Tonight, Romans chapter 6, I'm only going to
read a few verses, beginning at verse 11,
and it says, Likewise reckon ye yourselves also
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive
unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal
body, that ye should obey it in the
lust thereof.
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.
Father, we thank you for your word.
Lord, we thank you for the power, Lord,
of your word, and we ask tonight that
as we meditate on these things together, that,
Lord, your Holy Spirit would quicken these things,
would make them alive to our hearts.
Lord, the battle of sin that we have
every day of our lives, and so often,
Lord, this battle we fight it in the
energy of the flesh, we fight it with
our own will, our own good intentions, our
own effort to be better, and Lord, your
word tells us to do other things.
And we ask tonight as we look at
your word, and it tells us to reckon,
let not sin, neither yield, but yield.
Lord, as we look to your word, we
ask that you would open it up to
us, and speak to us from it, and
set us free.
In Jesus' name we ask it.
Amen.
Now, if you were with us for our
last study in the first part of Romans
chapter 6, very simply, if you'll recall, we
looked at some things there that Paul said,
knowing, knowing, you know, knowing your baptism, if
you know your baptism, know your crucifixion, know
your resurrection, know your obligation, some of these
things that the Lord just tells us to
know.
They're fixed.
These aren't things that essentially have anything to
do with us.
When I come to Christ, the moment I
accept Jesus Christ into my life, there are
some things that are just fixed.
They are done.
I am the heir of them.
I am the beneficiary of them.
And there is just as much as every
one of us tonight, we could maybe walk
out and see the moon, or we can
see the stars, the same stars that Adam
came out and looked at, and Abraham, and
Moses, and the apostles.
They're fixed.
They haven't moved, in a sense, in the
universe.
They're just fixed.
They're just there.
Well, so also, the day I accept Christ,
there are some things that are as fixed
as the stars in the sky.
They don't move.
They have nothing to do with me.
They're just things that God has done for
me, in the sense that the old man,
the Bible says, he is crucified with Christ.
I am risen with Christ.
I am seated in high heavenly places in
Jesus Christ.
Those are fixed things.
They're true of every single one of us.
If you're a child of God, if you've
received Christ, that's fixed.
It's not something that waivers.
It isn't something that maybe happens now and
then.
Or you find yourself having a curve for
you, if you're real good.
No, these are fixed.
They're just there.
God has done them.
It's a complete, total event.
It makes no difference tonight when you walk
in here.
It has nothing to do with being red,
yellow, black, or white, or young, or old,
or male, or female, or how long I've
been a Christian, or how good I've, you
know, been at the Christian life.
I am baptized into Christ.
I am dead in Christ.
I have risen with Christ.
I am seated with Christ.
If today you happen to walk in here
this evening, and you just, you know, led
everybody in your office to Christ, and they
all prayed the sinner's prayer with you, and
you held a little mini crusade in your
office, and saved half the building, and you
walk in here tonight, after mightily being used,
or maybe you walk in here tonight, and
you had a nice little fight on the
way over here with your husband or your
wife, or you, you know, are on your
cell phone, telling a few people what you
think of them, or you can hardly wait
to get home and see your kids, and
because boy, have they got something coming from
you.
And you may be, but you're, we're all,
they're just the same for every one of
us.
These are fixed.
The only difference is, is some of us
enjoy the benefits of them, and maybe others
don't, but they're fixed for us.
They're done.
As we looked at last week, knowing this,
just know this.
And tonight we want to look at some
other words.
These are more or less octave words, acting
upon what we know, you might say.
Here, these are fixed, and now because they're
there, Paul tells us as he goes on,
and he says, here's some things I want
you to do.
I think sometimes we look at chapters, you
know, five, six, seven, and eight of Romans
is so deep, or theological, or trying to,
you know, they're all wrapped up for us
theologically, or so difficult, and we can't unravel
them and figure them out, and they're really
not that difficult sometimes, if almost you just
look at some of the operative words.
And here, over and over, he says, no,
done, no, it's done, it's set, fixed, for
you, finished.
And now he says, knowing these things, now
he turns, and he says, likewise, here in
verse 11, reckon.
Reckon ye yourselves, or also yourselves, to be
dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
He says, because of what is fixed, because
of what is done, because of the words
and the things you want to know, he
says, now I want you to act upon
them.
I want, here is the response that Paul
says he wants to have within us.
And he gives us now some operative words,
some important words.
These aren't just simply suggestions for somebody that
just wants to, you know, kind of look
at little words in the theological library of
the Bible.
These are commands for a child of God
if you want to deal with sin.
If we are not doing these things, we
will not deal with sin.
It isn't where God gives different people different
ways to deal with sin.
There's only one way to deal with sin
truly, and that's to know certain things and
then act upon those things.
And the person that knows and acts ends
up seeing victory over sin.
If you try to do it any other
way, it won't work.
There isn't, you know, nine or ten ways
to skin a cat, in a sense, or
to, you know, to have victory over sin.
There's just one way.
A person knows what Christ has done, and
I respond to it.
And here, the first response that he gives
to us is the word reckon.
He says, now because this is so, reckon.
Now, the word reckon, we know the word,
and we use the word kind of, but
it's simply, essentially, the word reckon.
It just means consider yourself as one who
has died to sin.
When he says reckon yourselves to be dead,
he says just consider that done in your
life.
Accept it as fact.
Doesn't say figure it.
Doesn't say compute it.
He just says accept it.
Consider it done in your own heart and
in your own life.
He said just simply reckon it.
It has nothing to do with, you know,
with our life.
All the sin, he just says, just whatever
its behavior, not that it's died to me,
we'll look at that in a moment, but
I died to it.
I am somebody there that I've died, I
want to die to its impulses.
And therefore, I have died to it, the
Bible says.
I have died to its authority.
I have died to its nature.
And therefore, if this is done, it's fixed
in heaven.
And I am seated in Christ, and my
sin is blotted out, and it is gone.
Now I'm to reckon that to be so.
You see, the wonderful thing about a Christian
is that Christianity essentially tells us that every
one of us, no matter where we've been
and what we've done, no matter how much
time we spend doing it, the most wonderful,
the most glorious, the most powerful thing that
ever happened in all the world, occurred on
the cross when Jesus Christ died for us.
And his act of dying on the cross
for me outweighs all the sins I have
ever done.
It outweighs all the sins ever done to
me, by me, around me.
All the sins of all the world of
all time, the Bible says.
Christ died not for our sins only, but
for the sins of the world.
They are all, you know, something that have
been hung upon the cross, and the cross
of Jesus Christ outweighs all of my sin.
It is far greater, as terrible as I
may feel, as a sin, as wretched, and
as guilty, and as many, and as terrible
of all the things I've done.
The wonder and the glory and the majesty
of Jesus Christ on the cross outweighs all
of it, not just mine, not just ours
here, but the sins of the world.
A lot of people obviously have never taken
the Lord up on it, but still, you
know, that God loved the world, he gave
his Son.
But it's done as far as God is
concerned.
And when I realize that, and if this,
you know, has essentially been done with sin,
it's given me full access into God's presence.
And here, as far as God's concerned, he
now tells me, I want you to reckon
the old nature that has dominated, that has
dictated, that has controlled you, that has attacked
you, that has reigned over your life, I
want you just simply to reckon it dead.
I want you to, yeah, that's simply what
he's saying there.
It's a command.
Likewise, reckon ye yourselves also to be dead
indeed unto sin.
Here God just simply says, I did it,
now you accept it.
And sometimes, I suppose, of all the things
that you and I ever have to deal
with, and ever have to accept in all
of life, this is, it's understandably the most
difficult, in one sense.
And the most difficult in a sense to
understand that God would do such a work
for us.
And, but thus he, but he tells us,
no matter how difficult it is, the problem
is simple to deal with.
You reckon it so.
And one time, many years ago, when I
was a new Christian, I was one day
over at a house of a friend I'd
met.
I didn't know him very well at the
time, but I'd been getting to know him.
And I enjoyed him, and we went over
to his home, and when he took me
to his home, he had this beautiful home.
A couple of acres in Pasadena, and one
of those huge, huge driveways, and one of
these kind of ranch-style houses, and it
had, you know, tennis courts, and swimming pools,
and all sorts of stuff all over it.
And beautiful lawns, and rolling, like a, you
know, a park almost.
It was such a fabulous place.
And we're kind of sitting there, and we'd
been playing tennis for a little while and
things.
We came in, we were sitting in the
kitchen and having a Coke, and I'm kind
of looking around at this place, and I
said, boy, this is pretty neat house you
got here.
Nice world.
And one thing led to another, and I
came to realize, he said, well, I'd always,
we did always one like this for me.
I said, really?
What do you mean?
And he said, well, I was adopted.
And then his mother, adopted mother, came in
and sat down and began to tell me
one of the most remarkable and wonderful stories
I've ever heard.
Because this couple, this family that they were
adopted into, wonderful Christian family, loved the Lord,
and God had blessed them in many ways,
and wonderful walk, wonderful maturity.
They had two children, a son and a
daughter, that were older than this particular one.
And, but as they just one day looked
at all that God had done, it entered
their heart a number of years earlier to
adopt.
They realized, God, you have so blessed us
and given us so much, but yet we
realize there's so many children in the world
that have no such opportunity.
And they began to think and pray about
it.
And because they're, I'm not sure if they
themselves were Hungarian, but they ended up, you
know, going to Hungary.
They decided we, and they literally found an
orphanage in Hungary.
And this orphanage that dealt with, you know,
with adoptions there in America.
And they actually started with somebody here in
Los Angeles that dealt with foreign adoptions.
They hooked him up with this adoption agency
over in Hungary.
They decided we want a child, but we,
but they actually gave very specific instructions to
the orphanage.
And they said, we want perhaps the, a
boy that would maybe be the least likely
to be adopted.
One that just looks like, you know, they're
probably not going to be adopted.
Well, they went and checked things out, came
back with a report and told the family,
well, we found somebody the least likely we
have in the, in the orphanage, but we
better tell you seven years old, he has
already been placed seven times in foster homes.
Each time he's been returned for various reasons.
But at this stage, it's very unlikely that
somebody is going to come in and take
this child.
And he's had some difficult social structures and
everything else, of course, with it.
And they there thought about it, prayed about
it, and they instructed them do it.
At that point, they paid all the costs
involved in having somebody from the adoption agents
here, go over to Hungary, do all the
paperwork, get all the legal things done, you
know, pick up the child, bring the child
back to the United States for them, and
handle all of this work.
And literally the moment that that plane landed
in the United States, the adoption was legal
and complete.
That boy, though he didn't know, you know,
didn't speak a word of English, absolutely no
idea what it was that had transpired.
The moment he landed, he was now part
of that family.
He had been adopted into the family.
He had an United States birth certificate.
And he was an heir to the wealth
of the family, though he didn't speak a
word of English.
They met the airplane there.
And as he got off, they all introduced
themselves to him.
They had been trying to explain you're being
adopted.
There's a family that loves you.
They don't speak English.
We're going to another portion of the world
and all these things.
But he didn't grasp much of this at
all.
And in the translation, they learned a few
Hungarian words, not many.
And he didn't know any English, but there
a translator kind of helped explain to them,
you know, mom and dad and your brother
and your sister.
And then they told him his name, his
new, you know, American name.
He had a Hungarian name that they couldn't
fit.
And so they just gave him their family
name, of course, and said, this is who
you are.
And as they gave him that, you know,
this name and said, this is who you
are.
He's kind of looking around and wondering what's
going on.
They get in the car, drive home, this
beautiful place.
They decided they had it set up where
there was a picnic there where they had
the immediate relatives, cousins, and uncles and aunts
there for this little welcoming into the family.
And so they drive up and they're trying
to explain who everybody is.
And this is so-and-so and this
and so-and-so.
This is Harold.
And as they're explaining and greeting Harold, he's
looking there.
He didn't know who Harold was.
He didn't know who they were.
But he's, you know, they're looking and saying
you're part of our family.
And they're hugging and, you know, wanting the
kids to all play and have a nice
time.
He's there totally bewildered.
Didn't speak any English.
They didn't speak any Hungarian.
And so they're just going on.
They just, they had this barbecue going.
And there, as they were making hamburgers for
everybody, they, first thing they did was kind
of came over and they gave him a
hamburger and kind of set it up for
him.
And they noticed when they gave him the
plate, he grabbed it, he pulled it right
into himself.
He put his hand over it and his
eyes went back and forth and he backed
up into a corner, holding onto this hamburger.
And they realized, boy, this kid's had a
tough life.
And, but as they're saying, you know, they
tell everybody, don't worry about it.
Don't pay any attention.
Let him go.
And so they give all the kids hamburgers.
And then they all sit down and go
over to be friendly with him.
And he's sitting there watching all this.
And one of the kids took his eyes
off their plate.
The moment he did, he reached over and
he grabbed the hamburger, put it on his
plate and he made a fist.
And he looked at the kid, and they
look at it and real, boy, he did
have a tough, you know, and one thing.
So they let him have it.
We'll give you another one.
And so he's there kind of eating and
holding on.
Another kid take his eyes off his plate
and he grabs it.
And he ended up, I think he had
seven or eight hamburgers before they just said,
let him do it.
Don't worry about it.
And until he's full, we're going to listen,
whatever it is.
And he's grabbing everything, making them, waiting to
fight.
Nobody's fighting with him.
And they're trying to convince him and everything.
And he's losing something in the translation.
They take him in.
Here is your room.
He never had a room.
He never had a bed.
And they show him, here's your bed.
And they'd gotten some clothing for him.
He never had, here's a closet.
And they got all these toys and they're
saying, here it's yours.
And they even wrote his name on all
this stuff and around here, this is you
and Harold, whoever Harold is, you know, and
they realized as time was going on, he's
even wondering, you can almost read it in
him.
He's almost there.
I don't know who this Harold is, but
when he shows up and they find out
I'm not him, I'm going to be thrown
out of here quick.
But anyway, he's going on with this thing
and they go through a day and it
was kind of awkward, but they loved him
and they were so excited.
They realized he came in with a lot
of baggage and a lot of trials and
a lot of problems and a lot of
history.
Didn't know a word of English, but there's,
they set him up that night and he's
got his own bed.
Everything's there.
Here, all your toys and here's everything.
And by then he's so tired, he goes
to bed, falls asleep.
They all kind of go and go to
sleep.
But the one mistake they made that they
never calculated was, is that his room was
right off the kitchen.
And they didn't realize what they'd done until
the next morning.
They woke up, went in, looked in the
cupboards and the refrigerator, everything was stripped.
He spent all night taking all the food,
you know, out of the kitchen and he
went and he hid it somewhere in his
room.
It was in the closet, it was under
his bed, it was in the drawers, everything,
you know, he had.
You know, just, and he'd eaten a bunch,
all he could eat sitting up there at
night.
You know, just, I'm getting the best out
of this until they find me out or
whatever.
You know, but he literally did this.
And then they, they, they sat there and
realized he, but so they, uh, they said,
no, we got to put it back.
But they let him keep all the stuff
that wasn't perishable.
And then they, even in the refrigerator, they,
you know, with everything that had to be
in there, they wrote his name here.
This is yours.
We won't touch it.
You have it.
Don't worry about it.
We've got to keep it fresh.
They're doing everything they can.
They got it pretty well cleaned out, but
it was about a week before they realized
he hid cheese between the mattresses and, uh,
that had the obvious results of a new
bed.
But anyway, the thing is, is this went
on here with somebody there that, that, as
you look at this kid, all of us,
what had happened in a moment's time is
that he had literally been picking up, picked
up at one end of the globe.
He had been translated from one end to
the other.
And in that a process occurred legally.
He had a new identity.
He had a new family.
He had a new language.
He had a new world.
He had a new culture.
He had all of this was given to
him in a moment, just like that.
When the plane landed the ground, it was
done.
And because it was done, he now had
a process.
He had to learn to reckon it done.
He had to come to grips, the fact
that this was really true.
He was honestly, this new creature, he was
this new person.
He had this new identity.
He had this new world.
He had a new family.
And it's something there.
The Bible doesn't say, figure it.
The Bible doesn't say, compute it.
It doesn't say, comprehend it.
It doesn't say, understand it.
The Bible nowhere suggests that you and I
try to figure out the love of God
like this.
You can't do it.
I mean, when you stopped to think of
his story, he was just moved from one
end of the planet to the other.
We were moved from one end of eternity
to the other.
Our sins were all blotted out of all
of our life.
In a moment, we are made a new
creation in Christ.
We were seated in high heavenly places.
The spirit bears witness with our spirit.
There were children of God, of children, then
heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with
Christ.
When the plane landed, when I accepted Christ
and I was born anew, at that point,
that's all imparted.
It's done.
But now the process that God says, all
you can do, don't try to figure that
out.
It isn't a mind job.
It isn't a brain job.
It isn't something that you sit there and
say, now, okay, how did all this happen?
You can't.
Trying to understand and grasp the love of
God is the most endless process, I suppose,
there may be in all of time and
eternity.
You cannot reason it.
I suppose this is one of the reasons
that you don't see many rich or many
noble or many great following after Christ.
People that are using their brain to try
to figure out the Christian life and why
such a thing could be true will spend
most of their life doing it.
But the person, the simple person that just
simply can look in the eyes of those
people and see there is a dimension and
a power of love that they had within
them for me to redeem me or to
love me or to adopt me.
And you can't rationalize it.
You can't reason it.
You reckon it.
You just accept it.
It is just done.
And so true with every child of God.
The process there of just realizing this is
what has been done for me.
I am crucified with Christ.
The sins are forgiven.
It is buried.
It is dead.
It is gone.
And it is something there and the only
way you really solve it is you just
reckon it is so.
I think a lot of people, we tend,
you know, we find ourselves sometimes when we
are going through difficult times in our life
and why do I do this?
Why am I this way?
Why am I having this problem?
You know, and you sit there and watch
this kid, why are you stealing those hamburgers?
Well, let's see.
We probably need to go back into your
childhood.
Let's all get in a plane and let's
go over to Hungary and let's sit down
in the orphanage and let's work all this
stuff out.
As if we got to go back into
healing of the memories or something.
And we got to go back to our
old life or back to the old world
and try to, you know, understand why I
am a sinner.
Why do I do these things?
Why do I lie?
Why do I cheat?
Why do I steal?
Well, I maybe I was born in a
dog eat dog world and with a fallen
human dog eat dog nature.
But the thing is, God still loved me
when he looked at me and his mercy
and his grace.
And he chose me fully cognizant of all
those things.
And we was aware he was forgiving us
of every one of those things.
He doesn't look there anymore.
He wants to have some sort of psychology
or where I've got to go back into
my old life.
And why do I steal hamburgers?
He just says, reckon it done.
Just reckon it done.
And when you begin to see what you
have begun, you are now you reckon the
old man to be dead and you are
now alive unto God through Jesus Christ.
You don't have to worry why you steal
hamburgers.
Just go open a refrigerator that's been given
to you.
Just begin to draw upon the life that
is there now.
You don't have to go back to the
old life, the new one.
You know, you could never have stolen anything
in Hungary that compares to what you're freely
given every day here.
And what we are given in Christ, the
power of it, the glory of it.
There's nothing in the world we could ever
beg, steal, borrow, trade or do anything to
get that touches the glory of what he
gives to his child.
And I'm alive in him.
And he says, just reckon it to be
so.
And here it's not, it's as difficult as
it is.
Maybe, you know, to as to why would
he love me?
As many questions that can bring up, you
can spend eternity figuring that out.
But we're not.
But the fundamental thing is to stop and
realize all I know is he does.
Jesus loves me.
This I know for the Bible tells me
so.
And he did it.
And he did it for me.
And he did it for you.
He did it for every one of us.
Paul then goes on.
He says, now reckon this so.
But then he goes on to verse 12.
He says, let not sin therefore reign in
your mortal body that you should obey it
and the less thereof.
A second operative, you know, operative word.
He says, first, I want you to reckon
yourself to be dead.
Reckon the old man to be gone.
Reckon the old life gone.
Reckon the old, you know, experience there to
be gone.
And he said, now he says, and he
says, let not sin reign.
There is, he says, I just want you
after you reckon the old gone.
Now I want you to say sin is
not going to remain, you know, within me.
It's not going to reign within me.
And here he looks there and God says,
this is your decision.
You're the one to put a stop to
it.
This is your personal choice, your personal decision
there.
You hear so often we pray and we
appeal to God, Lord, take this away from
me.
Take this nature away from me.
Take this love for sin away from me.
Take this desire for this way.
Take this all away from me as if
that's something that the Lord kind of does.
But here he looks essentially when I'm saying,
take the trial away.
And the Lord says, no, I'm not going
to do that.
I hear God squarely in his word puts
the responsibility might say we're squarely on our
shoulders.
He says, no, this is your decision.
I brought you out of that nation.
I brought you out of that world.
I brought you out of that language and
that culture and that dog eat dog world
and that corruption and how I'm living that
way.
But in terms of being delivered from it,
once now you're here and you reckon yourself
to be dead, but now don't you let
it reign within you.
And this is somewhere you see, he looks
at us and I'm saying, take it away.
He says, no, you let not sin therefore
reign within you.
On one hand, we come, we only know
one language.
We only know one behavior.
We land here, it's all done.
But we also come with a nature that
now as a child of God, I've got
to go to battle with.
And he looks at me and he says,
you want to be free from sin.
Number one, you reckon the old man to
be dead and then you let not sin
therefore reign.
And here is something there that he looks,
he says, the battle and the desire that
God wants to see within us as a
battle against this nature, this flesh that we
have within us that wants to reign within
us.
And here, as he suggests, almost when he
says, let not sin, it's all the word
has in the Greek, the sense of saying,
stop it.
It's almost like somebody just putting their foot
down.
It's almost as just there.
Somebody is just saying that's enough.
Is the, is the suggestion that Paul has
here when he says, let not sin, therefore
reign.
And there's something there when, when he says,
if you want to deal with sin, number
one, you reckon yourself to be dead.
And then number two, you find within your
own heart, you're genuinely, deeply, profoundly sick of
it.
And you want to put your foot down.
It's not just going to go away to
simply because it embarrasses you.
It's going to go away because you're sick
of it.
And you have gone to battle and you're
determined.
It's not going to rain number of years
ago and a home that we lived in.
We had an elderly neighbor, a lady who
she loved cats.
She had a lot of cats and her
cats had cats and those cats had cats
too.
And she just seemed to feed them all.
And then because of her age at one
point, her kids came and put her into
some sort of a retirement facility, cleaned up
the house, put the house on the market,
sold the house, and then came and took
her stuff out.
New people moved in, but the cat stayed.
The family didn't say, Oh, we got to
collect these cats and do some.
No, they just sold the house.
And so the cats all found new homes.
Well, one of them decided it wanted to
hang around our place, but it was a
wild cat.
You couldn't touch it, you couldn't get near
to it, but it always hung around our
house.
For some reason, it just picked up, I'm
going to live there.
But I'm going to stare at everybody there.
And we had a cat.
Our cat was, you know, well, mall cats
are kind of pathetic animals, really, I think.
Nothing personal.
Well, it is personal, I guess.
I mean, some of you have cats and
you actually think you own a cat.
How many of you own a cat?
Just out of curiosity.
See, that's, you do not own a cat.
A cat owns you.
The person that does the obeying is the
ownee.
The one that does the commanding is the
owner.
And I've never seen cats, they don't do,
you do what they want.
And you've picked up with, Oh, you want
this.
You've always played guessing games with your cats
until you fix it, then they do it.
You know, whatever they want.
But anyway, that's your own business.
But the thing is, is that this, so
this cat, though, we had a kind of
a pathetic cat.
It was not a fighter and domesticated and
just, you know, cutest little thing.
My wife loved it, but it couldn't defend
itself from, you know, fly, I don't think.
But this cat would come over.
I didn't care much for our cat.
But when this cat came, I'd fight our
cat.
And it'd beat our cat to a pulp
all the time.
And, and I, you know, and again, I
wasn't crazy about our cat, but I didn't
like that.
And, and then it was, then it got
a little bit more bold with time and
we had a cat door so that our
cat could come in and out and get
his food.
And we had a dog as well.
And, but the next thing, you know, this
cat five figures out the cat door is
coming in and eating our cat food and
our dog food.
And, and then I'm looking at this thing,
Hey, would you get, I'm shooing it away.
Get out of here.
If you're not going to be nice to
us, I'm not nice to you.
You'll get your own food.
I'm not feeding you.
And, and next thing, you know, then it
even gets so bold is one night I'm
sitting there in my den.
I watched it come through the door, but
anytime he got near you stood up, boom,
it shot right out.
You can never get near it.
And, but this time it comes in, goes
past the pantry where the dog and the
cat food was, walks right in the kitchen
and goes up on the sink going for
my food.
And at that point, at that instant, I,
I stood up, that cat took off, but
I said, I just hit a limit.
And I said, that cat is history.
And at that point, something snapped inside of
me.
And I was, no matter what it took,
that cat was gone.
Wasn't gone yet, but it was a goner.
And at that point I began plotting and
planning full warfare on how to get this
thing.
And it would always come in at night
when we're sleeping and eat the dog and
cat food.
So I went and we had one of
these little intercoms, you know, that you kind
of plug in the house and you can
talk from room to room on.
So I got one of these little income,
plugged it in.
I put that chewy, hard, hard cat food
right on it.
So when the cat came in at night
and I had it by my bed, turned
up loud.
So when I started chewing, I'd hear it.
We had a door going outside our bedroom
door.
And then the kitchen door was over there
on the other side.
And so I've got this thing all planned.
I've got a towel right near the door.
So when I heard this thing, I could
go out the door, jam the thing in
the door so it couldn't get out, the
cat door.
And then I'd go finish the job.
But the, uh, so sure enough, one night,
about three in the morning, the cat, I
hear the crunching.
I go running out the door.
I'm running across to stick this in.
Just before I got there, this cat flew
out and, you know, just beat me in
there.
Went over and sat about 10 feet over
there.
Licks its chops looking to say, well, my
good shot, buddy, but you lose, you know,
one of those things.
And that just infuriated me more.
And night after night till finally I decide
I'm leaving my door open.
It hears me open the door.
That's its clue.
So I'm leaving the door open.
Gene's go to bed and it's winter.
It's 30 degrees or something.
Gene gets in, goes closer.
I said, no, you can't close the door.
Don't close the door.
She said, what do you mean?
Don't close.
I said, don't close the door.
Why?
That cat, you know, is out there.
I'm getting the cat and hears me open
the door.
Well, it's freeze.
I don't care.
I'm getting that cat, you know, and, uh,
and then Gene sits there and she said,
come on, it's cold.
I gave her a lecture.
I said, you know something, this is what's
wrong with the world today.
Nobody, you know, there's stuff that's wrong, but
nobody's willing to fight for their principles and
what's right and what ought to be done.
And this is why the whole nation, why
our country, why everybody, nobody has anything to
fight for any longer.
And I found something, you know, saying, and
that door is staying open.
She's okay.
And she piles on blankets.
She goes to bed, but about two or
three in the morning, I hear the crunching.
This time I sneak out.
I jam that thing in there.
It hits on the other side.
And then I go running back, shut the
door inside.
And then my dog, I hear it barking
upstairs, took everything, you know, got a blanket
up there, went down to it over, got
in a box and I won big time.
But the, uh, put that thing at, in
my car and I drove across the Santa
Ana riverbed over across the other side of
Norton Air Force Base, drove way out of
nowhere in Nowhereville.
And in there, when I looked at cat
and I opened the thing up and I
let it out and it gets out, trots
off a few steps, looks at me and
just went off.
But I, and I went back home.
I got into bed and I can remember
about four 30 in the morning.
This, I get in there.
My wife says now she can go to
sleep, but she's still a little awake and
I'll never forget it.
She's you great white Hunter.
You just showed you how little she understood
the triumph that had happened.
But you know, the thing is that thing
hung around and it mocked you and it
ridiculed and it, it ate up everything and
it beat up everything.
And it just, we just let it go
and let it go and let it go
until something that's stacked inside.
And all of a sudden the determination, that's
it.
That's done.
That, this is what Paul is saying.
In a sense there, he's looking there and
he says, until something happens within you, he
says, you reckon it dead.
But he says there, you've got to, something's
got to stomp within you where the sin
behavior, the nature, the character, the attitude, the
vocabulary, whatever it may be, that it's, it's
just like our sin nature.
It struts around, it mocks us, ridicules us,
you know, as human beings so often.
That's what sin does, breaks us down.
We'll never get along with it, never fits
in, but it's always lurking around sort of
a thing, just mocking, reigning, ridiculing.
And here Paul, he looks there and he
says, listen, if you want to know a
victory in your life, there's got to be
that sense of battle.
You know, we'll go to war on the
other side and we will lay our life
on the line in war.
We will do many things that are worthy
things so where whatever we got to do,
we'll do it.
We can put our foot down a lot
of ways in our life, but Paul says,
until you do that over sin.
I think one of the reasons the Christian
world today is in as much trouble as
it is, is we have given up on
sin.
We just, we just live with it.
We just tolerate it.
It ridicules and mocks and hangs around all
of our lives so many times so easily.
And we kind of took a few shots
at it.
We were upset and Lord, take it away.
And Lord, I'm sorry about this.
And we can still let it dance around.
It still has a place in our life.
We can go on for years and we
can be angry at our wife, angry at
our husband.
We can have tempers, we can have desires,
we can have a lust, we can have,
you know, something towards pornography.
But well, I mean, it embarrasses me.
And it, yeah, and I, God, I wish
you could take this stuff away.
And I, and the way I am towards
my children or the way I am in
this area of my life or that, we
look at it and we, we, you know,
we get upset and we want to shoo
it away.
And it, and when it ridicules us and
it mocks us, but oftentimes nothing rises up
to where we know what it is to
be up all night long before God, weeping
over it or longing or going to battle.
Lord, this is not going to rain in
my life.
I wanted something transformed within me.
You tell me it's so in heaven.
I want it on earth.
Let not sin therefore rain.
This is his concept.
That we look there in the Christian life.
I think one of the reasons the way
the church today, we were so lukewarm.
We're so user friendly.
We just kind of given up and oh,
well, let's just all get together and love
God the best we can.
But we don't talk much about sin and
going to battle against sin and really dealing
with sin because we've almost given up on
the topic.
But here the Bible has, and then the
Christian, the true Christian should never do that.
I should be one that with a great
longing, if I want real victory in my
life, that I reckon the old man to
be dead.
Jesus did an awesome job to get the
job done.
To do such a thing that I could
be forgiven and I could, and my sin
could be reckoned.
And it ought to be an awesome thing
to my heart that I can enjoy the
benefits of it.
But it ought to be the noblest battle
I would ever be in.
The one if I say, oh, if man,
if all go through this to fight for
my marriage sometime when it's in trouble or
to help this or to go to the
ends of the earth for this or to
go to put my life on the line
here to fight this, how much more ought
I be willing to be somebody that my
foot goes down and I say, this is
not going to rain within me.
And I think until we look at it
this way, we'll be victimized by it and
mocked by it.
It'll hang around, it lurks around, and it
ridicules and mocks and beats us down.
But then he goes on, interestingly enough, and
now with his next word, verse 13, he
says, neither yield ye your members.
Now isn't this something?
First he says, reckon yourself to be dead.
And he said, now he comes back and
he says, just to hit it again.
He says, let not sin therefore reign.
I said, now yield.
It's how you ever been to a carnival
or something where you go and they give
you one of these mallets and, you know,
a head little pops up and you're supposed
to hit it and then it pops up
another, you know, you're just banging, you know,
all over, you know, trying to see how
many times you can hit it in a
minute or something.
There's these little games.
It's like, you got it there, but as
soon as you hit it down here, it's
going to pop up.
You're going to find another place where it
can work.
And then you knock it down here and
it finds another place.
And the guy that's just going to hit
it once is if sin.
I'm just going to take a shot at
it.
If it doesn't come back, great.
But here the concept here, almost a lifelong
battle potentially there of somebody that is determined.
I'm going to reckon it dead, number one.
Number two, I'm going to go to to
battle with it with all my heart.
It is not going to reign as king
in my life.
I don't care how I've got to sit
before God, what it is to weep and
to pray that God help my marriage, help
my home, my spiritual life, my walk.
I'm toying and tinkering with it instead of
with all of my heart longing for victory.
And when I long for it, as I
would long for anything worth it in this
life, this is the greatest longing in all
the world.
And then he goes on, he says, neither
yield.
Neither yield to it.
First you reckon it dead, then you don't
let it reign.
He says, neither yield.
And you're wondering there, what do you have
to do to finish it off?
You remember, I remember as a kid, they
used to have these monster movies, you know,
that always had a sequel.
You know, it was like the blob.
If you ever remember that, I remember that
as a kid.
Have you ever had this Martian ooze or
something gets in, lands in the planet and
it starts rolling around and everywhere it just
gets bigger and bigger.
And then because it's destroying everybody and everything,
they got to try to stop it, but
they couldn't stop it.
And the blob just gets bigger and bigger.
It's rolling over houses, consuming, you know, anybody
and everything as they did this back in
the fifties or, you know, or something.
And somebody accidentally sprayed it with some, something
cold and they realized cold stops it.
And so they get the, you know, the,
the whole world comes down on this blob
and, you know, to freeze the thing.
And this huge battle, this, the whole movie
is trying to freeze this blob.
And then finally they freeze it.
And then the biggest planes in the world
come and pick this thing up and they're
taking it to, you know, the North pole
and dropping it there or something.
But just as the plane takes off and
at least this little teeny drop of ooze
goes down and you realize sequel, you know,
sort of, I mean, it's like, it's coming
back.
There's another movie already in the works, you
know, and, and here this is, I mean,
Paul has this concept here in the sense
there of a battle that yes, the sin
is there, but you learn to fight it.
And if you learn to fight it with
all the heart, yes, there'll be sequels until
you go to heaven.
But if you learn the formula, then you
just don't let it have a place.
Once you've had the great victory, it begins
to realize, and you begin to take territory,
but you'll still constantly have it around as
this concept here.
And because it kind of doesn't go away
as a way of returning, even after you've
reckoned it dead and it won't rain.
I remember the morning that I came home
that after this thing with the cat, it's
about four 30, six 30.
I'm meeting with some fellows.
I had a discipleship group, some men that
I meet with.
And I came in, I was beat to
death, but I came in a few minutes
late in there.
And, uh, but I was, I was proud,
you know, I had died.
This was a big thing to me.
And I came in, of course, where you've
been, you won't believe it.
I won big time.
And I told him the story.
And one of the guys, he's sitting there,
I'll never forget Jimmy, his name.
He's looking at me and he says, wait
a minute.
What'd you do with the cat?
And I said, Oh, I took it across
the Santa Ana river.
But I went on the other side of
Norton air force base over there.
And I dropped it over there.
He says, that's it.
I said, yeah.
He said, Don, that cat is back home
by now.
He said, no, no, no.
He said, yes.
He says, they, they know for sure that
it's back.
I said, no, they can't little their planes
will hit it.
I mean, it's got a river to go
through.
It cannot do this.
You know?
And he says, yes, they do.
And then I started hearing these stories.
The cat came back.
Remember that old song, cat came back.
They thought it was a goner back in
the fifties, sixties.
And this guy, the whole song is about
the cat coming back.
No matter what he did, tried to get
rid of this cat.
Then he finally blew up the planet at
the end of the song, but the cat
came back, you know?
And, but anyway, they say he gave me
the record.
He had it and he gave it to
me just to mock me.
But a few nights later, I'm sitting there
at the dinner table.
It's very quiet.
And I'm sitting at the table.
One of the boys says, dad, and Jean
says, not now.
And I said, what do you mean not
now?
She says, not now.
Nothing.
Everything's fine.
Not now.
I said, what's going dad?
No.
And I said, well, what is it?
Tell me I got it.
What's going on here?
Dad, the cat's back.
No.
They say, yes, it's back.
No.
I said, honey, yeah, we, I'm sorry.
We saw it.
And I had to go through the entire
scenario again.
I mean, the whole thing, you know, leaving
the door open, towel and everything.
It went through and it took me another
couple nights to do it, but I already,
I'd known victory in the past.
You see, I think the reason it got
away from me a couple of times is
this time I was definitely going to finish
it.
And then I made a deal with the
Lord.
All right.
If you just let me have it, I
promise I won't kill it.
I'll let it go in the fast lane,
the freeway.
And if you want to save it, that's
your business, but I won't kill it.
I won't do it.
But anyway, but here, this thing, I have,
it took me another battle all over again,
but I got it only this time.
I took it a long way.
I took many, many freeways out towards Barstow
from Redlands where I live.
I do.
I, and I literally dropped it, you know,
in a, in a huge, you know, wash
concrete wash, you know, that went off and
I dropped this thing in and it starts
treading up the wash towards Sacramento.
And I threw some rocks at it and
get going, you know, and things.
And it's this time I wanted all the
distance I could possibly have between it and
me.
I wanted no way that cat can get
back.
Well, this is sin.
So Nate, when somebody there, you know, when
you look there and realize I've made battle,
but it's, it's, it's attempt to come back.
Sometimes you see people for a time, they
have a battle over one area or thing
in their life, and then they just think
it's gone.
But here he says, let not sin reign.
And he says, neither yield.
Don't ever yield to it.
Don't ever give into it.
You know, and, and the thing is, true
story.
And it was several months later, I'm sitting
there.
It's quiet at dinner again.
True story.
You got it.
I'm sitting there and when I'm no, no,
don't tell me.
And Gene said, yeah, it was back.
I said, no, it can't be.
I couldn't believe it.
A few nights later, there's a knock on
our door.
True story.
Knock on our door.
I opened it up and there's a guy
there standing with tears in his eyes.
And he says, sir, he said, do you
own a black cat?
It was white on the front.
I said, why?
You know, and he, and he said, well,
the neighbors next to me told me it
was yours.
He said, I just came around the corner.
And when I drove around the corner, the
cat was in the street and I hit
it.
I said, you did?
And he says, it's dying.
I don't know what to do with it.
And so I go out there and there
it is.
I mean, it's laying there, dying, right?
And I'm looking at this thing.
And as I get down near to it,
the cat goes, the guy looks at me
and he says, oh, it doesn't even know
you.
So I think it does, but I didn't
go into it with him.
But ultimately Roman, Paul goes on in Romans
eight and he says, mortify the deeds of
the flesh by the spirit.
But we'll get into that later.
But the point of it is in closing
night, I didn't get to yield.
We'll pick up yielding next week.
But, but here he looks at you.
He says, you want victory in the Christian
life?
Do you really want it?
Do you want, do you want what Jesus
fought in his entire existence?
What he laid his life down for, what
he was willing to pay his blood for,
what he shed, you know, to cleanse and
forgive and to atone and to present us,
follow us and seat us in heavenly places.
And he looks at us to say, how
desperately do you want it?
Do you want it so much?
So you'll believe it.
You'll reckon it.
So Jesus, you did love me that much
and you did forgive me and you did
cleanse me.
And there, you know, Paul, another place, he
says, you know, you haven't even brought your
own faith to sweating blood yet.
You haven't even shed blood for your faith.
But I suppose the greatest area where we
do exhibit our real faith is sometimes that
God wants us, I believe, to shed a
tear.
He wants us to come in.
Lord, I don't want this to rain.
And if I sit up and I go
through your word and I cry out, I
want this transformed.
It mocks me.
It ridicules me.
I want it out of my life.
And it's not necessarily a two or five
or a 10 minute little prayer or have
somebody go, you know, a little thing as
much as it's the great longing.
And I believe when somebody longs for something
like this, when they look there and I
will, it's not going to rain in me.
I'm determined whatever it is that to find
the power and the sufficiency in Christ to
be set free.
If I just call it a little habit,
if I just call it, well, it's kind
of my weakness and I just let it
hang around.
It will my whole life.
Or I can look and say, this is
sin and it breaks heaven's heart and it
breaks my heart and it breaks other people's
heart and it mocks me as a Christian.
And I want freedom.
I want power.
I want victory.
I want a transformed life in Jesus.
And then he says, then rather than saying,
Lord, now do this.
He says, no, you, you get the, you,
you get the, the ax.
You will put your head on the chopping
block.
You be, you know, reckon yourself to be
dead in Christ.
You let not sin therefore rain.
You come, not that it's by our power.
It's already done.
But he says, and then when you see
it creep back, then when you see it
begin to kind of come back around, he's,
oh, I thought it was gone.
No, but I know who you are and
I know how to deal with you.
I've had victory over you before, and I'll
have it again and again and again till
I awaken his likeness.
The battle will be over then, but not
till then.
And when we look and say, this is
victory, and then the great key, now yield.
You got to be, if you don't start
yielding, we'll look at that next time, then
it'll be, that opens the door for things
to come back.
So there's the very positive.
But first he says, do you want freedom
truly?
Lord Jesus, how we thank you for your
word.
How we thank you for your love.
And I thank you for the victory that
you have battled for.
Your victory on the cross over sin, death,
hell, and the devil.
And the work is finished when you said
finished.
We are seated in you.
The old man is dead.
We are risen in you.
This is all done.
Now you look at us and say, now
you, you reckon my love to be this
great.
You reckon my mercy to be this great.
You reckon, you accept it.
Don't reason it, don't rationalize it, don't earn
it.
Just reckon, accept it.
And then look with all your heart, when
the old Hungarian language or behavior comes back,
you look at the world you're in now
and say, no, I won't talk that way.
I don't want that language.
I don't want that behavior.
It embarrasses me and those that have, in
the family I've been adopted into.
I want this one with all my heart.
Lord, I pray that you would, the church
seems to have lost this.
May we find it and may we be
free.
May we know your victory in your power
in Jesus name.
Amen.