of the solution.
Let's pray together. And let me just ask you today where are you in your relationship to the Holy Spirit? As we talk today, maybe for some of you, you say, you know, I don't think I have the Holy Spirit in me. Because I am hostile to the things of God. I don't have any peace. Maybe today is just your day to say God, I want to acknowledge my sin before you and trust Jesus Christ, and I want to move into a new relationship with you. I want the Holy Spirit in my life.
Maybe today, you're living with a sense of defeat in an area. You know you're a Christian, you're sure of it. But you're living with a sense of defeat. And maybe today, it's just a reminder to say there's something better for you. And to say God, I want to follow you in every area of my life because I know that you know what's best. I don't want to be exhausted, trying to live out my life my way.
Maybe you see yourself kind of going back and forth frequently. And maybe today is just a day to say God, I want to surrender afresh to you. One of the activities that I tried to do most days, so I try to just start my day simply getting on my knees and saying, God, this is your day, you are the God of the universe. I am not. And I surrender all of my ways, all of the things that I do today to you. Sometimes it lasts five minutes, sometimes less, sometimes longer. And then you come back. But for me, it's just a posture of saying, God, I want you to be my God. I don't want to be my own god. I'm not sufficient for that job. And when you and I make that choice, then we get to live without the persistent bondage and the stakes that can hold us down. God help us not to be people who ignore the potential ravaging effects of sin, but instead be people who take it seriously and live with a hope and a reality of what it can mean to live without being dominated by sin. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.
