Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Holiness

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Turn with me in your Bibles to Romans chapter 6, if you would please, Romans chapter 6. If you haven’t picked up on the fact that there’s a theme this morning, we are observing the 4th of July, even though it’s not until Wednesday, and talking about our country and its independence. I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been in church services before, for the 4th of July or before the 4th of July or Memorial Day, other patriotic holidays, where it seems like we forget the fact that we’re there to worship God.

It seems like we picked some days out of the calendar instead to worship our country and worship our flag, and certainly there are religious groups that accuse us of that. And if we don’t keep the right perspective about it, they may be right. I don’t think that’s what we’re doing here today, however.

If you listen to the songs that we’ve sung, and folks, we’re singing and we’ve been singing about God and our thankfulness to Him for the country that He’s given us to live in. Folks, our patriotism should never be worship of our country, but it should be rooted in thankfulness to our God because out of all the countries we live in, for whatever reason, He chose to allow us to be born in a country that’s free, that’s prosperous. And I realize some of us would argue and debate about how free we really are anymore, but compared to the rest of the world, we’re in pretty good shape.

And it was because of, I won’t say they were all born-again Christians, but it was because of men that at least cared about biblical values and biblical principles and were governed by them a little over 200 years ago that put us in good stead up to this point. If you listen to our patriotic songs, by the way, how many of you had ever heard that later verse of the Star-Spangled Banner before this morning? Anybody?

Okay, a couple of you. It says in the hymnal, it’s verse 2, and it is in our hymnal, but it’s actually the fourth verse of the song. My favorite verse of the song says, Thus be it error when free men shall stand, torn between their loved homes in the war’s desolation.

Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation. And then conquer we must, when our cause it is just. And this be our motto, and God is our trust. I love that verse. The patriotic songs we sing, yes, they talk about how great our country is, but they remind us that we have this country because God gave it to us, because God enabled us to have it.

And it’s not just something great we did on our own. It’s something that we were blessed with by God. I was rereading the Declaration of Independence yesterday.

How many of you have ever read that? I’m not going to give you a test on it. If you’ve read it, you can raise your hand.

It’s all right. They used to make us in school memorize portions of it. And for a while, I had portions of it memorized, that and the Constitution.

At the beginning of it, I’m just going to read the very first paragraph. It says, When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another, or with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitled them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. That first paragraph says, when it becomes necessary for one country to break away from another country because they’ve been denied the rights that the laws of nature and nature’s God entitled them, they need to set forth the reasons why.

And it says in the next paragraph, we hold these truths. I thought all this was in the first paragraph. I’m sorry.

That’s why I said I was just going to read you the first. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. See, they realized that there were natural rights that we had that were not given to us by government. They should be guaranteed by government, but they’re not given to us by government.

They’re given to us by our Creator. We’re endowed with them. They are gifts from our Creator, and that word inalienable means that they cannot be taken away.

Men will try, but they’re gifts from God, and they’re not anybody’s to take away. Now, I won’t read you the whole thing, but that’s basically what the Declaration of Independence was. They could have voted, and they did vote on resolutions of whether or not to break away from Great Britain and whether or not to be independent.

They could have simply done that by saying, I make a motion that we break away. I second. All those in favor, aye.

They actually wrote this document to explain the reasons why. And incidentally, there are copies on the bulletin boards up here and downstairs. If you’ve never read the Declaration of Independence before, I’d encourage you to do so.

We can’t listen to our patriotic songs and we can’t read the history of this country without realizing that what we are given, the liberty that we have, is not something that we purchased for ourselves, but that it was a gift from God. And the reason we were able to go and secure those liberties that God gave us in the first place was because of the Christian faith of this country. Again, I won’t say all of the founding fathers were born-again Christians, but they were certainly men who valued the principles of the Bible.

Now, just simply valuing the principles of the Bible won’t get you into heaven, but it does make for a pretty good form of government, if I do say so myself. The foundation that led us to this point, we are led to believe today, we’re led to believe by some of the movers and shakers in our popular culture, that Christianity is a threat to our liberty. Have you heard quotes like the person who said on television that fundamentalist Christianity was a greater threat to our freedom than the Taliban?

Folks, I’ve been reading my Bible for over 20 years, and I’ve never once felt the compulsion to go strap a bomb to my chest or fly a plane into a building. Have any of you? Don’t raise your hands.

You’ll end up on some kind of list somewhere. If you have, you can talk to me after church and we’ll talk and get you straightened out. I’ve never felt compelled to go and attack somebody because of their difference of belief.

See, Christianity is what brought tolerance to this country in the first place. And when I say tolerance, I mean the belief that everybody’s entitled to be wrong, not necessarily the modern definition of tolerance that we have to agree with everybody and say nobody’s wrong. But the idea that you had the right to be wrong and we’re not going to persecute you for it, we may try and change your mind, but we’re not going to persecute you for it, comes from Christianity.

It was when there was a biblical influence on government for the first time ever that there was true religious and political freedom. It was the Great Awakening that led to the American Revolution. How many of you know what the Great Awakening is?

Anybody? You’re not raising your hands because you’re afraid I’m going to ask you, aren’t you? The Great Awakening was the first great widespread revival in North America.

It took place in the 1730s, 40s, 50s, somewhere in that time frame. It was led by men like John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards. They preached, and men’s eyes were open, some of them for the first time.

Some of these people had sat in church for years. They’d sat in government-sponsored churches for years and been fed a steady diet of just behave yourself, do good, maybe God will love you. But these men came along and preached the biblical gospel, and people’s eyes were opened for the first time.

And the nation as a whole, it seemed like, started to turn and repent. They started to believe the gospel, and folks, revival broke out. And it was the churches that led people to see that God had something more in mind for them than just bondage to slavery, I mean, bondage to sin and oppression.

I want to read you something I found on the computer yesterday. It’s from a group called Reclaiming America for Christ, that they’re based not too far from where I used to live. Speaking to the churches, they said, we are to proclaim the truth of salvation in Jesus Christ alone to a lost world and to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

That’s the job of the local church. As light, we are to equip our people and lead them out to confront the culture, to point people to Jesus Christ. As salt, we are to equip our people and lead them out to reprove the unfruitful works of darkness. America was founded on this truth.

The message that you must be born again resonated with the colonists. This is talking about during the first Great Awakening. Resonated and the colonists realized that it was not church membership, but a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that made you a Christian.

Amen? I think we’d agree with that. The great revival that history calls the Great Awakening was the event that unified America to become one nation under God.

Folks, it wasn’t the secular philosophers that led to liberty in this country. It was the men of God. It was the women of God who read their Bibles, who realized they must be born again and realized there was something more than just bondage, oppression, and sin, and darkness for them to live their lives in.

The king of England willfully placed himself above the law as he unilaterally broke the charters that were in place between the colonies and Great Britain. As the colonists, catch this, I did not realize this. As the colonists sought to print Bibles and tracts for the Indians, the king said, no. There’s something we’re not being taught in history class anymore.

As Pennsylvania voted to outlaw slavery, We’re talking before the Civil War. We’re talking before the American Revolution. As Pennsylvania voted to outlaw slavery, the king said no. The king rejected the authority of elected offices in America and placed his own handpicked governors over the colonists.

And finally, the rumor of a plan to establish the Church of England over the colonies and outlaw other religious denominations was one of the last straws. The king placed troops in America even though there was no conflict with the Indians or France, and the effort was clearly to subjugate the colonists. Folks, we’re taught, and rightfully so, that there were economic reasons for the Revolution, the Stamp Act, that no taxation without representation, but there was so much more behind it.

There was already oppression going on before the Stamp Act happened. When they wanted to share the gospel with the Indians and the king said no, when they wanted to outlaw slavery and the king said no, when they wanted to go to their own churches much like ours. Folks, do you realize that Baptists were persecuted even early on in this country by the established government church?

When they wanted to go to their churches and worship God after the pattern of the New Testament, the king said no, long before the Stamp Act ever happened. As the king tightened his grip, stripping liberty from the colonists, the colonists themselves were uniting as a result of the Great Awakening. Rather than 13 very divided entities, they became one nation under God.

It was the patriot pastors that were the backbone, the black regiment, as the British called those men that ascended to their pulpits in their black clerical robes, I’m glad we don’t have to wear those anymore, and stirred the people’s hearts to liberty from tyranny. We have no king but Jesus, was the cry after a long train of usurpations of the law had continued and requests for relief had gone unanswered. The colonies finally were forced to declare their independence.

Not only was it the influence of the churches that led to the birth of this great nation, but it has been the pulpit that has led in the fight against every social ill in America, whether that be slavery, discrimination, suffrage, liquor, abortion, etc. America is in desperate need of another great awakening. Folks, far from being the ones who are a threat to liberty in this country, it is our churches, it is our Bible, folks, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that is the only thing that will bring liberty to men. Because it doesn’t matter how free we are politically, it doesn’t matter how free we are to go out and live our lives the way we want to, if we are in spiritual bondage, there is no freedom.

And it’s when people were spiritually unshackled, when they heard the gospel and responded in faith and they were spiritually unshackled, that people began to see, wait a minute, this is not what God wants for us. And as a result, for the first time, spiritual freedom and political freedom teamed up for the first time since the Garden of Eden. Folks, I’m a firm believer.

I know that 2 Corinthians chapter 3 is talking about freedom from the law and freedom from the rituals of the law, as we’ve been talking a lot about from Galatians on Sunday nights. But there’s a verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 that says, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And I’m a firm believer that that really applies beyond just what Paul was talking about.

I don’t want to take it too far out of context. But as a general principle, it works. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there’s liberty.

We can live in the middle of an oppressive country that takes away our rights and still be free inside because Jesus Christ has set us free from sin and bondage. But we can live in the freest country in the world. They have these freedom indexes now where they measure how free a country is and they put a numerical value on it, and we’re not at the top of the list anymore.

I don’t know how accurate those are anymore. But they tend to say countries like Norway and Denmark and Canada are more free. I don’t know if that’s the case or not.

But we can live in the freest country in the world, whether it’s the United States, whether it’s Canada, whether it’s Denmark, and still be just as big of slaves as we can be because we’re in bondage to sin. Folks, Christianity teaches liberty, not just political liberty, but liberty from our sins. And it was that liberty from sin, that freedom from sin that only Jesus Christ can bring, that is the whole reason, is the underlying reason why our forefathers went and fought and died to give us the country that we have today.

I remember being shocked the first day of my junior year of high school when I walked into my American government class, and the teacher told us that freedom in America, an exact quote, freedom in America is a direct result of the blood atonement of Jesus Christ. I thought, you’re going to get fired. He’s still there last time I checked. He’s absolutely right.

There would be no America, there would be no freedom in this country if it wasn’t for what Jesus did on the cross. That sounds far-fetched if you take it out of context of what I’ve already told you. But this Declaration of Independence that we were given, that was based in part on the Bible, said that men were given rights by God to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Folks, this morning what I want to talk to you about is what I see as Paul’s Declaration of Independence from Sin, and I want to talk to you about life, liberty, and the pursuit of holiness, which are the things that really we are to strive after. Romans chapter 6 verse 1 says, What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

God forbid, verse 2. God forbid. The question he’s being asked, or the rhetorical question he’s posing, what do you want me to say?

If for every sin there’s grace, should we just go out and sin more so that, hey, there’s more grace? If Christ is forgiving, and we’re supposed to tell the world how forgiving he is, Should we go out and sin more so that we show the world how much he forgives us? And Paul says, God forbid.

How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? He says, he’s writing, folks, to believers. This is not the world asking him, well, why don’t we just go out and sin more so that God has something to forgive?

He’s writing to believers, and he says, how can we who are dead to sin, and he makes an important point there that as Christians, we’re dead to sin. How should we who are dead to sin, how shall we who are dead to sin, live any longer therein? How is it possible that if we are dead to sin, that we would go and live in it?

And he’s not saying that it’s impossible for a Christian to sin. It’s very possible. It happens every day.

It happens just about every moment of every day. But what he’s talking about here in this passage is a lifestyle of sin, where we say, yes, we’ve been born again. We’ve trusted Christ as our Savior.

Our sins have been forgiven. So let’s just go right on back to them. As Christians, we sin, we mess up, we fall from time to time, and we are supposed to get back up, deal with our Lord, confess our sins, and put them behind us, not to lay down and wallow in them.

And that’s the difference. When he says, how shall we live any longer therein, he’s talking about how do we go back to the mud pit and wallow around in the sins some more? How do we make that our lifestyle if we’re dead to sin?

Know ye not that so many of us, as we’re baptized into Jesus Christ, we’re baptized into his death? And he’s not saying here that people who’ve been baptized are dead to sin. He’s operating off the assumption that people who’ve been baptized have been saved because that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Baptism in the Bible always follows salvation. And they were probably a lot more careful than our churches are today. And so it was pretty well assumed that if somebody had been baptized, you knew just about as well as you could somebody else’s spiritual situation that they were saved.

So he’s talking about saved people, people who’ve been born again. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? That baptism, again, does not save.

It is a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s a sign of identifying with that. It says we were baptized into his death. We publicly identified with his death and his burial and his resurrection.

Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. And he’s not speaking here again of the act of baptism bringing us new life. But he’s saying as people who’ve been baptized, it was assumed that we had been born again before that.

And so when we’ve been born again and we’ve gone through baptism, made our public confession of Christ, from that point on we are supposed to walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

What does he mean that the old man is crucified? He doesn’t mean that we went and put some old person on the cross. He means that the person we used to be, the way we lived our lives before we were born again, that has been nailed to the cross with Christ. The old man has been crucified.

Sin has been crucified. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. You see, that was the way of life before Christ. That was the way of life for all of us before we were born again, was that we were servants to sin.

And he said, now that old man, the sin, has been crucified, that we should no longer serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. That old person that we used to be, that was in sin, that was ruled by sin, was crucified and dead, and we were born again.

And something else came along. We walk in newness of life. We don’t have to serve sin anymore.

For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now, if ye be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. If we’ve died with Christ, if the old man has died with Christ, we’ve been born again.

Christ has forgiven our sins and made us something completely new. It says we will live with him as well. Folks, one day, if you’ve trusted Christ, one day you’re going to be resurrected.

If the Lord tarries and we die before he comes again, one day we’ll be resurrected. and we’ll stand before him in new bodies. I don’t completely understand that, whether they’re going to look exactly the same, whether they’ll be completely different, whether they will be these bodies, just better.

But we’re going to have glorified, resurrected bodies, and we’re going to live with him for eternity because we died with him. Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him. Jesus isn’t under death anymore.

And folks, even though we may physically die, we’re not under the tyranny of death anymore because death can only take us once, and after that Christ gives us life everlasting, that death cannot take away. Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him, and we live with him. Verse 10, for in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

Christ only had to die for sin one time, and that took care of all of it, and now he lives for eternity. Likewise, he says, he refers back to Christ when he says likewise, he’s used Christ as an example for us, Not that we can physically die and raise ourselves up from the dead like Christ did. Not that we can die for sin like Christ did.

But He’s still given Christ to us as an example. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. Just like Christ died, consider the person that you were, that person that was in sin, that was under sin, consider them dead.

Consider them gone, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. When we were born again, it was as though we were raised up somebody completely different, a new creation, a new creature. And let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in the lusts thereof.

I’m going to talk about this some more in a minute, but it’s really not something we think about of sin being in charge over us. But before we trust Christ, it’s sin that calls the shots in our lives. And he tells the Christians, don’t go back to that old way.

There’s no reason for it. There’s no need for it. As Christians, we shouldn’t be able to do it.

Of going back to the old way of letting sin reign in our mortal body, letting sin have charge over us, and obeying the lusts of sin. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto God, but yield yourselves. .

. I’m sorry, excuse me. It really messes up the meaning of the text when I skip a line, doesn’t it?

Let’s go back and try verse 13 again. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. And what he says here is don’t yield your body, don’t surrender your body to sin to obey it and to be used for unrighteousness, but instead yield yourself to God.

It’s God that we should surrender to as those that are alive from the dead, as that new creation God has made once we’ve been born again, and surrender, yield our members as instruments of righteousness unto God. Surrender ourselves to Him so that He uses us for righteous purposes. Verse 14, one of my favorite verses in the Bible.

And if you ever find yourself tempted with something, a great verse to have memorized and tell yourself, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. Sin shall not have dominion over you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a believer, I’m speaking to you if you’ve been born again, if you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior.

You as a believer do not have to give in to sin. It’s so easy when temptation comes to feel like, well, it’s so strong, I feel like I have no choice but to just give in. Sin shall not have dominion over you.

We do not have to let sin call the shots in our lives. We don’t have to give in when sin knocks on the door and say, sure, come on in. He’s not in charge anymore.

Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you’re not under the law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?

God forbid. It’s like Paul anticipates the way we think. A lot of people think because of our belief in eternal security that it’s a license to sin.

Oh, well, if you believe God forgives you and you’re not under these Old Testament laws and you don’t have to be good to maintain your salvation, well, you can just go and do whatever you want. Well, that sounds good. It sounds like a workable idea, but it doesn’t work because if we’ve been born again, if we’ve been born again, we’re eternally secure, but we won’t want to do those things anymore.

I’m not saying we won’t be tempted at times, but our desire will change, and there’s something in us that will say, hey, this is not good for you, and even if we do fall, we will feel convicted and feel the need to get right with God again. There’s nothing I see in the Bible that says we can claim to be believers and then go out and live however we want, and we’ve got fire insurance. Folks, eternal security is not a license to sin because that assumes that there’s no being born again.

That hearts. And so the question, Paul doesn’t even wait for him to ask. He asks it himself.

If we’re not under the law, does that mean we go out and live however we want? And he says, again, God forbid. Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey his servants ye are to whom you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness?

I’ve heard a preacher quote several times, Bob Dylan, and I’ve never been a Bob Dylan fan and don’t know where he said this, but it’s a good quote, so I’m going to use it anyway, that he had said at one point, it’s either God or it’s the devil, but you’re going to serve somebody. This verse points out that whoever we obey is our master. We’re the servant of whoever we obey.

And folks, it gives us two choices here, sin unto death or obedience unto righteousness. Ultimately, we are either serving sin or we are serving God. Nobody in this world is a free agent.

I’m sorry if we think we are. We’re not. The Bible sets out the two sides, and the lines are drawn.

You know which side you’re on by who you obey. But God be thanked, verse 17, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you. He says at one point, he says at one point to the church at Rome, and if I have said Corinth up to this point, I know I quoted 2 Corinthians earlier, but I may have gotten my wires crossed after that and said he was writing to the people at Corinth.

No, he was writing to the people at Rome. He was telling them, you used to be servants of sin. And ladies and gentlemen, I used to be a servant of sin.

I was born that way, couldn’t help it. Each of you were born servants to sin, but he says that ye have obeyed the heart of the form of doctrine which was delivered to you. And what he’s talking about, doctrine to the Romans, he’s not talking about, oh, you’ve got all your theological ducks in a row and everything checked off on the list and you know all the right things to believe, so you’re good.

I don’t believe the Bible teaches doctrinal regeneration, which is a fancy word to say you’re saved by believing all the right things. That’s not what the Bible teaches. When he says the doctrine that was delivered to them, he’s talking about the gospel, that Christ died for them because they were sinners.

They were separated from God because of their sin. They needed a Savior, and they could not do enough to save themselves. And so Jesus stepped in and paid the penalty on our behalf.

And now by trusting in what He did by faith, we can have eternal life. That’s the gospel. And that’s the doctrine.

That’s the heart, the form of doctrine that was delivered to them that they obeyed from the heart. Being then made free from sin because of believing in the gospel. It wasn’t they worked hard enough to earn their freedom.

Being then made free from sin, having obeyed the doctrine, being freed from sin, you became the servants of righteousness. So they believed the gospel. They were born again.

They were set free from sin, and they became servants then of righteousness. They became servants of God. Now, if I’ve lost you, what does this have to do with the 4th of July?

What does this have to do with the Declaration of Independence? When I read this passage as so many others, it seems to me that Paul is declaring our independence as Christians from the old master we used to serve. And I don’t think he could any more clearly spell it out that we used to be slaves of sin.

And when he tells them, sin shall not have dominion over you, that sin’s day of ruling in your lives is over, he’s declaring our independence as Christians and saying we don’t have to serve that king anymore. But folks, just like our founding fathers, didn’t say we’re going throw off the king of England, and we’re just going to have anarchy. We’re just going to every man for himself.

Now, folks, again, they believed the Bible and believed we needed something to keep ourselves in line. There was something else placed in the vacuum that resulted from throwing off the old master. We don’t throw off sin and say, well, then I’m just going to do what I like.

A new master was put in place, a much better master than we had before. We’re going to move through this just very quickly. I know we’re running short of time this morning, but he lays out the things that are the result of serving sin.

And whether we realize it or not, we serve sin. The world thinks, I can go out and drink, I can go out and do drugs, I can go out and have affairs, I can party, I can do whatever I want, I’m my own person, I call the shots in my own life. Wrong.

What people don’t realize is that if they