The End of the Matter

When I was a youngster, I once had a really brilliant idea.
I mean in those days I had a lot of brilliant ideas, but this one was particularly brilliant
I thought.
You see, I had been counting the cost of discipleship, and I was running through my mind
all the things I might have to give up if I was really going to be serious about Jesus
and all the things in life that I wanted to experience that maybe I wouldn't be allowed
to experience if I sold out to Jesus Christ and it was in the middle of that profound philosophical
thinking process that this brilliant idea hit me.
It occurred to me all of a sudden that the smartest thing in the world to do would be
to do this.
I could live my life the way that I wanted to live it until I was old and gray and ready
to die.
Then I could turn to the Lord and get converted, have all my sins forgiven and go to heaven
when I died.
And I thought it was just a wonderful idea because then you see I could have the best
of all the world.
I could enjoy my life in this world to the full and do all of the things that I wanted
to do, and I would still go to heaven and experience the benefits of God's grace.
Now I don't know if any of the rest of you have ever been as brilliant as I was at that
moment, but with the passing of the years that brilliance of my youth began to be tarnished
somewhat because all of a sudden it occurred to me that that would never work and it would
never work for two reasons.
Number one, I might not get to be that old.
Not everybody gets gray.
Not everybody gets to live to a ripe old age.
Sometimes we can die young.
We saw that just this past week with Laura's passing.
She was a month shy of five years.
We never know when the end comes for anybody that lives and when it comes you don't know
if you will have the opportunity to change your way of life.
Secondly it occurred to me that even if I did get to live to be that old, I had absolutely
no guarantee that coming to that age in life I would have either the desire or the ability
to turn my life around repent of my sin and turn to Jesus Christ because you see there
is a principle in life that says every decision we make sends us down a certain path does
it not.
And the further down that path we get the harder it is to back up and to start all over
again there are consequences to our decisions and when those consequences begin to overtake
us apart from the grace of God we cannot avoid those consequences and that I submit to
you this morning is what Paul begins to talk about now here in these concluding verses
of Romans chapter 6 when he says what return what return did you get from the things of
which you are now ashamed he says the end of those things is death but now that you have
been set free from sin and have become slaves of God the return you get is sanctification
and it's end eternal life what return he says did you get from the things of which you
are now ashamed the end of those things is death and the return that you now get he
says is sanctification and it's end eternal life and what Paul is doing is a thing that
the Bible does all the time he is outlining for us two roads he says think back to the
way that you used to be before you came to Christ when you live the life of sin he says
compare the outcome of that with the outcome that you're going to get when you follow
Jesus keep your eye he says on the end of the process look at the end of the matter I believe
that sometimes you and I as Christians when we live in this world of anguish and sorrow
and pain and we're trying to live out the practical implications of the Christian life
sometimes we get weary don't you ever get weary I think if you're honest there are times
you get weary about pursuing a righteousness and then you look around you and you see all
the rest of the world living their own life and not bothering to see God or to walk in
the ways of God and they seem to be doing fine and sometimes you feel like the Psalmist
in Psalm 73 don't you it's like the wicked prosper but the righteous go through hard times
and then every so often there's that question in the back of your mind that says why work
at it so hard why try to be so righteous why not just take it a little bit more easy
and Paul says the remedy to that is to keep your eye on the end of the matter the road
that you're on whether or not it is the right road is not determined by whether the road
is wide and easy or whether the road is narrow and hard it depends on where the road leads
and Paul says if you want to be sure that you're on the right road look at what the end
of the road leads you to and he says when you do that you will discover that the road
of sin and rebellion against God leads in one direction and the road that leads to God
leads in another direction and the end results of those two roads are diametrically opposed
to each other in the time that we have available this morning I want to share with you from
these verses first of all three characteristics that Paul gives us here of the road that leads
to death and then three characteristics of the road that Paul says leads to life when
you were slaves of sin Paul says in verse 20 you were free in regard to righteousness
here you have the first consequence of choosing to follow sin Paul says every time when we
make a choice to go our own way what we do is we dig ourselves more deeply into the slavery
of sin you were slaves of sin you were free in regard to righteousness and that's of course
a theme that he continues to repeat in this chapter of Romans he says earlier in verse 16
do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves you are slaves
of the one whom you obey either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads
to righteousness he says you are slaves of the one whom you obey I get the impression
sometimes from I guess probably all of our lives that we think sometimes that that sin
is sort of like a smorgasbord you know you sample a little bit of this and you sample
a little bit of that and you take a little bit of that and then you sort of think you can
just walk away and there won't be any consequences to the things that we participated in and
we need to understand that from a biblical point of view every opening that we give to
sin every step and every decision that we take that is out of the will of God digs us
deeper into sin because the poison of sin has been consumed into our being and it makes
us slaves of sin and you don't know what kind of a slave you are until you start trying
to break a particular habit or pattern of your life I've often compared it for people
to to a swimmer floating down a fast flowing river as long as you're just sort of floating
along with the stream you're hardly aware of of anything that is happening let alone
the power of the stream because you're just being rushed out to see but then when it begins
to dawn on you that you're going to be washed out to see and you start wanting to swim
to shore then all of a sudden as you exert your power against the power of the stream you
begin to discover just what an incredible force it is that holds you in bondage you were
slaves of sin you were free in regard to righteousness in Adam as we yield ourselves to
sin we yield ourselves to greater and greater iniquities as Paul in verse 19 the last part
of which we have read earlier we become slaves of sin we lose our freedom our freedom to
choose our freedom to decide our own direction we are driven by forces that have grabbed
hold of us and that want to drag us out to see number two says Paul the road to sin leads
to shame verse 21 what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed the
return you will recall is better translated as fruit what fruit did you get from the things
of which you are now ashamed shame is defined in the dictionary as follows shame is the
consciousness of something dishonorable improper or ridiculous done by myself or by others
the consciousness of something dishonorable improper or ridiculous done by myself or by others
one of the most vivid shameful memories of my childhood through confession time here I was
in grade one or two don't remember which one this was in the days before there were intercoms
in classrooms and for some reason or another the teacher that we had would periodically
call on students to take little notes to other teachers or maybe to the principal and
being the curious lab that I was I remember sitting there thinking to myself I wonder what
she's writing in those notes well soon I had opportunity to find out because guess who
got chosen to carry the note next time so I go tromping up to the front of the class
and not thinking at all you got to picture this I take the note from her and between her
desk and going to the door of the classroom in front of the whole class I take the little
note and I fold it open and I start trying to read this thing now mind you I don't recall
that I could even read but it didn't go over very well with the teacher she hauled me
back took the note back and and sent somebody else out with it and I was shamed in front
of the class now don't worry it hasn't dramatically affected my life I won't you know that
but we have those experiences where sometimes we could just wish we could die because you
see shame is the result to one degree or another of knowing that we have failed perceived
standards of conduct and propriety one of the interesting consequences of sort of the
free morality that you find in today's society is that our society is beginning to abound
in shame that same feeling Adam and Eve had when their nakedness was uncovered because
they had sinned against God and one of the ways in which that shame begins to surface within
our culture isn't that very low self-esteem image that a lot of people go through life
with because you see there is something inside us that intuitively says there is a standard
that I ought to be living up to and when we don't live up to that standard we feel guilty
and we feel dirty and we feel ashamed and we feel unclean about ourselves and if there
isn't somewhere to go with that shame and if there isn't somewhere to go with that guilt
our self-esteem begins to plummet and we just continue to throw ourselves into more garbage
and into more filth until as we shall see in a moment death takes over and our lives are
destroyed because we are weighed down by the shame of living the world is full of people
who are deeply ashamed of who they are, where they've been and what they do and it's
one of the consequences of sin and the remedy and the answer to the issue of self-esteem
in today's society it's a very popular topic it's not everybody patting everybody else
in the back and saying "my you're a really wonderful person if only you could see it"
to help people to see in Jesus Christ through His forgiveness and that in Jesus Christ there
is grace to carry out the purposes of God for our lives so that we accomplish our calling
we accomplish our destiny and we know that before God in Christ we are okay because God is
my Father it makes us slaves to sin it makes us ashamed at number three in the end it will
kill us what return did you get from the things in which you were now ashamed the end of
those things is poor is death he repeats it again in verse 23 the wages of sin is death wages
here is rations it's the pay it's the food it's the reimbursement the Roman soldiers used
to get in the Roman army and under the law the wages of sin is death and you don't have
to have eyes that are very wide open before you discover that all over the world death
reigns because of Adam's sin and because of our own sin and when the Bible says here
the end of those things it's death it's not just talking about a person who was physically
dead and put in a grave death here is ultimate separation from God it begins when our spirits
drift away from God when God said to Adam and Eve the day that you eat of that forbidden
fruit you will surely die they didn't just drop dead but they lost their fellowship
with God and one of the ways I can tell in my own life and one of the ways that I can tell
in the lives of a lot of other people when sin has taken root the first place it shows
up is you lose contact with God in heaven above isn't that true prayer loses its challenge
the scriptures lose their power and worship at best become sort of external and perfunctory
it is death living among the peoples of the world out of there it penetrates into every
part of the personality it disturbs and distorts our will our mind our emotions our relationships
begin to suffer look around you in the world and look at all the anguish and the death
that is being caused by people who can't get along with one another who don't understand
each other who don't love each other who want it their own way and who will use everything
they can to get it their own way and in the long run of course that leads to physical
death I think we will be amazed to discover how many illnesses in the world are the results
of stress or the results of sin in a variety of different ways and you know me well enough
been out to know that not every sin not every sickness or illness that that we encounter
is the immediate or the consequent consequence of sins that we've committed ourselves but
the Bible does always tie together the sin that is in the world and that whole process
of dying that begins almost really from the moment that we're born and of course the
end product of all of that is that eternal separation from God in the very fires of hell
that's not a very popular topic and I'm sure that all of us wish that we could avoid
looking at the consequences of that but the Bible says the wages of sin is death and
if you believe in the heaven of which Jesus spoke and you've got to believe in the judgment
of which Jesus spoke and for which he came to give his life the wages of sin is death
eternal separation from everything that is good and that is beautiful and that is holy
and that God has ordained for his children you see that's why it's so critical not only
in our own lives but in the lives of people around us to lead them to the Lord Jesus Christ
because apart from the Lord Jesus Christ there is no escape from the inevitable consequences
of all this sin that reigns in the world the end result of all of that says Paul is death
return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed the end of those he says
it's death the book of Proverbs says there is a way that seems right to a man but it's
in it's death but now notice he goes on he says that used to be your old life and he says
I want you to think about your old life think of how useless and futile and wasted it
was and now he says just as that went from bad to worse negatively now he says that you're
in Christ and you're seeking to pursue the ways of Christ you're going from good to better
to best because just as you yielded your members to greater and greater impurity so now yield
your members to righteousness for sanctification and again he gives us three characteristics
of what happens when by faith in Jesus Christ we said our eye on the goal of the prize
of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus he says number one we have become slaves of
God he says in verse 22 now that you have been set free from sin you have become slaves
of God notice the contrast before you were slaves of sin sin owned you sin drove you sin
possessed you you couldn't break free from it it made you do things you didn't want
to do it made you ashamed of the things that you did but he says now that you've come
to Christ he says you've become slaves of God God owns you God holds you in the palm of
his hands and God gives you the grace and the ability to pursue him and to pursue him
with everything that is within our hearts doesn't mean that we will never fail doesn't
mean that there aren't those times when we slide back into sin but you see the difference
is once we have become slaves of God and God's Holy Spirit lives within us we cannot continue
to abide in sin because the Holy Spirit begins to prod at us and the Holy Spirit begins
to work at us and the Holy Spirit begins to bring us back into the things of God if
we have really been engrafted into Jesus Christ we have people in this church in some
cases that have come to Christ many years ago for many years they've backslidden gone their
own way in some cases tried everything they could to forget what God did in their lives
with the Spirit of God wouldn't let them alone and the Lord Jesus continued to assert his
authority and his power and over the years we have seen God faithfully honoring the promises
of his covenant and not all but many he's brought back to faith he's brought back to
our relationship to himself he says you've become slaves of God there is a new desire
in you now to hear the voice of God and to obey him and to serve him that's one of the
clearest indications that somebody has been converted since you came to Christ has there
been a change in your life do you grieve when you're fair is there something inside you
that says yes Lord I want to serve you with everything that is within me all the days
of my life because you're worthy because you've purchased me at the cost of the blood
of your son number two says Paul as we follow Jesus Christ our lives change and they change
for the better the return you get he says is sanctification remember again that word
return is the fruit you get is sanctification the word sanctification means to be made holy
to be made holy means to be separated from sin and to be separated unto God Paul's argument
you will recall is to is to defend himself against that charge if you take the law away
from people they'll become bad he says it's impossible because when you're engrafted
into Christ the law of God is written on your heart the Holy Spirit lives within you and
the Holy Spirit within you wants to lead you now to obey God and to love God and to love
his people and to love his purposes and Paul says the more that you give in to the law of the
Spirit of life that lives within you the more your life begins to change you become stronger
you begin to seek sin more clearly you begin to see your righteousness more clearly your
will is strengthened so that you can begin to say I don't want to do that anymore I don't
want to live that way anymore your ability to control your thoughts and your mind and
your body begins to increase so that we can become more and more like Jesus which is God's
ultimate aim for the lives of his children because he wants to share as we'll see in just
a moment his glory with you and with me now that doesn't mean that it always feels
like you're making progress you've noticed that haven't you I mean the Lord begins to
work in your life and it seems sometimes like for every step forward you take it's like
you go back three and you begin to wonder well hey what's going on I felt I was a much
better person before before I said Jesus do you do in me what you want to do and make
me what you want me to be is not true I got to remember though not a lot of that is merely
a matter of perception because when the Holy Spirit lives in us and opens our eyes we begin
to see much more clearly who it is that we are have you ever noticed that before people
come to Christ oh they may not like themselves but most people think they're pretty good and
they know they're not perfect but they're more nearly perfect and most other people
they know and they just sort of blissfully ignorant about what God calls righteousness and
what God calls sin but then you come to Christ and the power of God's word begins to shine
in your life and the power of the Holy Spirit begins to open up your eyes and he begins
to convict you not only about the things you always did that you thought were okay but
about attitudes within you and he says that's wrong and that's wrong and this is what I want
and that's what I want you say woes me for I'm undone and it's not that an actual fact we've
become any worse than what we were before it's just that now we see our sin in a way that
we never saw it before and God does that not so that he can rub our noses in our sin but
so that he can take us by the hand and he can lead us to Jesus and he can point to us the
fact that Jesus on the cross shed his blood to wash away all those sins and he poured out
his spirit to renew your life and to renew my life because you see that's the biblical antidote
to shame the biblical antidote to shame and the biblical antidote to the things that we've done
many years ago is not to pretend we never did them which is what we tend to do in Adam that's
why he put on fig leaves I always say the problem with fig leaves is they keep withering and you
got to go finding new ones and a lot of people live their whole life trying to cover themselves
and their nakedness with devices of their own making or Jesus says come to me all who labor
and are heavy lead and I will give you rest the result he says is sanctification and it's
in eternal life ever wonder why God so fussy at your life it in my life ever wonder why he
doesn't let us get away with any of the things that we like to get away with the answer is
real simple biblically God wants to make us ready for eternal life and eternal life in the
scriptures is not merely the quality of living forever because you can live forever and be miserable
people in hell are going to live forever and they're going to wish they didn't but eternal
life in the scriptures is a life that is spent in the blissful presence of Almighty God I don't
think words can begin to describe what is the glory that God has laid up for his children
Paul you will recall talks about that day when he was given a revelation of the glory of God he
came back down to earth and he said you know what I hasn't seen here hasn't heard nor the heart
of man conceived would God has prepared for those who love him he says God has revealed to us by
his spirit so full of love and so full of grace and so full of glory is God that he wants to spend
eternity with you and with me and he wants to take all the riches of his grace that he wants to
put it out on your life and my life he wants to take every tear and wipe it away he wants to take
every disappointment and and throw it into the sea he wants to take every illness and he wants
to heal it and there is coming a day when we shall rejoice in the presence of God with all of his
glory forever and ever and the things that God does in your life and in my life is to get us ready
for that day that day when we will see him face to face and when we will experience the reality of
his power that eternal life we begin to experience already to some degree today as God through the
Holy Spirit begins to show us who he is and what it is that he wants to do for you, for me
but because he's holy so holy that the cherubim and the seraphim surrounding the throne of God
chant 24 hours a day holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty who is and was and is to come
and God's challenge in your life and in my life is to help us be done with every attitude and
every word and every behavior that doesn't fit his standard of measurement
and the beauty of it is that it's a free gift that God gives through faith in Jesus Christ. Notice
the contrast in that concluding verse the wages of sin is death. Death is something you earn by
what you do but he says the free gift of eternal life the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus our Lord and Paul's whole emphasis on this chapter and in the whole book of Romans
is to say to you and to say to me as you lay hold by faith of Christ and abide in him and run
the race it's going to be worth the while I'm always awed when I watch Olympic athletes
and I see the incredible time and the energy that they put into trying to be number one coming
down that ski run or whatever other activity that they're involved with and how their hearts
beat with joy when they stand on the podium and their acknowledge before the world as being best
or second or third best in the world and their particular chosen feel. Paul says we're in the race
too and the crown the world gets is a crown that's going to fade away but he says the crown that
God has for you and for me is a crown that's going to last forever sometimes we're going to find
the road you should go sometimes we're going to wonder is it worth a while the Bible says whenever
that happens keep your eye on the goal look at what happens to the world in all of their sin look
at what they end up with the brokenness the woundedness the death and the damnation
but look at what God has for his children a life of glory that will make all this suffering of
this age pulses in the book of Romans chapter 8 not worthy to be compared with a glory that God
has revealed for those who love him they got help us to run the race and to be presented before
him without spot or ankle or any such thing to the praise of his glory let us pray
Father what an awesome thing it is like you want to have fellowship with us do you want to be our
daddy you want to wipe away our hurts and our tears and our pain and you want to shower us
with every good gift of your grace we confess Lord we're not worthy
for all have sinned and fallen short of your glory but we thank you for the free gift of life
in Christ Jesus our Lord thank you Lord that you do not hold against us our iniquity
that you don't make us pay for all the things we've done wrong
but that you restore us in Christ some of us Lord I believe are deeply ashamed because
there are things we're not very proud of some of us Lord we wonder if you could ever love us
because we have such a terribly hard time getting it together
some of us Lord we just don't know if we even want to bother because we kind of enjoy
what the stuff that we're into and we think it's somehow going to be all okay
or Father just fill us with your love show us your grace in the Lord Jesus
wash us clean help us to come clean before you renew our lives by your power
and help us Lord to live in glad expectation of the day
when we will meet you face to face and we hear those wonderful words well done good and faithful
servant you've been faithful over little I will put you over much
thank you Lord for hearing us in Jesus name Amen