Romans 6:1-14

I'm going to invite you to Romans. Chapter six is where we are together. Romans Chapter six. We're studying the book of Romans together. And seeing this incredible book that God has given to his church, written by the apostle Paul after a couple of decades of ministry. This is the great treatise of the Christian faith. If you're new to the Christian faith, it is an incredible book to go through. Martin Luther referred to this as the Book of Books. This is he would say things like, if you lost all of the Bible, but you had the book of Romans as a follower of Christ, you're going to be okay. Because it's the great explanation of how to live the Christian life in light of what Jesus has done for us. The first half of this book is a lot of theological understanding of your relationship with God, so that the second half of this book is the application. What does that mean now, in light of my relationship with the Lord? And we're getting right towards the middle of the Book of Romans in Chapter six today, we're going to be talking about God's grace. In fact, chapter six and seven is sort of an explanation or an expounding upon how to live in light of God's grace. Because at the end of Chapter five, Paul told us something very incredible about grace. He said Chapter five, verse 20, Not that the law came to increase the trespass.

It's talking about the Jewish law. He's saying, look, the purpose of the Jewish law wasn't so that you find yourself free because you lived the law. Right. It's like the idea of a religion or at least the Jewish religion. And I would say religion in general is not to show you how great you are. In fact, when you look at religious law and you try to measure your life up to it, what you find is you constantly fall short. We tend to say, here's a church that religion leads people to two places pride or despair, neither of which are good. Like pride. The Bible talks about there's destruction with pride, but what God seeks is a humble heart. And so we don't want pride or despair. But he tells us that the purpose of the law was to help us recognize how much we needed God. It pointed out to us our trespasses against God. The law wasn't intended to show you how great you were. The law was intended to show you how much you needed Jesus. Right? And so with the law came to increase the trespass. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. This idea of abounding grace is incredible for the life of the believer who finds their trust in Jesus. That is saying to us, no matter how far your sin goes, God's grace goes deeper still. There is nowhere that you can be that is so far removed from God that he can't reach you in His grace.

God's grace for us is that rich and that good. And in chapter six and seven. Now, having said this about God's grace, Paul anticipates that people are going to have some questions about what this means for us. And in order for us to understand Grace, I find living here in Utah, when I talk about the goodness of God's abounding grace and how it's free, he describes it in Chapter five as this gift to us. What does that mean for us? Some people will look at the greatness of God's grace as you explain it, and they'll become all contorted in their face, trying to understand God's grace, and they begin to ask the question, Well, what keeps people from sinning? Right?

Like if you can't guilt and shame them by law, forcing them to do things, what in the world would stop people from doing bad things? If God's grace is that good? Like, why not keep on just doing what you're doing in life? Because, well, God's grace abounds beyond it, right? Like you just keep being a sinner because God's grace is just completely covers that. Don't worry about it. It's under grace. Like what stops people from living a bad life. And this is this is exactly where Paul wants us to go with grace. This is this is what he wants to talk about in the next Chapter six and chapter seven in anticipation of that grace, understand? Are we living in the abounding grace or are we abusing grace? Do we really?

Do we really have in mind what God desires for his grace and how we're to respond to it? Do we understand it? That's an important question in any aspect of your Christian life, and especially as it relates to the grace of God.

Because if Satan can keep you ignorant, he can render you ineffective. So we want to we want a healthy picture of what Paul is painting for us as he talks about abounding in God's grace and what that means in the Christian life. It's an incredibly freeing and good for the soul and the way that God intends it for our lives. But we don't want to be ignorant to it. We want to be effective with it. I know a lot of college students right now are going through their end of the year exams and it reminds me of a there's a story of a young guy who at the end of the semester he hadn't studied like he should, and he had to take an economic test. And he gets his test from his teacher. And as he goes through the test, he realizes he I don't know any of these answers. So he just writes on his test, Only God knows these answers. Merry Christmas.

And the teacher gets his paper and grades it and says and he writes on the top, God gets 100, you get zero. Happy New Year. Like, we don't want to be that. We want to understand what God desires to accomplish in us and through us. In fact, as a church, I would just tell you our heart here, we're not secretive about what we want to accomplish. We want your life transformed in the goodness of what Jesus desires to accomplish in you and through you. And Jesus gave us the two great commands, the great, great commission and the great commandment, which is Love the Lord your God with all your heart. That's the great commandment. And to go in this world and make disciples. And that's what we say as a church, like that's our heart's desire. We want to learn how to how to love the Lord and love others and go into this world from that and make disciples of him to understand what this grace looks like in our lives. And so in your notes this morning, we're going to talk about three Responses to Grace. And I want you to know the first two you don't want to do. It's the third one that we want to develop a heart for and live in light of that. But Paul asks the question, knowing that Grace abounds, he then he asks the question in chapter six, verse one, What shall we say then? Are we to continue to sin that grace may abound? Like if grace is so much greater than sin and God's grace will always trump our sin, why don't we just go in this world and live like however we want and we can just say it's all right.

God's grace is greater. That's how great God is. Why don't we do that? And point number one, what he's saying to us, and this is the first blank in your notes what Paul is wanting us to understand Grace is not about is what's called Antinomianism. All right. Antinomianism So for those that are great at Spelling Bee, you can put Antinomianism there. And another way of explaining it, it's more like liberalism. And I don't mean that politically, I mean just doing whatever you want with no accountability, right? So there's this idea of theological liberalism where you don't recognize anything above you. You see yourself as the own authority and you just live however you want, theologically called Antinomianism. If you want the most layman's terms, it's literally live like hell. That's what God's grace is so great. I'm just going to do whatever I want. And to respond that way is to not understand what God's grace is about. But Paul poses the question and he gives the answer in verse two, By no means. By no means is this the reason Jesus came so that you can continue to be the center of your universe and do whatever you want? That's not true.

Freedom. That's not what Grace is all about. God, God made you for a reason. And you're not really free until you're living that purpose in him. Because he designed you for his glory to the blessing of others. Freedom isn't free until you're living for the reason for which you were created. God's grace is not intended for you to live life for your glory. But to live for his. Point number two then, in your notes is this. Understanding. His grace has a purpose. Point number two then, I would say is the second half of this verse. But it's to avoid this is an incorrect response, by the way. But it's about avoiding sin. Avoiding sin. And we could refer to this as legalism. When we talk about God's grace. God's grace certainly rescued us. From something. But God's grace also rescued us for something. God has as an intention to His purpose, but he's freeing us from something and he's moving us for something. That's the purpose for which he created it. And we get a as believers, if we think the whole purpose of the Christian life is just simply about avoiding sin. Now he gives this statement in verse number two. But I want to add some extra thought to that, because Christianity, sometimes we take verse number two and we end with verse number two, or at least in an unhealthy religious thinking, we take verse number two and we think the whole point is verse number two.

Verse number two is not the point. Verse number two is the result of what the main point is, but it's not the point in itself. But he says this Shall we go on sinning that grace may abound. By no means. How can we, who died to sin still live in it? Which is true, right? Like certainly if you know Jesus, you don't want to look like the world, right? You don't want to live in sin because it's completely amiss from what God calls you to. But I also want us to recognize that the point of the Christian life is not about not sinning. Right Christianity this morning. Our goal for you is not that you walk out and don't sin anymore. That's not our goal now. Our hope for you is that you would certainly not sin, right? But that's not our primary desire for you. Our primary desire is different than that. But the result of it is your life becomes holy in Jesus. Legalism, though, becomes a focus that becomes it becomes a part of people's life. They think the Christian life is about not sinning. In fact, in walking this Christian life and first coming to Christ, I'll tell you, I entered into arenas of people in that claimed to walk with Jesus and maybe they did or didn't. I'm not the judge of that.

But I would see the fruit of what they would proclaim. And it was honestly legalism with Jesus's name slapped on it. They were more afraid of sinning than they were interested in walking by faith. And there's a there's a significant difference in that. Our desire for your life is not that you don't sin. Our desire for your life is that you walk with Jesus. And in walking with Jesus. The result of that would be you move from sin and you and you walk towards Christ. Or saying is when we come to Jesus, our life is completely other and different. We forsake any other kingdom this world has to offer and we live for something completely different. Which is? Which is Jesus. Sometimes you'll meet people whose whose hearts are about legalism when they when they kind of ask this question, Well, how far to the line can I get before God gets mad at me? Like, how close can I walk with the world or flirt with the devil or something like that before before the Lord gets frustrated by me moving towards that line. And if you have that kind of demeanor or question about you, can I tell you you're completely from the scope of what health is and the Christian life. It's not about how far you can get over here and still keep God happy. Your life pursuit would be How can I know Jesus and live for his glory? Legalism tends to be marked with things like in desiring not not to mess up rather than just glorify God.

They start to make a bunch of rules. And I've seen it in the Christian life. Like they'll say, they'll start regulating things constantly, like the music. They'll come up with all kinds of rules of music and drums and dancing and movies, right? It was funny in the early 2000 when the movie The Passion of the Christ came out because legalistic Christians would make a hard, fast rule. Never can you watch a rated R movie, Right? And I don't think it's wise to necessarily watch rated R movies, but they made that rule and then all of a sudden, The Passion of the Christ comes out and it's rated R and you see legalistic Christians, like they're just they don't know what to do with that. They're befuddled by because they made this hard, fast rule against everything because they were just simply trying to avoid sin rather than glorify God. No playing cards go to hell if you use playing cards, right? They start to regulate. Rules rather than focus on relationship in God. Now, there's certainly wisdom sometimes in the Christian life to come up with some rules, like especially if you know, in your life you're bent towards particular sins. And you get tired of faltering in that. And you want to protect yourself from getting to that place.

And so sometimes it's important to put certain boundaries in our life, to reorient yourself or refocus ourselves to the things that we want to achieve. But the goal is never about not doing those things. The goal is always about honoring God with the life He's given me and the freedom he's granted me by his abounding grace. I want to honor that because of what it cost him and how much he loved me and the way that he gave his self For me, that is the pursuit of my life as he has given me my heart. I want to respond by giving my heart back to him. And so, number three then, in your notes, Paul says to us in verse number four, and this is the desire of our heart in verse four that we too might walk in the newness of life to walk in the newness of life. What Jesus has done in you is something new. Something new. And when you come to Christ, you know what that's like. Before you might have had this religious way of thinking and maybe you believed in a god and blah, blah, blah, whatever that story might look like. But then one day someone introduced you to Jesus. And you heard the extent of his love and what he did for you. And you gave your heart and response back to him. And all of a sudden the desires of your heart change and you can't even explain it.

It's just you woke up just a completely different person. You wanted to give of your time and your resources and your talents. And you don't even know who this person is anymore. And when you look in the mirror because the day before you were all about selfish and what you wanted to accomplish and how you could please yourself and whatever would make you happy that day and using other people as tools just to get to your kingdom and your glory. And now all of a sudden you're about a different king and. And his glory. Newness of life. It doesn't mean that it's going to be a perfect life. In fact, Paul's going to talk about that in Romans seven. What happens when I mess up, even when I understand his grace and even when I make my aim about his glory? Like, what do I do then? I'll talk about in chapter seven. So it's not not necessarily perfect when you're when you're new to something, especially when you're new to something, you don't fully understand it. You're certainly not going to do everything perfect. But it's this. This desire, this bend in your heart now to submit to something different. Because it's new and it's life giving and you want to be a part of it. And so Paul encourages us that the healthy way to respond to grace is to walk in this newness of life.

And so as if we were to ask the question, okay, how is this newness of life possible? That's what he begins to answer for us in verse 3 to 9. And then what does it look like then for me to walk in that newness? That's what he tells us in verse 10 to 14. That's what we're going to look at together. So how is this possible, this newness of life verses 3 to 9? And then what does it look like for us to walk in this together? Well, when he talks about this newness of life verses 3 to 5, he encompasses it in some imagery here he talks about it in terms of baptism. What you're going to find in 3 to 5 is baptism versus 6 to 9. He talks about the crucifixion. But this is how it happened. In verse three, he says, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. What he's describing here in theologians will point to this section of scripture as one of the most powerful sections in all of the New Testament in dealing with baptism.

But here's something to know about the idea of baptism when you read it in the New Testament, the word baptism can sometimes be a little bit confusing. And the reason I say that is because they have one word that really describes a couple aspects of the Christian life. There you have to read the context of a passage to determine, okay, what exactly is it referring to when it's using the word baptism here? Because there is what's described in the New Testament as spiritual baptism. And for someone to come to Christ, we're all baptized into one spirit. That's it actually says that in one Corinthians 12, verse 13, that we're all by one spirit baptized into one body. The word baptism literally means immersed or submerged. It carries this idea that when you become a believer in Christ universally the body of Christ all over the world, when you become a believer in Christ, you're sealed and baptized in the spirit of God, meaning the Spirit of God. Indwells you and you belong to the Lord forever. Right. The way that you know that you have an eternity with God is the Spirit of God. Indwells you. And it's sealed. You're sealed in him permanently. So we're all spiritually baptized in him. And then the body of believers and response to what Jesus does in us by giving us new life, we will go through what's called physical baptism.

Right. Baptism, Physically, that is when you go into the water and you're baptized, right? Baptism physically does not save you. Paul said that in First Corinthians chapter one, verse 18, he says, I came not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. So Paul is saying to us, Look, it's not baptism that saves you. If it did, then Paul would say, I came to baptize you. But he says, rather, I came to preach the gospel. Because Paul knew the gospel is what saves. Physical baptism becomes the reflection of a spiritual baptism that takes place by Jesus. The spirit of God. When we accept Christ, the Spirit of God indwells the people of God sealed to belong to him forever. We are adopted in God's family and nothing can change that. And then there's the physical baptism. Now, the question theologians ask when they come to this is now when we talk about baptism here, what type of baptism is it talking about? And I'll give you my answer. I've looked at this for years trying to ask that question, and I may change my answer later because I'm not real confident on it. But here's my best answer today. I think it's both. I think in Romans six, Paul is talking about both. I think he's reflecting on the idea of spiritual baptism. And he's also reflecting on the idea of how we represent that in physical baptism.

When we are baptized physically as a body of believers or here at Alpine Bible Church, we practice immersion. And that's the word. That's the basic meaning for the word baptize is to be immersed. We go into the water and it's all symbolic of what Jesus has done for us spiritually. He. He came to Earth. He gave his life. He. He was crucified. He died, and he was resurrected. Now, what's interesting about Christianity is God could have picked any method he wanted for us to reflect our faith in Jesus and what he's done for us. Like, I don't know why God didn't say, You know what? Dig a hole in the side of a hill somewhere and walk into it an old person and walk out of it. A new person. I don't mean that in age. I mean that spiritually. You walk into the tomb just like Jesus, your old self, and you walk out of the tomb, your new self. But instead he picked water. And water is symbolic throughout the old, old and New Testament Israel. When the Book of Genesis begins, God talks. It talks about God's creation, the earth, and it says the water covered the surface of the earth and it was without purpose or meaning God. And then God brought out of the earth its purpose. He put land and animals and people. And so out of out of chaos came order the same thing for Israel.

When they went from Egypt into the promised land. They crossed the Red Sea and the Jordan River. They went from chaos into order. So there's been this idea of water from the beginning that we went from really darkness or destruction or purposelessness to now new life. And so when a believer goes into the baptism waters, they go in as the old self and they're submerged and they come out in the new self or new life as if we died with Christ and were resurrected to him. The early church. This was important in the faith. In fact, when the early church was baptized, it was very common that they would recite a creed of their belief the apostle's creed, the old Roman creed, the old Jerusalem creed. Those creeds were early creeds that Christianity would recite because of their faith in the Lord. They want to pronounce it. There was this public declaration. Baptism was that they belonged to God and wanted to be identified in Him. In this newness of life, we compare it to here at our church to that of a wedding day. It's your public place to declare to the world that Jesus belongs to you and you belong to him as he has given his life for you. So you want to give your life and response to him. Baptism is the symbolic representation of cleansing because you've been forgiven.

You come the old self. Not because you're worthy. Because he's worthy. And he has paid everything for you that you could be free in him. He does the work. He does the cleansing. And you get to sit in his abounding grace. This is a picture in the fifth century of just a early baptistery so you can see it. I know brothers and sisters in Christ around the world have different methods of baptism. There's an early document in Christianity called the Didache, where they talk about if you live in a desert and you don't have enough water to submerge somebody, you can do a little sprinkling. I know some churches that practice that today, but I want you to know here at ABC, when we baptize, we baptize all of you. Right. You take the plunge. I jokingly say sometimes, depending on how much you've sinned, I may hold you under longer. All right. I want you to know when you come out of the water, there's this cleansing of Jesus. Not not literally, but because of what Jesus has done for you spiritually. It's symbolic. But that's this is the reason this is the reason that we get to walk in the newness of life because of what Christ has done for us. We are cleansed in him. Romans three, verse 21 to the end of Chapter five talks about what Jesus has done for me. And then when you get to Chapter six now all the way to eight, it encourages us to then die for him.

Surrender our lives to walk in the goodness of what he has this cleansing and identity in Christ. And then he goes on, If I gave you the notes, no baptism. That's why we want to do in verse three talks about that. Let me go back to that. He tells us two things he wants us to know. Do you not know? Write about the baptism. So no baptism is that point in your notes. And then the second thing he wants us to know in verse six then is to know the crucifixion and resurrection. To know the crucifixion and resurrection, he says in verse six. We know. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died, has been set free from sin. The idea of the crucifixion and resurrection. Is about your forgiveness. Jesus came and gave his life that you could be forgiven. Free from sin. Dead to sin. Sin becomes, as it says in this passage, nothing. That's so important to just let those words. And really verse three, all the way to verse seven that we've read together, I'm dead to sin. Sin has become nothing. To hear those words and let those words be an understanding in your soul.

Because sometimes we get to that struggle in life where we don't feel like we're loved. We don't feel like we've performed enough. And we just simply want to accept what Jesus has said. It is finished. You're dead to sin. Dead. Don't go digging it back up. Don't go putting it back on your account. Jesus paid for it all. He died for your sin, that you could be free from it. It's nothing. It's not a weight. And that's on you anymore. Christ has set you free from it. It says in verse six or verse seven and verse eight. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. And here's how. In verse eight, he, the writer Paul, here knows this. He says, We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. So he's saying, look, if you want to know the reason why I can even state this or I know that it's true. It's because of the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus has conquered sin, Satan and death. And he's promised, as he was resurrected from the grave that he would give it to us, too, and that we're free from the sin that brings death to our souls. How is this possible? Because of what Jesus has done. Crucifixion and resurrection is about dying to an old way and finding new life in him.

So then how do we experience this newness of life? And I mean, that's the important question, right? You see the beautiful picture of how it was accomplished for us. But then how do we experience it in verse 10 to 14? He goes on and explains that to us. He says in verse ten, For the death He died. He died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. I'm Jesus's life. He's telling us here the point of Jesus's life wasn't about death. I mean, he did accomplish death, but the point of Jesus's life was to glorify the father. And the best way to do that was to surrender his life, that we could find life in him. And Jesus ultimate desire was to glorify the Father. And the way that he did that was through the cross. And I love what he says here. It was once for all. And when you think about your own your own life in Christ, when Jesus died for you, he didn't just die for your past sins. He died for your present and future. He died for it all. There is not one part of your life that will ever be outside of the grace of God because of what Jesus has done for you. So you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Number one, then, under this question, how are you experience this newness of life? He tells us this.

Consider your position. Consider your position. Look at that, he says. Verse 11. So you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God. You want to walk in the newness of life. Consider where you are in light of what Christ has done for you. Think about positioning what Jesus has put you in, not what you do, but what He has done for you. Do you know who you've become because of Christ? What a gift. What a privilege. You didn't have this before. No matter how much you worked and struggled in religion, you would have never been able to achieve this. Religion doesn't set you free. Religious law will not set you free. It will bring you to pride or despair. You need a rescuer.

But because of Jesus, you have the opportunity to walk in the newness of life. Consider that position and the privilege it is now to be the representative, hands and feet of Jesus in this world. You are his forever. A child of God, not of this world. To live for his glory and goodness. And then number two, then in your notes is this present yourself? Present yourself, he says, Let no sin, therefore reign in your mortal bodies. You don't belong to that anymore to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. this idea of instruments are literally instruments of warfare.

God's given you certain strengths and abilities, and you can use those abilities to destroy the things in this world. Or you can use it to bless the things in this world through your relationship in God. But it's all about understanding your position in him and then presenting yourself for that purpose rather than for the purpose of this world. You present yourself to the to the purposes of the Lord that he can work in you and through you. You know, I was a part of a meeting this past week with this group of leaders, and their heart was to want to help our society in general, especially our young people in our area, to make better choices in life.

And they wanted to they wanted to create opportunities for kids, to find better places, to do things, to make better choices. They're worried about influence. And, I wanted to get to the root of why do we even think that's important? Why does that matter? And how are you going? How are you going to do it? And they look at kids are making bad choices in some ways. Sometimes not all kids, not all, all the time, but some ways sometimes. And they want kids to be influenced to make better choices.

And they looked at the list of the things kids were doing they didn't like, and they wanted to help kids to make better choices. And I said, what's what's your motivation to this? How are you going to do that? And my concern was when kids see bad things that can happen the way that we inspire them to do better things is guilt and shame. Guilt and shame. What's wrong with you? You screw up, right? Make better choices. I find that can be a motivator. But that's an awful motivator. It'll work, but it only work for a little bit. What's far better? His identity and love. Your true identity and love. I don't think discipline is a bad thing, but discipline needs to be motivated out of love, wanting the best for them to succeed. And I think this is what Jesus has done for us in Romans to this point, that God's honest with our sin. We got to be honest with our sin. We're not trying to cover it up. We're not trying to mask it over. And we don't have to do that because God is gracious. He is so gracious. He gives us a place to be honest with where we fail. Now we get to bring that before him and he doesn't reject us in it because his grace abounds. But it speaks to the magnitude of the depth of God's love towards us. And while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

So that we can find a new identity in him, a new purpose, a new pursuit of life, desiring to live now for a new king and his kingdom. Something completely different in other. And we can position ourselves and the recognition of that and surrender ourselves to that for his glory. And that is far healthier. That God's grace would abound over and over. In fact, in verse 14, it says this for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. It never ends. It's new for me every moment of every day because God is that good. It reminds me of a story of Winston Churchill. There was a story where this wealthy family was having a party on an on their estate with all these other wealthy people. And in England and at this estate, there was a young boy that he lived there. It was his home. But he fell into some water and he didn't know how to swim. And he started to drown. And he was screaming for help. And at this party, the gardener heard it and he ran to the water and he jumped in just as the child was going under and drowning. And he pulled the kid out and he brought the kid to shore. And by that point, now, the party had accumulated next to the pond because of the noise and chaos.

And the gardener was able to spare the life of the child. And that child was none other than Winston Churchill. And the parents looked at the gardener and they said, You've saved the life of her kid. Tell us anything that we could do for you. And the gardener said, One day, I want my son to go to college. I want him to become a doctor. Many years later. Winston Churchill as an adult. One day he gets pneumonia. And they called the best doctor in England. And that doctor's name was Alexander Fleming. He was the doctor of the gardener that rescued Winston Churchill's life. And this ends up becoming now the doctor that now saves Winston Churchill again from pneumonia. And not only does he save Winston Churchill, this is actually the same doctor that discovered penicillin. So all of us have a lot to be thankful in this story. But Winston Churchill remarked in that moment, he said, it's rare that one person owe their life to someone twice. And it's a beautiful picture. I think of grace, but on a greater scale when you think in terms of Jesus. His grace rescues us that way every day. Again and again. He renews us in his goodness. It becomes a place for us in that transformation of God's abounding grace to then respond. For that king and his kingdom. I'll close with this. There was a farmer who.

I found a little baby eagle that looked lost and abandoned, and he felt pity for this eagle. So he decided he was going to take it home and care for this eagle so that it could survive. I mean, this is America's bird, for Pete's sake. You can't just leave it there to die, right? He takes it to the farm and he's trying to figure out how to best care for this eagle. And he thinks, You know what? I've got some birds. They're not the greatest of birds, but they're birds. And he threw the eagle in with his chickens. And the eagle. Eagle learns to survive by living among the chickens. In fact, he grows up with the chickens, and his only behavior is to act like a chicken. He. He walks around packs and eats like a chicken. And one day this will say Concerned citizen drives by. And he looks out into this farm and he sees an eagle walking around with the chickens and he says to himself, We can't have this. This is an eagle. And he goes to the farmer and he says, We need to do something about this eagle with these chickens. This eagle should not be here. And the farmer said he thinks he's a chicken. He's grown up with chickens. All he knows is chickens. So he's just going to live with the chickens. And. And the man said, I can't go for this.

He may act like a chicken, but he has the heart of an eagle. And so he takes that eagle and he lifts it up into the air and the eagle doesn't respond. So he decides, well, this eagle just needs to go higher. So he climbs up on the rooftop of the of the house that's there at the farm. And he raises the eagle up in the air. And the eagle still won't do anything. He just wants to act like a chicken. Well, finally he goes to the top of the mountain. He holds the eagle up. And the eagle in that moment looks out over the plains and he spreads his wings and begins to flap and he starts to soar. The story goes, the Eagle may have visited that farm again. No one really knows. But they do know that once he spread his wings, he never returned to the life of a chicken. That's the same thing is true for what Jesus has done for us. He has put in your heart to those that belong to him something new. A newness of life. And it is worth far more than the things of this world. If God's people would just see the gift of what it is and look at the position for which they have been given and surrender their hearts to the greatness that he desires to achieve in them by his power because of his grace. That is new every morning.