Every time I speak the Word of God, I sow seed into your life. What happens with that seed depends on how you hear.
That’s why some leave church without getting anything from it while others experience life change. If you want today’s word to produce a harvest in your life, pay attention to how you hear.
First, open your heart to receive the Word of God. If you sit with your arms crossed, waiting for God to prove something to you, you will kill the Word before it produces a harvest.
Then, make a commitment to stick with it. The Word of God often leads us into challenges and persecution. If you are expecting it to be easy, you’ll kill the Word before it produces a harvest.
You also have to be diligent to eliminate distractions. There are all kinds of things in the world, like worrying about money, that would like to kill the Word before it produces a harvest.
Pay attention to how you hear. Open your heart to receive the Word. Make a commitment to stick with it no matter how hard it gets. Be diligent to eliminate distractions.
Do these three things, and you’ll position yourself as good soil that produces an incredible harvest of righteousness.
We’re going to spend most of our time in Romans chapter eight. I’ve been stuck in verses ten and eleven since Monday. The Holy Spirit led me there and has kept me there ever since.
Clearly, the Lord has something for us in these verses today. In them is the secret to our next step. This is how we become who we are meant to be: NoLimits Church.
Romans 8:10-11 NLT - And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.
We are going to dig into these two verses. But first, let’s anchor ourselves by examining what leads into these two verses.
We tend to get ourselves in trouble by cherry-picking verses out of the Bible without understanding the context. Let’s stop doing that and put in the effort to truly understand what is written.
The Book of Romans is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a mixed group of Jewish and Gentile Christians.
It seems they were having a little debate on whether keeping the law was a requirement of salvation or not, specifically circumcision. Paul spent the first eight chapters clearing this up.
Romans 1:16-17 NKJV - For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
From this pleasant opening, Paul goes on to explain God’s anger against sinful people. Since these people refuse to acknowledge God, He has turned them over to their shameful, wicked desires.
How do we know who these people are? The hallmark sin is homosexuality, according to Romans 1:26-27.
But that’s not all. He’s also talking about those full of greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and everyone’s favorite: gossip.
This is a somber way to open a message. If an American preacher did this today, the church board would tell him to knock it off. The Apostle Paul wouldn’t listen to that nonsense. He’d just double down, like he did in chapter two.
He knew there were people in the crowd thinking, “Whew, I’m glad I’m not one of those sinners.” So he called them out, right to their face, with these words, “You think you are better, but you are really just a hypocrite.”
To make sure everyone understands, he says this:
Romans 3:23-25 NLT - For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
In other words, you might as well give up trying to make yourself look good. We all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Not one of us measures up.
Romans 3:23-25 NLT - Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood.
So, Paul put the sinners on blast. Then he put the self-righteous hypocrites on blast. And all of this was to prove that no one was capable of saving themselves.
Then, he completely disarmed the argument of the Jewish Christians who thought you had to be circumcised to be saved. Do you know how he did it?
He brought out Abraham, the beloved father of their faith. Abraham is where the Jewish lineage started. And guess what? His faith was accounted to him as righteousness BEFORE he was circumcised.
Abraham is the proof that we are made right with God only by faith, not by circumcision, or keeping the law, or abstinence from sin, or any other kind of good work.
Talk about dropping a truth bomb. I imagine they were all speechless at this point in the letter. Paul knew this was a heavy hitter, so he took a little break in chapter five. Take a look:
Romans 5:1-2 NLT - Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.
He goes on to talk about how we now have access to hope and joy, how we are now free from condemnation, and the abundance of God’s grace that is available to us. It’s a wonderful chapter.
This chapter is where we get the American half-gospel. We pluck this chapter out by itself and give everyone the warm fuzzies.
Now we have a bunch of people who think they can have Jesus and keep their sin, too. They think their life of sin as a “Christian” is proof of how loving God is.
Before we get into chapter six, which clears this up for us, let me take you back to a verse in chapter two.
Romans 2:4 NKJV - Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
Do you know what this is saying? If the thing you claim as goodness does not lead people to repentance, it is not the goodness of God. Why not? Because the goodness of God leads you to repentance.
Romans 6:1-2 NLT - Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
Ah ha! Here’s the other half of the gospel! To the church in America: All you have to do is keep reading into chapter six! Yes, God’s grace is abundant! Yes, you have forgiveness of sin! But wait! That’s not the whole gospel! There’s more!
You are dead to sin! You have been set free from the power of sin! You can now live a new life! You are no longer a slave to sin! You are now a slave of righteousness!
NoLimits Chuch knows this because I’ve been preaching it for three years. But if you have friends and family who are still clinging to the American half-gospel, send them to Romans chapter six.
What happens in the next chapter is really interesting. Paul knows at this point, we will be tempted once again to think that our righteous living can earn approval from God.
You know how we are, from one extreme to another. From the ditch on one side of the road to the ditch on the other side of the road. So, Paul is going to make sure we stay ON THE ROAD.
In chapter seven, he recounts his former life before Christ. He was a devout Jew, a keeper of the law. He did his best to follow the law, and compared to everyone else, he was the best.
So he explains how miserable it was to put in all this effort to keep the law and still fail over and over again.
Romans 7:15 NLT - I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.
This might go down as the most misused scripture in history. People love to use this to justify their sin. They think, “The Apostle Paul even struggled with sin! So of course, I’m going to.”
Too bad you are reading this out of context! The Apostle Paul was recounting what life was like before Christ. He was painting the miserable picture of trying to earn salvation by keeping the law.
So, if you relate to Romans 7:15, you just found out that you are trying to earn your salvation. I’m here to set you free.
You can’t earn your salvation by keeping the law! Salvation only comes by faith in Jesus Christ! And when you receive true salvation, you are released from the power of sin.
And now, we are finally to chapter eight. Aren’t you glad we examined what leads into the two verses we are going to talk about today? This is incredible.
Let me read to you all of chapter eight. Don’t tune out. Give your full attention to the Word of God.
Read Romans Chapter 8 (click here)
Take another look at the two verses we started with today:
Romans 8:10-11 NLT - And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.
First Corinthians 15:26 reveals that there is one last enemy to be destroyed: death. Jesus has taken care of everything else except this one thing: death.
The power of sin has already been destroyed. Sickness has already been destroyed. Our authority has already been restored.
There’s just one thing we are waiting on: our new bodies. We’re not waiting on the other promises of God. They are all available to us; just waiting for us to access them.
But we are waiting, with great hope, for that last enemy to be destroyed. We eagerly look forward to that wonderful day when we get the new bodies the Lord has promised us.
But in the meantime, He has placed His Spirit on the inside of us. And that same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is able to give life to our mortal bodies.
We’ve not fully realized what is in us. We tend to submit to the process of physical death instead of allowing the Spirit to bring life to our mortal bodies.
That’s not what we are supposed to be doing. The Apostle Paul gave us the answer back in chapter five:
Romans 5:17 NKJV - For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
If you dig into the original language, you find out that this means we are to govern abundant life. Through Christ, we have been given the position of a king over abundant life.
It’s up to us to demonstrate and establish abundant life on the earth! We have to use the authority that has been restored to us.
Abundant life belongs to us now. The problem is that we don’t understand our authority, that Jesus has made us a king in this life, that He has given us the ability to govern abundant life.
We are to reign in life. The Spirit of God lives in us. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us! When are we going to allow Him to bring life to our mortal bodies?
This is a call to step into the authority you’ve been given through Christ. Step into your role as a king over abundant life.
If abundant life is to be experienced on the earth, it has to happen through us. Let’s do this not just for ourselves but to make our city an open display of the Kingdom of God.
