Wake Up // Breaking Free from the Power of Sin, Part 2

We live in a world of cause and effect. You spend more than you earn, you end up in debt. Cause and effect. So how come, well why is it that you and I are such masters of self-deception when it comes to the consequences of our…sin. We live in a world of cause and effect. We know that; you work, you earn, your bank balance goes up. You buy, you spend, your bank balance goes down. Cause and effect. You spend more than you earn, you go broke. You earn more than you spend, you have savings. Simple. Cause and effect. You break the law, you go to jail, at least that's the theory. You obey the law, you stay free. Cause and effect. But when it comes to how we live our lives, how we behave and think and speak and act, we're pretty good at denying the effect from the cause, at least I am. "Oh look, I know I was rude to him but, but he deserved it!" Never mind it ruined a relationship. Never mind it injured the person. Never mind that it undermined his self-esteem and that had an impact on the way he brought up his kids. Cause and effect; oh never mind. It's true, isn't it? Cause and effect is alive and well but when it comes to us violating the laws of cause and effect, we are only too ready to make excuses for ourselves. Well no matter how many excuses we make, cause and effect rolls inexorably on. You can't avoid it, it just does. None of us likes to talk too much about consequences but it's the consequences of the dumb things we get up to that gives sin it's power. I'm going to come back to the title of this series that we're going through this week and next week, it's called "Breaking Free from the Power of Sin". See sin is not some old-fashioned concept of moralising, it simple means this; to miss the mark, to miss the point of life. And see, when we talk about breaking free from the power of sin, I'm assuming that sin has some power, that this whole kind of lemming-type desire we have to miss the whole point of life is powerful and addictive. You know I believe that each one of us is addicted to something. There's some form of sin that's just our sin, our weakness that robs us of life. The heroin addict knows that it's bad for them, knows that it's ruining their lives but the addiction is so powerful. They want to do something about it but they can't because they're addicted. You may have heard of the seven deadly sins; lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, anger, envy and pride. And my hunch is, each one of us relates to at least one of those in our lives. And like the heroin addict, we kind of know they have consequences. We know they're ruining our lives, we just can't do anything about them. If your particular weakness is laziness, you know you never achieve anything. You know that you don't invest in relationships. You know you don't get a sense of fulfilment out of life. If it's anger you know anger ruins relationships. If its pride you realise that you can't work closely with other people. If it's gluttony, well that's obvious. There are consequences. We can't deny them. Have a listen to the consequences of sin the apostle Paul writes about. Romans chapter 6, beginning at verse 13, he says: Don't present your members, your body, to sin as instruments of wickedness but instead, present yourselves to God as those who've been brought from death to life and present your body to God as an instrument of goodness and righteousness. Sin will have no dominion over you since you are no longer under the law but under grace. What then? Should we sin because we're not under the law but under grace? Absolutely not! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as an obedient slave, you are slaves of the one whom you obey? Either of sin, which leads to death or of obedience which leads to Gods goodness and righteousness. But thanks be to God that you, once having been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you have been entrusted. And that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. So what advantage did you get from those things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now, now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is God's holiness and sanctification. The end of that is eternal life. You see the wages of sin are death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6: 13-23) Paul uses the analogy of slavery. Well maybe we wouldn't use that in the same way today. Maybe the analogy we might use is addiction. There's this concept with sin, that we're in bondage to it and if we go the way of sin and rebellion and all that stuff we know is rubbish and wrong. You end up being a slave to it. You end up being addicted to it, the way a heroine addict is addicted to that needle and that heroin pumping in their veins. The wages of that, the outcome, the consequences of that is death. See, there are so many people who are trapped in a downward spiral of consequences. Trapped, they can't get out, it doesn't matter how hard they try. And mostly we all try at some point and then we give up because it's too hard. We roll over and we accept the reality and we say, "Well you know, I'm just an angry person. That's it, nothing I can do about it. I know it's ruining my marriage but there you go!" The wage of sin is death. There are consequences today and eternally. Today, so many people are like the living dead. They're robbed of the fulfilment that God's goodness brings. It's what righteousness means; integrity, purity, goodness. The power of sin is the addiction that traps us in the consequences and at some point, at some point we have to decide: enough is enough. At some point we have to wake up and say, "I can't do this anymore." A former prisoner and drug addict wrote to me recently, this is what she said, "I'm 36, I'm a sole parent of 4 lovely kids. I lived a life of drugs and crime and wait for it, all sorts of sin for 20 years. Finally, in 2005 I ended up in jail, been there 3 times now. A year ago in my cell I finally threw my arms in the air and called out to God, "I give up, I've tried to do what I thought was right, I can't do this life anymore, I'm yours." See, if you were expecting me to talk about being a better person in this series, you'd be wrong. We've all tried that, it don't work. It just doesn't, right? Because sin is more powerful than you and me. We're drawn inexorably to it like a moth to a flame and the consequences destroy our lives. So what are we going to do about it? You, me, come on let's get real here. What sin are you hanging onto so hard that you can't let go of and it's robbing you of life? Over the next few weeks on the program, we're going to show you how you can get your life back. Not in our own strength, can't do that, but in God's. First we have to decide to let go, you know we hang onto something real strong and the problem is its like hanging onto lead weights. We either have to paddle real hard and that's exhausting and ultimately we end up drowning. That's why Paul writes, "The wage of sin is death." All those little compromises are a foot-hold for the devil, like a bull into a china shop. He wreaks havoc in our lives and those compromises are like opening the door and inviting him in. Now the mistake we make is we think that applies to everyone else except us.