We Know

[0:00] I have many occasions to have what I call heartwarming experiences and had another this past Thursday. Shelly Jenkins, one of our widows, has severe vision problems.

[0:16] She's legally blind and very difficult to see. And it was necessary for her to relocate herself into an assisted living facility. And she was right over here on the Shrine Road mobile home park.

[0:30] And arrangements were made for her physical moving of her belongings and all of her things to this new facility where she would continue her life there.

[0:42] And I guess the heartwarming experience came from the number of folks, men and women, who were involved in that move, who showed up to make it possible, actually had more people than what we needed, trucks and vehicles and all the help and everything.

[0:58] And I just kind of stood aside and admired the whole thing. And I thought, this is really wonderful. This is just nothing more than the body of Christ in action.

[1:11] And that's the way it's supposed to be. And that was my heartwarming experience for Thursday. And I'm looking forward to more of this coming week. So, Shelly, we were able to find a new home for her cat.

[1:26] She has a 10-year-old cat, but she couldn't take it with her because even though she was allowed to have it there in the facility, she cannot see well enough to take care of it and provide for it.

[1:37] So, we were able to find a good home for that. And that's going to work out well also. So, just one of life's many things that the Lord has to offer in so many ways.

[1:49] It's just, like I said, warmed your pastor's heart. In your bulletin, once again, I just want to, for the record, because we are starting a new series today and we are labeling it, we know, and it is kind of in response to what the Apostle Paul asked by way of a rhetorical question.

[2:15] Know you not? It's another way of saying, you do know, don't you? Well, we'll look at that. In a world that daily provides questions without solid answers.

[2:30] Do we know anything about that kind of a world today? No solid answers? It's nice to know there are some. Today, we begin a series that provides the only basis for comfort and security.

[2:46] You won't find it in this old fallen world, but you will in God's Word. I can't wait. Well, we don't have to wait any longer.

[2:59] Before we warm to the text that will be revealed on the sheet that you were given from the 26th translation, New Testament, I trust each of you had one of these in your bulletin.

[3:10] We'll be referring to it. I want to preface that with a few remarks that will, I trust, prepare for what's coming. It is related to perspective.

[3:21] And the previous messages that we have delivered were also related to the issue of perspective and how important it is. This new series on know ye not and we know is expressed by the Apostle Paul in a number of his letters to churches.

[3:41] He poses the rhetorical question, as it's rendered in the King James Version, know ye not? And the rhetorical question is asked for effect.

[3:53] It's the kind of question that assumes everyone knows the answer. But it is asked to set up the statements that will follow. In most cases, the hearers already know the answer to the question posed.

[4:09] But today, very often it is not true that the listeners know it. Because we're living in an entirely different generation today.

[4:20] When these things often fall on deaf ears, whereas a few generations ago, they would pick up on it immediately. None of us know all that God has provided for us in Christ.

[4:34] But the more you do know, the happier and better off you will be. A lack of knowledge destabilizes, confuses, and robs you of joy you would otherwise have.

[4:50] Also, in conjunction with these know ye nots, or we know, it is imperative to note, they contain truths found only in the revelation the risen Christ gave to the Apostle Paul.

[5:06] Now, you will not find these truths in other parts of the Bible. Not in the Old Testament, not in the four Gospels, or elsewhere. Only in Paul's epistles.

[5:20] Why is that? It's because Paul's writings represent the latest, the most up-to-date information that Christ revealed to Paul after his ascension back to heaven.

[5:39] The know ye nots, or the we know, is updated truth, never before known, but now revealed through Paul.

[5:49] It is part and parcel of what Paul refers to as my Gospel, separating it from the Gospel of the Kingdom preached by Christ and the Twelve Apostles.

[6:03] This information is from the Gospel of the Grace of God, not of the Kingdom. And when people confuse these, or try to mix them, intellectual disaster is the result, because they just will not commingle.

[6:21] They clash, and they are supposed to clash. The Gospels do not reveal these truths because they are not supposed to reveal them. It was to be a later revelation.

[6:32] So the Gospels have in it everything it was supposed to have. The Old Testament has in it everything it's supposed to have. But what God revealed to Paul was after he ascended back to heaven and is providing new information that nobody else had ever even imagined.

[6:52] So what we are going to be talking about for the next few weeks, the Lord willing, has to do with information that is current for us and our generation, but was virtually unheard of, unthought of by previous generations.

[7:13] And I think that will become apparent as we move on. Now, if you will take the sheet that you were provided and look at... Excuse me. I should not have eaten that cookie.

[7:29] But I couldn't resist. Oh, here comes my water man. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. I keep wondering sometimes why it is that I have this problem with my voice.

[7:51] But then the little voice speaks to me and says, Well, Marv, you've got a lot of miles on those 86-year-old pipes. What do you expect? So if you would look, please, at Romans chapter 5, and you'll find that on page 66, 71, and verse 17.

[8:14] We're going to begin reading there, simply because we must do so for time's sake, because the content that is to come will be very, very enlightening to all of us.

[8:24] And by the way, speaking of enlightening, we had an extraordinary session this morning at 9 o'clock in the early hour. It was remarkable.

[8:37] Nathan Rambach brought some... Well, it was just... I don't know exactly what you would call it. It wasn't new information, but it had a new kind of emphasis and a new, fresh kind of approach to it.

[8:50] And it just kind of lit up things for a lot of people. And we really appreciate it from Galatians and from Genesis. So you really ought to give serious consideration.

[9:01] If you're not here for the 9 o'clock hour, you have no idea what you're missing. This is really good stuff, and I want to put in a pitch for it. Verse 17, chapter 5, we'll begin reading.

[9:14] And the apostle says, For if... And this, again, is a first-class conditional clause, and it doesn't mean maybe, it doesn't even mean if, it means since. It means since, or in light of the fact.

[9:26] For since by one man's offense, that's Adam's, death reigned by one, much more, they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.

[9:41] Now you will note as we read through this, I'm reading only the bold print. And the bold print is referred to here as the base text. It is the King James Version, which many of you have, and I know many of you also have the New American Standard, and some have the New King James.

[9:58] And I'm going to, for time's sake, just read the bold print. But in between, there are other renditions given, and they are very helpful, and I encourage you to look at them on your own.

[10:09] We won't have time to look at them now, but comment, because some will get the wrong impression. The verse is not talking about universal salvation. It's not saying that everyone is saved because Christ died.

[10:24] But what it is saying is that everyone is savable because Christ died. Because in the death of Christ, God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.

[10:37] Left out no one. Left out no one. Reconciling the world unto himself. So he has made salvation available to all.

[10:50] We preach the gospel informing people of that so they can make a personal appropriation of what Christ has done for them. That personalizes salvation. So what this text is saying is that God has already made a way for everyone to be saved.

[11:09] Not meaning everyone is saved, but that everyone is savable. Even the worst, most vile offender among us could be saved.

[11:22] If he could not be, then the payment Jesus made wasn't quite enough. That's the implication. All right, let's continue on.

[11:33] Verse 19. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, which is another word for everyone, as he's already pointed out in the previous verse, many were made sinners.

[11:46] So by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. Let's turn the page.

[11:58] But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. That as sin has reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

[12:18] Now, in chapter 6, what shall we say then? And Paul is asking a rhetorical kind of question. What's the outcome of this?

[12:29] Where do we go from here? What does this all mean? In light of what I have just told you, where are we going with this? What's the upshot? So what? That's what he's saying. So what? What difference does it make?

[12:41] What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? And the argument that he's putting forth here is to answer the ridiculous claim by some who oppose the subject of the grace of God this way.

[12:54] Well, if you're saying that the more sin there is, the more grace there is. That's the way it works.

[13:05] Grace is always adequate to overcome the sin factor. That being the case, what we really need is more sin.

[13:20] So there will be more grace. Because the more sin we have, the more grace. This is the ridiculous argument that some were using to oppose the Apostle Paul in his teaching of grace.

[13:31] And here, of course, he points out how nonsensical that is. And he's saying, no, no, no, no, no. You completely missed the whole point. He goes on to say, God forbid.

[13:42] In the Greek, this is the term meganoito. And it is the strongest adversity in the Greek language. It can also be translated, God forbid.

[13:53] God forbid or perish the thought. Don't let the idea enter your mind at all. That's what he's saying. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

[14:06] Now that is, on the surface at least, an enigmatic statement. If we are dead to sin, what in the world is he talking about?

[14:18] How can we be dead to sin? I'm afraid I'm very much alive, and so are you. And what is this business about being dead to sin?

[14:32] How does that work? Or is this some kind of a mistaken notion? Well, I'm sure there are those who probably come to that conclusion. But he's going to go on to present a very cogent, logical argument.

[14:45] And it all has to do with understanding perspective. There is your perspective and mine. They are very limited.

[14:59] There is God's perspective, unlimited. He sees the whole picture. This is the way God views you in Christ.

[15:12] This is the provision that he has made for us. He says, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?

[15:24] To explain, know ye not? Here's the first know ye not. Or do you not know? This is a rhetorical question. That so many of us, as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death.

[15:40] And it is really, really important to understand there is not a drop of H2O in that verse. In fact, it is so emphatic that there is no water in this baptism that the vast majority of our Baptist friends believe that.

[16:05] There is no water in this verse. This is a spiritual baptism. And Paul goes on to say, we are baptized into Jesus Christ.

[16:16] And the essence and the idea is of baptism is identification with. That's the big ticket item. The baptism is to be identified with, to be associated with in such an intimate way that there is no distinction between you and that with which you are identified.

[16:37] or baptized into. A common illustration is given in classical Greek language where it actually refers to in one of the writings, I don't remember if it was Homer or the Iliad or which it was, but it was one of them that talked about, it talked about a frog being baptized into a snake.

[17:02] What does that mean? It means the snake ate the frog. And what the snake was, the frog became part of, identified with in an inseparable way so that you no longer could separate the snake from the frog.

[17:25] They were one together. They were of the same. that's what you are in the person of Christ spiritually. We are members of his body spiritually.

[17:40] He is the head spiritually. It is a beautiful concept, but nobody explains this or even offers it apart from the writings of Paul.

[17:53] not because they somehow missed it. Well, they missed it because it wasn't revealed and they weren't even supposed to have it. It isn't that we're saying that the Old Testament or that the Gospels are somehow deficient.

[18:08] They're not deficient at all. They have everything in them that they're supposed to have. But the Bible is a progressive revelation. It is doctrine developing, doctrine on the move.

[18:20] It isn't static. It's developing. And as you move through, particularly, excuse me, particularly within the New Testament, it becomes more and more apparent that things are changing.

[18:39] This is what we call in the book of Acts because this is where the change started. This is where it began getting underway. It is a new revelation.

[18:51] It is an updating that wasn't available before, wasn't even thought of or imagined before. And before going on, let me just point out the essence of it and the principal thing that made this so wildly different, so totally, absolutely different, was that it put the Jew and the Gentile in the same boat on the same plane making no distinction between them any longer.

[19:25] And prior to that, there was a tremendous distinction among them. The main thing that characterized the Jew was his separation from everyone else.

[19:35] But now, in Christ, the barrier of separation is broken down. you are all in the same body together.

[19:47] And when Paul began preaching that, it was a thunderclap. And many of the Jews of whom he belonged, to whom he belonged and was one of at one time, said, treason, treason, away with that man.

[20:02] He shouldn't be allowed to live. And there were numerous times when they sought to take his life. Primarily because he was breaking down that distinction that God had told him to break down.

[20:15] But by the way, God also told Paul, this is what you are to preach and you're going to pay a heavy price for preaching it.

[20:30] Because when God appeared to Ananias right after Paul's conversion and told him, I want you to go to Paul, find Saul of Tarsus, he's in the street called Straight, he's there with one Ananias, with one Simon, Judas, and tell him, you lay your hands upon him that he may receive his sight and I will show him what great things he must suffer for my name.

[21:02] think of that. God is sending this man out to preach a message that by some is going to be well received and wonderfully appreciated and by others they want to kill him for delivering the message.

[21:22] That's the kind of temperature Paul the apostle was stepping into and the kind of climate in which he was to carry out his commission.

[21:33] So as I've said before, everywhere this man went, he had a riot or a revival. It was pure passion on his part that caused him to deliver that message and those who opposed him were doing so from passion also.

[21:52] Unfortunately, it was an ignorant passion. verse 4 says, Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism, not water but spiritual, into death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

[22:18] For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. This is stunning stuff if you really get a handle on this.

[22:31] When he talks about being baptized into Christ's death, what he's saying here is this is from God's perspective. It's not from yours. What we need to do is make our perspective coincide with God's perspective but also often we only see it with ours and we forget his or we don't even know his and the text says in verse 3 that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death.

[23:04] Do you really understand what that means? If you don't, let me put it this way. In God's perspective, life, when he sees Jesus dying on that cross for the sins of the world, he sees you there in him dying with him.

[23:33] That's God's perspective. That's not ours. We say, well, you're talking about that was 2,000 years ago. We weren't even thought of that. We couldn't be. Listen, that's the whole point.

[23:45] once you get fixed in your mind what God has provided for you so that you are able to see it from God's perspective because his is over and done with.

[23:58] It's a finished thing. It's already completed. It's wrapped up. Once you begin to see it that way and understand that that way, there will be within you a profound new sense of appreciation, of joy, of gladness, of stability, of security.

[24:16] That's where you are. That's who you are. That's what it means to be in Christ. That is a riddance to anxiety, to insecurity, to uncertainty, to everything that jars us in this life, that makes us quiver and quake and fear and shake.

[24:36] When you understand God's perspective, peace, be still. Even in the midst of, you know, you can be on a ship on the ocean when a real storm comes up and even some of the largest ships really reveal that they're in stormy water and that thing is rocking and rolling and up and down and the people on board are, half of them are seasick and it is tumultuous and you wonder, is this thing going to be able to ride this out?

[25:15] I hope we're not going to sink. It's really scary. And you know what? A couple of hundred feet below those waves, there's just perfect calm.

[25:27] You wouldn't even have any idea what's going on on the surface. on the surface is your perspective.

[25:40] Down deep is God's perspective. The difference is incalculable. That's what this whole series of know ye not, don't you know this, don't you understand this?

[25:56] Because if you do, it will change your life. The sad thing is, and I mean sad, is that so many Christians don't have a clue about this.

[26:16] Oh, they're saved. They're going to heaven when they die. but they're sure not having much joy in their life while they're here.

[26:29] This ignorance of this will rob you of your joy because you cannot see any further than your own perspective.

[26:41] Well, now, wait a minute. Wait a minute, Pastor Mark. How is it that I'm supposed to believe this stuff that is God's perspective? That's what the word faith means.

[26:55] It means to believe God. It simply means to take God at His word. It simply means God really does know what He's talking about.

[27:05] Can you believe that? Can you trust in that? Can you relax in that? Oh, but you don't understand. I have cancer. So what? That's your perspective.

[27:18] God's got a much bigger plan than that. Got a letter just a couple of days ago, an email from a young man. I'll share the letter with you next week. Many of you, well, not many of you, but some of you, because many of you weren't here years ago.

[27:33] Dave Browdebush, a name that probably is foreign to you, but he and his parents, Nancy and George, were early attendees at Grace Bible Church, and they moved away years later.

[27:48] I remember my wife and I, it was in the late 1970s, early 1980s.

[28:00] We spent, I think it was 10 or 12 hours in the hospital, university, hospital in Columbus, and Dave Browdebush was going through a 12-hour surgery.

[28:20] And of course, his parents and family were there, and Barb, my first wife, and I were there, and it was a long day and a long night, and he had invasive cancer in his spine, and he was just a young man, like 16 years old, 17 years old, had his whole life ahead of him.

[28:43] And the doctor came out and said, well, the surgery's over, it was a very difficult, very intricate surgery, and they had a team of multiple surgeons because no surgeon can be under that stress and strain for those kind of hours, so they would actually switch off to complete this.

[29:03] And long story short, he ended up paraplegic, lost his legs, going to go on, though, however, to a stellar career, and it's just remarkable.

[29:18] And the attitude of this young man was just almost unreal. How could a young Christian of such a tender age have the confidence and the peace and the joy and the insight that this young man had when his legs had just been taken from him for the rest of his life?

[29:38] They weren't amputated, but they were worthless. They might as well have been amputated. He couldn't use them. And the letter that we got just the other day, the email, brought us up to speed.

[29:50] And now he's not a paraplegic. He's a quadriplegic. Doesn't have the use of his arms either. And still, the attitude was just remarkable.

[30:07] And I can attribute it to only one thing. He has God's perspective in mind, not Dave's perspective. Makes all the difference. And you know, once you grasp this, if you do grasp it, you'll have to remind yourself of it often because we are very prone to forget.

[30:31] Sometimes the things that would benefit us the most, we tend to forget. And the Romans 828 thing, and I know people think and say, well, yeah, I know, everything works together for good, yeah, blah, blah, blah.

[30:44] That's true for most people, but it doesn't work in my case. Yes, it does. But the reason you don't see it working in your case when you face this adversity, this difficult, this heartache, this loss, whatever it is, is because you are drowning in your perspective.

[31:09] And that can induce depression and doubt and fear and everything else. I'm not saying that we deny reality.

[31:22] I'm not saying that we pretend somehow that the pain and the difficulty and the heartache that we're facing isn't real. It is real. And it hurts. It hurts a lot.

[31:35] But I am convinced, said the apostle, that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.

[31:54] God's perspective. Get a handle on that. Grasp that. It will make you wake up in the morning with a different attitude and go to bed at night with a different attitude.

[32:08] God does all things well, even when it hurts. Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death, death.

[32:21] That like as Christ was raised up from the dead. Oh, it gets only better. We're not only dead with Christ, on the cross with Christ, we're raised with him. Wow.

[32:33] Isn't that something? Can you believe that? How many times have I told you more than anything else, God wants to be believed?

[32:44] More than anything. And you have to ask yourself the question, is he believable? Is he trustworthy? Is he reliable? Can I really take what God says to the bank and count on it?

[33:01] If you are able to see this, grasp it and appropriate it, you can have the attitude that Job had when everything was taken from him, including his health.

[33:22] And he made that immortal statement that just blows us away. Speaking of his God, though he slay me, yet will I trust him.

[33:37] that is a faith that honors God. That is just priceless.

[33:52] All men is crucified with him, the body of sin might be destroyed. Think of that, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin.

[34:06] What in the world does that mean? Sometimes I don't feel very much alive, but I'm not dead. I'm able to breathe and eat and take nourishment and all the rest of it.

[34:18] I'm far from dead. What does this mean? He that is dead is freed from sin. That again, that's your position in Christ.

[34:30] We are dead. Think of that. what impact or effect or temptation can sin have on somebody who's dead?

[34:42] I remember hearing a preacher illustrate this when he was conducting the funeral of a man who had passed away who was notorious as the town drunk.

[34:58] and the grace of God, he became a believer in Jesus Christ and it completely changed his life.

[35:09] And the first thing to go was the sauce. Now, I don't mean to give the impression that anyone who comes to Christ is never going to have a problem with alcohol or addiction or whatever else they're in, because I've heard of cases where someone has been addicted to drugs or to alcohol and they come to faith in Christ and it's gone immediately.

[35:33] They don't touch another drop. They don't want another drop. They have nothing to do with drugs. They are free from that. And yet, there are numerous cases where people also come to faith in Christ and they become a true believer and they have a real struggle and an ongoing temptation with whatever it is, the alcohol or the drugs, and they may have relapses and they may be in rehab two, three, four times before they finally get over it.

[35:59] I don't know why with some it's gone just like that and with others they struggle with it the rest of their life. But I know cases all the way. And what Paul is saying here is that he that is dead is freed from sin.

[36:13] Henceforth, in verse 6, henceforth should not serve sin for he that is dead is freed from sin. And he illustrated this in his message. He said, when this fellow died, he said, now you know, physically he's dead.

[36:30] And if he were alive, if he were alive, you could still set a bottle of Jim Bean in front of him and he wouldn't touch a drop.

[36:42] Because even though he was alive, yet he was dead to sin. And that's what this text is saying. Which means, in essence, sin is neutralized for those who are in Christ and it has no legitimate power over you.

[37:02] Sin cannot rule the roost. But, if you allow it to, it will. And you may allow it to, but, you don't have to.

[37:15] you choose to. I think it was A.W. Tozer who made the point, and I think it's a very valid point. It is this, and get a handle on this because it's liberating.

[37:27] It does not mean that the Christian is unable to sin. We all know better than that. But once you are in Christ, it means that the Christian is able not to sin.

[37:46] In other words, you don't have to. You are not sold under it. That's the meaning of the text here when he goes on to say that the body of sin might be destroyed.

[37:56] Our old man has crucified him, and in verse 6, that the body of sin might be destroyed. That's not a good rendition, the word destroyed, because it kind of gives the impression that it's completely eliminated.

[38:08] And that's not true. That's not true. The body of sin in the old sin nature has found a home in you. You were born with it, and you will die with it.

[38:22] And when you die physically, then you will be relieved from it permanently. And when you come to faith in Christ, that old sin nature is rendered inoperative.

[38:35] And you can resurrect it if you choose to. And you know what? Most of us do. with anger, with unbelief, with unkindness, with anything and everything that is displeasing to God, we can resurrect that.

[38:51] But when he says this old man is crucified with this, it says, and he's talking about our old nature, our old sin nature, that the body of sin might be destroyed.

[39:02] Rhames renders it in order that the sinful body, which is the flesh that dwells in all of us, might be made powerless. Powerless.

[39:13] You, with your volition, can empower it to act. Or you can empower it not to act.

[39:24] In other words, you, in your volition, are in control. Now, I want to make a statement here that I think is very, very telling, and it's very important that you understand this. Human volition, or the ability of the human will to make decisions for good or for ill, is very important, very real.

[39:42] This is something that God gave to every one of us. We are born with a volition that is a capacity to exercise a will for moral good or for moral evil.

[39:54] We have a will that enables us to make decisions, and we are confronted every day with all kinds of decisions to make, and you make them with your mind, with your will. When you married, you exercised your will when you said, I do.

[40:10] And this will was somehow implanted in our human psyche. It is part of what makes us a human being.

[40:24] So we have options when we are confronted with them. This differs from animal creation, because animals do not have a volition.

[40:35] Animals act out of instinct. They do what is natural to their particular breed of whatever they are. There is a certain way that a polar bear behaves and conducts itself.

[40:51] It's operating out of an instinct. It is the programmer that programmed that bear to be what it is and do what it does, and they did the same thing for lions and fish and dogs and cats and everything else.

[41:04] But you don't have an instinct. You have an intuition and you have a will. An animal, a lion, can't look upon a gazelle when the lion is very hungry and say to himself, now let me see, should I attack and eat that gazelle or not?

[41:22] Let's call that a no-brainer. It's just going to do it automatically. Why? Because it's programmed to do that. That's its nature.

[41:33] Nature is red in tooth and claw. That's its nature. But you and me, when we are confronted with choices, our volition, our will comes into action and we can yea or nay.

[41:48] And you must understand that it is the exercise of our volition that provides the basis for our accountability.

[42:01] That's what makes us accountable to God. That's what we will answer for. So then everyone will give account of himself before God.

[42:13] And that accounting will be determined by what we did, with the free will volition God gave us. And there won't be any of this, well, I couldn't help it.

[42:25] I was so weak. I couldn't resist. Baloney. That won't fly and you know it. That's just an excuse. But it makes us feel better to make up excuses like that.

[42:35] I was just a helpless victim. I could not resist. Nonsense. You could too. Remember when Joseph was confronted with the charms of Pharaoh's wife?

[42:48] Wanted to bed down Joseph, have relations with him. And Joseph just said, probably didn't say it out loud, but I'm sure he said it in his mind.

[43:02] I'm sure he said it in his volition. Feet, move! And he ran, got out of there. He exercised his volition. That's what this is about. Our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be rendered powerless.

[43:18] We do not sin because we have to. We sin because we choose to. Deal with it. That's reality. And we do not have to apologize because we have to.

[43:34] We apologize to someone we have wronged because we choose to. My, this is priceless stuff. He that is dead is freed from sin.

[43:48] It is just as if the world's temptations have no allure to us because in Christ, in this spiritual capacity, we don't have to yield.

[44:00] It's just amazing. And now, verse 8, if we be dead or since we are dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more.

[44:15] For in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he lives unto God. Now, what Paul is asking these Romans as he writes this is, hey, you do know this stuff, don't you?

[44:33] Know you not? Don't you know this? Surely you know this, don't you? Well, I'm certain many of them probably didn't, and there were probably some there in the congregation who had a handle on it and understood it, but the vast majority of them probably did not.

[44:49] And Paul is asking this rhetorical question. It's the kind of question that everybody ought to know the answer to, but you know what? Not only did everybody not know the answer to it 2,000 years ago, but they still don't.

[45:04] And my goal as your pastor is to do everything I can to see to it that you know the answer. Because you cannot live it out if you don't understand it.

[45:22] Why do you think these things are given to us by God? Why do you think this text is here before us? Why do you think the Bible has been printed and distributed in hundreds of languages in not millions, but billions of copies over the years?

[45:41] Why it is the bestseller every year? God wants us to know this stuff because it severely, personally, positively impacts impacts your life in a way that nothing else will.

[45:57] And the really sad thing about this is, no, we don't expect the world to know this. The world doesn't have a clue. In fact, as I've often said, the world doesn't even have a clue that it doesn't have a clue.

[46:11] But we are supposed to be in the know. That's what we're doing here right now. That's why we're here.

[46:23] Is to learn more and more about what God has done for us in Christ, what he has made available to us, and what we are to do about it, and how it is to impact our life.

[46:37] And once you understand these concepts, you won't have any difficulty believing, all things do really, actually, honestly, truly work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.

[46:53] Yes, that includes your disease. It includes your aches and pains. It includes your weakness. It includes your vision loss. It includes everything that is negative, doesn't matter, doesn't amount to a hill of beans compared to who you are and what you are in Christ.

[47:11] For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

[47:29] For I am persuaded that the sufferings, the sufferings, oh, they were real. They are real. They hurt.

[47:39] You better believe they hurt. They hurt emotionally and they hurt physically. But they are still not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

[47:53] Can you believe that? If you can't, you can only say God isn't reliable and he isn't worth believing.

[48:10] You know, I kind of think that unbelief in this area, especially if you are clued in and a refusal to appropriate that and believe that, not only is to your detriment, but it dishonors Jesus Christ who died in your place to provide everything for you.

[48:46] Wow. Well, I'm not finished, but I quit.

[48:59] And I want you to know I'm quitting two minutes early. So if anybody's got a quick question, we can get it. Okay. Let's get our roving microphone.

[49:09] It'll be right there. Ethan's got those young legs that I envy so much. Right up here. Raise your hand.

[49:25] Yes. I was wondering where you copied this paper from so I can look it up. I'm sorry. Where did you Google this to find this? Oh, the text.

[49:37] Actually, it's from a 26 translations New Testament. It's where I got this. Okay. And a quick second question. What can a believer do to have the attitude of Job?

[49:50] Well, what can a believer do to have the attitude of Job? It's just believe what we've been talking about. Just appropriate it. Just personalize it.

[50:01] Just say, well, maybe. And by the way, nobody's saying that you have to understand this 100%. I'm sure I don't. I'm sure I don't.

[50:13] Nobody has ever plumbed the depths of any of God's truth. For sure. But we can get enough to appropriate it and have it impact and affect our lives.

[50:25] Thank you so much. And I can get one of the CDs and take it back to Tennessee and listen to it over and over again. Well, okay. Well, I appreciate that.

[50:35] Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Rita. Rita's sister Marlene has a question. This week has been rough for my husband and I.

[50:48] And I continue to try to grasp mental illness with Christians. When a believer takes their own life and it runs in the family and they continue to think that God is going to heal this.

[51:16] I don't want to be dramatic, but it has been rough. I understand. How, is there anything to do, say, for those who are so hurting like that?

[51:37] I don't know that there is anything to do or to say, but there is something to believe. And that's what we've been talking about. And, you know, the subject of suicide is tough.

[51:53] It's one of the most difficult to deal with. And some take the position that, well, if you are truly a Christian and you're a truly born-again believer, you wouldn't be able to do that.

[52:05] That's nonsense. That's nonsense. You can. And the reason you can is because there are circumstances and things that come into a person's life, certain kinds of illness, certain kinds of pain, that's absolutely overwhelming.

[52:26] And we who have not been there cannot empathize and cannot really understand that. And woe be unto anyone who is judgmental about it and faults someone because, as the old Indian saying goes, if you haven't walked a mile in someone else's moccasins, you should not be quick to judge them.

[52:53] And when you're talking about mental illness, that, too, is a whole different frame. You see, when our first parents engaged in disobedience to God, and the result was what we call the fall.

[53:10] That's probably the best way to characterize it because the fall is given that name because it was a huge step down.

[53:24] It was a fall. It was downward. It wasn't uplifting. It was down. And it completely changed the psyche of Adam and Eve in ways that I do not understand.

[53:39] I do not profess to understand. I don't know what it was that happened in their being as a result of that. All I know is that Adam and Eve took unto themselves some element that God did not put in them when he created them.

[53:58] Because the text tells us at the end of the chapter, in chapter 1, I think it is, that God beheld everything that he had made, and behold, it was good.

[54:09] It isn't good now. The world now is fallen, and we are fallen occupants of it. We are all fallen, and we are fallen in the totality of our being.

[54:24] That's what allows us to experience disease and death. That's what is responsible for mental illness, because our brains and our thinking apparatus was fallen also.

[54:42] We were fallen in toto, in entirety. And it ends in death, in physical death. And the complexities of mental disease and mental illness are just almost beyond our understanding.

[55:02] And I know some people take the position that, well, that is just irresponsibility on the part of the end of the world.

[55:15] But listen, the brain, which is incredibly complex and astounding in the way that God made it and he operates and all the rest of it, that's fallen too.

[55:33] It's the fallenness. Well, let me put it this way. When she was 69 years old, my first wife, Barbara, had a massive hemorrhage of the brain.

[55:52] And the doctor said, after taking the CAT scan and the MRI and everything, came out and said, there is extensive bleeding in the worst possible part of the brain.

[56:08] And in the space of about 12 hours, she was gone. She was almost immediately unable to communicate. You know, what her problem was?

[56:20] She had a fallen brain. She had fallen vascular system in the brain and in the body. And so do you. We all do. It's all part of what makes up this complexity of humanity.

[56:35] And even in our fallenness, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are still an incredible trophy, if you will, of God's grace, even in our fallenness. But these minds and brains have their limitations.

[56:52] And they are subjected to all kinds of stimuli and reactions and everything that comes into play. And we ought to be nonjudgmental when we are willing to offer verdicts about people and their mental abilities.

[57:13] Because you don't know what's going on there. And let me tell you something. A lot of our very best doctors and neurosurgeons don't know either. That's how complex we are.

[57:26] They've come a long way. But any neurosurgeon who's worth his salt will tell you that there is more about the brain that we don't know than what we do know. So when you try to extrapolate all of this and make a conclusion as to why somebody did something.

[57:43] And if you have not experienced and known the kind of pain or deprivation that they have and what's going on in their mind. Pain can be so debilitating and so excruciating that all someone like that can think about is end it all.

[58:01] End it all. And if God won't take me, I'll take myself. I can't stand it anymore. Have you ever been there? Well, if you haven't, don't fault somebody who has.

[58:14] And every time you go out of your house each day, you should be ready to treat everybody you meet with kindness because you never know what they may be facing.

[58:28] It's so easy for us to sit back and say, well, they should have and they ought to have and they shouldn't have. And why could he and how could he and all the rest of it. And to just, you know, be an all-knowing, judgmental and that's, you know what you would be?

[58:45] You would be one of Job's miserable comforters. Yeah, Job, we know why you're going through all this adversity. We know why you lost your wealth and your health and your kids. And we know why God took all those things from you, you lousy hypocrite.

[59:00] You put on a good front to everybody and made yourself out to be a very godly person. But we know that down deep in, you were really two-faced and a hypocrite.

[59:10] And that's why God took all this stuff from you. He's getting even with you. Now, that really made Job feel good, didn't it?

[59:23] Well, all Job could do is shake his head and say, miserable comforters are you all. Wow. Wow. And, you know, the world, listen, the world has got a bunch of Job's friends, quote, unquote, in it.

[59:41] People who are willing to sit back and take pot shots at someone else who demonstrated their weakness or whatever. And it's just, it's a sad, sad case of a fear. Well, there's so much involving this and we could just go on and on.

[59:54] But this is one of those, well, I'd like to have a three-hour session with a bathroom break in the middle. But we can't do that. So let's stand. We'll be dismissed. Our Father, we recognize once again, as we do every Sunday morning, there's more about this that we don't understand than what we do.

[60:16] But we just want to be responsive and faithful to what we do understand. We believe that you have revealed enough about yourself and you've revealed enough to us about ourselves to know what our position and attitude ought to be toward all this.

[60:38] And we relish what Paul has set forth as those wonderful, wonderful truths that you have provided for us in the upcoming series of Know You Not and We Know.

[60:56] Oh, how thankful we are. We don't guess. We don't think. We don't suspect. But we know. And only on the basis of what we know can we live out and move out with confidence and assurance, knowing that you really do do all things well, even sometimes when it hurts.

[61:20] We look forward to understanding and explanation that only you can provide when one day we get the glory and all these things will be ironed out and made clear. And then we'll have your perspective in a way we don't know.

[61:39] Thank you for Jesus and for all you've built into his death, burial, and resurrection for us. In his name, amen.