Real Freedom, Pt. 4

Ronald Weinland

February 16, 2019

We’re going through the series entitled Real Freedom. Today is Part 4.

We’ve discussed how people in governments in this world sometimes work for what they describe as freedom and the giving of peace to others through their own way, their own means, but we understand there isn’t true freedom. It isn’t true at all. It isn’t real at all. As it’s been stated in this series we are so blessed in God’s Church to understand that, to grasp some of those things that God has been revealing to us about what real freedom truly is and having our minds cleansed from the things we have not understood in times past.

So we’re going through this series discussing some of those things. We just had some verses here in Chapter 5 that we were going through. I do want to pick up a few of those verses and then we’ll continue on from there. So we’re going to jump right into this today as we talk about how God is leading us through this process that does produce real freedom.

Again, we’re going to begin with these verses, Romans 5:5, jumping in here and saying, And hope does not make (produce) shame. Before this, it’s describing things here that do produce shame, being ashamed because of sin. We should be able to have that in our lives, in our minds. Even that’s a process where so many people aren’t ashamed of sin. They don’t acknowledge what sin is because they don’t acknowledge God. That’s a part of a process of learning about what real freedom is. It’s coming to a point where we grasp what real freedom is.

So again here, And hope does not make ashamed... So it’s discussing things about shame; people don’t feel shame or ashamed. I think of what is referred to in scripture as the “Asham Offering.” It’s a shame offering, in essence, is what it is in the Old Testament, and that’s something that people have to come to. If you’re not ashamed of sin you just live in it. People don’t care. They don’t acknowledge, again, God and the laws of God. The more we come to understand and see the things that God gives to us as He begins to lead us out of bondage we begin to see the world for what it is. We begin to see human nature for what it is. That’s a great blessing.

I think of sermons given in times past where I’d hear of people discuss or talk about or make comments about they’re tired of being told how bad I am, we are, or whatever. You think, then you’re missing something very great here because we are! What are you trying to protect? What are you trying to reflect? What is it in your life you want others to see? Are you hiding? What is it? Because the reality is we have to be able to see our own human nature. We have to be able to see what we’re really like, so this is a process that God leads us through. A large part of that is coming to a point where we are ashamed of sin, where we can experience shame. If a person can’t experience that they can’t continue in a process, if they’re being drawn and called by God, of coming out of sin, of coming out of bondage, of experiencing what real freedom is. Instead they’re holding on to something that isn’t healthy for them.

That’s happened a lot in God’s Church. “Hope does not make ashamed.” So God gives us a hope and a purpose and a plan that He has, reflected in the holy days, as an example. We begin to latch on to those things. We begin to see what God wants to give to us. We begin to understand why He created us and we have a hope. We have a hope in His Kingdom. We have a hope in His Family. We have hope and understanding in those things, and it’s the opposite – that kind of a mind is the opposite of that which tries to hold on to sin, bondage. Human mind is sick, because the reality is there is a battle going on inside of us where we try to hold on in many cases to various levels of bondage, being in bondage, being in slavery instead of learning to take control of our lives. That’s what God wants. He wants us to make choices and decisions that reflect truly taking control of our lives and not being controlled by it.

Because the world is being controlled by their own human nature. They don’t understand that. They’re being controlled by their own selfishness. They’re not in control. People think they are, but they’re not, and so they don’t experience what God wants them to, a mind that is unique, that is being filled with the word, the mind, the thinking of God.

So hope does not make ashamed, or produce shame, because the love of God, the agape; something so unique. That’s what real freedom fully is, having that kind of mind, that kind of thinking in understanding in relationships because love has to do with relationships. It has to do with others, not just ourselves, but our thinking toward others.

...because the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the holy spirit which is given unto us. How is that possible? Well, through our Passover. We have to be forgiven of sin. That’s how the Israelites came out of Egypt, because of a Passover that they observed. God wants us to learn from that, and we do. We begin to learn then about our Passover and how we’re able to come out of Egypt, spiritual bondage, and then God begins to gives us of His holy spirit so that we can experience things that come from Him – His love, His mind, His thinking. That’s true, or that’s real freedom, when we don’t have the hang-ups of carnal, human nature.

For when we were yet without strength, without God’s strength, without the holy spirit, according to the time... I love this translation, this part which is translated right, “according to the time,” God’s time because it’s about God’s time when He calls us, when He draws us, because the world isn’t being let out of bondage. Only those whom God calls, or has called in times past. So when someone is called they begin this journey and they begin a process. So according to God’s time people begin to experience, can begin to experience real freedom.

It says...Christ died for the ungodly. Who is that? Everyone. All of us. That’s what we were. We didn’t live God’s way. We lived in deception. We lived in lies, things we didn’t understand about God, about religion.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good person some would even be willing to die. In other words, from their perspective a good person. We understand what that means. There is none good but God and His Son. But in this here, when it talks about a person in their thinking, that people have to esteem them, they have to respect them or respect something about it in a willingness to die for them. People in a close fraternal type of relationship, when you talk about brotherly love in the military, that’s what they develop. Because they rely upon each other, they depend upon each other, and there are those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for another. There is that kind of thinking that exists. There are those who are willing to give their life for a leader. They’re willing to do that. They think that way. They think so highly and as to what they believe in and what they understand. But again, not understanding here what God has given, that there is one who died for everyone so that we could begin to experience freedom, peace, God, God’s life in our life.

But God demonstrates, or as the word means “to establish.” God demonstrates (establishes) His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That’s a sermon in itself to understand, what that means, what God has done, what He desires for us to do and learn from that example, from what He has demonstrated by what He did through His Son and what His Son was willing to do.

God demonstrates (establishes) His love toward us, a willingness of sacrifice. So we have learned even more so about how that God was willing to sacrifice peace a long, long, long time ago by creating an angelic realm of beings that had free moral agency within them. They didn’t have the holy spirit in them, but all they knew was about what God showed them and revealed to them in His plan and purpose and what their function was, what they were to do until...until one began to see himself as greater than all the rest, and even began to compare himself with God. Incredible what the mind can do even in that spirit world.

God knew what was going to happen in time. It was a part of His plan. It can’t happen any other way because mankind was to follow later on where they would be given choices and come to a point of conviction where those same ideas would not enter into them. We choose to fight. We choose to fight for God’s way of life. We choose this is what we want and we want Him, we want His holy spirit, His mind, His life dwelling within us. We want to share in that.

He demonstrates His love toward us, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. So how does that affect us? Well, the more we understand that the more we love God. The more we really grasp that, truly, the more we will respond in loving God, in loving His way and loving His truth and actually fighting against sin and not wanting to do things that are contrary. We learn to want to please and be pleasing to God and to others in God’s Family. So that’s something that’s learned through time, through growth, and hopefully we learn to establish or to demonstrate that love in our life towards others, towards God’s family. To understand even going a little bit farther, if you will, as Christ said, “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing,” that same mind.

Because, you see, that’s God’s love. That’s the mind of God working. That’s something that must be in us in how we react, not just within the Body, within the Church, where we should be one and for one another, but even toward the world. We look forward to the time that they’re going to be freed, to begin the same process of freedom, experiencing that in their life.

And so what are we willing to sacrifice? Are we willing to do the same thing that’s been given to us or do we want to hold things against others or expect things of others that they’re incapable of doing? Or do we really understand they can’t do it. They can’t know and they can’t live what we live yet so we can’t expect things of them. If we have this kind of love working in our minds “while they’re yet sinners,” while they’re not able to come out of bondage yet, that we have patience, that we love them as God, because it says this is His kind of love, “that while we were yet sinners,” not living His way of life, not choosing Him, on the contrary, living contrary to Him and His laws and fighting against them and living a lie until He opens our minds to see that.

Much more then (verse 9) having now been justified by his blood... So it’s a process we go through, justified by his blood, by his sacrifice, speaking of Christ, we shall be saved from wrath. In other words, this meaning “the execution of judgment” because that’s what this is about. The world doesn’t understand that; even in translations this is not a good translation. But we don’t have words, in many ways, that describe this except from our knowledge and understanding, that it’s a matter of the execution of God’s judgment.

It’s not His anger. You know, when they talk about that in the Old Testament, and so forth, people see human anger. They see a loss of control. God’s in control and He doesn’t want to see His creation suffer, but there comes a time at times when God does intervene and He does execute judgment for the betterment...for the betterment of the world, of His creation.

He had to do that once with a great flood. God didn’t want to do that, but He had to do it because people had gone so far if He hadn’t intervened what would ever be able to come from that? The minds becoming so polluted, like they are today at such a fast pace. Much faster than any time in world history because of technology, to where there is no coming back from it. It gets to that point. That’s why God had to do what He did in the days of Noah because it just comes to the point in time that people can so damage their minds or the mind becomes so damaged that it will never choose God no matter what’s placed in front of them, no matter what they might see, no matter being resurrected in the Great White Throne, that they’d be able to see what God has done over the past 1,000 years.

You know, we think about sometimes what’s it going to be like when some of those in the Old Testament and different ones all the way through the different eras of God’s Church are resurrected to see the world today. When it says about prophesy, “chariots running to and fro,” all they could picture was a chariot and going slow behind a horse. To see something moving along at 70 and 80 mph and bypasses and you go to some cities and they’re going underneath, and underneath that one, and underneath that one and where are they all going, you know? Sometimes they come to almost a stop because there are so many of them. You think, what are they going to think? I can’t imagine being resurrected to a world like that. Can you?

To see things, to see peoples on a screen, huge screens, if you want, you know, as clear as day, and hear them talking, and where are they? Oh, well, they’re around the other side of the world. Think, what is this? And that’s nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing compared to what it’s going to be like at the end of 1,000 years. Technology and the understanding of things is just started. It’s just started. We think how fast paced things are moving?

We haven’t seen anything yet. Because just as today, God lets us use a physical world with physical laws to benefit mankind. He’s going to allow that to continue because that’s how we’re going to function, that’s how people are going to function. They’re going to learn to use things but for the right purposes. Not for war. Not for fighting. Not for competition. Not to see who can get their little smart phone out there first, whatever it might be, you know, and beat the market with the latest thing. It’s not going to be like that. They’re going to share in that. There’s not going to be nations stealing technology from another one to build bigger battleships and better jets that can’t be seen, can’t be detected. Incredible! All used for what’s good.

So if you can think about what it’s going to be like for people who are going to be resurrected and they see this today, and they see these automobiles, and they see the things that are taking place, and you push a button, “What’s that?” and part of the house comes up. “Oh, and you park your car in there? How is this possible?” To think that that is minor, little, puny compared to what is going to happen at the end of a thousand years? It’s going to be exciting what mankind is going to be able to build. Your mind cannot grasp right now.

It’s incredible what God is doing and the plan that God has for us, what we’re able to share in. I don’t know why I went off on those tangents, but hey, it’s exciting, you know, what God’s preparing for us and what we have an opportunity to be a part of as time continues on. This process of how we’re able to attain these things and eventually come into these things is so incredible, what God reveals to us.

And so again here... (I need to get back to this. These things are exciting, but I need to get back to some of what the flow is here.) ...been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the execution of judgment through him.  So again, God executes judgment. He doesn’t get angry like human beings get angry. And yes, He’s had to intervene and He’s going to intervene again. Most of all the judgments in scripture that talk about an end-time judgment or about man’s judgment or the judgment upon mankind and what’s going to happen to mankind is about this time. It wasn’t about the flood. It wasn’t about the time of the flood. It’s about what has to happen because it has to happen at the end of 6,000 years.

So the vast majority of all prophecy that has to do with God executing judgment upon mankind is about this time and what’s going to take place so that God can usher in a new world, a new government and bring this one to an end. It doesn’t give up easily. That’s why God allows it to go as far as it does, for man to go as far as he’s going to go.

So again ...we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God... We were paid for. We were purchased out of slavery. We were purchased out of bondage by the blood of Joshua the Christ. For if when we were reconciled to God... That’s how we were reconciled to God, because we’re able to be forgiven, then, of sin. He died so that we could have the opportunity, the blessing of being purchased by what he did, by our choice when God brings us to that.

...reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. I think of how much more this meant at a certain point for the Church. You know, we understood that to a point, but all the way? Not as deeply as we should have because this “being saved by his life” is because it’s living in us. It’s because he will continually come into the flesh, come into our lives once we’re called. That continual coming into us, abiding in us, dwelling in us, that’s what this is about. This is how we’re saved, because He is able to dwell inside of us, in this mind. That’s something that’s hard to grasp. What an awesome thing, though, that we can change and become something different, go through a process of transformation, all a process of being saved, of being able to experience more and more freedom in life.

Not only that, but we can now also rejoice in/with God through our Lord Joshua the Christ. What an incredible thing, too, of thinking about that today, how that the more we learn, the more we see, the more we experience, the more we learn how to be able to rejoice and hear about what God is doing in our lives, what God is doing in the Church, what God is doing in this end-time. ...through our Lord Joshua the Christ through whom we have now received the atonement, or the reconciliation.

Now continuing on from where we were, Chapter 6, jumping on down into Romans 6:1, continuing on with what Paul has to say about how we’re delivered from bondage. Verse 1. So he says, What shall we say then? Should we continue in sin so that we might receive more and more grace? So he’s talking about this process. It’s an incredible thing that God wants us to be able to be forgiven of sin. He wants us to repent of sin so that He can forgive us, so He can have a stronger relationship with us, to work to transform this mind to become more like Him, to think more like in agreement and unity with Him because we agree.

It’s talking about this process and it’s talking about this carnal mind, and yet inside this carnal mind is a spirit essence that comes from God. Because of baptism and what God gives in the mind there is something unique growing inside of us. It’s on a spirit plane.

Should we continue in sin so that we might receive more and more grace? Because Paul is explaining here that the kind of love that God has and the kind of mercy that’s given to us and the ability to be forgiven of sin, that when we’re forgiven it’s gone, but you can’t take an advantage of that or misuse that. This is what he’s saying. So because of God’s great mercy and the grace He gives to us should we sin more so that we receive more grace? Obviously not!

So, it says, God forbid! How shall we who are dead to sin, in other words, being made free from bondage (that’s what it means, that’s what it’s talking about), live any longer in it? In other words, to live any longer in sin or in bondage? God wants us to be free of bondage. He wants us to be in control of our thinking, to make right choices, not let our human nature, “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” control us because so much of that is our carnal life.

Do we fight against it? That’s revealed in this process of repentance and whether we really experience shame every time that sin comes around and knocks on the door and we give in to pride, or whatever it might be, or lust of the eyes or lust of the flesh in human life. That’s a battle. It’s a battle we have to be engaged in. As we fight we can grow.

So it’s asking the question, “If we are free, if we are made dead to sin because we can be forgiven of sin, no longer in bondage, how can we live any longer in it?” Who wants to live in bondage? Yet that’s something that’s spiritual and we don’t really grasp it sometimes as far as human beings are concerned. We don’t really see it for what it is.

Don’t you know...? It’s like asking, as well, another way of saying it, have you forgotten, that so many of us as were baptized into Joshua the Christ were baptized into his death? It’s a beautiful picture that God gives to us, to say this is a process. It’s a spiritual one but it’s a process nonetheless, and it’s something that works in your life. It makes it very clear here about baptism, we use this example, we talk about going under the watery grave and coming back up and learning to walk in newness of life so that when we are baptized we’re baptized into his death.

Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death, in other words, under the watery grave and we come up and we’re supposed to walk in a new way of life striving to live by God’s word and God’s way of life, fighting against the carnal human nature. ...that just as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life, as free and not in bondage anymore, not in bondage at all, but we are. Every one of us is still in bondage. We’re not totally free, but we’re coming out of it. Just like the Israelites coming out of Egypt, it’s a long journey; forty years in the wilderness...forty years. Incredible!

There are those examples of things that we learn from spiritually in our lives. That it wasn’t meant to be quick. It wasn’t meant to happen in one year or a few months to get from here to there, to come out of bondage and all of a sudden be in a promised land. It doesn’t work that way. Yet there was a time when we in the Church thought that it did.

First time I was struck by that, I shared that with the Church many of times, thinking of a young man about nineteen who was baptized, two weeks later killed in a car wreck. There was a thinking within the Church that, well, he’ll be resurrected at Christ’s coming. No, he won’t. You can’t grow, you can’t be transformed in two weeks time. It’s not owed to us all of a sudden just because we went under a watery grave that somehow we should be spirit then. On the contrary! That young fellow will be a young fellow again in the hundred year period when he’s resurrected, age nineteen. And he’ll start from where he left off in his growth, two weeks into being baptized. He doesn’t have to be baptized again. He was already baptized and God will bring him back that way and he’ll be able to continue on in life. Awesome to understand those things. There is a freedom in that if you understand.

So again, this example of going under the watery grave, because that’s what’s describing here. We’re to come up and we’re to walk in newness of life. We’re not to walk the way we did in the past. On the contrary. We’re to go in a totally different direction.

Verse 5—For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, watery grave, he died, we’re resurrected – that’s the example here, we come up out of a watery grave to be a different person, to have hands layed upon us so that we can become a different person because we receive the impregnation of God, of God’s spirit into a new life that starts in the mind. ...then we should also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self is nailed to the pole with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed. Isn’t that what we all want? But when I think of something like this I think of how many didn’t all want that. The vast majority of those ever called have not wanted that, not really. They wanted something else. They wanted to hold on to something else.

I shouldn’t digress probably too much here, but I was watching a thing that was sent to me about some of the history of the Church and things that people have gone through, and it was going through some of the things that happened just before the Apostasy and some familiar faces of one that – don’t know if I had any classes under him but he was in the same college for a time teaching. Some of the things that some of these people said when their minds were being changed, and one of them, that, some of the lies that they were telling themselves and telling to others. But anyway, they were going through how they came to a point in time where all of a sudden he saw that “British Israelism” was wrong, basically, because of the tribes of Israel and the migrations and so forth and Manasseh and Ephraim and all the rest of those things, and Great Britain and the lineage of king David and the like.

I was struck by the fact that they had to find something. They didn’t find doctrine that was wrong. They didn’t find that the Sabbath was wrong. They didn’t come out and say that “All of a sudden I could see that the holy days were wrong, and really, Christmas and Easter are okay.” They didn’t say any of that. They didn’t say anything about any of the laws of God, but this part here was wrong. They finally said, “I came to this point,” more than one individual saying in essence here, they came to see where this was wrong. “And so if Mr. Armstrong was wrong about that, what about the rest of the stuff,” see.

They didn’t say what that was, but that’s what it comes down to because it came out. Tithing. The Sabbath. The holy days. See, if you start thinking about a certain thing, that all of a sudden now I look at something that’s really very physical. It’s not spiritual. The migrations of Israel? Nothing spiritual at all. Manasseh, Ephraim, nothing spiritual at all. Now you’re kind of messing with things a little bit when you start talking about the lineage of David, but still, you know, very physical, about who’s ruling, still ruling, sitting on a particular throne that is going to be there until Christ’s coming.

So I couldn’t help but think about what the Church has gone through and what the human mind has to go through in order to finally say no to God by a choice. “You’re wrong in this. I’m gone. I’m going back to that swill that You called me out of.” That’s what they’re saying. “I’m going back to Christmas. I’m going back to Easter. I’m going back to Sunday worship because you can worship God on any day of the week you want to.” Now, those of you who are new, you think that’s impossible for the human mind to think that. You think that there is no way you would ever, ever, EVER do something like that. Yes, you would. If you were living at that time? Be careful...be careful. Your mind is capable of exactly that kind of thinking unless you fight, and you continue to fight, and you continue to be on guard, and you continue to cry out to God for His holy spirit, and you continue to repent of your sins. See?

Given enough time you’ll do the same things. You would do the exact same things. There would be a large portion, a matter of fact, right at a third. That’s just the way it is. So you have to know yourself, of what you’re capable of doing. Another third would do exactly as – because this is the way it is with human life – would just give up because it’s like if that isn’t true then I don’t know about the rest then. That’s what happens to the mind. Then another third would try to do like the Jews, hold on to it the best way they can because of what they’ve believed for so long and I’m not going to go back now and eat pork because I know that’s wrong. It’s very physical, and because of that, too, I’m going to keep doing the Sabbath because I just know that has to be right.

That’s the way the carnal mind works without God’s spirit. We have to be on guard. This doesn’t end. It doesn’t end for any of us no matter when Joshua returns, whether it’s still this year or next year or whenever. And I, candidly, don’t know when it is. I still have my hopes. I still look toward this time here, but I know that we’re running out of time for 2019.

But even at that, be careful. God just may have greater mercy He’s going to show and there are things that God can alter and change at any time to fit into His plan and things can still happen much later on. Because, you know, a nuclear war, once those things start going off, it doesn’t take much time to destroy this earth. You know, in a week’s time, two week’s time, that’s all how longer it would have to be and God would have to stop it because there are some things out there right now that are so massive and so great.

Some that are bragging about it; Russia basically bragging about some of what they have and certain weapons that can go off in the ocean now and cause a 300 foot wave all along the coastline of the United States. How much would that kill? It would destroy New York City. It would destroy it, okay? It would destroy most along the coast for a long, long way in if they did something like that? And he’s of the mindset. He’s of the mindset that he’s willing to do these things if certain ones attack them. It’s like, “If you’re going to do this, get ready, because we’ve got something bigger and, basically, hope against hope we’re going to try to stay around. But you’re going to be gone. You’re going to be gone. You’re going to be wiped off this earth.” What a mindset, that if it comes down to something like that that you’re willing to do, and it takes that kind of a mind to fulfill certain prophetic things at the end-time here, it really does, of individuals who are willing to go that far. And they are.

We live in a sick, sick, sick world. That’s why I marvel today, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I think about people today and who they vote into office, and they’re behind them! You think, it’s not just certain individuals, it’s their minds too that put them there. Where are the minds? Where is the soundness of mind of people anymore? It’s just like the mind is, soundness is gone for the sake of something else, whatever that might be you want. You want something different and so you’ll be obstinate to what is rational or what is smart. It’s not a matter of taking sides. It’s just a matter of there are some things that are rational.

I can’t grasp a people that condone human trafficking. Know that it’s going on, slavery. I mean real slavery. I mean some really bad slavery because of what’s done, especially to women, young kids, as well, children, what they’re put through, how they control them, the drugs, the dependence they put on certain kinds of drugs and how they take advantage of them then and sell them to others to use any way they want to do.

We stand by and we watch something like that? As a nation, a people we allow something like that to take place and we don’t consider how sick that is? Because it hasn’t happened to me, hasn’t happened to my family and so we remove it far from us. You think, how can you let that to happen to anyone on earth if you have the power?

I marvel that God is holding back. To this point it’s got to be so close, some of these things, because we’re so sick. You talk about Sodom and Gomorrah. You talk about the days of Noah, how people were living. This world has passed it up already. It really is. It’s passing it up. The soundness of mind of people, how far people will go in certain thinking, it’s sick. God allowed the world to be destroyed by a flood. We’re there! He’s going to let us do it to ourselves and then step in and say, “No more. No more. This is it.” He’ll stop it.

That’s why I marvel at some of the prophecies that talk about how God’s going to begin destroying those who are destroying the earth. What He destroys can be far greater than what they did. What He can destroy, depending on what they have done and how far they go can be far greater than what they do with their nuclear weapons. So compared to what the world is now in population, it could be very small. It could be because that’s how far the human mind is going in its thinking.

We were given seven more years and you think, “Wow!” Look what the world has done with it. Because, see, they wouldn’t listen, they won’t listen. It’s never been that way. God allows something to show His mercy and His grace that He gives and how He gives it to mankind and what mankind always does. There is a testimony of that then, a witness of that at the end-time as well as there has been through generation after generation after generation of mankind.

Even with the greatest of technology, look what we’re like. Look what we have done. Look at our choices. Look at what man does when God gives mercy. He misuses it because he doesn’t recognize it. He doesn’t accept it as being from God. We are so much worse than what we were seven years ago. We truly are. I hope you feel this way. It blows the mind. It’s astounding.

With what we know? A lot of people have been ignorant of the fact that there is human trafficking coming across out of South America. This interstate right out here is one of the heaviest trafficking freeways in the United States and they know it. And what are they doing about it? They ignore it. The ignore it. There are certain parts of some cities that they don’t even want to go into and they will not confront because it’s like their hands are kind of tied and what do you do? Someone speaks out about it. I’m sorry, but this world stinks! This entire world is such a stench. It makes me sick.

And yet for the Church God is allowing us, giving to us an opportunity of freedom. We have to understand that this battle is with us until the end, whatever that end is here until Christ returns. I hope that everyone is able to be there. We’ve gotten a lot stronger, but you can’t let down. You can’t let up one iota.

For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, then we should also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self is nailed to the pole with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed. You’ve got to fight. You’ve got to be a part of that, of making sure that this stays this way. You want to get rid of sin. You want to fight against it. You want to fight against wrong thinking that comes into the human mind. ...and that from now on we should no longer be slaves to sin.

Do we really grasp that in the world, that until you were called you were a slave, you were enslaved to sin? You had no freedom whatsoever when it comes to real freedom. You had none. You were not controlling your life at all. People think they’re controlling their lives by their choices. No, they’re not, not in God’s plan. Not in God’s picture. Not in what is true. Not in a matter of what is right with God. Not in the slightest. Within the Church we have to come to understand those things more deeply, of what God has placed before us, how blessed we are to be called out of that.

For he who is dead has been freed from sin. You have to keep the old person buried. That means you have to continue to fight against sin. That means you have to continue to repent. That’s what it’s about. Freedom doesn’t come without repentance. You have to repent continually of those things that we should be ashamed of in life, the shame that should exist in our thinking, of what is wrong, of what is evil, of what is bad, of what is contrary to God.

Verse 8. So he goes on to explain: Since we are dead with Christ, the old self, keep him that way. It’s dead. ...we believe that we shall also live with him. That’s our hope. That’s what we look forward to, being in the God Family, whether it be now, soon, or at the end of the thousand years. ...we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death has no more dominion (rule) over him. It doesn’t have to have dominion over us if we keep fighting, if we keep fighting for real freedom the way God says to.

For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but the life that he lives, he lives unto God. So you too should consider yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, in other words, to the bondage of sin, to be freed from sin. That’s why I mention here in this series, and mention it again now, that so often it’s hard for us to truly live by this kind of faith. It goes back to how deeply do we really believe what we’re going through in this series because if we truly believe it every time, every day that you repent you’re free. If you truly believe these things with all of your being you don’t have to carry this garbage. You don’t have to carry shame with you. You’re freed from it. Raise up your head, lift up your head. Your past is your past!

If you’re still here – all of you here are here, and anywhere else – but others, understand this! That it’s because of this process that God will work with us, that God continues to work with us. How blessed are we to be able to have something like this in our life? Freed! You don’t have to carry it with you. Because so often I know people in the Church who carry it when they go through various things, and you’ve got to let go. Be freed. Do you feel free? Do you really feel free? It’s one thing to know and understand your weaknesses; 1, 2, 3...4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. But the three big ones at the top, those are, if you know what they are in your mind, in your thinking, if you can fight to control and be on top of those the rest tend to fall into place because you’ll be on top of that as well more readily, more quickly, more easily.

So if this mind is in you, if that thinking is in you, when there is sin you just let it go. Because you know what? Your mind is always going to be your mind as long as you’re in this body! Who you are is what you are. You’re going to always be that way as long as you’re in this body. Your weaknesses, 1, 2, and 3, they’re ALWAYS going to be there! But you don’t have to carry that with you. You don’t have to be beaten down by it.

Does that make sense? You don’t have to be beaten down by it because you can have this mind to realize it’s always nagging me, it’s always there. Well, yeah, number 1, 2, and 3, whatever they might be, but fight them. Fight them! Be convicted! Cry out to God, and if you fall flat on your face at some point you don’t give up, you don’t let up, you don’t let down. On the contrary, you go and repent and you’re free again, and you get right back to where you were except you’re a little ahead now because you repented again and you’ve agreed with God, “I am wrong and You are right. I loathe carnal human nature. I loathe carnal nature. I loathe selfishness.” You repent, you’re freed of it. Okay?

Incredible, this process we go through in the human mind. I think of this battle, this warring that goes on that Paul is building up to and talking about, in the mind. I was thinking this past week about different ones I’ve known and names I’ve forgotten—I can see their faces—that were with PKG for a time, come and go. Why? Choices. Choices.

So, you too should consider yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, the bondage of sin, freed from sin, but alive, but alive unto God. In other words, to live unto God. How blessed are we to be able to live a life like that unto God? One that’s pleasing to God? One that says, “Father, I love you. I love Your way of life. I love Your truth. I love the holy days.” You think about all that it pictures from the beginning and on, what incredible hope that God gives to us, what clarity...and candidly, what beauty. The more you see of that the more you see of God. It’s the mind. It’s the thinking. That reveals who we are. The word. What a beautiful thing.

...but alive, in other words, to live unto God through Joshua our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign, the word means “to rule,” to reign in your mortal body... Because that can happen. People can tolerate sin! People can allow sin to continue and practice it. After a while you become hardened to it and God’s not in the picture anymore. Go through the motions of the holy days, of the Sabbath, but at some point something is wrong here, you know.

Therefore, do not let sin rule in your mortal body. Life is short. We have a certain amount of time to respond to the calling God gives to us and then we don’t. Therefore, do not let sin reign (rule) in your mortal bodies, because before it did. You had no rule; it ruled you. It truly does.

I hope you understand in the world, and when you were in the world—that’s what he’s talking about here—before when you were enemies because you didn’t know God’s truth.  Then you had choices to make to be able to make that separation then, that you weren’t in control of your life. You weren’t able to rule your own life. It has ruled you. What an incredible thing to understand. That’s why I hate it when I see people let sin begin to rule in their life again, to cut off the flow of God’s spirit, and then to leave.

Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in its lusts, because that’s what sin, it has to do with, it has to do with carnal, selfish, human nature.

Verse 13—Neither should you yield... In other words, don’t present (yield) your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield (present) yourselves unto God. That’s the choice. Do we live unto God? Are our lives really God’s? When we were baptized that’s what we said, whether we grasped that or not. As we grew or as we continued on in the Church after baptism this is something that should be more and more in our mind, this kind of thinking, that we are to present ourselves unto God in how we live. God sees everything. God knows every thought of your mind because it’s spirit essence. Your thinking... Your thinking.  God knows. No one else, but God knows. Well, His Son, that power and might that they have, the ability there.

That’s an incredible thing to understand. He knows us inside and out because there is a spirit essence in our minds. It’s the spirit essence—it’s nothing physical—and it’s in the mind. Then when we’re baptized and have hands layed upon us there is an impregnation of God’s mind inside that mind to where we can by our own choices begin to become something different, transformed. It’s awesome, the process that God has given to us to attain, to grow and have and experience what real freedom is all about and not to be controlled by sin.

Because, you see, to whatever degree we’re dealing with 1, 2, and 3 is to the degree we’re being controlled and we’re not out of bondage yet, and there is our battle. Those are our battles, and the clearer we see them, the more successful we can be and the freer we can be.

So again, yield yourselves or present yourselves unto God, in other words, you are God’s. That’s what we said at baptism, but it becomes more real as we grow. We have more understanding the more we grow, of what that really means. My life is God’s.

You know, if you have that, I don’t care if death is knocking at the door and you know it. It doesn’t really matter. That’s just life. That’s human life. We live and we die. It is what it is and it’s a reality. You don’t fret and you don’t worry, and if it’s God’s time and He’s through with us, so be it. Your life is in God’s hands. What more could a human being want? If you are presented to God, if you present your life to God it belongs to God and whatever and however He wants to mold and fashion us. We should rejoice in that. We should be excited about that. Whatever chunks of rock that are still there, that aren’t shaped into place yet, knock, chisel them off. The faster the better. Get me into shape!

That’s hard because when you have a piece of rock there and you have to take a hammer to it you feel it. You feel it because it’s a part of you and you feel it. So there is going to be some hurt involved, meaning some trial and some pain you go through in life when you have some of the chiselling take place because that’s how we’re able to grow. If it weren’t for trials, if it weren’t for hardships we couldn’t grow, but that’s how God works with us. That’s a marvel.

That’s something that Satan has never understood because God’s let him do a lot of things to different ones throughout time, and all the while you know what? God was using those hardships and those trials to change them, to work with them. So many in the Bible, so many through time. I think of Job. That’s how he came to conversion. Satan yielded himself right into God’s hands. He went and gave Job a pretty tough time, destroyed a lot around him, destroyed his family, destroyed his possessions, and because of those hardships and because of what was going on in Job’s mind, an upstanding man as far as man is concerned, came to see that he wasn’t so upstanding compared to God, that God is righteous. God is just. He came to conversion toward the end of the book of Job. He had to go through all those things because God brought him to conversion. Awesome!

That’s why I use the example I knew that I had to be hit in the forehead with a 4 X 4, you know, smack, “fooom,” you know. That hurts! Finally, it hurt so bad. Your close friend you grew up with, killed, shot, I think in the head because they wouldn’t even show him when they brought him back from Vietnam, couldn’t be seen. Went through things thinking how unfair is life? He never got to experience life. He never got to experience things that others get to experience. It tore me up.

Then some other things that I loved in life, like my mustang convertible, a fast one, a good one at that, I managed to flip end over end two and a half times to where it came out at a 45° angle in the frame. But I was alive and a few other things. Something I’d planned all my life, to go into the air force so I could fly jets because I wanted to be a jet pilot. That was all going great, going into the ROTC and they told me to come on down and then all of a sudden I got a letter that said, “Don’t come.” I asked why. Called up, talked to a major, and he said, “Well, if that’s what you got in the mail that’s what you have to go by.” Wonderful! But why? What happened? All these things that happened so soon one after another. Then another one I won’t even mention. But anyway.

It was an awakening for me. God used that as a process to begin to humble me, that I wasn’t so great, that I wasn’t so good, that certain plans and certain things aren’t what make you. So you come to see yourself and you come to see the futility of human beings in human life without God. Awesome!

I think of different people’s stories. They’re all different. They’re all unique. But I think of different ones that go through different things sometimes whether it be at the beginning of a calling or during your calling you’re going to be humbled. God is going to let you go through different things in this human life in physical suffering to learn lessons that cannot be learned any other way.

Now, to me I embrace that now. I love that. That’s why it talks about we rejoice in trials. You don’t at the moment. They’re miserable. They’re hard. They’re difficult. But when you learn from them because God uses them to teach you something with His spirit in your mind, that He begins to show you and reveal things to you about life, then you begin to understand the value of that, then you embrace it and then you do rejoice.

That’s why I’ve mentioned so often there is not a thing I’ve ever gone through that I would ever change. I forgot about the jaw breaking here and here. That one too. Different things that humble you, you know. I remember praying to God (and didn’t pray to God), I said, “If You exist, please, please reveal Yourself. Show Yourself.” Because after all these other things had happened to me and in college and the things I was going through there there’s got to be something else. “If you’re real...” And then I got my mouth wired shut for ten weeks. I learned a lesson from that. You might think, “Well, now, what’s that have to do with anything?” I learned that you keep your mouth shut and listen and God will show you what you need. He’ll speak to you. See sometimes we just have to learn those lessons in life. Not our way. Not my way. Humble. Just get rid of yourself, and if it’s God’s time, it’s in His time, He’ll work with you. He’ll mold and fashion you into something else. Beautiful thing. Awesome!

All these trials, different ones in the Old Testament have gone through. As I said, Satan doesn’t understand these things. He doesn’t understand that it’s through these hardships that we grow. Sometimes we’re pulled down by them, we feel depressed by them, we feel hurt by them, we feel whatever it might be, “Where is God?” Well, He’s there. He loves you. He is loving you right now by what you’re going through because He’s working with you and He’ll show you what you can learn from this that will enrich you and make you stronger, make you better. Awesome!

Verse 13—Neither should you yield or present your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Fight against it because it’s there. Who are you? Well, you’re coming out of bondage. You’re blessed to be able to come out of bondage, but you’re not out yet. We have to be able to see this part of our life, that at times we yield our instruments—blah, blah-blah-blah-blee-blah-blah, drama, drama, drama—whatever comes out of our mouth sometimes. So often it just doesn’t agree with God’s plan. It’s us. It’s our mind. It’s our thinking. It’s our words. It’s what we want. It’s why we think. It’s not what God thinks. It’s not about what God wants us to do and how He wants us to speak, but we tend to be that way as human beings. We give into certain things and do certain things, and on and on it goes.

He says, but yield yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments... This word here, unique, means like weapons or arms in warfare. To fight! That’s a choice that we want to yield ourselves like weapons or arms of righteousness unto God, because there’s a battle involved. You have to fight against this. You have to fight against self. That doesn’t come naturally. That’s why we have to cry out to God, “Father, help me!”

...and your members as instruments (weapons or arms) of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion (rule) over you. It isn’t supposed to. Don’t let it. Fight against it. How do you do that? By yielding yourself and doing the right things, crying out to God for help to do the right things, for changing of speech or changing of actions or changing of thoughts and whatever 1, 2, and 3 are.

For sin shall not have dominion (rule) over you, for you are not under (subject to) the law but under grace. Now, this is an awkward translation in some of this and how people take it because of what the Protestant world has done, what the Catholic Church has done. So people look at this and say, well, what do you mean I’m not under the law? “Well, that’s right, it’s been done away because,” they say, “Jesus came to be a blessing to us in life. He paid the penalties and so he freed us from that harsh, old law.”

It always comes down to the Sabbath and the holy days. That’s what it always comes down to. It’s not about the last six commandments at all. It’s about the first four. That’s what it always boils down to. So they want you to think something different. That’s not what this is talking about.

What does it mean you’re not under? It’s about the penalty of the law. We have been freed from that through forgiveness, that we can be forgiven of sin, because we repent of sin, because of what Joshua did for us as our Passover. That’s the context of everything that Paul is talking about, how we’re able to attain under freedom. So we’re not subject to the death penalty. That’s what it’s talking about. We’re not under the death penalty. We were before we were called or before forgiveness of sin could ever come in. That’s what the context of everything that Paul is talking about here.

It’s amazing how the Protestant world has so twisted and distorted that, that even within the Church it can sometimes take people years to get rid of this as they read some of this, to be able to see what Paul is really saying, of what God is really saying to us.

But you are under, subject to grace, because that’s how we’re saved. So it’s making a contrast here you’re not under the penalty of the law because of the death penalty, but now what are you under? You’re under grace because God has called you for a purpose. He’s given you the willingness to forgive you, that you can be forgiven of all sin through the Passover, through our Passover. It’s a process of growth because He’s called you into a relationship with Him. What an incredible thing, to begin to experience what freedom really is all about.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under... Because we’re not under the death penalty anymore, it’s like I can go out here and do whatever I want to do. No, you can’t. It doesn’t mean you’re free to go out and sin, and because of God’s mercy and God’s grace and He’s willing to forgive you of sin that now you can take advantage of that and misuse it for the wrong purposes. That’s not what this is all about. The carnal mind kind of thinks, would think it can think that way.

Shall we sin because we are not under (subject to) the law but under grace? God forbid! Do you not know that to whom you yield or present yourselves servants... So we can be servants unto God, to serve God’s way of life because that’s what we’ve chose, because that’s what we want, because He’s revealed that to us, or we can serve self, we can serve bondage, we can serve sin. That’s what it’s talking about here. So we have choices and freedom to make choices.

Freedom to make choices, what an incredible thing. Before you weren’t free to make choices. You were just enslaved to self, your own selfish human nature. You did whatever self chose to do and thought was right until God revealed what your mind is really like.

...that to whom you yield or present yourselves servants, meaning a bond servant, a bond slave, to obey, you are the one’s servant whom you obey? So again, is it to sin? Is it to bondage? Or is it to God, to righteousness, to obedience, to His way of life? ...whether it’s of sin unto death, or that leads, in other words, to death, or it’s obedience unto (leads) to righteousness?

So obedience, choosing God, choosing obedience, choosing to obey God, it leads to righteousness. Why? Because we believe God. Not that we’re able to do it perfectly, but as we strive to do so, as we choose to fight that, then God attributes that belief, believing Him, as righteousness to us.

What an incredible thing! We’re not righteous. We have our 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 5, 6, 7 all the way down. But the more we battle those, the stronger we become and the more that we’re able to have God’s righteousness in our life. That’s what He’s saying here.

Verse 17—But give thanks to God. You know, that’s a big factor in our life. You have to really see something to be thankful. And by expressing it God can reveal more to you. By expressing that gratitude and thankfulness it means we cherish it, it’s real, we embrace it. The more we embrace what God is giving to us, the freedoms, the ability, the grace, the mercy, the favor, the kindness, the forgiveness of sin, the closer our relationship becomes with God our Father and with our elder brother Joshua the Christ, and really with one another in the Body in how we think toward one another within the Body.

But give thanks to God that although you were the servants (the slaves) of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine... In other words, we’ve been enabled to obey. God has given us the ability to obey. We weren’t able to before. The world can’t. You can’t unless God’s spirit is there. You can’t know the truth. You don’t know what to repent of unless God’s spirit is there.

...but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine, which has been delivered unto you. God gives us truth. He gives us doctrine. He gives us things to understand and comprehend and we make choices all along the way whether we’ll embrace them. We can only do that to the degree we’re fighting this fight. Because otherwise, if sin, if we’re practicing certain things of sin in our life and we’re allowing certain things and not being ashamed to the point we’re willing to repent, we get cut off from the flow of God’s spirit and people leave.

I marvel sometimes of how many have gone through PKG. I marvel! I think of the last 2,000 years, how many have gone through God’s Church. But I think it’s, because of technology and everything else, there are some battles today that are harder than what they were a long time ago in some ways because that which enables people to sin is far greater than what it used to be. Much greater, many times over. So it’s much harder to fight what is in front, but there are great rewards, too, by being able to do so, by what God can mold and fashion within you as you yield yourself to Him.

Verse 18—That having been made free from sin... I know there are people listening today that have had things happen this past week in their life that they know are wrong. There are those out there listening that know there are things that they’re ashamed of, so much so that they can’t shake it and they’re carrying it with them because they don’t feel free. If you have repented, if you believe God, you are free! You don’t have to carry that with you. Did you do it? Did you say it? Did you act upon? Whatever it might be, just ask and seek God’s help to not repeat. And what if this week you repeat? What if you fall again flat on your face? You do the same thing again. You again go before God and say, “Father, forgive me. I loathe and I hate this carnal nature,” and you just keep at it. You keep fighting.

Because when can you stop fighting that fight? When comes a time in your life that you don’t have to repent? There is never a time.

I remember ministers, some minsters who would make comment, “How long can you go without sin?” Well, let’s see... A week? A month? A year? Are we that righteous that we can go that long without sin? Give me a break! I mean, that kind of a mind is physical in thinking totally. Where is God’s spirit in that? The truth is in that it doesn’t take too long. Sometimes it’s while you’re walking out the door from just having heard a sermon and there is something you have to repent of or something you might have said even after a sermon and you have to repent of whatever it might be. Or whenever, during the week, you get to work and something takes place, or whatever it is in life that is your 1, 2, and 3. What are they?

But you fight and you choose to continue to fight and you’re growing in strength. If you keep fighting you’re growing in strength, you’re becoming stronger. That’s a part of growth. But you’ve got to let it go, too. That’s the difficult thing sometimes, to not beat yourself up.

Beating yourself up is relying on yourself. Do you realize that? Beating yourself up is relying on self and not being freed. It’s not relying on God to deliver you, to save you. You can’t save yourself. You will fall flat on your face again. 1, 2, and 3? Somewhere you’re going to screw up. It might be a day. It might be month. It might be two months. It might be an hour. But somewhere you’re going to mess up, so you just do what you’ve been trained and led and guided and directed to do, you go before God again and say, “Father, forgive me.”

Does God get tired of you coming before Him and repenting? No. He’s given it to you because He loves you. Christ did it because he loves you. He loved God’s plan. Now you are part of the Body of Christ and he loves you and he’s working with you, to change you, to mold and fashion you, to transform you. So what’s past, as soon as you say, “Father, forgive me through my Passover Joshua the Christ,” it’s gone. God doesn’t hold it; He‘s not counting. He’s not keeping track. “There he goes again, another line. Now that’s 5 to 25, 50, 500.” God doesn’t count!

In the ministry I’ve learned not to count. God has blessed me in that. I don’t hold it against anyone, whatever has happened, because it’s gone! Who would I be to judge, to condemn that which God has forgiven? Well, I was going to say it – asinine, insane to think like that, to be like that. So you have to fight against your own human mind and to understand what God gives. When He gives us freedom, it’s there. When we’ve been forgiven, it’s gone, yet sometimes we as human being can’t, in our relationships, even with one another in the Body, even with the ministry. There are times when I know when someone is going through something because they can’t be themselves. Think, let it go. Repent.

Now, if you’re not repenting then you need to feel wrong. But if you’ve repented it’s gone. It’s between you and God.

So this thing of freedom, it doesn’t come easy. You have to fight like mad for it. It is a war. It is a battle. That’s what Paul is describing here all through this process here. You don’t have to carry anything with you. You have a very imperfect mind. We all do because of our carnality, but there is a portion of it that’s being perfected. What an incredible thing. What a paradox, or whatever. It’s incredible to understand. There is this part over here that’s warring, carnality, and then there is part over here that we have to choose, that’s a matter of God. It’s a matter of His holy spirit. It’s a matter of repenting because we want to be right, because we want to present our bodies, our lives, our actions, our thinking to God, that’s pleasing, that’s right. That’s an ongoing thing in our life.

So again, verse 18—That having been made free from sin, you became servants of righteousness. That’s what we are. We want to present our bodies right. That’s what we do when we repent; we’re wanting to do it the right way. We’re crying out to God for help. Isn’t that what you do when you repent? You’re saying, “Forgive me and help me to do it the right way. Help me to think right.” That’s as plain and as simple as it gets.

God sees your desire then. Do you really want to think right? Do you really want to act right? Are you really engaged in this to fight the fight? That’s what it’s about. As God sees that He will give you greater strength of His holy spirit in your life to do that. He will make you stronger. It doesn’t happen overnight. You’ve got to fight and keep fighting and be free...be free.

So he says, I speak after the manner of men, in other words, speaking in human terms, because of the weakness of your flesh. That’s a given! That’s just what we have because of our flesh, because we’re in a carnal, human body, this is what we carry. But we don’t have to be in bondage to it. We have a choice. We have choices to make along the way here.

For as you have yielded your members servants (slaves) to uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness... That’s what human beings do. It just becomes compounded in life and it becomes worse and worse until in time without God’s help and God’s intervention the mind can come to a point, literally, of being ruined. The mind can become ruined. That’s what happened to those in the time of Noah. That’s what’s happening in the world today, the mind is becoming ruined to where if things didn’t end at this time, if God didn’t bring it to an end, work things out, with the kind of technology that’s out here, people couldn’t be delivered in the Great White Throne nor in the Millennium.

…now yield your members as servants (slaves) to righteousness unto holiness. It shows a part of an order of things here; righteousness, living God’s way, wanting to live God’s way, praying for forgiveness of sin, asking for help to live what is right, striving to live what is right, striving to think right, to speak right, to act right, and on and on it goes.

So it says here, now yield your members as servants (slaves) to righteousness unto—What?—holiness, because we want to become more like God. We want to be more like our Father, in unity and agreement with Him.

For when you were the servants of sin, you were, it’s not “free from,” you were not a slave (servant) to righteousness. That’s what it’s saying. That’s what the translation is. ...you are not a slave (servant) to righteousness. So we couldn’t be. God had to do something, allow something, make a means, a way for this to be different in our lives.

What fruit did you have then of those things whereof you are now ashamed? Indeed the end of those things is death...under the law. It’s a beautiful thing here what Paul is saying and how he says it. But the world, Protestantism, the Catholic Church has so messed this up. Even as we come into the Church and as we live our lives in the truth it takes time to get rid of some of this garbage that’s in the world. The less we had it pumped into our minds the more blessed we are.

Verse 22—But now being made free from sin, in other words, delivered from bondage, and now become the servants of God, because that’s what God has blessed us to be, to become, to grow in, you have your fruit unto holiness. God is transforming the mind. I marvel at that process. A transforming of the way we think so that over a longer period of time you can see the way you used to think at a particular point and how you think now and the change that’s taken place. Yet you see, “I want a lot more change because I still have 1, 2, and 3.”

...and the end, everlasting life. That’s our hope. That’s what we look forward to. That’s our choice.

For the wages of sin is death... That’s what it means to be under the law because going back and what he’s discussing here and has been discussing all along is this thing about Hagar and Sarah. Do we rely on ourselves when God brings us into the Church or do we learn to rely and depend upon and cry out to God for deliverance? Or do we try to work certain things out ourselves on a physical plane? If I do ‘this,’ if I do ‘that,’ you know.

I don’t know why it came in, but I think of the time I went to Mexico City with seniors in Big Sandy at the end of the year, and I remember this woman who was going along on her knees up to a church, bloodied. Another person beating themselves on the back, bloodied. It’s a perverse thing of the human mind to think that somehow one can please God by things that we do.

Well, we can if it’s the truth and we’re striving to obey, but we need His help to obey and become convicted that that is the truth and that we’re living that because it’s right, it’s from God. But even once we’re called sometimes we still try to work things out ourselves to receive favor from God or to receive acceptance from God. No, you just repent of sin. That’s how you receive favor from God. You fight against sin. You repent of it when it pops up its ugly head out of the water and you cry out to God to deliver you. That’s what it is. It’s a beautiful thing.

You can’t do it. God has to do it and He’s done it. He made it available for us and we’re free, and we can keep growing and we can cry out for more help to fight.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life... That’s what this is all about, to be in His family. The purpose – to become at-one in the mind. That comes through a lifetime, whatever that lifetime is for us, of choices we make. We repent of sin; it’s wrong, choose God. He’s right. I want that. I desire that. I don’t want the other. I want to get rid of the other. Those choices and it’s through that process then that we can be changed. We come to a point in time when God says, “Now I know you. Now you can be given a spirit body, spirit life in My Family, and no longer have the pulls of your 1, 2’s, and 3’s and everything else that you had on your list. You’re free.” Now you are really freed because you’re spirit and you have a mind that’s in absolute unity and oneness, where God will – this is what I love. I love this when God revealed this – He will always, always dwell in us and we will always, always, always dwell in Him. Something the angelic realm has never had any of. God is offering it to us. That’s what it means to be in His Family, a most beautiful thing. Because in this life we cut ourselves off or we cut off the flow of God’s spirit and God’s power in our lives and we, because of this fight, and choices of making that fight.

For the wages of sin, what you get paid, it’s death, being under the law. If you strive to live by certain things and do it yourself and you think highly of yourself and what you’re able to do and blah, blah, blah, it’s not what it’s about. It’s about acknowledging God is right and we are wrong. ...but the gift of God is eternal life through Joshua our Lord.

Romans 7. Paul just continues to magnify this theme and it goes back to this thing about Hagar and Sarah and this different kind of thinking once we’re converted, once we have God’s spirit in our life. Because there have been a lot of people in God’s Church who have tried to save themselves, who haven’t really relied upon God, who haven’t really gone through this process like they should have and haven’t fought against sin and recognized it for what it is and really understood this thing about repentance and forgiveness.

Romans 7:7—What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Is it bad? Even in the Protestant world, if they went through this, but they can’t because they can’t see God’s plan, they can’t see certain things, but there are certain things when they say the law is done away with, if they could just accept certain things stated in what Paul is saying here, they’d have to make an admission that what they’re saying, what they believe is wrong. But they can’t.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! Is the law bad? Does it produce anything? No! Otherwise, I would not have known sin but by the law. That’s how we know what sin is, because only God can show us what right thinking is. Only God can reveal how we should live, what is right to live. We can’t decide for ourselves as human beings. Everybody has different opinions.

That’s what I hate about what they call news now a days. All these opinions. It doesn’t matter different stations and who they ask, you think, I don’t give a flip about what they think! You want to spend a half an hour interviewing? Who cares what they “think”! Who cares! Does it matter what someone thinks about certain things? What their opinion is about certain things? Wear me out.

I would not have known sin, but by the law. For I would not know lust (covetousness) except the law had said, “You shall not covet.” We learn by, basically, the outline of the 10 Commandments. If we look at those things and we begin to learn and then we begin to understand the spirit of those things as Christ came along and began to reveal the spirit essence of what the law was about, that it goes into the mind not just by physical actions. It goes into the thinking that produces physical actions.

But sin, taking opportunity because of the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. It’s kind of a different way of expressing certain things, but it gets the point across. He’s just saying here “but sin,” because it’s in us, “taking opportunity because of the commandment,” in other words, it’s like now the commandment has come along so now it reveals what it is. Before, it couldn’t be seen for what it was. It was hidden. But now it’s becoming clearer. So often as human beings we don’t like what we see.

That’s why I think when I first began to be called. I was excited before I was baptized. I wanted to share it. One time we had a whole bunch of relatives in the house and I unloaded the whole truck. I was so excited about everything I was learning. And for a little while, because they knew me, what I was, and for a little while it was kind of in astonishment they’d listen. It was like, yeah, just like, there were certain things here that make a little sense. But if you start thinking about it a little while you know what happens? They don’t like what they hear. Sabbath? Then you think, Easter? Christmas? You’ve got to be nuts! I’m not giving it up. What’s wrong with giving presents to kids, to children, little kids, children.

What’s wrong with going out and looking for eggs and having the fun of coloring them and all the little designs you can put in them? And you can do little things in wax on them. Because, see, I did these things. You can put a little wax on certain things and then you can put it down in this color and come back up and that part shows now because that part didn’t get colored because there was wax on it and it was so much fun as a little child. And you want to take that away?

But the world can only think physically about things like that. They think you’re nuts. How can you rob them of such things? They can’t help it.

But sin, taking opportunity because of the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. Now, what he’s showing here is what happens when you begin to see what’s true and you begin to realize it’s there, evil thinking. Anything that doesn’t agree with God is evil. It is evil. It is sick! That’s what he’s saying here. All of a sudden this produced in me all manner of evil desire. I didn’t see it before. Basically, it’s like saying, thinking, “I thought I was free! I was free and I didn’t have to know these things.” Now I know them. Now you got to do something about it, if you address it or not, because it’s revealing all these evil things that I didn’t see.

That’s why some people couldn’t, can’t take it and haven’t taken it in God’s Church. “I am sick and tired of hearing how bad I am. That’s all I hear in sermons, how bad I am. Week after week I’m bad. Well, take my marbles and go someplace else where I’m not so bad.” That’s basically what people do.

But sin, taking opportunity because of the commandment, produce in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law, it’s not “without,” because the law is there. But without or apart from the law sin was dead. I didn’t see it. It didn’t mean anything to me. I would think and do and live ever how I wanted to, you know, go out and party, get drunk, take drugs, smoke... “That’s so good. I’m hungry. Let’s go out.” This is what it’s saying here. For apart from the law sin was dead. People don’t see sin in those things. You tell them certain things are sin. So we learn what sin is. In our thinking we were fully unaware before.

For I was alive apart from the law once... See, I was alive, I lived what I wanted to live, I did my own thing. Nothing was there to stop me. Nothing...Whatever I wanted to do I did. Now when God calls you you put on the brakes. If you want something different you’ve got to make choices and you’ve got to do something different. That’s what Paul is talking about.

For I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came... What happened? God revealed to us the Sabbath, the holy days. He revealed to us the truth about Christmas and Easter and where it came from. You think, why didn’t everybody know this? Why doesn’t everybody see this? Ishtar. Astarte. Fertility. Laying of eggs. Prolific rabbits. Where does this stuff come from? Where do you read about it in scripture? Oh, it’s not there. Oh! Sunday, the day of the Sun. Where did that come from? Then all of a sudden your life changes when God reveals these things to you. Before you were dead to it all. It didn’t mean anything to your life.

For I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came sin revived, it was alive; it came alive, in other words. That’s what he’s saying. It didn’t revive, it means was alive, sin was alive. ...and I died. What we come to. We come to realize that we are under the death penalty as human beings – everybody is – and there is only one who can pay that penalty, who can pay the price, who did pay the price for our being able to be purchased out of bondage, out of slavery.

That’s why it’s such a beautiful plan that begins with Passover. We’re fast approaching it. Every year to me it just becomes richer and richer, the meaning of Passover and the awesomeness of understanding you can’t enter into any of God’s plan, the holy days, until you’ve addressed the Passover, until you have that in your life. What an incredible, beautiful picture.

I’ll read a little bit more and then we’ll review this next week.

And the commandment, which... “was ordained” is their interpretation of it, which is true in part. But it’s really saying here, what’s literally being said here, and the commandment which is to life... See, that’s what God’s commandments are about; they are about life. They are about how to have real life, true life, not the fake thing that people live in the world as they worship some fat statue or whatever it might be. I’m talking about Buddha and some of those kinds of things that people believe and live in and are deceived by. They don’t understand.

So the commandment which is to life; that’s what it leads to. It leads to what real life is about. It’s not about this kind of tranquil type of thinking like you’re on marijuana, you know, that somehow you can have this Zen. They just misspelled it. It’s sin not Zen. So you think, when you start living it that’s when you really start experiencing what’s meaningful, life.

And what’s it about? The law is about relationships. God blesses us and begins to give us an experience of what real meaningful true relationships are about. In the world it’s about lust or what I can get out of it, what I can get out of a relationship. I’ll do this if you’ll do that. “If you scratch my back you know that I’ll scratch yours! Just keep scratching mine and I’ll keep scratching yours.” “Give me money here and give me money there.” “Put me into office and I’ll take care of this and I’ll take care of that. You’ll be taken care of.” “We’ll build this bridge to nowhere. If you want that, that’s fine!”

I’m sorry, but I’m so sick of this world, so sick of the politics of this world. It ought to just make us sick to the core of our being that we have to worry about building a wall. But reality is in a physical carnal world, you know, you’re stupid without it. Oh, let’s just have more drones out there... I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be political sounding, and I don’t mean to be at all. But it’s just a carnal, physical thing. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out it’s going to be a lot harder to get those things through if it’s much higher and it’s much more difficult, and it’s going to be much more difficult to squeeze the people through that you want to take through in slave trafficking.

Sad. In the world you build walls. Israel knows how to take care of a little bit of both of those kinds of things as a whole to protect their lives and their citizens because they’ve got some people that are just not too sound minded who want to destroy them. There is no desire to have real peace. Some, it’s just that’s what it is. They have some neighbors over there that as soon as they get certain things going they want to obliterate Israel. But they realize when they do that they got to be kind of willing to obliterate and work on another, the big brother before that.

Sick, sick, sick world. Sick thinking.

You know what? We’ll just stop there. We’ll begin Part 5 next week.

1. Chapter 1